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polonium-snap · 3 years ago

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The Beauty & the Deku chp.3

Summary: Izuku and Katsuki somehow get trapped in a book of fairy tales, to get out of it they decide to play their part in the stories. How far are they willing to go to fulfill the romantic plotlines? Will Katsuki be able to play the role of a fairy tale princess?

ao3

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The ceiling was pinkish brown and wooden, comfortable heat embraced the slowly waking up body of a gorgeous blonde-haired man. Birds tweeted loudly outside his window, as they usually did these days, man fuck those birds, he thought, not only were they disrupting his sleep but they were also a sign he was still trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

“Fine, fine, I’ll get up.” Katsuki sat up on the bed. “You can stop yapping.” His only comfort was knowing at least the damn animals weren’t talking.

As the previous times, he woke up in an unfamiliar room, though this time it seemed more lively, and even if it was still quite far from his own room back at home, it was quieter. Katsuki sighed and stood up, leaving the warmth of his bed to face what was his reality as for now, he changed into some better clothes, noticing with relief that they were comfortable enough.

He went down the stairs where he found the idiots he calls friends making a ruckus and giggling for some reason.

“Let’s make it red.” Kirishima’s voice could be heard.

“No, no, pink.” Mina said authoritatively.

“Isn’t that the same color?” Now that was dunce face.

Katsuki could only thank the sky that they weren’t animals this time. “What are you idiots doing?” The blonde makes his presence known.

They jump to the table, trying to obstruct his view of whatever they were hiding behind and stuttering in a less than conspicuous way.

“We want you to pick some berries.” Kirishima said, handing him a basket.

“Yes, exactly!” Kaminari said, further cementing the fact they are hiding something from Bakugou.

The logic of Katsuki’s new approach to finding a way out of this hellhole would say he refuses to do anything they ask of him, but he thinks he knows what story they are in now, he knew it as soon as Bakugou saw three of his friends in ridiculous color-coded outfits that brought more childhood memories, he was in Sleeping Beauty. He had to go to the forest to supposedly look for berries so he would find his stupid childhood friend, Deku, who for some reason was always prince charming in these stories, while Katsuki was stuck in uncomfortable dresses.

“Yeah, whatever, I’ll go.” He rolled his eyes because showing disdain was the only thing that was not censored in this shitty world. He takes the basket and pretends he doesn’t know the three idiots are planning for a birthday party or something like that.

Katsuki would never admit it, but he had missed his friends, and seeing them in animal form did not count as actually interacting with them, seeing them in their usual antics was a breath of fresh air the blonde needed.

He makes his way out of the house and walks straight to the forest, fuming, because he is still mad at Deku and since they are done with the follow-the-story bullshit he can kick the green-haired menace as much as he wants. Katsuki ignores the animals that follow him around, only lightly greeting them, as he has accepted their permanent existence next to him.

“DEKUUUUU!!!” Katsuki bellows as hard as his vocal cords allow. “Where are you? You useless bastard!!!” He screams some more.

After some minutes of yelling, the little fucked decides to answer. “Kacchan?” Izuku says, appearing seemingly from nowhere with a white horse.

“Deku.” Bakugou grins maniacally. “Prepare to die, nerd.” He impulsed himself toward Izuku, whose eyes widened in panic and surprise.

“Wait, wait! Kacchan!” Izuku flailed his hands around, but the blond did not stop, tackling him to the ground. “Uff!” Deku said as they hit the ground and felt the weight of his friend crash into him.

“I’m still incredibly angry at the stunt you pulled off in the last story.” Katsuki explained. “You literally had ONE job, while I slaved around cleaning that crappy house, and you managed to mess it up!” He growled. “So don’t complain too much while I kill you.” The angry straddled Izuku and raised his hand.

“No, wait!” Izuku cried. “I-IthinkIknowhowtogetoutofhere!” He said quickly, making the other stop on his tracks.

He wasn’t actually going to punch Deku, not that the little twerp needed to know that. “What did you say?” Bakugou raised an eyebrow and took his fist away from the other teen’s face.

“I think I know how to get out of here.” Izuku stated.

“Do tell.” Kasuki said, still sitting down on Deku’s lap, which didn’t escape the notice of the green-eyed man, who blushed profusely.

“Let’s stand up first, Kacchan.” Izuku said, trying very hard not to stare at the cleavage that was so close to his face, enhanced by the loose clothing the blonde wore.

Katsuki blustered and stood up, wordlessly offering a hand to Izuku, which he took just as silently since he knew better than to point them out.

They started to walk through the forest. “Why didn’t you do what you were supposed to in the last story?” The taller man asked. “Did you hate kissing me that much?” Katsuki snorted, but he was unsure why an affirmative answer would hurt him so much.

“I-I didn’t- I d-d-don’t! I j-j-just!” Izuku stuttered, unable to explain himself. How was he supposed to tell his longtime crush that one of the reasons he didn’t want to kiss him was that he liked it too much and it hurt knowing it meant nothing? “I just couldn’t do it while you were unconscious!” It wasn’t a lie. “I felt disgusting.” Also, not a lie, kissing Kacchan while he was asleep felt like Izuku was forcing himself on someone that clearly didn’t like him that way.

“You are so stupid.” Katsuki said, somewhat relieved, Deku had said he didn’t hate it. “But it’s whatever, Deku.”

“Right.”

They continued walking until they reached a clearing, where Katsuki sat down on a nearby rock and rested his arms on a bigger one near it, smirking at Izuku. “So you said you know how to get out of here?” He said, thinking the other had just said that to get the other to abstain from hitting him. “It better not be your way of trying to convince me to go along with the story again.”

“I-it’s not.” Izuku said, blushing at how the other man looked and his new idea of a way out of this nightmare. “I was just thinking…”

“Dangerous.” Katsuki interrupted, continuing with his teasing. “Each time you do that we end up in an even more forked up situation than with what we started.” He never stopped smirking.

“Shut up!” Izuku continued to blush. “If you don’t want to hear my idea, that’s fine.” He turned away from his friend's hot smile.

Katsuki laughed. “Sorry nerd, it’s just that your last idea didn’t exactly work.” He said. “Besides, you said that if it didn’t work you would let me do my idea next, that’s just doing the opposite from what the story said.”

Izuku huffed. “How would that even work?” He crossed his arms.

The blonde rolled his eyes. “What is your new idea anyway?”

The shorter teen looked away, his cheeks slightly burning, originally he wasn’t actually going to say what he had been thinking about, he had said it on impulse, even though he knew Kacchan wouldn’t actually hit him.

“Well?” Katsuki insisted. “Aren’t you going to enlighten me with your amazing ideas?” He continued sarcastically.

“I-it’s just…” Izuku breathed, debating telling the other what he was thinking. “Y-you know how the last two stories only ended because we k-k-kissed?”

Bakugou’s eyes widened, immediately catching on to what Deku was trying to say, the worst was it did make sense, the last two stories had ended when they kissed, well. When Katsuki had kissed Izuku since the other hadn’t had the chance either of the times to kiss back.

“M-m-m-maybe i-if we did it again, we could move onto the next story?” Izuku finished explaining.

Katsuki fought a blush. “S-say we do t-t-that, what do we do once we get to the next story?” He asked

“I g-gu-guess we could continue to k-k-k-kiss until there are no more fairy tales?” Izuku said, though he completely expected the idea to be rejected.

“It could...work.” Katsuki admitted with an uncharacteristically quiet, pink dusting his cheeks, which he hid by turning away from Izuku.

There was a deafening silence, so much so he could feel the sparks of tension between them, pushing and pulling simultaneously. Red eyes lock on green, triggering even more the thick air between them as the color of their eyes shone even brighter with indescribable emotions.

“...Good, cool, cool, cool, cool.” Izuku muttered, unsure of what to do next, does he get closer to the other teen, or should he wait for the blond to initiate. “Should we...try it now?”

“Yeal,” Katsuki said breathlessly. “I mean, the faster we do this the sooner we’ll know if it works, right?” He tentatively stepped forward, not one to be a coward. “Or did you lie and you actually hate kissing me?” He teased as he was unsure of what to do with himself.

“No!” Deku replied too fast, blushing instantly. “I mean, no, it wasn’t bad, I guess.” He tried to be nonchalant. “I was just making sure you were ready.” He followed the knee-jerking response he had to Kacchan of accepting every challenge the blond implied.

Slowly they got closer.

Unlike last time, they weren’t rushed, didn’t feel the frustration to be done with the story as they had previously, this time they were obligated to look into each other and watch as luscious plump lips closed the heated distance between them.

Izuku couldn’t breathe, mesmerized by the sight in front of him and the warm breath that heated further his cheeks and tickled his nose.

Their lips met softly, making a complete contrast to their previous kisses, Katsuki lightly touched Izuku’s cheek with his hand, and Deku couldn’t help the need to place his hands on the blond’s hips. The kiss seemed to short, only serving to make Izuku crave more.

“...So...it didn’t work.” Katsuki said, not yet removing his hand.

“Y-Yeah.” Izuku mumbled back, also not taking his hands away.

Katsuki seemed to react first, slightly jumping away from Deku. “I-I think I need to go back to the three idiots cabin.”

Izuku jumps away too, as soon as his brain is able to process what had happened to a passable degree. “Oh, yeah! Of course! See you later, K-Kacchan!”

The blond turns away and starts walking away before stopping suddenly. “By the way, you can kiss me whenever.”

Izuku’s mouth snapped shut, the redness from his cheeks that just barely had seemed to calm down returned in full force.

“I-I mean! If it’s to get out of the story.” Bakugou amends, uncharacteristically embarrassed.

Deku almost is unable to contain the disappointment that spreads through him. “Of course…”

Katsuki berated himself all the way back to the house, what even was that back there with Deku? Why was he, Lord Explosion Murder, who is never embarrassed stuttering and tripping over his words? Not to mention the kiss, he definitely enjoyed it more than he should, prolonged it more than he should have.

Who would have known Deku was such a good kisser? It had to be that, right? That was the only possible reason he liked the kiss so much.

He needed to get out of his head, and thankfully taking care of his extras was exactly what could do so.

“There he is!” Said Kaminari, glad to see him, as Kirishima and Ashido turned to look at him too.

“Happy Birthday, bro!” Kirishima said, shoving a cake onto his face, while Mina presented him with a beautifully crafted outfit; a blue dress-inspired shirt with a wide cleavage with same-colored pants and a darker shade cape.

Bakugou smiled despite himself, it wasn’t anywhere near his birthday, though the praise of his (thankfully human-looking) friends was certainly but secretly appreciated. “How did you idiots even manage to make this cake and not set the house on fire?”

“Uhhhh…about that.” Denki looked at his friends less than subtly, at which they returned the unease with equally inconspicuous looks. “We have something very important to tell you.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kirishima confirmed.

“You should sit for this honey,” Mina said, suddenly serious.

The blond teen rolled his eyes, honestly, he should have started to do whatever the fuck he wanted long ago, but he strangely decided to humor his friends, NOT because he liked them and missed them, not at all, Katsuki was just in a generous mood.

“We,” Kirishima started and pointed to himself and the other two extras. “Are fairies, we were tasked by the king to take care of you until you turned 16, due to a sleeping curse that is to end today.”

Katsuki acted shocked just because he could. “Oh, word?”

“Now you need to get ready sweetie, you are going to marry a prince and we have to prepare.” Mina said, grabbing the newly made outfit with the intention of dressing Bakugou.

“Yes, yes, prince Izuku this, prince Izuku that.” Katsuki rolled his eyes at the thought of the nerd.

The three fairies shared a confused look. “Who is Izuku?” Kaminari asked.

“We were talking about Prince Philip.” Said Kirishima.

“WHat?” Katsuki yelled. “Who on Earth is that? I’m not marrying some random extra!” He protested.

“Why not?” Mina asked.

“There’s already someone I…” Katsuki paused, realizing what he was just about to say. “I would rather marry someone I know rather than some dude I just met…”

“You met someone?” Kirishima asked, surprised.

“NO, yes, maybe.” Katsuki stuttered. “In the forest, there was this guy, a total dumb nerd, but I guess he is torelable enough, kind of funny, and stubborn, anyways, he is definitely better than some Prince Philip.”

Ashido looks at him with something like sorrow. “Sorry hun, you’ve been betrothed to him since you were born, you have to marry him or there will literally be a war”

While Katsuki was well aware he was trying to purposefully change the story, he did not want to deal with a war at the moment. It never occurred to him that the prince might not be Izuku, it never seemed like a possibility, and he couldn’t quite understand why it was so upsetting.

He wondered who the prince would end up being.

۵⚜-The Beauty and the Deku-⚜۵

Izuku went back to the castle he had woken up in, finding out All Might was once again his father for the tale, which he was in part very happy about, but at the same time sad he didn’t exactly count on the time to enjoy.

“Al- Dad!” Deku said once he saw the oddly dressed Toshinori.

“Oh, my boy!” All Might said. “Where have you been all morning? We have so much to prepare for your wedding to the prince.”

“I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m just...uhm...exited?” Izuku said. “I mean, at first I wasn’t sure, but now I’m glad I’m marrying him.”

“My boy Izuku,” All Might smiled. “I’m so glad you have come around, I knew prince Aurelio would be a good match for you.”

“Wait, who?!” Izuku’s eyes widened.

“Prince Aurelio, the one you have been betrothed to since you were children.” All Might raised an eyebrow.

“No no no, I’m going to marry prince Katsuki!” the young man said, unnerved by the newfound information.

Toshinori paused for a moment. “There is no prince on this side of the world named Katsuki.” He said slowly, looking at increasingly more nerve-wracked Izuku with worry.

That’s right, Kacchan and him being both the main leads in every story was never a hard-cold fact. That thought didn’t help Izuku at all, they had just started to figure things out when again there were new issues to deal with?! He had to marry some random prince he didn’t know, and for what? Kacchan wasn’t even following the story currently, which right about now sounded very appealing to Izuku who while was more than ok kissing his childhood friend definitely did not feel the same way about some prince who was probably way older than he was.

He needed to speak with Kacchan.

“Look, you don’t have to marry prince Aurelio if you have someone you actually love.” All Might assured, patting the back of his panicked son in a loving manner. “I’ll just have to talk to the king and everything will be alright.”

Izuku bit his lip, he had been an advocate for following the story so far, but now he had his doubts. “I-I already have someone I want to marry, and it’s not prince Aurelio.”

“Alright, my boy.” All Might smiled, but then he sighed. “Your mother won’t be happy, you know? She is good friends with the queen.”

“My mom?” Izuku muttered, missing her dearly. “You mean my mom Inko?” He said making sure he was talking about her and not some woman who was supposed to be his mother in the story.

“Who else?” All might said, besotted with the mention of the green-haired woman.

Huh. Izuku thought this was the second time All Might and Inko were his parents and apparently married, happily. He was aware this world took real elements from his reality, which made him wonder if this relationship between his mom and his mentor held some truth to it.

“Who is this Katsuki you want to marry anyway?” Toshinori asked, curious as to who had captured his son’s heart.

“Oh, about that.” Izuku remembered his intention to go look for Kacchan in order to talk about the current situation. “I have to go find him, I mean, I have to introduce you to him.”

All Might laughed and side hugged Izuku in a way that mitigated some of the unease the green-haired teen had been feeling for a while. Izuku found himself very happy to see All Might so carefree, apparently devoid of any injury and restored to his old self. “All right, you go do that, I’ll talk the king out of a war, although now that I think about it, it might be the queen who I will have to talk to.”

“See you later All M- dad!” Izuku said, the taller man had looked hurt when Izuku apparently called him by the nickname All Might had gained in a war, instead of calling him dad, so Izuku had caved and called the man so only because he knew that it wasn’t the real Toshinori.

Deku mounted his horse and started to go on his way to the cabin Katsuki had mention waking up, they needed to talk.

۵⚜-The Beauty and the Deku-⚜۵

The castle was bigger than the one Katsuki had seen in Cinderella and Snow White, the atmosphere also looked brighter. As soon as he figured he was in Sleeping Beauty Katsuki had been determined to just not fall asleep, after biting the apple Shigaraki had given him in the last story he had had weird dreams he remembered nothing about. Besides, he had always wondered why Aurora went and got herself prickled with the fucking spinning wheel.

Anyway, that was not going to him, he strengthened his resolve as he entered the castle, rolling his eyes as he was told that his parents in this story wanted to see him just after his wedding to, ugh, Prince Philip.

“So they don’t see me for 16 years and the first time they want to marry me off to some weirdo, that’s nice.” He said sarcastically.

“People say he is very handsome, you know.” Kaminari said, now in what Katsuki supposed was his fairy outfit.

