#even been wanting to go back to the anime.........

[postracehair]

fracture

max verstappen x reader | 3.5k

max breaks his wrist during the first week of the off-season.

cw: max breaks his arm, r is a bit rattled, some blood, a naked shower, intimacy, mentions of sex

a/n: c'mon. you know he'd be so annoying. good thing we love him. [i wrote this before the season ended and then...never posted it. so, here, have it before we start all this shit over again in a few weeks.]

__

You are not there when it happens.

You're asleep, actually, curled up on Max's couch with the cats while he enjoys the first week of the off-season. The celebrations have ended and there is a great deal of work to be done in the next few months, but everyone gets a little bit of respite.

Vacation will come after the holidays. That's the plan, anyway. The last few days have seen you in Monaco, mostly inside Max's place. Just spending time together, relaxing, watching movies, rumpling his sheets. Today, though, he and Danny decided to go on a world-class-athlete-level bike ride.

Which is why you're on the couch. They've been gone all day and you don't expect Max to get home until later. You ran errands, cleaned a little, and then took an afternoon nap.

As you rouse from it, you fumble for your phone to check the time. The screen lights up and you're greeted with --

35 texts. 4 missed calls.

"What the hell?" you mutter, sitting up and opening everything.

DR: sorry for the three calls don't freak out but i think max broke his arm

DR: he says you're probably napping but i'm going to document this for when you wake up

DR: he's fine but yeah that shit is fucked

DR: he says not to tell you he fell off his bike but he fell off his bike

DR: he braked for some animal in the road and went over his handlebars

DR: oh he also scraped his face but he's still pretty, don't worry

DR: his palms are fucked though which is why he's not texting you

DR: we're on the way to the hospital, btw

DR: you're gonna be so pissed when you wake up

It goes on like that. Daniel, to his credit, has given you a play-by-play of the whole situation. You've only been asleep for about an hour and based on the time stamps this started right after you fell asleep.

You get up as you read, grabbing your things and trying to find your shoes as you read. You need to -- you need to go and be wherever they are. You need to help. Heart racing, chest tight, you need to be near Max as soon as possible, even though Danny said he's okay. If this was you, Max would already be there. God, why did you take a nap?

According to the texts, they got to the hospital and he was seen immedietly, x-rayed, and bandaged up. Broken right wrist, Danny had said. He's pissed more than anything.

You're about to call him back when your phone rings in your hands.

"Danny," you say as soon as you accept it.

"Oh, thank fuck," Daniel exclaims. "I thought I was going to have to surprise you in person with the whole thing."

"I'm about to leave, just give me 15 minutes to get there--"

"No, no, no," he interrupts you. "He just got discharged. I'm bringing him home."

You stop in your tracks, one foot shoved halfway into your sneaker. "Really?"

"Yeah, we'll be there in like, 20 minutes?" You can hear Max saying something in the background. "He wants to talk to you," Danny sighs. "Mate, you'll see her soon--"

He's cut off and there's some muffled noises and then Max is saying your name.

"I'm fine," he says. "I only made him tell you so it wasn't a surprise when I came home."

"Max," you sigh, shoulders creeping away from your ears at the sound of his voice. "I'm so sorry, I was asleep!"

He laughs. You feel a bit weepy, which is both an overreaction and cathartic. "Good," he says. "The whole experience has been a pain in the ass."

"You're coming home now? Are you in pain?"

"Eh," he says, dragging out the sound. "They gave me something while they set it so I don't feel it much. Daniel says we'll be home soon. Oh, hold on --" There is some muttering, Danny's voice in the background. "Okay, I'm going to give you back. See you soon, liefje."

"Okay," you say softly.

"Be there in a flash!" Danny says brightly. "Seriously, don't worry."

You hang up and just stand in the hallway, at a loss. Something bad happened to Max and you weren't there. It feels wrong. Not that he's in poor hands with Danny -- quite the opposite. He's probably the only person aside from yourself that you'd want there for Max in a crisis. But, god. You wish you had been there.

The cats weave around your ankles as you pace, waiting for Danny to call or for the door to open or, anything at all to happen. Your mind is running a million miles a minute. Objectively, it's the best time for Max to break something. There isn't even a car for him to test right now and he had at least another week of time off before needing to go back to Milton Keynes. This might throw a wrench in your holiday plans but you couldn't care less about that. How long will he be in a cast? You assume he's in a cast. What kind of help will he need? Will you be enough to provide it? What if he --

Noises in the hall make you freeze and then you hear Danny's voice. You bolt to the door, unlatching the locks and pulling it open. You're greeted with the sight of the two of them -- Danny looking down at Max's keys in his hands, both of their backpacks on his back. They've both changed out of whatever ridiculous bike outfit they must have been wearing for the ride, but you devote your attention to your boyfriend.

You can see the bandages on Max's knees and forearms where he must have scraped himself up on the road. His wrist -- it's in a black cast that runs the length of his forearm. He cradles it to his chest in a sling they must have given him and then you make your way to his face. A few scratches along one cheek, hair a mess, mouth drawn into a frown. A frown that relaxes slightly when you meet his gaze. Your eyes well with tears.

"Max," you breathe. He steps in front of Danny and meets you in the doorway, his cast-free hand cupping your face through the bandages on his palm.

"I'm fine," he says. "You're looking at me like I'm in a coma."

"Sorry," you whisper. "I just --"

He tugs you to him gently, pressing your face into his neck and rubbing your back. You try to be careful of his arm as you breathe deep and will yourself not to actually lose it.

"Guys, can we at least go inside?" Danny asks.

Max huffs and you pull away. He drags his thumb under both of your eyes but doesn't comment on the dampness he finds there. "Inside, liefje."

Danny drops Max's stuff and passes along the documents from the hospital. He's quite the personality but he's all business when he needs to be. "Pain killers in his bag. Call me if you need anything, guys."

You step away from Max long enough to throw your arms around Danny. "Thank you," you whisper. "For looking after him." For calling. For bringing him back to me. For doing what I should have been there for.

He chuckles. "Alright," he says. "Max should break something more often."

Once Danny leaves, it's just the two of you. Max has settled on the couch, head leaning back into the cushions.

"Come sit with me," Max calls. "God, I forgot how much I hate hospitals."

His eyes are closed and he holds his arm gingerly. It's not the first time you've seen him injured -- you've been at his side in the medical tent before after watching him careen into a wall at 190mph. And yet, right now, you're still so upset.

You settle into the cushions on his left side and just watch him.

"I'm sorry," you say again. Max's eyes open. "I can't believe I was asleep when Danny called."

Max shakes his head. "What would you have done?"

"I could have come to get you and take you to the hospital, or just met you there, or--"

He puts his hand on your knee. "Come on," he says. "Don't be silly."

How do you explain it to him? How do you tell him that something happening to him feels like it happened to you? That not being there feels like a personal failing?

"Will you tell me what happened?"

He sighs and you pull his palm from your leg to hold it in your hands.

"It's stupid," he grimaces. "You don't need the details."

"Max."

He folds. Other people in his life have called this your superpower -- Max's will is iron clad. It is very difficult to get him to do something he does not want to do. But one word from you, one soft look, one gentle touch, and he often relents. It's like you can peel back that layer of him that has hardened out of necessity. To protect himself and his heart, to make sure he's taken seriously, to stop things from hurting.

It's like you remind him that it's okay to feel, even when it's hard.

"Daniel summed it up," he grumbles. "We were biking down a hill outside the city and something ran out into the road in front of me. I stopped. Or tried to, at least." He mimes squeezing the breaks, fingers curling in towards his bandaged palms. You stroke his unbroken wrist with your thumb.

"And you went over," you finish.

"And I went over. Got my knees, my forearms, my hands. My wrist, obviously. Just landed badly."

You reach for his face ever so gently, dragging the pad of your thumb over the shallow scrapes on his chin, his cheek. He allows it, knowing that you need to touch him to be sure he's okay. Whenever he has a crash on track you have trouble letting him out of your sight for hours. You just need to look at him, feel him warm and alive under your hands.

"I'm going to write a letter to your helmet manufacturer," you say, not entirely kidding. You slide your hand over his temple and into his hair. It's dirty, you can feel it, but you cradle his skull all the same. "Thank them."

He laughs once, amused with your sincerity. "I need to shower," he says. "But I can't get this wet." You finally direct your attention to his broken wrist, the entirety of his forearm and hand encased in the cast under the sling.

"Does it hurt?" you ask again. Max would tell anyone else off for badgering him so, but he keeps his face soft and reassures you.

"It's strange," he says. "I'm sure I'll feel it later."

"Did it hurt?" you whisper. "When you broke it?"

You know that Max has felt a great deal of pain in his life. His day job requires it -- physical, mental, emotional. He knows how to handle it and get over it. But he's also honest with you, always.

He wrinkles his nose. "It wasn't nice," he confesses. "I knew right away."

You grimace. In the silence, you match your breaths to his and just sit together for a little while.

And then Max's stomach growls.

"Whoops," he says, grinning crookedly. Still an athlete, still a boy with a fast metabolism. You can't help but laugh.

"How about this," you begin, unfolding yourself from the couch and standing in front of him, hands on your hips. Max looks up at you like you're the best thing he's ever seen. "I order some food and then we get you showered while we wait for it. Let the scrapes breathe and keep your cast dry, then we eat and watch a movie and go to bed. Okay?"

"We get me showered?" He sounds skeptical.

"You think you can wash your hair on your own?"

He smirks. "I can do a lot with one hand."

You roll your eyes. "So you're turning down an opportunity to shower with me, is what I'm hearing."

Max gets himself off the couch and rests his palm on your hip. "No," he says softly. "I'm not that stupid."

He kisses you lightly and heads for the bathroom.

"I guess we can wrap it in a plastic bag, or something?" you call after him. It takes a few minutes of opening and closing cabinets for you to find one. You put in a delivery order and make your way to the bathroom. Max has already turned on the shower and you find him shirtless and peeling off his bandages in in front of the mirror.

"Let me do that." He doesn't put up much of a fight, not even wincing when the tape pull at his skin. You see the gashes on his forearm, the raw skin of his palms. "Arm, please." The plastic bag goes around his cast and you tie it at his elbow.

"You planning to wash my hair while wearing your clothes?" Max asks with a straight face.

You stare at him, trying to seem unimpressed. He breaks first, mouth pulling up at one corner before he shucks off his soft shorts and briefs in one go. He pecks you on the cheek and gets in the shower, still smirking at you through the glass door.

"Alright, alright," you mutter. "So dramatic."

You feel Max's eyes on you as you undress, leaving your clothes on a pile on the floor.

The shower is unnecessarily big but Max does not give you much space. The hot spray is at his back and he keeps his plastic bag-clad arm mostly out of the way.

"Feel good?" you ask. Max sighs but nods. You'll bet he's aching but hasn't admitted it. He turns to the side so you can catch some of the spray, too, fighting off the chill outside the warm water.

"I might fall asleep in here," he mutters.

"That'll be the painkillers, darling," you tell him. "C'mon, get your hair wet."

Max tips his head back. You readjust so that you can card your hands through it. You shampoo him gently, taking your time and massaging his scalp. It's a miracle he stays on his feet, but he does. You hum as you work and Max's breaths get deeper, slower.

"Head back," you say softly. He obeys. You do the same with some of your conditioner because you know he likes how it smells.

This shower feels more intimate than the countless hours you've spend in his bed, tangled up in one another. He's been inside you and yet this feels more vulnerable. He's totally ceding control, trusting you to take care of him. You're naked, slick bodies brushing, always touching whether it's your hands in his hair or Max's own fingers reaching for your skin just to feel.

One time, when you were sick, you couldn't muster the energy to take a shower. Max ran you a bath and washed your hair for you, talking all the while because you asked to hear his voice. It's obvious that you'd do the same for him, as you're doing now. It's just how you love each other -- all the way, all the time. When it's easy and when it's hard.

"Danny was right," Max says, words slurring half from bliss and half the fatigue of the day catching up to him. "I should break bones more often."

You finish rinsing him and just stand there in the spray for a few moments.

"Please, no," you groan, brushing wet strands back from his forehead. "If you want me to wash your hair I will, Max. You don't need to break anything."

His eyes flutter open and find yours. He smiles lazily and you turn off the shower.

"If you say so," he says. "Can we take this off, now?"

Bag removed, skin patted dry, comifes on. The food comes when you're settling Max on the couch with a pillow for his arm. In all likelihood he'll manage a few bites of take out and fall asleep 15 minutes into the movie. But he needs the rest, you think. And besides, he'll have you to watch over him.

__

It becomes clear remarkably quickly that Max is an awful patient. You sort of knew this -- he's been sick a few times when you're around, but you figured that was just man-disease. Whining, refusing to sit still. This is 10x worse. He won't let you do anything for him until he's proven that he can't do it himself. You consider locking him in your bedroom to keep him from trying to do things he shouldn't do.

Max just wasn't made to sit still.

But you can empathize -- it's frustrating to not be able to do any of the things he really likes to do. Drive, use his sim, even play regular video games. It's a lot of movies and long walks and leg days with his trainer.

And then there's the way he just won't ask for help. That's a Max Verstappen original and you know it gets worse when he's frustrated. You do it too -- everyone does. But Max wants to do everything himself, wants to prove that he can.

You try to sit back and let him work it out. About a week after he comes home with his arm in a cast, he calls your name. You're in the kitchen, staring into the open fridge and wondering if you should order more groceries or just go to the shops yourself.

"You okay?" you call back. "Where are you?"

"Bathroom,"he shouts.

Ah, you think. Here we go.

He hasn't shaved yet. You've always loved when he keeps his facial hair a little longer. You love the feel of it on your skin and how it lightens along with his hair when you're on holiday somewhere nice. It's more likely that he keep it long in the off-season. Hot races are a nightmare with a beard, he's said. It itches like mad.

"Coming," you call.

Sure enough, you find him in front of the sink, razor in hand and frown firmly in place. He makes eye contact with you in the mirror and even though you can feel his annoyance from here, the set of his jaw softens.

"Do you think you could help me shave?" he asks. No lead up, no hem and haw.

"Of course, Max."

You quickly work out that sitting on the counter next to the sink while he stands between your knees works best. His broken wrist hangs at his side, the other hand resting on the counter next to your leg.

You lather him up, carefully applying the white foam of his shaving cream on his cheeks, his chin, his neck. He's got a fancy razor, one that will probably make it hard to cut him. Still, you feel the way he's basically handed you a blade and asked you to use it on him. In so many ways it's one of the most intimate things you've ever done. Even more than the showers you've had this week, just chatting and washing his hair.

"I'll be careful," you say softly.

"I know." He tilts his chin up, showing you his neck. "Go on, then."

It's quiet work. You're focusing hard and Max seems content to allow you. Stroke after stroke, rinsing the razor in the sink. You keep one hand at the base of this throat as the other works, gliding it over his skin. Cheeks, jaw, upper lip. Chin, neck.

"I like your beard, you know," you say when you're almost done. He waits until you're rinsing the razor again to reply.

"I do," he says, smirking. "You aren't quiet about it."

The last patch comes off as easily as the rest and you grab a damp towel to clean the rest of the shaving cream. Max appears to have relaxed enough to become pliant, leaning into your touch as you finish. He lets you rub moisturizer into his cheeks, eyes fluttering closed. His hand ends up on your leg, fingers pressing into the flesh of your thigh.

"Cheeky," you mutter. He smiles, boyish and easy. You take your time, pleased that he's letting you, but also because you could touch him forever. "Schatje," you whisper, trying to make it sound like it does from his lips. "All done."

Max doesn't move. You frame his face with your hands and lean in until your lips touch. You feel his smile against yours, but he dutifully tilts his head to deepen the kiss. His freshly shaved skin is so soft. You've kissed thousands of times by now, but you can never get enough of him. The way he responds to your every move, meeting your pressure with some of his own. Your tongue with his, swallowing your moans and giving you his own like a gift.

It's Max who pulls away, dragging his lips over your cheek.

"Dankje," he whispers. It means more than that, you know. From Max, it means thank you for dealing with me, for taking care of me, for loving me.

He doesn't think any of that is easy for you. But he's wrong. It's the easiest thing in the world.

[anakinstwinklebunny]

PAIRING: sugar daddy!anakin x f!reader

FLUFF ❦

"Ani, please," you pouted, clutching your phone in both hands, before out stretching them to practically shove the screen in his face. There it was, a picture of the fluffiest, most ridiculous little guinea pig staring back at him with those little black eyes.

Anakin didn't even blink. "No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I mean no, sweetheart," he muttered, gaze moving down to the file, hand already flipping a page in the obnoxiously thick contract he has been reviewing at the kitchen table since breakfast. He didn't even gave you a further glance.

But you’re known for being relentless. You won't back down so easily. So, you moved closer to him before sliding onto his lap with grace. Your arms looped around his neck, expression twisting into a pout like the manipulative little minx you were. "But look at her, Ani," you whispered, tilting the phone so he had no choice but to look. "She’s just a baby."

He barely spared a glance at it before his eyes flicked back to his paperwork. "She’s a rodent."

"She’s a soft, sweet, helpless little baby," you corrected dramatically. "Like me."

His lips twitched—but he refused to let that take over , let that make him smile. Refused to let you win.

"Baby, they stink," he said painly, adjusting the gold cufflink on his sleeve. "I’m not keeping a tiny, smelly furball in my penthouse."

"They don’t stink!" you argued, of course, trying to pout even harder. "And I’d clean up after her, I swear! You’d never even notice she’s here."

Anakin snorted. "Oh, really? Because every time I get you a plant, you forget to water it. I don’t think a living, breathing animal is a great idea."

"Wait, Ani! It's different! Plants are boring. A guinea pig is—"

"No."

You huffed. Fine. Time for plan B.

With a slow, sweet smile, you nuzzled against his neck, before pressing soft kisses to his pulse point.

"Baby," he sighed, but it was weaker now.

You only hummed innocently, dragging your lips up his jaw, then lower, pressing a slow, open-mouthed kiss to his throat.

"Not gonna work," he muttered, but the voice got already deeper.

"You sure?"

His breath hitches when your fingers trail down his chest, toying with the buttons of his silk dress shirt. "Y/N—"

"You’re so good to me, Ani," you whispered against his lips, rolling your hips just slightly against his lap.

And damn—

Anakin grabbed your waist, yanking you closer, groaning softly when your lips finally collided. It was slow, deep - just like everytime he kissed you, with passion, actual love and worship - his hand cradled your jaw, tilting your head just how he wants.

He surrendered so easily

You whimpered, pressing closer, letting him take full control. Letting his large, calloused hands roam up under your shirt, squeeze your waist, tease your ribs, go higher and higher, fingertips finally meeting the--

You pulled away.

He tried to chase your lips, but to no use. You shoved his hands away, leaving him breathing heavy, eyes hazy. "The hell was that?"

You grinned innocently. "So… about the guinea pig?"

Anakin blinked. Then groaned in annoyance, kind of betrayal (he should have known better), head tipping back against the chair, hands tightening on your waist.

"You’re fucking impossible."

TAG LIST: @kingdomhate @divineani @haydensprettyprincess @skyguys-princess @catnipaddictt @heartscone @haydensbbg @inneedsoffanfics @jediavengers @babybell-cheese @anisluvrgirl @slutforfinnickodair @xhunnybeeex @fuckmyskywalker @gallerygourmet @ysrjune @anakinskwkler @cookybananas @emotionallybruisedx @diorvalentina @sevinax @throughparisallthroughrome @aniiuv @ritosparty @ninastyless @lily-strnlo @thesassypadawan @awhhayden @sydkneez @anisangeldust @l1ttle-misssunsh1ne @anakinca @rubiesarepretty @luluartpop @cloverina @nikiloveshayden

[neeeooon]

Hey Elle!!! 😚🫶May I request bllk boys (Nagi, Rin, Sae, Bachira, Shidou) with s/o who's rlly into anime, cosplay, spends all their money on figurines, merch etc and makes them go to conventions with them!!! 🤸🏼‍♀️ love your writing!

yesssss LMAO okay i had fun w thiss thank you sm for the request!!! 💛💛

when you’re an anime fan ;

bf bllk x gn!reader

nagi seishiro

-> he doesn’t like the fact that he has to share you with your dozens and dozens of anime plushies

-> “nagi! you’re crushing mr. sakamoto!!” “what’s that?” “?! please move so he can breathe :)” he decides not to fight you on this. “.. okay.”

-> though nagi doesn’t quite understand your obsession with spending money on little figures and plushies of cartoon characters, he works around it. it’s easier to spend a little time looking for a clear spot than upset you after moving something he wasn’t supposed to

-> until he comes over one day to find a large snorlax plush in his usually empty spot on your bed

-> “.. is this your way of telling me to move?” “what? no, it’s for you! your room is like a prison cell, babe. you need something to make it more personal. plus, he looks just like you!”

-> nagi doesn’t see it, but he sleeps with that damn snorlax plush every night he spends away from you <3

itoshi rin

-> “y/n? put the phone down…” “just one click, rin. one click and it’s all mine.” “y/n, so you really need twenty-six figures of the same four characters..?” “yes.” “really?” “… maybe?”

-> he manages to convince you to give him the phone so you don’t spend your entire paycheck on anime merchandise

-> he’ll stay up late watching the shows with you, and he actually follows along with and likes quite a bit of them. not enough to blow his entire paycheck, but enough

-> “i think we should be meruem and komugi from hxh for halloween.” “… but don’t they d—“ “DONT FINISH THAT SENTENCE.”

-> once you promise to stop crippling your bank account, he agrees to dress up with you <3

itoshi sae

-> bro is not impressed

-> he can’t even pretend to enjoy himself as you drag him around the merch store, grumbling about how ugly and expensive everything is

-> you ignore him and fill your little basket with mangas and posters for your room, but when it comes down to it, sae hands over his card at checkout before you have the chance

-> “?? i thought you said everything here is ugly and expensive?” “oh, it is. i don’t want you spending your money on ugly things, y/n.” you smile at his excuse and kiss his cheek

-> he’s not ecstatic at the cost of everything, but sae doesn’t complain about it to you, either. he even helps you hand your posters at home (those, he does insult)

-> “why does that guy have such big ears?” “be nice to geto!! those are his earrings.” “he looks like a weirdo.” “leave him be 😭”

bachira meguru

-> you better believe he’s feeding your addiction

-> “ooh, y/n, look at this one!! do you have this one?” “i’ve been looking everywhere for that character! how did you find it?” “my monster told me to check the back shelf..”

-> keeps a full, detailed list of every anime you mention starting or liking so he can surprise you with merch

-> “y/n, look! i made a hakura sakura keychain for you!!” “you made it?! i love it!! but what’s the occasion..?” “i just felt like making something for you ☺️” you may have teared up a bit

shidou ryusei

-> you were planning to cosplay one of your favorite anime characters, and the costume was going on sale at a convention. thankfully, shidou didn’t fight when you asked him to join you

-> “so, we’re gonna stand in this line for how long again?” “depends on how quickly they wave us through. could be a few hours.” “… let’s fucking do this.”

-> shidou has to body a few people, and you do get escorted out by security, but you get the costume! so you consider the trip a win

-> “you didn’t have to punch that guy for me,” you hum as you dab at your boyfriend’s scabbing knuckles. “he was going to push you out of the way. you wanted it more than he did, and he shouldn’t put hands on someone for a dress.” “you did, though..” “for you. not the costume… it is a cool costume, though.” “i know, right?!”

-> you post photos and videos of yourself all dressed up online, making sure to tag shidou for helping you complete your look <3

[persicipen]

𑑛 “GOODBYE FLOWERS” ﾉ PHAINON. HONKAI STAR RAIL

gn reader ﾉ words 0.8k ✘ spoilerless but vaguely set back in 3.0 before he goes to castrum kremnos. saying goodbye when you send your boy to save the world. but don’t worry, he will come back :3 ✘ BITTERSWEET FLUFF ﾉ GENERAL CONTENT!

Who stands before you is none other than Phainon of Aedes Elysiae himself. Chest proudly wide and out with the golden stars on his vest gleaming with each breath he makes; moonlight hair ruffled by the wind and his frivolous trotting through the streets with the intent to find you as soon as possible. He gives you a flower blue as his own eyes. It’s beautiful, no doubts about it. Must’ve been growing on the slopes with waterfalls behind the city where the climate is the gentlest, most loved by all plants and animals alike.

“Romantic.” You muse, rubbing the velvety soft petals between your fingers. “Maybe you should ask Lady Aglaea to hand you the Coreflame of Romance?”

“Don’t joke about it, Lady Aglaea is not someone to be laughed at.” He scolds you, voice gentle like Phagousa’s breeze.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that… It’s just that… if you weren’t destined to bear the fate of this world… perhaps then I wouldn’t have to worry about saying goodbye to you on such a beautiful day.” Your voice breaks with the first tear that dews your lashes.

The day is beautiful, more than ever. Kephale’s gentle sun shines on the city, and you can believe there is already a demigod standing in front of you, even though you know that he is still awaiting his chance to conquer the Coreflame. He seems unaffected by this anymore, not as much as with your saddening reaction.

“It’s okay.” He murmurs and takes your hand in his, caressing gently with his thumbs. The smile he gives you is loving, yet you see it wavering at the corners of his lips. “I’m going to miss you as well, more than you can ever understand…”

“Don’t say it like you’re going away for long. It’s just one mission, yes?”

“Heh, I am grateful that you think of me so highly. Battling a corrupted god is but a detour on our journey. Soon, we’ll stand together again under the sunlight shining from above.” His other hand rests against the nape of your neck as he presses his forehead against yours. “Don’t be sad. Whatever comes along, remember that I will always find you. I will always come back to you.”

Your shoulders slump a little with those words. If only you could have seen each other as much as you wanted to. In times when there is a fleeting peace, all you crave is a battle; an excuse to make Phainon stay beside you, as he has done many times before. Whenever things turned dangerous, Phainon was there to protect you. It is not you wishing for more pain or calamity — people have suffered enough because of the black tide — but that infantile part of you didn’t want to see him venture out into the fog of solemn war and leave you unattended. What purpose is there in the sun and ripe fruits if there’s no one to share them with you?

“I will keep watching this flower… Believing it’s your eyes looking back at me.” You tell him as you wrap your one arm around his waist, pulling him closer into a hug, which he returns without any hesitation.

“Then I shall return to you with a new flower every time, and I won’t stop until you’re drowning in a sea of them.” He laughs, and you feel the vibrations from his chest.

“You’re such an idiot… There is only one place where the flowers make a sea.”

The other side of the warm west wind, the one destination everyone will eventually reach once their life comes to an end.

“I’m not going there without you.”

You don’t ponder that. Instead, you let him hold you close as you try to memorise everything about him. Every curve in his muscular body, and how perfectly you mold together. The warmth of his embrace and how it makes you never want to let go, the way his heart beats against yours, the sound of his laughter, and his scent. For a moment, you pretend it’s just a normal day where your duties are mundane and Phainon’s presence is but a reward for accomplishing your task. A perfect ending, a beautiful dream.

But dreams will never last forever.

When he lets go, the chill of solitude envelopes you instantly. Your hands wander over to grasp onto the hem of his sapphire robes, gripping tightly as if holding on to something long lost. His voice calls out your name, repeating it gently until your blurred gaze meets with his cerulean one. He places a kiss on your forehead with a soft hum. It’s almost painful how genuine and affectionate it feels; as if he still believes there is always another chance, another time.

“See you tomorrow,” he whispers against the skin.

“Or the day after tomorrow.”

Another gentle laugh reverberates from him as he tucks the flower behind your ear and at last heads towards the gates to join the others. Your eyes follow him until his figure disappears in a blur of your tears.

[justaghostwithbones]

This is so beautifully articulated. I alternate between sprinting forward to moonwalking back… sometimes years. Sometimes I take up residence in that bygone time, and wallow in trying to change it, while imaging I don’t know how that storyline tragically ends. Sometimes I sprint forward then; start building the blocks of the life that I want. I’ll get it partially built… and then… and then… and then… I’m back in the past again, somewhere else this time. Trying to prevent a different moral crime.

But for just about a month now, I’ve held still (with a moment or two of those springs to half-build things; though instead of running backward, I just pause). I’m learning to crawl. I’m building those skills.

(CW: death, grief, suicide, animal death)

Something I’ve learned, so painfully, through so many genuine tragedies—the death of my little family: first my husband of almost ten years… then the first dog we adopted together (and even the people who hate it when others compare human children to pets would fully vouch for the fact that I showed my guys more love and sacrificed more for them than many human parents of human kids), who died spontaneously in my arms from a condition that couldn’t be screened for. He didn’t suffer, it was fast. I wailed when I felt his last breath. I had never felt something die before and it rewrote some of my DNA. I never wanted to outlive my dogs, and I couldn’t believe I had to. I had these primal screams of rage at “God” for everything I had already lost, but my baby deserved peace from me, even if he wasn’t really “there” at the moment, so I swallowed my rage and I held him for over an hour. Talking about everything he was and everything he meant and all of the people he had inspired with his spunky personality as a rescued dog who had done some time in the streets. I pressed my forehead against the top of his head and health my breath, unable to accept he was gone. I listened to songs with his fuzzy, sweet body cradled close to me while I kissed his face.

His “big” brother, whom we adopted a year later than our first guy, but was triple his size deteriorated quickly, and after torturing myself with data and research, I looked into his eyes one day and knew that he was asking me for help. He’d been to veterinary specialists several times in the previous few months, but there was nothing any of them could do for him. It was just age. He was a large breed dog who was at least 14. They kept telling me I couldn’t have done more. I knew the only help I could give him was to let him go. So I made an appointment and planned for him to pass peacefully under a tree my late-husband planted. I took him to the place where my husband and I got married. I gave him all of the carbs he wanted (once he got into the double digits, he felt he earned the right to snag food, and he never met a piece of bread he didn’t love). I took pictures of him against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains in the summer. I slept on my husband’s side of the bed (because he slept in a raised bed my husband built for him there), so I could pet him all night, every night I still had him. That gold-hearted guy ended up passing two days before this wonderful vet service was scheduled to come to my house… he still couldn’t fully let go, so they made an emergency visit, and he ultimately died in my arms on my late-husband’s side of the bed, after a couple hours of me laying with him and telling him stories and playing him songs and mapping out his irises like they would be my compass, because I had to no idea how to navigate life without his protective instincts. Because I didn’t know if my bones had another loss in them. I silently begged for his wisdom and felt so selfish for not being able to stop time and reverse biology and get more time with him. He loved my husband much more than he loved me, in the beginning, and there was some real poetic beauty in where he chose to let go—he didn’t get up on the bed regularly at that point; he hadn’t for years. But for a couple hours, I got to thank him out loud for everything that I could remember to say out loud. He licked tears off my face. His tail wagged when my mom arrived. I whispered to him until I felt his heart stop, and continued after.

