#i hope they die in one another's arms. i hope the death of the sun engulfs them both. i hope they never forgive each other
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captainscabins · 1 year ago
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"This story is a tragedy because it didn't have to end this way."
vs
"This story is a tragedy because it was always going to end this way."
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mcflymemes · 5 months ago
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"I'M GOING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE" PROMPTS * assorted dialogue for near-death scenarios and the dramatic conversations that follow, adjust as necessary
just stay with me, hold on!
we're gonna get you out of here!
stay awake for me, [name]!
look at me! keep your eyes fixed on me!
you're not gonna die here. not on my watch.
it's not over! not yet!
what if i take your place?
let me get you out of here.
squeeze my hand if it hurts.
i'll patch this up for you and we'll be on our way.
i'm not leaving you to die.
if you risk your life for me, i'm coming to get you.
i'll get you out of there one way or another.
don't say that. there's still hope.
this is not your time to die.
you promised me forever.
i came to save your life.
i just risked everything to find you.
you still owe me a drink, remember?
they've got you all wrong.
i'll find a way to free you.
anything you can tell me to help get you out of here?
don't start speaking like that. you're not going to die.
it's gonna be close, but we'll make it.
i thought i lost you.
wait until they see you're alive.
told you i'd come looking for you.
when you didn't show up, i started to worry.
they can't hold you in here without a reason.
they want to execute you?!
i'll get you out of here before the sun rises.
they can't take you away from me.
please don't cry. this isn't the end.
don't give up on me just yet.
i have a plan to get you out of here.
sit tight and wait for my signal.
stay right there! i'll get help!
you've lost a lot of blood, but i'm gonna fix you right up.
this is not how you're meant to die.
you have so much life left to live.
you promised me you'd stay alive.
i thought i told you to be careful!
this is what happens when you don't listen to me.
whatever happens, just know that i love you.
maybe i can take your place.
wrap your arms around me just like that.
i'll carry you out of this mess.
just a few more steps.
take some deep breaths for me.
the doctors are coming. just hang on.
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cinhomi · 6 months ago
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𝑈𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑙𝑒𝑑
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𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Han Jisung x fem reader
𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: you and your soulmate in a random morning of May
𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fluff, smut
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: descriptions of sexual intercourse, unprotected sex, no dynamic specified, vanilla, talks of death and afterlife
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1.9K
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“Ji?”
It's warm. The Sun’s rays penetrate the cream colored curtains of his bedroom and dance on your naked skin. The tree outside paints stunning shadows that turn into shapes that move with the light, in a psychedelic motion that molds with your bodies. A pantone of warm colors reflects everywhere and it's as if they're about to spill in your heart, too.
“Yeah, baby?”
His voice is barely a whisper, his breath tickles your ear. You can feel his hand move from your side to go up, up, until it reaches your neck and his fingers delicately close round it. You feel his bottom lip first, then the upper one, as he starts to leave little pecks on your nape, your jawline. The presence of his other arm is persistent, under you, dragging you closer until your back is flat on his chest. The pendant of his necklace starts to leave a print between your shoulder blades.
“Do you think there's life after death?”
He halts his actions. Jisung leaves another kiss behind your ear and inhales, hoping to get drunk with your scent. His hand caresses your cheek, and then travels down to your arm, finding your wrist, taking it close to his pretty mouth to rest there, to let him kiss it. He presses your digits on his lips and gives attention to each of them. It takes him a while to reply, but you give him all the time he needs.
“I like to believe that there is, yes.” his eyes close for a moment, it's almost as if he wants to memorize your fingerprints. “Where does this question come from, baby?”
When you turn around to face him you find his faint smile, his adoring eyes that trail from your chest, to your lips, to your own irises. There's a rebelling tuft of curly hair that stands alone on his head, and the mole on his cheek moves whenever he swallows. You caress the one placed on his collarbone, before taking a deep breath. “I just… I was thinking- when we die… our body remains here, right?”
Jisung nods and hums, brows furrowing slightly, trying to predict the path your thoughts will take.
“And, wouldn't it be sad if it all ended… like that? Or maybe- or maybe that's the beauty of it? In the end we really always kind of leave a piece of us here. Being it bones or ashes…"
He hooks the necklace he gifted you the night prior, twistes it in his hand and watches it shine. “I always feel like we're too big to just end with death, you know? I don't know if we actually reincarnate or if something like Heaven or Hell exists, but I don't want to- no, I can't accept the idea of disappearing from the universe completely.” he explains, all while bringing you close to him again, your breasts now against his chest, your leg brushing his glutes as he takes it to rest on his hip. “Do you agree?”
“Yeah,” you pout, your hands open to feel his muscles tense under your touch, “we are immense. Don't you ever think that, sometimes, you have strong feelings about something because you were connected with it in your previous life?”
Jisung nods, he leaves a kiss on the crown of your head. “For example?” he chimes in, resting his head on your pillow.
“Well,” you start, a hint of a giggle already threatening your voice, “maybe you're scared of bugs because in a previous life one killed you!” and a light slap can be heard on your shoulder as he shakes his head trying to suppress a smile.
“I thought you were about to be all cute and reference us… tch.” he looks at the ceiling, faking being offended.
“What do you mean?” and at your question his farce crumbles immediately, enamored eyes staring down at you.
“Maybe we're together now because we were lovers in our past life, too. No?”
All words die in your throat. There's a block forming in the pit of your stomach and your waterline starts to tingle.
“From the first moment my eyes laid on you, I knew you were the one. Sometimes I think I've known you all my existence, sometimes I wonder if we come from the same star.”
“Ji…” before he can see your expression you bury your head in his chest, “this is disgustingly romantic…”
He giggles. You look at him again just to get a glimpse of his gummy smile, maybe searching for the crooked teeth he had once. You miss it sometimes.
Jisung gets up on his elbows and in moments like these he seems bigger. His shoulders are up straight, chest popped up, slim waist twisted making the faint lines of his abs become curves. You'd look at his thighs and at his cock too, but grey cotton sheets cover it all.
“But it's true! It's true… I refuse to believe otherwise. We're together in every universe, baby.” his gaze fixed on yours. “Is it childish to think so?”
You shake your head, blinking slowly. Sunlight is still a bit too strong, your eyes straining from it, but the way it reflects on him, it's mesmerizing. Jisung takes your face in his hands and kisses you, tenderly, totally opposed to how he did it the night prior. It's so sweet, it's overwhelmingly sweet and you can't help but melt as his index finger caresses the corner of your eye, as his thumb taps your bottom lip for him to take between his. There's still a slight ache between your legs but it's a lovely feeling. There's still the smell of your juices, your panties by the end of the bed, his shirt hanging on the corner of his TV.
“I'll find you in every universe,” he whispers between kisses, “I'll be by your side, even if we become different things, I'll- I'll find a way, angel, I'll find it.” more urgently, his cold rings roam on your back, lifting you up enough to have his arms around you. It makes you sigh, it makes you whimper.
“I- I want-” you gasp, his tongue is under your jaw and it keeps on traveling down every valley of your body. There are soft but obnoxious sounds now echoing in the room. There's also a dog barking in the distance, few cars passing by, someone opening their shutters. “I want everything I lost to- come back to me, Jisung…”
His head is now on your belly, he stays there with his eyes closed. Jisung sighs. He kisses your belly button and goes even lower, almost disappearing under the covers.
“It will…” he inhales your smell, you, groaning against your navel, “it's already here angel. You may not be seeing it, but you're already surrounded by it. You said that, we just leave our bodies-” he checks on your expression quickly. “You feel it, don't you?”
He sees your eyelashes flutter and your head moving up and down. Jisung kisses your clit, and then your labia, and his eyes roll back when your soft sounds reach him. When your leg lifts and your knee presses on his cheek, nudging him away, big round confused eyes run all over you once again.
“Inside…” even if the sentence floats between you too, Jisung understands. He comes up and the way the freshly clean cotton falls from his figure reminds you that time at the lake, when he came out from the water to make love to you under a willow. He's hard, you feel it against your thigh.
“Need me to stretch you?” he's whispering, he's kissing your left shoulder. As you shake your head, his tip is already catching in your entrance.
“It'll be okay baby. I know you miss them, but your heart is big,” his cock slowly slips inside you as he speaks, “your heart is big and I love you for this reason.” and then you find yourself full, of him, of his sweet words, full of light and sorrow and sadness and cheesecake. You feel so many things, it's only natural that some tears threaten to spill from your eyes, but Jisung kisses them all away, but Jisung hushes you and rolls his hips deeper into you, with the same rhythm of the tap of your kitchen sink, that broke two days ago. Later he’ll call someone to fix it.
When your palms glide on his back you feel bumps, formed as long streaks. You close your eyes, you touch them like a blind person reading braille, you try to read him. It's written “I love you” all over. He adores it when you hold him flush over you, when your nails cling to him as he thrusts into you, adores your delirant praise, hushed under your breath.
Jisung drags his voice in long moans, you feel them hot on your neck, they alternate with hisses while his eyes squeeze shut and fight to stay open, to witness how your own face moves. They reverberate in your chest and your heart is being caressed. What was warm light now is scorcingly hot directly against your bodies, a sheen of sweat making you sparkle. It's such a nice day, you should grab coffee together later. Take his sunglasses maybe. His hoodie. His soul. He doesn't mind.
“Baby…” it's hoarse now, it'll sound melodic again when he's calm, “baby you are my everything-” his hips pick up speed, they falter, his thighs burn. When you wrap your legs on his lower half, when your heels press on him they stutter and Jisung chokes on his own words. You feel the tell-tale throbs in his cock, you feel the way his hands grip the flesh of your hips, and your walls closing around him.
“Ji- baby, look at me, look me in the eyes-” it's afternoon already. He lifts properly, both hands on the sides of your head. Jisung looks you in the eyes. Jisung, he tells you that he loves you repeatedly as he feels his high so close he thinks he's going to pass out. Your pussy sucks him in whenever he retracts his cock, he hears the change in your voice. You'll go on a walk together tonight.
He does as you asked, never closes his eyelids. He's like a god falling apart, stilling into you, orgasm crashing over him like a tidal wave. It's him, it's his expression that makes you arch your back, it's him greedily covering every millimeter of skin he sees with his wet lips, it's his praise, his “baby”, his cum deep inside you. You exist. In that moment you're sure you exist because Jisung breathes life into you, because when you come for him he circles your clit and smiles. You die and then you're alive again.
Jisung stays there for a while, he keeps smiling, teeth grazing your chest and collar bones as you both start to giggle. You feel the ache again and it's comforting.
"I don't care about dying, angel. I mean, I don't want to, but… it's okay because I already knew happiness, you know?” he closes his eyes.
It's a hot day of May and few butterflies appear to do their dance in the air. It's a hot day of May and you discuss about life and death like it's nothing, like you talk about the weather. It's a hot day of May and it's easy to love, to exist, to accept the end of existence. It's just a day like the others, and that's beautiful.
“I know.” your reply comes before a sigh. You'll have to say goodbye to coffee and think about lunch. “You have to tell your mom I need her kimchi recipe, okay?”
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a.n.
life is beautiful, please live it to its fullest and enjoy every moment, even if it brings pain, even if it seems dark, please cherish it. life is beautiful and you deserve to think so. I love you, take care of yourself.
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wordstome · 11 months ago
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kosovo maiden (könig x reader)
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Well, I did it again, gang. I wrote another story based on a painting. This one is by Uroš Predić in 1919, and was posted to Tumblr here (thanks to arcana-imperii for posting!)
I don't know anything about Kosovo, so the reader here isn't explicitly Serbian ;; please forgive me. Also, apologies for possibly inaccurate ambiguously late-1800s setting, medical information or German. Please enjoy!
2.2k words
There are soldiers in the field.
You heard the sounds of battle early in the dawn, the piercing explosions of gunfire and cannons ringing out as the sun rose. You weren’t concerned at first: it was far enough away that you felt safe enough to carry on as usual. But the gunfire drew closer and closer, and by noon you could hear the shouting and the battle cries, driving you trembling into your attic with terror. Mercifully, the fighting peters out as the sun sinks lower in the sky, but when you finally work up the nerve to peek out of your window, you find to your horror that the grassy field adjacent to your humble little home is littered with the bodies of dead and dying men.
Without a single further thought to your own safety, you grab a lantern and a pitcher of water and rush into the night.
It’s awful. Most of the men left behind are already cold, some whose eyes you have to shut yourself. The ones who were able to be saved were likely evacuated by their comrades, so the only ones left to face the cruel nighttime are the ones who won’t see the morning after. A few are still conscious when you find them, but you have little more to offer them than a gentle touch and one last drink of water. Their eyes are what will haunt you most after today: slick with tears as grown men weep, all semblance of courage and proud masculinity stripped from them as they face down their imminent demise. It’s terrible, heart-wrenching, but you can’t bring yourself to stop. You’re the only living thing left that can offer them comfort in their last moments.
The jug of water dangles from your hand as you trudge through the field, looking for anyone at all that you can provide help to. You’ve long abandoned any hope of finding someone you can save when you come across him: the giant in the grass.
It’s well and truly nighttime at that point, your lamp the only source of light upon what seems like a sea of human misery. The light hits his face, and you gasp. Your first thought is of how huge he is, at least 200 centimeters if he were standing. Your second thought is of how handsome he is…
You jolt to attention as he shifts and groans. He’s alive! Shaking some sense into yourself, you don’t hesitate to rush to his side. Your hands roam across his body, assessing the severity of his injuries. To your surprise, he doesn’t seem to be mortally injured. They’re severe, to be sure—he won’t be able-bodied for weeks. But he’s far from at death’s door, only confused and dazed…had his comrades only left him due to his sheer size?
Using your hand to support the back of his head and neck, you tip some water into his mouth in an attempt to revive him. The man cracks an eye open, regarding you with feverish wonder.
“Ein Engel…” he murmurs. You’re too elated that he’s alive, so you don’t actually properly hear what he said. With light, deft fingers, you tear strips of his tattered shirt and use the cloth to wrap up a scrape on his arm and stem the flow of a very nasty-looking wound up along the broad plane of his torso. To your alarm, however, the man seems to slump, his head laying back as if he’s about to lose consciousness.
“No, no,” you cry in panic, shaking him without heed of his injuries. “Sir, you cannot sleep here, I am unable to carry you…you will die out here!”
He mumbles something inaudible, and you breathe a sigh of relief. He hasn’t passed out on you yet, but you have to act quickly to properly care for his wounds. You shift your body so you can maneuver his uninjured arm onto your shoulders. Luckily, he seems to comprehend what you’re trying to do, and manages to stumble to his feet while leaning his weight on you.
It’s an awkward, fumbling dance, considering your earlier assessment of his height was correct—he’s a huge man, and his torso alone nearly dwarfs your entire figure. But with a good measure of patience, you manage to get him moving towards your house. It’s high time you returned home, as well: your stomach roils as you remember what happens to corpses left outside for scavengers to find.
The two of you stumble through the doorway of your home, you murmuring soft affirmations and encouragement to the man. He makes no indication that he understands what you’re saying, but he’s nodding along, responding to your gentle tone. You guide him to lay on your bed, his body visibly relaxing as he sinks into the mattress.
You bustle around, lighting candles, stoking your fireplace, and rummaging around for medical supplies. You return to him with a basin of warm water, a cloth, and some bandages—before stopping dead in your tracks.
In the low lamplight out in the field, you hadn’t noticed the color of the man’s uniform, much too preoccupied with his signs of life. But now the truth is laid bare in front of you as you take in his attire, eyes traveling over his broad body—
You’ve just taken in an enemy soldier.
The man has seemingly fallen asleep, likely exhausted by the battle and the effort it took to get into your home. That does nothing to assuage your fear, though: what are you going to do if he passes away right in your bed? Even worse, what are you going to do if he wakes? Will he be hostile? Will he attempt to take you as a hostage to secure safe passage out of his enemy’s territory?
It's clear to you, though, that if you don’t help this man, he will die. His wounds could easily turn septic, and then he’s a goner. You steel yourself and approach him, kneeling at his bedside.
You work slowly and carefully to reveal his injuries, wincing when they’re completely exposed. He’s no longer bleeding profusely, but he will absolutely need stitches. For now, you settle for cleaning them with a damp cloth, trying to keep infection at bay.
He must be well and truly knocked out, because he doesn’t even stir as you wrap his arm securely with clean bandages. You’re much more hesitant to deal with his chest wound: if he wakes and struggles, he could make it much worse. But his unconscious state affords you the best opportunity to stitch him up…
You furrow your brow and go to find a needle.
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You’re awoken by a gentle touch on the shoulder.
You stir from your sleep, wondering what your mother could possibly want at such an early hour. At least she put the fire on—you can hear the crackling. But why is your bed so hard? Did you fall asleep on the floor? Actually, now that you think about it, you do recall dozing off on your sheepskin rug last night, because—
Your eyes shoot open to see a huge, hulking figure standing over you.
The soldier startles when you scream, scrambling to move away from him. He cuts an intimidating figure in the early morning light: he towers over you in a state of undress, the bandages you put on him last night splotched with rusty dried blood. But you calm down as you realize he means you no harm, his hands outstretched in front of him as a show of peace: no weapons.
“Wo bin ich?” he asks. You squint at him. That sounds like German, but you can’t speak a word of it.
“I don’t speak German,” you try. He tilts his head, looking as puzzled as you feel right now.
“Never mind all of that,” you say, shaking your head and pushing yourself to your feet. “You shouldn’t be out of bed!” The soldier watches with amusement as you press your hands against him, careful to avoid touching his chest where you know his wound lies, in an attempt to get him back into bed. He allows you to do so, lying back down like an obedient dog.
“Muste pissen,” he murmurs as you fuss over him. You shoot him another confused look as you check the stitches you put in his chest wound. All seems well, you note with relief.
“What?”
He huffs a sigh. He gestures towards the door, and then then to his…oh.
“I see,” you say, cheeks feeling hot. You can’t bear to look at his face, but when you do, you find he’s watching you with amusement.
You tap his chest with a finger, then mime a sewing motion. “Don’t get up on your own from now on, you could tear your stitches,” you tell him, pointing to the door and then to patting your own chest. “I’ll help you.”
He snorts, but nods. You start to unfurl the bandages on his arm, heart twinging with sympathy as he grits his teeth in pain. You bite your lip in chagrin as the wound is revealed. It was much less severe than the one on his chest, but it’s doing much worse: pus and fluids are leaking everywhere, and to your horror, you think some parts of the torn flesh might actually be turning green.
“Es sieht schlecht aus?” he asks, concerned. You put on a smile you hope is comforting and rise from his bedside to go downstairs and rummage through your cupboards.
You return to him holding a bottle of liquor, the strongest you could find. He seems to realize what you intend to do, and shifts slightly to allow you better access to his arm.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper to him. “This is going to hurt.” Without further warning, you dump a good amount of alcohol on his wound.
“SCHEIẞE!” The bellow of pain that rips out of his throat seems to shake the very foundations of your home. You wince as he hollers and lays back heavy against your poor little bed, forehead covered in a sheen of sweat. That can’t have been pleasant…
“Das tat schlimmer weh, als die verdammte Wunde überhaupt zu bekommen,” he grits. You give him a sympathetic little pat before withdrawing to get the bandages.
He’s calmed down by the time you return to him. He watches you curiously as you wrap him up nice and snug, then turn your attentions to his chest wound. The stitches are still in place—it seems he was careful when he relieved himself—but you still need to clean and dress the wound. He lets out a sigh of relief when you opt for a clean cloth to dab away the dried blood instead of the liquor bottle.
You work quickly and efficiently, worried about him catching a cold with his chest out like this. You also can’t deny that the whole situation is starting to make you a bit shy—a foreign man, and an attractive one at that, is in your bed, shirtless, and you’re all but sprawled out on top of him to get up close to his injury. By the time you’re done, you’re fully blushing at the closeness of the contact between the two of you.
“You should be alright, it’s a good sign that you lasted through the night and haven’t developed a fever yet,” you tell him as you gather up the soiled bandages to be washed. “You’ll need to stay in bed so I can keep an eye on you—”
You’re drawn up short when you look up to see his face. Far from the angry scowl he wore when you disinfected his wound, his expression now is almost…admiring? You shift slightly, caught off guard by the adoration in this stranger’s stare, and your arm brushes against something solid and warm.
You stand up as if burned, turning to see what you just touched. To your chagrin, you find that the soldier is…well, he’s hard.
You whirl around to fix him with an outraged look, but he only laughs at you with obvious delight. What a pervert! You’re so flustered you don’t know what to do or where to look, but you’re stopped by the sensation of him reaching up and pressing a hand to your face.
You stare at him, wide-eyed, as he strokes your cheek with a sort of reverence that stops you in your tracks. “Mein Retter…” he murmurs. “Entschuldigung. Ich konnte nicht anders.”
You huff, recognizing that he’s trying to apologize. “You don’t act like an injured man at all,” you complain. A spark of mirth comes into his eye at your pouting tone as he just chuckles at you. You turn to walk away, yelping when you feel his hand brush against your bottom. You shoot him with a deadly look as he laughs again.
You scurry away, feeling awkward and hot all over. You had been so concerned last night about whether you should stay in the same house as the potentially dangerous soldier, pacing the floor and biting your nails as you pondered whether you should give him up to the local authorities. In hindsight, you’re glad you didn’t—they would surely have locked him in a cold cell with nobody to look after that festering gash on his shoulder, to say nothing of his chest wound. It was worth it to risk waking up to a man angry and spitting hatred at you, if you could save his life.
But now you’re realizing that you hadn’t considered the opposite possibility: that the soldier might like you a little too much.
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ein Engel = an angel Wo bin ich? = Where am I? Muste pissen = had to piss Es sieht schlecht aus? = Is it bad? Scheiße = shit Das tat schlimmer weh, als die verdammte Wunde überhaupt zu bekommen = That hurt worse than getting the damn wound in the first place Mein Retter = my savior Entschuldigung. Ich konnte nicht anders = I'm sorry. I couldn't help it
Once more, I wrote this in a frenzy akin to being possessed, so it's a little short. But there will definitely be more! Thank you for reading <3
@kneelingshadowsalome @danibee33 @crowbird @poohkie90 @cumikering @iytatsworld @papaver-decervicatus @anxietyrain @riotakire @ax0lotly @cookiepie111 @kacchasu @no1runawaymilkdad @chthonian-spectre @backwards-readings @yxllowtxpe @garbau @hexqueensupreme @queenthorin1 @violetstyless @her-majesty-theking @vegan-peppermint @peonytarian @ghostslittlegf @euuuuuuun @e1x03 @kokonoiwife @deaddainish @dragonfang @teehee-47 @catluvwr @keiva1000 @waves-against-a-cliff @channelsoph @cutiecusp @itsagrimm @dins-riduur-anthe @mantishymns @lexuria @complexivelovely
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florencemtrash · 9 months ago
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The Shadowsinger & The Inkbird: Chapter Fifteen
Azriel x Day Court Librarian Reader
Summary: Y/n's clairvoyance is a gift from the Mother, but it feels more like a curse. With the power to gain knowledge through touch alone, Y/n holes herself up in The Alcove and hopes her powers and parentage will remain a secret. But things will change after the Summer Solstice ball and a chance encounter with a certain Shadowsinger.
Warnings: ANGST... that's about the only major warning I can think of
The Shadowsinger & The Inkbird: Masterlist
Masterlist of Masterlists
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Jurian and Vassa took the attic and became scarce, but when night and day slid into one another you still heard her painful screams, muffled as they were by the magic that encased their room. It was a feeling more than anything else. A tension that gripped the House until it seemed to be sobbing. At sunrise and sunset without fail, Vassa’s body broke and rearranged itself, flesh turning to feathers and feathers to flesh. Before it had been a painless process where her body came and went in its various forms, but no longer. Now she felt everything alongside an itch deep within her bones that couldn’t be satiated by food or drink or anything else. 
Go to the lake! Her body screamed. Go to Koschei! And then punished her when she didn’t comply. Like a beast had sunk its claws into her flesh, its waiting mouth only inches away from snapping. To stay away was a slow, agonizing march to death. To move close would be swift, but final, and somehow Vassa knew that if she gave into Koschei’s call, she would be lost forever.
You lingered at the base of the attic's staircase, your bare feet sinking into the soft rug until the sounds of cracking bones finally ceased. Three pairs of feet shuffled above your head and you heard Jurian’s faint whispers like a gentle push of air. When the door opened and Lucien emerged, you saw Vassa crumpled on the floor, now a bone-thin woman with dull, coppery hair and skin ravaged by scratches and pockmarks. 
“Shhhh. It’s ok.” Jurian whispered, encasing her in his arms. 
“I can’t,” her voice trembled. “It hurts. I-I-I’m burning.” 
“Y/n?” Lucien frowned. The door slammed shut with a bang and you jumped backwards. You clutched a velvet pouch close to your chest and then slowly held it out to Lucien. 
“It’s for Vassa,” you explained, trying to keep your eyes on his mismatched ones — one russet as river stones, one gold like the sun. He opened the bag and stared in confusion at the fine, white powder within, giving it a tentative sniff. “Morphine. Humans use it for pain.” 
“I know of it.” Lucien’s frown deepened. “They get addicted. Take too much and they die.” 
“She’s already addicted. That’s what’s happening isn’t it? Koschei’s drawing his power away to get her to return to the lake and every day that passes she’s dying.” Lucien tightened his fists around the bag, still skeptical. Vassa had endured enough. He didn’t want to have her endure this either. “The bag is enchanted and will never allow her to draw too much. Just enough to calm her hunger. If we’re lucky it might help her sleep too.” 