“Who cares if the sun shines out of his ass.” Cool, ass itself was not a swear word, praise the gods. “I don’t want to marry him, and I’ll be such a jerk he won’t either.”

“Wow, you really must be in love with the guy you met in the forest.” Mina commented in awe, in a pretty pink outfit.

Katsuki spluttered, turning red. “I DO NOT LIKE DEKU!!” He screeched. “H-he is a lame nerd, we could never be together.” He turned to look outside the window. He and Izuku were friends, now that Katsuki had gotten his head out of his ass and stopped having his superiority complex triggered by his childhood friend, but years of miscommunication and misguided aggression could be easily ignored.

Ashido, Kirishima, and Kaminari guided him to his room and fixed him up in a blue outfit they had made for him, although Mina and Eijiro still argued over the color.

“We’ll be right back!” Kirishima said as he and the other two went out to do who knows what.

Katsuki sighed and looked at his reflection, he didn’t know why on earth he was still entertaining this stupidity his friends had told him to, he had said he would fuck shit up in this story because he was tired of going along with it, why exactly had he been doing exactly the opposite? Either way, there was no way he was going to ever marry some random dude, even if it was what got him out of here, he and Deku would figure out another way.

Suddenly he felt like he was underwater, he couldn’t think or feel.

He was an outsider of his own body as he stood up, slowly walking in an unknown direction through the swirling stairs and hallways. His senses were asleep and his mind seemed submerged in a thick substance that forbade him from controlling himself.

Abruptly he was vaguely aware of the door in front of him and as Katsuki opened it he was overwhelmed by green, but not the calm deep forest green he had come to like through the years, but a toxic acidic green burning his eyes with its power, although he felt nothing but nausea.

There was no pain as his finger touched the sharp end of the needle, just the acid spreading through his body as his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell unconscious.

۵⚜-The Beauty and the Deku-⚜۵

It had happened again, and really Katsuki should have expected it. Every Time he's out there doing god’s work and saving people, the world decides to fuck him over, he is actually fine with it, he has come to expect it. Katsuki is cursed and he knows it, the problem is that Deku is fucking cursed too, even more than he is for some goddam reason, and one would think bad luck plus bad luck would cancel each other out because that is the logical thing, right? Well, logic flies out when it concerns Katsuki and Izuku.

It is his bad karma making him repent, Katsuki recons.

At first, Katsuki would be offended Aizawa-sensei called him problem child #2, but honestly now with all the bullshit Katsuki goes through every single time he inexplicably sees himself end up involved in some villain’s conspiracy he can’t even deny it.

Which all of this is a roundabout way to say he and Deku got themselves in another fight with older more experienced villains when they are barely in their third year of high school.

They were supposed to do a simple patrol, it was supposed to be easy, but of course, Deku being Deku he had snooped around the agency and recalled the face of some suspected criminal who just happened to walk past them.

“I swear Kacchan, I saw him on the file Hawks was looking at when he welcomed us,” Deku insisted. “We need to follow him.”

“Ok, first of all you can’t call me that fucking kiddie name when we are in costume,” Katsuki scolded, though Izuku at least had the decency to look sorry. “Second, Aizawa specifically told us to only report suspicious activity and not to engage.”

“K- uh, Dynamyght, Aizawa-sensei said that to everybody.”

Katsuki looked at him with a blunt expression. “He said and I quote ‘I swear to god if you get in trouble I’ll expell you, problem children’ while looking at us.”

“Yeah, ok, but Kacchan he’s going to get away.” Izuku said, as they inconspicuously followed the presumed villain as they had yet to come to a decision. “Do you know what he is suspected of doing? They think he is the one that collects children and gives them to All for One!”

The blonde hesitated. “Fine, we’ll call back up.” The other boy frowned, knowing how long backup might take, moreover when it was not even a confirmed sighting.

“Think of the children!” Deku hissed, determined. “Besides, this will look amazing on our record, and may even help us climb ranks when we graduate!”

Dynamyght was nothing if not ambitious, also the children. “God damn it stupid Deku!” He hissed back. “This better not end in a disaster.”

Deku beamed and Katsuki scowled, as was his trained response to that disarming smile.

They carefully followed the suspect; tall with, black hair, yellow eyes, and a weird tattoo on his left eye. Silence trailed them too, even with the considerable amount of people on the street. The presumed villain turns the corner to an alley, where Katsuki and Deku follow several seconds later.

“Shouldn't have followed, mini heroes.” The man said, without even turning around.

Katsuki is about to tell him to shut the fuck up and fight when a hand appears behind him and covers his mouth and nose with a handkerchief. He struggles and is vaguely aware Deku is in a similar situation. Strength escapes the blonde and staying awake is harder as seconds pass by, his head swims and all he can do is muster his best glare as he topples to the ground.

“There’s a quirk I’ve been dying to try.” The man, who looks to be about thirty, smirks.

Katsuki blacks out.

He wakes up tied up and unable to use his quirk, whether it is because of the remnants of the chloroform or because of anti-quirk restraints is unclear. He looks around dazedly, he spots Deku slouched on the floor, no doubt still knocked out and a little girl in the fetal position sobbing in one corner of the dirty basement they were trapped in.

“Hey, you ok, kid?” Katsuki calls and hopes his speech is not too slurred.

The girl sobbed harder. He groaned lowly in frustration and slowly with the little strength he had recovered since he woke up he struggles his way to the small kid, about seven years old.

“We’re gonna get you out of here, you know.” Bakugou had never been good with comforting people, but he tried. “Me and him are actually heroes in training.”

“...Really?” The little girl lifted up her tear-stained face, she had light purple shoulder-length hair and blazing orange eyes.

“Yes really.” He assures her. “Even if we can’t get you out, there will be people looking for us, so don’t give those assholes what they want and keep strong.”

A determined look courses through the girl's face. “Allright, mister hero!”

“Call me Dynamight.” Katsuki corrects as gently as he can.

“My name is Lily.” She says he notices she has a thick book she clutches with all her might.

“Nice to meet you, or whatever.” The book bothers him, why would kidnappers ever let the kid keep anything? “What do you have there, Lily?”

“Oh, this is my favorite book! My mom always reads it to me before sleeping.” She smiles slightly, which Katsuki is glad to see, as this must be a stressful situation for a kid like her. “It’s got all my favorite fairy tales from the movies!”

Katsuki smiles lightly at her. “That is amazing, kid.”

A loud groan from the floor diverted their attention.

Deku lifted his head from the floor, though his tied hands made it difficult to rise from the ground. “K-Kacchan…” He whined.

“Finally up, you piece of sh-trash.” Katsuki amended.

“Where are we?” Izuku asked, clearly still fighting the effects of the drug the villains used to put them unconscious.

“Fu- Hell if I know.”

Deku turned to Lily. “Hi sweety, what is your name?”

She introduced herself timidly and Deku did the same, offering her a smile. Katsuki was glad the other boy had awakened, as he was better at dealing with people than the blonde was, though he still made one or two comments to the conversation they maintained, the little girl coaxing the answers out of him.

The relative pleasantness of the conversation disappeared when the basement’s door opened, revealing the man from earlier, along with his henchmen.

“Take them upstairs.” The black-haired man said.

“Yes, boss.” His henchmen replied in unison, bypassing their leader and lifting up the two teenagers and the girl.

“LET ME GO YOU FUCKERS, LET’S FIGHT LIKE REAL MEN!” Katsuki struggled as hard as he could, and Deku tried to do the same.

I was ultimately useless, and they were dropped in the ground of the upper floor, which was still very much disgusting. They sat the girl on a chair and the leader approached her, with the fairy tale book in his hands, he dropped it carelessly on the floor, where it landed open.

“Show us what you can do.” He smirked at the girl and the heroes in training.

Katsuki growled and Deku glared, Lily predictably was sobbing.

“I don’t have time to waste, little girl.” The leader growled when Lily didn’t immediately use her quirk, and he yanked the poor girl's hair, making Izuku and Katsuki trash harder on their binds. “If you don’t want to die, use your quirk on those two useless heroes.”

The girl cried harder, shaking her head. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”, she said as she raised her hands, probably to use her quirk.

Izuku shook his head, smiling sadly at the girl. “It’s not your fault Lily, the pro heroes will save us soon enough.”

Katsuki gave a short nod in agreement, if anyone was at fault it was these stupid asshole villains.

The girl’s eyes and hands glowed a reddish-orange that started to permeate the room to the point Katsuki had to close his eyes at the strong light as darkness overtakes him. He promptly loses consciousness.

۵⚜-The Beauty and the Deku-⚜۵

Izuku gets to the cabin a few hours later, although it seems no one answers when he knocks on the door. He opens it, just to be sure Kacchan is not there and to have a clue as to where he might have gone. He enters with tentative steps into the darkness of the place, where a sinister laugh greets him.

Hundreds of minions attack him before he can even defend himself as they tie him up and gag him, holding him in place in front of a black figure.

It looks like Kurogiri is the Maleficent in this story, which Izuku guesses is fitting enough, although he notes the usual purpleness of the villain has turned to a sour green.

“I set a trap for a peasant and look here, I caught a prince.” He laughs when Izuku glares at him as the gag and ties prevent anything else.

Izuku is dragged to Kurogiri’s run-down castle, they put him in a cell and shackle his hands and feet. If he had his quirk he could have easily broken the bounds, but not having it does not stop him from struggling against the iron chains.

The green-haired prince sighs and throws himself at the bench, wondering how Katsuki is.

However there is not enough time to lament his situation, as out of nowhere fairy sized Kirishima, Ashido, and Kaminari appear.

“Prince Philip!” Kirishima said as he starts shooting red magic off his wand into breaking the shackles that keep him bound.

“Who?” Izuku said, confused. “My name is Izuku.” He said.

The three fairies gasp. “You are the one prince Aurelio met in the forest.”

“No no, I have never met Aurelio.” Izuku reassured them. “But never mind that, where is Kac-Katsuki?”

Kaminari laughed as he broke the lock of the door. “Katsuki is Aurelio, we had to change his name so he wouldn’t get recognized.”

“Oh.” Izuku said, remembering princess Aurora had gone by Rose the first part of the movie.

Ashido spoke then, interrupting his thoughts. “Guys, we don’t have the time for this, we need to go!” She rushed them.

Izuku immediately straightened up, only half hearing Kirishima’s explanation as he was given a shield and a sword. They speed out the room, not without alerting Kurogiri’s ugly crow, which immediately started squawking in alert. The stairs were full of minions throwing all types of weapons at Izuku, but he skillfully deflected them and somehow they were able to make it out of the castle where the incessant attacks continued as Izuku tried to get to his horse in order to escape.

Rocks and arrows rained from the sky, but thankfully Kirishima, Ashido, and Kaminari turned them into bubbles and flowers with magic, which Izuku thought was pretty neat.

The dashing prince managed to get atop his horse and raced to the castle and with outstanding strength was able to cut all the spiky vines that barricaded the place Katsuki was trapped in asleep.

Upon cutting his way through the vines, Kurogiri teleports in front of him, furious. Then he turns into a dragon, at which Izuku looks for a more open area where he won’t be burnt to flames, swinging his sword at the reptile as it shoots green fire out his mouth.

In the process he somehow manages to break one of his left-hand fingers and lose his shield, he hissed in pain as he stared down the abyss. The dragon seemingly laughs, thinking they have won, but the three fairies hover over Izuku, overloading the sword with so much magic it shines. In a last-ditch effort to win, Izuku throws the sword with all his remaining strength and lets out a sigh of relief when it pierces right through the dragon’s heart.

Kurogiri stumbled into the abyss, where Izuku once the threat has been eliminated does not even bother looking back as he sprints toward the castle, bypassing the sleeping peasants, the guards, and even All Might and Kacchan’s parents, who appear just as unconscious as the rest.

Finally, he arrives at Katsuki’s room, where the blonde lies, his face slack with sleep, unmoving but still beautiful.

Izuku breathes in, Katsuki had given him permission to kiss him, even if it only was to get out of a story.

He leaned in and kissed his childhood friend, whose lips were as soft as they had been earlier in the day.

Katsuki’s red eyes slowly opened, blinking away the sleep. “You idiot.” He said, because what else would the explosive boy say? “You were Prince Philip?”

Izuku laughed. “I guess.”

He was about to tell the other teen they needed to go downstairs to greet their parents, but the world started to turn white again, as it did every time a new story was about to start.

Izuku braced himself.

#izuku x bakugo #katsuki x izuku #bakudeku #decchan #katsudeku #bkdk fic #bakudeku au #bakugo x deku #bakudeku fan fiction #bakudeku art #the beauty and the deku

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brooklynislandgirl · 2 years ago

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As members of the USMS interacted regularly with first responders, the chief deputy made it very clear that one of their cohorts would attend the charity ball as a representative. When no one volunteered, someone was voluntold and that person was the new transfer from the mainland. An hour at a table with the son of some rich oil tycoon and entourage made him reconsider his future in the USMS in a way that no close call or rough day ever had. That or homicide but someone took his knife and the fork did not seem as effective.

His idiot table companion kept up a running commentary as the dates for charity opened up bidding. Raylan had no intention of bidding, didn’t have the money to compete with many of the folk present, but the steady commentary belittling women to their looks and what a ‘good time’ they could have with them made him reconsider. The commentary reached peak terrible and disrespectful the moment a young lady from one of the hospitals arrived on stage.

Raylan interrupted Erik’s bid with one of his own but the bastard was quick to raise. The back and forth happened a few more times before Raylan checked his bank account and then ground the heel of his boot into Erik’s foot. The yelp was satisfying and the effect immediate. A gavel banged on the podium and Raylan had himself a date with the attractive young woman (and he may well have been old enough to be her daddy distressingly enough) for $350. She deserved a fair amount more no doubt but not with that man and he seemed poised to win.

The auction completed and people returning to conversation and milling about, Raylan wrote out his check to drop off at the table also hosting bids for the silent auction. The woman behind the table may have said something but he’d caught sight of the woman he’d won a date with, one Beth Riley. How’d this even go?

He shouldered past someone behind him, slowly approaching so as not to make her wonder whom she had to deal with now. “Hi. I’m, ah, Raylan. Givens. I suppose this would be where I say nice to meet you?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ It isn’t the first or likely last time Beth will find herself on this specific type of runway. She is Honolulu’s most eligible bachelorette, if not the world’s, and the money donated to Project Hawai’i is one more dollar earned for the homeless keiki on all of the islands. And maybe, just maybe, Beth couldn’t help but volunteer when Steve had brought her the forms. He always did have a way of charming her ever since they themselves were little. Of course the payback meant that he had to make the same offering of himself. Danny laughed until she’d roped him in, too. It wasn’t until she was on stage under the glare of the excruciatingly hot and bright lights, not quite able to see the crowd or who was bidding on her that she realised that maybe she should have argued just a little more with him. She can feel a few beads of sweat gathering at the nape of her neck, and the faintest tremble in her leg, given no substantial footing thanks to the four inch heels. She listens to the auctioneer and knows that she’s coming in a little low. She isn’t the most glamourous woman on the list tonight, and the men ~she assumes~ aren’t really bidding on her company. They want to see themselves associated with her name. With the date that is proposed with her. Dinner at La Mer, one of the most exclusive and expensive restaurants in all of Waikiki if not all the islands. One with a dress code and no children allowed near their Michelin star cuisine. Tucked away inside the Halekulani. She’s sure that that’s going to turn into a huge disappointment when she doesn’t accompany her ‘owner’ back up to the Royal Suite. And just like that, the bidding had come to an end. The auctioneer whispers in her ear and she nods smiling, having pledged to match whatever her price with a few extra zeroes at the end. She is then escorted off by a young man she knows from the hotel’s staff before the next round begins.

Beth was mingling as she knew she would have to and had just taken an offered glass of champagne from a passing waiter when she heard his voice. And despite the fact that she had difficulty processing words, especially when not actively looking at the speaker, she can tell a few things from the perfunctory greeting. One: He’s haole. And from the sound of it, he’s far from home. Normally she’d curl her lip in distaste but something about the accent or maybe the weary voice it shades softens her just a little. Two: He seems to be a little out of his depth, swimming in a pit of corporate sharks and other apex creatures. She turns around. And her lips part. Tall men are not an unusual feature in her life; most people tower over her by default, and he isn’t even the tallest of the ones she knows. What is striking is the leanness to his frame, the swimmer’s build beneath his suit jacket. The tufts of silver at his temples. The steely gaze of eyes she can’t quite determine the colour of. Every line and freckle on his face, the mole under his eye only calling attention to the knife blade sharpness of his cheekbones. Even she can recognise that he’s breathtaking in a cowboy-out-of-time sort of way; she’s read and seen enough westerns to know. And it’s not even the hat in his hand that says it. Wow. “Mister Givens,” she says softly. It’s all night breezes and the lingering blue smoke in an empty room. Rumpled sheets and three fingers of straight bourbon. A voice that doesn’t quite seem to belong to a woman so slight. And she is. Even in her heels he’s still got at least half a foot on her. She has old school manners, offering her hand for him to shake regardless of the bird-bone nature of her fingers, her wrist. “Doctor Elizabeth Riley.” Beth offers him the softest smile. “I’m going to assume, and forgive me that, but you’ve not done this before, have you?”

