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#i do want to deal with this issue at some point in a fic because holy loss of identity batman!!! philosophy of mind issues are always fun
magistralucis · 10 months
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Doing a Robert Rath reread right now what with Fall of Cadia coming out. I've noticed that when Trazyn has to switch bodies, he (and Rath's narration) doesn't shy away from referring to his previous self as 'murdered' or 'dying' or 'dead'.
I find this choice in vocabulary particular, since no necron is ever really 'dead' unless their engrams have been destroyed, or if they've consciously shut off their recall mechanisms. A destroyed body means nothing in itself; a necron reanimated via reconstruction vaults etc. hasn't truly died, their data merely moved from one place to another. They retain all continuity of their personal identity. Trazyn's bodysnatching fulfills all those conditions - but for him to insist that he dies in this process, albeit without consequence, feels like a strange way of looking at things. As if death is something he actively experiences and overcomes, not something he is merely good at avoiding.
Now there's a lot this implies about the mind-body problem in WH40k, and I would like to explore that in a fic or elsewhere someday... but right now the shipping headcanons are going wild, and I'm wondering if him and Orikan are partially in their the_mountain_goats_no_children.mp3 era because they're talking past one another. That they want each other's 'death', but have different definitions of the meaning. That when Orikan wants Trazyn to 'die', he's saying 'I explicitly do not want you to return to this mortal plane I want you to suffer permadeath die and be dead'... but since death is so common for Trazyn, he's interpreting this as 'I only desire to inconvenience you slightly :)', and it's driving Orikan absolutely batty as a result. Trazyn would much rather collect Orikan, anyway, than have him be destroyed body and/or data-wise.
The idiots, the fools 🖤
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Losing Dogs
Neither you or Aegon wanted to get married. Neither you or Aegon wanted to marry each other. But at some point, you figured you should make the most of what you had, and so you offer your husband a deal he cannot refuse.
Aegon Targaryen x Reader | 6k+ | cw: fem!reader, wife!reader, arranged marriage/loveless marriage, smut (piv, virginity loss, rough/loveless sex) DD:DNE, alcoholism, violence, suicide/suicidal thoughts & ideation, mentions of domestic/child abuse, death, pregnancy/miscarriage, aegon's mommy issues, insecurities, angst, typos, etc.
A/N: ... i had something to say about this fic but i forgot... maybe ill remember later???? edit: i did not remember. i thought of mitski while entitling this so go play i bet on losing dogs ig?
Tagging: @pinksirensong @aralezinspace @deniixlovezelda @azperja @sloanexx @risefallrise
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You don't know what you have until it's gone.
Aegon only truly understood what this meant the day he was married and he was forbidden to drink a drop of alcohol.
As if it wasn't painful enough that he was going to be married to a complete stranger from some house he's never fucking heard of, he was erratic and uneasy the whole day because of the withdrawal. He loathes the preparation, the ceremony, the fucking pageantry of it all.
He thinks it was worse that you seemed to be so chipper the entire time. You smiled with a halo, skin shining with the light. You also seemingly did no wrong, judging by the praises you received from his mother and grandfather. But, who was he kidding, of course they fucking loved you, they chose you to be his prison keeper.
You did not press him once, not when you were preparing for the ceremony, not when you were at the feast, not even after the Queen encouraged you to dance.
Anyone with eyes could see from how he slumped on his chair during dinner that Aegon would rather die than circle around the room to this grating noise echoing in the chamber.
The band begins to play another song and another round of dancing ensues.
He stares at the food on the table. Oh, to be a suckling pig.
The relief that coursed through him when he could finally leave was enough to knock him out. Except, he really wanted, no, needed a drink.
He crashes on his bed, belly down, and reaches for the cabinet door on his bedside table. He feels for his bottle, hand knocking into the corners of the compartment, but he sits up when he finds nothing.
He growls in frustration upon realizing this was definitely his mother's doing. Thief!
"I managed a cup."
Aegon struggles to look over his shoulder from his position. He rolls on his back as you walk to the side of the bed.
He stares at you. You offer a glass holding burgundy liquid. Your voice is soft and kind as you explain, "your mother would suspect me if I took a whole bottle."
Aegon pushes himself up and sits on the edge of the bed, facing you. He gulps at the wine you were offering.
Sure, he may not be the brightest, but anyone could tell this scene was the epitome of ulterior motives. Aegon leans on his thighs, "why are you doing this?"
You stare a moment. You clutch the cup in both hands and examine it. Again, your voice is gentle, "you are clearly in torment. It hurts my heart."
His eye twitches.
I see. It seems you were a fucking saint.
Aegon rips the glass out of your hands, some of the wine spills over. He downs the contents in one go, then chucks the glass across the room once he finished.
He looks back at you, glaring with watery eyes. He was exhausted, he was angry, and he wanted you to know it. But you don't flinch at the sound of the glass breaking. You didn't flinch at all when he showed aggression. Why didn't you flinch?
You press your lips and sigh. You step towards him and reach out.
He nervously straightens up and tilts his head back as you approach. His breath hitches when your warm hand touches his cheek. He blinks rapidly.
"It's been a long day. Would you like me to help you change?"
Again, his eye twitches.
And then he realizes what you mean.
Ah. So, this is what you wanted?
He releases a breath, eyes lowering. Your face falls into a slight frown.
He thinks about it for a moment. I mean, sex was sex and he was game. It didn't matter how he performed, his completion was all that mattered, really. And you were pretty enough, albeit irritatingly good.
When you stroke his hair, Aegon pulls at your skirts, causing you to squeak and topple, hands flying to his shoulders for support. Your faces are inches apart. He pulls you down until you have no other choice than to sit on his lap.
You can smell the remnants of the wine he just drank on his breath. Aegon brings his face closer to yours, and you let out a soft 'hmp'. You mutter, "I gather you don't want to change, but want to get out of your clothes."
He narrows his eyes as you shift on his lap and undo the buttons by his chest. He mutters dumbly, "this is what you wanted."
With knit brows, you retort, "I've not yet told you what I wanted." You shift on his lap again as you peel his top off. Amidst it, he asks, "what do you want?"
You grunt after ridding him of his top. You fold it in your arms then set it aside on the bed. You turn back to him. Aegon's breath hitches when you fondle with strings of his undershirt. He watches your lips as you mumble, "I want you to give me a ride on your dragon."
He furrows his brows. But that's what he just said.
You stand, only to lift your skirt and take your place back on his lap. This time, you straddle him.
Aegon gulps, hands coming to your hips like a magnet. He feels you grind on him; shaky breaths leave his lips in response. His hands scratch up your back and a moan escapes him when your nails trace his collarbones.
"Allow me one trip on Sunfyre, and in return, I'll be your magic lamp," you whisper, taking one of his hands, bringing it to the side of your ribs, "you may rub me where you like-"
His heart skips when you kiss his cheek.
"-and I will grant you all your wishes."
Aegon ticks.
The next moment, he pushes you down on the bed. He doesn't bother getting either of you naked, nor does he prepare you at all in fact. Thankfully, you were already wet.
You don't have the opportunity to ask him to be gentle, to explain you were a bride after all, and it was your wedding night.
Aegon grips your skirts as he fucks you like he means to prove a point. He snaps his hips roughly into you to assert dominance, to exemplify control. Sure, you offered yourself to him, but he was the one doing the work, and you were the one beneath him.
In truth, the pace he set gave you more pain rather than pleasure. And with how pent up he was, the rough tempo he set burnt him out way too quickly before it could make any of you feel good. And when he begins to lag, you start to feel good.
You notice this change and rub your nose against his. He recoils, unused to affection when fucking. It snaps him back into an aggressive trance.
You yelp. Aegon convinced himself it was a sound of bliss.
You kiss his jaw and work your way to his ear, hoping to calm him down. He tenses at the feel of your tongue on his lobe. It stokes flames in his belly and makes him involuntarily roll his hips slower to focus on the attention you're giving. In return, his pace is just enough for him to hit that spot that makes you throw your head back.
Aegon is startled by the scratchy groan that leaves your throat. He finds himself lifting his head to spectate, but you pull him into you by the nape and groan, "like that. Please- gods - that feels good."
His brows tense and he rolls his hips again, finding the same reaction.
You wrap your arms and legs around him, uncaring of how hot and sweaty you were getting. In the heat of the moment, you reach for his lips, needing them, needing something to wrap your own on.
Aegon kisses you. He kisses you with a strange twinge in his chest. He kisses you until he has to pull away and reposition himself to catch his building climax.
In a second, he's back to his fuck-loving self, only self-serving and lustful. As he gazes upon your writhing body, catching the beads of sweat on your skin, the concentration on your face, and the way you chant his name as you part your legs for him, he's overcome by another spirit. To watch you break, to watch you coil and collapse around him felt just as urgent as his need to come.
And so Aegon rubs your clit and forces you to peak first; you do it so well he curses loudly and comes after.
He lays on top of you for a moment, the overwhelming need to be held ripples through his body. He recalls how his whores shoo him away after he's done fucking them though. Before you can cradle him in your arms, he rolls off you.
You close your legs and and watch him strip himself and sequentially change. You watch him get back in bed and bring himself underneath the covers. He goes to sleep.
He fucking goes to sleep.
You feel hollow after this, but tell yourself it's nothing personal. You repeat this as you, yourself, get up and change, sequentially sleeping too. Or at least you try. You have fight the urge to cry for hours before you do.
The next morning, you bring up dragon riding to Aegon, and disappointed as you are, you are unsurprised to find that he was unwilling to give you such a thing.
It was a plain thing you were asking for, you explain. And it's exactly why he doesn't want to do it. It's clearly some trick, something to trap him, something he's going to regret. It was probably some ploy orchestrated by his mother.
Oh gods, he thinks, it's worse. It's a bonding experience so you can make him into your puppet. Fuck. No.
So, he does what he does best, and makes an excuse, "I don't feel like riding today. I'm still exhausted from the festivities."
You purse your lips and nod, "that's understandable. Would you like for me to get you something?"
Wait. You weren't going to argue about him not keeping his end of the deal?
You seem to catch this, considering your response and the way you take his hand. You place his palm on your chest. He can feel your pulse quicken as you mutter, "I am your magic lamp, husband. I wish to please you. I will prove this until you trust me enough to grant me a ride on dragonback."
He narrows his eyes, "you would grant me wishes, all in return for a ride on Sunfyre?"
You smile softly at him, "in return for respite, yes."
He doesn't trust your smile.
"I want to visit the Grey Cliffs. I have for a years now. I went there once as a child and long to go again."
"Why?" he knits his brows at your explanation, "what's there?"
You lower his hand and rub his skin, "respite, my prince."
Aegon pulls his hand away.
Very well. If that is what you want, then he will wear your wishes dry until you find it no longer worth the trouble.
Aegon wishes on his lamp everyday, and his wife sequentially plays entertainer, jester, servant, and slave.
He makes you bring a bottle of wine with you everywhere, and pour him a cup when he wishes. He loathes how you seem unbothered by it. He loathes how you don't even correct a visiting Lord who mistakes you for a cupbearer and simply serve him some wine. The Lord is mortified when he realizes you are his wife, a fucking princess. Aegon hates how you tell the man you were unbothered because you spent your whole life being a cupbearer to your father anyway.
He makes you do trivial tasks as well, sometimes tasks meant for more than one person at a time, and yet you still manage to do them, annoyingly better than the maids. When he demanded you cook him a full course meal, you did so all by yourself, and had the servants looking at you like you were some goddess.
He ripped a hole in his clothes then made you mend it. You covered the hole so seamlessly that he poked a bigger one right in front of you. And even then you don't give him the satisfaction of getting angry. You tell him you will embroider something on top of the hole and he storms off. He overhears you telling the servants, who applaud your level-headedness, that you were used to angry men, because your father was just the same.
You use each of these moments to somehow tell him you were the perfect wife and he had to oblige your stupid request at some point.
But then he found your flaw.
Aegon asked you to play the harpsichord for him, and you told him you did not know how. The woman who knew all did not know something? He would then proceed to hang this over your head. When he asked you for food, he'd tell you how much better it'd taste if he had entertainment. If he asked you to do something physically taxing for him, he's say that he wouldn't have asked you to do it, had you known how to play his 'favorite' instrument. He would use this as the reason why he could never bring you to Grey Cliffs.
It was all fun and games, but then you had to snitch, hadn't you?
"What are you doing to that poor girl!" Queen Alicent barked, making his ears ring.
Aegon groans from where he lies in bed. His mother rips the blankets off him, making him wake in a sour mood.
"She is your wife!" Alicent yells, "not your slave! Fine, you wish her to do tasks for you, tasks for your betterment. But to insult her standing by treating her like a maid is beneath a prince, Aegon!"
Aegon feels his throat tighten at the sight of his angry mother's face, "she is my wife," he growls, "I do with her as I please."
She strikes his cheek.
Aegon's head whips to the side. He doesn't have the energy to look back at her.
"You will no longer parade her as a cupbearer. I will have it decreed you are not ever served a drop of wine if you don't."
Alicent leaves after this. Aegon's anger explodes when the door closes.
He screams and rips at his hair. He kicks furniture around and eventually drops to the floor, exhausted, furious, and hurt. This was all your fault.
He screams again and claws the tears on his face. He slowly exhales through tight lips. His cheek is hot with saltwater. Who was he joking, this was all him.
This was all Aegon's doing.
His breathing is impeded by snot. He walks over to his window and stares at the ground below. If he jumps head first, not even the best maester in Westeros could fix him.
Before he can lean on the ledge, he is paralyzed in his spot by the sound of the door opening.
"I did not know she would be angry with you," you say.
Aegon looks back.
You see his red eyes and wet skin. He is a mirror to your younger self. You feel sick to your stomach. You try to explain, "I only asked if she could find a harpsichord teacher. I did not realize she would take offense in wanting to learn to play for you."
Aegon's heart aches at your naïve response. You were a stupid, perfect wife, and he, a stupid, petulant husband.
"I'm better off dead," he mumbles, looking back out the window. The call of the fall felt inviting, "want to push me, wife?"
You don't respond.
Aegon looks back at you, and suddenly you're only inches away. He tries to evade you, but you manage to catch his hand.
"We could jump together."
"What?"
Your face is blank. You part your lips, and for a moment, your eyes seem desperate, but then it's gone. You sigh, "dying is quite lonely," looking down, "I could keep you company."
Aegon stares at you. Tears stream down his face. "You're mad," he sniffles, yanking his hand away.
He walks over to his bed and collapses on it. He wraps himself in a blanket and feels sorry for himself, and angry at you for suggesting such a thing. Even now you want to be perfect by dying with him?
"I am," you mutter.
Aegon watches as you walk over to him. You sit on the floor beside his bed and look at your hands as you rub them.
"I cannot play the harpsichord, because my father does not like noise," you explain, "I was not allowed to make a sound or else I would be punished."
Aegon covers his head with a blanket but keeps his face visible, "he beat you, didn't he?"
You look at him, eyes melancholy, but still, he is the only one crying, "he beat everyone."
Aegon does not respond.
"I can sing though."
His brow raises, "how can you sing?"
"I would practice whenever he was gone, and sing for my mother in secret. It made her happy... happy enough."
He knew there was more to this confession, but he was too tired to ask about it, too tired to shed more tears.
"Would you like me to sing for you?"
"No."
"..."
"..."
"Would you like me to hold you?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
You stand from where you sat and get on the edge of the bed. Aegon watches as you slowly lie beside him. You bring an arm over him and pull him close. Aegon closes his eyes as you bring him into your chest.
You hold him until he falls asleep. Later that night, he asks you to hold him again. He also asks you to sing to him.
Aegon nestles his face in the crook of your neck. He wraps his arms around your torso, digging his fingers between your flesh and the bed. Your hushed voice reverberates in the bedroom, the song you sing is haunting and soothing. The vibrations from your chest lull him to sleep. You feel wetness pool by your clavicle but you make no note of it.
Aegon asks you to hold him the next morning after breaking fast. He asks you to stay with him in bed and to sing to him some more. When you have to leave his side, he asks to join you and waits until he can have you in his arms again.
Aegon becomes your shadow, and follows you around, under the promise of getting to share in your embrace. As you read and review letters or ledgers, your seat becomes Aegon's lap. He sleeps against you while you work without a fuss, cheek pressed against your back, arms fastened around your waist.
Sometimes, he notices the line that forms between your brows while you read and at some point, asks about it. You explain what causes it, and he is unmoved, as he is uninterested in politics that stress you. But when you read out to him, he finds comfort in your voice and asks you to read some. He falls asleep to your calm droning of circumstances he could not care less about. He groans and groggily awakens when you stop. He mumbles against your skin that you continue, pleadingly so.
When you had to leave the Keep for business, Aegon insisted that he joined you. When you brushed his cheek and explained to him why he could not go and that you would not be long, Aegon pushed you away and stormed off. You left without him anyway, and the treachery he felt was so great, he realized then how he could no longer go day to day without you. What was there to do, if you were not there?
And so Aegon desperately rubs his magic lamp and wishes upon you.
He wishes that you never leave without him again once you return.
He wishes that you promise to no longer make plans without him.
He traps you beneath him on your shared bed and wishes to be inside you. He kisses you and wishes to see you completely bared to him.
Aegon's mind is dizzy as he gazes upon the glory of your skin. He kisses your thighs, your hips, your breast, your lips.
Aegon wishes to surrender to you. He wishes that you undress him. He wishes to pull you on his body like a blanket. He wishes to see you take control. He wishes to see you cast your eyes upon him and lay your weight on his body.
He wishes to see you use him, to take what you need from him, to pleasure yourself, and to make him yours. He squeezes your thighs desperately when you moan out his name. This was much more maddening that what he imagined it would be.
He wishes to feel you come undone around him. He wishes he could forever feel the pleasure he did when he comes right after you do.
He wishes to hold you after. And when he holds you, when you lay on his chest and kiss him there, he wishes to never leave this moment ever again. He wishes to sing to you like you've sung to him.
"What are your plans tomorrow," Aegon asks as he draws nothings on your back.
You lift your head from his chest. He looks at you. You smile, "whatever you wish them to be."
He rubs your back and smiles, "I wish to take you to the Grey Cliffs."
Your expression drops, "what?"
He raises a brow at your reaction. You shift on your place. You straddle him again.
He looks up at you, noticing the line between your brows. He rubs your thighs, "you've granted me all my wishes. It's time I grant you yours." He shifts on his elbows and sits himself up, "it's time you meet my mount and-"
"We don't have to," you cut him off, placing your hands on his shoulders.
Aegon examines your expression. He listens to you sigh.
"I'd like to keep you-- wish to keep you..." you correct yourself, pushing him back down.
He looks up at you, feeling your hands rake up his body.
"...just like this," you finish, eyes solemn, lips curving into a soft smile, "I've not felt a thing like this in my entire life."
Aegon takes one of your hands and places it on his cheek. He whispers it like a secret, "neither have I."
You lean down to kiss him, "I wish to keep like this."
He kisses you back.
He is blindsided by how his wishes came to bite him in the arse. It's all crashing down on him. Suddenly, he wishes he didn't actually do any of those things with you.
He most of all wishes he heard you wrong. He wishes you didn't repeat yourself when he stupidly said, "what?"
"I'm with child," you speak slower, less excited yet excited still.
Aegon wishes you didn't look so excited. He wishes he fucking pulled out, but gods, you felt so good-- you feel so good around him, he felt so good inside you.
He realized the next moment, it couldn't be helped. You were going to have to bear his spawn at one point or another. He wishes you didn't have to. He wishes his seed wouldn't take completely. He wishes you don't take it to term. He wishes he won't have to be a father. Fuck.
He realizes he's been too quiet and you were waiting for a response from him. Your face began to twist. Your smile fades.
"Congratulations," Aegon musters. He feels like he swallowed a metal ball. His eyes wander to your belly. He mumbles mindlessly, "I suppose."
Your face falls.
Aegon looks back at you. Your face is devoid of any semblance of the glow it normally holds. You look sick. You feel sick.
"I see," you say, unintentionally allowing him to hear your voice break. Aegon's brows furrow at it.
He shakes his head, "you will be a great mother," he chuckles dryly, "you mother me so well."
You offer him a smile, but Aegon can see how disconnected it was from your eyes. You say, "thank you."
When you leave him after this, he wishes he hadn't said a word. He wishes he just left it at congratulations. He wishes he just pretended like the idea of having a child didn't mortify him and make him sick to his stomach. He wishes he wasn't so ill-suited to be a father.
Ageon no longer wishes for anything after this.
He no longer wishes to hold you, though he so badly wanted to. He no longer wishes to hear you sing, nor does he wish to hear you read to him. He no longer wishes to be around you, though his body urged him to follow you around like the lost soul he was.
He wishes he didn't wonder what you were doing at every moment of the day. He so desperately wishes to rid you from his mind completely that he drowns himself in his first and only true love, alcohol.
Fuck. He wishes he hadn't taken this route to his room. He wishes you hadn't taken this route to wherever it was you were going. He wishes he just turned around and fled like the coward he was, because then, you wouldn't have spoken to him.
"Husband," you curtsey.
Aegon stiffens and uncomfortably avoids your eyes.
You catch it, feeling your chest tighten painfully. You clear your throat and take a deep breath to steel yourself, "I thought you should know that I will be travelling."
Aegon looks at you.
"I have a ship ready and I'll be visiting the Grey Cliffs. Do not wait up for me."
His face falls. He opens his mouth, but doesn't have an opportunity to speak.
"I thought you should also know that I am no longer carrying."
His eyes widen.
"It's not an uncommon occurrence the first few months," you say simply, "I suppose the gods do not wish me to be a mother."
Aegon feels like a murderer. He wants to say something, to apologize, to comfort you, but he can't. He's too taken aback to do a single thing.
He turns into stone when you take his hand. You step forward and place his palm on your chest. Your heart is slow as you speak, "you won't have to worry about anything anymore, Aegon. Today is the end of our shared torment."
Aegon's stomach drops when you kiss him.
His eyes are glassy. You pull away before he can kiss you back. He wants to hold you, but the sadness in your eyes reminds him he is undeserving. You kiss his wrist, "goodbye, my love. I love you."
His heart thumps as you walk away.
Aegon is manic. He basks in the mess he's made and feels crushed by it all.
He finally acts after wasting so much time feeling sorry for himself. You were long out of his sight by the time he started running. This is why he headed to the dragonpit and got on Sunfyre.
"WAIT!" he screams, just as your boat leaves the dock.
Aegon watches as you run to the edge of the boat. He lands Sunfyre and runs as far to the edge of the docks as he could.
"Aegon-"
"Take me with you!" he pleads, "let me be the one to take you to where you must go!"
You look back. The ship stops. The crew brings down a boat and on it, you are rowed back to the dock.
He crushes you in his arms once he reaches you.
"Aegon," you mutter.
"Forgive me," he shudders, "I... I wish you let me do this for you."
"Aegon," your voice croaks. You push him away, "go home."
His heart drops. He breaks away to look at you. Your words feel like a stab at his thorax. It was presumptuous of him to assume you'd want him back, but it doesn't kill him inside any less.
"I've come to realize this is a trip I must go on myself," you mutter.
He shakes his head, "no. Please." He motions an arm out to his mount, "one wish. That I grant you one wish before you throw me away forever is... is--"
Your throat constricts at his words. Tears rush down your eyes, "I'm not throwing you away--"
"Please," he squeezes both your hands in his, "please, let me do this for you."
The flight to the Grey Cliffs is quiet, save for the whoosh of winds and the roars of the golden dragon you both rode. You always imagined it would be freeing, but only now did you know how it freeing it truly felt to fly. You knew now you'd forever chase the euphoric crush of air against your skin.
Aegon, who sat behind you, looks at your form as you outstretch your arms and close your eyes. Your body presses against him, and in this moment, he is unable to hold back from wrapping an arm around you and sparing a kiss on your shoulder. You are snapped out of your trance because of this.
The Grey Cliffs are dark and gloomy when you get there. Aegon realizes when you land that it got its name from the weather conditions.
He helps you down and surveys the area, trying to make out which part of this drear land was so special to you that you wished to go here.
You catch his expression and squeeze his hand.
Aegon turns to you.
You give a solemn look, "the view is better on the edge."
Aegon strokes Sunfyre's cheek, commanding him to stay before you lead him by the hand to the edge of the cliff. Once you get there, he feels queasy looking down at the crashing waves far beneath him. In contrast, you seem comforted by the view. His brows furrow at the deep breath you give out.
When you look at him, his stomach feels it, the comfort you felt upon witnessing the violent waves. Whatever it was that compelled you to this place was the same force that compelled him to kiss you.
He reaches out for your cheek, his other hand coming to you back. He pulls you close. His heart twinges when you stop him from kissing you.
"Aegon-"
"Forgive me," he cuts, "I beg."
You gawk at him. He brushes your hair which was wildly flinging with the breeze.
"You must know by now that I am craven. I lack the spine and the wit to be of any use to you."
Your eyes water. Your lips quiver.
"I would be a hopeless father, worse than my own, no doubt."
"Aegon," you babble as sobs overtake you.
Aegon, himself, succumbs to tears. He wipes the ones streaming down your face before taking a breath, "but you made me feel a love I do not deserve."
You swallow a heavy lump in your throat.
"I love you," he confesses.
"No," you pierce his heart. You shake your head in disagreement, "Aegon, this is a mistake. Bringing you here was a mistake."
"No!" he blurts louder than needed, "this was a choice," he looks down, "I choose to rip my insides out for you to devour. I am miserable, much more in the heat of your hate, but most of all without you."
His downturned eyes land on your face when you grab his wrists. You croak, "I do not hate you."
Aegon is not relieved by the admission, but he chooses to believe you mean it. He smiles softly, "good."
"But I do hate this life I live."
He clenches his jaw. Of course you do.
"You saved me," you press a hand on his cheek, taking your turn to wipe his tears, "even if for a moment."
"I made you miserable."
You chuckle. The sound makes his heart skip.
"You filled my life with purpose," you smile softly, "even when you did not mean to."
Aegon knits his brows deeply and takes your hands. He brings them to his lips and kisses them.
"But accidents happen. You must remember that accidents happen all the time."
Aegon shakes his head, "this is not an accident. Believe me when I say I chose to do this, I- ... I choose to love you."
You sob and turn to your feet.
"Please... believe me."
You sniffle and nod, slowly looking up at him, "I believe you."
You lunge into his arms and seal him into a tight hug. He hugs you back like it's his only way of surviving.
A crack of thunder startles Sunfyre. He becomes restless and steals away Aegon's attention, panicked that he might flee and leave them here.
He pulls away and takes a step towards her. He holds your hand, urging you to follow, "we should go before it rains."
You hug him from behind and press your face into his back, "thank you for taking me on Sunfyre."
"It was a long time coming."
"I've always wondered what it would be like to fly. And now that I know how peaceful it is, I'm ready to fly one last time."
He turns to you as you slowly come to his side. You hold his hand. He looks at you as you turn to Sunfyre. He promises, "I will take you on dragonback as many times as you wish."
You smile, but your eyes are fixed on his dragon. You release his hand and wrap your arms around yourself, "he is beautiful. You must never tire looking at him."
Aegon gazes upon Sunfyre. He takes in his golden scales and has newfound appreciation.
You take a step back.
"He is. To be honest, it's been long since I, myself, took him out of the pit. He must enjoy this day as much as you do."
"Aegon, you must understand that what I have to say has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me."
Aegon turns to you. He watches you tighten your arms around yourself. You must be cold. He rubs your shoulders.
You shake your head and turn him back to his dragon, "look at Sunfyre."
He knits his brows, "I'm looking."
"For so long," you release him, "I've wanted to fly free, to find my peace here in the cliffs. This was before I even met you." You point at the golden dragon, "I choose to love you too, but accidents happen, like if Sunfyre were to fly away, and you were to be left here alone."
Aegon stares at his ride for a moment as you lower your hand. He tries to makes sense of your words, but he cannot for the life of him understand.