Lucien stood there, clenching and unclenching his fists from around the gold drawstring, waiting for Vassa’s cries to cease. But they never did. And there you were standing in front of him, unwavering and expectant. There was a glimmer of stubbornness in your gaze. A sign of the hours you’d spent researching Vassa’s condition and acquiring the strange human drug, and your disapproval if Lucien didn’t accept it. 
“Thank you, Y/n,” he whispered, “But please go. Vassa hates for anyone to see her like this. Even Jurian and I.” 
You swallowed thickly and nodded, disappearing down the stairs as quickly as you could. The next morning when the sun rose over the mountains and Vassa changed, you heard only the House’s usual breathings. 
The House buckled under the weight of the Inner Circle’s secrets and the sheer volume of history that had occurred within its walls and between its occupants. It utilized its magic in clever ways — your door opened with a creak that wasn’t there before so that Azriel would always hear your comings and goings. Lucien would suddenly find his door locked and the curtains drawn on the days when Helion made surprise visits to see Y/n. Nyx would find himself ushered around by a broomstick that swatted his ankles when the adults were discussing private matters. It was all a great deal of work. 
So it was a relief when Rhys and Feyre quietly moved their children to the House of Wind with Nesta and Cassian, and when Mor and Emerie took the final steps in emptying their rooms and went to hide out in their city apartment. It was even more of a relief when Helion returned to the Day Court, but not before throwing a heavy threat in Azriel’s face that if he should ever hurt his daughter again in any way, shape, or form, he’d strip the wings off his back. 
Meals at the House were tense, quiet affairs, something not even Feyre, Elain, and Nesta’s sisterly conversations or Cassian’s light-hearted humor could ease. Elain stayed close to Lucien’s side, one hand always on his arm or resting against his back or brushing against his, but that didn’t erase what the Blood Duel had done to his trust in Elain. He was kind, but guarded, especially when Azriel was in the room. But it was more than she could ask for because it was more than she’d ever given him in the beginning. 
You and Azriel were worse off.
You were speaking once more, but your words were always laced with a bit of apprehension and Azriel’s were always filled with sorrowful hope. Conversations were dull, short, and didn’t even begin to brush the surface of all the things you should have been talking about. You were terrified not of the Shadowsinger, but of his opinion of you. Did he want you so he could fix you? So that he could feel needed? So that you could be another one in a list of females he burned through? 
It never truly seemed like that was the case, but you also didn’t trust yourself when it came to your emotions. You had told him once that you couldn’t imagine having a love like Feyre and Rhysand’s, or Nesta and Cassian’s, and you still meant it. You were a matchstick and he was flint, and you didn’t know what would happen to you after he had lit you aflame. For all you knew, you were already burning and this wonderful thing you’d had with Azriel would live and die with nothing more than the memory of an embrace in Rhysand’s office to show for it. 
But oh how you ached to touch him again. To hold him like you had before and to have him return the gesture just as strongly. 
You stiffened when Azriel’s hand brushed your arm, warmth bursting out from the point of contact. 
“I’m sorry.” Azriel whispered, and he was talking about more than the wine he spilled when he reached over the table.
You spared him a glance, the first real look you’d given him in two weeks. The flagon slipped from his hands, and if it weren’t for his shadows catching it an inch above the floor, the room would have been doused in burgundy red. 
“Does Lucien know?” 
Rhysand looked up from his papers. Missives from the Darkbringer army and Illyrian troops up north clogged his desk, all begrudgingly accepting his orders to prepare for what could amount to another lengthy war. Letters thrown back and forth between the seven courts added to the chaos, all of them war-weary and desperate for a path that wouldn’t lead to bloodshed. 
You took up the center of his room and stood so quietly he hadn’t even noticed you until you spoke. It had been eating away at you for days since Lucien’s arrival. Every time you two saw one another or spoke, you tried to scrounge for clues that would reveal whether he knew he was Helion’s son and whether he might suspect you were Helion’s daughter as well. The other members of the Inner Circle had been tight-lipped about that secret, a skill you now knew they all possessed with alarming dexterity. 
“Does Lucien know he’s Helion’s son?”
Rhysand slumped back in his chair, rubbing his temples with one careful hand. Finally he said, “Yes.” 
The answer knocked the breath from your lungs. You’d been expecting the opposite. “Does he… does he know about me?” 
Rhys sighed and shook his head. You didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. 
“How long has he known?” 
“Six years. Feyre was the one to tell him. She was actually the first of us to recognize the similarity, believe it or not. But then, no one ever dared to give weight to the rumors surrounding Helion and Aurelia Vanserra while Beron was alive.”
You rocked back and forth on your feet, breath shaking as it entered your body. “Six years. Six years and you never thought to tell Helion that he has a son? I thought you two were friends?”
Rhysand tensed. “I’m Lucien’s friend as well and he begged us to never speak of it - to live as though we’d never learned that secret. And I keep my secrets. We all do.” 
“You and your family have made that very clear in the time that I’ve been here.” 
“If you mean Azriel—”
“Don’t play dumb, Rhys, you know I’m talking about him.” Tears pricked at your eyes, adding to the humiliation that had coated you like a film ever since you’d seen his memories about Mor, Elain, and Gwyn. “I don’t—” You swallowed thickly, “I can imagine how you must have all been whispering behind my back about Azriel and I. How you must have found it so pathetic the way he charmed me when I was really his fourth choice.”
“That’s not true.” Was what Rhysand was going to say. But he didn’t need to. Azriel said it for him. 
Your face lost all color, any bravado melting away at the feeling of Azriel’s shadows wrapping around your ankles like ribbons of silk. You could feel him in the room and that quiet darkness he carried around with him as inherently as if it were stitched onto his body. 
Azriel was shaking. Shaking. With anger, turmoil, or grief — you couldn’t name it. All you knew is that one moment you were standing in Rhysand’s office, all velvet upholstery and suave, expensive taste, and the next you were in Azriel’s room. 
Everything smelled like mountain air. Maybe it was the gothic windows that stretched into the vaulted ceilings, stained glass opening out onto a personal balcony with deep blue curtains fluttering in the breeze. But you were sure that even with the windows barred it would smell the same. It would smell like Azriel. If you threw open his wardrobe you’d come face to face with a wall of black. Lots and lots of black. Black suits he hardly ever wore. Black fighting leathers. Black leather jackets for everyday. Black trousers. Black boots on the floor. Very practical. Very Azriel. 
If you dug through his dresser drawers you’d find black boxers and socks to match and no shortage of knives and daggers hidden behind wooden planks or in leather sleeves nailed to the bottom of his desk. But at first glance you only saw three weapons in plain view — Truth Teller, blade down and stuck in the wood grain of his desk beside a pile of reports, and two obsidian blades hanging from the wall beside his midnight blue bed in the shape of an “x.” 
The smell — Azriel’s smell — calmed you, at least up to the point where you turned to find him standing less than six inches away, hazel eyes boring into yours. Then your pulse skyrocketed. You were certain that if he only looked down to your heart he’d see it pounding against your chest like a drum skin ready to burst. 
“That’s not true,” he repeated earnestly. “And don’t you dare believe it. Not even for a second.” 
His eyes jumped back and forth between yours and before he could stop himself, his hands were grasping yours in a gentle hold. The leather gloves were soft and supple beneath your fingertips. You wanted to rip them off so you could feel his scarred hands again. 
“You weren’t meant to hear that,” you whispered, suddenly feeling small. That angry humiliation went up in a puff of smoke and left you shy and uncertain. 
Azriel gripped your hands a little tighter and you watched as tendrils of shadow worked their way up your arms and got lost in your hair. “But I did,” he said breathlessly, “And I need you to know that it’s not true.” 
“Azriel—”
“I know—” he was shaking his head, “I know what Helion said and I won’t lie and tell you that I’m perfect or that I’ve made any smart decisions about love in the past — I’ve not make a single one — but… but Y/n you’re not a fourth choice. You’re not something broken that I’m trying to fix or some fantasy I’ve fallen for.”
His hands shook and despite the gloves his hands still felt sticky and wet. Slick with your blood. The burning scent of iron in his nose.
“You’re the most real thing in the world to me. You’re—” You’re my mate. The words crawled up his throat like acid and it just felt wrong. He would say those words to you. He would. But not now. Not like this. He came up with something else. “Y/n, please tell me you believe me. Please.”
And there you were. Falling all over again. Burning like a matchstick on fire. The flames slowly eating away at you bit by bit. You wondered what would happen when you finally hit the ground, or when you ran out of length. Would he still hold you like this? Would you still feel real to him? 
“How am I meant to know, Azriel?” 
You’d always been good at books. You knew the ways in which these stories worked where the themes and plot points had been preordained and written with the purpose of being tied up in a neat package by the final page. People were very different. They were unpredictable and chaotic and they could lie through the skin of their teeth and believe they were telling the truth. And that was the problem wasn’t it? Because you still believed every word that came out of Azriel’s mouth, and his hands still felt like they were keeping you tethered to this earth when sometimes your powers and the memories that came with them made you feel like a whisper on the wind. Weightless and at the mercy of something you couldn’t control. 
“You can trust me. You can know for yourself.” 
He pressed your hand against his cheek and you wanted to cry at the faint pricks of stubble beneath your skin and the sharp curve of his jaw. 
He wanted you to use your power on him. He wanted you to learn all the ways he wanted you. All the ways he loved you.  
But you couldn’t do it. 
Azriel panicked when you remained silent, staring at him and at his hands like you were frightened. All at once he was back on the streets of Velaris, cobblestones shaving away at the skin of his palms as he dragged his way up to you inch by bloody inch, fighting against a body that was too broken to move. 
He couldn’t remember what it felt like when he’d stabbed you through the chest and dropped you on the street. Everything between the moment he saw Andrian’s clear-cut eyes to the moment he saw Rhysand’s horrified gaze was fuzzy and dark. But that made it worse because now in his nightmares he could imagine all the ways he’d hurt you, each version teeming with the same level of horror and possibility as the previous one. 
He let you go and hated himself when you stepped back, your hand slipping away. 
“I won’t… I won’t hurt you again, Y/n. I swear on my life. I’ll-I’ll make a bargain, I don’t care. I would sooner die than let something like that happen again.” 
I don’t know what I’d do with that kind of love. If I’d be able to handle it. It might be too much for me.
“Y/n, please.”
 I am not broken. But I am afraid. 
You fled from his bedroom. 
The air had a bite to it now with winter descending. The snow line on the mountains dipped lower and lower each day, creeping like ivy down a brick wall. 
Elain never wore gloves. Not when she was gardening. It was something she and Ione had in common. She liked the feeling of her strong hands, the callouses on her palms and fingers that she’d earned all on her own. She grunted, slamming her shovel into the soil and feeling the microscopic chips of ice give way when she kicked down on the blade. It was too late in the season to be planting tulip bulbs. If she’d been in Velaris she would have done this four weeks ago. But it was alright with her. She knew the value of hard work, and she had enough hope for the future to believe that even though she was late, she’d have something beautiful to call hers come springtime. 
“It’s time for that conversation I was telling you about,” she said cryptically, as was her way. 
Lucien dropped the final basket beside where Elain now knelt in the dirt, her pale pink dress dirtied and littered with her own handprints. The brown bulbs rolled around like oversized chestnuts, the kind that he’d be roasting over a fire right now if he were still in Autumn Court. Instead he was here, lingering in a Court that had never felt like home. Then again… he’d never felt at home in Autumn, Spring, or the Human Lands either. 
He straightened up and wiped his hands clean on his trousers, golden and russet eyes trailing over the River House’s grounds for this mysterious person he was meant to speak to.
There. 
The faint swishing of black robes behind a dark green topiary tree. He should have known Elain had been talking about you. 
You cracked your knuckles and rehearsed the words you’d scribbled out earlier that day and then set to fire in a maddening loop. You’d been restless with the truth of Lucien’s parentage and you couldn’t believe that the others had held their tongues so readily. As it was, without Azriel’s company to help quiet your mind, you’d dug into this new piece of information like a starving animal and couldn’t let go.
Was this a good time to tell him? Would there ever be a good time to tell him? You had no idea. 
Somewhere in the attic, you knew Vassa was itching to take to the skies like the burning comet she was. Every night she shivered in Jurian’s arms, the morphine barely able to take the edge off the humming in her bones, and every morning she let him lock her away in her cage. It was getting worse and worse trying to keep her from succumbing to Koschei’s influence. Even now you thought you could hear her keen cries whistling from the attic like ten thousand arrows launched into the air. 
Somewhere else, in a secret, hidden place you knew nothing about, Andrian had finally been imprisoned. Andrian with his bent neck and silver, candy-floss hair and bloody little hands. 
You shivered and jumped back five feet when Lucien called your name, kind eyes narrowed in concern. His shirt was loose and open and the sweat on his body rose like mist off his skin. He was his mother’s son first, Helion’s child second, and fire still ran through his veins. The chill did not touch him. 
He tipped his head to the side, red hair spilling out from the messy way he’d tied it up and away from his face. A brutal scar ran through his eye like a fissure, starting at the center of his brow before clawing its way down his jaw like a lightning strike frozen in time. But for all the cruelty he’d been dealt with in life, his eyes were gentle, even the mechanical one that whirred and flashed in the sun. 
They were even kinder when he looked at you. You with your inquisitive gaze and curious nature, like a stray cat that couldn’t help but linger too long at doorways. One foot inside, one foot ready to run and hide. He’d caught you watching him at dinners, and he’d catch himself staring when you walked around the house with a book in your hand, so utterly absorbed that you would bump against doorways and bang your hips against sharp corners. 
“Elain told me about you. Did you know that?” 
You blinked in surprise. “What did she say?”
“Elain… Elain doesn’t always speak clearly. Much of what comes out of her mouth can feel eerie or discomforting. But, she told me before we left for the Night Court that I would be happy I came. That I would never regret the things I learned on my trip.” He tilted his head even further, looking more and more like a fox with each turn of his face. “And she mentioned a bird. A bird with ink-tipped wings and eyes like a crow.” 
You flexed your fingers, well aware that the tips were smudged with ink, the nails bitten down to the quick. 
“Someone clever and cautious who’d been hidden away their whole life and needed to see the sun.” 
You felt stripped bare. That strange vulnerability that comes with being summed up in so few words had you feeling airy. Like one sentence could be enough to carry the weight of the three centuries you’d lived and never buckle. 
“I know you’re Helion’s son. I recognized it the moment I saw you.” 
Lucien stepped back, scarlet brows shooting up into his hair with alarm.
You hesitated, then continued on cautiously. “I recognized it because I would know my father’s face anywhere.” 
<- Previous Chapter Next Chapter ->
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Author's Note:
I KNOW IT'S A CLIFFHANGER ENDING BUT I NEEDED TO BREAK EVERYTHING INTO CHAPTERS SOMEWHERE AND I'M GOING TO TRY AND GET CHAPTER 16 UP BY WEDNESDAY SO I DON'T LEAVE Y'ALL HANGING FOR TOO LONG. HAVE MERCY!!!
The good news is that Chapter 16 is already mostly written, I just need to edit it all to make sure things flow smoothly. Also, LUCIEN KNOWS NOW AHHHHHHHHHHHH
Sorry for the Azriel angst... but it's delicious, no?
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suiana · 1 year ago
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in which you left your boyfriend a little bit earlier than expected (various yandere characters x gn reader) (inspired by mr loverman by ricky montgomery) (angstober day 1)
OH WHAT AM I...
"hey- wait, you can't leave me yet- we still haven't done all the things you wanted to do-!"
SUPPOSED TO DO?
"hah, I'm sorry..."
WITHOUT YOU?
"don't apologize! you're gonna be fine..! just- just stay with me! we'll get you to a doctor and we'll be back to being happy with one another! like we promised!"
I'M MR LOVERMAN...
"yeah... that would be nice... forever together... like we promised..."
you smile tenderly at him, brushing a stray strand of hair away from his tear stricken face. your breath is shallow, hands shaking from the cold as you try to stay conscious. huh, was your boyfriend always this beautiful?
"have i ever told you how beautiful you are?"
AND I MISS MY LOVER, MAN...
"you have! you always have! now just shut up and focus on trying to stay alive!"
he sobs, holding your body in his arms as the snow around you stains red. his bloodied arms are shaking fervently as he grips you as though his life depended on it. you can't help but sigh slightly at this. even when you were dying, he just had to grip you like a stress ball.
I'M MR LOVERMAN...
"we both know i won't make it-"
"shut up! you can't leave me too! you'll be fine and- and we'll be back to being happy together!"
he sniffles, eyes red as he tries to keep a positive attitude about this situation. yeah you were dying, how tragic and sad. you both know this fact, but your obsessed lover just had to be delusional and hope for a miracle to happen. he didn't want to loose you after all. you were all he had left.
yet you weren't worried at all. not about the fact that your lovesick boyfriend was trying to delude himself into thinking you were alright. nor about the fact that you would be dying in less than 10 minutes.
...for all you could focus on was how his teary eyes, soft sniffles, the setting sun and the falling snow surrounding you two... made him look much more beautiful than before.
OH, AND I MISS MY LOVER
"you're beautiful."
"shut up! this isn't the time for flirting!"
you couldn't help but let out a chuckle. your boyfriend was just too cute.
I'M MR LOVERMAN...
"can't i flirt a bit with my handsome boyfriend before i die?"
"shut... shut up! you won't die! i won't let you!"
you hummed in response to his statement, smiling softly at his harsh yet loving tone. and it was then that you realised how much you loved him despite all the things he had done wrong.
AND I MISS MY LOVERMAN...
"what's so funny?!"
"nothing... just thinking about how much i love you."
he stares at you, a grim expression on his face as his hold on you increases tenfold. the aura around him changes and something in him seems to snap. maybe it's the realization that you're actually going to leave him?
I'M MR LOVERMAN...
suddenly, he connects the both of your lips, kissing you passionately yet ever so gently, as though you were a fragile flower. his tears stain your cheeks, desperate hands warming your cold body as he continues to kiss you like he was on limited time.
except he actually was, for this would be the last kiss you two shared.
when he had his fill, he pulled away from you, lips swollen as his tears just never seemed to stop falling. he hides his face in the crook of your neck, sobbing into your once warm skin as you mustered up the strength to slowly stroke his soft hair.
"i love you! i love you so much! please don't leave me!"
AND I MISS MY LOVER.
"i love you too."
you smile softly as he continues to sob into your neck. you truly wanted to stay like this with him forever, but the more your hands stroke his head, the more you felt yourself slipping into the comforting touch of death.
"...don't forget about me, okay?"
the male stops sobbing for a second, pulling away from your neck to scold you.
"how could i ever forget about you? dumbass..."
he grumbles, hiding in your neck once more as you laugh weakly, your arm falling onto his head in an attempt to comfort him.
"don't... come over too soon, okay? go and... live your life."
you pause for a bit before continuing.
"I'll always... be here for you."
the male hums in response, not wanting to talk as he feels your hand drop from his head. when you do so, he shivers slightly. ah... has it always been this cold?
"...what an idiot."
he mumbles, staring at your peaceful face as the once neverending tears stop falling from his beautiful eyes.
...you really left him, huh?
"not only did you leave me, but you also took my heart with you too... how cruel."
he just wanted to love you until the both of you had grey hair. so why did you have to be such a fool and slip from his grasp now?
chuuya nakahara, mushitaro oguri, gojo satoru, yuji itadori, danheng, gepard landau, wanderer/scaramouche, kaveh, denji, your faves<3
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sserpente · 1 month ago
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A blood bath to die a little death for (Kinktober #3)
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You take a bath with Astarion. Oh, the things you can do in there...
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A/N: I’ve been meaning to write this one for so long. It’s kind of inspired by that scene with Damon from The Vampire Diaries. Also, I think those “Baldurian” bathtubs are just super cute.
Words: 1073 Warnings: smut, blood play, biting
“You know for a rogue you are being incredibly loud and unsubtle. I can hear you breathing, Astarion. And that’s saying something because you don’t even need to breathe.” You chuckled when he snorted in response and moved out of the shadows.
The others were out, so it couldn’t have been anyone else secretly watching you bathe.
You flipped around in the wooden tub to face him with a smile. The warm water was pure heaven for your sore muscles. Besides, taking the time to do more than wash blood off your body after another fight, was a luxury at this point.
Astarion’s gaze drifted over your bare form. Hunger reflected in his red eyes, though you were not entirely sure which kind of hunger it was. Your smile widened.
“Care to join me? The tub is big enough for both of us.”
Another snort, this time an amused one.
“Darling, there is nothing I’d like more.”
“Take your clothes off then. You look pretty without them.”
Astarion laughed at your flirtation. Piece after piece, he removed his clothing until he was as naked as you were. You watched him as he climbed into the tub, his muscles dancing in the process. Damn…he might have been the one who was the vampire but he did look like a snack. Not only was he handsome and sexy but he was also beautiful. Not many men could claim they were.
“Are you done admiring me, my love?”
You giggled when you were caught and moved over to him to straddle his lap, your arms wrapping around his neck.
“I’m hoping that we can take baths together every night once this is all over.”
He smirked. “I hope so too. Without our…companions, mind you.”
“Of course. We’ll find our own cosy little spot somewhere here in Baldur’s Gate. Although it will probably take me a while to adjust my sleep schedule to yours.”
“You…you would?”
“Of course. How else would we spend time together? And we’ll have a massive bedroom with a king-size bed and black-out curtains so you don’t have to worry about the sun.”
“We’ll have only one bed?”
You hummed at his adorable question. Sometimes it still seemed like he couldn’t quite believe you wanted to be with him.
“We will. Why? Are you scared I’ll bite?” You chuckled at your own joke.
Astarion wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you closer. “Very funny, darling. But…truth be told…I’m feeling a bit peckish.”
You rested your forehead against his. “Go ahead. We’re alone.”
“Indeed we are, my love. Indeed we are.”
You expected him to playfully pull you by the hair to reveal your neck to him. Instead, he spread your legs further and bucked his hips. Oh. He was rock-hard.
“So that’s the kind of hunger we’re talking about right now?” you asked with a grin.
“I say we make use of the time as long as we’re…undisturbed.”
“And you’re sure you want to? We don’t have to have sex just because we have a moment to ourselves…”
Astarion shut you up with a kiss. “I have been waiting to get you alone, darling.”
“If…you’re sure…” you breathed out when his erection pressed against your outer lips. It was as if he’d pressed a button to turn you on. With every playful stroke up to tease your clit you grew wetter for him, ready to take him.
“Astarion…” His name left your lips like a prayer when you sank down on top of him, letting him impale you on his cock. He growled as if he was about to devour you when you bucked your hips to meet his thrusts in the warm water, your limbs still entwined.
There was something about doing it in the bathtub, enveloped by warmth and silky wetness. Astarion seemed to think so too. His strokes were frantic as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to take things slowly or chase his orgasm.
Your eyes met and you smiled, your lips slightly parted. Continuous moans escaped you whenever he hit one of those hidden pleasure spots until eventually, he pressed you up against him so he was sheathed inside you to the hilt, and his pelvis ground against your clit. Oh, good gods…
“Go on…ride me,” he purred.
He didn’t need to tell you twice. Hunting your own pleasure until he was satisfied with you, you did just that until you were on the brink of orgasm, ready to fall—into a rabbit hole of bliss and his arms. Astarion was a surprisingly patient lover and he claimed that he loved the feeling of you clenching around him when you came, milking him for all he was worth.
You expected him to follow you as soon as your climax hit you and pleasure rippled through you like a thunderstorm. Instead, he bared his fangs and bit down on your shoulder—hard.
Blood poured from the sloppy wound, covering your back, your chest and eventually mixing with the bath water. You moaned at the foreign intrusion of his teeth in your skin as he lapped up your blood and drank his fill until the continued rocking of your hips stole away his composure too.
Astarion followed you down the abyss of pleasure, his cock twitching inside you and filling you with his seed all the while his fangs were still buried in your shoulder. You were both shuddering from satisfaction by the time he pulled away and gasped for air, a small trickle of blood running down the corner of his mouth. You longed to wipe it away with your thumb, to taste your blood on his lips.
“Hmm…you taste best when you’re aroused, darling.”
“G-Good…to know?” You chuckled weakly, shifting a little on his lap to feel his softening member inside of you still. “We’ll need another bath now, look at this.”
You gestured at the bloody bath water. Astarion laughed. A surprised moan escaped your lips when his tongue darted out to lick away the remaining blood dripping over your right breast, his mouth lingering around your hardened nipple for just a little too long. “We best get started then. Although I don’t think I would mind the others seeing us like this…they can all know you’re mine.”
You shook your head and kissed him on the lips. You already saw yourself stealing some scrolls from Gale to make the water fill up faster.
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shurisneakers · 4 months ago
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saturn
summary: close to a year after you die, bucky's desperation finally finds an answer. but it may not be the one he's hoping for. (OR) you die. bucky tries to bring you back.
warnings: angst. death. body horror (being revived from death and the processes that follow). sickness. war or something. swearing. there is also fluf here and there
a/n: im drunk as fuck <3 i haven't really looked at this since December. the title is taken from saturn by sleeping at last because i couldn't think of anything better. enjoy <3333333333333
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He occasionally catches a glimpse of his face in the lake.
His skin is worn from months of sun damage, splotchy and incorrectly healed. His beard has grown well past the point of respectability, with strands of grey he didn’t realise could sprout from him. Eyes sunken and half-lidded always.
Bucky waits everyday for the reaper to pull him underwater. Every day is another spent on dry, barren land.
_____________
It was closing in on a year and a half. Time moves like aged honey when you're punished, slow and grasping.
He steps off the bed and into the resolute silence of the cabin. There was a hole by his bedroom door after a regrettable night of alcohol. Mead. Something that had his head spinning and bile stuck to the walls of his throat, and of which he doesn't even remember the name of the next morning.