In under 2.5 years, I lost my husband, my career, my health (I still am not allowed to work due to my disabilities), and my babies I’d “raised” for 12, and 11 years, respectively. And I haven’t moved forward. The only reason I’m still alive is that… those weren’t my only two babies. Months before my husband died, he fell in love with a puppy we stumbled upon unintentionally while picking up something from a pet store. We didn’t know there was an adoption event held that day. So just over 5 years ago, now, we adopted a puppy. By now, he’s a “legitimate” service dog (cardiac training), and my best friend and confidante. There have been so many nights where I’ve wanted to unsubscribe from earth but just look at him and know he couldn’t live without me. He is my tether to now, and he is how I’ve navigated losing close family relationships (I didn’t suffer the loss of my husband, career, and babies in a way that was palatable for some people. I didn’t do anything crazy, they admit. I just… cried too much. Wasn’t fun to be around. So they didn’t come around. Or call. Or text. I don’t have any real “social media,” so I wasn’t suffering in their face or anything. I just… wasn’t supposed to suffer at all, somehow). He is the reason I’m working so hard in therapy (and have been for nearly 4 years, but REALLY doing painful work for the past 4 months) in the hopes that I will start to want to wake up. That I will look forward to living. That I am determined to find a way to live and not just exist. That I can build a sustainable way to move forward.

But right now, I’m proud of myself for holding still, even when it hurts everywhere and I know all my internal escape routes, all of the ways I can distract myself, all of my hiding spots, all of the ways I can bleed to distract my brain from its selfish existential suffering. But I’m not using them. I’m just holding still, sometimes shakily, sometimes while holding my breath, sometimes through hours of silent tears running down my face.

It’s a kind of poetic irony that I found this person’s beautiful sentiment—that made my neurons start firing in a way that I could write about things I’ve never been able to speak aloud with any level of detail—on the eve of “spring forward” (though I, along with literally everyone else, hates the fact that we can’t stick to either daylight or standard time year round. It’s literally the only thing there’s true consensus about in the U.S.; sincerely); because that’s what I want to do. Maybe in March I’ll only be crawling, but it’s still forward motion. Because I know I won’t make it through 2025 if it’s like 2024. The world is getting worse and I have every excuse to do the same. The world is getting worse so I refuse to do the same. The world is getting worse so I am going to get better.Not perfect. Not perfectly. Tearfully, painfully, tragically, better. I’m going to keep the coffee dates adults pretend to make. I’m going to meet the neighbors I’ve lived near for 13 years. I’m going to learn how to exist among tragedy without feeling tragic. I’m going to learn to tell the stories of what I’ve lost with the aim of learning to gain things, not as an excuse for why I don’t ever even dare to want anything because I know so deeply the pain of loss. I want to grieve, but not be the physical embodiment of grief. I want to learn how to want things. I want to learn how to say that I want things. I want to learn what I like to do. I want to learn how to find joy and not just be busy.

I want.

how do you reconnect to life after being disconnected for so long

[threeacttragedy]

Entry 20: The One Where We Take a Course in Rear Window Ethics

Oh, hey, hey – you’re back!

Yes. I, uh – we need to – uh... What the hell are you doing with that Exakta VX camera fitted with a 400 mm Kilfitt lens?

Come here. See those open windows across the courtyard?

Uh, yeah…

Well, I’m trying to zoom into that apartment –

Wow. Because that’s not creepy as fuck.

Oh, don’t be so modern. This is New York City, 1954. It’s fine.

Yeah, okay. I need you to focus for a moment. Seriously – put down the zoom lens. Headquarters called and wanted to know why Dorothy was still in Oz. You know we were told to take her home.

No – actually we were told to throw stones at that wannabe Wizard. And we did. Kind of. Okay, whatever, but surely you can feel the shift. At the very least we’ve infiltrated the base camp with a bunch of flying monkeys. They’ll take care of the rest. God, there’s one in there –

And we were supposed to help Dorothy find her way back home.

Meh, don’t worry about Dorothy. I don’t think she’s ready to go home. Even after the ping-pong bullshit of the past few weeks, she’s still standing on her own two feet. Although Toto continues to be a mild pain…

But –

But nothing. Dorothy’s had the power to get her own ass home this entire time. When’s she’s ready, she’ll go.

Okay, well, obviously you’re not going to be of any help as you seem preoccupied with spying on your neighbors. So, I’m going to need to borrow the hot air balloon. Where’d you put it?

Oh, it’s on the—wait! If you take our balloon, how am I supposed to get around? I’m not staying here indefinitely. There’s no air conditioning in this damn apartment!

How about I promise to come back for you? Maybe.

Damn you. Fine, I’ll go with you. Let me get my shit together. Here, hold my camera – and don’t drop it!

Hmph, this is heavy. How does it work? I just look through this and… <points camera towards apartment across the way> Oh – this is interesting. What the hell did you say was going on over there? “…[S]tart from the beginning…Tell me everything you saw – and what you think it means.”

You know those days when you have no choice but to catch up on the work you’ve been blowing off for the past few days (maybe even weeks)? Well, last week, I was having one of those days. The work I’d been pushing down my list for weeks finally needed to be addressed. Regardless of how mind-numbing it was, it had to get done otherwise things were going to start going awry.

I’m one of those people who – when working on the mundane – has a mind that tends to wander every few minutes or so. I find myself Googling things like, “What is the fastest animal on the planet?” And, for your own Useless Knowledge, the cheetah’s land speed of 60+ mph doesn’t come close to the peregrine falcon’s dive bomb of 240+ mph.

Anyway, to keep my mind from wandering, I usually have something running in the background to force my brain into paying attention to two things at once – somehow that helps me maintain focus. The most popular “something” is almost always one of the many (quite possibly too many) British detective shows available for streaming. But, the other day, I simply wasn’t in the mood to rewatch Season 3 of “Dalgliesh” for the seventh time.

So, after a bit of scrolling, I put on an old movie I hadn’t seen in years: “Rear Window.”

The 1954 original, of course.

I’m rarely impressed by anything put out by Modern Hollywood, but the old shit – well, there are some legit classics out there, including this one.

One of the reasons I’ve always been fond of this movie is because you go into it knowing the “bad guy” right from the word “go.” I’m one of those extremely annoying people who can guess the villain within the first few chapters of a book, or within the first twenty or so minutes of a movie (like I said, I am rarely impressed by Hollywood). However, I will admit, one book did slip by me. Damn you, Agatha Christie. Honestly, though, the thrill I felt with being wrong was far more memorable than anything I’ve ever felt with being right. Good or bad, a surprise always leaves its imprint, doesn’t it? Plus, the hysterical elation my father must have felt – and later exhibited – knowing I was going into the final few chapters wrong – well, damn him, too. And, no, the book was not “Three Act Tragedy.” That one was quite easy.

Okay, enough about Ms. Christie. Back to Mr. Hitchcock.

As I sat busily typing away and listening to the dialogue of “Rear Window” playing in the far reaches of my office, it suddenly occurred to me that the parallels between “Rear Window” and the Lukola fandom were rather, well, thought-provoking. Here we have a man (and later his sidekicks) peering into the personal life of another human being. Our protagonist in “Rear Window” witnesses an event (a cover-up, actually) and sets out to prove it – all from the perspective of an onlooker looking in. Sound familiar? I thought it might.

So, welcome to your course on “Rear Window Ethics.”

Now, I cannot intertwine “Rear Window” with the Lukola fandom without dragging your ass into the story. Actually, I could – but it’s far more entertaining for me (and hopefully you) if I form a nexus between you and the movie.

Therefore, you, of course, get to align yourself with L.B. Jefferies (played in real life by Jimmy Stewart). If you’re still in this fandom, it’s because you’ve witnessed something you simply cannot ignore and you’re almost certainly hellbent on proving it at this point.

It’s very likely most of you entered the Lukola fandom alone. You watched some portion of the World Tour and became intrigued. Your mind began to wander, which sparked some urge in you to do some digging. Eventually your investigation led you to the Devil – sorry, I mean, social media. There you met like-minded junior investigators, and you’ve now found yourself chatting with these newfound friends and theorizing in the burrows of underground group chats.

So, about your sidekicks…

The part of “Stell-aaaaaa!!!!” (yes, that is my hat-tip to Jake) is given to your most “inventive” Lukola friend. You know, the one that has their own “theories” channel in your private chats; the one who scurries down the rabbit hole – not in search of the White Rabbit – but in search of the Cheshire Cat. Stella is the reason you think outside the box. In “Rear Window,” Stella (played by Thelma Ritter) is Jefferies’ nurse (Jefferies is injured and bound to his apartment; hence why he has so much free time to gaze out the rear window). This friend will throw anything and everything against the wall to see what sticks – even if it occasionally takes a deep-dive into how to cut up a body in a bathtub.

Next, we have Detective Doyle, Jefferies’ long-time friend (played by Wendell Corey). Doyle is quite possibly your spouse, haha, or anyone who side-eyes your involvement with this fandom. Doyle half listens to Jefferies’ theories and usually counters Jefferies with an alternative piece of evidence. But don’t fret, although Doyle teases Jefferies about his wild theories throughout the film, Doyle is, in fact, supportive of Jefferies and does comes around in the end.

I’m going to switch gears for a moment but not before acknowledging that, yes, I am aware I’m missing a player here. Don’t worry – she will arrive shortly.

Alright, on to our subject matter: Lars Thorwald.

Thorwald (played by Raymond Burr) is our straight-outta-Hitchcock-baddie who has been spotted by Jefferies trying to cover up the murder of his wife. The obvious parallels I’m going to draw between “Rear Window” and the Lukola fandom are (1) Thorwald’s crime being equivalent to the World Tour and everything that has happened thereafter, and (2) Jefferies’ obsession with proving Thorwald is guilty being comparable to the fandom’s obsession with proving Lukola is real.

Now, I’m going to get the ball rolling by fast-forwarding through the World Tour all the way up to where I last left you – the post-release of “Mis-Directed.” Recall that shortly before the book’s release, in a surprise turn of events, Luke appeared with Antonia at the Boss event held January 30. However, this was almost immediately negated by Luke snubbing Antonia post-event (and perhaps even more shockingly, Antonia’s mirrored lack of acknowledgement of Luke). And try as Nicola might, there’s no skirting around the innuendo made throughout that fan-fic of a book.

“Watson! Get up! There’s fuckery afoot!”

Who the hell are you?

I’m Dad. Who are you?

Ah, not that guy!

Yes, that guy. Of course, Dad has entered the room. After all I needed someone to fill the role of Lisa Fremont (also known as Grace Kelly). Lisa is your Lukola friend with the highest degree of common sense. She takes the “evidence” presented and looks at it with some realism. She is never going to take the Dwight Shrute Route and state something as “Fact,” but she is the one you rely on to delineate between what makes sense and what doesn’t. In short, this is your friend who understands human nature.

Alright, before I really get this ball rolling –

Since I’ve now added a third wheel (Dad) to the back-and-forth dialogue of my two wizard-chasing-balloon-riding-time-traveling-narrators, I suppose I should also give these two imbeciles names.

You first.

Uh, well, I’m Charley and that’s –

I’m Crowd.

Full credit for these two make-believe idiots is given to my dad. He created the personas of “Charley and the Crowd” for my two nieces a few years ago. They would show him their dolls and my dad would narrate what was going on in their stories. Of course, my nieces regularly corrected him with, “No, Papá, that is not what Barbie is doing!” Still, Charley and the Crowd stuck around, playing the role of two, usually counter-productive and sometimes ignored, news anchors at a Macy’s Day Parade-like event hosted by my nieces’ massive collection of L.O.L. Dolls.

And just for clarity’s sake, during the dialogue between Charley, Crowd, and Dad, actual statements made by Dad will be in quotations. Any statement not in quotations was added simply to move the story along.

Let’s begin (finally).

In “Rear Window,” every time Jefferies and his sidekicks present their findings to Detective Doyle attempting to prove Thorwald’s guilt, they are thwarted by evidence discovered by Doyle’s investigation. It’s a constant back-and-forth throughout the movie; however, regardless of how “solid” Doyle’s evidence is that Anna Thorwald is still alive, Jefferies remains sat on the hill that Thorwald killed his wife. It was this parallel – not the peeping Tom aspect of the movie – that piqued my interest last week. No matter what was thrown at him, Jefferies remained steadfast in his opinion Thorwald murdered his wife. Nothing budged him. I realized Jefferies’ level of resilience mirrored every diehard Lukola’s reaction to every piece of contradictory evidence thrown at them. Nothing budges them.

The tail-end of January and all of February was a bit wild in the Lukola fandom. I mean, there were a lot of narratives being thrown around only to be counteracted by another event. As I mentioned earlier, we ended January with the Boss event but that flame was quickly extinguished by Luke and Antonia’s complete lack of follow-up. Luke had the perfect opportunity to make it “official” with Antonia – to finally shut down the Lukola shippers – but he didn’t.

Crowd: Antonia not doing anything with it is the biggest tell, in my opinion.

I’m not going to spend much time rehashing the Boss event because I already discussed it in Entry 18 (link below), but I will touch on two things that I believe deserve an Honorable Mention.

The first being –

Charley: Why didn’t Antonia have her phone or even a handbag at the Boss event?

I mention this little detail because it was echoed at the BAFTA afterparty Luke attended with Antonia on February 16. In fact, I suspect this may be the modus operandi when Antonia attends an event with Luke – she is not given the opportunity to have a phone with her. One would think, at the very least, you would see Antonia entering and/or leaving an event with some kind of handbag or clutch. But we have pictures of Antonia entering both the Boss event and BAFTA afterparty without one. I will acknowledge we don’t see her leave these two events; however, if we rewind time, Antonia does not have a handbag with her during Papsmear.

Dad: “Well, that’s extremely odd.”

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it before – at least not on this blog – that my dad has an eye for women’s fashion. My sisters and I grew up under his critical eye and, to this day, my father doesn’t know where he went wrong with my older sister. This is entirely why he was given the part of Lisa Fremont, the movie’s style icon in the form of Grace Kelly. The fact that Antonia is never seen with any type of handbag at these events sparked his interest.

Dad: “[It seems] they [at a minimum Luke] wanted complete control [of what Antonia could take away from the event]. No handbag. Nowhere to hide a phone. No rogue pictures floating about.”

Charley: Yes, it does seem that way.

The second event I wanted to mention was – although neither Luke nor Antonia liked the Boss grid post of the two of them entering that event together – Nicola did. Now, this wasn’t an immediate like. In fact, Nicola waited almost two weeks to like the post, on February 12.

Crowd: The day before Nicola went back and liked that post, that video was being dissected across social media.

Dad: Why?

Charley: Because it was suggested Luke said, “Let’s get this done,” as he walked inside the event with Antonia.

Dad: “I don’t hear shit.”

I will admit, when this video was initially sent to me, I didn’t hear anything except the background noise. However, when I was told what was allegedly being said, I was able to hear it. This very well could be the power of suggestion but the timing of Nicola’s like on this post is, at a minimum, noteworthy.

Once we leave the Boss event, we stumble right into “Mis-Directed.” I’ll post the links to my review of that book at the end. It is what it is – and it’s a whole lot of…umm, yeah…maybe Dad said it best.

Dad: “Either your Lukola thing is real, or Ireland is a psychopath.”

Crowd: Seriously, who let this guy in here?

I’m going to have to hard agree with my dad on this one. Not necessarily about Nicola being a “psychopath,” but the references made in the book are too on the nose for it not to be intentionally Lukola- and/or Polin-coded.

I’m also convinced this book was edited after the World Tour, with the most obvious example of this being demonstrated with the quote: “The dates here coincided with the time period of Leicester Square… Below the words was a symbol of a V-shaped flying dove. At first glimpse, it strongly resembled two raised fingers.” If our duo is to be believed, Luke and Nicola had no idea prior to the World Tour that the fandom would go wild over Colin’s fingers. But after the release of Part 1, any mention of “two raised fingers” would send the fandom into a feeding frenzy. And it’s such an extremely random bit of innuendo, I have trouble believing the author came up with it on her own.

Charley: When you think about it, if Antonia hadn’t shown up at the Boss event, the Lukola fandom would have taken the book as confirmation that Lukola was real.

Indeed, a hefty portion of the fandom would have done just that. The fandom was already convinced that Luke and Nicola spent the holidays together – even without direct evidence – because there was evidence that Luke and Nicola did not spend the holidays with Antonia and Jake, respectively.

Antonia appeared to be with family at Christmas and in the Maldives over New Year’s – without making even the slightest insinuation that Luke was with her.

Jake seemingly spent the holidays with Dylan B., as demonstrated by his pre-Christmas stories with Dylan in their (basically) adjacent hometowns – without Nicola, who, by her own account, was in Galway. Jake and Dylan’s Christmas stories were followed up with their jointly hosted New Year’s Eve party – at which Nicola was not present (as evidenced by Nicola’s comment to an attendee’s New Year’s Eve post: “Have the best night miss yous”).

Dad: “It is weird they [Nicola and Jake / Luke and Antonia] wouldn’t spend any of the holidays together. One? Sure, maybe. But all? No.”

But, even with that statement, my dad chose to play the role of Detective Doyle (a/k/a the Devil’s Advocate of “Rear Window”) regarding the holidays because –

Dad: “Misty [Antonia] was with her dance troupe. Jake was with his friends. Ireland was doing her thing. But no one knows where Thang [Luke] was. Everyone else has a trail except him, which is odd. He could have been with Ireland, but you can’t prove it, so what you have is not really evidence.”

Charley: Thanks, Dad.

But, let’s face it, my dad is right. There’s no solid evidence that Luke and Nicola spent their holidays with each other or anyone else. You can apply the same theory to the birthdays. The only “evidence” we have that two people did not spend a birthday together was Jake posting a belated birthday greeting to Nicola followed by Nicola posting what appeared to be an intimate birthday dinner for two, presumably from the night before. We can surmise Nicola’s birthday date was not Jake, otherwise he would not have posted the late greeting.

About Jake’s birthday –

Crowd: Oh, yeah, “hard launch No. 54” because Nicola used a red heart in her birthday story to him.

Charley: You mean the same one she used in a story for another friend just the other day?

Crowed: Yep.

Dad: “I don’t know what to say about those people [the Jakolas]. They need to resubmerge or something. There’s no relationship there [between Jake and Nicola].”

The Jakolas are banking this “hard launch” on the fact Nicola posted a birthday story for Jake, but not for Luke, and vice versa. These are the same people who will argue that Luke and Antonia not posting about each other’s birthdays is because they’re private – but, in the same breath, refuse to acknowledge Luke and Nicola may not post about each other’s birthdays because they’re private.

I believe it’s worth mentioning that no one from the Bridgerton cast except James Phoon posted about Nicola’s birthday on January 9. When Nicola acknowledged her birthday greetings the day after, she did not repost Phoon’s story nor did she repost fan-favorite JVN’s birthday story. And I should have placed bets on this next part – no one from the Bridgerton cast posted about Luke’s birthday on February 5. Surely, I’m not the only person who saw – and anticipated – the comraderie there.

What the Jakolas should have been focusing on with Jake’s birthday was the fact that it was Dylan and Becky’s boyfriend that were wearing matching “Jecky” shirts at their joint birthday party. No one else had that shirt except for the two people believed to be their significant others. Although I’m not fully convinced Jake is dating Dylan, I am one hundred percent convinced Jake would date Dylan over Nicola.

Charley: What’s next?

Crowd: God, there was so much shit going on in February! Uhh, let’s jump to Valentine’s Day. Nicola attended the IFTA’s with her mother and sister, and Luke attended a GQ dinner event alone.

This holiday follows in the same vein as the previously noted holidays, except it’s Nicola and (amazingly!) Luke that are both accounted for. Jake was presumed to be in Sheffield rehearsing for his play; and Antonia was nowhere to be found, not even at the GQ dinner.

However, Antonia does make a brief reappearance at a BAFTA afterparty alongside Luke on February 16.

Crowd: But it was a repeat of the Boss event. The next day, neither acknowledged the other.

Charley: And Luke was reported to have left the party after only an hour – without Antonia. He even posted a picture of himself getting into a car alone.

Dad: To me, “[i]t seems like Thang took his dog [Antonia] for a walk and left her at the dog park.”

Two days later, Luke – actually out for a walk – is papped getting coffee, alone. Is it horrible of me to say that the most exciting thing about these pictures was the untucked versus tucked shirt? I’m not even sure why I’m taking the time to mention this except I felt there would be some side-eye if I did not.

And to be honest, I’ve left out some details and minor events from the months of January and February because, if I were to add them, this post would be twice as long as it already is. For example, don’t get me started on sunburns, tan lines, and “sunny places.”

If we were in the movie, “Rear Window,” everything stated up until this point would run parallel to the back-and-forth between Detective Doyle and our Trio of Peeping Toms. Evidence is presented by the Trio, which is then countered by Doyle. Doyle’s evidence is dismissed by the Trio because, again, they’re hellbent on proving their case, so they continue theorizing and digging into Thorwald. All that leads up to the movie’s climax.

Charley: Have we finally made it to the SAG?

Crowd: Yes, yes, we have.

Charley: Dad – Dad – wake up!

Dad: Huh?

Alright, the fucking SAG awards. This would be about the point in “Rear Window” where Lisa gets caught by Thorwald rifling through his belongings in search of evidence. We’re in the audience biting our nails because Jefferies can’t do a damn thing to help Lisa except watch everything unfold. And that’s what we did with the SAG awards. The entire Lukola fandom was hyper-focused on Luke and Nicola – and they did not disappoint.

Forget all the drama we endured from the sideshow characters and the nonsense that came with them.

Forget Luke being AWOL for six months.

Forget everything except the “hug heard ‘round the world.”

The ice was broken; the champagne was flowing. Luke and Nicola’s joint SAG appearance was like the World Tour on steroids.

Dad: Can I say something?

Crowd: Fuck. What?

Dad: “It was their season, right? So, their joint appearance on the red carpet wasn’t earth shattering. Neither was them sitting together. It was their night to celebrate.”

Crowd: Who invited this wet blanket to the party?

Dad: I wasn’t done. “Their season has run its course, right? They’ve ‘graduated.’ So why are they the focus of mainstream media?”

Charley: <thinking> Because there’s something newsworthy there?

That is your climax. Not their SAG appearance – because everyone can have their own interpretation of Luke and Nicola’s behavior and those interviewers’ Q&A’s – it was the mainstream media going ga-ga over Luke and Nicola that sent the Lukola narrative tumbling out the window. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand that reference.

By the following day, Luke and Nicola were everywhere. I genuinely appreciate the “Librarians” of the private group chats – those people who track and record every single post, story, like, non-like, follow, unfollow, literally everything – their job was grueling last week. The Sincerely Ignorant Lukolas who jumped ship months ago were frantically trying to climb back on board, while the Jakolas were desperately trying to find their Dramamine. The Defectors went silent except to remind their hive of hornets not to worry; that they will get “a reminder soon…”

Charley: A reminder of what?

Crowd: Oh, that there are two side characters floating about.

Well, lo and behold – right on schedule – a random picture of Luke and Antonia in an elevator surfaced the day after the SAG awards. The problem with the picture was that it was dismissed by Lukolas almost immediately. The account that dropped the picture on X was suspicious. Antonia’s hair and clothing seemed “so last year.” The Lukolas were far more focused on Luke and Nicola liking anything and everything to do with the SAG that day than to pay any attention to the “same old song and dance” about Antonia. Even Nicola liking Jake’s very bland “Nicola” comment on her grid post was dismissed with a “shooing” wave of the hand and an uninterested half laugh.

On February 25, the “insinuation” pictures were at it again. In fact, it was a rather busy day. An event host posted a picture of what appeared to be Antonia perfectly centered at an L.A. hotel pool. The story was reposted by the hotel itself. In fact, that’s the only reason the picture was found by the fandom. A new elevator picture of Luke and Antonia dropped; however, it, too, was dismissed fairly quickly, regardless of it being dropped by a different, less dubious X account. The Lukolas just didn’t give a fuck about Antonia. Luke was the subject of a blind that insinuated he had spent most of his time at the SAG looking in a mirror. And the evening was rounded out by something that would have rocked the boat in June 2024 but had little effect in February 2025 – Nicola followed Antonia on Instagram and vice versa!

Oh, shit – Jefferies just lost his grip and fell out the “Rear Window.” But he didn’t die! So, that’s a plus.

The following day, February 26, Antonia started to remove tags from her Instagram account including the “Soho” New Year's 2024 picture of Luke and his friend group, which included Antonia. And Nicola responded to the “mirror” blind about Luke with “I can confirm this is 100% not true [laughing/crying emoji].” So, interestingly, we had Antonia backing further away from Luke and Nicola stepping up to defend him.

Crowd: So, where do we go from here?

That’s a good question. The thing I’ve learned through this “course” is that the Lukolas are now unmoved by the shenanigans happening around them. You can serve Antonia to them on a silver platter, and they’ll flag down the waiter and ask them to return her to the kitchen. And you won’t find Jake anywhere on their menu (hence why I didn’t even bother to mention Jake’s play).

Dad: I think “the whole thing has run its course.”

It really has. The Lukolas are tired but unyielding. At this point, they just want their version of Thorwald to confess. The narratives running parallel to each other (i.e., Lukola vs. Jakola vs. Lutonia) can’t go on much longer. One of them is going to crack under the pressure.

Remember, “Three can keep a secret…”

P.S.

Dad: “Is Ireland still wearing that ring?”

Me: Yes.

Dad: “Then why did you call me?”

Me: <deep sigh>

[yeoslattes]

Lowkey

Genre: smut

Wc: 7.6k

Pairings: bodyguard!Yunho, rich girl college student!reader, chauffeur!Mingi

Summary: Yunho desperately needs someone to put you in your place

Warnings: smut, threesome, dom/sub themes, late 20s Yunho/Mingi, early to mid twenties reader, mild dumbification, Yunho is lowkey patronizing, fingering, oral both fem and male receiving, orgasm denial, ruined orgasm, cream pie, cum shots, clothed sex, backshots, mild choking, use of pet names (doll, slut, tiny), mentions of size difference, spoiled reader, no use of YN, unprotected sex, alcohol use, reader is a party girl

A/N: my Yungi fic is finally out!!! I had so much fun writing this! While I edited I realized how Yunho goes from really shy to suddenly getting fed up and wanting to put her in her place (character development 😭). Also Mingi is really mostly a side character here, most of the readers interactions are with Yunho but don’t fret I have stuff planned for Mingi in the future. I hope you guys enjoy and ofc any feedback is appreciated just be nice about it🫶🏼

The sun beams through your sheer curtains smacking you right in the face. Your tired warm body is snuggled under the cream white fluffy duvets that your mom had purchased for you in Italy. Cracking an eye open you stretch your limbs and groan softly, sitting up on the bed. A shiver shakes through you, the AC causing goosebumps to erupt on your soft skin.

With only one class in your schedule for today you took on the task of getting ready for university. Fashion was an art to you, it was a sole representation of who you were and how you liked to express yourself. And what exactly was that self expression? Well, clothes from the most expensive designers of course. Your parents owned one of the top marketing companies in all of New York and were currently in the works of expanding worldwide, to say you got everything and anything you wanted was an understatement; the fact that you were an only child only ever added to just how much your parents spoiled you.

“Darling! Yunho is up front waiting for you, don’t be late, traffic in the city is only going to get worse.” Your mother’s voice reverberates through the tall walls of the grand mansion.

“I'll be on my way soon!” You respond back, quickly spraying your sweet perfume and heading downstairs. You may have been perfect in your parent’s eyes, or maybe they just liked to act oblivious but behind that perfect daughter act you put up was something more. You loved to shop till you dropped, that was a known fact but what many didn’t know was the absolute party animal you had developed into over the course of your college career. 

There wasn’t a club in New York that you hadn’t graced with your presence. Even when you traveled outside the country for an already expensive vacation, you'd still find a way to get into the most renowned clubs wherever you were on the map. You’d always come up with an excuse to go out, perhaps an important dinner, or sometimes a friend of a friend’s birthday party; your parents would always believe you. Your friends were no saints either, rolling in money themselves they were always there to join you in any escapade you had. You were living the ultimate college student life and no one was ever there to say no to you. 

You adjust your bag on your shoulder and slide into the sleek black Escalade. Yunho sits on his phone in the driver’s seat, immediately dropping the device into the cup holder when he hears you settle into the back.

“Good morning Yuyu.” You beam, “good morning miss,” he says, voice barely above a whisper, he sends you a smile through the rear view mirror which you return. Yunho’s heart flutters slightly as he steals glances of you. Your fingers type away on your phone, updating your friends with the latest gossip you have. Yunho’s gaze keeps flicking to you in the mirror, his admiration suddenly turning into pure irritation at the constant ticking of your phone’s keyboard. He’s so annoyed he almost misses the turn to your best friend's house. He slams on the breaks, sending you flying into the back of the passenger seat. You groan loudly while holding your forehead.

“What the fuck Yunho, ugh.” You exclaim tossing your phone on the seat. “Can you be more careful?” His gaze hardens as he peers at you through the mirror for the umpteenth time this morning. He gulps and sucks in a deep breath. Your voice only adding to his irritation. “Don’t forget to pick up Cassie and Yeri.” You say typing away on your phone again. Yunho can only sit in silence, his mind going to the fat paycheck he’d get at the end of this week for driving a CEO’s daughter around. You were such a joy to drive except when you weren’t, but he’d endure anything if it meant he got to work for you; his boy crush only growing by the day.

He’d been picking up your little group of friends every morning since you started your freshman year at NYU, while also driving you around town and picking you up from clubs while being drunk off your mind. It was taking a toll on him, he rarely got any sleep before he had to be up at the ass crack of dawn again, but the pay was good so maybe that’s why he didn’t mind it as much. At least that’s what he liked to tell himself whenever he felt his feelings for you bubbling up. “My daughter is off limits. I trust you understand that right?” He vividly remembers your father saying as he signed the contract. He’d been employed by your dad right before you started college, you had ended up totaling your first car, and with your father’s company status on the rise he decided it’d be best to keep you safe by hiring a chauffeur. You were now halfway through your 3rd year of college with Yunho still as your driver. 

He didn’t talk much but when he did he would only ever say the most encouraging things. After you had been stood up on a date you had cried your eyes out in the car, it had upset him seeing you that way so on the ride back home he pulled over and gave you a pep talk of just how much you deserved; since then you had grown fond of him. But it was only ever friendly, until recently. He was tall and extremely handsome, always looking better when you had too many drinks for your own good as he hauled you out of an A list New York club. While he had his good moments with you, there were times where you grinded his gears, like this morning’s drive to school or when you were too “tired” to carry all your shopping bags and just shoved them in his hands without saying please or thank you. As smitten as he was with you, you were his boss’ daughter and that was a zone he did not want to enter.

As he pulls up close to the curb in front of the main area of campus, he sits in silence like always and listens to the loud chatter between you and your friends.

“Alright girlies! Shopping after school? Let's meet up here, Yunho will be driving us!” You say loudly smacking your peppermint gum, your girlfriends all speak loudly, agreeing between giggles. You were the last one to step out of the black Escalade, “bye Yuyu see you soon mwah!” You blow him a kiss and he smiles at you, only shaking his head with a breathy laugh after the door closes.

With a couple of hours of free time, Yunho decides to kill time at a nearby coffee shop, the tired chauffeur sits in the corner of the rather empty cafe. His face lights up mid sip when Mingi walks in. He greets his long time friend, the equally tall man sitting adjacent to him.

“Man, it's like I barely see you nowadays.” Mingi sighs, relaxing into the chair. Yunho checks his watch, your class was short and he’d be expecting a text in about an hour.

