#i hate the cloud i need to have everything on my own hard drive forever and ever

[hylianengineer]

It is not physically possible to murder an operating system but I really really want to right now.

Why is my Desktop backed up to OneDrive? Why is it apparently impossible to move anything on my Desktop to the computer hard drive without removing it from the Desktop? My computer should have a fucking desktop that isn't in the cloud and that I don't have to pay to store things on.

What the fuck, Windows 11?

[rainbow-starheart]

Letter/Speech to Fellow Antis:

Dear fellow Antis,

I want to take a moment to address something that has been weighing on my mind. I know many of us share deep frustrations and disgust toward the actions of Proshippers. We have seen the harm in certain ships, the normalization of abuse, and the troubling behaviors that can arise within those communities. I understand why we feel the way we do, and I share many of those feelings. It’s painful to witness and harder still when we feel helpless to stop it.

But I must warn you: allowing that frustration to consume us, to drive us into aggression, stalking, harassment, or any form of harm, is not the solution. I know that it feels righteous at times to confront these behaviors, but we cannot allow our emotions to dictate how we interact with others, especially when it’s causing damage to ourselves.

I learn that the hard way with the Lacey situation long ago...

The truth is, if we continue to let our frustrations take a toll on us, we risk harming not only those around us, but ourselves as well. Mental and emotional exhaustion from constantly being in conflict, always on the defense or offense, only makes everything worse. It wears us down. It clouds our judgment. And, ultimately, it fuels an endless cycle of hate that accomplishes nothing. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “fighting fire with fire,” but in doing so, we lose sight of our own well-being and the moral compass that guides us.

This includes you @your-dead-girl-forever-200k and @antiproshipconfessions (while I know your blog is simply for confession posts from any person on how they feel about proshipping,please no further interaction or engaging with one...)

That’s why I urge you, as fellow Antis, to simply block and avoid. It's as simple as that. When we encounter Proshippers or others who don't align with our values, we don't need to engage in a battle. We don't need to waste our energy fighting or trying to convince them that their beliefs are wrong. Their choices are theirs to make, and it is not our job to control them or “correct” them. What we can do is protect ourselves, protect our peace, and avoid unnecessary conflict by simply blocking and moving on.

If we continue to engage in these aggressive actions, we risk turning into what we despise. Harassment, stalking, doxxing, and threatening only lead to more harm and escalate the very issues we are trying to prevent. I understand the pain, but we must resist the urge to retaliate with more pain. Instead, let us be the example of peace and strength. Let us take the higher road, even if it's difficult.

I believe that we can be strong in our beliefs without resorting to harm. We can stand firm in our values while maintaining our integrity. We can protect ourselves and those we care about without engaging in battles that ultimately bring no resolution. We must not let our frustrations dictate our actions. We must not let this fight over what is “right” or “wrong” become an endless war that damages our mental health, our peace, and our sense of morality.

So, let us remember that it’s okay to step back. It’s okay to simply block and move forward. It's okay to let others make their own choices and live their own lives, even if we don’t agree with them. We can be true to ourselves without making the world our enemy.

Let’s protect our own mental health and peace. Let’s not allow the toxicity of constant conflict to destroy what we stand for. And most importantly, let’s remember that we are better than those we stand against. We can make a difference, but not if we let our anger and frustration control us.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for being a part of this community.

Let’s move forward with strength, wisdom, and peace.

[not-poignant]

For the meme!!! 21 - 22 - 23

We love a sequential number sequence :D

21. Could you ever quit writing? Do you ever wish you could? Why or why not?

I mean, yeah, maybe one day! I don't want to quit writing, I certainly don't wish I could. I love this job! It's been my favourite ever job! It's also been the hardest fucking job I've ever done!!! But I still love it :'D

I don't want to say 'I'm never going to quit' - I don't know what the future might bring. The arthritis in my hands is pretty bad, maybe one day I'll be in too much agony to justify it. Maybe one day I'll just stop enjoying it. I don't believe in sticking something out forever based on how I feel about it now!

I can say with all confidence that I don't want to quit. The biggest flaw in this version of my job is that it doesn't pay super great for the amount of work that goes into it. BUT, it definitely pays better than working as a professional artist did, and there is growth, and amazing people do support the Patreon, so it's like...that flaw becomes less of a flaw over time.

I love this job. It wasn't one I would have picked for myself, but it's introduced me to the best people, it's something I feel I'm actually pretty good at (maybe I'm not, but this is a nice feeling to have), and it's kind of unique. I get to be my own boss (I'm a mean boss, but I'm getting better), and I get to work from home, and I can accommodate my chronic illnesses. I get to spend time in amazing worlds, with amazing characters, and then I get to reply to amazing comments and asks made by amazing people.

Like, when this job is going well, I feel like one of the luckiest people. When this job is hard I just groan a lot and take painkillers for editing headaches. But like, the good parts of this job are very good!!

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

I'm pretty organised.

So, all of my chapters are written in Microsoft Word and saved directly into Dropbox (with offline storage as well). All of my folders are also very well organised. I have a naming system for each chapter, and everything is chained together pretty well.

On top of that I now use Obsidian for worldbuilding (it's free! Though you can pay and they deserve money for their awesome service). I used to use World Anvil but found it too clunky for my personal needs. I have about 4 Obsidian vaults now (i.e. different worlds) and they look like this:

You can see a chained folder system on the left, and the graph view on the right.

And the information in the individual files is set up like a Wiki page:

Not all of my worlds get this treatment, but Underline the Rainbow, Vexteria, Mallory & Mount and something else I've forgotten about all have vaults. Fae Tales doesn't, because I didn't know Obsidian existed when I started worldbuilding for that, lol, so all of that is in Word.

And then I will on occasion just write in notepads and in Paperblanks journals when I need to brainstorm stuff. This part of the process is especially useful when plotting, brainstorming names or titles, or figuring out the end of a story.

I don't use Google Docs (don't actually like it), Scrivener (hate it, sorry Scrivener fans), or anything else. Word has its issues, but it does well enough for me. I actually formatted Perth Shifters in Word.

23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.

I write in a study dedicated to art/writing, because those have been my jobs for over 15 years. I sit at a large desk, and have a desktop computer with one monitor (I've wanted two monitors for such a long time), a decent speaker system, and a good RGB hard-drive.

It's a mess, lol.

Hang on let me show you:

I have stickers on the desktop by the immaculate WhiskeyRabbit. I have a bunch of art supplies, and art in various stages of completion (the raven is finished, Augus behind the raven is not). There's meds and supplements everywhere. I have my Metformin (diabetes meds) in front of me because I often eat where I work, lol. I have some Sank collectible toys on the subwoofer because I find Sank very inspiring. And lots of art behind me like I'm some 18 year old instead of the 41 year old I actually am.

Oh and like, some half-finished chocolate blocks, lmao. And some fingerless gloves, a tea-towel, notepads for my writing, a calculator for my wordcount, a little spiky massage ball for the muscle/fascia issues in my wrists from writing so much, and much, much more.

It's a very ADHD desk. I do not notice the mess, lmao.

To my left is my writing whiteboard which tracks my writing and the chapters I've completed for the year, and my yearly wordcount to date. It also has some pinned up fanart and gifts from readers to keep me going when things get hard! :D

--

From the Weird Writing Questions meme!

[lottiebagleywritesobx]

Girls like you

THE POOL

JJ Maybank wasn't really sure why the Y/L/N family had hired him to clean out their pool when summer started. They seemed to like him around the hotel when they went for meals but he wasn't exactly qualified, he wasn't complaining though, they tip well and it couldn't be that hard.

His only problem was Y/N.

They never got on well. She was friends with Kie in her kook year, who even went as far as to dub her 'the only kook who doesn't make me want to gauge my eyes out', so she knew the pogues from around although they'd grown apart the girls shared no bad blood and always stopped to catch up when they saw each other around.

He was in the middle of raking the leaves from the large pool when he saw her. She was crossing the garden from the large mansion, clad in a bikini with sunglasses perched on the end of her nose. JJ hates how good she looks, her curves perfectly on display and a confident aura around her.

She's got headphones in, he notices as she saunters closer.

"Hi princess," He smirks, watching as she rolls her eyes

"I'm not your princess. How long are you gonna be?" She questions, settling onto one of the sun loungers next to the pool

"An hour or so," JJ states

"Well, could you do it quietly I'm hungover and I wanna just relax," She states, slipping the second headphone back into her ear before he can reply.

He cleans, unaware of her watching him from behind the glasses as she sips on her bottle of cold water. She would never tell anyone but watching him work, his muscles tensing and untensing under his vest shirt, a light sweat from the hot summer day on his skin, she couldn't help herself from thinking he looked good.

He would definitely admit to John B that he thought she looked fit. Her breasts spilling out of her bikini top a little and the barely there thong bottom's high cut making her legs look excruciatingly long. He'd probably make some crude jokes about hate sex being way more fun. He wouldn't admit though, to finding something very comforting about her presence, and finding the way she hummed along to whatever she was listening too adorable.

It's a further 40 minutes, JJ is trying to work out how to get the pool vaccuum to turn on, when her phone rings loudly.

"Hey Sare," Her voice speaks. JJ figures quickly it's Sarah Cameron, the pair are practically inseparable and the whole island knows it.

He half listens to her side of the conversation, more out of boredom than interest.

"No, babes, I love you and all but I really don't wanna. The last million times I've seen Rafe he's been so weird and creepy and I don't wanna be alone with him,"

JJ doesn't know why the comment angers him so much. Why does he even care if Rafe is clearly trying to pull her? It's none of his business. Yet, he can feel his blood boiling at the thought.

"No Sar, if I go and you have to stay with me then you can't go and be with Topper,"

She's silent for a few minutes before sighing "Fine. Fine, I'll come. See you in a minute. Bring me some shorts, I'm in the garden and can't be arsed to go upstairs and find some. You owe me forever,"

JJ wants to scream. Wants to tell her she shouldn't go if she feels uncomfortable around Kelce. He wishes Kie were here, maybe she could talk her into staying where she felt safe.  Maybe she would be able to explain why JJ even gives a shit.

"Maybank," She states, he looks up, trying to act like he hasn't been listening. "I'm going out. You'll be the only one here," She informs

"Okay," He nods.

"My keys are on the kitchen counter, lock up when you're done and I'll just grab them from you at the hotel,"

"All right," He agrees

"When will you be there?" She questions, looking at him like he's an idiot. He groans internally, obviously she needed to know that.

"Tomorrow, 2 until closing,"

'"I'll swing by around 4," She informs. He nods, trying not to stare at her as she lets her hair down from the ponytail it had been in, shaking it out. A car honks outside and she turns, walking up the garden towards the side gates, turning a few metres away,

"Oh, there's an envelope on the kitchen counter with your tip in," She adds

"Thanks. Goodbye princess," He smiles,

"Still not your princess," she shouts back, turning and disappearing round the corner.

THE CAR

JJ felt a lot more in his element when her dad had called him asking if he could fix her car. He hadn't specified it was his eldest daughters, and JJ knew the family owned 7 cards despite only 3 of them even being able to drive.

JJ recognised it though, a white convertible porsche, he'd seen her driving it around before. Wether she was blasting music with the roof down singing with Sarah, picking up a take out from the wreck, driving around in the middle of the night, she'd even given Kie a lift to the Chateau before. He realised that he always seemed to notice her presence.

He was working in the family's garage, the bonnet popped open and grease all over him. It was an easy fix, if a little fiddly.

He jumped out of his skin when the door burst open.  He is immediately taken aback by how good she looks. Clad in a tight black skirt that is ridiculously short, heels and a tight black V neck top with a lace trim around the neck. Her hair falls in bouncy curls around her shoulders and her makeup looks perfect. He would have sworn on everything he'd never seen anyone look so beautiful.

"You're a boy," The girl states.

"Good job noticing that one princess," JJ smirks, she rolls her eyes.

"I have a date and Sarah is being so unhelpful, can you help me pick a top?" She questions, he gulps, nodding.

"Okay, so this is option 1,"

"It looks good,"

"Right. But is it sexy? Do you look at me and think I wanna slam her against a wall and rail her?"

His eyes widen a little, that's one way of putting it he decides.

"Look, I'm your families help, I shouldn't be answering that,"

"Like I care Maybank," She groans, exasperated.

"Okay fine, I look at you in that and I think I wanna rip your clothes off,"

"Okay good. Option 2," She starts. JJ is shocked when she pulls her top off in front of him, without even turning around. He turns around, although not without taking a mental picture of her boobs being pushed up in a red lace bra. "Who knew you were a prude?"

"Just respecting you princess," He comments

"You've seen me in a bikini, what's the difference?" She questions, he stays silent having no quick comment to respond with. "I'm dressed," She states

He turns back around, she looks good, a forest green top made of satin.

"The first one is sexy, that one is cute,"

"Thanks JJ, oh, and hey, thanks for fixing my car,"

"Uh. Yeah, anytime,"

THE SUMMER HOUSE

JJ was happy to paint the summer house. He claimed to his friends it was just because they way over paid and tipped big. In reality it was because for three days straight he would get to catch glimpses of her. And he did.

He saw her when she swam in her pool.

He saw her when she played in the garden with her little sister.

He saw her when she cloud gazed with Sarah Cameron.

The best times he got to see her though, were when she would bring him stuff. Every so often she'd knock on the open door to the summer house, sometimes with water, sometimes with snacks, a few times even with a beer. A couple of times she stopped and made small talk, one time she even smeared paint on his cheek and giggled as he chased her through the garden.

He enters the kitchen, used to how the family worked now. An envelope of money waiting on the kitchen counter, they always seemed to be coming and going so it was easier.

He was shocked to see her in the kitchen, she's scrolling on her phone sipping on what looks to be an iced coffee

"Oh, hey JJ," She smiles

"Hey, I'm done," he informs, she nods, watching as he picks up the envelope "So, I'll be seeing you around,"

"Did you want a lift?" She questions, he looks at her slightly confused "I just noticed your bike wasn't here and it's kinda late to be walking back. It's a long walk,"

"You really don't have to princess,"

"Honestly, it's fine," she assures, jumping up and grabbing her keys before heading towards the garage.

She wasn't sure when she stopped hating JJ Maybank, wasn't sure when she started noticing little things like the blue in his eyes and which snapback he was wearing and how tired he looked. She wasn't sure when the sight of his bike in the driveway started giving her butterflies.

"So where is your bike?" She questions, the roof of the car is down and the wind blowing through her hair as she pulls out of the private estate her home is on.

"Didn't have enough fuel to get to yours and back," He shrugs

"Why didn't you just-" She cuts herself off "Shit, I'm so sorry. That was insanely rude, I wasn't even thinking and-" He chuckles, watching as she splutters and blushes

"It's okay. Life is different on the cut I can understand how a kook princess wouldn't get it," He shrugs, she nods, still not sure what to say.

"Y'know my life isn't perfect," She comments, he scoffs, unable to help himself. "I'm not kidding. It's privileged as fuck, I know that, but it's not perfect,"

"Go on then princess, what's so shit?" He doesn't mean for it to sound so harsh, he's genuinely curious

"My parents, they have basically planned my entire life, down to where I'll go to college, what sorority I'll be in, where I'll work my summer internship, who I'll marry, where I'll get married, which big kook house I'll live in,  at what age I'll have to give up my career, which has been decided for me by them, to start trying for babies. It's 24 by the way so in 8 years. My whole life is decided and I don't want it. I wanna go on a trip around the world and surf and travel and explore. I wanna fall in love and get my heartbroken again and again until I find the right guy. I wanna live in a New York apartment and I wanna see the world. I don't wanna marry Rafe Cameron just cause our mothers are friends. I mean he's literally scary and harasses me and acts like even though I'm 16 I shouldn't have a choice cause one day he'll father my kids. And no one gets it, none of my friends, not even my best friend. The only person who ever understood why it was so shit was Kie and then she left, she left and lives her life and it's fun and exciting and anything could happen. I don't hate her for it but it fucking sucks that she left me miserable. I'll be miserable living my planned out life and then I'll die. Yeah, I have money and that's fucking great, but my life is far from perfect,"

JJ sits in a stunned silence. He's not really sure what to say. Their problems were very different but hers were just as shitty. He feels like he's seeing her in a whole new light.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I don't tell people that and we barely no each other," She mutters, not wanting to look at him

"Where would you go first?" His question surprised her

"On my fictitious surf trip?" She questions, he nods "Europe, Spain I think,"

They sit in silence the rest of the way, it's not awkward though, both of them feel comforted by each other presence. He gives her instructions to the chateau.

"We are probably gonna drink some beers and smoke. You wanna stay? You could crash here and drive home in the morning," JJ offers

"I can't. My family are having dinner at the hotel. Thanks though," She smiles gently

"Yeah. Uh, I hope it's not too shit. Thanks for the ride princess,"

He climbs out of the car, his friends who sit on the porch immediately calling out to him, they're all laughing and teasing him about his lift home and when he looks back he almost thinks he sees a look of longing in her eyes before she's reversing out of the chateau.

THE BOAT

"Can you fix it?" She questions. JJ Maybank has never seen her look nervous before.

It was only 6:30 AM when she'd started banging on the door to the Chateau, tears in her eyes and panic on her face hoping JJ would be here. John B had pulled the door open, half asleep and groaning a little at the bright sunlight. He'd let her into the small home and disappeared to wake JJ up. John B opted not to put too much thought into the way the minute her name was said JJ leaped out of bed and shoved into the living area, the way his hands cupped her cheeks to see if she was okay, the way he was calling her princess as he tried to calm down her hiccuping tears.

"I can fix it," He confirms. They're standing on the deck of her families boat "It's an easy fix princess, okay? don't even worry," He speaks in a comforting tone

"Thank you JJ,"

"No worries. It'll take me a while, you got anywhere to be?"

"No. Well yes, a breakfast thing with the Cameron's but it's at my house and I can't exactly show up without the boat so,"

"So you're hiding out here all day?" JJ questions

"Well, I don't wanna intrude. I can go and hang out at the beach,"

"Don't talk nonsense, you can hang here. C'mon, I need to be down the bottom with the engine, you can sit and entertain me,"

She watches intently as he works, now that he's not working at her house he hasn't bothered with a shirt, instead just wearing shorts and his infamous red baseball cap. He glances at her occasionally, her makeup streaky from crying and wearing a short white dress.

"So, wanna tell me what happened?" He questions

"Not really," She admits, he nods and she sighs before beginning to explain"Rafe wanted to go boating late and then it all went wrong and then we got the boat to the nearest dock, hence why we are in the middle of nowhere, and he said he was going to call someone to get a lift and it was rainy so I was waiting in here.  It had been a while so I went outside to check on him and he was gone. I didn't know what to do. Dad would kill me for breaking the boat, do I just kinda figured I'd walk to yours and hopefully you would no how to fix it. Then I realised I have no clue where you live so I walked to John B's and hoped for the best,"

"He just left you in the middle of nowhere alone?" JJ doesn't know why he's so mad, they were hardly even friends

"Yeah. He texted me to let me know it was cause he's already in shit with his dad and didn't wanna go down for breaking my family's boat," She shrugs, JJ wants to go and find Rafe Cameron and beat his skull in.

"Look, a girl like you deserves someone who would treat them a million times better than that,"

"I always thought you hated me," She admits

"So did I, until this summer I kinda did," He shrugs

"What changed?" She asks, the question is so vulnerable he can't help himself from looking at her

"You aren't what I thought you'd be," He admits, she nods slowly

"How should a girl like me be treated?" She questions

"Like they're the only thing on earth," He's not really sure why he's so openly telling her how he feels but it feels too late now

"Is that how you'd treat me Maybank?"

"Girls like you don't date boys like me," He shrugs, turning quickly back to what he's doing, not wanting her to recognise the disappointment on his face.

THE PARTY

It was no secret her family hosted a big formal party on the 10th of July every year, her parents wedding anniversary. JJ had waited the party the last 2 years and this summer was no different, he'd even managed to get John B and Pope a job too.

His heart had stopped when he saw her, her dress was the exact shade of blue as the sky and flowed beautifully down to her feet, her hair curled with the front pinned back, her makeup beautiful. She looked like an angel approaching him and god why did she have to look so perfect.

"Hey JJ," She smiles, grabbing a glass of champagne from the tray he's holding "Could you do me a favour?"

"Of course," He agrees, expecting some job that needed doing for the party

"If you see Rafe and I'm on my own..." She trails off "I'm trying to avoid him, after the other day,"

It's three hours into the party when JJ grabs her hand, pulling her along behind him and away from Rafe who is clearly trying to catch her alone. He pulls her into a small cupboard slamming the door closed behind him and locking it.

"What was that about?"

"Rafe," He shrugs, he didn't outwardly say he'd been watching her all night to make sure he could look out for her. He also didn't say he would have been watching her all night even if she hadn't asked him too.

"JJ, you know how your coming over next week to fix that one  door that you can't open from inside the cupboard?" She question

"Yeah," He states, peering out of the key hole to see if Rafe is still looking for her

"Well, this is the cupboard,"

"Shit!" He shouts, pulling away from the door to face her. "Shit, it's your parents wedding anniversary and I got you locked in the cupboard,"

"It's alright," She shrugs "They hate each other most the time anyway,"

"Call someone to let you out,"

"Where on this dress did you think there was pockets, you call someone,"

"My phone is in the twinkie,"

"The what?"

"John B's car," JJ sighs. "Fuck princess, I'm so sorry," He groans

"It's fine. Sarah will come looking for me eventually," She shrugs. He nods, watching as she sits down on the ground, patting the space next to her.

He obliges, sitting next to her, knees touching in the tight space.

"You look nice tonight, I like the shirt and tie," She compliments, he can feel himself blush and is glad the cupboard is dark enough she probably can't see it.

"Y'know what you said on the boat the other day?" She questions, he immediately knows what she's referring too "About how girls like me don't date boys like you,"

"Yeah," He confirms

"Why is that?" She questions quietly

"I couldn't make you happy princess. Your parents would hate me. I couldn't take you on the fancy dates you're used to. You wouldn't be happy,"

"My parents love you, they think you're resourceful and hard working. I hate the stuffy dates figure 8 boys take me on," She informs, he laughs a little at that. "Besides, you already make me happy. I'm just saying Maybank, if you don't wanna date me just say it, don't try and put it on me,"

JJ isn't really sure how to react. How to explain he desperately wanted to date her, wanted her to be his girl and wanted to shower her in love and adoration. He isn't sure how to tell her that by inadvertently telling him she wanted to date him she had made him the happiest man on earth. He's not really great with words and it all feels too hard to say.

So, instead, he turns slightly, taking her face in his hands and pulling her to him, his lips crashing against hers and somehow she knows everything he wanted to say.

[danniburgh]

Past Grievances & Turning Points (a RushBit mini-series) part 1

Pairing: Javier Peña x ofc//f!reader with name.

Summary: You just moved with Javier, but you can't live your life wearing his clothes, so the two of you start a road trip to your house in Albuquerque in which you take the time to tell him everything he still needed to know about you.

Word count: +4k

Chapter warnings: mentions of violence

A/N: This is canon RushBit after the main story; i had such a hard time getting into this for some reason, but finally here we are, im so excited for this side of the story, really <3

ao3 // fic index // Masterlist

comments and reblogs are eternally appreciated 💓

gif: @fuckyeahjavierpena

“Javier,” you whispered in his ear again, he shifted slightly and let out a sigh when you ran your hand through his hair “Javi, baby,” you called, he hummed in response and you smiled “breakfast’s ready.”

Javier let out another unintelligible hum and your smile widened, you left a kiss on his cheek and left him there to wake up if he had gotten or not the message; you walked out of the room, made sure to let the door ajar so at least some of the smell of the food you and Chucho had made together woke him up fully and made your way back to the kitchen.

“Still asleep?” Chucho asked when he saw you walk into the kitchen, he was already sitting and eating, Pepe sitting next to him whining for a bite, you nodded and sat next to him.

“He has a lot to make up for.” you teased, Chucho grunted a smile while you poured maple syrup on your pancakes.

“At least he doesn’t get those nightmares anymore, Florecita,” he said, cutting a piece of his sausage and dropping it to the floor for Pepe to eat “ya, ten, perro necio.” (cut it, here, stubborn dog)

“Lucky him.” you muttered with a piece of pancake inside your mouth.

“Is that another of my shirts?” you heard from one side as you cut another piece of pancake, you lifted your head to look at Javier, still rubbing sleep off his eyes as he walked inside the kitchen.

“Yeah,” you replied, Chucho asked for the syrup in a mutter that you had learned to identify in the two weeks you’d been living with them, “why?” you asked, handing the bottle to him.

Javier sat next to you with his plate in one hand and a coffee cup in the other, you looked at Pepe, that sat between you, looking at Javier.

“Just asking.” he said, shrugging as he blew slightly to his coffee.

“I need clothes.” you commented, stretching over your plate to reach for a napkin, Chucho called Pepe to give him another piece of sausage.

“We can go buy some later.” Javier replied with another shrug, you frowned with a slight smile on your face.

“Why? I have my stuff,” you told him, Javier looked at his dad pet Pepe and rolled his eyes, not having really listened to what you said “Javi, I need to go back to Albuquerque.”

“What?” he almost choked on the sip of coffee he was drinking, his brow furrowed. You raised your eyebrows “why? what happened?” he asked.

You looked at Chucho with your mouth slightly agape and a flabbergasted smile on it, the old man looked at you, shrugged and kept on eating.

“My things, Javier,” you enunciated, “I gotta pick up my stuff if I’m gonna live here, I can’t live dressed in your clothes.” Javier relaxed visibly.

“You look good in my clothes,” he leaned back on the chair with a small smirk on his mouth, you threw him your balled napkin and he chuckled, “fine then, when do you wanna leave?”

“First thing tomorrow.” you replied, sipping from your own cup of coffee.

“A’right, we leave tomorrow.” Javier leaned forward and picked up his fork.

“Wait, you're coming with me?” you asked him, Javier didn’t look at you, he cut a piece of sausage. Pepe huffed at the smell.

“Who’s gonna help you pack?”

--

You yawned again as you carried your small bag on your shoulder; you shivered slightly when you walked out of the house to put the bag inside the truck because of your dampened hair making contact with the chilly morning air.

You looked up at the early morning dark sky and closed your eyes as you breathed in the sweet smell of the night dew resting on the little patches of grass around the house; there was something about the few late nights and early mornings you had spent with Javier there, something you hadn’t given yourself the time to put into words or expressing to him. Something that made you feel like you belonged there, like that was your space in the world, in that ranch with the man you loved, his dad, a big dog and the mooing of the cows that could be heard once in a while. You fit there.

You heard Javier’s heavy steps as he walked out of the house and you turned around to look at him as he closed the door.

“Could you make more noise, honey?” you teased with a low voice, Javier rolled his eyes at you and you looked at the boots he was wearing, you shook your head and smiled at him as he walked towards you.