It's all fleeting, anyway. Names, labels, lives.
He cooks himself breakfast on an old pan.  The room is bone-cold, and the floorboards creak when he drags the decades old chair from the dining room to the porch.
Paint peels under his feet, and his toe curls. A dull, faded orchestra of evergreens as far as he can see. He's had a target on his back since he was a kid, always under the gaze of something beyond his understanding. Always making sure he doesn't take a step out of line, or let too much life into his heart.
It's been a while since he's felt that. Like it had finally decided he learnt his lesson, that he wouldn't dare to take a new breath without considering if he deserved it. And so he doesn't wonder if there are irises staring back at him with the same lifelessness with which he watches them, day after day, hour after hour.
The outside cools his blood to a standstill, and he is almost entirely certain he is alone. The vast expanse of an empty sky, bearing no clouds, no birds. Some days, he almost thinks he can feel you when the winds move.
He thinks he's past the point of insane.
__________
His friends are kinder than he is. To a fault, almost. God knows he hasn't given them a reason to be.
After a couple of months of shifting to the middle of nowhere, there are fifteen fucking knocks to the door.
Bucky flings it open, ready to chew someone’s head off. Raging, still in the ratty old t-shirt and sweatpants and socks with holes in them that you swore you would burn. He is armed with a battalion of curses and threats, only for words to die a quick death at the tip of his tongue.
“Hey.”
Bucky's muscles tense to the point where they might crack, but he forces his arm to lower. 
“Been a while,” Sam says, arms crossed over his chest.
He doesn't know how he's hunted him down, given the nature of his disappearance, but Sam was nothing if not determined in his humanity.
With nowhere else to turn, Bucky silently pushes the door open.
________
“I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Bucky glances around the house. There are cobwebs hanging from each corner he sees. Bulbs coated with dust. Fine china starting to fade with unuse, and utensils slowly beginning to gather rust.
He doesn’t reply. He’s offered him water, but Sam declines.
“You get cell coverage out here?”
“Don’t make a lotta calls,” Bucky’s vocal chords sound like they’re lined with gravel.
“We noticed.” Sam leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Talked to Dr. Canmore?"
"Yep." Not since the psychiatrist was forced to clear him after Bucky showed no signs of violence, or returning back to him. To him, that concluded the purpose of their relationship.
"And?"
"There's nothing to say, Sam," he rebukes, gruff. "'M fine."
Sam looks like wants to raise an eyebrow, but the patience he's grown over the years from dealing with those worse than the mess setting in front of him disallows him. "Get enough food?"
Bucky flashes him a thumbs-up, and feels the onset of a migraine.
"Sunlight? Water?"
"'M not a fuckin' plan--" he begins harshly, but clears his throat. "You?"
"Doin' alright." Sam shrugs. "Been training a buncha new recruits, getting in touch with new ones. Superheroes are poppin' up all over the place. Got a girl saying she can control squirrels."
Bucky nods absent-mindedly, picking at the hem of his shirt. He thinks you would have found that amusing, considering that you thought Scott Lang's schtick was a bit on-the-nose too.
“Do you want to?”
Bucky sharply shifts back into focus. “What?”
“Help out,” Sam clarifies. “Recruit, train.”
Bucky’s jaw inadvertently tightens. “No,” he says sharply.
"Could be good for you."
""M done with that life." 
Sam's eyes reflect a reality that's different, but he still relents, "Okay. Whatever works for you."
Bucky can’t say he retired, exactly. He’d unceremoniously quit and had gone AWOL, but it had never been on paper. SHIELD was gracious enough to accept in whatever form they had, sending him funds every month as an unofficial pension.
“You should drop by sometime. Compound's all re-done."
Bucky shifts in his seat like the chair is too small for him. “‘M not exactly a joy to be around.”
“You’re actin’ like that’s somethin’ new,” he riffs, mouth curling into a smile. “Still.”
Sam's a good man who often lets his instincts lead the way, and if he's insisting on Bucky to return then something must be worth listening to. But his only company's been the thoughts in his head for a while now, and they're no good. What's impure about him surely wraps its tendrils around the world around him, poisoning them.
It's difficult, impossible, even to shake the suspicion growing on him, crawling up his back.
“Alright, well–” Sam pushes himself off the couch “-- just give us a call if there’s anything you need help with.”
Bucky may not have as many words as he used to, but he hasn’t forgotten his manners. He walks Sam to the front, where his truck lay parked, all polished from the last time he saw it.
"You got everything you need?” Sam asks again, and something inside him ignites a spark.
“Yes.”
Sam nods, hand on the hood of the truck, giving him a final look up and down. The few seconds of a leeway fans the spark into a red-hot anger, one that has Bucky's muscles painfully tight.
"Right. See you aro-"
"Why'd you come here?" Bucky interrupts. "To check if I'm losin’ it again? SHIELD couldn't get Dr. Canmore on the line so they send their next bet to tranquilise me?
Sam's eyebrows raise this time, and Bucky thinks he's finally managed to piss off the last person who cares if he's dead or alive, but everything in him is too hot, too scathing to bother.
He wants someone to get it, what it's like to claw at concrete walls with raw fingertips and broken nails. He wants someone to see what it's like, living like they've been injected over and over with needles.
"I know it’s hard, man," Sam replies, gentle like cool water on a burn.
Bucky's hands freeze, because he realises very quickly he wanted someone to hurt.
"Just thought you could use knowin' you had someone there," he continues. "Got flowers too, but I wasn't sure if you'd..."
Something in Bucky deflates, and he wants to cower into a ball. Bury himself so deep underground that he doesn't have to deal with how his ribs feel like they're cracking into splinters all over again.
Sam's already moved towards the passenger side door, and pulled from it a beautiful arrangement of evening primroses and jasmines. Of course Sam remembered.
You would have loved it.
"I don't have anywhere to keep it," Bucky croaks. He's turned the home he bought into a tomb, and he's closed the door to any remainder of life waiting to be lived.
Sam simply hands it to him, and Bucky takes it cautiously like it'll wither in a second. His touch is venomous and his want is a death-sentence, but the flowers stay alive.
"If you ever find a place," Sam says, squeezing his shoulder, "leave something there, too. Might help."
________
He'd add 'liar' to the list of words he's chosen to describe himself, if he said he didn't think about it every second since you died.
The idea initially comes to him like a snake, slithering and winding its way up his shoulder to hiss into his ear. He shudders the first time, jaws clenching, and dismisses it immediately.
But 'sinner' is a word he would use, and so on nights when he's awake too long and when your laugh sounds like a draft in his ear, he entertains the thought.
Indulges in it, grotesquely allows himself to think of an alternate ending, where his presence had not corrupted your fate, and you would have been alive and vibrant and trying out new flavours of gelato from the corner store. Stealing kisses from him, half awake, and dragging him to watch sunrises from the roof.
He thinks of things he'd do differently. Retire a lot faster. Took you to the National Parks like he said he would. Make sure your scent seared itself like a tattoo on all his clothes, because there's nothing on earth that replicated it and he's turned it inside out trying.
When the air is icy and the skin aches where his metal arm meets flesh, he thinks of how you always flicked his shoulder when he passed an off-hand comment under his breath, but muffled a laugh when his insults got more creative.
But soon, it will be closing in on two years since Bucky's last heard you groan at his stupid comments and the lake is just as pristine as the day he bought the cabin. The water glimmers like shards of diamond and there are days he thinks it's too still for even his liking.
"Have you ever been to Asgard?" you ask one night, legs splayed over his thighs.
He looks up from the book he's reading, pencil tucked into his ear. "I have not."
"Not even once?" you ask, distracted from whatever show you had gotten hooked on on TLC. Ever since you'd discovered the channel, you were convinced it was the best way to learn about "his culture". Sometimes he tuned in to learn about updates to "his culture" in the years he was gone.
"Strictly earthbound," he replies.
You nod, eyes drifting back to the TV. He watches you for a few seconds, hand gently squeezing the arm closest to his.
As it always was, your posture was pin-straight. Always ready. Like sitting still wasn't even an option. He used to think it was because you were never truly comfortable around him, until he realises that that was simply a part of you.
Bucky re-adjusts his glasses. He was getting old. His back pained and creaked like an old door hinge more each time.
He didn't think he'd get here. He's growing to love it. Mission reminders and target locations get replaced more and more with reminders that he still has to put the leftovers in the fridge from the date earlier that night, and that your shampoo needed a re-stock.
"Would you want to come with me one day?" you ask suddenly.
He puts the book down, and you turn away from the TV again. 
He can always tell when you're thinking. The world buzzes a bit. When you're older than a few galaxies, the universe and you become not so distinct.
"Might be a bit too grand for a fella like me."
"I think you'd like it," you counter, "and you're in a relationship with me. You'd fit in as well as anyone could."
He's still not sure how he's managed to accomplish the second part but you must have liked something about his ragtag sarcasm and social isolating tendencies.
Bucky's growing older each day. You're the closest thing he's seen to eternity. He doesn't think he would fit in, not with his thrift shop t-shirts and unbridled insecurities.
"Do you want me to?" he asks, hesitant.
He's met Thor, and he's heard mostly about Loki through childhood tales and news reports. Thor didn't seem to mind him, but then again, Thor saw the best in everyone.
"I'd like to show you the place I grew up," you reply, playing with his metal fingers. "You showed me yours."
"That's a couple'a streets from here, sweetheart," he reminds playfully. "Not exactly another realm."
The corners of your mouth lift slightly. "But you feel connected to it, don't you? That it is a part of you?"
Bucky intertwines your grins and keeps it there. He's always felt something towards Brooklyn. Something that kept him going when Siberian frost nipped at his skin. Tethered.
But when he'd shown you the place he grew up in, it wasn't the same. Brickwall had been overlaid with plaster and paint. Doors ripped off their hinges, wallpaper a ghastly white instead of the stained floral print his sister and he drew on. It was unease, trepidation.
It didn't feel like his anymore. Probably because Bucky didn't feel like him anymore.
"Yeah," he replies after some thought, even though it's not entirely right.
"I feel that way about Asgard," you continue the thought. "Being here is lovely, and I love learning of all the things your people do, but--"
"It's not the same," he interjects gently. "I get you."
You look at him and smile, and Bucky feels the same gnawing feeling that this is something that's too good, too pure for him.
God of the Night Sky and the Mortal of Blood Stained Hands.
It shouldn't work, but you've already got a drawer in his shelf for your belongings. You've talked about moving to a cabin by the woods if you ever wanted to settle down. You kissed him that morning, and once more on his shoulder, and the last time he's laughed this much in one dinner was the one he had the night before with you.
"Whichever day you're ready," you promise. "I've got a feeling you'll be convinced."
Bucky presses a kiss to your fingers, and you turn back to the TV with a smile.
He watches you for a while. Your fingers continue to play with his. Bucky thinks getting older may just be worth it.
You made a dozen or so trips back to Asgard since the conversation, and he pushed his involvement on each one with the unfailing and ultimately misplaced  certainty that he'd have time.
__________
You wouldn't approve of the way he'd kept the cabin. You wouldn't approve of the way he lived. He knows that, but he also knows if you were around then he'd have a reason to actually sow more than vegetables in the land he keeps digging up. He'd make sure of the table cloth that he found stashed away, leave the blinds open more to allow light to reach his room.
He looks at the bouquet of flowers by his feet and thinks that laying it by a boulder would be insignificant.
So for the first time in a long while, he prays the act of creation will bring him some respite and builds. 
A little hut, with sticks he finds around the place, and makes it big enough to house Sam's bouquet from the wind and sun. He carves out your name onto the boulder, painstakingly with his pocket knife until each letter was guaranteed to last a century. He adds the year of your birth, and can't find it in himself to add the year you died.
He steps back and exhales. It's a memorial. It's a start.
__________
Bucky spends most of the day digging up dirt, sitting out on the porch and looking for firewood. He’s learnt how to grow his own vegetables, and how to go into town unnoticed for other essentials.
And now he has something to tend to.
It starts with fickle sticks and grows into something sturdier. He brings the memorial stronger wood, and bands to hold it together. He looks for wildflowers and pretty leaves, bunches them together and leaves them under the protection of the small roof.
It's the most he's done in over a year.
Months go from crawling to a standstill when it nears October. Bucky leaves the house less often.Truth is, the sky has never entirely recovered since you were gone. It's never truly dark-- a faint navy blue or even azure in the days leading up to the anniversary.
He's seen people puzzle over it-- call it the newest effects of light pollution or climate change. There is no reasonable answer, but the one that exists is that you left and you took the constellations with you.
Still, evening always comes faster and he can't quite stand being out at that time, when there is a void where he used to feel you the most. Instead he stays asleep for as long as he can. He makes use of the brief time he has to fix himself some food, and bare minimum upkeep.
He gathers the last of the flowers he can see around, some leaves that hadn't entirely been lost and makes his way to the lake.
"Forgive me, sweetheart. Season's changin' and I don't got a lot of options," he says lowly and to the hut that's managed to stay up.
Bucky looks at the sparse flowers in his hands and thinks that he'll make the godforsaken trip into civilisation to get you better ones. Ones you really liked, colourful and dynamic.
For now, he tries tying them together with a blade of grass to make it look less pathetic. It breaks every single time-- he's never been very good at being delicate.
Something around his wrist catches his attention. Some days he forgets it isn't a part of him.
His hair whips rather majestically around his head. He’s used to the sting when it strikes his skin, only reflexively reaching up to tuck it behind his ear.
“Hair tie?”
His eyes snap to yours in surprise. You've never really talked to him before, just brief nods and smiles along the way. Bucky wasn't exactly the patron saint for socialising either. He's always thought something about you was otherworldly. He didn't consider himself significant enough to be going out of your way to talk to either.
“Would you like a hair tie?” you repeat. “It’s rather bad out there.”
“Uh, yeah,” he replies, though he’s never considered that as a solution. “Sure, if you’ve got one.”
“We’ve learnt to carry them around when you fight alongside the likes of Thor and Volstagg.” You smile, reaching into the compartment of your belt. “Long hair looks good. Doesn’t always work that way.”
Bucky gives you a tight smile, feeling slightly embarrassed but a voice in him compels him to accept the kindness you’re offering.
He quickly secures his hair into a lower bun, giving more show to cheeks dusted pink.
“I’ll give it back after the mission,” he promises.
“Don’t.” You pause, giving him a once-over. “It suits you.”
Most days he remembers it's one of the only things he's still got of you. Still, he ties the flowers together with your hair tie-- and they stay this time.
"See you next week," he says, and a wind blows past him. Pathetically, he dares to hope it's a sign from you.
___________
Two sharp knocks on the door, but his eyes are open before the second one. It wasn’t like he was getting much sleep anyway.
When his arm doesn’t keep him up, it’s the ache in the rest of his body to be near you. Trailing kisses up your arm and watching wildfire heat spread through his neck when fingers tip up his chin. Lips trying to catch each other until panting breaths matched.
He flips over to the other side. Both sides of the pillow are drenched with his sweat. Christ, if this was how it was going to be in the days leading up to the anniversary, he can't imagine what would happen the day of. 
Someone rapps intently at the door, only picking up pace when Bucky chooses to ignore it. By all means, he’s retired. That alone should entitle him to some fucking peace, but no. 
He curses as he drags himself out of bed and pulls on a shirt, shuffling to the door. When he pulls it open, his eyes are probably murderous, but there is no one to catch the daggers. There is a simple brown cardboard box, labelled with his name.
Bucky, with a narrowed gaze, takes a step away from the box and instead heads into the open air. But there is not a soul, even as he stalks around the cabin and really stops to listen.
He comes back to the threshold and eyes the box. Using his foot, he swiftly kicks the lid off it and braces for an impact that doesn’t come.
There are shirts. And a mug. He frowns, kneeling down to shuffle through the contents, only to find bits and pieces of things he just…left behind when he left the compound.
Pictures he never really got framed. Socks with torn toes. Sweatpants. Laptop.
And there’s a tiny box. His chest twists the second he lays eyes on it so much that he thinks he’s been injured.
There’s a ring in there. Not really even an engagement ring, since you were gone before he had a chance.
Just a ring. But it’s enough to make him suddenly feel the weight of the air around him and he’s forced to take a seat right there on the steps. There’s nothing else in there of you, just old mission reports that mention your active involvement. Maybe if the smell of cardboard hadn’t permeated through the fabric of his shirts, he’d have traces of your scent.
Fragmented parts of his life, like snapshots of his history, running through his mind like an old film. It makes him question, for a second, if death was finally catching up to him.
Well, it was late. He’d been kept waiting for years.
_____________
The day itself is grey and sullen. In crackles of electricity, he can almost feel Thor’s state of mind. He tries not to think that in a few years, you’d be gone for longer than he knew you.
He rounds up leaves as orange as mandarins and ties them together with the hairtie. He clears up the last bunch he’d left and takes a seat on the shore of the lake. Cloudless and barren. Chill.
He can sense the end of the battle is near– he sees Sam a lot less overhead, even his gun didn’t require as many re-stocks. His pace slows to match the few that are left around him, and he’s already wondering how he can finish this quicker to get to help with search and rescue.
But Bucky didn’t even have to be told. Mid-punch, something in the air shifts and a deep shiver runs up the curve of his spine.
Before he even straightens up the sky explodes from the early azure of dawn to a blinding white to a blood-curdling crimson. His body reacts faster than he does, because the speed at which his stomach drops is only rivalled by how fast he was sprinting to your last known location.
He yells names through open comms-- yours, Thor's, Sam's-- turning the corner and immediately feeling the full force of a blast shove him onto his back.
With a groan and the force of his left hand, he presses into his ears to stop the excruciating ringing. He feels someone pull him up– blue, red and white kevlar against bruised skin and he’s already pushing away.
“Sam, where–” he blinks furiously, trying to read what word’s Sam’s got on his mouth because his head is still spinning. “She–”
He hears something about Thor and building and searching and forces himself to look at the force of a multistory highrise that’s collapsed into rubble on the street.
Something about impaled and sacrificed and he feels like vomiting violently, shoving Sam aside to stumble through the dust and smoke, teeth clamping down on his heart in his mouth.
Thoughts of you waiting under rocks, choking while fly ash turned your lungs to rock, suffocating.  Every second of his incompetence is a second you spend wasting away where he couldn't find you.
It takes hours for Thor to give up searching through the rubble. It takes Bucky days.
It took a few seconds for the sky to turn red. It took weeks to turn from crimson to the ghost of blue it still remains.
God of the Night Sky and A Man Too Slow.
Your body is never found, and Bucky never forgives himself. It takes a whole month to be able to look at the night. Some days he hides his face from the moon, afraid of wrath.
____________
When Bucky gets the call, he isn’t exactly sure how to respond. One, because he didn’t even know you had his number memorised and two, he’s not sure how you’ve allowed yourself to get arrested. But it’s 2am and he’s on his motorcycle, on the way to the police station, still entirely confused about what exactly was going on.
“That’s him.” You point, jumping up from behind the bars.
You look lovely– someone’s gotten you out of the battle armour he usually sees you in, and into something that passes as authentically Earth-like.
He makes a mental comment to tell you, but to still be discreet about it. He's not really sure where the both of you stand these days. You've got him agreeing to braids in his hair like a viking, and sitting next to him during team nights. He's got you reading the entirety of Lord of the Rings and going to museums with him to steal back his belongings. But he's not really sure.
Bucky’s eyebrow twitches at the fact that they’ve got you locked up, but you look entirely unfazed like it’s a new restaurant or escape room you’re checking out. Excited, even.
"Hey,” he says calmly to whoever wants to listen, “what the fuck?”
The grin you give him is sheepish and he already kinda wants to laugh, but he fights back a smile.
“Broke two tables at the bar two blocks down,” the officer replies. “Looks like she was going for a third.”
“I promise, I did not mean to,” you swear to him. “I did not realise your furniture would be so weak.”
Bucky looks at the officer wearily. “Had t’lock her up for that?”
Whatever the officer was expecting, it was not Bucky's lack of respect for the law or private property.
“Well– superpowers– we’re not really sure–” he stammers.
You watch the man curiously, while Bucky's eyes flicker over to you. He knows you could bend the bars of the jail cell and walk right out, so indulging them was clearly a choice.
“I’m an Avenger, I’ll take it from here,” he interrupts, making his way over to you.
“I’m gonna need to see some ID–”
“Google it,” he bites back, before turning to you. “Y’okay?” 
“I’m great,” you reply, full of life as if it wasn’t the middle of the fucking night. “It was a lot of fun.”
“How’d you know my number?” He mentions for the guard to unlock the gate, ignoring the swelling in his stupid chest.
“We are friends, are we not?” you ask, a bit confused.  
Bucky can't figure out if he's surprised or disappointed- a good mix of both, perhaps. He's glad you consider him a friend, but something in him aches dully. He positively despises it and how often it's been creeping up on him whenever he sees you around the compound. He was a 100 years old, not some lovesick fuckin' teenager.
“Yeah. We are,” he agrees, turning to glare at the officer who was holding up his phone, eyes darting between it and Bucky’s face. “Could y’move faster? It’s late.”
The guy hurriedly unlocks it and you step out, stretching your arms over your head before waving goodbye to the guy and sauntering off. He watches you go for a second before pressing back a small smile.
“The bar-”
“Tell them to get stronger tables,” Bucky calls from over his shoulder, not even waiting for a reaction. “Send the paperwork to the Avengers office, and put the bail on the tab.”
He finds you outside, arms crossed over your chest while you wait for him.
“Thank you.” You give him a smile. “I forgot that it would be late for you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he waves off. “Wild night, huh?”
He had heard that some of the agents who had shifted here recently were checking out the hubs around town, but he had no idea that you’d be with them. It made sense in hindsight. More often than not, you were seeking recommendations and guides on how to learn what it was like here.
“I’ve seen worse.” Your eyes shine, and for a second he thinks that they even glimmer like starlight. “I did not realise breaking tables would be such an issue.”
“Yeah, we tend to be possessive over stuff,” he scratches his neck, almost embarrassed for his kind. “Coulda kept the cops out of it, don’t know why they had to go through all this.”
“I will have them replaced. Ours will not break, they’re made for Asgardian parties after victories in battle.”
He nods slowly and wonders if a crane would be enough to lift the table into the joint. It was nearly 3am, and he was out here with you in front of a police station, and he can't stop his stomach from fluttering. He wants to punch himself.
“Are you hungry?” you ask suddenly.
Bucky’s head tilts. He definitely had dinner….maybe. Half a leftover burrito and an apple.
“I’m starving,” you add. “I saw this place along the way here–”
Not to rub it in, but Bucky Barnes, smooth player and charmer extraordinaire, blanks. He's about sixty years off his game, and sure, he thinks you’re real pretty and that maybe he’s always wanted to know what it’d be like to buy you dinner and maybe hold your hand? If you were good with that? Maybe even–
“Like a date?” he blurts out and immediately wrings his fingers.
You falter and he wishes he was never born. “A date?”
“Like– getting dinner together,” he tries to remedy. “Breakfast. What time is it?”
“Yes, that is what I asked.” Your head cocks to the side to match his in confusion.
“No, like– like different. Not just dinner– yeah, dinner, but more–” Christ alive, he wishes he could run into traffic, but the road was deserted.
You wait for him to explain a little better where he was trying to get at. He can feel his ears burning bright.
He just shuts up instead.
“Dinner-breakfast, but more,” you test slowly.
“...more romantic?” he tries finally, defeated. “A date. Romantic date– I’m tryin' to ask you out here.”
"Oh.”
The world is very still. He thinks he will hand in his resignation tomorrow and disappear.
He had done his part, embarrassed his mother and every internet poll that deemed him the most suave and mysterious Avenger, and could now die in peace.
“A date it is, then. Breakfast-dinner, but more,” you reply.
Oh. He thinks he’s probably going to combust but you lean over to press a small kiss to his cheek, and now he’s sure he’s going to combust.
“Humans think too much,” you say simply.
"Think I'm more of an exception than the norm,” he mumbles.
"Aren't I lucky," you tease, and tap on the helmet. “Don’t suppose you’ve got an extra?”
Bucky’s eyes fly open, and the blankets get kicked off in a frenzy. His chest heaves as he sits up, rubbing furiously at his eyes.
He knew it was going to be bad, but he didn’t think it would be this fucking insidious. 
He moves to wipe the sweat from his brow but comes back dry. The air is still cold even though he keeps the window shut, and he turns to it to see a thunderstorm taking place outside.
He watches the drops pelt against the window and trees shake violently for a moment, forcing himself to breathe as he rakes his hand through his hair.
Before it clicks, and his stomach drops.
“Fuck,” he hisses, not even bothering to throw on a jacket before bolting outside.
The path that he’s trodden a thousand times before looks entirely unknown, and had he not been reliant on his muscle memory he would have had no clue where he was heading. Inky blue trees, harsh and sharp, and he's sure he's gotten a few scratches on his face already as he sprints through the forest to the lake.
The boulder is there, the carving of your name remains but the hut of sticks and leaves-- it lays strewn across the land.
And the hair tie. The fucking hair tie.
He crawls miserably on his arms and knees, relying on the light from a clouded moon to guide him through every inch of grass. Eyes burning red, he continues to scour until morning breaks with twilight.
6 years he’s kept it with him. 6 years, and it’s gone with the rain.
He lets out a cry, fist driving into the earth, barely met with any resistance.
God of the Night, and Devil of Misery.
_______
The flowers had dried up and left him to rot with them. The lake was troubled on more days than not. He had a ring that was neither entirely yours, neither entirely his and no more than the traces of your skin in his memory.