“Yea…work is work. It's been kicking my ass recently.” He groans, “do you at least get a vacation?” Mingi asks curiously, Yunho shrugs, “Maybe I would if I asked for it, but I’m trying to rack up at least 3 more checks before I take time off. Besides, taking care of the SMB Enterprises future successor isn’t so bad; she has her bad days but her and her friends make it worth a while.” Mingi chuckles at his friend, “ah really? How so?” Yunho shrugs yet again, “lets just say free reality TV but in person.” Mingi playfully scoffs, his hand coming up to run through his hair. However, there was something more that Yunho wasn’t saying, being friends since childhood had its perks as he knew Yunho better than anyone else and could read him like a book..

“There’s something more though that makes it worth your while right?” Mingi asks curiously and Yunho’s cheeks flush red. Mingi nods trying to suppress a smile, “you like her.” Yunho mentally curses, he chuckles nervously and shakes his head. “Well yes…but I could never. Her father would have my head; I have to keep things strictly professional.”

While Yunho said one thing, Mingi would be thinking the opposite. He was a carefree soul, he didn’t care about anything, “you should-” he starts but Yunho cuts him off, “I can’t that’d be violating my contract.”

The pair talked for a few hours just until around the time your class ended. Yunho is about to check his phone when he sees you walking through the cafe doors, his brows shoot up in confusion, awkwardness filling him when you suddenly walk up to the table he and Mingi were sitting at.

“Oh I'm so sorry, I didn’t know you'd be out 30 minutes early.” He says swallowing thickly and standing up. He could only hope you wouldn’t tell your dad about his cafe date with Mingi. 

“Yea my professor let us out a bit early and I wanted a coffee.” You say, texting away on your phone yet again, Yunho suppresses an eyeroll. “But don’t worry I wont tell daddy about your little…date.” You say taking a peek at Mingi. He sends you a tight lipped smile. “Okay well, are you ready to go miss?” You shake your head. “Mm mm, I gotta wait for Cassie and Yeri, and after can you take us to Soho? I need to pick up a few things.” Yunho nods, “for sure. I’ll go bring the car.” You take his seat, not sparing a glance at Mingi, who still remains in his spot after waving goodbye to Yunho.

“So…” he starts, 

“Not interested.” Sending him a smile, you walk over to grab your coffee from the mobile order area, “See you around! Yunho’s friend.” You shout walking out of the cafe. Mingi sits back dumbfounded, “unbelievable that he fell for a bitch.” He mutters silently.

***

You had over 5 bags up to the brim with the latest fashion trends. You were sure you’d bought at least one mini dress for every weekend of the month. Your feet ached and you were drained from carrying the bags all through the streets of Soho. Yunho remained inside the car, parked in the designated parking area waiting for your text. 

You step out of Neiman Marcus and wait for your ride to pull up in front of the doors. When your driver sees you struggling to the car he immediately hops out to put your and your friend’s bags all in the trunk.

“Good shopping day miss?” He asks, and you nod, stretching your back deliciously against the leather seats of the Escalade once you’re finally inside. The rest of the ride is abnormally quiet, even Cassie and Yeri lay against the headrests with their eyes closed, the day's exhaustion catching up to you three. Before you know it Yunho is pulling up the long curved driveway, stopping right in front of your front doors.

“Thank you for driving us around today Yunho, I know it can be a bit much.” You sheepishly thank him, a soft blush covering your cheeks. “Of course miss, I’m only doing my job.” He gives you a smile and you retreat into your house with him following close behind. This was one of those moments where he absolutely adored you.

***

Friday morning something shifts when your father calls you into his office. You stand barefoot, sporting sleeping shorts and an oversized t-shirt, feeling slightly awkward as Yunho is also standing there. You can feel him eyeing you, clearly not used to seeing you in your lounging attire.

“Darling, due to current articles and the uprising of the company I have decided to promote Yunho to your bodyguard.” Your father says, his hands resting politely atop of his desk. You can't help but stare at him dumbfounded, it was the calm before the storm. Yunho could see your gears turning, he could almost calculate when your outburst was going to happen.

“What do you mean you’re assigning me a bodyguard? Absolutely not! I do not need a babysitter.” Your father’s demeanor changes. 

“I will not tolerate your attitude.” He says raising his hand up.

“But dad, I am in college! Actually, I'm about to graduate college. I don’t need someone to look after me!” You state, close to stomping your feet in a tantrum.

“It’s not that you need it dear, it's just for safety precautions. SMD is gaining popularity and I cannot have you walking around without any protection.” He reiterates. You look at Yunho and he can only look down at his feet. “But why him?” At your words his head pops up to look in your direction, his eyes gleaming with mild offense.  

“Why not Yunho? He’s perfect for the role. He’s worked with us for 3 years now, knows all your friends and is very familiar with your lifestyle.” Your father defends. 

“Well yes but I like him as my chauffeur…I am not here for this dad.” You argue, pointing aggressively at him as you try to prove your point.

“I hired a new chauffeur, per Yunho’s recommendation. He will be here tonight for whatever dinner you have going on this time.” Immediately you knew who he was talking about. 

“That loser from the coffee shop!?” You say looking at Yunho this time. Your father brings a hand up to massage his temples, Yunho is about to respond but is cut off.

“Yunho is your bodyguard, and Mingi is your new driver. So either put up with it or stay home tonight. End of discussion!” 

You pressed your lips shut, suddenly feeling defeated by your father. You knew discussing the matter further with him was a lost cause, there was no budging him when he set his mind on something. Finally you drop your head in defeat and nod. “Now go, I have to finish some work here. Yunho my apologies for that, you are dismissed.”

You spent the rest of your afternoon laying in bed just staring at the ceiling, then scrolling on your phone and switching between apps. Nightfall approaches and it's time to get ready for a night in the city. You start with a long shower, exfoliating, shaving and moisturizing. You pick a dress from the countless different ones you’d bought earlier in the week. Delicately pulling the tag off, you slip it on. Your phone startles you as it vibrates aggressively on your vanity table, blindly you answer and are met with Cassie’s face.

“I love you but you have to hurry, our VIP reservation is at 11.” Cassie urges, you nod at her through the camera. “Yes yes I'll be there soon, there were new arrangements made today. I’ll tell you all about it.” You hang up the phone and hurry down, where Yunho waits for you by the door. You don't notice the way his eyes rake over your frame and he suppresses a little smirk. He opens the car door for you and when you slip onto the leather seats you are met by the same guy from the cafe. You’ve got to be kidding me, you think to yourself. He’s dressed in a suit just like Yunho, he doesn't say anything else besides a small hello. You only watch the way he smirks at Yunho when he slips into the passenger seat. A smirk that makes you wonder if you had been a topic of discussion between them. The car ride is silent and soon you are pulling into the valet of the night club.

“Mingi right?” Your voice breaks the silence and he nods, “nice to meet you miss. I look forward to tending to whatever you need.” Mingi replies and you almost roll your eyes at the automated response. 

“Nice to meet you once again Mingi, welcome to your first day on the job.” You scoff hopping out of the car, the entire debacle between you and your father clearly still filling you up with annoyance.

***

The night starts off slow, you sip on a cocktail while Cassie leans into your ear. “So who's the new one?” Your eyes shift to Mingi who stands next to Yunho, his big hands crossed at his pelvis. He sports a dark pair of shades making it impossible to see where he was looking, yet you can sense his gaze is on you and your best friend.

“Mingi, he’s friends with Yunho. My dad decided that I suddenly needed a bodyguard and promoted Yunho, then hired Mingi per Yunho’s recommendation.” You mock your father’s tone. 

“Hmm,” she hums, her teeth digging into her glossy lips, “can I have one?” Looking over to Mingi, you can see his attention is now fully on Cassie despite the dark lenses covering his irises. She waves at him and he sends her a smile. Your friend almost melts into the couch at the subtle advances of your driver.

 “No.” Your voice is flat, “I fear they’re both mine.” You joke, except you're not sure how much of it is a joke. The more the alcohol kicks in, the more appealing the pair looks to you.

Your party of friends grows bigger by the hour and more regular club goers fill the space, the bass of the music pounds on your chest, it’s not long before you start feeling the slight fogginess of the alcohol clouding your judgement. Shot after shot kept coming, bottles of the most expensive liquor being served to your table. You’re up now dancing freely with your friends, Yunho standing within close proximity, he’s had to stabilize you on your feet twice now. He points to his watch when Mingi looks at him. “We have to bring her home in about an hour. Her dad’s rules.” He informs his counterpart through their ear piece. Time flew by and by the time that hour hits its 3 a.m.

Yunho sucks in a deep breath and leans down to your level. “It’s time to go.” He says loudly, and you shake your head, “it’s only 3 Yuyu. I don’t wanna go.” You pout holding your stance. It’d only get more difficult from this point on, “I understand that miss but your father’s rules were clear.” You ignore his words and try to tread through the crowd but a heavy hand pulls you back. 

“Stop it!” you say twisting your arm from his grip, “I don’t wanna go! You two and my dad can go kiss my ass!” Yunho sent a nod to Mingi. Suddenly your feet are no longer on the ground. Mingi clears up space as Yunho walks with you over his shoulder through the crowd. His large hand holds the bottom of your dress down. Your small fists pound on his back, as you try to flail yourself all over the place.

“Put me down Yunho!” But your bodyguard refuses. Back in valet Yunho waits for the car, while apologetically smiling at a few other employees as you yell every profanity under the sun. Mingi stands beside Yunho and you manage to catch the edge of his sunglasses with your fist, smacking them off his face and scratching him in the process. Mingi winces, holding the raised skin of his face as he picks up his glasses. Yunho shoves you in the car and soon you’re all on your merry way home with you passed out in the backseat.

“I’m regretting this job.” Mingi mutters, running his finger over the scratch on his face. “She’s usually not like this, I guess daddy’s new rules are getting to her.” Yunho responds, sending a pitied look to his best friend. “Usually?” Mingi asks, shaking his head in annoyance.

***

“Mom, did dad give me a curfew?” You ask your mother the next morning, you did your best to ignore the pounding in your head. You can see her eyes shift as she tries to put up a front.

“No baby, what do you mean? Or at least I don’t know of any curfew.” She replies, folding her laundry neatly.

“Because last night that I was out with my friends…at the dinner I told you about. I left at a specific time and that's not how Yunho and I usually operate.” With crossed arms you stare at your mother waiting for whatever excuse she’s come up with. 

Instead she gives you a pointed look, “and how do you usually operate?” She smirks, you can’t help but roll your eyes. “Uh, I let him know when I'm ready to go.” You state as if it were an obvious fact. Your words hang in the air and she shrugs.

“I’d ask your father directly honey, I wouldn't know.” You huff in annoyance and head back to your room to freshen up and dispute this with your father.

The door to his office echoes loudly when you swing it open, startling Mingi and Yunho who currently sit in the seats facing the desk.

“Pumpkin I'm discussing busine-”

“Did you give me a curfew?” You ask cutting him off. Your father sighs in defeat, he knew that you’d come to him with questions sooner or later.

“Not necessarily a curfew hon, just a set time to have you home.”

“That’s literally the definition of a curfew! Dad, what is going on? Are you trying to ruin my life?” Your father, clearly on the edge already, is having none of it.

“Is 3 a.m not enough for your clubbing activities?” Your eyes suddenly widen at your fathers words. How'd he know? Then your eyes shift to Yunho who now stands besides Mingi against the wall. Both men stoic in the face as if the entire debacle isn’t going on in front of them. 

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out? You keep telling your mom and I that you are going out to important dinners, come to find out you're out at clubs getting absolutely wasted with those trashy friends of yours.” You shake your head, “You don’t underst-”

“What I don’t understand is why my daughter is acting like this. Look at the gash you gave Mingi last night, all because he wanted to ensure your safety back home and you just can’t help but act a fool! Do what you like, you are an adult, but under my house you’ll be home when I say!” He yells, his voice booming through the office.

“But-” You try to argue, and he shakes his head.

“Don't you get it? With our status you cannot be acting like this; it’ll end up in the tabloids and what does that mean for SMD?” Your father searches your face for some type of answer, but you hide by crossing your arms and looking down at the wooden floor.

“You swipe my Amex like it's nothing, you buy what you want, you go where you want, what more do you want? So no, the curfew isn't going anywhere. End of discussion. Now please leave so I can finish business.” Your words are caught in your throat. 

You stare at your father before your eyes shift to the two men dressed in black on the side, Yunho sporting a very sly smirk as he watches your eyes sparkle with tears. He was enjoying this little meltdown, he enjoyed the fact that someone had finally said no; after all you were a spoiled brat and while he loved that about you, it was time for a reality check. You stomp out of the office slamming the mahogany door behind you causing you father to flinch and apologize to the pair.

“Don’t have daughters.” Your father sighs.

***

The next week you spent going to your scheduled classes and swimming. The weekend had been the opposite of relaxing between your fathers argument and the raging hangover, you decided to reconnect with nature, touch some grass if you will. Every single time, Yunho was out there with you, and there was nothing he could do about the skanky bikinis you sported every time you sat out in the sun. In his head he cursed Mingi for being able to take a break, after all he was your only real bodyguard. 

He sat in a chair in the shade, his eyes drinking in every area of uncovered skin behind his sunglasses. His mind went places and he couldn't help but readjust himself multiple times. Your demeanor with him had also changed, you were more talkative than before, asking him about himself, offering him lemonade made with your own secret recipe. You were sweet talking him and he knew it was your way of trying to get him to break the rules for you next time you went out. But if there was one thing about Yunho it was that he wasn't a people pleaser, and he wasn't one to give in easily especially not to brats like you. 

The week flew by for him and like usual, here he was on his way with you and Mingi to another top club in New York city. You were dressed in a two piece set this time, the skirt so short your underwear peeked through every time you sat down. With wandering eyes everywhere, in order to shield you Yunho’s big frame stood in front of you. He takes your hand and you smile up at him with big eyes, but he averts his focus to his job at hand which was protecting you.

***

By midnight you're drunk out of your mind, so drunk that you ended up booking a hotel room in the building where the said club was at. You told yourself you deserved to get wasted and spoil yourself in a luxurious hotel after the hell week you’d had.

“I-i don’t wanna go home, just take me up to my room whenever. I forwarded you the reservation email.” You told Yunho. It wouldn’t align with your father’s rules but Yunho was sure you'd twist up some pretty lie to get out of being asked too many questions. “Tell my parents I'm crashing at Cassie’s.” Yunho could only agree, because what else could he do in this situation? Would it put his job in jeopardy? Yes, was he annoyed with you? Also yes, but he'd rather deal with your father later than have you cause another scene for him and Mingi yet again.

“One more drink Yuyu please?” You ask, your eyes big and glassy as you stare up at him. He shakes his head, “I don’t think it's a good idea to keep drinking miss. At least take a break.” He suggests, your lips form a pout but you were too tired to fight him. Eventually you manage to slip through the crowd and to the bar. Mingi and Yunho search for you but their panic is short lived when you reappear with another martini in hand.

“Do you want some?” You ask, there you go again with that suggestive gaze that has him reeling. He shakes his head and as you're about to take another sip he pulls the glass away from you. “I said no more.” You pout at his harsh tone. 

“Fine, take me to the bathroom then.” You say crossing your arms. Yunho sighs internally, deciding that having you use the restroom alone was too risky he convinces Cassie to take you. The blonde holds on to your arm as Yunho clears space for you to walk through. He stands outside the door and motions Cassie to bring you in.

Yunho waits outside for what feels like an eternity; after 20 minutes he knocks on the door. Cassie opens and without a word pulls him in. “what-” but Cassie shakes her head, “she threw up about half of the drinks she drank. I fed her some water, she should be sobering up.” You sit against the wall of the fancy bathroom with your eyes closed. You feel a hand going around your bicep to hoist you up and you shake your head.

“Don’t move me, I’d rather wait it out here. Just get me some water please.” Not daring to have your eyes obliterated by the harsh light you keep them closed. You hear the bathroom door open, letting the noise of the club in for a second before it muffles out again.

A full bottle and a half of water later, you had sobered up almost entirely. You rinse your mouth in the sink and pat some cold water on your chest to freshen up and head back out where Yunho stands.

You walk through the crowd heading straight for the bar, ready for at least another round of drinks but Yunho pulls you back. “No more drinks.” He states flatly. Your brows draw together, sending him a confused look. “Um, who says I can’t? Cause as far as I can remember you’re just my bodyguard not my dad.” Now you have taken it upon yourself to mess with him. You were tired of being bossed around. Your eyes bore into his, his gaze has shifted in a way you had never seen before; he was pissed. Sucking in a deep breath he leans down to your ear, “you are done for the night.” You swallow thickly and shrug trying to play off the sudden ache in the bottom half of your body. You take the lead, both men following close behind you.

Despite sobering up, the exhaustion after drinking is catching up to you and the little alcohol you have left in your system still keeps you a bit unstable on your feet. The elevator ride up to the room is tension filled. You can feel both men’s gazes on you, and out of the corner of your eye you see the way Yunho and Mingi exchange glances.

As soon as you step through the door Yunho breaks the silence, “I need you to sit down and drink some water.” Taking the water bottle from his grip, you sit down purposefully taking small sips. Both men watch you carefully, pulling their blazers off and draping them over a chair, leaving them both in their white button ups.

“I don’t really want any more water.” Your hoarse voice says, pushing the bottle away from you. You go to stand up but Yunho stops you.

“Sit the fuck down.” He points at the seat as soon as you rise to your feet.

“Excu-”

“Now.” You plop back down on the soft chair in defeat. 

“You’ve been a real fucking pain the ass you know that right?” At that you giggle, biting your lip a little too hard at his frustration.

“She thinks it's funny Min.” A low hum rumbles through Mingi’s chest.

“Do you want me to blow you as a thank you for being the best bodyguard ever and putting up with me? Because I will.” Your body is now burning hot, just the mere thought of Yunho having you on your knees in front of his best friend who is also your chauffeur excites you. You slowly rise to your feet, stepping carefully towards Yunho as if testing the waters. Your bare feet on the carpet showcasing the sheer size difference between you and the dark blue haired man. Without second thought his hands cup your face and pull you into him for a kiss. Everything goes fast, your hands grip his wrists as he still has a hold of your face as he kisses you with pure fervor.

“Fucking brat.” Yunho pulls you away and redirects you towards Mingi who is now standing by the bed. Your arms stretch out to reach for the Mingi, he pulls you into him and you meet his lips as Yunho manhandles your skirt. Mingi wastes no time laying you down, the skirt of your two piece set now resting on your waist from the vigorous movement, your panty clad cunt on full display. Yunho presses you down into bed by your chest, his opposite hand coming down to play with you. His fingers rub over the fabric of your now soiled underwear. 

“Such a good girl huh Yunho?” Mingi says chuckling at your writhing form. Yunho smirks,

“Sit behind her, why don't you.” Yunho pulls you up and Mingi slots himself between you and the plush pillows, your back now resting flush against his chest. His arms encircle themselves around your waist as Yunho tugs your panties down. He holds the fabric up by his finger, “We’ve been getting peeks of this slutty thong all night, how cute.” Yunho chuckles.

His fingers toys with you before slipping two slender digits inside. Immediately your back arches against your chauffeur’s chest, his grip only tightening on you. His eyes are focused on his fingers splitting you open, his hand coming down to rest right above your pelvis. He starts with languid strokes, and the way you only spread your legs further for him eggs him on to pick up speed.

“Look at you, spreading your legs open like a slut.” There’s a condescending look on Yunho’s face when he speaks to you. The veins on his arms slightly bulged out from the excretion. You could only whine and attempt to buck your hips on his fingers. Between the haze of the alcohol and the duo's cologne invading your senses you feel yourself spiraling. A knot forming in the pit of your tummy builds up fast. Your lower body begins to shake as your legs threaten to close, that's when Mingi reaches for one of your legs and he hooks his hand behind your knee pulling you open for Yunho.

“Open up pretty.” He murmurs in your ear.

“Im gon-na, Yuyu.” You squirm in Mingi’s grip, your whines picking up in volume. You can barely keep your eyes open and then your orgasm hits you. Your body shudders heavily under the two men. Yunho sends you encouraging words as you cum all over his fingers. Mingi leans down to press feathered kisses on your cheek, his lips inching slowly towards your now messy glossy lips. He kisses you hard, his hand unhooking from your leg and coming down hard against your pussy. Your whole body jolts at the action you can only cry out and take what they give you.

“Come here baby,” Yunho says, pulling you up swiftly. Your legs are shaky as you stand close to him, his hands on your face again, this time you lean to kiss him, glossy lips working desperately against his. But Yunho wasn’t about to let you do what you wanted, not this time. He pulls away, his large hand wrapping around your throat as he squeezes lightly, only enough to take your breath away momentarily.

“Watch it slut, you want something you have to work for it.” He spits, backing you into Mingi. “Who goes first? Me or you?” The driver chuckles and pulls your arms behind your back bending you into the bed. “I’ll break her in for you, how about that?” Yunho smiles at him, “don't let her cum. Tiny has to learn to work for things, she can’t just swipe daddy’s Amex here.” Yunho mocks.

You climb onto the bed face down, ass up, with your hands resting behind your back. Mingi’s belt buckle resonates loudly in the room, echoing in the haze of your brain. Yunho suddenly comes into your line of vision, his pants also unbuckled.

“Are you ready baby?” He asks, feigning a pout at the tears lining your eyes. You lift your head, your hands coming to support you as you push yourself up. You nod vigorously,

“Please Yuyu, I want it so bad.” You whine. Yunho shakes his head and points at Mingi, “why don’t you ask Mingi nicely baby.”

You pant softly and crane your neck to look at the man behind you. “Please Mingi, I want it so bad.” Your hips wiggle back towards him. Mingi’s mushroom tip prods at your entrance

“You want it?” he teases and you nod, taking your lip between your teeth, his large hands grip your waist as he gently pushes in. His girth alone splitting you open slowly. Your eyes roll to the back of your head, at the intrusion.

“Hands behind your back girlie.” Yunho whispers, your arms reach back and Mingi holds on to them as he pulls you onto him, his entire length buried in you. His warm skin comes in contact with your ass and suddenly he’s set a delicious pace that has you reeling. Your breath gets caught in your throat and you're sure you've now gone dumb. Yunho is talking to you but you can barely hear him, until he taps your cheek, his hand cupping your chin and gently lifting your face up. His leaking tip pokes your lips, you open your mouth, wide eyes looking up at him. Yunho bites lip, his hands caressing your face.

“Good fucking girl baby.” You hum around his cock and he gently moves further in until he hits the back of your throat. You gag slightly, tears now rolling down your cheeks freely.

“Being used from both ends, baby. Look at you.” Mingi moans, his thrust now becoming erratic, he eventually resorts to barely pulling out, his hips jutting hard against you just bullying his tip against your cervix. Your eyes roll to the back of your head, your orgasm fast approaching. Yunho takes notice of the way, you're going limp on the bed, your whole body twitching.

“She's about to cum, don't let her finish. She doesn't deserve it yet Min.” He grunts, pulling out of your mouth and cupping your chin once again. He watches with an amused smile as Mingi struggles to slow down and pull out, just as you're about to fall over the brink it all stops. Your tired body collapses on the bed, writhing in discomfort at your fading high.

“Yun-ho, please.” You whine, rubbing your legs together.

“I'm pretty sure I gave myself blue balls man,” Mingi shudders, his hand running up and down his cock, trying to keep the stimulation going. Yunho ignores his friend's comment and takes his place instead, he looms over you now. He pulls you on your back, tugging on the top you still wore, which was now soiled with spit and tears. He tugs at the stretchy material until it sits comfortably under your chest. Your tits spilling over, nipples perky and waiting for attention. He toys with your tits, fondling them and laying a flat smack that irritates the skin. You're panting like a dog, legs open waiting for him to do whatever he wanted to you. 

“Are you ready to work for it?” He asks, once again in a condescending tone. You nod, your hands reaching around the bed feeling for Mingi. Yunho leans down pressing a sloppy kiss to your lips, his tongue swipes over your lip, your mouth drops open as he slips inside, instantly buried to the hilt. He gives you one last kiss and pulls away, instantly setting a brutal pace. Pleasure spreads all over your abdomen, as his cock hits that spongy spot deep within you. You're a moaning mess, legs trying to cage him in and hips lifting to meet him but he doesn't let you.

“You're acting like a bitch in heat baby, you wanna cum?” He asks, and you nod, letting out a strangled cry. “Ye-yes yuyu please.” Mingi’s hand works heavy on his cock, trying to match the grip your cunt had around him.

“I said work for it, remember? So why don’t you be a doll and help Mingi.” He motions over to the man beside your head. You do the best you can to replace his hand, your pace is shaky, barely consistent, he leans a bit closer and you are able to get his red tip in your mouth. His hand coming down to cup the back of your head, helping you lift up without causing much strain. Mingi lowers his hips, lodging himself deeper in your mouth. You can barely focus anymore, your headspace far from reality. 

“She's going dumb look at her,” Yunho grunts, Mingi breathes heavily above you. And you suck gently and somehow that's enough to push him over the edge. His cum spills into your mouth at the same time your high is building up. You pull from him, his tip still leaking, now spilling all over your lips and chin. Yunho hold your hips and your hands come down to grip his forearms as he fucks you into the bed. 

“You earned it tiny, go ahead and fucking c-cum.” Yunho strangles out, your orgasm builds up until you're falling over the edge. Your body locks up, legs shaking as you ride your high, loud whines falling from your lips. You relax into the bed and Yunho who ruts against you suddenly stills and spills into your gummy walls. He sucks in a deep breath as the pulsing in his cock comes to a slow halt. He pulls out and his seed is spilling out from you, running down between your lips and onto the bed creating a wet patch.

Your eyes are closed, lungs still trying to suck in air from the heavy exertion. You feel yourself getting moved around, a warm towel wiping your face and then between your legs. Someone pulls you out of the matching set that was still bunched around your waist. 

You feel a tap on your cheek and you open your eyes to be met by Mingi and a water bottle. “Here's some water doll.” You sit up and gently sip from the bottle, humming at the cool liquid running down your scratched throat. Yunho slips on the white button he sported on you. Mingi looks at him as he puts the blazer back on.

“I’ll stop somewhere for a button up in the morning.” Yunho says when he feels Mingi’s judgemental gaze on him. “Get some rest doll, Mingi and I will be back for you in the morning.” you pout as they tuck you into the plush bed. “You can't stay?” You ask but you knew the answer. Yunho shakes his head, “gotta report that you are safe. It'll also look suspicious if we stay, you know you got eyes on you everywhere now.” You nod and nuzzle into the bed. 

The door clicks softly behind them as they walk towards the elevators. “I can tell she really likes you.” Mingi informs his best friend. Yunho shrugs, “That's rocky territory, I couldn't imagine what her father would do if he ever found out.” In a way it hurt his chest the thought of never seeing you again if your father found out. After pining over you for the past 3 years in secrecy, and it coming down to tonight's activities he was happy, but it was also bittersweet that nothing further than this could ever happen; he could never call you fully his out of fear.

Yunho rests against the elevator wall, anxiety creeping up on him at the thought of trying to play this all off in the future. He avoids the front desk personnel’s gaze as she gives him a questioning look on his attire as his bare chest peeked through the expensive blazer. When they're both back in the car he reports to your father through text that you'd insisted on crashing at Cassie’s place and that they’d be back for you early in the morning.

***

The following weeks were a blur at least for Yunho, he couldn't concentrate on anything other than you, all he ever saw was you. He caught himself admiring more than ever before; so much so Mingi had to often snap him back to reality. Aside from that, there was nothing he could do besides stay quiet and do his job. He had Mingi to vent to but that ended when the man resigned after he got a job opportunity as a producer. He was shortly replaced by Hongjoong, he was cool and all but he couldn’t have deep conversations with him like he did with his best friend.

The lewd activities from that night replayed in his mind and he just couldn’t help how much his feelings for you kept growing since then; he was sure he was now in love. He envied Mingi and how easily he relaxed in situations where Yunho was conflicted.

“Why are you stressing, man? We all had a good time, it doesn't need to be brought up again.” His friend would say, but that was easy for him to say when he wasn't in love with you. 

You on the other hand had developed a full blown crush on your bodyguard, you liked the way he handled you, that was all you needed in your life. Not being able to hold back any longer you’d began to sneak out into the greenhouse that sat in a quiet corner of your grand backyard. Yunho would meet you for quickies, which would eventually lead to the two of you talking till the late hours of the night all while your parents remained clueless inside. You knew how much Yunho feared losing his job and being faced by your father, but of one thing you were sure; you always got what you wanted, and Yunho would be yours one way or another.

[typhoonquixol]

What do you mean they can see everything?

Tim: Jason. You have your tumblr profile set to public. People can see who you follow, and what you've liked.

Jason: No.

Tim: Yes.

Jason: So then everyone can see...?

Tim: Yes.

Jason: How many people know about my account.

Tim (smiling wickedly): Enough.

Jason: How to I make it private?

Tim: Why would I tell you that?

Jason glares at Tim with the hatred of a thousand suns.

Jason: Even if I deleted the account you'd recreate it by hand wouldn't you?

Tim: yep.

Jason, hands clasped together, leaning forward: I will pay you.

Tim: I could take over Wayne and Queen industries in a week if I wanted to, money doesn't matter to me.

Jason: Then what do you want?

Tim reaches behind the couch and picks up a black motorcycle helmet. He'd planned this interaction. Sonofa-

Jason: No.

Tim: no? Alright... Damien is going to love scrolling through so many-

Jason: FINE. Fine. Fine. You can use my bike.

Jason digs into one of his dozen breast pockets, pulls out his keys, and tosses it to Tim.

Tim: Cool. I'll give it back Friday night after I take Bernard out. You have until then to delete the account or set it to private.

Jason: Can't you just... hack the likes away?

Tim: That many? Not a chance. So either suck it up or delete it.

Tim walks away, satisfied and looking forward to driving the infamous Red Hoods bike into a brick wall.

Jason watches him go with pure hatred and respect. He opens his phone and checks. Sure enough he can see other peoples likes. He flicks back to his page and scrolls through his likes. 10,000 in just one month. How long had he stared at his phone on patrol?

He was never going to understand technology again was he...

Tim walks Bernard out of his apartment, promising him something really special. They finally get outside to the curb and Tim dramatically points to... nothing.

Bernard: Uh, cool. So are we walking to the surprise?

Tim: I left it right there what hap- I need to check Tumblr.

Bernard: Tumblr?

Tim: Yes.

Tim opens his phone and looks at Jason's page. He's posted a photo of himself driving in the middle of the street laughing like a maniac.

It is then followed by re-posts of several cutesy photos of animals hugging each other. Specifically of wolfs curled around their cubs, carrying them by their scruffs, and so on. Damian has already commented on seventeen, demanding why Todd would hide this from him.

Tim: That petty little...

Bernard: So what was the plan?

Tim: I blackmailed my brother into giving me his bike but he chose to expose the himself rather than let me use it.

Bernard: You mean that brother?

The six foot tall brick house that is Jason Todd appears behind Tim and slaps his brothers shoulder.

Jason: I said you could use my bike little bro. Not which one.

Jason sweeps his arm towards a vintage 1983 Honda Shadow he'd parked a few spots down.

Tim: Your kidding.

