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fanfic-scribbles · 3 years ago

Text

Crash Pad

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Summary: You’re just minding your own business when the Winter Soldier crashes into your life. Literally.

Quick facts: Romance – established past Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes leading into Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Fluff, slight mention of blood

Words: 7801

A/N: I started writing this a few months ago and almost finished when my life got fairly shook up. Still, I’m quite proud of being able to eke out an ending. For anybody who only cares about this story, feel free to skip this note, but for anybody following my other stuff: writing is going to be slow for the time being. My mom died and things are pretty topsy-turvy right now. Writing is still a comfort, but head to hands isn’t working the same right now. Thanks for your patience; I hope this is a pleasant read for you in the mean time <3

You’re getting ready for bed and have just turned off the living room light when you hear a clatter on the fire escape. You haven’t gotten over to shut the window yet and you wince at the thought of maybe coming face to face with a giant rat, or a raccoon, although you haven’t yet seen a raccoon and you’re pretty sure they don’t live in the city but it would probably be better than a rat the size of a raccoon–

What you get is much, much worse as a fully grown man falls through the curtains, knocks over a side table and potted plant, and crashes onto your living room floor with a wheezed (but emphatic), “God damn it!”

You freeze, unsure of whether to run or yell or maybe both. However the man flounders on the floor, unable to otherwise move much as he holds his side and– is that blood on your floor?

“Are you okay?” you ask despite everything.

He yanks his head back to look at you and grimaces. “Fuck, I–” He tries to get up, slips in what you are almost positive is blood, and slumps over with a little sigh and a handful of muttered curses that might be in another language. “I am really sorry about this,” he says lowly, like he's embarrassed to be bleeding out in a stranger’s living room. Then he shifts a little more and moonlight gleams on his arm. His very…shiny…completely metal arm, and you find a whole new way to be concerned.

You should have known the reasonable rent was a goddamn trap.

You take a few steps back, barely avoid hitting the counter, and flick the light back on without taking your eyes away from the man on your floor. He squints at the brightness and shows you a face that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, familiar. Fortunately because Captain America and the Avengers somehow got him pardoned for potential war crimes and treason even without him being present for any of that circus of a trial. Unfortunately because…war crimes. And treason. And that is definitely blood.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out and looks a little woozy. “There were sheets– I thought the building was empty.”

“The sheeting is for the building right next to us,” you say and sigh. “I’m going to guess you are not in favor of me calling an ambulance?”

He just blinks at you a few times. Maybe he is secretly a raccoon.

“Please don’t,” he says, some life returning to his eyes, and he looks you up and down. The rubber duck pajamas must put him at ease because, while he is still tensely holding his midsection, his shoulders relax a little. “I’m so–”

“Sorry, yes, I know.” You point at the bathroom. “I’m going to get the first aid kit and hopefully I won’t have to explain to the coroner’s office why Captain America’s boo bled out on my floor.”

You’re just opening up the cupboard that hopefully contains at least some band-aids when he calls out, “What the hell is a ‘boo?’”

Two old t-shirts, one and a half rolls of dusty gauze, and his own homemade stitch kit later, the man is finally all patched up. “How are you not passing out from blood loss?” you ask, eyeing the mess on the nice hardwood that has definitely just lost you your deposit. But there’s no corpse to deal with, so at least things aren’t as bad as they could be.

“I’m built pretty hardy.” He sits up a little more and groans. Before you can beg him not to split his side again, he extends his hand. “James Barnes. But you can call me Bucky.”

You shake his hand (gently) and tell him your name. “Do you let everybody call you Bucky, or just the people whose floor you bleed all over?” Something moving catches your eye and you sigh at the sight of your inexpensive (but still nice) curtains blowing slightly, showing off their new stains. “Floor and drapes…”

“I’ll clean it,” he says. “I can get blood out of anything.” He winces. “I…that sounds worse than it is.”

“I imagine getting blood out of anything is a good skill for an international spy-assassin to have,” you say.

Bucky scowls. And, you think, blushes a little, though how he has enough blood to do that you don’t know. You look at the spot again. It looks big to you but maybe you’re making a fuss over nothing. No, wait, there’s still dried blood on your floor. You’re allowed a fuss. “So you know who I am.”

“Your boy made it hard to miss,” you say.

He grumbles to himself, then says, “He’s always such a drama queen. I didn’t need to be pardoned.”

“Really,” you say and look at the bloodied handkerchief wrapped around a bullet he dug out of himself. “Looks like at least one other person disagrees with you.”

“This was Steve’s fight, not mine.” He huffs. “Story of my goddamn lif–”

He suddenly falls back and you reach out instinctively to catch him. He recovers quickly, wild-eyed and stiff and you scoot back just in case. He takes a few deep breaths and seems to force himself calm. It doesn’t look very effective and you’re honestly starting to worry. “You really–”

“I did not faint,” he snaps and maybe he has more blood than you thought, or maybe absolutely all of it has come to collect in his face.

“I was going to say you really need a hospital,” you say. “But yeah, you did.”

He grumbles under his breath and then, as if predicting your protests, stands up quickly enough to waver. Serves him right, you think, but when he scowls at you, you wonder if maybe he’s psychic too. “Try not to pass out on your way home,” you say, because if he wants to leave there’s really nothing you can do to stop him.

“Funny,” he says. He clears his throat and adds, much more sincerely, “Thanks.”

For the t-shirts, for the first aid kit, for not calling the cops, for not calling the Avengers so Captain America can hone in on him like a cartoon hound, for not bitching about the floor too much– the list is many and varied and so you give him a simple nod and hope you can get even a little bit of sleep tonight because work tomorrow is going to be hell without it.

He goes back to the window and before you can point out you have a perfectly good door, Bucky slips out onto the fire escape again. You shrug to yourself and go over to firmly flip the lock. You’ve done your part– in the event he slips and hits his head, someone else can be the good Samaritan. You’re going to bed and tomorrow this is going to feel like a weird dream, if there is even a single good deity in existence.

You’re not sure if it’s proof of or a mark against the existence of said single good deity when Bucky shows back up in your fire escape the next evening and taps politely against your open window before he lets himself back in, scooting your new plant just an inch out of the way.

“I have a door,” is the first thing that comes out of your mouth.

“Your hallway’s too well lit,” he says, much more hale and hearty and obviously not suffering major blood loss. His hair even looks like he just got out of the shower, all soft and shiny and bouncing a bit as he twists his upper body to start pulling stuff out of a backpack hanging off one shoulder. “I got stuff to clean the floor, and a replacement first aid kit. You outta keep it better stocked, so I got you one of the good ones.”

“O…kay,” you say, for lack of anything better. There’s a hysterical laugh building up in the back of your throat as the Winter Soldier brings out some rags and a cleaning solution for your bloodstained hardwood floor, but you cough it out and say, “Thanks,” when the formerly-feared international assassin looks at you like you’re crazy before he gets on his hands and knees and starts scrubbing.

It’s not fair no one would believe you. You’re not quite sure this isn’t an elaborate daydream, but then, you like to think you’d imagine something more fun than this. You clear your throat. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks,” he grunts, glaring at the floor and rubbing at the stain like it has offended him personally. It’s a little worrisome when he goes at it hard enough to maybe rub a hole right through the floor– you’d rather deal with the stain– but there’s a hard edge to his eyes that make you think maybe it’s a good idea for him to work it out in a productive, non-violent way. And if it turns violent, hopefully he has some home repair skills to make up for it.

You busy yourself with making tea, using the nice pot and the nice cups you never get to break out, and by the time it’s almost done steeping Bucky isn’t rubbing quite so hard and, in fact, seems to have made the stain do a disappearing act.

“Nice,” you say. “You want some tea? I made plenty.”

He lifts his head and tilts it as he squints at you, like he’s still not sure of you. But he shrugs, says, “Sure,” and stands up, rolling his shoulders. He looks down at the floor and nods appreciatively before coming to sit on the other side of the counter. “It’s almost gone; just a little bit more and it’ll be like I was never here.”

That last part could have been a decent joke, but he said it so seriously you just clear your throat. “Thanks,” you say and start pouring. “My landlord is going to have to find some other excuse to try and keep my security deposit.”

Bucky snorts but otherwise makes no noise. At first it’s nice, if a bit awkward, as you don’t really feel the need to fill the silence, but it becomes clear by the way Bucky glares at the plant sitting in front of him on the counter that something is eating at him. You’re not sure whether or not to pry, but it seems polite to at least ask, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he grunts and leans even lower to the surface of the counter.

You stare at him. “I appreciate what you did, but you didn’t have to come back,” you say gently, because a pissed-off former-assassin isn’t really a problem you want to have on your hands. “I’m not awful enough to actually expect you to clean up your own blood the day after you nearly bled to death.”

“What?” He blinks and then scowls and shakes his head. “No, it’s not that; it’s…” He picks up his cup and downs all of it, despite the fact that it was still steaming. Tentatively you pour him another cup, to which he says, “thanks,” before loading it with sugar again. “It’s good,” he says and this time he sips it.

“It’s one of my favorites. Very soothing,” you say. “Normally.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I wish anything was soothing. You know Steve almost ran into a goddamn minefield today?”

You didn’t know that, you don’t think anything the Avengers do is any of your business, really, and where does one even find a minefield in New York City– you don’t say any of that, but you apparently don’t need to, because Bucky is off like a shot saying more words than you’d have thought possible for him. All of it is ranting about what a reckless dumbass Captain America is, and a Brooklyn accent increasingly comes through, egged into existence by sheer aggravation. You sit and listen, transfixed not so much by the details (they’re too fleeting and sparse) but by how annoyed Bucky is with Captain Amer- with “Steve goddamn pain in the ass Rogers” and you’re never going to be able to see him again without snickering.

Bucky sighs heavily and rests his chin on the table. He looks very tired, all of a sudden. Maybe a relaxing tea and enthusiastic rant wasn’t the best combination. Then again, he also looks less tense, so perhaps it’s fine. “Why don’t you stop for the night and go get some sleep,” you say and take away his cup. “You can finish up tomorrow.”

He squints at you, squints back at the floor (that you honestly can’t tell is any different from the rest), and looks back at you. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” you say and stack the cups. “When you come back refreshed you can tell me why Steve Rogers can never walk past that animal shelter without ducking his head in shame.”

Bucky’s smile is lopsided and he shakes his head. “Maybe,” he admits and hops off the chair. “I’ll just…leave the stuff here then, if that’s okay?”

You nod and he quickly picks up and puts the supplies in the empty bottom space of your side table. He goes for the window.

“I have a-!”

And he’s gone. You roll your eyes. If Steve Rogers really is as much of an asshole as Bucky says he is, then those two deserve each other.

For all that the Captain America mythos has been debunked for you, you’re still brought up short when you suddenly encounter Steve Rogers the next night.

On your fire escape.

He knocks his head against the railing in his scramble to simultaneously get up and face you, curses, and lifts his hands defensively. “I can explain.”

You rub your face with both hands. They definitely deserve each other. “I doubt that,” you mutter and sigh heavily. Thank goodness there haven’t been any actual fires; you don’t know how you’d get out with all these buff superheroes hanging around outside your window. “Have you lost something?”

Captain America looks at the ground for a moment, and then flashes you a smile. “…Yes?”

God, he is a smartass. “Do you want to come inside or do you want to risk some Nosy Nancy from the building across the street seeing a big shadow and calling the cops?”

That would never happen, but he slips inside almost immediately and then there he is, in all his uniformed, shield-holding glory. It’s too weird to think about, and you step back to give him (and you) space while you close the curtains. “Thank you,” he says politely and looks around. “Your apartment is lovely; it’s very…green.”

You’re not sure why he hesitates, until you see him looking at your yellowing majesty palm. “He’s coming back,” you say and go to adjust the plant for lack of anything else your nervous hands can do. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you,” he says and stands with his feet shoulder wide and his hands clasped down in front of him. It is perhaps the least comforting thing he can do and for one ridiculous moment you wish Bucky was here to be in between you. You wish the Winter Soldier was here. To protect you. From Captain America.

You clear your throat. “So,” you say and grab yourself something. “Do you lurk outside everyone’s apartment at some point, or am I just special?”

For all his military posturing, Captain America squirms like a schoolboy. “I swear I wasn’t– okay, I guess I was but not intentionally? I was…looking. For something.”

“Something you dropped?” you ask him.

“A person,” he says, staring elsewhere. For a moment you have a paranoid thought he’s staring at the space where Bucky had fallen in that night, but no, he’s just looking at the window. At least you remembered to change the curtains.

“Pretty sure you can see one of those without squinting into the grates,” you say.

“He might have passed through on his way somewhere else,” Captain America says. “Have you seen a man outside?”

“Other than you?” you ask. He blushes even harder than Bucky does– and think of the devil, you have a moment where you’re not sure what you should say, but quickly come to realize that whatever is going on between the two of them, you do not want to get stuck in the middle.

You’re prepared to lie your ass off, but he apparently takes your response as a rebuke. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you feel unsafe.”

“It’s fine,” you say. Despite his previous answer, you lean into the fridge to get him a bottle of water. “I’m pretty sure Captain America isn’t going to murder me. And if you decided you wanted to, well, there’s nothing I could really do about it.”

He chokes on the drink he’s just taken. You instinctively lean in so you can slam his back but after a couple of hits he covers his mouth and waves you off. “Sorry, sorry,” he says and grabs a nearby dishcloth to wipe up what he just spit on the counter. “That was just…really dark.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I’m not the one lurking on fire escapes,” you say.

He rolls his eyes. The nerve. You laugh and he actually grins. Asshole. His smile softens though and he says, “I’m really–”

“Sorry,” you finish for him.

“Am I that predictable already?”

You shrug. You want to tell him it’s because he and Bucky seem very much alike in that respect. You want to but…you don’t. Whatever Bucky’s problem is, he seems to want to deal with it himself, and it’s not your place to get in between them and start snitching. “You seem the type. Don’t worry about it so much. You…look pretty worried. I’m not going to hold it against you.”

“Thank you.” His lips turn into a sad sort-of smile and he takes a slower drink. “I guess I am pretty worried. This man I’m looking for, he’s…important to me, and he’s been through a lot, and I just want to know he’s okay.”

You stare at him. He looks down. And looks down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to babble like that,” he says and glances at you with a strained smile. “I don’t normally do that.”

“Hm.” You stare at him for several seconds and notice he is blinking an awful lot. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m a little tired,” he says, quietly, and some of the posturing seeps out of him and he lets himself slump a little more. He suddenly shakes his head and sits up straight again. “Thanks again for…” He looks around and settles for shaking his water bottle.

You hold back a laugh. “Sure. I uh…do you need me to call you a cab?”

He shakes his head firmly and, to his credit, he’s pretty excellent at pretending to be okay. You almost believe him. “I can get home all right.”

“Well, please make sure you do. I can think of a lot of people who’d be sad to think of you collapsing on the way home because you wore yourself down to the bone,” you say. “And from how you seem to worry about your friend, I bet you can think of at least one.”

He blinks, like he’s surprised, but a smile curls onto his face, warm and true. “Good night,” he says, and because you’re so nice, you don’t stop him when he goes back out the window. At this point, it’s beginning to feel like a lost cause.

“What did you say to him?”

“I know you don’t like the door,” you say, not even turning away from the plant you’re watering. Any time you put down the canister you forget where you left off and you are not going to kill these plants by overwatering. Not again. “But maybe you could at least tap on the window when you decide you’re going to enter my apartment.”

“Why do you leave your window open?” Bucky huffs. You can hear him sit at the counter behind you. “You know what kind of creeps can take advantage of that?”

You finish watering the last plant and turn to stare at him. “I’m starting to get an idea.”

Bucky scowls. “I’m not a creep,” he mutters.

“Polite society encourages doorways instead of windows,” you say. “It’s okay. Captain America, apparently, is also a creep.”

Bucky sits up straighter. “What did he say?”

“Not much,” you say. “He was squatting on the fire escape like he could make you spontaneously materialize. I invited him in for an explanation and after a little while he went on his way.”

“After a little while,” Bucky repeats and squints at you suspiciously.

You shrug. “He likes to vent to complete strangers, apparently. But I didn’t tell him anything about you, it doesn’t seem fair to tell you anything about him. If you want to know, I get the feeling you can go ask him.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but he stands up and stretches. “You said I bled on the drapes?”

“I already scrubbed that out, if you can finish the floor,” you say and go for the tea pot. “Do you like green tea?”

“As long as you do it right,” he says and starts scrubbing again. “I hate it all bitter.”

You go for the good matcha and start preparing it while he works out his frustrations on your floor. You glance at him a couple of times but he seems fully focused on his task, until you finish the tea and call him back to the bar.

“Steve Rogers is a pain in the ass and don’t let anyone tell you different,” he grumbles, but it’s soft and there’s a troubled look on his face as he takes his cup.

“Do you miss him?” you ask and blow gently across your drink.

Bucky shifts uncomfortably. Just as you're about to apologize for overstepping, though, he speaks. “It’s hard to go back when you’ve done the shit I have, you know?”

No. You have absolutely no idea what it’s like to live as a free man after decades of literal objectification and being used as a murder weapon for fascists. But it doesn’t seem very helpful to say that, so instead you say, gently, “I can’t even imagine.”

Bucky bobs his head and takes another sip of his drink. You’re delighted he seems to be drinking it fairly quickly, but also a little dismayed because a good matcha latte takes a decent amount of work and it’ll take a little time if he wants another cup. “I want to go back but I can’t yet. I wish he wouldn’t be so goddamn stubborn about it is all. Just because he thinks I didn’t do anything wrong doesn’t make it true.”

You nod, like any of this makes any goddamn sense to you. But maybe– maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe Bucky’s saying all this because you’re an outside entity with no personal stake in, or knowledge of, what counts as treason, or what’s needed to lack culpability, or what it means to be an absent friend.

He rambles, a little bit, and though about half the words are proper nouns you don’t recognize, you nod along, and when he finishes his latte you make him another one, and when he leaves, you don’t mention the door. Even though you want to.

You’ve actually forgotten how nice it is to have someone come through the door. Case in point–

“Um, I hope this is all right,” Steve Rogers, dressed in casual civilian fare and holding a small pot of flowers, says as you can do nothing but stare at him. “I just wanted to stop by and thank you again for being so understanding. May I…come in?”

That snaps you out of your funk and you quickly stand aside. “Of course; sorry, I just…wasn’t expecting you.”

“I was just going to leave the plant with a note if you weren't here, but I’m glad you were,” Captain Rogers says and walks in, and sets the pot down on the counter.

You walk over to the fridge. “Would you like something to–” As you turn to finish the question you see him glance furtively at the window. Ah, of course. He looks down guiltily and you can’t help but roll your eyes and laugh. Well, he did come through the correct entrance and brought some pretty flowers. “All right, you did knock on the door this time; go sniff around the fire escape all you want.”

“I’m just checking something I forgot,” he says quickly and goes to the window. He’s only outside long enough for you to brew some tea and he comes back in just as you’re pouring his cup. It isn’t until he’s about to take a sip, however, that he says, “Oh– I know it looks bad, but Bucky– sorry, James Barnes– I swear he isn’t dangerous.”

“I know. I saw some of the trial stuff,” you lie. Well, you did see some of it, but it wasn’t until you heard Bucky mutter “Martha Stewart was right,” while fussing at some of the blood on his shirt that you felt safer. Strange as it is to think.

Steve relaxes his shoulders like some of the weight is off of them. “You have no idea how good that is to hear. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people say to me. I can’t really punch people anymore because I’m so much stronger now but it’s so tempting sometimes. At least when it’s online I can mime punching them.”

His annoyed tone allows you to laugh a little. “Maybe imagine the block button is a punch in the face?” you suggest.

He grins. “My friend Clint suggested printing out the most irritating comments and taping them to a punching bag. It didn’t really work but the thought was nice. The block button as a punch to the face though…”

The guy doesn’t really need more violence in his life, but he genuinely seems pleased with the idea, so you let it be. And when he starts ranting in detail about some of the comments he gets about Bucky, you make a new pot of tea– chamomile. For the both of you.

You don’t know how the flowers are dead already– it seems like Steve just brought them and they were so pretty you immediately looked up care instructions and followed them to the letter. Or so you thought. But now, only days later, you have a pot of dirt and withered petals.

And Bucky sulking at your counter.

“I told him I was fine,” he says petulantly.

You sigh and bring the pot over to the sink and think about what to do. “Did you tell him in person?”

“In a letter. He knew it was from me.”

The soil looks nice, so you’ll dig out the remains and try to plant some replacement seeds. Maybe that was the problem– maybe the flowers were sick or something. “Well reading and seeing are two different things.”

“He knows I cover him in fights.”

You slowly look at Bucky. His oh-so intelligent response is to bristle like a cat and go, “What?”

You roll your eyes. “He’s desperate to see you, knows you’re near when he’s fighting, and you wonder why he’s “so goddamn reckless?’”

Bucky just glares. Yeah, these two morons absolutely deserve each other.

You hope Bucky figures it out sooner rather than later.

He doesn’t, but he keeps coming by, as does Steve, and you resign yourself to hosting two pining idiots who keep dancing around each other.

Bucky drinks anything you give him without complaint. However he drinks the lattes and almost anything green tea a little quicker, though he tries to hide his cup from you when he does. Whether he’s ashamed of going through them so fast or embarrassed you don’t know, but you start to give him bigger cups, and that seems to help.

The first time you give Steve a cup of apple pie spice, he gives you a severe glare– which he then completely undermines by liking the blend immensely.

“I swore the next person who offered me apple pie would get popped,” Steve says, an amusing mixture of half-bluster and half-shame as he sips from the classic teacup you hope not to regret handing him.

“Lucky for me it’s not actually apple pie,” you say. “Do people really make that joke?”

The eyeroll Steve gives that is 200% sass. “You have no idea,” he says, deadly serious, “–how funny people think they are.”

This becomes…oddly normal. Listening to Steve talk about anything that’s on his mind, giving Bucky new tea blends just to see how he reacts to them; your apartment is no longer just you and a bunch of greenery that seems to wilt more often than not. Everything seems warmer, and better– even your plants seem healthier. (For that, though, you suspect Bucky is giving them a special mixture of something after you catch a glance of him messing with one of the pots. You want to ask him what he’s doing, but you don’t want to admit that he’s better at taking care of them than you are.)

It’s so normal, that you feel the silence only after the first few nights without a visit. They don’t visit every night, but they visit often enough that you know they’re off somewhere even without them telling you. For a couple of weeks you try to pretend the quiet doesn’t bother you, but you check the fire escape twice every night, and then once more before you go to bed.

The next time you see Bucky is during one of these checks. There was no tapping, no noise to otherwise alert you, he’s just suddenly back, sitting next to the window, hunched over in black clothes nearly blending into the darkness and staring out at nothing in the night.

“What’s wrong?” you ask and crawl out to kneel next to him. “Are you hurt again?”

“No,” he mutters and continues to glare at some imaginary point in the distance. “Steve was, though.”

It’s a little harder to swallow. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles and buries his mouth further against his arms. “He’s fine, strutting around the hospital like a- like a- …” He huffs and sits back to wave his arms before he curls back in on himself. “But it was close, and he’s an asshole.”

“Mm,” you say. “Chamomile mint?”

He sighs heavily but he gets to his feet and starts to enter, only to stop and hold open the curtains for you.

“Thank you sir,” you say with only a hint of sarcasm and go on ahead to get the tea started. Bucky snorts but doesn’t say anything and you use the time the water needs to heat up to take care of some of your plants.

“Stop it.”

The snap comes so fast from Bucky you immediately stop what you’re doing. He doesn’t look as angry as he sounded, but he’s frowning pretty hard. “You're overwatering that one; jade plants are succulents. You don’t need to drown it.”

You look at the plant and set the watering can down. “Oh.” You knew that. You think. You’re just nervous. “Did you see him? In the hospital?”

“Briefly. I didn’t talk to him; just made sure he was all right,” Bucky says. “And he is. I wouldn’t leave him if he wasn’t.”

That does assuage some of your concerns. Steve is nice. You want him to be okay. And Bucky is– also nice, but god, they’re both so fucking frustrating. “You couldn’t have just–”

“Don’t start with–”

“I’m just saying–”

“And I’m telling you not to say–”

“I pay the rent for all that you sublet my fire escape; I’ll say what I want,” you manage to finish to Bucky’s consternation. You lift your head proudly and he frowns to one side. And then he…smirks. You’re not sure you like that.

“Crappiest space in the city,” he says and sits up. “You could at least get a chair.”

You roll your eyes and dole out the tea, fixing it the way Bucky likes. No sugar for this one, but plenty of honey. “If I ever have to leave for an actual fire, I’ll be in enough trouble trying to get around you.”

“Nah. I’d carry you out,” Bucky says and lifts his cup in a silent ‘cheers.’ He takes a sip and the sigh sounds content, so you assume you did it right. For a few moments a comfortable silence settles between the two of you as you sip warm drinks surrounded by greenery (that is mostly green) and life goes on in faint sounds outside the confines of your home.

Bucky sets his empty cup down with a sigh. “Do you think, if I show up to throttle him, that he’ll actually start watching his own fucking back?”

You give that some serious thought. “Will you give him time to moon at you first?”

Bucky sighs with disgust and flumps back onto the counter. “This is stupid. This all feels so stupid.”

You open your mouth because you do have a lot of opinions about honest communication and using innocent civilian apartments to dance around each other, but Bucky shoots you a glare to let you know that a, he knows, and b, he doesn’t appreciate it. You roll your eyes and go back to drinking your tea. It is a very good blend, and you’re not going to let it go unappreciated because two early 20th century boys can’t get their shit together.

Not that you’re complaining, really– you’re starting to feel like less of a disaster by comparison. Or maybe letting two strange men into your apartment makes you just as bad by default. You rub the bridge of your nose. Yeah, no one is getting out of this looking sane. You feel like that should bother you more than it does, but it’s just a fleeting thought before you go back to worrying about Steve and pouring Bucky’s cup back to full.

The next night when someone knocks on your door, you’re only mildly surprised to see Steve on the other side. And most of that surprise is because you can see fading bruises on his face, and also because he is holding a fairly big potted plant with tall green and yellow-edged leaves.

“Hi,” he says and lifts the pot slightly. “I got you a present.”

“Uh, wow; thanks?” you say and quickly step back to let him in, momentarily forgetting he can probably carry it around with ease. Steve places the plant on the floor near the end of your couch, where it actually looks fairly nice. He gestures at it proudly. “It’s a snake plant. The man at the nursery said it’s very hard to kill.”

“You’re not funny,” you say but you look at it appreciatively. It is nice, and you could do with ‘hard to kill’. Speaking of– “Should you be up? You look like you should be in a hospital.”

He shrugs and his face goes neutral. “I’m healing well enough that there’s nothing a hospital could do for me. And I felt so…restless.”

You nod. “Want some tea?”

“Please. I really like what you make,” he says and immediately takes a seat at the counter. Oddly enough, it’s not the one Bucky always takes. You don’t realize you squint at the space for too long until Steve looks curious and asks, “Is everything okay?”