“All ready?” he asked, resting his hands on your waist, gently tugging you against him, you smiled and nodded, “good,” Javier leaned to leave a soft kiss on your lips; your breath hitched at the deepness of that soft kiss, when he broke the contact to look at you, you let out a heavy sigh that made him smile. “I’ll drive.” he whispered, and you nodded again in response.

Javier slid his hands away from you and you bit your lip once he turned to walk around the truck and get inside; you did the same, buckled your seatbelt and shifted on the seat to look at him as he turned on the ignition; you scoffed as he backed the truck slowly through the driveway, wondering if he would be able to endure the thirteen hour drive.

“What’s so funny?” he asked with half a smile, reaching for the seatbelt on his left side, you shook your head and he narrowed his eyes at you.

“You look good today.” you muttered, leaning forward to turn on the radio, Javier let out a chuckle and gripped the steering wheel. A song you didn’t know but was sung in spanish started on the radio and you folded your arms on your chest.

“We’re using the two-eighty-five?” he asked as he turned on the main street, you hummed in response “and then where, we go through El Paso?” you turned to look at him.

“El Paso? no way, that’s extra forty-five minutes,” you huffed “we keep on the two-eighty-five basically until it ends,” Javier groaned “then we turn on the route sixty-six and we’re basically there, the house is on the outskirts.”

“You’re helping me drive, right?” he teased, you laughed.

“Of course, you big baby.” you replied with a smile on your face, Javier scoffed and kept driving with one hand, dropping the other softly on your thigh.

“I was thinking,” he let out as he turned again on the main highway to leave Laredo, you hummed in response as you unfolded your arms, lowered the voice of the radio and took his hand with yours, admiring the little wrinkles of his knuckles, “if we’re gonna live together, we should build our house.”

“What?!” you almost shrieked, Javier let out a chuckle.

“Well, you didn’t think we were gonna live with my dad forever, did you?” he glanced at you.

“Well…” he gripped your hand tightly and you reciprocated the grip, the thought made you nervous; it was another step, that, although it was very obvious, it also seemed enormous in comparison to what it had been happening since you arrived at Laredo “I guess you’re right.”

“You sure?” Javier asked, having turned again to start driving through the highway, he looked at you for a few seconds before looking back at the road.

You wanted to nod, you wanted to say yes and unbuckle your seatbelt and shift on the bench seat and kiss his cheek until your lips were numb; but at the same time the thought of a physical representation of your permanent stay there frightened you. Not too long ago Javier had told you he wasn’t sure about feeling resentment in the future. He had told you he didn’t know if some day he would wake up and decide he hated you.

Javier looked at you again and tightened the already tight grip on your hand; he was the man you were leaving everything for; your body and your heart and your instinct were telling you to leap and jump onto whatever he wanted to do with you, onto whichever plan he had already made in his head, into the brick castle he was building on a cloud.

But your mind, that one was betraying the very sentiment that had driven you to Laredo in the first place; it didn’t know. It wasn’t sure.

“I mean…” you muttered, Javier said nothing, waiting, expecting, “yeah.” you let out, your eyes glued to the windshield and to the early morning sky, still dark, purple with the reflection of the sun slowly arriving.

“Amor, you don’t sound very convinced.” Javier chuckled out almost nervously, glancing at you once again. He wanted to stop the truck, he wanted to pull over and turn off the ignition and turn fully to you and ask you what was going on; he wanted to study your face and hold you close to him until you mouthed and voiced what was going on inside that head of yours. He hated not knowing what you were thinking.

“I think I’m just nervous,” you said, lifting the entanglement that was your fingers around his and kissing his knuckles softly. You didn’t want to overthink it; you had made a decision, you had decided to stay with him for as long as he had you. And, if he was planning on building a house and building a life, it felt like he was thinking about something permanent. “have you thought where?”

Javier let out a short sigh and decided to not ask about your thoughts anymore; he knew you would say you were fine because it was your default response. So he decided to go in the direction you were leading.

“Right there in the ranch,” he muttered; you smiled at him, Javier looked at you briefly and recognized that smile as one of disbelief, “I’m serious, there's a piece of field on the opposite side of the paddocks, we can build there.” he said, shrugging.

“Chucho’s gonna let us do that?” you asked him, Javier slid off his hand of your grip to scratch his jaw and nodded.

“He’s the one who offered the land.” he replied, you covered your mouth with both hands and frowned; your throat closed at the thought of him having that very same conversation with his father and Chucho just offering his own property for you and him.

“You talked to him about it?” you asked him, your voice slightly muffled by your own hands, Javier huffed and nodded with a smirk on his face.

“Why you’re not buying what I say?” his smile widened, you shifted on the seat as closer as the seatbelt let you and reached for his hand.

“It just doesn’t sound familiar to me.” you muttered with a tight lipped smile, playing with his fingers.

“What do you mean?” he questioned, you let out a sigh and turned to look at him; Javier eyed you and the road back and forth for a few seconds.

“Well, I haven’t received that kind of affection from my parents, y’know?” you let out, Javier nodded, he gripped your hand and brought it to his mouth, brushing your skin with his dry, soft lips, tickling it with his mustache, “Idunno, feels foreign even when I’m seeing it happen before my eyes.” you explained, Javier kissed the back of your hand and let his and yours rest on his thigh.

“Pop can be a hard man sometimes,” he said, his voice deep with some emotion you could barely see in his eyes “but he loves very openly.”

“Like you.” you muttered out, Javier smiled and shook his head a couple of times.

“Maybe,” he replied, “I haven’t asked yet.” he teased.

You wrinkled your nose at his response and he chuckled. You leaned to raise the radio volume again; a grupero song that you recognized immediately was barely starting on the station, making you groan and change it.

“What?” Javier asked while you pressed the forward button to fish for another station.

“That fucking song,” you muttered, “it’s about fucking Felix Gallardo.” you said.

“He has a song?” Javier questioned, you turned to him and narrowed your eyes.

“He has several, that one is the newest,” you mumbled, settling for a pop station that was playing some new song by Mariah Carey, Javier scowled at it and you leaned back on the seat “I don’t know why they’re playing it in the fucking radio.”

“Maybe stations don’t know.” he shrugged, you scoffed.

“I can tell them, it’s shockingly obvious.” Javier chuckled at your reply and you tightened the grip on his hand as hard as you could.

“Hey!” he complained, sliding his hand away and stretching his fingers “sorry.”

“Yeah.” you let out, crossing your arms on your chest and setting your eyes on the view outside, Javier groaned lowly.

“Amor,” he called out, you shook your head, “I would know why it makes you so angry if you told me, y’know?” he tried to reason, you looked at him and then looked back at the road; the sun was rising in the morning sky and the, yellow, orange and scarlet tones of the sun telling the night sky a temporary goodbye were reflecting on the puffy clouds above the fields.

“Yeah, I know,” you replied, feeling his hand searching for yours. You unfolded your arms once again and took his hand, knowing there was one last thing about you he needed to know and that was long overdue, a talk you had promised since the first time you spent a night together, since the first time he had held you inside his arms when you told him half trues and blatant lies. Knowing there was just that one thing to get over with so your chest didn’t feel as constricted as it felt when you talked about it. “you really have to know.”

“I’d love to hear it,” he muttered softly, brushing your knuckles with his thumb “and we have time.” he whispered, trying to lighten the mood inside the truck, you huffed and let out a heavy, audibly sigh.

“I don’t even know where to start,” you mumbled, biting your lip and looking at him, the soft, recently born sunshine that was taking over the sky slowly reflected on his skin and made his deep, brown eyes glimmer; Javier looked back at you and raised his eyebrows, expecting, ready to listen. “alright, I think I told you I was a desk agent, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, when was that?” he asked, you let out a chuckle.

“Uhm, since I was out of the academy until almost the end of ninety-one,” you replied, “when they sent me down to Juárez,” you tried to recount the time, Javier groaned and you laughed silently, “yeah, around five years.”

“Really?” Javier let out, you nodded “Jesus.”

“Yeah,” you scoffed “I was in the New Mexico office, mainly focused on intel and trying to put my masters to good use,” Javier hummed and played with your hand “wasn’t so bad, had the chance to go on some raids,” you muttered, “we were just looking for low life dealers, whoever controlled which town, y’know, the usual.”

“And when you told me they sent you to México as a punishment,” he started, you looked at him, “was that the truth?”

“Yeah,” you muttered, “that was true, I tried to cut a deal with some idiot distributor for intel.” Javier huffed.

“That doesn’t end well.” he let out, ripping a low chuckle out of you.

“It really doesn’t, the shithead got caught, he said my name in the interrogation room and by the next week I was crossing the border with a suitcase and I think a cardboard box with files,” you laughed, Javier grinned, “I barely knew any actual spanish.” he frowned.

“Really?” he asked, you nodded, Javier tutted his lips “well, you learned it good.” he teased.

“I had to,” you said with a shrug “see, by this point the mexican government had finally figured out Felix Gallardo was still running his business from jail,” you explained, Javier hummed in response, sliding once more his hand away from yours and patting his chest to reach for his sunglasses that hung from his shirt, “and there was this whole deal with the plazas and no one really knew who managed what, so basically they sent me to study the area’s main supplier,” Javier shook his sunglasses to open them and put them on, the sun was starting to reflect on the windshield, “if I wanted to do my job right I had to learn the language.”

“How long did it take you?” Javier asked, you shifted on the bench seat to tuck your leg under the other.

“Around a year with intensive help from…” you stopped suddenly, Javier turned to you with an eyebrow raised, he looked at you and noticed the way your head tilted, he put his hand on your thigh, “from Marcos,” you muttered, “he taught me.”

Javier only hummed in reply, he didn’t know if he should ask you about him; he groaned to himself and felt your stare, he was sure you also remembered the way he had asked if you were fucking him for intel all those months before that felt like a lifetime; you gave him a chuckle.

“I didn’t fuck him,” you whispered, drawing a chuckle out of him, he shook his head before you fell onto a brief silence that he swore he could cut with a blunt knife “I just got him fired.”

“Baby,” he started, you shook your head, “it wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe,” you muttered, “he still lost his job.”

Javier sighed, his thumb started drawing slow circles on the covered skin of your thigh.

“You talked to him?” he asked, you let out a slow whine.

“Yeah, I tried to apologize,” you said, remembering how you worked yourself up for three days in order to have the courage to dial his number and talk to him; you closed your eyes and took Javier’s hand, “he didn’t even know it had been because of me, so…” you felt your chest constricting, Marcos’s surprised, hurt voice still echoing inside your head, “let’s just say that bridge there is burned.”

Javier tried to reassure you in the only way his body knew how, he gripped your hand and tried to bring you closer to him; you unbuckled your seatbelt and shifted closer, resting your head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” his voice came out soft and sweet, you huffed; cherishing the way he was slowly voicing stuff he knew would make you feel better.

“I guess it had to happen,” you replied with a soft shrug, “we spent years together, I learned a lot from him,” Javier hummed appreciatively and you smiled, “we were sent together down to Guadalajara,” you told him, looking out to the Texan road, wondering where exactly were you driving through, “we had to focus on Sinaloa too, we had just learned they had this, weird, sort of partnership with Juárez,” Javier nodded once, “and a fucking rivalship with Tijuana.” you chuckled tiredly.

“What a fucking mess,” Javier teased, you nodded and stretched to place a kiss on his cheek, Javier smiled, “that must’ve been hard, amor.”

Javier tried to imagine himself in your place; he had been there for a couple of years before being sent to Colombia; a small taskforce to look for the missing Agent Camarena, he didn't like it. He felt like the violence and the way the narcos were destroying his parent’s country, and his, in a certain way, felt too personal. He didn’t know if he would’ve come out alive if he had been stationed there instead of Colombia.

“It was,” you replied, stirring on the seat to tuck your other leg under you, “the amount of hours we spent trying to analyze interactions between those three cartels still haunts me,” you tried to joke, Javier scoffed, “if I compare it to how Colombia was…” you reflected, Javier hummed warningly, “in my experience,” you smiled and clarified in the same tone he hummed, Javier chuckled, “for me, México was crazier.”

“I imagine,” he said, you looked at him trying to read his face from up close; in the last two weeks you had spent in his house you had re-met him. It was like he was another man with the same essence; he was relaxed, talked more, his sense of humour came out at all times and you had lost count of the times he had made you laugh until your eyes teared up and your belly hurt. It was like being in a relationship with a man you barely knew but had a deep, meaningful love for. He turned to you and smirked “what?” he asked.

“I love you.” you whispered.

Javier smiled at you and, with his eyes skilfully on the road, leaned down to leave a soft kiss on your lips.

“I love you too.” he replied and you left another soft kiss on his mouth, Javier turned to look at the road.

“We should look for something to eat,” you said against the skin of his jaw, he chuckled, “I’m gonna be hungry really soon.”

“We definitely don’t want a hungry flower around here.” he teased, you swatted gently at his arm with a feigned frown.

“I just wanna have energy to keep telling you about México,” you said, Javier nodded, “where was I?”

“Rivalry with Tijuana.” he recalled, you opened your mouth and mouthed a soft ah, nodding.

“So, to make the story short they all wanted to kill each other.” you told him.

“Sounds familiar.” Javier let out growly.

“Right? why can’t they be diplomatic?” you joked, making him chuckle, “Tijuana had thrown a bomb into one of Chapo’s houses and that was a whole ‘nother mess,” Javier blinked heavily at the word bomb and you winced when he gripped your hand tighter, “you get it,” you muttered, he nodded, chewing the inside of his mouth, “so Sinaloa responded with a shooting and killed a lot of people, family of Gallardo,” Javier looked at you in disbelief, “yeah, cousins and one of his aunts.”

Javier said nothing, he kept driving normally but you could feel the way his respiration had become faster, you wondered what he was remembering after what you had said.

“It all escalated very quickly, mind you, this was ninety-two, I spent my birthday in a hotel room in Guadalajara,” you chuckled.

“Why?”

“The cartel knew we were in town, they were trying to track us so we moved hotels for a while.” you replied with a smile on your face while the memory of a small, supermarket store-bought cake with a hard frosting and one single candle painted itself inside your head.

“Who’s we?” Javier asked you, you rolled your eyes.

“Marcos and I,” you told him, Javier groaned in feigned anger and you laughed at him, “he sang me the mexican happy birthday.” you bragged.

“They’re called las mañanitas, Flor.” he chuckled, making you laugh harder at the tone of his voice.

“Yes, that,” Javier shook his head at you, “we had to move to Culiacán, though,” you let out, sitting up straighter at the sight of a gas station, “we had the tip that el Chapo had moved because of all the violence, so we followed him too,” you pointed at it, “can we stop? I’m hungry.”

“Yeah,” Javier changed lanes so he could drive into the gas station and parking next to a pump, you reached for his left hand and took it to look at his watch, you’d been driving for around five hours, the both of you sighed at the same time and he turned off the ignition, “can you get me some sunflower seeds? I’m gonna fill up the tank.” he asked when you reached for your bag that rested on the truck’s floor, you looked at him as he opened the door and got out.

“Sunflower seeds? a’right grandpa.” you teased, opening the door, Javier laughed silently, watching you as you hopped off the truck, closed the door and walked towards the store.

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[brekkerism]

BASIC INSTINCT (Part 1 - A Spencer Reid Series)

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Summary: (Y/N) has recently joined the bau through non conventional and rather privileged means. Couple that with a dark and troubled past, all she really wants is a fresh start. What she didn’t predict getting in her way of that, was one Special Agent Dr Spencer Reid. She thinks it’s hopeless and he’ll hate her forever. That is, until she sees Dr Reid on a rather...unusual place.

A/n: I kinda can’t believe this is my first Spencer Reid/Criminal minds fic. I’ve been obsessed for so long but I never got the courage to post anything. Well, we’ll see how this one goes. I really do hope all of you enjoy this, since I’m planning to make it multi chapters and I’m too in love to abandon it! Forgive me for not giving y’all the smut right away but good things come to those who are patient! And also huge thanks to @imagining-in-the-margins for being such a wonderful human and helping me beta this first one. Shout out to all the lovely people in the discord for encouraging me enough to write this. And also for my sweet liv, bc if she didn’t like this I would def not have posted.

Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader

Word count: 2320

Rating: R-no actual hard smut. For now.

Content warning: 12+ years age gap, description of bdsm scenes and play, swear words, brief fingering

*********

Since the first day I stepped in the bau, I knew Dr.Spencer Reid would not like me one bit.

Call it a gut feeling, a hunch, or maybe my justified pessimism.

 I knew the moment my dad told me, fresh out of the academy and not even slightly experienced at 24 years old, that I ‘mysteriously’ got a generous offer for a job with one of the best teams the FBI had to offer, that I wasn’t going to be liked by a lot of people. Because it wasn’t a mystery how I got the position. It was actually really plain and simple, and could be boiled down to one word:

Nepotism

I didn’t ask for it; I didn’t want it (no matter how much I actually wanted the position, but by my earning it on my own merits), but I completely understood something like this was likely to happen. I knew it the moment I moved back home and decided that the only thing worthwhile I really wanted to do was join the FBI. My dad was a good guy who was just trying to help me, his intentions were just a little misguided. It happens.

What doesn’t ‘just’ happen is that my dad is the deputy director of the FBI. His helping me was ‘making calls’ and ‘pulling strings’, which instantly gives my peers every reason to doubt every achievement I have.

But I was completely ready for it.  

What I wasn’t ready for is for everyone on the team to be normal and so welcoming to me, like I was any other agent. It was everything I wanted.

Well, everyone did that except him. I couldn’t figure it out why, but from the first minute he turned those eyes towards me, looking me up and down but never quite reaching my eyes, I could feel the scrutiny under the stare. Almost like he was saying “Really? This is it?”.

But with a blink it was gone, and he turned away from me and put his attention to the book in his hand so fast I almost thought I imagined the whole thing.

But I knew, I knew I saw it. And I knew that even if I didn’t want it, my body and brain would spend days trying to make him acknowledge me again, to look me up and down again, to try and prove to him what I’ve been trying to prove to everyone:

I deserved to be there. I could earn it by myself. I just need the chance to do it.

And so, my journey to try to not only be useful but a valuable agent, someone he would have to notice began.

 And it was shit.

Everyone was so willing not only to teach me, but to listen to my input.

Luke always had my back, both of us being the newbies in the team. JJ and Tara were always open to listening to theories, doubts and rambling, besides being totally badass inspirations. Penelope always had a eager and friendly attitude that could comfort me immediately, and she welcomed me with open arms. Emily and Rossi were patient, while also pushing me to be so much better, and being the best mentors they could be.

None of them even seemed to have even a passing thought of giving me special treatment or harsher judgment. It was almost perfect.

If it wasn’t for Special Fucking Agent Doctor Reid. He wouldn’t even be an asshole towards me, oh no, It was much, much worse. He ignored me.

He was almost happy to pretend I didn’t even exist. Of course there were situations that he couldn’t avoid socializing, as minimal as it was, but it was like he was talking to a wall. He looked at me like he was surprised that I was even there. He wouldn’t acknowledge me unless he was made to. He wouldn’t even correct me when I was wrong. At this point I was sure that I could be screaming bloody murder at him and he wouldn’t take his eyes off whatever he was doing.

It was the most frustrating and irritating thing that has ever happened to me. It made my blood boil over. It made me cry with sorrow.

And I couldn’t even figure out why. I didn’t know what it was that made me crazy because Spencer Reid wouldn’t look my way.

So I did what every angry and frustrated normal young adult does.

I went to a sex dungeon to drink my mixed feelings away and watch BDSM scenes. Duh.

Even though I wasn’t going there to play, and I thought I would never be able to play again, it was still a safe place for me. A place where I could see people that once knew the real me and provided a place free of any judgement. People who didn’t know who I was outside of those walls, who thought of me as just another person in that safe and different little world.

It also helped that watching, as much as it wasn’t my preference before, was the only thing that could properly get me off these days. And after everything, I thought I still deserved the ability to enjoy some parts of it.

And so, after saying my goodbyes to Pen, JJ amd Emily, and finding flimsy excuses not to join them at the bar for Friday drinks, I hopped the elevator, wondering how long would it take me to get properly dressed and drive across town, and if I was going to be able to call more of my old friends.

But all my happy thoughts of getting to immerse myself on a world I still loved were immediately clouded when a hand stopped the elevator and went in with me. His hand.

Great, just the perfect ending to an shitty day. A awkward elevator ride with Spencer Reid. And as always, he didn’t bother to acknowledge me, even though it was just the two of us riding down.

I was trying so hard to be in a good mood; to ignore the shitty end to a shittier case and go somewhere where I could try to be happy. But I just had to be met with his silence, his awkwardness, his existence in general. I didn’t want to feel like that today. So before I could stop myself, I did something stupid

 “So, what are your plans for the weekend, Doctor?”

Stupid. Stupid, stupid. Like he would voluntarily participate in small talk with me, something he already didn’t like, with someone he didn’t even bother to not like.

 “I think I’m going to go to a party with a friend today.”

Now that took me by surprise. No short replies? No one syllable answers? He actually told me something out of his own free will? He engaged in small talk?!

 “O-oh? I didn’t know you were one for partying... like, at all. Which friend are you going with? Do I know him?”

Talk to me. Keep engaging in small talk, please.

 “You don’t really know me well enough to judge if I am one for partying or not, now, do you? And you definitely wouldn’t know her. I don’t only hang out with people on our team, contrary to popular belief.”

Well that was extremely uncalled for. And rude. I thought that it was the first time he ever referred to me as part of the team, but that was an small detail to analyze later.

 “No need to be defensive or rude, I was just asking.”

 “Well, don’t.”

He was back to having that stupid blank expression on his face, back to not dignifying me with a proper answer, and that just wouldn’t do, would it?

I had a response. I had an excellent, spectacular comeback to use, but before I could actually defend myself in any way, the elevator dinged open. He couldn’t get out fast enough.

It was infuriating. So I did the only reasonable thing:

I followed him to his car to give him a piece of my mind.

Because of those immensely long legs, he almost got there quick enough to drive away and avoid me, but I would not let my stubby short legs get in the way.

I got my hand in before he could close his door, much like he did with the elevator. He still refused to look up at me but, the cheer disbelief and confusion on his face was enough of a response. Can’t ignore me now, asshole.

“You know, the only reason I don’t know anything about you, is because you pretend like I don’t exist. So don’t be needlessly rude to me. It’s better to keep not saying anything at all.”

And there it was. It was just tip of the iceberg, but at least I acknowledged it. I could actually feel a smirk forming on my face.

“Remove your hand please.”

And he finally looked up at me. All the disbelief and annoyance on his face were gone, replaced by that utterly bored and blank stare.

I actually wanted to scream. How was this the same guy that couldn’t stop talking and rambling enthusiastically about any and everything to anyone, the same person who had a perfect smile and warmth on his eyes for everyone else. How.

It was too frustrating. So I stepped back, removing my hand from his car door and walking towards my own car. It was better to just let it end already so I can wallow in my humiliation over this failed attempt at confrontation.

It almost put me in a bad enough mood that I didn’t want to go to the ‘club,’ but I had already promised Amara, who was not only one of my best friends but also happened to be dating that particular BDSM dungeon’s Mistress. There was no getting out even if I wanted to.

 And I didn’t really want to.

 ****

 A hour and dress change later, I was ready to go. This was absolutely nothing like the old outfits I used to wear for this events, but then again, I wasn’t the same girl. Not entirely.

So I opted for a silky black dress with a cowl neck and the best heels I had. It was sexy enough for a night of normal clubbing, but rather tame for a night at a dungeon. It was exactly what I wanted. It was less likely in that type of dungeon for anybody to approach or proposition me if I didn’t look experienced and in my element.

Even if I secretly was.

So I got ready, took my time to properly breathe, and left everything that wasn’t this night or positive thoughts behind the locked door of the apartment. I could come back to them later.

Right now, I was going to be happy and have fun.

 *****

I was not having fun anymore. It was unfortunate, and I felt like somehow that this had to be the bad mood I was in from a particular encounter earlier. I just couldn’t find anything that excited me the way I wanted it to. I had made the rounds with Amara, and she had showed me all of the new rooms and new toys before every space got occupied with busy couples and groups.

It was beyond fun exploring before the spaces were being actually used, and imagining what each person would get out of those rooms. It was a pleasant and happy feeling.

But soon enough the dungeon got filled with more and more people, and each room was occupied and used. Most were open for all that wanted to watch, but each scene I passed failed to get my attention. It was especially more daunting and lonely when Amara left to put on a show with her girlfriend in the main room.

And as pretty and wonderful as they looked, I just didn’t feel like watching a couple as in love as Amara and Celeste performing tonight. It was just... a little too much for me. After everything, most loving was.

No, what I was looking for was not that. I was looking for the thing I used to crave. The thing that used to keep me going at all times of the day.

I was looking for fucking. Not couples making love, not couples having sex, not pet play, not elaborate scenes or people using toys so strange and complicated I couldn’t make out what was what.

I was looking for someone completely fucking dominating their partner.

It shouldn’t be impossible to find. Not on a Friday night, and not in a club this good.

And I did. I finally found it.

The dom had his back to the audience and the door with the little window I was watching through. He was turned toward his sub standing on the side while she spread her legs on the bed, her hands tied up to the headboard, showing her pussy to the audience along the wall. It was the perfect scene for me. In fact, too perfect.

She even looked a little like me, in fact. Same build, similar hair. It got me even more excited to watch this through. I took a deep breath and finally opened the door. Stepping in, I leaned against the door, having a direct view to the bed.

And god did I want to watch.

The dom still had his back to us,but I wasn’t watching him. Rather, I watched the girl’s cunt and how he was fingering it, not saying anything for her or us yet.

He has really nice hands.

Really, really nice. In fact I don’t think I’ve seen such nice hands since –

Not the time!

The girls face looked rather blissful, and I imagined three of those pretty and long fingers should be doing just the trick for her.

But then she did something that displeased him.

She moaned. Loudly.

The sound was immediately followed by a sharp slap in her face.

Fuck, that made me wet.

But before I could even entertain the idea of getting my hands inside my panties, the dom spoke.

He spoke in a voice I almost never heard directed towards me, but could pick out in any crowd.

He spoke in the voice of the man that made me so mad I almost didn’t come to the club in the first place.

“Are my fingers inside you too much? Cause I’ll fucking stop if you can’t obey and stay quiet.”

 And I froze. I froze and panicked and had to stop myself from screaming by bringing a hand up to my  mouth.

 Because that was Spencer Reid, in a BDSM dungeon, dominating a girl right in front of me.