Jason: I'm not

Jason, leaning in closely to whisper: Because I know you wouldn't dare crash this one.

Jason, loudly chuckling: Have fun on your date. See you Bernard

Bernard: See you Jay.

Jason walks off cackling. He gets a ping on his phone. It's Grayson.

Grayson: Why didn't you tell me you liked wolves??? I could have been sending you wolf memes daily.

This is then followed by a tidal wave of adorable wolves.

Grayson: See? See i can give you memes. Jason let me make you happy!!!

Jason already regrets his decision.

[misguidedasgardian]

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA II.

II. Floating Jasmines

Summary: He did want to marry you, did he not? 

Warnings: Use of she/her pronouns, reader has hair, Ancient Rome accuracies and inaccuracies, animal slaughter for ritualistic purposes, arranged marriages, age difference (Marcus is late forties reader is 20), cursing, reader gets waxed and takes a milk bath, use of historic characters that don’t belong on this timeline, mentions of consumations, one sided fluff and ANGST a bit in the end, MIGHT MISS SOME WARNINGS

Due to topics discussed and future warnings…

+18, MINORS DNI

Notes: I feel like the first chapter was a bit rushed, but I hope that I can find a “pace” I’m comfortable with! I hope you like it! I feel like this chapter is very descriptive, but I wanted to set a tone… hope I did justice to all those rituals and all! I didn't check this so sorry for any mistakes, I was so exited!

This fic was inspired by the coolest @stylesispunk's "Soldier in the armour"

You caressed your mare’s coat with delicacy, Marcus has gifted her to you tamed already, so you rode her constantly. He had said it came from his own stables up North where he had a villa.

One of the few things he had said to you.

You did not understand, he was supposed to want to marry you, then why after the betrothal he never even spoke to you again?

He found you with Lucius in the garden, but it haden’t mean anything, you were steps apart, it was nothing, just a few parting words to the one you had wanted to marry. 

He led you back to the celebration that night, and he had remained at your side until he left you and your mother in your villa, and then he retired for his.

You never saw him again

It’s been three months. 

Your mother had explained that he left to take care of some things, you knew that winter was coming and as General and as owner of villas and country he needed to care for his estates, especially since he was to be wed. 

But the temperatures were lowering and your doubts were ever higher.

Was he angry at you? That he found you alone with a man? Was he doubting his decision?

Have you done something wrong?

“Amica mea”, called your mother, you turned, letting a soldier take your horse back to the stables. “Did you have a pleasant ride?”, wasn't a long one, as you had not much space to go, especially alone…

“It was mother”, you said softly, you both entered back to the villa

You removed the shawl you had placed around you, it was getting cold, you had to put on wool socks now, and closed shoes, and a thicker tunic under your stola.

You were entering winter, it had been three months since your betrothal. 

Every day you grow more anxious.

Your mother assured you that everything was alright, and you still kept your ring in your finger 

“Actually, Marcus has returned to Rome”, she said softly, “he is to remain here until after you are married, and until the Emperors decide on who they are going to appoint as consuls”, she said softly, your wedding, as the appointment of the consuls were to happen in the first weeks into Ianuarii 

You didn’t know where he went, you knew he wasn’t on campaign, so he must have been in his villa in the country, but it didn’t matter to you.

“Mother, did I do something wrong?”, you asked her for the tenth time, “for him not wanting to see me?”, you asked her then

“Darling I swear you did nothing wrong”, she assured you, “he had business to take care of”, you were not convinced, not really, and she could sense that, “there’s more, he is coming at sundown, he just arrived back to Rome and he wanted to see you”, she said excitedly

“Really?”, you asked her, hope returning to your features

“Yes, my dear”, she said, smiling softly. “so go get ready”, with a smile, you did as she requested, putting on your most beautiful stola. Your mood had lifted completely at the news. 

At the prospect of him wanting to see you, made your stomach filled with butterflies, and you found yourself excited. 

If Marcus was the man you had to marry, you were going to make the best of it, you were determined to be a good wife to him, and make him proud, and do your marital duties. 

And soon he was there, entering your home with a soft smile on his lips, and those kind eyes you discovered you liked so much. 

From the first time he had come to your home to now, there was a whole sea of difference. He seemed relaxed, his eyes were shiny and his smile sincere, or at least, it looked like it.

He brought you an amphora filled with delicious wine.

Your mother, after eating with you in the triclinium, excused herself and left you both alone with a knowing smirk on her lips

You were incredibly nervous, but… his gentle demeanor helped you ease a bit

“I wanted you to know”, he started, “that I left to settle some business in my states, it was the harvest and I wanted to oversee it”, he explained softly

“Is your state… big?”, you didn't know how to follow up to what he had told you, he only chuckled

“Not much, but we have many apple trees, and pears, some olives”, you smiled at that, “is a villa in the edge of a lake, it is quite beautiful”

“Sounds incredible”, you said with an excited smile 

“I wanted a place to have solace after my campaigns”, he explained

“Are they going to send you out there again… after we are married?”, you asked him

“I should think so, yes”, he murmured with a soft smile, “there are always revolts and uprisings, we need to oversee our territories, care for our subjects”

“I know they are important, though… I hope they feel brief”, you said with an apologetic smile, he looked at your face and smiled kindly at you, making your cheeks heat in embarrassment. 

You had to admit the subject really interested you, about geography, and culture. Well, also battles as well, the strategies, the ones already fought and how they happened, and you were marrying a General, that is what most excited you, you were going to be able to ask him about his campaigns and about the battles he had fought, you felt so emboldened, you went ahead and ask him… 

“I wanted to ask you, who was the most difficult enemy you ever faced on the battlefield?”, you asked him, he took a sip of his cup of wine and left it on the table in the middle of the Triclinium

“I do not wish to bore you with tales of wars, my lady”, he said softly, and your smile dropped. You should tell him that you wouldn’t be bored, but you didn’t press on it. “How do you find your new mount?”, he asked after an uncomfortable silence, the previous soft atmosphere now destroyed

“Luna is so calm, and sweet”, you said then, “thank you”

“You named her Luna?”, he asked

“She is silvery as the moon”, you explained gently. 

“It’s a beautiful name”, he assured you, “and I’m glad, I made sure she had a good temperament, I would never put you at risk, my lady”, he assured you. And that made your heart beat fast in your chest, and your cheeks heat up

“Thank you”, you say shyly, he smiled at you then. But as he seemed to truly gaze at you, he got serious all of a sudden.

“This might be what you asked the Gods for”, he started, and you felt your cheeks heated, was it really that obvious? although you were trying your best to not show it, “but I promise to keep you safe, and to care for you”

“And I promise to be a dutiful wife”, you said, over excitedly, you must have looked so childish. His face turned serious, and you could swear you saw a glint of sadness in his eyes, but it was probably your imagination. 

He might be rough around the edges a bit, but he was joust, and generous, and caring. You beamed at him again, and for the first time since this whole thing started, you found yourself wanting to marry him.

Your mother didn't show up again, and Marcus left shortly after, and when he was in the threshold, in the Atrium, he grabbed both your hands, leaned in, and kissed you on the edge of your mouth.

You saw you could see stars even if you were inside, and he left you with tingles all over your body and promises that soon you were going to get married, with no setbacks

The day of your marriage ceremony, it was so cold, you only managed to get out of bed because you knew that today you were getting married to Marcus. 

You knew what you had to do, you had been taught all the rituals, all the processions.

As your eyes trailed around your room, that was kissed by the first rays of the morning sun. You started to see small remnants of your life, today, you were going to marry a man and leave your home, to go and live with him.

Today, you were going to leave your girlhood behind.

You raised from your bed and grabbed a little doll that was on a wooden shelf in the corner. You were old enough to have gotten rid of it quite a few years back, but you didn’t have the heart to. It was a little dolly made with articulated wooden limbs and dressed in a tunic. 

You smiled at it, and put it inside a beautifully carved wooden chest, as you did the rest of your personal artifacts that you were not going to take into your new married life.

“To Venus”, you whispered. 

Once you were done, you turned around and found your mother looking at you from the door, with a sad smile on her face.

“My only daughter”, she whispered, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “You are leaving too”, she said, you smiled at her and hugged her tightly. She caressed your hair and kissed the side of your face, “but this is for your safety”

You found that odd, but it was such a heartfelt moment, you didn’t think more about that. 

“But this is a happy day”, she said, releasing you and smiling through her tears. 

“Yes it is”, you said happily 

“Ah!”, you screamed, “Fatue!”

“I’m sorry Domina”, the maid said apologetically. You knew the sweet maid wasn’t at fault, but… it hurt nonetheless, “just a little more”, she said with a weird smile, as she raised your arm to access the tiny hairs in your armpits. 

“It hurts”, you whined childishly

“I know”, she placed the warm thick substance, she waited a few minutes, and then she pulled, making you whine. It all had to go… 

For your wedding night. 

“We prepared a milk bath”, she said as if that was going to be of any comfort, “to soothe your skin”, you looked at her, frowning, she tended to…

“Au!” ...take you by surprise. 

Once the torture was done, you were led to the indoor bath. As she had said, it was filled with goat milk, and soft and aromatic essences. Your maids fixed your hair up, so it wouldn’t get dipped in the liquid, and then abandoned you, you undressed, dropped your thin tunic into the floor, and slipped in the beautifully tiled space, she was right, it was soothing on your skin. 

MIlk baths were not strange, but rather, a delicacy, only being done in the most special of circumstances, like your wedding day, for example. 

You enjoyed the peace and quiet of the secluded place, as you faintly heard all the servants and maids walking all around, surely preparing for sundown, the ceremony was going to take place in your home, as it was customary. 

In the midst of all the flowers floating in the milk bath, you found a beautiful jasmine, your favorite, you grabbed it, making more ripples in the quiet you had created, you took it to your nose, letting the sweet smell soothe you.

You didn't know where it came from, as it was winter, so you took it as a sign from Juno herself, the goddess of marriage, then, you rubbed it against your neck, you really hoped its sweet smell would cling into your skin for today.

You smiled, you felt dreamy, thinking about what exciting things are to come. 

Time seemed to fly by you, your mind blinded by a soft mist, and before you knew it, your hair was being fixed in six braids, you were looking at yourself in the mirror, a large polished piece of copper. You had been dressed in the softest fabric you had ever felt, thin, sheer too, you could see your most intimate bits, but it wasn't less beautiful, delicate, soft and sewed with gold, and then, they placed a beautiful white tunic above it. All white and sewed with golden as well, it fell loosely to your feet, but it clinged to the just right places in your body. 

Your mother came into your rooms then, and they finished fixing your hair, she brought what looked like a golden rope in her hands.

But you knew what it was.

You believed it was pride you saw in her eyes, as they passed the golden rope around your waist, and then tied it in the traditional way. 

“I’m so proud of you”, she said with a wide smile

“I love you mother”, you said happily, she leaned in and kissed your cheek, and then she hugged you tightly

“You are going to be happy with him, I know you will”, she murmured 

“I really think I can”, you said with a wide smile 

And when you were all ready, with the crimson red veil placed upon your head, you were left alone in your rooms, waiting for the right moment for your entrance. 

You were supposed to be escorted by your handmaidens, but just now you realized that the only friend you had was Cecilia, and right now she was in Sicily with her husband…. so you found yourself alone.

“Do you need anything, domina?”, asked Alba, the lovely maid who had been by your side all day, and for years back

“I’m a bit nervous”, she smiled, she nodded, and brought back a trail with what recognized was a small amphora

“A bit of mulsum”, she said, “that will comfort you”, she said with a soft smile

She was right, the wine did help you relax your nerves, especially when you heard people arriving at your home. Finally everything fell on you, the reality. You were going to marry a man, this very night you were going to leave your home to never return, and you were going to live in a foreign place, you had never been to Marcus’ home, you didn't know where you going to end up this very night, you did know though, you had to consummate the marriage. 

You knew what was going to happen, you were a Roman woman, you were raised in knowledge of pleasure, war, wisdom, passion, love, and many others. Tales of Conquerors driven by mythical love and a passion that conquered empires and transcended thousands of years…

Would that kind be the kind of love you’ll have with Marcus?

You had barely a cup of wine with honey, it managed to soothe you to a certain point… but you couldn’t have more or it was going to cloud the rest of your senses, so you started fidgeting with your fingers. 

You started to feel uncomfortable, your scalp began to itch under the veil and your tight braids, the cold winter air began blowing through the window, but your hands were sweating and your breathing was becoming rasher.

You went to the window to have some fresh air, but you found that the garden was, well, not blooming, again, it was the middle of the winter. But as the sun was hiding in the horizon, the air got colder by the second. So you took long breaths and then you came back to sit on the bed.

You didn’t even got to before the door opened, and Alba came back 

“It’s time”, she said with an excited smile

You wanted to throw up as you were so nervous. She came and grabbed your hand, and led you out of your rooms. The ceremony had been prepared in the main atrium of your house, the most propitious space for that gathering of people. 

They were all there, they had lit fires all over the space, and everything looked so magical and mythical, even though that was the same atrium you saw everyday 

Your mother received you at the threshold and led you towards the small altar they had set for the occasion. You were so nervous your legs were shaking, but they still held you upright. 

Marcus was standing in front of a woman you could only guess was the matron of honor, right behind the altar

The ceremony was led by a woman you didn't recognize, but the Protuba, the matron of honor, was supposed to be a woman who had been married once, and still was living with her husband, so it couldn’t be your mother as she was a widow.

You looked around and found mostly men present in the ceremony, but that wasn’t odd either, there was supposed to be at least ten of them, then you looked at Marcus. He was looking at your mother, you couldn’t quite identify the feeling behind those eyes… it seemed like he was asking for some sort of permission, your mother met his eyes with decision, you looked back at Marcus and he seemed to nod.

And then he turned to you, his eyes fixed. 

“You stand as Venus in front of me”, he said softly, your cheeks heated 

“That would make you Mars then”, you murmured. He smirked 

“Let’s begin”, said the woman loudly, it all got so quiet, you could hear a single straw fall into the marble floor. You took a long breath. She presented a long scroll, the contract to your marriage, the details of which you did not know, it had been made between them both with your mother. 

“We are here free, of your own wills, to join in matrimony”, you both nodded, he was first, to sign the paper, you followed, scribbling your name shakily. Once that was done, you stood right in front of the other again. 

You both looked at the matron, she then looked at you and nodded, so you turned back to Marcus and smiled at him, taking a long breath. 

“Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia”, you said shakily, now you understood your friend, the way of the words constricting your throat

“Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaius”, he said firmly, with a strength and conviction you envied. 

“Now, the concordia”, it wasn’t without cause that the wedding ceremony was often called ‘the joining of hands’, you tried to wipe the sweetness of your hand in your dress but didn’t get to as the Matron grabbed it rather roughly, and Marcus’, and joined them together, his hand was so big, rough though, but warm, so warm, as you yours, you held your breath as his warmth in this winter night made you warm too. 

“With the concordia, you are agreeing that a mutual affection made by the Gods themselves has bonded you”, she said, “Where she is woman, you are man, this is the will of the gods”, then came your least favorite part, the sacrifice to Juno.

They brought forth a big piglet, and you looked away as someone slaughtered it, its cries ringing in your ears. You were brought back to the present when you felt a caress in the back of your hand, you realized it was Marcus’ thumb, caressing it, as he saw your distress.

You smiled at him widely

You took the time to gaze upon your now husband, he looked so handsome, dressed in perfect white, golden laurels sewed into the fabric, his beautiful dark locks combed backwards, and a pleased smile on his face, he looked like he just received laurels back from his campaign. You even saw little wrinkles that were born in the outer edges of his eyes, but that made him look even more handsome if that was even possible, and that nose… 

He turned towards you and found you gawking, he leaned in and kissed your cheek, you believed you were going to faint. 

When he placed his big warm hand on your lower back to meet your guests, -which you completely forgot they existed-, you believed you could swoon, his touch comforting and soothing, he then turned to you and smiled. He seemed to search for something in your eyes, and you hoped you could see the devotion within them.

You married one of the most important generals of Rome, a handsome man and you truly thought you’d be the happiest woman alive.

The feast began right after, and you realised your mother had gone all out, dancers in the pools of the two atriums, more servants than guests walked around offering food and wine. Cheerful music was playing, and all the guests had dispersed and were talking in loud conversations. You believed you could put together an older  empire than Rome if you summed their ages together. 

You had no people of your own, as Lucius and his friends were not here. His father was, and you guessed he didn’t want to see you get married to Marcus. His friends were here though, all men dedicated to war, pretors, some other generals. Some of their wives were about your age, but you didn’t recognize them.

Some even giggled in corners after looking thoroughly at you.

You tried to eat, but your stomach was in knots. You tried to drink, and you managed, water though, not wine, you didn't want to. As Marcus chatted with his fellow man of arms, you as much as clung to your mother’s skirt as she indeed was talking with the wives of men of the Senate. 

Sooner rather than later, a comitive came from what was once your rooms, carrying coffers filled with your belongings, one of them held, you guessed the golden one, carrying what you guessed was your dowry. 

Now you truly clung to your mother, as the time to leave your home for your husband’s had come.

“Don’t be sad my beautiful girl”, she whispered against the top of your head, “you’ll be just fine, and this will always be your home”

“I’m scared mother”, you whispered.

“You will be alright”, she said, “I promise you”, you nodded, surprised to realise you were crying. 

Marcus came to your side, grabbing your hand softly, releasing you from your mother’s arms. He had to struggle, you weren’t embarrassed to admit, but you released her and clung into his arm instead.

You left your home, your villa, and you both led the procession to Marcus’ villa, that you didn’t even know where it was.

This could be a long walk or a short one, you didn’t quite know.

It was already pitch black, being late and winter, but the torches taken by the people who were following you lit the night. 

It was cold, and your clothing was thin, but you held onto the arm of Marcus. He stood deadly silent, and you couldn’t find the words either. 

When you finally arrived at the gates of Marcus’ villa, your feet ached, it was in the very center of Rome, near the curia, it was… big. Your mother had not come, but a group of people you had known your entire life was there, looking expectantly at the both of you.

You gasped as you felt Marcus’ thick arms raise you from the ground, taking you in his arms. 

He left all of them behind with no words spoken and he entered his home with you in his arms, you heard the cheers and lude remarks, and then the gates closed behind you, as you grabbed onto Marcus’ neck. His body was warm against you, cold from the walk. 

He released you at the atrium. 

He directed you towards a table where two copper bains stood, and you know what follows.

Marcus used two small stones that sparked a fire that burned a few twigs and moss. The Other basin had water in it. So Marcus was indeed a traditional man, a religious man even. 

“Touch the water first”, he whispered in your ear, making you tingle, “so you won’t burn”, he suggested, you smiled nervously, and slipped your hand inside the copper basin, then as it was wet, you placed it above the fire. When you felt the sting, you removed it. The small rite was supposed to purify you and your new home, your new family home. 

You then realised you were very much alone with him, for the second time, and now… he was your husband.

The air was thick with expectancy, and your nervousness. 

But he had been so gentle… that gentleness was going to translate into your intimacy as a marriage, right?.

“Well, this is my home”, he said. You looked around and you found it comfortable, and… quite new, if there was such a thing in Rome.

Your home was ancient, as the Palatine hill, some say it was made by Romulus and Remus themselves after they founded Rome.

But Marcus’ was perfect, the pillars white and straight, the tiles unscathed by the passing of time, the pools were clean and with fresh water. Not like the ones at your villa which even had water lilies in them, and your pillars looked more like stone than marble, with wallflowers clinging to them. These walls lacked the paintings that decorated yours.

If you and Marcus weren’t there, there was no other trace of life. 

But it was beautiful nonetheless, and this was your house now too.

“As my wife”, he started, “you can do as you please with this home”, he said, the warmth that decorated his features at the ceremony now were lacking, now he seemed like he was sad. 

“Thank you Marcus, you are so kind”, you offered with a soft smile

“This way”, he said, with a thick arm pointed at a hallway. 

This was it, the root of all nervousness, you were going to consummate the marriage, you were going to… take him… 

 You arrived in his rooms, he entered in front of you, and you played with your fingers nervously. You prayed to Juno a week before, for him to be gentle and kind with you, to hold you with passion and devotion alike. That she blesses you with children. And the thought alone was enough to make you less nervous.

Maybe this was the day you were going to start your family. 

But he didn’t move. 

He rubbed his face with his hands, as he was exasperated, his back was to you, and he stood still, unmoving, hiding himself from you. 

Did you have to do something? 

He finally seemed to come to his senses, as he revealed his face and turned, but still not to you. You looked at yourself, begging the gods for wisdom in this… strange time… you then remembered the golden belt around your waist. 

And it finally dawned on you, maybe he needed a little push

“The husband is supposed to take this off…”, you trailed, playing with the fabric nervously. It was braided beautifully, it was customary to be made of wool, but you, being Lucilla's daughter, and granddaughter to an emperor, they had woven it out of golden silk just for you. 

It was the most beautiful knot of Hercules you had seen, and you were wearing it today on your wedding day, where your husband was supposed to untie it, before he claimed you in the marital bed for the first time. 

“I won’t”, he said simply, looking over his shoulder, to finally turn on his feet to look at you. His right hand grabbed his left wrist in front of him, as he stood still and solemn, and he was standing in front of his superior, or the emperor's themselves, “I will not touch you”, you didn’t seem to understand as you stood there, frozen in front of him

“But you are my husband”, you offered weakly. Of all the scenarios you played in your mind, you never thought this was the way it was going to go. You’d think he was going to be too eager, maybe too rough, too impatient, but never this… unless… “have I done something wrong?”, you asked, your voice broke at the very last word, and it was worse as he seemed to look at you with pity, “did I do something to displease you?”, you asked shakily

“You did nothing wrong”, he said, so simply, but his voice sounded too serious, too cold

“But…”

“It was a long day, we both could use some rest”, he said, his eyes soft at this, as he was begging you. He came to you, cradled your face in his big hands and kissed your forehead, and then he left you alone in the room.

Your heart shattered inside your chest as you sat on the edge of the bed, you grabbed into the fabric tightly. You were seized by an awful feeling that you didn’t even recognize at first, your chest ached, as bitter tears down your cheeks.

“But I did everything right”, you whispered

MASTERLIST

PCN: So the angst begins MUAHAHA

I thought the word "domina" was said by slaves to their "owners" but apparently not... it means "Lady or Mistress" use to call ladies of "status" so yeahhhh

Taglist: @orcasoul @peelieblue @raynetargaryan2 @thereallchristine @sesdeuxyeux

[stellasdrafts]

Wanted/Woman (Arthur Morgan)

Summary: two stranger outlaws find themselves captured by bounty hunters (Arthur Morgan x outlaw!Reader)

Word Count: 3.8k

Content: female reader, capture and bindings, violence and death, light gore, mentions of infertility, forced proximity, manipulative reader, enemies? (not quite but they dislike each other) to tension, crude language, male slander

Notes: surpriseeee new hyperfixation (dw will still be writing for leon too!! just added a new fictional man to the roster yum). i imagine mid-honor Arthur for this :) (also idk shit about guns so bear with me thanks). this is kind of an amateurish attempt of mine at criticizing misogyny bc i’m pissed off about today’s political climate. cliché on purpose.

The last thing you remember before going dark is the stinging pain of being pistol-whipped in the face by some bounty hunter’s grimy revolver.

As your consciousness comes to, you see flickering firelight from behind your eyelids. Even before you open them, you mentally curse at yourself for even letting yourself get in this situation in the first place. You had always prided yourself on your talent of finding secluded areas to camp out in. As well hidden as they could be when your picture was plastered on fences and announcement boards across three states with a bold, capitalized WANTED above it, anyway. You suppose you had gotten comfortable – sloppy. You slipped up and somehow those bastards found the shitty abandoned house you were using as a hideout, ambushing you while you were stubbornly focused on patching up a hole in one of your boots.

It takes you a moment to gather your surroundings in the haze of post-unconsciousness. The tent you’re being held in is hot, despite it being dark outside. The air is thick – stuffy and incredibly unpleasant. The smell of animal carcass lingers on the canvas as if it had recently been used to hold some hunt. You hear the muffled sound of men discussing by the campfire roaring outside – something rather serious, you assume by the tone of their voices. It doesn’t sound like too many of them, only two by the clean back-and-forth flow of their conversation. Somehow, the most obvious detail of your capture is the one you register last – the burn of rope at your wrists and feet, and the warmth of another body at your back. You’re bound to someone.

Your heart rate picks up at the sudden realization and you tug, beads of blood drawing at your skin. You’d typically consider yourself a rational person, but with the fog of having just woken up, your brain jumps to the worst conclusions. There’s no way of knowing if the person behind you has been shot dead already, they’re completely still… That is until he speaks.

“Would you stop that? Rubbin’ your wrists raw won’t help either of us.”

Take a breath. You’re better than this. The bounty hunters outside are men, and now you know the person behind you is one as well. Maybe some good old feminine charm could be your ticket out of here. It wouldn’t be the first time your conniving passive woman act got you out of scrapes. They might kill the man first, anyway.

You look around, making sure to make him feel you squirm. Your breath quickens and you summon a more proper accent. You won’t go down. Not like this. “W-What the hell is happening?”

The man’s body shakes lightly behind you – the sonofabitch is chuckling. “Oh, quit playin’ dumb. I saw you when they brought you in. You got posters from here to Colter.”

You make sure to yank at your ropes the way a panicked woman would. He hisses at the pain and you’re glad you don’t have to hide your prideful grin. “No, I don’t know what’s going on! There must be some mistake!”

The hunters haven���t even checked in on the two of you yet, but by the timbre of their conversation outside when you awoke, they’ll get the gist of this one too, and you’ll be damned if this stuck-up man leads to your demise.

“There ain’t no mistake, woman.” Looks like there won’t be any fooling this guy. He must be in the business, you assume. “Tryin’ to play the damsel in distress won’t help you any, so quit your whinin’ and stop pulling at the damn ropes.

“I’m not!” You sniffle. “M’not who they think I am!”

You may as well feel his eyes roll. “Right. What’s your name then?” You give him your usual decoy as he attempts to sit up straighter. “And what’s got an innocent thing like you in this kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know!” you cry. “I was mending some clothes when they burst in my house and knocked me out!” you recite with ease. It wasn’t a total lie, after all.

The man listened to your sob story, wanting to get a read on you, you presume. “Is that right? You were… just sewin’ when they magically came out of the woodworks and took ya?”

The goddamn attitude on this man… “Yes!” You start crying again. “Oh god, this can’t be real!”

You hear your companion let out a heavy sigh. “Alright, cut the dramatics, darlin’,” he grumbles. Twigs snap outside and both your heads whip in the direction of the two hunters’ shadows near the flaps. He lowers his voice. “I know you’re puttin’ on that act and it’s getting’ real old. It’d only work on someone dumb as rocks so-” he’s interrupted as the two bounty hunters waltz in, surely having heard you wailing seconds prior.

You flinch hard and make yourself fall to the side. You’re a pathetic, blubbering mess – the complete opposite of what they’ve surely heard of the outlaw they were chasing. You will make them doubt themselves. Manipulation is your specialty, and men are so simple minded~

“Please! Please-”

The captors look a bit startled by your distress. One of them, the bulky one, kneels down at your side. Men just can’t help themselves, can they? They just have to save the pretty tormented girl. He tries to soothe you by placing a grubby hand on your knee. “Calm down, sweet thing.”

You try to hide your recoil. It’s not like you can scoot backward anyway, since you’re tied to the pessimistic wanted man. “P-Please, will you just tell me what’s going on?” You blink with tear-soaked lashes, being a convincing little housewife.

The hunters share a look, as if silently trying to contemplate the legitimacy of your cries. The bulky one returns his attention to you, seemingly placated. “We ain’t gonna hurtcha unless you give us a reason to, sweetheart. We’re just here to bring you down to the sheriff’s office.”

You hear the other wanted man scoff behind you. Surely, they weren’t actually falling for this?

The taller one hanging back grins cockily. “Gonna get us that nice little bounty on your head,” he adds.

It’s your turn to bite back a scoff. Little? There’s nothing little about a hard-worked two-thousand dollars on your head alone. You’d even been dubbed Bullseye.

For your own sake, your eyes go wide as saucers, as if you’re truly repulsed by the idea of having committed any crimes. “Bounty?! That’s impossible. I’ve never sinned in my life. Please, there must be a mistake-”

The tall one chuckles and you feel flames of anger licking at your insides. “Oh, there ain’t no mistake. You must’ve done some reeeeal bad things. Bounties like that ain’t given out for no reason.”

The bulky man nods to corroborate his friend’s words, but judging by its slowness, he seems a bit more apprehensive. “…You seem too soft to have a bounty of a couple grand on your head.”

Your new wanted companion whistles from behind you, impressed.

“Goddammit, Wilson!” curses the tall one.

There’s the crack you need. You keep pushing, sensing the foundation crumbling between the two. You shake your head feverishly. “I don’t know who you think I am! I’ve told you my name. I’m a housewife. M-My husband’s name is Elijah. Really, I barely ever go out. I don’t know what’s going on here.”

The two idiots glance at each other again, brows raised. Wilson tilts his head. “Roberts, maybe we fucked up. I mean, look at’er! The law has been after the girl for years. The… The posters are old. They’ve been up so long that they’re kinda faded… Maybe her and Bullseye really do just look alike.”

The tall one – Roberts – doesn’t answer right away. You’d venture to guess he’s more trigger-happy than his partner. “I didn’t see no husband inside the house.”

“He’s off on business in the next county at the moment.”

Again, they seem to communicate without speaking aloud. Wilson stands with a groan and nods in my direction with urgent eyes, evidently commanding Roberts. The latter steps forward with a sigh, his arms crossed. “Fine. I’ll bite. If that’s the truth, miss, how long you been married?”

You smile weakly, pretending to recall a memory. “Since my Elijah and I were nineteen.”

“All this time and no children?”

You drop your shoulders and strategically let your smile fade. You’ve been waiting a while to use this one. “No, sir, I been having… issues,” you admit shamefully. And you’re so proud of yourself that you hope even the non-believer tied to you is starting to wonder if he accused you of being a liar a little too quickly.

Both the hunters are taken aback at that. A woman shouldn’t be talking about private matters to strangers. The dumb bulky one breaks the silence first. “I-I’m sorry about that, ma’am…” he mumbles awkwardly.

You nod solemnly and wipe a skillful tear from your cheek with your shoulder. “I begged him not to go- begged him! A-And now I’m tied up-” You gasp and try to put some distance between yourself and the man you’re tied to, but it only yanks at both your binds. “Does that mean I’m tied to a killer?! Oh God!” you cry and squirm violently.

Wilson raises his hands the same way one would calm a horse. “Ma’am, calm down-” In an attempt to calm you down, he grabs a knife from his belt and cuts your wrists’ bindings while Roberts rushes to make sure the other outlaw doesn’t try to pull some stunt. Unlike yourself, he leaves him fully bound and secures him to one of the tent’s support posts.

Now that you aren’t back-to-back with him, you catch a glimpse of his face for the first time. Oh shit. You recognize him immediately – it’s impossible not to, not in your line of work. That’s Arthur Morgan, one of Van Der Linde’s men. One of his most feared men, actually. No doubt he has a pretty bounty on his head as well.