You squint at the countertop. “Yeah, just…trying to figure out if that’s a stain or a spot.”

Thankfully there is a spot of spilled something and you quickly grab a towel and wipe it away. You think it’s a pretty good save, but Steve looks at you with a raised brow, like he’s figured something out. You freeze. “What?” What are you going to say? How is he going to react? What will you–

“Was that a coffee ring?”

You blink a few times, and then roll your eyes as your chest practically deflates. He smiles and winks. “I can’t believe you.”

“I am a layered human being who can drink many things,” you say defensively. “And if you want coffee you’ll have to ask another time. I’m not giving you anything with caffeine in it when you look like you got hit by a truck.”

“Train,” he corrects absently. “It barely clipped me.”

You sigh and go for the sleepy blend. One of you is going to have to bow out of this conversation due to exhaustion and at this point you don’t care if it’s you. However it might truly come in handy as Steve keeps looking out the window and shaking his foot. You set the cup in front of him and before you can ask what’s wrong, he takes the cup in both hands and blurts out, “I think I saw him.”

You look at the window and squint. “Seriously?”

“Not here.” Steve rolls his eyes. Like you’re the crazy one. He blows gently across the surface of the liquid and says, “Though it’s strange you’d think I saw Bucky out of your window.”

“Isn't that why you started showing up here in the first place? I distinctly remember someone with a big red, white, and blue shield lurking on my fire escape.”

“Oh, right,” he admits sheepishly, hunched over his cup. His eyes glimmer with mischief as he looks up at you through long lashes and asks, “Did I ever apologize to you for that?”

You’re brought up short by the amount of boyish charm this giant walking wall of muscle manages to pack into that look and you have to find your tongue to say, “I– y-yeah…”

Steve chuckles to himself and you give yourself a mental slap on the face. “Troll,” you mutter and sip from your mug. The liquid is piping hot and burns your tongue, giving you an excuse to grimace when Steve flashes you a beautiful smile.

You’re in trouble.

Not physically, not immediately, and perhaps someone on the outside might say you’re being dramatic about it, but they wouldn’t know shit about the situation. They wouldn’t know about how your hands felt as they slid over Steve’s when he handed you a new small pot of flowers; they wouldn’t know about the feeling of serenity that settled over you when Bucky abandoned some of his oh so careful control and rested his head on your shoulder for four long seconds; they wouldn’t know how it feels like you’re missing something until someone shows up at your door or taps at your window.

You’re falling in love with two people who have always been, and still are, desperately in love with each other.

Isn’t that just your luck.

In the end, Bucky takes your advice more to heart than you ever expected he would– you and Steve are quietly enjoying each others’ company, with you standing in the kitchen and Steve sitting at the counter as per usual, when the curtains move dramatically for Bucky to slip in, which makes Steve whirl around, and your hands jerk so hard from all the sudden surprise that your cup slips out and crashes to the floor.

“Shi-” You forget to watch your step and immediately catch a jagged shard that embeds itself right under the ball of your foot. “Ow, fuck!”

Your name is said in different voices but very similar tones of alarm and you suddenly find yourself gathered into Bucky’s arms, bridal style, and he carries you over to the couch. “Wh-” You swallow at the close proximity to Bucky’s chest and the way he holds you so effortlessly but so securely. “I’m fine; it’s just a little–”

Bucky sits down on the couch and doesn’t move you, which means you are basically sitting cross-wise in his lap. This is not something you need after your recent revelation, and it doesn’t get any easier when Steve comes back with the heavy duty first aid kit Bucky got you and gingerly takes your foot to examine the injury. His sympathetic look towards you gives you the warning you need to brace yourself before he pulls the shard out. It doesn’t hurt too terribly and he’s almost tender as he cleans your foot.

“Look at us, matching blood and all,” Bucky says lightly.

“It’s my floor I’ll bleed on it if I want,” you grumble, but you’re too distracted by how focused Steve is on fixing you up. “You…seem to be taking this well.”

“I knew he had been here since the first time I came,” Steve admits as he rolls the gauze around your foot. “There was a bloodstain on your floor still.”

“Seriously?” You had thought Bucky was being overdramatic about the supposed stain and humored him, but it…makes sense. Why else would he come back the next night. Why else would Steve continue to come by. And because Steve had kept coming, Bucky had kept coming, and…they won’t need to come back anymore, will they? They now have what they’ve wanted. Each other.

Someone says your name and you force yourself back to neutral as much as you possibly can. Steve looks curious though and Bucky says, “What’s with that look?”

“There’s no look,” you say. “And if there is, it’s only because you two have devised the weirdest meet-cute ever– decades after you actually met.”

“Hm.” Bucky continues to stare at you, but doesn’t say anything else.

They come back. And they both use the door.

You don’t know what you’re more shocked by– that Bucky and Steve, having come back to each other, are still coming around to you, or that Bucky is actually walking through the designated threshold. You don’t have a lot of time to think about it though because the place is…a mess.

“What happened here?” Steve asks as Bucky’s shoulders go up to his ears and he looks around the place like he’s going to find something unpleasant.

“It’s not that bad,” you say and glance around. You’ve cleaned out a few of the pots already and stacked them away in the closet, but some of the plants are still…slightly alive, for a little while. A couple are even doing fairly well– one of which being the snake plant Steve got you.

“What happened to the jungle?” Bucky asks, looking around shrewdly. You don’t like the sound of that. It feels so…probing, and raises your hackles. Why should he care?

“I wasn’t keeping them alive for very long.” You flick a yellowing leaf and keep your tone light. “I just got tired of it. What are…what are you doing here?”

You don’t look at Steve, but he clears his throat and his tone is similar to Bucky’s when he asks, “Is now a bad time?”

“For what?” You square your shoulders and face them. Like an adult. Like an adult who had two other adults just sort of crash into their life one day and start sharing space until such time as the two window-crashers decided they…didn’t need to come around anymore. “I’m happy you both found each other. You didn’t have to come back.”

Steve looks…well, he looks hurt. You don’t know any other way to describe it; it doesn’t show in his face so much as in his eyes, in the feeling you get watching the line of his shoulders lower. But before he can say anything, before you can explain yourself, Bucky speaks up.

“It isn’t like that,” he says.

You look down. It’s easier than looking at a man who feels rejected, and a man who has you completely pegged.

“What?” Steve asks.

“It’s okay,” you say, in perhaps the biggest bald-faced lie you’ve ever told.

“That’s not– no,” Bucky insists and lifts your chin. His fingers are warm and gentle and linger too long.

You pull back from his touch before you can embarrass yourself further. “You guys were literally circling each other.”

“Please.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “I don’t need to keep coming back here to be near Steve. I know where he lives.”

“And I leave my window unlocked,” Steve says. He aims a cheeky grin at Bucky and adds, “Guess I should have left it open though.”

“Shut up,” Bucky tells him but looks at you and says, “Point is: we weren't using you.”

Steve blinks. “Oh– no, of course not!”

“It’s all right,” you say, trying as hard as you can to assuage their discomfort even though you can’t put much into it. Even though you did very much want this meeting to happen, somehow you don’t feel very ‘all right.’

“No,” Bucky says and takes your hand in his. The flesh hand, which he runs up to the middle of your forearm. His touch is gentle and light, even when he grips. You can break away, but you don’t– you let him pull you in, close and closer, until there’s barely any room between you.

Steve crowds from the side and puts one arm behind Bucky, and one arm behind you. “If you only think we’re here because of each other, then it’s not all right,” he says softly.

“I know it isn’t– I know you weren't ‘using’ m–” You swallow hard. “And I know it’s not–”

They both swoop in for a kiss– for a kiss with you. Somehow they avoid bumping heads and the lip-lip-lip contact is barely there, with Steve at the corner and Bucky barely catching one side of your upper lip, but they're both there for a glorious moment that leaves you stunned.

“Oh…” you say, dumbly. You try to fight it, but a smile pulls at your lips. “Oh.”

“That good already, huh?” Steve asks quietly, slowly forming a small smile of his own.

You let out a little sigh that is immediately undermined by an uncontrollable laugh that swells from a bubble of relief at the base of your throat. “Bucky’s right, you are insufferable,” you say but you reach out to sweep your fingers in a gentle touch down Steve’s cheek and under his chin.

“You get used to it,” Bucky says.

You think about that. Even with how you’ve been, entertaining these two rotating planets over the last however many weeks or months, this would be an entirely new normal.

You think you can’t wait to get used to it.

#steve rogers x bucky barnes x reader #captain america fanfic #reader insert #stucky x reader #mcu reader insert

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yejiroh · 3 years ago

Text

Siren Scales & Village Tales

•••

For @chaoticyuna 's Summerween event!

Siren Gojo with a female reader.

Word count: 2.3k

TW: large bodies of water, bullying, blood.

•••

“The water was always murky by the bog trees, billows of dirt and sod and other bits always falling into the water by the pounds. Further down the dirt road that passes through the swamp, and you’d find a well, then a town.

“A merchant’s town, children waddled through the puddles that filled the pit holes- it wasn’t a rich area, despite all the good business. In the center of the town, a big fountain captured the sun’s rays during the golden hour- usually around 5 in the afternoon.

“Now, back to the well- it’s kind of important.

“The well, around 3 feet wide, was built of what was now crumbling bricks- terribly small, but just big enough to fall down; should you be unlucky enough.

“But there was also a rumor- as there is in every town and village. And, like other rumors that resided in other towns and villages, it was that of the supernatural. But in this case…

“Sirens.

“Sirens were fish tailed peoples with webbed hands and glowing eyes. It was said that if you ever heard one singing, you’d be inclined to bring yourself forward, to take their hand and fall.”

“Fall?”

“Yes, fall. Fall down the well, they would tell you. However, once in a blue moon, there’s a survivor, one who crawls their way up from hell and back to the siren as if they were addicted to their voice; coming back every day while the sun is still up, just to leave crying their eyes out as the sun comes down.”

“Why only during the day?”

“Well, no one knows. It’s just something that happens. Like a law of nature.”

***

“Don’t you think it’d be better to just relax once in a while? It wouldn’t hurt you, I promise.”

Despite all the reassurances of saying a story was a story until proven otherwise, better safe than sorry. And the only well in a 15 mile radius was this one.

Curse them for being so cheap.

Your hands burned from the rope as you dragged the bucket up, clear water sloshing around spilling out some.

“Nanami, with all due respect, you are the last one I want to hear the word ‘relax’ from.”

Gravel bits dug into the souls of your shoes, some chunky enough to feel even through the rubber. It kind of stung.

“Y/n, I’m going to be frank with you; mermen? They don’t exist. Neither do griffins, or hydras, or any of that fairy tail nonsense you’re always babbling about. It’s just us two, and old Mr. Gakuganji down the road.”

Sighing, Nanami adjusted his glasses, not bothering to wait for you as he loaded the last gallon onto the wagon, getting ready to go.

***

People surged forward, coins and paper money grasped in hands before thrown at you two, grabbing at the jars of the well water. It was always like this, the town coming up to the well water like it was their life sustainer, and maybe for some, it was.

“Y/n! Welcome back! Did you see anything unnatural today?”

A mocking laugh, a tall man tore his shirt off- Aoi Todo. Behind him, the Zen’in twins chuckled.

“Actually Todo, I haven’t. BUT, I do have something else to note. That well water you’re drinking? It hasn’t been boiled yet.”

Watching his face contort, a smile is set on your face as Aoi began to hurl, tiny worms and water with last night's feast falling onto his feet.

“Y/n! What the hell! Did your siren buddy put you up to this?”

“What happened to them not being real?”

It was the same conversation everyday. And, like everyday, you was met with a horrible answer.

Todo scoffed before spitting onto the ground, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“No man is every gonna want you, you stupid woman.”

“And if I don’t want to marry?”

***

As the hours passed, dusk came, bringing the stormy clouds with it- but it wasn’t yet raining. A ripple in the lake waters caught your eye- maybe a fish, but the fish weren’t in season, so it was unlikely.

You shouldn’t have been out after curfew- there were rules for a reason, yeah, but what was the harm? Especially after dinner, where you’d only had time for stale bread; chewing down the more than stale pieces was troubling.

The sands of the lake were dry, like all the water had been taken from the ground, pooling into the lake. Odd.

“A law of nature? But that's so…”

“Boring? Stupid? Illogical? Aye, it is.”

Kneeling down, you dipped your fingers into the water. There was something missing from the story the elders told you, you're sure of it; no matter how many times you waved your hand in the shallows, not a single ripple- only from that tail you saw earlier.

Something rumbled, whether or not it was the stormy clouds or your stomach, you didn’t bother to check.

Dipping your feet into the water, a sigh of relief escapes your lips- a breath let go you didn’t know you were holding.

Another roll of thunder- but something caught your eye; the tail again.

It was only for a moment, but you could make out the colors and fin shape. Various shades of blue and silver and yellows, shifting in the light, and the fin, large and (almost) pillowy.

It hit the water, disappearing once again.

“Stran-THE HELL?

Digits quickly grabbed your foot, webbed and slimy, pulling you under before you could scream.

Something pressed into your mouth- maybe seaweed? Bitter and salty, whatever it was was quickly shoved down your throat, forcing you to swallow.

As clear as the water was on the top, it was far too dark and dirty underneath. The vice grip that had pulled you down was now dragging you deeper, the breath you were saving long gone with the swallow, your eyes began to close.

‘Count the digits!’

A tiny raise of suspicion, you felt around for a limb, feeling up before coming to your wrist.

Forcing your eyes to open, the tears that pricked at your eyes were quickly swept away with the current.

Head feeling light, panic was soon replaced with adrenaline, and you raised your legs, knees to your chest, before kicking out hard. Your feet hit the thing holding you, and it let go quickly, allowing you a chance to escape.

Already out of breath, you swam up as fast as you could, finally breaking through the water’s surface. You sucked in a deep breath, coughing violently as you wiped the water and dirt out of your eyes, hurrying to the land.

Behind you, waves crashed, and the water of the lake that seemed crystal clear was now red and thickened. The air became heavy with the scent of iron, and soon the entire lake shifted up, sands and all, dragging you up with it.

“Now, now, it's not strange, is it? I think it’s quite the opposite. Normal even.”

You found yourself in the palm of a hand- or, in the webbing between fingers that curled in, as if to cradle you.

Finally getting a good look at the thing in question, it didn’t take long to put two and two together; the fish from the beginning, the thing that pulled you under...and now…

“I’m Y/n, what the fuck are you, and what’s your name? Also, you’re hot.”

And it was true. Big glossy blue eyes that seemed to be lashed by the purest white doves feathered around,the hair, just as white as the lashes, seemed to trail deep down, and looking down, you leaned over it’s thumb, holding it tight as you peered down. Purple scales glimmered all the way down.

Two fingers grabbed your collar, picking you up, bringing you to face an eye.

“You’re a funny little thing- I could just eat you up”-it opened its mouth, biting the air before laughing”- “I am Gojo. You’ve heard of me, yes? I’m a Siren...but I guess the more accurate description would be to say that I am this lake. And thank you, Y/n. You’re much too kind, considering I was about to drown you. Here, let me brush you off.”

As Gojo patted you down, your insides churned; it was much too fast, and to be frank, it was more like you were getting spanked. It didn’t help that dust clouds rolled off you.

“Y-you-ow-’re a -OW-guy?- STOP THAT HURTS!”

Gojo laughed, smiling as you coughed and waved your arms.

“A guy hmm...I suppose I am. You’re quite big for a fairy. And what the hell are you doing near a lake with no wings?”

“Fairy? I’m a human. There’s a whole ass village down the road through the forest.”

“Human? Oh...Ohh, yeah that makes a lot of sense.”

“Are mermaids- sorry, sirens- -lake dudes?”

“Lake dude, siren, doesn’t matter.”

“Right. Are y’all supposed to be this huge?”

Gojo gasped, a webbed hand on his chest and mouth hanging open before promptly putting you down, laying down himself as his lower half dissolved into water, the pit that was the lake somewhat there again.

“Big? You think I’m big? I’m just a small lake! You flatter me Y/n!”

Propping himself on his elbows, he rested his face in his palms, looking at you with a smile.

“Eh, it wasn’t for flattery- just curiosity.”

“Still...well, now I feel bad. I was gonna eat you.”

“Eat me?”

“Yeah.” Gojo scoffed before looking down, glaring at the ground. “There’s this human who calls himself Todo- a real-

“Pain in the ass? Insufferable? Obnoxious? Egotistic? A liar?”

“YES EXACTLY- you know him?” Gojo put his head down, and you watched in interest as some of him crumbled to sand before promptly climbing up onto his nose.Tapping it lightly, you let out a out a small “oomph” as he rose up, eyes on you.

“Yeah, I know him. He’s actually why I’m here now- kinda. The fucking jerk kept messing with me, talkin’ about how, ‘Oh, Y/n, did you see anything weird? A siren perhaps?’ and yeah, the fucking town laughed at me, but it’s okay, cause the well water he drank hadn’t been purified ye-”

Gojo interrupted you, waving his hands around in the water before bursting into laughter.

“The WELL? Not the one by this place I hope? Oh god, thank Yaga y’all purify that!”

Joining in the laughter nervously, you asked why, which sent the siren bawling into more laughter,forcing him to place you on his head so you wouldn’t fall off.

“Oh, oh my gosh- stop tugging my hair Y/n- that well water is connected to this lake- me! Y’all would have been drinking my piss and body had you not purified it! And I can’t have a pretty thing like you melting from the inside out and drowning in your own blood because of scales or something!”

“So...what I’m getting at here is...Todo is going to die if he hasn’t already? I mean, he spit it out, but he still drank a bit-”

A sudden burst of wind, you tugged Gojo’s hair again, holding on so tight your knuckles turned white.

Gojo hummed, deep in thought before exhaling slowly.

“Well- no pun intended-, I believe he’d turn into a fish. At least, that's what happened to the last guy who did that. Man, he was a crazy one. Called himself Get, going on and on about how everything he consumed he could turn into. Weird shit, Y/n.”

“Turned into a fish but could shapeshift?”

“Ah yeah- you guys know magic and stuff is real right? Anyways, my body, as you can see, is basically this entire lake- not like a lake god or something. Once I die, this place will have never existed. Back to what I was saying, I have a strict ‘no-no’ policy. A little spell just so I could get more dinner. And, I don’t think anyone would want to just be a lake their whole damn life.”

“Huh...that makes sense.”

“Yeah. “

“So…”

The two of you paused for a moment, and you couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly; to think that sirens were only bloodthirsty monsters- well, he did try to kill you, and it was true that they were beautiful, but the fact that you were literally sitting on the head of one now- one who claimed to be small- it was entirely laughable.

Clearing your throat, you crawled over, leaning down to come facing his eyes once again, poking his forehead.

“Say...Gojo, you wouldn’t mind eating Todo if he turned into a fish right?”

“Hmmm...not really. Why?”

“Just asking. I’ll drop by here tomorrow, yeah? It’s getting late, and I gotta make sure no one took my dumplings.”

And with that, you said your goodbyes, promising to meet again, you with your vial of well water and siren scales, and Gojo with a gold coin.

“Payment, my dear. Nothing is free in this life, you know. Hopefully now you’ll have some better village tales to tell now.”

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isabellitah · 4 years ago

Text

Title : Our Wife

Pairing : Sakusa Kiyoomi x Female!Reader x Miya Atsumu

Warning : blood ig, curse words, attempted rape, torture, and mentions of death

Credits : to the artists regarding the drawings of Sakusa Kiyoomi and Miya Atsumu found on the banner- i saved them from pinterest I think.

Note : do not copy or repost this anywhere else. I do not write Haikyuu!! fics anywhere else.

Y/n Miya-Sakusa was scared. No- scratch that- you were terrified.

You wouldn’t show it to your captors though- your husbands taught you to never show fear- but Jesus Christ- you were terrified not only for yourself but more so for your unborn child- a child you didn’t even know existed until half an hour before you got kidnapped from your own room. For the past hour that you’ve been tied to a chair in the middle of the room, they haven’t touched your body. The same couldn’t be said for your face. Half of your face was covered in slightly dried blood; blood that came a wound you got when they slammed your head against the edge of your beside drawer to knock you unconscious, and a spilt lip that was still bleeding slightly from when they punched you when you spat at the face of the person who demanded your husbands’ locations and the locations of all your warehouses. The thought alone made you scoff- you’re no rat. Unlike whoever the hell gave your home’s location away. Your husbands were going to be so pissed when they find you gone and your shared room thrashed about.

Sitting on the wooden chair was become a pain in the ass. Literally. You couldn’t even escape because of the metal cuffs attached to your wrists, forearms, and ankles and they took your daggers away. You’re stuck and all you can do it wait. Wait for either your husbands to burst through the door or wait for your promised torture session and possible death.

Minutes- hours- who knows how long later, two men in black barged into the room, startling you from your daydream carrying knives with guns in their holsters. Well... looks like your Omi and Tsumu are too late huh...

“Ready, Princess?” thing 1 with an eyepatch said with a smile, showing his yellow teeth, “Boss said we gots to kill ye before yer husbands get here. Ye know, so they barge in ‘ere only to see yer bleeding body. Even better if they get to see yer naked corpse, doncha think?”

“Boss said not to rape her tho-” thing 1 interrupted thing 2, “what boss doesn’t know won’t hurt ‘im. And besides- I wanna leave Miya a surprise for stabbing my eye.”

And just as thing 1 started moving towards you, a scream was heard from outside the door and echoed into the room, sending shivers down things 1 and 2’s spines. You, on the hand, smiled. They’re here... fucking finally.

“What was that?” Thing 2 looked around nervously. Huh- he must be new to the business. Poor guy he won’t make it far at this point. Thing 1 shrugged, “eh who cares? There’s no one we can’t kill.” he boasted. Dumb overconfident pig.

Another scream rang through followed by a shout of terror, “THEY’RE HERE!” that was cut off as a loud gunshot echoed through the walls followed by a series of bangs and clangs. The familiar sound brought you off guard- they brought everyone? You were sure that that clang was from Michinari’s favorite weapon- his metal bat. Where were you and who took you that they felt it necessary to have everyone here? You were brought out of your train of thoughts when you realized that all of a sudden everything and everyone was silent. All you can hear was your own heartbeat.

“Ah fuck it-” thing 1 looked at your form with a crazed look in his eyes that sent shivers down your spine.

“Dude what are you-”

“Well it’s obvious we won’t make it out alive-”

“Wait what?”

“-might as well have fun before we die, ey?”

With that said he closed the gap between you two. You felt your mind blank as tears started forming in your eyes. The moment he ripped Atsumu’s shirt from your person, the tears fell along with the loudest scream you could muster, “OMI! ATS-” you were cut off as thing 1 smacked your cheek with the butt of his gun, “shut up ye lil bitch. Yer not leavin til I get my f-”

Thing 2 was suddenly down- a hole on the side of his head. None of you even heard the door open so that meant Shinsuke was here- well him or Rintarou since they’re the stealthiest in your family.

Thing 1 suddenly stood up straight and placed his hands up with his palms up and blocking your view from whoever was with you two in the room, “hey uhhh I was forced to do this, mates- it- it wasn’t anything personal, yea?” Sat on a wooden chair in just your undergarments and the remnants of one of your husbands’ shirt, you let a small smile appear on your face. They’re here. You and your little bean are safe now.

Rintarou stepped out of the shadows and from his voice you could tell he looked bored, “so... where is she?”

Thing 1 shook his head, having lost his voice the moment his eyes met the bored yet malicious ones of one Suna Rintarou- one of the deadliest assassins of the Inarizaki family, and prayed that the fox wouldn’t notice your bleeding form behind him.

The moment you let out a sob, he pushed thing 1 away and squatted in front of you. And he was not happy with what he saw was done to you-

He saw your bloody and bruised face. He saw your shaking hands and the tears you let flow from your eyes. But what angered him the most was the fact that someone he viewed as his little sister lost the brightness is her eyes.

Any chance the idiot had with reasoning with him was gone.

“Congratulations, idiot. You’ve secured a spot in our personal dungeon.” Rintarou smiled as he heard a sharp thump before the telltale sound of a body hitting the ground, “you didn’t hit him too hard, did you, Shinsuke-san?”

“Not hard enough.”

“Ok- let’s get these off of you before your hubbies come in here,” with that said both men started unlocking the cuffs trapping you onto the chair. After freeing you, you were immediately hit with the feeling of fatigue and let your body fall onto the person closest to you. Shinsuke caught your semi-limp body and immediately became worried but calmed down as he felt your breaths. He arranged your position so that you were laying across his lap, facing the roof of the cell. Rintarou settled himself beside Shinsuke after texting Kiyoomi your location- receiving an immediate reply that they’ll be there as soon as Atsumu is out of his blood haze. Shinsuke brushed his hand through your hair but immediately stopped when you whimpered, “hit- t-table- home.”

The two men exchanged worried glances when you stared up at them with your eyelids slowly closing. Rintarou tapped your cheek, “Y/n-chan, stay awake- how do you feel right now?”

“Aish of all the questions Rin-”

“B-baby...”

“Kiyoomi-san and Tsumu will be he-”

“M-my baby...” their eyes widened as you shakily placed your hand onto your tummy before falling limp in Shinsuke’s arms. He refrained from panicking when he saw your chest still rising and falling in patterns- you probably fainted from exhaustion.

“Holy shi-”

“Y/N!”

The moment the two saw your limp body they assumed the worst- but as Atsumu was about to yell out his rage and sorrow, Osamu appeared from the shadows and hit the back of his head, “she’s breathing, you moron.”

“I knew that, shitface.”

“Who ya callin’ shitface, ya pig?”

“Who ya callin’ a pi-”

“Aran,” Kiyoomi calmly spoke as he turned to face the hitman- ignoring his husband and brother-in-law, “lead the way out- make sure that there will be no delays. We must take Y/n to Motoya immediately- we don’t know the extent of her wounds- however they look... less than favorable as of the moment.”

At the reminder of your current condition, the twins shutted up, “Osamu,”

“Yeah, Omi-san?”

“Bring that thing with us.” was muttered with great disdain while his finger was pointed towards the unconscious thing 1.

And so they left the building covered in blood with neutral faces.

They may not show it but they were livid.

They didn’t miss your tear and blood stained face nor the the fact that your shirt was ripped right down the middle.

They knew what was going to happen to you had they been a second late.

“Hitoshi and Heisuke are already tracking the rats- we’ll have them in the basement by tonight,” informed Kiyoomi’s trustworthy gunsmith, Tsukasa Iizuna.

“They better- only question now is who gets first dibs on the assholes.”

As they settled into the car, Shinsuke told them the news of your latest surprise. He knew that they’d go even more ballistic were they to find out during the check-up from Motoya. But since they were in a closed and moving car with you on their laps, they couldn’t really do much except stiffen and let their rage grow stronger- and he looks forward to seeing what they’ll do to the bastards tonight. Shinsuke, above all things, is a man of honor- and what he hates above all things, are traitors.