Taglist: @imagining-in-the-margins @spencer-reid-in-a-pool @gretaamyk @prettyricky187 @sunlight-moonrise @fanficlibrary82 @blazinvixen @samanddeanstolethetardis221b @httpnxtt @reidetic @hyper-fxation @blushingspencer @reidlusts @wishingwellwriting @redbullchick

I feel like I missed a lot of peeps but please know I’m still thankful ma loves

[keltonwrites]

Where no one knows your name

How many times is a person meant to make new friends? When I moved into an apartment in DC with an absolutely iconic girl from Craigslist, I wrote in my journal, “you never know when you’ll meet your next bridesmaid.” Charmingly juvenile, as I was 24 years old. Ironic, as I never had any bridesmaids. And embarrassing, knowing I wrote something that’s surely been embroidered on a bachelorette party t-shirt by now. My point was: you can meet people you fall in love with anywhere, anytime, assuming your heart (and calendar) are open. Now my heart and calendar are open and I am one of Elizabeth Bennet’s sad sisters, cloying and desperate for attention while everyone at the ball ignores me. Meeting people here is unnerving and hapless and eye-clawingly vulnerable. My first new friend told me she was moving away in a few months. Do you invest deeply in hopes of another faraway friendship? Do you just go back to waving as you pass on the street? I like this girl! What an embarrassing thing to have to say to someone! Do you just invite people to every and anything like a lunatic? I can’t even remember to call the people I am forever-and-ever in cahoots with. I’m also deeply bound by what I’ll call the Movie Trap: say it’s 3pm during not-a-pandemic, and you get the urge to see a movie. You look at the showings, and there’s one you really want to see at 7:15. You think to yourself, “I should make an effort,” and you text a friend. “Hey, you wanna go see This Cool Movie at 7:15 tonight?” No one ever says yes. Don’t give me an example of when someone has, because it’s always one of these answers:

“Oooh, I’m actually seeing it with Kate tomorrow - wanna come?”

“Can we go to the 9pm showing? Stuck at work.”

“Yeah but let’s see Movie You’ll Fucking Hate instead.”

Now maybe I’m just lighting flares guiding you to the worst parts of my personality, but this drives me nuts. No, Liz, I don’t want to go tomorrow. I want to go tonight. At 7:15. So I can be in bed by 10. And you’d have to drag my dead body and prop open my eyes to get me to see something like Marriage Story in theaters. The Movie Trap is a big reason I usually hang out by myself, or I make plans weeks in advance. (Don't I sound like a blast.) Just the idea of being like, “I like you! Wanna hang out in October?” makes me want to collapse into a puddle of sad adulthood. Which is why on Friday at 4:30pm, when a girl I’d met a week prior asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I just said yes. I put on a pretty dress, did my makeup, put stuff in a purse, and drove the 25 minutes to town. It was really fun! And how novel to have new contacts in my phone like “Maggie blue house” and “Jess concert friend” — a throwback to the days of “Greg guy on L train” and “Devon ad party.” The very concept of not knowing someone’s last name or even needing it, and a year from now updating their contact info and smiling at your origin story. But for the most part, no one is in our phones. In terms of phone numbers collected, here is the list:

Two friends we knew prior who thank god you guys exist.

New friend who is moving away.

New friend who is game to drink tequila and ride mountain bikes.

Neighbor-not-yet-friend who I really fucking like and am not sure how to cross hang-out threshold with.

​Not to say there aren’t any other prospects or people I’m platonically gaga over, but I don’t have their phone numbers. There are honestly a lot of people like this because when you live in a small town (and you’re from the Midwest) you say “oop, sorry” to every person/object you bump into, and you say “hi :)” to every person you see. These are the rules. If I drive by you and don’t wave, it’s because I was so deep in a daydream I probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. This isn’t acceptable, because in our urgency to tattoo our vaccination status on our foreheads so we can make friends, it turns out just driving by someone can be a viable strategy. A few days ago, a man was driving by our kitchen window and then our driveway, and then he reversed back up to the kitchen window and started waving. Ben went outside — it was that kind of wave. The man had seen from his car a smokejumper emblem on the back of a truck in our driveway. “Hey, are you a smokejumper?” We aren’t. But my dad was, and he was in town visiting, accompanied by the emblem on the back of his truck. The guy said we should drink sometime. Numbers were not exchanged. We’ll call that a node, because it’s not quite a connection. And it’s mainly nodes, waiting to be connected, to have relevance. But first, no matter who you’re trying to befriend, you have to answer everyone else’s Do I Care Quiz. The quiz is employed by 93% of locals to determine how they feel about you existing within their personal 50-mile radius. The first question is non negotiable:

1) Are you visiting?

Variations on this question include “how long are you in town?” or “what brings y’all to town?” or my least favorite and most insulting, “did you just finish Jeeping?” I know I have blonde hair and say y’all, but how dare you. (Also, to be clear, you can own a Jeep, customize your Jeep, mod out your Jeep, and love your Jeep, but you’re not Jeeping until you drive too fast through a tiny town so you can hurl your Jeep over a mountain pass without ever getting out of it.) So the answer to “are you visiting” is “no, I live here.” Which brings us to the next question, my favorite for how loaded the gun, kneeling in the grass, scope on, target locked it is.

2) Are you part-time or full-time?

The first time I answered this question, I didn’t realize it was essentially like asking how someone voted in the 2020 election. The judgment was cocked and ready and the palpable relief/joy/or at the very least, tolerance, exuded by answering “full-time” was like when the sun comes out from behind the clouds on a 40 degree day. I was fine, but wow that does feel better. The third question though does not have a standard hoped-for answer. This is where nodes turn to connections turn to phone numbers.

3) What brings you here?

It seems like the best possible answer would be saying you work in town, and you’re going to begin construction on displaced-worker housing to ensure the people who run this town can actually live in it. We’d have everyone’s phone number. Saying you’re a writer who works remotely and bought a house from a legendary and beloved local who could no longer afford it is really something you keep to yourself. But in the interest of making friends, I just word vomit my entire history. We might as well find out at the onset if I make your eyes roll back into your skull. Not at all threatening that all it takes is a single social signal misinterpreted to be the absolute death knell of my ability to make friends in a town of some 1400 adults. In fact, I’ll share one such interaction. I was hiking with Cooper, about 5 miles by foot away from my house. I was on a trail, crossing a sloped meadow, and a group was traversing up the hillside to the trail. I said hi, where y’all coming from. One girl answered and we talked about the trail. She eyed me up and down. “Did you just move here?” “I did!” “I served your family last week,” she said. “Oh,” that phrasing. “Must have been my in-laws.” “Heard you bought Jack’s house. Such a bummer when locals like that are forced out.” “We didn’t even know about his house,” I said. “We were looking at another house and he asked his realtor if he could get us to come see his house. We just loved it, and him!” She had no emotional reaction to this. “You moved from California?” she asked. (Dangerous question.) “Yeah, got these sea level lungs, haha,” attempting to disarm with humor was a failure, “but couldn’t be happier to be out of California.” “It’s not like this all year. Winter’s really hard here, you’re in for a rude awakening.” “Well California’s the last place I lived, but I’m not from there. I’ve lived in brutal winters. At least Colorado gets sun!” I laugh with cloaked loathing. “It’s different when you live at altitude,” she said, like no human aside from her had ever been literally anywhere. “Are you trying to go around?” She indicated the path behind her. “No, y’all go ahead, just gonna wait to give you your space. I’m sure you’re faster than me.” “K, good luck making it to the lake." Maybe she was thirsty. Maybe she was hungover. Maybe she just has vicious delivery, but it felt like every blade of grass was leaning against the wind to listen. She was with four other people and not one of them said a word. I left that interaction not wanting to see another human ever again. But that interaction, and her intimate knowledge of exactly which house I lived in, made me want to decorate like we lived in a gingerbread house, all candy canes and plum drops, screaming to any passerby that we’re friendly. One of the mayor’s first questions to me was “what are you going to do to the house?” There are rules here about what your house can look like, and I kept emphasizing we bought the house because we loved it, not because we wanted to change everything about it. And now, instead of wanting to decorate the interior, I want to put up shades so we don’t contribute to light pollution, I want to hang a sign by the water spigot saying “grab some if you need” for hikers and mountain bikers, I want to paint a sign for the wild mint by our door that says, “I mint to tell you to take some,” because our neighbors were openly panicked they wouldn’t be able to just grab mint from the cabin’s garden anymore. Without question, COVID makes things harder. Dinner parties feel like dares. Dropping cookies off at someone’s house feels invasive. Grabbing a drink feels like the ultimate sign of trust. But at least we have nodes who can connect who can think to invite us and who can see that despite having lived in California, we’re not all that bad. In the meantime, I’ll be painting signs about water and mint, hoping to garner the benefit of the doubt from the so beautifully, earnestly, and waiting-to-see-if-you’re-worth-it doubtful.

Subscribe to the newsletter at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites — high altitude relocation and renovation in a tiny mountain town.

[robininthelabyrinth]

My third and final prompt I promise: Wen Zhuliu. WEN ZHULIU. What if instead of being Wen Chao's babysitter/bodyguard he was a different young master's? Picturing him heaving a long suffering sigh at Huisang or Zixuan's antics is hilarious to me. I just want to see all the different interactions with the Core Melting Hand!

I apologize in advance for writing a fic that technically fulfils your prompt but also is...not quite about what you asked for

That Bitter Draught (ao3) 

It wasn’t that Su She was entirely unaware of what he was like.

He was a man almost entirely consumed by bitterness and envy, his eyes so firmly fixed on what his neighbors had that he couldn’t appreciate the blessings in his own life. He was selfish and ungrateful, and hated the ones he admired the most, hated all of the ones who were better off than him, even the ones who pretended to be fair and equitable about it.

Especially those.

He’d been born to an ordinary family, not cultivators at all – a feeder family doing agriculture for the sake of the great Lan sect, who never much thought nor cared about where their vegetables came from. He waded knee-deep through the muck and the mire for the first six years of his life before some passing Lan cultivator had discovered he had a bit of potential, and next thing he knew his parents had handed him off to be someone’s servant, taking him away from everyone he’d ever known – from his parents and his animals and his siblings and his brother – and he was supposed to be grateful for it.

There wasn’t anything wrong with being a servant, Su She supposed. It was a livelihood like anyone else’s, and maybe he wouldn’t be so bitter about it if he’d stayed that way, the way he was supposed to, as a servant with just enough skill at cultivating to not disturb the tranquil and thoughtful atmosphere of the Cloud Recesses as he rushed around doing all the things that were necessary.

(The Cloud Recesses – so pretty and clean and pure, except there was muck here, too, and no amount of pretending by the sect disciples that their shit didn’t stink the way everyone else’s did would change that.)

Maybe Su She would have been fine with being a servant, though he suspected he wouldn’t – in the darkness of the middle of the night he sometimes thought that his ability to be content had been taken away when he had, that the black gaping hole in his heart that had once held his family would always be a yawning pit that always wanted more than he had, forever incapable of getting the one thing that would fill it up again – but he didn’t stay that way.

No, see, Su She was good at cultivating. He was really good - not quite a genius, but his hard work paid off and he got better and better at what he was doing even though they barely gave him any time to do it in.

After all, someone had to make sure that everything was ready for the sect disciples when they woke up at the start of the mao hour, and that meant he had to be hard at work by yin, and of course the fact that they went to sleep at the end of the xu hour only meant that his work stretched well into hai, but despite all the disadvantages they loaded him down with he cultivated like a madman at every free hour, squeezing it in between work and even more degrading work. He got better and better and better, and eventually, finally, someone noticed him again.

This time they made him a disciple.

They expected him to be grateful for that, too. As if he hadn’t bought the chance with his own sweat and tears and blood, and all to be one of the blessed ones, one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who could – if they were meritorious enough – get a pass to leave the sect to go where they liked.

(Moling was too far to reach by foot, not even for the New Year, and he didn’t make enough money to buy a horse. But once he had a sword, gifted to him from the sect, once he could fly – once he was old enough – once he was trusted enough –)

Being a disciple meant that he woke up at mao hour and went to sleep at xu, that his chamber-pot disappeared in the morning as if by magic, that his food was brought to his table instead of being stuffed into his mouth in the crowded staff room right off the kitchen in the brief reprieves he had between duties…all things he had to adjust to, things that were strange and felt almost unnatural.

Now that he was a disciple, he had all the same rights as all the others, the ones who had been born to it instead of raised up from a lower level for it.

It was supposed to mean that they were all equal, all Lan disciples the same, except that all the arrogant young masters looked down their noses at the former servant who’d stepped above his station. They ridiculed him for it: for being ambitious, for being envious, for thinking too highly of himself, for not knowing the things they’d had a chance to learn and he hadn’t, for smelling like the shit no matter how clean he kept his clothing or how much he washed.

Equal – hah!

The worst, though…the worst was the Twin Jades.

Lan Xichen was powerful, yet kind and generous to the point of selflessness, a proper gentleman; Lan Wangji, equally gifted, always did the right thing, no matter the circumstances, his expression solemn and serious, his reputation famous for his righteousness.

Su She hated them. He wanted to be them, wanted to be Lan Wangji so bad it made his blood boil, but he also hated them – hated him.

The Twin Jades. They didn’t deserve to be called that, not with the three year age difference between them and at least four points of difference on their face, if you were looking; not when Su She’s brother had been born so soon before him that he’d been born clutching his ankle as they left the womb together. Not when the only difference, the only difference, between them was that fucking Lan cultivator’s comment that he only had enough room in his cart to take one of them with him.

A servant, even with cultivation potential, was worth less than a bag of bok choy meant to serve as a side dish on a trueborn Lan disciple’s plate, and so his brother was stuck in the muck back at home while Su She fought his way through the muck that was the Lan sect’s glorious principles and discipline.

He didn’t even know for sure if his brother was still alive.

Oh, Su She had the sect’s permission to write them letters, but what would it help? No one in his village could read, he certainly hadn’t been able to before he’d been forcefully taught so that Lan sect elders could pass him notes instead of condescending enough to speak to him, and the cost of paying a scholar to read it to them would be a waste of the money he faithfully sent them out of his wages every month.

So yes, Su She was bitter. Su She hated. Su She envied, and envied Lan Wangji most of all. After all, he was handsome, but not as handsome; he was talented, but not as talented; he was smart, but not as smart; he was powerful, but not as powerful; he was a twin, but no one cared about him and his brother the way they cared about Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen – Lan Wangji, who got to have his older brother with him any time he liked, but spent the entire time standing there stone-faced and driving him away.

And, of course, Lan Wangji also had – him.

Yu Zhuliu was the sort of guest disciple that was really a servant and not a proper Lan disciple, although his cultivation was high enough to rank alongside some of the shining stars of the Lan sect – even more so than most, given his cultivation of the unique ability that had made him renowned throughout the cultivation world as the Core Melting Hand. It was only that he had been too old, at the time the Lan sect had rescued him from some misfortune that Su She had never heard specified, to learn their ways properly, and for some reason the elders resisted allowing him into the sect properly.  

Perhaps it was because he was what was termed an ‘inconvenient child’ of Meishan Yu, the bastard child of a daughter of the clan; a liability that could neither be killed nor kept.

Perhaps it was because his ability was truly too terrifying, attacking as it did the golden core that all cultivators strove so hard and so long to form.

Or perhaps it was simply that he made a very convenient servant.

Yu Zhuliu was, to put a point on it, Lan Wangji’s servant, acting as both bodyguard and attendant.

He was a deputy to help Lan Wangji with whatever he needed, big or small. The Lan sect prided itself on discipline and humility, but only to a certain extent – only to the extent it looked good or was pure – and of course they were desperate to keep their precious young jade safe from the growing predations of Qishan Wen; it was not so strange that they assigned him a bodyguard, and of course if he was already doing that he might as well do the rest.

After all, who could expect a proper young gentleman to care for himself?

Su She hadn’t taken much notice of Yu Zhuliu at first, other than a brief stabbing feeling of pity when he heard of the man’s circumstances. But then one day he’d noticed him rolling his eyes as Lan Wangji stiffly recited the rules in advance of yet another punishment he was inflicting over something minor – no one loved the rules as much as Lan Wangji did. There was a reason nobody talked to him, perfect disciple that he was, and of course unlike the lowly Su She who, despite himself, longed for the company and recognition of his peers, Lan Wangji rose above it all, was above it all. And while no one could claim that his distribution of punishments wasn’t as fair and equitable as might be asked, it was evident to Su She that he only did it that way because it was the subject of yet another rule.

But no one ever seem to notice or care, no one ever thought it as stupid as Su She did, right up until that moment when he’d seen Yu Zhuliu making a long-suffering face like that where Lan Wangji couldn’t see, and Su She couldn’t help but smile a little, heart suddenly warm with a feeling of fellowship.

Yu Zhuliu had seen him smiling, caught his eyes, and rolled his eyes again, this time more pointedly – a gesture aimed just at him, a shared joke – and that was it; Su She was lost.

Su She was in Lan Wangji’s age group, even if they weren’t close (no one was close to Lan Wangji), so it wasn’t hard to find time to go over and talk to Yu Zhuliu.

The conversations were mostly one-sided to start with, which Su She had expected. Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man, and of course there was always that master-servant divide lying between them like a gulf. Still, Su She had been a servant once, which Yu Zhuliu knew – everyone knew – and in time Su She got him to ease up a little, talk back, commiserate.

Su She told him about his family, the little he remembered of them after all these years; in return, Yu Zhuliu unbent enough to tell him a little about his own background: the mother that hated him as the living sign of her disgrace, the constant accusations that he didn’t deserve to bear the Yu surname.

“Have you ever considered changing it?” Su She asked, helping him fold Lan Wangji’s laundry. It wasn’t something he’d ever have permitted himself to do under other circumstances, knowing how important it was to distance himself from all things relating to servants, but he was willing to make some compromises if it meant getting to spend a little more time with Yu Zhuliu. “Obviously if you want to keep it, it’s yours; they can’t deprive you of your birthright like that. But it doesn’t seem like you particularly want it.”

Yu Zhuliu was quiet for a long moment. “Once,” he said, his eyes distant. “I considered it once, before I joined the Lan sect. I wasn’t yet sure who had been the one to – well. Suffice it to say that I was seriously considering an offer I had received to join a different sect, and they offered to allow me to adopt the main clan’s surname as my own if I performed well.”

Su She shuddered in automatic revulsion at the thought.

Yu Zhuliu saw it, of course, and chuckled. “It would have been a great honor,” he reminded him. “Especially for someone like me – to be able to shed my old name would have been enough, but to replace it with a name that was even more powerful..?”

“Gratifying,” Su She agreed, a little begrudgingly. The idea of giving away his identity like that, giving in to the arrogant young masters’ lies that they were better than him just because they had a fancier surname, revolted him, but he could, he supposed, see a little of the spiteful appeal of it.  “Like – stamping on their faces with it, showing them what they’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you take that offer, then?” They both knew the Lan sect would never in a million years extend a similar offer, even though there were plenty of branch families surnamed Lan and another one more or less wouldn’t much matter. It wasn’t proper, though, and no one cared more about propriety than the Lan sect. “With the clan surname, they would have had to make you a proper disciple.”

Su She would never agree to such an offer himself. He might want, in the darkest parts of his heart, to be Lan Wangjii, to be something better than he was, might occasionally daydream of what his life might have been life if they’d been born swapped in place, but he didn’t – he wouldn’t sell his surname for it.

(He wouldn’t sell his brother for it, even if all he had of his brother was a surname and some swiftly fading memories.)

But Yu Zhuliu hated his surname and all it represented. He wasn’t like Su She, always thinking of the past and the might-have-beens and growing fat on all his resentment and grievances; if Yu Zhuliu could shed his skin like a cicada, emerge somewhere else a brand-new person, he would do it in a heartbeat.

“It was the Lan sect that saved me,” he said simply. “And so I owed it to them to come here, no matter what the Wen sect offered me.”

The Wen sect. Wow. That was sure some offer to turn down; they commanded the loyalty of over a third of the smaller sects, maybe even close to half, and Yu Zhuliu could have gotten their surname.

Of course, the Wen sect offered that out much more readily than other sects did, but still.

On the other hand, if Yu Zhuliu had accepted, if he’d become Wen Zhuliu, then Su She would never have had the chance to meet him, or would have only met him under bad circumstances.

Maybe he wouldn’t have liked Wen Zhuliu that much at all.

“Your loyalty is admirable,” he finally said, after wracking his brain for something appropriately neutral to say.

That got him another chuckle. “Did you know that lies make you look like you’ve tasted something sour?”

“I,” Su She said with dignity, “am a great liar. You just haven’t noticed it yet.”

Yu Zhuliu was silent for a moment, maybe reviewing things he knew about Su She. “I suppose you probably are,” he said thoughtfully. “Which means it’s the Lan sect that you don’t like.”

Su She shrugged. “I don’t think I’d like any sect,” he confessed, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

Yu Zhuliu’s overwhelming trait was his loyalty, after all – he’d sell Su She out in a heartbeat if he thought the Lan sect deemed it necessary. Su She was mostly just counting on being so pointless and insignificant that Yu Zhuliu wouldn’t think it was worth telling anyone about him.

It probably wasn’t, either. Why would the Lan sect care about someone like Su She one way or another? He wasn’t anything to them, not really; even as a disciple, his only purpose was to act as an adornment, to bring honor and glory that would reflect upwards onto the great clan surnamed Lan.

“Why?” Yu Zhuliu asked. He sounded honestly curious – honestly interested, interested in Su She for something other than being an extra body in a formation or another cannon fodder to throw to the dogs when a night-hunt went badly.

Su She wanted to tell him everything.

But Yu Zhuliu was loyal, always loyal, and Su She may not be as smart as Lan Wangji but he wasn’t stupid.

“They’re all the same in the end, full of arrogant young masters,” he said breezily. “I mean, did you see the group of disasters at Teacher Lan’s lectures?”

Perhaps that was a harsh assessment, but he’d humiliated himself in front of them all on that night-hunt that went wrong against the Waterborne Abyss, with his still-shaky control over his sword, trying as always to live up to Lan Wangji’s example the way they kept always telling him he should and then being looked down upon as an idiot for even trying – why would he do something so stupid obviously he can never match Lan Wangji always aiming above his station and thinks too highly of himself still a servant after all obviously he’ll never be good enough – and the mere thought of them tasted like bile and hatred in his mouth.

“The head disciple from the Jiang sect seemed fairly smart,” Yu Zhuliu said, and Su She scoffed.

“He’s very smart, very smart indeed,” he said scathingly. “So smart that he’s forgotten who he is and where he came from. Eventually someone’s going to remember that he’s a servant’s son, not a proper young master at all, and he’ll pay for it in blood and tears – if he’s lucky.”

“Do you think so?”

“The Jiang heir has an inferiority complex as deep as the ocean –” Su She knew what one looked like; after all, he saw one every day in the mirror. “– and eventually the time will come when he has to be sect leader in his father’s place. On that day, all those pretty words about how wonderful Wei Wuxian is, how smart, how talented, what a credit to his sect, they’ll all fall onto Jiang Wanyin’s ears like a lash on his back. And when the time comes that he has to sacrifice something, well, we’ll see how much being smart helps Wei Wuxian then.”

“An interesting perspective,” Yu Zhuliu remarked.

“An accurate one,” Su She retorted. “He was raised as a proper young master, not a servant, and so he won’t even know to see the danger when it comes. None of them would.”

“No, I suppose not. It’s always the things you don’t know you don’t know that can harm you the most.” Yu Zhuliu straightened up – the laundry was done; they’d finished it ages ago. “We will have to continue this discussion another time, Su-gongzi –”

“Su She, please. Su Minshan, if you must.”

“Su Minshan, then. I look forward to speaking with you again.”

When Yu Zhuliu let, Su She hugged himself in glee, allowing himself a moment of triumph at a successful conversation with the person he liked, then went to wash himself clean again. He wasn’t dirty, and it was the middle of the day, but he wanted to make sure no one could smell the bleaching herbs they put in the laundry on him. He didn’t want to risk any more mockery, and anyway, it had gotten to be a habit.

As he went to the baths, he saw Lan Wangji standing on a nearby pathway, looking up at the sky as if deep in thought. He must be on his rounds again, even though it wasn’t his day for it, or even the right time; he’d taken to haunting the routine work of it as if it were the only thing keeping him grounded.

Whatever. It wasn’t Su She’s business.

Except maybe it was, because Lan Wangji kept – looking at him, over the next few days. Which was weird, because Lan Wangji never looked at anybody, his nose firmly stuck up in the sky where mortals dared not tread, and it was starting to make Su She nervous.

Surely Lan Wangji couldn’t tell – about him. He’d never been able to before, why would he start now?

And yet…what if he could?

What if Lan Wangji had figured him out? Figured out Su She’s rebellious heart, how he wasn’t grateful at all not matter nice a face he put on, how he hated the stupid Lan sect rules and the stupid Lan sect disciples and the stupid Lan sect arrogance, how he secretly schemed to learn everything he could and transcribe everything he couldn’t memorize so that he could take it back home to Moling one day and show his brother everything he’d learned, how he despised them all for their arrogance –

“Will you be attending the archery competition?” Lan Wangji asked stiffly. He did everything stiffy, like he was actually a statute carved out of jade and only just pretending to be human. “At the Nightless City?”

“Naturally,” Su She said, not bothering to look up from the verses he was copying. Not the most polite, not as kiss-ass as he ought to be when faced with the glory that was the second jade of the Lan sect, but he’d found that as long as he kept his tone as formal and humble as possible, he could get away with a little. “It may be nothing like yours, Lan-er-gongzi, but I do have some skill at it, you know.”

Not that most people thought so. They would be travelling to Qishan in three groups, for easier and more secure travel – one for the adults, one led by the Twin Jades to represent the shining hope of their sect, and the last of everyone else making up the numbers. He was in the last group, of course, even though his talent for musical cultivation was one of the strongest in the junior generation and his swordplay good enough to only lose to Lan Wangji three times out of every five – better results than a good half of the group of well-born Lan clansman being sent out as the representatives of their sect.

Was he bitter about it? Yes.

Lan Wangji hesitated for a long moment, and even shifted from one leg to the other – a sign of nervousness in most people, maybe. In Lan Wangji? Who even knew.

After a while, he said, “My group has an extra place,” sounding almost like it was an offer, and the entire thing was so bizarre that Su She immediately became suspicious.  

“What do you want?” he asked.

Lan Wangji blinked at him.

“He who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding bad intentions, Lan-er-gongzi,” Su She clarified, glaring up at him and unable to keep his mouth from twisting as though he’d bitten something sour. He knew he often looked like that, and it made the female cultivators downrate his handsomeness, but he’d been the subject of too many jokes to stop himself from being so bitterly defensive. “You don’t know me, you don’t like me, and you don’t go out of your way to offer a better place to anyone, even if there’s no official rule against it. So what is it you want?”

Lan Wangji shook his head.

“If you don’t want anything, why offer?” Su She sneered. It would be just like Lan Wangji to have decided to recognize a promising disciple that deserve a chance to shine – he was perfect like that, after all, always thinking of others, always a true gentleman. Well, Su She had endured a lifetime of being seen as promising by gentlemen, being recognized as a talent without once being thought of as a person, having to humiliate himself in front of them like a dancing monkey and worst of all of having to be grateful to them for allowing him to do it, and he was sick and tired of swallowing down that bitter draught.