You don’t have time to dwell in your thoughts because that half-witted hunter speaks again. “I won’t untie your ankles, though. Can’t have you runnin’ off on us until we’re sure you ain’t it,” he says with a chuckle.

You want to punch that condescending little smirk right off his face… But you can do even better.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of running.”

“Well, that’s good ‘cau-”

He trips over his words when you snag the knife from his naively relaxed grip and jam it into his neck with all your might. As he topples over, you swiftly grab the revolver from his holster and shoot Roberts a couple of times in the chest before he can even react.

“Goddamn fools,” you mutter as you undo the rope around your ankles, seemingly unfazed by a tied-up Arthur Morgan some feet away from you.

Even writhing on the ground, Wilson disturbs your newfound peace, gargling on his own blood. You roll your eyes and put a bullet between his own. Standing, you stretch your limbs, rubbing where the rough rope had dug into your skin. You retract the bloody knife from the bounty hunter’s neck, giving it a twirl. It was a pretty knife, engraved with some intricate swirls. You earned it.

You finally look up at Arthur. “You were right, I s’pose.”

“Seems that way,” he replies, carefully watching every movement of yours. You’d seen that look in men before. He was trying to gauge if he was going to be the next recipient of your wrath.

You grin and lean back against some crates, enjoying seeing such an infamous man be so unsure. “Now, what to do with you?” you ask rhetorically.

You watch as his eyes go from the dead man at his feet to your calm figure. Evidently, you had managed to impress him. Pride swells in your chest. He nods toward his bound ankles. “Well, are you going to get these off? That would be greatly appreciated,” he inquires dryly, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

You hum, giving the knife a couple more twirls. “I bet, Van Der Linde.”

The outlaw raises a brow, otherwise utterly composed. “So you know who I am… Or at least who I run with.”

“Mhm.” You trace the edge of the bloody blade with your index. “You’re no small feat, Arthur Morgan.” You push off the crates and nod at the corpses on the dirt. “They would’ve lucked out.”

“I’d say the same for you,” he replies, his gaze unrelenting.

The two morons had spoken your alias, but it’s the fact that Morgan recognized it that sticks with you. A sick sense of satisfaction bubbles within you at the knowledge that your name has been spread to one of the country’s most notorious gangs.

“Well ain’t you sweet,” you quip sarcastically.

Arthur looks down at Roberts, mere inches away from him. “Your aim on him could’ve been a bit better, though. Too far right.”

You? Aiming anything other than perfect? You scoff, your eyes narrowing as you search through a sack on the crates for your confiscated guns. “I don’t have to let you free.”

“And I don’t have to be pleasant,” he retorts gruffly, and for a second, you’re reminded of who you’re talking to. The adrenaline from your victorious escape begins to simmer down and you realize that perhaps you shouldn’t be speaking to an accomplished killer this way.

…But you’re one yourself.

You look over your shoulder with a smile. “You’re tied up, hun.”

The man scowls. “Oh really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Amusing, this one. But perhaps you aren’t exactly in the position to have Dutch Van Der Linde and his boys on your tail for taking out their best man. You sling the bag full of your belongings over your shoulder and crouch before him, pushing Roberts out of the way with one foot. “I can’t see why we can’t be amicable, can you?”

One of his brows quirks up. “Depends on your definition of amicable, miss,” he dryly speaks your family name.

“Charming manners.” You tilt your head. “I reckon we ain’t that different, you and I. Two of the most notorious criminals. Everyone knows our names. We were, well-” you gesture to his bound current state. “-both tied up. On the same team, if you will. We live the same lifestyle. I don’t see the point in goin’ off and tattlin’ on each other.”

Arthur lets out a quiet huff. “So you’re suggestin’… What, an alliance?”

“I’m suggestin’ silence. You go off without worryin’ about me sending the law after you, and I do the same.”

“And how do I know I can trust you?” He’s skeptical, and you can’t quite blame him after he’s just witnessed how you swindled those men.

“It’s a two-way street, Mr. Morgan. I’m the same as you, it’d be hypocritical to turn you in. Plus, I don’t quite care to alert the law of my presence by going in to report you.”

You can practically see the gears turning in his head. “Fine. But I’m not forgettin’ this.”

But his mention of an alliance lingers in your head. You hold up a finger. “On second thought, I’ve got a better idea. More fool-proof terms, if you’re hesitant to trust me.”

He rolls his eyes, obviously not enjoying being at your mercy. “And what would those be?”

The corner of your mouth quirks up. “It’d be idiotic for members of the same gang to snitch on each other, wouldn’t it?”

A look of realization washes over his face. “It would,” his voice drops lower, not liking where this is headed.

“Then, I’ll be joining the Van Der Lindes. I’m tired of sleepin’’ with a pistol in my hand.”

His expression shifts, seemingly amused by your conviction. “Oh, are you?” he retorts with a chuckle. “What makes you think they’d even let you in?”

You grin. “You knew exactly who I was when you heard those twits call me Bullseye, that’s what.” You stand up straight. “And you’re going to give me a shining recommendation.”

“Am I, now?”

“Mhm… Or I could throw you on my horse out there and we could have ourselves a nice little ride to some sheriff’s office. I figure Saint-Denis would have the most intense security. You don’t think they’d recognize me if I just rode by and dropped you on the doorstep, do you?” You jeer as you rummage through the tent, looking for anything of value to take.

Despite your threats, a small smirk creeps onto Arthur’s face. He takes a moment to study you, weighing his options.

“Confident, ain’t ya?”

“With reason.”

A beat. You just stare at each other.

“Can you untie me already? We’ve got a lot of ground to cover to get back to camp.”

[lamentationsofalonelypotato]

@zepskies

Karl Urban and Bruce Willis' fight to Back In the Saddle is literally everything to me! It lives rent free forever in my head! But I will forever be disappointed that Karl Urban didn't come back for the second movie 😭

You should watch Knight and Day if you haven't seen it. It's like Red but with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz and it's an action Rom-com.

Also you're spoiling me with all of these wonderful reviews 🥰💗

Ahh the "hear me out" thing is so relatable lmao. But Marlin?! Really?! 🤣🤣

It really is the best thing to do with your friends 🤣 My friend group has a chat where all we do is send photos of our "hear me out" characters lol.

Oh God, you're giving me Vietnam War-level flashbacks to undergrad when I was stuck until 12 am at the library working on essays and shiz. 🫠

I'm sorry, but man it's so relatable. I was up for hours studying for physics tests that I never understood. I hated Physics... I mean I know it's real and that it exists, but I don't need to know why things work the way they do. They work and I believe it, that's it 🤣

GIRL PLSSS. 💀💀💀 Not "daddy gorilla." 🤣

🤣 I had to do it LMAO! I'm ashamed 🫣

Okay, lmfao. I'ma need you to stop calling me out like this. 😂😂

Its funny because I was one million percent calling myself out with this. Girl, you had no idea how many romance novels I read lol, but I love the use of the "You're out of order gif" so much 🤣

But I so love the description of Russell -- he's a man in a sea of man-boys our age, and there's a distinct difference. 😏

Amen 🙌🏻 That's why we like men in their 40's, because they're experienced and they actually know how to treat a woman. 😉

LMFAO. Reading this snippet in context is of course even better. I'm dying but also she would so be me in this situation. 😝

Thank you sweetie 😘 Yeah, I wanted to make her a little bit more realistic and not as confident or practiced lol. She's literally me whenever an attractive man talks to me. 😭

OMG YESSSSS. Lmfao Rain was beautiful! And I love that you referenced one of my favorite movies. 😆😆 Totally agree that Nala had bedroom eyes. And I raise you Robin Hood from the Disney movie! They did NOT have to draw him that sexy.

Dory is a horsegirlie and I will make Russell the cute older brother that had to endure her obsession! But I might have also been thinking about cowboy Dean and your follow up series Outlander. I'm so excited to jump back into that world!

Oh my word Robin Hood is peak disney animation- they had no business making a fox that sexy 🤣. And he was GOOD WITH KIDS and a GOOD PERSON! Robin Hood walked so Nick Wilde could run in Zootopia and that is the hill I will die on!

Miss ma'am!! Don't make me bring out the Out of Order gif again! I had to fan myself when he literally caught her hand. Dear Lord. 🫠 Also, the way I was so shocked and literally laughed out loud at the way she headbutted him. 🤣 Honestly that would probably be me trying to flirt. A+ casting 😂👌🏽 But again, that spice and the way he kissed her melted me like the Wicked Witch of the West. ❤️‍🔥

The man is too smooth 😉 I'm going to be honest the original draft didn't have the headbutt, but then her kissing Russell like that seemed too easy for her and she needed to be more awkward lol. I needed her to embarrass herself and I wanted to suffer from second hand embarrassment lol

"A+ casting" ☠️🤣 LOL

Thank you! Russell is really working her, but he's also making her feel comfortable with her awkwardness lol

lmaooo sage advice! 😂

Kay is the Gandalf of this fic 😂. She's trying to steer the reader in the right direction and support her!

LOL I love her inner monologue. She's so adorkable, but I'm already getting the RED vibes omggg. 🙏🏽

Thank you friend! She is very "adorkable." And yay! I'm glad you're picking up the RED vibes. Of all the Jensen Characters I felt like Russell fit the best for that kind of situation.

It's the little things I love loll. 🤌🏽

Oh goodness thank you! Yeah, Russell protecting her head while she fell is so him and I love him so much for that.

Not me feeling sorry for him right now when she's well within her right to try and beat him with a pink baseball bat. 🤣🤣🤣

She is one million percent within her right to beat him senseless, but I also felt bad for him too. He really isn't a murderer (well... maybe) but he was attacked!

I was smiling so hard while reading the rest of this. I was actually so disappointed to get to the end! This was one helluva meet cute, hun. 💜 The thing about your one-shots is that they feel like the start of a series--of an amazing adventure that's about to start. I know you have probably a million WIPs at this point lol, but this does feel like a RED kind of movie and I would love to see more of these two if you ever feel so inspired. ✨

Yay! I'm happy it made you smile Alex! It really is one crazy meet cute lol

Girl stop, you're making me cry with these compliments 😭💕 I do have about a million WIPS, but I really do love this reader and Russell too. And I would love to continue their story in the future, because I'm obsessed with RED. I might have to watch it again to plot out a series with these two 😉

I Can Explain!

Pairing: Russell Shaw x f!reader, Reader POV

Prompt: "How Do You Know Where I Live?"

Requested by: @vixaaa

Summary:  When you meet a gorgeous green-eyed stranger at a bar and agree to go home with him, everything goes off the rails and you're strapped in for the ride.

Tropes: Awkward Rom-Com? Forced Proximity? Protective Russell.

Word Count: 10.6 K (But You'll Laugh The Whole Time)

Warnings: An Unhinged Game of "Hear Me Out," References to Sex, Sexual innuendo, Little bit of self-deprecating thought (reader), Reader is kinda awkward and clumsy, Gunfire, Weapons, Talk of Murder, Shooting?, Brief Description of Torture, Brief Description of Murder, Terror, Fear, Cursing, Kissing, I think that's everything? I promise this one is a rom-com despite all the warnings. 😅

Note: This is told from Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. There is no use of y/n. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!

Internal monologue is in italics and is in first person.

Main Masterlist

Prompt Celebration Masterlist

A/N: Hey guys! This is another wonderful prompt request that I got for my prompt celebration from the enchanting @vixaaa! This one is based a little bit on the movies "Knight and Day" and "RED." If you've never seen either of those, go and watch them right now. They are some of my favorites!

P.S: Yes, this is the one I've been writing that has just been making me wheeze/cackle laugh the whole time I wrote it...

“Alright, hear me out… Gil, the angelfish from Finding Nemo. There is no way in hell he was made for kids.” Your friend Liza says wobbling slightly on the plush leather bench seat of the booth before taking a shot of vodka. Her peacock blue No. 2 hair shimmers like a beacon in the dimly lit bar. 

“That’s low hanging fruit.” Kay snorts from your left while leaning heavily into your shoulder, the smell of her vanilla perfume wafting up with the movement. “That scar? The tragic backstory? And voiced by Wilem Defoe? Sign me up.”

You giggle into the shot glass clasped in your hand before you knock it back, face scrunching at the taste and pleasant burn.

The “Hear Me Out” drinking game your two best friends proposed to clear your head from the nuclear level bombing of an exam you just took in your Physics One class, had been successful so far. You couldn’t remember any of the questions from the test that made you scream obscenities into the strawberry shaped pillows on the couch in your living room earlier. Exactly where the two of them had found you when they got back to your shared apartment at the end of the day.

The live music in the crowded bar thrummed through your veins and the shots were giving you just the right amount of buzz to feel more carefree than you had in the past week. The week that you’d spent approximately one million hours studying for the test and trying to memorize all the formulas that looked exactly the same. 

Four times you’d fallen asleep on your computer and had the imprint of the keyboard on your cheek, three times you’d had a mental breakdown and decided to change your major promising yourself that you were sure you could make it doing freelance whatever the fuck sounded good at that moment, and you couldn’t count the number of times that you’d gone to the library to study only to get distracted by whatever else was better than studying for a physics test.

Spoiler alert, there are a lot of things that are.

But you knew you were screwed the second you saw the first question and the rest of them had only been the final nails in the coffin that was the dream of getting an “A” in the class before the semester was over. 

The glimmering sheen of hope at the end of the semester you once had, was ebbing to a dim lantern being swung by a lighthouse keeper in a hurricane, hence the large tray of vodka sitting prettily on the water ringed table in front of you.

You were sure to regret every single shot, but your next exam was two days away and you didn’t want to think about it yet, not when the shadow of the last was poking you in the back with a pencil like someone looking for your final piece of gum.

For a Tuesday night, Duke’s, the bar the three of you frequented so often that the rotating circle of bartenders knew you all by name, was crowded.

There was the familiar glow of the neon signs posted on every wall, a new band performing a set on the small stage in the corner, a collection of screaming girls in the front row of the crowd snapping photos and drooling over the base player, a group of frat guys shouting obscenities at a tv blasting a football game, and a few patrons trying to unwind from a long day while nursing multi colored drinks and sitting sporadically around the crowded bar while the bartender of the hour leaned against the counter and tried to hear orders people shouted over the din. 

You would have been more than happy to spend the evening on the couch eating a greasy pizza and drinking margaritas back at the apartment, but Kay and Liza refused to let you rot on the couch. 

The three of you had been inseparable since freshman year when you’d been assigned as roommates together. Liza was an art major hoping to illustrate book covers one day, Kay was a hardworking pre-med student, and you were… undecided. Physics 1 had been the idea of your advisor, who after a year of trying to get you to declare a major was close to throwing in the towel, you believed that he was using Physics 1 as a form of payback for driving him almost to the point of early retirement. 

“Okay, okay I see you.” Kay giggles, before grabbing a fresh shot. Her long black hair is pulled back from her face with a claw clip, but a few pieces bob around her head with the movement of her head to the music. “And I raise you Kerchak from Tarzan!”

“The daddy gorilla?” Liza asks, leaning into her fiance, Matt, where he lounges back against the faded maroon leather beside her. 

There was a half full glass of beer sitting in front of him, one he’d ordered when he found out what everyone else at your table was drinking. But he’d been a good sport so far despite all of his suggestions to the game being so obvious there was no reason for him to defend his choice and the rest of you mocking him endlessly for it. 

“Sweetie, he could be my daddy any day of the week.” Kay winks and throws back her shot. 

“You’re disgusting.” Liza rolls her eyes, refusing to take a shot to agree with Kay. 

“Hey! What happened to ‘we listen and we don’t judge?’” You interrupt, putting your arm around Kay who holds up a middle finger in answer to Liza’s taunt.

“Where was that when I said Jessica Rabbit two turns ago?” Matt grouses from his side of the table, crossing his large arms over his chest. His blond hair had tumbled out of the bun at the back of his neck to cover the grass stain on the collar of his jersey. He’d come straight from practice when Liza called. 

And then Kay and you had to suffer through the long make out session the two of them had when they reunited as if they’d been separated by war for fifty years and not two hours. They were recently engaged and you loved Matt, which is why you’d let them make out for exactly thirty seconds before Kay and you started making exaggerated gagging noises while they kissed. 

Kay’s boyfriend hadn’t been able to get out of work, but Kay was going to walk to the coffee shop inside the library to pick him up when the tray of shots in the center of the table sat empty. Usually you’d worry about that sort of thing, your friend walking alone on campus at night, but because Kay had the highest tolerance out of all of you, Matt included, and a total badass who welcomed the challenge of anyone who tried to test her, you were willing to let it slide. 

That and the three of you tracked each other’s location with your phones.

“Because Jessica Rabbit isn’t a hear me out! Everyone knows that she’s super sexy!” You argue. “She doesn’t fit the criteria of this game!”

“She’s right babe.” Liza says, squeezing his arm with a sympathetic smile. “But it’s okay. I love that you’re a basic bitch.”

“But she’s animated!” Matt exclaims, obviously confused.

“So? Flynn Ryder is animated and he’s every woman’s dream.” You shrug, picking up a glass to take your turn.

You begin to shuffle through the mental file folder you have on characters who possessed “the energy” that made them so attractive. Truthfully, Kay and Liza had already said most of the ones you were thinking.

“You want to talk about every woman’s dream?” Kay smirks, her eyes flick over to the bar. “Check out green eyes over there. Holy shit, I’d let him rock me like a hurricane all day and all night!” 

“I’ll be sure to tell Sean, your boyfriend of three years-” You begin to say, but Kay pinches your cheeks between her fingers and turns your head so you can see who she’s talking about. 

Oh.

The stranger sitting at the bar is everything she suggested and more. He’s the kind of handsome that didn’t exist outside of the stack of communal romance novels that sat on the bookshelf in your living room and served as the perfect reminder of how single you were. 

The man is taller and broader than any of the so-called boys you went to class with each day, his tight fitting dark t-shirt pulling up over muscular arms that rippled with taunt muscles and were decorated with smoky tattoos curling beneath the ink colored sleeves. His chocolate colored hair is long and pushed back over his head, but a few strands hang forward to frame a well defined jaw covered in a thick dusting of facial hair.

Your throat suddenly gets very tight. 

The man’s gaze is focused on you, the green of his eyes brilliant, crinkled just around the edges with his smile. He winks and your entire face takes on the identity of a strawberry with your flush.

“Holy shit!” Kay nudges you. “You have to go over there.”

“What?” You squeak. “Are you insane? That guy is-”

“The kind of man who would make you forget all about that physics test?” Liza raises an eyebrow.

“The kind of man who would break the laws of physics with you all night long?” Kay adds. “Babe, come on, it's been months for you. Why don’t you go over there and say hi?”

“No way.” You shake your head vehemently, hyperventilating a little bit at the thought of going up to a complete stranger. 

You were not the confident girl in the group that did that. Kay was. It was exactly how she had met her boyfriend Sean three years ago, by using a cheesy pick up line that made him snort so hard he had beer coming out of his nose. Liza wasn’t much better. She’d met Matt in this very bar when her heel broke and she stumbled into where he was sitting with his friends at the bar. 

And the truth was it had been a few months since the last relationship (if you could call it that) fizzled out… and with both of your friends in relationships you often were the awkward fifth wheel. It wasn’t that you didn’t like your friends' boyfriends, Matt and Sean were great and they always did their best to make you feel comfortable whenever you were out with everyone, but you were kinda tired of being the spare tire.

“I don’t think we should be encouraging her to go off somewhere with a random man from a bar that she just met.” Matt says with a frown. 

Matt often held the braincell in your friend group and was the one who was more focused on making sure that everyone was safe. He was the one who followed up with a text whenever someone left to go home, the one who made sure that everyone stayed together when you were out late, and was usually the designated driver. 

“You’re such a hypocrite.” Liza boops Matt on the nose. “You were a random man that I’d never met before. And if I’m not mistaken we met in this very bar.”

“That’s different.” Matt sighs, but he leans towards Liza, the tension dissipating from his shoulders as he looks at her and his frown slips into a smile. 

They were one of those couples that no one ever thought would work. Liza was the carefree art major with no plan in the world and Matt was the All American, blue-eyed, blond haired football player that everyone said was “going to do great things” when in reality all Matt wanted to be was Liza’s husband. He didn’t care about anything else, but making her happy. Hence the giant engagement ring on her finger, the same one that he’d let her design because he knew that was important to her. 

They were everything you wanted in your own relationship. A beautiful merging of crazy (from you) with someone stable and structured, preferably someone with a strong jaw, brilliant green eyes and-

Great, he’s already invaded my subconscious. 

You glance up again to see if the stranger is still looking. He is, but this time his smile is just a little wider, and you watch his eyes drag down the length of your body for a moment appreciatively before flicking back up to yours and catches you doing the same thing. 

You weren’t wearing anything revealing, in fact, you hadn’t bothered dressing up to go out because you didn’t feel like it. You were still wearing the blank sweatpants and oversized sweatshirt combo that you’d worn to your exam. 

When you caught him looking at you, it made you regret you hadn’t worn something more eye-catching.

“Come on, that guy is checking you out! Go over there.” Kay nudges you, jostling the forgotten tequila shot in your hand. 

“He looks like trouble.” Matt says half-heartedly, but he’s too busy staring into Liza’s eyes to really care. Her hands are entwined at the back of his head pulling his forehead down to hers.

When it got to that point of the night, it usually meant that the two of them were about fifteen seconds from calling it an early night and going back to Matt’s apartment. Technically Kay would probably end up there as well because Sean was now Matt’s roommate and that meant you’d have the apartment to yourself…

“How can you tell? Are you looking at his reflection in Liza’s eyes?” Kay takes a shot from the collection of the remaining few in front of her.

“We all know that if Sean was here, you’d already be practicing your scuba breathing.” Liza gently brushes back the few strands of blond hair that hang forward into Matt’s face which only makes him sigh softly and look at her like she’s the last woman on earth. 

You try not to be jealous. 

Kay only rolls her eyes. “Alright, I’m taking initiative.”

“What does that mean?” You begin to ask, but Kay shoves you out of the booth and towards the handsome stranger who hasn’t taken his eyes off of you since your eyes met moments ago. 

“Kay. What the hell?” You turn back to look at her, but she’s already holding up your forgotten shot. 

“Take this and go over there.”

“But-”

“The only butt you should be thinking about is his, in those deliciously tight jeans. You will thank me in the morning.” She refuses to budge. “And then come home and tell me everything the two of you did, because Sean’s about to go visit his family for a week and I will need something to fantasize about.”

You wrinkle your nose in disgust, but then look to Liza hoping for help. Unfortunately she’s too busy counting Matt’s eyelashes to defend you. You look back at Kay who is still holding up the shot, gaze unwavering. 

I can’t believe I’m about to do this. 

You think to yourself with a sigh, before taking the shot, hoping that it will give you some of the confidence you need to talk to the most attractive man you’d ever seen in your life. 

I can do this, I can do this-

The internal monologue repeats itself over and over again with each step as you weave your way through the crowd to make it where the man is sitting, dropping your gaze to the people around you as if you’re more focused on them.

You weren’t, but staring at him while you were walking towards him seemed too predatory, and you could already feel how warm your cheeks were from your flush.

You grip the firm edge of the bar when you make it to him, using it to ground yourself there in the moment before you find the strength to meet his gaze.

There’s a faded green jacket hung over the high backed barstool behind him that you hadn’t noticed before.

Your eyes trace over his body, just a quick glance, but snags on his arms for just a second too long to be casual. They were even more glorious in person, tan and flecked with cinnamon colored freckles hidden beneath twisting tattoos that disappeared into his dark shirt sleeves.

“Hi.” You smile shyly at the man when you meet his gaze.

“Hi.” He rumbles with an easy smile while the green of his eyes flashes in the neon sign hanging behind the bar.

His voice catches you off guard. You weren't expecting it to be so smooth, silk over your skin, but also like the rough drag of the ocean against sand as it pulls it out to sea.

“Hi.” You say again as all other thoughts evaporate from you mind and you fight the urge to facepalm. 

What the hell am I doing over here? I might as well do the walk of shame back to my own table. 

Russell raises an eyebrow, his smile widening. “Hi.” He echoes.

You open your mouth-

“Before you say hi back sweetheart, why don’t you tell me what you’re drinking instead?” He winks making your cheeks warm with their flush.

Honestly, you were expecting him to be turned off by your somewhat awkward introduction, but if you bothered him, he doesn’t show it. He leans towards you curiously, eyes drinking you in. 

You clear your throat while your mind scrambles to come up with something appropriate or sexy to say other than ‘wow you’re pretty.’ You settle on. “Whatever you’re drinking.” 

Smooth real smooth. 

You glance back in the direction of where your friends are sitting as the man’s gaze turns to the bartender so he can order you a drink. Kay makes an obscene gesture with her hand that makes Matt kick her under the table, and Liza gives you an encouraging thumbs up.

Kill me now. 

You turn back to the man lounging against the bar, unaware that he’s watching you again. 

“You seemed like you were having some fun over there. What were you talking about?” He nods his head in the direction of your friends, the motion causing more of his dark hair to fall into his eyes and you fight the urge to push it back from his face and find out if it was as soft as it looked.

“Oh um.” Your mouth goes dry. The last thing you wanted to say to the gorgeous man was that your friends and you were discussing what animated movie characters turned you on. So you blurt out. “The First Law of Thermodynamics.”

It had clawed its way from the dark recesses of your mind where the rest of the test answers had been hiding from you when you tried to summon them earlier. 

“What?” The man laughs while you feel your face begin to blaze. 

“The First Law of Thermodynamics?” You clear your throat. “The theory that energy cannot be created or destroyed."

Where was that when I needed it for the test?

“Huh.” He smirks and takes a long sip from the beer in his hand. “Didn’t think Tarzan had anything to do with that.”

Oh sweet baby potatoes he heard the daddy conversation. Why couldn’t he have heard the Jessica Rabbit conversation instead?

“Ah.” You laugh awkwardly, realizing exactly what he overheard. 

The bartender puts down a bottle of beer in front of you and whirls away to another patron sitting on the opposite side of the bar. The band begins to play a new song, this one louder with more drums than the last one, causing the man to lean closer to you so you can hear him. 

“So.” The smell of the man’s cologne wafts over you. He smells like pine, mint, whiskey, and there’s an odd smell you can’t place, something that smells almost a little bit like smoke.

You ascribe it to cigarettes, but you don’t realize how wrong you are. 

There’s something about him, more than just how attractive he is or how good he smells that draws you in. Maybe you’d just been burned by far too many boys and were blinded by the man sitting in front of you, but he had a roughness and self-sufficient air that you found refreshing. 

He was assertive, sexy, with smoldering green eyes that somehow seemed soft and hard at the same time and filled you with an unholy amount of desire. 

“So?” You parrot, bringing the beer up to your lips, hoping that a sip will take the edge off. 

“Don’t you want to hear mine?” His voice is low and sultry, breath warming the air between the two of your faces. 

You sputter out a cough, choking on the sip you took in surprise, and his eyes widen in concern.The man brings his hand down against your back with a hearty smack to clear out your lungs.

“Are you okay?” 

“Never better.” You choke out, voice a little wheezy. “Wrong pipe.”

This is quickly becoming the most embarrassing moment of my life. 

“Are you sure?” The stranger’s eyes trace over you as if he fears you’ll start asphyxiating at any moment.

“Mhmm.” You clear your throat again. “What were you saying?”

“I asked if you wanted to hear mine.”

You suddenly forget how to breathe, the only thing grounding you to this moment is the hand you placed on the cherry wood of the bar. “Sure.”

“Rain.”

Despite the last few seconds of you feeling so awkward it made you want to sink into the floor like quicksand and the fact that your throat is still burning from when the beer went down the wrong pipe, your mouth quirks up in a smile. “The horse from Spirit?”

“Mhmm.” He smiles a little wider. “My little sister used to watch that movie non-stop, and there was always something about that horse.”

“Huh.” You muse taking another sip of the beer, this time successfully not choking on it. “I didn’t peg you for a horse guy. You seem more like a Nala person.”

“Oh that lion did it for me too.” The man leans closer to you and you can feel your knees getting weak. “She definitely had bedroom eyes.”

“She did!” You laugh at him. “The animators knew what they were doing.”

It was getting easier to talk to him now and you could feel your nerves slowly going out to sea. There’s a comfortable silence that fills the air between the two of you.

“Why did you say the First Law of Thermodynamics earlier?” He asks before taking a sip from his beer. The condensation trickles down the side of the glass to pool against the wood of the bar.

“Because I didn’t want to admit what we were talking about.” You answer honestly. “And I guess it’s still a little fresh in my mind-”

“Why?”

“I had a physics test today. Completely bombed it. That’s why my friends brought me out tonight, they were trying to make me forget it.” You wave a hand dismissively, but it was the first time you’d thought about the test in the past hour and it still stung a little bit. 

You were hoping that by this point of the night it wouldn’t have mattered anymore, but it did. Not to mention you didn’t exactly want to be talking about your most recent failure with a man who looked anything like he did. 

But something about him made you feel comfortable talking to him about things that were not on the pre-approved list of subjects you created when you spoke to people you were attracted to. He didn’t seem to just be some hot stranger in a bar, he seemed like he actually cared, and that he was invested in what you were going to say. 

It made him even more attractive. You weren't used to boys wanting to actually listen to anything you had to say.

“I’m sorry.” His face pulls down into a sympathetic frown. 

“Me too.” You sigh. 

“Maybe you didn’t do as bad as you think you did.”

“Oh I did. When I turned in the test, the professor made a face.” Your thumb rubs against the glass of the cold bottle clutched in your hand. “I studied all week for it and it kinda feels like I wasted all that time.”

The man studies you for a moment. “I think that if you learn something from it, then it’s not a waste. There are no accidents.“

“Are you purposely quoting Master Oogway to make me feel better or is that just a coincidence?” 

“He’s a smart turtle.” He laughs pleased with himself that he made you smile. “But you remembered the First Law of Thermodynamics. And I thought it was a nice pick up line. Might use that sometime.” 

“Shut up.” You laugh and raise your hand to hit him on the shoulder, but he catches it with his.

The contact of the rough palm of his hand in yours makes electricity zing through your body, bringing a wave of heat coursing behind it. 

“That’s not very nice. Keep trying to hit me like that and I might have to take you to court, Sweetheart.” He winks.

“Oh please-” 

“How else am I going to run into you again?”

“Well-” You swallow trying to find the next words, but they’re stuck in the back of your throat. 

I am so out of practice. 

“Well?” He raises an eyebrow in a silent challenge, the end of his perfect mouth teased upwards in a smile. 

“This doesn’t have to be goodbye.”

“What did you have in mind?” The heat of his gaze sends goosebumps dancing over your skin and you swear you can feel your heartbeat in the base of your throat. 

People do this all the time. I can say it. I can-

“Maybe-” You scoot closer to him, summoning some courage from the tequila. “Something like this.” 

Your free hand curls into the front of his shirt to pull the stranger closer for a kiss.

Unfortunately, you pull him just a little too hard, with a little too much enthusiasm, and he falls off the stool with a startled cry in surprise and knocks his head into yours. 

“Ow.” You groan rubbing at the red mark forming on your forehead. “I am so sorry.” 

By now your cheeks are so warm that you could fry an egg on them and you were sure you looked like a giant raspberry. You had never been so clumsy or so embarrassed in your entire life. 