“PLEASE! I’M SORRY! PLEA- AHHH” Thing 1 screamed as Kiyoomi dug his dagger deeper into the man’s shoulder- forming a hollow hole of sort.

“Just a little more... I want to see if your bones are clean or if they need to cleansed as well-”

“Omi-omi~ I want my turn !” whined Atsumu as he crossed his arms and pouted at his husband.

Kiyoomi rolled his eyes, “you had your turn five minutes ago when you spilled acid onto his legs- it’s my turn now.” with that said, Kiyoomi ripped his dagger from the man’s flesh without a warning and grabbing a bowl from the prisoner’s ‘meal’, poured the bowl of scalding hot soup into the hollow flesh.

And as the man wailed, the two traitors squirmed in fear as they awaited their turns.

“We don’t usually go to this extent but what can we say...”

“No one messes with our wife.”

please reblog if you liked it hehe 🥺🥰

#hq!!#hq x reader #haikyuu!!#haikyuu!! x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu mafia au #sakusa kiyoomi x reader #miya atsumu x reader #sakuatsu #sakusa kiyoomi x miya atsumu #poly

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0bsess3d · 3 years ago

Text

lies | j.m. | part two

masterlist

JJ Maybank x Routledge!Reader x Best Friend!OC

A/N: It took me so long to finally get to rewriting this. But, here it is, I guess. I’ll probably start on writing the third part tmrw.

Warnings: Cursing, Lying.

Word Count: 2.0k

Summary: Instead of rejecting your friend, you tell him you’re taken, which is a complete and total lie. Now that he’s asking to meet this so-called boyfriend of yours, you’re going to need someone to play the role of your imaginary love interest.

You woke up the following day, almost forgetting about the mess you got yourself into. Not only did you lie to your best friend, but you also had to pretend to date your brother’s best friend to back up said lie.

What in the hell have you gotten yourself into?

You reached over to turn over your blaring alarm from your nightstand, groaning. You laid there in bed for a second, giving yourself time to fully wake up before you reached over to check your phone.

You had a couple of notifications from apps that you barely even use anymore and a couple of unread messages. Some were from friends, just saying “hey” or “good morning.” But, there was one from JJ:

JJ: What time do your friends want us over there?

To which you replied:

(y/n) : Kassi said 7, so you should probably come over here at around 6:30.

JJ just replied a simple “okay” You just laid your phone back down on your nightstand, standing up to get ready for the day.

Soon enough, you were in your kitchen, fixing yourself the third bowl of cereal this week. John B soon emerged from the doorway, his hair clearly not brushed this morning. “Morning.” He murmured to you, his voice raspy as he had probably just woken up.”

“Good morning.” You mumbled back, pouring the milk into your bowl of fruit loops. Then, you watched as your brother poured himself a glass of orange juice, putting the milk back into the refrigerator.

“So,” John B started, “when are you and JJ going over to your friend’s house?” He asked, watching as you took the first bite of your cereal.

You allowed yourself time to chew and swallow your food before answering him, “He’s coming to pick me up at 6:30.” You simply told him, taking another bite of cereal.

John B nodded, finishing off his glass of orange juice and placing it in the sink. He moved over to lean against the counter beside you as you ate. “So, how long do you think this whole charade is going to last?” he asked you, crossing his arms over his chest.

You shrugged, having not really thought about the answer to that question. “I don’t know. I guess just however long it takes for Julian to stop liking me.” You chuckled a little at the end of the last sentence.

“But what if he doesn’t?” he questioned.

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about all that.” You shrugged again.

“Well, you’ve got to. You can’t just keep lying to your friends forever (y/n). One day, all of this is going to come back to bite you in the ass. And, when it does, I will be right here to tell you ‘I told you so��”

You just rolled your eyes at your brother, putting away your empty bowl and spoon. But, honestly, you knew he was right. You were well aware of the fact that you dug yourself a deep hole that you may struggle to get out of.

Before you know it, it was 6:28, and a knock sounded at your door. You had spent the entire day on your phone or watching tv, and to be honest, you weren’t ready at all for the events ahead. You opened the door, revealing JJ, his signature smirk spread out on his face. “Hey.” He greeted, walking past you into your house.

“Hey,” You greeted back, watching as he moved to sit on your couch. “I was just finishing up getting dressed. I’ll be ready in a sec.”

Just as you were about to turn around and go into your room, JJ stops you, “Oh, wait, here.” He threw a red hoodie, one that you have definitely seen him wear before, at you. You quickly caught it, looking down to see what it was before giving him a confused look. “You know how girls usually wear their boyfriends’ shirts? I thought it would be more convincing if you wore one of mine to the movie night thing.” He ended it with a simple shrug.

“Okay, yeah, that’s actually really smart.” You laughed before disappearing into your room.

Around a half-hour later, you were both on the doorstep of Kassi’s house. Kassi lived in between the cut and figure eight. She lived in a nice house with a nice family. She wasn’t as poor as the pogues, but she wasn’t as rich as the kooks either. She was in the middle. Finally, the door opened to reveal the pretty blonde girl that was your friend. “(y/n), hey!” She hugged you before looking over at JJ. “And you must be (y/n)’s boyfriend.”

“Yep, that’s me. My name’s JJ.” JJ shook her hand with a friendly smile.

“Nice to meet you, JJ. Come on in, guys. Julian and I already ordered pizza, and we’re looking for a movie to watch right now.” As she spoke, Kassi opened the door wider to let you and JJ inside.

You walk in to see Julian sitting on Kassi’s couch with the TV remote in his hand. Not gonna lie, you did feel kind of awkward seeing him for the first time after you rejected him. And, there was a small part of you that regretted lying to him.

He was wearing a white t-shirt and grey sweatpants, and his brown hair was messier than it usually was. He looked good.

As soon as he noticed you two walk in from the corner of his eyes, he finally looked in your direction. For a moment, you could see a hint of jealousy in his expression before he quickly hid it with a friendly smile. He stood up as you and JJ approached the living room. “Hey, man. I’m Julian. You are?”

“JJ.” The boys shook hands before everyone piled on the couch. You and JJ were cuddled up together, Julian was on the other side of the couch you two were on, and Kassi sat in the recliner by the couch.

The room was silent besides the sound of the remote clicking as Julian searched for a movie to watch. “So, how did you guys meet?” Kassi asked, trying her best to save the awkward silence.

“Oh, uh, JJ’s friends with my brother.” You answered casually, only earning a nod from Kassi. This question was easy. It was one of the few questions you’ve actually thought about.

“How long have you guys been dating?” She asked.

“About to be four months,” JJ answered this time.

Julian’s head snapped in your direction. “You hid a relationship from us for four months?” You could tell he was hurt, and that made you feel even more guilty if that was even possible.

“Julian, I’m sorry, but we couldn’t risk people finding out about us.” You tried your best not to get into a fight with your best friend of 4 years over a stupid, fake relationship.

“Oh, yeah? And why’s that?” Julian asked, his arms crossed. You and JJ looked over at each other, not knowing how to answer this question.

Okay, so maybe you should have thought this through a little bit more.

Just as you thought you were going to be caught in your lie, Kassi spoke up. “Julian, you know how protective her brother is. He wouldn’t let you hang out with her for a year unless someone else was there with you. So how would you think he’d react to finding out his best friend is dating his sister?”

“Exactly.” You agreed, nodding at Kassi.

“Maybe, but why couldn’t you at least tell me?” Julian asked, now turned towards where you and JJ sat with a hurt expression painted on his face. JJ just sat there as you did the talking, not wanting to get this guy mad at him and make everything worse.

“Because you could have told Kassi, and Kassi can’t keep a secret for the life of her. No offense, Kassi.”

“None taken.”

“Okay, I guess that’s understandable,” Julian muttered with a sigh, but you could tell he was still suspicious. “Now, what do you guys want to watch? I can’t find anything.”

Once the movie was over, everyone was exhausted and ready to go home. You all helped Kassi clean the living room before saying goodbye and heading out the door. “Bye, guys! It was nice meeting you, JJ!” The sweet girl shouted from the doorway, barely able to keep her eyes open.

“Nice meeting you too.” JJ smiled back, walking in front of you to his truck. You and Julian waved at the blonde girl before watching as she shut the door.

Just as you were about to catch up to JJ’s truck, Julian stopped you, “Wait.” You turned around to face him, giving him a questioning look. “I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Well,” Julian chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “I didn’t necessarily believe that JJ existed.”

“What do you mean?” You asked, tilting your head to the side a bit.

“Like, I thought you were lying to me about having a boyfriend.”

“Why would you think that?” You chuckled nervously.

“Well, I don’t know. You’re just so sweet. I thought that you were pretending to have one just so my feelings wouldn’t get hurt.” Julian laughed as if what he was telling you was stupid. If only he knew.

“What? That’s crazy.” You laughed with him. “I would never lie to you, Julian. You’re my best friend.”

Julian nodded, smiling. “I know, and that’s what I love so much about you.” After that statement, the silence between you two became extremely awkward. “But, uh, I like JJ. He’s cool. You should invite him to hang out with us more often.”

“Of course.”

Julian glanced behind you at JJ, who was sitting in his truck waiting for you. “I’ll let you guys get back home. But, first, uh, one question.”

“Yeah?”

Julian lowered his voice to an almost whisper so JJ wouldn’t hear from the truck. “Does he know that I, uh, asked you out?”

You immediately shook your head no. “Of course not. I wouldn’t want him to get mad at you, especially since you didn’t know I was in a relationship.”

“Thank you.” Julian gave you a small smile, starting to head towards his car. “Good night, (y/n).”

“Good night, Julian.”

During that whole car ride, you and JJ talked and talked about just about everything. You laughed about the movie and about conversations that happened earlier. It was like you could never get bored when you were around JJ.

All good things come to an end, though, and JJ finally arrived at your house. “You spending the night tonight?” you asked him, your hand on the door handle.

“No, I think I’m going to stay at home tonight.” He told you, tapping his fingers on his steering wheel. “But don’t worry, you won’t have to miss me for too long. I’ll always be here in the morning,” He told you, making you smile.

“Can you walk me to the door?” You asked, only earning a nod in response as you both got out of the truck and headed to the front door. “Oh, I almost forgot. Julian said that he likes you and to invite you to hang out again.”

JJ smiled, putting a hand on his chest dramatically. “Well, I would be honored.” You both laughed, now standing on your front porch. “Just let me know when you guys are planning on hanging out again.”

“Will do. Good night.”

“‘Night.”

You were about to walk inside, and JJ was almost off the porch when you turned back around to add something. “Oh, one more thing.”

“Yeah?” JJ turned around to face you.

“Thank you.”

“For what” He furrowed his eyebrows, confused as to what you were thanking him for.

“For agreeing to, you know, pretend to date me. I would have been in so much trouble if it wasn’t for you.” You explained, causing JJ to give you a small smile in return.

“It’s no problem.” The sweet smile on his face soon turned into a cocky smirk. “But, remember, you’ll owe me one.” The blond boy winked before walking off to his truck and driving away.

You watched him drive off while rolling your eyes with a grin on your face. “Asshole.” You muttered to yourself as you entered your home and went straight to bed.

a/n again: so, I didn’t really change that much because I realized that I don’t actually hate it that bad, and I was just overthinking it as usual. It is definitely longer, though, so I guess that’s a plus?

taglist: @is-it-really-a-secret (sorry for tagging you again lol)

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alice-angel12x · 4 years ago

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💗Fairy!Deku x wingless!Reader x Fairy!Prince!Shouto pt.2

Part 1.

Being Prince Shouto's personal maid was difficult, but Izuku helped me forget my hardships when I'm with haven't But lucky today was one of my rare vacation days. I haven't had one of those in a long time, so I decided to visit and pay respects at Queen Rei's grave. Before Endeavor married his way into the throne, it was Queen Rei who ruled the kingdom. She was a sweet, kind, and gentle Queen. I used to be her maid when I was younger. Sadly she passed away of an Illness, so her burial ground was placed a bits travel out of the kingdom, underneath a beautiful tree.

Sadly by the time I managed to arrive on foot, it was already sunset, so I had to make this quick. As I got closer I could see Large pillars of ice, tons of burn streaks on the ground, and Lots of Umbra holes.

'What in the world happened here?' I wondered as I got closer to the gravesite.

I sat in front of the grave and gave a respectful bow. Sadly No one came to this grave anymore when the Umbra started to appear here suddenly, I was surprised that this place wasn't destroyed.

"What are you doing here?" Asked a familiar cold voice.

"Y-your highness!" I squeaked in surprise. Turning to see the one and only prince Shouto.

"I was here to pay my respects," I said simply.

"Do you really think I'd believe that? Many people just come here to pretend they care. Just to get close to me, even Corte did this," He sneered.

"So I would appreciate it if you stop soiling my mother's grave and leave,"

I had enough of his high horse.

"Get over yourself. I once served the queen, and I came here to pay my respects. Because she is everything you and Endeavor fail miserably at," I snapped.

"How Dare You!" Shouto sneered. "You know nothing about my family,"

"Your right, I don't know everything. But I am aware of how awful Endeavor is. The queen would vent to me about how awful he was because she didn't really have anyone else to talk to. But just because your life situation sucked, doesn't justify how you act and treat others," I vented, but The prince just kind of glared at me.

"If it did, then I would have every reason to be a hateful person,"

"And why would that be?" He dared ask with an apathetic look on his face.

"Maybe if you stopped and actually looked around you maybe you'd learn things or notice things. Anyways what are you doing out here it's almost dark?" I asked him.

"I could ask you the same, but I come here to keep my mothers grave safely from the Umbra," he said as he leaned against one of the ice pillars.

So that's why he always flies off near night, he comes here to keep his mothers safe. The poor guy, he must miss her greatly. I quickly dug through my bag and pulled out my crystallized flutter flower. Infusing it with my magic it started to glow brilliantly, lighting up the whole gravesite.

"What is that?'' the prince asked as he covered his eyes.

"This will keep your mother's grave safe," I answered as I placed the light over her tombstone.

"Not even My father's hottest flames can take down an Umbra. How is a ball of light going to protect anyone," He asked.

"It's kept me alive for this long," I said as I started taking my leave.

"Oh, by the way. For a person who shouts they are going to be nothing like their father, you're doing a pathetic job at that," I added.

--------------

Shouto watched her leave and travel back to the Kingdom darkness slowly consuming the land. Soon it was dark, but the light kept the area around the grave brightly lit. He readied me and waited for any surprise attack.

Suddenly The ground shook and a Large Umbra shoots out of the ground. Sporting there drills like teeth. Shouto readied his fire magic only for the monster to screech in pain as it entered the light radius. It quickly submerged back into the ground, just as fast as it came.

As the night went on the Umbras never came close to the light, they remained just outside the edge of the light. It was an interesting night. __________________

"Why did Bakugou beat you up again?" Y/n asked her friend as she cleans her friend's wings.

"I Don't know, he was just really competitive today I guess," Izuku Sighed as he let his friend tend his cuts and scrapes.

"I thought I would have to only worry about you hurting yourself. Now I have to worry about Bakugou possibly killing one day," Y/n sighs as she puts bandaids on Izuku's scratches.

"But Have a good a good day," Y/n said as they left the medical wing.

"Good luck with the Prince," Izuku said as he gave her a quick hug.

With a sigh, Y/n made her way to the prince's chambers. Prince Shouto was already awake and was writing something.

"Good morning Y/n," he said simply turning to face her.

"O-oh good morning your highness," Y/n greeted in surprise. "It's good to see you unharmed,"

"The light you created Protected me Like you said," He said with a tiny smile, as he turned back to his work.

Y/n was surprised by the Prince's sudden change, it wasn't too drastic. He still wasn't much of a talker. He only fell back into old habits for a while, after a bad talk with his father. Other than that Shouto was just more pleasant to be around, he would slow down for her at times and sometimes help her get up places.

As Y/n started to blow out the prince's candles for the night, the prince stopped her for a minute. The prince laid in his bed but was staring out the window and at the dark forest beyond.

"I can see your glowing crystal from here, though it looks like a tiny star this far away," he said though he didn't turn to look at you.

Y/n could feel some sort of sorrow behind his words, so she happily excepted his apology.

"How long will the magic last?" Shouto asked.

"What Magic?" Y/n asked slightly confused.

"The crystal light you made, magic like that will fade eventually. So how long till it loses its glow?" Shouto asked turning to you.

" For as long as I'm healthy and alive," Y/n said softly.

"Y/n... I'm sorry for how I behaved during the time you served me," He apologized as he sat upon his bed, shame somewhat seen on his stoic face.

"It's alright Your highness-,"

"It's Prince Shouto from now on.. I've requested that you become my permanent Maid. Starting tomorrow," He interrupted.

With a quiet laugh, Y/n slowly helped the prince back into bed and blew out the candles.

"Could you make me one of your crystal lights?" He asked sleepily.

With a smile, Y/n focused as she formed a small crystal ball between her hands, the size of an Apple. It started to glow radiantly as she handed it over to Prince Shouto.

"Goodnight, prince Shouto," Y/n whispered.

___________________

It was another simple day as Y/n traveled along with the large vines the ran the walls of the castle. It was large and thick enough for her to walk on. She was taking the trays and plates to the kitchen to be washed when suddenly she pushed off and crashed on the floor a couple of feet down. A loud thud and crash echoed throughout the room. Y/n slowly pushed through her pain as she sat up and started to collect the plates. The giggles of the Fairies could be heard behind her.

"You know I'm surprised that you even survived this long. In the castle and out in the wild, most defects like you would have died by now," One of them laughed.

"Like that weird Toga girl with only one wing. She was so creepy how she stalked the captain guard Midoriya. She didn't see that Umbra coming," Another added.

"Yet somehow you lasted this long, must be a miserable existence. No magic or beautiful wings to make you stand out, and yet here you are worming your way up the ranks," said a beautiful Fairy noble.

"Lady Maria, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there," Y/n apologized to the higher-ranked fairy.

You see when Endeavor took full control he made a class system, where fairies with powerful magic are someone higher and more important than those who don't. Someone like Y/n would be at the bottom, not just for having no wings. Y/n never freely showed off her special magic, so most claim that she is powerless, the main reason Y/n is such a low rank. Even if she did, most would see it as a pretty useless power. Pretty but useless.

"You better, any higher you would have been a goner. Maybe you should use your wings to save you. Oh, wait," Maria laughed.

"Lately you've been overstepping your boundaries. I've noticed that something has changed in the prince lately. He's been softer to you lately and made you his personal maid. Also, you seem close to the king's personal guard Midoriya. Trying to boost your statues are we?" Maria asked with a sick sweetness in her voice.

Maria grabbed Y/n by her jaw and forced her to look up into Maria's cold eyes.

"Listen closely, fairies like The Prince, Midoriya, and I are higher ranked and are important for a reason. Endeavor had the right idea for only for the strong to marry others who are strong. So they can make more strong fairies to protect the kingdom, but if fairies like you start getting in the way. You, Will, weaken the kingdom, so you need to stay with people of your rank. We protect the kingdom and your kind can show your gratitude by serving us," Maria said with a smile.

"So know your place," she sneered.

__________________________________________

#mha x reader #mha #mha deku #fairy au #mha fantasy au #izuku mydoria #izuku x reader #mha shouto #shoto x reader #shouto todoroki

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thinkingisadangerouspastime · 4 years ago

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avatar state/cycle

Written for Day 3 of @aangweek! Read here on AO3.

~*~

3. avatar state/cycle - someone has drained the color from my wings / broken my fairy circle ring

Toph couldn’t explain the feeling.

The sand in the desert alone had made it thrice as hard for her to discern anything about her surroundings, so if Toph was honest, she had next to no idea of what happened when Aang learned who’d stolen Appa. Wind and sand had bitten at her face, she recalled, and dug into the corners of her eyes. Sokka had grabbed her arm, pulling her backwards and yelling for everyone to run. Other than that, it had all been… imperceptible.

There had been power in the air, though. Power that had crackled over her skin like lightning, burning a hole through her chest. So Toph may not have known the details of what was happening around her, but when Aang spoke with the voice of a thousand ancient, aching souls… Her blood had run cold.

And yet, not even two minutes later, the roaring wind had died.

Toph didn’t understand. Maybe - Maybe part of her was afraid to. To learn the source of such raw strength, raw energy. But she needed to know. She owed Aang that, at least, didn’t she? Because it was her fault. Hers and hers alone that the sandbenders had stolen Appa.

But Toph didn’t dare ask Aang himself. The guilt gnawing at her insides only worsened whenever she was within a few feet of her friend. She’d nearly asked Sokka, but a thought had occurred to her moments before she’d readied herself to approach him.

Toph… didn’t remember Sokka grabbing his little sister while they were in the desert. This recollection - or lack thereof - led her to conclude that maybe, just maybe… Katara had been with Aang. If that was true, then she’d know better than anyone what had happened after Appa was stolen.

Asking Katara was harder than asking Sokka, though, for reasons Toph couldn’t quite place. Reasons she didn’t want to place.

But Toph willed herself to ask. She was an earthbender, after all - she had to face her problems head-on, because they weren’t going to disappear on their own. They would only grow heavier and heavier and heavier on her back until she squared her shoulders and threw the weight off of her own accord.

Toph waited until a night where Sokka and Aang were asleep already. Katara was usually the last to fall asleep, anyways - something about her connection to the moon - but Aang tended to stay up with her. Not tonight, though. He’d passed out seconds after collapsing next to Sokka. Such timing had worked out in Toph’s favor.

She crept across their camp with light footsteps so as not to wake their friends. Katara wasn’t far away - only ten or so feet from their weakly flickering fire, her back against a large rock that crested out the ground. If the purring Toph heard was any indication, the waterbender was petting Momo, too.

Toph lowered herself next to Katara, unsure of how to initiate a conversation. Thankfully, her friend had it covered.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Katara’s voice was quiet. Gentle.

Toph shrugged. “Could’ve. Chose not to.”

Katara chuckled. “Alright. Care to share why you’ve chosen to stay awake, then?”

Toph’s mouth went dry. All thoughts of preparation and readiness went out the window as she was struck with a paralyzing notion - what if Katara blamed her for Appa being stolen, too?

There was a pause. “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to,” Katara hastily reassured her. “I just…” She exhaled. “I’m here to listen if you need it, okay?”

Toph licked her lips. It was now or never. “I - I have a question, actually,” she managed to say without her voice cracking. She flexed her palms, tension already rising in her body. “What… What happened in the desert? With the sandbenders?” She took a deep breath. “With Aang?”

There was another pause, this one longer than before. Toph might have feared Katara had walked away if she hadn’t been able to feel her friend through the large stone they both still rested against.

Katara sighed. “You must be talking about the Avatar state.”

Toph frowned. “The what?”

“The Avatar state. Did your parents not tell you about it when you were little?”

Toph snorted. “The history of the Avatar wasn’t exactly covered in my personal schooling. My parents were more worried about my ability to walk in a straight line without slouching.” Not to mention no one in her household had expected the Avatar to resurface. As far as her parents had been concerned, the Avatar had never existed. They were nothing more than a legend of the less fortunate.

“Oh.” Katara grimaced. Toph could hear the expression in her friend’s voice. “Right.” She shifted, causing Momo to release a low mrp. “Well, the Avatar state is like… the Avatar at their most powerful,” she explained. “They have access to the knowledge of all the previous Avatars, so they can perform incredible feats of bending with all four elements, even if they haven’t mastered certain elements themselves yet.”

Toph nodded. “So… Aang went into the Avatar state when we met the sandbenders?”

“Yes, exactly.”

That explained the sheer power weighing in the air, fizzing over her skin like static and threatening to paralyze her. And the voices. Those must have been the voices of past Avatars, channeling their power and their rage through Aang.

Toph’s brows furrowed. “Okay. I… I think I understand.” She bent earth beneath her right palm, just to give her body another task to focus on besides the anxiety clinging to the back of her throat. “But what actually happened then? When he went into the Avatar state?”

“What do you mean?” Katara asked, puzzled.

“I” - spirits, why was this so hard for her to articulate? - “I couldn’t see out there. There was wind and sand and energy and -” Toph cut herself off with a helpless shrug. “And fear.”

So much fear. Maybe hers, maybe Aang’s, maybe both.

Toph’s fingers curled into the ground. “I guess… why Aang went into the Avatar, what that means, is what I don’t get.”

“Oh.” There was a note of recognition in Katara’s voice. A sort of… acknowledgement, maybe, that hadn’t been present before. Whatever it was, Toph was grateful for it.

“I think I understand what you’re asking now.” Katara chuckled. “Although I’m struggling to figure out how to explain the Avatar state without using too many visual details.” She bumped Toph’s shoulder with her own. “Telling you his eyes and arrows started glowing blue doesn’t mean much, does it?”

Toph snorted. “No, not really.”

“I figured.” Katara hummed, contemplative. “Okay. Think about it this way.” There was another mrp as Momo was presumably disturbed from his slumber once more. “The Avatar state is… an instinct. Sokka would probably call it a defense mechanism.”

Toph frowned. “Wait. If it’s an instinct, how does Aang control it?” When she’d first learned earthbending from the badgermoles, her instinct had stopped boulders from crushing her, but she’d also sent them flying every which way. Did Aang -

“He doesn’t,” Katara said. “Not really. The Avatar state activates in moments of… need, I guess?” She sighed. “It’s hard to explain. Whenever Aang is under some kind of intensity, like - like emotional or physical stress, the Avatar state might be activated.”

“So it’s kind of… to protect him?” Toph thought back to the descriptor of a defense mechanism. It sounded like the Avatar state was almost a shield. A reaction to some form of pain. Which meant in the desert, he’d…

“Yeah, protection is a good way to describe it!” Katara laughed. “Though it’s the most offensive defense I’ve ever seen.”

Katara’s words entered Toph’s mind through a haze. In the desert, none of them had been injured. Tired, yes, dehydrated, sure, but not injured. Which meant for Aang to have entered the Avatar state…

It must have been because of emotional pain.

“Anyways,” Katara continued after a pause. “I’m only guessing at this point, but I think learning what happened to Appa just… overwhelmed Aang. So his body reacted in response. Tried to protect him from his own emotions.”

Momo started purring again. Toph guessed Katara had resumed her gentle petting of the lemur.

“When Aang found Monk Gyatso’s skeleton at the Southern Air Temple,” Katara whispered, her voice laced with a quiet grief, “he… he had the same reaction.”

Toph swallowed the lump in her throat. She would not cry. “So it was sadness, then,” she said when she was certain her voice wouldn’t waver. Devastation. “Anger.” Rage. “Fear.” Terror.

Toph clenched the front fabric of her tunic. “Just… hurt.”

There was a pause. “Yeah,” Katara confirmed. Her tone was almost… mournful. “He’s already lost everything, and now -” She cut herself off with a sharp inhale. Toph didn’t need Katara to finish to know what would be said.

Now Appa’s gone, too.

Toph couldn’t stop a tear from slipping out. She rubbed it away, praying Katara would interpret her action as one of exhaustion instead of guilt.