He didn’t need the better spot, not this time – he would be going one way or the other – and he wasn’t willing to give Lan Wangji of all people the satisfaction of doing him a favor he didn’t even want.

Lan Wangji shifted from one side to the other again, waiting a long time before he spoke again. Maybe it was nervousness.

“Yu Zhuliu is in my party,” he finally said.

At first Su She didn’t understand the point Lan Wangji was making, terse and oblique as the other man habitually was, and then he understood it far too well.

He saw red.

“What business is that of yours?” he shouted, dropping his brush and jumping to his feet, forgetting all of his good intentions to try to keep his head down and his tone at least plausibly polite. “So what if I spend some time with him when he’s free? Not every waking hour of his is yours!”

Lan Wangji’s eyes darted from side to side. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean –”

“You didn’t mean what?!”

“You like him.” A meaningful pause. “Very much.”

“Yes, I do,” Su She said, his cheeks flushed red. “So what? So I cut my sleeve sometimes, big deal. It’s not against any of your stupid rules – every attempt to introduce such a restriction formally has been rejected, I checked. This isn’t something you can punish me for!”

He could, of course. No one would question Lan Wangji issuing yet another punishment – he could say it was due to Su She’s noise, no shouting in the Cloud Recesses – and of course not every type of punishment was the sort that got meted out in the Punishment Hall. There were other types, more insidious – isolation, ostracization, missing out on opportunities for advancement, resources…even merely sentencing him to write lines could be used to deny him his coveted spot at the Nightless City.

Lan Wangji wouldn’t do that, though.

Somehow that just made Su She angrier. Who told Lan Wangji to be so fucking perfect?

“You can add it to your list of achievements,” he adds bitterly. “Everyone knows you’re better than me - better at manners, better at cultivation, better at everything, and now better in this way, too, because I’m a cutsleeve and you’re not –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Lan Wangji flinched.

Su She’s jaw dropped in shock. “You are?”

Lan Wangji’s features weren’t exactly easy to ready for anyone except Lan Xichen, but at the moment it was plain enough that even Su She could figure out that he was miserable.

“For who?!” A terrible thought slipped into his mind. “It had better not be Yu Zhuliu!”

“No!” Lan Wangji said hastily. “No – no. Not at all.”

“Good,” Su She said fiercely. “Because he’s mine. Or, well, not mine, we haven’t agreed on anything, I haven’t even said anything, but I’m trying and – well, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean.”

He wasn’t actually sure Lan Wangji did. He wasn’t sure he knew what he meant.

But Lan Wangji nodded, as if his confused rambling had been as clear as a Lan sect rule.

“I thought you might like to spend more time with him,” he said, and – oh. His offer. The Nightless City.

“…I would,” Su She said begrudgingly. “Thanks.”

For Yu Zhuliu, he’d even put up Lan Wangji’s charity.

“Who is it for you, anyway?” he asked, unable to resist and wanting to take advantage of this strange intimacy, this momentary breach of etiquette undoubtedly never to be repeated, but Lan Wangji shook his head, refusing to share. “Fine. Have it your way.”

It wasn’t that he cared, anyway.

Not about Lan Wangji’s mysterious lover, and not about Lan Wangji himself – this wasn’t a charming little flaw that made the whole seem more relatable, wasn’t something that generated fellow feeling, the way Yu Zhuliu’s gentle mockery had. So what if both of them were secretly cutsleeves in a sect that most assuredly did not approve of such things? That didn’t mean anything. It didn’t give them anything in common. They still weren’t the same, not at all, not with Lan Wangji was nobly bearing the burden of it while Su She had given in to temptation almost at once…

No, this was just more of the same.

More of Lan Wangji being, despite all of Su She’s efforts to the contrary, Su She’s idol, his ideal. The person who he hated most because he envied him the most, the person who made him hate himself as being nothing but the lesser copy, the person he despised for making him sometimes feel as if maybe Lan Wangji’s better birth really did entitle him to be better.

So no. He didn’t care.

(It wasn’t that Lan Wangji had seen him, recognized him as something the same. As a person, worthy of recognition, even if not of respect. It wasn’t.)

Maybe he cared a little bit.

He must have cared, or else he would have just run away when the Wen sect descended on the Lan sect with flame and sword instead of being a stupid idiot and going to look for him.

(He told himself it was because Yu Zhuliu would undoubtedly be wherever Lan Wangji was, and it was a pretty decent lie, except that he went to the Library Pavilion and Yu Zhuliu wasn’t there. So he told himself that Yu Zhuliu would have wanted him to protect Lan Wangji, and that lie worked better.)

Of course, once he got there, the stupid noble gentlemanly fucker wouldn’t even listen to him and run.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the important one?” Su She bellowed. This was clearly not the time for manners, and anyway Lan Wangji had already seen beneath his mask once; another time wouldn’t hurt. “Yu Zhuliu’s out there fighting to keep you alive and you’re wasting all his efforts, you’re just standing here, waiting for them to come get you –”

“It is necessary,” Lan Wangji said, solemn as ever. “Someone must keep their attention here, instead of following my brother.”

“Oh fuck you,” Su She said, and took out his sword. Lan Wangji just had to play the fucking brother card, didn’t he?

Yu Zhuliu would want me to do this, he told himself as he tried to fight. He was pretty decent, but he was just a disciple, not a soldier, and as a Lan sect disciple he’d never killed anything before. After a while, he ended up shouting for Lan Wangji to throw him his guqin – the one Su She favored was rented from the sect, lacking as he did the money to purchase her in full, and so he didn’t have it with him – and he attacked with that instead for a while, being better at music than he was at the sword.

The lash of his music was less powerful than Lan Wangji’s single-note waves of power, but Su She was also sneakier about it, and a few unexpected distractions during a battle were much more helpful to Lan Wangji’s defense than any amount of getting himself killed waving a sword around would have.

In the end, unsurprisingly, they were defeated. Su She ended up surrendering in fairly dramatic manner, knowing that the Wen sect might preserve Lan Wangji’s life as a useful hostage but that they couldn’t give a damn about his own and, as always, humiliation was the path to survival; he bet Lan Wangji was already judging him for it, for his weakness, for how pathetic he was when he was sniveling at Wen Xu’s feet as they beat him black and blue to make a point to Lan Wangji, but he didn’t care because he bowed his head and lived while the disciple next to him that didn’t died.

Lan Wangji didn’t bow his head either, but they just broke his leg before throwing them both in a carriage headed to the Nightless City.

The worst of it was, he didn’t even have Yu Zhuliu around to comfort him.

“I ordered him to go with my brother,” Lan Wangji said in belated explanation. “To protect him.”

“You could have said,” Su She said, curled up in the corner of the carriage and feeling sick to his stomach. He should have just run away. He could be in Moling right now if he’d just run away, and who would have known? Of course, then he would have to have left behind all the things he’d prepared, and Yu Zhuliu, too… “Maybe I’d rather have been on that team. Why’d he run, anyway? I bet he had a great reason.”

“He took the key books of our sect –”

Su She rolled his eyes. Of course there was a good nice selfless noble reason for Lan Xichen having fled, leaving his younger brother behind as a sacrifice to cover his tracks – proper young masters never did anything without one of those. It was like they thought that admitting that they were afraid for their lives would be worse than actually dying.

“He took what he could,” Lan Wangji said, his eyes cast down. He wasn’t really talking to Su She. “But so much was still lost.”

Su She thought about all the copies of the books he’d been making, all the knowledge he’d been slowly siphoning away over the course of years, and how they were hidden far away from the main buildings of the Lan sect. He’d probably have more than they did, when this was all said and done, assuming he survived. Wouldn’t that just drive them all up the wall? All those stiff smug elders who thought they were better than him would have to come and beg him to give them the books –

Lan Wangji would, too. Those books were probably his only friends, just as they were Su She’s.

“…maybe not all lost,” he said begrudgingly, and curled up tighter, cursing himself as an idiot.

He might be feeling all warm and fuzzy towards Lan Wangji over something as stupid as a single moment of shared misery, but just because he had feelings about it didn’t mean Lan Wangji did. More than likely, when it came down to it, Lan Wangji would put aside all his noble manners and sell Su She out in a heartbeat, and probably not even count it as a betrayal. After all, in the end, Su She was still just a servant that had temporarily made good, still just cannon fodder, meant to be used and sacrificed for the sake of his better-born master.

At least Lan Wangji had probably given up on expecting him to be grateful about it, given the despicable personality he’d already seen Su She display.

It irritated him how much that mattered.

“There’s always copies, after all,” he added. “And before you say anything, I know it’s not the same as having the original, but it’s worth something, isn’t it?”

He was worth something, even if he was only Lan Wangji’s copy.

“That’s true,” Lan Wangji said. He was quiet for a long while after that, long enough that Su She started seriously considering going to sleep because unconsciousness was preferable to worrying about what was going to happen to them once they got to the Nightless City, and then he said, “You are unhappy.”

Su She turned to goggle at him. “Of course I’m unhappy! The Cloud Recesses was lit on fire, we’re prisoners, we’re probably going to die painfully –”

“Not now. Before.” A pause. “With the sect.”

Su She shut his mouth and glared suspiciously.

“I won’t say anything,” Lan Wangji promised. “I only want to know.”

Su She shook his head stubbornly. “You won’t understand,” he said, a little helplessly, when Lan Wangji continued to look at him, wanting an explanation. “It’s not – something you would understand. You’ve always had everything, all your life.”

Lan Wangji frowned a little, clearly thinking it over, clearly taking it seriously, and for a moment there Su She kind of hated Yu Zhuliu for making him actually like Lan Wangji a little bit. “Not – everything,” he finally said. “My family…”

He trailed off, probably thinking about where they were now. A father locked away in seclusion was different from one on the verge of death; a missing brother, an injured uncle…

Su She huffed and turned his head away, refusing to feel sympathetic. “At least you had them,” he said bitterly. “I haven’t seen my family since they sold me to your sect, and at this point I’m too scared to go visit them.”

“…the Lan sect does not keep slaves.”

“No, of course not,” Su She said. “You just offer people more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives if they’ll hand over their six-year-old son to be properly trained as a servant, because it’s better to get them while they’re young – teach them to be quiet and inobtrusive and grateful for how much better it is to spend their life cleaning up the shit that sticks to your boots. And the worst part is, you are grateful for it, no matter how bad it is, no matter how much you miss your home or your family or your brother, because the buyer could have picked him instead of you and then you’d be the one stuck on some farm somewhere doing nothing with your life, just waiting to see if he’ll come back one day.”

The difference with Su She was that he’d figured out pretty quick that going back wasn’t enough.

When he’d realized how important it was to cultivate a golden core at a young age, he’d saved up every bit of money he could on top of what he sent his family every month, volunteered for every job that paid and even bit his tongue and took out extravagant loans from the sect that he would be paying off for years to come, and he’d hired a rogue cultivator to go teach his brother the basics of cultivation.

He hoped that was enough to make up for all the years he’d been gone, even though he doubted it; he wouldn’t think it was enough, himself, and surely his brother was like him. He was still too young to go outside the sect by himself – he would have to apply for a token, and agree to take someone with him, and he didn’t want to take anyone with him except maybe Yu Zhuliu, who wasn’t an option.

He didn’t want anyone to know if his return home went as badly as he feared it would. If his brother turned out to be as bitter as he was, and turned that bitterness against him –

“You have a brother?” Lan Wangji asked, because of course he’d noticed the important part.

“A twin,” Su She whispered, and turned his face away.

They did not speak again until the Nightless City, and even then it was limited to necessary things, neither of them wanting to risk the fury of their Wen sect guards. After a while, it was announced that the Wen sect would be holding a camp for all young masters, meant to indoctrinate them into righteous conduct, and that they would be attending whether they wanted to or not. They had probably assumed that Su She was well-born because of the fine clothing and fancy hairpiece he wore, and never knew that they were loaned to him by a sect that liked to surround itself with pretty things even if it had to pay for the clothing itself, and Su She had never been happier to be counted among his supposed peers.

Still, when the indoctrination camp began, and Wen Chao – accompanied by three bodyguards at all times, because he was even more of an arrogant snot than even Su She had previously imagined an arrogant young master could be – began lording it over them all, Su She drifted over to Lan Wangji’s side again.

Mostly because no one else would, other than maybe that troublemaker from Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian.

“I know some curses,” he told Lan Wangji, pretending to be casual about it as if he hadn’t accused Lan Wangji’s sect of various awful things. “Really nasty ones. Want me to try one on Wen Chao? I can be subtle.”

“He’d figure out it was you when he checked us all for the inevitable backlash marks,” Wei Wuxian put in. “Then he’d just kill you to get rid of it. Stupid idea.”

“Depends on how quick-acting the curse was,” Su She said peevishly. He hadn’t even been talking to Wei Wuxian, and he hadn’t forgotten who it was that had charged in like a hero from a play to rescue him when he’d overreached himself fighting the Waterborne Abyss even if he doubted Wei Wuxian remembered him in return. “Also, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere drawing fire onto the Jiang sect?”

“What? No,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not –”

“I mean, I certainly can’t think of any other reasons for your actions, Wei-gongzi,” Su She said, his voice set at its most simpering. It wasn’t like there were any Lan sect elders here to punish him for being disrespectful, after all, and he figured that helping defend the Library Pavilion with Lan Wangji probably earned him a little space to be himself for once. “Aggravating Wen-gonzi, making light of everything, galivanting around flirting with girls – one might almost feel as if you’re on vacation. Surely your Jiang sect will not have to pay for any of that, politically speaking; it’s not as if the Wen sect thinks of them as one of their greatest rivals and is looking for any chance to cut them down…but no, surely it’s my misunderstanding. I’m sure Wei-gongzi has a thoughtful plan, being such a good servant to his sect.”

Wei Wuxian frowned at him. “But that’s not what I’m doing,” he said, but his voice came out a little weaker this time. “That’s not it at all, I was just…hm. Hey, Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng, I have a question for you…”

Su She watched him leave with satisfaction, then turned back to Lan Wangji, who was looking at him again.

“Why do you dislike him?” he asked before Su She could change the subject.

“I don’t dislike him,” Su She said. “I envy him, sometimes. The rest of the time, I pity him.”

“You think Jiang Wanyin will cast him aside, one day,” Lan Wangji said, and Su She thought back to that conversation he’d had with Yu Zhuliu. Lan Wangji had clearly heard more of it than he’d let on.

“Well, yes,” he conceded, because he did. He’d seen how close they were, which was only going to make it worse for them both when it inevitably happened.  

“Would you tell me why? In your own words?”

Su She frowned at Lan Wangji, who raised his hands as if in surrender. “Please.”

Well, if he was going to ask nicely…

Su She decided to pretend that he was talking to Yu Zhuliu.

“Fine. You want my opinion? Whoever raised Wei Wuxian ruined him,” he said bluntly. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t act like a servant – he doesn’t even act like a second son. He acts like a master. He acts like he’s the next heir to the Jiang sect, not Jiang Wanyin; you’ve seen how he’s always bossing him around and refusing to listen to him even when he tells him to behave.”

“He’s his shixiong,” Lan Wangji objected, but mildly.

“For now. Do you really think Wei Wuxian’s going to suddenly learn how to be obedient the second Jiang Wanyin gets instated as sect leader? Or do you think he’ll continue to run rampant, doing just as he likes the way he always has, with Jiang Wanyin bending to his every whim the way he always has? What do you think the cultivation world will think of that?”

Lan Wangji was frowning deeper now, thoughtful.

“The cultivation world isn’t kind to servants who forget their place. If he keeps acting the way he has been, the time will come when he does something so outrages that Jiang Wanyin will have no choice but to throw him away,” Su She concluded. “A servant’s son, however precious, is nothing when weighed against the duty owed to the sect inherited by your ancestors. I mean, even your brother put that first and foremost, and he’s your blood.”

“…I agreed with Brother’s decision.”

“Sure. But did he ask you first?”

Lan Wangji remained quiet.

“If it makes you feel better, there’s always a chance that it won’t become an issue,” Su She continued, mostly to avoid having to listen to Lan Wangji’s injured sort of silence. “Maybe they’ll luck out and instead something will happen to remind Wei Wuxian that he’s a servant and that his job is to throw himself into the abyss to save Jiang Wanyin, probably without even getting thanked for it.”

Lan Wangji looked at him sidelong. After a long few moments of contemplation – Su She really couldn’t stand the way Lan Wangji looked at him, as if he was trying to figure out an interesting puzzle, but he also couldn’t get enough of it, it was horrible – he said, “It will not be that way, with Yu Zhuliu.”

Caught, Su She glared at him.

“How would you solve it?” Lan Wangji asked.

“What?”

“You were a servant, once,” Lan Wangji pointed out. “You are no Yu Zhuliu, no Wei Wuxian, to sacrifice yourself for the Lan sect, and it pains you to pretend to humble yourself before us. What is your solution? You are too clever not to have one.”

Su She wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he didn’t enjoy being called clever as much as he did. It didn’t sound condescending when Lan Wangji said it, the way it did when the Lan sect’s teachers did – like praising a well-performing pet that they’d raised themselves, patting themselves on the back for doing such a good job in training him. He sounded almost as if he resented Su She for being smart enough to see the messy contradiction that was Wei Wuxian’s life, and for being the only person he could ask to shed some light on the subject.

Su She didn’t mind resentment, not even aimed at him. On the contrary, it made it feel real.

Why wouldn’t Lan Wangji resent having to respect someone like him?

“I’m leaving, eventually,” he confessed. “I’m going to start my own sect, or try, anyway, if I can get the money for it from somewhere. Back at home in Moling. Maybe, if I’m very lucky, I’ll be able to convince Yu Zhuliu to come with me, notwithstanding the stupid debt of loyalty he feels he owes your sect.”

Lan Wangji looked contemplative again, surprised but not displeased, as if Su She had suggested something he’d never even considered possible. “What cultivation style will you use?”

“Yours, of course,” Su She said, rolling his eyes at him. “What am I supposed to do, come up with a new one of my own? In what free time, exactly?”

“People will say you’re copying the Lan sect.”

“People have said I’m a copy all my life,” Su She pointed out. “Let the cultivation world sneer and the Lan sect break its rule against gossiping to look down their noses at me – I’ll still be sitting by myself as a sect leader in my own right while they’re just disciples. I’ll make my own rules, admit anyone into the sect that I want, and that’ll be worth all of their disdain.”

He hoped it would be, anyway. He suspected he’d end up being bitter about it, but then again he was always bitter, and anyway, what could he do about it?

If life had taught him one thing, it was that there was no way to make people stop talking, stop mocking, because no matter if he took three baths a day and scrubbed until the blood ran red he would still underneath it all be a servant, a farmer’s son. But he was more than that, he knew he was more than that, and the only alternative – to stay in the Lan sect as a second-class barely-better-than-a-servant for the rest of his life – just wasn’t tolerable.

He’d do what he could and figure out the rest when he came to it.

“You think Wei Wuxian will do the same?”

“Probably?” Su She said and shrugged. “I mean, he has the reputation for being an unorthodox genius, so maybe he’ll come up with his own cultivation style to go with it – you can do things like that when you’re rich and have the time – but as for whether he will form a new sect…how would I know? Maybe he’ll go be a rogue cultivator instead, the way his father did when he got tired of being stuck in the Jiang sect’s shadow. Depends on how many people go with him.”

Lan Wangji hummed thoughtfully. “A rogue cultivator has only to concern himself with his own wellbeing,” he said slowly, as if feeling something out. “A sect – with others.”

“I mean, you could try to take a family around as a rogue cultivator, but I think Wei Wuxian is a walking illustration of why you don’t do that.”

A small flinch. Why were all these well-born sons of the nobility so delicate? It was only loss.

“But you are certain he will go.”

“Well, yes. Either he figures out that he needs to shut up and listen to someone else for once or he leaves, and I don’t think he knows how to listen.” Su She shrugged again. “Why do you care, anyway? He’s Jiang sect. It’s not any of our business.”

Lan Wangji was silent, but somehow it came across as a meaningful silence. An almost pointed silence.  

An embarrassed silence.

“…him, really?” Su She said, twisting around to gawk a little at where Wei Wuxian was having a furious whispered conversation with Jiang Cheng that involved a lot of gestures and even more suspicious looks from the nearby Wen sect guards. “I mean, sure, he’s attractive, no one’s going to deny that – he’s not rated fourth for nothing – but…really? Him? He’s not exactly the quiet-and-thoughtful Lan sect type I thought you’d go for, you know?”

Lan Wangji, with all the great grace and dignity and pomp of a proper young master of high birth and proper breeding, buried his face into his hands.

Su She covered his mouth with his sleeve to keep from laughing at him. It wasn’t exactly nice to laugh at someone who was clearly all too aware of their evidently terrible taste in men.

From the way Lan Wangji glared through his fingers, he wasn’t doing a very good job of muffling his snickers.

It was a good laugh, which was nice because it was the last thing Su She had to laugh about for long while.

The “indoctrination camp” was frankly awful. It wasn’t that he thought being forced to do servant’s work like tilling fields or doing laundry was the worst thing in the world (although he did resent that they didn’t bother paying them for it), and memorizing useless maxims was more or less what the Lan sect excelled at the most, but the constant air of vicious supervision, the threat of punishment, of having the swords they had all worked so hard to obtain taken away from them…

And that was all before they were forced to act as bait in Wen Chao’s night hunt.

“I’m serious,” Su She muttered to Lan Wangji. “I know so many good curses.”

Lan Wangji condescended to elbow him in the side to get him to shut up.

“I miss Yu Zhuliu,” Su She complained instead. “He’s much better company than you are.”

“No one is better company than Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian piped up. He was hanging out by them – not quite with them, but nearby – again.

“I thought the Core-Melting Hand was terrifying,” Jiang Cheng opined. He was following Wei Wuxian, as always, and sticking as close as his shadow, as if he was afraid of losing him. Maybe he was. “All silent and stoic and looming.”

“He doesn’t loom. He’s just tall.”

“All tall people loom. Look at Chifeng-zun, he looms even when he’s sitting down.”

Chifeng-zun, who was the leader of the Nie sect, was, in fact, unreasonably tall and, yes, loomed quite a bit.

“Well, Yu Zhuliu doesn’t,” Sue She said. And then, because he didn’t actually like either of the Jiang sect’s young masters no matter what Lan Wangji might think of them, he added, “Not that you of all people have the place to say anything, Jiang-gongzi. Family shame should not be spread in public.”

He thought that would make an impact, remind them of their manners, but instead all three of them – Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and even Lan Wangji – looked at him in confusion.

“What?” he said, staring at them back. “I know Jiang-gongzi’s maternal family is Meishan Yu…isn’t it?”

“It is,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding baffled. “But what does…wait. Yu Zhuliu – his Yu is Meishan Yu?”

“Yes?” Su She said, looking between them. Yu Zhuliu had said it was no secret, but the junior generation was treating this as if the information had hit them like a sudden landslide: Jiang Cheng had gone white, Wei Wuxian’s jaw was hanging open, and even Lan Wangji’s eyes were as wide and round as the moon. “You didn’t know?”

“I assumed it was another Yu,” Jiang Cheng croaked.

“Meishan Yu probably doesn’t want to admit that one of their own went to work as a servant for another sect after they kicked him out,” Su She concluded. It seemed relatively reasonable to him, but somehow that made all of them look even more upset. “What’s the matter?”

They all just shook their heads and made their way away, looking stunned to a man, and Su She was left to roll his eyes and wonder what in the world made young masters act like that. Something in the water, maybe?

He would curse himself later for making the joke, because there was something in the water of the cave they went to, and that something was, apparently, a corrupted Xuanwu.

(Lan Wangji was still glaring at him for trying to pull the girl out when Wen Chao’s whore demanded it, but it wasn’t his life on the line if the Wen sect went through with their threat to start slaughtering disciples left and right if they couldn’t get to her. Anyway, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to cut her in a way that let out a bit of blood but left her the mobility she might need to escape – she was a cultivator, too! What did it matter that she was a woman?)

Wei Wuxian was holding the Xuanwu’s attention with a fire talisman, and Jiang Cheng was leading the disciples to the pool with the water, which Lan Wangji had identified as containing an exit…as usual, all the young masters were showing their stuff. In a burst of resentful fury, the sort he hadn’t had in weeks, Su She leaned down and grabbed a bow and some arrows. If he shot the Xuanwu’s eye, he might be able to –

A hand fell on his shoulder, and Su She turned to look.

Lan Wangji shook his head. He didn’t seem angry about the girl anymore.

“Keep them,” he said, nodding at the arrows. “There will be Wen sect soldiers waiting for us outside.”

“You don’t think I can make the shot,” Su She accused, feeling obscurely betrayed. “You scored so high in the archery competition – I bet you think you could do better, is that it? You want –”

“If you miss, you may anger it further,” Lan Wangji said. “And I have promised Yu Zhuliu that I would see you safe.”

Su She’s anger was extinguished as quickly as a candle blowing out. “You – did? He asked about me?”

“Before he left with my brother.”

“You should’ve said something,” Su She grumbled, but he let himself be lured into allowing Lan Wangji to use him as a crutch as they waded into the water. At the last moment, Wei Wuxian threw the fire talisman into the air and ran after them, causing the Xuanwu to go crazy and chase, and then there was a bit of frantic swimming – it felt more like drowning, even with Wei Wuxian leading the way for them both – before they got to the other side.

“I’m going to be sick,” Su She groaned, spitting up water, and then he still had to sit up and shoot an arrow back at one of the Wen sect guards that, as Lan Wangji had predicted, were out there.

Of course, a few seconds later the Xuanwu came bursting out of the side of cave, so they all had a whole different set of problems to deal with.

At least the Wen sect mostly ran away.

(Not all of them. A few of them stuck around to shoot some arrows at them – every bad thing Su She had ever thought about any young master, he thought twice for the Wen sect.)

“Next time we deal with this inside the cave,” Su She shouted, running for cover. He was able to get the arrow into the Xuanwu’s eye the way he had planned to in the cave when he finally had a little time to stand and aim – admittedly, he might’ve missed in the cave, he never shot half as well when he was angry – and in the end Lan Wangji shouted something about Chord Assassination and Wei Wuxian had a brilliant-stupid idea about using it like a spider web to make a net and Jiang Cheng swam like a fish to lure it through the right spot and all together with a bunch of the others they ended up chopping the Xuawnu’s head off.

Well, chopping was the wrong word. More like a shichen or more or wretched sawing using Chord Assassination as a garotte, relying mostly on Lan Wangji’s arm strength – Su She and the few other Lan disciples that knew the trick were holding the strings down with burning bleeding fingers, an essential part of the process but ultimately only a prop to help Lan Wangji do what he needed – and by the time it was done their robes were more red and crusted brown than white no matter how many bleaching herbs and special arrays had been used.

“All right, the threat is gone,” Su She said, feeling bitter again as he scanned the treeline. He didn’t even know what the bitterness was about this time. “Can we go already?”