“It’s okay, you just surprised me a bit.” The man says, but he’s peering at the mark on your forehead. “Are you okay?” 

How many times is he going to ask me that tonight? 

“Yeah the only thing that’s hurt is my pride.” You let out an awkward laugh. “I’m just gonna-“ You gesture with your thumb over your shoulder to signify that you’re going to leave. 

The anecdotes that your friends were going to tell from tonight had already begun to manifest in your head:

“Hey, remember that time you tried to flirt with a gorgeous man at the bar and you headbutted him?”

“Hey, remember that handsome stranger? The one you told all about your failed physics test instead of sleeping with him?”

“Wait.” He gently puts his hand on your waist, sending your heart into a gallop. “Can we try that again?”

“Huh?” You blink in surprise.

So far all you’d done was head butt him and tell him your sob story about failing your physics test. 

Worst seduction technique ever. 

“Don’t move.” He smiles. “Don’t want to have to take you to the hospital for a CT if you bump my head again.” 

It would have made you laugh if he wasn’t already kissing you.

It might just be the alcohol talking, or the fact that the last thing you kissed was the strawberry pillows on the couch in the living room last week when Liza, Kay, and you were watching your favorite paranormal tv show and you were imagining the male lead, but this kiss is nothing like any of the others you’d had in the past. 

His mouth devours yours, beard scratching against your cheeks in a way that makes your entire body buzz. The man’s hands tighten your waist to draw you closer, closing the space between your bodies, and all you can feel is the wonderful drag of his fingertips against the end of your sweatshirt, the burn of his beard, the press of his chest onto yours, and the tangle of his tongue as you sink further into him. 

A moan vibrates up through his chest and into your mouth that you echo with a soft sigh, your hands slipping over the taunt muscles before finding purchase against his back, your fingertips curling into the soft fabric of his t-shirt. 

The rest of the bar is rendered to a dull throb of life at the back of your mind, the man in front of you absorbing the rest of your attention as he should. He is nothing like anyone you’d ever met and you wanted to know more. You wanted to see the end of the odd shaped scar just at the base of his throat, trail your fingers over the dark tattoos that decorated his skin while searching for more in places you couldn’t yet see, and sink into the deep green sea of his eyes. 

“Better?” He breathes.

“Much, but if you’re not into that, I also know the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Just to give you something to remember me by.” You mumble against his lips, still slightly embarrassed. Your hands were still curled behind his strong shoulders, fingertips digging into the firm muscles.

“Beside the bruises?” He smirks before he kisses you again, the languid roll of his tongue against yours makes you forget your own name. “I’d very much like to hear it.” The rumble of his words vibrates through where your bodies are pressed against one another. “But first let me get the car and then I’ll let you tell me all about it.” 

He brushes his lips to yours one more time, before he puts cash on the bar, and leaves you breathless as he saunters away towards the front door. 

Holy fucking shit. How did that work?

“Girl Yes!” You hear Kay, before you feel her hands come down on your shoulders to shake you excitedly. “I was a little worried in the middle there for you with that head butt, but yes! That’s how you do it!” Her excited squeal brings you back down to earth from the cloud you were floating on with Russell. 

“Where’d he go?” Liza asks. Matt was holding her from behind, his chin on her shoulder as he slowly rocked her to the music.

“To get the car.” Your cheeks flush at the insinuation. 

“Fuck I am so jealous. The only thing I’m going to get to do tonight is Sean’s back.” Kay gives an exaggerated sigh. “It’s acting up and that means I’m going to have to give him a massage for an hour and not the good kind. It always knocks him out.” 

“Aww babe.” Liza says. 

“It’s okay.” Kay shrugs, but then sends her a saucy wink. “I can do some laundry. His washing machine has this spin cycle that makes me see stars.” 

“I didn’t need to know that you’ve been molesting our washing machine.” Matt closes his eyes as if trying to scrub the image from his mind. 

“It’s money well spent, Mattie.” Kay batts her eyes at him. 

He huffs, but then turns his gaze on you, his blue eyes are filled with concern. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Yeah.” You shrug, nerves popping and sizzling inside so much that they might as well be giving off enough electricity to power New York City. “I don’t get a creepy vibe from him. I think he’s actually kind of nice.” 

It was true. Your radar was usually on point with things like this, and there was something about Russell that didn’t scream axe murderer. He seemed surprisingly laid back and honest, and you found yourself curious to know more about him. 

Matt doesn’t look convinced.

“It’s okay babe.” Liza says, swaying her and his body to the music. “We have the app on our phones and we all know the safe word.” She continues, referencing the word the three of you designated when everything was okay as well as the other word that meant everything was going terribly wrong. 

You didn’t think that you would need it. 

He sighs. “Fine, but if he tries anything weird-”

“What qualifies as weird for you?” Kay asks, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve always been curious about your kinks.” 

Kay always took pride in getting under Matt’s skin. You never knew why that was, only that it seemed to be her mission to make him crack. He never did. 

“Be safe.” He nods at you before he drags Liza towards the door. 

“Seriously babe.” Kay begins to back away. “Be safe. Because the last thing you want to pass right now is a pregnancy test.” 

“Why are we friends again?” You groan as you follow behind her, weaving through the mass of bodies writhing to the newest song. 

The air outside the bar is cooler, but there’s just a hint of something on the wind. Spring was coming, but it was still far enough away to leave just a light chill in the air. The street in front of Duke’s was populated sporadically with cars of varying shapes and colors, but you couldn’t help but wonder what kind of car the mysterious stranger drove. 

Why didn’t I ask him for his name? 

“Because you’d be lost without me.” Kay laughs at you, but then pulls you into a hug. “Have fun and please try not to think about that stupid test. You’re so smart and I promise that one test is not going to define your entire future. If that were true my first organic chemistry test would have come with a refrigerator box to live in, because that test was literally the stuff of nightmares.” 

She frowns at the memory. It was the first test that she had ever failed in her entire life, and although you were the one who usually obsessed over grades, it was the first time you’d ever seen Kay so disappointed. That was also because her professor had asked her to stop by for office hours and told her that there was no way she’d ever be able to get the grades she needed in his class. 

But a weekend marathon of Sex and the City listening to her mentor Samantha Jones, had brought her back to life and she’d sauntered confidently into the classroom armed with a flat white latte and sat in the front row at every lecture the rest of the semester. 

She’d gotten the highest grade in the class. 

Basically, Kay was your hero, that was the real reason why you were her friend. 

“I’ll try my best. Tell Sean hi for me.” You squeeze her just as tight, before she walks away down the darkened path back to campus where Sean would be waiting for her. 

There was an odd glow over the sidewalks tonight, a yellowed light that crawled along the cracked brick building that housed Duke’s and halted just shy of the opening of the alley that ran between Duke’s and the bank next door. No other people were visible. Even the small crowd that usually leaned against the rustic brick wall outside of the bar smoking was nowhere to be seen. 

It was odd.

You rub your hands down your arms with nervous anticipation. You’d slept with someone from a bar one time before, but one night stands were not your forte at all. The last time it’d happened, you’d gone back with a guy to his apartment only to find out an hour later when his girlfriend got home that he wasn’t single. She hadn’t seemed surprised that you were in bed with him, but you had been when she pulled out a switchblade the size of your hand and began to slash through the neatly arranged collection of plush squish-mallows on the floor while screaming obscenities at the guy.

In hindsight, maybe the squish-mallows were a clue that he was in a relationship. 

But you didn’t have any bad feelings about the man you’d met. He was attractive, witty, nice, funny, and he genuinely seemed concerned about you when you almost choked to death on a sip of beer. 

I will make him forget the entire awkward encounter. 

You promised yourself, but you also began to be a little bit nervous. You didn’t know why it was taking him so long to find the car. 

A bird caws overhead, sweeping low across the buildings, feathers an inky black in the night air, its shadow flickering across the moon. 

Another two minutes pass and you start to get antsy. 

Maybe he just left?

The thought brings a wave of disappointment over you. The stranger was the first person in a long time that you’d felt genuinely attracted to and now you couldn’t help but think that maybe he lied and when he said he was going to get the car, he really was trying to get away from you as fast as possible. 

You take a few steps in the direction that Kay left thinking that you might as well cut your losses and see if you can catch up, but hesitate. 

What if I leave and he comes back? What if-

An odd noise that sounds like a cat hacking up a hairball comes from the alley directly to your right, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the pavement. 

You turn. Most of the alley is obscured in shadows, several large dumpsters jut out from grimy brick walls stained with God knows what, but you don’t see anything out of the ordinary. 

There are some lights fastened to the wall that runs the length of the bar, sending a dingy orange light over the bags of trash, empty flattened cardboard boxes, and plastic cups strewn over the wet ground. 

The door of Duke’s swings open for a moment, bringing the sounds and smells of the bar through the doorway as a woman enters tugging a sullen looking man behind her.

You turn your attention back to the empty alleyway, and catch the low rumble of a voice that sounds oddly familiar. It echoes through the darkness bouncing off the stone, metal, and bags of trash to where you stand at the dimly lit mouth of the alley.

That’s weird. 

Another sound follows the voice, a wet sounding thud that piques your interest. You take a tentative step forward into the darkness.

Wait. Isn’t this how every horror movie starts?

It was a valid question. But then you hear the voice again, it’s louder, vibrating against the brick and mortar, and it pulls your forward. 

Anxiety hums through your body as you inch down the alley, sticking to the well lit side that runs the length of Duke’s.

“Who sent you?” The familiar voice asks.

There’s no answer, and the sound of the cat choking up a hairball comes back. 

Someone needs to get Grizabella a glass of water.

You take another shaky step passing by the first dumpster before you reach the part of the alley that wraps around the back of the bar. 

At first you’re not sure what you see. The part of the alley behind the bar is more of a cramped street with a tire marked dirt path, bathed in awkward light from the moon and from a lazy streetlight that’s only half lit. There’s another dumpster back here, this one a little larger than the others you’d seen along the side of the building, but that isn’t what’s interesting. 

The image comes into focus. 

The stranger from the bar is standing there, his back to you, but he isn’t alone. The stranger has a man pinned to the dumpster, a large knife stabbed into the space between the man’s collarbone and his right shoulder while his other hand is clasped tightly around the man’s neck.

“Who sent you?!” The stranger roars, the knife digging into the man’s shoulder. 

Your entire body freezes in fear.

My radar was so wrong. How could it be this wrong? He was so caring and kind- That’s what they said about Ted Bundy. 

Your gaze drops to what you thought was a garbage bag at the green-eyed stranger's feet, but realize that it’s not a bag, it’s a body.

Holy shit he’s a murderer! Maybe if I just back away slowly-

You take a slow step backwards hoping to edge back into the alley that runs the length of the bar and forget this night ever happened, but instead of your foot finding solid ground, it finds a forgotten potato chip bag. 

The crinkled plastic crunches underfoot, breaking the still silence of the night. You inhale sharply and look up. Your gaze locks with the green-eyed man.

“I didn’t see anything.” You hold up your hands, backing away slowly. “Have a nice night.”

“Wait-”

“Nope.” You turn and flee down the alley hoping that someone is coming out of the bar at the exact moment who can witness the broad stranger chasing after you. His boots thud against the concrete, splashing through water in hot pursuit, contrasting against the plods of your own feet sloshing through puddles and through trash to get back to the light.

Before you make it halfway through the darkness, he grabs your arm and turns you to look at him. 

“Let me go!” You shriek, tugging at his grip, preparing to kick him between his legs, the only place that matters.

“Please wait. I can explain!” 

“You don’t have to explain!” You keep pulling at his arm. “I didn’t see anything! I don’t know who you are. And you know what? I wasn’t even in the bar tonight! I was back in my apartment watching Crime Scene Kitchen!” 

It was the first thing that popped into your head, but if it meant that you got to live, it would be your alibi.

He hesitates confused. “What’s Crime Scene Kitchen?”

“What? You just fucking murdered someone in an alley, you’re about to murder me, and that’s what you’re asking me?” You scream.

“I’m not going to murder you. And I was the one who was attacked!”

“Oh sure!” Fear clamps down hard on your throat squeezing the air coming in through your lungs. Tears begin to burn against your eyes as you try to release his grip. “Somebody help me!” You scream loudly trying to twist away from him and wishing that you’d brought your bottle of pepper spray or that you’d taken the self-defense class last summer with Kay or at least paid more attention to that scene in Miss Congeniality.

How could I have been so stupid? He’s going to kill me here and I’ll never know what that physics test did to my GPA. 

You frown slightly at that thought. It really is weird what goes through your head when you think you’re going to die. 

“Please, let me explain.” He says again, eyes wide and filled with an emotion that looks surprisingly like regret.

His dark hair has fallen forward over his cheeks that are flecked with blood, but the lights that line the wall of the dark alley perfectly frame his face. He looked like a model for a beer commercial or one that they’d roughed up a little for those weird perfume commercials you saw that never made any sense, but were always intriguing. 

Why are all the hot ones crazy? Why couldn’t he have just been a bad kisser? Or maybe a little too loud? Why is his flaw that he freaking MURDERS people? 

As you think that, there is a little voice inside your head that asks: Could I be okay with that? 

NO! OF COURSE NOT!

“There’s nothing to explain! You’re a murderer! You just killed those people!” You aim a kick at his crotch, but the man only catches your ankle with his large hand. You could feel the warmth of his skin through your sweatpants, the sensation that brought warm tingles through your body when you were in the bar, only sends a wave of fear crashing over you.

“Yes I did, but for a good reason!”

“Really? What reason was that!?”

“They were trying to kill me!”

“I don’t believe you!”

“I-”

Before he can finish his sentence, gunfire explodes over your head. Sparks fly as bullets crash into the dumpsters and rip through the night air around where you and the man are standing.

There’s a large black suburban parked in the street that runs behind Duke’s where you’re found the stranger with the body. Three men stand in front of it all in dark clothing and each one is  holding a pistol pointed directly at where you’re standing. 

“Holy shit!” You scream, but the stranger tackles you back behind the large rusting green dumpster that juts out and gives you cover from the blaze of bullets.

His body lays over yours, curving protectively around you, and his arm is behind you head so when you hit the ground, your head doesn’t. The impact of the cold, wet, concrete beneath your body jostles through your system, but you can’t focus on it too much, not when the man’s entire body is laying on top of yours and it feels as if he was made especially for you. 

He lays in the cradle of your thighs, wonderfully broad and hard, the muscles of his body contrasting to the soft curves of your body underneath your clothes. It left very little to the imagination, well… not little. 

It’s enough to make a girl forget that he’s a murderer… No, what am I saying!!

You shove him off of you and cower back behind the dumpster, the sound of gunfire filling your ears and making you realize exactly what you smelled on the man earlier that you thought was smoke. 

“Baby-” He says reaching out to comfort you.

“Don’t touch me! I’m not your baby!” You swat his hands away from you pressing yourself back into the wet wall of the alley. 

The smell of mold and trash was rising all around you in an unholy mist. The wet ground soaked into the soft fabric of your pants and left stains that you didn’t want to think about what they were. 

“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit-” It comes out like a sickening mantra as you rock back and forth, hands on your ears to make the sound of the gunfire stop.

I’m going to die here. In this dismal back alley. In front of this gorgeous murder. If I had know that I wouldn’t have spent so much of this week studying for a mother-fucking physics test!

“Sweetheart!” The man shouts to catch your attention, but you don’t look at him. 

“What in the devil’s ass is happening?!” You shriek.

“Listen to me!” He shouts louder over the sound of gunfire and takes your cheeks in his rough palms to make him look at him. His green eyes are brilliant in the light, but filled with a determined fire that makes you suddenly feel very safe despite watching him kill someone and the active gunfire bouncing all around you. 

You wanted to trust him, but you also didn’t want to be on the news or used as a cautionary tale for mothers to guilt their daughters with. 

“I promise that nothing is going to happen to you.”

“How can you guarantee that?!”

“Because I don’t break my promises.” The determined grit in his eyes hardens as they sweep over your face. “I will explain what’s going on. But first I have to go talk to them.” He releases your face, but hesitates. 

The man wasn’t bothering to duck and cover, in fact each time a bullet ricocheted off the side of the dumpster he didn’t even flinch, meanwhile the sour taste of bile was rising into your mouth and you were sure that you were going to throw up. Panic was setting in, and your heart rate was getting dangerously high as anxiety and fear flickered along your nerve endings. 

Oh my sweet goodness he’s mentally unstable.

“Actually.” He sighs and flashes an awkward smile. “I don't want to lie to you. I’m going to go kill them. Don’t move.” He reaches into the waistband at the back of his worn jeans and pulls out a gun. 

Has he had that this whole time? HOW did I not feel it? 

“Wait what? Don’t go out there!” Your fingers fist in the front of his jacket, the fear of him leaving you more than the fear of him murdering you. At this point it was either be killed by the beautiful stranger or killed by the other guys, and being killed by the other guys meant that you’d have to meet someone new and look where that had gotten you tonight. 

“They’re not exactly going to leave on their own.” He cracks a smile despite the situation. “But promise me you’re not going to move.” His smile turns into a concerned frown, eyebrows furrowing together as his eyes settle on you once more, steely and unyielding. 

“I promise.” Your voice comes out shaky and not at all what you sound like. Truthfully you were surprised that you got anything to come out of your mouth that wasn't vomit.

He nods once. 

When he leaves, you wait exactly three seconds, counting each of them out in your head before you take off in a dead run for the front door of Duke’s bar and into the safety of the street beyond without looking back while hoping that all of this has just been a bad dream. 

Coming back to the apartment feels surreal, crossing through the living room like a Salvador Dali painting, and finally closing your bedroom door and locking it is like a mirage. 

You weren’t sure how you made it back here, only that you did, and that was all that mattered.

Kay and Liza weren’t home, predictably, but you would have tried to call both of them if you hadn’t dropped your phone in the cluster fuck that was everything that happened an hour ago. Because on top of everything now you didn’t have any way to contact your friends and let them know that you’re alive and okay.  

Your body was still buzzing with the anxiety of everything that happened, mind going a mile a minute the longer you allowed it to bathe in the memories of being shot at and watching the stranger kill those men. 

The stranger that somehow was able to trick your radar.

I just need to breathe, relax, and- 

You turn around towards your bed expecting to go to sleep and forget all of it, but the thought stutters to a halt as you realize you’re not alone. The green-eyed stranger is standing there in the center of your bedroom. He is holding a bundle of your clothes in one hand and your empty school backpack in the other. 

“What the fuck?!” You scream and reach for the Strawberry Shortcake bat your dad bought you when you moved out, hefting it high on your shoulder preparing to swing. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He raises an eyebrow at your awkward stance. “Why are you holding a bright pink baseball bat?”

“All the better beat the shit out of rapists who break into my apartment in the middle of the night!”

“What happened to murderer?” The end of his lips lift up in a smile too perfect to be real. He almost seems to be enjoying this, like he thinks you’re being cute and not accusing him of something terrible. 

“That too!”

He laughs at you, but then his smile slips into a frown.“Why did you break your promise?” You don't understand why he looks like a kicked puppy at the thought that you broke your promise. 

Of course I didn’t keep it! I was running for my life to get out of the way of the millions of bullets pointed at my head!

“What?”

“You promised that you would stay there and you didn’t. You could have been killed.” Worry flashes in his gaze, and your eyes drop to the flecks of blood on the outside of his jacket that remind you of everything this man had done tonight.

“Oh, well excuse me for breaking a promise I made to a murderer!” 

“I’m not a murderer.” 

“If the boot fits!” You snap back. “You showing up in my bedroom certainly seems plenty murdery. That and you going through my underwear drawer for a little souvenir.” Your eyes narrow in suspicion. 

“A souvenir?” The man laughs at you again, his shoulders shaking. He’s still wearing the same clothes he was in the alley, and again you’re momentarily stunned by how attractive he is.

“Why else would you be going through my drawers? And how do you know where I live!?”

“That’s not important right now.” The man shoves the bundle of your clothes into your backpack before moving back to the chest of drawers in the corner of your bedroom for another handful.

“What the fuck do you mean that’s not important right now? And what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m packing you a bag.”

“What? Why? So it’ll look like I ran away?!”

Oh holy fuck he’s still going to kill me!

You swing the bat as hard as you can, but the man raises the backpack to block your attack. 

“Calm down Derek Jeter! I’m not going to murder you, please stop saying that.”

“Why?”

He frowns and shrugs his shoulders. “Because it’s hurting my feelings a little bit.” 

“Hurting your-” You shake your head in disbelief. “Look, I have no idea who the fuck you are or why you broke into my apartment but-”

“Hi. I’m Russell.” The man now identified as ‘Russell’ holds out his hand to try and shake yours. 

That’s obviously a fake name. 

You stare at him blankly. “Are you insane?”

“No, I just told you, I’m  Russell. And we have to go.” He retracts his hand and begins to shove clothes into your backpack again.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, crazy! I have class in the morning and an exam in two days!” You heft the baseball bat higher on your shoulder as a silent threat.

Judging by the way he blocked your attack so easily a few moments ago, you didn’t have high hopes. But you did think that if you screamed loud enough your elderly neighbor, aptly named Willy due to the many, many times he’d flashed Kay, Liza, and you “accidentally,” would come over at least to see if you had any extra magazines to take back to his hoarder apartment that was stacked floor to ceiling with yellowed newspapers long out of print. 

Russell sighs, and looks from the bat to you, shoulders relaxing a millimeter, but there’s still something determined in his gaze. “I understand that you’re scared, but those guys, they saw you with me.”

“So?”

“So if I leave you here with no protection, they’re going to come here and take you.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes I do!” He replies, the edge of his voice is tinged with anger and frustration. 

“How?”

“Look!” Russell holds up a battered phone. Displayed on the cracked screen is a message thread of texts to an unknown number. Russell clicks on one of the pictures that was sent an hour ago, about the time the two of you met.

As it grows larger on the screen you recognize the two people in it. It’s a picture of Russell and you kissing at the bar. Your eyes are closed, hands curved over his shoulders possessively, while you smile into his mouth.

The memory of the kiss sends a warm tingle down your spine as you remember how good the kiss was. It was definitely in the top ten, hell, it was number one. 

Don’t be seduced by his charm and good looks! You saw him kill someone tonight! Not to mention he probably killed those other guys that were shooting at you.

Russell swipes his finger over the screen again, this time the picture is of him and you talking, your face on full display. You’re laughing at something Russell said with your right hand resting on the cool bottle of beer you never finished. Honestly, if anyone was seeing those photos for the first time it would look like Russell and you were together. 

“You took pictures of me!?” You shout. “You’re a fucking freak!” 

“Sweetheart, listen to me-”

“I’m not your Sweetheart. You’re just some random murder that I met at a bar!”

The things that I’ve said tonight for the first time could be an SNL skit. Why me?

“For the last time, I am not a murder! And I didn’t take those photos. The men who were after me did.”

“So? Why would they care about some random girl?”

“Because they don’t know you’re some random girl I met! They think that you’re important to me and until I figure out who they sent these pictures to, you’re not safe.”

“Can’t you text them and say that you just met me tonight? That it’s a pure coincidence?! That I’m not important to you.” You point at the cracked phone, waving your free hand frantically at it.

Russell laughs at your question. “Are you kidding? Do you think they’re going to believe me?”

“I don’t know! And how would they know where I live?”

“The same way I knew how.”

That is a good point. How did he know where I lived?

You hesitate, gaze flicking over where Russell stands with your backpack in his hand, but another idea begins to wiggle from the depths of your mind. “Wait. Is this some kind of kinky thing you do? Some fetish? Pretending to be a spy or that people are after you just to get yourself all hot and bothered?”

“What?” Now it’s Russell’s turn to look at you like you’re crazy. 

You take that as confirmation. “It is! Holy fuck, that is so messed up.”

Wow forget murderer, he’s an actual psychopath. Why the hell did I drop my phone?

Kay and Liza weren’t going to be back tonight. Especially not if they think that you took “Russell,” if that really is his name, back to the apartment. You had no other way of contacting them, except with your laptop that was sitting closed on your bed behind where Russell was standing. 

“Wait a minute. I’m not a spy.”

“Exactly, that’s the point! You’re pretending to make me-”

“No, I’m not. I promise all of this is real!” Russell sighs frustrated. “I know that you don’t want to believe me, but it isn’t safe here. And I can protect you!”

“That’s exactly what you would say to kidnap me!”

“Sweetheart. I am not going to kidnap you, I’m trying to keep you safe. I mean, if I have to kidnap you I will-”

Your eyes widen and you heft the bat high on your shoulder prepared to swing.

“Sorry, that was a bad joke.” He holds up his hands in surrender, flashing an apologetic smile. “What would it take to make you believe me?”

It was the question that you had been contemplating since he’d protected you in the alley. You knew nothing about him, didn’t know what he did for a living, and you’d only just learned his name. But despite everything that happened there was a little part of yourself that wanted to believe him. You wanted to believe everything he was telling you, well, not the part about you being in danger and the idea that people now wanted to kill you, but the part about being able to trust him. 

You think about the way he made you feel at the bar, when he listened to you complain about your physics test and made you laugh. You’d trusted him then, enough to go home with him or at least, try to go home with him. 

“I don’t know.” The bat slips a little bit from your shoulder with your honesty. “Do you have any character references?”

Russell cracks a smile. “Isn’t it a little early for you to ask me about my old girlfriends? Don’t think any of them would be willing to say anything good about me either.”

This time you can feel a little smile begin to tug at the end of your lips, one that Russell notices. 

“I know that you’re scared.” He takes a tentative step forward. “But I promise that I will explain everything to you, answer all your questions, but all I know is that you’re not safe here. And I can’t in good conscience leave, if I know you’re in danger.”

The look in his eyes had the determined fire you’d seen many times tonight, but there was something honest about it. They saw through you, and even though you had spent most of the night terrified and believed him to be a murderer, you didn’t think that someone like that would be so determined for you to go with him. 

It felt like two parts of your head were at war. You wanted to trust Russell, you didn’t think he was lying to you, but you had seen him kill those men. And there was an unfortunate part of you that worried he made all of this up to kidnap you. 

But I think if he meant to do that… he would have jumped me the minute I walked into my bedroom, he wouldn’t have said “hi.”

“I know this whole thing sounds crazy. But the last thing I want is for you to die because of something stupid I did. Please.”

You bite the inside of your cheek thinking about Kay and Liza. “If I leave, what about my roommates? They live here too.” 

He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not going to sugar coat it Sweetheart, there’s always a chance that they’ll be hurt, but with you gone, there’s also a chance that these guys will focus more on finding me.”

“So basically you can’t guarantee their safety?”

“No.” He drops his gaze for a moment, but then he looks at you again. “But I can guarantee yours and I don’t want to take the chance with your life. And my brother is smart, maybe he can figure out a way to keep them safe too.”

You stand there for a moment contemplating what he’s saying, the memories of everything that happened tonight rising up in an unrelenting wave, not just cowering behind the dumpster, but the kiss the two of you shared, and the way he made you laugh.

I want to trust him. I don’t think he’s lying, I don’t think he’s going to hurt me. You think to yourself, and then the inevitable thought comes. I feel safe with him. 

“Do you promise that your name is Russell and that you’re telling me the truth?” You ask one more time to make sure.

“Yes.”

So you take a chance and hope to God that you’re not wrong. 

“Okay.” You nod, lowering the bat entirely. “I’ll go with you.”

He sighs in relief. “Good.” Russell holds out the backpack towards you. “You should probably pack this. If I had my way, there won’t be much in here besides underwear.”

“You’re such a guy.” You roll your eyes and take the backpack from him, but you can't help the smile that curls on the end of your mouth.

Russell returns it, pleased with himself that he'd gotten you to smile again. “That's better than you accusing me of being a murderer.”

“Jury’s still out on that one.” 

“But you have to admit… this did make you forget your physics test right?”

He's not wrong... but you don’t think that this is better.

A/N: I had so much fun with this one. I hope y'all laughed as much as I did 😂

Thank you so much for reading! Likes, Reblogs, and Comments are not required, but are always appreciated! I love hearing what y'all think! 😊 If you'd liked to be added to my taglist please let me know!

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@roseblue373 @livya99 @mrsjenniferwinchester @zepskies @louisanalady

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[ask-postcrash-curly]

…alright big c, I warned you. I’ll do ten.

Real why would someone do this? I truly wonder.

This one is super duper real, thank you anime girl Jimmy… jamine jirl I guess.

A story in two parts……… hawk one or hawk two, big c.

I luv Swansea he’s so swaggers. But you’re swagalicious curly so even better

doubting this but whatever jimothy zare says (that’s his full name, right?)

sometimes I’m the yeller sometimes I’m getting yelled at. Did you know my friend once yelled ‘Ting I don’t want to know about your sparkly pink dildo!!!!’ In front of my favorite teacher? He just looked at her and said her very disappointedly. Anyways, I got back at her by yelling something like ‘I don’t consent!!!’ In the middle of the halls. It’s so fun to do.

Thank you for this educational speech, Daisuke.

Hmmmmm. With the five m’s.

anyways, that’s all for now! Please tell me how to you eat ice cream from the cone up without making a mess.

...Oh.

Y'know, Ting, when you said kind images, this isn't really what I was going for. These are... rather disturbing. I don't want to see Swansea looking half-starved and I certainly don't need to hear Daisuke's thoughts on frottage. Ever.

And. Uh.

Really... really not a fan of, uh, seeing myself and Jimmy in that way. Yeah. We weren't involved and even if we had been I certainly wouldn't want to see it now. Urgh. Yeah.

The ice cream trick's not as cool as it sounds, Ting. I just tilt my head back and ask the sellers for an empty bowl in case of an emergency.

[ilium-ilia]

a fox cries; never howls

simon "ghost" riley x fem!reader | in limbo au | masterlist

Part (2/3): rooftops

tw: torture, gore, non-con

Slowly, things begin to change. 

It comes leisurely like the rising sun dawning on rimy land, or the change of a leaf from green to gold. First, it appears in the tips of your fingers. Baby pink gel polish lengthens and grows as your nail bed widens. Like the triumph of mother nature, your real nail attempts to drown out the synthetic lacquer that coats them as if purging some blight on your body. Riley—no, Simon now—catches you chewing on them one day and comes back home from work one night with a fresh pair of nail clippers and files. You spend an hour hunched over on the couch spreading dust everywhere as you grind off the polish on your hands and the glitter on your feet. 

When you’re finished, your nails are torn to shreds. Uneven and jagged, they catch on fabric and cling awkwardly to your skin, but the incessant color is gone. Purged from your body, you are left with nothing but your natural nails in all their weak, dull glory. Simon asks you if you want him to buy you any polish, and your denial leaves your lips before your brain has the time to fully process it. No—nail polish will never taint your body ever again. 

The next change you note is your body hair. While under Marco’s thumb, he ensured you were waxed regularly at scheduled esthetician appointments that he would always drag you to every other week or so. Everything would go. Your legs, your arms—especially your pubic hair. There wasn’t an inch of your skin that hadn’t been ripped apart by wax, leaving you as smooth as a baby and feeling naked even with your clothes on. Now, you don’t have those appointments, and though you were provided with a razor when you were first brought here to Simon’s home, you’ve yet to use it. 