He sighs, "what accident? Why do you keep-"
Aegon is flooded by confusion when he turns and finds you nowhere behind him. A split second later, he lets a horrified scream and the fear that claws into him makes his knees buckle. He crumbles to the ground and crawls to the edge of the cliff. He screams so loud that Sunfyre roars back and comes towards him.
Aegon watches as the red seafoam bubbles at the foot of the cliff. He watches as the crimson waves slowly slosh back into its original tint.
Rain begins to pour, and his tears taste no longer salty.
Was this the flying you ached for? Was this the relief you sought?
When he returns to King's Landing, dripping wet, he breaks down in front of his mother, weeping as he clutched his skirts.
Queen Alicent is obviously disturbed. She instructs her servants to get his son a change of clothes and some towels. She looks down at him, "what's happened? What's wrong, Aegon?"
"An accident-" he barely manages to say, "there's been an accident."
"An accident?!"
Aegon's mind goes blank. A bitter taste
You don't know what you have until it's gone.
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artslovergirl · 27 days
Text
casual by chappell roan – but make it 2007
art donaldson x reader
notes: okay so, originally this was just a part of a larger fic based around the entire song but um,, i have adhd. so. you get it. but i really liked this part that i actually got done so i didnt want it to collect cobwebs in my google docs lol. but i might think about finishing the whole thing! maybe!
wordcount: 1.7k
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Your body was buzzing and tingling in a pleasant and almost numb way. Like the feeling of calm waves lapping at your ankles after having a tidal wave crashed over you. Everything felt warm, most likely due to the late June air and Arts warm arms wrapped around your already flushed body. You probably liked these moments the most. The afterglow. In these moments you could wholly bask in your connection to Art without the thought of you two being just 'casual' dragging after.
It wasn't like you hadn't known what you were getting into. Casual hook-ups and maybe the odd date here and there with a super hot tennis player from your art history course (you made the pun as soon as he introduced himself. He was nice enough to give you a fake laugh.) sounded like a great deal. And it sounded like one of those college-y things your roommate had urged you to do.
You just really hadn't been prepared for how easy it would be to fall in love with him.
Suddenly the warmth that his soft yet firm body was radiating against yours– that was so pleasing a moment ago– felt like an unbearable sauna. You gently untangled yourself from his embrace. He let out a small hum but let you go. Everything still felt warm.
Like routine by this point, you walk over to his dresser, not even bothering to pick up your sweaty discarded clothes from earlier decided on stealing a shirt and boxers from him like always.
You pulled open the drawer and felt your breath catch at what stared back at you. There was a small corner packed with clothes that werent there before.
Your clothes. Which wasnt surprising since you often just forgot your stuff after a late night. But what was surprising is that Art had made a small space for you in his drawer which was now occupied by your originally left behind but now freshly washed and folded shirts, underwear, some pajama bottoms and your favorite lacy bra (which was coincidentally Art’s favorite too).
A familiar shiver swept over your skin causing goosebumps– which you would really like to attribute to your severe lack of clothing but you couldn't lie to yourself anymore than you already had. This relationship had exceeded far past casual. Unfortunately –unlike the other times you had realized this and then vehemently shook away the thought– you couldn't ignore it this time.
Because it was staring you right in the face in the form of your favorite bra hanging out of Art Donaldson's dresser.
You had to face it: you were basically his fucking girlfriend. You were in a relationship without the labels nor the commitment. That's great. That's what everyone wanted, right? All the emotional involvement, none of the promise of loyalty or reciprocated feelings and a 100% chance of getting your heart broken.
…But he had to feel it too, right? Guys don't make space in their dresser for a girl they have no feelings for, do they? So maybe… Maybe this could have a happy ending? Maybe this could serve as the catalyst for you both to be honest about your feelings and realize that you're basically already dating and just make it official. It's not like Art had commitment issues, necessarily. It was more the opposite. He was too committed. To Tashi.
Either way you really just needed to figure out where you fit into his life. Because right now you were squeezed in between his sock drawer and the place where he kept his old tennis rackets.
“Are you okay?” Art’s voice snapped you out of your stupor. You mumble something that sounds like, “Huh..what?” and look over your shoulder to see Art giving you a confused stare from his bed.
His blonde curls were still all messed up from you running your hands through and tugging at them earlier. He was bathed in the warm glow of his desk lamp, softening his already adoring features all the more.
His face was smushed against his pillow as he was laying on his side, and he was giving you his best puppy dog eyes. Although, to be fair, he kind of always had puppy dog eyes. The upper part of his well-defined chest was visible, his pale skin still tinted with redness from you running your hands and nails all over it.
The sight made your heart stutter even though you saw him in a much more promiscuous position a mere half an hour ago.
He looked too good to be true. Sometimes he reminded you of those statues that had lipstick marks all over their marble lips because they were sculpted in such an enchantingly beautiful way that people couldn't help but kiss them. The name Art made a lot of sense, you thought.
Wow. You were whipped to an almost embarrassing level.
That thought made you feel like someone had poured a glass of ice water down your back, “Um..” You tried to regain your focus. “I hadn't noticed that you…kept a space in your dresser for me.” Your gaze swept back over to the drawer.
Mainly because you were sure that if you looked at Art any longer, your feelings would become irrevocable.
”Oh, yeah.” he said it so nonchalantly, in complete contrast to how you were feeling right now. He sat up with his blanket pooling over his thighs, exposing his Adonis belt and blond happy trail that led down to- You quickly flit your eyes back to the dresser in front of you.
Jesus Christ, get a grip, you mentally scolded yourself. There was a short silence that fell over the room. His gaze was still on you, trying to gauge what you were trying to communicate to him. He leaned back against the headboard and without him even realizing, he began running the pads of his fingers over his lips like he always did when he got nervous or felt awkward.
“Well.. I just thought since you stay over sometimes.. You know.” he explained, clearing his throat a little. You dug out your panties and one of your (used to be Art’s) Stanford shirts. If you were going to confront this, you definitely couldn't do it naked.
You didn't miss how Art's gaze never left you once while you were pulling on the soft cotton shirt and panties.
Once you were clothed again, you padded back over to his bed in silence. The mattress dipped as you let your weight fall onto the edge of it. You started shuffling your feet against the carpeted floor, trying to release some of the nerves washing through your body.
You could feel his bed squeak a little as he leaned forward towards you, letting his arms rest on his knees. The intensity of his attentive stare on you didn't exactly help the nauseating swirl of anxiety stirring in your stomach. You chewed on your bottom lip while scrunching up your nose, thinking on how to best approach this.
Tugging and pulling at the carefully crafted bracelet on your wrist, you started, “So..isn't it a little..much to keep space in a drawer for someone you're just hooking up with?”
You immediately worried your wording was making you come across too harsh so you almost stumbled over your words trying to follow up with, “Not that- I just mean…Um..I don't know like..what the..code?..on that is..” Yeah, nailed it. Real smooth.
Vaguely you could see Art’s face scrunch up in confusion from your peripheral, but you were too mortified by your clunky approach to face him fully. He began fidgeting, flicking his thumb under his ring finger. “..Um,” a nervous chuckle followed, “What–uh, what do you mean?”
You began pinching and pulling at the hem of your (his) shirt. “I just…” you sighed and it almost sounded annoyed– maybe the repressed anger at his refusal to acknowledge your deepening relationship was finally bubbling up–
“Isn't that something a guy would do like..for his girlfriend?” You turned your head to the side, finally facing him. He began staring at his bedsheets as if they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world, fingers still fidgeting.
“I dont know..” he mumbled, “Not necessarily. It's just more convenient, right?” he added with a small shrug. You could hear the uncertainty wavering in his voice.
The sight of him all nervous and sitting curled up in on himself like a hedgehog trying to protect its soft underbelly almost made you regret saying anything at all. Seeing Art in any unease at all always sent a small pang through your chest. He just looked so…almost pitiful. You weren't going to back down, though.
“Art.” you tried your hardest to make your voice sound firm and stable. “Mh,” He raised his head finally meeting your gaze. His blond curls fell just slightly above his eye– he needed a haircut again soon.
Without really thinking about it, almost like it was an instinct, you had reached out and carefully brushed some of them out of his line of sight. It felt so intimate that it made you want to hurl so you quickly retracted your hand like his forehead had burned you.
You laid your hands down in your lap and stared at them.
“I think..things between us are..more than just a casual fling now. At least to me.” You really had tried to sound confident in your words but instead you almost whispered them. Like it was a secret you were ashamed to admit.
The few seconds between you speaking and Art responding felt like torture. You just kept staring at your hands, swallowing down the growing lump in your throat. The sound of him shifting on the bed felt almost deafening to you in the silence.
“I…” He awkwardly cleared his throat again, “I think I...like what we have right now.” That wasn't the response you expected. Or wanted. Was it even really a response? A metallic taste flooded your mouth. That's when you realized you'd been mindlessly chewing your bottom lip and were apparently too lost in thought to realize you had dug your teeth in far too deep. You didn't care about that right now. Your head felt like it was buzzing, completely overwhelmed with different thoughts and reactions to Art's response and what you should do next. “Okay.” is all you could manage. “Yeah, okay.” you exhaled softly, shifting your gaze back to him and nodding slightly. He nodded back, his expression indiscernible.
Despite what you said, you still let yourself drift off to sleep in his arms. And despite what he said, he still pressed a tender kiss to your forehead as your eyes fluttered shut.
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bokettochild · 3 months
Text
Just saw the update!
So, first thoughts!
Gremlin Legend and Sky is something I am LIVING for. Sky's little look of approval as he stands between Wars and Legend after that little move is sending me!
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(Wild is not impressed)
I also really love that JoJo played with Warriors' cape/scarf being capable of doing that, which is a major risk btw, but I love that we see it's potential now!
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Like, Legend's timing is perfect (and I love that this confirms the Legend v. Wars dynamic we all love) especially considering Hyrule was literally talking about the same thing and you'd THINK Captain-War-Hero over here would be more cautious because of it (although the fact this implies Legend doesn't trigger Warriors danger sense is GREAT for the fluff fic writers like me!)
Time and Wars looking like disappointed parents though is brilliant
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(Warriors with messy hair is so funny to me, help)
The continued portrayal of Time being too harsh with the boys, all tense after what happened to Twilight, that's great. i'm glad the consequences of past events are following them, it really makes this all feel linear!
I also am ALL HERE for the boys finding their differences! Warriors and Wild both admitting to being new to dungeon crawling and the monsters involved is a great thing we've all been playing with in fics, but making it cannon feels like validation :)
Also, Warriors being defensive of that, and maybe a bit prickly about their judgement, I think it shows a lot of him. he's got his pride,a although he's learned to tame it. He's feeling a bit miffed to realize how different he is, but doesn't want them seeing him as lesser as well (although they never would). I can also hear him using a clipped military sort of tone when speaking here. It's just the way his words are selected and strung together that makes it seem he's being very to the point, direct, and cold in his tone, which really sells the whole difference between a soldier and the "average nobody" that the rest of them were (ironic, since he's trying to act like the difference isn't a big deal but only further accentuates it this way).
Twilight being pleased that Epona is fine and just enjoying a meal made me grin so big though. He's all worried for his girl but she is, quite literally, happy as a horse over there LOL
Also, this bit:
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recognition for Sky's right-handedness, my beloved! (JoJo is giving us all the easter eggs!)
The fact that the passage is too small to let them all fight though is a brilliant way of preventing some of our heavy hitters and more skilled heroes from being able to do anything though!
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I like how that gives us the chance to see Time one-shot the foe and also gives him the impression that the rest are maybe not skilled enough to do this alone. WE all know they are, but they're a handicap to each other right now, and it's only further cementing in his mind that they're not ready for all this, which will make his overbearing speech and the judgement he casts on them in combat all the more an issue.
I mean, we all know the hero's shade was like that, but JoJo has shown Time acting this way from the start
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(Deep Shadows P.2)
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(Likelike)
So I guess we're in for more of that now, and most likely someone (probably Legend, as it's usually him, or Wind, who is very aware of judgement from teh rest) is definitely going to have to call him on it soon, maybe in the dungeon. Will that lead to some bonding with Time where he has to admit he cares and worries about them as though they're his own? I hope so!
Anyways, all this to say, we really are seeing how much they struggle to work together, so hopefully this dungoen will teach them all how to do that better, as Time mentioned earlier
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(Dawn p.8)
Now, to finish it off!I would like to thank JoJo for giving us so many beautiful shots of Twi this time around. I'll admit it now, he's pretty darn fine <3
That said, I'm loving the Legend content too! i hope we get to see some more starring moments from him going forwards, what with him being the dungeon veteran and all! It's great seeing his childish/playful side these last few updates, but I'm really craving some veteran Legend right now >:)
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starillusion13 · 7 months
Note
Hi! Your fics are so good! specially the ot8xreader fic 💖💖💖
Can i also request ot8xreader, you suddenly disappeared and they thought you ran away (with their money and jewelries) and betrayef them but in reality one of their female employees leads you to nowhere and tried to kill you (because she is jealous and wants the boys for herself) she make it looks like you ran away to make the boys mad at you but you are laying in hospital bed comatose for months. one of boys/or member of the mafia saw you in hospital when they tried to smuggle medical equipments and report it to ateez.
I hope it make sense 😅 Thank you
You are our Home
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Pairing: Mafia! Ateez x f!reader
Genre: Angst, Mafia, Fluff
W.C: 8.2k
Warnings: arguments, regret, trust issues, cheating(?), hints of torture, mention of cuts and wounds(just the pain not detailed), mention of hospital and mafia business and deals, traumas and betrayals, comatose, stroke, nausea, scared, crying, lies. A lot shit is going on in the fic.
Networks: @cultofdionysusnet @k-vanity
Note: Thanks for reading and reblogging. I appreciate all of your reviews and feel free to text me if you want. Spread love to others, not hate. I don’t know what’s up to with the requests coz all are Angst at this point. But I have included fluff here. Clap your hands👏.
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“Are you sure she is not home?”
“Seonghwa, I have gone there myself to check the whole place. Even few of her things are missing. Something is not setting right here.” Hongjoong’s impatient voice echoed through the speaker in the room. The members round the table were all attentive to the conversation between the two older ones. “Yeosang is tracking her id but he couldn’t find anything important. And what about San? Did he come back?”
Hearing the question, Seonghwa looked towards Wooyoung who shook his head and the older one sighed before delivering the message to their leader on call. Before hanging up the call, he informed the three members to come back to their office for further discussion about you. They last heard your voice yesterday evening when you were asking them if they would return yesterday or the next day. They didn’t know that the next day, instead of finding you waiting for them at the parking lot, they will be greeted to an empty cabin.
Usually, whenever they go to overseas missions, you pass on it because you intend to maintain all the procedures in the office and home. They respect your thoughts and opinions a lot so they never said anything on those way of thinking. Just like other trips, they bid goodbye to you and they went off to the designated country. When they reached there, you had a video call with them and they assured you that they would return soon—one month would pass in a blink. But maybe something went wrong. With the passing of days, you became distant with them, not picking up their calls or maybe just leaving a short text message ‘I’m busy’ and your close employee friend, Amy supported your side, telling them that the company had some issues ongoing with money and she also sent them all the details where it was always your duty to do it. Generally, they didn’t mind but they were worried for you overworking yourself so they told Amy to look after you. She assured them that she would be always by your side and would manage to do the most of the works.
Today, it was their day of return and last evening hearing your voice over the call made them impatient to come back home soon. They wanted to talk to you a lot but somehow you were not in a mood to hold a long conversation with them and so they didn’t ask you anything much. It was okay because they knew very next moment you will be in their arms and then they will keep you away from workloads for a while. But who knew, you won’t be anywhere in their surroundings.
San slammed the door open and glared at the ones present inside the room. The one who was sitting near the door rolled his eyes, knowing his over-dramatic acts like usual but when he caught his gaze, he could see the fire in his eyes.
Seonghwa raised his brow from the end of the table, “What happened, San?” Wooyoung and Mingi close to him were also watching San shuffling his hairs in anger and threw the glass from the table beside Jongho, who was already annoyed with him from earlier.
“Where is Hongjoong?”
Wooyoung was quick to reply, “He was on a call with us almost an hour back. They went to our home and then they will stop by the store to pick up some packages. They will be back soon.” Mingi nodded and went back to check some important news, displaying on his phone screen.
“Who else has the access to the shared account?”
“What do you mean by that, San? You know we don’t use that account and it’s only get handled by y/n. after she returns, you can ask her about it if it has any problem.” Seonghwa said it calmly but he could see the impatient and a flick of rage in the man’s eyes. San again picked up a glass but got stopped by Jongho, “don’t throw it again.”
They glared at each other before gulping down the water and he turned towards the oldest one.
“did she tell anything about transacting large amount of money? You know the account is empty as well as the spare account doesn’t have any money. The locker with the expensive jewels in her cabin is also empty. Why does she need so much of money all of a sudden?”
Everyone was shocked on hearing him. You needed money and for what? Nobody had any sort of hint that maybe you were going through some rough days, they would have consulted things with you. They would have tried to make you relax but no—you kept everything to yourself and didn’t tell anything to them. You were in some trouble and the thought itching their mind to ask you about it.
“her phone is still switched off.” Jongho sighed and sat on the couch beside Mingi who glanced at the clock.
San sat beside Wooyoung, “What’s even going on? There is no news of her whereabouts. She is not picking up her calls and now all these moneys and jewelleries are missing. I want her to explain me everything right now.”
“San, calm down. I am sure she has her own reasons for this.”
“And when do you think will she return, Mingi? Are you sure we are just going to sit and wait for her?”
Before the other could say anything, the door slammed open and Hongjoong entered furiously with Yeosang and Yunho trailing behind him. Neither of them appeared any less frustrated than the leader. Wooyoung was still staring at the door until it got closed by Yunho. He sighed and looked away—he thought you might enter the room with them and then would surprise them with a silly joke and the rest of the day will end up with you getting scolded but in the end you knew it was because they care for you.
Where are you?
“What’s the news, Yeosang?”
Hongjoong sat on his chair and ruffled his hairs, Seonghwa patted his back and looked towards the hacker who was being asked a question by the youngest.
“Nothing Jongho. We can’t find her anywhere. It’s still showing her last location was at the A.T.M and we checked the C.C.T.V but she was pretty normal when entering it and exiting the stall. I don’t why was she there-“
“to withdraw all the moneys from her shared account and the private one.”
Hongjoong raised his brows at San, “why do you think so?”
“Amy showed me all the past transactions from her side. She might not have withdraw all the money in person but has transferred to some other accounts.” He signalled Yeosang to open his laptop and the one was quick in action, “Can you search the accounts that are connected with hers where the money got transferred?”
Yunho scanned the room, “but why did she need such large amount of money? I am pretty sure she would have told one of us if she was in trouble.”
Seonghwa nodded and walked towards the wide large glass window and stared at the city. He was trying to find your location in the chaos of the city, his eyes were roaming everywhere as if he could get a glimpse of you. He was behaving like a lost boy desperate for you to hug him. Maybe he was a the second in command after the most feared mafia leader, Hongjooong--- in the end it’s you with whom they are the real persons, they can be themselves. Tears flowed down his eyes and he didn’t notice that Wooyoung was standing behind him and suddenly patted his back. He himself was fighting the urge not to break down.
Hongjoong glanced at them across the room and sighed.
Mingi put down his phone and the typing of the keyboard was heard along with some frustrated groans. Jongho spoke up, “San told us that the jewelleries are also missing from her lockers.”
“What? Even her expensive items from her room were also missing.” Hongjoong was surprised that you were missing for so many hours and then all those money and other expensive items were missing too.
Yeosang shut his laptop with a groan and glared at the device. San beside him asked what happened but the news they got was not what they were expecting.
“She has been transferring money for last 6 months and for the last one month, she has spent money on some expensive trips and buying properties. The two accounts where the moneys are being transferred are highly protected with firewalls. I can’t access to it. It only seems like it’s been handled and protected by hackers from other mafia groups.”
Mingi furrowed his brows, “mafia groups? Why will she be transferring money to other mafias?”
Hongjoong pocked his cheek with the tongue, “she doesn’t usually spend such amount of money at once. And according to her schedule, she was pretty much busy with her work-loads.”
“yeah, Amy was always the one asking us if we needed any kind of help and giving us updates on her because she was busy with some events outdoor. Can you give me her schedule for once?”
Yeosang nodded and searched for the schedules Amy sent him and delivered it to Yunho who was quick to open it and read the routines. His creased eyebrows got noticed by Hongjoong, “what happened, Yunho?”
The man shook his head before turning the laptop from Yeosang towards him from across the table and quickly typed something. Everyone was watching his actions and Jongho was peeking at the screen from beside him, “why are you searching these companies?”
Hongjoong raised his hand to let him do his work. After a couple of minutes, Yunho clenched his jaw and shut the screen before turning towards the leader, “I was right.”
“what?”
“these companies: first FACT CHECK enterprise didn’t have any events because they were overseas with us, next ORANGE FATE didn’t held any events for last few weeks and SEVENTEEN has no updates. This only means she didn’t have anything according to her schedules and some same schedules are repeated again and again. Without getting anything solved, everything is appearing to be more puzzled.”
Jongho patted Yunho’s back and turned towards the leader, “we should call Amy and ask her.” The leader nodded and Mingi quickly dialled her number to ask her come to their room. Seonghwa and Wooyoung also returned to their places and waited for her.
As soon as Amy got the call, she skipped towards the room and entered the door with a worried expression. The boys looked at her and noticed her worriedness but Hongjoong asked her not to panic and let her sit on the chair beside Yeosang where you were supposed to sit in other times.
She sat on your chair.
She smirked to herself. Second step achieved, including her in the meetings. First step was already going pretty well when they were calling from overseas to know the daily updates of their place from her---apparently you were busy.
Sitting down slowly, she clasped her hands and Yunho noticed her heavy breaths. They all turned towards the leader when he spoke up, “where were you all these days?”
She bit her lips and tugged her hair behind her ear. She nervously glanced at everyone when Jongho offered her a glass of water. She thanked him and quickly gulped it down, taking few breaths she proceeded, “I-I was working here in the office and then keeping you all updated.”
“where was she? You were not with her?”
“y-yeah I was with her but only when she was inside the building. She was always busy outside.”
“where did she go?”
“the events. I don’t know anything in details because everyday she was late to office, complaining that how tired she is and then going out frustrated. Trust me, I thought you all should know about it because why she will tell me anything.”
“do you know why she needed money? Was she in trouble?”
She paused before glancing at them and then looked down, “n-no. I don’t know. If this was known by me. I would have told you all about it.” She started sobbing and looked up, “I am worried for her. I hope you all find her soon and I will get my friend back.”
Yeosang patted her back and everyone felt bad seeing her cry because she was really close with you and you enjoyed her company so much that they could feel her loneliness and concern when you were missing. She excused herself and Jongho went with her because they didn’t want others to know about the situation yet and she needed someone by her side because of her being oversensitive.
.
.
.
The next two weeks they had done everything possible to reach your location but you were nowhere as if your presence was vanished from the universe. There were no sign of kidnapping because there was no call from any mafia groups, no threats from any rivals and everything was normal and in place without you. It seemed like you never existed but yeah, the employees started asking about your absence and that led to them getting hold of the reality. The news was quick to spread everywhere, to every corner of the city.
Amy became closer to them and she was handling all your works. Them consulting few things with her, of course it was a great achievement for her. At some point, some members were losing hope to find you and becoming reckless. The leader was having a hard time in controlling them but he knew the emotions and conditions of his family because he was on the same boat.
With the passing of days, the chances of getting you back was disappearing and one more thing they were noticing, the strange behaviour of Amy. She was often seen zoning out and flinching to sudden people. They realised she was very traumatized with your disappearance. But a sudden parcel flipped everything upside-down.
Amy was sitting down with the parcel in front of her on the table and them scattered all around the room. Some were in disbelief and some were furious. She was crying and with shaky hands holding and looking at the things which they found out from the parcel.
The leader was hovering on her from the side and glaring, “Amy, What are you hiding from us? Tell me now before I lose my patience.”
She kept quiet and staring at the pictures. You were laughing with a boy, receiving gifts from him, partying at a club with him and kissing and also, you were on a trip for a week with him. It was definitely you, there was no editing and the details were pointing out that you were really not present at home or at office on those days and it only made it clear that there was lot going on behind their back.
“Amy! Speak up!”
She flinched and wiped the tears.
“she was meeting this boy everyday.”
The boy was familiar to them, Lee Heesung from Orange Fate Limited. They often had meetings and events with them. They were not on a term of rivals but were on an agreement of allies because of their head departments.
Seonghwa said darkly, “Continue.” San clenched his fist with every words coming from her mouth.
“she told me not to say you all anything that she was……she was cheating behind you all. She was with you because you all are too naïve that you trust her so much. She threatened me that she would kill me if I go against her. I couldn’t do anything because you all would have never trusted me but I tried to tell you so many times. I am only explaining everything today because its been a month that she has gone missing. But actually, she was planning to run away for a while.” She started weeping and Mingi comforted her. He was hesitant to be so close to her but why he should feel guilty when you didn’t think twice before doing such a thing to them.
They were sick worried for you only to get a parcel, maybe from their ally base that you were with their leader all these times. Yunho scoffed hearing the explanation and Jongho glanced at him before sighing and switched on his lock screen where he was hugging you from behind and both smiling at Yeosang who was behind the camera clicking the picture. A tear drop fell on the screen, just above your face.
He hated himself for missing you.
Mingi took her outside because she was scared and blabbering nonsense and was convincing them that she would bring you back and make you apologize. She explained everything how you were not busy due to workload but because you were going out with your boyfriend. The rage was building inside them with the thought that what more you had done with him other than kissing behind their back. All these past months when you were intimated with them, actually you were just using them as a stress reliever and maybe you were complaining about them to Heesung when you were making love with him.
Yeosang curled his fingers, nails scratching the leather of the chair’s armrest.
Woooyung asked his leader, “Are we going to bring her back? We going to-“
“We are going nowhere. She is not our concern anymore. If she chose to go away, to find love in someone else then let it be.” San growled.
Wooyoung shook his head and with pleading eyes he stared at the leader. He wanted to hear his thoughts and he was sure he won’t agree with San but he was wrong.
“No more discussion on y/n. she was not missing but enjoying her life.” He scoffed, “I wanted to believe that these all are wrong but no. it had to be true. Why had it to be true? She betrayed us. She played with out trust. There is nothing to keep up with this conversation.”
He leaned back into his chair and ordered everyone to leave. They were hesitant to leave because each one of them were sure that if they went off to their individual ways, they would end up doing something worse. But why should they harm themselves? It was you who betrayed them and then ended up breaking their hearts.
If someone had to regret, IT’s You.
Seonghwa halted at the door and looked back towards the leader who was glaring at your picture on the wall, “are you sure we are not going to get her?”
“Never. We are not going to trust her again. Let’s pretend we never met her. And Leave.”
.
.
.
Days went on and turned into months and they all were emotionless as if they only knew their missions and going back home, commanding others and then going back to their own life. No extra conversation with anyone. They even became distant among themselves and Amy was enjoying this a lot because afterall she was the who was spending most of the times with them, delivering the messages and information to them and their individual opinions to each other via her.
Jongho knocked at the leader’s bedroom door. It was noon and none of them went to office building, only Seonghwa went for an hour to check the updates and returned early. Everybody was at home but in their individual room, Jongho glanced at the door between Yunho and Wooyoung’s room. It was locked. In other times, he would often find music blasting from your room and then finding you dancing like a maniac.
“what do you need?”
“the medical kit is empty and I need to treat Yeosang’s wound from yesterday.”
“the ones in the cabinets in the upper rack?”
“nothing.”
Hongjoong sighed and pull off a jacket before exiting his room and signalled him to follow.
“where are we going?”
He stopped and glared, “of course to the base hospital. I definitely know other hospitals will freak out seeing us.” Jongho nodded to his statement and followed him.
Arriving to the hospital, they straight way went to the cabin where its pretty usual for them to appear often.