So this time when the idea appears to him like a snake, crawling and inching up his back to tell him that he deserves it, you deserve it. It would solve everything.
He is no stronger than Eve. He had fallen from grace a long time ago. He shudders just as he did the first time, but now it felt like more reprieve.
_____________
“James,” it greets, hollow like a windchime.
His voice comes out more gruffer than he expects from months of unuse, “Got a minute?”
The light retreats further into the house, away from him. He watches it fade as it travels, unsure of what to do until it pauses, hovering in one spot.
It waits for him, he realises. He slips the beanie off his head and into his pocket, before hesitantly taking a step into the cabin. The floorboards creak under the weight of him the way his own used to months ago. Now they were well-worn and all the corners that made the most noise were identified and memorised. The house and its resident both stayed silent.
Bucky finds Wanda with her eyes closed, palms pressed into her knees as she sits midair, body levitating like she was held up by a marionette.
The room is lit dimly, the only light enough to see Wanda and he understands that the woman he met years ago and the one in front of him now were not the same. Even without his serum, he has a feeling the hair on his body would be standing up, adrenaline replacing desperation and fingers bound tightly into a fist. But even with his senses on high alert, Bucky finds it hard to find a reason to care.
“You found me.”
They gave him back his laptop. He knew the Avengers had eyes on her– but only because she was allowing them.
“What brings you here?” she asks, eyes still closed.
“I need a favour,” Bucky replies, voice unnaturally strong.
“Most do,” she hums, bones cracking when her head creaks to the side. “What is it that you want, James?”
“Got a feeling you already know,” he replies.
“Humour me.”
Bucky’s eyes burn the more he continues to stare. He feels sweat trickle down his back in a clean line. The room felt like it was closing in on him with every pulse of light, crawling into his skin and scraping up and down his bones until–
“I want to bring her back from the dead.”
Wanda’s eyes stay shut but a sick, twisted sort of smile works at the corner of her mouth. “Who?”
“You know who,” he swallows thickly.
Wanda straightens her head till she is sitting pin straight again, eerily firm as if her spine had been replaced with a rod.
“It has been months. Nature would not have been kind to her.”
“But it’s possible,” he says– asks, really.
“Anything is,” Wanda tuts. “But all that time would have eroded away at her.”
“We never found the body." He hates how his voice quivers for a second. “And she’s not from this Earth. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Depends.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can.”
Bucky feels relief flood into his system, an ecstatic sort of euphoria that has his heart lead–
“But I won't.”
And it goes back to how it was. Cold. Bitter. Was this some sick fucking joke?
“Why?” His voice drops an octave.
“Time will heal you. Getting in the way of that is only harmful to you.”
Real fuckin’ rich coming from you, he wants to scream.
“I tell you this because I know from experience.” It’s almost as if she reads his mind. Probably does. “Bringing someone back from the dead is not what you think it is.”
“I’ll handle it. Whatever it is.”
“Can you?”
Bucky wavers, brows furrowing. “Yes.”
Wanda hums, the same smile from before returning to her face. “Your spirit is admirable. But I’m afraid I can’t grant you this wish.”
Bucky feels white hot inside, and like his world crumbles into a dark heaving mess. “Wanda–”
“It’s for your own good, James.” If he wasn’t so full of rage he’d maybe hear the fondness that hid behind a few of her words.
“How would you know?” he snaps. “Vision wasn’t human–”
Wanda’s eyes snap open. Bucky is forcefully shoved a step back, arm jumping up in front of him in a second. For the first time he notices that the light wasn’t shining on Wanda– it was coming from her. Crimson red and pulsating as fast as the blood raced through her veins.
“You think Vision was the first time I’ve lost someone?” Her voice is cold. “You met him, James. You knew his name.”
Bucky’s grown to carry guilt on his back like Atlas. A little bit more is hardly a burden. “This– it’s going to be different,” he says. “She’s not a mutant, she’s a God, Wanda–”
“So you think you can match up to that by playing one?” Wanda’s voice raises. “You don’t get to pick who stays dead. You don’t get to choose. I didn’t. None of us did.”
“I wasn’t there when she died. If I was, then maybe–”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I cannot give you this favour.”
“Then consider it repayment. Of a debt,” he finally exclaims. “You said it. You owed me one. I’m cashin’ it in.”
Days of starvation just so that the kids could eat. If his handlers knew, they’d make him kill them with his bare hands. He gladly accepts fifteen more broken bones just so that the twins are kept together, and even when he goes back under, the sight of their big eyes, too big for their faces, staring at him haunts him in his nightmare.
“I just want another chance.” Bucky’s stare is strong, voice steady. “I’m tired of praying. I’m sick of it. I’ve been begging my whole life for a second chance at everything. You think I want to be here? That I get to be the one that’s still alive?”
The glow around Wanda looks like it should burn her. All consuming and vicious, like blood splattered on a wall.
“Please,” his voice reduces to the strength of a child. “Just try. That’s all I’m askin’.”
Bucky watches as the light slowly dims to a silhouette, leaving him blinking back the burn on his iris. He loosens his fist, knowing later that his fingernails probably broke through the skin of his palm.
Wanda’s chest rises and falls.
She closes her eyes. “Leave.”
He wordlessly turns on his heel. It was stupid of him to hope, he supposes.
______________
Autumn dies for December to grow, and he starts staying inside more than he already does. Snowfall covers the roof and the treetops. He swaps eggs for soup and makes batches large enough to last the whole day. The ground freezes over, and he looks for ways to keep his self-sustaining system going, but trips to town become more frequent.
Sam visits once more, and brings some more things with him this time. Books, a journal, some old box sets of shows. Bucky nods along to the conversation, asks after his family and when the time comes, rejects another offer to come to spend Christmas at the compound.
He accepts Sam’s flowers with more grace than the last time. The door closes, and he leaves it by the couch.
__________
He attempts to rebuild it. Pulls together some stronger branches and heavier stones. A new memorial lays together half-heartedly. Dejected. A little miserable looking.
He stares at it a little too long before one swoop of his arm cracks it in half and leaves it strewn across the grass.
Bucky doesn't try again.
__________
“Did you come up with the constellations?”
It's a stupid question, but he's always curious about you.  
“Hm,” you reply at first. “Not in the sense that you’d think.”
Bucky turns away from looking into the abyss and towards you. His flesh hand continues to trace shapes into your skin as your neck rests on his bicep.
“I didn’t place them in a way that was meant to be drawn,” you reply. “My mother used to tell me when I was a child that the spirits of those I cherished would live on through parts of our creations. For others, it would be through groves of orchards, or rain that corrode caves into mountains.”
Bucky watches the fingers of your free hand dance nimbly, while the other stays tucked between the both of you.
“I was young when I realised that certain lights were brighter when I felt too much for someone. Pain, joy, rage,” you continue, fingertips pointing upwards, “Those stars, satellites– whatever you wanted to call them– they were the ties I had to those I loved. So sometimes, I would move them with me so that every time I looked up, I would see that I had company.”
He tears his eyes away from you and towards where you were gesturing. It’s subtle at first, but then he sees– stars moving faster than they should, darting all around the canvas of the night like runaway splotches.
“Over time, those on earth noticed patterns and called them constellations. I’ve always seen it as my family,” you say, gently dragging a barely lit star from the corner of his eye towards the centre.
“That’s for Thor. Sif.” You take turns to point. “Loki. Fandrall. Hogun. My parents.”
Each seems to glow a little brighter as you call out their name. “There’s one for you, as well.” Your finger drops, finding its way back to comfort on his chest.
Bucky’s eyebrows raise.  
“You’ll have to see for yourself which one it is.” You leave a kiss on his jawline, and he instinctively tugs you a bit closer. “It won’t be any fun if I tell you.”
He doesn’t need to ask. There’s one slightly to your left, that’s glowing a little brighter tonight than the rest. His chest swells, and there's a profound sort of speechlessness that engulfs him. He never really knows what to say around you anyway.
“Really fuckin’ love you, you know that?” he mumbles into your the skin of your temples.
“I’ve got a clue or two.” You laugh and along with you, so does the sky.
___________
Bucky eyes fly open, fingers digging deep into the pillow. Not because of the way his brain was choosing to torture him again.
But the fact that the fucking person from before was back at his door, even though it was the middle of the fucking night.
He lets the first three knocks go unanswered but by the fifth one, he’s ready to unleash the force of the shitty month he’s had into whoever was here to drop off the next box of fucking whatever.
He doesn’t even bother pulling on shoes or straightening out his clothes. Hair wild and untamed and fury in his eyes, he marches down the steps of the cabin with a select choice of words for SHIELD and their stupid protocols.
With enough force to pull the door from its hinges, he yanks the door open, eyes ablaze and mouth set in a scowl.
And the earth stops spinning. 
The absolute wind gets knocked out of him and he’s scared to even blink because this has happened to him before. It’s happened, and his eyes have closed and it’s left and he can’t afford that again–
He freezes when a hand reaches out to touch his bicep. Because that has never happened before. He’s always woken up before this.
At the threshold of the cabin, he falls to his knees. His joints ache the same way they did in church all that time ago when his fury was masked with tears.
“Oh,” he whispers, kneeling before the essence of a God he thought abandoned him.
“Bucky?” you ask, confused and soft, hand reaching out to cup his cheek before lowering yourself to his height.
Bucky makes somewhere between a strangled noise and a strange laugh, head reeling.
“You’re back.” His hands fall at your waist lightly like he’s afraid to disrupt still water.
“What’s–” your sentence is interrupted when your eyes roll back into your head.
Moments later it goes limp, and his reflexes move faster than he can comprehend as he grabs you, body springing into action when his mind gives up on him.
He lets out a sigh of relief loud enough to be a sob, fervently holding up the dead weight and a rhythm returns to the stillness of the night, one he’d forgotten the sound of. If he was even the slightest bit aware, more than grateful, he would see the signs from then. His vibranium doesn’t warm when it meets the sliver of skin as he bunches up your shirt in his grip. It feels like he’s breathing in Antarctic air, not spring drafts.
“Thank you,” he whispers against your shoulder to whoever is listening. “Fuck– God, thank you.”
_______
"It's been a month."
"A week, and that's pushing it."
"You're pushing it," you mumble, tightening the straps of your armour, "I do not know how you live like this. Do you always just stare at the ceiling when you're bored?"
"Sometimes I like to switch it up. Look at the floor," Bucky adds gruffly, to a roll of your eyes. "Maybe the door on the days I'm feelin' real fancy."
"You will just let your TV lay that way? With half the screen missing?"
He shrugs half-heartedly. "Sports season's done. Got nothin' to watch."
"Hmm," you pause a second. "'No' to your offer then. You may take that as my formal reply."
"'No' to Thai takeout later?" Bucky squints out into the twilight through the window of the ammunition room. "Lebanese then?"
You raise your eyebrows, tightening the leather around your wrists. "Goodbye, Barnes."
"Bye," he replies, checking to see if his knives sat securely in his old tactical pants.
You send him a nod before you start striding towards the door.  The jet had landed a while ago, still onloading agents and recruits from the compound. 
Bucky's arm jets out to grab your elbow, pulling you back into him. He's well aware it's only because you let him.
"I'm kiddin'," Bucky laughs at the matching smile on your face. "I'll get it fixed. I'll fix it myself. Just marry me, please. I'm growin' old here, sweetheart. All this questioning's not good for my heart."
"You're already old. And we will talk about it when we get back," your fingers press gently into his chest, and he can feel your touch even through the bulletproof vest. "Your laws-"
"There's no law out there that says ex-enemies of the state and Gods can't marry. Even if there is, it'll be just another one I have to break."
Your eyes twinkle when you laugh. Bucky sees remnants of old cosmos in there, as he always has.
"We'll talk about it when we get back," you promise. "Be safe."
"Can't guarantee that."
"Try not to die, then."
"Always."
He can't remember a time when he wasn't the last one on the jet, owing to goodbyes like this. You never opted to join them, reaching the same way Thor does.
The night was uncharacteristically calm, especially since he knew that miles away you were about to step into another battle. But it's good. The night means you will be at your strongest, and that is what he hopes for.
Bucky allows a few seconds of silence to take you in, skin glowing even against harsh fluorescent lighting and a cool air of confidence around you. You raise an eyebrow at him, because this is far from the first time he has done this. He would never divulge why.
He takes a chance to press a quick kiss to your lips, humming. "I'll get the TV fixed when we're back."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Barnes." You smile, thumb swiping across the dent in his nose, an imperfection in a sea of many. "Thai for dinner?"
"Lemme check my calendar." Bucky takes a step back, feeling his heart constrict in a way that he's gotten used to craving. "I may have an opening."
"Please, don't try too hard."
"I'll have my secretary get back to you."
You roll your eyes, fighting a smile. "I love you."
"So, that's a yes then?"
"Get on the plane, Bucky." You sigh. "You already know the answer."
"Love you more." He grins at you, bright and like he's never known sadness. "Catch you later."
____________
In the days that pass, he doesn’t know how to be.
His body leaves him no choice–  staying up all night, waiting for Wanda to show up at the door, fingers burning to take it all back. He keeps the doors locked and windows shut, as if ageing wood would provide any sort of a barrier when it came to her will.
Bucky walks around in a trance, eyes glossy and body stiff like he isn’t sure how much of what he’s seeing is real.
Your body, housed in his old clothes, looks three seconds away from death. He keeps a bucket by the bed from when you cough up dust, the last remainder of old organs. He massages leg spasms, and muscle cramps from your neck.
He keeps a towel close by for the nausea and anything in between as your body fights off the shock of a rebirth. Allopathy is useless when you're a God either way, so he resorts to herbs and roots to alleviate as much as he can.
Your lungs struggle for air at night. He’s already awake, propping you up to make sure you’re breathing better. He rubs at your back in circles the same way he used to do for Steve and finally takes a breath when the wheezing subsidies.
He fervently tells you he loves you every time you slip back under, and wipes at your forehead with a wet cloth to ease the warmth. He’s met with coughing fits and clenched eyes.
Exactly one week from your return, a trip downstairs to gather more firewood for the room and Bucky falters to a stop near the kitchen.
There's a note pinned to the dining table with no indication as to how it got there.
The debt is repaid. This was by your will. Whatever happens next will be by hers.
Every hour, he watches rotting flesh, dissolved muscles and clotted blood crawl out of your mouth. He forces himself to watch. It was his choice after all.
Bringing you back from the dead was never going to be easy.
_________
A week later, the remains of your old body stop exhuming itself. Perspiration beads line your forehead, and he thinks the salt of sweat is your first act of creation. 
Your breath steadies. Nights go smoother. He learns he can live off of two hours of sleep. 
He toys with the idea of telling someone. Sam. Thor, even.  But your lips are bluer than he’s ever seen, even more than when he’d introduced you to blueberry juice pops when the heat beat down on you both in July, and you’d kissed his red-stained ones. 
The longer he stares at you, he dismisses the idea. Something in him says that beyond being something they could accept, they could actively bring a stop to what he was doing right now. 
He couldn’t afford that. Not now, not ever; not when he’s let you down once before already. It’s a secret for now, then. For as long as it needs to be. 
__________
In the days later your nervous system seems to be rewiring itself. The first time he sees you with your eyes open, the plates he’s holding clatter to the floor. 
“Hey,” he whispers, fingers clutching the side of the bed, “Hey, honey. Can you hear me?”
But your eyes never meet his. He slowly follows your gaze to the closed window, eyes glassy and surrounded by strings of red. 
He sees you mouth something, and desperate as he is, he never truly understands what it is before you’re gone again.  
His exhale leaves staggering, head dipping to your arm as he clenches his eyes tight till he sees spots. 
_____________
Bucky starts leaving the windows open. The ones in your room, at least, and only when he's there to keep watch.
It becomes a mission then. The next time you opened your eyes couldn’t be to the desolation he lived in for months. He looks for flowers. Vines. Anything to make the place look less dreary and miserable. He cleans the blinds, and dusts the paintings in the room.
The cells in your body seem to be working overtime– every day there is a little bit less that reminds him of where you came from. Scabs fall away faster than they grow, leaving unbroken skin.
He notices it late. There is only one wound that remains-- a red, jagged scar along your stomach. It looks angry. Heals slower than the rest of them. It is the only place Bucky sees specks of gold instead of bronze when you exert yourself too much.
__________
It takes a good amount of time. He should have anticipated it— the next time you awake, and the next few times after that are only when the sun chases beyond the horizon. 
He drops to your side with questions of “can you hear me?” or “does something hurt?” but each time, something outside the widow holds your attention dear to its chest and unwilling to share.
The moon rays become an elixir more powerful than anything from this Earth. Light almost surrounds you like a cloak, sinking into your skin and drowning in your bones. 
He stays up at night, massaging your arms and your temples, but you are still so cold to the touch he isn’t sure the blood is circulating at all. So he gets more firewood. Makes sure the house is warm all the fucking time.  
Stagnant. Still. Some nights he thinks he can see you looking at him from the corner of your eye.
The second he turns, you lay unmoving as before.
________
He stands labouring over the stove. There's a batch of rich tomato soup, with bread toasting in a skillet nearby. He alternates between wiping down the bowl to serve you in, though you still haven’t eaten, and stirring the soup to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. 
He makes note that he still has to get more gauze from the town, and proper tools to sand down the chairs before he can even think of--
But something interrupts his to-do list. It's so soft, he thinks for a second he's imagining it. But the ladle he's holding clangs against the pot, and he abandons the bowls with such hurry that he wouldn't be surprised if it's in shards.
He races up the stairs, three at a time, his heart is thumping louder than the floorboards creaking.
It’s silent. He can hear his own arm whirring quietly.
He lets out a breath when he sees you haven’t changed positions since he last saw you, and wordlessly turns to head back downstairs to an over-bubbling cauldron of soup. 
"Bucky?"
It’s almost like eternity whooshes past his ears when he realises that he wasn't imagining it.
“Hey.” He drops without a second thought to your bedside, knees scraping against the wood. “Hey. Hi sweetheart. What do you need?”
“Water,” your voice is hoarse and just above a whisper, but you’re looking at him.
You’re fucking looking at him, and your eyes are a share darker than he remembers them being.
He makes a grab for the jug by your bed and holds a full glass to your lips carefully, watching as water treacles in through chapped lips. 
"How are you feelin’?" He hates how shaky his voice sounds, as if he wasn't prepared. As if he hadn’t been waiting.
It takes a second for you to form the word. "Tired."
His fingers brush against your cheek. "What can I do for you?"
You don’t respond, and he watches your chest rise and fall heavily again. You were asleep again.
He bites into his lower lip so hard he can taste the rust of his blood. Moonlight filters in through your curtain and he runs his thumb over the corner of your eye, placing a kiss on your forehead.
It was a start.
___________
Bucky grew up with siblings he outlasted and an absolute wildfire of a friend. It was safe to say the man had more patience than most.
The same conversation repeats three more times over the next few days, and he answers each time with as much tender refrain as the first, begging to know where he can help and what he can do.
“Tired” turns to “I’m tired” turns to “I’m just tired”, and with each he is as proud and hopeful as he was when you talked the first time. 
You begin to eat finally, and he hopes his skills aren’t bad enough to send you to the other side again. Spoonfuls of soup. Bites of bread. A glass of water, and then two. 
“Buck,” you rasp.
And he’s as ready as he was the previous day, with a gentle, “Tell me, sweetheart.”
You’ve already gotten a slice of bread into you today, and you’ve slept through the night. He’s considering this one of the best days you’ve had so far, and that alone is triumph enough to ease the anxiety that pervades him. 
“I was dead.” But this was new. 
Bucky blinks, not sure if he heard you right. Your eyebrows knitted together tells him he did. 
“You were,” he confirms, not daring to breathe. 
“But now…” you trail off, as if you were expecting to wake up that minute. 
His Adam’s apple shifts up and down. “Things changed.”
“How?” you ask, eyebrows pulling together even tighter, and he worries it takes energy that could be used elsewhere.
The muscles in his jaw tighten anxiously. The floorboards press into his knees. 
"You did something?" your voice comes back quietly. 
His silence is enough of an answer.
"How long was I gone?"
"It’s been a while, honey," he replies, eyes never leaving yours. 
Your head turns to face the ceiling, a deep exhale working its way through you. Bucky's eyes drift to the scar on your stomach, hidden under the fabric. Thorny and broken.
"Who knows?"
His gaze shifts back to your face, but you aren't looking at him.
"Only me," he says, voice unwittingly dropping before adding, "and Wanda."
"Wanda," you repeat quietly. "It was magic."
Something familiar sets into Bucky's chest. Heavy, pressing down on his throat and making the bile rise.
"I'll get you more water," he says, pausing briefly to look at you, but you continue to stare at the roof. "I'll be right back."
You don’t have a response for him. As he makes his way to the door, it follows like a shadow. He pauses by the frame to look at you once again, but your eyes have closed.
Bucky watches for a second, swallowing thickly. It feels all too similar to guilt.
__________
Bucky dedicates himself even more vigorously to the house. He finally takes out the cutlery, cleans it up the best he can and wipes down the table every single day.  He spends the day collecting fruits for juices and vegetables for broth. Firewood. Making sure everything is sharp enough to use, and the traps he set up in his initial time here were still functional.
He checks to see if the trees can take the weight of the swing he’s hoping to fashion out of bark. How fast it would take to polish the porch chairs and flooring, and what exactly it would take to do that.
No matter how much he cleans, it isn’t enough to wipe the look on your face from where it was seared into his brain like hot iron.  
A week later he's in the garden, digging up the ground to plant seeds. It's January, and it's still fucking freezing, but he's gonna fucking try anyway.
He's got a hold of seeds of poppy, marigold, daisies and who knows what else, and plenty of fucking time.
"You garden now?"
He looks up in surprise. You lean against the backdoor, no winter coat on even though it's freezing. It flashes in his mind that you look paler than you used to, and he wonders if that will go in time. 
“I’ve always gardened,” Bucky defends weakly, and tries to keep his tone normal. “Just– not well.”
Arms crossed over your chest, you ask, “Has that changed?"
“Can’t say it has, sweetheart." He looks at the mess he's created on the ground. "'M tryin', though.”
The corner of your lip upturns into a faint smile. His stomach twists painfully.
"You're up," he says, a little too late. It came faster than he thought it would. Then again, you weren’t human. You didn’t always listen to the laws of nature. 
"Y'feeling cold?" he adds quickly. 
You shrug, pushing off from the door to slowly take a seat. Your legs dangle off the ledge of the porch, barefoot. Bucky waits for you to swing your legs like you always have but you stay still.
He dusts his hands on his jeans and stands, tugging his jacket off his shoulders and holding it out to you. "Can I?" 
"Go on," you allow, and he drapes it around your shoulders, making sure it isn't likely to slip off before stepping back.
A draft blows past you both without either of you saying a word. Discarding the little shovel on the ground, Bucky chooses to take a seat beside you instead.
"You will feel cold, won't you?" 
"I'll be fine, don't worry 'bout me," he reassures. 
"Seems like you have it covered already," you say, making a motion to imitate the shape of his beard. "Mighty fine mane you've got there, James. You could give Odin a run for his money."
He gives a short chuckle, threading his hands through his hair that reaches down to his shoulders.
He’s finding it hard to formulate words. He couldn’t even tell if his mind was racing or entirely blank.
"You've got grey in your beard now," you observe. It sounds wistful. Sad even, and all of a sudden he’s left realising that he doesn't know how long it has been for you.
"Been a while since I got a haircut." 
Christ, he was drier than a brick. His conversational skills and charm had deserted him along with the rest of his luck. 
You lift your eyes from his beard to his face, scanning from his hairline down to his chin. "You look as handsome as you always have," you say and his heart jumps. "Just a bit..."
Sadder. Tired. Mistrusting.
"Older," you settle on.
He'd grown more wrinkles than he could count, and his skin didn't bounce back as much as it used to.
Beyond that, he smiled a lot less. He spent more time thinking than verbalising.
“You need help?” He hears you ask faintly, head gesturing to the patch of dug-up mud.
“You need to get rest,” Bucky shakes himself out of it. “I’ll get you some–”
“I’ve rested long enough, Buck,” you say assertively. 
He wonders if you did. Bucky remembers what you told him of Asgardian funerals. How your body is set floating along a river, and your soul lifts towards the sky to rest. You never got to have that. He doesn’t even know if they sent an empty log along a cold river.
"Tomorrow?" he delays.  
You look at him briefly before nodding.The ground stays untouched and the sky still greys. Bucky sees you take a few deep breaths, shuddering when a draft of wind blows by. He silently shrugs off his scarf too, and wraps it around your neck loosely.
You simply let him. Minutes pass in silence, and neither of you make any motion to move. 
You bump your shoulder into his. "I see you haven't fixed the TV yet."
A swift exhale leaves him in the form of a laugh. He turns away so that you don't see how his eyes begin to burn.   
"Sorry, honey," he croaks out, "I've been distracted."
The smile you give him is melancholic, and that's enough to dissolve his red eyes from a warning into tears.
_________
Bucky buys every single streaming platform available, and every channel available on cable.
That night he takes apart every single component of the television, wipes it down and puts it back together better than before. He only rests when it's 2am and the sound of late night commercials softly flood the living room.
__________
Bucky takes the guest bedroom, initially, a floor away from you to give you the space you need. 
He then realises it's too far, it's too risky. Sheepishly, he shifts to the same room as you, but makes himself a place to sleep on the floor with blankets and a pillow.
You voice your protest, and even though he’s spent three years curled up beside your sleeping frame, he says his back could use the hard surface now. 
He gets you clothes from town. Sweaters and socks, scarves. Things he knew you used to like and things he always promised he'd get if he had another chance. You take them with a small smile and a thanks. He sees you wear them around the house, and while they're exactly the size they should be, and the colours he knows you love.