So it grows. And grows. It comes in thick and wild. You run your hand over your legs and the hair tickles your fingertips. It’s a texture you’re not used to, yet one you can’t seem to get enough of. You’ll often catch yourself mindlessly tracing the changes of your body, and Simon doesn’t speak a word about it. He does not call you gross or disgusting. He does not claim that it’s unattractive, like Marco would. In fact, he seems to pay no mind to it at all. 

There is very little that you do that Simon comments on, really. Usually they are more questions rather than comments, anyway. He asks if you’ve eaten, what you’ve eaten, how much water you’ve drank, if you need anything—you are wary of his kindness. Of this alien hospitality. You fear he thinks of you as an animal; a pet. Something to feed and water and make sure that it doesn’t kill itself in the meantime.

The small scratches on your wrist heal within a week and don’t even bother to leave scars as the scabs crust and dry. On the other hand, his cat scratch lingers. The blade carved deep enough into his arm that he ended up needing stitches; something he had done overnight at work without telling you. Not that he needs to tell you what he does—being the one taking care of you and all—but you caught sight of the thread poking out of freshly formed skin. His tattoo is ruined because of you. Jagged skin refuses to line up properly, and the ink fades as scar tissue forms over what used to be well-done artwork. 

You often catch him rubbing at it as if the wound is fresh, and he often catches you staring at it as if you can still smell the blood. He’s told you time and time again not to worry about it, but the agita haunts your gut anyway. You are well aware of the irony that lies beneath you injuring the man who’s effectively saved your life. He’s given you a place to stay—his own bed and damn near the shirt off of his very back—but your sorrow does not absolve you from the sin of having committed that act. 

Not yet. 

As time drones on and the days gradually become shorter, you and Simon grow closer—as close as a stray cat is able to get to a big dog, anyway. Your bravery evolves as you venture out of your room—his room—and explore the expanse of his home. The kitchen and his always fully stocked fridge. The soft cushions of his couch as you flip through streaming services on his TV. The stairs in his garage and how they squeak as you sit amidst quiet music while he works on his motorcycle. 

Eventually, when your intrepidity grows, you find your voice. Words still come slow and fractured, and punctuated with uneasy hums and gasps, but it is something. You tell him what little stories you feel comfortable sharing, and your stomach drops when you fully realize how much of your life has been devoured by Marco. There are no mawkish tales of your crazy teen years for you to bond and laugh over, but Simon is good at filling the silence. 

He’s under the impression that you like hearing him talk. Your fingers stop tapping against each other when he speaks, anyway. So he fills every doldrum that passes with stories of him as a child and the trouble he would get into at school, or odd things he’s seen at work. His voice is nice. It crackles like a phonograph and hums deep like waves in the ocean, beckoning you home. Simon is a stark difference from the honeyed coos and cutting gazes you are so accustomed to with Marco. 

When Simon has run out of things to say, he puts on a movie. 

It’s never a big deal. There’s no fanfare of popcorn and candies—rather, it simply exists in the living room. He doesn’t invite you to watch the movie with him, but he leaves half the couch empty. Simon Riley shrinks himself until he’s cornered to one side when he could very well swallow the entire furniture set himself. When you eventually grow curious enough to sit yourself next to him, he glances at you for only a short moment before returning his attention back to the TV. His feral cat has decided to take company with him, and he refuses to scare her off too soon. 

Not sure what the movie is—and feeling too anxious to ask—you keep quiet as the action unfolds before you. There’s a plane crash, and death, and some man named John Ottoway is attempting to save the survivors from being eaten by a voracious pack of wolves. Some scenes are so gruesome with shredded bowels and choked cries that you tell yourself to look away, but you can’t. You are enraptured by it. It captures your attention the same way the glint of a knife does. 

There are softer moments, though, where the men sit around a crackling campfire in an attempt to stave off the Alaskian winter storm. They speak of home. Of their wives. 

Of their daughters. 

“I knew a girl named Mary.” Your voice cracks when you speak, but you quote the name of one of the character’s daughters anyway. 

Simon shifts next to you. “Yeah?” 

You nod as your eyes stay glued to the screen. “Yeah. She… she worked at Makarov’s club but… I don’t know if she was like me, o-or if…” 

Cacophonous howling interrupts your recollection, and you pause to watch the men engage in a fight with the wolves. Sparks fly, shotgun shells pop, and then there’s laughter. 

“She caught me crying one day,” you admit. You’re not sure why you’re talking, but now that you’ve started, you can’t get your mouth to cease. “I was seventeen and I… was scared. We didn’t… speak the same language. I only learned her name because I saw someone else call her that but she… found me crying in the hall after…”

You swallow down the memory of that night. Of the sting, of the laughter, of the hands that held you down while needles whirled away. Coughing, you rub at your neck. 

“I guess crying is universal though. She sat on the floor with me, and just… held me. She’d speak and I wouldn’t understand a single word b-but it was nice all the same.” A ghost of a smile flickers across your lips at the memory of her. This Mary. You remember the warmth of her, and how nice she smelled—sweet like vanilla. You bite it away. “I don’t… I don’t know what happened to her. She showed up at the club one day with-with these bruises on her face. I remember her falling while trying to dance on stage and… some men dragged her away and I never got to see her again.” 

A stillness settles between the two of you at your admission, and for a moment you think you might regret having opened yourself to him. Simon has given you his bed, and his home—he is not your therapist. He is not your friend; he simply is. Nothing more than a caregiver babysitting a woman too gauche for her own good. 

“I’m glad someone was there for you. Even for a little while,” he says after a beat. “I’m sorry you lost her.” 

Simon’s words are foreign to your ears, but they do enough to quell the throe that’s burrowed into your chest for too many years. Blinking, your vision drops to your hands. On screen, a man falls through skinny tree branches where ravished wolves wait for him in the snowbank below. As narrow snouts prod at his skin, and jaws unhinge to take his legs and arms into their mouths, he imagines his daughter—Mary—leaning over him. She tickles his face with her long, brown hair, and when he dies he’s dragged off by the wolves without a second thought. 

If Simon is glad someone was there for you in some strange, dark moment of your life, is he glad to be here with you now? Is he glad to be that person? 

You think the answer to this question might be yes when Simon invites you out of the house one night. 

“What?” you breathe. 

You’re sitting next to one another on the couch, hunched over plates like food motivated animals as you scarf down dinner. Your fork clinks against the china as you stare at him, heart raging like thunder in your chest. 

“You haven’t been outside in weeks. Might be a good idea to get you fresh air,” Simon explains nonchalantly. 

Pressing your lips together, you look at the floor. “Where would we go?” 

“Wherever you want,” he says. 

It would be a lie to say you have no appetency for this—this idea of fresh air and freedom. Though you are away from Marco, you’ve yet to experience it truly. You are still in a man’s house. You are still struck with fear that one day you’ll turn around a corner and be met with those aching, green eyes of his. You are still hiding in slivers of shadows; in the palm of another man’s hand. 

“I don’t… know of anywhere,” you admit. 

Simon finishes swallowing the food in his mouth before speaking. “John Price has a club. It’s loud and rowdy, but I’ve got access to the roof. No one would bother you. Except maybe me.” 

His flat attempt at humor is almost enough to draw a laugh from your lips. “Okay.” 

“Is that a yes?” he clarifies. 

You nod. “Yeah that… that sounds nice.” 

You tell yourself that you’re dressed up in a hoodie to stave off the algid weather that rushes autumn into winter, but that’s only half the truth. Anything to obscure your face is favorable when you’re taking the plunge into the big unknown. While Simon drives you to this club, you try not to think about the first night you met him. How you were put in the back seat of this car and forced to blindfold yourself���how everyone thought you were the enemy. So much has happened since then, and still it’s as if nothing has changed. 

Simon parks towards the back of a large, brick building adorned with neon lights. There’s not a single soul to be found and you still find yourself gritting your teeth as you step out of the passenger’s seat. You’re reminded of Makarov’s club—this building sports the same grimey brick and drumming music—but Simon’s hand on the small of your back is grounding. You’re quickly ushered inside the back entrance to the building where pulsing music washes over you in a garroting wave. 

As Simon leads you through dark hallways, you try to ignore the alcohol in the air. Sour beer and stinging liquor—you’re forced to remember your time with Marco. It always creeps. Slithers beneath your skin where you’re forced to feel it writhe. You recall tear-blurred vision and a glass pressed against your lips. Mead washes over your tongue and the fermented honey burns just as bad as Marco’s lips against the back of your neck. There are too many hands on your body for you to count. Too many fingers digging into raw flesh begging for reprieve. A simple scent sends you back in time—your senses always seem to make a prisoner of you.

After climbing several flights of stairs—many of which you swear you’ll fall through if you step incorrectly—Simon opens the roof access door. Wind pulls at your hair and clothes, but the air is fresher up here than it is inside. The music is quickly snuffed out the very moment the door shuts behind you, and you find that your ears are filled with the sound of speeding cars and dull chatter. There’s not much to see besides exterior ducts and vents, but when Simon motions you further along the rooftop you know that he’s brought you here for something else. 

Both of you approach the edge. There is no railing to prevent you from plummeting over the side and crashing onto the sidewalk below, and for some strange fleeting moment, you have the urge to jump. To spread your arms and see if you can fly. Simon sits with his legs dangling over the side, but you know better than to tempt your thoughts like that. Sniffling, you sit slightly behind him with your legs pulled up to your chest, arms acting like cuffs to keep you chained to the building. 

It’s beautiful up here. You look out at the world as if its exterior has cracked and you’re finally allowed to see what it looks like on the inside. It’s full of pedestrians in coats skipping through intersections and cars honking as soon as traffic lights turn green. Glittery street lights attempt to convince you they’re stars as they illuminate cracked streets and crumpled trash. Despite all the grime, it takes your breath away. It’s the first time you’re able to look up and see something that mesmerizes you rather than terrifies you. 

After a moment of soaking in the view, Simon reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He taps it against the palm of his hand a few times before looking at you. 

“Mind if I light one?” he asks. 

Why is he asking you for permission? “Go ahead.” 

The two of you sit quietly as he takes drag after drag. Smoke rises and dissipates in the air and it travels far enough that you can smell the nicotine. It’s an intoxicating scent, one that somehow calms the quiver in your heart. Simon’s fingers twitch as he flicks ash onto the brick next to him. You notice the build up of soot—an old scar that’s been years in the making like the mound of a keloid against puckered skin. 

“Used to come up here all the time when I first started working here,” Simon admits softly. “It’s quiet. No one fucks with you. Good place to think.” 

Humming, you nod in agreement as you rest your chin on your knees. “What are you thinking about?” 

“My brother and mum, mostly.” 

The air shifts. There’s a change in the wind, and it’s enough to send a shiver throughout your body. “Are… they okay?” 

“My brother’s dead.” He says it simply—states it like a fact. Like it doesn’t sting his throat. But you can smell the blood that lingers in his mouth from the very wounds the words leave behind. “Has been for a while.” 

“I-I’m sorry,” you choke out, stunned. 

“Don’t be,” Simon says with a shake of his head. “Marco’s the one who should be sorry.” 

Your silence is deafening—concerning enough to get Simon to turn towards you. He soaks up your wide eyes and lips parted from the question that died in your throat. A deep breath expands his chest before he huffs in a sour laugh. 

“Yeah. Marco gets his dirty fuckin’ hands on everything,” he mumbles as he shoves his cigarette back in his mouth. 

You carefully scoot toward Simon, toes inching closer to the edge but you don’t notice the urge to fall this time. Swallowing, you stare at him. “What happened? If… if you’re okay with, like… talking about it.” 

At first, Simon shrugs as if it’s no big deal, but you can see the contempt roll off of him in waves. It’s the first time you’ve seen him like this since the night he found you; pretending to buy a session with you in order to steal you away from your captors. Is this why he was so bitter? Why his tone cut you so deeply? Was his vitriol not meant for you but for Marco? 

“His name was Thomas. Tommy,” Simon shares with a sigh. “He’d gotten really bad into drugs. Guess havin’ a shit life can lead you down that road sometimes. Used to buy from people off the streets but somehow got mixed up with Marco and those other cunts.” 

His cigarette burns nearly to the filter, so he shoves the tip along the brick next to him. Embers sizzle and flicker before they’re snuffed out, dying in the cold chill of the air. 

“I remember that a little,” you admit quietly. “Not your brother but… well, sometimes Marco would… like, use. At the club and stuff. Usually he smoked, like, weed and stuff but I think he’d steal… other stuff from buyers. Coke usually, I think?” 

“Shit’s bad news,” Simon mutters. With his hands now free, he rubs them together as he leans his elbows on his knees. He glances at you and how you curl inwards on yourself like a cracked egg attempting to hold itself together and his lips purse. “Dunno exactly what happened. Guess it doesn’t really matter. Tommy ended up owing them money somehow. A fuck load of it, too. When he couldn’t make the payments, well…” 

An unwelcome memory invades your thoughts as Simon explains the story, and you are violently tossed back in time several years. Suddenly, you are naked and shoved back inside your sixteen year old body. Skin puckering with goosebumps, you pitifully wrap a soiled blanket around your shoulders. Ichor dots the fabric, though not nearly as much as your tears do, and it’s so thin that it hardly keeps you warm inside this poorly insulated warehouse. 

Sitting in front of you on a rickety chair upon the concrete floor is a man. His greying beard collects the blood spewing from his nose, and there are several patches of hair missing from his scalp, leaving behind nothing but near perfect circles. He tries to open his eyes, but they’re swollen shut with fat, periwinkle bruises. Each punch he receives from the man in front of him only worsens the wounds until the skin on his cheeks splits and cracks easier than thumbs digging into the peel of an orange.

“See that?” Marco purrs into your ear. His hand snakes around your waist where it dips beneath the blanket you attempt to cover yourself with. Thin nails trace along your skin as he pulls you closer to him. “Not too fun, is it babe?” 

You watch in horror as a blade suddenly glints in the dim warehouse lighting. This abuser—an enforcer?—curls over his victim as he sets the knife alongside his ear. All it takes is a simple flick of his wrist for the cartilage to pop free from his skull with a scream. When you attempt to look away, Marco snatches your jaw with his other hand and yanks your head to the side, forcing you to witness the dismantlement of Makarov’s latest victim. 

“Shy thing, aren’t you?” he chuckles. The man is further torn apart before your eyes all while Marco makes you watch—skin gone from his nose, nails ripped from their beds. “No, I need you to watch. Good girl. Yeah, soak that all up. I need you to remember this, alright? Think of it as… a lesson. Don’t want you getting the wrong idea that I’d go easy on you if you tried leaving.” 

He interrupts himself with another laugh as his nose nuzzles against the back of your neck. Tight muscles winding in your body begin to tremble so terribly that it squeezes the tears free from your eyes. The old man’s other ear joins the first one on the floor, along with a few disembodied fingers. Pink bone glints through the numbra, and you find that you can’t look away. It’s too fresh—like you could pick it up and place it back against the man’s hand and it would screw right back on as if it had never left. 

“Alright, maybe I’d go a little easy on you, but I couldn’t have everyone thinking I’d let some sweet thing like you walk all over me,” Marco humors. Fingers letting go of your jaw, his hands begin to further wander as he paws over your bare body. Your lips tremble as you force yourself to keep watching the man while Marco pinches the crying flesh of your nipples. “I’d hate for you to end up like this, so just be smart babe. It’s not so bad here. I promise.” 

The memory fades just as quickly as it arrived, and you once again find yourself sitting on that rooftop next to Simon. Twitchy fingers paw at the nape of your neck as you wait for him to continue. 

“They came for me next,” Simon huffs. “Said that if I couldn’t pay, they’d kill me too then go after my mum. So I fought like hell. Got mixed up in some underground boxing ring in order to make enough money for the monthly payments. That’s how Price found me. Struggling down in that piss hole. When he offered me a job, I didn’t refuse to take it. He gave me enough money to pay off Tommy’s debt and to keep my mum safe. Price has been after the fucker for years ‘cause of shit like this.” 

“I hate him.” 

Those words leave your mouth without permission, and you nearly slap your hand over your lips in fear of reprimand. It’s the first time you’ve ever said it outloud—express your hatred for the man who’s kept you under tight lock and key for over a decade. It’s a thought that’s lurked in the back of your mind for ages, stuck dormant in some part of your brain. Smothered by Marco’s greedy teeth. 

“I… hate Marco,” you say, louder this time. 

Simon’s titter is warm but jagged in his throat. He looks back out at the city for a moment to bask in the pale glow that bleeds into the sky, and you find yourself staring at the silvery scar that bisects the side of his lip. “Yeah, proper piece of shit, that one.” 

You nod in agreement. “I’m sorry that you… had to go through all that.” 

Simon’s mouth opens to shoot you a quip, but it dies on his tongue the moment he looks at you. Curled over, eyes focused on the pale brick at your feet, you’re pawing at your neck again. An odd habit he’s noticed you can’t seem to drop. Something lurks on your skin—something he’s only seen small glimpses of. A mark. Words he can’t read. Shifting, he turns his body so that he’s able to get a better look at you. 

“That thing on your neck. What is it?” he asks. 

Hesitation interferes with your mindless rubbing for only a split second before you’re back to tracing. Your fingertips track the raised skin—old scars that refuse to properly heal. You can almost make out the cyrillic script letter by letter. М… A… P… К… O…

“It’s a tattoo,” you answer truthfully. 

Curiosity piqued, Simon rubs at the old wound on his arm. “What of?” 

“Words.” Your voice feels stale. Flat. Your hand drops from your neck as you rest your chin on your knees. “It says… Marco’s Girl.” 

Once again, Marco has rendered you nothing but a prisoner within your own body. You still feel the plush rug tearing at your cheek when he held you down to brand you. Needle digging into your neck, he whispered to you saying that it was for your own good. That everyone needed to know who you belonged to. So many eyes witnessed you as they knocked back drinks as if watching their favorite movie. Legs squirming, feet kicking, you sobbed the entire time. You continued to sob as he raped you afterwards, thumb brushing over his artwork like it was his magnum opus—as if he was sealing the bond. 

For years, you’ve tried clawing at it. You thought that if you could dig your nails in deep enough you could shovel the ink out of your skin, but it persists. Inflamed tissue, it now sits on your skin like a brand. Nothing but cattle. Nothing but Marco’s good little girl who belongs to him and only him. 

When you finally gather the courage to look back at Simon, you notice how rosy the tips of his ears are. Bright pink and deepening, you don’t mention it as he retrieves another cigarette. He doesn’t light it. Instead, he keeps it tucked between his lips where his teeth bite at the filter. Thick fingers toy with his lighter, igniting a flame just to watch the wind blow it out. There’s an urge to speak more, to tell him that you’re fine and that he doesn’t need to worry, but he cuts you off before you even get the chance. 

“I’m settling your debt tomorrow,” he says. 

It’s nonchalant. Inconsequential. He says it like he doesn’t realize the way it makes your heart twist against your sternum. Finally, he lights his cigarette and begins to inhale. There’s an odd twitch in his fingers as he pulls it out of his mouth, like he wishes he had something else in his hand. 

“What… like… I don’t understand,” you stutter. 

“I did my homework,” he admits with a sour chuckle. “You owe Marco money. A debt that was passed to you after he killed your parents, yeah? It’s why he toyed with you the way he did. I’m settling it tomorrow.” 

Mouth suddenly arid, you shake your head as you scoot closer on stiff limbs. “Simon that's- my debt it’s- like, I’m talking hundreds of thousands of- of-” 

“I did my homework,” Simon reiterates. He looks at you with a lopsided smile as he huffs a drag of smoke from his nose. “I know what’s at stake here, sweetheart.”

Lips trembling, you bite into the side of your cheek. “So you’ll… give him the money and… and that’s it?” 

He snorts. “Probably not.” 

“What else will you have to do?” you ask. 

“Nothin’ good.” Simon flicks ash from the cigarette. You watch the wind take it away until the embers burn out. “I’m tellin’ you this because I might be gone for a while.”

“How long?”

He shrugs. “Dunno.” 

Acid broils in your stomach and begins to chew away at your esophagus. Every building in London seems to sway as you try to keep yourself grounded. Your leash has gone slack. You’re not sure what you should do with the collar. 

“You… shouldn’t have to do this for me,” you mutter, voice hardly audible. “I don’t… I don’t want you getting hurt because of me.” 

Simon puts out the remnants of his cigarette on the brick next to him. “Alright. I’ll do it for myself then.” His words feel like they should be spoken with a tone of humor, yet each syllable is just as cold as the last. “I hate the fucker. Would be good to finally get rid of him.” 

Once the wind begins to pick up, and neither of you can handle the algid autumn air, Simon takes you back to his house. The ride is just as quiet returning as it was arriving, but the weight is different. It’s crushing. Insidiously constricting around your rib cage until the breath is all but gone from your lungs. As Simon drives, you can’t help but to look at him. If he catches you staring, he doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing but silence to pair with the way your eyes trace every feature of his face or the curve of his fingers as he grips the wheel.

Why does this feel like goodbye? 

It’s well after midnight by the time you both step through the threshold of Simon’s home. Dinner still wafts through the air—fresh chicken and baked brussel sprouts, probably one of the fanciest meals you’ve ever eaten—but not even the change of scenery can quell the raging solicitude that thrashes in your skull. 

You watch with a tense jaw as Simon preps the couch for the night. A fat pillow that bends awkwardly at the armrest, and a blanket that looks a few inches too short to cover him completely—your stomach twists. The cushions dip from the memory of his weight. He’s spent every night for the better part of the last couple months shoved onto this furniture.

“You should sleep in… the bed tonight,” you interrupt. 

Stiff, Simon turns to face you with narrowed eyebrows. “What do you mean?” 

“I just… it feels wrong. Having you sleep out here. Especially if… tomorrow…” You can’t finish your thought. Fear captures your tongue and turns it to stone within your mouth, and you’re stuck trying to swallow the lingering cement. 

“I’m not lettin’ you sleep on the couch,” he interjects as he continues to make his bed. 

“Why not?” you challenge. 

Simon shrugs. “Feels wrong,” he echoes. 

“It’s big enough for two.” 

Stunned, Simon turns back around to face you. He takes in your wide eyes and how they refuse to flicker away from him despite his gaze. 

“You want me to sleep in bed with you?” he confirms. 

You nod. “Yes.” 

“You sure about that, sweetheart?” he asks further. 

“Yes.” You swallow. “Please, Simon.” 

Despite your history, it’s a strange feeling to lie next to someone else. Marco never exactly lingered around when he was finished with you, and neither did any of his friends. There’s enough space on Simon’s cyclopean bed that neither of you have to touch, leaving a gap that’s almost large enough to hold the depths of your grief. Faced away from him, you curl on your side as he lays sprawled on his back next to you, breathing slow and even as he sleeps. 

You’re surprised his slumber took him so quickly. There’s not a single bit of tension to be found in his body when you roll over to face him. Street lights bleed through the bedroom curtains, illuminating the curve of his nose and the slight part of his lips. It’s strange to think that a few weeks—or, has it been months—ago you regarded him as nothing more than another man for you to fear. 

Now, here you are. Lying next to him in bed as you try not to shiver like a wet cat. 

“Hard to sleep when you’re tossin’ and turnin’ like that,” Simon breathes. 

His voice makes you flinch, though you’re not sure why. It’s quieter and softer than you ever would have expected out of him. Perhaps it’s your shame that gets the best of you. 

“Sorry, I… can’t sleep,” you admit meekly. 

The mattress dips and shakes as Simon twists to his side. He’s close enough to you now that you can smell the tobacco on his breath. “What’s on your mind?” 

“I’m worried about you,” you whisper. 

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.” 

His chuckle is soft, and you can feel it travel through the bed as it grumbles through the cotton. “It’s nothin’ I can’t handle, sweetheart.” 

“I know, it’s just…” You taste the words on your tongue. Feel the way the tart syllables dig into the wet muscle. “He terrifies me. I don’t know what to think about any of this. I’ve been living under his thumb for so long but it’s all I’ve ever known. I just- I don’t want you to get hurt over this j-just for me to not even make something of myself afterwards.” 

“I’m not doing this for you, remember?” he says, harking back to your conversation on the rooftop. His tone tells you otherwise. “You don’t need to make anythin’ of yourself. Not for me. Not for anyone else. You always hear ‘bout those stories of… people like you. In your situation. They save themselves or they’re rescued and they go off and… get degrees or discover some bullshit that gets them on the news or somethin’ but… no one expects that outta you. Not me. You shouldn’t expect it out of yourself, either. Sometimes it’s just enough to be alive, sweetheart.”

Alive. Living. Is that what this is? Are you living while laying in bed next to a man who stole you away from your abuser? Or is this just existence? How would anyone have ever expected you to stop and smell the roses when your entire life has been devoid of flowers—full to the brim with thorns that rip into flesh like nails into the fuzz of a peach? 

Can you only enjoy the fragrance when the collar around your neck is gone? 

You think of your leash snapping—this terrible leash that’s bound you to Marco for eons—and—

“C’mere,” Simon whispers. 

—then you break. 

Simon pulls you into his gravity; sucks you in like a black hole, and you’re too far past the Event Horizon to argue. Arms tight around your torso, he holds you close to his chest as you begin to crumble. A swell of emotion drowns you like a tidal wave, and he makes no mention about the wetness soaking into his shirt. 

He’s warm like fire. You think that’s why you’re not scared of him anymore. Despite the dark hue of his eyes and the rigid lines along his body, Simon’s been the first and only person to light your way. To provide you warmth where you would otherwise freeze to death. 

But he is more than just some incandescent heat—he is also a metronome. A raging war drum lurks in his chest where you can feel it beat against your cheek. His lungs expand, and yours follows. It sings you to sleep, steady and loving, where each pulse is a kiss against your skin. 

Come morning, when Simon peels himself away from you to make breakfast, you fear you may never hear it again. 

It’s all you can think about as he whips up something grand. His heart. The sound of it—of him. Fork poking your eggs, you want to tell him to let it go. To let you go. That you’d rather live the rest of your life cowering in fear like you always have than attempt to bear the thought of him returning home in pieces. 

Of not returning home at all. 

(When did you start thinking of this place as home?) 

“You alright?” Simon’s shouldering on his coat. It seems to broaden his shoulders, makes him look like the fighter that he is, and still you stare at him as if he’ll crumble before you. “Lookin’ a little queasy.” 

Your eggs have gone cold. 

“How… how long will you be gone?” you ask as you try to keep the tremor in your voice at bay. It’s the same question you asked last night; one you already know the answer to.

“I dunno,” he repeats. 

Tears begin to swell in your eyes again, and at this point you’re not sure that they ever stopped. Praying that they stay at bay, you stare at the counter with your fork still grasped in your hand. “I just… would feel a lot better if I had a timeframe. Knowing that… you’ll be back, I…” 

“Hey,” he softly interjects. He reaches over the counter and gently prods at your face with his knuckle, urging you to look at him. A wiry smile graces his lips as you blink at him. “Chin up, sweetheart. I’ll be back by dinnertime, yeah?” 

You realize Simon Riley is a liar when the clock strikes nine and he’s yet to return. 

Nervous eyes peek out through thick curtains, hoping to see a flicker of headlights along the street or broad shoulders marching up the walkway. You are only met with the same darkness that’s blanketed the neighborhood for the last few hours. A tremor shakes throughout your fingers as you step away from the window and look at the empty living room. 

Everything stares at you. The couch he’s slept on for the last few months. Sparkling dishes drying off in the rack next to the sink. You stare back, but not in the same way in which they look at you. You cannot pick these items apart with your eyes and dig until the pain bears fruit. You just have to stand there and take it. 

At half past nine, you toss yourself into the shower. Really, you’re not sure why you’ve ended up here in the very place you tried to kill yourself in a few months ago. Some days you enter the room and swear you can still see the blood soiling the cracks in the grout on the floor, but for now you ignore it as warm water blankets over your skin. 

For a long while, you stare at the lineup of body washes that decorate the edge of the tub. When you had first been brought here, Simon had bought you some off brand shower gel that smells like pomegranate and gardenia, but you find your fingers reaching for his body wash instead. It’s warm. Spiced. Clean and mild—not strong and overpowering like the cologne Marco always bathes himself in. 

The very moment you flick the cap open and squeeze a coin sized dollop onto your fingers, you begin to cry. Cracks form in the brittle dam that had been keeping you feelings at bay, and now they overwhelm you insouciantly. Knees buckling, you find yourself sitting in the tub. Hand clutching to your chest, you wail like a broken alarm. It echoes off of the walls and rattles your ear drums, but your throat isn’t strong enough to choke back the agony. 

You see Simon. You see him sitting in that chair, and there is Marco with a knife that sports a cruel blade. There has never been a moment when he’s yelled, but your brain orchestrates the sound of him screaming with concerning ease as Marco carves him like a butcher chisels away at swine. You are tormented with a nightmare of your own creation as you envision Simon’s body slumped forward, motionless and cold. His fingers are on the ground, plucked free from his palms like the seeds from an apple, and the features of his face are all wrong as it’s sliced free from his body. 

There are no lips to cover his teeth. No cartilage for his nose or ears. No lids to cover the eyes that scream at you that this is all your fault. 

But nothing lasts forever—though, it often feels like it will.

Blissful silence shrouds your mind as your tears finally cease. Overwhelmed with a lack of emotion, you find it difficult to feel anything at all as you sit with your legs crossed and your hands palm down on the tub. Eventually the water grows cold enough to chase you out of the shower, and you push yourself to your feet with a grunt as you turn the water off. You take your time drying yourself off as if you can rub away the ache with the fabric of your towel, and then dress yourself in pajamas before exiting the master bathroom. 

The television is on, and you don’t remember leaving it sitting idle. The vibrations of the speakers bleed through the door, beckoning you out. 

Sanguinity pulls at the strings of your heart until you’re rushing out of the bedroom and bursting into the living room. Simon sits on the couch with his legs spread wide as he slouches on the cushions. He’s kicked his boots off next to the coffee table, which homes a couple of boxes of Chinese takeout. 

Your hand clasps over your mouth as you soak up the state of him. Plum bruises haunt his cheekbone and seeps all the way into the bridge of his nose, which sports a new, crooked bump. His eyebrow is split almost in the same exact place where his scar lies, and there’s at least two visible stitches on a laceration along his jaw. His right hand is bound in a splint and he keeps it held against his chest. Though his lips pull into a smile when he sees you, his neck moves stiffly as if every gear and joint in his body is clogged with rust and debris. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he greets. “Sorry ‘bout dinner. Bought some takeout to make up for it.” 

“O-Oh my god, Simon, you…” 

Words failing you, you instead stumble across the room before collapsing onto the couch next to him. Your hands hover over his body, but you’re too afraid to touch him. Instead, you evaluate him with your gaze. He still has all ten fingers, though they’re all cracked and sporting bloodied knuckles. His ears sit just as large as ever on the sides of his long face. Though he is beaten and bruised, Simon is still in one piece, even if he is marred with cracks. 

“Oh my god,” you repeat. Though you were certain you had cried for all your worth earlier, more tears begin to well in your eyes. “Look at you. W-What happened?” 

“Don’t worry ‘bout it. I’ve had worse than this,” he assures you. His words are faintly slurred as if his tongue is too big in his mouth. Squinting at him, you notice how half of his lip balloons with swelling. “Have you eaten anythin’ today besides breakfast? You should eat up.” 