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another-fantasy-world · 4 years ago

Text

Strings Pt. 2

Pairing: Rosalie Hale x Fem!OC

Summary: in which the true queen of vampires found love when she least expected.

Warnings: ...Light Angst? Slowburn and mentions of death,trauma and depression

Timeline: Breaking Dawn - Post-Twilight

Word count: 4, 200 words

!Extra long chapter!

GIF isn’t mine

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

The witch couple somehow got Rosalie to agree to their terms, much to her distaste. She still doesn’t know what it is that irks her about the couple, she does not trust them, at all but, she trusts Carlisle. Plus, right now, they have more important matters to attend to.

Various thoughts run through Rosalie’s head, as she stands in the vast snow covered field. She may not show it, but she worries for her adoptive sister as Alice strides through the field handing Aro her hand for him to go through her thoughts and visions.

“Now you know. That’s your future, unless you decide on another course.” Alice states when Aro dropped her hand in shock

Rosalie stands rigid, observing silently as she glares and snarls at their “Royalty”, eyes pitch black. She knows in herself that she would do everything for her family, even if it costs her, her life. She stands there, watching as another hybrid walks into the field, she watches as they question him, She watches as Bella sags slightly in relief knowing that Renesmee is immortal and finally, she smiles knowing that they’ve won as the red-coated vampires blurs into the distance.

Joyous screams of victory rips through the air as she joins her family as they rejoice, happy that they did not have to fight the Volturi today. Together, they walk back to their house where their witnesses say their farewells and leaving.

“We won!” Maggie squeals are she rushed into Rosalie’s arms with Emmett trailing behind her

“Yeah, Yeah. Now I have to suffer an immortal life with the smell of wet dog wafting through the air.” Rosalie smirks

“Hey! I heard that!” Jacob complains

“Tsk. You were supposed to.” She retorts as she walks to Carlisle who was holding Esme in his arms.

But as she was walking, she was suddenly thrown into a void, cold, dark, and starry? She was confused as she looks around, panicking when she couldn’t move.

“What the fuck is going on?!” She tries to move her body but she couldn't, she then feels her body get thrown around like a rag doll.

“This is worse than being forced to ride that death machine. What was is called? Rollie? Roller coaster?” She grumbles in her head as she wills herself to not puke. She didn't even think vampires could still be nauseous.

That went on for what seemed to be hours before she was finally dropped into the ground. Opening her golden eyes, her orbs seemed to hyper focus on the gigantic trees and the creatures that live in it. Her ears then pick up the sound of groaning, turning her head, she sees the rest of her family sprawled all over the forest floor.

“Oh my God! Amore! You didn't have to paralyze them that hard!” Veronica thumps Amore in the head.

“I sincerely apologize for what she has done. We needed to take you far away from Forks, The Volturi Coven changed their minds and decided to ambush you and your witnesses. Fear not, your witnesses have been teleported to their homes safe and sound.” Veronica explains while still glaring at the pouting Amore.

“What was that anyways?” Edward groans as he sits up'

“Teleportation. I needed to paralyze you, that lowers the chance of you losing a limb.” Amore explains while Veronica cast a cloud of blue upon them, seemingly healing their “injuries”

“Cooooool. Can we do it again?” Emmett brightens like a child getting a puppy for the first time.

“No.” They all deadpanned at him making Veronica and Amore chuckle.

“Well, I suggest we get going now, even with our speed, it's still a long way to run.” Veronica dusts herself off as she and Amore help the family up and the still dazed shifters.

“Long way to run where?” Jacob asks, utterly confused.

“To the palace of course.” Veronica smiles

“It's high time you guys meet the Queen.” Amore smirks and winks as she speeds off, followed by Veronica then the Cullens and then the Black Pack.

Anastasia pinched her temples in pure stress, the Cullens were coming to visit and everything was in utter chaos. Mud was smeared all over the walls, broken dishes and glass cluttered the floor as little children run past her, screaming her ears off.

“Lance, darling. Clean this up before I rip someone's head off. Make sure this place is spotless before the guests arrive. Get the pups back to their mothers, the children back to the village and contact Maxine, there's a few shifters accompanying the Cullens. I'll be in my lab.” She orders her personal butler who scrambles around trying to get people to help him.

Anastasia ventures down, down until she reaches her own personal laboratory where she herself develops her own type of blood. She's repulsed by the thought of drinking from a clueless human no matter how annoying they are and disgusted at the thought of killing an innocent animal just so she could satiate her desire of drinking blood. And because of this artificial blood, her eyes slowly turn into the rich dark violet that it is now.

As she works, combining different substances and powders that vary colors, her mind drifts to a certain blonde girl. Anastasia for the life of her, cannot even think of what she would do where she faces the blonde beauty, not when her heart if filled with guilt.

1932 Rochester, New York

Anastasia roamed the streets as she keeps her eyes trained on the single glowing golden string attached to her, amongst the other colors. She was born this way, even when she was just a little human, she could always see strings. Of course her feeble mind at that time didn't understand what it was, but now she could. As a vampire, she practiced and willed her strings to be more color coded, since the mere chaos of tangled strings give her a headache. The strings connected each creature in this world, once you make an acquaintance, a blue string connects the two of you and that soon escalates into different colors, However, one color lets her see soulmates, and that's green, which is why she's now following this glowing gold string to wherever it may go. She was tempted to just yank the string as hard as she could and let the creature on the other side find her but somehow, something was holding her back.

As she walked the streets of New York, head held high, she also ignored the stares that she got while walking. She knew why of course, her Italian clothing much different from the posh American clothing everyone around her has, not to mention she was wearing clothes meant for “men” but she never was the one to abide to gender constructs. She also couldn't, for the life of her, think about what she would do when she meets the creature on the other end of the string. Should she kill it? Should she keep it? Should she protect it? Should she-

Her thoughts were then interrupted when her eyes suddenly tunnel visioned. There 'it' was, the 'creature' on the other end of her string, 'it' was actually a woman. An insanely attractive human, being fawned over by boys as she walks by and she was smiling at the small group girls crowding her. Anastasia could suddenly feel the emotions of the said woman: Happiness, Pride, and a little twinge of loneliness and sadness. Anastasia's heart (despite being half-dead) tightened in her chest, she wanted to do everything and anything to make the woman happy. She didn't even care that she just saw her mere minutes ago, she wanted her and only her. And that's when she realized, this woman, no, this angel was meant to be hers. But then again, Anastasia knew that the woman was too good for her, she doesn't deserve this life of pain and eternal suffering, seeing the people you once loved grow old and eventually die, yet she also knew that she cannot live without her, so she settled with being her protector.

“Mr. Lombardi? Did I pronounce that right?” Mr. Hale questioned her, she had managed to manipulate her looks to make her look like a man.

“Yes sir.” Anastasia answered, she named herself Gioele for the sake of her facade.

“And why should I let you protect my daughter?” Mr. Hale raised his eyebrows, staring at the 'guy' infront of him.

“With The Great Depression still happening, I believe your daughter might be in danger. You and your success may make you a target for those who are below you, poor unfortunate...” She trailed off, her moral compass preventing her from saying derogatory words but she knew she had to play by his personality and rules

“We do not talk about them.” Mr. Hale deadpanned

“Yes sir.” 'Gioele' agreed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

“Very well then. You have piqued my interest. One wrong move and you'll find yourself hanging on a rope by your neck.” He threatened just as someone entered.

“Father? Mother requested your presence.” Anastasia's eyes widen when she hears the soft, melodic voice right behind her.

“Rosalie! Perfect timing. This is Gioele Lombardi, he will be protecting you from those awful lowlifes scattered around the streets.” Mr. Hale introduces Anastasia to Rosalie who in turn looked at her.

“Rosalie. Rosalie Hale.” She introduces her self while Anastasia promply goes down on one knee and kisses her hand.

“My Pleasure.” She smiled, seeing the faint blush on Rosalie's cheeks.

Anastasia stood up, offering her arm to Rosalie who accepted and they both followed Mr. Hale outside, Anastasia holding up an umbrella to shield Rosalie and herself from the sun. She didn't sparkle as much as other vampires do but it would have been really suspicious when people see her faint sparkle as her marble like skin hits the rays of the sun.

And in that afternoon alone, Rosalie Hale became more popular, people talked about the attractive guard and of course Rosalie's beauty. Anastasia was annoyed at how people spoke about her and her mate, while they were walking around the city. Rosalie noticed and distracted her by asking her questions and answering questions directed to her as well.

Anastasia just felt herself fall even more as days pass by, She would sit by Rosalie's side while she reads her books, She would accompany her on walks and would help her pick flowers as well. She knew all about Rosalie but Rosalie only knew things Anastasia want her to, that doesn't include the fact that she's a woman and not a man and also the fact that she's an actual vampire. And that proved to be in her disadvantage later on.

A year pass by quickly with Anastasia enjoying every single second she spends with her soulmate, she could feel Rosalie radiating happiness whenever she's around, but of course, Rosalie was getting suspicious as well. It may be because of that one time where they were caught in the rain and their umbrella was much too small for 2 persons so Anastasia insist on Rosalie using it, leaving her wet, making her clothes stick to her body, and even under the dim light, Rosalie could make out a feminine body, toned but still feminine and that left her thinking if she truly knew her guard as well as she thought she did.

One day, Rosalie was sent on an errand to deliver her father's 'forgotten' lunch, and Anastasia knew it was a bunch of shit. She heard the couple discussing their plans to hopefully attract the attention of Royce King II and they succeeded, she had to watch as Rosalie and Royce flirt with each other, with her silently seething, forgotten. She had to hide her growls and snarls whenever flowers would be delivered at the Hale Household, but she couldn't do anything, Rosalie deserved someone who could grow old with her, and not a half-ling abomination like her. So she accepted the fate she wished upon herself and made the hardest decision of her life.

The day Rosalie was engaged, she packed her bags and set to leave but unfortunately, Rosalie caught her. And what she did that day, she still regrets up until now.

“Gioele? You are leaving.” Rosalie states, stunned.

“Don't. Don't stop me Ms. Hale. Or should I say Mrs. King?” Anastasia spat out, and she internally flinched when she saw the pain in Rosalie's eyes.

“Where did this come from Gio?” Gio, Rosalie's nickname for her alter ego. She couldn't handle it anymore and looked around before gently dragging Rosalie into an empty room in their house.

“Look, my name's not Gioele.” Anastasia removes the glamour she placed on herself and watched as Rosalie stare at her in shock.

“It's Anastasia. And yes. I am leaving. You are to be married to Royce King II and I cannot get in between that.” She stares at Rosalie's eyes, hoping to relay her feelings, but Rosalie was still much too hurt from her best friend lying to her.

“You lied. You broke two of your promises Lombardi. Is that even your real surname? It is not, is it? God. Why must I be so stupid! Go! Leave! Find some other woman to lie to!” Rosalie walks away from her

“Rosalie! Wait!” She tried to chase after her but Rosalie just turned around and slapped her, she was shocked, not only because the love of her life slapped her, it's also because Rosalie managed to crack the base of her neck. She lifted her hand to cover the cracks that were covering the base of her marble like neck.

“Rose...” She stared at Rosalie.

“Leave.” Rosalie glared, and Anastasia knew that this was her chance... to let go of her soulmate... in the most painful way possible.

“Fine...” She growled out “...I never liked you anyways, You self-centered, smug woman who only lives to please her father and the people around you. I hope you and your cold heart enjoy your loveless marriage!” She grabs her bags and walks away, not bothering to turn back, knowing that if she sees Rosalie's face and the raw emotions in her eyes, she'll just turn back and beg for forgiveness.

But of course, she couldn't stay away, no matter how hard she tried, she just can't so she lingered, hiding herself in the shadows, watching as Rosalie walked the paths they used to walk on, with Royce accompanying her, his arm hooked on hers as they chatted happily. It took everything in Anastasia to not rip off Royce's head whenever she knew he was making Rosalie uncomfortable and It took everything in her to not steal Rosalie away from him.

She was lingering around Vera's house, Rosalie was in there, cradling the baby boy in her arms as she cooed at him. Anastasia smiled as she saw her mate being all cute, she longed to have that with her, but alas she couldn't.

She was just enjoying herself when suddenly a body slammed into her, they fought for the upper hand as they kept tumbling around. Anastasia would straddle the man and he would flip her as well, she knew he was a vampire and didn't bother to pull her punches, cracking his marble like skin while he, in turn would also punch her face. The only difference they had was, Anastasia is actually bleeding. After what went on like hours, something snapped, Anastasia knew something was wrong with her mate so her eyes glowed a bright red, she threw the man off her and tied him with her strings. She growled at him before speeding off, following the slowly fading golden string. She ran as fast as she could, but she was too late.

“Rose?” she stared in horror as the body of her beloved, sprawled on the sidewalk, bleeding out.

“Stasia?” She turned her head and saw Carlisle standing behind her.

“Carlisle! I beg of you, Please save her. Turn her Carlisle please!” Anastasia begged Carlisle

“What happened? I smelt the blood.” Carlisle knelt beside the barely alive Rosalie.

“Turn her first then I'll explain.” Anastasia choked out as she closed her eyes just in time for Carlisle's teeth sinking into Rosalie's skin

She shook with anger and decided that she'll chase after whoever did this to her, her ears hyper focused, trying to find whoever did it. And that's when she heard it: Royce King II.

“I need to find a new fiancee now.” He laughed as his friends expressed their joy in letting them-

Anastasia let out a loud guttural growl as she prepared to speed away but Carlisle held her back.

“Don't. She needs you first.” Carlisle motioned to Rosalie who's writhing in pain. She immediately scooped her mate into her arms and followed Carlisle's mate string, which led her to a two floor house, she barged in with Carlisle hot on her heels.

“Lay her here.” He instructed the distressed Queen.

“Will she be okay Carlisle?” She asked the doctor as he kissed his mate in her forehead.

“Yes. Give it a couple of days, Your Highness.” Carlisle reassured her as she swallowed back her sobs.

“Very well. Uh. My apologies, I barged in without your permission. My name is Anastasia. You must be Carlisle's lover?” She offered her hand to the older woman who in turn just gave her a hug.

“It's fine. Really. You are welcome here. Carlisle told me all about you.” Esme smiled and Anastasia just smirked at Carlisle.

“Still thinking about me Cullen?” Anastasia teased, taking Rosalie's hand into hers and gripping it, calming her nerves.

“He talks about you everyday.” Esme smiled at her.

Anastasia was about to reply when the doors opened and in came...

“You.” Anastasia growled and lunged at the man. He dodged but she caught his arm and used her momentum to flip him over, throwing him through the wall and into the backyard, making him land flat on his back. The man coughed as Anastasia straddled him, planting her foot to the ground, her strings glowing a bright red as they wrap around him as she slowly ripped his head off.

“Anastasia! He's my son!” Carlisle cried out as Anastasia snapped at him, eyes widening in surprise.

“He's yours?” Anastasia's eyes glowed a bright red and Carlisle felt his entire body shiver.

“Y-Yes.” Carlisle stuttered, the murderous aura surrounding Anastasia triggering his fight or flight.

“He is the reason why I didn't get to my mate fast enough. He lunged at me for no reason, leaving my mate in a vulnerable position AND LOOK WHERE SHE IS RIGHT NOW! SHE'S FIGHTING FOR HER LIFE CARLISLE!” Anastasia's body shook in anger

Carlisle could see the cracks growing on Edward's skin, and he slowly approached the furious queen. He managed to calm Anastasia down by sending calming waves into his strings, decades of working alongside the queen was proven to be useful in this moment. The ropes that were once wrapped around Edward slowly loosened until they retreated back into her body.

Edward wheezed as he moved away from her while Anastasia composed herself.

“Teach your son better manner s, Carlisle or the next time we meet, you'll see his decapitated head decorating the Volturi Walls.” Anastasia threatened as she walks calmly back into the house through the wall that she made and sat beside her unconscious mate. She noticed the golden string slowly go back to it's natural glow, which made her sigh in relief.