There's a nagging feeling in him that they don't sit right. They don't look right. Still, you wear them on the days you can leave the bed. He shows you around the house. The good parts, at least, and pretends like that’s how he’s always lived even though he can tell you see right through his facade. 
He’s there when you thrash around at night. Bucky's up before the minute is even over, at your side and gently calling your name till you jolt awake. He hands you glass after glass of chilled water, rubbing your back in circles till the wave passes. It’s entirely too reminiscent of what you used to do for him, and he hopes the familiarity would do you good. 
Sometimes you tell him what you saw. Darkness enveloping you for hours, holding you close and sliding its vines over you, binding your limbs like rope before you're shoved into blinding light.
“Last I remember was the fight," you say one night, as he wipes the sweat from your forehead. "I cannot tell how much of it was real, it's--"
And you pause and struggle, and he's at a loss for words because you never have been. You've always known what to say. You've always had a thought you wanted to share. 
"Thor told me a little bit," he offers quietly. "If you'd want, I'd tell ya."
You look at him, conflict raging behind drained irises. "I was fighting. I heard them say something about-- there was a building with civilians hiding."
"Yeah, there was," he confirms, voice tight.
"They wanted to-- do something to it." You close your eyes, brows furrowing in concentration. "I told Thor I would get them out before anything happens. We had done it so many times before."
"He said there was an explosion."
The sky explodes from the early azure of dawn to a blinding white to a blood-curdling crimson.
And Bucky was too slow to get you out.
"I don't remember that," you say and his eyebrows furrow. "I remember--"
Bucky watches you hesitate for a second before your hands nimbly move the fabric of your shirt slightly to reveal the outline of the scar, inhaling sharply. 
"I wasn't careful enough. There were civilians I was getting out and someone from behind--"
It dawns in a slow realisation the reason why the scar hadn’t healed yet. Why it stood out from the others that littered your skin. Bucky had thought for this long that you'd died in a blaze, trapped under bricks and mortar. That you had been left suffocating because he hadn't been fast enough, that he wasn't good enough.
"I knew I would not be awake for long. I just wanted to get rid of as many of them as I could."
"The building came down." He swallows the rock in his throat. "We spent days searching through it."
"I think I was gone before the explosion happened."
It makes sense-- the sky shifted all too quickly that day. You were gone before he even had the chance. Your fate had already been sealed. 
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should have been there.”
“I’m glad you weren’t. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
"That's not–" his words come out in a rush, stumbling over each other, insistent. "If I was there--"
"There is no point in punishing yourself," you interrupt his spiral. "It was a choice I made. I would do it again. It was what had to be done."
He swallows thickly when he knows the conversation ends there. 
__________
Some nights Bucky settles on pressing a kiss to your knuckles, and lingers there for a second longer than he should. 
You turn to face him from your place on the bed, looking at him like you've known him for centuries. Some nights it feels like you have.
_________
Bucky builds you a swing. It's a little ridiculous, and it takes a whole week to do it.
But your face breaks into the biggest smile he's seen since you got here, and he can taste the sun on his tongue. The strange feeling in his stomach is alleviated for a moment, and replaced with something closer to pride.
You spend hours on it while he works on parts of the house. He makes sure you've got a blanket with you at all times, even though you’ve never once told him you feel cold.
You ask him questions about everything. Him, the world; like you’re trying to relearn what you’ve lost.
"How long ago did you buy this place?" 
"Nearly two years ago," he replies, paintbrush in hand as he swipes up and down the deck. "Owners hadn't come here in a while and they wanted it off their hands quick, so I made an offer."
You hum, using the balls of your feet to swing yourself higher. "I have always wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this."
Bucky’s painting halts for a second as he fights a smile, but he doesn't respond. The squeaking of the swing stops. He looks over to you, only to find you already looking at him.
"Is this why you bought it?" you accuse.
Bucky returns to painting the wood, face turned away.
"You are far more of a hopeless romantic than I ever remember you being."
He scoffs out a laugh. "You'd'a run away."
"I wouldn’t have." You narrow your eyes. "I have had suitors in the past who've done far worse. You are far from the most embarrassing."
"You laughed when we kissed for the first time," he points out, amused.
Your jaw drops. "That was because I wasn't expecting it. You'd been courting me for months, I thought you were never going to move beyond that."
"I was tryin' t'be a gentleman," he defends. "I didn't know how they do it in Asgard."
"Well, for starters, they don't kiss someone after dropping tiramisu all over them."
He cringes, but it doesn't escape him that memories of the both of you feel like they're accompanied by a light this time, instead of dread. "Could you blame a fella for bein' nervous?"
"I do not know why, you had no reason to be."
He wants to ask if you've seen yourself before. He was damn near pissing himself whenever you got too close to him. The tiramisu was just collateral damage from when you chose to wipe cream smudged at the corner of his lip that night. 
When he lifts his head to look at you, you're back to swinging. Back to your own world. A new one you seem to have constructed for yourself since you came back. Back then he was privy to all your thoughts, no matter how mundane they were.
Right before he goes back to painting the deck, his brain makes a small connection. It's a small detail, but one that holds a lot more weight the more he begins to notice.
Your back curves in on itself ever so slightly. No longer pin-straight. His grip on the brush grows a little tighter.  
__________
February rolls around. Bucky's only managed to work up the courage to hold your hand occasionally when you go for walks.
Fingers laced in yours, he shows you parts of the woods he's discovered that stray from the main path. The shrubs that look like they're alight when the sunset catches them. The trees that have a hole right through the centre, like they've taken a bullet.
You keep him out longer and longer, and by now he’s run out of things to show you. He ends up repeating a lot, but you look glad each time, like you’re learning something new about him each day even though he’s dredged you through the same mud path at least thrice now.
He wants to think that it’s because you like having longer to hold his hand. 
You listen intently, asking questions whenever you could. You let him know what parts you like better, and parts you’re glad he’s left behind, even if it was recent. 
Bucky blushes from head to toe when you pick a flower and tuck it into his hair, and you smile it away with a swing of your hand. 
"You get visitors?" Your mouth moves in tandem with your fingers that weave together a crown from stray leaves and blades of grass. You tell him, even though he remembers, that it was something you learnt from Sif growing up. 
"Sam drops by every now 'n then."
"Do you visit them?" you ask, hands twisting deftly and with skill of someone who’s done this all too many times. "How has everyone been?"
Should he tell you he's been sequestered? That he dropped everything and disappeared overnight because the questions of 'are you fine?' and 'do you want to talk?' became as suffocating as a thick cloud of smoke.
"Last I heard, they were doin' alright." He hopes it's enough.
"I tried talking to Thor," you tell him casually, but it feels like a cold fist clamps down on his chest. 
“And?”
“I couldn’t hear him,” you tell him, just as normally and he’s disgusted that he feels even the tiniest bit of relief. “I couldn’t hear Heimdall either. I know he’d respond if he could hear me, so I can only assume he hasn’t.” 
“You’re sayin’ you’re not able to talk to them?” His voice sounds small.
“I believe I lost the ability to communicate with them,” you tell him, tying the last bit of grass together. “I don’t think there is precedence for when someone comes back from the dead.”
You hand him the crown, and Bucky doesn't dare to meet your eyes. It’s too small for him. It’s closer to the size for a child. 
"'M sorry, honey," he mumbles. It returns to his stomach. The sick, gnawing feeling that he’s tried to obtain salvation for.
"I still have you,” you tell him, “But you were here for this long without anyone. It must have been lonely.”
Truth be told, he never really noticed. It almost seems like he’s forgotten how it felt.
"Hasn't been for a while, now." He squeezes your hand.
"I don't like the idea of you staying here alone.” Your eyes scan his face. "You deserve to be around others."
Bucky doesn't know what it is about the way you say it-- like you're not entirely sure you're here either. Like you aren't real. 
He calls your name, unsure, scared even. You answer with a hum. 
"Are you okay with being here?" It’s too late to be asking this. 
Your face pulls together thoughtfully, but he can't decipher what you're thinking.
"I like spending time with you. Always." 
Your head leans on his shoulder, and you resume the tune you’re humming. Bucky tries not to think about the fact that you haven't quite answered his question.
_________
He wakes up on the ground again, not to your muffled groans or bed sheets being thrown to the ground.
You're not in bed. The window is open. There's scattering downstairs, and it's followed by a strange scent, and for a second he panics.
He scrambles down the stairs, mind already conjuring pictures and images so vile and ghastly--
But all he sees is you in his biggest shirt, one that you yourself once got him as a joke for a punchline he can’t really remember right now.
And you're surrounded by broken pans, bent forks and an entirely indiscernible charred mass on the bottom of a skillet.
"I tried to cook," you admit, "like on TLC."
"And you broke the pan?" he asks, a little stunned, a lot more in love. 
"I did not realise your cookware would be so weak." You try so desperately to hide a smile. "Tried to scrape it off using the fork."
He looks at the misshapen piece of cutlery.
"And what's that?" He slowly makes his way into the kitchen towards you.
"The remnants of a frittata." You hold it out to him.
Bucky takes the handleless skillet from you and looks at the ashes.
"What do you think?" you ask.
Bucky holds it back out to you. "Could use a few more minutes on the stove."
The smile you try to hold back breaks into laughter and his face lights up in surprise. It's the first time since you've gotten here, and the first time in years since he's been graced with the sound.
He bites his lip when you take it back from him, all while still giggling, like he doesn't quite believe his ears.
"I do believe I would fare better at toas-- oof."
Bucky pulls you into his chest, arms wrapping around you like a weighted blanket. The pan drops to the counter as his head falls to your shoulders.
"I missed you so fuckin' much," he utters desperately into your neck, clenching his eyes closed so tight it hurts.  
"I missed you too," you say softly, arms circling his waist, pulling him closer.
___________
The days start to get warmer. Your skin still stays cool to the touch. It's something he's getting used to. For years he was used to waking up at night to turn down the thermostat, just so that he could stay under the covers with you without burning up.
But while good days increase, there are the ones you spend too feverish to get out of bed. You sleep the whole day, only waking when he brings you food.
March fades the dark circles around your eyes as much as it can, but they never truly go. The scar on your stomach doesn't heal beyond a certain point, and is always ready to turn garish and violent on days you can't get your head to lift.
Bucky wonders if you’ll ever get better. 
Fevers break when the mornings do. You tell him you dream of the same thing over and over. Darkness, holding onto you with the same tenacity as a mother stops a child from running into a flame.
You walk with your shoulders drooped, and always some sleep in your smile. Sometimes he hears you call for your parents, who he knows haven't been around for a few hundred years. He hears Thor's name, and Loki's during nights that are more peaceful.
On days that are good, you spend time helping with the garden and for once, the flowers start growing. Tree bark he can't break into two, you manage with one hand. You watch shows together on the couch, and he massages your head when it's in his lap.
And finally, Bucky shows you the lake when it thaws over. Crystal clear waters let you peer at the little plants growing on the bottom, and the sunlight glows in the ripples.
You notice the engraving on the boulder before he has the chance to divert your attention. When you ask, he tells you about the little memorial and the rain and the loss of the hair tie. 
Your hand squeezes his a bit tighter. He thinks no memorial can hold a candle to that.
You look at your reflection in the water a lot. Bucky sits beside you, skipping stones to see how far it can go, like he did in the harbour as a kid. Steve always used to win, no matter how much Bucky tried. 
"There was a lake by my school when I was child," you tell him. "When I was mad, I used to skip class to go sit there for hours."
“What made you mad?” He chuckles.
“A lot of things. I had too much energy to just sit there, and that was ‘unbecoming of a future leader of Asgard’.” Your face pulls into one of distaste. “I always thought there was more to learn about the world than what their books contained.”
Bucky collects a few pebbles from around him. "Did the lake make you feel better?"
"Always." You take a stone from him to skip across the surface. "Sometimes my friends used to join. Our elders said the water had the ability to remember. Loki used to make faces, and it would always linger for a few seconds before it disappeared. Even after we thought he was gone, I'd see his face there."
Bucky stays quiet, nodding at points to let you know he was listening.
"I used to see younger versions of myself sometimes," you continue, voice distant. "It always surprised me. I thought I used to know what I looked like. It was different each time."
You inch towards the shoreline, leaning forward on your knees. The clear water looks like an open sky underneath you. "I look different now, too," you say. "But I can't remember what I used to look like."
Bucky discards his stones to come join you, leaning down to where you were. The face staring back at him pulls a sick, twisted feeling in his gut. Deep in him, he knows what you're talking about extends beyond immediate impressions. Centuries of being intertwined with the universe had always given you lines and traces that transcended your physical appearance. 
You have always felt like the God of the Night.
Now you have been to the other side and returned, seen things others haven't and still kept intact. While he doesn't have the courage to admit it, he knows in his blood what you feel like. 
He's scheduled an appointment with him many times, but always just missed it.
Now, you feel closer to the God of Death.
"You've always been beautiful. Still are." It's a band aid on a gaping, festering wound.
Even still, you look at him with a smile. "So are you."
Bucky makes the mistake of looking at his visage in the water, and immediately recoils.
"Christ," he grunts at the difference between the both of you. "What a fuckin' mess."
"Oh, it isn't that bad," you laugh, watching him contort his face.
"Easy for you to say, you look stunning." He points to your reflection. "I look like I was raised by wolves."
"You just need a shave," you hum.
"I need a new face."
You leave aside his last comment to propose something entirely new instead, "I could do that for you."
"What? Give me a new face?" he asks and you give him a pointed look. "Oh. Shave my beard?"
"Same thing, no?"
He supposes so. "Alright," he agrees, with a certainty reserved for no one else. 
A small smile appears on your face, even though you aren't really looking at him.
Bucky watches you lean forward. Your fingers dip into the water, disturbing the reflection.
_____
Late evening finds you settled on the counter, armed and ready. "Lot of trust you're putting in me."
"I'd trust you with anything," he says, looking in the mirror to check once again that foam covers every inch of hair on his jaw. "You know this."
"Still," you note, watching him tilt his chin up. "I could do this with a dagger, if you'd like."
"This works fine, thanks."
You let out a laugh, and he finally steps in front of you, satisfied with his part. You swish the razor into water once again just in case, before leaning forward.
The first swipe goes agonisingly slow. Bucky watches your face screw up in concentration as you scrape down his left cheek.
You pull back and make a face. He raises his eyebrow in question.
"You are too far away," you declare, wrapping an arm around his bicep and tugging him closer.
Your legs wrap around his waist to keep him in place, locking behind his back. His breath hitches in his throat the proximity but you appear entirely unfazed, washing the razor again.
"Are you okay?" you ask, keeping one hand on his neck for balance as you get a much better go at his face.
"Yep," he thinks he says. It may just have been a sound.
You could have spent hours there for all he cares. He's too focused on the pressure of your legs on the small of his back and the way he's basically melted into your hand.
"Your eyes have always been my favourite feature," you tell him, blade carefully running down the curve of his jaw. "When you smile hard, there are these lines in the corner. It's like you can't handle being that happy."
He can't tear his sight from you, and from the fact that this is the closest you’ve been in years. You may as well have been telling him utter nonsense, and he'd still find it hard to control his breathing.
"But I have a soft spot for this." You lightly tap the bridge of his nose. He knows immediately what you're talking about. "I will never forget how stupid you were. Throwing yourself in front of danger like that."
"Couldn't let that guy touch you," his voice comes out an octave lower than what it was. "I'd gladly take a few more punches."
"That's why they stopped pairing us up on missions." The corner of your lip upturns, and you swish the razor around in water again. "You were being reckless."
"I'd do it again."
"One scar is enough." You tilt his jaw to see if you'd gotten everything. "I don't enjoy you getting hurt on my account."
Bucky exhales deeply when you get started on the other side. His hands itch to hold your waist, pull you closer like it’s been carved into the strands of his being, but they stay by his side. 
"I tried for so long after you were gone," he tells you instead, to gain a sense of control. "I went to the therapist. I tried talkin' about it. No one got it. It was the same thing over, and over."
How do you explain that it wasn't simply a person. He thought that that was where it ended-- everything in his life had finally culminated. And that was taken too.
"Went back to the roof a month after everything happened," he continues, studying your reaction. "It was s'ppsed to be a clear night. There was nothing in the sky. I couldn't see the constellations. I couldn't see your family-- I couldn't see you."
You listen intently, but never stop working at him. The longer you spent there, the more of his old face revealed itself to you. Worn, and aged a thousand years in a few months, but it was still the still face you swore to love and cherish for aeons. 
"They took all your stuff. Said it belonged to Asgard, they couldn't keep it here. Thor went off grid. All I had was pictures of us and the hair tie you gave me."
You clean the razor off in water, eyebrows furrowing at the information.
"It felt like you were never here. Like I'd just made you up all those years." You can hear the faint trembling in his voice. "But I had memories of you in all these places-- and I couldn't stay. It was easier to move here and start again."
Looking back at him, you realise you've already finished. There was nothing left on his face to clear.
"Was it hard?" you ask finally, letting go of the razor in the water. 
He looks at you, and you know he's struggling to form the right words. He looked like he wanted to scream, rip the hair out of his scalp, punch a hole through the mirror. 
"More than anything.” His voice comes out raw and peeling. 
Bucky watches you look at him for a long moment, and he wonders if he’s said too much too soon.
But instead you kiss him.
His arms find its way back home around your waist, and he feels you sigh against his mouth before your body relaxes, tilting your head to deepen it.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there,” you breathe, forehead leaning against his. 
"Don't," he begs.
You search his eyes for any kind of a message.
He kisses you harder, pulling you flush against him.
__________
Bucky moves into your bed after you threaten him well and good, and he knows you intend to keep your promises.
For the first time since he can remember, he keeps the windows open throughout the night and throughout the day.
It’s foolish, to think he was invincible. That what you had had finally cemented itself as final.  
You both stay in as long as you want. There is no hurry, nothing to get to. You talk a lot more. You begin to tell him sometimes at night that you see glimpses of what seemed like beyond the end.
Gold. Blood of ichor. Warriors fallen in battle go to Valhalla. Trees that kissed the skies, and valleys so green it hurt. Sometimes, in the corner of your eyes, you could see those you'd lost over the years waiting for you, hand outstretched.
No matter how hard he tries, Bucky doesn’t seem to get it. Every time he thought he was dead, there was only jet black silence and crushing pain. Then again, he never truly died.
But he isn’t ignorant. Fevers and fatigue that initially lasted a day, now knock you out for a week. There are times you throw up more than you've eaten, and the dark circles look like abysses.
He worries to the point of his stomach churning. You look like you don't have the energy to be here, even though you kiss him like you do. 
Bucky runs his hands over your scalp and tells you stories of his childhood. What he felt when you moved in with him, how anxiety made space for comfort. He reads you tales from other mythologies and marks the similarities in the stories you've told him over the years.
Each time you come around your smile gets more tired. Your shoulders grow heavier and your skin loses colour.
You still cook breakfast together. You still watch TLC together to figure out the culture on earth because even after all this while, you still maintain that's the best way to do it.
Things could still be good. But more often than not, Bucky wonders if he’s unknowingly surrendered you to a life you do not wish to live. 
_______
"Sweetheart?"
You continue to drag your finger through the water, oblivious to what he's saying. 
He calls your name, and there's still no response. April sees this happening more often, and Bucky's learnt that no matter what he does, it only seems to worsen.
He touches your shoulder lightly and you almost jump.
"It's getting late. Wanna head back?" he asks, because you’ve skipped out on lunch to stay by the shore the whole day. It seems like it’s the only place you want to be. 
"Yeah." You give him a small smile, wiping your hands on your pants.
"Want a hand?" he asks, holding out his.
You grab it, and pull yourself up, giving him a small peck on the lips along the way.
It feels comically normal. He wants to pretend that it is.
"Pasta tonight?" you ask breezily, slipping your hand into his.
Your fingers are ice cold to the touch. He forces back a shudder.
"Anything you want," he promises.
__________
He catches you humming as you water the plants, when you walk with him, while you read from the end of the bed. 
It's the song of my people, you tell him. They used to sing it when everyone was together.
He listens to the tune and tries to commit it to memory, but it changes far too often.
May catches you staring a lot more often. At walls. The trees. The lake is the worst.
On what would have been the fifth anniversary of the both of you being together, he brings you a cake. The both of you share it over a glass of wine, even though it clashes terribly and leaves an aftertaste.
You laugh harder than you have in the last few weeks and he gets to feel triumphant for an evening. 
You chase the frosting on his lips with a searing kiss, and that's that.
“What do you suppose it means?” you ask later that night, arm wrapped around his middle.
“What?” he mumbles, drowsy from a full stomach and good time.
“That I got a second chance and others didn’t?” your voice sounds distant.
Bucky is suddenly very awake.
“It couldn’t be that they weren’t as loved," you continue. "So then what made me different?"
He doesn’t have an answer.
He rolls over to look at you. But you are staring at the ceiling once again.
_________
His unwavering faith that he can learn to live with it feels like it’s eroding. 
Death changes everyone. He knows that before Steve left a few years ago, he wasn't the same Brooklyn-born spitfire. Steve's died a dozen or so times. He was reborn into a different soul each time.
Spring bounds towards you with warmth and life. The grass is greener, and Bucky's learnt there's more to life than just casseroles and toast.
You bring him more flowers to tuck into his hair. He wears them dutifully, and then learns to press them in between pages of books you both buy from old bookshops.
You give him wider smiles. You talk a lot less. 
Bucky learns that silence doesn't have to be filled. He's loved you in the winter, and he loves you in spring.
But there is always a tension simmering under the surface, just out of reach, like the sky reflecting in the lake. 
Sometimes you say things that he can't quite make sense of. Sometimes it's a lot more obvious, and the same feeling of guilt returns to his chest and flowers under his ribs.
So he asks you one day. You're on the couch, head in his lap while he reads a book you've annotated the week before. The only disturbances are when he stops occasionally to ask you why you liked a line, or why you drew a heart next to another.
You're humming the tune he can’t catch. 
There's nothing really wrong, but he knows. He can feel it in his marrow.
“Sweetheart," he calls gently. 
You look up at him. 
"Are you– are you happy?” And he leaves his heart, raw and unprotected on the line.  
You don’t look surprised. Not entirely knowing either.
A beat passes before you open your mouth to speak. 
“I like being here with you. I love you, I always have, and I will always love being here with you,” you choose your words carefully. “But I don’t know if I can feel that anymore. Happiness, I mean. Or sadness.”
Bucky keeps the book down. You don't lift your head from his lap.
“I feel like there’s a void where my body should be,” you continue in a chance to explain, “I feel like I'm made of air.”
“Are you feeling under the weather?” Bucky tries to find a rationalisation. Anything, that he can fix. That he can control.
You slight him a smile. “Not since the last bout.”
He doesn't know. He doesn't want to get it. He’s always felt that he was selfish, that that was ultimately what led to his punishments. This was a whole new level.
“I was born on Asgard. I have always felt like I was a part of the mud and the riverbed. They were a part of me as much as I was, them. I don’t know if that’s still…”
You pause, and Bucky feels time come to a standstill around him. 
“I’ve been reborn here,” you continue. “I don’t feel like anything is mine. I don’t feel like… I am a part of something. Even the night.”
He knew. Though he knows in his dreams he can still feel traces of Brooklyn carved into his bones, it had jaded over time, been eroded by years of waking up in places he couldn't place.
You sit up to look at him. Your eyes have an intensity to it that even the universe couldn't mask. 
“Do you really like who I am now?” you ask finally.
“I love all of you. Every one.” Ever changing, transient.
“How?” you ask softly. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
He swallows thickly and wills himself to ignore the chill creeping into his body. In truth there is so much he wants to say. He doesn't think that as a war-fractured man from the thirties who grew up in bloodshed will really have the sufficient words.
“I just do. Can’t help it.”
Even if you aren’t satisfied with his answer, he will never know it. He has known for a while now that he's been letting you down since the day he walked into Wanda's cabin.
You give him a slight smile. Lay your head back down on his lap. His book remains unread.
It felt like the beginning of the end.
It's a simple decision then. It would have been, for anyone who wasn’t born with a soul as corrupt as his.
One more week that is hard for you to get up from bed, turns into two. One more week that your face morphs into something he can’t quite recognise. He's never wanted to harm someone he loves, but he seems to do a fine job at it.
It's a simple decision, really. But simple didn't mean easy-- God knows he is anything but a saint.
When you see it finally, the fruits of a labour that took far too less time to manifest than justified the time he spent putting it off, the smile that appears on your face is blinding, he wonders how the sun even has the gall to shine.
“Thor,” you breathe out, only seconds before being engulfed in the most bone-crushing hug you’ve ever received.
Bucky watches from the sidelines, fingers wringing and entirely ready to be smithed to ashes.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he breathes into your shoulder. "I cannot believe this."
You pull back, and standing next to Thor gives Bucky a new frame of reference. One that isn't dependent on how you looked the week prior. He doesn't know how it slipped past him, how he hadn't noticed that you looked so different.
“You look wonderful." You grin at the behemoth of a man. "Your hair has grown out once more."
"They can try cutting it off my dead body," he replies defiantly, arms clasping at your shoulders to keep enough distance to study you from head to toe. "You'll have to give me a second. I didn't think this would be true, when Heimdall gave me James' message."
You look over at Bucky whose lips pull together in a tight line. 
He looks embarrassed. Unsure. Afraid. Guilty, and prepared to be berated for how long it took him. 
"It's true," you reply instead, giving him a smile. "Here, in the flesh."
Thor squeezes your shoulder once more, and laughs the same laugh he's always had around you. Loud, boisterous and entirely free. 