"Hongjoong?" The said man stopped in his track on hearing someone called him.
It was their rival gang NCT’s member standing in front of him. They never had anything against each other but they were allies with someone who was apparently their enemy.
"Mark. What are you doing here?" Jongho asked in a monotone voice to which the boy before him licked his lips.
"Dude don't think I'm here for any sort of mission. I work here as a part time worker like my leader forced us to keep a normal citizen profile as well, might help us in some ways."
"Why are you saying all these to us? I'm sure your leader won't be happy to see you being friendly with us." Hongjoong smirked.
Mark nodded and glanced at his surroundings expression turning towards them, "I didn't know y/n was in relationship with you all."
"What are you trying to say?"Jongho inquired him and he sighed.
"Hongjoong I heard that you guys were searching y/n but I didn't know how to reach to you guys because my leader strictly told me not to contact any one of you."
"What are you upto?"
"Do you know what happened to her?"
Hongjoong scoffed and glared at him, "don't interfere in our matters. It's all over between us and her so I would like you to get the fuck out of my way."
"So you trusted some bitch?" now it's Mark who was glaring.
"What do you mean?"
Mark held his wrist and dragged him towards a room. "what are you doing?"
"Please come with me. It's for your own sake."
Both of them hesitantly followed him and when he opened the door, they were greeted by the worst view. Their breathing stopped for a moment, they froze with the time. It felt like they were dreaming and oblivious to himself, Jongho stepped forward towards the bed.
IT’s You.
You were sleeping peacefully on the bed.
"What happened to her?" Hongjoong was holding back his tears and clenched his fist. Tears welped in his eyes. He was shocked to see you lying in front of him on a hospital bed with a white sheet covering your body and you were connected to the machines beside you. His eyes followed the bandages wrapped in different places which were visible to his eyes. He didn’t want to think anymore about it. He was clenching his fist that all these months he blamed you and thought that you betrayed them was just to find you in the hospital.
Did Heesung hurt you?
“She is comatose for last few months.” Mark stated, eyes fixed on you.
Hongjoong was glaring at you. Atleast at this moment he thought had it better if you were somewhere enjoying your life rather than being in coma.
Jongho who was kneeling beside your bed caressed your hand, “Why? Why is she in this condition?”
“That day when I was returning from the mission, she stumbled in front of my car. Dude she is not here because of that, I was not driving. Me and my friend were just chatting by the side of the road when she came to us running frantically. She was so scared and covered in blood.” Mark licked his lips and shook his head when he remembered the day.
“who are you? Why did you help her?” the leader asked the question but didn’t glance to his direction.
“I know it’s weird but we are childhood friends. After I joined the mafia gang and for the sake of my leader, I had to keep distance with her so that she might not get in trouble with this dark life but somehow she ended up with you all.” He sadly chuckled.
He continued, “I searched about her when I brought her to the hospital. I found out that she was related to you all and the first thought that came to my mind was that you did this to her. But then when I found that you all are searching for her, I was confused for a while but then gradually came to know the truth. Somebody has tortured her and her body was lacking nutrients and due to the deficiency of iron, she got a stroke.”
“torture? Who did this?” the leader was losing his patient with each word coming out his mouth.
“when I brought her here, she was conscious for few days. Yeah, I strictly told others that they should not let anyone to know about her and Johnny is her doctor. She was repeating some things like ‘Amy please don’t do this’  ‘I want to go home’  ‘help me’  ‘I will go away but please don’t hurt me’. according to the reports she is in vegetative state right now, she got a stroke when one day she was thrashing around things.”
A ring interrupted their conversation. Hongjoong was lost with your view and the words from Mark were sinking inside him. He was still processing that you were in front of him and on top of that, you were in a miserable state.
Somebody tortured you? Amy?
Mark broke his trance and urged him to pick up the call.
“where are you? We need to treat the wound and there is nothing in here.”
“Seonghwa, come to the base hospital and bring others too.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just do what I said. You will know when you reach here.”
“I think hearing some familiar voices or maybe something that can trigger the stimuli can bring her back to senses so I hope for the best. She is attentive to some responses and you all are my last hope.”
Mark patted his back and excused himself. He ordered some guards outside the door not to allow anyone inside the room except few members whom he will be sending soon.
Hongjoong stepped forward and with slow steps, he sat beside your bed. His shaky hands caressed your head, tears fell on you when he planted a kiss on your forehead. Jongho was still holding your hand on the other side and was watching your slow breathings.
“y/n……please wake up.” Hongjoong’s voice cracked and he didn’t know what to say anymore. He was angry, upset, hurt and moreover, he was dying inside. He couldn’t afford to see you in that condition.
They waited for a while. They were whispering so many things and tears flowing down their eyes continuously. They were lost after seeing your condition. The leader was confused that why someone had to treat you in this way when you did nothing in the first place. He was feeling to rip off the machines from you so that he could hug you and shield you from all the negativities that might be lingering around you.
The door slammed open and several footsteps could be heard entering the room when suddenly all the sounds paused.
“y/n?” Wooyoung was quick to run towards your sleeping figure, he pushed aside his leader and hugged your body, resting himself on top of you. He was excited but also confused after seeing you in that condition.
 You were laying pale and fragile upon a sterile hospital bed. Concern etched deep lines of worry upon their faces as they gathered around you, their hearts heavy with fear and uncertainty.
Seonghwa glanced at you and then towards Hongjoong who was not even taking off his eyes from you. “what is this Hongjoong? Why is she here?”
He didn’t reply and when he turned towards Jongho, he stood up to give space to Mingi so that he could stand beside your bed. The youngest was not willing to leave your hand but still others needed to see you as well so he stepped towards Seonghwa, “she is in coma for last few months. Somebody had kept her locked up and tortured her.”
“what?” San glared at him. “what are you saying, Jongho? Who?”
“I don’t know-“
“Amy.” Hongjoong stated the name blankly and stared at Seonghwa. “Are you sure?”
“she was scared of her before she went into coma so that only proves she has something to do with her.”
Wooyoung’s grip tightened around you. Yeosang was beside him who was trying to comfort him but also wishing for you to wake up. He couldn’t believe his eyes that you were in front of him. He could feel your skin against his fingertips. Your faint breathing could be heard and it was the only hope, the only belief that you were with him, with them.
Yeosang caressed your hand and pressed a soft kiss, “y/n, look we are here. Wake up. We all are here to protect you. No one can hurt you. Please look at me, y/n .” he started sobbing and buried his face into the hold where your fingers were getting wet with his tears.
Mingi caressed your head, “y/n… we are here to take you home, doll. Please open your eyes. Try to hear my voice I am here.”
Wooyoung traced his fingers over the bandages and the healing cuts on your face. The beautiful face, the soft skin which always felt amazing against his and he never missed a place to kiss every inch of it. Now its all covered with cuts and bandages. “baby please wake up. Please look at me, talk to me.”
Three of them were crying surrounding you and the rest of them closely behind them were hoping to see your eyes fluttering open and to tell them what you went through. They were cursing themselves for once believing that you left and betrayed them.
They were hating themselves for believing that.
Yeosang pulled back Wooyoung and both of them sat on the couch to the side, the younger one was sobbing in his hold. Hongjoong nodded towards Seonghwa and the older one sat on the stool beside your head and held your hand, the leader stood behind him.
“y/n…can you hear me? Love we are all here for you. Look we found you.” Seonghwa gulped the lump, smiled sadly and continued, “We will get through this together. You need to wake up for me.” Hongjoong placed a hand on his shoulder to encourage him to keep going.
San moved forward, he was observing things from a distance and was silently praying all the Almighty to wake you up, to do a miracle so that he could see your eyes and smile again. Mingi stepped back to give him space and he kneeled beside you and took your hand in his trembling ones, the needles from the iv-drip and other machines piercing your skin and he was holding back the urge to rip that off because it might be hurting you. “Y/n……”
“I can't bear to see you like this. Please, wake up...please…I love you so much" he mumbled and planted a kiss on the knuckles.
“you need to see yourself. You are strong enough to come all these ways alone. You can fight more. You are no more alone, we are here for you.” Seonghwa pronounced every word distinctly so that you could hear them, understand him and atleast process slowly that you were not alone but surrounded by your loved ones. Your family.
Jongho slowly said to them, “Mark told us if we trigger a memory then she might wake up. She is responsive to some stimuli earlier. I don’t know what to do but please do something and wake her up. If not then she will be under more risk.”
“No! she won’t.” Wooyoung shouted and again stood beside you, “y/n, don’t give up on us like this. You cant leave us. I wont be able to live if I lose you. Wake up please.”
Yeosang stood beside him, voice cracking “ you are our heart y/n. just tell me what you need, I will do anything for you but don’t leave me please.”
Hongjoong gulped, “Y/n…remember the day we met, those happy moments which we cherish. I still think about them everyday even after the day you were missing. Please we have so much to do in our life. We love you.”
Mingi’s voice wavered, “We'll be here for you every step of the way, I'll fight this battle with you, y/n. Together, as one...nine makes one family.”
Your index finger moved a little in San’s hold. He was surprised, his breath hitched. He looked towards everyone but others gave him a confused look. he was smiling and holding your hand tightly and glancing between you and them.
“guys she can hear us. Her finger is moving.” His gaze landed on the last one who haven’t said anything after they had arrived. He was fuming but crying and San knew that he could do anything if he was quiet. “Yunho…”
The sterile white walls of the hospital room surrounded him, the heavy air which he breathing was filled with different emotions. But the only emotion that was tugging in every corner was the faint ray of hope.
Hope for you to wake up.
Hearing his name, slow and heavy steps took him to your side. Seonghwa who was still whispering some old happy memories paused and moved back a bit. Yunho stared at your face. The memory of you smiling at him and laughing at his jokes. You acting like a baby and always promising that he would protect you like your big saviour. But he didn’t. he broke his promise. He left you alone to fight and then you were fighting with your death.
He will kill every person who did this with you.
“Y/n, You're my reason to keep going. I…we won't let you go. Stay with me. I love you, Pearl.”
The familiar voices echoing inside your head.
Their voices.
Your family.
Nine makes one family.
You clutched San’s hand but quickly loosened the grip. You repeated the action. Their eyes not leaving a second of your form. Your dry lips parted slightly to seep through some air. The oxygen mask felt like suffocating the air.
Slowly, like tendrils of fog dissipating under the morning sun, consciousness began to seep back into your mind.
Your eyelids fluttered, heavy with the weight of slumber, as you struggled to orient yourself to the surroundings. The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor echoed in their ears, a steady cadence that anchored all to the present moment.
With a groan, you attempted to shift your body, the sensation of stiffness and lethargy weighing you down like an anchor. Your limbs felt foreign, disconnected from the mind, as if you were a marionette being manipulated by invisible strings. Few deep cuts and wounds stinged, you whimpered at the pain.
As your vision cleared, you became aware of the figures standing by your bedside, silhouettes bathed in the soft glow of the overhead lights. their faces had masks of concern as they observed your awakening. You couldn’t place the names with the faces.
Who are they? Do you know them? Why are you here? Wait…where are you?
You twisted your neck to every direction, an air of suffocation engulfing you and the memory of being locked up, bloods, wounds, cut and crying flashed in front of your eyes.
“baby…” Seonghwa’s voice made you look at him. Your eyes were filled with horror. They will hurt you again. An adrenaline hit you which made you feel to run away and save yourself. You were trapped and you needed to get out. You got rid of the oxygen mask.
“no…no…please don’t kill me…I..” you pushed yourself up, groaning because you felt your lethargic body was heavy with tons of weight, you wanted to move but still couldn’t. you started crying and retreated your hand back when you felt someone was holding it. San left your hand when he saw fear in your eyes. You were confused, scared and tired but still attempted to make a run.
Wooyoung’s voice choked with emotion, “baby you are awake…”  you shook your head and  twisted your body but Yunho was quick to make you still and you groaned when the wound in your waist sent a wave of pain throughout your body.
“please…leave me…I want to go home please…” you were crying and wiggling weakly under his hold.
Yunho was standind straight and engulfing your upper body tightly in his hold to let you cry and shout but he couldn’t let you go away when surprisingly he got you back from the edge of death, “shh shhh…Y/n, don’t cry please. I am here. No one is going to hurt you.”
Seonghwa patted your head, “we are going to take you home.”
“no…no…they  they are waiting for me. Joong…I want to go to him…Hwa…Woo…please please.”
“baby, I am Woo. I’m right here.” You glanced at him. a memory of you fooling around and laughing with him flashed in front of him.
You shook your head and Yunho pushed your head against his chest and placed a kiss on top, “it’s me, Yunho. Love calm down.”
When you didn’t stop shaking, he held your face and made you look into his eyes, he was holding back his tears and still smiled at you, “I am here. Right in front of you. You are safe with me. Your Yuyu is with you.”
You stared at him and your actions slowed down. He shifted and sat on the edge and pulled you closer. “Yunho…” hearing his name from your mouth, he pulled you closer and caressed your sides, lulling you to calm down.
“yes, it’s me. we all are here.”
San placed himself on the other side edge of the bed to caress your back. Even though, they were sad seeing you vulnerable but somehow a relief settled inside them that you were awake. You were with them.
“Calm down for me. will you?”
Hearing his soothing voice, you clutched his shirt. Your tears were soaking it but he didn’t care about that, he just wanted you to not feel scared of them.
They knew it was a burden for you to take in your surrounding after waking up from coma after months. You took deep breaths and he could feel your trembling body calming down.
“Y/n. How are you feeling?” Hongjoong’s concerned voice echoed in the air, reaching your ears. Several nights you spent calling out his name, hoping for him to save you but you were alone. Your mind slowly and slowly settling down and you got a grip of your current situation.
You looked down to see yourself wrapped in a hospital gown.
You were in hospital.
“paining. It’s paining everywhere.” You mumbled and stared at Hongjoong. He stepped forward and softly cupped your face, giving you a warm smile.
“it will go away. You will be fine soon.” He kissed your forehead. Seonghwa stood beside him with a bright smile, his presence itself was giving you a blanket of comfort adding to the warmth from Yunho was hugging you.
Hwa nodded and removed the strand of hairs from your face and tugged them neatly behind your ears, “my pretty baby. Do you need something?”
You moved your head up and down slowly, he urged you to speak, “I..I want water.” He didn’t waste a second, quickly turning on his heel, walked towards the table to get a glass of water. You felt your throat was burning dry and you coughed.
San patted your back, “its okay. Take it slow. You are fine.”
Hongjoong wiped your eyes, “don’t cry, baby. We are here for you. Always.”
Wooyoung sat beside your legs and ran his hands up and down above the blanket. Even though he couldn’t feel your skin against his but he knew you were fine and with him.
You stared at him when Seonghwa gave you the glass, you gulped the water hastily. You coughed when you choked. Yunho and Seonghwa softly scolded you not to rush. Your gaze returned towards Wooyoung, you extended your hand and he intertwined his fingers with yours. Tears fell from your eyes. “you are really here...”
“Yes I am. For you.”
Seonghwa and Hongjoong moved aside to let Mingi and Yeosang in front of your view. They were trying their best to appear happy but they knew with just a blink, you would see them all breaking down. Mingi kissed your nose and gave you a tight hug, “do you want to eat?”
“I don’t know. I want to…go home.” You turned towards Yunho, “please take me home. I don’t want to stay here.” He nodded and wiped your eyes, “shh…we will go okay. We are waiting for the doctor to allow the discharge for you.”
Yeosang cupped your face to bring your attention on him, “we are going to watch movies and we will play tag game. How about that?”
You smiled and their heart melted seeing the small curled up lips, “yes. I would love that but I’m feeling so weak.”
Wooyoung chimed in, “You have to eat a lot to become strong and then we will watch movies and discuss your favorite things. You have to show us your favorite stories.”
Hongjoong chuckled, “You cant make her do that even now. She will still run after you because she always do her best to hide the things she read. But I’m curious too.”
Mingi raised his brows and nodded, “those are in English so even if I get a hold of it. I don’t know how to read them.”
Jongho laughed lightly, “deliver them to me. I will let you know about it.”
Seonghwa shook his head and laughed. The atmosphere was becoming lighter than before and they were glad that you were smiling with them. Jongho kissed your nose, “you need to walk more or you will feel more weak. But you should rest until the wounds are getting better.”
You nodded.
You were always an independent and hardworking woman and that’s how they got attracted to you. Every on the point decisions and single handedly and actively managing lots of works was never a small deal for anyone but they saw you doing it and they were impressed. When you got the offer to join the company, you didn’t know it belonged to a mafia base but what to do, when they told you about it, you were already in love with them. They were always honest with you and respected and even treated you like a queen. Their queen.
 But today, seeing you so weak and vulnerable like a baby was breaking their heart into million pieces. You were hurt, you were scared and traumatized.
A groan escaped your lips when you shifted in your place and Yeosang made you still and Yunho helping you to sit properly, leaning your back to his chest. You turned towards San who was quite all these moments. He was still sitting on the bed close to you and rubbing his hands up and down your body. He wanted to feel you, to make himself belief that he was not dreaming but it’s the reality.
Yeosang with concerned eyes looked towards you and asked, “Are you okay? Where is it hurting?”
San urged you to speak, “tell us baby. Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.”
Yeosang, the medic of the group knew he had to take care of you more after returning back home. Yunho massaged your side and it did wonder to relieve some tensions.
Your gaze fell on San’s hand, it was bandaged. Your eyes went wide and you looked towards others to scan them. Why are they hurt? You couldn’t find anything visible on Wooyoung, not even on Jongho but when you watched Yeosang fishing his hand inside the jacket’s pocket. You quickly grabbed it and caressed the bandaged palm. You didn’t notice it earlier.
“Why are you hurt? What happened?”
He shook his head, “nothing major.”
Your other hand grabbed San’s wounded one, “does it hurt?”
“no baby. Calm down. Getting hurt during missions is pretty normal.”
“don’t normalize these things. I don’t want you all to get hurt.” San hugged your side. “I’m sorry…”
“why?” his whisper fanned your ears, tickling you lightly.
Hongjoong frowned, “why are you sorry? You did nothing wrong, y/n.”
“but I am here…”
Wooyoung placed a finger on your lips, “don’t speak. That’s not your fault. You are safe and talking with us. That’s what we want right now.”
Seonghwa patted your head before announcing, “I am going to talk with her doctor…what was the name again?”
Jongho stated, “Johnny.”
“ah yes him. so Mingi and Jongho come along with me, we need to take some medical equipment as well.”
The two nodded and followed behind him before them sending smiles towards you. Your eyes followed them until they closed the door behind them.
“San…”
“hmm… tell me.”
“I don’t want to go to that office building. And you did got some pictures, right?”
Before he could reply Hongjoong interrupted, “no we are not going there anytime soon.” You nodded.
San furrowed his brows, “what pictures?”
“me and Heesung…”
Yunho pulled you closer if its even possible, “why? Why are you asking?”
“do you all trust that? I mean the pictures are real but…”
“but?” Hongjoong just needed some truth and the plannings he already made inside his head would be in action. “tell me y/n.”
“I was drugged and didn’t know what he did. Amy…she used me to get to get you all. She forced me to transfer money, to meet him, and so on. But trust me I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted you all. I wanted to go home. I still want to go far away with you all.”
“calm down, Y/n. we are not speaking about those things right now.” Yeosang shushed you and  Hongjoong clenched his jaw.
He is going to kill her. He is going to torture her till the day she dies of blood loss. He wants to rip her heart out. Does she even have one? He mentally scoffed. He caught Yunho and San staring at him. they both smirked when they saw the leader was fuming.
The leader showed his dirty smirk towards them. They knew the hell was going to break loose for someone.
Seonghwa called Yeosang and asked him to tell others to take you to the car because they got the permission to take you home as Yeosang could manage the rest. He removed the needles and you winced but he was quick to tape the wounds. Wooyoung held your side when you tried to stand up. You felt your head spinning and nauseous hit you. Hongjoong quickly brought a mug in front of your face to let you vomit and Yunho held your hairs in a ponytail and patting your back, encouraging you to take it easy and you will be okay. Yeosang wiped your mouth with wet tissues and San swept you off the ground.
“you are not walking anymore. You need to rest and your limbs are still too weak to make you stand strong even for a second.”
You didn’t argue because you yourself were aware of your condition. As soon as you all left the room, people moved aside seeing the mafia group carrying a girl in their arms. Some had sympathetic look and some with curiosity whispering to each other. You felt awkward under the gazes and you buried your face in his chest. His laugh vibrated in your face and you could hear others chuckled.
Wooyoung ruffled your hairs, “silly.”
Reaching the parking lot, the others were already there. The fresh air hit your face, feeling lively and Seonghwa came in front, “are you okay?”
“I want to stay outside. Please.” You were whining like a baby in san’s arms.
One by one they all entered the car and you were laying with your head resting on Seonghwa’s lap and legs placed over San’s thigh. You pout when they didn’t acknowledge your request. Jongho stared at you, “what happened?”
“I said I wanted to stay outside.”
“didn’t you want to go home?”
You sighed and closed your eyes. Yes, you wanted to return home.
Hongjoong laughed from the passenger seat and Yunho spoke up, “we are going to the beach in front of our house. We will have our lunch there and spend the evening there as well.”
Your eyes fluttered open, “really?”
“yes.” Mingi assured you and joked to make you laugh.
San stroked your legs, “you are our home, y/n. I love you.”
Even if you wanted to go to the house, your home.  It’s fine. Wherever they are, its your home.
They are your home.
“you guys are my home too. My world.”
[thanks for loving the ot8 fics anon <3. I hope you liked this one.]
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Taglist: @mymoodwriting @justhere4kpop @anyamaris @yeoobin @icchyi @jwnghyuns @piratequeen-queenofgames @dinonuguaegi @oreharuuu @hwanring @sanwifesstuff @kiwiisnthereoops @kiwiraccoon @hyuukah @kazscara @aceofspadesbiofalltrades @nvdhrzn [open!]
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angelgoeslewd · 8 months
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Omegaverse Alpha!Chuuya, Dazai, and Ranpo Headcanons
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⚠️ warnings: 18+ concepts and scenarios, Minors DNI! Omegaverse, GN!reader, mentions of heats and ruts, slick, knots, and sexual/explicit scenarios.
[Fyodor and Nikolai here!]
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Chuuya
ARE U READY TO BE THE WORLD’S MOST SPOILED OMEGA??? :D ‘CAUSE BABY- YOU ARE!!!
Chuuya knows that he can be very absent in your relationship, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. But that doesn’t stop him from always trying to make up for it!!! Unlike OTHER ALPHAS-
Chuuya is honestly probably the best Alpha you can have. He’s very sweet!! He worships you, he’s caring towards your needs, sympathetic to any issues you have, will absolutely spoil the shit out of you, protective in all the right ways, very stable financially — the list goes on and on. However… it is extremely hard to break down his walls and actually GET to the point where you two are in a committed relationship. Between his trust issues and being a literal executive for the MAFIA- he isn’t the type to fall in love very fast or very easily. He wants to be. He romanticizes love to an extreme; but he cannot bring himself to actually relax and let down his walls in order to experience it. Basically, you gotta fight for this boy, but it is oh so worth it.
I know most people probably think you have to manage dancing around his outbursts and anger issues but honestly? Those are for people who Are Not You™️. You do have to talk him down from crushing the Alphas who mention you in the wrong sort of light to death, however.
They end up dead anyway. Yeah you really kinda have to be morally grey to date this man. And that might be a deal breaker for some. While I see a lot of fics talking him out of the dangerous life of the Port Mafia and having him settle down, I really don’t see that as a viable option. One, I firmly believe that Chuuya sees his place in the Port Mafia as one he’s earned, all by himself, without relying on anyone and proving himself worthy. The emotional ties to his job alone make it hard for him to even consider leaving. Two, even with all the danger, Chuuya prides himself on being able to keep you safe despite all of that. You will never be taken. You will never be used. He keeps you close enough so that you are technically protected, but far enough removed that you cannot be a pawn in this sick twisted game that Mori plays. And… it’s kinda stable for him. For you. A generous income that leaves you leaves you flush and living lavishly beyond your wildest dreams. He can’t give that up. So really, you have to be ok when he ends up having to murder a few people for his job. Not that you would know about it first hand. And he’s never malicious. He has his own moral code that will never be broken.
Heats???? Ruts??? This man will shower you in whatever you want during that time. No matter what, he will always be there for you. Uninterrupted personal time with Chuuya. His Omega always comes first. He is such a generous lover too. He’ll knot you as many times as you wish. He’ll make you breakfast in bed and make sure you hydrate. Loves eating you out until you’re begging for his knot, ass up and face down. Give you all his clothes for the nest you make. He’s so in tune with his Omega that his ruts will line up with your heats very early on in the relationship, so you might want to invest in child-prevention or otherwise both you and him will be looking at parenthood. 😳 He wouldn’t mind that. Considering how long it would take for you to get to that point… but he wouldn’t let you know that.
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Dazai
Honestly, I love this man ok? He was my first BSD love and he’ll always have a place in my heart because of that. But my god. He is an absolute horrible Alpha.
Dazai himself is very guarded. He loves to have an air of nonchalance, but that’s all it is. An image. He is a fortress of walls that will never truly come down, unlike Chuuya, who eventually lets you in fully. Considering his past and his experiences, being able to break through a few of those will be a victory. Dazai, on the other hand, needs a partner who is okay with never truly knowing his own desires. A partner who’s ok with always being held at an arm’s length, because Dazai feels like if he loves you too much, something bad will happen.
Not only the emotional distance, but a physical one too. Dazai loves to be touchy, but at home, he also needs time to regenerate his own physical stimulation. It might be strange to some that he seems more affectionate and physical in public, but Dazai wants to trust you. He wants to feel comfortable enough to not always be what he feels like he should be. He might come off as cold or even uncaring, but he just needs time, no matter how much he loves you. And trust me, it will pay off.
And we also have to consider his job. Unlike Chuuya, who’s rather stable in his self-image and work life, Dazai almost is like Ranpo in a sense, where he feels like something bad will happen if he’s not available to ADA at every second of the day. Unlike Ranpo, Dazai cannot shirk these feelings or his duty, even though he basically goes in and does absolutely nothing all day. Mentally, he’s there. Thinking up solutions and plans without speaking a word of it. He needs to be there to get ahead, to minimize casualties, no matter how much Kunikida helps out. There will be many times you spend a heat alone, or Dazai will have to rush out to go to work during one of them.
Buttttt that’s not to say he’s a selfish lover. He is, in fact, a very, very good one. Not only through experience, but in creating a sort of intimacy that makes you feel like he’s all there. Even if he isn’t. Which, again, is sort of shady of him. 🙄 But honestly? His dirty talk is top notch. During the heats that he goes to work, he’ll talk you through the time that he isn’t there. Much to your embarrassment.
Dazai’s favorite thing is to feel you clench around his knot. He loves making you so horny that all you can do is beg him to knot you and scream his name or his title. It’s a moment that he can just forget everything, his past, his current situation, and just be with you. He loves being your Alpha and does wish he could be a better one, but that’s just not him. 100% keeps a pair of your slick stained panties in his pocket. Disgusting man.
His ruts will take a while to line up with yours. It’s a combination of both problems — physical and emotional distance. Feeling like he can even sort of trust you will cure that. He’s super restrained during his ruts though. Even if you’re in a long relationship, the only way you can notice is by his heightened scent, which he loves to blockers to suppress, because he’s stupid like that and feels like it interferes with his investigations (yes and no. it’s not very helpful if someone can smell you a mile away, but it’s also because Dazai likes to keep an air of mystery AND distance between any sort of work and personal life, in his own strange way. Stops taking them if it helps create a connection he can use) and the fact he just randomly wants to knot you at all times of the day. He doesn’t even seem that serious about it though — just like “oh! popped a knot in you! sorry!” and does that 10 more times until you catch on.
“Dazai… are you in rut???” “…yeah.” absolutely ridiculous mind game for no reason other than it’s Dazai.