“You can come to Yunmeng,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s closest.”

No one disagreed.

More or less the second after they arrived, just as soon as they’d had baths and a change of clothing, Lan Wangji wanted to go back to the Cloud Recesses or to travel around looking for Lan Xichen. He looked strange in borrowed Yunmeng purple, even if they’d politely given him the lightest and bluest shade they had – really it was at best a pale lavender at best – but that sure didn’t seem to bother Wei Wuxian from the way he kept gawking at Lan Wangji when he thought Lan Wangji wasn’t looking.

“If you don’t trust your brother, trust Yu Zhuliu,” Su She told Lan Wangji irritably after yet another request that was swiftly denied. He’d made a half-hearted effort to remember his manners after the stress of the moment had passed, but Lan Wangji seemed unhappy any time he did so now he was back at being a bit more of his awful actual self. Of course, Lan Wangji liked Wei Wuxian so maybe he just had a kink for rude people? “Do you really think he’d take him anywhere you could find him?”

“Then I should be at the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “To help rebuild –”

“To help make them a target again, you mean?” Su She said scathingly. “Did you forget, somehow, that you’re still a valuable hostage? That they’ll be expecting you to go back? Or is it just that all that nobility is starting to make your brain rot, you stupid fucker?”

Lan Wangji glared at him, tight-lipped, and stalked away, which meant that Su She’s point had probably been taken and they could have at least a little rest before having to start running again.

Before the war started. War, which terrorized the common people…

He needed to go to Moling to check on his family. Even if his brother rejected him, as he feared, he had to go – better rejected than bereaved, surely..?

Consumed with dark thoughts, Su She didn’t notice that he wasn’t alone until he walked straight into Wei Wuxian’s chest.

(Why were they all so tall?)

Wei Wuxian was glaring at him. “Listen,” he said, sounding angry. “Listen, whatever your name is, you can’t talk to Lan Zhan like that –”

Su She punched him in the face.

Wei Wuxian stared up at him in shock from where he’d fallen on his ass on the ground, but Su She didn’t care; he turned on his heel and stormed off, his face hot with rage and shame and bitterness.

“On second thought, we can leave right now,” he spat at a shocked-looking Lan Wangji. “I’m not staying here one more fucking second.”

Whatever your name is.

Like they hadn’t just gone through life and death together, hadn’t fought side by side, like he hadn’t risked his life on Wei Wuxian’s stupid plan, none of that mattered; he wasn’t important enough for Wei Wuxian to remember his name. People like him really were nothing but side characters to people like Wei Wuxian, weren’t they? Their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their bitterness – all irrelevant. An aside at best, mere marginalia, a splash of color to liven up the background.

Su She would bet money that Wei Wuxian knew the names of all the rich young masters that had attended classes with them, whether he liked them or he didn’t. He even knew the name of that little Wen clan member that he’d so bravely stood up for during the archery competition. But not Su She’s name, no, even though he’d been so graciously suffering all of the stupid back-and-forth pining Wei Wuxian had been doing with Lan Wangji, even though he’d let himself foolishly believe that because he and Lan Wangji had something in common that they might be something like friends or at least companions, that he might be treated as an equal –

No, these stupid rich young masters were all the same. He’d been right the first time.

Actually, now that he thought about it, why was he even here? Did he really think Lan Wangji would take his side over Wei Wuxian, who wasn’t only his peer in every sense of the word but also his beloved?

What a waste of time.

Su She left again. He wasn’t stupid enough to try to walk away just as he was, no matter how furious; how far would he get with no money, no food, and even his sword back in Wen custody? Instead he made his way down to the kitchens to ask for travel rations that could last for a while, and planned to visit the armory to borrow a sword after that. He’d need to pack lightly, but comprehensively: who knew how far the Wen sect’s influence spread? He might not be able to risk going into the cities and towns on the way to get supplies, not even wearing borrowed Yunmeng robes – even if he hid the incredibly obvious white forehead ribbon with a hat, he still walked like someone from the Lan sect, something he’d only really noticed once he was surrounded by people who slouched and bent and took large ground-eating steps instead of the sedate pace that he couldn’t quite break the habit of using.

“Su She,” Lan Wangji said from the door to the room they’d been given. Su She didn’t look at him or stop stuffing the travel rations and the spare robes he’d obtained into a qiangkun pouch.

“If you’re coming here to scold me about hitting Wei-gongzi, spare me,” Su She said stiffly. “We’re not in the Cloud Recesses; you don’t have any role over discipline here –”

“The silencing spell would have been more effective.”

Su She blinked, surprised by the apparent non-sequitur, and turned to look at him. “What?”

“To silence him,” Lan Wangji clarified, meaning Wei Wuxian.

As if that was the problem with what Su She had done.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng piped up – Su She hadn’t seen him standing by Lan Wangji’s side. “Hitting doesn’t work, he just pops right back up again. Please ignore him in the future; he’s an idiot.”

Well, Su She couldn’t disagree with that.

“You have a guest,” Jiang Cheng added. He looked almost – nervous? “Could – would you introduce us? Properly, this time.”

Su She couldn’t think of anyone he knew that Lan Wangji didn’t also know. Why would they ask him? The only person –

He stiffened abruptly, hope welling in his stomach. “Yu Zhuliu? He’s here?”

“Brother sent him to check on me,” Lan Wangji said. “And to tell me to stay where I am. You were right.”

It was – immensely gratifying to hear that.

“He and Mother are having tea,” Jiang Cheng added, looking impressed. “She insisted. It’s so weird.”

Yu Zhuliu looked the same as he always did, when Su She finally got to see him: tall and broad-shouldered, steady as a mountain, untroubled by wind or rain. There were a few points of similarity between his face and Madame Yu’s, if you looked for them, and he seemed pleased by her surprisingly gracious reception – when they spoke about it later, it turned out that he greatly admired her, the famous (or infamous) Violet Spider who had made a name for herself as a fierce warrior and top-grade cultivator, and who had never looked down at him for his birth when they’d both been younger.

Wei Wuxian didn’t apologize at any point, though he also didn’t call Su She out as the cause for his black eye. Instead, he opted to act as though their earlier confrontation had never happened, bounding into the room Su She shared with Lan Wangji – no one else rose at the same hour they did – and insisting on taking them around to see the sights of the Lotus Pier, to spend a day on a boat, another picking lotus seeds, and yet another shooting down kites.

Su She refused to go shoot down kites, not wanting to risk humiliation at something he was actually pretty decent at by competing at archery against Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji, and spent the day with Yu Zhuliu instead.

“I missed you,” he blurted out instead of saying something reasonable. “I mean – not that I wanted you to be there and suffering, it was pretty awful, and who knows what the Wen sect might have tried to get you to do, it’s just – you know – ”

Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man who did not speak much. He put his hand on Su She’s and said only, “I know.”

Su She swallowed, and stared down at the hand that rested on him. It was a good hand, to his mind: broad in the palm, with short fingers that were the exact opposite of the long graceful ones favored by the Lan sect, but it did its vicious work well enough that the whole cultivation world knew about it – the whole cultivation world feared it.

Su She had never once worried about it. That probably made him a fool.

“Yu Zhuliu,” he said, very cautiously, even though he knew he shouldn’t speak; it was him being a fool again, except only this time he was a fool a hundred times over. “I know – I know that the Lan sect is very important to you. They rescued you at a bad moment in your life, and you owe them your loyalty; I understand that. But…do you think...maybe – one day in the future…”

Yu Zhuliu was looking at him steadily. He didn’t pull back his hand.

Su She gathered up his courage. “I’m going to go home to Moling, someday. Maybe even someday soon. And when I do, I’m not – I’m not going to go back to the Lan sect afterwards. I’m going to start my own sect, if I can manage it. When I do, would you – consider coming with me?”

He waited for Yu Zhuliu’s response with bated breath.

Yu Zhuliu looked serious and thoughtful, and he opened his mouth to respond –

There was a giant clatter from outside their door. “Wen sect!” someone shouted. “They’re here!”

Su She and Yu Zhuliu looked at each other, alarmed, and rushed out.

Unfortunately, that just meant they got a front row seat to the travesty that happened next.

Su She felt sick to his stomach: he’d predicted long ago that Wei Wuxian would one day rediscover that the Jiang sect saw him as only a servant, as something that could be sacrificed for the good of the sect, but each sizzle and snap of Zidian on Wei Wuxian’s back made him feel worse and worse. Su She’d been beaten plenty of times before, even whipped on occasion, but then again he’d never really taken the Lan sect to heart as his family – it wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that he’d been so badly raised, tricked into thinking that they loved him like one of their own, into acting like a proud and arrogant young master who had a family that would hold up the world for him no matter what he did.

“She’s pulling the blows,” Yu Zhuliu murmured in his ear, too low for anyone else to hear, and that helped, a little. But not that much, since it was clear that Jiang Cheng, horrified, couldn’t tell, when it wasn’t clear if Wei Wuxian could, and then in the end it turned out to be all for nothing because Wang Lingjiao still demanded his hand.

Worse: he wasn’t sure if it was that, or the casual mention of a supervisory office, that was the step too far for Madame Yu.

Su She did not especially appreciate Madame Yu’s comments about Wang Lingjiao’s status as a servant, unsurprising and almost expected though they might be – although in a moment of horror-stricken hysteria he noticed that her words made Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji simultaneously flinch and glance over at him in concern, apparently all to a one forgetting the circumstances they were all in out of fear of his sharp tongue – but seeing her beat up the disgusting Wang Lingjiao was oddly gratifying.

Right up until the Wen sect guards she had brought with her started attacking from the inside, while from outside the sound of bombardment began – Wen sect’s armies had been lying in wait.

“Kill them!” Wang Lingjiao screeched the second she was free to do so, lunging forward with claws extended at Madame Yu’s face. “Kill them all –”

She never got that far.

Yu Zhuliu’s palm caught her dead in the belly, the force of it throwing her backwards into the arms of one of her guards, who quickly scurried away with her.

“A waste,” Madame Yu said, straightening her clothing. “Of your abilities, primarily. Did she even have enough of a golden core to justify melting?”

Yu Zhuliu didn’t bother responding, drawing his sword, and the next thing Su She knew they were all being given swords from dead Wen sect guards and heading out into the battlefield.

“Oh, I really hate this,” Su She said, looking down at the one he was given. As a Wen sect blade, it wouldn’t have any pity on him, and he didn’t think he was good enough to avoid getting skewered the first second he got angry and stopped paying attention to all of his weak spots. “Doesn’t anyone have a spare guqin I can use instead? I know some really good attack songs.”

“I think I have one in my room, actually,” Wei Wuxian said, and led him away from the others, limping only a little. Madame Yu really must have been pulling her strikes – not that Su She hadn’t believe Yu Zhuliu, of course, but still.

“You play?” Su She asked as they hurried through the hallways. “I thought you used a dizi.”

“I – considered picking it up. Briefly.”

“Just kiss him already,” Su She advised, deciding to try to be nice for once. “It’ll be faster, and your reception will be warm.”

“Kiss…who?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of genius?” Su She growled, and took the never-used guqin. It had been impossible to use anything more than the most straightforward sound attacks when they’d been fighting at the Cloud Recesses, given how many Lan sect disciples and even servants cultivated with music, but here at the Jiang sect where just about everyone was a swordsman first, musician later, and only Lan Wangji to compete with, Su She had a bit more freedom to go find a nice safe spot near the walls to play.

He wasn’t a guqin player on Lan Wangji’s standard – it still burned to admit it even if he maybe didn’t hate him as much as he used to – but he’d spent an awful lot of time in the library looking for things he could use when he was building his own sect and, well, he’d always liked the weird stuff.

“Wait, are you playing ‘Banish Evil’?” Jiang Cheng asked at one point, hopping over a wall to get near enough to ask.

“What? No. Are you deaf? They barely sound alike,” Su She said. “Now get out of range already before it you’re affected.”

Not long after, the effect started to show, with Wen sect cultivators falling left and right out of the sky above his head once their qi started locking up in response to his music.

Had he looked up a method to lock someone’s qi through music just because it reminded him of Yu Zhuliu? No, but it sure did help motivate him in learning the abstruse and needlessly complicated finger-work for something that, yes, okay, maybe sounded a little bit like ‘Banish Evil’, but not enough for people not to immediately call him out on what would otherwise sound like an incredibly bad rendition of that song.

“Once formed, your sect will be immensely unpopular,” Lan Wangji informed him as he flew by on his sword, his own musical cultivation acting as a shield to allow him to fight unaffected by Su She’s music.

Su She grinned down at the guqin and thought to himself that he’d be keeping this one. They could consider it payment for having made him have to put up with Wei Wuxian.

At some point in the battle, Sect Leader Jiang returned and ended up fighting back to back with his wife, which – once the battle was over – turned into a shouting match.

Yu Zhuliu, when he arrived, took one look and his eyebrows went up. “Perhaps we should assist with clean-up on the pier,” he said, delicately enough that Su She immediately figured out what he was implying.

“Yeah,” he said, covering up his smirk with his sleeve. “Let’s go quickly.”

“Don’t you two worry about our feelings getting hurt by it,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding amused, as Jiang Cheng nodded along. “We’re more than used to them fighting.”

“Is that what you call it in the Jiang sect?” Su She sniggered, unable to resist, and both of them paled.

“How would you even know about that?” Jiang Cheng eventually recovered enough to volley back. “Being from the Lan sect and all – I’m amazed it isn’t against one of your rules.”

“Su She is starting his own sect,” Lan Wangji, appearing from who-knows-where, interjected. “With fewer rules.”

“Wait, really?” Jiang Cheng asked, looking – he looked impressed, actually. “A sect of your own? That’s amazing!”

Su She flushed, his face hot and red at once. No one had ever said anything positive about his idea before. “Not anytime soon,” he demurred. “I mean, even a small cultivation sect has to have money enough to buy a house – pay for swords, musical instruments, things like that – and I’m broke.”

“Oh, money,” Wei Wuxian said, in a tone of someone who’d never had to do without, and Su She was already starting to secretly plan his murder – yes, he was aware that Wei Wuxian had reputedly spent some time on the streets as an orphaned child and no, he did not care – when he added, carelessly, “You helped save our home, the least we can do is give you something to help start yours.”

Su She stopped dead. “Are you serious?”

“Certainly,” Jiang Cheng said, and fuck, they were being serious. That was the Jiang sect heir saying he would give him money, not a servant, someone whose words could plausibly be held to be binding on the rest of his sect. “Do you have a plan for what cultivation style you’ll teach new disciples?”

“Uh,” Su She said. His mind was blank. “I was just planning on using the Lan sect techniques.”

Wei Wuxian looped an arm over his shoulder. “With some innovations, thought, right? That qi-locking music was pretty nice, and I’ve never seen it used before.”

Su She puffed up a little. It was pretty nice, good of Wei Wuxian to recognize that – and he hadn’t even seen the teleportation talisman Su She had been painstakingly teaching himself how to use!

“Nor I,” Lan Wangji said, and looked pointedly at Su She. “I suspect it comes from the forbidden section of our library.”

“No, it isn’t,” Su She said immediately, holding up his hands. He knew what the punishment was for going in there without permission. “Not the forbidden, but the forgotten – I was one of the people assigned to sort through old inheritances. Books from abroad, obscure books no one ever bothered categorizing, that sort of thing. The big jumble in the basement of the secondary library…you know, the fire hazard. The one that blew up in the Wen sect’s faces when they tried to light it.”

“You remember enough of them to make it work?” Jiang Cheng asked, now looking even more impressed.

“Well, no,” Su She admitted. “But I made copies of everything that looked interesting and hid them in an abandoned root cellar halfway down the road to Caiyi Town, so they should still be intact.”

Lan Wangji lit up, which for him was a slight bit of color to his cheeks, a slight arch to his eyebrows, a faint curve to his eyes – in other words, he was positively glowing. “Would you permit copies to be made of your copies? We would gladly pay for the privilege.”

“And if you put that together with our money, and you should definitely have enough to fund a sect,” Wei Wuxian said enthusiastically. “And we can come visit!”

“Sooner rather than later, actually,” Jiang Cheng said, rubbing the back of his head. “Before the yelling started, Mother and Father agreed that we younger generation should lie low somewhere for a few weeks somewhere obscure to avoid any immediate reprisals from the Wen sect – and once they’ve lost the trail, we go out to recruit new sects to join the war.”

“That would be in line with what Brother requested that I do,” Lan Wangji observed, voice carefully neutral as always. “I would not object to spending some time in Moling, courting a newly formed sect.”

Su She didn’t know what to say, his mouth moving open and closed. It was almost everything he’d ever wanted, and he only need to reach out and grasp it – his own sect, his brother, the respect of the arrogant young masters…

Nothing could be better.

A hand fell on his shoulder, the warmth of it lighting him up inside.

“Our sect would be happy to host you,” Yu Zhuliu said.

Su She was wrong.

Now

it was perfect.

[catxsnow]

DREAMING OF YOU D.W.

Request: hiii can i request an angsty older damian fic where he and the reader broke up but are still very much in love? maybe based out of the song "dream a little dream of me"? the ending is totally up to you!

Warning: angst

A/N: Lol I’ve been so preoccupied with the Halloween prompts I keep forgetting I have requested fics in my drafts. Anyways, I don’t know if this was exactly what you wanted but I hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 2.2k

Damian Wayne was the best thing to ever happen to you.

Damian came into your life when you were at your lowest. He was the one that helped you to climb out of that never ending pit that you were stuck in. He made you see the good in the world and that you could still find your own happiness. In the end of it all, you found happiness in him.

It was the little things that you found joy in again. Waking up early enough to see the sunrise. Ice cream on hot summer days. A walk in the park with Titus. Fresh produce from a farmers market. It was those things that drove you to see the light again, all because Damian was willing to stick by your side.

You started planning your life again. Finishing your last two years of your university degree. Buying a new apartment that wasn’t in the slums of Gotham. Reconnecting with family members that you hadn't talked with in months - some even years. You wanted a fresh start, and you had created one.

Damian got you back on track without even realizing it. He gave you hope for the future. Life with him was perfect. You couldn't imagine a future without him. He bled his heart and soul into your relationship, just as you did. Damian was the best thing to ever happen to you. 

Until he wasn't.

The secrets, the lies, it caused fights between you. Damian hid part of his life from you and you couldn't understand why he was being so protective of it. You had opened yourself completely to him, and he couldn't be bothered to do the same. He loved you, there was no doubt about that. It was whether or not he devoted himself as much as you ever did.

You began questioning your entire relationship with him. How much of it was built on his lies? What even were his lies? The more you thought about it, the more you realized that you had only scratched to surface of who Damian really was. You didn't know anything about him, and he didn't want to tell you. He couldn’t.

Which led to the hard decision of whether or not you were willing to keep a relationship that was so one sided. How could you love someone when they were only willing to show a certain side of themselves? The answer: you couldn't. You loved Damian, you would forever. But it came down to the ultimatum of showing the real him or leaving.

Apparently Damian never loved you as much as you thought he did. He was gone by morning.

For weeks your dreams were plagued of him, mundane dreams that felt so real. Him waking you up for the sunrise that shone so perfectly into your window. Instead, when you opened your eyes, grey clouds were all that you could see. The days weren't nearly as pretty without Damian there to share it's beauty with you.

The bed was no longer filled with love and warmth. It was cold, you dreaded getting into it. His side was empty, though his smell still lingered no matter how many times you tried washing it away. Titus' fur would be found in your blankets and a random toy stuck under your couch. He probably missed you more than Damian did.

You swore you saw Damian everywhere after your breakup. At the drive through of your favourite fast food place, the park where you used to sit together, hell you thought you saw him at the grocery store. Damian didn't like grocery shopping, he never went. You felt delusional with seeing him everywhere.

At night when you were alone on the streets, you felt an eerily similar presence as him following you. Sometimes at night that same feeling would draw you towards your window and stare out of it in hopes to see his familiar green eyes. You were disappointed every time.

You never wanted to break up with him. You hoped so desperately that you could have worked things out with him. He was perfect for you, and you to him. Being without him was killing you inside. You missed his love, his smile, his touch, even that adorable little tick he had. TT. You hated when you picked it up and continued to use it without him.

You didn't know it, but Damian was a bigger mess without you.

He missed you more than he ever missed anyone or anything in his life. At home he was quiet, only keeping company with his pets. He refused conversation with his father or Alfred. Dick couldn’t even get through to him. Being back in the manor was something he didn't imagine himself doing. Yet, here he was.

His night life became more violent. He didn't have a fear of holding back his punches anymore because you would never find out his secret. His fucking secret. That was the reason that you were out of his life. Knowing that he was Robin? He didn't want to taint your beautiful life with that.

More times than not he would watch over you. Whether it was when you were walking home or at your apartment. He just needed to know that you were okay. Okay and alive were two very different things. Damian learned that very quickly. Without you, he wasn't sure if he would be okay ever again.

Damian craved your kiss. He didn't realize how lucky he was to even have a small peck here and there until it was taken away from him. There was nothing he wanted to do more than to rush to you and tell you how much he missed you. To hold you in his arms one last time and kiss you until your legs gave out.

He  had dreams of you at night. Dreams of you laying in his arms with a smile on your face. You would tell him about your day and how much you loved him. He felt the warmth of you until the moment he woke up. Then, it was nothing but coldness. A dark, lonely room without any sign of you.

You were the best thing to ever happen to him.

It was that moment when he decided that he had made the biggest mistake of his life. If he cared about you enough, he should have been willing to let you decide if you wanted to stay in his life after knowing his secret. If he wanted you to be with him, then you were going to have to learn it one day.

It seemed easier to hurt you now, than it would have to be hurt by you after knowing everything he had done. Damian took the easy way out. He should have fought for you, trusted you with his secrets. He couldn't let you escape him, not while there was still a strand of hope.

Damian launched himself out of bed. It was nearing two in the morning but he didn't care. He needed to see you right now. He raced across the city on his cycle, passing all the streets in a blur. The way from his father's home to yours was etched into his brain. He could have made it there with his eyes closed if he so wanted to.

The kickstand on his bike was barely pulled out and his helmet thrown to the ground. Damian ran to your doorstep and feverishly knocked on your door. He was most likely to wake you, but it was worth it. He was ready to spill his heart and soul out to you and plead for you to take him back.

To his surprise, you opened the door relatively fast. You looked so effortlessly beautiful. A pair of shorts on a bag shirt - his shirt. Your hair was sopping wet and it was clear that you had just gotten out of the shower. Bags were under your eyes and you looked like you hadn't slept since your break up.

You stood there, mouth agape, unsure of what the hell he was doing at your door step at two in the morning on a Wednesday. It was raining out, Damian's hair matched your own. He was soaked to the bone and his clothes clung to him. A desperate look was on his face.

"Damian..." You breathed out. He looked like a wreck. Creases around his eyes that had never been there before were evident. His hands trembled at his sides - though that might have just been from the cold. "What're you doing here?"

"I needed to see you," Damian started. His heart clenched at the sight of you. "I needed to apologize for everything that I did, for keeping things from you. I was so scared that if you knew the truth about me that I would lose you."

"You lost me anyways, Damian," You shook your head. He was the one that decided to walk out on you after you were willing to put in the work. It was Damian that made that decision, he lost you because he choose to. All of this was his fault and only his fault - the secrets he kept, the choices he made.

"Please, please just let me explain everything," Damian begged. He didn't know if he could ever live with himself if you turned him away in this moment. "If you want me to leave after, I will. You'll never have to see or hear from me again, just... I can't go on anymore knowing that there's someway that I can try to fix this. That there’s still a chance of getting you back."

You crossed your arms over your chest, debating whether or not you were willing to be hurt by him again. Damian was the love of your life, he would always be the love of your life. Letting him explain himself too you, that was either going to be the ticket he needed back into your life, or the closure you finally needed. Or something far worse.

So, maybe mistakenly, you opened the door wider to let Damian in. Your home hadn't changed much in the weeks that he was gone. It was messier, but otherwise identical. Several picture frames of the two of you were turned down, but not put away. His hoodie that he left behind was still strewn across the back of the chair.

He thanked you as you handed him a towel. Damian sat on your coffee table directly across from your spot on the couch. He paused for a moment, wondering where to begin and how far back he needed to go. If you were going to take him back after that night, you would deserve to know everything.

For now, he started with his arrival in Gotham City all those years ago.

He told of you his life with his father, his brothers. The teams that he had been on and the struggles that he had been through. Damian told you of his hardships, his dreams, his failures. He told you of the times that he had lost all hope and the times that you had given some back to him.

Damian told you everything there was to know about his life as Robin.

By the end of it, you were in tears. All those times that he lied to you about what he was going or where he was going, his 'business trips' for his father, they were all because he was risking his life to be Robin. Damian was a hero, and you were too oblivious to even notice. You were so focused on his lies that you didn't want to see why he was doing so. Everything he did was to protect you.

Damian reached forward and wiped away your tears. He didn't want to see you upset from his. Your bottom lip trembled. You felt horrible for being cruel to him so many times because you didn't know the truth. Without another thought, you leaped into his arms.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," You sobbed against him. Damian kissed the top of your head. He cupped your cheeks, making you meet his eyes. His gaze flickered down to your lips for a split second before looking back to yours. It was a subtle way of asking if it as okay. You answered by initiating your long awaited kiss.

The weeks apart left a yearning for you both. This kiss was the one thing that both of you craved most. The tenderness of it, the love that fueled it. You felt like you were going to combust from how much you missed his kisses. Your dreams of him kissing you were nothing compared to this.

"I love you," Damian pulled away, resting his forehead against yours. He was petrified to let you go again, scared that you wouldn't come back this time. Dreams of you would never be enough for him. Damian needed you like he needed air. "I can't live without you. I dreamed of you ever night."

"I wished upon the stars every night hoping that you would come back to me," You confessed. "Please don't leave me again."

"Never, beloved."

[suite43]

(summary: starscream and bumblebee have an argument, and turn to trusted friends for some advice. or: several long and winding paragraphs about love, redemption, and what we are worth. alcohol warning.)

"Be honest with yourself," Starscream sneered. "If we hadn't been forced together, do you really think you'd give a scrap about me?"

"Why does it matter?" Bumblebee shot back.

"Because, Bumblebee, you're wrong. You think you care, you think you're in love with me, but you're not. You were forced to be around someone you hated and you had to find some way to be okay with it because you're a good little autobot and you overcompensated. You're a victim of proximity. We both are. But y'know what? You're free now, so go ahead and run along back to your life and your friends and people you actually give a shit about beyond finding the moral high ground and leave me alone."

"Unbelievable," Bumblebee muttered. "You're unbelievable! Do you know how to do anything except wallow in denial? What is your fucking problem?"

"My problem at the moment is that someone was deluded enough to think he could squeeze millions of years of monstrosity out of me by telling me he loved me."