"The others will be thrilled. Sif, Hogun-- you have no idea how the past two years have been. There is so much to catch you up on."
Bucky knows. The fact that you're standing there today is living proof that he knows so well.
“I cannot wait to meet them." The corner of your lips upturn wider at his enthusiasm. "I've missed them terribly."
"We did not get to give you a proper farewell. Your welcome back will be a thousand times better," Thor says brightly. "We can return as soon as you say the word."
You look to Bucky, not for permission, but as a question he's known has been awaiting him a long time.
"Ready?" you ask softly.
He knows you didn't have to ask. That if you'd left him there and never returned, he'd deserve it and worse.
But you're you-- patient and kind. And he thinks that he can try to start redeeming himself.
__________
Turns out he wasn't wrong. Asgard really is too grand for a fella like him.
It is opulence-- gold and towering heights that bleed the love of its citizens and a history richer than words can contain.
Thor is smart. Aside from Heimdall, who greets you with the hug a father gives a child who's been away for too long, no one knows of your appearance until you are ready.
You get a few days in the tower to yourself, to breathe in the air that grew your lungs and touch the marble you've split your head open against in the past. The help are sworn to secrecy, and no one knows who Bucky is anyway except as the man who has been specifically allotted to the same room as you upon your request.
It doesn't take long for your face to pick up. Your skin comes alive with a vibrancy he didn't think he'd see again. You sleep sounder at night, and you eat more than you've had the appetite for in the last few months.
He trails behind you and Thor initially, not wanting to eavesdrop into conversations he has no place being a part of.
But you grab his hand, lace your fingers in his and tug him along as if to say that this is his home too.
He sees what you mean when you say that you are connected to the land. Clothes on Earth have never fit you right. Silks from Asgard decorate you like you are one in the same, like it flows from you.
_________
Reunions are a tearful affair. Lots of hugs are exchanged, punches to the shoulder, and kisses to various parts of your face.
“You have been alive for months, and we are just now learning of it,” Sif holds your hands in hers. 
“It took me a while to recover.” You give her a small smile. 
“We would have come as soon as you called,” she continues. “You did not have to heal alone.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
Eyes turn over to Bucky, and he’s suddenly very aware that the clothes he’s been given are too rich for him, too grand. He feels small, like they drown him out.
Despite what he’s saying, he feels as though he has deprived you. He knows that he has, and he has no one else to blame but himself. 
“Thank you,” Sif says instead, taking him by surprise. “We will remember this.”
“Don’t mention it,” he replies weakly.  
__________
It takes days to meet the closest of your friends, until they decide they had their fill. Bucky is slowly introduced to all of them. Boisterous and loud, most greet him with a wide appreciation. Others are less quick to warm, and he gives himself no room to blame them either. 
Upon insistence, he joins you for your welcome back dinner, and gets a seat right beside you. 
Your hand holds his the entire night, squeezing tighter when something makes you laugh, or when someone is particularly embarrassing.
When there is a lull in the conversation after hours, sly grins are exchanged.
"So, this is the one you raved on and on about." 
His eyebrows quirk in amusement.
"I did not rave," you huff. "I simply informed you--"
"For hours. Days even,” they drag on. “A great warrior from earth with eyes that could rival storms--"
Bucky chokes on his wine. You award your friends with several curses and glares.
"Long hair past his shoulders. Oh, and arms to die for--"
You take in the way his face has gone red, all the way up to his ears. You laugh and grip his hand tightly with an unabashed shrug.
"I am only glad that that's all you remember," you joke.
He thinks he should be buried in the garden for his sanity.
_________
Walks around the castle become increasingly common at night. You are mostly left undisturbed, and you take the opportunity to show him everything you've ached to.
Where you've learnt, where you first scraped your knee. The first arrow you shot. Where your parents met. The first and last time you cried over a friend gone astray.
He can't fathom why he ever thought he wouldn't be ready to know this. As if knowing more about you would cement the fact that he was lesser than.
“You look ethereal,” Bucky tells you one night, honest and true.
You look at him, a bit taken aback. There was nothing particularly different about you this evening. In fact, you’d chosen to stay away from festivities today to lie around the gardens with him, citing a headache.
“I should have said yes earlier,” he continues. “You belong here. It shows.”
A laugh leaves you as an exhale. “It feels different.” You run your fingers through his hair. “I don’t know if it would be the same if I brought you here years ago.”
“Different how?” Bucky closes his eyes and revels in the feeling of your touch.
“I don’t know,” you tell him. “I am not sure it is what I remember it to be.”
You don’t say anymore. Bucky doesn’t ask. 
He lays with you under a clear night sky, and your fingers deftly move the faint lights in the sky to mimic shapes of fishes and hunters. 
He notices the sky here, too, has taken the same fate as it has on earth. Not as full as it could be, always just a little less bright.
He assumed it would change when you came back. He assumed it would change when you came to Asgard.
The sinking feeling in his stomach reminds him of what he already knows is going to come.
_____________
There are nights you are dragged off by your friends for things that don't include him.
You shoot him a sorry smile and he tells you to just go with steady reassurance.
Bucky takes to exploring. He's been given robes to blend in. They always fit in a way that's too soft.
He looks at statues erected, memorials in place for those who've given up their lives for a bigger cause. He spots your name in there as well, as if they've not yet entirely sure that you're back. He spends hours at the library, reading up on things he couldn't find on Earth. Where heroes slain in battle actually go, what it's like over there. Stories of when they are brought back. None of them end well.
Thor finds him, and introduces Bucky to Asgardian mead that he swears got Steve tipsy. Bucky’s had a rough couple of years. He’s in no place to turn down a drink. 
He remembers what it's like to be 21 and drunk again and like nothing bad can ever happen.  When you choose to join in with them, Bucky finds he’s a lot braver and a lot smoother with liquor flowing through his veins. 
Stumbling through tower hallways, giggling and stealing open-mouthed kisses in the shadows like a bunch of teenagers until he has your back pressed up against the bedroom door. 
“Eager?” you breathe out when he nips at your neck, hands scouring every inch of you he can find. 
“What gave it away?” he mutters, pulling away to look you. 
Wild eyes and equally untamed hair, and there is a light in his eyes that outshines supernovae. 
“I love you,” you tell him, and it’s a startling moment of clarity in the middle of a juvenile hour. “I hope that always remains with you.”
Before he can respond, you thread your hands behind his neck and steer him towards the bed, mouth never once leaving his. 
________
Another solitary night, and it's by pure accident that he ends up retracing his steps to the first place he was introduced to in Asgard. He wonders how much of it was intentional, his conscience forcing him to a reckoning long awaiting him. 
Heimdall is there as always, standing tall with a grace that is still threatening. Bucky is not a fool-- he knows he can sense his presence.
Still, he looks only for a moment before making leave. 
"I hear it was magic that brought her back," Heimdall voices.
Bucky pauses in his tracks.
"Yes," he says, like he’s forced to respond.
"Are you aware of what it takes to bring a body back from the dead?" Heimdall asks, tone still. "Cells are broken and reattached if they do not malfunction. The brain is attacked with sensation after being dormant for months. The heart pumps degraded blood through vessels that have collapsed."
Bucky feels bile rise to his mouth at a memory that seems so far away. Enough has happened since.
Heimdall looks at him, steel cut eyes boring into his. “Our ancestors have tried this for centuries,” he says slowly. “It has always ended the same way.”
Bucky keeps silent. Wonders if the God can hear him swallow the lump in his throat– probably can.
“Tempering with fate has never fared well.”
“I’m not trying to play with fate,” Bucky finds himself moving on its own accord. “If this wasn’t supposed to happen, it wouldn’t have. I am not a God.”
Heimdall stares into his soul and Bucky feels suffocatingly exposed. “The separation between divinity and mortals is thinner than you may imagine.”
“I have no interest in crossing it.”
“Haven’t you?” Heimdall’s eyes flicker over to the direction you were last going in. “When your will supersedes reality– what else do you call it?”
“Luck.” His voice comes back stonily.
Heimdall gives him a wry smile. “No such thing.”
Bucky’s palms feel clammy, his stomach twisting into knots.
“Your grief is natural. But do not let it overpower your love,” Heimdall adds. “I am sorry you had to go through this. I'm afraid sooner or later you will have to see that you cannot disrupt the natural order of things.”
"Why?" His voice cracks and he curses himself.
Heimdall's eyes soften. "There comes a point where your love for someone becomes indistinguishable from hurting them. Your intentions are noble, but you already know where you stand."
Bucky quietly turns on his heel and leaves, but the conversation remains heavy on his mind for days to come.
_________
The first time you fall sick, really sick, like you used to be on Earth, Bucky watches from the sidelines as various people tend to you. Those with divinity at their fingertips, those with herbs and concoctions he’d never heard of, others with tools and prayers and everything. 
They try everything. It takes you a full week to recover.
Bucky sits, emotionless by your bedside, and feeds you from a spoon, food that your friends swore you grew up loving. 
Asgard was supposed to work. Being here was supposed to work. No one knows what to do, except to wait it out. As your fever quells and Bucky watches you open your eyes for the first time in a few days, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he says quietly from your bedside. “How can I help?”
The smile you give him is tired. He gives you a small one in return, and leaves a kiss on your forehead. 
It feels all too familiar. 
God of the Night and the Devil of Cursed Fates.
_________
Thor teaches him the song, the one he caught you humming for months. It sounds different to what he remembers you singing.
He watches you thumb through titles in the Asgardian library, looking for a book of wildlife to show him. It only takes a few seconds for you to hum under your breath again, but Bucky is quick to ask this time. 
“Oh.” You blink. “I may have remembered it wrong.”
He tilts his head at you, but you go back to browsing through library books.
___________
Nights in bed, he spends tracing up and down your arm. He's full from a feast, and he's watched you dance around a courtyard with spirit and joy, and for the first time in years he feels like he can breathe.
You drag him along with you, and while he may have been quick on his feet in the thirties, Bucky was significantly older. You don't seem to care. You laugh like nothing has ever worried you before, and he finds it infectious.  
"D'you s'ppose we'd have been married by now?" he asks, breaking the quiet.
"I remember turning down your offer," you say, the corners of your mouth pulling upwards. "So, who's to say?"
Bucky's face breaks into a smile, one that looks particularly incredible in the moonlight. "You said I knew what the answer was already. Looks like that leaves the ball in my court."
You look at him, a little endearingly, and as he's come to expect, a little sad.
"I think we would have," you hum. "But you wouldn't have survived wedding festivities here."
He scoffs, rolling onto his back and feels his stomach ache dully. "Barely holdin' on now as it is."
You pull closer to him, fingers dancing across his chest. "Why didn't you try to find someone else?"
He exhales, sharper than he intends. "Didn't wan'to," he mumbles.
"I'd hate to think you didn't try to find others who loved you," you tell him, brows pulled together, "You have so much of it to give. It'd be a shame."
"Didn't see the point." Bucky hopes he doesn't sound as sharp as he does in his head.
"If something were to happen tomorrow, and I am no longer here," you begin and he wants to beg you to stop talking about this, "It would break my heart if you didn't go on with life as you were meant to live it."
"This is how I'm meant to live." He sounds pathetic-- obsessed, and entirely dependent but he isn't sure you know. "This is it. This is the best it's ever gonna get for me."
You look at him, eyebrows knitted. Your thumb caresses his jaw, running across the sharp curve.
"You deserve more," you say gently. "You do. Life has been unkind, but you will always deserve more."
You’re doing it again. Preparing him. For the inevitable he knows is looming on the horizon. The one he saw in Heimdall's eyes.
Still, you notice that it is too much for him, and you break the tension with a smile.
Outside the window, the sounds of a party continue on. You would be out there too, if he hadn't noticed the slow in your movements and the dip in your energy. He instead gave his lack of stamania as a reason and asked if you would join him in the room, for which you shot him a grateful look.
"You never gave me a ring," you remind instead, voice teasing.
Bucky looks at you wearily before silently getting up from the bed. 
You sit up in confusion, watching him trail across to the wardrobe and pull out the clothes he was wearing on his first day here.
He shuffles back into bed and turns to you, holding out his hand in a request.
It takes a second but you give him yours, and he silently slides a ring onto your finger. Even in the darkness it glitters like it’s made of light.
"I've had it for ages," he tells you. "Woulda given it to you quicker if you'd just said yes the first time."
You laugh loudly, and hold his face in yours before kissing him hard to the sounds of a fading party.
__________
The effect wears off gradually. It goes the same as it does in the cabin. 
You begin to space out visits. Stay in for a day or two, which increases as time passes. Though the castle help are ever gracious and at your beck and call, you send them away in exchange for quiet nights in.
Bucky wipes your forehead with cool cloth. Feeds you nectar by hand and tells you of everything he's learnt since the time you've arrived there.
You begin to look sick again, and miserably, he does not know what to do. You've been attended to by the best of medicine that the nine realms have to offer. You've spent nights with your friends, drinking in joy and embodying love.
But you are dying. You have been since you came back, and he can no longer choose to look past it in hopes for a remedy.
He looks at you like you've given the world the light it bathes in, and wipes your perspiration with his thumb.
You smile back at him in your sleep, and he lets that slow the march towards the end.
_________
One of the good days, you lead him to the lake. The one where water remembers. You point out faces. He discerns them to be some of your friends a couple of hundred years ago.
He follows as you walk along the banks, letting you show him yourself through the years. Some streaked with tears, others with joy so infectious it has his stomach doing flips.
"That is the last time I came here," you point at the last one. "Two months before it happened."
He remembers the trip. He thought he remembered how you were back then, that he'd etched into the crevices of your mind.
When he looks down, he sees a different person. Your face is light. The weight of circumstance does not weigh you down.
You were right when you said you did not recognise the person you were.
That night in bed, he holds onto you tighter than he has, no longer afraid of causing more damage. He has already done the worst, and you've taken it without a word.
“Bucky,” you call.
He doesn’t trust his voice to answer, so he just makes a noise.
Your eyes meet his intently and he knows. You do not have to say a single word to him. 
You’ve made a decision. It was your will, as Wanda had told him all those months ago.
“I'm sorry,” his voice cracks. “I'm so sorry. It was so selfish.”
“It's okay,” you press a palm against his cheek and shudders from the cold.
“I love you.” His eyes burn, but he forces himself to take more of you in. “I love you so much, I'm sorry. I just wanted a second chance.”
“I know.” You smile but your voice is sad. “I know. I understand.”
“I don't know how you aren’t angry at me." I don’t know why you stayed.
You look him in his eye, giving him no space to run. "I would have done the same. If I could, I would have done the very same thing."
He chooses to believe that, despite what Heimdall has told him. If he tries, he can find heat in the frigid veins.
"But we are simply delaying the inevitable, my love." You press a kiss to his forehead. "I no longer belong here. I am not who I was. I doubt I will ever be."
He loves every version of you. He already loved, and he will always learn to love whoever you change to be.
"I know it is hard, but I have to go," you tell him softly.
His eyes burn and his head stings.
"I grew up with friends I loved, and a family that loved me. My life was good," you tell him. "I didn't realise how much I wanted to give that forward until you happened. I will always love you for that."
Bucky kisses you till you can't breathe and his tears mix with yours.
Till the morning breaks and you have to tell everyone of your decision, he tells you over and over again a tale you already know. Everything he's ever felt. Everything that’s happened in the last few months– his revolving door of therapists and all the movies he’s watched and all the bakery foods he thought you'd like.
You listen, and you tell him stories he memorises to heart. You are still dying. 
But this time he is there, and in that lies his true second chance. 
________
A month later, and not a day before that.
You pass away quietly, surrounded by people instead of rubble. He holds your hand throughout, and for long after even once your chest stops rising.
The Asgardians let him stay for as long as he wants, still and quiet. No one says a word as he presses a kiss to the crown, leaning his forehead against yours for as long as the universe permits.
The funeral goes by in a haze. Everyone gathers, even after such short notice. No matter how much time he had to prepare, the air was thick, and he swallows down his discomfort.
A gentle breeze whispers through the columns of the great hall, carrying with it the soft, mournful melodies of Asgardian lyres and flutes.
In the center of the pyre, you lay, ethereal even in repose. Around you, night-blooming flowers bloom alongside, as if the sky itself was paying its respects.
Thor recites the ancient eulogies. With reverent hands, they guide the vessel into the river that flows through Asgard.
As the vessel drifts away, a hush falls over the assembly. Just before reaching the edge of the waterfall, arrows shoot fire onto the wood, letting the flames consume the casket. Bucky holds back a cry. 
Thor hits the staff, and the casket continues onward instead of falling off the edge. Within a flash Bucky sees an orb rise above you and shoot off towards the sky.
Thousands of lights are let loose into the sky. He closes his eyes, says a few words no one will know except you, and lets go of the soul orb given to him.
And that was it.
________
Bucky looks at the last of his belongings, tied tightly together. 
There were a few things he was allowed to take with him, things that belonged to you while you lived here. He's grateful more than anything, that he's not relegated to photos.
He was made to stay a few more days in Asgard while everything was completed. Though the people were lovely, and he's more than glad he came, he knows that this was where this ended.
He exhales, looking back at the place where he spent the better part of three months.
"You will be alright?" Thor asks, walking with him to the courtyard.
He shrugs. It was still fresh, but the utter despair he had felt the last time had been replaced with a quietness.
"You?" he asks in return.
Thor smiles, and claps his back and Bucky is forced to take a step forward.
"It will be an honour to remember her," he says, and for a moment, Bucky feels a sense of peace at his words. "You are always welcome here."
A small laugh leaves Bucky in the form of an exhale. "Don't be a stranger, Thor."
The God summons the Bifrost and the force is enough to make Bucky hold his hands up to his face.
"I'll see you around. Thanks for everything." His lips pull together in a tight smile.
Thor takes a second, but then says, “You will be alright, James.”
It’s reassuring, he thinks. Bucky nods and turns, taking a step towards the bridge.
"Wait," Thor calls loudly, "I almost forgot."
He turns to him in confusion, and a list of possibilities running through his head.
"She told me to give you this," he says, "She used to carry them around for us."
From around his wrist, he pulls off a hair tie and holds it out to him.
Bucky takes it, a little stunned.
________
Two months pass.
Bucky stands on the threshold of a door that is foreign to him.
His head falls, but his arms raise either way. Two swift knocks and he takes a step back. He looks around nervously, hands stuffing into his pocket. His car lays at the end of the long driveway, ready to leave at any given moment.
For a second, he thinks about making a run for it. But the door swings open and Bucky's eyes quickly dart up.
"Hey," he says, voice coarse. "You got space for one more?"
Sam looks at him in initial surprise, but it fades to softness when he notices the shape the man is in.
“C’mon, Buck,” Sam says softly. “We’ve got you.”
Bucky lets out a staggered breath, and leans over to pick up his backpack that Sam's already beaten him to.
He takes one good look at the sky. Dark, clear and finally returned to the way it had been for centuries.
But he swears that a single star in the corner of his eye shines a little brighter than the rest.
339 notes · View notes
goddessapostle · 1 month ago
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Storm
Fandom: Genshin Impact Characters: Wanderer/Scaramouche, GN!Reader Summary: You're going to die thinking about a man whose name you don't even know. Warnings: Violence
1k // AO3 // Masterlist
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A/N: Another request from @acidsbeats! Thank you for helping @ficsforgaza once again, and thank you for your patience this time as well! ^^
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Damn, you wish you could fly. If your friend were here, he'd carry you down the cliff. Anemo Visions are so useful. 
But he’s not here. Bandits are. They separated you from the caravan you were guarding, then drove you up a cliff overlooking Mawtiyima Forest. You're trapped between a waterfall and a long drop. 
Your friend could hold them back. Then again, your friend could escape without certain death. Your friend is awesome. 
Except for the fact that he wont tell you his name. It’s been almost a year since you met the wandering Inazuman, but he just won’t reveal it.
“Call me whatever,” he said, more annoyed every time you asked. 
Well, Whatever won’t have to worry about it anymore. 
You dodge the fist headed for your face. Another lands in your stomach. You cough, but still manage to elbow the guy responsible. He stumbles away, clutching his nose. You have maybe a second to catch your breath. 
One man lounges in the back of the crowd. He nods towards you, and two more Treasure Hoarders walk forward. He’s the ringleader, clearly, but you have no clue why he’s targeting you specifically. He had a chance to steal your client’s wares but chose to chase you instead. 
You beat down his two grunts as the memory of him floats up from your mind. 
It was the night you and your friend met. Lambad kicked you both out of his tavern because he was tired of your bickering over the best seat in the place. This asshole tried to mug you both, but you kicked his ass right into jail. Your friend was impressed. He’d be impressed now, too, since you’ve just disabled seven of the people trying to beat you to a pulp. 
Fuck. Now is not the time to think about him. 
The mugger waves another person forward. 
“Fight me, coward!” you call. “I’ll go easy on you this time.” You smile, despite the pain of your split lip. 
The mugger stands. You raise your arms in front of your body, fists clenched, stance wide. 
You have no idea what happened next. You woke on the ground. The ache in your knuckles suggests you were fighting. The ache in your head suggests you lost. The bindings around your wrists confirm it. 
A blurry face floats in front of yours — the asshole mugger. 
“Not dead yet, I hope?” He sits you on your knees and brushes dirt from your shirt. His hand travels under it to yank your necklace from you.  
“Don’t–touch–” you try as he searches for more treasure. You can barely form a coherent thought.  
His fingers hover by your head, removing most of your earrings. He leaves you with just one pair — dangling silk ribbons that attach in three different places. 
If anything, you’re glad you still have those. They were a gift from your friend. They may be the only reason your body is identified. 
“Satisfied?” you ask as he walks back to the group. 
He hums, parsing through your jewelry with a finger. Scowling, he sets it on a nearby barrel and picks up a roll of leather. 
Five knife hilts reflect the sun as he unrolls it. 
The first knife sinks into your shoulder. You grunt, hoping he doesn’t hear it over the waterfall to your left. 
“You humiliated me.” The second lands in your thigh. 
“You have to pay for it, y’know?” The third, your abdomen. It burns with every breath you take. 
Wind rushes by your head. You think the fourth knife missed until you feel blood drip down your ear. 
“And your shit ain’t worth nearly enough.” 
There’s only one knife left. You have no doubt as to where it’s meant to go. 
You have to do something — maybe the waterfall? 
Water falls into a pool, usually, but you have no idea how deep it is or how long the drop. The fall could kill you. 
Could. You can risk could. 
The mugger raises his hand. 
You tense.  
A gaze lands on your back. One that’s familiar. One that’s full of rage. 
Your muscles go slack as air flows all around you. It gathers at some point behind you. 
“You dare touch what’s mine?” 
Your body sways, teetering in the wind. An arm steadies you, wrapping gently around your shoulders. 
Your friend slashes his other hand. 
The bandits fly. Some into the water. Others into trees. Those that can still move run away. 
The grip on your shoulder tightens before dropping to your wrists. He doesn’t untie the rope; you hear a snap! and then your hands are loose. 
You slump against your friend’s chest, wrapping your uninjured arm around him. Tremors make their way through your body. 
You were going to die. 
Gods, you were going to die. 
Your friend holds you close. 
“How?” you croak, voice lost with your adrenaline. 
“I was helping the Matra with an investigation. And...” He holds up his hand. In his palm is a knife that matches the ones still sticking out of you. The only difference is a scrap of fabric caught in the tang — the silk from your earrings. 
“You saved my life. Thank you.” 
The fabric flutters in a breeze. He stares at it, then at you. 
“Scaramouche,” he says. There’s a weight to the word, one you cannot decide is reverence or despair. “My name is Scaramouche.” 
You blink, slow to understanding. “Your… name?” 
“Call for me if you’re ever in danger again. I’ll find you. I can’t-I can’t lose you.” He hugs you tight, pressing you firmly against his chest for the briefest of moments. 
When it passes, he scoops you up — one hand on your back, the other under you knees. 
“What–” 
“You need a doctor. I’m going to tell Cyno where those assholes went then take you to one.” 
“Wait-” 
You scream when he jumps over the waterfall. 
Scaramouche just smirks. 
170 notes · View notes
shalotttower · 4 months ago
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The Art of Disappearing (part 1)
Title: The Art of Disappearing Fandom: Resident Evil Village Characters: Lady Dimitrescu x Reader (female) Summary: Lady Dimitrescu enjoys wine; you enjoy living. You pray to god those don't overlap. Word count: 1800+ Notes: mentions of death, implied torture and violence, NSFWish, WINE Part 2
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Hiding in plain sight is a skill honed by necessity here.
Melt seamlessly into the decor of drapes and velvet curtains until you're indistinguishable from them. Become wallpaper with eyes that stare and mouths that don't open, and arms that only pick, and pass, and scrub, and fold.
You're not the girl who was locked in the cellar last week.
You're not the girl who dropped a plate yesterday.
You're not the girl whose blood got so deep into the dining room rug that it's better off being burned.
You want to say that you won't be that girl, but you can't promise anything anymore except that dinner is at 6 o'clock every evening unless stated otherwise by Lady Dimitrescu. Your schedule revolves around hers entirely, like planets rotating around their dying sun, even if it's not your shift. There's no such thing as a day off in the castle.
But there're such things as a quiet day, or a normal day, or a bad one.
Today is a bad one.
Lady Dimitrescu's favourite lipstick is missing.
It's a very rare, expensive shade, like the red shell of a ladybug, or the last breath of a maiden. Your ears pick up the word being murmured from one maid to another — 'if anyone sees the item, return it to the Lady's vanity immediately'.
You hope that someone finds it soon. Nobody here is dumb enough to steal, so it's probably forgotten somewhere. But you don't say it of course, because Her Ladyship doesn't forget anything and you still need your tongue intact.