“No! I’m not eating anything until you tell me what happened!” 

Surprised at your outburst, Simon’s eyebrows raise before his lips quirk with a chuckle. Adjusting himself on the couch, he winces as he attempts to get comfortable despite the aches that ail him. 

“Just had a little scrap with Marco, that’s all,” he says flippantly. “Broke a few bones in my hand and got a couple of stitches in my face, but that’s ‘bout it. Besides maybe a bit of a concussion. Nothin’ serious.” 

Your teeth grind against one another as he explains his half of the story. “No. No, no, no, t-this isn’t good.” 

“What’re you fussin’ for, sweetheart?” Simon asks with furrowed brows. 

“He’s not gonna stand for that. For what you did,” you begin to blubber. “Fighting with him? I-If you’re hurt this bad, then he’s probably pretty hurt too, and Marco, h-he gets really angry about stuff like that, and-” 

“Baby, I killed him.” 

Shock overwhelms you into silence at Simon’s interjection. It fizzles and vibrates through every neuron in your body as your brain works in overtime to make sense of the words he’s thrown at you. There’s a discrepancy in what you know is possible, and what reality is. Marco can’t be dead. You never thought it was possible to kill a beast like him. Yet, here Simon is, triumphantly home, sitting on his couch still drawing breath all while claiming the man who toyed with you for eons is now nothing more than a rotting corpse. 

“What?” you breathe. 

“He’s dead,” Simon reiterates. “You don’t owe him anymore, and Makarov and his fuckers won’t be comin’ after you either. He’s dead, baby. I killed him for you.” 

Consternation quickly swells into something else as your lips morph into a pained smile. Your attempt at keeping back over a decades worth of grief is quickly cracking. “I thought you said you weren’t doing this for me.” 

He smirks as best as he can with his swollen lips. “I might’ve lied a little.” 

Your laughter strangles into a sob, and your teeth begin to bite at the still growing remains of your fingernails. “You mean it? H-He’s really gone? That’s it? Am I… am I really…?” 

Simon’s arms swaddle you just as you begin to crumble. Even with his injured hand, he cradles you against his chest as a culmination of emotion seeps out of every wounded pore in your body. It’s thicker than molasses. Thicker than blood. You’ve held onto this shame for so long that it doesn’t know where else to go besides out. Into the air to find some other poor host—it sublimates before your very eyes. Vanishes until it’s nothing more than a bad dream. 

He’s averruncated the one thing that’s haunted you for your entire life, then came back home with food and a smile. 

Eventually you cry out every emotion that you can—shame, grief, relief—and when you’re finished, Simon urges you to eat. It’s the first time in ages that you’ve been able to eat food and truly taste it. The sesame seeds and how they pop on your tongue. The seasoning of the chicken and how it sticks to the roof of your mouth. When you’re finished, you attempt to urge him to go to sleep in the bedroom with you, but he declines and says he doesn’t think he can sleep through the pain.

So you stay with him in the living room. Curled up against his side, your cheek presses against his chest as the TV drones on with some late night programme. Your eyes can scarcely make sense of the images that flash before you as the weight of sleep begins to pull on your body without discrimination, and you find yourself slipping under its demanding wave without incident. 

You never thought that you’d ever get the luxury of feeling content, but you think this must be the closest you’ve ever gotten to it. You revel in its warmth—in the safety of it—all while the heart that you feared you would never heart beat again lulls you to sleep.

this chapter is dedicated to the woman who fed me when i was a child, going on day two of no food.

we didn't speak the same language, and i never learned your name, but i think of your kindness all the time. i like to think you got out of there. that you went to live a good life. i hope i'm right.

[half-of-a-gay]

please please please part 2 of rugby player sevika 🤭

if u have time 🤭🤭🤭

*Ahem* slow burn *ahem*

love your writing ❤️❤️❤️

Rewrote it twice, still don't like it... bon appetit

PART 2:

Rugby player!Sevika x Team manager!Reader

pt.1

You woke up to warmth.

A heavy, solid weight draped over you. For a moment, still caught in the haze of sleep, you didn’t question it—just let yourself sink into the quiet comfort of it.

And then your brain caught up.

Your eyes snapped open.

Sevika was still curled into you, somehow having managed to shimmy herself lower during the night. Her head was buried against your stomach, her arm slung lazily over your waist like she had every right to be there. One of her legs had even hooked over yours, effectively trapping you in place.

Your breath hitched.

The weight of her, warm and grounding, held you down in a way that wasn’t just physical. It was intimate. Personal.

She looked...peaceful.

---

Her usual scowl was gone, replaced by something softer, lips slightly parted, her breath steady and slow. Even asleep, her fingers had curled ever so slightly against your hip, like even unconscious, she refused to let go completely.

Your stomach twisted.

Because now you had proof. Proof that all the stolen glances, all the tension, all the avoiding and overcompensating—

None of it had been in your head. She wanted you. You exhaled slowly, staring at the ceiling, fingers twitching slightly where they rested in her hair.

You should wake her up. You should move. But for just a second, you didn’t. Because if she woke up, this moment—this ridiculous, perfect moment—would be over. And you weren’t sure you were ready for that yet.

So you waited, despite yourself, letting the seconds stretch on, taking your time to decide how you were going to play this once the big, stubborn, emotionally stunted woman on top of you finally woke up.

And when she did—

It was immediate panic. Sevika let out a slow, sleepy breath, shifting slightly—only to freeze mid-motion as her brain caught up to her body. Her fingers tensed against your waist. Her breath hitched. Then, very slowly, she cracked an eye open.

You had never seen her look so horrified in your entire life. You smirked. Oh, this is gonna be fun.

"You’re overthinking," you murmured, voice still thick with sleep.

Sevika stiffened.

Your fingers twitched against her scalp, an absentminded, lazy stroke that made her flinch like she’d been electrocuted.

Then—as if that wasn’t enough to kill her on the spot—

"I can see it in your forehead," you added, watching the tension carve deep lines between her brows. "You're gonna pop a blood vessel."

Sevika launched herself away from you immediately, practically falling out of bed in her hurry to escape.

You bit back a laugh.

She scrambled to her feet, snatching up her hoodie, refusing to make eye contact. "Uh. Yeah. Well. That was a—uh—good nap."

You raised an eyebrow amused. "Nap?"

"Yeah," she muttered, pulling on her hoodie like it was some kind of armor. "Normal nap. Nothing weird."

You snorted. "Right. Because ‘naps’ usually involve you draping yourself over someone like a weighted blanket."

Sevika froze mid-motion. "I didn’t—"

"Oh, you did," you cut in smoothly. "And you said, ‘I need to be held to make it stop hurting.’"

Her entire body locked up. "I—"

"And then you got all comfortable and decided you weren't leaving." You tilted your head. "You’re like a house cat"

Sevika made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a dying animal.

"Anyway," you said, stretching out lazily, "glad you got your nap. You should do that more often."

Sevika was already halfway to the door.

"See you at practice, cuddlebug," you called after her, grinning.

The door slammed shut behind her. You shook your head, grinning to yourself.

Oh, she was so screwed.

And now you knew it.

And it only got worse from there.

On the bus ride back, Sevika made sure to be the first one on, securing a seat at the very back, as far away from you as possible. She sat stiff and silent, arms crossed, hood pulled low over her face like she could physically will herself out of existence.

A stark contrast to the ride to the game, when she had been content sitting beside you, shoulder brushing against yours, making just enough conversation to keep things comfortable. When you could feel her there—solid, warm, present.

Now she was a ghost.

At first, you let it go. Figured she just needed time—time to cool off from her embarrassment, time to recover from her hangover, time to pull herself together.

So you gave her space.

You were patient.

But then the avoidance continued.

Days passed.

Never met your eyes when you spoke to the team. Never acknowledged you unless she had to.

And when she thought you weren’t looking she would watch you.

Little, guilty, self-pitying glances. Those damn gray puppy eyes peeking at you from across the field, the gym, the hallways—only to immediately flick away when you turned your head.

And that? That pissed you off.

Even her teammates started noticing that something was off between you two.

"Did you piss off the manager or something?" one of them asked after practice, nudging Sevika’s shoulder as they walked off the field.

Sevika grunted. "No."

"You sure? Because she looked like she wanted to murder you during warm-ups," another chimed in.

"Yeah," someone else added. "And you’ve been acting weird lately. More than usual. Like, extra broody and avoidant."

"I don’t brood," Sevika muttered.

"Uh-huh. Right." They exchanged a look before smirking. "So what’d you do? You forget to turn in your paperwork? Insult her little planer?"

Sevika clenched her jaw. "Drop it."

That only made them laugh harder. "Damn. You really did something, huh?"

She didn’t respond. Because she had done something. And now she was stuck in this self-inflicted hell, avoiding you like a coward while her teammates clowned the shit out of her for it.

She needed to get out of here. But then she saw you. And worse—you saw her.

Your eyes locked from across the locker room, and for a brief, terrifying second, she thought you were just going to let it slide. That maybe—somehow—she could escape this again.

She’d been avoiding this. Avoiding you.

But now, there was nowhere to go.

Your teammates had barely cleared out before you were on her, stepping in fast, backing her into the lockers with zero hesitation.

"Sevika."

The way you said her name sent a sharp, hot twist through her gut.

You crossed your arms, standing your ground.

"We need to talk."

Sevika was hit with a full-body, gut-punch realization that there was no escaping this anymore. Because you weren’t just annoyed. You weren’t just calling her out for avoiding you. You were furious. Your eyes burned with it, your posture rigid with the kind of restraint that only came when someone was about five seconds away from losing their mind. 

She had fucked up. But still, she tried to weasel her way out. "I’ve got somewhere to be," she muttered, trying to step past you.

"Too fucking bad," you snapped.

Sevika stopped cold.

Your voice—normally sharp, sometimes teasing, always in control—had an edge she hadn’t heard before. And Sevika, who had gone up against some of the most brutal players on the field, was scared shitless.

Still she used one of her best tactics. Deflection.

"You’re overreacting," she muttered, shifting like she was about to move past you again,  but you moved first. Pressing a palm against her chest, shoving her back against the lockers with enough force to make a dull clang echo through the room.

Sevika’s breath hitched.

"Try again," you said, voice low and furious. "Because I’m done with the nonchalant bullshit. I’m done with you dodging me like a coward."

Sevika exhaled sharply through her nose. "I’m not a coward."

"Really?" You laughed—a sharp, cold, humorless thing. "Could’ve fooled me , considering you ran out of my room like I was about to fucking kill you."

She clenched her jaw. "I—"

"You what?" you snapped, stepping in closer, keeping her pinned between you and the cold metal lockers.  Your fingers twitched at your sides,  like they’re holding back from shoving her again.

This was so much worse than what she expected. You were right there, heat radiating off you, furious and sharp-edged and unrelenting, looking at her like you were daring her to lie to you.

And she’s just standing there, stock-still, breathing hard, barely holding herself together because—

Fuck, she likes this. 

She likes how fucking mad you are. She likes the way you’re pushing her, making her feel every second of this. She wants to see how far you’ll go so she stays silent.

That pissed you off even more.

"Say something," you demanded, voice tight.

Nothing. Your fingers curled into the fabric of her hoodie before you could think better of it, yanking her forward just enough that your chests almost brushed.

Her breath hitched. Her lips parted, a sharp inhale like she was about to finally say something, but—nothing.

You let out a sharp, frustrated breath, eyes flicking down—just for a second—to her mouth.

And fuck, she noticed. Sevika wasn’t breathing right. Trying her hardest to keep herself in check.

You weren’t about to let her.

"You don’t get to do this," you said, voice dropping into something rougher, quieter.

"You don’t get to run away, and act like I’m supposed to just go along with it."

Her jaw ticked.

"You don’t get to look at me like a kicked puppy when you think I’m not watching—" your voice dipped lower, deliberate, "then pretend you don’t want me."

Your fingers tightened in her hoodie, the tension between you snapping tighter, hotter. Then, quieter—too quiet—you murmured, "You really thought I wouldn’t come after you?"

She let out a sharp, uneven breath through her nose. Every muscle in her chest was tensed, her pulse pounding in her ears, her hands aching to grab you—to do something, anything, fucking move, but she didn’t.

She just stood there, pinned, teeth clenched so tight her jaw ached, fingers twitching at her sides like she was trying to physically hold herself back.

And then you had to go and do it. Your nails scraped lightly along her jaw, forcing her chin up—forcing her to face you, face what she craved.

A flicker of heat shot down her spine, curling low and hot in her stomach. And your voice—fuck.

"Tell me I don’t feel good against you."

She felt trapped in a way that made her lightheaded, in a way that made her want to press you even closer, in a way that made every second of holding back feel like a fresh kind of hell.

Her restraint was cracking, splintering apart like thin ice. She couldn’t think past the way your fingers were still holding onto her, the way your body was too close and the way your lips were just inches away from ruining her.

"Tell me," you whispered, voice low, lips so fucking close—"you don’t want me."

And just like that—

Something in her snapped. Her hands found your waist, fingers digging in just hard enough to make you gasp, and in one sharp motion, she turned you—slamming you back against the lockers. Her grip on you was tighter than necessary, her chest rising and falling too fast, her body pressing into yours.

And fuck—you really did feel so good under her hands.

Sevika clenched her jaw, forcing herself to hold still, to keep herself from doing something stupid. But then you licked your lips, smirking, looking up at her with that fucking expression—that look like you’d just won. Like she was already yours.

And fuck. She was.

The last thread of restraint snapped. But she didn’t kiss you. Not yet. She just held you there, her forehead tilting forward, her breath heavy, warm against your skin.

You didn’t move either. Just stood there, breathing just as hard, your chest brushing against hers with every inhale. Waiting, daring her.

She could feel everything—the way your body fit against hers, the way your hands twitched like you were dying to pull her closer.

She wanted to draw this out. Wanted to make you wait, make you feel it. But she was already losing. Her gaze flicked down—to your lips, to the sharp rise and fall of your chest, to the way you were still smirking at her like you fucking knew what you were doing to her.

Her breath came out sharp, unsteady. She dragged her hands up, skimming the sides of your ribs, feeling your muscles tense under her palms.

You let out a slow, shaky exhale, you were feeling this just as much as she was, you wanted this just as bad.

"Sevika," you murmured, voice low, almost teasing. She wasn’t sure if you meant to say something else. Because she didn’t let you finish. She kissed you hard. Like she’d been starving for it.

Your fingers snapped up into her hair, grabbing hold, pulling her deeper into it, your body melting into hers as you kissed her back just as desperately.

Her hands gripped your hips, tighter than she should, guiding you exactly where she wanted you—pushing you harder into the lockers, pressing her body into yours.

And fuck—

The little sound you made when she bit your lip? It was ruining her. She groaned, low and rough, tilting her head, deepening the kiss until you were both breathless, until she could feel your pulse racing under her fingertips.

Your hands tightened in her hair, refusing to let her put even an inch of space between you. 

Sevika wasn’t planning on going anywhere. Not this time. Not when you were right here, wrapped up in her, letting her take everything she wanted. She dragged her hands lower, gripping your thighs—

And then she lifted you effortlessly, like you weighed nothing.

Your breath hitched, a sharp gasp leaving your mouth as your legs instinctively wrapped around her waist, your arms snapping tight around her shoulders.

The shift made the kiss become messy, deeper, her lips pressing harder against yours as she held you there, pinned against the lockers. Sevika felt your thighs squeeze around her waist, pressing yourself even closer, and she let out a low, wrecked groan, her fingers tightening against the backs of your legs.

"You're so strong," you gasped, voice breathless, teasing.

Sevika let out a rough, half-laugh, half-growl, pressing her forehead against yours.

"You should’ve done this sooner," you said, voice barely above a whisper.

Sevika exhaled sharply, a cocky little smirk tugging at her lips.

"Yeah," she muttered against your skin. "I know."

Then she kissed you again. And this time, she didn’t hold back.

[seumyo]

bro wtf is wrong with you?? every time i think i’m safe, you drop another emotional damage bomb like it’s nothing. do you thrive on our suffering??? do you sleep peacefully at night knowing you made us cry??? i swear you enjoy this a little too much. touch some grass. drink some water. go apologize to your stuffed animals for the pain you’ve inflicted on us.

…anyway, malleus angst when? ily ur works pls don’t die broski 😭

to lose malleus draconia against something you could never rival.

ps. based off of my twst oc and his relationship with malleus (male!reader)

You had always known Malleus Draconia belonged to no one.

That was the nature of the dragon fae—too powerful, too eternal, too distant for any one person to truly claim. But you had still thought—hoped, foolishly—that this would end up differently. That after years at Malleus’ side, there would be no room for another. That if Malleus was ever to let someone in, truly in, it would be you.

And yet, here you were. Watching.

The night air was crisp, heavy with the scent of roses from the courtyard garden, the flickering lanterns casting long shadows against the stone paths. It should have been a peaceful night. It should have been yours. How many times had you and Malleus walked these very grounds together, speaking of things that only beings like you could understand? How many times had you stood beneath the same sky, caught between the weight of eternity and the loneliness of it all?

But tonight, Malleus wasn’t beside you.

He was with them.

The human.

You watched as Malleus stood close—too close—to the magicless student who had somehow wormed their way into his life. Malleus was speaking in that slow, deliberate way of his, his voice like a lull of thunder just before the storm. And the human—the human—was laughing.

Bright, open, utterly unafraid.

As if they had any right.

You had been the one to pull Malleus from his solitude, to remind him that regardless what happens, he’ll always have you to turn to when things get rough. You had been the one to stand by him when even other fae hesitated.

You. Not them.

Yet here Malleus was, giving the human a smile that you had never been able to draw from him. A soft one, without the weight of anything to hold him back, without the quiet sadness that always seemed to linger in his gaze.

Malleus looked light.

Your fingers curled at your sides, sharp nails biting into your palms. The sting grounded you, kept you from doing something you would regret—like stepping forward and reminding Malleus just who had been at his side for centuries. Just who had earned the right to stand beside him?

God, you were starting to sound like Sebek.

But then, what would be the point?

You had always known this love was one-sided. You had always known Malleus cared for you, but not in the way you wanted. And knowing that should have been enough to keep you from hurting.

But it wasn’t.

A presence flickered beside you. Lilia. You didn’t look at him, but you could feel the weight of the fae’s knowing gaze.

“You’re brooding,” Lilia observed, his voice laced with quiet amusement. “It’s unlike you to sulk in the shadows. That’s Idia’s job, isn’t it?”

You exhaled sharply through your nose, but you didn’t rise to the bait. You didn’t trust yourself to. Didn’t feel yourself to.

Lilia hummed. “You know, watching from afar won’t change anything.”

You finally turned your head, meeting Lilia’s red eyes with a sharp glare. “And what would you have me do?” Your voice was low, controlled. Strained. “Drag them away from him? Demand that he look at me instead?”

Lilia tilted his head, ever the picture of effortless wisdom. “Would it be so wrong to want him to see you?”

Your throat tightened.

Malleus had always seen you. Hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he?

You turned back to where Malleus stood, the sound of that human’s laughter ringing in your ears. Malleus’ expression was soft, his gaze warm, and you felt something inside you crack. Slow, but not all at once.

You had spent years standing beside Malleus, waiting—perhaps foolishly—for the day that the dragon fae would look at you and understand. That he would realize that you had never left, never wavered, never wanted anyone but him.

But that day would never come, would it?

Because Malleus had looked at someone.

Just not you.

Lilia let out a quiet sigh, as if reading the weight of your thoughts. “Love is a fickle thing, isn’t it?” he mused, voice softer now. “It does not reward patience, nor does it care for history. It goes where it wills.”

You sighed, slumping against the overgrown marble railings of the garden. “Spare me the wisdom.”

Lilia chuckled. “Ah, but it hurts less when you hear it from someone else, doesn’t it?”

You didn’t answer. Because it didn’t hurt less. It hurt more.

The human said something, and Malleus laughed. Not a quiet chuckle, not the polite amusement he often gave others, but something real. Something you had never been able to pull from him. No matter how much effort you put into it.

And in that moment, you knew.

You could never be that for Malleus.

You could be his friend, his most trusted companion, his constant. But you could never be the reason Malleus smiled like that.

Because Malleus had never once looked at you and seen something to long for.

You had always been there. Reliable. Familiar. Expected.

But this human? They were new. They were different. They were something Malleus had never known he could have.

And you—you had always been something Malleus knew he wouldn’t lose.

So you watched.

Because there was nothing else you could do.

And wasn’t that the cruelest part?

-

You hated the rain.

It soaked through your clothes, clung to your body as a literal unshakable feeling, and turned the world into a cold, miserable blur. The water was pooling at your feet, running in rivulets down your cheeks like mock tears—because you refused to cry. Not here. Not for this.

Not for him.

Malleus stood just a few feet away, regal as ever, the rain sliding off him like it dared not touch him. Even now, with you standing before him, drenched and trembling with the weight of everything you had kept locked inside for centuries, Malleus was unmoved.

And that—that was the thing that shattered you the most.

“You—” Your voice came out hoarse, your breath uneven. Your chest ached, a deep, twisting thing that no magic could heal.

“Since when did I lose?”

Malleus blinked, his expression unreadable.

“Lose?”

A sharp, bitter laugh tore out of your throat. You tilted your head back, let the rain sting your skin, let the cold seep into your bones. You should have known. You should have known it would come to this—because you had always been waiting, hadn’t you?

Always standing just behind Malleus, always within reach but never touched, never chosen.

And you had been okay with that for a time.

Because you thought that if you had been patient, if you were loyal, if you stayed, then maybe, just maybe, Malleus would one day turn to you and realize—

But no.

No, because Malleus had turned.

Just not in your direction.

Never in your direction.

“Yes, lose,” you spat, taking a step forward. “Since when was I not enough?”

Malleus’ brows furrowed slightly, as if he did not understand—as if he had not known. “[Name]—”

“No,” you snapped, stepping closer, your voice raw with something you could no longer hold back. “Don’t say my name like that. Like you don’t know. Like you haven’t always known.”

Malleus said nothing, but something in his gaze shifted.

And that was enough.

Enough to confirm what you had feared all along.

Malleus had known.

He had known, and he had still—

You exhaled sharply, a bitter, humorless sound escaping you. Your hands trembled as you ran them through your soaked hair. “I have been by your side for years, Malleus,” you murmured, the words thick with something you couldn’t name. “I have stood with you when others feared you. I have fought for you, bled for you, given you everything—”

Your voice cracked, and you swallowed against the lump rising in your throat.

“I have loved you, Malleus.”

Silence.

The rain poured harder, like the sky itself was mourning for you. It could also be influenced by how the fae in front of you felt. Honestly, you couldn’t care anymore.

Malleus’ lips parted slightly, but he did not speak. He just watched, as if waiting for you to continue, as if he did not realize that you were standing here, breaking yourself open for him—offering your heart on a silver platter, knowing it would never be taken.

You laughed, a sharp, wounded thing. “You don’t even look surprised.”

Malleus inhaled, slow and measured. “[Name]…” His voice was quiet, heavy with something you would rather not hear. “I—”

“Don’t,” you cut him off, your voice hoarse. You shook your head, stepping back, suddenly feeling so tired. “Don’t say it.”

Because you knew what was coming.

You are my dearest friend, [Name].

You are important to me.

I never meant to hurt you.

Words that meant nothing.

Words that would only twist the knife deeper.

Malleus’ eyes searched yours, and you hated that. Hated that even now, when you were falling apart, Malleus still looked at you with that quiet, unreadable expression—as if you were a puzzle to be solved instead of someone standing in the ruins of something that had never even begun.

As if he hadn’t known you well enough throughout the years.

The rain continued to fall, each drop heavy against your skin, against your chest, against the gaping wound in your heart that you refused to let bleed any more than it already had.

You let out a shuddering breath. When you spoke again, your voice was quieter. Resigned.

“I can’t force you to love me.” Your throat tightened. “And I wouldn’t want to.”

Malleus’ expression flickered—something almost like pain flashing across his face. But still, he said nothing.

You exhaled shakily, tilting your head up towards the sky. The rain was suffocating, pressing against your skin, drowning you in something you couldn’t escape.

“That’s the worst part, isn’t it?” Your voice dropped to a whisper. “That I understand.”

Because you did.

You understood.

Malleus had chosen.

And it wasn’t you.

You felt something inside you break completely, splintering into a thousand irreparable pieces. And there was nothing left to do—nothing left to say.

Because if Malleus had wanted you, he would have chosen you. There wouldn’t be a reason to choose in the first place.

But you weren’t even an option in the first place, you realize.

What a fool. Naïve, hopeful fool.

And that was enough.

You exhaled one last, trembling breath before taking a step back. Then another. Your boots splashed in the puddles forming beneath you, the water soaking into the hem of your coat.

You glanced at Malleus one last time, committing the image to memory. The prince you had loved your whole life. The man you had given everything to.

You were willing to give the world and back to.

The one who would never be yours.

The rain blurred your vision, but you didn’t blink.

“I hate the rain,” you murmured, more to yourself than anyone else.

Because it reminded you of when Malleus was sad. When you were the one to stick by him as the weather passed by each quiet night in his castle.

Then you turned.

And you walked away.

Because if you stayed—

If you stayed, you would break. More so knowing that you lost Malleus to something that you could never rival.

Genuine, unadulterated love.

SEUMYO © 2025. PLEASE DO NOT REPOST, PLAGIARIZE, MODIFY OR TRANSLATE.

[bingbongsupremacy]

Hey I saw your old post asking which fanfics you should do next. I know it didn’t win but could you please please please do “Tell Me You Love Me Again” with Eddie. Im in dire need of some good angst ❤️

Tell Me You Love Me Again

Sorry this took me so long to write! I have had some massive writer's block. Hopefully, this is okay!

Pairing: Rockstar!Eddie Munson x reader

Story Type: Angst

Warning: Y/N use, swearing, Eddie's a bit of a greedy ass ngl

Summary: You've been with Eddie since before he was famous. It used to be a loving relationship. As the years have passed, things have changed. Can you save the dying spark between you?

*Not Proof Read*

□□□□□□□

"Baby, you wanted to talk. Why are we just sitting here in silence?" Eddie asks with a grin. He casually flips through a music magazine, observing all of the new instruments for sale.

I take a deep breath. How do I even start this conversation? He's been so busy launching his band's new line of merch that I doubt this is a great time to talk about our relationship. Who knows when we'll have another opportunity? This is the first time I've been able to see him privately in weeks. I don't know how long I can keep harboring my frustrations.

"We do need to talk...here goes nothing." I sigh. "It's about our relationship."

Eddie pulls his eyes away from his magazine, his smile fading into a serious expression. "What about it?"

"I've been feeling very frustrated lately. I feel like you're never home, and I never get to see you anymore. I miss you." I reply honestly.

Eddie sets the magazine on top of the coffee table that separates us. "I know it's been busy lately, but it's great for us! Now I can take you anywhere you want to go. Name any place, and I can bring you there." Eddie's playful smile returns.

I let out a tired laugh. "Eddie, that's nice and all, but the problem is you don't have the time to take me anywhere I want to go. I just want you to dial it back a bit, please. Spend more time with me, and I'm sure Wayne would love it if you spent some time with him, too."

I'm not even sure if Eddie has time to call Wayne anymore. I might be the only one talking to him regularly.

"I spend plenty of time with Wayne." Eddie's expression is slightly offended.

"It's just the past year; you've rarely been back. Can't you take some time off? Cancel a few tour dates or reschedule some photoshoots?"

"I can't just abandon my career, Y/N. My band has worked so hard for this." Eddie argues. "It wouldn't be fair to the boys."

"What about what's fair to me, Eddie?" I let out a frustrated sigh. "I'm not asking you to abandon anything, Eddie. I just think you should prioritize our relationship a little more. We barely see each other anymore!" My heart pounds. "When you're not on tour, you're constantly doing promotional videos or photoshoots. We haven't gone on a date in almost a month."

My flurry of emotions has caused tears to prick the back of my eyes. Fuck, I can't cry right now.

Eddie's shoulders are tense. His usual animated and playful exterior is replaced with a frustrated and angry one. One I rarely see, especially not when talking to me.

"That's part of the job. I'm a fucking rockstar, Y/N. I can't exactly blow off the world tours and photoshoots. My label and manager expects me to get shit out quickly. You don't understand! The moment I stop making songs and producing new shit, the moment all of this, " He gestures around the room to all of his expensive nicknacks and furniture. "disappears. I'll become irrelevant. My band will become irrelevant. This is my life, Y/N. And you're going to need to learn to accept it."

My frown deepens. "Do you hear yourself? How can you not see how greedy you're becoming? What happened to just loving music? Loving the art of creating, no matter how many people heard. When did this all become about money?" I stand up from my spot on Eddie's couch, needing to put some distance between myself and the man. I avoid making eye contact with him, knowing if I do, I'll burst into tears.

This room suddenly feels so suffocating. "Is this really all you care about? How many shows you can sell out? How deep your pockets can get?"

"For fucks sake, Y/N." Eddie groans as he leans back against his recliner. His head hits the back of the seat, an annoyed expression flashing across his face. "You're being so fucking dramatic."

I shake my head. "This is not what I signed up for. You are not the man I signed up to be with."

Eddie stiffens. Hurt crosses his eyes. His face turns stoic as he looks me dead in the eye. A dark anger replaces his hurt. "Things change. People change. Obviously, I've changed. If you hate me so fucking much, why don't you get the fuck out and find someone new? Someone who better suits your lifestyle since you're not happy with me."

I freeze. My heart drops at his bitter words. He's never spoken to me like this before.

He's so different than the man I fell in love with all those years ago. Life seemed simpler in Hawkins. I'd work the night shift at The Hideout and he'd play with his band. I was able to see him regularly while he was still able to do what he loved. No massive world tours to separate us for months. No partying until early the next day. Just the two of us, supporting each other and doing what we loved.

I feel my cheeks heat from embarrassment and anger. He's right. He's changed, and it's obviously been for the worse. "You know what, you're right."

Eddie's eyes widen slightly in surprise, like he didn't think I'd agree.

"You don't want to work this out like an adult, so I'm going to leave. We're done, Eddie. I can't do this anymore. I deserve someone willing to set aside time for me. I shouldn't be the only one giving 100% to the relationship. I need someone who respects me and what I need. You can't give that to me." I grab my purse from the couch. I pause right before I reach the door. " Eddie, " I turn to look back at the man.

He doesn't meet my gaze. His eyes are trained on his locked hands. He looks like he's in disbelief.

"I hope you find what you're looking for. Just know that you'll never have enough money or fame to please yourself. Materialistic things can only bring you so much happiness. You'll suffer until you realize that. I just hope it isn't too late when you finally do."

With that, I leave the apartment. As soon as the door behind me clicks shut, the tears begin to fall. I lean against the wall near Eddie's door and wrap my arms around myself for some sort of support.

I wish he loved me enough to apologize. I wish he would come out here, tell me he was wrong, and that he was going to try to fix things.

I finally garner the strength to push away from Eddie's wall and make my way downstairs. With every step, I think of new things I wish Eddie would do.

When I take my last step out of the apartment building, disappointment settles in my chest as I realize none of my wishes came true.

Eddie's a rockstar. He'll never love me as much as he loves his lifestyle.

I was stupid to think he'd always be the man I fell in love with in Hawkins, Indiana.