"Primus, Starscream, if you're not interested just say so! If you're angry, if you're scared, fucking say it! But you don't ever get to tell me how I feel!" Bee was screaming up at Starscream, pain and frustration radiating from him. "I don't know where I'd be if things were different and I. Don't. Care. I like my life, Starscream. Despite everything, I'm happy with it and I'm glad you're in it! Apparently you aren't, and if that's true you can leave! You've always been free to go whenever you fucking feel like it! But you haven't! So pardon me for assuming you had something going on in that thick fucking head of yours!"

"Oh, please-"

"No! Shut up! I'm not done and for once you are going to listen to what I have to say! You try so hard to convince everyone that you've got some black heart, that all you are is violence and malice, and I know  that's not true! Whether you want to believe it or not I've seen what you're capable of! I know you, you let me know you, and I decided that I fucking love you and I'm willing to keep loving you even when you're a cruel, stubborn bastard. If you really want to leave, leave! Go! But don't run because you're afraid, or because you think I don't know what I'm getting into."

Starscream didn't say anything, just stewing. Bee tried to collect himself, mentally urging Starscream to just fucking say something.

"You don't know me."

"For fucks sake, Starscream," Bumblebee sighed and decided fuck it and gave into his impulse, pulling Starscream by his collar down into a kiss. He was frustrated and Starscream was caught off-guard, so it was messy and clumsy and awkward, but after a beat Starscream grabbed his helmet and pulled him into it harder and Bee nearly forgot he was ever angry in the first place.

It felt like a million years had passed when they finally pulled apart and Bee let his heels fall back into the ground. Starscream stared down at him, face unreadable.

"Sorry," Bee said, barely even whispering, hands settled on Starscream's chest. "I just. How do I prove to you that I mean it?"

"You can't," Starscream responded, pulling away from Bumblebee's touch. Bee just watched him go.

He sighed. Starscream would be back when he was ready. Or he wouldn't. Either way, Bee would be here.

///

"Are... Are you okay, Starscream?" Thundercracker asked, peeking out the door to the balcony.

"I'm fine."

"Um... Why are you on my roof?"

Starscream was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Thundercracker's apartment, staring off into the distance, one hand held over his mouth in thought, fingers idly tracing his lips as he couldn't drag his mind away from flittering fancies of Bumblebee and kisses and love. Thinking about dozens of late-night conversations and well-meaning gifts of cheap high grade and the way he laughs and the way he looks beautiful even when he's angry and- hm.

"You know about things, don't you, Thundercracker?"

"Most people generally agree the answer to that question is 'no', but. Maybe? What kind of things?"

"What does it feel like to be in love?"

"Oh. That kind of thing. Uh," Thundercracker climbed onto the roof awkwardly, pulling himself up next to Starscream, legs kicking where they dangled off the edge. "You know I don't really mess with all of that, right? Dating and stuff. I don't do it."

"But you know things," Starscream said. "You're better with feelings then anyone else I know."

"Not true," Thundercracker said. "You know Bumblebee!"

"That's exactly the problem, Thunders."

"Oh. Oh." Starscream could almost hear the gears turning in Thundercrackers head as he connected the dots. "Are you in love with Bumblebee?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. If I knew I would know what to do about it and I wouldn't be here asking you for romantic advice now would I?"

"I suppose."

"So then how am I supposed to know?"

"If you're in love?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I've never been in love. I don't know. But, in the movies, it's like... Usually two people kind of get stuck together in some kind of situation, y'know, they meet and they don't really like each other much at first. But then you think about them all the time. And then you keep running into them, and even when you think they're annoying, something about them is still kind of endearing. They make you happy. And then there's some big fight or misunderstanding or somebody gets scared or has to leave and it looks like nothings going to work out, but eventually they decide that they like being around each other enough that it's worth working out whatever they fought about or giving up whatever's keeping them apart, and then, happily ever after, I guess."

"Just like that, huh?"

"Only in the movies. There's no end credits in real life."

"So what happens next, then?"

"I guess just what happens with every other kind of relationship. You keep being happy and working and then fighting and deciding its worth trying again over and over until you give up or somebody dies."

"Unfortunately I don't think death is a viable reprieve for my situation."

"Oh yeah, I guess not. Sorry."

"No, it's okay. He's easier to tolerate when one of us is dead."

"I guess the question, then, should be, is he worth it to you? Are you going to get off the plane to Santa Fe or New York or Chicago and run back to him, or are you gonna go be a well-respected but no-fun businesswoman in the big city forever?"

"What?"

"Sorry, I think I got lost in the metaphor," Thundercracker laughed, a big, booming thing, clumsy and well-meaning and earnest, just like the mech it came from. "Something in there was probably good advice, though. You should ask me things more often."

"I really should," Starscream sighed, leaning over and laying his head in his trinemates lap. Thundercracker didn't stop him, and let one hand fall to rest on Starscream's midsection, just to say I'm here when you need me so Starscream can reply I know, Thank you, I'm sorry by taking that hand in his and squeezing it lightly. They watched the stars twinkle across the horizon as lazy clouds sauntered by, and Starscream started to wonder about what he was worth.

///

Bumblebee trudged into Maccadam's, his normal sunshine dampened by how just miserable and unfair everything seemed. He took his usual spot at the bar and ordered a drink, half as strong as usual so he'd have to spend twice as much money if he wanted to do something stupid, letting his thoughts brew around as he sipped.

"Hey, bigshot! How did it go?" Wheeljack slung his arm around Bee's shoulder, energetic as ever, but Bee just groaned and slammed his head into the bar.

"Terribly."

"Weelllll," Bee could practically feel Wheeljack trying not to say 'I told you so'.

"He's just. Agh!" Bee said. "He was just himself, y'know, determined to be as difficult as possible and allergic to his own happiness. And I yelled at him, which I probably shouldn't have done, and then I kissed him, which I definetly shouldn't have done, and now he's probably never going to even look at me again."

"Well, y'know what they say, fortune favours the bold and all that!" When Bee gave Wheeljack a skeptical, dont-try-to-make-me-feel-better kind of look, Wheeljack just doubled down, squeezing his shoulders. "Seriously, you shot your shot! That's all you can do, and if he didn't want you that's his loss!"

"He was scared, Wheeljack. I know him, I know that that's his fucked up defense mechanism or whatever and I knew he was gonna try to drive me away. Why did I let him drag me into that?"

"Because you care, Bee. You care a lot. You aren't the kind of person who can see somebody struggling and just leave them to it. You're like, literally incapable of not lending a hand. Especially when you love somebody."

"So then why the hell did I have to fall for the hardest to love cybertronian there is?"

"Oh, I'm sure there's been worse.I mean, Nova-"

"Not really the point."

"Oh. Because you have horrible taste?"

"That's more like it," Bee grinned. "Cheers?"

"To shit taste!" Wheeljack agreed, clinking their drinks together.

"Absolutely."

They left the bar a bit later, neither of them really drunk so much as in the zone, as Wheeljack liked to put it. It was right before you got too drunk to really do anything sensible but drunk enough that you didn't overthink things, and it was just the right level of alcohol consumption to go for a walk and talk about life.

"So, what're you gonna do then?" Wheeljack asked after the conversation had trailed off.

"About what?"

"Starscream. Y'know, I don't think he's very good for you."

"I dunno," Bee shrugged. "And i know. I know nobody thinks he's a good person but he tries, Wheeljack. He really does! He just, he's scared. All the time, I think, of everything. He doesn't trust me, or you, or anyone at all, and I hate it. I hate that he feels like he can't trust me, even after all the stuff we've been through. It makes me mad! Not even mad at him, just mad at- at- I dunno, at the universe, at the war, at Megatron, at every shitty thing that ever happened that made him feel like he needs to be afraid all the time. I want him to be safe. I want to make him feel safe. But I dunno how and he won't tell me, and how can I tell him my stuff if he won't tell me any of his, and if we never tell each other anything then it's not all that much of a relationship."

"I mean, what do you even want from someone like that? He's not got a lot to offer. I mean, he's kinda hot if you squint, I guess, but other than that?"

"I think 'kinda hot' is the understatement of the century, Wheeljack. But... I dunno, I just. Want something. I want him to be able to tell me he cares about me. I know he does. But I want him to say it. I want it to be real."

"Why? You're a good person, Bee, it's not like you don't have options."

"Because I'm happy when he's around. I feel more like myself. I feel like my life is better when he's in it. For better or for worse, he's got a perspective nobody else does, and he always comes up with things I'd never even think of. He's smart and observant and funny just as much as he's a wise-ass and a smug bastard. For every inch of him that's irritating there's another bit that's incredible. And a lot of that incredible feels like our little secret, like he only lets me see those parts of him, and I like that too. And, I dunno, I get to be angry and there's nothing wrong with it. He's never mad that I'm mad, he never tells me that getting pissed is a waste of time or energy, he just lets me be. He argues, but he doesn't try to stop me or make me be polite and friendly because he doesn't need or want me to coddle him. I like the idea of taking care of him because it's less actually taking care and more just. being there, and letting him do the rest. I share my input and he gives his, and eventually he comes to the answer on his own and I get to see him being better. He gets better because he wants to, not because I'm forcing him to."

"I guess I just don't get how Starscream becomes a better person without you dragging him into it."

"People are fundementally good, Wheeljack. Don't look at me like that! It's true! Everyone wants to be loved, and really we all want to do good so we feel worthy of being loved, but it's about opportunity. When your needs aren't met, it gets harder and harder to do good. When everyone around you treats you with cruelty, it gets harder. When everyone believes you're a monster, why even bother trying to prove them wrong? All it takes is one opportunity, one chance to do the right thing, one person to say I know you know what's right for someone to take a step in the right direction. I didn't do anything to him, I just. I tell him what I know, which is that he doesn't enjoy who he became any more than the rest of us, and I give him space to know that even when it's scary and even when he loses everything, I'm on his side. Even the worst of us can improve given the chance. I really do believe that. I mean, you were at Megatron's trial. He opened the matrix. If that guy, given the opportunity, decided to turn himself around, why can't Star?"

"Did you kiss him and then yell at him or yell at him and then kiss him?"

"What?"

"Earlier, when you said you guys fought. Was it all like 'oh im in love with you' and then you kissed and then you fought afterwards? or was it like 'oh we're fighting by the way I love you' and then you kissed?"

"Uh, neither. I told him I was in love with him and he told me I wasn't and that made me really really angry, and I'm not even sure why honestly. And then I kissed him, to uh, prove I meant it, I guess? Not my best idea."

"Maybe you're just tired of being told what to do."

"I think I just don't like other people telling me what I am. I know what I am. I'm Bumblebee!" He took a deep breath and started yelling. "I'M BUMBLEBEE! I'M ALIVE AND I'M IN LOVE! AND I KNOW WHO I AM!"

"HELL YEAH!" Wheeljack threw his arms up, just enjoying the act of making noise as they wandered back to Bee's apartment, and eventually the two of them devolved into pointless hollering and whooping, until someone somewhere through a little chunk of metal and bonked Bee right in the back of the head with a SHUT THE FUCK UP! and the two of them just started laughing, both trying to shoosh the other as they eventually made it into Bee's apartment and Wheeljack settled on the couch, barely sparing a muffled g'night buddy before passing out, leaving Bee alone to stare out the window and think about what he wanted.

///

Bee rolled out of bed the next morning to the sound of a knock at the door, rubbing at his eyes, wincing at the too-bright sunlight. He wandered past where Wheeljack was snoring on the couch, muttering a yeah, yeah, I'm coming, to the door as the knock came again, less sure of itself this time.

He wasn't really sure who he expected to be at the door. But it both was and wasn't a surprise to see Starscream standing there.

"Bumblebee." He said plainly.

"Uh, good morning," Bee responded. "What's, uh, what's up?" Ah, that felt like the lamest possible thing he could've said. Nice one, Bumblebee.

"I... I want to apologize."

"You... what?"

"I'm sorry," he muttered, hands clasped in front of him, not meeting Bee's eyes. "I. For everything. I'm sorry I'm impossible. I'm sorry I'm cruel. I'm sorry I'm petty. I'm sorry for my ego and my selfishness and for how I only drink the most expensive wines, even when you buy me the cheaper ones. I'm sorry because I know that none of this is going to go away and I'm going to have to keep apologizing over and over and it's going to get old. I'm sorry for doing every possible thing I can to drive you away and I'm sorry you're not stupid enough to fall for it because your life would be a hell of a lot easier if you would. This isn't easy. And I could stand here and apologize for hours and I still wouldn't hit everything, but, but. You're... I'm missing my train for you, okay?"

"Uh. You lost me on that last bit."

"Thundercracker's advice only comes through rom-coms, so, sorry for that too, I guess."

"It's okay. Uh. Thank you for apologizing. And I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry that I'm stubborn, I'm sorry for yelling, I'm sorry that I'm touchy and pushy and too much in all the ways you aren't. I'm sorry I always have to feel like I'm winning, I'm sorry about all my moral grandstanding, I'm sorry for all the ways I make you feel like a bad person. I'm sorry for the days that I don't have the patience, and I'm sorry for the days I have too much and it makes you mad, and I'm sorry I thought I could make you love me in the way I wanted just by pulling hard enough."

"It's okay. It's... It's okay."

"Are we... are we okay?"

"Yeah. I think so. For now. And if we aren't later, then I think we can figure it out." Starscream let his hands seperate, and Bee reached out to take them in his own, intertwining their fingers.

"Okay."

"Only if you want to. I know I'm not easy."

"Neither of us are easy. But that's okay. I meant what I said. I know what I'm getting into. If you think we can figure it out, I'd like to try, at least."

"I think I can do that. I can try."

"You wanna start by kissing me properly?" Starscream's face flushed bright pink.

"That sounds as good a place to start as any."

[maplecornia]

chapter 13

𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔱: 2.89K

𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔯𝔢: romance | slice of life | fluff | angst | bts x female!reader | ot7

𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: You watched them from the sidelines ever since you were a young teenage girl. Now you’re grown up, they’ve returned after 2 long years and everything has changed. What happens when you pull back the mask and find the darkness within? What happens when you see that they’re broken?

𝔞/𝔫: so yeah, i've decided to start uploading every day for this story until i'm caught up with the chapters i have. i'll tell you guys when i'll go back to posting once a week.

𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: cliffhangers | angst | fluff | slight mentions of self hatred | depression | mental health illness | self harm | occurs in the year 2024 | set in a timeline where BTS went to the military together | slight language

tags: @kookaine | @fangirl125reader | @kookiebbyxx | @taradevonne | @rae-bear |@mangminnie | @pixiekooo

"Kim Taehyung…"

As you utter the words, he pulls you closer, as though to hide you from the crowd.

There are too many people, too many chances which he can't stand to take.

You blush profusely, trying to ignore the fact that you are so close, that this is real, that you are touching Kim Taehyung.

After a moment, as though making a split-second decision, he drops his arms around you. Quickly, he takes your hand dashes down the bus, towards the open door.

You follow after him almost blindly, hardly noticing the looks people give you as he drags you outside the bus, outside of the crowd, into the safety of the park.

You are still surprised by the feel of his hand around yours, so large compared to your hand. His is surprisingly warm, causing a shiver to go through your body as with a single touch he can warm you from the inside out. Swallowing hard, you stare only at your linked hands, his beautiful artistic ones wrapped around your small cold hands. So distracted by the touch, you hardly even notice as he leads you down the steep steps.

Nor do you expect the pain your foot feels as soon as you step down with it on one of the steps.

As he reaches the floor past the steps, he turns around to you, witnesses as your leg fails you and you cry out half in pain, half in surprise as you fall on him. His eyes widen as it happens and instinctively wraps his arms around you, breaking your fall.

Both of you topple into a pile on the ground, the bus doors closing and driving away with a slight screech on the pavement.

At first, you hardly notice that he’s underneath you, you're in too much pain. However, as you position yourself so that you can sort of crouch into a standing position, your face meets his once more and you freeze in place.

Your hands are on either side of his face, your legs are cradling him, and your hair falls on one side of your face as you stare at him with wide eyes.

You can't move, not for the way he’s staring at you.

Neither one of you can look away.

Part of him wants you to stay like this forever.

Part of you wants him to never look away.

You swallow hard as you realize just how close you are to him, just how your faces are mere inches away from each other.

Almost out of nowhere, an image of the masked man pops into your mind. At the image, the similarities, you flinch off of him, rolling off of his body and onto the ground next to him.

He’s surprised at the action, and looks over at you, a bit confused.

It can't be him….it just….cant be.

But you can't put it out of your mind.

They have the same jawline. The same skin tone. The same muscle in their throat. The same honey doe eyes. The same curl to his hair.

As you stare at the sky, watching the clouds pass by, you can feel your heart pounding incessantly in your chest. You don't dare look at the impossible who has sat up, you don't know how you'd react.

How you'd look at him if you'd see the mirage, the same flash of the man once more.

When his face appears above yours, you find that there’s no trace of the masked man in his face. He's put his hat back on his head, adding that extra shadow in an attempt to conceal himself.

Staring at him with a bemused smile on your face, he glances at you in confusion, something about the look in his eyes making you smile softly.

He smiles back, almost giddily, his heart sparking with the idea of being so close to you, of finally meeting you again.

Straightening, he holds his hand out to you, a small offering.

You take it, after a moment. The action makes you feel safe, secure, as though nothing can hurt you. He pulls you to your feet, his hands steadying you as you sort of bounce to a stop, careful not to step on your foot.

Turning, you glance towards your foot as you slowly place it on the ground. Taking a deep breath, you sigh before resting your full weight on it. A small gasp escaping your lips, you cringe as stinging pain runs from your foot to the rest of your leg. Almost immediately, you pull your foot back up, your hands tightening around Taehyung's shirt.

Groaning, you wince slightly, biting your bottom lip.

Taehyung steps forward, moving his hand from your arm to your back, somehow knowing that you need that extra support.

“Are you okay?” he asks, startling you.

He hasn't talked until that moment, and the sound of his deep accented voice causes you to turn to him. As he raises his eyes to yours, you nod mutely in response, before turning back to your wound.

“I'm fine. I guess it's just bruised--” Your words fall short as you take a step forward, but the leg beneath you fails you once more. Gasping slightly in surprise, you collapse, Tae’s careful arms catching you before you hit the ground.

You cling to him, panting heavily, in a mixture of pain and panic.

What am I going to do?

Catching sight of your foot, you growl, cursing it for acting up. Cursing yourself for falling over that briefcase. Now you're being a burden.

You hate being a burden.

“Why did you lie?” he asks you softly, his voice right next to your ear. You can feel his breath on your neck, sending shivers down your spine. Swallowing hard, you turn to look at him, finding his eyes already locked on you.

After a moment, he turns away, scanning the park for a place to sit you down. As soon as he spies a park bench located a couple of feet away near the entrance, he smiles in satisfaction.

He turns back to you, only to find you trying once more to wiggle out of his grip and walk on your own. Scoffing, he rolls his eyes before pulling you gently in the direction of the bench.

“Let's go.” He gestures to the bench and you follow the movement trying to see what he’s talking about.

You realize what he wants you to do, and you immediately draw back. You don't need to rest. What you need to do is get inside that park, find your field of flowers and finish what you came to do. No injury you may have acquired will stop you from reaching your goal.

As he tries to move you towards the bench, you shake your head, reluctantly pulling back on his secure hold. He turns toward you, a bit confused.

“I'm fine.” You say as you meet his confused gaze, trying to make him release you. “I don't need to rest, I’m okay.”

You manage to break free of his hold, his hand falling to his side. Turning away, you force through the pain, ignoring the stings that continue to snake up your leg with each step. You bite your lip, but refuse to look back, refuse to give in.

Watching you hobble away, he can't help but smile. The fact that you think you can walk with an injury, is comical to him.

Rolling his eyes in amusement and slight annoyance, he shakes his head. You've only covered about an inch of ground since you let go of Taehyung, your injured foot dragging on the ground behind you. He smiles at the sight.

He only has to take one step toward you before he’s close enough to touch you. In one swift motion, he secures his hold underneath your arm, pressing his hand against the small of your back before hooking his other hand underneath your knees and lifting you in his arms.

You give out a small cry of surprise at the sudden motion, and your hands immediately secure themselves on the nape of Tae’s neck. He smiles as you pant from that small moment of fear, but you hardly notice. You're more concerned with the reason as to why your feet are no longer safe on the floor.

“What are you doing?” you cry out, clinging to him out of panic, almost afraid that you are too heavy for him to carry. He doesn't answer you, smiling to himself. For some reason, his expression irks you. It's as though he has just won a fight, and you lost. You sulk almost, slumping in his arms, and he chuckles.

“This isn't necessary.” You mutter under your breath, as he releases you. He places you carefully on the bench, before kneeling in front of you. He looks up at you, patiently waiting for you to meet his gaze.

“You're in pain, so yes it is. I’m not going to let you hurt yourself on my watch.” He replies before reaching forward and brushing your hand with his own as though to capture your attention. You stare at him in surprise, unable to say anything in response.

He’s so kind.

You've heard of his kindness, of his humble nature, but never before have you expected that same nature to be extended to you. Why should he do any of this for you? Why would he want to do any of this for you?

He clears his throat as he stands up, turning around to look for some sign of a food truck or stand so that he can get you some ice to put on your ankle. Luckily, he spies one a couple of ways inside the park, and smiles, relieved. They are bound to have ice or something that he can use to make you feel better.

Nodding decisively, he turns to you. Noticing as you shiver a bit, he reaches for the black coat hanging securely across your satchel.

At the motion, you look at him in wonder, watching his every movement as he gingerly puts your jacket around your shoulders. His eyes widen a bit at the sight of you watching him, but he merely smiles warmly in response.

“I saw a place inside the park where I could get you something for your ankle.” He informs you and you nod, turning your head for a moment to try and peer in the direction he’s gesturing to.

“I'm going to go for a minute so I could get it for you. You better stay here until I get back, okay?” you roll your eyes slightly at his tone, before nodding.

“You don't have to treat me like a child, I won't move. But you should know that this isn't required. I've dealt with worse.” It’s true and you won't get into the details right now, but all that needs to be said is that you fall. A lot.

He smirks almost playfully at your remark, and leans forward, his hand almost subconsciously resting on your knee to steady himself as he does.

“Really? Care to explain?” he teases, leaning forward and on instinct, you draw back, a bit of embarrassed blush beginning to explode in your cheeks.

“No…” you respond, regarding him with half confused, half nervous eyes as he peers at you with his mischievous ones. What exactly is he trying to do?

“Besides, weren't you going to get some ice?” you continue almost indignantly, indicating forcefully with your chin towards the direction which he was pointing before. He glances the way you point with bored, disinterested eyes before turning them on you, leaning forward once more, his face mere inches from your own.

“I thought you said it wasn't necessary.” You don't reply to that, just draw carefully back again, your hands tightening on the insides of your jacket as though it were some sort of protective shield to cover your pounding heart. You swallow hard as he continues to move closer, the elfish grin on his face doing nothing to help matters. After a moment of this, he chuckles softly to himself before pulling away once more.

“Don't worry, I’m going. I was serious about helping you.” You pull yourself back into your normal position staring up at him, unsure of how to react. As his hand leaves the safety of your knee, you find that you hadn't even noticed it was there in the first place. The touch was so comfortable, natural, as though made especially for you.

“It is necessary.” He says, almost out of nowhere.

“I'm sorry?” you ask, not sure if you heard that right, and still slightly confused at what he may mean by that. He looks back at you, half in amusement.

“It's necessary to me that you're alright.” You don't have anything to say to that, as he turns around, disappearing into the few people that have been milling about outside. As he leaves, you realize that you can hardly hear anything but the roar in your ears, and the pounding of your heart.

How can he just say that as though it were nothing?

You watch him until you can no longer see his retreating back nor the black hat he wears above the curls of his hair. Turning away, you smile, half to yourself.

Is this happening?

You aren't dreaming, are you? You look down at your hands, and for good measure, you pinch yourself, wincing a bit at the sharp pain.

“Nope….” you groan, rubbing your wrist. “Not a dream.”

And yet...

You bite your lip at the thought of the memories, of the impossible day you had, of the excitement which has been churning over in your heart, hitting you deep in your soul.

Your hands clutch onto the insides of your jacket as you pull it tighter around your body. Against your will, a small squeal escapes from the confines of your mouth, almost as though you were a schoolgirl again.

All of it is just too good, too good to be true.

Tilting your head back, you close your eyes, taking a deep breath to calm your nerves, get your thoughts in order. Looking to your side, you catch sight of your satchel and are reminded of the reason you wanted to come here in the first place. Smirking, half to yourself, you rummage within your pack, pulling out your sketchbook, a couple of pencils, and your trusty eraser. Looking around for a flower that looks exactly like the one out of BigHits window, you're lucky enough to find one behind you, waving slightly in the wind. Smiling in relief, you pluck it off of the bush, setting it down carefully next to you on the bench. As you flip open your sketchbook, turning many pages of many different creations over until you find the one you have been working on, you let out a sigh.

“Alright, my little model.” You mutter to the flower next to you. “It's time to start working, huh?”

You need no response, even as you glance at it as if awaiting one. You smile to yourself before picking up one of your many pencils and getting to work.

It's as though when the tip touches the paper, everything else around you fades away, and you are lost in the world your mind has created spilling from your brain and landing on the sheet. It's as though you have encased yourself in a little space, a space made just for you. It offers you silence, peace of mind.

In this small space, you can do whatever you like, you can accomplish anything, your mind is the mere limit.

Every sketch, every drawing has a purpose, a story to tell. Everything you write, every idea that comes into your mind, can grow into something more. Every song you sing has some meaning, some purpose behind it. Every dance you have ever performed is made to express the anger, sadness, or pain, or even mere happiness of each song it is made for.

Some more than others, it's true.

The point is, people, make things, create things just so that they can get their message across. Just so that they can tell the world their story.

You want to do the same.

The idea of it makes your heart bud with excitement, the infinite possibilities which are offered to you. There’s only one thing that is missing, one thing that any creator searches for.

Someone to share it with you.

Once you find that, then your work would mean something.

What does it all mean if there’s no one to see the world you have created? If there is no one to recognize just what story you are trying to create, does it even exist?

You want it to mean something, you want people to see it, to see what you long to tell. You want the world to see your creation, you want the world to hear your message, to experience your story. Even if you had one, or a few people who can see it, then you would be okay. Even if only one person understood, and was able to see the world through your eyes…

Maybe then would you feel complete?

𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔢: so these next few chapters will be a lot of taetae and yen moments so...be prepared

chapter 14 here

check the Infinite Stars masterlist for more chapters

check my BTS masterlist for other BTS content

check out my masterlist for other kpop fanfics

[dewykth]

—acquainted (m)

“there he goes again. wishing for too much. silly boy, doesn’t he already know he will never have you the way he wants?”

muses. motorcyclist!taehyung x reader words. 2.3k+ contains. smut, angst, unrequited feelings, a fatal love affair notices. explicit sex scene, infidelity (don’t), slight degradation

He should really stop this.