---
Lady Dimitrescu likes wine; you enjoy living.
You pray that the two never overlap.
So far luck has been on your side — for six months now you've been working in the castle. You've cleaned stains from carpets and floors without asking what they are (because it was clear even without questions); polished silverware until you could see yourself reflected in them and arranged flowers countless times to learn which ones Lady favors over others.
You were a mouth that didn't speak and eyes that saw nothing. A piece of furniture with legs and arms.
As long as you do your job and keep a low profile, you're safe. Humans thrive in delusion, and so do you. It keeps you sane, what an oxymoron that is.
---
At three in the afternoon, you clean the bathrooms.
Bela is the neatest among the three, and Cassandra leaves everything scattered around for maids like you to collect and place where it's supposed to be. Daniela is... unique. You're not sure how she manages to get stains and fingerprints on such random surfaces. Sometimes you wonder if she does it on purpose.
Daniela loves fun surprises.
Like sneaking up on you when you're on your knees, scrubbing the tub. She pokes your shoulder. "Hiya."
Your heart drops into your stomach.
"Lady Daniela," you greet while trying not to let your hands shake under the apron.
She's smiling sweetly today, like she didn't just scare ten years out of you. You're not fooled and know better than to trust that expression. Nothing in this castle is innocent and saccharine and nice. Especially not the daughters.
"Can I help you with anything, my lady?"
Please say "no" and leave.
Daniela rocks on her heels then leans forward, inspecting your work.
"Maybe. Maybe not."
She's bored, you realize. Great. Bored means unpredictable behavior, and unpredictable behavior means trouble for everyone else who isn't Daniela herself. You wait for whatever she wants — entertainment? food? — patiently despite the churning in your gut.
"I'm bored," she announces.
"Yes, my lady."
"Let's play a game. Hide and seek, like little ones."
Six months have yet to make the instinctive urge to flee within you die out whenever one of them wants something from you directly. You'd think that this whole time might've increased your chances of survival, but humans thrive in delusion. In reality, everything is a gamble here. An embroidery of chance and circumstances that determines if you will live another day, that's all.
"I would be honored, my lady."
The bathrooms must be finished by five, and it's almost four. You're not going to make it on time.
"Who is going to hide first?" You ask after a moment.
Daniela claps. "Well you, of course, silly!"
Of course.
---
Hiding in plain sight is a skill honed by necessity here. Melting seamlessly into the decor of drapes and velvet curtains.
But you're not a vase or a coat rack. You're just a girl who's been in the castle for a while and has gotten good at being invisible. You can't hide your heart beat. Your scent and the warmth of your skin are impossible to erase.
"Ready or not, here I come!" Daniela's sing-song voice carries from the other end of the west wing, and then fades.
She didn't count to ten. You know because you've been counting along, just to have an idea of how much time there's left until she finds you. There're no harbored hopes about the opposite happening. Hide and seek is one of Daniela's favourite games, and she dedicates herself to it thoroughly, with great interest.
It's not about winning the game — that much you realized early on when she played against other maids, plucking one out and chasing her around the castle before dissolving into flies with a cackle.
It's about the entertainment good enough to satiate her.
You're not the most agile, not the fastest. Even after six months your knowledge of the castle's layout is patchy, but you try to think logically. What places will she check last? What will Daniela expect you to choose?
Closets are off limits. So is the library, unless you want Bela on your tail as well.
Your mind wanders.
There're so many rooms in this castle that you haven't seen once during all of your shifts. You're always cleaning hallways, sometimes the daughters' parlors, and nothing more.
Down the stairs, past the servant quarters, is a place where rumors are born. Of thick barrels stacked to the ceiling like dominoes and wine in various stages of production. It smells sour-sweet down there — like fruit rotting in August.
Wine that never runs out in Dimitrescu castle as long as there're maids.
That's what others say, at least. Nobody has come back to confirm.
Would she look in the cellar? Would anyone?
It's the last place you'd search if you were looking for someone insignificant and replaceable.
You take off your shoes so that your steps don't echo in the expanse of marble and stairs.
---
There're all kinds of things down here. Broken furniture that's been tossed aside for disposal, boxes and crates of unidentified items, old paintings of people you don't recognize.
And wine.
A lot of it in barrels and bottles, some of which are labeled, some aren't. You walk past them, following the corridors of dusty brick. The air smells like mold and fermentation, damp. It reminds you of the lakeside by your grandmother's cottage in summertime and you feel strangely nostalgic.
You miss home.
The thought is dangerous and you quickly push it away, back to where it belongs — in your memories. Home doesn't exist anymore.
Time passes. Minutes go by without the sounds of buzzing swarms or doors creaking open somewhere nearby. No voices either, except for your own breathing and heartbeat that fill up every corner of silence. You find a nook between the stacked barrels and settle there with your knees pulled to your chest.
The place is colder, uncomfortably so. Cool ground sends its chill through your stockings.
You've done everything you could. Found a good hiding spot, a perfect one, and it's out of your control from here on.
The art of disappearing is simple: be nothing and wait until time decides if you're worth staying like that or not.
---
Daniela finds you after your legs start to numb from sitting.
"Found you," she grins from ear to ear.
Her flies settle as she solidifies into flesh with a giggle, girlish and mischievous. It could be cute if not the bloody smudges around her mouth and chin. She crouches down in front of you, close enough for you to see the specks of gold in her eyes.
"Congratulations, Lady Daniela."
Your fingers dig into your skirts.
Daniela tilts her head; a fly crawls on her cheek before taking off. "I win! I get my prize now."
You didn't know you were playing for a prize. But nobody tells you anything in this castle until it's too late, like that you're not supposed to open windows in winter, or that you can't touch Daniela's books because she has them organized alphabetically.
"What would you like, my lady?"
Another fly lands on your lips, a thick creature with translucent wings and little fuzzy legs. They tickle but you resist the urge to make a face lest she takes it as an insult. At your question her expression turns impish, one of those you never fail to associate with trouble.
She reaches into your apron's pocket... and pulls out a lipstick.
You stare at it — a simple elegant tube with a golden cap.
"Look what I found!" Daniela waves it in front of your face like it's a toy.
Your blood freezes over. How did it end up there? You've been working for hours today yet you don't recall ever picking it up off anywhere. Where-
"My lady, I didn't take it!" you blurt out in horror, when it dawns on you. "I swear, I wouldn't! I would never-"
Daniela blinks owlishly and then breaks into laughter, clutching her stomach. Her smile is so wide that you can see her gums stained with coagulated blood which makes your stomach turn. The flies swarm and dissipate around you both, disturbed by her unrestrained mirth.
"Silly," she interrupts your stammering. "I know! You should've seen your face!"
Oh thank god.
You're so relieved that for a second all air leaves your lungs.
"...you tricked me?" you ask quietly after a moment, a bit more composed now when the accusation of theft doesn't hang over your head.
"Mhm," Daniela nods and wipes tears from her eyes, still giggling.
You're not sure if it was funny to anyone except her.
Her smile lessens gradually and eventually vanishes from her lips altogether when the initial amusement wears off. Something coy appears in her demeanor, sheepish even, as she fiddles with the lipstick in silence.
"Can you put it back in mother's vanity?" she grabs your hand suddenly and places it into your palm.
That's when you realize that you never even once questioned where she got it from. But Daniela gives you a pout with a warning look, like she's able to tell exactly what you're thinking. All questions die instantly on your tongue; you nod.
"Yes, my lady. Of course."
"Good," she pats your knee. "Don't forget! Or I'll eat you."
Flies descend onto your skirt, buzzing around Daniela's fingers until she disappears into dozens of black insects.
You know that she meant every word.
197 notes · View notes
latanyalove · 11 months ago
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When You're Injured Pt Three
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So sorry for posting this late! Thank you for all of the support in the previous part, which is here! There might be another part coming soon! WC: 3,513.
Please support me by liking, reblogging and commenting on this! Also please follow for more content!
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Tag list: @veroxbarnes, @afrillisdark, @phsycochan, @airwolf92, @punem699, @pascalmode, @drakulana, @laufeyslegacy, @sunnys-day, @mugiwarasoul19, @yunacxo, @stuckinthewrongworld and @purpledemonnnn
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"Hey Captain! Is that-"
"Get the surgery room ready!"
"Right!"
The captain's crew member sprinted down the hall, feet pounding against the floor. The sound of their running echoed through the hallways, loud enough to be heard from a mile away.
You weren't going to die. Not on his watch.
He ran as fast as he could, holding you tight in his arms. He could feel your heart racing, and he knew he had to move quickly. He ran faster, his heart pounding in his chest as he raced down the hall. He cursed under his breath, knowing he had to get you to the surgery room as soon as possible.
He ran faster, pushing himself to the limit as he rounded the corner and burst into the surgery room.
He gently placed you on the bed, ensuring that you were comfortable and secure. He then quickly got himself ready for the surgery, putting on a mask and gloves and preparing the necessary instruments. He took a deep breath, focusing on the task ahead.
He had to act fast and make sure that you would make it out alive. He was determined to do whatever it took to save you.
As soon as Law laid you down, other crew members came running into the room, eyes wide with shock. They had seen the green spots that had spread across your body and knew it was serious.
They quickly began to assist the captain, gathering the necessary materials for the surgery and setting up the instruments.
You were going to live. Whether you wanted to or not.
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You slowly opened your eyes, a wave of pain washing over you. You slowly opened your eyes to see that you were in your room. The sun was streaming in through the window, and you could hear the faint sound of birds chirping outside.
When you realized you were in your own bed, a wave of relief washed over you.
Why were you here? You don't remember how you got here. You just remember being in the forest with Ikkaku but then the both of you separated and then-
Oh.
You remembered what happened. Your Master had found you somehow and was straggling you to death until-
"Law," You said out loud, remembering the rest of the events that had happened.
"Gosh! How could I have been such an idiot!" You muttered into your hands, ignoring the pain you received for using your limbs.
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"Law?" Your lips trembled as your gaze wandered unconsciously across his chest.
"Yes Y/N? I'm right here, just keep talking."
"If I die, I just want you to know that I've liked you for a while now."
In the middle of his steps, he froze in place.
"What?"
"I thought I was being too obvious but it seems that even the Surgeon of Death can't even catch on to things like that." You chuckled to yourself yet there was no amusement on your face.
As you glanced up at him, hoping to see if it was a smile or a grin, you were surprised to see that it wasn't either, but rather one of horror.
You knew it. He never did like you.
"Leave me here. More reinforcements are going to come now and they're stronger than ever. I'll keep them back so you can escape-"
"Stop talking."
"But-"
In an instant, a glance had you stop what you were going to say, instead you paid attention to your breathing and not the reaction that he showed to your confession.
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Of course he didn't like you! It was obvious that he thought of you as a friend or just a crew member like the others.
A harsh shrill noise which came from the door made you jump which also made you groan in pain at the sudden movement.
Quick footsteps were heard coming closer to you and you braced for an attack.
"Y/N! Are you okay?" A furry hand was gently placed on your shoulder and you opened your eyes to see a worried looking bear in front of you.
"Bepo?" You asked in a hoarse voice.
"Ah! I should get Law now that you've woken up!" Bepo said to himself as he got up from kneeling down beside you.
"No!" You yelled, grabbing his hand tightly, "Please don't get him,"
The bear looked sympathetic before nodding quickly and sitting down on a chair beside you.
"Law looked terrified when he rushed back to us with you. I'd never seen him that terrified before. He made you his first priority and did the surgery mainly by himself for ten hours,"
"Ten hours," You repeated in awe and Bepo nodded quickly, rubbing your hand with his.
"Yeah, he didn't even tell us what had happened to you, he just locked himself inside his office,"
"How long has that been?"
"3 days,"
"3 days!" You screamed in shock, unable to process what Bepo had said. "I was in a coma for 3 days?"
"Has he eaten anything at all?"
"We don't think so though we've heard his stomach growling before so we just assumed not,"
Why are you working so hard Law? Was there an emergency in which it needed your at most attention that you couldn't even eat?
You thought deeper. Is it because of you? Were you the reason for blocking everyone out?
"Please can you talk to him?" Bepo asked pleadingly, "I hate seeing him like that and you usually help in this,"
"I'll," You stopped, "I'll try Bepo,"
A smile suddenly appeared on the bear's face, showing warmness and relief.
"Thank you, now it's time for your medicine," Bepo said, holding the bottle and the spoon in his paws.
You reluctantly took the medicine even though it tasted like sea water and mold cheese. Instead you thought of what Law used to say about it, "If you take this then you can stay in the office with me,"
At the time, all you cared about was the office. The large room, full of work papers and most importantly, the books which infected the office. Every month ten books at most are added to the large collection that most of the time they are just placed on the sofa.
Being new to the crew and having to set out soon, you only had found comfort in books, especially Psychology books. You were fascinated by the behavior and the minds of humans.
Law obviously saw how much you loved the books, more of them appearing in his bookshelf without him saying a word.
"Y/N? Are you okay?"
You were brought back to reality by Bepo's concerned voice. You looked at him and nodded slowly, pushing the thoughts aside. "Yes, I'm fine," you said, forcing a small smile as a sign of assurance.
"Okay, well don't push yourself for a while," Bepo warns before leaving you alone by yourself again.
Even if you were to talk to him, what would you say? Were you the cause of his workaholic ways? Did your confession scare him that much?
You groaned again into your hands, frustrated and confused. How did it come to this? You had no answers and the more you thought, the more questions you had. You had to talk to Law and find out what was going on, but you were scared.
What if he didn't want to talk to you? What if your words had pushed him further away? These thoughts were overwhelming and you felt powerless. . . .
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You woke up not even realising you had fallen asleep, your thoughts still lingering in your head. It must have been the deep thinking that made you tired and caused you to drift off.
You sat up, feeling a bit more rested, but still confused and scared about what the outcome of talking to Law would be. You took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to find the courage to confront him.
Looking out the window, the darkness of the night was illuminated by the stars and the bright moonlight. The crashing waves of the sea glistened in the moonlight as the submarine gently rocked back and forth. The sound of the waves was calming and peaceful, and the smell of salty sea air filled the air.
Everyone must be asleep by now, you thought. It was the perfect time to go see Law.
You would find yourself walking towards his office, always on guard for some crew members, who would instantly send you back to your bedroom.
There was a light under his office, which told you everything you needed to know.
Law was asleep so deep that he couldn't be bothered to switch off the lights. He probably had some work paper stuck to the side of his face and his hat was definitely off for sure.
You didn't know why you knew all of that. Maybe it's because you've observed everything about him, for research obviously!
Slowly, you opened the door small enough for you to fit into the room and as soon as you laid eyes on him, all of your suspensions were correct.
Law had been peacefully sleeping on a messy pile of paperwork, his spotted hat on the floor which left his jet-black hair out for anyone to see.
Law, you thought sadly, why can't you rest in your bed? Was there something keeping you awake that you had to stay here for? Was it you?
You removed all those thoughts and got back to reality, advancing forward to start cleaning the office.
The papers were picked, the books were back and the last thing was the hat.
Glancing from the hat to Law, you sighed before walking over to stand in front of the 'terrifying Surgeon of Death', who didn't seem to notice your presence at all for these twenty minutes you've been near him.
Strange, you noted, usually he would be up in seconds if anyone was at least one meter close to him.
As you were going to place his hat on and leave, a hand grabbed onto your wrist as if to stop your actions. It took you seconds to realise that it belonged to Law and he was awake.
Great, now you have to talk to him.
"You're not getting Y/N back," He stated in an angry tone, his eyes unable to stay on your face.
Great, now he's hallucinating that you are someone else. But who?
"Law," You said sternly, "It's me, Y/N,"
Law's expression changed immediately from anger to relief as he realised it was you and not the person he thought it was.
His grip loosened on your wrist and he looked up into your eyes with a newfound understanding. He sighed and let go of your wrist, his expression softening as he smiled weakly.
"Oh Y/N," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "You're alive, I'm glad it's you."
You didn't even notice how he had let go of your hand and was slowly glazing your side as it found its way to your hip, his grip becoming firmer as if he was scared you would disappear if he let go.
You didn't know what to do, so you stayed still, looking into his eyes.
He seemed to be searching for something in yours, so you just stayed still, not wanting to break the moment.
"Who did you think it was?" You asked, placing the hat on its owner's head.
He looked away, and then back at you, as if he hadn't been expecting the question. "I don't know," he said. "I just thought of someone else."
"Like my Master?" You joked, placing a hand on his arm.
Suddenly, Law's expression became serious and his grip tightened on your hip. He looked away, and then back at you. "No," he said firmly. "This is not something to joke about."
"Law-"
"You don't have to fake it while you're with me," He said in a soft tone.
"That goes for you too."
"What?"
"I heard that you hadn't eaten in three days." You started, moving closer to him without realizing. "Was the reason me? Am I the problem?"
Law looked at you with a bewilderment expression as you rant out the thoughts that have been tormenting your mind for hours.
"Did my confession scare you that much?"
Tears began to well up in your eyes as you said the words. You were scared that he didn't want you anymore and that your confession had pushed him away.
You felt embarrassed and ashamed, wishing you could take back the words you had said. Law looked at you with a kind and understanding expression, and he placed a hand gently on your cheek.
"Y/N," he said softly. "It wasn't your confession that scared me."
"Then what?"
There was a long pause. A slight blush formed on his cheeks. "Losing you scared me,"
You took a moment to look at him; regret, worry and relief were written all over his face. He seemed to be struggling with his own emotions, unsure of what to say or do. You could see the fear in his eyes, the same fear that you had felt moments ago. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.
Then the puzzles came together.
You took his face into your hand, shocking him as he looked into your eyes for an explanation. You felt the warmth of his skin as you cupped his face, and saw the surprise in his eyes. You gazed at him tenderly, with an understanding that he didn't expect.
"I'm not going to end up like him Law," You whispered.
Law's eyes widened in surprise as he realized the meaning of your words.
"How do you know?" He whispered.
"Luffy told me after the feast we had with them."
He made a mental note to have a little chat with the Straw Hat.
"I'm going to stay by your side until you don't want me to," You reassured, gently pushing a strand away from his eyes.
He didn't have any words left to say; no one other than him had passed through his wall of protection and got him this vulnerable.
He didn't know what to do or say. He had never felt such a strong connection with someone before, and it made him feel exposed and vulnerable. He had built up walls around himself, ones that no one else had ever been able to penetrate until now.
He felt like he could open up to you, like he could tell you anything. He was stunned by the fact that you had seen through his walls and seen the parts of him he had kept hidden away.
He knew that he could trust you, and it made him scared and excited all at the same time.
You felt a sudden wave of dizziness and your vision blurred for a moment. You tried to focus on Law's face and the ground beneath your feet, but the ground seemed to be shifting and moving.
Your leg started to wobble and you felt yourself losing balance.
You felt your legs giving way beneath you, and you thought for sure that you were going to hit the floor. But before you could, you felt Law's strong arms wrap around you in an instant, catching you and holding you up.
When your mind finally caught up with the situation, you realised that you were sitting on Law's lap. He had swept you up into his arms and was now holding you close. You felt a warmth in your cheeks as you looked into his eyes, feeling embarrassed and exposed.
You felt his strong arms around you, and you could feel his heart beating rapidly. You felt a sudden wave of emotion come over you and you closed your eyes, resting your head against his chest.
"I think I love you too,"
"You think?" You teased, looking up to see the flustered man.
He seemed to be malfunctioning as he felt a sudden wave of emotions come over him. His heart was beating rapidly and he felt exposed and vulnerable. His mind was running wild, and he felt like he had no control over his own body. He had never felt such a strong connection with someone before, and it was overwhelming him.
He was struggling to process the situation, and he didn't know how to respond.
"I'm just joking Law-"
You started to speak, but your words were lost in the moment as soon as you felt Law's lips on yours. Your heart raced and you felt the warmth of his body against yours. You were lost in the moment, your mind in a daze as you felt his lips gently move against your own.
All of a sudden, the world around you seemed to stop, and the only thing that mattered was the two of you in that moment. You felt like you were standing on the edge of a cliff, and the only thing keeping you from tumbling down was Law's strong arms around you.
You felt a sudden wave of emotion come over you and you closed your eyes, savoring the moment.
Reluctantly, you moved back to take a breath and to look at Law. His eyes were intense, searching your face as if he was trying to figure out what you were thinking. His mouth was slightly open, and his breathing was heavy.
He seemed to be in a state of shock, as if he was in disbelief of what had just happened. You felt a sudden wave of embarrassment wash over you, and you quickly looked away, not wanting Law to see your blush.
"I wanted to show you how I felt about you." He muttered, eyeing your lips.
"Or you just wanted to kiss me," You replied with a small grin.
Suddenly, Law's face changed from flustered to a warm grin. He seemed to have regained his composure and he looked at you with a sparkle in his eye.
"Maybe I did but don't you think you're off the hook for not telling me that you had an injury,"
"How did you-?"
"The green spots came from the injury but it had time and bacteria to mutate and get worse than it should have."
"I thought it wasn't that bad?" You tried to reason.
"Well for ignoring your injuries, I think you need to be punished."
His face softened, and his eyes twinkled with mischief.
You could feel his grip on you tighten, and you felt your face flush as you looked away. His gaze lingered on you for what felt like an eternity, and you felt your heart beat faster at the thought of what he might do next.
"L- Law, the crew members are asleep-"
"Then make sure you don't wake them up," He smirked.
You quickly tried to argue with him, but it was in vain.
"Rooms Shambles,"
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778 notes · View notes
tragedy-of-commons · 7 months ago
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lay your life down and pretty
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various hsr x gn!reader | wc: ~2k
In which you die (or they've already lost you).
tags/warnings: character death (reader), it's implied in dh's part but explicit and semi-graphic in hanya's, descriptions of mara and the insanity that comes with it, hardcore angst, hurt no comfort, there may be Lore Inaccuracies
notes: this was originally supposed to be four parts. i'm sorry it's only two but it's just been uhhh... hope you enjoy & thanks for the incredible support lately <3
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Dan Heng makes the best pancakes.
You’ve expressed this undeniable fact to his face multiple times, louder in their progression just to see the tips of his ears burn that endearing red. These declarations are reserved for breakfast. At this time you also chide him for trying to weasel his way out of eating the most important meal of the day!
And he’d sigh, letting you hound him about food options until he’d crack under the weight of your grin and end up mixing batter at 7:30 in the morning.
(“I tried flipping them in the air once and the pancake slapped me in the face,” you’d regaled, head resting idly on your fist.
Dan Heng stared into the black of the skillet. “...Somehow, I don’t doubt it.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” you huffed.
He almost let not-quite laugh slip then, but because of his stuck-uppery, he just managed to look peeved. “I would appreciate it if you passed me the butter.”)
Instead it is around 9:00 in the morning, and Dan Heng is alone. 
He’d stayed up late the night before doing some reading, causing him to oversleep and rush the process today. He’s almost burned his hand on the stove eye twice, nearly dropped an egg on the floor, and has just narrowly avoided burning the batch. Dan Heng is not clumsy (not like you were), and he is painfully aware that he is late.
After he plates the food, the oven clock reads 9:19. He gathers everything, including two sets of utensils and one awkward wad of napkins - before setting the table by heart. Your plate goes in front of the chair closest to the window, and his goes in front of the one adjacent to yours. 
The rhythm of distributing each item eventually leaves him with empty hands. Everything is ready, but there is still something colossal missing from the scene.
Dan Heng stares hard at your empty seat before taking his own. 
The pancakes are blackened around the edges, but it’s nothing a good heaping portion of syrup can’t fix, and the smell that wafts upward is sweet and inviting. The sun’s rays shining in from the outside world paint the kitchen in flecks of light that occasionally catch on his arm when he brings his fork to his mouth.
Resigned, his silverware clatters noisily to the table.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “I’m sorry that I was late.”
Predictably, there’s no response. Dan Heng’s throat feels like it’s closing up on him, and the syrup definitely isn’t helping. He dabs his mouth with his napkin for a good long while.
He is sorry. It wasn’t enough that he’d stayed up late the night before, but that he deliberately kept glancing at the clock and counting the hours until daylight arrived - reminding himself that if he drifted off, the next day would come much sooner.
He isn’t the type to procrastinate either. Even when you’re not here anymore, you seem to have a profound effect on his character. Dan Heng pinches the bridge of his nose. The sound of his voice echoing off the walls of the lonely kitchen is unwelcome. “Happy birthday.”
It’s strained, imperfect, and painful; which only serves to remind him of your insistence on celebrating his birthday as well. You had practically prostrated yourself at his feet, begging him to let you fuss over him - even if it made his vision hazy and palms sweaty. He needs to return the favor, even if the mere idea of another important date passing him up without you makes him want to hide.
So here he is. 
Here he is, floundering terribly, missing you terribly, loving you terribly. Dan Heng wrenches his hand from its secure position in his lap to drum on the table.
“I got you something,” he says. “I… I didn’t know which color you’d prefer more, so…”
You’d tease him into an early grave if you were able to see the knitted oven mitt he’d picked out over two months ago. It’s an almost hideous shade of teal that he’s sure you’d love, especially since you forced him to bake with you regularly.
(He was shopping with March 7th when he’d seen it and then reflexively dumped it into his basket. His companion only asked him if he was planning on using it as kindling for the fireplace.)
Dan Heng closes his eyes and slides it over to your placement. For a second, he almost fools himself into thinking you might magically appear to brush fingers when you accept the gift with a bright smile. He has no such luck.
Your breakfast is getting colder, and there’s nothing to be done today; his friends, as much as he can say he appreciates them - also meddle quite a bit. His schedule was mysteriously cleared up and he was gently encouraged to go home and take the day off. The feeling of three pairs of eyes drilling holes into his back as he complied was a bit too potent to be coincidental.