Seriously, if this man is your Alpha, I’m sorry. He makes you jealous accidentally a lot because he has Omegas fawning over him, that he gives crumbles of attention for validation, but his secretly super possessive and HATES when it happens to you. Seriously. One Alpha hits on you and suddenly you’re covered in hickies and claim marks, rubbed so hard with his scent it almost stinks and you can’t get it out with ANY SORT of laundry detergent.
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Ranpo
again, if this man is your Alpha, I’m sorry. I am actually less sorry than if Dazai is your Alpha but I’m still sorry.
Ranpo is childish. He has absolutely 0 clue on how to be a proper Alpha, despite Fukuzawa trying to teach him, but unlike someone like Kunikida or Sigma, has probably little to no desire to learn. That isn’t entirely true, especially with how earnest Ranpo is to want to learn with you, but honestly, he gives up very quickly.
He can be very selfish with his pleasure, but that’s mostly to your gain, to be honest. At least you have 0 emotional hangups when it comes to Ranpo. 🤷‍♀️ that’s all I can say.
He also has 0 embarrassment. He will fully scent you, partially undressing you to get to what he wants, like a breastfeeding CHILD, in the middle of the office. If you smack him away, he’ll be fully confused. Like “whaaaaat? I’m your Alpha. I’m supposed to do this.” NOT HERE, IDIOT.
Mouths your neck and your scent gland whenever too. Like just leans over in meetings to do so. You, as his Omega, almost have to leash him, your Alpha. It’s a bit of an unusual dynamic, but fits perfectly to Ranpo.
He will end up growing up a bit when he enters a relationship with you; however, that will take a lot of time. Your relationship probably starts off really casually too. Ranpo will most likely just offhandedly ask you on an outing, then he’s considering you his significant other, his omega, without it ever truly being discussed. “It wasn’t obvious? Why would I ask you out if I didn’t want to be with you?” Please teach him how to properly enter a relationship. Or at least discuss with him the standards of dating. Fukuzawa will give you a bonus. Just please.
Now, it’s very widely accepted that Ranpo is autistic/asperger’s syndrome, and I headcanon him as that as well so a little on that from another Aspie!!! Ranpo doesn’t always catch on to what is and isn’t socially acceptable. He has a tendency to sometimes be sexual in times that aren’t always the best, but if you tell him nicely, he’ll understand and back down. Usually with a nod and taking mental notes. You need to be very verbal with this man because he will not catch on in any sort of way. If you want a gift, ask him for it! If you want time alone, ask him. Seriously. You need to tell him or he’ll just keep doing his little routine.
He has stimulation problems. You might need to carry around headphones or some sort of fidget toy because he sometimes gets overwhelmed in public by all the information he’s taking in. He’s used to it, but that doesn’t make it better. If you let him sit on the couch with a weighted blanket and just sit with him in silence on the other side, he will eventually jump your ass after a while and cuddle up under your arm. He will probably not leave your side for the rest of the day, refusing to talk to anyone but you.
His libido is finicky, it jumps between hyper sexuality and almost completely disappearing, even if he wants to pleasure you. His ruts show that. Unlike most Alphas, they aren’t always timely, and show up randomly. It makes it hard for your heats to line up with his ruts. They rarely line up, and sometimes when you’re in heat Ranpo is completely disinterested and would rather be working on a case. Early on, he most likely will ignore you and them, not out of animosity or a lack of care, but just because he’s really not used to being in a relationship. If you give it time and practice, certainly after expressing your need, Ranpo will take care of you through them. Whether it’s eating you out or knotting you properly. He can finger you with one hand while working on his phone or laptop with the other, a skill he didn’t even know he had.
His ruts on the other hand… he’s very needy. You will have to call out of work for a week or two. He wants to be touching you at all times. Don’t expect to leave the bed at all. Actually, just plan on being on his knot the whole time. If you have to get up, even for a drink of water, expect him to be right there behind you, arms clasped around your waist, begging for you to come back to bed. His scent gets so heavy. He just wants to be comfortable and the only way he feels comfortable is with you. You might need additional call out days for how weak your legs will be afterwards.
Ranpo is apologetic though and will bring you painkillers or a heating pad. You probably could talk him into a massage every now and then. He knows how much you give to him, and struggles with sometimes feeling like your relationship is one sided. It is, in a way, but Ranpo gives back tenfold with how absolutely pure his love is for you. He’s loyal and will never entertain any sort of attention from any other Omega. He shares all his snacks and candy with you and tries to show you his love in little ways, like remembering your favorite flavors or something you mentioned you liked.
Ranpo isn’t the best Alpha, but he is a good soul. He tries and though he has his struggles, he really is there for his (and your!) best interests at heart.
Praise him. Praise him during his rut and you will be there for another week. It drives it crazy and ends up lengthening it for an extended amount of time.
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whats-amata-you · 4 months
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Alright y’all hear me out, but I kinda like this interpretation of the Kaiba brothers where they have to deal with the consequences of a very codependent sibling relationship. Not like in the “something happens to Mokuba and Seto has a crisis” kind way, but in the “Mokuba doesn’t know who the hell he is outside the context of being Seto’s little brother” kind of way.
Literally everything Seto ever did from the day Mokuba was born was toward the singular goal of Mokuba’s wellbeing. He sacrificed everything to give Mokuba better opportunities, a more stable home life, a better chance at happiness than Seto ever really had for himself. Seto even gave up huge swaths of who he himself was to work toward that goal. It was all for Mokuba.
But Mokuba was right there with him, the whole time, watching his brother suffer and doing everything in his power to protect him. Mokuba’s whole identity revolves just as much around Seto as Seto’s does around Mokuba.
And that’s fucked up all well and good when Seto’s a teenager and Mokuba hasn’t even hit puberty and only one of them is really taking on any serious adult responsibility. But imagine what that must be like when Mokuba grows up.
Imagine being 20 and as long as you can remember you’ve been worrying about keeping your older brother alive. Maybe he’s in late twenties or early thirties now, and life has finally forced him to either do the work of healing and moving on or else spiraling into self-destruction to the point that not even you can save him anymore. Maybe he’s married off and happy in his own life, or maybe he’s dead or missing and left you behind as his only heir to the family fortune.
And you’re just as completely, utterly lost either way because either way, he doesn’t need you the same way anymore. And on top of that, you realize you don’t really need him the same way anymore.
His routines aren’t yours anymore. His moods don’t set the tone for your whole day anymore. You don’t plan your life around him and his needs anymore.
So. What do you do when you’re suddenly cut loose and left adrift?
I imagine Mokuba floating through life a lot for his twenties, maybe into his thirties. He’s got no sense of direction or purpose without Seto being the center of it all. He realizes he doesn’t have to become a businessman like Seto and help run Kaiba Corporation, but doesn’t know what the hell else he might even want to do. Doesn’t even have a clue. He goes into business anyway because he knows he has to do something, but he doesn’t really enjoy it and it wears on him. He’s popular with women but can’t make a relationship last more than a few weeks; they keep fizzling out because he just doesn’t seem to have any ambition.
It’s super easy for Mokuba to see and acknowledge how Seto was always sort of his dad when they were kids, as well as his brother. Seto actively took up the role and wasn’t shy about saying so outright. But I don’t think either of them realizes quite as easily just how much Mokuba was parentified too, even from a very young age. Seto made Mokuba’s physical health and overall wellbeing his business on purpose, but Mokuba accidentally stumbled into providing a level of emotional support to Seto that no child should ever be responsible for. That kind of relationship would fuck anyone up.
I feel like an interpretation of them Kaiba brothers that had a Mokuba who ended up being rather directionless and having issues with his sense of who the hell he is after Seto’s inevitable Character Development one way or the other is worth exploring. People change over time, and if a fic is set a decade or more post-canon…idk, I just feel like Mokuba’s trauma deserves some serious exploration, too.
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st-eve-barnes · 1 year
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Easy on you
(Modern Aegon x Fem Reader)
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Summary: Hiding from the party downstairs you and Aegon end up in the same room together, sharing some drinks and secrets, and feelings.
Warning: 18+ for smut. Teasing, dry humping, oral sex (female receiving), explicit language, the whole works. Also fluff, love confessions and Aegon being an insecure slut.
Word count: +5800
I've been a little obsessed with Tom Glynn-Carney lately so you guys get some more Modern Aegon ;) (As always please forget about his issues in canon, this is my version and consent is a big deal to this Aegon)
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All my fics are also on AO3
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The Targaryen villa was so immense one could easily get lost in its abundance of different rooms, stairways and halls. You were pretty sure you had walked this exact same hallway just a few minutes ago. They all looked alike and you’d been walking around for a while now without running into another living soul.
You hadn’t meant to go this far, you just wanted to flee the family gathering downstairs but once you’d started going up the stairs you had just kept going without looking back.
Anything to avoid seeing them.
You sighed in relief when you finally found some light at the end of the tunnel. Literally. The room at the end of the hallway had its door ajar and a ray of light came peaking through.
You knocked a few times and waited, when there was no answer you carefully pushed the door open, finding the room inside empty.
It seemed to be some kind of guest or entertainment room, there was a large made up bed and some sofas but you didn’t see any personal stuff anywhere. There was a fridge in the corner and a bar filled with drinks. The light was on which meant someone must have been here not so long ago and maybe you just missed them.
Just as you were about to leave again the other door in the room opened and you were no longer alone. You stood face to face with Aegon, who walked in with a drink in his hand and a surprised look on his face.
“Well, hello. How did you get up here?”
“I got lost,” you explained,”Is this your room?”
“It is tonight,” he smiled and let himself fall down onto the sofa, plopping his feet down on the coffee table,”This was meant to be a guest room but it’s so far up in the east wing I think the rest of the family forgot it exists.”
His eyes rested on yours for a minute, taking you in and trying to read your expression. You looked tense and more nervous than usual. “What are you doing all the way up here, Y/N?” he then asked again.
“I told you, I got lost,” you avoided answering his question.
”Must have been walking for a while then,” he remarked.
“Yeah,” you sighed.
“Want me to direct you back to the party?”
“Fuck no.”
The words left your mouth without even thinking and you bit your lip but Aegon just smiled.“You were trying to get out, weren’t you?”
“Not out, just…looking for a spot to hide out for a while,” you confessed.
“Well, you found it. You…um…wanna grab a beer or something?” he pointed towards the fridge and you gladly took him up on his offer.
If you had to run into anyone from the Targaryen family you were glad it was Aegon.
You and him had been friends for a while now, ever since your brother married Heleana and your family had started spending more time with the Targaryens. Heleana was a total sweetheart and Aegon had always been the most welcoming of the entire bunch.
To be honest those two were the only ones you could stand, the rest of that family scared the shit out of you.
For some reason you always felt at ease with Aegon. maybe it was because he never seemed to feel comfortable around his own family either. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that he was also fleeing the festivities tonight.
You let yourself sink down on the couch next to him and took a sip from your beer.”So who are you hiding from?”
He let out a laugh and shook his head,”Who am I not hiding from?”
You kept your eyes on him waiting for an answer but he didn’t elaborate.
“Okay, so you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine,” you teased.
He bumped your leg with his,“You first.”
You sighed but when your eyes met his you caved quickly. You’re not sure what it was about Aegon but he always had a way of making you feel you could tell him anything and he would never judge you for it.
“My mum,” you confessed,”And Viserys.”
“What’s Viserys done?”
“Nothing,” you sighed,”It’s just…my mum wants to set me up with someone from your family. Apparently she’s sooo happy with my brother’s new life she thinks it would be wonderful, for me, if I were to marry rich as well.”
Aegon rolled his eyes and took another sip from his beer, trying his best to sound casual with his next question,”So…who’s the lucky Targaryen?”
You sighed deeply,“Aemond.”
“Oh no, poor you.”
“Shut up,” you hit his leg, making him laugh.
“No but…I mean, Aemond’s not so bad,” he then tried to reassure you but you quickly shook your head.
“I don’t even know him, Aegon, it’s not…it’s just not how I imagined things.”
“Then say no, it’s your life, they don’t get to decide how you should live it.”
“I know,” you pulled your legs up underneath you on the couch and turned on your side, facing Aegon,”and my mum said it’s totally my choice and she’ll never push me into it but…I just…don’t know how to disappoint my family.”
Aegon snorted at that,”Want some tips? According to Viserys being the family disappointment is one of the only things I absolutely excel in.”
You smiled but gave him a more serious look then,”Viserys is an idiot. But I mean, it’s not like I don’t understand why my mum wants it, you know, financial security and all that.”
“Money doesn’t solve all your problems or buys you happiness.”
“Only someone who has it would say that.”
Aegon sighed and ran his hand through his hair,”Shit, you’re right. That was such a rich kid’s response, wasn’t it?”
You nodded,”I know what you mean though, having money comes with its own problems and responsibilities but it’s infinitely better than not having it.”
“But your family is doing okay now, yeah?”
“We’re okay, yes but I know where mum is coming from. I just didn’t feel like having that conversation about my future tonight.”
“Yeah, I totally get that.”
“So who are you really hiding from?”
He sighed and closed his eyes while he confessed,”Viserys. Of course, who else?”
“Why?”
“Because…he wants me to work in the family’s company and…I’d rather fucking die.”
“He can’t force you, can he?”
“He can disown me if he wants.”
“Would he do that?”
“I don’t know. And part of me wants to say I don’t give a fuck but…”
You smiled,“You’re used to your little life of luxury.”
“Yeah,” Aegon admitted,”Does that make me weak? It makes me weak, doesn’t it?”
“No, of course not. But, it’s like you said, money’s not gonna solve all your problems.”
He leaned back into the couch,”Yeah, maybe not.”
“What would you do? If you could have any job in the world?”
“Just get paid to play with my band.”
“Are you guys any good?”
His eyes lit up and he gave you a sweet smile,”You should come see us some time and judge for yourself.”
“Tell me when and where and I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” he nodded and finished his beer,”Want another one?”
“Sure.”
“Think it’s safe to say neither of us wants to go back downstairs anytime soon.”
He took two more bottles from the fridge and gave you one before sitting down on the floor in front of the couch. You moved down to join him.
“What are we gonna do to pass the time up here?” you asked.
“Well, I could think of a few things we could do,” Aegon teased while giving you a flirty look and motioning towards the beds.
You hit him on his leg,”Don’t be gross.”
“Sorry, couldn’t help myself,” he avoided your eyes for a moment but couldn’t hide the smile on his face. 
It wasn’t the first time Aegon flirted with you. It seemed to come second nature to him, you never thought much of it. It was always playful and friendly and you knew it was just his way of communicating sometimes.
“Let me guess, there’s no Netflix up here or anything is there?” you asked.
“Nope,” he shook his head,”I doubt there’s even wifi up here. It’s just us. Sorry to disappoint.”
His eyes met yours again and you shook your head,”You don’t disappoint, Aegs, you’re the only Targaryen I’d ever want to be alone in a room with.”
“I still don’t know if that counts as a compliment,” his lips curled up into a smile and you couldn’t help but laugh.
“What about a drinking game?” he then suggested.
“You want to get me drunk, Aegon Targaryen?” you teased him.
“I want to get me drunk,” he joked,” but you can join if you want.”
That flirty look was back in his eyes but you chose to ignore it this time.
“I mean, we can also talk about our families and insecurities and struggles in life,” he then added.
“Drinking game it is,” you shut him up quickly, putting that satisfied grin back on his face.
He was up in an instant to grab a few glasses from the bar and something a little stronger than the beers you’d been drinking so far.
“Okay,” he settled back down on the floor in front of you, filling up the two glasses,”So, truth or dare?”
You laughed and shook your head,”Absolutely not.”
“What? Oh come on, why not?”
“Because every dare you will come up with is going to be something completely inappropriate.”
He stared at you in feigned shock but you just narrowed your eyes at him.
“I am offended you would think that,” he then reacted,”Also a little flattered that you know me so well.”
He gave you a big smile and you couldn’t help but join in, his laugh was so infectious you realized how easily he always made you feel better in his presence.
“Never have I ever?” you then suggested and you didn’t miss the sudden interest peaking in Aegon’s eyes.
“You sure about that one?” he asked carefully.
You suddenly felt exposed under his gaze and the game hadn’t even started yet.
”Not so much anymore now, no,” you confessed with a smile.
He laughed softly,”I’ll go easy on you, don’t worry.”
And he did, at least in the beginning of the game. It started off so innocent. 
Never have I ever cheated on an exam. Never have I ever skipped school and lied to my parents about it. Never have I ever binged an entire series in one day. Never have I ever been so drunk I blacked out.
It was only after a few laughs, drinks and harmless confessions that the game took another, more sexual, turn.
Both of you were pleasantly buzzed by then and without really paying attention to it you had both inched closer to each other, your knees almost touching now. 
“Never have I ever dated more than one person at the same time,” you stated.
Aegon snorted and took a sip while your mouth fell open.
“What?” he smiled,” I’m a slut, don’t act so shocked.”
You kept staring at him and just shook your head.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” you shrugged,”Your turn.”
“Never have I ever faked an orgasm,” he stated with a smug grin on his face.
You rolled our eyes and took a sip.
“Why do all women do that?” he asked with genuine interest.
“I don’t know, probably because we’re taught from a very young age that we’re supposed to be good and supportive and men can do no wrong so if we can’t reach our peak that’s still a reflection of our faults and not theirs.”
This time it was Aegon’s turn to stare at you with his mouth open.
“Sorry, was that too much?” you asked.
He shook his head,”No, not at all. That was…very fair. And quite sad.”
“But then sometimes,” you added with a smile,” Sometimes the sex just isn’t good and you just fake it to get it over with and get away from them quicker, and the idiots can never tell.”
”See but that’s still sad, I would never leave my girl unsatisfied and I’d hope she would feel safe enough with me to just tell me if I need to try harder.”
You’re not sure why his words made you blush but you had to avoid his eyes for a moment.
“Of course that never happens,” he then added with a smug grin, making you burst out in laughter.
“It doesn't!" he protested.
“I’m sure it’s happened to you as well, Aegs, all women do it.”
“Not with me,” he insisted.
“Up to 80 percent of women fake it sometimes, do your math.”
He was still firmly shaking his head,”Not with me.”
You sighed,“Fine, I’ll take your word for it, casanova, shall we move on?”
He opened his mouth to protest again but you were faster.
“Never have I ever been caught masturbating,” you blurted out.
Aegon just laughed and forgot about his protest to have a drink.
“Really?” you asked.
He just nodded,“My mum has seen things that will scar her for life.”
“Oh my god, Aegon, ew!” you covered your mouth with your hand as you laughed and he joined you.”Next, please.”
“Never have I ever...slept with someone I was actually in love with,” he confessed, and you both suddenly stopped laughing.
“Never?” you asked,”Not even a little bit? Like a crush?”
He shook his head,”Nope.”
“That’s sad, Aegon.”
"No, it's not, come on, sex is a great thing, whether you're in love or not," he shrugged.
"Yeah, but it's better if you are."
“You say that but I noticed you didn’t drink either,” he pointed out.
“No, I…I guess we’re both sad,” you smiled weakly and looked down until Aegon bumped his knee against yours and gave you a warm smile.
“Okay, next,” he said,”No more depressing ones now.”
You smiled and nodded,”Okay, um…never have I ever fantasized about a friend.”
Aegon’s smile was soft before he lifted his glass up to his lips and took a sip. He didn’t say anything but quickly moved onto the next one.
“Never have I ever cheated on someone,” he confessed. You looked at each other for a moment, neither of you drinking.
”So at least you’re an honest slut,” you then joked and he laughed while looking into your eyes.
“Gee, thanks.”
You smiled.“Never have I ever had a one night stand.”
HIs eyes stayed on yours as he slowly drank from his glass and then filled it up again.
“You know,” he sighed,”I’m beginning to notice this game isn’t really fair.”
“I can’t help it that you’ve done everything,” you pointed out.
“I have not done everything, you’re just very…”
You pointed your finger at him, warning him to choose his next words carefully.
“Less experienced than I am,” he then added,”which is perfectly fine.”
He placed his hand on your knee and gave it a soft squeeze.
“Yes, it is perfectly fine,” you repeated.
“So why no one night stand though?” he asked,”Is it a principle thing or you just haven’t felt like it?”
“I haven’t met anyone that made me feel like I wanted to,” you explained.
He nodded,”That’s fair. I bet you’ve had plenty of offers though.”
Your eyes met his,”Why? Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re really fucking hot,” he confessed with a small grin and then took a quick sip from his drink, trying to hide the blush on his face.
You wanted to ignore his flirty comment like you always did but you couldn’t help but feel the effect of his words this time, making you feel a little lightheaded.
“You wanna stop playing the game?” he asked.
“No,” you shook your head,”I think I have one more.”
Aegon moved a little closer to you and you were very aware of his hand still resting on your knee.”Go on then.”
You bit your lip and hesitated for a moment before speaking the next words softly,”Never have I ever kissed a friend.”
His stare was so intense it was making your head spin, both your drinks were untouched on the floor next to you, forgotten about now that Aegon seemed to only have eyes for you.
“Do you want to?” he then whispered.
Your eyes widened at his statement and he gave you a soft, sweet smile. Your mouth opened to speak but the words weren’t coming out.
His hand carefully moved up from your knee to your thigh, testing the waters, waiting for you to do something, anything, hit him again or yell at him and tell him to stop being gross. But you didn’t do any of those things, you just stared at him and he recognized that hunger in your eyes, it was a reflection of his own.
He pulled you a little closer to him until you were face to face and practically sitting in his lap. Then he moved his hand up to your face and gently cupped your neck, moving his thumb over your jaw and your cheek. 
You sighed into his touch.“We shouldn’t, Aegs.”
You could hear the words leaving your lips but your hands were clearly not on the same page, grabbing his shirt and pulling him towards you and Aegon was doing nothing to make things easier on you. He was licking his lips and looking at you with so much lust in his eyes you were sure your protest would crumble as soon as he touched you again.
When his gaze fell down to your lips you knew you lost the fight.
He gently nuzzled your cheek, his soft voice was like velvet against your skin,”If you don’t want this I’ll stop right now, just say the word and I’ll back off, okay?” 
Your mouth opened to speak but you had no words left for him, all you could feel and think was how badly you wanted him.
“Do you want to?” he asked again.
“Yes, I want to,” your answer finally came, putting a relieved smile on his face.
“Good girl,” he whispered, which did not help your situation at all.”I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Aegs,” you sighed and looked at him, letting yourself drown into his pretty blue eyes.
“Will you let me kiss you?” he asked, brushing your nose with his.
You nodded,”Please.”
He cupped your face with both hands, looking deep into your eyes before he slowly leaned in and pressed his lips to yours in the softest, sweetest lingering kiss. It was over too soon and only left you wanting more.
Aegon moved his hands down to your waist, pulling you further into his lap and then he was kissing you again. The kiss was still gentle but also filled with more purpose. He started out slowly, just moving his lips with yours. Then he carefully licked into your mouth, teasing your tongue with his, waiting for you to open up to him completely before deepening the kiss.
The room around you was spinning now, his lips were intoxicating and addictive and you never wanted them to leave your mouth ever again. His hands made their way underneath your shirt to caress your lower back, leaving a trail of goosebumps all over your skin. 
You pulled him closer to you, hands tangled in his hair while you kissed him back with the same fire, setting you both aflame. 
You had kissed a few guys in your short lifetime and some of them had been pretty good, but none of those kisses came even remotely close to the way Aegon Targaryen was kissing you right now. As if he was dying and you were breathing life into him.
When you softly whimpered into the kiss it encouraged him to pull you even closer, straddling his lap now and you both moaned quietly at the first contact of his cock against your center. Even through all the layers of clothing you could feel him.
You grinned into his kiss.
“What?” he whispered in between kisses.
“You’re hard.”
“Thanks for noticing, of course I’m hard,” he joked and then bit your lower lip, making you moan softly which made him bite a little harder,”You have any idea how long I’ve wanted you like this?”
You broke the kiss to look at him in surprise.
“You really had no idea, didn’t you?” he realized and he shook his head in disbelief,”And I thought I wasn’t being subtle at all, I flirt with you all the time.”
“You flirt with everyone all the time!” you pointed out.
He laughed softly,”Okay, yeah, fair point.”
“Do you wanna talk about this?” you asked.
He locked eyes with you again.”No, I don’t wanna talk,” he then spoke softly,”I want to make out with you some more.”
His hands moved up your back, pulling you closer again and taking your mouth in another needy, sloppy kiss. You didn’t hesitate to kiss him back and involuntarily your hips moved against his, making him hiss into your mouth. He rocked back against you, letting you feel just how turned on he was.
He was breathing heavily in between kissing you and his hands were now on your ass, holding you down on his lap while you rocked yourself on his erection. Both of you seeking out the friction and feeling the need to be even closer.
“Gods, you feel so fucking good,” he whispered against your lips and then started kissing your jaw and your neck, sucking on your skin and tracing patterns with his tongue. 
He was driving you insane. You had always found Aegon to be easy on the eyes but that’s as far as it went. You had never looked at him this way before tonight, and now it was all you could think about.
You needed him like you needed air.
You pulled at his shirt and he was quick to help you pull it over his head. He didn’t waste any time and quickly did the same with you, leaving you in just your bra. He couldn’t look away and the pleading look in his eyes put a smile on your face.
“Can I?” he asked eagerly,”Please?”
You just nodded and watched as he nervously unclipped your bra and then gently pulled it down your shoulders, revealing your breasts to him.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
You couldn’t help but laugh,”They’re just tits, Aegs, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of them.”
“I haven’t seen yours,” he answered in a soft whisper and before you could say anything else he was kissing down your neck and collarbone. And further down until he was gently sucking on your nipple, making your eyes close in a heavy sigh. His cock was twitching against your inner thigh, making you want him even more. 
You knew your panties were completely soaked by now and your pussy was throbbing so hard it was becoming entirely distracting.
“Aegon,” you moaned quietly and grabbed at the waistband of his pants, pulling them down a little,”I need to feel you.”
“I know, baby,” he teased, kissing his way back up to your neck, his lips brushing the shell of your ear as he whispered,”You want me to fuck you? Is that what you want? You want me to fill you up, hmm?”
“Yes,” you breathed.
“You sure, baby?” he checked.
This time it was your turn to tease him and you looked into his eyes while you grabbed his hand and lowered it in between your legs,”Why don’t you put your hand down my panties and feel how sure I am?”
You watched him swallow hard, his fingers moving over your jeans, even through the thick fabric he could feel how soaked you were underneath.
“F-uck,” he breathed.
You moved out of his lap to push him down and pull down his pants and boxers, finally freeing his erection from its confined space. He let out a sigh of relief, quickly followed by the most obscene moan you had ever heard when you wrapped your hand around his length.
Your eyes locked with his while you leaned down.
“Wha…what are you doing?” his voice sounded wrecked all of a sudden and you'd barely even touched him.
The mischievous look in your eyes told him everything he needed to know and just before you were going to take him into your mouth he pushed you back.”No, no…you can’t do that…fuck, baby…please don’t…”
“You don’t want me to suck you off?” you asked surprised.
He was biting his lip and cursing himself. He had dreamt about this so many times, fantasized and jerked off to this so many times but he knew if you put your mouth on him right now this would all be over within seconds. 
And he didn’t want his first time with you to be in your mouth. He wanted to be buried so deep inside your tight heat with your entire body pressed up against him, swallowing your needy moans and watching your face as he made you cum.
”I want nothing more than for you to suck me off but…I,”he stuttered over his next words,”I’m so fucking close to blowing my load…I just…that’s not what I want right now…”
He was blushing, clearly embarrassed and you thought it was the cutest thing.
”Okay, so no sucking then,” you pouted at him for a second but then gave him a sweet smile and he couldn’t help but smile back at you. Then he grabbed you and pushed you back, off the floor and onto the couch. His fingers were making quick work of your jeans and you lifted yourself off the couch to help him take them off, your panties going along with them.
Aegon stayed on his knees on the floor, his eyes meeting yours while he settled between your legs.
“What are you doing?” you asked with a weak voice, knowing all too well what he was doing.