But maybe Katara was crying, too. The silence meant Toph had no way of knowing.

“Come on,” Katara finally said. “We should get to bed. We’ll be travelling on foot for now, so that means we need as much rest as we can get.”

Toph flinched. “Right.” But before Katara could stand up, Toph grabbed her arm. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For taking the time to… talk with me.”

Katara smiled at her. Toph didn’t need to see to know that. “Anytime.”

The next morning, Toph awoke at the crack of dawn. After a more restful night than she’d had in days, perhaps waking earlier was to be expected. Even better, Twinkle Toes was already up. Based on the heat in the air, he’d started cooking breakfast for them over a new fire, too.

Toph marched over to Aang’s side and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug. She ignored his startled yelp, instead squeezing him tighter. “We will get Appa back,” she whispered. “I promise.”

A beat passed. Aang wrapped his arms around her in response. “Thank you,” he murmured. His own embrace tightened. “I know we will.”

Toph was never going to let him feel such a hurt again.

~*~

it was not intentional but i think there's some major katophaang vibes from this ficlet, lmao (i have no regrets). i hope to see you tomorrow for day 4 - dance. thank you for reading!

#aang #aang week #toph beifong #katara #atla #avatar the last airbender #aanglove #atla fanfic #atla fanfiction #katophaang vibes tbh although that was not the point of the fic jskdjasdkals #appa #amy writes

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ultimaterealmofchaos · 3 years ago

Text

i also want to apologize as well as explain the circumstances for not being here and basically not existing for so long

honestly, it’s entirely my fault, i’ve dug myself a hole that i seemingly can’t get out of. no, nobody else is involved, and this isn’t a callout except for myself and my own mental state lol

i’ll elaborate below.

unfortunately, life has been rather difficult as of late for me. what’s wild is that nothing bad is actually happening, but my job has basically been driving me into the ground both physically and mentally, and everything else has suffered because of it. it’s gotten so bad that i’ve had multiple breakdowns over the past few weeks, and most recently i’ve taken another day off my schedule for availability, giving myself three days off a week instead of two. but, basically, i feel like all my creativity has been killed recently, and i despise it. i’ve just been. honestly, really struggling lately. but i don’t want to bring anyone down because of it, so i haven’t really spoken about it to anyone. which. i suppose doesn’t really help me, but it helps others, so it’s okay.

another thing is really specific to just me, and it’s very important that i emphasize first that i do not blame anyone for it except myself. i do not believe in trying to control others in the rp sphere, or any sphere, really. but. unfortunately, i find it really difficult to rp outside of my own fandom? i have no idea if that makes any sense or not, but like. i have trouble rping with muses that aren’t from the same source material or series as my own. and i have no idea why, honestly, but it’s really difficult for me. plus, i have my own trauma from past experiences, suddenly losing close partners out of the blue because they decided that they didn’t want to write in the fandom anymore, which... well, of course, it’s their own choice, and i’m not going to talk shit on them or anything for that, but, unfortunately for me, that included the total cessation of speaking to me completely, even ooc. which. i am a sensitive girl with really bad rejection sensitive dysphoria, which again i am not blaming anyone for except myself, but it hurt me very intensely whenever this happened (it’s happened more than once). so now i’m automatically paranoid and afraid of it happening again when my friends/partners jump fandoms, even if they don’t actually intend to stop speaking to me. listen, i don’t know where i’m going with this now that i’m reading it again, but... i feel like the danganronpa rpc is dying out a bit, and i didn’t want to feel abandoned here because i love writing in it so much.

so, what did i do? while everyone else went to genshin impact, i went to five nights at freddy’s, because i’m not into genshin impact -- but again, i don’t fault anyone who is; we all have our own likes and interests and that’s valid -- since i started playing security breach and now run a blog in that rpc as well as this one. but that community is small too, so... yeah. idk y’all.

i just. i know while this all explains stuff, it doesn’t excuse it. and i’m not asking for excuses. i’m not asking for sympathy, or pity, or anything like that. i understand if you don’t wish to see me on the dash anymore, and it’s okay. you do what you feel is best for you, as long as you aren’t harming yourself or anyone else.

i’m sorry.

if you’ve read this far, kudos to you, because goddamn i don’t shut up. and please take care of yourselves, because you deserve it. and i still support all of you. <3

#ooc: it's! karla!#ask to tag

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fangirlandiknowit101 · 3 years ago

Note

30 BTS writer asks: 1, 12 + 18? ❤️🌻

Almost forgot to add - thanks for asking<33333

1. What was the first fandom and/or pairing that you wrote fic for?

Unsurprisingly, it was for Naruto and Sasuke/Naruto. You can still read it in all its glory, even on ao3 lmao. Might be hard to believe but that fic (Unsuspicious title, don't ask why it's called that I have no explanations) is really the absolute first thing I wrote that counts as a fanfic. I didn't write about other people's fictional characters before that. I didn't really write much outside of school at all, not sure how I lived my life tbh...

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

I answered earlier that I want to write a horse rider au at some point, but what I'd also like is to write a real enemies to lovers fic. Like, actual enemies. But it might be too angsty, so who knows if I'll ever make it lol.

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Aah you guys really want that commentary don't you... maybe one day I'll release a version of tswm with director's commentary for the whole thing hahahahaha (jk I'd never have time to do that)

But alright, I'm gonna take the opportunity to comment on another scene in tswm that I definitely this deserves it, it's the reunion scene between Naruto and Sasuke in chapter 49! I hesitated to pick this one bc it's so long and emotional, and also I don't want to add any accidental spoilers... but oh well. Here we go!

[My comments will be in bold text, this starts almost at the beginning of the chapter, right when Sasuke meets Naruto in Kaguya's place.]

He reached out with a hand, the bright light reflecting in the half-moon in his palm. It glowed, and just like that, his hand wrapped around another’s.

Naruto.

He sucked in a breath, lungs desperate for air. Naruto stood before him, chest heaving, hand clutching Sasuke’s so hard he feared it might break.

Their shared beat rang loud in his ears, eyes wide as they drank each other in. The darkness had given way to white, fuzzy light, their bodies floating, suspended in air.

“Sasuke,” Naruto whispered, as if afraid to drown out the sound of their connection.

Honestly, I tried my best to make it as painful as possible. That's all I wanted lol. At first I had no idea how to write this scene, but then I just got a feeling and tried to write it in words.

There was no hiding in this place. It was similar to that strange place that seemed to exist between them when they fought, blows connecting, hearts open. Between one breath and the next, it would be gone, their shared hearts lingering long after.

Nothing more poetic than that special place Kishimoto created for them when they exchange blows... extremely gay.

Here, there was only the two of them, the heat of their bodies as Naruto reached for his face.

“Am I dreaming?” Naruto wondered, fingers stroking along Sasuke’s cheekbone. “You look so real…”

They sank down, slowly, until their feet touched solid white. He shivered, the tips of Naruto’s fingers touching his chin, his mouth.

“It could be a dream,” Sasuke said quietly, exhaling as Naruto came closer.

“I can feel your heart,” Naruto murmured, his forehead coming to rest against Sasuke’s temple. “I missed you so much.”

Images flashed before Sasuke’s eyes, impressions of the world from Naruto’s perspective. Menma as the kyuubi. Kakashi, entering through a window. Iruka, hand gentle as he reached over the table.

Sakura, pain drawing her face tight. A mountain of paperwork. Snippets of conversation. The overwhelming pain of loneliness, like walls closing in on him.

He puzzled together enough pieces to make sense of the days since they separated.

Must be convenient to just read each other's minds... I should stop making fun of my own writing. But anyway, I felt very clever when I realized I could skip explanations between them and just let them see each other's memories of the past few days. I think it fits that they could see it through the other person's eyes, all the emotions too. Especially how painful it was for Naruto and how much he was trying to keep it together in front of his friends, and still failing. It gives Sasuke a better understanding of what would have happened if he'd decided to leave after one year passed (and I'm still bitter at Kishimoto for doing that in canon.)

“Naruto,” he sighed, lifting a hand to sift through soft strands of hair, closing his eyes as Naruto pressed into him.

Hearts bared, he felt Naruto’s desperate longing as his own. It mirrored his own pain, the aching emptiness filling his chest. Little by little, the cold was pushed away by warmth, Naruto’s mouth touching his cheek, his jaw, his throat. It burned against his skin, each point of contact erupting into tendrils of heat that seeped into his body.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Naruto confessed, lips shaping the words onto Sasuke’s throat. “I couldn’t go back to you, I-“

Sasuke turned his head, capturing his mouth. The words were lost between their lips, swallowed by the sudden surge of need. Naruto’s arm wrapped around his neck, keeping him in place. A fever caught him, leaving him dizzy and faint. He felt emotions between them like a physical caress, like they swirled in and out of their bodies, like a strong wind playing with fallen leaves.

Pain. Longing. Fear.

Happiness. Comfort. Love.

Naruto kissed him like he’d die if they stopped. He might, for all Sasuke knew.

Don't mind me, I was just crying buckets as I wrote this.

Their hands were still clasped tight, their palms pressed together, keeping their marks in contact. Teeth dug into his lower lip, but he could barely feel the pain over the onslaught of emotion. It was overwhelming, to share Naruto’s heart so fully. Was this how Naruto had felt, when Sasuke had touched him by accident? When Sasuke had shared too much of himself, and Naruto had been unable to give him the same in return.

I think it actually wasn't as overwhelming for Naruto when Sasuke accidentally touched him. This place that Kaguya controls just amplifies things a lot.

No such restraints now.

Their souls were on fire, like chakra flames billowing around their bodies. It was too much to make sense of, and yet it felt as if they’d always been this close, always been one and the same. Naruto fit inside him like a key, like Sasuke was now unlocked, his body no longer keeping him prisoner.

“Naruto,” he breathed out, over and over again, every nerve ending alight as they held each other.

I was listening to this song called Heat Up by Giant Rooks as I wrote this (that's where the chapter title comes from and honestly the lyrics are just *chef's kiss*) and I really tried to use as much metaphor as I could, idk if that makes it sound boring haha but for once I was definitely thinking very hard about every single sentence. And I tried to make it as "alive" as I could, so you'd feel it rather than have it described to you.

An eternity later they calmed down, mouths sliding lazily over each other, heartbeats finally finding their shared rhythm. Their foreheads pressed together, Sasuke’s eyes fluttering open to meet deep blue, their usual strength faded into self-doubt.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, running his fingers through Naruto’s hair, thumb tracing the shell of his ear. “Don’t hide from me, not here.”

Aww look at Sasuke, so in tune with his emotions. He really is an all or nothing kind of guy. If they already share everything in this place, there's no point in having secrets. Besides, his worst fear is Naruto losing confidence because of something he said or did.

Naruto let out a sharp breath, lifting their clasped hands between their chests.

“I missed you,” he said again, eyes closing in pain. “I’m so happy you’ve been okay.”

So much pain. Sasuke struggled to make sense of it, so much of it reflected inwards, towards Naruto himself. He could understand the longing, the absence of him like a gaping hole. It mirrored his own pain, pain he’d locked inside his heart within a steel cage. It flowed freely now, wrapping around Naruto’s in recognition.

But the rest… Naruto let out a sob, and yet he was smiling. Sasuke pressed another kiss to his lips, unsure of what to say.

I know Naruto did that whole waterfall thing where he embraced his evil side and totally let go of all his negative energy... But you can't tell me he's 100% okay and only happy and never feels pain. When will Konoha start offering therapy... Jokes aside, at this moment in time Naruto is so conflicted. The whole time he's been worried about Sasuke leaving him, and telling himself that Sasuke would be happier in the other dimension, and that logically he should let Sasuke stay, but he absolutely doesn't want Sasuke to leave him. It's the most selfish thing he's ever felt, I think, this need to have Sasuke by his side. And he's got so much on his shoulders, just piling up, everyone relying on him to somehow magically fix the world. And he's afraid of failing, of acknowledging to himself that there are parts of him that aren't ready to shoulder this burden, that he's still hurting, that there's still a part of him that could have become like Menma. He's supposed to be completely selfless but he isn't, and he thinks of that as a character flaw, a personal failure. And that's kind of where his resolution to not become hokage comes from. Because he doesn't think he can remove this selfish parts of him, and so maybe he should embrace them instead.

“Sasuke, it’s so strange…” Naruto started, his words slow, carefully chosen. “You understand Charasuke so well, but Menma… I can’t accept him. And now I realize, he shows the ugliest parts of me. The parts that I’m afraid of.”

They both leaned back a little, to see each other’s faces. Light played over Naruto’s features, blurring him at the edges. Sasuke cupped his cheek, tilting his chin up so that their eyes met. Now that he knew what to look for, he could feel Naruto’s fear.

“It’s always there,” Naruto confessed, raw honesty in his voice. “The fear of losing you. The fear of not being strong enough. The fear of becoming hokage, and failing.”

Sasuke opened his mouth to say something, to reassure him, but Naruto shook his head quickly.

Sasuke, on the other hand, he never held himself up to be a good person. He's well aware that he has weaknesses, that he's putting up walls so he won't have to deal with emotions and stuff. But he does believe (a bit blindly) in Naruto, I think. Even though he thinks Naruto won't succeed, it's not because of anything that Naruto does or fails to do. He thinks it's because the world won't follow him, that Konoha isn't capable of change. But he never thought that Naruto would actually give up or have these kinds of doubts.

“Let me say this. I didn’t understand it at first. Menma always rubbed me the wrong way. I know you don’t like him either, but for me… It’s like looking at myself and knowing I gave up.”

He drew in a deep breath, his fingers trembling around Sasuke’s.

“And now, here, I can’t avoid that fear. Because all of it… all of it is for you, Sasuke.” He swallowed, and through the fear, Sasuke saw his determination. “You asked me, if there’s any room in my head for anyone but you. And there isn’t.”

Naruto's brain is 99% Sasuke and 1% ramen, that's just fact. That aside, this might be one of my favorite quotes in the fic.

Frowning, Sasuke bit the inside of his cheek to stay silent. Naruto was working up to something, he could tell, and part of him couldn’t help but think it would end the two of them.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Naruto said, drawing the pad of his thumb over Sasuke’s eyebrow, the touch equal parts reassuring and painful. “I can hear your thoughts, you know. Do you really believe that I would choose anything else over you?”

A lie caught on Sasuke’s tongue. He didn’t want to believe it, but what place did he have by Naruto’s side? How could he be all that Naruto wanted him, needed him, to be? How could he be someone that others would accept walking by his side?

Oh, Sasuke. Always so ready for Naruto to cast him aside. He doesn't want to stand in the way of Naruto's dreams *wipes tear*

“I don’t believe that you would want to,” he replied, eventually. “But maybe you should.”

They stood for a long time, looking at each other. Sasuke felt torn in two directions. He wanted to tell Naruto to never leave him. He wanted to say that he’d accept anything. That he’d remove himself from Naruto’s presence to make the choice for him. That he couldn’t, wouldn’t, stand between Naruto and his dreams.

That he’d known, all along, that the other dimension was only a dream. An impossibility. That he accepted this, and wouldn’t resent Naruto for choosing the village over him.

I think the difference between Naruto and Sasuke here, is that even though they both think the other should maybe leave them for better things, Naruto is much less ready to actually give Sasuke up. Sasuke is more of the martyr type lol.

“You deserve me,” Naruto said, voice dark with conviction. “Don’t you dare think otherwise. Don’t you understand? If you saw what I’ve been doing the past days…”

Naruto lifted their joined hands higher, shifted his grip until he held Sasuke’s palm open in front of himself.

“I thought only of you. I cared only about you. What good is the village to me, if you’re not there?”

His heart felt too heavy in his chest. Naruto’s words rang through his ears, the implication behind them ensnaring his heart until Naruto held it in his hand, too.

“I don’t want any of it, if you’re not with me.”

Sasuke lowered his eyes. He couldn’t allow himself to give in. He’d already given so much, and although he knew that Naruto would have this, too, it was too much in this moment.

“Sasuke… When are you going to recognize that you’re a good person? That even if our relationship hadn’t changed like this, I’d still need you beside me?”

I wanted to write this part so badly... To make Naruto tell Sasuke that he's a good person. That Naruto thinks so, at least. It's one of the first things I thought of for this scene. Not that Sasuke agrees haha.

“Me, a good person?” Sasuke raised his eyebrows, meeting Naruto’s gaze again. He recognized the stubborn glint in Naruto’s eyes, and sighed. “Even if that was true, you’re smart enough to know it’s not enough.”

Slowly, Naruto pulled his hand closer, his grip turning gentle. Sasuke caught himself holding his breath, as Naruto’s lips connected with the mark on his palm.

“You still don’t understand,” Naruto murmured, the movement of his lips tickling Sasuke’s skin. “The past few days, what have you been doing? Caring for the children, when I wasn’t there to do it. Putting Charasuke before yourself, comforting him in the ways he needed you to. Holding yourself together. Trusting me to come back.”

This is where we acknowledge exactly how much Sasuke has changed. Naruto spent the days apart thinking only of Sasuke, even to the point where he was neglecting his friends and duties. Sasuke, on the other hand, stepped up to fill the role he thought Naruto left behind, hiding his pain behind helping others. Ultimately trusting Naruto to hold his promise to come back. Also, I just want them to be soft with each other T_T

Staring at him, Sasuke’s breath caught in his chest at the swell of pride Naruto felt for him. Was it true, that he had changed so much? In Naruto’s eyes, he had. It was startling, to realize how Naruto thought of him. But Naruto had changed too, he thought. They had grown closer, in a way he didn’t think they could have in their own Konoha.

“I think Charasuke is a bit like you,” Sasuke said, lips twitching upwards at Naruto’s affronted look. “He needs physical comfort. I don’t mind giving it to you, and I guess I don’t mind giving it to him either. You both tend to do whatever you feel like, anyway.”

“You used to mind.” Naruto looked serious, reaching out to touch Sasuke’s mouth as if to prove his point. “Suddenly, you didn’t.”

The smile slipped from Sasuke’s lips. Naruto was right. A few weeks ago, he did push Charasuke out of the window. To be fair, Charasuke hadn’t liked him much back then, either, and the circumstances had been very different. He did understand him better now. If Menma represented Naruto’s fears, Charasuke represented everything Sasuke wanted in life. But Charasuke didn’t have Naruto, didn’t have Menma with him either, and maybe that was why Sasuke wanted to be there for him. His connection with Naruto was precious to him, had kept him going, had kept him questioning himself even in his worst moments of darkness. Had given him a reason not to give up on a life that wasn’t filled with pain and hatred.

Naruto made it worth it to change. Was he hoping to help Charasuke change, too?

Spoiler alert... yes you were, Sas.

Perhaps Kaguya had something to do with it, but maybe, even without her influence, he would have reached this point anyway if given enough time. Time they didn’t have back home. It surprised him to realize that Naruto had thought of this already. That he felt selfish for wanting Sasuke to go back with him, when he knew it would be painful.

“You minded when I touched you, too,” Naruto added, as a reminder that they were talking about the two of them.

“I didn’t.” It was easy to confess. “I couldn’t allow myself to accept it, but I never minded. And now…”

Even if Naruto could read most of his thoughts in this space, it was difficult to say the words.

“I was afraid to have more of you. I still am. Because I know they’ll never accept it.”

Sasuke vs homophobia :( Can't really kill that with a sword. Sasuke was definitely in love with him before they went to the RTN dimension, he'd just buried it so deep that he had no idea it was there or what it was. If you separate love from attraction it's not really gay, is it? (It is)

Naruto kissed him again, desperately. There were so many thoughts swirling between them, a mess of images and emotions overshadowed by the overwhelming fear of losing each other.

Naruto’s guilt, for not being able to reach Menma like Sasuke reached Charasuke. Their worry for each other. The frustration of being forced to wait. Sasuke’s slow realization of how much Naruto meant to him. How much his family meant to him, even a different version of them.

“I can’t be without you again,” Naruto said, swallowing thickly. “There’s so much I want to say and I don’t know how.”

“I’m here,” Sasuke promised. “Any way you want me to be.”

Even though it hurt, knowing the struggle that lay ahead of them, how Naruto had struggled only the past few days.

He wasn’t sure when he’d closed his eyes, but Naruto’s hands holding his face between them made him open them again. His expression was serious, almost solemn.

“I think you’d be happier if you stayed there,” Naruto whispered, searching his eyes. “You can’t deny it. I know they’d take care of you, and I can tell that your bond with your family is important to you. In a different way than ours, but still. I’d forgive you, if you chose them.”

Stop sacrificing yourself, Naruto. I don't like it.

“How could you say that?” Sasuke grabbed Naruto’s wrists, glaring at him. “Even after everything you said about how you can’t be without me, how you’d never choose anything over me, and you still think I would leave you? Even when you can feel my heart, you think I won’t choose you no matter what?”

Sasuke calling him out, as he should.

He knocked their foreheads together, tightening his grip.

“You think I’d choose happiness over you?”

How could he be happy, if Naruto wasn’t there with him? It wasn’t even an option. He cared about Charasuke, that was true. And the other version of Itachi, of Shisui, his family… Even the Sakura of that world. But how could they compare? Losing Charasuke would hurt, but it wouldn’t rip his soul apart. Staying with them would be a life, but it wouldn’t be living. How could Naruto think of himself as selfish, and still be so incredibly selfless when it came to Sasuke? What was he supposed to do, to make Naruto trust him once and for all?

“If I deserve you, why wouldn’t you deserve me in turn?”

Naruto didn’t have an answer to that. Sasuke hadn’t expected him to, and he felt him struggle with the concept. Naruto’s hero complex wasn’t doing either of them any good.

Like, I personally don't like the concept of anyone deserving love or not deserving it. Love is something you give, freely, regardless of how society values the other person. The love you give isn't less worth depending on the person receiving it. But I think the both of them are so traumatized that they need to make peace with this concept. They kind of need to be told - yes, you do deserve love, and I will give it to you. Naruto's hero complex is like... we don't have time to unpack all of that.

“You want to do this the hard way?” Sasuke continued, tone sharp. “I’ll do it with you. I don’t think you’ll succeed but I’ll do it.”

He gathered up all his resolve, all his conviction, pushed aside his own reservations.

“Saying you’ll forgive me… that’s a lie. You wouldn’t. You never would. And I wouldn’t want you to, anyway. If you wanted me by your side and I couldn’t do it, you’d be right to hate me.”

“I could never hate you.”

“Then I’d hate myself.”

Bearing each other's burdens and all that...

Naruto made a face, as if to disagree, but Sasuke felt him smile despite the topic of their conversation.

“What kind of role reversal is this,” he muttered, pressing his thumbs into Sasuke’s cheeks childishly. “I don’t even know why I’m arguing about it.”

“Because you love me.”

They stared at each other. Naruto’s eyes widened in shock, but Sasuke held his ground. What was the point in pretending anything else? It all made sense like this, and perhaps deep down Sasuke had always suspected it, even before he returned to Konoha.

“Y-you can’t just say it out loud!” Naruto spluttered, slapping his hands onto his own face instead, hiding behind them with a groan. “Stop being so smug about it!”

Me, while I wrote this: Yeah, you can't just say that out loud! The pain of being perceived. I am suffering with Naruto.

“I won the argument, didn’t I?”

“Ugh, shut up!”

Feeling lighter, Sasuke wrapped his arms around Naruto, leaning his cheek against the top of his head, Naruto burying his nose in his neck. He’d deny it when they were back in reality, but he could feel that Naruto wanted the body contact, and he was unable to resist it. It didn’t take long for Naruto to calm down, releasing a huff into Sasuke’s neck.

“Maybe we can just stay in this place forever,” he said, sneaking his arms around Sasuke’s back.

“You’d miss ramen too much.”

If an emotional scene doesn't end with a joke, what are you even doing with your life. But writing them hug was like, releasing so many endorphins. I'm weak to it.

It was strange, to talk and immediately feel every thought behind the words, every emotion on full display. Naruto’s amusement radiated off him, and it was his turn to feel a little smug as he concentrated on everything that Sasuke felt for him.

When Naruto started imagining long days spent in bed, Sasuke rolled his eyes and decided they’d been emotional enough for the time being.

Sasuke like, I can accept the lovey-dovey stuff, but I draw a thick line in front of the bedroom door. He's got some work left to do lol.

Idk if any of this made any sense but... there you have it!

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rawiswhore · 4 years ago

Text

Triple H/Hunter Hearst Helmsley x Fem Reader- "Mindless Self Indulgence"

A wrestling duo known as D Generation X, who eventually evolved into the most iconic wrestling faction of the WWF's Attitude era, helped the former Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Shawn Michaels get over and were a wrestling duo that had people getting out of their seats and cheering instead of booing them this time.

One of the things Triple H was notorious for when he was in D Generation X, even when they added more members like the New Age Outlaws and X Pac, was his Val Venis-esque dick jokes he made towards women in the audience ("I got the rocket if you want the ride!", "I've got a knife that will fit in your drawers!", "My bazooka is locked, cocked and ready to unload!").

Even before he became a current day frat boy dressed in jeans, T-shirts and leather jackets, when he was known as Hunter Hearst Helmsley and played a rich, elegant, classy 1800's blueblood gentleman, he was quite the ladies man; having a valet dressed in an evening gown wrapped at his side, admitting in his personality profile in a WWF magazine that his favorite actress is "women never act when they're with me", his favorite sports are "women and polo; better yet, women playing polo", and favorite video game is "who has time for all these games with all these women?", and even in one wrestling promo saying that women are his toys.

Isn't he supposed to be a gentleman? Why isn't he kissing the top of women's hands and holding doors open for them?

The WWF's Attitude era of the late 90's is infamous for its mistreatment of women, from wrestlers downright hating women to women being portrayed as eye candy to how legitimate female wrestlers like Ivory, Jacqueline and Torrie (not Wilson) degraded down to being just sex objects, though even before the Attitude era existed and the WWF was really childish, some male wrestlers played characters that just saw women as objects (i.e. Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Razor Ramon).

The man who played Hunter Hearst Helmsley/Triple H doesn't see women as objects in real life, especially not now considering the women's division in NXT and the WWE now has women being athletes and wrestlers instead of objects, and most women in the WWE and NXT today are women that are wrestlers that have wrestled for several years, rather than eye candy that never had any wrestling training before joining those companies.

However, during his tenure during the late 1990's, before he became The Game and during a time when he didn't have facial hair, you shared with him an idea you had involving him, considering you love roleplay.

Despite that the man who plays Hunter Hearst Helmsley/Triple H doesn't see women as sex objects, although he fell in lust with you when you were a ringrat for him, so much, he wanted you to be a valet for him escorting him to the ring, what you plan on doing with him is something he can do one time only.

Although, in the future, he did do a few things similar to this, either on "Monday Night Raw" or when the cameras weren't rolling.

He agreed to your idea, and even he enjoys roleplaying during sex.

One day during his time as Hunter Hearst Helmsley or as Triple H in D Generation X, during a time when he didn't have facial hair, you invited him to a hotel/motel room when you and he had free time.