A couple of hours pass by and Anastasia was feeling hungry, she asked for Carlisle's help in looking for food in the forest and he told her where the majority of the animals lived and she set off. While she was hunting, she couldn't help but feel like she failed Rosalie. She let her become something that she protected her from. A Vampire.

Once she had her fill, she slowly walked back to where Carlisle lives, delaying her arrival as much as possible, dreading the fact that she knew Rosalie was awake. She could feel it. She took a deep breath and opened the door, making everyone's head snap towards her. Her eyes caught Rosalie's and instantly, they connected, more so than before, which means that Anastasia feels what Rosalie feels 100 times more than before. Pain, Sadness, Longing and Hatred. And that's when she knew, she knew that Rosalie hated her. Her soulmate hated her. The thought weighed on top of her, slowly crushing her heart, she physically gasped for breath as she could feel Rosalie's anger increased tenfold.

“Rose. Let me-”

“Don't Anastasia. Do what you do best, leave.” Rosalie answered her, putting emphasis on her real name. She tried to move closer but Rosalie only moved and sped out of the house, with Carlisle trailing after the newborn.

She was about to follow as well when Edward stopped her.

“I apologize for my actions earlier, I truly believed that you were preying on them, that's why I attacked you, but you should really trust me when I say that you shouldn't follow her. She's angry.” Edward quickly explained

“And how do you know that?” She asked.

“I can read minds.” Edward simply states, nodding at her.

Anastasia nodded, defeated and sat on a chair with Esme right beside her.

“Give her some time.” Esme advises, rubbing the girl's back.

She gritted her teeth when she felt Rosalie's pain. Not physical, emotional. And she has the power to take it away. But with a great price. A price she was willing to take.

When the Cullen family was complete, with Rosalie, Anastasia quickly worked her gift. Wrapping her strings around them and re-writing their memories, without her in it. Except for Carlisle's, she left some memories of him working alongside her while in the Volturi. Once she finished, she quickly speeds away and forces herself to leave the memories and pain she just took into the back of her mind as she wiped her bleeding nose, her body collapsing under a big tree due to the exhaustion.

She was pulled back into reality when the beaker she was holding in her hand exploded, drenching her in artificial blood. She gritted her teeth, there were two things that could've happened. One, she mixed the wrong chemicals while day dreaming or two, Amore decided to switch the labels again.

She checked everything, and then found out the second one was the truth, she stormed out of her lab, blood dripping from every inch of her body. Her annoyance clouded her brain, forgetting that she sent Amore to pick up the Cullens and if she was here, then so were The Cullens.

She spotted Amore from afar and sped towards her, slamming her against the brick walls of her “castle” . She hated that term.

“What did I tell you about switching my labels Lewis?! Look at me! Blood is in every crevice in my body! There's blood in parts that I didn't even knew were exposed!” She growled out

“Well, to be f-fair, You aren't wearing your usual lab attire so that's partially your fault.” Amore choked out. Anastasia just growls in response.

“Stasia, calm yourself. First impressions are important.” Veronica waves her hand and Anastasia's clothes were back to normal, dry and there was no trace of blood anywhere.

First Impressions? Anastasia then mentally facepalmed herself. She had forgotten the Cullen Family. She releases Amore, then turned to the family, recalling her speech, she started to talk.

“Hello. Sorry you had to see that, but you should really get used to it. My name is Anastasia...” She drifted off as her violet orbs met golden ones. In her brief moment of surprise, she unknowingly let down her guard, causing her previously cast spell break. She knew that her mate would be there and she mentally prepared herself but turns out, she wasn’t prepared at all. When she recovered from her shock, she could feel that her spell had been broken. The entire coven looked at her with various emotions: Happiness, Confusion, Longing and Familiarity. She may or may not have met all the members before and also wiped their memories.

“Gio...” Rosalie whispered.

“Shit...” Anastasia cursed, she somehow knew this would happen, just not this soon.

“Rose...” She stared at her mate for what seemed like years before Rosalie glared at her with so much anger she didn't know it was possible, and stormed off. Again.

'She always does that.' Anastasia sighs.

“Well, that secret's out. I'll escort you to you ro-”

“We'll do it. Chase after her.” Veronica pats her back before escorting the Family to their respective chambers, but Carlisle stayed behind.

“That... was messed up Anastasiarine.” Carlisle expressed his disappointment before pulling the girl in a brief hug.

“I missed you too Cullen.” She whispered before letting go to chase after her mate.

“I'm sorry. Please forgive me.” She sent that thought to the Cullen Family, including Rosalie and went back to what she did 75 years ago.

She was once again, chasing the glowing gold string.

#rosalie hale #rosalie hale x oc #jasper hale x alice cullen #edward cullen x bella swan #carlisle x esme #olympic coven #cullen clan #the cullens #cullen family #the volturi #rosalie cullen #rosalie hale x fem oc #platonic carlisle x oc #The Cullens x OC #The Volturi x OC #rosalie twilight #rosalie #rosalie hale x reader #rosalie lillian hale

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rotationalsymmetry · 4 years ago

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Ahem (about Eliot Spencer as football captain in a high school au):

None of the Leverage “kids”/OT3/whatever — Eliot, Parker, Hardison — were popular in high school. Definitely not Parker, who was more or less raised by her thief mentor and was never even in high school, and has noticeable difficulty interacting with people as an adult when we first meet her in season one. Not anyone who found as much time to learn how to code as Hardison did. Not Eliot either — it’s canon both that he took home ec and that he got teased by other guys for it.

There’s a tendency to associate being good with the ladies with being gender-conforming (in men.) But you know what? When we see Eliot seducing women, he doesn’t put on a strong manly man vibe. Mostly he goes for sensitive and attentive and vulnerable and women love it. That’s not gender conforming. That’s...not intrinsically incompatible with football captain, but they don’t fit easily with each other either.

Even the one time his physical fighting skill is a factor, with the other fighter (Mikel Dayan), it’s less about his strength and more about mutual respect for each others’ skill. The attraction is about both of them being really into the same thing, a thing that most people don’t get that deeply into.

All of them are “nerds” in the sense of having a narrow range of interests that they get really, really into: Harrison’s nerdery is focused on computers, which is classic, but Eliot’s hard-skills nerdery that’s focused on fighting and cooking and paying incredible amounts of attention to sensory details, is actually the same sort of thing just with a different focus.

Parker’s is actually the most extreme: her interests at the start of the show are security systems and jumping off buildings and not much else, and she’s also the least good at “masking” or faking being normal. She asks what an ornamental houseplant is for, because at that point she really just doesn’t see the value in anything outside of her very narrow interests. She doesn’t even appreciate art as art, just as something that can be stolen.

And I’m not saying that to dis any of the characters. Rather? I’m thinking: these are my kind of people, people who get really into things most people don’t care about, and who tend to not get interested in things just because everyone else is. The sorts of people who don’t know how to answer when other people ask them what music they like to listen to. (Well, maybe Eliot does.) The sorts of people who barely know what football is, because either a thing is your entire world or you know virtually nothing about it and care even less, with no middle ground.

And they get to have an entire show about them doing amazing things and doing good in the world, you know? Their differences don’t make them lesser. Parker doesn’t have to be able to appreciate art or know what plants are for! Being able to thwart complex security systems and jump off tall buildings is actually enough for her to be living an amazing life and contributing to the world in a positive way.

And that means when Parker does start broadening her horizons, she’s able to do it for herself, because she decided she’s missing out on things, and not to “be normal” or fit in. Or because she has to do it to find people who care about her and support her, she was able to get that before making any changes. That’s such a powerful message, you know?

And when I see Eliot as captain of the football team high school AU headcanons, what I think is: that’s missing Eliot’s character, that’s flattening him to just being good at things like fighting and sports and making him as stereotypically male as possible. Because just like Parker didn’t need to be normal or popular or even know how to make small talk with a jerk without sticking a fork in his hand in order to find her people, Eliot also didn’t have to get on the football team to find his people, and that matters too. He found his people by being himself, his weird oddball self who notices things other people miss and grows his hair out and is a fighter who won’t touch guns and really notices people and is probably way too sensitive for his own good. Don’t let his ability to terrify strangers by looking at them and pound them flat when necessary keep you from seeing the rest of Eliot Spencer, the guy who never quite figured out how to be a normal guy and decided early on that he wasn’t going to bother trying.

And that coexists peacefully and comfortably with Eliot as a guy who gets around a lot; I’m polyamorous and kinky, and a lot of the guys in those worlds who get the most dates are absolutely not the sort of person who would have been captain of the football team in high school. Getting a lot of action does not support a narrative that Spencer is gender-conforming, even though getting a lot of action is something that manly men are supposed to aspire to.

There are a lot of people like that: who were loners, outcasts, bullied in school, and who later on were able to find people who didn’t care whether you made the cheerleading squad or whether you had the right kinds of celebrity crushes. Or the adult world equivalents. Who see value in people living their most authentic lives, rather than conforming as closely as possible to expected social roles.

Maybe I’m the one who’s missing something, and this sort of hc is about how you can be all that and get the social recognition of being homecoming king or queen as well. Maybe it’s coming from people who like to imagine that they could have had that without sacrificing parts of themselves. I for one am very firmly in the category of “fuck them and their arbitrary markers of acceptability, I’m going off and finding better goals to aspire to.”

Parker was not a cheerleader, even though she had all the physical abilities that being a good cheerleader requires (plus the looks for it.) Eliot was not football captain. They got to do amazing things with their lives because being football captain or chearleading whatever is not actually especially important. It’s just a marker of success within a very specific social context that’s disconnected from being able to do anything in particular outside of that context, and which prioritizes conformity, especially conformity to gender roles, over authenticity and diversity.

(Note, because apparently this is necessary: this is a personal opinion, people get to have whatever headcanons they want, don’t harass people, etc. it’s better to lift up examples of doing it well than be confrontational about people doing it badly. I just think it’s actually more meaningful and more consistent with canon to present Eliot as an outsider in high school than to present him as one of the popular kids, and popular in an extremely conventional/stereotypical way at that.)

(I can relate to the Eliot who got teased for taking home ec but felt secretly vindicated because he was the one getting close one on one attention from a hot lady teacher; I cannot possibly relate to football captain Eliot.)

(It’s a power thing? Within a high school social framework, football players and cheerleaders (not at my high school, but whatever) have the most social status and therefor the most power. The whole deal with the Leverage crew is that they’re restoring power imbalances. Putting them in positions of relative power makes no sense. Highschooler Eliot should be beating up the football captain for groping the girls or bullying weaker boys, not being the football captain himself.)

#leverage #discourse #I’m guessing this isn’t going to go over well #leverage meta #gnc #neurodivergence #long post #it just blows my mind that football captain and head cheerleader are being presented as positive thinfs #within an explicitly queer ot3 #like if you accept that Harrison and Eliot are together #why are you also insisting that Eliot should be more gender conforming than he actually is?

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jewishtwilightrenaissance · 4 years ago

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Two Become One

Notes: Since I myself am a Jew and both the culture & faith is really important to me, I wanted to add that into the story to add some depth and something for the characters to bond over. I got really emotional about it towards the end, but hopefully it just adds to the story!

Also, this originally started as a ‘Life and Death’ fic with Billy’s female version, Bonnie Black, but I really wanted to celebrate OG Billy first. So let me know if y’all want to see that, too!

Context & Plot: The reader is in their mid-20′s and has just recently moved to Forks. By being a member of the Forks Intracommunal Committee, the reader happens to meet Billy Black, a Quileute Council member who serves on the Forks Committee with her. They strike up a friendship that soon evolves into a romance.

Word Count: 3,048

“____!” A familiar voice cut through the din of the committee, drawing your attention from your notepad. You looked up and over your shoulder to see Billy Black wheeling towards you with a bright smile on his face. “How are you?”

“Billy, hi. I’m good,” you answered. As Billy approached the table, you nudged the folding chair on your right to one side to allow enough room for his wheelchair. “Meeting’s about to start. You got here just in time.”

He hummed in response. “I had a few things to take care of back home. Namely Jacob and the other kids,” Bonnie added with a chuckle.

Somewhere in your chest, you felt a muscle tighten. You’d heard plenty about the escapades of Billy’s youngest child, a rowdy teen who just so happened to be about 10 years younger than you. That in and of itself wasn’t a bad thing, but it did remind you that you were at least 20 years out of Billy’s age range. You bit back a sigh and turned your attention back to your notepad, eyeing your hastily scribbled notes and doodles.

You and Billy exchanged a few more pleasantries before the meeting officially started a few minutes later. A few local business owners and church leaders brought up whatever it was they had to say but in all honesty, you had trouble concentrating on them with Billy sitting right next to you. It was ridiculous - you were a mature adult who had left her puberty years well behind her, but sitting next to your crush made you feel like a teenager all over again. His long hair, dark eyes, his smile - they were all so rich and full of life, full of energy just like Billy. And like a damn prepubescent, you’d fallen for it all.

A nudge against your thigh caught your attention and you blinked yourself back to reality. Billy was leaning in your direction, one arm braced against his wheelchair, and there was a note pushed into your line of sight. ‘Today is more boring than usual. I think I caught Hank dozing off.’ You let out a quick breath through your nose and bit down on the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing.

Grabbing your pen, you wrote back, ‘I think I almost caught myself dozing off,’ and passed the note to Billy’s end of the table. Crush or no crush, Billy was also your best (if not only) friend in Forks and you loved the absolute hilarity of passing notes with your 40+ bestie in the middle of class a meeting.

Eventually, the meeting came to a close and it was your turn to share with the committee (and hopefully no one would be ignoring you like you had been earlier). Energy was thrumming in your fingertips as you anxiously gathered and regathered your notes and pen, 15 sets of eyes on you. You cleared your throat.

“So as I hope you all remember, Forks’ spring interfaith gathering will be in 2 weeks time on the 21st. First, I want to share how excited I am.” By now your nerves had turned to eagerness, and you rubbed your palms together with a smile. “But I also want to say thank you to everyone here for allowing me to run this event, seeing as I’m so new to the community. I especially want to thank Father Thomas, Pastor Martinez, Pastor O’Callaghan, and Billy Black for working with me and allowing me to work with their communities. It really means the world to me.

“I also have some really awesome news regarding the event. As you all know, there are no synagogues or notable Jewish communities under an hour away from Forks. But I’ve managed to reach out to a few Jews individuals and families in the county who are going to be reading some prayers and scripture with me. Other than that, I don’t have anything else to update you on. But I’m excited to see everyone there!”

Some scattered applause and supportive remarks followed your announcement before the committee leader brought the meeting to an end. After fielding a few questions about the event, most of the committee members had started to leave. Billy, you noticed, had stayed behind, as if he was waiting for you. Or so it seemed, if the curious shine in his eyes was anything to go by.

You raised an eyebrow in his direction. “Yes?”

“I received an interesting letter in the mail this morning,” Billy said, the corner of his lips twisting into a knowing smile. Your cheeks immediately flushed and you dipped your head to avoid his gaze for a moment, as if you’d been caught red-handed with your hand in the cookie jar.

“You did, huh?”

Billy laughed; music to your ears. “You really didn’t have to send me a thank you card, ____.”

You shrugged, looking up a little shyly through your eyelashes. “You’ve made me feel really welcomed here, Billy. Not just as a fellow committee member, but as a friend. Inviting me into your home, introducing me to your family, everything! It really means a lot. I-I... I just wanted to show you that I appreciate it.” And, you added to yourself, I guess it doesn’t hurt that I have feelings for you.

There was a tenderness to Billy’s eyes that made you feel some type of way. You could tell he was touched by your gesture.

“Thank you.” He backed away from the table and waited for you to follow suit. Once you had gathered your things and pushed your chair in, he started wheeling alongside you, keeping pace with your footsteps. “If your offer still stands, I’d be happy to come over tonight.”

You could’ve sworn your heart skipped a beat. When you first sent out Billy’s letter, you’d invited him to come to your place for Shabbat dinner as a way of showing your thanks and also respect for his culture by sharing yours in return. You may have also had a little bit of wine at the time and had plans on making the evening romantic-coded.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d really want to join me or not,” you said hesitantly. “But-”

“I do. Like you said, there aren’t many Jews around Forks and certainly not out in La Push. It would be good to learn more about your people and traditions, the things that are important to you.”

You caught Billy’s eyes and smiled. “Like you did with me.”

G-d, you were such a sucker for his shining eyes. Deep and dark like the forest itself, like the rocks and sand on the beaches, like rich coffee grounds at the bottom of a mug.

He nodded. “Yes.”

By now, the two of you had left the meeting room behind and were in the parking lot outside. The sun was peeking through the heavy cloud cover while a gentle misting of rain swirled in the air. You could see that Billy’s truck had been parked a few spaces away from your own.