He didn’t say anything, just gave you a playful, flirty look before putting his mouth right above your knee. Soft open mouthed kisses trailed your inner thigh, each one making you squirm a little bit more as he kissed his way higher and higher. That first lap of his tongue over your folds made you want to cry out in pleasure and you bit your hand to stop yourself from screaming so loud the entire family downstairs would hear you.
Aegon’s hand reached for yours, giving you something to hold onto, his other hand was on your inner thigh, spreading you open for him while he nipped and sucked at your clit.
“Not…fair,” you breathed, fingers squeezing his hand painfully hard but you couldn’t feel a thing apart from his mouth, sending you to heaven one lick at a time.
When he started fucking you with his tongue, nose pushing up perfectly against your throbbing clit, you were done for. 
“Don’t stop,” you whimpered,”Please…oh god, Aegs, please…”
His thumb started circling your clit and the room around you seemed to fade away. You were falling deeper and deeper until there was nothing but bliss. Tears filled your eyes and your back arched off the couch in one of the most intense orgasms you ever experienced.
Aegon didn’t rush you afterwards, let you ride out every last wave of it, kissing your clit and licking every last drop you offered him. When you finally came down from your high you pulled him up on the couch with you and into your arms.
His lips found yours in a filthy, deep kiss that let you taste yourself all over his tongue. His hands moved up to your shoulders and he gently pushed you down on your back onto the couch, his mouth never leaving yours. His left hand moved down to your inner thigh, opening you up again while his lips latched onto your neck.
“Wanna fuck you so bad,” he whimpered into your ear,”Tell me you want me to.”
His cock was heavy against your dripping center, begging to be allowed in but waiting for your consent, his leaking tip teasing your entrance.
“I want you to, god please, I want you to,” you were practically begging.
That was all the consent he needed and he slowly pushed himself inside.
“Fuck, you’re so wet for me,” he breathed in a shaky voice.
“Yeah, no shit,” you teased.
His lips curled up into a cheeky grin and he pressed his forehead against yours,”Wrap your arms around me, hold onto me, baby.”
You did as he asked, pulling him to you and locking eyes with his. You could have drowned in the ocean of blue staring back at you, his gaze was so unexpectedly soft and loving it was making your heart flutter and you both seemed to halt for a moment, just looking at each other.
Aegon was nervously biting his lip trying to hold himself back. 
“It’s okay,” you whispered,”You can let go.”
He moved his hips with a grunt, slowly fucking you into the couch. It didn’t take long for you to moan with him and set a pace that left you both breathless, chasing that much needed release.
“God, you feel so good,” Aegon’s whispered in between ragged breaths,”It’s totally…fucking unfair…how good you make me feel.”
All you could do was nod while biting your lip, his eyes were on you the entire time, not breaking eye contact once and it made the whole thing feel much more intimate. 
You knew Aegon’s reputation better than anyone, biggest slut in the city who didn’t do relationships only quick fucks, yet nothing about the way he was looking at you and touching you right now felt like a quick fuck, it felt like a whole lot more. 
Something you would have to think about and analyze later when he wasn’t a few seconds away from giving you another mind blowing orgasm.
“Aegs,” you moaned desperately.
“You close, baby?”
“Hmmm,” you breathed,”So close.”
His hand moved down between your legs to find your clit, giving you that last push you needed to fall apart completely and when you clenched around him he followed suit. His face buried into your neck, muffling his loud moans before he pulled out and spilled all over your thighs.
Desperate little whimpers against your shoulder when he came down from his high, clinging to you with all he had and then his lips were on yours again, kissing you so deep and slow you felt like you were falling again. 
When you broke the kiss to look at each other you both let out a deep breath that ended with you giggling and Aegon biting his lip and being unable to take his eyes off you.
“You good?” he asked.
You nodded,”Yeah, you?”
He nodded and placed a soft kiss on your cheek,”Can we stay like this for a while or…?”
“Or?”
He sighed,”I don’t…this is usually the part where the girl leaves.”
“Where she leaves or where you kick her out?”
“A bit of both, I guess,” he confessed and traced your jaw with his thumb.
“Do you want me to leave?” you leaned into his touch and looked up at him from under your lashes.
He quickly and firmly shook his head,”No, I…I want you to stay with me. I mean…if you want, it’s your choice.”
You smiled softly and leaned into him,”I’d love to stay. But I would like to get off of this couch first and get cleaned up.”
“Yeah, okay,” he nodded and was quick to help you sit up before disappearing behind the bar to find a wet towel.
You spent the rest of that night in bed with him, doing nothing but talk and sleep, and kiss a little in between. 
When the sun came up the next morning Aegon was back between your legs, waking you up with his tongue and his lips and sending you into another toe curling orgasm.
“You better be careful, Targaryen,” you warned him afterwards,”I could get used to this.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” he smiled while resting his head on your chest and looking up into your eyes.
“To get me to stay with you?” you asked, caressing his hair until he hummed into your touch,”It’s okay, Aegs, I know you don’t do that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Date, have a relationship, that kind of stuff.”
“Oh,” he sighed and you watched his expression fall,”Right, of course, how could I forget? I'm the kind of guy you fuck, not the guy you date. Who in their right mind would want to end up with Aegon Targaryen anyway, huh?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” you tried to soften the blow but he was already pulling away from you and grabbing his shirt. He put it on without looking at you. The sudden silence in the room was heavy.
“You should go,” he then whispered.
“Is that what you want?” you asked softly and you didn’t move from your spot in the bed, hoping he would grant you another look. It took a while but he eventually turned around and looked into your eyes.
“You know that’s not what I want, sweetheart,” he sighed quietly and your heart leaped.
“It’s not what I want either,” you confessed.
“It’s not?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
You reached out your hand to him and he took it eagerly, letting you pull him back into your arms. He cupped your neck and kissed your lips, soft but hungry, waking up an entire army of butterflies in your stomach.
“I want to do all that stuff, with you,” he then whispered in between kisses,"I want you so bad....I've never...never felt this way about anyone before. And I know I’m not boyfriend material and you can do so much better than me but…”
“I don’t want to do better, I want you,” you breathed against his lips.
“Wait, did you just insult me?” Aegon teased, making you both laugh but then his gaze turned soft and serious,”I know I’m not the Targaryen your mum had in mind but…will you give me a chance? Will you be my girl?”
You leaned into him and closed your eyes,”I'm already your girl, Aegs.”
He smiled and put a lingering kiss on your forehead.
”Fuck, our families will be so pissed over this.”
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pls ANYTHING with Aaron Warner. I'm literally living for him and I love your writing.
never go out of style
aaron warner x fem! reader
after a bit of convincing, you decide to let aaron join you and juliette shopping. maybe you should've thought twice on that.
(no specific timeline, but kind of hinted towards after the series ends)
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a/n: dw bff i understand ur obsession 🫶ik you guys are waiting for pt 2 of my other aaron work but i'm having some issues with it so i wanted to whip up a quick lil fic for you guys and it also helps with my writing blocks. also in this they all kinda of live together in a base like location still. shorter than my other stuff but hope you enjoy and tysm for supporting my work !!! again i envision hayden as aaron but fancast who u like !!
word count: 3.1k
warnings: clingy aaron, suggestive content, aaron and juliette banter, some grammar errors probably
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the sun peaked from the window of your room, shining a light directly toward where you slept peacefully on the bed.
your peace was disrupted by a loud ringing sound coming from your clock on the night stand.
you groaned as you began regaining consciousness from your deep slumber. with your still bleary vision you glanced at the clock, 9 am. you rubbed your eyes and let out a yawn, knowing it was time to get up for the day.
you pulled yourself up into a sitting position, only to be brought back down by a strong arm next to you – face pulled forward into a broad bare chest. for a moment you’d forgotten about your sleeping boyfriend next to you.
“mm, no.” mumbles the man next to you. to make his point cleaer, he slid you closer and nuzzled his face into your neck and naked shoulder comfortably.
both you and aaron rarely ever slept with shirts on. it wasn’t always due to inherently sexual reasons, more-so it’s for aaron’s sake because he’d always make a huge fuss about the fabrics getting in the way of your skins touching directly. aaron is a huge fan of touch, well only your touch. anyone else’s he’d be disgusted by.
much to your bewilderment, he originally wanted to the both of you to slumber bare. much protest came from you for various reasons, including in the case of an emergency everyone needed to evacuate swiftly, the two of you could potentially land in a horribly embarrassing situation.
so, you both settled for a tops off only kind of deal. you were lucky he even let you sleep with your bra on. although, when he was needy or wanted to be a cheeky bastard, he’d take it off in your sleep.
“aaron…” you said in a knowing tone. he was like this almost every morning where you attempted to get out of bed with him. it was really cute, but also really annoying when you had to be somewhere, like right now.
“sorry can’t hear you, very tired. maybe try again in an hour or two.” aaron was very obviously not asleep; but he’s avoiding your pleas of freedom.
you rolled your eyes at his behavior. you couldn’t wait any longer or you’d be late to meet with juliette. so you begun to try and push a hand against aaron’s chest to free yourself of his cuddle prison.
aaron in reaction only squeezed you impossibly tighter. you weren’t weak in strength in any means, but if it’s a competition between you and him; he’ll win everytime.
“c’mon baby, i got places to go.” you tried to coo him into releasing you with a pet name. aaron absolutely loved when you used pet names for him.
“shhh… teddy bears don’t speak.” aaron responds, and puts a finger over your lips for emphasis. man, he was really stubborn this morning.
with the way you are being held hostage, you thought being called a teddy bear wasn’t far off.
that leaves you to your last resort — puppy dog eyes.
you look up at aaron and give him your best pleading eyes, “you know i’d love nothing more than to just stay in bed with you, but please aaron, i really do have to leave.” you plant a quick peck on his lips for extra effect.
aarons eyes soften, you could see he was almost cracking and close into relinquishing his hold on you. so close.
but then the tables turn, he gives you a sad look before saying, “you’re always gone these days doing something with juliette or kenji, is it so bad that i just wish to spend some time with you even if it’s just sleeping in our bed.”
crap, he did a reserve and now pulled puppy dog eyes on you. and worst part is it was working, especially with the sad little voice he was giving.
although, his statement wasn’t all that true, you spend more than enough time with aaron, and barely enough with your friends. but of course in his dramatic mind, any few hours that aren’t spent together felt like a week to him. but you doubt you could even properly compute this argument back to aaron, not while he was looking at you like an injured animal.
juliette was going to kill you for your next words, “how about you come along with me today then.”
aaron face changes tune immediately — a big grin makes it way onto his face. he pulls your face to his and plants various pecks all over your face, making you giggle at his excitement.
it was really hard for you to deny warner at times, he could be really convincing. or maybe you were just easily susceptible to his puppy dog antics.
“well, what are you waiting for, let’s get ready.”
aaron finally releases you and moves to get up from the bed. not even giving you a moment to stretch, he goes on to your side of the mattress and in one movement scoops you you in his arms and walks in the direction to the bathroom.
aaron made quick work of putting you on the counter and getting the water facet to the shower head turned on. he was obviously very eager to join you on whatever you and juliette were going to do.
the two of you showered together. aaron being the clingy man he is, loves when you bith shower together. he likes to wash and scrub your hair for you, lathering it in soap and shampoo. you admit that’s your favorite part because it tends to feel like a nice head massage.
however, showering together can be inconvenient at times because you are sometimes in a rush or just rather be alone. but then he gives you a sad face and you feel bad. even when you try to do it alone while he’s busy, he will manage to worm his way into your space.
aaron helped dry you both off and, ever the fashionista he is, even picked out an outfit for you to wear. he has a habit of doing that, and you can’t deny the pieces he chooses are fabulous.
if you both happen to subtly match, like right now, he’ll claim it was a coincidence — which you do not believe there is any coincidence with that man.
you left to meet up with juliette while aaron finished getting ready, so you could tell her the slight change in your plans for the day.
juliette was longing on her phone in the common place when you saw her. once she noticed you she git up and approached you.
“hey, you ready to go?” julietted asked you as she got her purse from the place she was sitting before.
you chuckled nervously, “uh, you see, about that-“
“so where are we headed off to?” a voice intercepted, wrapping an arm around your shoulder .
your boyfriend had perfect timing as usual.
juliette didn’t let the ‘we’ go unnoticed.
she furrowed her brows, “im, sorry did you just say we?” giving you a quick glance in confirmation.
“oh, y/n didnt tell you i was joining you ladies on whatever it is your doing?” aaron questioned with fame in innocence laced in his voice.
the smug jerk definitely knew you hadn’t got to that yet.
juliette turned her gaze toward you, making a discontented face, “no. it seems she hadn’t informed me of this.”
you winced and gave her a sheepish shrug, trying to say ‘sorry i’m taking my boyfriend along and im springing it up on you right now cus he didn’t even give me a chance to tell you.’
juliette rolled her eyes, "does he even know what we're doing?" she raised a brow in a questioning manner.
aaron once again decided to butt in, looking down in your direction, "yeah, i'd also like to know what it is the three of us are out to do today." putting extra emphasis on the three, likely to annoy juliette further.
oh god. it just dawned on you what juliette and yourself had planned to do today. you realized how much a catastrophe this was a bout to be.
you glanced at juliette, who you deemed also had come to this conclusion.
you turned to face aaron, "we're going shopping."
an hour later.
"nope. absolutely not, change."
you rolled your eyes, you were so close to strangling the beautiful man that was aaron warner. if he spewed out one more opinion on your fashion choices, you were gonna lose your mind.
just as you expected. disaster. you really should've known better than to bring bring along your very honest boyfriend who happens to be obsessed with fashion himself.
in theory, it sounded cute, trying on clothes and showing your best friend and boyfriend all the cute outfits. the avergae boyfriend would say you look great in anything, making you all giddy and happy.
but you didn't have the average boyfriend, you had aaron warner.
to his credit, he had behaved himself on the car ride over (only after stubbornly refusing to drive anything that wasn't his BMW.) he even kept his comments to himself when you entered the store.
the moment you picked up an item of clothing, it was as if the crack in the dam of his mind had finally broken. he started spewing every possible critique that he thought of.
"no, that color will wash you out."
"it's cute you think i'll let you go out like that."
"put that horrendous looking shirt down down and walk away."
"im saying this as a loving boyfriend, are you blind, or do you actually think that's wearable."
juliette was in no way spared from his fashion "advice."
"i'm shooting myself if you pick up another pair of denim blue-jeans."
"i hope your horrible sense of fashion isn't contagious."
both you and juliette ignored him to an extent, she occasionally snarkily replied and then picked something he would hate purposely. aaron eventually gave up on as he put "salvaging the one good percent of juliette's closet" and focused all his attention toward you, much to your misfortune.
you loved aaron's sense of fashion, you really did, but you didn't find it very enjoyable everytime you picked up an item you thought was cute, just for him to snatch it from your grasp
another thing, when it was time to try on your items - aaron refused to wait outside the dressing room, he was very persistent on getting in the dressing rooms with yo he even told the worked in charge of the fitting rooms 'it was nothing he hadn't seen before.'
you gave him smack on the arm for that suggestive remark.
so, now the two of you were cramped into a small dressing room, not that aaron minded - the closer the two of you were, the better.
you did enjoy how he doted on you - zipping up your dressing, helping you put on and remove clothes, planting a small kiss on the top of your shoulder whenever you were dressed.
he would sit down on the small chair in the dressing room and take in your attire, "now give me a little twirl." he teasingly commanded manner.
you shook your head with a grin, then spun around in the flowy fabric of the light pink sundress you were trying on, adorned with small flower embrodiery - it was an "aaron approved" dress on the rack of course.
when you met with his eyes again, he looked as if he were in a trance, hypnotized by your entire being. he was enticed by the clothing that draped you, examining it thoroughly. your face flamed up under his loving gaze.
"well, what do you think?" you asked a bit anxiously, since he hadn't uttered a word since the clothing was put on you.
it was ridiculous to be nervous about your boyfriend's approval, but alas, you couldn't help it when the boyfriend in question is aaron warner.
he was brought back by your soft voice and stared up to you, putting a hand on your hip - bringing you closer to him.
"i think..." he paused, standing up from the small cushion, and cupping your face with his hands, "we should buy it in every color they have."
aaron then started sloppily covering your face in kisses, each one after the next. you attempt to weakly push him away, not putting much force into it.
"aaron you're going to smudge my makeup!" you cooly scolded.
aaron looks down to you, leaning his face closer to yours, "my love, if i always cared about smudging your makeup, i'd never be able to kiss you." he replies smoothly.
little moments like this truly made all of the mayhem of the day worth it. mostly.
"now, love, hurry up and try the next one on. i chose that one myself."
"but juliette hasn't even seen this one yet." you brought up your best friend, who was trying on her on choices a few doors down.
"who cares what juliette's opinion is, her fashion taste is a worn out t-shirt and jeans." aaron sassily retorted.
"i heard that you asshole!" juliette bellowed over to aaron from the inside of her dressing room.
aaron remains unfazed by her disruption, "ignore her, put on the next one."
you give aaron a glare at his behavior to juliette, but comply go to the door in your room to get the piece he keeps referring to.
you gape at the fabric hung before you, doing a double-take to ensure you had seen it correctly. oh you're boyfriend was sly.
you hold the clothing in your hand and turn to face him, "aaron, this is lingerie."
he smirks, "i suppose it is."
heat was beginning to rise from your neck to your cheeks, you played it off with a scoff, "i'm not changing into this unless you turn around."
aaron gives you a disapproving look, as if to say 'seriously?' - "nothing i haven't seen before."
"just turn!" you scolded at him.
"alright love, no need to get so feisty." he teased then finally turn his back to you. you hated when he teased you terribly. you almost gave him a smack on his back for that, but decided against it.
you started removing the clothing on your body, reminding yourself to show juliette the dress later. you grabbed the lingerie aaron picked, it was green colored lace two piece set - the top had lace on the cups, a corset like style for the waist with 3 light green ribbons going down, and a mesh fabric with lace trimming the edges draped from the bottom of your rib area and covered your butt almost fully. the underwear was a simple lace thong the same color as the top.
it was beautiful, and you shouldn't have expected any less since your loving fashion expert boyfriend chose it.
once the lingerie was on, you looked at yourself in the long vertical mirror placed in the center of the room.
you admit you thought you look pretty good in the set. you had a few nightwear pieces, but those looked plain in comparison to the on you had on.
your noticed aaron's back in the mirror and suddenly remembered he was waiting for you to put on the lingerie.
your smooths down the top with your hands, then turned to aaron's direction, "ok, you can turn around now."
aaron mutter a small 'finally' before twisting to see you. the first thing he did was stare at you, his jaw slacking and eyes widening.
he was silent for so long, you started to get insecure if he thought it looked bad on you. you nervously laugh, "do you like it or-"
the question went unfinished because in an instant aaron took one large step towards you, pushed you against the mirror and passionately kissed you. you were thrown so off guard, you stumbled with your feet, stabilizing yourself by placing you hands on aaron's shoulders.
aaron's hands started wandering down your body, leaving goosebumps on your skin. aaron's lips were almost devouring yourself, kissing you with need and eagerness.
you were the first to pull away for air with a grin, aaron's lips followed yours, not ready to end the kiss. you had to gently put a hand on the side of his face to pull him back enough to let you breathe.
the haze that was clouding you for a moment cleared - reminding yourself you still were in the dressing room.
the first thing you did was laugh, then ask, "so i'm gonna assume you like it?"
aaron leans his face towards your, pressing your foreheads together and whispers, "love, if we don't pack up and go pay soon, i'm going to commit some horrible acts to you right here in this dressing room."
later
"well, i can say with full confidence this was the worst shopping trip, in the history of shopping trips to ever exist." juliette announced to the entire car as she drove back to the base.
"maybe next time you shouldn't come along then." aaron retorted from the backseat where the both of you were seated. (aaron was insistent on both of you in the back instead of one in the passenger seat and one in the back seat.)
"you're the one who wasn't even suppose to come! y/n only brought you along because you're a clingy boyfriend."
"i don't know what you mean by that, i'm not clingy." aaron defended, crossing his arms over his chest, like a stubborn child would.
you couldn't help, but let out a small laugh, you tried covering up with a cough. aaron snapped his head in your direction, furrowing his brow, "do you think i'm clingy?"
"no- well, maybe a little.. but it's not a bad thing." you tried to reassure him. your boyfriend's clinginess could be a little much, but honestly the feeling of being loved so much by someone was worth any small inconveniences.
aaron tugs you closer to his seat, wrapping an arm around you. "well, it's not my fault i love you so much" he tells you, giving a small peck on your lips, "if anything i'm reeling in at least half of my clinginess."
you raise a brow at this, not quite believing that, "i can't imagine how you could possibly top your regular behavior."
"oh, i can always be much worse, love" he cockily says leaning his head down closer to yours.
juliette interrupted your shared moment with a comment, reminding you both of her presence in the front seat, "i'm gonna throw up from all this sappiness."
aaron as always was quick to come up with a cynical reply,"not our fault you and kent have the emotional connection of a brick."
"hey!"
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python333 · 3 months
Text
residual self-image — python³
― ― ― ―
synopsis residual self-image is the mental projection of your digital self; it refers to your own physical appearance that is understood by you, that is projected unto you by yourself. you see yourself as something to be ashamed of. price sees something different.
relationships platonic!captain price & gn!reader.
characters cap. price.
word count 7.6k
warnings anxiety/panic attack [not sure exactly how to classify it; i think it's more of an anxiety attack?], reader takes SSRIs [zoloft/sertraline], suicidal thoughts and almost-suicide attempt, reader is the most unreliable narrator known to mankind, second person pov [you/your/yourself], usage of [name], usage of [c/n] for call sign/code name, bad matrix references/spoilers for the matrix and the matrix: reloaded.
note please please PLEASE let me know if this comes off as me romanticizing having anxiety or taking antidepressants so that i can fix/rewrite it /srs i don't take any form of antidepressants or anxiety medication and i also am not diagnosed with either of those!! nothing i say is final!!! i do not have firsthand experience with what reader goes through in this fic!! sorry i disappeared for a second, have some food as an apology. again, feel free to correct me on anything you think is inaccurate and i will (most likely) change it!! also sorry for like 3k words of backstory oopsies
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In The Matrix, Morpheus gives Neo two options: blue pill, or red pill?
He says that if Neo takes the blue pill, “the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe”. But the second option, the red pill, if Neo takes that, he will “stay in wonderland and [he] show [Neo] how deep the rabbit hole goes”. Neo, of course, takes the red pill, and is shown the “real world”. 
Neo is thought to be “the One”. With the “O” in “One” being capitalized, so you know that it’s a pretty important title. 
In the end, Neo becomes confident in who he is and what he can do, and defeats the “Agents”. Trinity confesses her love to a “sleeping” Neo, their ship is getting attacked by whatever those weird fuckin’ creatures were called, and Neo defeats the last of the agents. The end. 
You take pills too. But yours are blue. They’re matte, powdery, baby-blue pills that are branded with the name “ZOLOFT”. It’s sertraline, to be specific, and you’ve been taking it for the past few months. You’re new to pills like these, ones meant to treat anxiety and depression and a number of other medical issues, so you didn’t know how much to take at first. You asked your doctor so many questions. You think about it often, and wonder if, even though it’s their job, that doctor had gotten annoyed at some point because of your inquiry. 
These pills do similar things to the ones in The Matrix, though. You take them, preferably at night, and wake up in your bed like you always do. You believe whatever you want to believe, and another chapter is closed at the end of every day, marking another page closer to the end of your story. 
Some days, the story feels like it’s going to end sooner than expected. 
A side effect of sertraline―or, well, Zoloft specifically―happens to be suicidal ideation. It’s not that common, not that talked about, and isn’t the most well-known. But then again, most mental disorder-treating medicines have some kind of side effect like that, and plenty of people take things like antidepressants without an issue―or so you thought―so surely you could deal with something as simple as sertraline, right?
Wrong. So, so, wrong. 
It’s probably really bad for a person who works in a military group to be dealing with such thoughts. You think about quitting sometimes, for the sake of the other people in the task force, because what could happen if the wrong straw breaks the wrong camel’s back while you’re doing an assignment? What if, caught in the crossfire between your team and your enemy, you say fuck it and decide that it’s all just too much? What are the odds of that happening? What are the odds of anything happening? What were the odds of the Earth being created, of the first animals evolving, of the first humans speaking the first languages? Statistics are so important, chance is so important, and odds determine everything. What are the odds of you deciding whether or not you have the will to live? The ability to keep going, to keep the routine you’ve always kept, to keep from taking one of those G19s from the armory and turning off the safety before pulling the trigger? To commit to such a permanent solution, one you’ve deemed as the “s-word”, because thinking about it sometimes is too much.
Or maybe it’d be a rope, your brain continues without your consent, A chain. Anything that will hold your body weight up enough for you to dangle from the fan on the ceiling―an image that makes you lean towards a chain, sickeningly enough, because of the idea of your abnormally stretched neck on display. The purple bruising that would appear, the indentations of each link, the smell of your blood and the metal of the chain unable to be told apart. Maybe your eyes would still be open, and it would look like you’re staring down at anyone who walks into your office. There’s so many possibilities. They add up, and create new odds, new chances. Every time you simply think, you are creating a new way to go about life, and that creation is sometimes stored so deeply in the back of your mind that it haunts you. It comes back around, becomes more common, the chances of it happening go up. 
Sometimes the odds feel like they aren’t in your favor at all. Sometimes you wonder how you could’ve ever thought that any part of the universe was against you. It’s not bipolar; it doesn’t come and go in extremes, it just comes and goes. The odds will lower in your favor some days, and you will deem those days “bad days”, and other days they will be so high you don’t even think about “good days” or “bad days”. But those other days are almost as bad as the “bad days”, because they go by so quickly. You take them for granted so easily, too easily, and they leak through the thin lines between your fingers, leaving you with nothing by the end of the day. 
Sometimes on “bad days”, your hands go from cupped to praying, and you will plead with yourself to just get better. You never do, on those days, and after taking your medicine you will go to sleep and believe that the next day will be better. Or, at least, convince yourself that the next day will be better. 
You would’ve understood if Neo took the blue pill. If he stayed in blissful ignorance, even after all of the weird shit that happened to him. If he continued to wake up every day in a “normal” world, to sell computer systems and hacking programs, to be anyone but “The One”. 
Because that’s what you do. You take your medicine, and go on with life as normally as possible, even with all of the things that you’ve been through. You wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for saving the world, or beating up robot-alien-things, or whatever. Just like how you don’t want to be held responsible for really just… taking care of yourself. 
Which you’re shit at, by the way, if that doesn’t make things worse. 
You take your sertraline and that’s about it. It’s not like it doesn’t work, it’s just underwhelming sometimes. Before you got on it, you would take more things to heart, think about things more, and were probably a little more prone to actually killing yourself. After starting to take it, it was admittedly pretty rough. It felt like your anxiety had increased a little, like your paranoia had only heightened, and everything felt so elevated. 
Then, maybe a few months after beginning to take it, everything dimmed out. Like one of those lightbulbs you can dim, everything gradually came back down, and even lowered to a more tolerable level. You were glad, at first, that you had endured those first few months the way that you did because you’re not sure you would’ve even been here to this day had you not. Reading several articles and Reddit posts about Zoloft definitely didn’t help, especially as someone who was taking it partially for anxiety, but still, you managed. 
And then you realized that just taking the medicine didn’t do as much as you hoped it would. 
It helps you deal with anxious and depressive thoughts, yes, but you still feel like something’s missing. That lightbulb in your mind has dimmed, but it’s only just enough light to see ahead of you. Before all of this, the light was bright enough to blind you, to make you see that dreadful stark-white that still sometimes haunts you―when it dimmed down to where it is now, it was obviously a relief, but you feel like now there’s not enough light. 
You understand the whole point of the medicine is to dim that light, to help bring down your mental state to a more “normal” one, but you think that even people who don’t have diagnosed mental disorders feel strong emotions like you used to. Maybe not as strong, but definitely something adjacent to it. You miss that, funnily enough―getting strong enough emotions. 