He was dressed in a tight black D Generation X T-shirt that hugged his muscles and blue denim jeans, looking similar to how he looks on "Monday Night Raw".

(if it's Hunter Hearst Helmsley during his gentleman days you want, then he's wearing a Monday Night Raw T-shirt and matching black jeans while he lets his hair hang down, no ponytails or braids behind his head).

He let his honey blond hair hang down, not tied back in a ponytail or let his hair have a little ponytail tied behind his head

After he undressed you out of your clothes, you laid on top of the silky comforter on one of the beds.

His eyes observed you up and down, lying there naked, and he was going to make you helpless.

While his eyes scanned your naked body, his hands were unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans, only for his hands to grab to the sides of his jeans and pull them down until his genitals were exposed in front of you.

He had a rock hard erection waiting to come out under his jeans, and his cock was growing harder and harder whilst he undressed you.

His jeans were feeling tighter and tighter while he undressed you, thank goodness he took them off.

The roof of his mouth could nearly salivate over seeing you naked, his tongue moist and feeling like it could salivate and slobber.

After he nearly disrobed, he placed his hands on your thighs, where he spread your thighs apart until your twat was exposed right in front of him.

You wish you could spread your legs wide open for him, but he's gonna be the one in charge of that.

When your legs were spread eagle, enough to show your pussy to him, he lifted one of his hands off of your thighs and wrapped his fingers around the bottom of his erection, where he walked a few steps forward to you, grinning with his dick in his hand.

His other hand, especially the tip of his thumb, was running across your top lip, feeling the texture of how soft your lips are.

With his cock still in his hand, he moved and inserted the tip of his penis into your pussy hole, where his cock began to separate and spread the inside of your vaginal walls apart, his shaft and penis penetrating into your twat.

His fingers unwrapped off of his shaft as it crawled and entered your pussy, those fingers moving to one of your hips and holding onto it.

Your eyes had elevated to the top of your head, your eyelids shutting the irises in your eyes and your head arching back whilst his cock entered inside of you.

When his penis was completely inside of your twat, he moved his hand on your mouth down to your other hip, holding onto that hip, and he began to pound your twat back and forth, thrusting in and out of you and fucking you hard.

His fingers grabbed onto your hips quite hard, the tips of his fingers dug into your flesh, he's making you his.

The bed squeaked and rocked while he pounded you, and your fingers were trying to grab onto the silky comforter you were lying on top of as he fucked you.

Since he didn't run his thumb over your lips this time, your teeth sunk into your bottom lip, but not too hard, muffling and quieting your moans out so no one will hear you in the other rooms.

You and Hunter/Triple H are worried that people might hear you moaning in the hotel/motel room, that's the problem with having sex while on the road.

Triple H/Hunter was pounding into you hard and fast, making sure he's making you dumb while he thrusts and fucks you.

No, he really wasn't making you dumb, but you were roleplaying that you were turning into his mindless cock slave as he's banging you.

You were moaning and whimpering your moans as he was fucking you, though some of your moans were a bit breathy, quiet and gaspy.

You're forgetting everything in your head while he's fucking you, there's a reason he's fucking you so fast.

Blood has been circulating and swelling your clitoris up, your pussy becoming more and more moist and feeling like it wants to salivate and seep your wetness out of its pores.

Hunter/Triple H, meanwhile, as his fingers grab onto your hips, he shuts his eyes tight and gets into fucking you.

Your tits are bouncing up and down while he's plowing and pounding you, and he loves women's breasts, just look at all the chicks he asks to flash their tits in the audience.

He tried to open his eyes and look at your chest, only to see your breasts bouncing in rhythm and pace with every thrust he pounds into you.

Your breasts went up and down while he was banging you, and he grinned and smirked seeing your tits bouncing up and down when he shoved his dick back and forth inside of you.

He bit his bottom lip, not just over how horny he is and how good it feels to have his cock inside you, but seeing your breasts bouncing as well as what a good girl you've been for him while he's fucking you.

"You've been such a good girl for me" he purred, wanting to slide his hand on your body. "M-my little fucktoy"

When he's cum inside you, he has a surprise for you after that.

You haven't been faking your orgasm, he really is elevating you higher with every fast little fuck.

He would love to play with your breasts as he's fucking you as well as do some other things, so one of his hands on your hips slid and brushed up your hip and shifted over to one of your tits, where he squeezed that breast and fondled it, playing with it.

You're his mindless cockslave and fucktoy, and he's gonna play with you.

His fingers bunched up to your nipple, where he tweaked and pinched that nipple, twisting your nipple rightwards.

You can feel how sensitive and good it feels when he pinches and tweaks your nipple.

"Ohhhhh Hunter!" you squealed and moaned at the same time, your eyes shutting tight and your fingers grabbing onto the silky comforter, feeling the silky, smooth fabric. "Hunterrr!!!!"

"No, no, no!" he ordered, shaking his head. "Don't say a word".

Your brain is basically turning off, or at least during sex and you're pretending to turn your brain off.

You're his belonging and belong entirely to him, no one else can have you but him.

If he can't have you, no one can.

Sounds reallytoxic, but that was his character back then.

Though, he wouldn't mind passing you around to his boys for them to fuck as well.

He's been fucking you so hard that your mouth is beginning to drool and slobber, saliva is spilling out of your mouth down your skin and onto the bed.

His skin is getting hotter and warmer under his T-shirt, he nearly wants to take it off as he's pounding and fucking you.

Men cum before women do, and his precum sliding down his cock was wetting the inside of your twat.

Throughout his thrusts, he was quietly groaning, moaning and grunting while he was pounding away in your pussy.

He's probably gonna cum any minute now after a while from thrusting back and forth in you for such a long time.

The walls of your vagina was brushing, nudging and tickling the sides of his shaft, the inside of your pussy feeling so soft

He's excited even more for what he's gonna do to you next after he cums.

He, too, has been orgasming slightly as he's pounding your pussy, although his moans are a lot more quiet, your moans have been drowning out his moans.

Pretty soon, he climaxed, groaning as he ejaculated inside of your twat, one of his hands grabbing onto your hips tight and his eyes shutting tight when he jizzed.

The tip of his penis released his seed inside of you in little spurts one by one, shooting out his cum inside of you.

When he felt like he jizzed enough, he withdrew himself out of you, his cock exiting your twat.

Despite that he just came, he isn't done with you yet.

Now that you've become his mindless cock slave, you'll do what he says.

He wrapped his fingers around his shaft and crawled on the bed, holding his penis as he crawled to you.

He lifted his hand off of one of your breasts and entered his fingers on that hand into your mouth, where the tips of his fingers began to scratch and tickle on the top of your tongue.

Strange, but...this is what he does when he's a dom.

He luckily had his nails perfectly clipped, no sharp fingernails scratching your tongue.

His thumb on that hand traced and slid across your bottom lip, luckily you weren't wearing any lipstick or lipgloss.

"Now suck my fingers!" he ordered and hissed, sounding like he meant it.

Since he sounded like he meant it, your lips circulated around his fingers and started sucking them, listening to him and obeying him.

"That's a good girl" he murmured, smirking and smiling.

When his thumb reached the corner of your mouth, he elevated that thumb to your top lip and slid it across your upper lip.

His other hand reached out to where your vulva is, where he began to play with your clit, scratching and rubbing your clitoris like the fingers in your mouth, sometimes he placed your clitoral hood in between his fingers and squeezed it.

He regrets that he didn't play with both of your nipples and tits while he was thrusting in and out of you, but better luck next time.

With his fingers in your mouth, you hope he won't gag you and make you throw up.

His fingers can feel how moist and wet your tongue and mouth are.

"You're all mine now" he murmured, his voice warm and husky.

The tips of his index finger scratched up and down your clit vertically, sometimes he pressed his finger on your clit and rubbed it in circles.

Your moans were being muffled by having his fingers in your mouth, and it's gonna take some time for you to cum pretty soon.

Since he's holding his cock in his hand, he lifted and pulled his fingers out of your mouth, only for him to insert his cock in your mouth.

You could taste how salty his dick was, and your eyes opened and looked at him when his cock slipped inside your mouth.

"Close your eyes" he said gently, smiling at you, and you listened to him, shutting your eyes. "Thereeeeee"

Him saying "good girl" makes you feel like a dog, and he even feels like he's rewarding a dog by saying "good girl".

Your lips wrapped around his shaft as his cock entered your mouth, and he unwrapped his fingers off of his shaft as his dick slid in your mouth.

He lifted his hands and made them form an "x" shape, slamming those hands down over his genitals.

"Now suck it!" he shouted and exclaimed as he did that iconic, aforementioned gesture, slamming his hands in an "x" shape into the area above his private parts, but below his stomach.

You listened to him, sucking onto his salty, gooey cock, tasting his cum and precum that trickled out of his slit and down his shaft, swallowing his jizz.

"That's it" he muttered, grinning while you sucked his cock.

He could hear your gulping noises, which means you're swallowing his jizz, and he loves that.

You're supposed to swallow his seed, not spit it out.

"Suck it!!" he shouted again, his other hand making a chopping motion (like he's karate chopping wood) next to his genitals, and you obeyed him, still sucking his cock.

You can't even speak anymore now that his cock is in your mouth, although you literally can't speak, it's not like the next day you'll be mute forever.

You will be able to talk, right now you've become his mindless fucktoy.

He eventually did make you cum pretty soon, your clitoris pounding after you came and your twat becoming juicier, and he ate your pussy out, licking and tasting your twat.

Triple H/Hunter Hearst Helmsley, at least the character he played in the WWF, isn't the only one who sexually objectifies women and sees them as his toys.

Razor Ramon (the character, though the man who plays him isn't much different) used to see women as sex objects ("chicas are for fun!"), having a fling with them then throwing them away once he's done with him.

Razor Ramon would love to play with you and turn you into his cock slave and fucktoy, so would Brian Pillman (the character Pillman played in the WWF), Val Venis, the Godfather and Jerry Lawler definitely would.

You've become comfortably numb and dumb for Triple H/Hunter.

Despite that you've become his mindless cock slave, you're sucking his cock and fingers.

Although, you won't be a mindless cock slave tomorrow, and you won't become so dumb that you can't walk or talk.

Sorry if I sound ableist.

You were back to your normal self after you and he had intercourse, but for a while, you were his brainless fucktoy.

#hunter hearst helmsley #triple h #90s #wwf #attitude era #wwf attitude #fanfiction

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a-crimson-lion · 4 years ago

Note

That new analysis is great, and I haven't even read that chapter! Personally, while I still dislike Bakugo, the things I'm hearing about 284 actually sound good to me--I feel like not only are his stans being annoying about it though, but those who dislike him *might* be being a little hard on him? Not YOU, of course Crimson, you did a great job keeping your analysis balanced, but I've been seeing people still hoping he dies and that doesn't feel right to me (1/2)

(2/2) Like it's not perfect, but he's getting there, y'know? If it's true, and he really is starting to see that he was an ass, I'm willing to finally give him a chance. I agree though that he also has to finally acknowledge the impact this had on Deku.

The State of the Fandom: Katsuki Bakugo

‘Kay, gotta keep this short so I don’t write another 4K essay out of nowhere. (Foreshadowing)

So first off, if you have no idea what @cjcroen1393 is talking about, check out the analysis here.

Second off, if you still haven’t read Chapter 284, check out the official VIZ translation here. New chapters are only free for the first three weeks after their debut, so make like an Ochako and get them savings!

Alright, now back to the subject at hand...

First off, while I appreciate the flattery, if I’m being completely honest, I’m still sort of skeptical because we just got Chapter 284, y’know? I wanna hold my breath, but I’ve already been through Bakugo’s Start Line, the Final Exams, and the Remedial Course Arc, three concrete moments that should have showcased Katsuki’s development and either came with conflicting results or were later debunked (Katsuki sticking to his original bull-headed strategy, Katsuki only working with Izuku as a last resort after stating he’d rather lose earlier, Katsuki saying not to look down on others and then looking down on the rest of UA due to a problem he inadvertently contributed to). But yeah, I’ll stick around and see what happens.

Honestly, I feel like 284 has a lot of opinions focused around Katsuki when you’re looking at him specifically. And no, I’m not talking about a direct AntiBaku vs BakuStan thing, that’s not what this is about. I can’t speak for all AntiBakus, obviously, but from the discourse I’ve seen, we’re all currently split into one of three categories:

Cautiously optimistic, willing to see how things play out.

Perpetually exhausted, nothing Katsuki says or does will make him worthy of atonement or redemption.

Kill him with fire, burn him at the steak, he’s worn out his usefulness.

I’m stuck between the first two categories, and the only reason I’m not in the third category (aside from Katsuki’s basic human right to live) is this:

A dead person can’t change. A dead person can’t suffer. Take that as you will.

And that’s not even discussing how the entire fandom is looking at things. Again, from what I’ve seen, the opinions split into three or four categories:

Look how far he’s come! (←The majority of fandom.)

Look how far he has to go… (←I am here. And maybe some AntiBakus.)

He AlWaYs CaReD!1! (←Cease your existence.)

I want to believe, but the narrative has taught me otherwise. (←The majority of AntiBakus.)

[‘Kay, this is where I’m cutting it off. Click “Read More” if you’re still awake.]

I’ve already said my piece on why the “HAC” take fills me with righteous fury, but let me see if I can explain it better with an analogy:

Let’s pretend for the moment that you’re a gold miner. Obviously, you’re looking for gold.

Your boss has you sent down into the mines to head into one of the more… frustrating caverns. Figuring you have nothing better to do, you get to work.

As you get into picking away at the rock in the search for gold, it takes you hours. And eventually, you stop striking bits and pieces and find a solid chunk of gold ore.

Now, your response can vary based on which of the categories you’re in.

If you’re in the “He’s come so far” camp, you are very excited to find this piece of gold.

If you’re with me in the “He’s still got a ways to go” camp, you remember that this chunk of gold ore doesn’t meet the quota. You still gotta dig.

And if you’re in the “HAC” camp, it’s essentially the same as walking back to the cavern entrance, digging down, and finding the quota of all the gold you need.

Sure, it seems like a good deal for most people, but you just wasted a long time getting to one good chunk when you could have dug down from the start. So what was the point of digging your own tunnel to begin with? That’s several hours, or even days of your life, you’re never getting back, because the cavern decided to be cheeky.

(Also, if you were in the "I don't wanna get my hopes up" camp, you've been digging through a pyrite vein and are skeptical.)

I hope that makes sense.

If it doesn’t, essentially the “HAC” line of thought feels cheap because it makes it seem like Katsuki was being needlessly extra from the start. If he always cared, why does he have to suicide bait? (Yeah I know y’all hear that too much but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened.) If he always cared, why does he have to even risk almost killing Izuku in the Battle Trial? If he always cared, why does he almost consider losing in the Final Exams? It just opens up a lot of holes.

I’m not gonna tell you to not be a fan of Katsuki or to not like him, because that isn’t realistic. Hell, if I shouldn’t have to justify why I don’t like him, you guys certainly don’t have to justify the opposite. But there has to be a sort of awareness that comes with either territory.

Because whether you like it or not, Katsuki HATED Izuku from Ch. 1 to getting kidnapped.

He saw Izuku as an OBSTACLE from Deku vs Kacchan 2 all the way to the OFA meeting in Ch. 257.

...and right now, Katsuki is finally, FINALLY recognizing Izuku as a person. A person who is in real f***ing danger and can’t bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. The extent remains to be seen, but what Hori has set up so far is really promising.

But that’s the thing: we’re still in the setup phase. I talked about this before in my last post, but right now we’re only in the third phase of Katsuki’s attitude. The “What The F*** Is Your Existence” phase lasted 116 chapters. The “I Can’t Let You Get Ahead Of Me” phase lasted 141 chapters. And the current phase, the “Why Don’t You Care About Yourself” phase, has only been going on for 27 or so chapters. And Katsuki only recently acknowledged that he bullied Izuku in a flashback somewhere in that time frame.

And the thing is, this doesn’t absolve Katsuki of anything. I still firmly believe Katsuki was being legitimate when he was talking about hunting down Tomura and using Izuku as bait, because that competitive side of him is DYING, not DEAD. And Katsuki still has yet to address the issue in his relationship with Izuku beyond internal and external monologues to people who are decidedly not Izuku, though there’s a high chance of that changing in Chapter 285. And the thing is, all Katsuki recognized is that Izuku’s inherent selflessness made him uneasy, and that was the main reason he bullied him. He still has yet to realize that he is a direct contributor to Izuku’s selflessness being warped into hardcore martyrdom. In his acts of beating Izuku, he lessened his self-worth and thus, made him believe his life was worth giving up. We still got stepping stones to cross, and while Katsuki’s making progress, he’s not across the creek yet.

...and while I’ve personally given up all hope of viewing Katsuki’s redemption in a satisfying light, I am hoping that Hori gets it right for the rest of you.

Thanks for reading.

-Crimson Lion (22 September 2020)

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writing-the-end · 4 years ago

Text

LoL Chapter 8- Power Surge

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU belongs to @theguardiansofredland )

Team ZIT- and Mumbo- are left behind to handle the dark crystal. When even Tango's hellbound magic and Impulse's explosion magic don't seem to work, can Mumbo get his own magic to even appear and help his friends?

--------------------------

Tango and Zedaph were eventually kicked out of the infirmary, among other hermits. Now, only Cleo, Grian, Xisuma, Ren, and Wels are in the building. Hermits settle back into their homes, but four stare at the blue orb sitting in the grass.

“It looks so innocent, tucked away in Jev’s slime.” Mumbo whispers, afraid to step closer.

“Like it didn’t just attack and nearly drain almost all of TFC’s magic and life.” Tango growls, teeth baring as he stares at the dangerous item. He works with dangerous magic, hellbound spells. But this isn’t like that. Hellbound magic takes power from the underworld. This takes power from other creatures. Living creatures, life sustaining magic stolen from their bodies. Sucking it up like it did TFC. And Gildara.

“We need to take care of it.” Impulse rises from his crouch, an easy smile on his face as he cracks his knuckles. “Let’s get this thing out of our hair.”

Impulse flicks his hands, shocking yellow magic appearing in the air. He pulses the magic forward, and a concussive blast ripples from his hands. The ground blossoms red and orange, dirt tossed across the group remaining on the train grounds.

But when the dust settles, the crystal is nestled in the crater Impulse blew apart. Slime had been eviscerated, only the black rock left behind. He tries another explosion, focused and sharp. Still nothing. Impulse sighs, knowing he needs help. “Tango, can you perhaps lend a hand, man?”

Tango grins, cracking his knuckles and joining Impulse in the fight to break the gem. Leaving Zedaph with Mumbo. “Alright, I’ll put it to fire and you blow it to pieces. I got your back.”

The two share a fistbump, and activate their respective magic in tandem. Tango’s pattern curls and pops red like a fire, while Impulse explodes yellow outward, shockwaves and blasts in his circle. Two impish smiles and fiery eyes look down at the tiny crystal.

And they don’t hold back. A wall of fire, so hot it turns blue, burning at the gem and it’s dirt surroundings. Warping the stone and dirt it nests within. Zed and Mumbo find themselves flung backwards by Impulse’s blast, their heads spinning and teeth rattling. Impulse and Tango managed to stay upright, hair sweeping back and feet dug into grass in an attempt to not meet a similar fate as their friends. Tango sees it first. “This stupid fucking gem won’t break!”

Fire erupts around Tango, but he’s quick to tamper down any of his frustration, aided by his friends. Impulse and Zedaph join him, glaring at the crystal as they plot on how to destroy it. They don’t just want to break it- they want to obliterate it. The crystal siphoned energy from TFC, attacking him when he used it. Zedaph closes his eyes, grimacing as he remembers the black veins and pale skin that marred their guildmaster. His soft purple irises remain closed as Tango and Impulse continue.

“Maybe we can borrow False’s cannon?” Tango whispers.

“I don’t think she’ll give us that ever again.” Impulse looks over his shoulder, seeing the dark oak and stone brick home, the forge nestled in the crook of the house. A part of the roof is new wood, but Tango and Impulse have still yet to fix the other hole in the back of the house.

Zedaph opens his eyes, and sees Mumbo. Standing a distance away, shifting from foot to foot and watching the grass at his feet sway in the sea wind. Awkward and alone. “Hey Mumbo. You have lightning magic, right?”

The multi-mage jumps back into reality, patting his foot over the indent he dug with his boots and tugging on the seam of his sleeve. “Oh, y-yeah. Not well, per se, but I have lightning magic.”

“Maybe we can be a little cleverer- more clever? I dunno, whichever- about evicting this gem from existence.” Zedaph smooths his hair, nodding Mumbo to join the trio. “I’m not exactly the crystal guy, but gems tend to have a lattice structure to it, yeah?”

“That’s what they taught us in middle school.” Tango chuckles. He tucks one hand under his forearm, still feeling the exciting energy of casting his magic. Hellbound magic was unstable, changing on a whim and easy to lose control. Not just of the magic, but of oneself. He spent years just training to keep himself in check, making sure he never falls victim to the nature of magic. Admit it’s danger, but find beauty in it, in the same way Zedaph sees a soul to shepard in even the most rabid animal, and Impulse can refine any explosion into art like a flower.

“Well, if Mumbo can excite the lattice of the crystal, it will be less stable. You two can go at it with the booming and blazing, and bam! No more creepy gem wanting to take over our grandpa.” Zedaph rests his hands on his waist, looking around at the others.

Impulse and Tango are all in. Among the ZIT trio, Zedaph is the one with the craziest plans. The ones that always somehow end up working. But Mumbo isn’t so convinced. “You guys are placing a lot of faith on me and my magic. I don’t know if I’ll be able to control it like you want. I can hardly even summon it.”

Just to prove his point, Mumbo opens his hands. A wobbly red circle casts in each palm, before falling apart. Mumbo’s shoulders drop, and even the tips of his robes collars seem to wilt with his emotions.

“Come on, Mumbo. We’ve seen your power- you’ve got more than most of us combined. You’re a multi-mage, that’s so cool man!” Impulse’s cheerful excitement exudes off him like sunshine, rippling out like an explosion’s heat. And just as energetic.

“You’ve been training with Grian and Iskall, and when you really put your mind to it, you destroyificate them.” Tango adds, grinning as he remembers seeing those two cocky hermits get blown off their feet by the newbie. “That’s not one but two S-Class wizards you can easily hold off. This wimpy little crystal should be trembling in it’s cleavage.” Zedaph and Impulse can’t help but giggle at the word. Still immature adults.

“Bu-but I can’t control when that happens. We haven’t figured out how to yet.” When he’s not training with Grian and Iskall, he’s digging through Joe’s library and talking with Xisuma. So much power, it takes so much to call upon, to release. It’s like breaking open a dam, and the power rushes out of him when he does. If he’s not careful, it can take control of him, instead of the other way around.

“Just give it a shot. You never know until you try!” Zedaph pushes Mumbo in front of Tango and Impulse, and retreats. His magic isn’t exactly useful in this situation.

Mumbo’s quaking in his boots. “Oh, oh dear. Well, I guess I’ll just-” He raises his hand, fingers shaking as he draws up his sigil. A blossoming red lotus of redstone and electricity, flecks of magic falling away like embers. They drift into the sky, carried up towards the bright blue atmosphere and fluffy white clouds. Zedaph can’t help but notice that they look like sheep, his ungulate allies in the barn he calls home.

When he looks back down, the circle has been cast. But what the trio sees erupt from Mumbo’s hand looks less like a great bolt of red lightning, and more like a static shock stained ruddy. Mumbo whimpers, watching it disappear like the embers of his circle. He doesn’t have the courage to tell the trio he told them so, because he’s so focused on his own failure.

“Aww, it’s okay Mumbo. Just try again- I’m sure you can do it.” Zedaph, dares to step forward, giving a hearty pat on Mumbo’s back. Zedaph grew up in the rural countryside around Foresta, where everything is rough. Calloused hands from years of farming give the tightest hugs.

And a weak city boy like Mumbo just wasn’t prepared for Zed’s strength. There was no malice, but his lanky body just couldn’t handle the slap on the back. He stumbles forward, hands catching himself on the ground- and sparking the magic deep within him. Magic flows freely from his fingers, redstone forming a circuit along the verdant grass and into the crater Impulse has created. Magic rushes through him, overwhelming each and every atom and fiber of his being. He doesn’t have control of his magic. His magic has control of him.

The circuit connects to the gemstone, the dust illuminating and lightning ricocheting free from the trail. Mumbo blinks, his eyes filling with red light as magic takes over his whole body. So much magic, uncontained by a circle.

“Guys, do it now!” Zedaph orders, noting the way the dark crystal rocks in the dirt. It glows from within, red light and lightning escaping the darkness of the opaque gem. Being ripped apart by Mumbo’s astounding magic. Zed knew Mumbo was strong- but this? This is unlike anything he’s ever seen. Including two different forms of magic.

Impulse doesn’t waste a second. He waves his hand, casting a spell and snapping his fingers. The crater grows deeper as the dirt erupts in an explosion, smoke illuminated by deep red and yellow fire from Tango’s magic. They don’t stop, they don’t let up. Only when the dust settles and smoke clears away, Mumbo’s circuit going dead, does Zedaph dare to peek into the cavity caused by his friends.

The crystal has been obliterated. All that’s left it dust, caught by the wind and scattered into the azure waves of the sea around them. Team ZIT celebrates the defeat of the crystal, grabbing one another and pouncing on their backs. Howling with joy and rubbing their knuckles rough into each other’s hair and back. Mumbo stands up silently, bolts of lightning escaping from his hands. Striking around him, turning the grass a burnt black color. And growing stronger.

“We did it, guys! We showed that stupid crystal it messed with the wrong guild!” Impulse cheers, his smile so wide across his face it hurts his cheek.

“Mumbo, dude, that was incredible.” Tango looks over Zedaph’s shoulder, brushing dirt off of the pink capelet. Mumbo doesn’t answer Tango’s compliment. He’s just standing in the grass, eyes closed. Zaps of lightning grow more frequent each second. “Mumbo?”

Zedaph steps away, pulling free of Impulse and Tango’s touch. He reels back as a bolt of lightning nearly hits his leg, all his blond hair standing on end. “Mumbo? Mumbo can you hear us?”

Mumbo’s eyes snap open. But those grey irises, filled with inquisitivity and anxiety, are overshadowed by a glowing red. Sparks like static electricity crease free from his eyes, staring blindly out. Mumbo’s not in control of his magic. Impulse is the first to notice his feet losing connection with the ground. “He’s going into a power surge!”

Impulse and Tango run into the lightning storm, each grabbing a sleeve of Mumbo’s black robe. Holding him down, their faces creased with pain when lightning courses into their body. They can feel the air turn to ozone, the scent of a storm on the horizon. Tango clenches his teeth, digging his heels into the ground. They shouldn’t have pushed Mumbo when he wasn’t ready. He needs to have control of his magic. “Zedaph! Do something!”