“It’s close to 4:30,” you said after checking your phone. “I’m lighting my candles around 6 tonight. Did you want me to give you a ride to my place or would you like to come over a little later?” You’d hardly given Billy a second to think before adding, “I still have some cooking to do, but you’re more than welcome to relax while I do that.”

Billy nodded thoughtfully. “You have any beer?”

“I may have one or two cans that I saved just in case you were ever over,” you admitted.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Shabbat evenings were always hectic for you and this night was no different. Between keeping your challah from burning, keeping an eye on the clock, ensuring the rest of the food was kept warm without overcooking, and making sure Billy felt comfortable and welcome in your home, you were sure you’d gained a few gray hairs. Luckily, though, dinner was ready at about the time the sun finally set and the twilight hour descended.

After setting the challah on your best dish (your challah board and cover was still missing in the abyss of your unopened moving boxes), serving up two plates of food and placing them just so on the table, you dug out your candlesticks and shabbos candles. Billy watched you silently as you wrapped the bottom of the candles in foil and balanced them in the candlesticks.

“The candles are meant to stay lit until they burn out,” you explained. “It’s just easier to clean up this way.”

You fidgeted with the silverware at your place setting, then the vase of flowers in the center of the table, then finally sighed and let your hands fall to your sides. You’d been so anxious about wanting to put on a good first Shabbat impression for Billy that you’d forgotten the night was meant to be enjoyable for both of you.

Billy, it seemed, had picked up on your anxious energy and kindly said, “It looks wonderful, ____.”

“Thanks.” You chewed on your bottom lip somewhat thoughtfully, giving the table a final glance over. “I suppose we should start before the food gets cold, huh?”

You pulled out your chair and settled down as Billy moved his wheelchair into the open space across the table from you, his hat placed on the couch behind him. The tiny box of matches rattled when you slipped out a match and lit it. The warm, comforting glow of the candles soon followed and you felt your anxieties dissipate in response. You circled your hands once, twice, three times over the flames, drawing their light in towards your body. You took a breath - in through your nose, out through your mouth - and let your eyes flutter closed, your hands hovering above them to block out the extra light.

“Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.” Then again, in English. “Blessed are You, Adonai, Ruler of the Universe, who sanctified us with the commandment of lighting Shabbat candles.”

When you opened your eyes again, you looked across the table at Billy and saw the reflection of the candles flickering in his eyes. In that moment, bathed in holy light, he was stunning. You gasped and smiled and committed the moment to memory as he gazed back at you, wordless yet clearly moved. Your cheeks were already starting to hurt from smiling so broadly.

“Shabbat shalom, Billy,” you all but whispered.

His eyes, large and all-consuming in their beauty and warmth, drew you in. “Shabbat shalom.”

After the lighting of the candles came one of your favorite songs, the song that welcomed in peace the Sabbath angels into your home. You offered Billy a short explanation of the song’s meaning before finally singing your own rendition. He was silent the entire time and you hoped that he didn’t feel left out at all, but the emotion shining in his eyes told you that your worries were the farthest thing from the truth. Next, came Eshet Chayil, recited in English from your old siddur. And finally, Vayechulu and Kiddush.

Your voice started out as a whisper, recalling the holy memory of creation and the day of rest as first practiced by G-d Himself. Prompting Billy to repeat after you, you raised your glass of wine. “L’chaim!” There was an indescribable joy in seeing Billy participate in your culture, in hearing him say something as simple as a mere l’chaim and knowing that he honored it, respected it, and honored and respected you as well. It was because of that realization that your heart swelled with pride and tears threatened to choke your words as you finished the Kiddush blessing.

“Blessed are you, Adonai our G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and favored us. And given us in love and favor his holy Shabbat as an inheritance, as a remembrance of the act of creation.” Here your voice faltered. In the presence of someone you loved, in the presence of the Sabbath angels and even the Divine Presence itself, you felt the calling of your people. “For this day is the beginning of all holy days, a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. For you have chosen us and you have blessed us from among all the nations.” Indeed, you were chosen. Like those who had come before you, G-d chose you to be His, to be given the gift of His commandments. And in this moment, you were choosing to share that inheritance with Billy, to give him a window into your world to see it in beautiful detail. “And you have bequeathed us your holy Shabbat in love and favor. Blessed are you, Lord, who sanctifies Shabbat.”

Both you and Billy were left speechless once the final words of Kiddush left your lips. You felt raw and exposed, bare for Billy to see every detail, every flaw, every crease and line from your body down to your soul. Is this how he had felt when he brought you to the reservation and showed you his own traditions, welcomed you into his home and shared the stories of his people? Did he know how highly your regarded him, his people? Did he understand that you could see that same regard in his eyes as he watched you now?

Your voice cracked when you finally spoke again. “Billy.” You swallowed nervously as a number of mixed emotions began to bubble inside you. “Thank you for being here tonight.”

“It’s my honor.” His voice seemed raw.

You reached across the table with an open hand. He gently placed his hand in yours and you both smiled. “Can I tell you something?” He nodded, his eyes again catching the light of the candles. “I like you.” Cringe. “I really like you. More than a friend.” Billy remained silent, only raising his eyebrows in an entirely imperceptible expression. “I know this might be weird to you. I don’t know. And, I mean, the chance of you also being interested in me is so low. I get that. No matter what, I want to be your friend. But... but having you here tonight, after learning about you and your people, the traditions you hold dear, and after sharing my own with you, I realize that I want to share more with you.

“I want to hear more about all the trouble Jacob’s getting up to and how your daughters are doing. I want to hear more about what you have to say about the things that are important to you, even if it’s just some stupid football game.” Billy chuckled and squeezed your thumb. Your heart was pounding deep in your chest as if it were going to explode. “I see you, Billy. And I know you see me, too. And I never want to stop seeing you.”

The room was silent. So silent that it was almost uncomfortable, except for the occasional crackling of the candles. Billy, still quiet and with an unreadable expression, slipped his hand from yours and moved his wheelchair back. Your heart dropped into the pit of your stomach. You retracted your arm as if you’d been burnt and held it against your chest. You wanted to look away, you didn’t want to see his expression turn angry or disappointed as you were sure it would, but you also couldn’t tear your gaze from those deep, dark eyes.

“Fuck, Billy, I’m sorry.”

Your face fell into your hands. What the hell had you been thinking? What had started out as a beautiful evening was starting to go to shit all because you had to open your dumb mouth.

“____.” Billy’s voice drew you from your inner-scolding. He moved around the dinner table and came to sit beside you. “Don’t apologize.”

By this point, the several sips of wine that you had taken earlier were starting to create a buzzing sensation in your stomach. And Billy’s sudden close proximity was making the buzzing more intense. Oh no.

You felt the skin of his hand rest on your arm; he was warm. “You’re right,” he whispered. “I do see you. I always have.”

You and he had never been quite this close before. You could see in detail the creases at the corners of his eyes, the few stray hairs of his eyebrows, the stubble along his neck and chin. You wondered what aspects of your face stood out to him as his eyes flitted across your features. Billy’s smile was what finally did you in. Were you blushing? You suddenly felt very hot.

He moved his hand from your arm and pushed himself forward until his knees bumped against your chair. Turning in your seat and folding one knee under you, you were able to fully face him. Billy’s gaze dropped to your mouth and paused, and you suddenly either felt like flying or like vomiting.

“Billy?”

You couldn’t have said anything more if you wanted to. Billy leaned forward, took your chin in his hand and guided your mouth to his. Like his hands, his lips were warm. His warmth spread across your mouth and down into your chest where your heart was doing backflips. Blindly, you pawed at his arms, his jacket, trying to find something sturdy to hold onto to remind you that this was absolutely real. Billy’s hand trailed from your chin, across your jaw, and around the nape of your neck where his fingers finally curled into your hair.

A sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan escaped you and Billy swallowed it. Gently and hesitantly, you gave him a little nip on his bottom lip. His lips parted just slightly, his breath hitting your teeth, and you quickly ran your tongue along his skin. He smiled, gripped your hair a little tighter, and then pulled back.

This time when he said your name, it was sweet, reverent. “You’re certainly full of surprises,” he murmured.

You smiled breathlessly. “What can I say? I have no excuse.”

“Thank you,” he said again. “For telling me, for tonight-”

“The night’s not over yet.”

Billy smirked. “No. No, it’s not.”

#billy black #billy black x reader #twilight #twilight renaissance #twilight oneshot #jewish reader #jewish stuff #gil birmingham #writings

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cosmicoceanfic · 4 years ago

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I'm studying for an archeology exam and am also steadily going crazy😂

Headcanon(I think I've seen this one around but I really like it so): Finn thinks he's been dating Poe for MONTHS when Poe finally lets him know about his feelings, because affection had to be very low-key in the first order. Finn assumed they started dating from when Poe hugged him and said he looked good in the jacket.

I’m sorry for your crazy! Mine is a psych exam. I’m never gonna remember all these lobes. It’s a disaster.

So this is, exactly, why I love this, and pardon me for the ramble, but I got really excited thinking about this.

Stormtroopers have a culture. It’s a culture that anyone who isn’t a Stormtrooper can’t know, because if they do, they have to cut that piece of it off completely and pretend it never existed. No one can believe Stormtroopers have any thoughts or feelings than what they’ve been trained to have or they will be even more expendable than they already are. So their culture is completely secret so they don’t have to forego any part of it in the name of keeping the rest of that culture.

And a big part of that culture is going to be how to express affection without anyone other than a Stormtrooper noticing. If you’re not supposed to feel, everything about the way you silently and secretly interact with each other is going to be about feeling. So there’s all these really quiet signals and codes that pass between them, and one of those is going to be the quiet exchange.

Some Stormtroopers trade blasters. It’s easy enough to discount if caught by an officer, the sort of thing that just gets you bumped down to sanitation, and there’s so many stormtroopers that if it doesn’t happen every day, it’s not going to be noticed. Some Stormtroopers do something just as simple and quiet as quickly trading each other their forks to eat. It’s the act of being comfortable enough to share something with someone else, no easy feat in the First Order, that matters. It’s the giving. We are now a we because we gave to each other. That’s what the concept of dating or finding a partner is with Stormtroopers.

So Poe gives Finn the jacket and Finn’s flustered because well, okay, it’s a little fast, but he likes Poe quite a bit, so this is good, he can figure out something to give him later and they can see how this goes (he just finds like, a neat rock or something on a mission not too far off from receiving the jacket and Poe is fortunately a big fan of neat rocks so he keeps it and Finn’s like “phew, okay, so now we’re on even ground here”), and then the months wind on and Finn’s steadily even more contented with this very abrupt decision Poe made because he’s moved from smitten to full blown in love with him, and from context clues just around the base, apparently there’s supposed to be more to a relationship than whatever it is they’ve got going on, but Poe seems to want to take things slow, and Finn can respect that, he’s just finding his bearings in the Resistance as it is and he doesn’t want to push Poe into anything he’s not ready for.

So it’s gotta be like six months, right, just some unbearable pining time wherein everyone thinks they’re not dating (except Rey, who probably has a shared framework of what a relationship means because on Jakku I assume the act of giving also has a heavier and more significant weight to it, who is like “I am very happy for you and your pilot boyfriend even if he and I bicker about who gets to fly the Falcon sometimes and I like your choice of rock”), and Poe is in agony, because Finn is the best, just the best person out there, nobody comes close, and he tries out all these speeches, he rehearses in the shower, he practices in the mirror when Finn’s not around, he gets caught by Leia once, who looks both very amused and very tired by the shenanigans and tells him that if he can fly missions against the First Order than he can probably do this.

So Poe finally, finally, finally plucks up the courage, he pulls himself together, he stammers a little bit coming out because all the rehearsals had not actually prepared him for saying it in front of Finn, but he does in fact manage to tell him “I love you”.

And Finn just sort of... blinks, a little bemused.

“Yeah, of course,” he tells Poe, a little slowly, who didn’t expect it to go like this at all. “That’s what the rock was for.”

Anyway. I didn’t really mean to spin this out into something fic adjacent but god. You sent me such a great little headcanon there, friend. This really made my night. Thank you so much for doing it, it was exactly what I needed

edit: I forgot to add that because giving is so secret and quiet in the First Order that Finn was probably very taken aback by Poe openly going KEEP IT! IT SUITS YOU! in front of everybody but just sort of figured this was how the Resistance did it and also found it very endearing on Poe’s behalf

#star wars #we're gonna do this #ocean answers asks #poe dameron #finn #stormpilot #fic #accidentally #whoops did not think that would happen #every-last-word

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years ago

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Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

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hiscyarika · 5 years ago

Text

Kir’manir: Chapter One

Beroya

n. bounty hunter

Word Count: 2.6k

Pairing: Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) x Reader

Summary: The Mandalorian finds himself face to face with another bounty hunter looking for the child.

Warning(s): Violence, Injury

A/N: This is the first part to what will be at least a six-chapter series! Please let me know if you’d like to be tagged for future updates! (Also, the gif is not mine!)

Masterlist

Tag Lists

Gif made specially for me by @theforceofdarkandlight ❤️

You aren’t sure why the tracking fob had shut off only to reactivate just a couple of days later. You’re also not sure why it had taken you to the desolate wasteland that is Arvala-7 and now has you landing on some equally deserted swamp planet called Sorgan. You’ve never known Greef Karga’s fobs to malfunction, so your best guess is that somehow the fifty-year-old bounty had managed to escape from their captor.

You scoff as you consider the idea. It was probably some amateur with no idea what he was doing.

You hover your ship over a clearing, slowly lowering it to the ground. Successfully landed, you stand from the pilot’s seat and climb down to the hull, gathering the weapons and supplies you think you’ll need for this chase. Karga hadn’t given you much to go off of when describing the bounty. No one is even sure what species it is. So, you opt to take one of your heavier rifles, thinking that it might come in handy in case this target proves to be a challenge even for you.

You step out of your ship and take in your surrounding environment. There’s plenty of tall trees where the clearing ends, shielding you from any prying eyes up above. Though really you don’t think that you’re going to have any problems with the locals. From what you understand about this planet, it’s made up of mostly farmers who are sparsely populated anyway.

Each step is careful and calculated as you make your way through the woods, following the tracking fob as it brings you closer and closer to the target. You step over rocks and fallen branches. Keep your boots from getting tangled in moss and scattered tree roots. There’s no path through the lush green overgrowth that you can find, but you suppose it’s better to stay where you won’t draw attention to yourself. You have no idea how the locals will take to an outsider creeping through the woods at the break of dawn, especially one as heavily armed as you.

By the time the sun has reached its zenith, you’ve found the first signs of life. Trails have been worn into the ground from being traced by hundreds of footsteps. Stumps remain from trees cut down, and soon you find yourself able to hear children running around as they play. Keeping yourself hidden, you stick to the edge of the treeline, just observing the villagers as they go about their day. The tracking fob is beeping wildly in a compartment on your belt, though thankfully you’re the only one able to hear it. You think to yourself that they should lend a little better to stealth operations. Maybe you’ll make the suggestion to Karga when you get back to Nevarro to drop off the bounty.

You let out a soft breath as you look out among the villagers, trying to figure out which one of them is the bounty. But all you see are natives, dressed in dark clothes and carrying around baskets full of bright blue creatures that you assume are their main source of food. None of them look like they’ve stepped far from the village, much less made it all the way to Arvala-7 and back.

And then you see it.

Amongst the children is a little green creature. You take out your binocs, using them to get a closer look. It comes into better focus, and you swear that you have never seen anything like it before in your life. Its pointed ears extend as far as the creature is tall, and it’s not even tall enough to reach the knees of the children. By the beeping of the tracking fob, you know this is your target, and it makes you wonder how such a tiny thing managed to escape the Guild.

You exchange your binocs for your rifle, carefully planning your shot so that none of the kids will be caught in the crossfire. As the crosshairs settle on the creature, it turns around, revealing huge, innocent dark eyes that shine up at his young companions. It’s a child. A fifty-year-old child. How could Greef Karga send the entire Guild after a child? And with orders to kill it on sight, no less.

Your mind is going faster than a Tatooine pod race. You may be a bounty hunter but you still have morals. You still have a conscience. You know that there is no way that you can kill this child and deliver its little body to Karga. There’s no way you could live with yourself after that.

Your rifle falls from its position, and you try to think of what you’re going to do now. If you’d managed to find the target, you know that other hunters will show up soon, and you’ve been a bounty hunter long enough to see that the others lack your moral standards.

Before you can even begin to formulate a plan, there’s a blaster at your back.

Instinct drives you and you whip around, dropping the rifle and drawing your own blaster in one fluid movement. You find yourself face to face with the Mandalorian.