Right now, you’re sitting at your desk in your office, staring down at the plate of mashed potatoes in front of you. You get it almost every time it’s offered, and endure the teasing you get from your teammates, all for one purpose. 
To hide your pills in it.
Mashed potatoes are starchy, yes, but easy to swallow without chewing. They’re thick enough to help hide the feeling of the pill going down your throat, and don’t leave that weird aftertaste in your mouth that taking your medicine with water does. You tried taking the pills with water at first, like you would with any other medicine, but with this specifically you just can’t. It’s too easy to notice, they’re too big to just hide with water, and it feels like swallowing a rock every time you take them with water. 
So, mashed potatoes it is. 
The pill is already mixed into it. You had folded the small blue tablet into the mushed vegetable with a plastic fork, trying to keep it as hidden as possible, making sure no hints of blue bled through the beige-yellow of the potato.
You’re now watching the mashed potatoes, unblinking, as if it’s going to grow legs and run away from you. It’s never truly easy swallowing the medicine, even with the mashed potatoes coating it, but it’s usually easier than it is today. Then again, today was deemed a “bad day” the moment you woke up, so this was to be expected. 
You grab the white plastic fork after a brief moment of hesitation and pierce the food with it, hand trembling ever-so slightly as you do―not from anxiety, but from your lack of water intake―and pick up a clump of potato with little strength. The vegetable oddly weighs your hand down the tiniest bit more than usual, but you ignore this in favor of pushing yourself to just force the food into your mouth. You try your best not to chew, your jaw only really moving to chew the side of your cheek instead to satisfy your urges, and eventually manage to swallow the food. 
Right off the bat, you can tell the cluster you swallowed had the pill in it. Lucky me, you think almost bitterly, not sure whether you should be happy or uncomfortable, at least it’s over with. It’s not that it’s a bad thing that you got to the pill so quickly, but usually you’re able to get a few bites of medicine-less potato in before the actual medicine itself. Nonetheless, you scoop up another fork-full―fork-full?―of mashed potatoes and try to eat as much as you can to get rid of the weird feeling of having a pill going down your throat. 
Just the fleeting thought of having a pill that big going down your throat makes it feel like your esophagus is closing. You feel yourself grow closer to nausea at the feeling, setting down your fork and pushing the paper plate of your dinner aside, just to rest your elbow on the table and put your forehead in the palm of your head. It’s bad enough that you feel ashamed because of the fact you even have to take antidepressants, so it’s even worse that those same antidepressants are throwing bad side-effects at you. 
Ashamed because needing medicine to function the same way anyone else does feels so pathetic to you. Maybe it isn’t pathetic. Actually, you know it isn’t; you don’t look at other people who do the same thing and think that they should feel as ashamed as you do. But you still look at your bright orange prescription bottle, labeled with your legal name, and think that you shouldn’t need it. 
You think, for a moment, that it’s because of how much you’ve dehumanized yourself. 
Dehumanized is such an ugly word, and it leaves a strange bitterness in your mind after thinking about it, but deep down you feel that it’s true. You know that you’re human, obviously, because physically that’s what you are. You are, undeniably, a homo sapien―a person, a living being that is a bipedal primate mammal. You, in a less literal sense, have those same cords attached to you that Neo did when he first went to the “real world”. 
But you need those cords, you think, lifting your head so that your chin is resting in your palm instead of your forehead, you need to stay attached to the Matrix. 
Because you took the blue pill. You found a way to keep yourself attached to the Matrix, to keep yourself grounded to what you wish you could experience without them. And those cables weigh you down, and that pod you stay encased in limits your movement―sometimes you feel more like the pod than the person inside of it―but it all seems so worth it to you, doesn’t it? To keep believing what you want to believe, to wake up everyday and dose yourself with that fifty-milligrams worth of sertraline hidden under a pile of food, to eat that food and swallow that pill even though it makes you feel like a mutt? 
You take a shuddering breath in, your thoughts building up in volume and mass, more questions entering your mind too fast for you to process them all. You feel that familiar rush of adrenaline, the kind that triggers your ‘fight-or-flight’. It lights your nerves on fire and causes them to jump, to electrify, and you feel your fingers twitch with the feeling. It almost feels like there’s something crawling along your nerves, under your skin, and the thought almost triggers your gag reflex. Your eyelids flutter, barely shutting for just a moment before you force them open. Your gaze flits over to the still-mostly-full plate of mashed potatoes. 
You’re usually able to finish them, even on “bad days”. But today, with nausea swirling uncomfortably in your stomach, and a too-big pill going through the thin tubes inside your body, you find that it’s much harder to even think about picking that fork back up. You can almost feel your heart beating through your palm, that continuous th-thump, th-thump growing exponentially faster, and your palm getting sweatier by the second. You shift your feet and find that invisible needles are poking at the bottom of them, small pins that push and prod at your skin that leave a strange hot-cold feeling. It forces you to take the pressure off of your feet by holding them up ever-so slightly, the soles of your shoes just barely touching the ground. 
You swear your heart rate increases at all the different sensations lingering on your body. You can feel your breathing starting to pick up, and for God knows what reason, you suddenly find it difficult to keep your eyes locked onto one object. Your gaze dances around the room as a surge of chills runs up your spine. A trail of goosebumps rises after each wave of biting cold, passing over the bony projections of your dorsum. After having so many of them, you know instinctively the signs of an oncoming anxiety attack, and know how quick those symptoms escalate from simple shallow breaths to the inability to keep your breathing consistent at all. Yes, they develop slower than a panic attack does, but the gradient from fine to not-fine is hard to view as slow when there’s so many symptoms to keep track of.
At the thought of such a thing happening, your gaze instantly locks onto the prescription bottle sitting on your desk. It’s still uncapped―fortunate for you, because you’re seriously doubting your ability to uncap something with a child-proof cap on it right now―and in your eyes is practically glowing. It’s so tempting, because it’s just right there, so easily accessible, so easy to just grab and pour however many pills you need down your throat. The thought makes you realize how dry your mouth feels, how constricted your throat feels, but your mind is too filled with a flurry of incoherent thoughts to dwell on such feelings. 
With your free hand, you grab the uncapped bottle. It shakes with your hand, now more from your building anxiety than your dehydration, and makes the tablets inside rattle. You bring it to your lips, ignoring the chiding voice in the back of your mind telling you how disgusting it is to just put it on your mouth like that, and shake it just enough to get a single pill out of it. The dryness of the pill sticks to the wetness of your mouth, just below the border of your bottom lip. You set the bottle down and poke at the pill with the tip of your tongue, the weird vanilla-like taste of the medicine spreading across the muscle easily. 
Your mouth is dry, so you have to use the residual saliva sitting on your tongue to slick the pill up enough to go down somewhat-smoothly down your throat. It’s still rough, and some areas of the pill remain powdery, the feeling of it sliding down your throat enough to make you gag. For a brief moment, the action causes the pill to lodge in your throat―it’s not big enough to make you choke or anything, but it’s enough to make your heart beat faster and your hands grip onto the edge of your desk tightly. Your thumbs are tucked under the edge, the first knuckle at the tip of your finger bent and the flesh of the tips of your fingers turning lighter from the pressure. 
You cough once you feel the pill go down your esophagus entirely, and breathe raggedly afterwards. Deep down, you know that the medicine takes some time to work, and that if you gave it a little longer than a minute that you’d start feeling better. But the reeling anxiety that wraps around your throat like a chain seems to pull you impossibly farther away from that betterness, and forces your throat to tighten to a point where your breathing feels limited. You go from breathing through your nose to your mouth, where you can still taste the lingering artificial-vanilla with every inhale. 
It’s getting worse, an annoying voice tells you, one that manages to be louder than the others, the medicine’s supposed to help. You’ve only taken a hundred milligrams so far. Another and it’s a hundred and fifty. An overdose is only if it goes over two hundred.
It’s stupid logic but more tempting the more you think about it. It is, after all, only a third pill. You’d be pushing it—
Do you really care all that much that you’re pushing it? What if you want to break that limit? The limits you made, to keep yourself alive, that you still sometimes question the existence of? 
―but that doesn’t really compute well in your mind, and you soon find yourself reaching for the bottle again. Each pill shakes with your hand, and with each tremor another wave of tablets hits the sides of the bottle, like a visual representation of the thoughts that bounce off of the walls of your brain. You lift the bottle, and bring it to your lips, the area that makes contact with your mouth cooler than the rest of the bottle from earlier when you had done the same thing. You’re about to tilt it up before you hear a sudden knock at your door. 
The noise is startling and makes you drop the bottle, the pills spilling over the edge of it and onto the table. 
“Shit,” you curse quietly under your breath, quickly flattening your hand and sweeping all of the pills into a pile, and picking them up in clusters. You manage to get them all back in the bottle before another knock sounds out, and cap the bottle before opening up one of the small drawers on the side of your desk and shoving it in there. 
“Come in!” you call out in a strained voice, praying that you’ll be able to keep it steady for as long as the person at the door needs to talk to you. You close the drawer just as the door creaks open. 
Much to your horror, you look up to see your Captain. 
Your palms are still sweaty as he walks in, so you try to discreetly wipe them off on your pants, and hope to whoever can help you that he doesn’t pay too much attention to the sweat gathered on your forehead. You take a deep breath as silently as you can, attempting to gather yourself before Price can notice anything being wrong.
“It’s a quarter past two,” Price comments once he walks in, closing the door behind him, “why are you still awake?” 
You look over to the digital clock on your desk almost immediately and, oh shit, it is exactly 2:15. You look back over at Price, who is busying himself with pulling the chair that was once in front of your desk around it, presumably to sit next to you. You still feel the dreadfully fast pace of your heart, that th-thump, th-thump, th-thump that you can hear blaring in your ears. It makes itself known in your chest, in your wrist, even in the base of your throat―almost every pulse point in your body has forced you to become aware of its existence.
You swallow dryly, trying to ignore said feeling, and reply, “Why are you still awake?”
Price raises an eyebrow at you, pulling the chair up beside you and sitting down in it, “I asked first.” 
You look at him with an unimpressed look on your face. “Can’t sleep. Why are you up?”
Price hums and leans back in his seat, arms crossing over each other, “Same reason.”
It doesn’t sound like a lie, but it doesn’t sound entirely true either, in your opinion. It’s not that you don’t trust him, but he just seems like he’s up to something. What that something is, though, you aren’t sure. 
“Why the food?” Price nods over to the plate of mashed potatoes, very noticeably unfinished. 
Your gaze follows his to the mashed potatoes. You can still feel the moisture on the palms of your hands, the small tremors that wrack your fingers, and Price’s presence does nothing to soothe your flaming nerves.
“Wanted dinner,” you shrug as casually as you can, forcing a neutral expression onto your face―you briefly overthink what a neutral expression looks like, and decidedly just let your face relax the best you can, “I didn’t get any when everyone else went, I was busy with something, and didn’t really want to head over to the mess with so many people over there, plus I was busy.” 
You look over at Price after your lengthy explanation, not realizing just how lengthy it was, and watch the corners of his lips quirk up into an amused-yet-worried smile. 
“You said you were busy twice,” he points out, before pausing, and pointing out again, “and it looks like you’ve taken a few bites out o’that at most.” 
You don’t bother to look at the mashed potatoes again; you know very well how they look, and know how undeniably full the plate looks. 
“Didn’t feel that hungry,” you make up a poorly thought-out excuse, that even you can understand is unbelievable. 
Price blinks at you, slowly, before sighing. 
“Are you alright?” Price asks, looking more concerned than amused now. You should’ve known from the moment that he walked in that you wouldn’t be able to hide anything from him. If not for the fact that he always seems to know what’s going on, then because of the overwhelming presence of your disquietude. 
You look at him and try to figure out what to say. What is there to say? You were panicking just two minutes ago, with your prescription bottle in one hand, the other too shaky to hold up the damn thing. You can still taste that vanilla. You can still taste the plastic. The bottle itself never once touched your tongue, but every time your tongue rests in your mouth, the tip of it pokes at the same exact place the bottle made contact with. You expect it to taste of vanilla, like its contents, but it doesn’t; it tastes like the pharmacy you got it at. It tastes like the sterile white of the counter, the fingers of the person who handed it to you, the money you spent on it, and the time it took you to get it. 
It’s nothing pleasant. The strange vanilla of the pills aren’t either, but they’re preferable to the bottle itself. 
Price notices you zoning out for a moment, and waves a hand in front of your face. Your eyes unconsciously track his hand for a moment before you blink back into reality and look at him. You knew you were fucked earlier, but when you look at his expression, at the look in his eyes as he watches you snap back to reality, you know that he knows. Maybe he doesn’t know exactly what happened, or how it happened, but he knows something. Fuck, he knows. 
Or, maybe he does know. Maybe he heard your cursing through the door, even with your low voice, maybe he heard the pills spill onto the desk, maybe he heard the opening and closing of the drawer, maybe he―
He’s staring at you.
―has security cameras set up in here, because he does in every room, every hall, everywhere but the bathrooms and the sleeping quarters―
He’s talking. It’s muffled by the sound of your own heavy breathing.
―or maybe it’s just intuition, a gut feeling he has, where he just knows that something’s wrong, that same gut feeling that everyone seems to get when something isn’t the way it’s supposed to be―
Your palms are sweaty. Your heart is pounding out of your chest. You’re starting to feel a little lightheaded.
―the same “gut feeling” that you experience every day but have to ignore because it’s not a gut feeling it’s anxiety and your real gut feelings feel the almost the exact same way anxiety does so you may never know if you ever get an actual one―
Price grabs onto your arm, though the feeling of his skin on yours can’t push past the skin-crawling sensation that coats your skin.
―but how do you really know that your gut feelings aren’t gut feelings? How do you know that anything is anything? That it’s really Price that’s sitting next to you, that it’s your own office you’re sitting in, that―
“[name]!” Price’s voice snaps you out of the trance you seem to be in, and you sharply inhale at the sound of his voice, his volume much louder than you expected it to be. 
You didn’t realize how fast and heavy your breathing had really gotten until this point. You look at Price, a little more on the panicked side now, with restless eyes that can’t stop flitting all over his face. He takes his hand off of your arm before you can even notice it was there in the first place, and leans back away from you. 
You try to take deep breaths, but each breath feels like trying to breathe underwater, and each inhale-exhale leaves you shuddering. You look down at your lap, breath hitching and stuttering, and the moment you open your mouth in the hopes of breathing easier, you are all too aware of just how dry it’s become. You’re sure you let out some kind of sound that alerts Price of your growing distress, because he hesitantly leans forward and takes a deep breath. 
“[name],” Price keeps his voice soft and quiet, quieter than he’d been just a few seconds ago, his soothing voice a gentle wave crashing against the rock of your mind, “you’re okay. Look at me, soldier.” 
Like a remote to TV static, the noisiness of your mind is partially calmed and the waves that wash over your brain provide sweet escape from the overwhelming adrenaline and cortisol thrumming in your veins.
Mindlessly, you do as he asks, his words grounding you and tugging you back down to Earth more effectively than any anchor could. When you look at him, his eyes are clouded with concern and there’s a small frown on his face that almost perfectly juxtaposes his usual quokka-smile.
You know you’re still trembling. You can feel the hairs that stick up on your legs and arms, the weird hot-cold feeling that creates pinpricks of discomfort across your body, the way your heart is trying to escape the prison cell of your ribcage—but none of it compares to the unbelievable dizziness you feel. Your head is a balloon filled with helium and it is slowly deflating, but not fast enough. You feel like you’re no longer in control of your own body—or were you ever in control? 
Your stomach is churning. There’s a sense of dread that dwells there. You might throw up. 
Cutting through your thoughts is Price once again.
“You listenin’?” your Captain asks, to which you nod after a delay of a few seconds. Price holds a hand out and gives you a questioning look, the question of ‘can I touch you?’ clear enough on his face that you nod lightly and he takes your hand gingerly.
“Do y’know where you are?” Price asks. You nod, and he softly requests, “can you tell me where?”
“My office,” you answer simply, the gravel in your voice making you wince. The warbling that escapes your mouth is nowhere near your usual voice, and for a moment you think you might be right about needing to vomit, but you manage to push it down and pray. Price ignores this and pushes on.
“And who am I?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know. 
“... The Captain.” Price purses his lips—he doesn’t really want to accept this as an answer, because he wants you to say his actual name, but he knows what you mean, and you know what he’s doing. He knows that you mean that you’re here, that you’re present, and you know that he’s trying to ground you the best he can.
“Do you know my name?” he questions, to which you nod again, though a little more moderately, seeing as the repetition of nodding your head only makes you more lightheaded, “what’s my name?”
You take a few shaky breaths, ones that are shallow and uneven, ones that hitch enough for it to be so noticeable that Price manages to pick up on it. You open your mouth to talk, but find that your tongue is too heavy to lift to create coherent sounds. The thought somehow heightens your anxiety, something that seems to be noticeable to Price, judging by how his expression shifts to something impossibly softer.
“Here, let me—” Without another word, Price cautiously brings your hand up to the middle of his chest, where his sternum is. 
He exaggerates his breathing, taking long, deep breaths in, and similarly long exhales. His chest rises and falls satisfyingly, and it’s clear that he wants you to copy him. You try your best at first, taking that same too-deep breath that he does and fail almost immediately as you choke on the air you attempt to inhale. Price brushes his thumb over the back of your hand and takes another exaggerated breath, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. You keep your gaze more focused on the lower half of his face as you copy him, oxygen going in through your nose, and carbon dioxide going out through your mouth. 
That one successful breath is followed by an unsuccessful one, then another successful one, then another, and it’s a little rocky but you find that soon enough you’re breathing. There’s air flowing in and out of your body smoothly, with each exaggerated breath you take, almost in sync with Price, until finally he puts your hand back into your lap but continues to hold it. He squeezes it once before letting go, and clasps his hands together. 
“What’s my name, soldier?” he asks, and this time you think you can answer him. 
“John Price,” his name feels weird coming out of your mouth, especially with no honorifics, but he accepts the answer anyway. 
“Good,” Price praises, giving you a small smile, “you’re doing good.”
The approval he gives you helps to calm your nerves the tiniest bit, and you feel yourself slowly coming down from the God awful high that you’d just been on. Again, you’re not sure how he knows, but he senses that you’re calming down―is it because your breathing is steadier? You aren’t nearly as restless? You’re no longer zoning out?―so he leans back in his chair and watches as you do the same. 
“Now,” he breathes out, “can you tell me what’s going on with you?” 
You look away from him for the briefest moment, sparing a glance at the cabinet you know the bottle of your pills lays in, before looking back at him. If he noticed you pulling your gaze away from him for a split second, he doesn’t mention it nor does he make it known that he did. 
“There’s not really anything going on,” you shrug, to which Price scoffs. 
“[c/n],” he looks at you, disbelieving, “two seconds ago I had to help you breathe normally. I know that there’s something that’s going on, somethin’ that had to trigger what just happened.” 
You stay quiet and he gives you an expectant look. The pressure from his fixed glare makes you feel like you’re about to explode. 
Finally, you answer him defeatedly, though vaguely, “I was in the middle of taking my medicine when you knocked.”
Price stays silent, expecting you to elaborate. 
“And…” you try to find a way to make it sound less awkward than it does in your mind, though you suppose there’s never really a correct way to go about something like this, “I almost took more medicine than I needed to.” 
The silence continues, but now Price looks less expectant, and instead more of a mix between concern and something else you can’t identify. That something, though, is still soft, and still has a hint of pity―maybe sympathy?―to it.
“Almost?” he repeats, “was that on purpose?” 
When you think about it, it’s complicated. You didn’t necessarily intend to overdose, you just dismissed the idea of it. Or, at least, you don’t remember trying to overtly kill yourself. Then again, you knew the risks of taking more pills than prescribed to you; had you taken that third pill, you would’ve only been one more away from an overdose, and even then you’d still probably get some kind of health issue. 
Price’s face hardens when you don’t answer immediately. He must be taking your silence as a “yes”. 
“Not… really,” you answer slowly, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” 
He nods, waiting a few seconds before asking, “Have you thought about it before?”
By it, for some reason, you sense that he isn’t asking exclusively about taking one too many tablets.
It’s tempting to be dishonest about it; it’s a shameful thing to you, to use the things that are supposed to help you to harm yourself, to be so careless with your own life. You know that it isn’t necessarily all your fault, but there’s still that small part of you that can’t help but feel guilty for using something so many other people try so hard to get to almost kill yourself with. 
After a few beats of silence, you decide to answer, “Yeah.” 
Price nods again, and he looks like he expected that answer. “D’you want to tell me more about that?”
You could, hypothetically, go in-depth about all of your weird thoughts about committing. The ones you’d been having just, what, fifteen minutes ago? Thirty minutes ago? The ones about chains wrapped around your throat, stolen guns from the armory, deep purple bruising and a stretched neck. Those thoughts, the ones that try to make ending your life sound pretty, that try to make it sound appealing. It’s not to convince yourself, you don’t think, but rather to help you come to terms with the fact that you were already convinced that you were going to commit at some point. The thought still scares you, because you’re a pussy―terrible, terrible choice of words, a voice at the back of your mind insists, you’re not a pussy, you’re just like anyone else―but you felt like you just knew that you were gonna die by your own hands. That you’d already made the choice, and now you have to understand it, to realize it. 
You are in that room full of TVs, with The Architect in front of you, telling you that you have no choice. That, in fact, the problem is choice. You are surrounded by a million other yous, all protesting, all denying that you have no choice but to kill yourself, all yelling “Bullshit!” because deniability is the most predictable of all human responses. 
But, you remind yourself, The Architect was wrong. He told Neo that he couldn’t do anything to save Trinity from her “fate”, but Neo did save her. He plunged his hand into her chest and forced her heart to beat. 
That’s true. 
And, you add on, The Architect is a computer program, tasked with mimicking human emotions, despite never having felt them. He could never understand the power of human will, of the desperation so many humans have to live. 
Because The Architect was never alive. He is a sentient computer program, whose job is to create a world in which humans can “live” while they are fed on in the real world, but his problem was his inability to create anything less than perfect. We aren’t expected to be perfect, and are taught that flawlessness doesn’t exist, which is why he came to the conclusion that he needed a “lesser mind” to help him create a better Matrix. 
You aren’t supposed to succumb to the idea of having no choice. Because that, in itself, is a choice. Everything you do is a choice. Even if everything you do will only add up to the same ending, to the same fate, why should you waste time not making the choices you want to make? When you assume that you have no choice, you assume that everything you do will go to waste, but that’s not true. You aren’t the only person that exists. You aren’t the only person who makes choices. The choices you make affect other people’s choices, and those choices affect another person, and another, and another. You still have to live through the choices you make, as does everyone else, so even if everything will end the same, why should you make inherently bad decisions when you could be making good ones? Why should you go through things you don’t have to go through, just because you believe that nothing matters in the end?
“Not really,” you answer Price, snapping yourself out of your thoughts, “I don’t… want to think about it too much right now.” 
Price looks a little more worried now but he doesn’t protest your decision.
“Is there anything in here that you could use to hurt yourself?” he asks after a moment, “Or that you’ve already used?” 
You bite your tongue. Technically, the pills count, you suppose, but those are your meds. You can’t really have those confiscated.
“Other than the medicine, no,” you answer truthfully, much to Price’s relief, as is evident on his face as his hardened expression softens. 
“Good, good,” he shifts in his seat. 
He’s gearing up for something. You can tell with the way he subtly presses his clasped hands together, the way his face goes through a mix of emotions, and the way the deafening silence of the room really seems to be getting to him. 
Suddenly, he asks you, “D’you think you’re going to… ?” 
He doesn’t ask you explicitly, but you have a good idea of what he’s asking.
“I was thinking about it,” you respond softly, “before you came in.”
Price nods, having expected that answer. You’re not sure if it was obvious, or if he just assumed you were thinking about it because of you confessing to having thoughts of it before this. 
“Y’know I have to tell someone about this, right?” Price reminds you gently, as if you didn’t already know, “Someone up the chain. Might be Laswell.” 
You hum affirmatively, because you didn’t expect anything less from him, and know that it’s for the better. It doesn’t make you feel any better, obviously, but you know how to be realistic when the time calls for it, and you know that if the roles were reversed you’d do the same thing. Not because it’s mandatory, but because when you imagine Price in your situation, the thought wraps itself around your heart and twists. 
The room is silent for a beat, and you get the feeling that Price is somehow more uncomfortable with the quiet than you are. He shifts in his seat while you stay still, and he clears his throat to break the silence for a brief moment before speaking up again. 
“It’s late,” he points out the obvious, before pausing and irresolutely asking, “do you want to head back to my quarters with me for the night?” 
His words confuse you for a moment. You open your mouth to ask why, before it suddenly hits you―oh, right, you just basically confessed to being suicidal. He doesn’t want to leave you alone right now. 
“Yeah, sure,” you agree, less questioning than Price expected you to be judging by his momentary look of surprise, before he nods and begins to get up. 
He pushes his chair behind him, standing up straight, and holds a hand out for you to grab. You grab it gingerly and use it to haul yourself up, your knees cracking as you do after having been sat for so long. You wince at the sound and Price gives a light-hearted chuckle.
“I thought I was s’posed to be the old one?” he teases, making you give him an unimpressed look and let go of his hand. The room falls back into soundlessness.
You both remain silent as Price leads you out the door of your office, turning off the lights and closing the door after you, and continues to lead you down to his sleeping quarters. His are farther down the hall from yours, because of his higher rank, and therefore takes longer to walk to from your office. The long walk is quiet enough to hear a pin drop, but you both don’t mind this, as the atmosphere here is more comfortable than the one in your office. 
Eventually, you make it to his room, where he opens the door for you and signals for you to walk in first with his hand. You enter the room and hear him enter shortly after you, and go to sit on his bed before pausing. 
“I’m still in my…” you gesture to your clothes, gear-less but still not your “normal” sleeping clothes. Price raises an eyebrow at you as you wave at the state of yourself. 
“I’ve seen you sleep in worse,” he points out, “and I think you sleep in this than in your actual sleeping clothes.” 
You’re about to ask how he even knows about that, before he answers you before you can voice your question, “I’ve seen you walking back t’your quarters in these clothes and hear you snoring a second later at least ten times.”
You close your mouth and sigh through your nose, before muttering, “Didn’t know I was talkin’ to fuckin’ Sherlock Holmes.” 
Price snorts at your retort, “If I’m Sherlock, are you Watson?”
You think about it for a moment, before shaking your head negatively. 
“No?” Price toes off his boots and walks over to you, sitting on the bed, “Then who are you?” 
You sit down next to him, “I dunno. I’m like…” 
“Like Neo,” you continue, ignoring the way Price’s eyebrows immediately raise, “and you’re Morpheus. But less smart.”
“You’re not Neo,” he scoffs, “and I’m not a less-smart Morpheus.” 
“I wasn’t askin’ you,” you grumble, shaking your already-loose boots off of your feet and crawling up Price’s bed. You manage to snake under the covers and feel Price’s eyes on you as you do, staring holes into your face.
He hums in acknowledgment, not bothering to answer you verbally, and instead gets up to lift up the covers and get into bed. The bed is small enough as-is, but with two people inside of it, it obviously gets much smaller. Price doesn’t seem to mind, though, and turns so that his back is facing the door and his front is facing you. Directly in front of you is the base of his neck, but if you tilt your head up, you can see him looking down at you with tired eyes. 
You let out a soft breath through your nose and realize just how tired you are. Price seems to notice this, because his arm comes up and rests across your side, his hand splaying across the middle of your back. He gives you a comforting sweep of his hand, before settling it on your upper back, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb in soothing circles against your clothed back. 
You close your eyes, and he closes his, and it feels like you’ve woken up in the real world and removed the cables from your body.