Zedaph is already summoning his magic circle, the intricate spell requiring a number of motions to draw it up. Taking control of an animal is one thing. A human is something completely different. And a friend, more than anything. He hates having to remove their free will- but Mumbo isn’t in control. He has to do something. Impulse slips from his grip on Mumbo’s sleeve, fingers digging into the gold trim near the newest guildmember’s ankles. The grass is becoming further from Mumbo’s feet, weightless like a feather.

“Mumbo!” Zed calls as he casts his spell. The two souls find a connection, Zedaph pulling on Mumbo’s soul. Trying to bring sense back from the senseless entropy of magic. Zedaph is standing still, but his face is contorted as he works to calm his friend down. He’s a shepherd mage, this is his job. To herd minds in the direction he so pleases. Animals, humans, he has the ability to speak to things beyond human language. To people beyond talk. To Mumbo, trapped and warped in his own magic. “Mumbo, calm down. Take control again.”

Zedaph’s voice was no louder than a whisper, but to Mumbo it was a roar. His eyes blink away the red that blinded him, falling back to the ground with a stumble. His mind feels hazy, his body two steps ahead of his actual consciousness. Grass brushes against his hands, a gentle tickle against tingling skin. He finally looks up, and finds he’s not the only one on his knees. Zed has fallen down, his face pale but still smiling.

Mumbo struggles to stand, struggles to understand what happened. Until he hears a crunch at his feet. He looks down, moving his boot out of the way. The blades of verdant green have been charred black, rocks and dirt flung aside. Like lightning struck the ground. “Oh, oh dear.”

“It’s okay, Mumbo.” Zedaph whispers, wiping blood from his nose. “We got the job done, and that’s what matters. Good work, destroying the crystal. I knew you could do it.” His smile does little to ease Mumbo’s concerns.

#hermitcraft #light of lairyon #lol #hermitblr #wizard au #wizard hermits #wizard tango #wizard impulse #wizard zedaph #wizard mumbo #team zit #tangotek #impulsesv #zedaph #mumbo jumbo #hermitcraft fic #hermitcraft au

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bubmyg · 5 years ago

Text

dare to begin - jjk

pairing: jeongguk x reader

genre/warnings: college!au, f2l (idiots to lovers), amateur model!jeongguk, aspiring photographer!jeongguk, amateur stylist!reader, graphic design student!reader, a touch of angst, mostly tooth rotting fluff

word count: 16,748

summary: jeongguk has a camera and you have a pirated editing software so what better for two broke college students to do than to open a photography business to their…closest friends on facebook or where kim seokjin’s modeling agency wants to sign jeongguk and you don’t know the first thing about curling his hair.

a/n: this was inspired by that random dispatch photoshoot in vegas...i’m not even sorry

“Oh fuck off.”

Jeongguk’s head lifted from where his forehead was pressed between the crook of his elbow, squinting at you through bleary eyes. “...for once, I didn’t even say anything—”

“Not you,” You clicked so angrily on the notification, it didn’t register and you had to jam your index finger into the button again, “The bursar’s office.”

“Oh, did they—” Jeongguk rolled to his back, head half dangling off the end of your bed as he pulled his phone to his face. “—oh. Tuition statements.”

“How can they make us pay for something that hasn’t even started yet? We haven’t even finished this semester.”

“What are they going to do if we don’t pay by the first day of the semester—” Jeongguk’s eyebrows peered at you underneath his phone, “—kick us out?”

You glared at the mass of numbers twisted into the statement until they muddled together and gave your conscious the mirage that the cost was an extra digit more. Your phone skidded across the surface of your desk, coming to a stop in the pointed corner next to a decorative jar of pens and a concert ticket you’d pushed through the cork board material substance lining the back.

“They won’t kick me out?” You didn’t look up from studying a fray of graining wood on the pointed corner of your desk but cocked an eyebrow at the waiver of uncertain concern in Jeongguk’s voice paired with the change in position from we to me, “Will they?”

“I don’t know,” You answered truthfully, arm slung over the back of your desk chair to face his pouted lips still slung backward over your bed. An unspoken why would they kick you out? “I really don’t.”

He answered your rhetorical with closed eyes and his phone pressing to his abdomen, “I don’t know if I’ll...have enough. That much. By then. Even if it’s not until the end of the summer…”

You scolded the glaring image of your bank statement when you gently tried, “There’s all kinds of loans you can apply for. What about scholarships? Isn’t the science department like...the biggest at the university? Surely they offer something—”

“I don’t think I have the grades,” There was a silence occupied by his notebook with messy organic chemistry notes rewritten twice from the previous semester when he’d taken the exact same class. Jeongguk dropped your gaze, shifting until the back of his head was resting on the side of your mattress while he went for his cuticles, picking at the edge of his thumb while soft red crept into his puffed cheeks and flaring nostrils.

You abandoned the open animation file on your laptop that you’d forgotten to click save on for the seventeenth time within the hour, a final project you just had to turn in with a semi coherence to the material of the semester to maintain your existing grade. You stumbled, desk chair catching on the edge of your crumbled rug but it didn’t deter you from flopping in beside Jeongguk, leaning over him with both elbows pressed into his stomach to snatch his notebook. He eyed you curiously under wavy fringe until you settled on him, chin pressed into the bottom of the pages as a concentrated scrunch met the pass of your eyes over his handwriting.

“What are you doing?”

You glanced up, gradual in the drag of your hands up his sides until you could jam your index fingers into the sensitive spots around his ribs, coaxing a soft squirm and a gasping giggle from his lips.

“Helping you get those grades. Do you really want to take organic chemistry for the third time?” Jeongguk didn’t flinch because your inquiry wasn’t teasing or jabbing, it was serious for the sake of never seeing him on the verge of tears over three credit hours again. He shook his head in negation instead, reaching behind him to snatch one of your pillows to drag behind his neck, propping him up just enough to study the curl of your stature against his chest.

“No, ma’am.”

“Good, now pay attention.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

You watched Jeongguk sink his teeth into the mint chocolate ice cream balanced two dollops high on a cone with a wrinkle to one side of your nose, the smile on your lips forced when he swallowed the green between his cheeks and quipped, “What?”

“You know what,” You twirled a string of hot fudge onto your plastic fork, mouthing your lips over it until the sweet substance melted on the roof of your mouth, “Forget it.”

He shrugged, happily taking another, literal, bite off the opposite side of the treat tower, lips sponging down the length of his hand to noisily suck on the melted stream of ice cream that had rippled across his knuckles.

You sighed. Jeongguk grinned mint green, “Tastes like freedom.”

“My summer job says otherwise.” The bookstore wasn’t a fun place of employment during the school year let alone when three fourths of the student body was gone.

Jeongguk dabbed at the corner of his lips with a napkin, a sharp contrast to the way he’d been barbarically gnawing his way through the ice cream, “So does my summer tutoring. A lesser of two evils.”

“I suppose…”

“At least we can drink on Wednesday’s now and only feel slightly guilty.”

“You don’t drink.”

“I drink a little—”

“Is this your way of asking me to come over for beer tonight?”

He grinned sheepishly, “Doesn’t have to be for beer. Hoseok moved back home yesterday. I’m extra alone.”

You eyed his prize possession, his camera, encased snugly inside it’s over the shoulder case that Jeongguk kept within grasp on the tiny cafe table shared between the two of you. He followed your gaze, a careful hand coming to rest on the strap even though he knew you respected his comfort enough not to touch it.

“So, what, you talk me into following your wandering ass around the park for hours to take pictures and now you want me to hole up in your apartment and watch whatever terrible nature documentary you’ve found on Netflix?”

Jeongguk mumbled around another chunk of the treat in his palm, unaffected because he knew you were going to show up at his apartment regardless of invitation, “I bought us ice cream, didn’t I?”

You grumbled your thanks into your deviation of attention, pulling your phone to your eyes as you jabbed another spoonful of sundae into your cheeks. Jeongguk continued to happily munch while you scrolled through one social media and then the other, finally landing on Facebook with a disgruntled roll of your eyes the second the first post appeared.

“What?”

“Facebook.”

“Did Yoongi post another Area 51 meme?”

You scrolled to the next post just to confirm that yes, sadly, before scrolling back up to the original source of your offending scoff. You eyed the generic smile plastered on the lips of the girl you’d went to high school with, the same as the generic caption on the generic set of pictures she’d taken of her dog and someone’s baby, advertising a brand new photography business, one she’d be doing on the side with no prices listed and simply a shoot me a text to book an appointment!, a service exclusive to those who knew her and who would pay her a little extra because of that connection and a business page created exclusively for a business that would be forgotten by the end of the summer.

Your lips parted to explain, unfortunate in absently scrolling past Yoongi’s string of laughing emojis at whatever Area 51 meme his conspiracy theorist group chat had sent him that morning, before you were pausing. Thumb freezing, lips parted in a perfect circle, eyes the only thing moving as they swept upward.

Jeongguk watched you like you were seconds away from shedding a shell or sprouting a second head or both, ice cream sticking to the pout of his bottom lip and a new melted stream lipping into the stretch between his thumb and index finger. He didn’t follow your gaze when it jerked from him to his camera bag, watching as your entire being lit like the thing you were sprouting wasn’t a second head but instead a hovering light bulb.

“You know what we should do?”

“...go to the park and take pictures of the playground equipment in obscure angles that strangely turn out to be aesthetically pleasing?”

“Close,” Your nail dug into your screen until you were at the top post again, flipping your phone over while you continued to study the zippers wrapped to the width of Jeongguk’s camera bag. When he’d squinted at the screen for what you deemed necessary to get the gist of the post, you continued, “We should open a photography business.”

Jeongguk squinted, “A what now?”

“A photography business. You take the pictures, I edit them. Foolproof way to earn extra cash.”

“In order to have a photography business we have to have something to photograph…”

“I bet we can get Yoongi to pay us twenty bucks to take pictures of his dog.”

“It’s almost not worth the twenty—”

“Okay, forty dollars,” You shrugged, reaching out with your own clean but crumpled napkin to dab at the excess ice cream on his hand, “I’m sure there’s some of our friends back home who need pictures of their baby. Or their cousin’s baby. Or their little brother’s senior pictures—” You blinked at the confused round of his doe eyes, “—what could it hurt to try?”

After a second of silence and swatting your hand away to lick at the dried ice cream instead, “...well we’ll need examples.”

“Good thing we were just about to go to the park—” You gestured toward his camera bag, “—and that thing is virtually attached to you.”

Jeongguk gradually began to loosen, “You want to do this right now?”

You stood then, binning your virtually untouched sundae before reaching out for his mostly eaten treat. He shoved the last of the cone between his cheeks instead of handing it to you, puffed cheeks innocent as he handed you his mass of crumpled napkins to throw away instead before you were taking both his hands to pull him up.

“What better time than now?” You grinned when he cocked an eyebrow, still holding onto your hands, “C’mon. You can help me edit them tonight.”

Skeptical, “Okay…”

Jeongguk dropped one of your hands to reach for his camera, shrugging it messily over his shoulders while you squeezed the remaining appendage in your grasp, teasing, “Don’t act like you weren’t going to take a ton of pictures of me, anyway.”

You weren’t immune to the soft blush that spread outward from the center of his cheeks, chin dropping as he shouldered his way out of the nearby door, holding it open for you and when you skipped through he grumbled, “Shut up.”

You were fresh off a playful argument about whether he could arrange your hair into a halo of hearts around your head when it happened.

“Not possible,” You dismissed, a disguised threat as you glared up at him from your seated place on the grass. He stepped closer and you held up a steady palm, “Do not touch me or my hair.”

Jeongguk whined, fingers wrapped around his lens as he crouched, twirling and snapping a picture of your indignation. “At least lay down for me? The flowers look nice…”

“These are weeds—”

“Please?”

You obliged because the stars in his eyes told you to, falling backwards to the plush earth with an arm tucked behind your neck and a hefty sigh. He’d stepped between your legs, one foot at your knees and one at your hip as he craned, tongue in cheek in concentration until he mumbled, “I still think the hearts would look cool.”

“I thought you were good at this whole photography thing.”

You retracted into yourself before he could grab you, a shriek of laughter tumbling out of your lips even before his fingers curled into your sides and you flailed an absent foot at his stature squatted over you, chanting I’m sorry, stop! until Jeongguk relented to a messy sitting position next to you in a soft cloud of grass clippings and dust, camera plopped in his lap as he glared at you.

You rolled until you were perched on your elbows, reaching out your previously assaulting foot to prod the light denim on his thighs. When he cocked an eyebrow, you tried, “Any good ones?”

Without missing a beat, he hummed, “As good as we can get with that face of yours.”

“Hey!—”

The tiniest of smiles pressed the ghost of a dimple in Jeongguk’s cheek and he tossed his head, “Come here.”

An awkward waddle over and you were pressed into his side, cheek on his arm as he scrolled through the shots on the digital screen. It was something about his ability to capture shots at just the right moment in just the right lighting with just the right angle that elicited a feeling of fond within you, that even if you didn’t particularly like the squash of your chin between your neck or the way the wind had curled the material of your shirt around your torso, it was still a glimpse into how Jeongguk saw the world, saw you. A strange fuzziness bubbled to the tips of your fingers as he continued to scroll through his lens to what he perceived as your beauty, focused more on the gradual smile that grew higher on his teeth as he flipped past candid shots of you telling him off to staged shots of you perched on a park bench looking as skeptical as you could about the barking squirrel perched just out of frame above you.

“Good, don’t you think?” His fond faced you, further melting the numbness on the edge of your appendages to the entirety of your stature.

You relaxed into his so that your nod brushed against his bicep, afraid of what your face would say if you met his gaze and you mumbled, “Told you we didn’t need heart hair.”

“Hush,” Jeongguk’s screen went black as he set it gently on the cross of his ankles, leaning on his palms to accommodate your stature better, “Do you think we got plenty of examples?”

You continued to stare at his blank screen, skin warm on the fabric covering his arm and suddenly it happened when you blurted, “Let me take some of you.”

A possessive hand curled to obscure your view of the blank preview screen, shoulders jumping as he tried to laugh it off, “No, that’s okay.”

Chin on his shoulder, you dared to look at him and utter, “What? I’ll edit them. I mean, I know your face looks like that but that’s the beauty of technology.”

“My joke,” Jeongguk’s neck craned backward to observe you, smile flustered like the pink that had overtaken more of his cheeks, “...why do you want to?”

You shrugged, “You always take pictures of me. I just thought we could change it up—” You swallowed, “You know. For our business.”

“Ah, marketing technique, huh,” Slowly, he uncovered the device, flicking it back to life with a seasoned thumb as he was stretching it to place it softly on your thigh, “Okay, boss. Where do you want me?”

You’d used a camera before but something so expensive to the price tag but priceless to the wary man before you made it an extra weight in your palms, fumbling at first to get anything that wasn’t blurry. One of your first clear shots was after you’d shoved on broad shoulders until he was seated on a wooden bench, awkward and small at first until you sighed with the camera at your hip.

The exasperated relax that sighed from your lips opened up a new realm that had the strange bubbles from earlier lodging into the base of your throat when Jeongguk reclined, both arms framing the back of the bench and his legs flopped open, that slight crinkle to one edge of his nose still present until you slowly rose the camera and it erased into something effortlessly smug.

“I can’t...I can’t get it to focus.” For two reasons now.

Jeongguk nodded in seeming understanding and you had a hunch he didn’t entirely understand why but he patted the spot next to his thigh on the bench nonetheless. “Come here. Rest your elbow on this and then try. It’ll stabilize it a little bit more…”

You startled yourself and him when you bypassed the bench for his thigh, digging your elbow into the taut muscle as you pulled the camera to your face, catching his surprise first and then the slow smirk that melted back into his features, chin tilting as you got a few more shots before pulling your touch away.

The next set of shots was you frantically ordering him to stay like a dog until you’d jogged the proper distance away (Don’t trip! Watch my camera!) and motioned for him to walk to you. It was rigid at first, just as before, a little too fast and his face was on the edge of bursting into audible giggles. You continued to back away, holding up a palm for him to pause again and then you shouted, “Relax!” louder than before and more important.

There was an easy gait to his walk now, feet crossing as they stepped in front of each other, one hand finding the front pocket of his jeans as the oversized hang of his striped blue shirt crinkled at his thin waist. One hand dared to fluff at his hair, gaze going out to the occupants of the park rather than the desolate intersection to his other side and you couldn’t help but giggle at the unsure smile that crossed his lips immediately after the action.

Jeongguk settled for an easy saunter after that, one hand in his pocket, both in, both out, until you were tired of the clench of his jaw and you called over the raise of his device to the lower half of your face, “Hey! Are those yellow converse you’re wearing?”

He frowned at first, “What’s wrong with my yellow converse?” before breaking into a gentle grin, one that started at the crinkles around his eyes and traveled into the wide pull of his teeth as the easy swing of his steps stumbled into his louder laughter and you continued to click away all the same until he set his sights on you. Hunched back, rolled shoulders, arms comically splayed out behind him as he darted for you, a squeak of surprise leaving your lips and before you could think to hold onto his camera and run, he was on you, arms around your waist to direct his giggles directly over your ear.

The excitement died with gentle sways in the center of the sidewalk. Jeongguk continued to hold your hips as he pulled away, quieter now, “Do you think we have enough now?”

“Plenty,” You held his camera out to him until his grip was secure on it, prodding your index finger to the center of his chest, “Did you want to take anymore? I know you originally wanted to come because you had some ideas for your portfolio…”

He beamed, slightly apologetic in the slant of it on his lips, “It’s okay, we have all summer. I’m...kind of hungry anyway.”

“We just had ice cream!”

“We’ve been here for four hours.”

You eyed the time on your phone and then the dip of the sun behind some wisped clouds in the horizon. “Oh.”

“You’ll come with me another day, though?”

You patted Jeongguk’s chest instead of prodding it. “Of course, Guk.”

He plopped in beside you, two paper plates balanced between his long fingers and the curve of his wrist, each piled high in fresh slices of pizza. One plate was deposited to the coffee table beyond the sway of your ankles, the latter pulled over his thighs to begin happily munching at the toppings while you continued to hack at the keys on your laptop.

“Any progress?” Jeongguk leaned closer with grease stained lips, “Making us look good?”

You hummed, dragging your finger over your touchpad. Another notch down on contrast, another notch up on the chosen filter, some color correction, and lessening of shadows to compensate for the natural lighting.

“Trying my best. And…” You navigated to save the image on the screen, one of Jeongguk walking toward you with a hand in his pocket and an easy expression adorning his otherwise tentative features. “I’m done!”

He pouted, grease stained finger trailing to the screen, “You cut off my shoes.”

“I blame your camera,” You exited out of the program, pulling up your internet browser instead. You paused, the cursor blinking on the search engine and you turned to observe the fish of Jeongguk’s lips as he gnawed on another bite of pizza dough, “...do you really want me to post some of these?”

He dusted his fingers on the edge of his joggers, leaning closer until his cheek was smooshed against the crook of your elbow. “I mean, what can it hurt.”

You began to type then, slow in entering the cursed Facebook and you chatted as you typed, “Should we create an official page for the business and everything?”

“Absolutely we should,” Jeongguk made grabby hands at your laptop until you relented and let him pull it into the awkward curl of his lap. His eyebrows furrowed at the first post on your feed, the same Yoongi Area 51 meme that continued to fester in your feed because Taehyung couldn’t and wouldn’t stop commenting on it and his tongue sandwiched in his molars with further confusion, doe eyes scanning down the length of the screen until the tip of your nail pointed him in the right direction.

Jeongguk hesitated again on the first question. Name.

“Uh…”

“I got it,” You leaned your head against his, softly, “Dare to Begin…”

Dare to begin a new semester that neither of you knew if you could properly pay for. Dare to begin a summer of trying to figure out how to pay for that semester. Dare to begin a new semester by some miracle and then what (figure it out when you get there, survive) with a major you adored and a major he did because photography wasn’t a viable career option. Dare to begin a friendship with someone who photographed the world like the beauty he saw it in but photographed you like he was in love with the world because you existed in it.

Dare to begin a new business on Facebook, of all things.

He wrinkled his nose, “I was just going to go with Flash Fiends or something.”

“Oh, come on,” You reasoned your prior thoughts to something that wouldn’t cause suspicion of your sentiments, “Dare to begin, like weddings? They’re beginning their journey with us. Senior pictures? Beginning a journey. Baby pictures? Again...beginning a long life journey—”

“You’re serious about this?” Jeongguk had already typed Flash Fiends in the name box and you squeaked in indignation.

“I guess not,” Suddenly bashful, “I just thought it was creative…”

“It is,” You blinked and he’d navigated through three other windows before he was typing dare to begin with Flash Fiends as the opening line in the description box. He hacked away some more, a generic description and you equally agreed to put prices in the album with the pictures of the two of you. Another jam of his pinky into the enter key and he lifted up off your side to hand you your laptop back. “There! Okay, now do your thing.”

Doing your thing included dragging all the files into an album, adding searchable hashtags, making the post public, choosing to set the last photo of Jeongguk you’d edited as the cover photo. A couple more clicks to make the post, navigating to share it onto your profile and dropping a tag of his profile and, “My thing is done.”

He took your laptop from you to replace it with the extra plate of pizza, sliding the remote into his hand in the same movement and flicking on the television. “Now,” He gestured solemnly to the litter of devices in front of you, both your phones and the still open laptop, “We wait.”

You remembered two of the share notifications before you dozed off underneath the cozy puff of Jeongguk’s duvet and the heavy weight of his arm draped across your waist. One from Yoongi, an oh so serious I’m going to help my friends! share that included the obligatory you’re very talented, Guk-ah! I’d love to have you shoot Holly one day...comment. One from Taehyung, a less than serious share that included a string of laughing emojis solely on the image of Jeongguk lounging seriously on the wooden park bench.

The notification you most definitely did not remember was the email from Kim Enterprises titled internship inquiry.

You crawled from Jeongguk’s embrace to snatch your laptop, afraid to pull the email up on the tiny screen of your phone in fear you were reading it wrong. The light off the screen roused him from his sleep before your suddenly-not-tired-anymore gasp did.

“What? What’s wrong?” He misjudged the search of his hand for you, gently sliding across your cheek instead of your arm like he’d been aiming but you barely flinched, covering your lips with both hands instead.

“This can’t be real,” The words muffled through your fingers before they were in action again, highlighting the email address and jamming it into the search engine.

“I’m not following you…”

“To be honest,” You clicked on the first result of the search, another gasp raw in your throat when the website, that website, emerged, “Me either.”

“B-Bloom?” Jeongguk squinted at the screen, turning your laptop towards the sleep still coating the fringe stuck in his eyelashes, “What is Bloom?”

“A magazine. An extremely popular magazine.”

He brushed your fingers out of the way to navigate back to the tab with your email on it, squinting at the address, “Why did an extremely popular magazine email you?”

“Let me read this email to you, Guk.”

“I can read—”

“Greetings owner of Flash Fiends. We were extremely intrigued by the contents of your recent business inquiry not for the service at hand but rather the individual seen in some of the photos. The social media entity tagged him as Jeon Jeongguk, and if that is the identity of this individual, we’d be interested in signing him—” You paused, swallowing half your tongue and holding a singular finger up as you inhaled audible through your nose, “—for a summer modeling internship in the interest of some of our newest summer spreads, paid of course. If that is something that would be of interest to you, please reply to this email with an updated resume and we will be in touch. Thank you again, and we look forward to hearing from you. Park Jimin, Department Head of Kim fucking Enterprises and Bloom fucking Inc.”

There was a passing moment of silence, some shifting as Jeongguk fell back into the sheets with his pillow curled in his bare arm and he mumbled, “I told you Flash Fiends was an incredible name.”

“Jeongguk! Did you hear me?”

He hummed, “I saw it, too.”

“And? They want to pay you! This is the perfect opportunity to earn the money you need for next semester!”

When he was silent for a frightening second, you shut your laptop and shucked it to the floor, turning until you were facing him. You’d barely settled when a tiny, forced smile was dimpling into his cheeks. “I’m not going without you,” He tried to provide and you frowned.

“Uhm, yes you absolutely are.”

“I’m not a model, babe.”

“You’re entirely more attractive than you give yourself credit for,” You blinked at him, soft fingers subconsciously reaching to stroke wavy tresses from his gaze, “Come on. What could it hurt to try?”

“You said that about the photography business idea, too, and now look where we are,” He flushed under your touch between his eyebrows, “Besides, are you going to run that alone if I leave?”

You bypassed his sarcasm, “We’re in a place where you could get that money you need for next semester. One step closer to graduation. And all you’d have to do is pose for some pictures. They’ll probably pay for your housing and shit too—”

“Okay, but I’m still not going without you,” You waited on Jeongguk to exhale through his nose, considering something over the top of your head before elaborating, “...if I’m going to try this, you’re going with me. Just like the photography business.” Just like everything.

“You need a resume first.”

“And you need some sort of skill that goes hand in hand with a famous model—” He beamed, “—like yours truly.”

“Fuck off—”

“You could be my assistant.”

“Fuck off twice.”

“What about my stylist?” Jeongguk let the suggestion hang in the air for a second before teasing, “Your eyeliner looks half decent sometimes.”

“And does any part of you genuinely think I want to go with you at this point—”

“We also need someone to fake these resumes for us—” His features wrinkled up, “—can we get arrested for that? Should I apologize to my FBI agent now?”

You ignored him, instead saying simply, “Taehyung.”

The software engineer blinked at you past artificial blue, the light coating the dyed grey locks that parted in all the right places around the circumference of his head, baggy flannel wrapped around his knuckles that drummed absently into his desk.

“So...you were serious about that Facebook post?”

“Not really, but—” You exchanged a glance with Jeongguk, “—now we kind of are.”

Taehyung spun slowly in his desk chair, making one full rotation until he pondered, “So, let me get this straight. You want me to fake resumes for the two of you so that you can get a paid internship at Bloom, aka, one of the biggest fashion magazines in the country, because they somehow, through the power of the internet, found your half-joking, half-serious photoshoot and want to sign the amateur model that is Jeon Jeongguk.”

Jeongguk exchanged a glance with you this time, “Correct.”

The older boy blinked, once, twice, four times before shrugging, pushing sleeves up to his elbows as he dug bare heels into the floor, dragging himself closer to the computer to begin hacking away. The blue light turned white and he mumbled, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Twenty minutes later you were sitting across from Taehyung at his tiny dining table with a manila folder in hand containing two pieces of paper, stapled together neatly in the corner, and printed with thick ink you were almost afraid to touch. The man across from you sucked noisily on coffee from a Pikachu themed mug, taking a massive bite from a chocolate energy bar in the same movement and he spoke through the crumbs gathering on the corners of his lips, “I think you’ll find those sufficient.”

You ignored Jeongguk’s flat out whine at the contents of his papers, gleeing, “Oh, good thinking, Tae. I’ll absolutely take credit for RM’s cheekbones in the Seoul music video.”