There’s no one in the Guild that hasn’t heard of this man, though this is the first you have ever seen him in person. You think to yourself that he’s probably come for the bounty as well. It doesn’t surprise you that he’s been able to track the little creature to this largely unknown planet. He’s the best hunter in the Guild and Greef Karga makes sure that everyone knows it.

“Don’t,” you say, looking into the horizontal part of his visor. “It’s a child. Karga has us hunting a child.” Your voice is strong and firm as you try to reason with the beskar-clad warrior. You’re fully prepared to shoot him if he makes a false move. You don’t care who he is or what reputation precedes him. You won’t stand for the murder of an innocent kid.

The Mandalorian stares at you for a moment, silent. Then, his helmet tilts slightly to the left, like you’ve confused him. He lowers his blaster then, returning it to the holster at his side. Now you’re confused. You didn’t think it would be that easy to get him to stand down. Your grip on your blaster tightens, thinking that maybe this is all just a clever trick: he’ll get you to let your guard down, then incapacitate you and take out the kid. But you’re no amateur. You aren’t so easily fooled.

“I won’t hurt him. I...I took him from the Imps,” he finally says.

Now you’re really perplexed. This is the Mandalorian you’re talking to. Rescuing a bounty? That breaks every last tenet of the Guild Code. Surely Greef Karga’s favorite would never do such a thing.

You shake your head, pointing your blaster a little more forcefully at him. “Right, because I’m supposed to believe that?,” you scoff.

He’s not at all shaken by the fact that you could shoot him before he has the chance to draw his weapon again. “I brought him in from Arvala-7, then took him back when I realized what they wanted with him. There was a shootout. The entire Guild is looking for us now,” he explains.

You’re still not convinced. Surely if the entire Guild were after the Mandalorian, you would have known about it. But when you think about the tracking fob, and the lapse in its functioning, his story makes sense. He’d even mentioned Arvala-7, the planet you had been originally tracking the target to. And there’s something about the way he stands, about the way he watches you, that makes you rethink your judgement of him.

You let out a sigh, your body still tense as you look at him. Finally, you decide to lower your blaster, convinced that the Mandalorian is being truthful.

“You need to get him out of here. If I tracked him here, then others will come. It’s only a matter of time,” you tell him. You expect that there are already groups of other hunters headed for Sorgan now.

The Mandalorian gives you a curt nod. A silence falls between the two of you, disturbed only by the incessant noise coming from the tracking fob.

You take it out of the pouch on your belt, throw it on the ground, and crush it under the heel of your boot.

“Thank you,” he says, and with that you part ways. Before you head back to your ship, you take one last look at the little green creature. As you sling your rifle back over your shoulder, you think to yourself that you trust the Mandalorian to keep him safe.

---

When you cross the treeline into the clearing again, the first thing you see is the other ship landed not far from your own. It’s a light freighter, one that you happen to recognize as belonging to Daask, a trandoshan widely known for being ruthless and cunning. He’s the kind of bounty hunter that you’d rather not run into on the job, especially not this job.

You watch the loading ramp come down on the other hunter’s ship, revealing the trandoshan and his crew: a bothan and a twi’lek that you don’t recognize. Daask spots you immediately and grins wickedly, his forked tongue flicking out of his mouth.

He says something to the other two, but you’re too far away to hear it. You begin to close the distance, knowing that you’re not leaving Sorgan without some form of interaction. You just hope that the Mandalorian has the good sense to leave the swamp planet as soon as possible.

You take in a slow, measured breath, your eyes locked with Daask’s. Your gaze of stone never falters. You’re out in the open. You can’t afford to make an offensive move yet. But as soon as you’re close to your own ship, you call out to the band of hunters.

“The bounty is gone. They escaped and left the planet before I could get to them,” you say. The lie is weak, and you don’t expect it to work, but all you need now is to buy time.

The trandoshan narrows his eyes, and then pulls his own tracking fob from his pocket. He holds it up for you to see. The red light is blinking, indicating that the target is much closer than you were telling them. “She’s with the Mandalorian,” he hisses.

All three draw their weapons. You do the same. As they open fire, you press yourself against the side of your ship, an angle that keeps them from being able to hit you from their current position. But they begin to move towards you. You move every few seconds, firing back at the other bounty hunters. One shot grazes your arm, but in the heat of the firefight you don’t even flinch. Instead, you take out the twi’lek, your bolt hitting him square in the chest. He falls to the grass with a strained outcry.

The bothan goes down next, and rather than pursuing you on his own, Daask retreats back to his ship, abandoning his crew, leaving them to die. You step away from your ship, watching as the freighter takes to the sky in record time. You think that you’ve managed to stave off the trandoshan for now, but when he hovers above you and aims the ship’s guns down at you, you realize that you’re terribly mistaken.

Your heart flies into your throat and you try to run, try to make it back to the cover of the trees before he can fire, but your legs can’t carry you fast enough. You hear the blast, feel the heat of the explosion that follows, but before you can even comprehend what’s happening, the shockwave sends you flying across the clearing.

Everything goes black.

---

When you open your eyes, there’s someone standing over you. Their form blocks the sun from your eyes, leaving you staring up at a blurry silhouette. Your ears are ringing painfully, and for a moment you think that Daask has come back to finish the job after realizing that you weren’t dead. You try to bring yourself to move, but find yourself paralyzed.

The form begins to move, crouches closer to your level. You close your eyes, bracing yourself for what you believe will be your untimely death. And all for the sake of the strange child that you will never see again. It was laughable really, a bounty hunter dying to save the life of her target. You’ll be infamous with the Guild for years and years to come. Daask will make sure of it. He’ll boast of your death as if he brought down the entire Galactic Empire on his own.

But the hand that wraps around your shoulders does not end with claws ready to tear you apart. No. It’s gentle, gloved in leather. Human.

The Mandalorian.

You open your eyes again. Your vision begins to clear and the ringing in your ears dies down. The outline of his helmet and the armor he wears comes into sharper focus. His voice comes quickly through the modulator in his helmet, but in your daze it’s like you’re hearing him through water.

“Can you hear me?” Syllables and words come together in your head as you finally begin to comprehend language again.

A labored breath escapes your lips. You force out a quick, “Yes.”

He slowly pulls you to sit up and you have to bite back a groan at the way your body aches. It’s a bone-deep pain that you know will stay with you for a while, but you suppose that’s better than being dead.

“What happened?,” he asks cautiously.

“They came for the child. One of them escaped. Daask won’t stop until he collects his pay,” you tell him, though you have no idea if he’ll recognize the trandoshan’s name. Regardless, he’s sure to understand the severity of the situation. More hunters will follow. And it won’t be long before they do.

“He won’t touch the child. I’ll make sure of that.” He sounds so certain, so confident, as if he doesn’t have the entire Guild on his trail.

He pulls you to stand next, and it’s then that you realize just what Daask had done. Your ship—what little remains of it, anyway—sits across the clearing. It burns and smolders, beyond hope of repair. He’s taken out your only means of transportation. You’re not sure how you’ll leave Sorgan now. All you know is that you can’t stay.

The Mandalorian follows your gaze. “What will you do?,” he asks softly.

“I can find my way on my own,” you reply, though you’re certainly not sure how.

“You killed two Guild hunters,” he retorts, looking at where the bothan and twi’lek lie dead just a few yards from the wreckage of your ship. “They’ll put a bounty on your head next.”

“I’m not afraid of them.” Your words are insistent. You’ve been at this for a long time. You know how to beat bounty hunters at their own game.

The Mandalorian goes quiet for a few moments, and as you face him again you can see that he’s pondering something. You’re not sure why he cares so much for your well being, not when there’s a child already dependent on him for safety. There’s no logical reason for him to be concerned about what happens to you now.

“Come with us,” he says.

Chapter Two: Narudar

---

Tag List: @theforceofdisney @ginger-swag-rapunzel

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #bounty hunter!reader #reader insert #dyn jarren x reader #dyn jarren #mando #baby yoda #the child #star wars

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jungshookz · 5 years ago

Note

ok but like what if jungkook and y/n are at a hockey match and a kiss cam lands on them but they're both strangers

➺ pairing: jeon jungkook x reader

➺ genre: biRTHDAY-themed fluff that is so utterly sweet you will undoubtedly get like ten cavities after reading this; tae demolished a whole serving of cheesy fries and he’s not feeling so good mr stark; namjoon & y/n bond over the fact that they just don’t get hockey

➺ wordcount: 4.6k

➺ note: happy birthday to the man that not only owns my heart but also my whOLE ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh my goD i love him!!!!!!!!!!!! u ruin my life but also make it ten times better!!!!!!!!

(gif isn’t mine!)

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

“remind me again why jimin couldn’t come with you instead?” you scowl when someone bumps into you from behind and you instinctively reach down to pull your purse to your front

…what??

you haven’t cashed in your latest paycheque and you don’t want anyone steaLing your hard-earned money

you stumble into tae’s back when someone knocks into you again

you would think that people would have the common decency to be a little more polite but no

this is so not your scene

plus you saw an army of ants feasting on the carcass of a cockroach in the washroom and you immediately hightailed it ouT of there

your bladder is just going to have to wait til you return to safety of your own toilet

tae told you he’d be happy to chug down a gallon of soda and give you the cup to pee in and you nearly considered it because that would probably be cleaner than the washrooms here

“because- yeah, two forks, please - because he had some dumb work thing that he couldn’t skip out on and i wasn’t going to waste my front row tickets!” tae scoffs as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world

well

that’s fair, you suppose

“you really couldn’t invite anybody else? i was your next choice?” you cling to the back of tae’s jersey because everyone keeps shoving into you and you feel like you’re going to be carriEd away by a hoard of sweaty hockey fans if you don’t hold on to something

you don’t mean to sound ungrateful because it is really nice of taehyung to have invited you to this apparently suPer big-deal of a hockey game (you’re pretty sure the fans here would rip each other apart to get their hands on a front row ticket) but like ?///???

you aren’t exactly a super enthusiastic sports person

sure, you’ll watch a couple matches if it’s on the tv while you’re cleaning up your apartment or if you just need some noise in the apartment but it’s not something that you actively seek out to watch

if anything you’re 100% more likely to watch spongebob squarepants over a sports game

you just don’t see the appeal of watching grown men (anD women! ur a feminist! girls are great!) gliding around on ice clickity-clacking a tiny puck here and there with wooden sticks while very aggressively shOving into each other at the same time

also the names of the hockey teams are always so dumb

you could probably come up with a better hockey team name because all you have to do is pick an adjective and then pick an animal

the screaming giraffes

the wailing whales

the condescending toads

you would pay good money to watch a match between the screaming giraffes and the wailing whales

you’re not sure if the condescending toads would make a good name now that you think about it

“aw, c’mon! it’s not like you had any other plans, anyways.” tae raises a brow at you and you immediately scoff

he has a good point.,.,., but stiLL

“i totally had plans!”

“ordering a party sized serving of chicken alfredo and garlic bread and watching netflix doesn’t count as plans.”

…okay anoTHer good point

the seats that you guys got are actually pretty good

you’re located right in the middle so you get an equal view of the goal on the right and the goal on the left

it’s not like you’re going to be paying attention to the game but still

very nice!

“can you believe we only had to pay $5 for all of this?” tae laughs lightly in disbelief as he rubs his hands together and looks down at the foot-long hot dog sitting on his lap

“…it should be concerning that we got all of this for $5.” you mutter under your breath and stare down at the plastic-looking cheese smothered over the fries

you told tae not to go overboard with the food but of course he didn’t listen to you which is why you guys are sharing a foot-long chilli cheese dog anD an extra large order of chilli cheese fries and a slurpee served in a literal bucket

usually you’d be down to inhale all of this but uh

you don’t want to sound snooty or anything but you saw one of the employees accidentally drop an entire bag of cheese into the pot before quickly fishing it out with their bare hands and you’re pretty sure that’s a health code violation

you mentioned it to tae and he said it wasn’t a big deal and- well, he’s already starting to scarf down the hot dog

side note

these fries are actually really good

you stab a few more of them with your fork before shovIng the biteful into your mouth and gently dabbing some cheese sauce off your chin with your napkin

just because you’re starving doesn’t mean all your manners are going to fly out the damn window

you didn’t eat breakfast this morning so this is a great first meal

“vou know what fhe beft part iv of sitting in the front?” tae asks through a faT mouthful of hot dog and you immediately wince in respond

men are disgusting

“what?” you reach over to wipe tae’s mouth with a napkin because both his hands are occupied by the almost offensively large hotdog

he swallows his bite before licking some chilli from the corner of his mouth

again

men are disgusting

“sometimes the hockey players get sLammed right up against the protective shield right in front of us.” tae gestures to the clear plastic panels separating the crowd from the rink “and if you’re really lucky, you get to see someone lose a tooth or something!”

you immediately make a face

“wha- how is that-“

“jungkook, over here! i found our seats!” you glance over for a second when someone quite literally scReams out loud for their friend

and then you’re turning to face tae again

“as i was saying,” you pause for a brief second when tae reaches over to take the fries from you, “how the hell is that the best part about sitting in the fr-“

you jump in surprise when what feels like a whole handful of popcorn suddenly scatters down on your head and onto your lap

oh coMe ON

you just washed your hair this morning!!!!!

the crumbs are going to look like you have veRy bad dandruff

also this is heavily buTTERED popcorn which means that the grease stains on your jeans are probably going to be there for the rest of your life

and these jeans were expeNSIVE

>:-(

this hockey game is not a very fun experience so far

“oh shit, sorry!”

“it’s all good, it’s all good…” you mutter as you flick a kernel of popcorn off your shoulder

yep

there’s a speck of grease on your sweater

greAt

“just be careful with that drink of yours because i-“ you look up to-

o-oh

oh god

oh god the popcorn guy is cute

and not just cute

he’s like.,,. he’s suPER CUTE

round brown eyes

obscenely perfectly tousled black hair

he definitely looks to be around your age which is a big fat bonus

although that colour-block hoodie of his is making him look a lot younger you still think it’s safe to say he’s probably around your age

“sorry, miss… the plastic lids here are flimsy as hell and mine keeps popping off so you can’t blame me if i get you wet!” the guy flashes you a boyish smile and you feel your mouth go dry

oh dear lord

have mercy

“hey- you want extra chilli on your half of the hot dog?” you’re rudely poPped out of your little bubble when taehyung suddenly elbows your side

“wh- what? what?” you tear your eyes away from the handsome stranger who’s making himself comfortable in the seat right next to you before clearing your throat and looking over at tae

“extra chilli!” tae chirps and raises your half of the hot dog up a little

he already finished his half which isn’t a huge surprise

to be honest he was going to just go ahead and finish the hot dog but he figured it’d be nice to at least offer you a bite

“-i even asked for an extra little container of chopped up onions because i know you like-“

“no!” you blurt out and whack the container of onions out of tae’s hand causing it to smAck against the plastic divider before clattering to the ground

the two of you blink down at it

tae purses his lips before subtly kicking as much of it as possible under his seat

“i, um, i’m actually not that hungry. you can finish the hot dog.” you clear your throat again before unscrewing the lid of your bottle of water and taking a tentative, ladylike sip

“…what are you talking about? you were going to town on those cheesy fries like five seconds ago- oW-“

“jungkook, over here! i found our seats!” jungkook perks up when he sees namjoon waving him over

there he is!

he was starting to get worried that namjoon wandered off somewhere or somehow locked himself in the supply closet or something

namjoon put him in charge of snack duty and he went aLL out

popcorn? check!

roasted peanuts? double check!

blue-flavoured slurpee? triple check!

he actually ended up getting two drinks because namjoon likes to bite the straw and jungkook doesn’t want to share a drink with a straw-biter

“here, i’ll take the peanuts and my drink-“ namjoon plucks the paper bag and the plastic cup cradled in jungkook’s arms before he steps aside to let him squeeze into the aisle

namjoon actually won these hockey game tickets from a raffle at work and jungkook almost exploded with joy when he invited him to come and watch it with him

it was actually pretty perfect timing because the game just so happened to land on jungkook’s birthday

namjoon gave jungkook the best birthday present and he didn’t even have to spend a dime

:’)

“s’cuse me, sorry-“ jungkook weasels his way in between the aisles and carefully steps over people’s legs as he makes his way to his seat exciTEdly

he’s never been to a live sports game before!!!

and he’s definitely never been in the froNt row of anything before!!!!

two birds with one fAt stone!

also he-

“oh shit, sorry!” he gasps when he accidentally tips his carton of popcorn a little bit causing it to land all over the stranger seated next to his spot

shiT

there goes half his popcorn

he’s not going to go back up to the concessionary stand to get more popcorn because the game is about to start and the line is probably still half a mile long

“it’s all good, it’s all good…” jungkook winces to himself and feels his cheeks heat up a little as he watches you brush the popcorn to the ground

yikes

he’s about to sit down when suddenly you speak up again “just be careful with that drink of yours because i-“

jungkook feels his heart skip a beat when you look up at him

oh wowie you’re pretty

…he just spilt his greasy popcorn all over a very pretty girl

double yikes

it’s fine

just play it cool

he can play it cool

“sorry…” jungkook raises his cup a little “the plastic lids here are flimsy as hell and mine keeps popping off so you can’t blame me if i get you wet!”

he immediately pales as soon as that tumbles out of his mouth

wha-

what the HELL was that?!?!?!

out of all the things he could’ve said

his three and a half brain cells came up with thAT

you can’t blame me if i get you wet???????

you probably think he’s some kind of weird peRVERT now

luckily your boyfriend starts talking to y-

huh

you have a boyfriend

of course you have a boyfriend

jungkook lets out a little huff before plopping down on the plastic seat

whatever >:-(

namjoon leans over and glances into the popcorn bag before frowning

damnit

he just wanted some popcorn

:-(

“holy shiT, did you see that backhand????” tae practically screeches as he reaches over and slaps your arm aggressively “y/n, did you see it????”