The thought crosses Taehyung’s mind for the fifth time as he exits his apartment complex and mounts his bike. It’s there the whole forty-five minute drive it takes to get to your house. The high rise buildings disappear with each passing mile, replaced with modern, ostentatious estates. You live on the far end of the city, where The States is imprinted on a granite slab right in front of an opulent water fountain. He punches in the memorized gate code, pushing the intruding thoughts to the back of his mind.

The palatial homes never fail to make Taehyung’s mouth drop. His eyes traverse over every inch of the vast lush mansions. It’s all he can do, because he’d never be able to afford such a luxury. Taehyung barely manages to scrape up his rent money in time, hardly getting by with his shitty 9 to 5. But a boy can dream, he supposes.

His bike drives up the path to your residence, and he parks behind the separate garage, just like you tell him to. Away from any prying eyes. Old rich people are nosy, you had excused, they don’t have anything better to do. Taehyung believed you, not like he’d know any better.

Your house was the most impressive. Strikingly beautiful white marble, making the other houses on the block look stale in comparison. It suits you, he thinks.

A statue of an angel sits atop a platform, water shooting out of the top and into the vast pool surrounding it. It’s beauty is supposed to catch the eye of anyone entering your home, but Taehyung’s been here too many times to count. It isn’t as impressive as before.

He reaches the familiar mahogany-coloured doors, and his fingers find the doorbell before he can think of turning back. He pushes it once, twice, then takes a step back.

Why is he here again?

Taehyung told himself that it’d be the last time. That he wouldn’t come back again, that he’d cut whatever this was short, that he’d stop seeing you. That was what he had said the last time he saw you, yet here he is again. Taehyung isn’t like this. He doesn’t fuck someone more than once. He doesn’t go over anyone’s house to fuck. So why is he standing at your door for the third time this month?

He’s playing a dangerous game.

Taehyung likes to think he’s a man of control, but everything is different with you. Your number appears on his phone, and hearing your voice calling out for him is enough to make him break. It’s stupid, he’s stupid. It’s a Friday, half past five. The time you ask for his company is usually on Saturdays. The days Taehyung should be out clubbing and finding someone to take home for the night. Not be standing in front of your three-story mansion like a fool.

He should leave. He should leave and never step foot in this neighbourhood again.

The doors open, and Taehyung finds it baffling that there’s a twinge of disappointment in his chest at the sight of one of your housemaids. It’s not like you greet him at the door every time he comes over. You never do.

The maid says nothing, beckoning him to come inside. He does, because he has no fucking self-control left. Taehyung follows the petite woman up the stairs, and even though he knows his way around the grandiose manor, he lets her lead him anyway. They turn a corner at the end of one of the many hallways, and Taehyung’s heart starts ricocheting against his ribcage once he catches sight of the familiar ivory door at the end of the hall. The woman stops a few feet away from it, bowing before taking her leave. He watches her before reluctantly turning back.

What the hell is he doing here? He should go. You don’t even know he’s here yet. He should turn back, he should go home and tell you something came up.

But Taehyung is frozen, feet glued to the floor as he stares at your door dumbly.

Breathe. Count to ten. Then leave.

He can’t seem to move though, not even to knock on the door. It seems he doesn’t have to though, because it is swinging open before Taehyung can count to three.

The sight of you takes his breath away, which is nothing out of the ordinary, and all thoughts of leaving fade away into the endless abyss of his mind. You’re wearing that stupidly gorgeous smile of yours, the one that Taehyung likes to think is reserved only for him. He hates it, he despises how weak you make him feel. How fragile you’ve made his heart.

He shouldn’t be here.

Leaning your head against the door, you raise a brow at him. “Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to come inside and fuck me?”

And something switches inside him.

Taehyung pushes you inside, hands coming to the back of your neck to pull your lips to him. He kisses you fervently, with urgency, like he’s been starved of you for years, even though it’s only been two weeks since he last touched you. Too long.

His tongue slips into your mouth when you gasp in surprise. Taehyung twirls you around, pushing you against the door. His hands come to rest on either side of your head, and his lips leave yours in order to nip at your neck.

You gasp, “Mhm, I missed you.”

Taehyung tries to not let your words get to his head. It’s not like you mean them. “Did you, baby?” he murmurs against your neck, “Or did you miss my cock?”

You smirk, tilting your head to the side to make more room for him. “Maybe both.” They’re empty, he reminds himself.

Your hands go to his hair, tugging slightly and Taehyung can’t stop the soft moan that escapes his lips. He spreads your legs, hooking one of them around his waist. You get the message, jumping slightly to wrap your other leg around him. Taeyhung’s hands go under the silk robe you don, squeezing your bare ass as he kisses you again. He blindly leads you to the large bed near the middle of the room, setting you down on the thousand thread count sheets.

Taehyung hastily opens your robe, dick hardening at the sight of the black lace lingerie adorning your body. “Is this for me, baby?”

You only smirk in response. His lips meet your neck once again, placing open-mouthed kisses down to the valley of your breasts. Taehyung sucks hard, teeth nibbling softly at your skin and you moan, “mmhh, Tae, no marks.”

He growls at your words, resisting the urge to bite down onto your skin. But he obliges, moving his lips along. Taehyung’s hand slips behind your back, fingers expertly unclipping your bra. He doesn’t bother to slip it off, instead pushing the fabric down before his lips latch around your nipple. You gasp, back arching into him prettily.

Does he really think he could ever stop coming back to this?

His tongue swirls around your bud before he sucks harshly, just the way he knows you love. Your hands find his hair once again, tugging on his black curls. Taehyung moans around your breast while his other hand comes to your neglected one, pinching your bud in between his fingers. “F-fuck, Tae, please.”

His mouth comes off of your breast with a pop, a trail of his saliva connecting your wet nipple to his red lips. Taehyung smirks, “Please what, baby?”

He loves to see you begging for him. Needing him. He needs you just as much. “Please, touch me, anything.” you squirm when his fingers start to dance up your thigh, and he can’t help but chuckle.

“Ah, baby, you’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”

“Your fingers,” you gasp at the feeling of Taehyung’s fingers ghosting over your heat. “I want your fingers, please.”

Anything you want, he’ll give it to you.

Taehyung slips off the lacey fabric, throwing it across the room. His fingers come to lightly toy with your clit, and his eyes widen at the sheer amount of wetness. “Baby, you’re so wet and I’ve barely even touched you.” You whine at his teasing, hand coming to grip his bicep. “I told you, ah, I m-missed you.”

Empty.

Taehyung slips his fingers inside, making scissoring motions to make room for him. You’re a mess, moaning and clutching at his bicep with such force he’s sure he’ll see your finger indents tomorrow morning. Taehyung doesn’t mind it, even when he wishes he could mark you his just like you do to him.

He’s a fool to think such things.

“Nngh, fuck, Tae, please. I want your cock.”

You look beautiful like this, quivering underneath his touch. A blissful expression etched onto your flushed face, lips swollen from your teeth. He wants this vision of you to stay in his head forever. Where he can pretend you’re his, he’s yours, and you belong to one another.

Where you come undone in his own bed, not the one you share with your husband.

Taehyung grits his teeth.

Too much. He wants too much.

Taehyung slips his fingers out of you, ignoring your whine in favor of turning you around. He angles your ass up high before hastily removing his leather jacket. His tattooed fingers quickly undo his belt, and he pulls his jeans down. Taehyung’s cock springs free, and he grabs the foil wrapper from his pocket, ripping it with his teeth before slipping it onto his shaft. He lines himself up with your entrance, holding his breath as he slides into you.

And, god, he could never get enough of this.

You both release simultaneous moans of ecstasy when he bottoms out, and Taehyung thinks he’s far too gone already.

He grips your hips, sliding out until only the tip is inside of you before slamming his hips back into you. You whine, head dropping to the mattress as Taehyung continues to fuck you at a brutal pace. He watches the way your hands grip the white sheets as you moan about how good his cock feels.

Taehyung is on cloud nine, addicted to the way you feel around him. You’re a drug, and he can’t get enough. He can’t stop coming back to you. Taehyung wants more, more, more.

“Such a slut,” he grunts, “moaning for another man on your husband’s bed. Tell me, baby, does he fuck you like this? Does he make you feel this good?” He can feel you tightening around him as he spits out the words, angered. It doesn’t deter your loud moans, if anything it turns you on even more.

His hand comes down on your ass hard, and you release a muffled moan into the mattress at the pain that just feels too good. “I asked you a question, baby.”

Your head lifts, and your arms struggle to hold you upright as Taehyung continues to fuck you just right. “Only y-you- nngh, only you fuck me this good, Tae.”

And he knows they’re just pretty words. That it’s just to flatter him. As soon as this is all done and you’ve gotten what you want, Taehyung is left with nothing but a shadow of your empty promises.

But Taehyung lets himself pretend for now, just for the sake of his pleasure. He pretends the ring on your finger is his, and you only want him. For his pleasure. He feels you tightening around him, and his hand travels to your weeping pussy. Taehyung’s fingers skillfully rub your clit, knowing just what to do to send you over the edge. You whine loudly, and with one last flick of his wrist, you’re coming undone, moaning out for him. Taehyung grunts when your walls contract around his length. He thrusts sloppily into you once, twice, before he’s reaching his high with your name on his tongue.

The sound of your heavy breaths overlapping his filters through the room. Taehyung collapses next you, blissfully staring at the angels delicately painted on your high ceilings. He belatedly registers that you’ve moved away from him, now standing beside the expansive bed as you wrap a silk fabric around your frame. Your eyes meet his, and you smile before placing a kiss on his cheek. Your lips leave the spot tingling, and Taehyung can’t seem to take his eyes off of you, wanting to revel in this fleeting vision as much as he can.

“Thank you.” you say before walking to your bathroom. Your soft-spoken words hang in the air as Taehyung sits up and the door shuts behind you. This is how it always goes. You never ask him to stay. You never invite him for another round. You never ask for more. So why does it hurt so goddamn much this time?

The ride back to his apartment is always the worst part. The coming down of his high, when the effects of your presence wear off. When the actualities of this relationship sets in and the devil on his shoulder fights with the demon in his head.

She doesn’t want you like you want her.

That’s fine. I only want the sex. Just like her.

Liar.

But no matter how many times he tries to lie to himself, it’s useless. Because, no, Taehyung doesn’t just want the sex. He wants you in his arms. He wants to lay with you in his bed. He wants you to be there when he wakes up. He wants to cook breakfast for you in the morning before eating you out on the countertop of his kitchen. He wants it all.

There he goes again. Wishing for too much. Silly boy, doesn’t he already know he can never have you the way he wants?

He’s playing a dangerous game.

No, he’s already lost.

© dewykth. all rights reserved. no reposting, translation, or modification of any kind is allowed.

[wellhellotragic]

These Wounds Won't Seem to Heal  3/4

Summary: It’s not her fault. She’s still new and doesn’t know. He’s not flawless. Not anymore. He’s got scars, ones she’s seen first hand. Ones she helped tend to. His body is covered in them. There’s a thin red line where he took a bottle to the face during his early beat cop days. There’s another angry red mark on his torso from where he was stabbed with a knife in his ribs. The one where he had his hand slammed in a locker as a teenager has long since faded, only the barest hint remaining, only visible in just the right lighting.

There’s two oval scars now too. One in his stomach and one on his chest. Those are from the worst day of her life.But none of those scars compare to the ones he carries on the inside. The self-inflicted cuts he makes to his soul never quite healing over. He blames himself.  It’s not his fault.

There’s a scar on her soul now too. One he left. A piece of her heart forever missing.

Rating: Mature (mostly for language)

A/N: Guy, I suck so hard core. I don't even know how I let so much time lapse between chapter 2 and now, and then to really top off my suck-o-meter, I realized that there's going to have to be a chapter 4 because I can't fix what I've done so easily. Not realistically at least. I promise, and happy ending is coming though, and it won't take me another 8 months to get it up. I hope to have it up and finished by the weekend.

The AO3 version

It’s been a hell of a night. She’s not sure where exactly it falls on her list of worst days ever, but it’s in her top five. It has to be. It’s not the worst, that honor is saved for the night she almost lost Killian, but it’s still up there. She’s spent hours now going through all of the details over and over again with Graham and Lance, her story never changing. Getting poked and prodded by EMTs, despite telling everyone that she’s fine.

She’s not, but they can’t stitch up her insides.

David, her partner, on the other hand has a bullet hole in his leg. Better than his head though.

She’s not even sure if she can fully reconcile everything that happened. She and David were investigating the death of a low profile importer, a nobody, interviewing some dock workers that had found the body. Some gruff looking men who easily blended in with the usual fishmongers and cargo sorters.

But they weren’t. She realized it just a second too late, right before a bag was pulled over her head. She fought like hell, but she was at a disadvantage. From what she heard, David had put up a fight as well, but in the end, it was useless, and she lost consciousness with a sharp blow to the head.

She woke up strapped down to a chair with David the same a few feet beside her. She shouldn’t have been surprised, Jefferson had always given her a bad feeling, but she never actually thought he’d go dirty. She certainly never expected to be facing the wrong side of his department issued sidearm.

Even now, everything is still a blur. Graham assured her it’s the shock, that it’ll fade once the adrenaline wears off; that everything will clear up after a good night's rest. She’s not sure about that though. It’s four in the morning now and the adrenaline seems to be hanging on for dear life still and she knows she's not going to rest any time soon. Humbert offered to drive her home but she declined, choosing to wait for August to finish wrapping up his report.

She’s not sure what time it is when they finally arrive at her apartment. The battery in her cell phone died ages ago. Neither of them even make a move for the fridge, choosing to bypass the beer she keeps stocked for the hard nights. Instead, the two of them move in silence to her room. She plugs in her cell before crawling in bed next to him, like when they were kids in Ingrid’s foster house. She’s not sure who’s comforting who at this point, but she knows that she just needs to be with family.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She doesn’t, but she knows she needs to or it’ll eat her alive. She’s tried that once already and it ended up with her almost having a complete nervous breakdown and a three week leave of absence with daily Archie sessions.

“I don’t even know where to start.”

It’s true. So much has happened in the last twelve hours, there’s no one easy to pinpoint place to begin. So August goes first. He fills in the blanks that he can, so that she might be able to piece together the rest. He tells her about Killian sending him undercover, about Jefferson and missing drugs and money. How Jefferson was helping to conceal evidence that would link Walsh and the Nikko empire to a wide distribution of pixie dust.

Some of it is just speculation, that Jefferson must have figured out they were closing in on him and that’s why he went for Emma, and David was probably just collateral damage. How he most likely picked Emma because he knew how much she meant to him , and while he didn’t say Killian’s name specifically, the implication hung over her like a heavy cloud.

“Before you got there, he told Killian to choose. Between me and David I mean. To pick which one of us would live and which one would die. And then he just started laughing and screaming in this crazed voice that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget.”

It was the single most terrifying thing she’d ever heard. The mania that accompanied it. She already knew that it was going to haunt her for months to come, if not longer.

It’s a real Gracie’s choice. Gracie’s choice Killian. GRACIE’s CHOICE!!!

She felt August shift next to her.

“Gracie was his daughter. She died while he was undercover with a Southie Gang. Killian was undercover with Cruella at the time. It was a freak accident, a gas leak and the house went up in flames, but he was convinced that she was killed by one of the De Vil boys. He told me once that he knew Killian had given him up as a snitch to prove his worth. The De Vil’s had nothing to do with the Southie boys, but he’d twisted it up in his mind. I never thought he’d do anything about it though. It was just crazy drunk venting one night.”

She knows August. Knows that he’s blaming himself for what happened tonight, but she ignores it. Nothing she says will stop him from tormenting himself, and she’s not done.

“I told him to choose David. He has this whole perfect life, you know. An adoring wife and a new baby, all of these people that would miss him if he were gone. I told Killian to save David, and I-” She hates how small she feels when she cries, but she can’t hold back the tears. “He gave me this look. He’s been cold, but this was something different. There was just so much anger in his eyes.”

And that’s when she breaks. Knowing that hated her was one thing, but watching him train his gun on her. Seeing the pure darkness in his eyes. She doesn’t know how to voice it to August, but she knows that if August hadn’t arrived when he did, she knows he would have done as she asked. That he wouldn’t have had to think twice about it. And it’s that knowledge that sliced open the last piece of her heart that had been hanging on by a thread, even after all that time.

August holds her through the tears, until she finally exhausts herself enough to sleep. And so she drifts off, completely unaware of the new voicemail alert waiting for her.

________________________________

The February air is cooler on the water and he kicks himself for not bringing a heavier jacket. It’s been ages since he’s been out on this boat, and time has helped him to forget everything except for the things he wishes he could. Liam always used to tease him, so much so that Killian would reject any offers of warmth from his brother just to prove a point. He wasn’t some silly kid that needed to be minded anymore. He was capable of doing everything on his own, except for bringing an extra coat. He forgot everytime, and today was no exception.

Luckily for Killian, the spare that Liam kept on the boat just for him is still in its place, folded neatly in a small storage locker below deck. It hits him in the gut a little, that Liam could be so right about some things and incredibly wrong about others.

It’s eating Killian alive, not talking to his brother. Not being able to express himself because despite everything Emma has done for him, Liam still doesn’t approve of her. Liam often still thinks of him as the teenage boy, awkward and desperate for approval from anyone that will give it to him, even if it means getting taken advantage of.

He’s not that kid anymore though. He isn’t letting his crush steal his essays and letting her claim this as her own. He isn’t using all of his hard earned money to buy her jewelry that she’s just going to pawn for cash later. He isn’t following after Emma like a lost puppy dog.

He’s in love with her, and he has a sneaking suspicion that she feels the same way. But at this rate, he’s never going to get Liam’s blessing, the only approval he needs anymore.

He shouldn’t be thinking about this now. He really shouldn’t. Not when he and Liam are sitting in a rented dilapidated loft across from an abandoned fabric warehouse waiting for the Canal Street Cutter to emerge. There had been a lot of chatter that morning about where he might be hiding and Liam assembled teams throughout South Boston hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

Emma and August were stationed about eight blocks over. Lance and Arthur were on the edge of South Boston and Waterfront. Other teams were scattered, but too far away to get to if they needed assistance.

Killian had tried to tell Liam that it was a bad idea to spread everyone so thin, but the elder Jones brother had been instant and headstrong as ever. It would have been a career making arrest, and Liam, ever aspiring to be more just wouldn’t let that chance pass him by.

“I just think that you have other obligations that require your attention right now.”

“If this is the bros before hoes speech you can just save it.”

“Killian,” The exasperation evident in his brother's tone, “you know I detest such vile language. It's crude and you are better than that little brother.”

“What obligations?” He has to quash his desire to correct his brother’s description of him.

“I just think that you are meant for so much more in this life and I worry that you gave up so much when you left the narcotics division to follow her into homicide. You were a rising star there and now you’re having to cut your teeth all over again.”

“It’s not as if I’m starting all over. For God’s sake Liam, I just made Lieutenant. But there’s more to life than a job.”

His brother takes his gaze away from the binoculars to turn to Killian.

“Look at father and all of his vices. It strayed him from the path. But you, Killian, you persevered and now everything you've wanted is in your grasp.”

“This isn't the same thing and you know it. Emma isn't some pathetic man’s addiction. Liam, I'm in love with her.”

“Killian,” Liam pauses, taking a deep breath. “She's a distraction. Think of all that you’ve accomplished in the year that you were undercover. You brought down an entire crime syndicate. You did that without her taking your attention away.”

“I didn't bring the De Vil family down because ‘we’ were apart. I did it because we were ‘apart’ and I knew the only way I'd be able to see her again without putting her in harm's way would be to find the evidence and make the arrest.”

“Fine, if you need another reason, have you thought about working directly with her, or even over her in a supervisory position? Have you considered how your personal relationship with a subordinate could affect your judgment?”

“It’s not-”

Liams sees movement in the distance, cutting off Killian’s rebuttal, but his view is obscured so he motions for Killian to follow him, to leave the safety of their little room. They stay silent as they walk downstairs and head out a propped-open door leading to an alleyway. They had to wind through hallways to get from the loft outside and now they’re further away from the warehouse with no cover.

Killian even tries pointing out how visible they are, but Liam shuts him down, determined to close the case. He’s halfway sure that Liam’s trying to prove a point about how Killian can’t be successful and be in a relationship with Emma. He’s seen it before, the way professional jealousy destroys couples. But Emma’s not like that. She wouldn’t see his success as her failure.

They try to skirt the perimeter and he knows he should keep his mouth shut, this just isn’t the time, but he’s just so frustrated that he can’t keep holding it in.

“Please don’t make me choose between you.” It’s an angry whisper, more to himself than anything, and even though he did his best to keep his volume low it’s still enough that Liam’s heard and turns back to him, missing sight of the empty beer bottle at his feet.

The glass battering against the gravel echoes through the night as they both stay silent, waiting to see if they’ve been heard. The air is still around them, and Killian thinks they just might have lucked out.

And then he hears the gunshots ring out.

Liam is on the ground before Killian has time to register what’s happened. He runs to Liam, but gets knocked to the ground before he can get to him. His body hurts and he can see blood covering his hand from where he just touched his abdomen. He’s always heard people say that the shock blocks out the pain, but they must all be liars, because the longer he lays there, the more the pain intensifies.

It takes everything he has to pull himself behind a dumpster, half crawling, half slithering like a snake.

The shock eventually did kick in though, because even to this day he has no memory of radioing in for help. Just the vague memories of Emma leaning over him. The look in her eyes as she tried her best to hold back tears.

The same tears he fought back the night he left Boston, like the coward he was. But Archie was right. He needed to get his head on straight, to distance and center himself. He had to leave, for her.

He’s still wrestling with the guilt. He talked about it with Archie, how she begged him to kill her and save David. And that he actually considered it for about two full seconds. Not because he wanted to, but because he didn’t want her feeling the way he did. The burden of knowing that someone else was dead, and knowing that no matter how good you are, how hard you try, that you’ll never live up to them. He didn’t want her hating herself the way he did. Didn’t want her to destroy herself like he had.

But then something snapped inside of him and rage bubbled up. The audacity of her to beg him to kill her. For her to try and force that decision on him, with no regard to him or his feelings.

It was at that moment that he finally realized what he’d been doing to her ever since Liam had passed away. He finally understood the choice she’d been forced to make that night. And he knew - he knew that despite it all - he could never live with himself if he’d chosen anyone but her. That he couldn’t let her go just like she didn’t with him.

The only thing that saved him was Boothe. In the moments that passed after August arrived, while the two of them tried to wrestle the gun away from Jefferson, he felt the weight of Liam’s death wash over him. And then he heard a shot ring out and there was nothing but panic. Panic and guilt.

It felt as though ages had passed as he searched for Emma in the smoke filled room. The SWAT team had moved in at some point, but he’d been too focused on fighting off Jefferson to notice. He pushed through the sting in his eyes and the tightness of his chest as he looked for her, but all he saw through the haze were armored cops everywhere.

It wasn’t until he was forcibly escorted outside the building that he saw her, saw that she was safe, and then his stomach turned. He ran around a corner away from all of the prying eyes, and for the first time in his career, he gave in and let the night overcome him.

It’s been nearly a year since that night and he’s been running ever since. Some days are better than others. The anger is mostly behind him, but some nights he still wakes up in a sweat clutching his bed sheets, ready to fight. But there’s never anyone around to take a swing at, because he’s all alone. He’s pushed away anyone that ever mattered and isolated himself on that damn boat.

He thinks of Emma, wonders if she’s moved on or not. He’s too cowardly to call her, partly because he has no idea what he will say if she answers, but mostly because he’s terrified that she won’t answer. So he broods. He takes to the local bars as he sails the coastline and drinks a little too much before stumbling back to Liam’s boat alone. It’s a wonder nobody’s robbed him yet for what a careless sot he’s been.

Tonight is one of those nights. He’s made his way down to Florida and back, only a few hours away from Boston, and his demons are screaming again. He’s hoping against all hope that the rum in the tumbler across from him will help quiet them. Just holding the small glass in his fingertips helps a bit. A placebo of sorts. He doesn’t want to be this man anymore though. This pathetic lonely human. He doesn’t want to feel this way anymore, but he doesn’t know how to fix it. Archie said that him realizing it was a good first step but he’s not sure if he agrees. He’s called Archie a lot over the last year. Somehow doing therapy over the phone as the boat sways back and forth under his feet has helped to ease his hesitancy. There’s something about knowing that he can hang up at any time if he wants, and that no one knows. No one will judge him.

They don’t talk about Emma, not in present tense at least. They’ve had conversations about the way he’s treated her in the past, about his complicated feelings for her, the way it’s all shaped him, but they never talk about her now. He’s not sure if it’s because Archie doesn’t know if he’s ready for that, or if Archie knows something that he’s absolutely not ready for.

Archie is here tonight though, the rum is.

He’s still twirling the amber in his hand as he hears the familiar scraping of a nearby barstool against a wooden floor. There’s a scent that follows, a floral perfume that doesn’t match with the musk of the dive bar. He doesn’t look at her directly, doesn’t need to when he can see her from the mirror behind the bar. Her top is low, flashing more skin that it’s covering. She’s closer than he thought.

“Is that for me?” She’s bold.

He’s reminded of those early days on the force, when he wouldn’t even have to talk to a woman. When he could just flash her a smile and she’d be on his arm heading out the door to her place. He’s not that guy though, he’s salty and cynical, and the look he flashes her is closer to a smirk.

“Excuse me?” “Well, you’ve been toying with it for almost twenty minutes. I just thought maybe you were waiting for me to walk into your life.”

Was he this bad at picking up women?

“Look, I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m not in the mood for woman.” “So you’re gay?”

It’s a good thing he hasn’t started drinking yet because he damn well might have chocked otherwise. He doesn’t get a chance to respond though. The bubbly blonde that served him his rum has returned with a spray bottle in hand. “Mary of Mothers. Didn’t I already have you escorted out of here tonight, Teresa?”

“Bite me, Tinkerbelle.”

The girl behind the bar might be all of five foot tall but there’s a beast inside her that towers over any man in that bar and before he knows what’s happening the bartender is drowning the girl in what smells like stainless steel cleaner and the words coming out of her mouth would make any Navy man blush.

The girl ends up running away and Killian isn’t sure what to make of any of it. He’s broken up bar fights before, but he’s never seen anything quite like that.

“Sorry about that. I know this little bar might not seem like much, but it’s all I’ve got and I’ll be damned if I let the likes of her selling her body in here.” “Oh, she wasn’t-” “Trust me, where you had agreed upfront or not, you would have been light whatever cash you have left in that wallet before the night was up. And I’ll bet you dollars to pennies you would have had a lovely little itch or two down there.” She nods her head towards his crotch before switching the subject like she hadn’t just implied the poor woman from before was an STD ridden whore. “So, I haven’t seen you here before. Where you from?”

He’s not sure how she’s disarmed him so quickly, but he finds himself telling her all about himself over the next hour. Business has slowed down and her other barmate seems to be more than capable of handling the few strays still walking in.