“Wait—” Jeongguk placed his hand on your arm until he could drag your fake resume close enough to scan it. Another whine, high pitched and through slanted eyebrows and pouted lips, “—why do you get to be attached to Namjoon?”

“Your crush is showing.”

“At least yours doesn’t say you were a former foot model!”

You couldn’t suppress the snort in your throat, gently prying the wrinkled papers from Jeongguk’s death grip to confirm that Taehyung did, in fact, write that Jeongguk had an impressive track record of modeling for various small shoe companies with posters plastered in every massive mall on the south side of the country.

“Why—”

“Because you can’t see your face, dumbass,” Taehyung finished the bar in hand in two bites, shucking the wrapper into a pile of various other trash on the edge of his dining table, “It’s easier to fake if they do check references. What do you think they’re going to do, pull your socks off to check?”

“There’s approximately a million other parts of my body that aren’t my face.”

“Not quite a million…”

“Anyway,” You flattened both your resumes to the table, tapping on the section that said references with a singular reference, “What is this phone number?”

“Mine,” Another energy bar had materialized from somewhere and the wrapper was loudly crinkling in Taehyung palm as he shrugged into another bite, “I’m your manager now.”

“There’s no way this is going to work.”

“This will work,” He took another swig from his mug and when something like a belch rumbled in his throat you figured out that it wasn’t coffee but something carbonated, “What? Do you not have any trust in me?”

You fiddled in the backseat of the cab, the seat belt too tight on your shoulder and digging into that spot on your neck the more you shifted. You tore your gawking gaze away from the city skyline trailing along outside the window to Jeongguk prodding at his thigh with your index finger.

“You think they’ve called Taehyung yet?”

“If they haven’t yet they’re probably not going to,” His chin swiveled from the window to look at you, gently taking the nervous tap of your hand into his palm and holding it in his lap, “They’ve already said we’re in. We’re already here. It’s okay.”

You were silent through another stop sign and the anger of honking traffic over the soft radio before you uttered, “So Taehyung must be some kind of wizard, then.”

Jeongguk’s palm caught on the back of the driver’s seat when the brakes slammed again, offering you another gentle smile as his thumb swiped over your knuckles, “Evidently.”

“We’re here,” The driver informed you over the ambiance of unmoving traffic and screeching tires, holding out an expectant hand for Jeongguk to jam a wad of cash into before he was pulling you out onto the sidewalk after him.

Backpacks on and suitcases barely lifted over the lip of the trunk of the cab before he was speeding away off the curb in a rare moment of serenity on the street. Your easy going shrug in Jeongguk’s direction was short lived until you turned toward the building in question, your building for the next few months, nonchalant turning to ice even as summer heat burned through the fabric of the hoodie you’d adorned since five am that morning at the airport.

A skyscraper was the easiest way to explain it in layman's terms, towering endless stories high so it almost appeared to curve and sway into the flecks of clouds skimming through the blue sky. It seemed to be made entirely of windows, tinted enough and if you squinted, covered in elegant curtains or outlined with towering succulents in molted clay pots. The front door was sliding glass, accented in gold like the name plate jutting out in an awning over a massive outdoor rug with the same name and logo etched in a shag of the same hue. The longer you gaped, the more people entered or exited through the very glass doors, ingraining the soft mechanical hum they made into the forefront of your conscious along with the polished leather shoes and designer purses and singular wedding bands that likely costs more than you would pay in tuition for four years combined.

“This can’t be it,” You panicked from Jeongguk’s arm again, finding it to dig your fingernails into and turn back onto the street, frantically trying to catch sight of your long gone taxi driver but the street had filled in your moment of disbelief and all shades of yellow and orange began to look the same. “Surely we told him the wrong address.”

“Babe,” He didn’t move his arm so as not to startle you, wincing the further your nails curled into his skin but gentle in his call nonetheless, “Baby, hey—” His eyes trekked the jump of your throat as you swallowed, finally meeting his eye contact, “—let’s just go inside. The worst they can tell us is no.”

They didn’t tell you no but the look from the receptionist told you to be self conscious of the joggers shrunk just above your ankles and the tattered edges of the hoodie curled around your knuckles that curled your skin anemic into the handle of your suitcase while Jeongguk easily chatted through her questions and paperwork, confirming that yes, you were the guests of Kim Enterprise. When you uttered purple to his under the breath pick a color inquiry, you didn’t expect it to be for a spiraling wrist band with a shiny metal key attached to one end, an end that pressed into the pulse point on your wrist. He turned from the desk, a folder in hand and a matching blue band on his wrist, one he shook at you so that the key twisted softly underneath the massive crystal chandelier taunting the space above the front desk.

“We’re on the tenth floor,” He seemed entirely too at ease in the drape of his oversized crew neck and baggy joggers over open-toed sandals amongst luxuries like a jar of pens perched on the edge of the front counter you commended him for grabbing because the shiny ballpoints seemed to be carved of the same, close-to-real gold accented every inch of the building. He flicked his head again, soft bangs bouncing, and you were left to stumble after his stature until his advancements had to pause for a tall man in a matching tracksuit walking a happy looking doberman from the direction that you smelled chlorine.

“Does this place have a pool?” You whispered with your hands braced between his shoulder blades, waiting until the man was out of sight to navigate for the elevators.

Jeongguk waited until he stabbed the button, stepping back to jostle the folder in hand to squint at one of the pages. “Looks like it—” His eyes glinted for a second, “—and a full gym!”

He continued chattering about the amenities while you stepped onto the elevator, listing off the various delivery services that would come to the front lobby versus the ones that would bring it to your door, only pausing through a rant about what the in house cafe coffee cost when you jammed the key on your wrist into the lock of the apartment, your apartment, and pushed the door open.

Jeongguk mirrored your panicked thoughts from earlier when he let go of the handle of his suitcase, causing the lopsided storage to tumble to the hardwood below. He articulated it next, “This can’t be it. There has to be a mistake. We’re in the wrong apartment or something—”

“Guk,” You comforted him with a hand on his hip, “Our keys wouldn’t have worked if this wasn’t the right place. They wouldn’t have called us by name at the front desk…”

You followed the awe of his gaze as it tilted upward and in swivel, taking in the muted caramel hardwood glossed underneath fluffy white rugs and hues of blue leather furniture, similar wood color to the floor marking that of the cabinets and tables nailed to walls or pushed into corners, accent pieces and fake flowers doused in blacks and whites sprinkled throughout the various nooks. The windows you’d noticed from the street stretched out in the opposite direction from where you’d came in, allowing you a view not of the street but through the city, a birds eye view through buildings taller and shorter than your own, some close enough to theoretically touch and others just an unworldly as they would be from ground level. Thin black curtains swayed from gold accented rods, a result of the white ceiling fan and the chill of air conditioning seeping out through various vents pressed into the crown molding of the rippled ceiling. A staircase marked the far corner, spiraling upward into an open concept hallway that disappeared into another handful of doors, the wood a slightly darker shade than that on the floor but the railing coated in a curved gold metal.

He swayed next to you and when he shuffled forward, you registered that he’d stepped out of his sandals, picking his feet up like prolonged contact would dirty the immaculate condition. He’d no much as peeked around the corner, the curve of broad shoulders a sliver in your peripheral, when a noise of surprise came high pitched from him.

You peeled off your tennis shoes by the heels, taking long steps until you were behind him. In the kitchen, an open concept room marked onto by the black marble bar that made an L shape to the hum of shining appliances.

“The lights are motioned censored,” Jeongguk provided at a breath and the two of you were still enough in silence that they flicked off. You moved to test his theory, flailing a hand out and frosted globes curled into the ceiling in threes illuminated once more.

You stepped around him, hardwood trailing into slick white tile and you nearly stumbled into the edge of the countertop when you tried to step for the neatly folded triangle of paper perched in the center next to a bowl of fresh fruit. You plucked it into your grasp, not without dislodging a yellow apple that rolled a few paces across the specks of silver shining through in the countertop, using your thumb to smooth out the creases to squint at the printed type.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Jeongguk uttered finally, still rooted in place but slumped against the wall.

You flipped the paper over, “Apparently heading to the agency for a meeting with Park Jimin.”

His eyes closed, feet shuffling until his entire back was pressed into the wall, “I knew that. They said that in the confirmation email. I meant—”

“—we can figure out what to do with this place when we get back. We need to get ready,” You glanced at him, “I mean, you can go in our airport clothes but I’d rather...not.”

“Right…” Jeongguk squinted, eyes trailing over your shoulder to the nestled staircase as he pushed himself up off the wall, “You think the bedrooms are up there?”

You frowned, “Why not just change down here?”

“On account of giant ass windows and thin curtains I don’t entirely trust yet,” His voice echoed to you no matter where he ventured into the house, going first to snatch his fallen suitcase and then secondly making his way for the ascend.

You almost tripped trying to collect your own bag, heaving by the time you caught his stature on the stairs and he turned to you with an amused cock of his eyebrow. “Coming with?”

“Don’t leave me down there alone,” You countered, shoving at his waist, “Too big for me to be by myself. This makes my dorm look like a thimble.”

Jeongguk laughed, a soft sound as his feet hit the next level, glancing down each hallway and then at you. It was an unspoken race until your coiled muscles jumped the opposite direction, meandering into bedrooms at each end of the upper level. You heard his cackles grow louder from within the first door your reached and your conscious had just began to affirm the same thing he yelled to you, “These are fucking huge too!”

A massive queen bed with a white duvet and two white blankets neatly folded at the end, two white wicker rocking chairs, a white throw rug peeking out from underneath the bed frame, white tile in an en suite bathroom like that in the kitchen cut off where the slightly darker wood floor began.

You dropped your suitcase unceremoniously in the threshold, picking your feet like Jeongguk had been before as you dug into the top pouch of the bag to retrieve a different outfit. Three splashes of water to your cheeks and a struggle with a jean button confirmed you were very much still alive and you dared to wander out into the hallway after a fight with an automatic sink faucet.

There was one more bedroom half the size of the one you’d claimed on your side of the hall, one you inspected with a quiet hum, dragging the door shut behind you as your sweeping steps brought you back outside. The false sense of serenity your anxious mind had calmed you into immediately erased when there was a figure standing at the head of the stairs, forcing a scream from your lips.

“It’s me—” But it didn’t look like Jeongguk, not the Jeongguk you were used to anyway. Neatly pressed black slacks falling neatly around his ankles, a black baggy top that curled into his elbows with vertical blue stripes cutting down the surface of the fabric, the material tugged and cinched with a thin belt at the point of his thin waist, new jewelry curled over his exposed wrists and collarbones and fingers, hair slightly damp and parted effortlessly.

“What the fuck?” You barked.

He glanced down at his shirt, picking at one of the loose buttons and then finally deciding to do it up, a muted, “Does this look okay?” catching in his throat when you rushed for him, catching his wrists and quickly undoing his previous action. He was flushed harsh at the neck when you glanced up at him, sheepish in the smile that crossed the own heat flaming through your stature.

“Yes,” You affirmed, “You look great, but…”

“But—”

“Aren’t I supposed to do your hair?”

Jeongguk blinked at the pink in his cheeks worsened. “Yeah, I was thinking…” He seemed to wince but you knew it as embarrassment, “Maybe you could curl it for me some time? More of a wave than what’s naturally there...you know.”

You eyed one of the wispy strands that swayed out over the top of his ear, not included in the wet swipe of his brush through his tresses.

“What do I look like?” You teased, grabbing his wrist to tug him down the stairs two at a time, “Your stylist?”

“Jeon Jeongguk and…” The man behind the counter trailed off, reading your name a bit quieter from the front of a blue file folder with a raised eyebrow. You nodded with a smile nonetheless, nudging Jeongguk who was still fixated on an oak tree sized fern resting in front of the sleek wall beyond the counter.

“Perfect,” His chair clicked across the plastic mat underneath the wheels, head disappearing into a file cabinet before returning with two laynards. He passed them across the desk, blank ID badges encased in thick plastic sleeves that would earn you clearance. “Your headshot will accompany the ID—” He was addressing Jeongguk point blank, “—once you take an appropriate one. Company protocol.”

Jeongguk passed you one lanyard, untangling his absently and he inquired softly, “...when will those be taken?”

The man frowned, “In just a few moments? Were you not aware?”

“I thought we had a meeting scheduled with Park Jimin,” You drew the man’s attention to you, stretching the lanyard around your neck.

“Oh, you do,” He smiled, “His meeting is running late, so we’re going to send you to the studio first.”

“We weren’t prepared for a shoot…” Jeongguk tucked his own badge over his neck.

The man willingly addressed you this time, smile tight lipped as an obnoxious office phone began to ring behind him, “Well, I’m sure your extremely talented stylist will be able to make you presentable from the shoulders up, yes?”

You swallowed, “Absolutely.”

“Perfect. The studio is down the hall to the left. Follow the signs posted on the wall,” More plastic wheels clicking across the floor and the ringing silenced as he placed the speaker against his shoulder, “Now if you’ll excuse me. Hello, Kim Enterprises—”

“Hey,” Jeongguk nudged you as you trailed down the mentioned hallway, squinting at an array of plastic signs drilled in a row on the wall. He tripped when you abruptly turned, pointing to direct him instead but he just nudged you again, “You can try out the whole curling my hair thing a bit sooner than expected.”

You dared to glance away from the scattered map in your brain to the shag of his locks of his eyebrows, ones that had already begun to dry and scrunch into soft waves. “Yeah,” You nodded, nudging him in the direction of the arrow for headshot studio, “Maybe.”

There was a woman stationed outside one of the open doorways, absently scrolling through her phone and she jerked when you approached, pocketing her phone in a messy fumble. “Ah, hello!” She greeted, and you rushed for the plastic at your chest to flip it over to display your name. “You must be the new duo...Jeongguk and—” She squinted at your name, uttering it too. “—perfect!” Soft curls bounced around her shoulders and when she turned you were knocked backward by the overwhelming smell of vanilla, but it faded like her figure into the room. “If you’ll follow me…”

The room opened into rows of empty makeup counters, bright lights burning hot over the top of walls half coated in mirrors. A few of the chairs were pulled out, like they’d been used earlier in the day, and some spare makeup bags were left sprawled with the products rolled onto the white counters. The woman was standing in a far corner at a clean counter aside from a neatly packaged makeup bag, a hair dryer, and a curling iron with the cord wrapped neatly around it’s head.

“I think you’ll find this sufficient,” She chirped in reference to the items at the table. She pulled out the chair, just for extra measure. “If not, there are extra of everything in the cabinet on the far side of the room. If the skin tone is not correct, your welcome to any of the others, as well. This bag is yours for the duration of your stay so I recommend keeping it stocked so you do not waste time before shoots.”

“Other than that, have fun!” Her hand centered between Jeongguk’s shoulder blades, pushing until he followed her unspoken lead and collapsed into the chair. “Come across the hall when you’re prepared. I’ll notify our photographer of your arrival.”

He stared at you through the mirror until she’d slipped out of the room and then some, finally uttering slow and gentle, “Uh. So, what are you going to do to me?”

You decided to place your fingers in his hair to calm yourself in the slightest, fluttering the strands in both palms, and even your teasing was absent, “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to fix this—”

“Should you start with makeup?”

Both your gazes absently trailed to the rolled up black bag and your gradual nod came before your steps trailed to the opposite side of his chair. “I’m not going to do much…” You rambled while you discarded a liquid foundation that was a shade too light for Jeongguk for a powder one that appeared to match. “You don’t need it…”

You shook some of the substance into a tray, marveling at a clean powder brush before jabbing the soft end into the pile of dust curled in your palm. Your nose wrinkled when you moved for him, using your free hand to nudge his bangs out of the way before your internal monolog told you fuck it and the same stabbing motion became the end of the brush into the center of Jeongguk’s nose.

He spluttered and you panicked when the fallout of the clumped dust spread below to the black fabric of his shirt. “That how you do it, huh?” He spoke through powdered stained lips and you frowned, spreading it up and over his cheekbones.

“Close enough,” You finished evening out the powder before dropping the brush, reaching to dust at his shirt instead. He let you, waiting until you’d dulled the color into soft, barely there blots along the surface of his chest and watching with rapt attention as you straightened, settling curled fists onto your hips with a huff.

“I think that’s enough makeup.”

“It’s just powder.”

“Exactly. You can’t even tell it’s there—” Jeongguk gestured to the drying and fraying mop on his head before sanctioning his hands underneath his thighs again, like you’d bite him if he moved while you worked, “—now fix my hair.”

You unraveled the cord, plugging it into the row of outlets lining the far wall before stretching the warming end of the iron toward Jeongguk’s face so quick he ducked, an attempt to loosen the perpetual frown that was carving a discolored circle into your bottom lip from the harsh suction of your teeth into the plush substance. When it didn’t work, he rounded his lips and blew upward so that the section of hair you feathered into your fingers fluttered out of your grasp. You cracked a smile then, dropping the curling iron to your side and you cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Behave.”

He giggled, a soft sound that matched the crinkle of his powdered covered nose and his hands went back to being stiff underneath his legs. “Yes, ma’am.”

If it weren’t hard enough teaching yourself to curl short strands of hair on someone else, it was worse that the someone was Jeongguk, wide eyes coated in celestial bodies peering quietly up at you, a soft encouragement paired with tender giggles when you cursed. You nudged at the last strand, waving it over the tip of his right ear and you leaned back against the counter to inspect your work.

It was his expression that faltered you now, an absent fondness that stared deep into your gaze when you met the very things that could rival any planetarium and you stuttered, “I-I think I’m done?”

“It looks good,” Jeongguk leaned forward to confirm, squinting at himself in the mirror, fixing a few strands to his liking and then he added a bit slower, “We can practice…”

A squeak left your lips and you went to cover your face because we can practice meant it wasn’t that good, but you weren’t allowed to wallow in it for long when two hands wrapped around your wrists, prying your cover away and drawing you closer until you were all but leaning over Jeongguk.

“It’s okay,” More absent swiping to your knuckles and the freckle on the center of his bottom lip prominent when dimples pressed into his cheeks, “Ready?”

You let yourself smile, “You’re the model here, Guk.”

His headshots developed instantly and were sprawled in massive print sizes on the grain of Jimin’s desk, a glaring documentation of Jeongguk’s first professional shoot, your first time curling his hair, and the endearing little smile he allowed to adorn a sliver of his teeth. But even if you found it endearing, Park Jimin’s cross expression seemed to suggest the opposite.

“Are these the ones you chose?” He mused, dragging a finger across the thing white space framing one of the photos. It was a pre-teeth smile, pulled lip dimpling the freckle on his chin, nose a second away from wrinkling at you flipping him off behind the scenes.

Jeongguk considered his affirmation as a failure and it showed in the way it slid off his tongue, “...yes?”

Another handful of heartbeats into Jimin’s silence and Jeongguk uttered, “I mean...uh. T-they probably would look a little better if you’d adjust your umbrella lights. Or, you know, purchase new ones. They seem to be out of date. And are worsening the contrast—”

A second longer and Jimin shrugged, effectively cutting off Jeongguk’s rambles, and he gripped the edge of the photograph instead, sliding it into a neat pile with the others. They were quickly slipped into a folder, one he passed aside to make room for intertwined fingers in the center of his desk.

“They’ll suffice for now,” Thin eyes studied you fully now, disregarding the hunch of Jeongguk’s shoulders in the chair next to you, snake like black peering out from beyond bleached blonde fringe, “...can I ask who you are?”

“His stylist.”

“Name?” You uttered it and Jimin nodded, leaning back into the plush back of his chair. “So is there a reason you’re here…?”

“I think I’ll need to know about Jeongguk’s future endeavors here if I’m going to, essentially, be responsible for his look—” You ignored the dry texture cracking at your tongue on the roof of your mouth with each new syllable, all the moisture instead clamming your palms that roughed out of sight on your thighs, “—don’t you think?”

He seemed impressed with that answer, two hands threading at the nape of his neck to let plush lips quirk with the raise of one eyebrow. “I think you may be correct,” Jimin drawled slowly, “You may stay.”

You bit down the sarcastic thanks for the permission because he was done targeting you, testing you, instead focusing his attention back on Jeongguk. The man fell forward again, dragging his chair closer with two hands between the languid part of his thighs before they transferred to rest on the round, plastic arms.

“It’s a relatively simple internship. We already have you booked for some very specific shoots for our advertisements and the main magazine alike. I’ll email you a calendar, but for now—” Fluffy blonde locks disappeared from view before he resurfaced with a highlighted piece of paper in hand, slapping it the table and pushing it until it fluttered at Jeongguk. “—you’ll see your shoots highlighted in pink. Anything else you need to attend is in yellow. Meetings, check ins, things of that nature.”

Jeongguk still seemed like a fish out of water so you leaned toward him and questioned, “And the green color?”

“Retreats, bonding opportunities. Things of that nature,” Something genuine sparked in the smile on Jimin’s face as he glanced at you, “Seokjin is very into the team aspect of our company. You’re welcome to any of them, assuming you have the time between other schedules.”

Jeongguk still hadn’t spoke, drilling a hole into the paper, so Jimin took the social cue to inquire, “Any other questions?”

You were about to wonder about the glaring pink and yellow overlap for the Monday of the upcoming work week when Jeongguk spoke, firm and assuring as he glanced up.

“I understand I’m here for modeling, but I’m extremely interested in photography. Independent and contracted, studio and otherwise. The times between schedules, would I be able to shadow some of your techs? Just for...the experience?”

Jimin barely faltered at the hopeful fidget of Jeongguk’s fingers in his lap, “I don’t believe we have the opening nor the time for that kind of request. I’ll check for you, but I wouldn’t count on anything.”

Translation, don’t ask questions, do what you’re here for.

“So,” Jimin was still chatting as he pushed himself off his chair, back arching into a stretch, “We’ll see you Monday morning for the cover shoot?”

You froze into standing, the hand you were about to offer to Jeongguk consulting the chair you perched in as a vice as your knuckles bled anemic into your bone, “Excuse me...the what?”

“The cover shoot,” Jimin blinked as though that should be common knowledge to two rookie interns, “Seokjin recruited you with this concept in mind. You’ll be on the front cover of the next issue of Bloom.”

More silence that Jimin was unaware to, moving around the side of his desk to make it to a row of towering file cabinets in the corner. He had the folder of Jeongguk’s headshots in hand, filtering it with careful thumbs even when you uttered a half octave softer, “Can we know what the concept is?”

Jimin smiled, the answer obvious as the mentioned cabinet rebounded audibly into a magnet placed on the inside of black metal.

“They’ll be happy to explain it to you in your pre-shoot meeting Monday.”

“What if we’re doing all this—” Jeongguk winced for the fifteenth time when you lowered the curling wand to another strand of black, “—and it’s a shoot for my feet.”

You resisted the urge to accidentally let the edge of the iron graze his cheek in the unwind from the soft wave of his tress. You shifted where you perched on the marble, letting your thighs fall further apart for his waist to lean against the edge of the counter. With a hand on his shoulder, you pushed until his eyes trained on you, slightly sheepish, slightly shameless, entirely endearing and you sighed at the last attribute.

“You think they’d put a whole ass foot on the cover of Bloom?” When he whined, you reached for another, untouched piece of hair, twisting and pressing it to the heat, “Nothing else. Just a foot. Maybe some scandalous ankle—”

Jeongguk pinched your thigh, “You’re mean.”

“This meanie can let you style your own hair and look like that on a magazine that everyone on campus is definitely going to see,” You ducked until he met your gaze again, serious despite the upward curve of your lips, “How mean am I now?”

“You’re not,” He grumbled, glancing off to the side, “You’re the best.”

“Thought so,” You let the curling iron teeter to its stand on the counter, bracing your hands on either side of you to inspect your work, “I...think we’re done.”

You resisted the urge to scream when Jeongguk ruffled searching fingers through the front, letting the styled strands fluff outward in the carefully done part you’d established with a complementary pen you’d found in a drawer in the kitchen. He arm fell limply to his side, latter tucked firmly in the unzipped pocket of his joggers and he looked at you from the winced corners of his eyes, “Does it look okay?”

You were gentle in pinched his chin between your thumb and index finger, turning his head so doe eyes were peering at your from the center of their endearing glory, but your lips fished and you hummed in Park Jimin fashion, “I mean, it’s still your face, but from what I have to work with—”

“That’s still my joke and it’s not funny anymore.”

You surprised Jeongguk and yourself when you used your grip on him to lean forward, feathering your lips to the center of his cheek, drawing a natural shade into the artificial blush you’d rubbed in light doses to his skin. “You look great, Guk,” To amend the tingle lingering on your lips, you added, “Only be, like, three-fourths as nervous as you were before.”

He disappeared from between your legs and was six steps up the spiral staircase to retrieve his bag when he managed to choke out a less than threatening, “I’ll leave your ass here alone.”

You hopped down from the counter, shuffling through the apartment to retrieve your key still stuck to its spiraling purple bracelet next to your phone that set on a charger attached to an extension cord (fatal flaw of the millions invested in the apartment: outlets placed in inept locations) when you heard two footsteps behind you, a descend on the staircase, and then a long pause.

And then, “...do you think I should change shoes just in case it is of my feet—”

You were lost on one end of a long conference table while eight experienced professionals chattered on the likes of composition and aesthetics and ambiance and the vision of the newest issue, a list of words that meant similar but different things in the digital world with the manipulation of graphics at the tips of your fingers and you were more entertained with the aesthetic of the swirl of auburn color bubbling upward in your coffee when you stirred it with the tiny black straw. You were seemingly forgotten among the bustle that ended the meeting, a cattle like usher toward the singular door when the room was barely filled anyway and you found yourself hopeless in a room three times the size of the previous one with equipment you didn’t understand, more terminology you couldn’t grasp, and an entire missing Jeongguk.

The woman from your check in was back, bringing you your makeup back with a disapproving tut, ushering you with the heel of her palm on the small of your back toward a tiny collection of tables in the corner of the studio, a shortened version of the one you’d been in the day before, and you found it all but occupied by a new set of strangers.

You nudged the roll of your bag into the only empty spot, turning in time with the soft hush that met the other individuals milling about your general vicinity and you squinted because oh god, what now?

Words like alluring, sensual, lithe could all be replaced with much simpler adjectives, one in particular that struck bluntly at the forefront of your conscious, one you wished to express to the various shoot executives mulling over a concept they could easily direct in a hands on fashion without needing a briefing. You’d thought that into the swirl of your coffee and you assumed the cloud of cream that had surfaced, breaking into various puzzle pieces outward toward the rim of the cup agreed with you.

You understood why the bolded letters of various synonyms taking up a bullet point list on two pages of an outline, a waste of space and trees, was needed because your crude, one bullet wasn’t enough to encompass the entirety of Jeongguk’s being as he made his way toward you.

All eyes were trained on the rookie subject of the shoot but he was focused on you, a soft excuse me to the woman standing in front of you as he shouldered around her to tower over you. It was Jeongguk, your Jeongguk, but you felt some fraction of what everyone else did with him that close looking like that.