“i saw- i sAW it, i saw it!” you scowl and smack his hands away from you

“oh my god, that was legEndary-“

you can barely hear tae’s enthusiastic blabbering because all you can hear is the sound of skates shrEdding up the ice and the sound of the puck being whacked back and forth and also cheers and whOops from all of these diehard fans

you honestly have no idea what the hell is going on right now

all you know is that the two teams are tied right now and everYone’s getting frustrated

you’re not sure which team you should be rooting for so you’re just basing it off of which uniform you like better

in other words, you’re cheering on the pUrpLe team!

also no one’s been smacked up against the plastic divider yet which is a huge relief because you’re not sure if you want to see anyone lose any teeth today

“will you cut it out?? your future girlfriend probably isn’t going to appreciate it if you’re practically beating her up-“

jungkook perks up immediately when he hears that come out of your mouth

so that guy isn’t your boyfriend!

nice!!!!!

that means he still has a chance even though he dumped like a pound of popcorn on you and almost drenched you in his blue-flavoured slurpee

also he didn’t mean to eavesdrop

it’s just hard noT to eavesdrop when you’re sitting right next to him

he’s been paying attention to the game because duH but also he keeps thinking about how cute u look when you have a mouthful of french fries

also

now he knows that your name is y/n which is actually pretty fitting

you look like a y/n

it’s cute!

on an unrelated note

u smell rly nice but he can’t quite put his finger on what that particular scent is

jungkook’s nose twitches

“what do you mean the game isn’t over yet??” you groan and plop yourself back down in the seat “there was an intermission like half an hour ago!!!”

“there are two intermissions, you whiney baby!” tae scowls

you need to chill

you’re acting like watching a hockey game is equivalent to getting your teeth pulled out

you’re being a bABy

if he can sit through hours and houRS of your reality tv shows you can sit through one hockey game

“so…” namjoon pauses for a second “the game… isn’t over?”

“nope! there’s one more round.” jungkook chirps and shovels a handful of popcorn into his mouth

“oh.” namjoon slumps back in his seat a little

he thought the game was over

to be honest he was ready to leave before the first intermission but jungkook looked like he was having the time of his life so he decided to wait it out

“so what are we supposed to do now?” namjoon furrows his brows “do they just expect us to wait and do nothing?”

“well, no, they’re doing that thing where-“ jungkook immediately chokes when he suddenly sees his face on the jumbotron

and unsurprisingly

your face is also on the jumbotron

“y/n-“

“hold on, i’m about to beat my high score-“ your tongue pokes out in concentration as you focus on your very intense session of tetris

“y/n-“ tae hisses and punches your arm

“ow!” you whine and rub your sore arm

tae’s been hitting you for the duration of the whole game and you’re pretty sure your arm is about to fall off

he needs to cut it out

he knoWs you bruise like a pEACH

“-what did i tell you about hitting me???” you put your phone down and turn to glare at tae

“you’re on the- look!!!!” tae points to the front and-

you immediately pale when you realise that yes, that is most definitely your face on the jumbotron right now, and yes, you and jungkook, the very handsome stranger that you definitely already have a crush on, are currently trapped inside of a big pinK heart with the words ‘KISS CAM’ floating on top of the heart

oh god

you can’t kiss him

you still taste like cheesy fries

and your lips are chapped

and your tongue is stained blue from the slurpee

you can’T KISS HIM

and also he’s a literal stranger but most importantly you are not in the right state to be kisSEd right NOW

“oh, no-“ you shake your head quickly before making a slicing gesture over your neck “we’re not- we’re not together!”

jungkook glances at you for a brief second and he can sEe the panic in your eyes

okay

he was down to kiss you but obviously you don’t feel the same way which is totally understandable but stiLL

oh well

he might as well join in on the protesting

“right, yeah- we don’t know each other!” jungkook shakes his hand at the camera and you flash a sheepish smile at the camera before shrugging

the crowd immediately erupts into boos and you immediately scoff before turning to face the people behind you

“excuse-” you gawk when someone has the audacity to thrOW a handful of popcorn down at you guys “-excuse you!”

you turn back to face the camera and shake your head before holding your arms up and crossing one over the other

“sorry! we’re not going to kiss!!!!!!!!”

you shoot a glare in tae’s direction when he joins in on the booing

sometimes you don’t know why you’re friends with him because he’s literally suCH a moRON

“seriously, we’re not- oh, okay-“ you let out a breath of relief when the camera moves away from the two of you

you immediately slump back in your seat

phEW

that was a close call

if ur going to kiss jungkook it’s going to be because he wantS to kiss you and noT because he’s being forCed to kiss you

“sorry about that…” he turns to look at you and you immediately perk up

“no, you have nothing to apologise for! don’t sweat it.” you laugh lightly and shake your head before digging through your purse for a stick of gum

your breath still tastes like cheesy fries and it’s not very pleasant

“i, uh, i’m jungkook, by the way.” jungkook sticks his hand out for you to shake

he’s… introducing himself to you

…does that mean… he might be… interested in you…?

much to think about

you take his hand gently before offering him a shy smile “i’m y/n.”

“and i’m taehyung!” tae leans over and shoots jungkook a boxy smile “i would shake your hand but my fingers are still sticky with cheese.”

your eyes flutter shut and you pinch the bridge of your nose

kim taehyung is the absolute bane of ur existence

“it’s nice to meet you guys. uh, this is-“ jungkook glances over his shoulder “this is namjoon!”

“hey, hi.” namjoon smiles politely and nods to the both of you in acknowledgement “are you guys big hockey fans?”

“i’m not, but tae is-“ you laugh lightly and namjoon’s eyes liGht up

“i’m not that big of a fan either! i honestly don’t really get it!“

“right??” you gasp in excitement because now you have someone you can actually talk to about this stuff “what’s the big deal with a group of grown men gliding around and-“

“i know!! also i always lose track of where the puck is-“

taehyung and jungkook lean back slightly to give each other the same looks of ‘do you hear what i’m hearing right now?’

“i don’t see what the point is of having two intermissions-“ you nearly jump ten feet into the air when the crowd suddenly buRsts into cheers and for a second you think it’s because the game is resuming

but nO

because take a WILD guess as to whose faces are up on the jumbotron aGAIN

“wha- are you people serious?!” you gawk as you stare at yourself at the screen

…is that really what you look like?

you look weirder when you’re up on the big screen for some reason

you don’t get a chance to dwell on the fact that people can probably see your pores from how HD the camera is because the next thing you know, the crowd is beginning to chant

“kiss! kiss! kiss! kiss!”

jungkook lets out a nervous laugh and shakes his head before reaching up to pluck at the silver hoop hanging from his ear (it’s a nervous hAbit and he is very vERY nervous right now) “sorry, we’re not going to!”

“kiSS! kiSS! kiSS! kiSS!”

“you heard the guy!” you gesture over to jungkook “we’re not doing it, you pERverts!”

it seems like the audience couldn’t give leSS of a shit because every time you and jungkook say that you two aren’T going to kiss they become more riled up

even taehyung and namjoon have joined in on the chanting

namjoon can’t help but snort when jungkook turns to look at him with briGht red cheeks

if ya can’t beat em join em!!!

“we’re going to be here all day! just move on!”

“KISS!”

“we’re not going to kiss!!!!!!!”

“KISS!”

“we don’t even know each other!”

“KISS!”

“my lips are suPer chapped!”

“KISS!”

“take a hint!”

“oh for the love of god-“ jungkook’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when you’re suddenly grabbing him by the collar of his hoodie and pulling him towards you and-

his heart stops in his chest when you press your lips against his and he immediately freezes

o god

you’re kissing him

you’re kiSsing HIM

you pull away far too soon for jungkook’s liking (it was obviously only meant to be a peck) and jungkook blinks owlishly

wha-

is that it?????

that’s all????

you are riPPING him off

“there, we kissed! are you freAKS happ-“ before you get a chance to get all smug with the camera jungkook’s yanking you back and smearing his lips over yours

the crowd now eRUPTS into cheers and screams and namjoon is literally screeching his head off next to jungkook

taehyung isn’t doing any better

he threw his half-eaten hot dog up into the aIR

and for a brief second jungkook thinks you’re going to freak out and pull away but he’s more than pleasantly surprised when you begin to kiss him back

also he figured out what u smell like and why he likes it so much

it’s because you smell like his favourite fabric softener

and if that’s not a sign that you’re basically perFect for him then he doesn’t know what is!!!!

jungkook reaches up to cup your cheek gently while your fingers curl around the nape of his neck

needless to say

you are vERy much making out with a stranger right now (your mom would probably flip if she found out) but you most definitely don’t give a hECK because jungkook’s lips are so soft and he tastes like buttery popcorn

the tiniest of whimpers slips past your lips when jungkook teases you with small brushes of his tongue against yours

he tilts his head slightly to deepen the kiss and all of a sudden you feel lightheaded and your entire body feels like jello

he’s such a good kisser that you nearly forget the fact that the two of you are making out in front of like 20,000 people right now

a smirk twitches at the corner of jungkook’s mouth when he pulls away and you immediately respond with a whine

it started off with you getting him all flustered but obviously the tables have turned because you are just putty in his hands and he knows it

“jungkook…” you sigh breathlessly as he nudges his nose against yours

oH boy

your soul definitely left your body

you’re still floating on cloud nine

meanwhile the crowd is still compLETELY losing it because they were just expecting a little pek and not THIS

“yeah?” jungkook takes his bottom lip in between his teeth as he resists the urge to lean in and kiss you again

“i think this means you have to take me out on a date now.”

“…i think you might be right.”

best

birthday

ever

:-)

help me help you make your wishes come tru (aka send me a request)

drabble masterlist // main masterlist

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anerdinallherglory · 4 years ago

Text

Approaching Sun (27)

Author’s Note: I am SO sorry about how long this chapter took to update. Taking on master’s classes on top of work has been a rough transition. The majority of this chapter had been planned and typed a long time ago, but it just took me ages to organize it, detail it, clean it up, and fluff it with a fork. For those of you who have contacted recently, (and I probably have yet to respond) this chapter is for you. Without your encouragement, who knows how much longer this chapter would have taken.

Forgive me. Hope you enjoy.

Pairing: SasuSaku

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

Chapter 27: Confirmation

Sakura had fully intended on eavesdropping on Sasuke’s conversation with Satou; in fact, it was the only reason that Sakura had allowed the interaction to transpire between her patient and her teammate. After Sasuke had closed the door firmly behind her, Sakura had walked heavily down the hallway so her footsteps could be heard. Her next step was to take the stairs, walk silently up two floors, and listen in by opening the window directly above Satou’s. Sakura had noted that Satou’s patient room window had been cracked open. Surely her ninja skills would be well-adapted to a simple eavesdropping.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, as Sakura walked down the hall, she noted that her breathing was becoming short. Her chest was tightening considerably, a feeling that she dismissed at first to anxiety at the current situation. When she paused to consider it, Sakura tried to swallow past her itchy throat. A terrifying realization came over Sakura has she glanced down at her hands that held the freshly pulverized Ashuwa.

Shit.

Sakura covered the mortar, sprinted down the remainder of the hallway, and took a right. She held tightly to the Ashuwa despite the situation; she couldn’t afford to sacrifice what they had acquired in her state of panic. Sakura tried her best to remember the hospital’s layout; there was a drug storage room on every level, so thankfully Sakura wouldn’t have to take stairs in her compromised situation. Turning another corner, Sakura was relieved to finally stumble up to the door marked “薬” for medication. Placing the mortar of Ashuwa on the ground, Sakura managed to focus through her shortness of breath and perform the sign of the ram to channel her chakra to her palm. Placing it on the center of the door, Sakura nearly stumbled as the door received her chakra signature and swung open to grant her access to the room.

Sakura’s vision began to blur as she shuffled through the drawers and cabinets. She could barely read the itemized labels of the stored items. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. She felt lethargic and her throat was swelling quickly. She should have taken Mako’s warning more seriously. He had told her of the drug’s disuse in the medical environment due to many allergic reactions to it. This was what she had been testing earlier when she picked a generous pinch of Ashu from the ground and placing it in her mouth; however, her and Mako both had gotten distracted by the issue of Satou.

Sakura cursed at herself for being careless but felt confident in her approach. If only she could find the medicine. She narrowed her focus to the vials on the top shelf and coughed violently as she reached for one. Stumbling into the shelf resulted in several of them busting onto the ground. After locating the blue tagged bottle labeled “adrenaline,” Sakura threw open cabinet after cabinet until she found the drawer of packaged syringes. She was choking now, a fish out of water and she aimed the needle into the top of the bottle; her hands shook as she waisted even more time trying to draw the medicine into the plunger.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sasuke was trying to outwalk Mako, who was smiling kindly and attempting to make small talk as they quickly made their way down the hall from Satou’s room. Sasuke thought if he could just stride quickly enough, Mako might take the hint and part ways with him.

Sasuke frowned at Mako’s prattling of, “I have to admit. I was concerned with the whole genjutsu approach, but I think that it might be pretty effective. That was brilliant!”

Sasuke stopped his break-neck pace and narrowed his eyes at the medic, scrutinizing him carefully. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mako innocently, crossing his arms behind him.

Sasuke debated Mako for a second. Here was a skilled shinobi of medicine, an assistant to his friend, and Sakura addressed him casually. This trip was the first occasion that Sasuke had ever met him, yet Mako recognized Sasuke’s attempt at genjutsu before he had even performed it. Perhaps he was knowledgeable of the sharingan; many people were. It was Sasuke’s past of constantly being targeted that had the Uchiha wary. Was this the reason Sasuke was inclined to distrust him, or was it the fact that Sakura was involved?

Sasuke clarified. “I want to know who you are and what you want.”

Mako laughed and smiled nicely. “Well, I am a medic ninja here at the Suna hospital. I have been appointed to assist Sakura-san during her stay with us. Kankuro was pretty adamant about it.”

“Hn.” Sasuke responded before walking forward again. Mako sped to catch up.

“Honestly,” he continued, “Sunagakure owes a lot to Sakura-san. You have probably heard this before, but we have advanced due to her and the Leaf’s medical supervision and instruction. We are something in her debt.”

Sasuke didn’t respond. Perhaps that was all there was to it. Sasuke supposed it made sense that Gaara and Kankuro would assign the most ambitious learner and fellow medicinal expert as Sakura’s assistant. Sunagakure wanted to take advantage of every lesson and tip available. Sakura’s discipline and dedication to the medical practice made her share a common interest with the professionals here. Not everyone always had some double meaning to their actions like most ninja in the shinobi world.

As Sasuke and Mako rounded the corner to the left, they paused as several people ran past them in the opposite direction, back toward the center of the third floor. One man who bumped into Mako’s shoulder turned to look at him in recognition, jogging backwards. “Code 10. Haruno-san.”

“Shit!” Mako cursed, chasing after the man who spoke. Sasuke didn’t know what “Code 10” meant, but to see a panicked response in connection to the name “Haruno” had Sasuke quickly following.

“What is it?” he demanded, matching Mako’s stride this time.

“Anaphylaxis” Mako said breathlessly as they rounded the final corner and nearly collided with several attendants outside a small room in the hallway. Someone was kneeling just outside the door and Sasuke couldn’t make out the questions they were asking before until he began to make his way through with Mako right on his heels.

When he came in line with the entrance, Sasuke froze. Sakura was on her back, broken glass surrounding her on a messy floor. A medic was kneeling down beside her and removing a syringe from her hand. “We need to get her into one of the rooms. Now.” Sasuke’s heart was racing as someone wheeled a gurney past him. Mako began pulling him away from the entrance to which Sasuke almost shrugged off.