She makes him laugh too with her feisty spirit. It’s been far too long since he’s felt at ease like this. They talk and talk. Not about much in particular, just random conversation. She bought the bar about six years ago, and tells him about how it’s let her build the family she always wanted and never really got. She’s carved out her own little place in the world and he envies her that. The way she can just lay her whole life bare to a complete stranger while he can’t even talk to the people that know him best.

The night rolls on and it’s time to close up. He half expects that she’s going to invite him upstairs, to the little apartment she mentioned earlier, but she surprises him. She’s done that a few times tonight, but this one hits him in the gut. “So, what’s her name?”

This time he actually does chock on the water she’s poured for him.” “I’m sorry, what?”

“Killian, in the last few hours, you’ve told me your entire life story, everything from your shitty father to your arrogant brother, your job, your leave of absence, but you haven’t mentioned a girl one single time. You’re holding back, which means there’s something to hold back.”

“You don’t know that. I could be gay.” “Um, ya, I saw you check out Teresa’s rack earlier, definitely not gay. So what’s the deal.” He doesn’t want to talk about it, but he doesn’t want to be rude either. So he gives her as little as possible, but she sees through him. In fact, she actually asks him what the hell he’s waiting for as she pushes him out the door.

He doesn’t really know what he’s waiting for to be honest. He’s wanted to go back to Boston, but there’s just so many threads he left unravelled when he left.

[golddaggers]

wRoNg

not my gif just randomly taken out of google

pairing: thor x reader

warnings: it’s nsfw, if you squint, there’s a bit of a breeding kink. 

a/n: twice in the same week??? i feel so proud of myself xD but i am hopeful you will enjoy it! leave likes, reblogs or maybe some comments if you do. 

word count: about 1,5k. a quick little ditty.

It was the last thing you should be doing. 

Still, as your hips ground against his, you couldn’t find in yourself to think why it was so bad. You were both in need of releasing tension. What a better way to do that if not in bed? Sure, it wasn’t healthy. Most of the time you hated each other. Always bickering, with bitter remarks about battle stances. You’d say he was always relying on his hammer instead of having a proper fight technique and he’d reply you weren’t exactly playing on muscle strength when using your sorceress powers. It would go on forever if the others wouldn’t chime in saying you were being annoying. 

Much to your surprise, you found him alone drinking. It’d been a rough week. You shouldn’t be so baffled he’d turn to alcohol when you were about to do the same. Sitting side by side, a few drinks on you, you realised he wasn’t so bad after all. Thor could be a nice company if he wanted to. Lighthearted jokes and pearly white smiles. Tomorrow you’d blame it on being intoxicated, but you were, doubtlessly, into him. 

The invite over to your home hadn’t been awkward. Thor accepted it without even blinking twice. An arm wrapping around your shoulders as you both swayed your way out of the dimly lit club. Neither could drive, so you walked. His skin against yours was electrical. Literally. You winced in pain when the shock first hit you, hearing his hoarse voice apologise, thick in his own inebriation. 

Your place wasn’t far. After a few minutes long walk, you were there, fumbling with the keys, trying to get the right one in the lock. As soon as the door clicked closed, he pressed you against it, the lips you fancied kissing on your neck, his warm tongue on your skin, sucking, marking while his hands squeezed your bare arms. It was a summer night, so you were dressed in short Levi’s shorts and an off-shoulder beige shirt.

A strangled sound slipped when he pulled in down, revealing the black strapless bra you had on. You’d be in serious trouble with your neighbours, because the way Thor kept touching you, you simply couldn’t tone it down, moans growing louder as his beard burned each little bit of skin it touched. As if you weren’t in enough trouble as it was, hooking up with a colleague. This sort of thing was forbidden, a sane bit of your brain tried to convince you. But the horny one shrugged it off. 

For a few moments, you just made out. His hands pulled you up to wrap your legs around him, your nails digging into his back, within his white t-shirt, as your lips were entangled, a mess of saliva and tongues. There was nothing sweet. Or romantic. This was all about tension. And boy did you two had a lot of it. His hard-on pressed against you just right. You rolled back against him, borderlining a scream. 

He hooks his fingers to the cups of your bra, pulling so your boobs spill out. The kneading is hard, you almost whimper in pain, but it sends a tingle down to your core, where you’re sure you’re a sopping mess by now. Thor’s mouth starts sucking on one of your nipples, teeth grazing the sensitive skin. A syrupy feeling clouds your brain, and you found yourself whispering his name over and over. 

Effortlessly he takes you to the bedroom, questioning in a half snarl where it was, so you point towards it, shaky. Your back falls to the soft sheets you’ve set your bed with, a loud squeal slipping from you, and again when he rips the shorts in half, showing the purple panties you were wearing. A plea for him to not do the same to your shirt falls from your lips.

There’s a mirror in front of your bed, in which you can visualise your state. Your lips are swollen, hair all frizzy and out of place. Both your shirt and bra are pooled by your waistline. The remains of your shorts fall off when you stand up, to remove them properly. Thor does the same, stripping off the white shirt and dark jeans, kicking off the sneakers as well. 

You watch, holding your breath. He’s so gorgeous. Tight and muscly. He feels like he’s made out of marble. A greek god embodied. Deep blue eyes stare at you then, eating you alive, like a hunter does its prey. You swallow hard, chewing your bottom lip, quaking in anticipation. Breathing comes out in ragged pants as he walks in your direction. 

His voice whispers a “c’mere.”, low, raspy. You’re putty, unsure if your legs will support you any longer, but they do. This man radiates heat, you feel warm all over, though you aren’t sure if it has to do with his body heat or your own arousal. Slick is dripping from you. 

"So wet for me…" He grunts, biting down on your bottom lip, "Tell me, how do you want me?" 

Your lips part. You weren't expecting that. He'd been leading all along, calling the shots. And you've allowed him to do so. The tip of his fingers brush your clit, and your forehead falls to his chest, a hand on his forearm, trying to support yourself. 

It's gentle, the way he's touching you. A thumb circling your nub, the tip of his index finger on your wet entrance, teasing. Your grip on him tightens. 

"I want your fingers, inside me," You manage to say, your mouth open against the tanned skin of his chest, "Please." 

The index slides easily to the knuckle and you roll your eyes. He doesn't rush, going in… Then out. A soft moan slips from you. It pains you that he's going so slow, the throbbing intensifying every time his palm hits your clit and the finger inside curls, touching you ever so intimately. 

"More," Again, it sounds pathetic, a needy girl, "I can take more than that. Please give me more than that." 

There's no need to look at him to know he has a smug grin on his face. You've known him for too long to not know it. Nevertheless, he complies, sliding another one, not once changing the speed. Goosebumps prickled your skin, you were almost crying with how much you needed him. 

He pulls out the second he realises your breathing getting irregular, your teeth biting harder on his peck. You were just on the edge. It's no surprise a groan bubbles on your throat, he chuckles, stealing a kiss from you. 

In the weak light of your room, you've never seen a man so handsome. Blond hair dishevelled, pink lips plump and parted. His body, a wonder.  

"Want you to cum around me." Thor whispers, hoisting you up again, back pressed to the wall. "Are you going to be good for me, sweetheart?" 

His eyes are glossy with desire, underneath you, you feel his dick, hard and throbbing. The air was heavy with desire. Of course you wanted him inside you, stretching and filling you up. So you tell him, breathlessly, "Yes". Thor seems to swell with pride, he loves having that effect on you. 

The room spins when he pushes inside, it's better than you thought it'd be. Your hands grasp his broad shoulders, it's a hopeful way to cope with everything that you're feeling. You could swear even your insides were twitching. 

Much like his fingers, he goes in and out slowly. Grunting like an enraged animal against your neck, squeezing your ass, leaving hand prints behind for sure, bringing your hips toward his with a slap. 

You mumble his name, bringing his head up for a sloppy kiss, your hands securing his cheeks, a burn feeling against your palms. No one had even come closer to making you feel this way, trembling with each snap of his, the subtle bump against your clit as he tried to sink deeper into you. 

"Gonna' cum," Blinded your pleasure, you throw your head back. "So fucking hard." 

"Come on, baby girl, around me, yeah?" His nose nudges your cheek, him too is getting sloppier. 

It's overwhelming when it does happen. A rubber band snapping, and you scream, scratching your nails down his back. Shaking. Lucky you his grip was strong, grounding in place, otherwise you would've fallen to the group, your whole body turning to Jell-O. 

"F-fuck," You stutter, feeling him still rutting, searching for his own release. 

"I'll fill you up," Thor says, rough, "Fill you with my babies. Gonna' swell your belly with them." 

Somewhere inside you, you know it's wrong, you can barely stand each other, but at this point you don't mind. An itching to feel him spend himself inside you, feel hot and wet, filled up with his cum. Which happens soon, you know it's cornering him when he squeezes your waistline. 

Then he caves. And lets out a sound that makes you clench. Hot. That was what he was. A bloody handsome guy who had made you fall apart like it was your regular Thursday. And when he places you in bed, wrapping himself around your body, there's a sense of familiarity you can't shake it off. 

Maybe tomorrow you'll regret it. Tonight, though, tonight you're gonna live like there's no tomorrow. 

[brockadoodles]

this is me trying - n. mackinnon

AN: Don’t be fooled by the cute gif, this is ANGST, AGNST, and more ANGST. But y’all asked for this so. Here’s another one of the folklore series. It’s a repost, but definitely let me know what you think!

Word Count: 2190

Warnings: Drinking, angst

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here Pouring out my heart to a stranger But I didn’t pour the whiskey

When you left Denver, you had no plans of coming back. You made peace with your decision to leave Nate because you felt in your heart that it was the right one at the time. Nate was intense but nothing was as impeding as the freight train of emotions that hit your body at once when you fell too hard for him, too fast. You did what any cowardly person would, you followed your fears all the way out of town, hoping for that to be the solution to mend the destruction inflicted on your heart that you were only to blame for. 

You thought Los Angeles would bring back who you were before Nate, instead, it chewed you up and spit you out like so many before you who went there, hoping for a glamorous reality that only existed in fiction. Instead of new dreams, you had an overpriced apartment you hated that felt cold at night, and loneliness in your heart you had accepted would be there forever. You were haunted by regret, the memory of leaving Nate standing alone in his kitchen as you left him, begging you to stay. He tried to tell you it was in your head, that you weren’t feeling too much, that he loved you as much as you loved him, but you wouldn’t listen. Los Angeles gave you one thing you were thankful for, even if it didn’t feel that way in the time you had been there and that was the realization of your mistake. 

“I don’t understand how you can tell me you’re in love with me and then just decide to leave?” Nate sighed, doing everything he could to understand what you were saying to him. He knew things had been hard, the season was long, but you never flinched at any of the trials of his career. He was so in love with you it hurt, his love was a strange feeling in his own heart, he didn’t know if he would ever find someone until he found you and he just knew. 

You wrapped your arms around your body, a physical representation of the pain you were trying to shield yourself from, a heartache that at the time felt necessary. Nate was your entire world, you lost yourself in him and your relationship and it terrified you. It was a love that was too good, where you were pulled off on the side of the road looking at a view, ten seconds away from the drop off that never came. You wanted to get ahead of it, break it off before it broke you. 

“I do love you, Nate, but it’s too much. I don’t even know who I am anymore.” You cried, begging him to understand. 

Nate tentatively took a step toward you, reaching slowly to pull your hand into his. 

“You’re the most amazing person I know. You have a dream that you’ve built on your own, and you do a damn good job of it. You care about the people around you, with your heart that loves people deeply. Everything about you is beautiful. You make me feel like nothing else matters, I would give everything up tomorrow if you asked. Please, don’t do this to us.” 

You sobbed at his words, looking into his eyes that were watery with tears. You squeezed his hand, unlacing your fingers from his. You knew what you had to do, you couldn’t be in Denver anymore. You couldn’t see his face everywhere, you had to figure out who you were. 

“I can’t be that person, Nate. I don’t know who that is. I’m sorry, you have to let me go.” You whispered, smiling sadly at him. 

You didn’t look back when you left his condo, you couldn’t allow yourself the last glimpse of him that you didn’t deserve. You knew if you did, you would have stayed. Instead, you walked to your car, packed full of your belongings. The tears didn’t stop flowing the entire time you drove toward the freeway, away from Denver and love you didn’t know if you’d ever find again. 

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

It had been six months, time that should have been enough to get over a breakup that you were the cause of. You were standing on a rooftop, looking out at the pink and orange sky that was settled between the LA skyline. A drink was sitting on the ledge, untouched in front of you, the water droplets on the glass from the ice that was melting. Everyone around you seemed so happy to be there drinks flowing and a steady noise from the constant chatter as they all celebrated your friend’s new engagement. You sighed, opening your phone as you debated slipping out early. You felt like an open wound, your thoughts were still racing over Nate, clouding your judgment and making it so that you couldn’t even be present for an event that deserved your full attention. 

When the car pulled up to your building, you felt like you were on auto-pilot as you thanked the driver, pulling out your keys before entering the lobby. As you opened the door to your apartment, you felt your eyes get heavy. You slipped off your heels, leaving them by the door as you continued inside. You slowly worked through your night routine, each step of it committed to muscle memory. You weren’t fully there, all you could think about was Nate. 

You made yourself a cup of tea in an attempt to wind yourself down, the cup warm in your hands as you crawled into your bed. Everything reminded you of him, the way you carefully got into bed, as if he was still peacefully sleeping on the other side and you didn’t want to wake him, the way you mentally said goodnight to him, even if you were just talking to his ghost, each little inconsequential piece of your life led back to him, no matter how hard you tried to forget. 

You felt so ahead of him at the time, so sure that what you were doing was right for both of you. The fear of a future with him overtook everything, the worries slowly started to replace comfort. You laid in bed that night, watching as time passed slowly while you thought intently about the last year of your life. You mentally berated yourself, trying to pinpoint exactly where it went wrong, combing through your memories for any signs that Nate gave that could have made you so insecure. 

The problem was that those signs were never there because Nate had never done anything wrong. He was an intense person, giving his all into everything he did, including you. Nate may not have been the type to show his feelings with superficial romantic gestures, he rarely surprised you with flowers, he didn’t take you on fancy dates, he took painfully long to say that he loved you. Anyone who didn’t know him probably would write him off as a lost cause, a young guy who didn’t know how to give himself to someone else. They had it all wrong though, Nate may not have been public about his affection, but he showed how much he cared in other ways. You felt his love in the way that he held you close after a tough loss, it was in the way he smiled softly at you when you weren’t looking, it was the way that he was your biggest supporter, always proud of your accomplishments and the person that you were. It was the way he was so sure about you meeting his family and Sid, knowing if you could get along with them, that you were probably the one for him. 

You thought back to that summer in Cole Harbour. Tears silently rolling down your cheeks as you remembered what Sidney had said to you that weekend. 

“He’s better with you, ya know. He’s more tolerable,” Sid jokes, walking up to you with a smile. You turned to look at him before your eyes trailed back to Nate, your heart full of nothing but affection for the man you had the privilege of getting to know. “But actually, not sure I’ll like him as much if you ever leave. You’re everything to him.” You looked at Sid, smiling softly at him. You didn’t respond because at the time you didn’t need to, the way you loved him was evident that weekend, it was unspoken. 

You never considered what Nate wanted. Looking back on it, you completely disregarded any feelings about you leaving, you never even gave him a chance to speak as you walked out his front door. The pressure created in your own mind, conning you into leaving a relationship that you were perfectly happy to be in only to later never let you grieve over what you did to him. You were selfish and you decided that enough was enough, you needed to forget about the failed attempt at moving on, you needed to go home. 

Glancing at the clock, you saw that it was just nearing 4 am, dimly lit reflections from the buildings were sneaking into your windows as the city was still asleep. It was a bad idea, one that came about from six months of never feeling at peace, your mind constantly going in circles. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you packed a small bag and left LA, settling in for a long drive back to a painfully familiar place.     

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

As soon as you drove into the city, feelings of nostalgia calmed you. You felt the most at peace than you had in a long time, a false sense of hope filling your heart, not knowing that in a few hours you’d finally break. 

You didn’t have a plan as you drove the familiar route to the place you once shared together, the streets unchanged as you passed by. It was dark, and you had no idea if he was even in town but it didn’t matter, you had to try. When you got close to the house, your heart sank. A beautiful woman was getting into a car in the driveway. Of course, he had moved on, why wouldn’t he when it had been so long? You drove away from the house quickly, the pieces of your heart shattering as you went to the one place in Denver where you knew you’d have a few hours to just forget.  

You sat at a dimly lit bar in downtown Denver, flakes of snow littered in your hair from the winter conditions you couldn’t forget if you tried. Your dark anorak jacket was carefully placed on the stool beside you, the wool scarf that had lost the scent of Nate a long time ago still carefully wrapped around your neck, keeping your body warm and comforted. Whiskey sours were placed in front of you far too frequently for anyone that was supposed to be put together. You poured your heart out to a stranger, details blurring together as you spoke to the man next to you who probably couldn’t care less about your problems. Your words were slurring as you crawled deeper into your own mind, over analyzing each moment of your relationship with Nate and how you got to this point of being in the same town and not knowing each other anymore.  

You shakily pulled out your phone, debatably one whiskey sour too many from any sort of rational decision. You missed him, the kind of longing where your whole body aches. You sat in the nearly empty bar, minutes from the last call, ringing in your heart that was heavy enough to lead to collapse. 

You opened the familiar contact, the red heart still next to his name, taunting you as you remember the childlike crush you had when you put it there. You knew he wouldn’t pick up, not after what you did, but if you couldn’t be with him, you wanted to at least try one more time to rectify the mistakes you made.

“Nate I- god. I miss you, I’m sitting here at this bar, and all I can think about is the potential we had that I fucked up. I feel like I’m the outsider in this crowded party I wasn’t invited to. All I wanted was you and I fucked it up, baby. I-god.” You cried out into his voicemail, not unfamiliar to the desperation in your voice. 

“I guess this is me trying ya know? I want to make it right, to make you happy, to love you like I was so scared to before. I-I’ll be here, waiting.” You set your phone down, shaky hands wiping tears from your cheeks. You waited there until the night grew cold and the bartender had to help you into an Uber home, for a call that would never come.

[jawritter]

Twelve Days Of Christmas

Summary: Dean never realized that Y/N missed Christmas until he turned off an annoying Christmas song on the radio on the way home from a hunt, now he will make it his personal mission to give her the Christmas he misses so much, and if he plays his cards right, maybe he will give her what he has wanted to give her for so many years, himself.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Written For: @spnchristmasbingo​​​​

Square Field: Christmas Pajamas

Word Count: 1963

Warnings: Fluff, Dean on Ice Skates, lol. Fluff

A/N: This is to help me catch up on my SPN Christmas Bingo card lol Chapter 6 will post tomorrow! I knew chapter will post every day until Christmas! I know I’m insane lol. This is a real time fic collection and all mistakes will be my own! Please do not copy my work! Hope you all enjoy these!!

**SERIES MASTERLIST**  **MASTERLIST**  **BECOME A PATREON**

Hibbing, Minnesota was a small town that had an almost rustic, old-time feel to it. The old stores that lined the streets downtown spared no expense in decking themselves out for the holiday season, and you could have sworn that you had taken a step back in time as soon as Dean turned Baby onto the main street in the town where most everything was located. 

You could even see Dean out of the corner of your eye looking around excitedly as he drove down the street. Pedestrians were walking around with bags and in their warmest winter attire. You could hear the faint ding of the Salvation Army bells ringing from the corners. If you listened hard enough you could even hear the kids you just passed laughing as they launched snowballs at each other from around the old light post in the street. 

Dean smiled to himself as he watched you take in the sights around you. The smile that graced your face makes his world seem all the more brighter. In the dark world that he had been thrust into at such a young age, when you found the slightest little bit of light you tend to cling to it. His hand twitched on the steering wheel, and for just a moment he almost took your hand in his before he caught himself. He didn’t want to move too fast. 

You weren’t just some quick fuck to him, you weren’t just something to do. You had come to mean the world to Dean, and even though his feelings for you were a big driving force in all this he was doing for you, he wanted to make sure for the first time he did it the right way, and not in some rushed hurry in some truck stop bathroom or a motel quickie. He wanted you to fall for him the way he’d fallen for you if that was possible. Even if it was selfish to want you, he did, and there wasn’t any changing that. He was tired of trying to stay away from you.

Finally, Baby’s wheels came to a crunching stop in the middle of the street at a little shop, and before you could get out of the car Dean grabbed your shoulder, stopping you. 

“Stay here Sweetheart,” he tells you before jetting out of the car before you had time to argue. You watch with intense curiosity through Baby’s frost kissed windows as Dean made his way to the counter to talk to the elderly gentleman that was working there. 

The older man disappeared into a small room that you couldn’t see and returned with two boxes in his hands, passing them to Dean, as well as a bag, before Dean paid the man, and made his way back to Baby, throwing the bag in the back seat before passing your box to you, and shutting the car door against the bitter chill of the wind outside. 

“Open it,” he said excitedly.

You would have normally given him hell about how Hallmark this was, but those bright green eyes left no room for kidding, so you gingerly pulled the lid off of the box on to your lap. Finding a brand new pair of Ice Skates will be in their protective paper wrapping. 

You were smiling like an idiot, and you knew it, but the fact that he’d gone through his much planning and preparation made your heart feel like it was going to fly out of your chest and flutter around the room. 

“Dean, are we going ice skating?” you asked excitedly as he put Baby in drive, and began to slowly pull away from the curb. 

“Yep, I remember you saying you used to go with our dad when you were a little girl. Every year Donna said they open up an outdoor ice rink for everyone in town, and I just had to bring you.”

You could have cried on the spot, your eyes and heart were swimming with so many emotions as Dean smiled a little while he drove down the road towards your destination. You couldn’t believe he paid that much attention to you, much less remember everything you had told him about your life before hunting the way he was slowly revealing he did. 

When the car parked out in the parking lot, you leaned over in a moment of bravery and placed a kiss to his stubbled covered cheek, and threw your arms around his neck the best you could in the car with a box of skates in your lap. He never hesitated or pushed you away, he just wrapped his arm around you, hugging you back like his life depended on it.

“Thank you for this Dean, it means the world to me,” you tell him, and you could have sworn he placed a kiss on the top of your hate covered head, but it was so fast that you couldn't be sure. 

“Anything for you Y/N/N, you know that.”

It had been years since you had been on a pair of skates, and Dean said he’d only ever did it once or twice in his entire life, but you found your footing quickly. It really was almost like riding a bike. Dean was taking it a little slower, but cat-like reflexes he’d developed as a hunter had him moving pretty well after only falling on his butt three times. 

Dean was surprisingly more graceful than people ever gave him credit for. Years of fighting had taught him how to move in a way that made him limber and almost fluid. You could see it in the way he moved now next to you as the pair of you glided alone in a circle with the rest of the moving crowd. You laughed harder than you had in years when Dean collided with the ice the first time, and the second, and this third, each time growling out an adorable “son of a bitch”, but he was determined, and now you would think he’d been doing this for years.

You were so distracting watching him move next to you that when a group of teenagers sped past you it knocked you off of your balance, but before you could actually collide with the ice Dean’s strong arms wrapped around you, leaning against the makeshift wall they had placed as a barricade around the ring to balance the pair of you. His breath fogging out in front of him and mingling with your own as you repositioned yourself. 

His eyes scanned your face, as his gloved hand came up to brush the hair away from your face that had fallen when you lost your balance, his piercing green eyes boring into yours as your heart pounded away against your ribcage, which had nothing to do with the near-fall you almost took, and everything to do with the fact that this Adonis of a man still hand his arms securely around you even after you regained your footing. 

“You okay,” he asked, his breath coming out of his parted pink lips in white puffs. He was so close to you smell the gum he’d been chewing. Your entire body tingled with excitement, for just a moment you thought he was going to kiss you, but just before he would have followed through he straightened and laced his fingers with you. 

Blushing furiously you cleared your throat and smiled at him, nodding because there was no way in hell your throat was going to allow you to speak. It felt like it had literally caved in on itself the moment you realize just how close Dean was to you. 

Dean’s eyes searched you over like a protective mother hen, still worried, always worried. 

“Your cold Y/N/N, your shivering,” he stated, taking his top layer coat off of his body and draping it over your shoulders. “We’ve been out here for a few hours. What do you say we head back, take a hot shower, and make something hot and laced with alcohol.”

You blink a few times as the scent of his cologne laced in his jacket clouded your sense, and his hand rejoined your own. 

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

Dean helped you from the ice and out of your skates before getting his own and placing them in the back seat, turning up Baby’s heater to warm you. The drive to the cabin back through town was peaceful. You hadn’t noticed that you had been out most of the day, but the sun sinking pink behind the clouds added an enchanted feel to the little town as you went. Day 9 had by far been the best yet, and if today was the last day you’d cherish this time with Dean forever. 

Still, Dean wasn’t done, far from it. 

Once you got back to the cabin, he grabbed your arm, stopping you from going to the shower with the bag you had all but forgotten from earlier in his hand, holding it out for you to take. 

You took the bag suspiciously in hopes of getting that full-body laugh from him again that he did the other day, and it worked to your surprise. 

“What’s the suspicious look for sweetheart, it’s not gonna bite! Open it! You’re gonna need it before you take a shower!” 

You pulled the tissue paper from the top of the bag, and two pairs of Christmas pajamas, complete with socks, were waiting for you. One for you, and one for Dean. 

“Oh my God! You’re actually gonna wear Christmas pajamas?” you asked him in disbelief, pulling out your Elf pajamas as well as Dean’s which proudly declared “Merry Christmas you filthy animal,” across the front. 

“What can I say, they looked warm, and it’s a classic,” he said, taking his pair from you. “Now if any pictures of this rare occurrence surface once we’re back at the bunker just know I might have to kill you.”

You snort out a laugh, hugging him again, and enjoying the way he all but melted against you. His hand going to your hair to play with your hair as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Now, you know I make not promise Winchester,” you tease him when you finally force yourself to let go of him.

His eyes narrow at you playfully. 

“You better go take that shower Sweetheart, or else I’m gonna go first and use all the hot water,” he teases you, snatching up his pajamas and making his way into the kitchen to start on some hot chocolate for the two of you. 

You grin your way towards the small bathroom, mind swearing with events from earlier today. You would have never guessed this side of Dean existed. You definitely weren’t going to be ready to get back to reality once Christmas was over. Even as you sat tucked safely into his side with his arm around you later that night, several cups of adult hot chocolate in, and about three episodes of Dr. Sexy M.D. deep you still couldn’t believe just how lucky you were that he would care enough to do this for you. 

Dean, on the other hand, was just as surprised that you were willing to do this with him at all, and didn’t tell him to fuck off the moment he bought the present on night 12. He didn’t think it was even possible, but somehow, right here with you tucked safely against him for the first time he could see himself with a happy ending, and that was a gift enough for him this year. 

He was sure you were all he’d ever need.

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