Tight jeans ripped in strategic places hugging taut thighs, cuffs buttoned loosely on relaxed knuckles, a sheer black shirt coated in metallic specks tucked neatly at the cinch of his lithe waist and secured in an equal V to the dip of defined collarbones. His hair was like you’d left it but frayed from the heat and softening from the lack of product, parting more on one side than the other and flopping into his eyes that blinked curiously at you.

“Hey...hello—” Jeongguk snapped his fingers, waving his hand so you felt the brush of his palm on your nose, “—did you hear me?”

The neanderthal corner of your conscious had enough sensibility to not utter what you wanted, instead bypassing his inquiry to all but shout, “Where are your other clothes?”

“They’re...in the dressing room? With my other things?” Someone yelled something you didn’t quite catch but the slide of Jeongguk’s palm down your elbow suggested he did, “Look, they sent me to you for a last minute check. Do I fit whatever concept they were talking about?”

Your subtly was forgotten, buried by the singular word that continued to expand into your thoughts, likely dilating your pupils the same way and the culprit of the saliva that pooled back by your molars.

Graphic design didn’t mean you were above putting size seventy-two Comic Sans font onto a document to print and plaster everywhere but even Comic Sans wasn’t worthy of whatever the concept was Jeongguk embodied. Nonetheless, you let the muted scream in your throbbing head takeover.

“You look sexy, Guk.”

He flushed at his neck first, traveling around to dip into his chest but it didn’t crack at the clench of his jaw this time, something lingering in the flash of black in his irises and his throat jumped, fingers curling over your arm and you briefly forgot where you were until someone’s stature was intentionally bumping into Jeongguk’s side, breaking his grasp on you to shove him in the opposite direction.

“Shooting in five.” You felt like you were underwater, coherent enough only to register you can’t see lightening under the sea (the flash of a camera) and you were fairly certain you’d been pitched off the edge of Atlantis when you came to enough to realize the prior five was up and they’d created a makeshift “wall” (a piece of plywood coated in white plastic) for Jeongguk (the, very sexy, “model”) to lounge against with his hands shoved into his pockets.

Part of Jeongguk’s shirt had come untucked from his belt, fluttering at the apex of his thigh, and it made your fingers itch to fix it until words of encouragement from the photographers elicited him to lift the arm on that side, palm smoothing down the back of his head until he found comfort in threading long digits into wavy tendrils. The sensible part of your brain moved to fire the necessary neurons to be annoyed that he’d just touched his hair again, hair you’d practiced on all weekend, burning yourself four times and the sheets of the unoccupied bedroom of the apartment once.

But the feral cloud in your conscious won and you chose to focus on the sliver of his waist that appeared instead.

You continued to eye it as he approached you again, sensibility pouting when you didn’t acknowledge that his sweat had smeared some of his carefully applied eyeliner or the lackluster gloss left on his lips wrapped around the ribbed edge of a water bottle, by passing all of those things in favor of his neck as it jumped and gulped.

Jeongguk pulled off the water bottle with a labored breath and the only thing familiar in his stature was the slight slouch toward you, gentle fingers brushing past your wrist to grip the table behind you and lean into it.

“Good?” He breathed, heat off his aura suffocating you and you wondered is the bottom of the ocean hot? too.

“Y-yeah. Yeah! Talented. Brilliant. Incredible. Amazing. Show stopping—”

He laughed and that was sexy too, shrugging into another languid gulp of water, pointed in stretching his neck out and he held the open bottle toward you until you took it. “As good as that Vine, huh?” His teeth appeared into the teasing smile that whipped away from you as he sauntered for the array of computer monitors in the corner displaying his shots.

You fumed.

“That’s a Lady Gaga quote, dumbass.”

Your knees, crossed albeit, were digging into the side of Jimin’s thigh and for a table to be so small in a quaint corner of a bustling rooftop restaurant, it garnered well over the decibels needed to make other patrons glance your way when a round of applause waved through the group.

It was Jimin who had elicited the reaction with the piece of paper in his hand, firm and glossy and making that distinct flop noise when he’d untucked it from it’s folder pocket and maybe if you didn’t have to crane from your position next to him to see the image splayed out over the front, your knees wouldn’t be invading his space. He didn’t seem to care, wearing a charming smile that flashed over the top of your head to the man most affected by the various interest levels of stares gathered from around the general vicinity of the restaurant.

There was a chunk of steak still stabbed through the throngs of Jeongguk’s discarded fork, meticulously cut by his focus that so desperately tried to evade the situation at any given opportunity. You noticed the pink in it before the pink spreading outward on his cheeks, framing the grateful smile he gave as acknowledgement before bowing his head at the audible emissions of praise.

“Quite the cover photo,” Jimin was still speaking, on the tail end of his reveal speech. He pulled the photo away to glance at it again, “And for an amateur on their first job as well. Phenomenal, truly.”

You touched Jeongguk’s thigh and it was the strength he needed to utter his thanks, soft at first and then louder as he addressed the other occupants at the table, “Thank you. It...it means a lot—” He turned and you followed his gaze to the one individual at the table who you’d yet to hear speak, seated at the head of the table opposite Jeongguk, wearing a black waistcoat and an easy smile to petal shaped lips.

“—and thank you, Mr. Kim, for this incredible opportunity. I-I...we—” He glanced at you for permission to include you in his speech and you squeezed his thigh in encouragement, “—we wouldn’t be here without you.”

Seokjin bowed his head in a similar fashion to Jeongguk, dropped the cloth napkin scrunched in his palm to hold that hand up in solace, “You’re very welcome but please, call me Seokjin. Before you ask, my father wasn’t Mr. Kim, I just don’t want to be called that.”

Jeongguk didn’t know whether to laugh and he wasn’t the only one so Seokjin tried to amend further, “Formality is outdated. Am I right?”

Someone, a marketing tech for the specific cover shoot, murmured quietly to sate the CEO, “Correct, Seokjin.”

Other customers had gone back to their previous dinner table discussions, returning the restaurant to the dull roar of before, and your table was no exception to the seemingly mundaneness. Ice cubes against frosted glass, the click of cutlery into glass plating, an occupied silence filled with content chewing and thoughtful swallows.

Questions to proceed the cover shoot reveal.

“What exactly were you doing before this? I understand you’re still in university?”

Jeongguk didn’t have to lie on that question because Taehyung hadn’t lied on your resumes. Or your cheat sheets, depending on who was asking. You’d forced him to sit on the floor in the living room of the apartment and recite back any and everything contained on the email attachment Taehyung had begrudgingly sent you again, from the way your name and phone numbers were ordered on the header to the exact digits, a forward and back recitation of Taehyung’s phone number (a series you’d, unfortunately, never forget).

“Yes, I’m going to school for, uhm...chemistry,” He winced because that also wasn’t a lie. Unfortunately.

You kept quiet because they hadn’t asked you. On guard. On call, maybe. Eager to recite your major and list of minors like you were at a family barbecue with cousins who refused to talk to you for three years.

An impressed murmur rounded the table in a wave. “Chemistry...What will you do with that?”

Like clockwork. “Med school, possibly. Maybe teaching. Not sure yet.”

“And your modeling experience—” Now into the flashcards once stacked in the need to review pile, “—who did you say you were signed with?”

“Ah…” His knife hit in a resounding rebound through the slab of meat he was attempting to dice into another tiny cube, “Well I wasn’t really signed, I just—”

“You weren’t signed?”

You swallowed because it wasn’t Seokjin who’d ask the question but the smile on his lips had wilted into the furrow of his eyebrows, two elbows hitting the table as his fingers clasped in front of him.

“The company has changed names since then,” Jeongguk jammed the cube into his cheeks but chewing didn’t let him off the hook as ambient dinner noises paused in wait of his answer, “It’s been a while…”

“Your resume says you’ve had published billboards up until last year. Were you not signed then?”

“It’s been a while since I originally signed. I had that contract for five years time and the company changed possession three times in that period. Who knows what it’s called now, you know?”

Safe.

Your on call button beeping eagerly in the forefront of your conscious gradually flickered until it was off because your lie wouldn’t be as easy. You couldn’t produce a selfie or even a fake contact that would ring to rap superstar Kim Namjoon. Even Taehyung wasn’t that good.

“Your manager, agent, whatever you have—” It was Jimin who asked this time, curious, “—would we know him?”

“Kim Taehyung,” Jeongguk offered up the name with little hesitation and you almost choked on a clump of parmesan tickling at your throat. The cheese convinced you there were a million Kim Taehyung’s in the world, the name not your eccentric, software engineer group project partner who’d once recited the HTML of the university’s financial aid office web page to you by memory and you managed to swallow down a gulp of your ice water, cube included, with minimal tears pooling due to your choke. “He’s our manager.”

The introduction of our caused eyes to fall upon you and blinked through the bleary tears remaining in makeup coated ducts. Some of the product smeared into your eyes then, worsening the tears of pain, but no one addressed you still. You just nodded to ensure they didn’t.

The end of the meal meant goodbyes and goodbyes meant brief instances of small talk with each individual at the table. For you, they were limited to thank you for the meal. For Jeongguk, it was a sentence or two more, ones you were in earshot of.

Seokjin came last, a soft hug wrapped around your shoulders that was awkward in the way that he patted at your arm. It was a firmer hand he reached for Jeongguk a firm shake in the middle of two broad statures as he stared directly through the haphazard fringe stringing into Jeongguk’s lashes.

“Congratulations,” Another firm shake that traveled up into a pat on Jeongguk’s shoulder, “I look forward to seeing more of your work.”

You trailed Jeongguk’s pointed trek through the front door of the apartment building, taking three strides to his normal one and you tried to slow him with a tempting, “Should we go get ice cream? We should go get ice cream.”

He was slowest when in front of the elevator, jamming his middle finger into the up button. “Why should we go get ice cream?”

“To celebrate?” Your toe caught on the small gap between the ground floor and the elevator, “They seemed to really enjoy it—”

“I’d rather just go to bed,” It was harsh in delivery but his eyes softened and his chin tilted down toward you, “...if that’s okay. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” You affirmed and as an afterthought you teased, “Beauty sleep for the superstar.”

His smile was a ghost on the dimples in his cheeks, eyes downcast so his eyelashes shadowed on his cheekbones and his head dipped away from you to stride down the hall, staying that way as he fiddled with the blue spiral on his wrist and pushed into the apartment.

Jeongguk was with you in peeling off your shoes onto a makeshift welcome mat, a plastic takeout bag from the Thai food you’d gotten the second night, before affirming again, less harsh and almost tentative, not to ask but that you’d say no and he wouldn’t get to complete his request.

“...it’s okay if I go to bed? If I leave you alone down here?”

“Yeah,” You reached to touch his wrist, feathering your fingers over his knuckles, “Maybe I’ll figure out the TV so you don’t have to do it for me every time.”

He tried to smile. It didn’t fool but you let him go anyway, watching mute as he ascended the stairs, sluggish and slow like his fingers fiddling at the buttons of his creased button up.

“Jeongguk—” He looked at you now, fingers braced on the railing, shoulders slumped as he turned, “—take your makeup off.”

“Thank you, baby,” A soft murmur that echoed in the silence of the house, “Good night…”

You tried the television twice and gave up on the third time’s the charm, trekking the route Jeongguk had made up the stairs but turning the opposite direction for your room. You saved the shower for the morning, pocketing your jewelry in an empty pouch of your suitcase, swiping a baggy t-shirt off the floor that smelled like your roommate, washed your face in the facet you’d mastered in three weeks time, tucked yourself underneath cool sheets, raising your phone to your face where it was attached to a looping extension cord plugged into yet another inopportune outlet on the far side of the bed.

A makeup tutorial that was less of a tutorial and more of a demonstration of the guru’s skill set elicited the sleep in your eyes and you’d nearly dozed off when another light peeked from your peripheral, one that startled you to lock your phone and squint.

It was Jeongguk, body language like you’d left him but pajamas on in place of his dress clothes with a blanket sanctioned over one shoulder and dragging against the ground like his sluggish footsteps. A pillow was clutched in his latter arm, squished against his chest with his chin resting on the plush surface, forming a natural pout on the purse of his lips and the wrinkle of his nose.

“Hey,” You didn’t question, the initial startle of your heart morphing into something fond and heavy in your ears that caused you to spread your arms, “Come on.”

Mindless shuffling was domestically mundane, tugging apart the made side of the bed, replacing the pillows with his, tucking the duvet at his waist and his blanket over his shoulders, shifting further into the warmth to let him drape a hand to your hip, contact, while you propped yourself up on the curve of your arm.

“You okay?” You thumbed soft strands of his fringe between your thumb and index finger and when he didn’t jerk away, you went to stroking the tresses between the spaces in your digits. It was wet, shower fresh, not dry enough to curl yet.

Jeongguk grumbled, voice muffled and raspy into his pillow that he mushed his cheek further into, “Just couldn’t sleep, is all. Your bed is comfier.”

You ignored the way his fingers fist further into your shirt at your hip. Carefully, you nodded, “You sure that’s all?”

He hummed again, a mixture of hesitation affirmation and the reaction to your nails scraping into his scalp. You repeated the motion just to hear him mewl and feel him relax, melted shoulders shifted until he was close enough to wrap an arm around the small of your back.

“The shoot turned out really well, huh?” Jeongguk snorted, the breath fanning against your neck and you frowned, “I mean, it’s really cool. That you’re going to be on the cover. Looking like that—”

“I guess.”

You went to scrunching his hair at the back of his head between your palm, “The other things we’ve been working on since...they’ll turn out great too. Who knows, maybe you can erase the foot modeling for something legitimate and credible.”

Jeongguk’s hair ruffled in your grasp when he adjusted his cheek on the pillow, pulling away from your chest to be eye level.

“You know something?”

You let your hand flop out of his hair to the pillow, “What?”

“I haven’t taken a single picture since we’ve been here. I haven’t even thought about touching my camera.”

“I hate it,” He continued, blunt with his nose crinkled at the bridge, “I miss it…”

“We have a day off in a few days. Maybe we could go exploring with it—”

“—and I can’t believe I’m saying this but I miss school. I miss being at university,” Jeongguk blinked, a prolonged blink that scrunched at more parts of his face, “Okay, I don’t miss that. I...I don’t know what I miss. It’s...something. Mostly photography probably but I think it’s just…”

“...I think it’s just knowing. I miss knowing. As in having at least a sense of what I’m doing. Where I’m going. What I want to do.”

Your features softened into something grim, nodding when he glanced at you. His laugh was bitter as he held your eye contact, “In short, I hate this. I, frankly, hate that you convinced me to do this. I...I can’t wait to go home.”

“I’m sorry, Guk, I didn’t—”

“It’s not your fault,” He breathed in, holding it, eyes closing, “Please don’t apologize. It’s been like this for a while. Me not...knowing.”

“I thought you were right. Money can fix a lot of things, like paying off my loans and tuition. But paying my tuition means I’m stuck in an unspoken contract of sorts with a major I hate that’ll propel me toward a career I’m unsure of but already hate, anyway.”

“The only thing I’m sure of is my camera,” Jeongguk shrugged, eyes open and wide and starred in natural celestials and a shimmer of tears, “and I don’t even want to touch that anymore.”

“I mean I do, but I don’t...you know?” His voice broke then, a glisten falling to his cheek now as a tear finally lipped over and you cooed, rushing forward to intercept him back into your embrace.

“What’ll make it better?” You held him with two arms around his neck, cheek pressed into the damp strands at the crown of his head.

“Don’t know. Leaving probably. But...I’m not going to do that. It’d make me feel worse. Quitting, you know.”

“What can I do? Anything? I already made you come here…”

Jeongguk pulled away from the damp spot he’d rounded on the collar of your shirt and the base of your throat, cheeks blotchy and tearful and he scolded, “I told you not to worry about it. I’m the hot mess.”

“Yeah, but you’re my best friend,” You thumbed at his cheek, collecting the drying tears, “My hot mess.”

You didn’t expect Jeongguk’s strawberry tulip bud lips to taste like salt the first time you kissed but you cleared the culprit of the taste with your thumbs while he pressed desperate affections into the seam of your mouth, holding you tight to him at the waist. You let him because you wanted it too but took his lull for a breath to cup his face, still working at clearing the fresh wave of tears on his cheeks while you hushed, “Not now.”

“M’sorry,” He apologized this time, a messy blubber through your tender touch, “I didn’t—I didn’t want to do it like this.”

“If I don’t get to apologize, neither do you,” You kissed his nose in lieu of his lips, “You can kiss me all the time once you figure you out.”

Jeongguk sniffled, “Be careful. That’s incentive.”

“Maybe that’s why I said it,” You kissed his eyelid in tandem with another swipe underneath it and you mirrored the action on the opposite side, “And you never answered me. What can I do?”

He smiled when he noisily advertised the snot in his nostrils this time, squeezing your hips, “Just be you. You’re the last thing I photographed.”

“You’ll always be the thing I photograph.”

You were halfway through waving a strand of his hair down the battery powered wand in your hand, an online purchase with your second intern check. It was a seasoned movement now, easier with his hair that had grown without cut since you’d been in the city. It was an advertisement shoot, a casual look that would be perched above bar codes and brand affiliates on the back page of the magazine.

“Crouch for me,” You paired it with a light smack to his shoulder, catching attention where it had wandered to a loose strand on the baggy t-shirt draped over his stature. Jeongguk was purposeful in being awkward, bending at the waist and the knees and he dramatically sat a hand on his thigh, cocking a hip out and sticking his tongue out at you.

“Better?”

“I can’t stand you—”

“Is it their break?”

You managed to maneuver your surprise into the jerk of the curling wand away so it didn’t burn Jeongguk, both of you glancing toward the new presence in the room. It was a frantic looking intern from the front desk, one that came and went on an odd schedule you couldn’t quite pinpoint but he looked two seconds away from tearing his hair out at the roots anyway. When the photographer nor the set manager didn’t respond, he took it as an affirmation, forward in grabbing Jeongguk’s arm to tug and motioning you with his free appendage.

“I guess it is now,” You exchanged a glance with Jeongguk when the intern scoffed, not letting go of the larger man before him until you were halfway down the hallway and an abrupt turn to another later.

“You’re needed with one of the head executives.”

The cover shoot magazine was set to go in print within the next few days and urgent around the studio meant they went about airbrushing the static in Jeongguk’s curled hair a different way and were seeking approval of the talent. You assumed Jimin was about to tutt in disapproval when you couldn’t see the smudge his stocky finger was gesturing to on the life sized image plastered across the center of his desk.

But you turned past the sign indicating his office and you almost parted your mouth to gently correct the frazzled twenty-something, help him out for something that was bound to be corrected anyway, but he paused in front of an office, that office, one with a name plate bigger than the rest and the only one displaying the company logo in tandem.

“Seokjin requested to see you personally,” The intern knocked but didn’t look inside, just propped the door open and gestured, “In you go.”

An excuse was on the tip of your tongue and you ran into Jeongguk on the way to express it but the intern had already coaxed at Jeongguk’s larger stature and you both were shoved into a shut room before your brain could even process that I have to use the bathroom on the first floor because that’s the only soap I’m not allergic to wasn’t a viable excuse.

“Hello,” The sheer size of Seokjin’s size seemed to swallow his broad shoulders even in the tight hug of a navy suit jacket to the definition of his shape but the enormity contrasted to the warmth in his voice, smile, and eyes as all gestured for the open chairs turned inward toward his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

He shuffled at two specific sets of papers as you tripped over Jeongguk’s ankles for the same chair, catching and narrowly avoiding a spill of an empty piece of furniture. You settled as the horror set in of what sets of papers Seokjin held, stapled leaves taken from the same blue file folders you’d been greeted with on day one.

You were useless in noticing you’d left your ID badge in the studio, too.

“I ran your references, out of curiosity…” Seokjin bent the papers in hand at the thumb, “Tell me about Kim Taehyung.”

“That’s our manager,” A robotic answer spoke in monotone, Jeongguk’s blank gaze on the turtle paperweight perched on the edge of Seokjin’s desk suggesting the same type of mechanical movement.

“Your manager is a member of two seperate government watch lists for hacking low level search engines?”

Your eyes bulged and you forgot your role, “He is?”

“I don’t know,” Seokjin smiled gently, “but he probably should be if he isn’t. He’s not very subtle about it. Between him and the conspiracy theorist…”

“Yoongi,” You breathed, “Yeah...probably.”

“You—” He shuffled deeper into his array of papers, plucking one specific piece out to slide across the desk at Jeongguk. You recognized it as a screenshot of his online portfolio, the chosen album one of fresh summer wildflowers (weeds, you’d informed him behind the scenes) from the summer prior, “—you’re very talented.”

“And you…” This time a screenshot of your commissions profile, various examples of your work scattering the black and white screen cap, “You have an eye for design. My layout team could learn a thing or two from you.”

“I checked with your university and don’t worry, not your grades. I don’t care about those numbers frankly…” He tapped on something on the top paper in his pile, “Your majors. You didn’t lie about those. Graphic design, that suits your passions, from what I can tell at least.”

You nodded.

“But chemistry?” Seokjin blinked, “I can’t imagine that fulfills you in the slightest. You said you plan to be a doctor?”

“I don’t know,” Jeongguk answered, quick and honest and for once he didn’t slump into the answer. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

“Can I let you in on some cheesy but true advice?”

More nodding, this time from both.

“It’s not worth it if it doesn’t fulfill you. Certainly not something so far in left field from what you clearly love to do. I said I didn’t care about grades but…” Seokjin cocked his head, a knowing smile on his lips, “Those grades don’t match someone who's passionate about their field.”

“I’m going to have to pull the cover shoot, for obvious reasons. I’ll have to send you home as well, with the rest of your internship pay, of course.”

You rushed to deny that in the same sentence that Jeongguk did, apologetic and hot at the neck when Seokjin held up a hand.

“You get the pay on one condition. You go home and do something with it. Something something, not just continue on with that boring chemistry degree.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I told you to call me Seokjin but I’m going to change that, too—” Seokjin stood, rounding his desk for a handshake that Jeongguk rushed to straighten and intercept, “—call me Jin when you book your first photography gig, alright? Even if it’s just your conspiracy theorist friend and his fried chicken looking poodle.”

Jeongguk laughed, loud and unabashed and you were the first person he directed his joy at, only causing your elation to grow tenfold in your heart.

“You too, after you design the new McDonald’s logo or something. I’m getting pretty tired of those golden arches…”

You thumbed at the tassel dangling off the graduation cap flopped top down on the edge of Jeongguk’s mattress. It fit Jeongguk’s head better than yours, so you brought it over for him to borrow so that the fight in the bookstore was one less stress his graduation checklist had to suffer from.

“Taunting me with that?” Jeongguk’s neck hinged over the side of the bed, blinking backward at you.

You glared, breaking away from the yellow fringe to crouch in front of his face, squishing his cheeks together to plant a chaste kiss on the exaggerated pout of his lips. One of many you’d planted on him after he’d met with his advisor to change his track from chemistry to digital imaging, adding an extra summer semester onto his graduation while he watched you take your leatherbound diploma in only muted jealousy from beyond the lens of his obnoxious camera obscuring the view of a dad in a Hawaiin shirt and sandals.

Your headshot, the original one you’d taken messily after burning your arm and testing eyeliner thickness over the same mark, was framed in his room but not hung, leaning against the wall where he’d nailed a hanger but couldn’t get the cheap balsa wood to center. You pointed to it, “Taunting me with that?”

“No,” He reached for you, grabby hands until you stepped into his embrace, allowing him to pull you down onto his bed, “I think you look cute.”

“I think you’re a sap.”

“I think I’m allowed to be considering you’re moving next week.”

“You’re renting a space in my bed in eight weeks,” You sat up to poke his nose, “We both lose.”

Jeongguk pouted, “Hey.”

You just grinned, “Hey, what?”

“That was the best part of that internship,” He marveled, blissful as his eyes shut, “Living together.”

“Oh yeah? Not the whole introspective finding myself thing?”

“Nope—” The fullness of his teeth shined even as his eyelashes stayed glued, “—the whole getting to cuddle the secret love of my life thing.”

“It wasn’t that secret.”

“It was.”

“Hmm, okay,” You folded your arms at your chest to prop yourself up on his stomach, “Speaking of secrets. Have you checked your phone?”

“Did Yoongi add us to another group chat?”

You snorted, “Check your phone.”

You huffed when Jeongguk used the top of your head to hold his phone, thumb flexing against your forehead as it scrolled, and you giggled when all his motions, breathing included, gradually stalled.

“Did Taehyung figure out how to hack email addresses too?” When you didn’t respond, Jeongguk peered at you underneath his thumb, “Ha-ha, very funny.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I got another email from Jin.”

“Oh, that,” You grinned, “Yeah, I do know about that.”

He grumbled, thumb moving into action again as he clicked around, opening the email and enlarging the font to read.

“Jeongguk. I’m happy to hear you’re graduating soon and in something you seem to enjoy! It just so happens that we have an opening here in our photography department and we’re seeking someone with your exact credentials. I’ve reviewed your updated profile and can’t say I’m anything less that thoroughly impressed. If you can provide me with an updated, and legitimate, resume, the spot will be yours upon graduation.”

“Thanks for not spending my money on booze,” Jeongguk added with a laugh, “Seokjin (Or Jin. Just not sir. Or Mr. Kim).”

“Really?” You rewarded his face with a kiss to his chin, moving the affections up his cheek as he marveled, “They really want to hire me?”

“They really want to hire you. For real, this time.”

“But...but wait—” He stopped you with the heel of his palm into the center of your forehead and you huffed, “We...we just got things figured out. And I’m going to have to move closer to the company…”

You did your best to plaster indignation onto your features, “You really think you’re going to get away with leaving your stylist here?”

Jeongguk’s eyes bulged, hopeful but not following, “...what?”

“Grab my phone for me.”

He happily obliged in dipping his hand into the back pocket of your jeans, handing you the device with a smile but deeply concerned, singular, eyebrow. You huffed, fumbling at the screen of your phone until you pulled up your own email, one you’d received two weeks ago and you enlarged the font to hand to Jeongguk.

He frowned through his intense scanning before whining, “Is this why you wouldn’t tell me anything about your job offer?”

“Yes.”

“...did he hire you to run the design department?”

“Not yet but I am working there.”

“...so we’re not getting that apartment back home?”

“Nope.”

“...are we still moving in together?”

“Absolutely.”

An extra silence and you could feel the gears churning behind his skull in the rapid thrum of his heart at your palm, “...back to the previous apartment?”

“I don’t think that’s available anymore but no. I asked for something a bit more our taste.”

“So we can buy real welcome mats this time?” Jeongguk propped himself up on his elbows, curling his stature so you were drawn closer to his face and he happily rubbed his nose to yours.

“You didn’t like our bachelor pad chic decor?”

He ignored you, “And can we build IKEA tables together? Oh, what about name our apartment, you know, like people name their cars—”

#bts reactions #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fluff #bts x reader #jungkook imagines #jungkook imagine #jungkook x reader #jungkook scenario #jungkook fluff #fic: dare to begin #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT'S DONE!!

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