Sakura’s pink head was closest to the door so Sasuke couldn’t get a good look at her face until they began lifting her onto the gurney and wheeled her past him. To Sasuke’s great relief, his medic friend was fully alert despite the hives across her face and swelling lips. When making eye contact with him, she raised her hand and waved awkwardly.

“Hey.” She said past swollen lips.

“Hey?!” Sasuke responded, irritation quickly replacing his concern. Was she serious?! Mako let out a surprised laugh at her casual greeting. Sasuke ignored him completely and began tailing the gurney as it rolled away with her.

“What the hell happened?” he asked her with pointed annoyance. After failing to mumble past her tomato mouth, Sasuke shook his head. “Nevermind.”

“I’ll explain,” Mako said from the other side of the swiveling table. Sasuke spent the next several minutes listening to Mako explain a basic understanding of anaphylaxis and staring disbelievingly at Sakura as they unloaded her onto a bed. They began to hook her up to an IV and other machinery that would monitor her pulse and blood pressure.

Mako continued his explanation, “Antihistamines are what comes next. Luckily, she responded to the epinephrine and doesn’t need intubation. We’ll have to monitor her for a few hours just to make sure she doesn’t have another episode.”

Sakura was nodding her blistered head in agreement at everything he said. Sasuke just glared at her.

“Why did you eat a plant you knew was toxic?” he asked crossly. She shrugged her shoulders, the only response she could really make at the moment.

“I should have stopped you, Haruno-san.” Mako bowed. “It is all my fault.”

Sakura began shaking her head to dismiss Mako’s apology. Then she began to gesture for Sasuke to come over to her bedside. When he was close enough, Sakura pointed toward his hand.

“What?” he asked, looking down at it. My hand? What about it? He sure wasn’t going to hold her hand if that was what she was implying. Especially not in front of anyone.

A word made it past her lips but Sasuke didn’t understand it. “Hn?”

“Rath,” she repeated, still pointing. “Da ya hath a rath?”

“Oh,” Mako exclaimed. “You were handling the Ashuwa earlier, Sasuke. Do you have a rash on your hand?”

Ah. Sasuke’s hand was partially gloved except for his fingertips, which were unmarred. It had been approximately 30-45 minutes since Sasuke had even touched the plant. Sakura had sampled the herb 10 minutes before that, so it was too early to tell if Sasuke would have a similar reaction. He didn’t have a rash on his fingertips though.

Another physician handed Mako a familiar mortar and removed his disposable gloves after touching it. Mako immediately pinched a piece out of it and offered it to the Uchiha.

Sasuke responded with a glare as Mako continued to hold it out. “You’re not suggesting I eat that?”

“We need to make sure that you don’t develop a similar reaction, especially if you plan on using the chakra pills that Sakura is making.”

Sakura was mutely nodding in agreement and Sasuke annoyingly spat out toward her, “Why? You want me to end up looking like you?” Her nodding turned to shaking.

She followed with, “He’th ight. Eat wow you ah here.” Sasuke scoffed and blinked in disbelief at her communication efforts. How was she even talking?!

This was an absolute lunatic idea. She wanted the BOTH of them in hospital beds in this village while Gaara was away handling potential psychos that were after them? It was already a concern that she was incapacitated; Sasuke sure as hell wasn’t going into anaphylaxis too by choice.

“I’ll wait until you’re better,” he answered, shooing Mako’s hand away from his face. As he did so, Sasuke pointed at the door, ordering Mako to just go and check on Satou’s kid. Mako blinked at him in confusion before taking the hint and exiting with that same excuse.

When the silence grew thick between them, Sasuke took a casual stance against the wall next to Sakura’s bedside.

“Ya are wathing time,” Sakura began, looking guilty despite her swollen mouth as she tucked her hands beneath the covers and looked around at nonexistent people in the room; anywhere but at him. She was right. He was wasting time, and Sasuke mentally shook himself as he realized his indifference to that. He was trying to remind himself of his goal but in that moment, Sasuke’s feelings were outweighing that purpose.

He turned his back and peered out the small window at the darkening sky. He glanced back at her briefly before turning back to the window. “Are you okay?”

There wasn’t a reply which had the Uchiha worried and he turned to see her wide-eyed expression at his question. The face Sakura was making looked as if Sasuke had grown two heads. “I mean,” he added quickly, “with a mouth like that, it looks difficult to breath.”

She immediately covered her mouth and frowned at him, obviously embarrassed at his words. “I ah fine!” she shouted in embarrassment into her fingers and turned her head. Sasuke resisted the urge to smirk.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

After the administration of the antihistamine, Sakura didn’t wait long before she began removing her own IV. She felt bad for the time that had been wasted today when she was supposed to be making the food pills. Sakura was just relieved that the Ashu had been tested before she gave Sasuke a drug that could potentially kill him.

“What are you doing?” Sasuke asked as she removed the monitor and turned off the flatlining machine before anyone came in at the sound. “They said it would be best to stay the night.”

“I’m ah do-ter” she told him. Yes, Sakura would have advised the same thing to her patients, but she was out of danger now and she felt anxious despite her drowsiness. She was troubling Sasuke enough by accompanying him on his mission. She didn’t want to get in his way; she was supposed to be making things easier.

Sasuke scoffed at her dismissive, mumbled declaration as she stood from the bed. She blinked heavily and managed to stand upright. It would still take a little bit of time for her to completely pass out from the side effects, so Sakura figured the time she had left awake could be spent productively.

The medic immediately went over to the cabinets and pulled out disposable gloves and a mask from the drawer. The mask would serve two purposes: 1) protect her from inhaling the Ashuwa as she worked and 2) hide her ridiculous “tomato” mouth as Sasuke referred to it. Ugh. Sakura could die from embarrassment.

“What are you doing now?” Sasuke grumbled irritably, following her as she moved. She immediately headed over to the mortar on the cabinet and pinched some of the yellow herb, skin protected from the substance thanks to the gloves.

“Eat.” She stated plainly. They couldn’t proceed further if Sasuke was likely to have a similar allergic reaction. Sakura would have to scrap their entire progress by disposing of the food pill batch. She would be back to square one and they would have to start all over by finding a new foundational herb with the correct properties to achieve the correct results.

“Forget it,” the Uchiha deadpanned before making to head for the door. Sakura caught hold of his hand, stumbling in the process and taking a hard fall on her knee. She winced visibly. That would bruise later. Sasuke immediately turned and helped her up and Sakura thanked her mask for hiding her blushing cheeks as well.

With the same hand Sasuke had offered, Sakura turned his palm up and placed the Ashuwa in his cupped fingers. “No time.”

Sasuke glared at her for what seemed like several minutes before reluctantly dumping it down his throat. They both knew he had to for his own sake.

Sakura nodded before trashing her gloves and retrieving a new pair. She couldn’t risk leaving traces around the hospital and anyone else coming into contact with the pollen if it was responsible for anaphylaxis. Mako had said that it was such a common reaction that they had stopped using it altogether.

Sakura halted in her steps, considered her plan, and decided to grab the entire box of disposable gloves. She handed Sasuke the mortar.

Sasuke gave her an expression that radiated annoyance but somehow was miraculously completely blank. If she could speak clearly in this moment, Sakura would have asked him how he managed that.

“Fowwo” she murmured through her mask-covered lips, pairing the word with a beckoning wave. “We’ll tesh your weaction why we wait.” She was shuffling out the door before Sasuke had the chance to say anything more.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sasuke trailed his teammate from the room, carrying the mortar of Ashuwa he had ground up earlier that day. This was one of the few times in his life that Sasuke somewhat regretted his decision to refuse the artificial limb that Tsunade had made for he and Naruto. Sakura was walking with one arm against the wall for support and Sasuke’s one and only hand was currently occupied.

It was well after dark now and many of the staff members were busy attending overnight patients, so they weren’t stopped by anyone as Sakura found her way back to the medicine room, which was now cleaned of broken glass and everything back in its space. She reached up and grabbed several bottles of adrenaline and then dug through the drawer for syringes.

“Sakura,” Sasuke began as she dropped some of the things she was holding onto the floor. “You need rest. We can finish this later.”

“We hafe to wait for weaction anyway. Might as well make the pills.”

“I feel fine.” Sasuke reassured her. It was true. Time had passed enough for his fingertips to develop a rash if there was going to be a topical reaction. He had yet to show signs from consumption.

Sakura strode past him again, this time walking backwards to face him. He could make out a smile beneath her mask which somewhat irked the Uchiha. She seemed awfully cheery despite nearly dying from anaphylaxis. Sasuke concluded that it had to be the medicine making her drowsy.

“Turn around before you fall,” he grumbled. She laughed as she began to walk slowly up the stairs. He hurried up behind her and offered her his elbow which she took thankfully despite his huffed “So annoying.” Her laugh was her only response.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sakura was practically nodding off as she watched Sasuke mix and prepare the batch of ingredients for the food pills. She felt relieved at finally seeing headway as Sasuke rolled the batter into 1-inch circular doses according to her instructions and placed them in the hospital’s oven. Sakura had tried to do so herself, but Sasuke had insisted she sit down to avoid screwing them up and risking their progress. Sakura allowed him to take the reins, praying desperately that the food pills would turn out and serve their purpose after such a hassle.

“Sasuke,” she whispered, immediately touching her lips behind the mask as she noticed the decrease in swelling. The ice Sakura had retrieved from icebox was doing its job.

“Hm?” he answered, trashing the latex glove he used to protect his skin and replacing his own. He turned to her then in the dim light, but Sakura couldn’t make out his expression because the only light in the room was a lamp over the counter workspace behind him. There was a shadow concealing his features and Sakura was too tired to try to make them out.

A lot easier now that her lips were shrinking, Sakura asked, “How are you? Any shortness of breath?”

“I’m fine,” he stated simply.

“Good,” she replied, thanking that ridiculous Uchiha blood of his for not reacting to the Ashuwa like her’s had. How ironic, Sakura thought, that even Sasuke’s genetics seemed to be working for him even in this circumstance. How superior he must feel.

Reclined across the small seating bench in the corner, Sakura placed her chin on her chest and inhaled the gentle night breeze that was coming from the opened window. It seemed to be the first night that the sand wasn’t trying to shatter the glass; to be honest, Sakura was surprised that the hospital windows even opened. Perhaps they were high enough on the fourth story to avoid the sand barrage.

Sasuke came to stand before her and Sakura blinked sleepily up at him in an antihistamine induced haze.

“Sleep,” the Uchiha before her ordered. “I’ll wake you when they’re done.”

Sakura wanted to argue that she could manage to stay awake for another 20 minutes while the chakra pills roasted, but she wasn’t that confident in her ability to do so. At most, she could manage maybe 5 more minutes if she concentrated hard enough. She wanted to ask Sasuke about the conversation he had with Satou.

“Sit with me,” she said, but it sounded more like a question. There was a minute of silence as Sasuke observed her. The bench wasn’t roomy, but Sakura was too drowsy to be apprehensive about their proximity. Sasuke must have not been either, because he sat and exhaled when he did so. Perhaps he was tired too.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sasuke tried not to lean away from her as she settled into his side. He cursed her medicated self for such confidence in a small, darkened space. He counted down the time in his head; he would only have to stay seated here for 17 more minutes. For some reason, that time seemed both entirely too long and entirely too short.

“Satou,” Sakura began, reaching up to take off the medical mask on her face. Sasuke tried not to smirk at the lips that were still puckered despite having minimized in size. He blinked past the image to focus on her words.

“Hn,” he responded sourly, thinking of the man whose name had just been dropped between them like a heavy, unwanted stone. Sasuke didn’t particularly feel like talking about that man. He had, had enough of Satou for one day.

“How did it go?” his teammate probed politely despite being nosey.

“Fine,” he replied shortly, not wanting Sakura to find out about too many details. How would she react if she knew he had used his Sharingan on him? Probably not well. Sakura would continue to dig for more specifics if Sasuke didn’t bring an end to the topic promptly. “His son needs to be sent to Konoha.”

Sakura nodded, not seeming too surprised at Sasuke assessment. Perhaps she had been thinking similarly. “Thank you for talking to him.”

It wasn’t much of a talk, but Sasuke wasn’t going to tell her that, so he just responded again with a finalizing “Hn.”

Sasuke couldn’t help but jump when Sakura’s fingers touched his right hand. “Sasuke,” she began, almost in sleepy inquiry as she brushed his palm with her thumb and index. There was hopefulness in her voice and Sasuke cursed her medication again for her damn self-assurance.

“I..” she began, but Sasuke cut her off before she continued. Sasuke was almost absolutely certain that he knew which words would come next.

“Shh,” he replied, leaning comfortably into her side as his answer to her unspoken confession. “Just sleep.”

After a few breaths, and when Sakura’s head nodded onto his shoulder, Sasuke scooped up her hand into his, finding the courage to splay her fingers with his own and fasten them into place. Even when he would let her go in 15 minutes, Sasuke would lock the moment into his heart to last him the rest of his life.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

When he counted down to the last second in his mind, Sasuke counted a few extra seconds. And then a few more. He thought about letting the doses of chakra pills burn to a crisp in the oven, but he decided against it, reluctantly releasing Sakura’s hand and pulling away from her heavy head.

Making sure that Sakura wouldn’t wake, Sasuke silently rose, turned off the oven and retrieved the pills from inside. He placed them on the counter quietly and turned to lean against the counter. He watched Sakura’s sleeping form for a few minutes, considering if he should wake her as he promised or let her sleep longer. What was the possibility of sitting beside her and stealing a few moments more?

Sasuke knew he was playing a dangerous game. Tomorrow, the Uchiha would test the chakra pill nearby and he and Sakura both were aware of what would happen after that. With the issue of his chakra reserves addressed, he would return to the desert to attempt cross-connecting dimensions again. They both realized Sasuke couldn’t waste any more time.

And with that thought, Sasuke’s stern resolve slipped. He would distance himself later, he thought. He would put the space back between them tomorrow. Tonight, Sasuke wanted to be next to Sakura.

He sat back down beside her and softly took up her hand again. Just for a little while longer.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Sakura woke in the middle of the night from the pain in her arched neck. She blinked past sleep and realized that she was folded into Sasuke’s side with her knees tucked and Sasuke’s head leaning against hers. Not only that, but Sakura froze as she realized her hand was entwined with Sasuke’s between them. The moment was fragile, and Sakura almost cried of joy and then heartbreak as it shattered when Sasuke responded to her shifting.

The weight of his head on hers lifted and Sakura tried not to grab desperately at him to keep him from moving. Instead, Sakura pivoted her eyes to his as his sleep faded and realization appeared on his face.

Sasuke released her hand and stood hurriedly, saying nothing despite how Sakura’s heart wanted answers. She wanted to know if this moment was genuine or if she had been the one to hold onto him in her sleep. Sakura wanted to believe desperately that Sasuke had allowed himself to be transparent for just a moment and had secretly revealed his true feelings for her by holding her as she slept. Had that been the case? Was she being too optimistic? This wouldn’t be the first time their hands had touched. Had he been supporting her as a friend, or did he feel something more? She had to know.

“Sasuke,” she began, but he cut her off for the second time that night.

“Good. You’re awake. Let’s go.” He declared, hastily placing the finished chakra pills in an open travel container on the counter.

Sakura stood then, heart racing and adrenaline pumping as she worked up the courage to come up behind him as he worked. She wasn’t going to confess this time. She was going to ask Sasuke if he had been confessing to her while she slept?

“Do you… love me?”

Sakura was almost certain that he stopped breathing altogether as he paused his task. The Uchiha took a minute to compose himself before exhaling. “When are you going to stop that?”

The statement was meant to be cold, but the fact that it came out so desperately low gave Sakura a rare feeling of hope despite the words. “When are you?” she responded calmly in a whisper.

“What?” he asked incredulously, finally turning to her.

She gradually took the last few steps between them and stood carefully in front of him. “When are you going to stop pretending that you have no feelings for me?”

Sakura expected a scoff, a ridicule, but what she got in return was painful fear in Sasuke’s usually expression-less eyes.

It was true, she realized. Sasuke did have feelings for her. There had been so many signs, but Sakura had been unsure about all of them until this very moment. But what had just passed between them was confirmation. Sakura almost lost her breath at the realization.

“You’re mistaken,” finally came the blunt retort, but it was too late.

Sakura was already closing the inches between them. Her fingers were already brushing his cheeks as she brought his face to hers. She hesitated. Just for a second. Just long enough for him to pull away from her. But Sasuke barely took a breath before Sakura touched her lips to his.

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