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lazycats-stuff · 1 year
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Batfamily
Batfamily & male!reader, part 2, part 3, part 4 - platonic
talia and bruce having a older son who “went missing ” but actually joined the court of owls . he’s become friends with a bunch of rouges and two face is like a dad to him. he lives with harley and ivy and sometimes selina and they just chaos. but he runs into batfam and damian just wants to kidnap him so he can have his brother back - REQUEST
Batfamily & male!reader, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4 - platonic
can i request a scenario where the reader, who has been trained as a weapon for most of their life, struggles with expressing their emotions. The reader has been adopted by the Batfamily and is injured during a mission. They try to hide their injuries, but Dick or Jason (or both) find out and scold the reader for keeping it a secret. The reader responds by saying that they didn't think it was a big deal. it was a big deal. So it’s fluff and angst. The scenario can end with the Batfamily having a movie night after patching the reader up to help them feel better. If the scenario crosses any boundaries, please feel free to change anything necessary.
Batfamily & male!reader, GENDER NEUTRAL VERSION - platonic
Hi! If this makes you uncomfortable writing, you can choose to ignore it. I was hoping you could do male!reader, who was on patrol and the reader is kidnapped by a villain, and once the batfamily find them its to late and they were brainwashed and was now under control of a villain. (Bonus points if the villain, is actually their biological father who trained them to be a weapon before the reader got saved by the batfamily) Once they like have a fight and the batfam knock ‘em out they bring him to the cave and try to bring his memories back. It takes a while to get his memory back since the reader is not trusting them and doesn’t talk to them because they were brainwashed to think the batfamily is bad but after a while something happens and their mind snaps and they’re back to normal and they get all emotional because they hurt their true family??
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
I'd like to request batfam x male reader, who crotchets a lot. He has some medical issues, so he doesn't go on patrol, he helps out with information gathering though. When Damian got added to the strays, the reader tried being a good older brother, and he crochets him a little stuffed animal for him as a welcome gift. Everyone in the family has one, even Alfred. Let's say, Damian had a bad day, and coincidentally the reader just finished the crochet animal and goes to his room to give it to Damian. Damian snaps and destroys the stuffed animal in front of the reader, also saying some pretty hurtful stuff. The reader cries because it took a lot of time to male it. You can end it however you want Take your time <3
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Can I pretty please request male!reader x batfam who isn’t like sacred of most things like he’s really calm during watching horror movies or if their on a mission and he sees a dead person, he might feel disgusted but like doesn’t care really. So he acts hes not afraid of anything. Anything but bugs. I mean hes AFRAID, really afraid of BUGS. Not like ants or flys or cockroaches or small spiders. no things like big and creepy looking spiders or centipedes or bugs that just look creepy yoy get what I’m saying? I kinda want this to be with Tim or Jason and the reader is younger than them
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hey, I'd love a batfam x reader fic, where the reader got mistreated by the family when they were first introduced (not by Alfred tho), they ignored here and just focused on their own shit and when the reader got older and they realized "oh shit I got another sibling" they wanna build a relationship, but the reader hates them and is like "nah, I don't give a shit how bad you feel, kys" and "Do i look like I care? Fuck off and please fall down the stairs and break your neck" or they're really overly nicest most anime girl voice to make them feel extra bad "oh my absolutely dearest brother, I would love to spend time with you, buuuut I just don't want you to waste your time on your little brother, okayyy 😚" I hope you can imagine something with this! Take time and have great day
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Batkids x male reader, were the reader was Bruce's best friend but due to some bad blood they kinda hate each other, but still look out for each other. Now what about Bruce having to go on a mission with the justice league, and lets just say Alfred is on vacation and Bruce just takes the extra step and let's the kids stay at the reader's place, because he knows they're safe with him. While the reader hates Bruce, he loves his nephews and he takes great care of them. Bruce eventually returns and the kid's are obs with their uncle, so now Bruce has to visit the reader more often and maybe they repair their friendship??
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hey so I was wondering if you could do a fic/head cannons of the batfamily reacting and bonding over time with Bruce’s biological son he had 20 years ago (one night stand stuff) when he was young. The son who went missing when he was 10. And he came back as a blood witch/vampire due to his mothers heritage around dicks age now and him and dick bond in specific getting together eventually also some Damian being jealous/spiteful but warming up and bonding with him happy ending if you are willing to do this I’d appreciate it and want it so much but thank you anyways If you don’t for even considering it
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
could u maybe make a batfam x male reader and where the reader is like trained to be an spy or something and their mission was to figure out what was going on inside the manor but they figured out to much and got roped into the batfams family
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Could you do one where batfam and batbro!reader are on a mission and reader gets hit with something that temporarily makes him half cat? Like ears, tail, teeth, stuff like that?
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hey I was just wondering if you’d possibly do headcannons of A fic of the batfam in specific Damian getting all of readers (Damian’s biological older brother who’s a blood witch/vampire) long decade old friends killed by accident when he slips up and tells the league where they operate from and reader cannot cope with this so he goes into the forest at night to scream and cry in private but Damian follows him one night and sees reader about to end their lives and he stops them admits the truth and expects the reader to kill him with one look but instead reader hugs him and cry’s saying he should have been a better brother and he understands it’s a mistake and Damian gets upset as well and hugs reader back just them both crying saying sorry and Bruce finds them and takes them back to the mansion, the end and if you can’t do it cause of the attempted suicide I understand it’s just a personal thing but thank you for considering my request anyways.
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hey, I wanted to ask if you could do a bat!bro who’s Australian? And very aussie, like they go bogan (look it up if you don’t know) when they are mad and every second word is basically just a swear word of some kind (especially c*nt) Also showing everyone Kath and Kim, it’s a classic and I recommend it to everyone.
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hello I was wondering if you could do a Batfam x teen reader, where the reader is like Lara croft from Tom Raider. The reader love going on adventure to ancient ruin and collect artefacts. The story is up to you, of course! Thanks you for your amazing writing! (sorry, English isn't my first language)
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
How about a one of the one where the family didn't know about male reader past and found scars. Let's see the justice league/titans/young justice reactions to readers past R.I.P Deathstroke cause the moment anyone sees him there all about to jump on him🤣
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hi! So I’ve had this idea for a while and idk why but I thought I would go ahead and request it. Batfam x Batbro reader who’s the 2nd oldest (maybe their ages range from like 25-18) and is really close with all his brothers. One night after some encouraging from Dick he decides to go out with some friends. While he is gone this villain who he’s been fighting for a while breaks into the mansion and uses his powers of mind control on the family. (the boys and Bruce, Alfred has the night off so he isn’t here) He uses them as leverage over batbro when he gets back from his night out. (Could you focus more on the scene where they break in and mind control happens? I’ve been picturing we see that part happen and then batbro gets home. Kinda like you would see on a tv show) The villain tries to bargain with batbro (maybe he has powers that villain wants?) for his family but because batbro is a smart badass he finds a way to project villain’s own powers back onto himself so batbro is able to command him to release him family and then he gets sent to jail. The brothers are very impressed with his quick thinking skills and they end up having a “sleepover” in one of their room (because let’s be honest, those beds could probably hold like 15 people) and they all fight over who gets to lay next to batbro and Dick and Jason end up winning that fight. It ends with the brothers being like “hope you enjoyed your once chance at protecting us because it will never happen again!” To batbro because they (even the once younger than him) and very protective of him. If not it’s totally ok!!! Thank! Love your work!!
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Could you do batman x son reader, where the reader struggles with an eating disorder. Maybe reader faints on a patrol or maybe he just trys to hide his Ed behaviors (like skipping meals, over exercising, purging, ect...) from the family, but one day the family just figures it out.
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Hellooo, I was wondering if you could write a fic on how the bat family would react to the male reader having a mental breakdown. The male reader always acts like he is the best. And all of a sudden he just broke down and started crying and they all feel bad for him. Idk if this makes sense I'm sorry 😭😭
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
been thinking of a batbro bimbo reader who isn't yet fully aware of his family's identitys but is a vigilante too. Thinking of him getting flirted on and the other's getting protective. Especially the younger siblings (Ex: Damian)
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
hi I love your posts and I wanted to ask if you could do batfamily x newest batbro who was created to be a weapon and when bruce saves him and makes him have a childhood he couldn't make choices like the demon slayer kanao please - @elizabeth63646esangrenta
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
Can I request a batfamily fic with a reader who loves reading and is rly shy but they’re trying to spend more time with them ♥️
Batfamily & male!reader - platonic
I had read a fic of yours where Batson was Australian, I don't know if you have other requests like this but if you accept, make one with Batson being Brazilian and he likes football, carnival and who likes to listen and dance to music by the great diva Anitta
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
Remember when u wrote batbro who's Australian? Now u HAVE TO do Italian! This time with Italian toddler batbro, please little Italian people with their small hand gestures are so funny and so fricking adorable to me I'm tearing up just thinking about it
Batfamily x male!reader - Romantic with Damian
Please write Damian x friend reader who's really shy, and they have to make a school project together, and they do so at the manor, but because the reader is shy he doesn't want to meet the family. The family (to annoy damian) want to meet this friends, but Damian actually likes the reader and tries to protect him from his brother's
Batfamily x male!reader, PART 2- platonic
What about Batfam x male reader where the reader was actually the first child Bruce adopted and he was the practice child. He hated growing io because Bruce had really no idea what to do and then the other kids came along and now Bruce kinda understood what to do. He hates family time because he never felt like family, he was just some doll the others could practice on so later they wouldn't make mistakes. And i imagine at some point they snap. I feel like what if Damian brought over Jon for dinner and Jon was like "oh I thought Dick's the oldest, you never told me about (reader)" and reader just slams down their fist and goes to their room. At this point the rest of the family try to comfort them but the reader only screams about how they never were a son or bother, they were only a practice doll for them to use and then throw away
Batfamily x male reader - platonic
Batfam x reader who bites, like affectionately bites them. The bites don't hurt, and it mostly on the arms, like when they are sitting down, the reader just goes now and lightly bites them because they have an oral fixation
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
What about male reader being Alfred's nephew who came to live with him because his parents died or were just unfit parents? Alfred isn't all too happy that he's here, but not because he hates him, no, but because Gotham isn't the safest place and the fact that he's bow living with the vigilante family isn't the greatest fact. I feel like Alfred would be very overprotective of his nephew, and just the family's reaction to Alfred's nephew, i feel like the family didn't really ask Alfred about his family and such .
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
Batfam x M reader hwere the reader is Bruce's older brother, who decided to move away from Gotham after a really big fight between him and Bruce (before Dick was adopted) Bruce wanted to reach out, but never really did because he thought the reader hated him. At some point the reader decided to come back to Gotham and meet with Bruce because he got married and had a kid, but his partner died and he needed support + his kid wanted to know about their uncle. Now total shock on the batfam part because they have an uncle??? And Bruce didn't tell them??? Now they try to build a relationship, but Bruce is still a bit distant because he feels guilty
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
Batfam at a gala with the reader being dubbed the "hearttrob", the reader is really handsome and nearly everybody wants to get into his pants. However, the reader is actually a really innocent and the family is always on a mission to stop anyone from talking to the reader who just wants to get him into their bed. They're like "nuh uh he only deserves the best"
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
What about Bruce"sneaking out" to go on date with the reader. His son's obviously follow him to see what their father is up to. When they realize that he's going on a date, they tease him the next day because 'the playboy is settling down'
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
Hey can I ask for a batbro reader who begged for a bird and finally got one but the bird ended up hating everyone except for reader and Alfred (he deserves it) and is super protective of reader to the point that it bites anyone other than Alfred who gets close to him and always cuddles with the reader. Reader is a mama bird and just blames everyone but his bird,
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
Since Christmas is coming up, I wanted to request that Aussie reader that gets rly annoyed because he has to celebrate Christmas in the winter and not the summer with prawns and pavlova. Just batbro getting so pouty because it’s cold and snowy (idk I haven’t rly been in snow) and hates it. Also wanted to ask you, what season are you celebrating in? Summer or Winter? You don’t have to answer but I’m just curious.
Batfamily x male!reader - platonic
Hello I hope you are well I wanted to make a request about a little male reader that he is a Green Lantern who ends up in Gotham for something related to space drug trafficking but for unspecified reasons he ends up being very attached to Batman a lot as if he were his son small and the bat family ends up making fun of him for this. - @henry03
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madlori · 3 months
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I'm asking this to you because you're the only person I know who's been around fandoms for so long — do you find this shipping-situation weird? I've been in many fandoms but I've never really seen this insistence on there being only one acceptable ship for a character and encouraging the idea that anything other than the norm is almost sacrilegious. Almost every big fandom over the years have had multiple conflicting pairings, take for example, Marvel. Even works of media that have a canon romantic pairing have had fans who ship others with the leads (that was what shipping was tbh) and no one has ever shown up to their doorsteps with pitchforks in hand, at least not that I'm aware of. So I guess I'd really like your opinion on why you think this is happening now? Have things always been this way, just not in plain sight? Is this just the new fandom culture that is developing now with the influx of younger people? Or is this fandom an aberration where a group of people are so used to being the majority that they simply aren't taking well to things not going their way?
I've been thinking about this today, and I'm still not sure what I think.
I've been in fandoms with a hugely dominant ship before. I've been in fandoms that had ship wars. I've been in fandoms with a lot of peacefully co-existing ships. I'm not sure this fandom is really all that different. To answer your first question, no, I don't find it all that weird. In fact I sort of expected it.
Let me tell you a story about the Brokeback Mountain fandom, which managed to have a ship war despite having really only one ship, the canon ship. So BBM fic fell into several broad categories, the biggest of which were fix-the-ending/canon divergence fics and the straight-up AU fics (I wrote one of each, lol). Post-canon fics weren't as common, because you had to deal with one half of the canon pairing being...well, dead.
There was a post-canon fic that gained a lot of fans...and when I say "fic" that's really an understatement. It was a SAGA, and I don't use that term lightly. It was a series of like...6 or 7 epic 100K+ word fics and it was over a million words total. The author would put out more than one 5K chapters per DAY. I'm still in awe of this woman's output. But it was the content that created the issue.
(Brief recap for those who have not seen BBM - two ranch hands in the 1960s, Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) spend a season herding sheep together, have sex, form a bond, then separate to go about their expected hetero lives but get together for fishing trips every year or so to have sex and spend time together. Jack wants more, Ennis is terrified. Both marry and have families. Eventually Jack dies in what is implied to be a gay-bashing but who knows, and Ennis makes his peace with the love he'd felt for him)
The saga picked up a couple of years after the film's events. Ennis decides to tentatively explore what being queer means, goes to Laramie, finds a gay bar, and very cautiously enters. Through a Series of Events he gets mixed up in an assault there and befriends a local sheriff's deputy, who is also gay. They begin a relationship.
Now, this series was COMPLEX. A huge cast of characters, a long and thorough evolution of this relationship, a lot of angst over Jack's memory, and it really worked for a LOT of readers. The new love interest she created was a really great character.
For others...it did not work and they hated it.
The animosity between fans who loved this saga and those that did not grew pretty heated. This was like '05 so there was no twitter or tumblr, this was all on LJ and dedicated fandom forums (some of which banned discussion of this fic for this reason), but there was doxxing and namecalling and real vitriol.
I guess my point in all this is that when there's strong feelings, some fans will find a way to be horrible to each other.
I was in the Sherlock fandom, another fandom 98% dominated by one ship. There were other ships, but somehow they seemed to co-exist mostly peacefully barring some snide remarks and rude comments (I could be wrong about this, if you asked someone who shipped a non-Johnlock ship they might have a different answer). No, the insanity in the Sherlock fandom was not ship-war-related.
I was also in the Criminal Minds fandom, which has a whole bunch of disparate ships and no ship wars that I can recall.
Then there are other fandoms, like Avatar, with TERRIBLE ship wars that are still going on.
I don't think the situation in 9-1-1 is as unique or different from other fandom wanks as has sometimes been asserted. I think terrible fandom wars are sort of inevitable, whether they're ship related or not. But for what it's worth, here are some of my thoughts on what's going on here.
A loooooong time (5.5 seasons) with one very dominant non-canonical queer ship. No other ship really ever approached the level of saturation or devotion of Buddie.
A pervasive belief that this ship might possibly become canon. That's a feature a lot of other ships do not have.
A lack of intense devotion to any of the other love interests. BuckTaylor was never a challenger to Buddie. Neither was Eddie and Shannon, or anybody else. It's hard to fight when there's no worthy challenger.
But now? BuckTommy is not only canon, but it has a lot of fans. It's a threat. And it's not only a threat in a feelings kind of way (as in, people like a thing that is not the thing I like and it makes me upset) but there's a perception that it's an ACTUAL threat, as in if people like this ship and promote it, it could cause it to become a permanent relationship (the degree to which fan response actually affects how the show unfolds is...debatable).
I do not personally think this is the case, but some fans strongly believe that Buddie could still happen if it weren't for BuckTommy. So if you're still wanting Buddie and believe it will or could happen, the existence of an alternate love interest represents a direct obstacle to that happening. That's a heck of an incentive to hate that competing ship. I get it.
That...might be a somewhat unique situation. There's a fight now because there's a challenger who might actually stand a chance.
This goes along with what we saw in the immediate aftermath of 7x04. I read someone else say (apologies, I don't know who it was, feel free to @ me if it was you and I'll credit you) that the early post-7x04 enthusiasm and acceptance of Tommy reflected the belief that he was temporary. A lot of folks thought it was just a way for Buck to get with Eddie, like, very soon after that. But the more time went by, the clearer it became that this was not the plan or the intention. So the mood soured for those who were still pulling for Buddie.
Other fandoms I've been in with a hugely dominant ship...Sherlock and X-Files are the two that spring immediately to mind...there was never a challenger with any legs. X-Files fandom wank was between the ship and the...lack of ship, shall we say. But a concrete, tangible "opponent" makes a fight so much more visceral, doesn't it?
I do think there's been a fandom shift towards needing ships to be canon that I don't really get, but it's there. There's been a lot written about fandom culture in the last ten years, the breakdown of boundaries between fans and creators, the access to those creators, a sense of ownership/entitlement, purity culture, obsession with shipping "correctly" (which leads into wanting things to be canon for the validation)...these are all newish features. So pile that on top of 9-1-1 having a longtime single ship that's legitimately threatened for the first time in its existence by a competing canon ship and it's kind of a powderkeg.
No wonder it's caught on fire.
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blindfaithmate · 15 days
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All the Drarry Fics I've read and loved - Part 2
Back with another list.
No one ever told me by Slight Weasel - It is a one-shot where Harry marries Draco to keep him out of Azkaban. Harry says a lot of 'er', and Draco is doing his best to not be a prick. Harry's POV shows a Draco who has changed and is doing his best in drastic circumstances. It is an MPreg fic, so please read the tags before you jump in. I like reading MPreg fics, so I loved it.
Slutty Butter by Drarryweather - The best three-shot smut fic I've ever read (After Hoko_onchi - honestly, I love them; have read almost everything by them and 10/10 recommend). The writing is fantastic, the ending is satisfying, and there is a kinky Draco who unlocked several kinks for me. Everybody wins.
We're Not Friends by Alexmeg - I read this and cried a lot. Deals with heavy stuff. It is a short fic. But I feel this deals with what happens with Draco after the war at Hogwarts realistically. People leave him alone. And he is not just alone; he is lonely. So when he asks to meet Harry one day, it is suspicious. Ends on a happy note (I don't read fics with sad endings, so trust me, read this). Good fic. (I have also read Tell me a secret by them - this is also good but the ending felt off. Also, took me a long time to get into this fic. It is inspired by Grounds for Divorce so I had high hopes tbh. But oh well)
Not Mine, Never Yours by CapricornBookworm - Oh dear lord, we love oblivious Harry and pining Draco, but at one point, I was screaming at Harry to just realise that he's in love with Draco. And the ending soothed my burnt Drarry soul. And we get Charlie Weasley. Honestly, the best and the hottest Weasley. Would also recommend other fics by them. I've read them all. If I like a fic, I read all the other fics by the author.
Get What You Knead by dodgerkedavra - Harry is a shopowner and, fortunately/unfortunately, ends up buying a shop opposite Draco. The way Harry gets re(?)-obsessed with Draco is hilarious. Love this one-shot. If you are a cat lover, you'd definitely love this one.
All In Due Time by gnarf - It is an MPreg, and honestly, it has cinnamon roll Scorpius and I loved him. My heart broke for Draco in this fic. It was like one after the other thing was going bad for him. And Harry could've stepped in earlier. But I guess that's why this fic works and is aptly titled. Because you finally see Draco happy with his kids and find love with Harry after he has somewhat healed. Love this journey for them.
A Shower, A Meal, A Nap, and A Shag by chickenlivesinpumpkin - This is an 8-parter fic. Read it only if you are of a strong heart and can take rough, and I mean rough af smut cuz even I had to skip certain parts. It has a fantastic possessive, jealous, and obsessive Harry but you know there's something wrong. In one of the parts, they kinda break up (not a spoiler), and again, if don't like such a vivid description of a break up then skip that part. The fic, otherwise, is a masterpiece. I have realised a masterpiece fic will often bring up issues for you, and you will want to add disclaimers. The author has also done so. So, read this fic, but only if you're in a strong mind space. Read the tags before you get into it.
we have heard on high by oflights - Oh, this is a lovely fic. A soulmate au, where Harry knows who his soulmate but Draco doesn't know it yet. There's a good backstory to it. It is a long one-shot. It is a good late-night light read. I have definitely read more fics by this author but can't recall any at the moment. So do check them out.
I hope you all like the recs. Let me know if you have read any of them or read them after my rec and liked it? I mean it's okay if you don't but I'd love it if you do, you know? Also, thanks for all the love on my last rec list.
I will definitely come back with another list. Till then, keep reading, writing, and loving Drarry 💚🩶 (always grateful to the authors who write fics and share their art with us)
PS. Some of these fics will require you to have an ao3 account.
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veryberryjelly · 1 year
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Hi! I love your fan fictions! I was wondering (First time requesting ever) if you could do a FIC for Mattheo or Theodore based on exile and the readers dealing with self hate, and anxiety , and they feel so alone and push him away because the readers scared to accept her feelings and afraid she’ll get left, and no one loves or cares about her? ALSO THAT FANFIC U JUST MADE WAS SO CUTE OMG-
𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧
🥰 thank you, this request is so up my street, i hope you enjoy it
also, i took this to mean body issues kinda self hate, i hope that's what you were going for. &lt;3
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this was unprecedented.
you had a date to the yule ball.
your best friend had asked you a couple of weeks ago and you were more than excited to accept his offer.
you had been crushing on him for two years.
and even though you were pretty sure he was asking you as a friend, this was an opportunity you could not pass up.
you and your girl friends had dedicated a saturday to dress shopping three weeks before the ball at a shop in hogsmeade.
while your friends had no trouble picking the perfect dresses very quickly, it took you a lot longer to find one that didnt accentuate every single flaw you could pin point in the mirror.
in the end you chose the dress you felt looked best.
you wanted to look beautiful for mattheo.
but even with a beautiful dress you didnt feel good enough for him. he was perfect and you really weren't.
in the few weeks between getting your dress and the dance, you seemed to recede into yourself.
keeping quiet during meals and spending most of your time in your dorm with the curtains drawn around your bed.
as you stood there in your dorm before the dance, you couldnt even bring yourself to look in the mirror.
you knew you didnt look as good as your friends.
or any of the other girls in the school for that matter.
one by one your dorm mates filtered out of the room in their dresses and down to the common room to meet their dates.
sitting on the edge of your bed, you could not move.
you didnt want to go down there and disappoint.
but it seemed that staying in your dorm didnt stop mattheo from seeing you in your dress.
a knock at your door attracted your attention and you picked up your eyes from where they had been focused on your fiddling hands.
you found mattheo stood in your doorway.
you were almost floored with how good he looked in a suit.
" hey, what're you doing up here? been waiting for you downstairs " he spoke simply, approaching where you sat on your bed.
" 'm sorry. i didn't mean to keep you waiting for so long..." you dropped your eyes back down to your hands, running the fabric of your dress between your fingers.
" don't worry about it, love. just want to know how someone who looks so beautiful can seem so upset. " his hand lifted to brush some hair behind your ear.
beautiful...
" i- i don't feel beautiful.." were the only words you could muster to come out of your mouth.
" what..." his words were quiet and stunned.
he stood from your bed and you feared he was realising that you were right and leaving.
so you clenched your eyes shut to prevent any tears falling from your eyes and to prevent you from seeing him walk out that door.
but when you felt his hands on yours, your eyes fluttered open again and you found him crouched infront of you with both of your hands clenched in his.
" sweetheart, you are the most beautiful girl i've ever seen... "
" you're just saying that, i know i'm not as pretty as the other girls here-"
" you cannot compare yourself to those girls. they're rude and dull and none of them hold a candle to how stunning you are "
suddenly you felt like you should cry for a whole other reason.
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softpascalito · 3 months
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I To Dig a Grave I Chapter 5 I
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Summary: Twenty-one years after the outbreak, you come to Wyoming looking for something and end up in Jackson after a stranger saves your life.
But he doesn't stay a stranger.
Turns out Joel Miller is looking for something too. It feels like a fresh start. But when bad luck seems to follow you, Joel is the only one to turn to, forcing both of you to confront your feelings about your pasts- and each other.
Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader Rating: Explicit / MDNI Word count: 20k+ Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Age Difference, Smut, Explicit Content, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Canon-Typical Violence, Chose not to use Archive Warnings, Tags to be added
AO3 LINK // Series Masterlist // Playlist
notes: between writing this and the voice memo of pedro on omars new album? im in the trenches. sending all of you lots of smooches for the recent comments and feedback, please know that i do a lil jump every time i see someone has commented <3
this fic will deal with heavy topics. please note that it doesn't use archive warnings and tags will be added as we go in order to avoid spoilers. each chapter will have detailed warnings in the end notes on ao3.
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Chapter 5 – The Wake
‘I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one.’ — J.D.Salinger, Franny and Zooey
The typewriter is fixed by the time you get up. But before you can sit down and ponder how to begin your speech, Joel forces you downstairs for some breakfast. He has somehow gotten his hands on orange juice and refuses to let you leave the table before you’ve had two glasses and some toast.
Eventually, he clears his throat. “We could grab some of your stuff today, if you want.” He pauses for a moment, searching your face. “Or I could, if you prefer to—if you’d rather stay here.”
The thought of going back home seems unbearable. The thought of Joel leaving you alone seems almost as bad.
“Can’t we do that tomorrow? I’d rather—I want to finish the speech. And we’re leaving in a bit.”
“Okay,” Joel mumbles. “Okay, yeah, we can do it some other time.”
You both head back into his workshop upstairs afterwards. He’s laid out some paper and pulled up a more comfortable chair for you. He settles down on his own and watches as you hesitantly begin to type, occasionally glancing out of the window. It’s begun to snow again, the thick flakes drifting against the other side of the glass and beginning to pile up on the windowsill below.
“If it keeps snowing like that, they won’t be able to prepare the grave, will they?”
Joel stares at the book that's spread out in front of him, determined not to let your eyes meet.
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out.”
They're not the words he should be saying. But they are the only ones able to push past his throat and flow into the open.
***
“Watch out for the steps, they’re frozen over.” Joel closes the front door behind himself, taking his first breath of cold air. It’s still snowing and he watches as the first flakes settle on your coat. He hurriedly pushes his gloves onto his hands and follows you down the small flight of stairs that leads to the street.
You place your feet carefully, partly because you would not find slipping and landing on your butt entertaining and partly because your body feels like it belongs to someone else again. You automatically turn to your left but Joel catches your arm before you can begin to move down the street. He jerks his head to the street ahead of you instead, the one that follows along the walls of the graveyard. They seem to have gotten much taller than they were a few days ago.
“We can get to the church through here,” Joel says, his hand squeezing your arm before he lets it go. “Less people.”
“Good point,” you agree quietly and begin moving again, this time across the street and past the green house on the corner. Joel follows your lead, putting himself between you and the graveyard, his broad form shielding you from view.
Which is a stupid thought, you think after a few moments. It's not you he is trying to hide. You are the one he's hiding something from.
You slow down a little, making Joel glance back at you. As his hand nudges yours again, you notice that his gloves are the same ones he wore when you met. A little more worn down maybe, but still the same leather, the same shade of brown. And here he is, still saving you, even if in a completely different way.
“Come on. We’ll be late.” Joel pulls on your hand lightly and you begin walking again. You don’t let go of his hand though. He doesn’t mention it.
When you pass the large metal gate that opens to the cemetery, you automatically turn your head. “It’d be quicker through here.”
Joel's head swirls around at that. “No.” You almost think you feel a slight tremor in his hand as he shakes his head. “I think it's better if we stay on the street for now.”
His hand is still in yours so you don’t find it in yourselves to argue, even if you find the cemetery quite beautiful. It feels less like a cemetery and more like a small park, with high trees and benches, a small oasis from the occasionally busy life in Jackson.
You can’t really tell if you’ll still find it beautiful once Lane's name will be carved into one of the headstones.
The two of you walk in silence for the remainder of the way. As you reach the far end of the church and when your gaze moves past the library shed tucked away to the side of it, you make a mental note to check in there once you’re done. You try and distract yourself by keeping your eyes on it, thinking about which books you could take home to pass the time with, trying to make a mental list.
But as soon as you step over the holy threshold, you can’t name a single one. The scent of burned down candles and wood greets you.
“I think I may pass out.”
Joel instantly switches his hands, wrapping his free arm around you, no doubt ready to catch you if your knees do give out. “Like right now?”
“No, I—I've just—never done this before,” you choke out. You’ve seen Infected and bodies and funerals. But there’s never been a wake. People just die and rot in this world. 
You suddenly feel like you want to cry and desperately try to pull yourself together. If this is the last chance to say goodbye, you want to do it with grace and you want to do it right. For Lane’s sake.
You take a shaky step forward and Joel takes the hint, moving you further down the hallway and stopping in front of a door to the left that is slightly ajar. His arm is still around you, his hand resting in yours.
“Want me to wait here?” His voice is low.
“Is she in there?” Your voice is equally quiet, matching the somber atmosphere around you.
Joel takes in your features for a moment before giving a slow nod. “Yeah. Yeah, she’s in there.”
“Can we go in together?”
You are certain you do come near to passing out when you step into the room, pressing your body against Joel’s, unconsciously using him as a shield. There is a small table full of candles to your left, a stained glass window half covered by snow at the far end of the room and two mismatched chairs to the right.
You do not see any of it. The second the door opens, your eyes are on her.
She’s bedded in a wooden coffin with white sheets. Her skin is almost as pale. The stark contrast that draws your eyes in is her hair. Ocean blue, the tips already losing their color.
Joel looks down at you, carefully and slowly disentangling himself from you. “Would you like a moment alone?” The small nod is all he needs to see, squeezing your hand once more before heading back outside, leaving the door ajar.
It suddenly strikes you how still she is. A body, usually so full of life, decorated by countless miniscule motions. The corners of her lips turning upward, the anxious turning of the silver rings on her fingers, a strand of hair falling into her face.
You move closer. You sit next to her. You stroke her cheek. She looks like she’s sleeping very deeply.
Joel lets out an involuntary sigh as he steps back out into the hallway. They managed to get the blood out of her hair, covered the right side of her head with a pillow. It almost looked comfortable. And he feels like he can breathe again. It’s a much better sight than the one in the cabin. You shouldn't have to remember her wounds. Only her face.
But he finds that he’s glad to get a moment alone. Because unlike you, he knows exactly what her temple looks like under the dainty, white pillow.
He sits down on one of the wooden benches lining the hallway, making sure to keep his movements quiet. Not because there is an enemy around. But because the wooden structure around him takes him right back.
He hasn’t been to a service in forever, not even before the outbreak. But the high ceiling and the stagnant air still make him automatically lower his voice, making him feel like he’s all of eight years old again and dressed for Sunday service with his parents somewhere just outside of Austin.
He hasn’t had time to consider how to do this, a small voice in the back of his head says. He hasn’t considered how the hell he will get you through this in one piece, if he is the one that should be doing so. There is so much baggage in him, tucked away into the dusty corners of his house, that he’s surprised you haven’t found it yet.
He stares at the floor and wonders if it had been easier for him to move on if he’d been able to say goodbye in a pretty room, surrounded by candles and lacy pillows, with high ceilings above. And for a split moment, he allows himself to imagine the hair resting on white sheets not to be blue but dark brown and curly.
Joel is leaning against the wall of the hallway when you finally emerge from the room, managing a weak smile. He stays quiet as you step towards him, raising your arms to sneak them around his body while you bury your face in his chest.
You can feel the exhale of his lungs below you as he sighs, bringing his arms around you and pulling you into him.
It comes so naturally now. The way he rests his chin on the top of your head, your hair tickling his graying beard. The feeling of your face pressed tightly into him, clearly having found a place where you can hide from the questions you already know people are asking.
Joel's hand caresses your back in gentle motions. His voice remains as quiet as it was earlier. “Did you say goodbye, darlin’?”
“Yeah,” you mumble into his chest, giving a shaky nod. “Yeah, I did.”
“Wanna take a break and go back in? Or come back later?” he offers quietly. He knows exactly how hard it is to let go—to walk away from the last piece that they leave behind when they leave the earth. The body holds so many memories.
“No, I think—I think it’s okay.” Hot tears have gathered in your eyes and threaten to spill into Joel's shirt. “I think I said goodbye.”
Joel quietly coos at you for a few more moments before he begins leading you back outside. He’s content to leave the church behind that feels so laden with bad memories despite it holding none.
You're just leaving the small hallway and passing back through the church when he abruptly moves you to his side, putting a small amount of distance between you. His arm is still wrapped around your waist but it's less strong, merely enough support to keep you from falling back.
“Oh. Hello, you two.”
Your breath hitches in your throat as you stare at the woman in front of you. She has short hair that's tied in a neat bun. The lines and wrinkles on her face seem to have increased rapidly since you have last seen her. She's wrapped in her black winter coat, one that is slightly too big for her small frame and almost reaches her knees. You realize that all her clothes are, in fact, black, even if some are slightly faded.
You feel Joel shift again beside you. “Ma’am.”
With a quick motion of your free hand, you wipe your eyes. It feels silly to be crying in front of her. You’ve lost a best friend.
She has lost a daughter.
“Mrs Moss, I’m so sorry—I meant to come by, I swear,” you blurt out, hoping that you sound as honest as you are. The tears threaten to come back.
“It’s quite alright, dear. I know it can’t have been easy for you,” she says gracefully. “And it’s Deborah, I’ve told you before. Eleanor’s friends are—” For a split moment, you can see something twinkling in her eyes before she corrects herself, carrying on as if nothing happened. “Eleanor’s friends were always welcome in my house.”
Your heart feels like it’s stopped. Eleanor. You almost forgot that Lane wasn’t her real name, despite it feeling more real than Eleanor ever has. You try and remember the story behind it and you’re certain it had something to do with her grandmother but you can’t recall the entire thing. You make a point not to ask.
The woman in front of you stays quiet. Her eyes wander between you and Joel for a moment, sending a completely different kind of discomfort through your body.
“Well, I’d like to go inside now,” Mrs Moss announces quietly and Joel and you shift to the side to let her pass. She gives you another sad smile in passing. “You’ll be there for the ceremony, won’t you? Eugene came by this morning. They are clearing the receiving vault out today.”
Joel tenses next to you, his grip getting a tiny bit tighter. You just stare blankly at the woman in front of you. “Receiving vault?”
You bite down on the inner side of your cheek.
“Oh, it’s what they call that small building. Of course, once spring comes around, we’ll bury her properly.”
Mrs Moss does not seem to realize what she has just set into motion or that all of these details were complete news to you. She gives Joel a small, polite nod and continues down the hall.
The taste of blood fills your mouth.
You don’t hold hands on the way back.
***
You brush past Joel the instant he opens the door and, while he is still stripping off his gloves, hurry into the small bathroom at the end of the hall. It’s rarely used and has become more of a makeshift storage room if you’re being honest. A few plastic containers are piled up next to the sink and you squeeze around them before letting your tired body sink onto the toilet lid.
You can hear Joel hesitate in the hall, his heavy boots on the wooden floors audible through the thin door. You can't see the way his face is scrunched up in worry—and guilt. The guilt that threatens to swallow him whole as he briefly glances at the small cupboard under the stairs, one of the few that is locked. He knows you won’t check there.
With a small sigh, he follows down the hall, hesitating in front of the bathroom door. He leans against the doorframe, his gaze fixed on the floor.
“I meant to tell you.”
No reply comes. But he can hear your breath, the small squeak of your shoes as you move your feet on the toilet seat. You’re pressing them to your chest as tightly as you can.
She won’t be buried. She will be stored in the back of some shed like something you plan to forget.
“If I’d known she’d be there—” Joel shakes his head despite knowing that you can’t see him. His hand flies to his face, pinching his nose as he closes his eyes, trying to find the right words to make you understand that he needs to do this, that this is his job. He’s supposed to protect you. And he failed miserably, letting you walk right into Lane’s mum with no clue about the arrangements.
“I would’ve told you in time. I swear.”
The hand leaves his face and instead gravitates towards the doorknob. He pauses for a moment, the metal cool under his touch. “Honey, can I please come in?”
“Fine,” you press out, keeping your gaze fixed on the plastic containers below. You don’t want to look at him. Mainly, you don’t want him to look at you.
Joel gets to his knees, unable to suppress the small groan as he does so. He hesitantly reaches out to place a hand on your knee, squeezing a little. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I thought it was—not the right moment.”
“Okay.” You nod, determined to punish him with as many one-worded sentences as you can. Today has been one bad surprise after another and it’s entirely his fault—except you know that’s not true. But you’re not ready to place the blame on the person who may deserve it—you’re not ready to think of Lane with anything but fondness and longing. And maybe, a tiny part of you pipes up, one that you’d much prefer to be quiet, maybe you know that Joel will take the blame if you place it upon him, that he would proudly carry your hate like a crown and still let you eat his food and still let you sleep in his bed.
Your eyes meet his and he looks so miserable, broad shoulders still wrapped in his winter coat, his hair slightly wet from the melted snow and his eyes. His eyes, begging, asking to be forgiven.
The thoughts of blame and hate are gone in an instant. Instead, the tears that you didn’t allow to come in the church and all the way back home, finally spring up in your eyes.
“I didn’t think—when that man died last year in the winter—” you choke out, the thoughts forcing their way into the tiny bathroom. “They buried him, he got a grave—”
Joel brings his free hand up to your face just in time to catch the first tear rolling down your cheek and wiping it away, his calloused hand smoothing over your skin.
“Darlin’, he was sick. You know that, right?” Joel keeps his voice low and soft and his motions slow. Like he is approaching a sick animal, trying not to startle it.
You didn’t know that he’d been sick, to be truthful. But you also don’t see how that made a difference.
It’s almost like Joel can read your mind. He tilts his head a bit. “They knew he was gonna pass, sooner or later. They dug his grave in the fall.”
You can’t help the sob that escapes you at that. Because it’s a horrible, horrible thing, digging a grave for someone who is still alive. And because it’s a horrible, horrible thing to not be able to.
“No one dug—'' You think you feel snot running down your face. “We didn’t know—No one dug a grave for Lane—”
“Yeah,” Joel agrees quietly, his voice filled with a heaviness. “No one dug a grave for Lane.”
No one knew she’d need one.
Joel lets you cry, even when his knees are screaming at him to get off the bathroom tiles. He pats your arm and wipes your tears. He doesn’t try to cheer you up or make you see the bright side or, worst of all, tries and tell you that Lane is a better place. You both know her place was here.
He lets you wear yourself out from crying before he asks if you want a bath and, following a shy nod, scoops you up in his arms and carries you upstairs into the bathroom, the one you actually use.
The small moment of hesitation after he’s set you down on the edge of the tub is his way of asking for permission. You give a tired nod.
He lets you undress and climb into the tub while he begins to heat the water, insisting on placing a towel below you so that the porcelain won’t be too cold on your skin.
It doesn’t take long until the air in the room is comfortably warm and steamy and the faint smell of jasmine and cotton fills the air, replacing the lingering one of old buildings and grief. You feel like you’re transported back to the first time you were curled up in Joel Miller's bathtub, the first day you’ve ever spent in Jackson.
“Lean a little to the side,” he instructs quietly, lathering the top of your head with the shampoo and working it into your hair. His fingers are scratching circles into your skin, making you feel like he’s washing off all the things you’d like to see disappear down the drain. The sorrow and the pain. You don’t touch the guilt yet.
“Do you remember the last time you did this?” you mumble and hear Joel hum behind you as you continue. “I wouldn’t let you cut my hair.”
“You also called me an asshole.” You are glad your head is slightly lowered so that Joel can’t see you smile. Then again, you have a feeling he knows.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
His fingers work around your head, gently tilting it into whatever direction he needs to reach every part of it. He surprises himself when he speaks up.
“You know what you looked like?” Your head perks up slightly at that, attempting to turn around but Joel guides your head back with a gentle motion. Because he doesn't want shampoo to get into your eyes. Definitely not because turning around would mean seeing—
“Tell me,” you insist, despite keeping your gaze forward now.
“No, nevermind, it’s—it’s silly.” He tries to brush you off but you aren’t having it.
“Joel. Come on. Please?”
He can see you’re on the verge of turning around again and reckons it’ll be easier to just answer your question instead of having to deal with all the thoughts he is so successfully pushing away.
“You looked like a fawn. Curled up, trembling. Waiting on someone.” “I wasn’t waiting on anyone.”
“I know you weren’t.”
You sit in comfortable silence, tilting your head back as Joel pours warm water over your head. He steps back into the bedroom to grab some fresh clothes, leaving you to wash your skin and dry off by yourself.
“They’re not much but they should do until we get some of yours,” Joel mutters as he hands you one of his worn shirts. You pull it over your head, each part of it a bit too big on your body. The collar is draped slightly to one side, making your soft skin peek out from under the fabric.
Joel smiles weakly, trying so hard to avert his gaze. But not enough to miss you struggling with your hair, attempting to pull the still wet strands into a bun.
“C’mere,” he instructs, taking another step towards you and reaching around your head to take the hair tie from your hands and carefully gathering all your hair in his right fist. You’re left there without distraction, without anything to do except stare up at him, so close that you can make out the gray hairs in his beard and the small scar that decorates his nose.
“There we are,” Joel mutters, securing the hair tie before hesitating for another moment as his gaze shifts down to your face, your eyes meeting.
He’s looked at you hundreds of times. So he’s not sure why, at this moment, his lungs suddenly seem to stop working, drowning in the softness of your eyes that seem to be completely focused on him. For a split second, he thinks he sees your gaze flicker downwards.
One of his hands finds a strand that escaped his grip before and he tucks it behind your ear, his eyes never leaving yours.
“You still look like that sometimes.”
He is so close. If one of you leaned just a tiny bit forward—
The moment is over as suddenly as it appeared. Joel drops his hands a little too quickly to be casual about it, taking two steps back. Like he’s gotten too close to something dangerous.
But you're not dangerous, a small voice in the back of his head says. You’re just a fawn.
He cannot touch you. He is certain of one thing: He would find a way to ruin you.
***
A few months ago, being back in Joel’s bathroom would've been your favorite thing in the world. And it’s still good and comforting. But it’s not the same.
You give yourself to brief illusions. That this is your first day in Jackson, that you don’t know anything about the man beside you except his name and that he carries his gun in the back of his jeans. That you will be taken to your new home in a few days and meet your roommate, the one with blue hair you’ve already spotted around town.
But you know it won’t happen. You had another shot at life here, the chance to do and say all the right things this time. And you failed.
You can feel the mattress dip beside you as Joel crawls under the thick covers. It’s nice to feel the heat of his body next to yours, to feel him shelter you with what he can. He sleeps on the side that is closest to the bedroom door, leaving you tucked away to the more closed off one.
But it never makes you feel trapped. Quite the opposite. Anyone who hopes to reach you will have to pass by him. You wish that grief too could be politely turned away or chased off with a drawn gun. But it seeps through the cracks of the old wooden house, drifting through the hallways, spreading its arms and placing itself right on your chest.
The thin curtains are drawn but you can still see the faint shimmer of the snow that’s stacked up outside, reflecting the lights of the few lamp posts that line Rancher Street. You move your head just enough to be able to stare at the silhouette of the window, wondering if any of the candles next to Lane are still burning or if she’s already shut away in the receiving vault, without any light at all.
Joel sighs softly beside you, his gaze following yours and lingering there for a few moments. “Want to talk about it?”
You both know what but you still find it an odd question. You do talk to him about Lane, more than anyone else even. He’s not touching you and something tells you that it has to do with what happened in the bathroom before. Just that nothing actually happened, you tell yourself. But you don’t dare to bring that up. Defense is better.
“Talk about what?”
“About whatever is keeping you from closing your eyes,” he mumbles quietly, his eyes back on you. “I know it ain’t easy but you need a few hours of sleep at least.”
“She’s there when I close my eyes,” you whisper into the quiet room, tensing slightly at just the idea of it. Of her. You don’t understand how something you love so much can feel so unwelcome in your head.
“I didn’t know you had bad dreams,” Joel muses quietly.
“It’s not that. But she must feel so alone. And confused,” you whisper, curling up a little more into yourself, as if that will protect you from the images that keep forcing themselves to the front of your mind.
“Honey, she’s not—she doesn’t feel those things anymore, okay?” Joel sighs beside you, hesitating for a small moment before reaching out and lightly rubbing your shoulder. “I promise it’ll get better once you get the ceremony over with.”
You both stay quiet for a few moments, both thinking about graves and funerals and those you’ve lost. There are so many you’ve lost.
“Can I ask you a question?” you pipe up, your voice trembling a tiny bit. You’ve never outright asked him—only taken what information he gave willingly, which was very little.
“If you promise to try and sleep after.” Joel chuckles quietly, leaning back into the pillows. The small laughter dies on his lips as he hears your question.
“Did you have a funeral for her?”
The small intake of breath to your right tells you he didn’t expect this. You immediately feel your stomach give a lurch as you sit up slightly. “Sorry, you don’t—I shouldn’t have brought it up—”
“No.” Somehow, despite his voice being very quiet and low, it’s strong enough to make you fall silent in an instant. You bite your lip as you try and make out Joel’s face but it’s too dark to do so without moving closer and you’re afraid that one more misstep will have him either running off or throwing you out of the house.
“It all happened very fast, with Sarah.” His voice quivers a tiny bit as he says her name. “We were lucky to make it out at all. Tommy took—He got us out.”
Maybe it’s your tired mind playing tricks on you, but Joel doesn’t sound like he feels very lucky about having made it out. You can’t blame him. Some part of you, too, feels like you should have been with her, in that cabin. Should be with her in the vault. That there should be two graves waiting to be dug instead of one.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, again, because apparently you are not good at finding the right words and you feel just like you did in front of Mrs Moss earlier today, just that this is Joel and that is precisely what makes it so much more difficult and so much worse.
“It was a long time ago,” is all he says.
To your surprise, the quiet that follows is not uncomfortable. Maybe because he feels that you understand, at least partly. Or maybe you’re just two very tired people, glad to have each other to hold on to.
After a few minutes, you can feel him turn towards you in the dark, opening his body up so that you can shift a bit closer, the excuse about the night being so incredibly cold dying on your lips when you feel how readily Joel wraps his arm around you, pulling you into him. You press your face into his chest, taking a deep breath that actually makes you feel like breathing comes a little easier. Your hands sneak around him, holding on. Always holding on.
A small sigh leaves Joel’s throat, his voice so low you can barely hear it.
“Let’s get some sleep, little fawn.”
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Here's something that's been cooking in my head for a while. So there's a lot of fics where Marc and the reader will have a argument and then Marc will sort of shut out and just leave Steven and Jake to be out as a means to avoid reader, and some have it that while that's happening Steven and Jake then just spoil reader with affection and stuff and then there's some point where Marc just comes out and they talk it out. But hear me out on this one and even feel free to run and do your own things with it-
So let's say that that's a common scenario that happens and that Marc and reader are arguing about something and at some point things boil over a little and they do a whole "Fine! "Fine!" sort of thing. Reader walks away to cool off and maybe go back to the issue later when both of them are more calm but then Marc goes "I guess this is the part where you sit somewhere and wait for Steven and Jake to spoil you rotten!".
And now there's an even bigger problem because now Marc is bringing Steven and Jake into this and that pisses them off and there's a whole argument between them because Jake and Steven are saying that they wouldn't have to if Marc would just man up and not turn every issue brought up into an argument. And Marc is saying that it wouldn't be such a big deal if they just let him sulk and solve it himself without them swooping in and overhearing/seeing them basically fawning over reader. And reader is even more upset because it's somewhat true but because you're still made they want to prove him wrong.
You can continue from here or just leave it. Just thought you'd like to hear it at least
Thank you so much for this ask! It has been fermenting in my mind for days now. I hope I've done it justice ❤️
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Spoiled Rotten
Marc Spector X GN!Reader Rating: T Masterlist | ao3 | want to be tagged?
Warnings: arguements (subject matter is not specified), hurt and comfort (heavy on the comfort), typos, rail road sentences Please let me know if I've missed a warning!
Word Count: 1496
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“No that’s not what I said, you’re not listen-”
“You’re just repeating what you said over and ov-”
“I wouldn’t have to repeat it if you would just li-”
“It’s not even relevant to this, you’re changing the sub-”
“I’m changing the subject? What do you think you’re doi-”
“Stop talking over me!”
“Stop talking over me!”
You both glare at each other, rage boiling over like an overfilled pan. 
Your breathing hard, your lips forced together, just waiting for him to say something so you can both go at each other again. 
You could strangle him, the way he sneered a little as he spoke, that little mocking tone he used specifically for you, the fact that he would never, ever, ever back down. 
Your breathing calmed a little as he stayed quiet, good. His hands were balled into fists at his sides, a few rouge curls had escaped his carefully slicked back hair, breaking his illusion of being oh-so perfect. 
Oh, I’m Marc Spector and I never do anything wrong. 
You loved him, of course you did, and if anyone ever laid a finger on him you’d gouge their eyes out, but good god if that man didn’t know how to get perfectly under your skin. 
He stayed quiet, scowling at you. 
With a deep breath you looked away from him and walked into the kitchen. There was no reason to stay in his presence if he was going to be like this, trying to bait you into talking first like a child. (As if you hadn’t been trying to do the exact same thing to him.) 
You thought about making a comment, saying something like ‘oh, the silent treatment, Marc? Real original.’ But you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. And you knew how childish it would sound. 
You stopped in front of the kitchen counter and sighed. Cliché as it was, you couldn’t remember what you had first started arguing about. Or why it even mattered. 
Maybe if you just took a few minutes to cool off and-
Marc’s distinct footsteps sounded as he came into the kitchen. “So, I guess this is the part where you sit somewhere and wait for Steven and Jake to spoil you rotten!" His voice was somewhere between normal and shouting, raising in volume even more at the end. 
He had been trying, and promptly failed, to sound collected.
You turned, anger rising in your chest and throat, “what?” 
“It’s always the same-”
“It is not always the same-”
“We have an argument, you go off and sulk and then,”
“I sulk?” You gestured to yourself, “I’m the one that goes off and sulks?”
“And, then, Steven or Jake front and it’s all ‘oh what has that horrible Marc done to you now.’”  His eyes flicked to the side the second the words left his mouth, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching hard. 
You recognised the movement instantly. Steven or Jake, or possibly both, were saying something. 
Heat rises to your cheeks. “That’s not what happens.”
He glances back to you, the smallest twitch is his forehead telling you that Steven and Jake must still be talking. “Liar.” 
You clamp your teeth shut, trying to stop yourself from saying something you know you’ll regret. 
He was right though, and you hated it. Why did this insufferable man always have to be right? 
You and Marc argued the most. 
Jake didn’t shout, he didn’t like that kind of confrontation. He would go quiet and listen to you when you were angry. For anyone else his silence would have made it worse, but there was something about his expression. How he just folded back, bleeding emotion out of himself until he seemed monochrome against your rage. It never failed to refuse you. You’d both end up talking calmly about your disagreements. 
Steven was the king of sarcasm, and passive aggression when he wanted to be. But when an argument with you was getting too far he would just call a timeout and let you both go your separate ways to calm down. 
On the whole, very rarely did any of you argue, and when you did it was usually about something silly. 
And as you’d been together longer, disagreements with Jake and Steven had lessened to almost nonexistence. While arguments with Marc had stayed the same. 
It always followed a similar pattern: you and Marc would shout at each other and then Jake or Steven or both would come and make it better with hugs and kisses and soft words. 
“Well it’s not going to happen this time.” Marc snarled. 
You looked back at him, realising you had been lost in your thoughts. 
“You're stuck with horrible me.” 
He was goading you, trying to get you to shout at him again. Needing you to yell, to express your anger. He could deal with that, could fight against it. 
You stayed quiet. 
“Gonna give me the silent treatment? Because I’m not good enough for you? That’s real original.” 
You almost laughed then, but just managed to stop yourself. There was no way that could help in this situation. Your shoulders slumped slightly. The problem was, you were both too similar. 
“Sit down.” You spoke softly, and gestured to the kitchen table before walking over to the coffee machine. Marc was the only one who really used it for the fancy milky coffees he still pretended he didn’t adore. 
“What?” He snapped, watching you move. He took a step towards you, his hands flexing in irritation as he saw you switch the coffee machine on. 
You turned fully to look at him, “sit down,” your voice sounded calm and kind, even though you were still fighting with your own exasperation inside. “Or stand, whatever you want.” 
You expected him to snap back with another dig. But to your surprise he swallowed, a small bob of his throat, and sat down on the chair closest to you.
He didn’t take his eyes off you while you made a coffee, the crease in his forehead deepening as he assumed you were going to drink it right in front of him. 
Instead you heard the little breath he exhaled when you placed the cup on the table directly to his right. 
Marc stared at it for a second, dumbfounded. He was so caught up in staring at the coffee that he didn’t hear you step back and open the cupboard, only realising that time had passed when you set a small plate with choco leibniz milk biscuits in front of him. 
“Those are Jake’s.” He whispered. 
“I bought them for everyone.” You leave out, ‘except Steven’ as that was a given due to the milk. 
The biscuits were, however, a favourite of Jakes. And he did have a tendency to eat them all before anyone else got a chance. 
Marc pressed his lips together into a tight line. 
You didn’t want for him to say anything else as you walked into the living room and turned on the television. You spend a few minutes searching through the listings until you found something that matched your criteria. Marc had a soft spot for westerns. 
You clicked on The Searchers and pressed play before grabbing the heavy, fluffy blanket out of the airing cupboard and laying it out on the settee. 
When you came back into the kitchen Marc was chewing on a biscuit. He looked up at you as you entered and for a moment seemed much younger than his years. 
“Come on,” you spoke softly, lifting the plate and cup from the table. 
Marc didn’t question you and followed you into the living room one step behind. 
You gestured to the settee after you put the biscuits and coffee on the table, raising the blanket for Marc to sit. He did, slowly, as if he was waiting for something awful to jump out at him. 
You sat next to him, pulling the blanket over you both. You left a ‘sensible’ space between you. Not wanting to be too far or too close, and upsetting him with the extreme. 
He stared at you, not even glancing at the television. “What are you doing?” He whispered. His expression was nervous, pained, and it chased away the residual anger in your chest. 
“Spoiling you rotten.” You said quietly, The Searchers opening music nearly drowning your words out. 
Slowly, you lifted your arm to the back of the settee, leaving an open invitation for physical touch. 
To your surprise he moved instantly, burying himself into your side and laying his head against your shoulder as he wrapped his arms around you and squeezed you tight. 
You smiled and kissed the top of his head as you hugged him back. 
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into your chest, his breath hot against your skin. 
“Me too.” You kissed his head again as you both relaxed into each other's embrace and settled down to watch the film.
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