So he sits there and pretends he’s eating with you for as long as he can. The stutters in the familiar rhythm that comes with today are things he can smooth out over time, even if it feels like a betrayal to you. You would never see it like that, which is why he can even live in a home without you in it at all.
(The oven mitt rests beside your full plate until the afternoon, because he cannot bring himself to clean up just yet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to.)
Dan Heng is not a man who can afford to hope, but he’s already been in debt since the moment of his birth. If just one of his prayers is granted, he hopes it’s the one he runs through his mind every night:
In the next life, please let us cross paths again. And if there’s room for it, please let me love you for as long as I can.
He’s never been one for optimism, but it’s all he looks forward to.
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Hanya’s hands cradle the expanse of your face.
Her fingers ghost over any healthy glow remaining in your cheeks. You’re slipping, rightfully so, but does it make her a monster if she wants to claw and rifle through the sands of time to search for any universe where you were spared from this cruel fate?
(She thinks it does.)
You can’t get the words out, but there’s a resigned film that glazes over your eyes - one that tells her that she needn’t lie about where you’ll be going. Your mouth forms silent syllables punctuated by wheezes that will surely send her careening under the depths of the unconscious at record speed.
“Han.. ya,” you croak, “Stay.”
“I will,” she promises, because she needs to - over and over, until you remember it always, even when you’re gone. Even when you’re suffering through the last moments of your fledgling life. “I will remain here.”
Her duty as a Judge of the Ten-Lords Commission is to oversee life and death on the Xianzhou. When Hanya drifts aimlessly like a spectre between inky darkness and blinding daylight, it has occasionally struck her that one day she might have to oversee yours.
Presently, your mind is being swallowed by the maw of mara, a madness that she’s all too familiar with; faced with her dull countenance, she must have witnessed thousands succumb to the fate of infernal life. 
“D-Don’t cry,” you beseech. There isn’t much time until you’re no longer Hanya’s secret reprieve, but instead a writhing abomination - and she only has herself to blame. Had she not embraced you so tightly, would you be free of this curse? Would you still be smiling and dragging her by the hand through Exalting Sanctum?
“I will not send you there,” she breathes, “You are not deserving of—”
The agonizing cry you let out next is still beautiful. Even now you can mitigate the emptiness that’s dug its claws in her heart so deep that it’s become symbiotic with the organ. However, instead of the empty, Hanya feels its distant relative: the pins and needles. The hollow white noise crackles until she’s pierced with an arsenal of skeletal knives.
She could take it, and she would take it, if it meant that you weren’t about to die and then awaken again as a monster that desecrates the very concept of you.
She releases your now matching tear-stricken cheeks before seizing both of your arms. The thrashing has crept in, meaning that there isn’t much time before you start sprouting leaves and weeds like a statue abandoned by its devotees. 
A sharp inhale through clenched teeth. “You have… to. M’gonna hurt—” you convulse in her grasp, “—somebody...”
Of course you’re worrying about others right now. Kindness is a relic of the past that you’ve somehow managed to exhume, restore to its full glory, and gift to Hanya like she deserves to touch others’ lives in the same way you have. 
Every shopkeep knows your name, face, voice, and smile. Your warmth is infectious - even before she knew you in person, she knew of you by word of mouth. Xueyi had told her that the reason Huohuo was so resolute in her duties lately was because of “the person who defeated a bunch of reprobate hooligan bullies tormenting her”. 
If her big sister held you in high regard, she figured you were one she wouldn’t mind exchanging greetings with if you ever crossed paths. However, the thing about you is that you always give more than you take; you too eventually gave her your smile over tea, your opinion on her writing, and a perspective from the light she usually only smothers upon first contact. 
It seems that it was just a matter of time before Hanya extinguished you.
“You are not ready,” she begs pitifully, “You are not!”
She knows it’s never about being ready. Bad things always happen to good people - to sons, daughters, friends, big sisters, and lovers.
Lovers. 
The word is foreign on the tip of her tongue. It’s strange to be actualized and even stranger to ascribe that label to your relationship, but Hanya doesn’t know what else to think when the knives stab her over and over to the elegy of I love you, I love you, I love you.
The trek from Fyxestroll Garden to the Alchemy Commission is sizable. The Dragon Lady could see you and do her best, but she’s seen where that’s led; best efforts gone to waste, inconsolable loved ones given false hope because they were too stubborn to let go.
Is that what she is? Too stubborn to let you go, even when she’s brought this karma upon you?
(Yes, something ugly whispers, this is your penance. Now it’s theirs too.)
“I...” you let out a strangled groan, and when your chest jerks upwards, it barely registers that you brush your lips against hers. There’s tears and snot everywhere, and you’re getting stronger - too strong for her to hold. Hanya’s forearms ache with the strain as gingko leaves begin to ravage your humanity and rip you apart.
The transformation process is cruel, but she promised to remain by your side. Twigs protrude from your neck, nestled between thorny brambles that poke and prod. You are not a Cloud Knight, so your screams aren’t muffled by armor - or muted by the numbness she feels when dealing with other cases. 
It’s too real, it’s too much, and it’s not enough.
Drowned out by the previous mantra of I love you, the background vocals of I’m so sorry peter off into whispers that are soon lost among the sickening squelch of Xueyi’s blade cutting through you in one clean motion. The tip of the sword rests over Hanya’s heart, stained with your blood.
“...That’s not them anymore,” her sister says. It’s off-kilter, the way her brow is furrowed in a silent apology.
One can only hope.
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taglist: @flower-yi, @moineauz, @aphrodict, @nomazee
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avoxrising · 1 year ago
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The Feral One • Chapter 6
Finnick Odair x Reader
Series Masterlist Link
I love writing pissed off Johanna dialogue!
Content warnings - death (it’s the hunger games)
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As much as he wants to chase after you, he can’t. Katniss would kill you and he can’t abandon the plan, not until he can pass off babysitting duty to Johanna.
You spent the evening wandering the jungle, unnerved by every little noise you heard. After you left, you circled back the way you had originally come, hoping the others would carry on in the other direction.
Your arm was still bleeding but you didn’t care. It’s not like any sponsors were lining up to send you stuff. You’ll have to kill a career and steal their supplies using the only weapon you have, the arrow that landed in your arm.
A few hours after dark, the faces of the fallen appear in the sky. None of your allies are on the list so you don’t really care. It’s not like you knew these people.
You opt to go deeper into the jungle, opposite of where Finnick must be. This whole place is starting to look the same, though, and it’s hard to get your bearings.
Hours later, a gong rings twelve times. You don’t have time to ask yourself what it means as the hairs on your body stand up and a large blast of electricity shoots down mere yards away from you.
Lightning.
You have to move. Now. Your ears hurt and panic rises in your throat. They’re here to kill you. You’re gonna die.
Running, you collide with someone, another tribute. They don’t even have time to scream before your arrow is through their neck and their cannon is sounding. Move. Now.
You run until you can’t anymore, scared that something is chasing you. The game makers must have caused the lightning to force you and the other tribute closer together.
There were other canons throughout the night, but you paid no attention to them. You sat under a tree, hugging your knees, trying to ignore the burning in your dry throat and the pain in your arm. Of course Katniss had to shoot your dominant arm.
When the day is bright enough to illuminate your section of the jungle, you decide to head back towards where the lightning was. If another tribute was over there then there may be some food or water close by. Maybe they even had sponsors.
The sun is high in the sky by the time you make it back to where the fight occurred. There’s no trace of it but you know the spot. Your hair stands on edge again and you panic, knowing exactly what this means. The lightning strikes and you bolt, running from whoever must be near.
They’re going to kill you. You’re dead. You need to run faster.
You run downhill, towards what you think is the lake. Despite not being allowed in the ocean for the past five years, you’re probably still the second best swimmer in the arena behind Finnick. If you could lure whoever is chasing you into the water then you could drown them.
Your legs barely make it to the beach, completely drained from your lack of sleep and sustenance. Whoever was following you must have realized your plan and stopped. Maybe nobody followed you at all.
As you make your way out of the jungle and towards the water, you pause, spotting a large group of people a ways down the beach. It’s Finnick and his alliance. Maybe they would give you food, or shoot you. Honestly, who knows?
They spot you approaching and Katniss aims another arrow at you. You’re still clutching the one she shot you with in your hand, ready to stab anyone who comes near.
“Y/N!” Finnick exclaims as he runs over to you. “I was so worried.”
You look over at the group and back at him, silently asking if they’re ok with you being there. He sighs, realizing that Katniss probably isn’t ok with you being there but he needs you with him anyways. He can’t lose you.
“Have you eaten?” he asks. You shake your head no. “We have food and water. Oh! And some first aid stuff for your arm. Katniss is sorry by the way.”
“Skin?” you ask him. Noticing the scabs on his body and the cuts on his face.
“We got caught in some poisonous fog last night and ended up in a fight with some monkeys this morning,” he explains. “I’m alright. Nobody in our group has died except Blight. He hit the force field last night and they couldn’t revive him.”
You hum in response, catching a whiff of the fish Finnick must have caught for the group to eat. He notices your hunger and gently guides you to sit on the edge of the group close to Johanna and far away from Katniss.
“Glad you could join us feisty!” Johanna chuckles as you sit near her. You give her a shrug as if to say that you’re currently indifferent to your existence. She gets the memo.
“Nuts and Volts,” she states. “Have you met fiesty?”
The man and woman look up at the group.
“Yes,” Beetee replies. “I believe we briefly met Y/N at her victory tour celebration in the capital but it’s been many years. It is nice to see you again Y/N, although I wish it was under better circumstances.”
“You guys aren’t letting her stay with us, right?” Katniss asks and you tense up. They need her for their plan. You’re disposable.
“Back off firebird,” Johanna barks. “She’s sticking with us.”
“She tried to kill me!” Katniss exclaims.
“Because you touched her,” Johanna shouts. You flinch at the volume. “Rule numéro uno is don’t touch fiesty. Plus I thought you were a good fighter, Katnip. You mean to tell me you couldn’t win a fight against her? She hasn’t been outside in over five years. She’s practically harmless!”
“Let’s settle down,” Finnick states, noticing you becoming tense due to the yelling. “Here’s your fish Y/N. I’m gonna go grab you some water.” You smile at him in thanks and begin to eat the fish. The smile fades when you notice Katniss watching you eat like a hawk, so you turn around and sit with your back towards her while you eat.
You need to convince her of Johanna’s words. You’re harmless.
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svtcrus · 6 months ago
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THE WORLD OVER YOU || gojo satoru x gen!reader
synopsis: he chooses the world. it will always be for the world. for he is always one step ahead. as it was never about him from the start.
disclaimer: JJK MANGA 261 SPOILERS, lowkey angst, mentions of death
a/n: sorry for being gone! life’s gotten a bit busy..! hope this quick lil blurb will do you guys well :)
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“what?” was the first thing said after staring at your lover in silence for the past 2 minutes. your eyes wide threatening with tears, and your brain mangled in confusion.
satoru looks at you with an expression you cannot decipher. his bright blue eyes never seemed to look as empty and emotionless as they do now. his countenance tells you nothing. it leaves you with nothing but shattering confusion.
(SPOILERS AFTER THE CUT)
“my body. i’m giving up my body to yuta if I die. we already talked about it, there will be no changes y/n.” he repeated. as if you didn’t hear it the first time. you understood him loud and clear. you had furrowed brows, a racing heart, and fingers clasping so tight you swear it would leave a scar.
it had just felt like you were born, lived, and died all at once in the spot.
“‘toru you can’t be serious-!” before you knew it you felt slight streams come down your cheeks. and it wasn’t out of the sadness at the idea he had planned this. it was sadness at the fact he may be sacrificing for a society that has only ever used him since the very beginning. that he is allowing them to ruin him, string your lover like a puppet till even after death.
all you had ever wanted was for him to be liberated, freed, unbound from this power. this power and strength; these abilities he was born with since he came to this world. you had all but wanted to see him be just satoru for one moment whether it was in life or when he died.
you were never extremely worried at the thought that satoru would die one day. you had expected— even thought of times— that there may come a day where he’s coming to your arms dangerously harmed or even dead. it was what you signed up for since the day you accepted lifelong commitment with him.
what you did not know that you were also giving up was the very fact given to you today.
“I have to. If we wish to beat sukuna, we have to plan every type of plan we can. we need backup plans, we need more than just a plan a and b.” the sound of his feet clicking against the wooden floors of his office ring. he’s stepping closer, cold hands grasping onto your arms. they glide down to hold your own hands, which are shaking. in which you didn’t even realize were.
“y/n, sweetheart. this is what you and I both knew when we took this job. when you knew of who I am. who I was born to be since the day my six eyes were known…” you could say it was silent, yet at the same time your quiet sniffles was the only thing heard. satoru looked down at you, with only a saddening but acceptive look.
“we both knew I wouldn’t be living till I was 90. with this job? I was fated to fight someone of equal or of stronger power than me. sure this way of life sucks, and if I can I would love to spend another lifetime with you till i’m 90.”
“but it’s simply not possible here… isn’t it? you are willing to do anything yet not everything for me. for you. for us.” you finish off. knowingly understanding that you cannot change this mans mind once he’s made the decision. you should’ve expected this. satoru has always thought ahead since the day you met when you were both still students yourself.
“you’re always one step ahead of me.” satoru lightly chuckles at this. he takes this as a green light to finally embrace you. the setting sun dawning onto his back from behind. and you’ve never felt more warm and cold at the same time.
“my job requires me so... the world requires me so.”
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@svtcrus || 05.23.24
do not copy, plagiarize, modify, repost my work
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jolys-cane · 6 months ago
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TOUR THOUGHTS
Saw the Les Miserables Tour at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto on May 21 2024; here are my thoughts (Long read, sorry I have a lot of feelings)
Prologue/Look Down/Valjean's Soliloquy
We got like, holographic waves crashing and the men are rowing a boat LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE it's awesome
Oh my god the pipes on the background actors were so good. THE SUN IS STRONG ITS HOT AS HEEELLL BELOW
I miss Javert's stupid guard hat. Was bareheaded as he gave Valjean his yellow ticket
PETIT GERVAIS?????????? Valjean steals a little boy's coin when he's roaming the countryside 😭
Randy Jeter as the Bishop blew me away. Not just his voice but his acting was FANTASTIC every single movement was like. I am an old bishop. This is how an old bishop moves. Idk idk it was really good
Nick Cartell did a great job w Valjean overall, but I totally loved him as pre-MsurM Valjean the most. He acts like a feral animal, grabbing the wine out of the nun's hands and the bread from the priest all hunched over and practically snarling - very very cool and awesome
At the End of the Day
Not a negative but when we went to At the End of the Day there was very minimal lighting and my first thought was Oh no the lighting broke hope they fix it and we don't have to have a brief intermission but then when they went 'At the end of the day there's another day dawning' the lights went up and I was like OHHHHHHHHHHHH so that's just me not understanding lighting direction
Foreman killed it, so did all of the factory workers I love all the interactions and ad-libbing in the background it makes me so happy to see
Every time I saw a tall graceful ensemble member I was like '"That's Kyle Adams" and 8/10 times I was right. Otherwise it was Daniel Gerard Bittner
I Dreamed A Dream
OKKKK VOCALS???? Haley Dortch has such a beautiful, clear, emotional sound and she left not a dry eye in the house. Literally the second intermission hit my parents and myself were like. Holy shit dude what about that Fantine
I got her autograph after the show and she was so so sweet 🥺 She accidentally messed up her signature and had to redo it and was apologising to me and I was like GIRL you brought the house down you could stab me right now and I'd be like 'Thanks have a good one'
Lovely Ladies / Fantine's Arrest
Bamatabois (David Andino) was a standout performance, really chewed the scenery and I adored every second he was on stage (Plus his costume was fantastic)
The other girls defending Fantine 🥺
I like that after the police show up and they basically arrest all of the ladies and pimps, regular well-off citizens come out to witness Valjean defending Fantine from Javert. Thought it was a nice touch
Fantine's Death
My first and only cry of the evening, Haley Dortch no one does it like you
The Confrontation
If you've heard me talk about the confrontation you'll know that I absolutely hate the new chain choreography, HOWEVER. I really really liked it this time. Preston in particular gave it a lot of physicality that I enjoyed
Nick Cartell is a little guy and I don't really believe that his Valjean managed to knock out Preston's Javert
For some reason the percussion was really loud and I could barely hear the vocals so I don't have many thoughts on them
Master of the House / Waltz of Treachery
MATT CROWLE YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS
Both Thenardiers were fantastic, not a crazy amount of ad-libbing but when they did they made it count ("BYE, BAGUETTE")
Madame in particular was hilarious
Master of the House is very busy in a good way, everywhere you look interesting things are happening. Another number where the ensemble shines and you can tell everyone is having a blast
The Bargain was funny as hell, Thenardier tells Cosette to die in his arms and she goes limp when he's saying she's 'often been ill'
Valjean gives Cosette Catherine!
Look Down / The Robbery
Gavroche was super charismatic and confident, really great child actor (Milo Maharlika)
Eponine tosses Marius' book across the stage and he goes "I like the way you always ... tease 😐" They're such cute friends together
After Enjolras and the boys are done their preaching Enjolras gets stopped by a policeman and is told off 😭
During the robbery Montparnasse keeps Marius away by brandishing his little knife at him which I thought was cute
Also! Montparnasse is the only member of Thenardier's gang to escape during the Robbery!!! Which is a nice Brick reference
After Thenardier's 'In the absense of a victim' spiel he does this exact pose
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Gavroche's little 'Clear the streets' 🫡moment is so cute
Stars
God I love Preston Truman Boyd
His Javert is so stalwart and reserved and dedicated, he's kind of robocop and it really really works, and you get to see just a smidge of vulnerability peek out in this song
ABC Cafe / Red and Black
I DON'T REMEMBER A LOT bare with me
Grantaire was absolutely the standout. Slapped Marius' butt with his coat. Stuck his wine bottle dick in Enjolras' face. Offered Combeferre a sip of his wine (who reluctantly accepted). Blew a kiss at Enjolras
Kyle Adams physicality is probably my favourite aspect of his Grantaire - he moves very assuredly, like a cat, in a way that is like okay he's drunk but he's so used to being drunk that his stumbling is more like dancing. I remember reading a fic that described Grantaire's movements in a similar way and I wonder if that was one of the fics Kyle took inspiration from?
OOH they did the wine bottle keep-away thing with Grantaire and Marius which I didn't know they still did so that was exciting
J.T Wood is such a cute Joly I love his voice
In Do You Hear the People Sing Grantaire grabs a gun and holds it at arms-length like it has cooties before handing it off to another student
Combeferre waves the flag both times (Here and in One Day More) and I'm not sure if it's always Combeferre who does that or if it's because Andrew Marks Maughan is clearly the most physically strong of the Barricade Boys
In My Life / A Heart Full of Love
Delaney Guyer is a really good Cosette in that she has a gorgeous voice and also has a lot of personality and actually reacts to things going on around her
Marius (who was played by Christopher James Tamayo for this performance) is such a cute little nerd. You can see him try to figure out what he's going to do, then he throws a rock at Cosette's window and kind of cringes at the noise - he's so unsure of himself and awkward
Cosette is very excited that he's here and closes the window right away, which prompts Marius' 'I'm doing everything all wrong!' until she reappears downstairs and they get to be cute dorks in love
Attack on Rue Plumet
I don't remember a lot but I DO remember that Eponine was really good here
When Valjean is like 'Tomorrow we'll away' Cosette goes 'WHAT? NO!'
David Andino is so good as Babet he is a chronic scene stealer at this point
One Day More
If you know Another thing about me you know I hate the One Day More box-step but it actually did not bug me this time. They put Grantaire next to Enjolras for the marching portion which is cute
On My Own
Holy shit Mya Rena Hunter delivered the most heartbreaking and powerful rendition of this I've ever heard
The Barricade
Loved Feuilly in his little part
Javert is a good spy. If I didn't know the plot of Les Mis I would've been like Holy shit that's Javert? Crazy. I love him drawing the 'plans' he'd overheard into the ground with a stick
Gavroche flipping Javert off >>>>>
Buff Combeferre is one of the two to drag Javert away to be tied up lol
A Little Fall of Rain
The only version of ALFoR that actually made me feel something
Marius and Eponine get a lot of time to be cute together before the barricade actually notices that she's dying - and Gavroche is the first to notice and gets a front row seat to her death which is heartbreaking
The First Attack
Grantaire's "AND SO THE WAR WAS WON!" was sooo scathingly sarcastic
Javert waited, like, 30 seconds to leave after Valjean freed him, with his back almost against the barrel of Valjean's gun as if he were hoping to be shot
When the gun went off the entire barricade abruptly snapped their heads to look at Valjean and the audience laughed 😭
Telling Valjean 'Well done' for shooting a tied up hostage is a strange choice
Drink With Me
I still hate 'For certain as the eagle flies' I think it's the dumbest line in the entire musical
Grantaire's part was very grand - His voice has like noticeably changed at this point in the musical to give it a sort of hoarse hopeless quality to it which absolutely hits you in the feels
Enjolras comforted him and I swear Grantaire let his hand linger on his cheek for a few seconds longer than normal before pushing him away
Gavroche hugged Grantaire from behind and Grantaire couldn't even turn around at first because he was so distraught and kind of blindly reached for him 😭
Chris Tamayo's Marius is such a poor little meow meow
Bring Him Home
Absolutely jaw-dropping performance from Nick Cartell
He sings Bring Him Home like it's a lullaby - which it's supposed to be
I don't exaggerate when I say that the applause went on for about a minute straight, and was the loudest of the night by far
Death of Gavroche / The Final Battle
Oh poor thang
Grantaire near the end of Gavroche's singing was turned away facing the audience like he knew Gav was going to die and couldn't bear to watch 🥺
Later on in the final battle Grantaire spends most of the time next to Gavroche's body in like a catatonic state
The SPOTLIGHTS representing BULLETS as Les Amis died almost made me lose it
Grantaire dies last, I'm sure he said something before he started climbing the barricade but I couldn't hear it 😭He and Enjolras still have their moment over Marius' body
The Sewer
Javert comes across Enjolras' cart-carried body (Still hate the cart but I can learn to appreciate it) and looks a bit uncomfortable
Then he stumbles upon Gavroche's corpse, kneels, and does the sign of the cross over him
Almost made me cry ngl
DOG EATS DOG WAS SO GOOD I LOVED IT
Javert looked like he wanted to shoot Valjean as he walked away with Marius
Javert's Suicide
HOOOOOOLYYYY SHIIIIITTTTT
It was so good
Preston Truman Boyd you will always be famous I fully believe that Javert had completely lost his mind at this point in the play
I don't have many thoughts on the rest but I loved Marius and Cosette reading Valjean's confession as he walked away with Fantine - and the Bishop hugging him as he arrives in heaven
Also Kyle Adams as Major Domo mincing about the stage in The Wedding was an absolute delight
Am very sleepy now but overall 10/10 I love this cast so much
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frenchkisstheabyss · 1 year ago
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♡ But It's Better If You Do ♡
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♡ Pairing: rockstar!mingi! x chubby!fem!!tattoo artist!reader
♡ Genre: fluff/angst/sorta suggestive
♡ Summary: Your ongoing love affair with your rocker client is all fine and dandy until you begin to catch feelings for him that send you into a spiral that isn't fine nor dandy.
♡ Word Count: 1.7k-ish
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♡ Warnings: drinking, getting tattoos, kissing, briefly reminiscing on getting some top-notch dick, pet names (baby), reader gets turned on by Mingi (because, like, who wouldn't?), I like to say "fuck", & that's about it
♡ A/N: I've combined my neverending weakness for rock musicians, Song Min Gi, and happy endings into one fic and my lil alt girl heart is happy. I hope yours will be too. I may or may not have a thing for turning bad boy Mingi into a simp for reader but, like...ssssh.
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It drives you insane when your friends tease you about Mingi, asking what city he’s in now and when you’ll see him next. You don’t know what city he’s in. That’s a lie, you always know. And you have no plans on seeing him ever again. Another lie. You’d stop the world to see him for 5 minutes. From the moment he walked into your shop, seeking an impulsive late-night tattoo, you were doomed to fall for him.
The first time he stopped by your shop it was a little after midnight and you were ready to close up but you were starstruck, you’ll die before you ever admit that, and he was gorgeous so you let him in. His choppy hair was a total mess and his dark eyeliner had all but melted off, the remnants smudged like ash beneath volcanic eyes that engulfed you each time they gleamed in your direction. You did the tattoo, an old-school traditional dagger down his left rib snuck in amongst the other 30 or so tattoos crowded onto his chest.
He paid you 3 times your normal rate and was supposed to be on his way. But you knew from his shows and his offstage antics that he wasn’t one to do anything he was supposed to. Armed with a pretty face framed by the softest cheeks and a plump figure he just wanted to nibble at, he instantly developed a weakness for you. Mingi had to have you and he did. All night. Reclined in your tattoo chair, bent over your workstation, cuddled up on the couch in the lobby. In the darkness of your studio, sweat-slicked bodies reflecting the glow of the neon lights like puddles of rain, he took you every way he could.
And you gave. And you gave. And you gave. Being with him altered everything you thought you knew about desire. About pleasure. Mingi touched you in ways you never imagined someone could. He made you feel beautiful. Worshiped you with his tongue from head to toe until the sun rose. Once it did he was gone, off to some other city. To some other girl in some other tattoo shop no doubt. So you moved on, filing it away as a one-time thing. Only it wasn’t. Mingi came to see you every chance he could.
Even if he was a few cities over he made sure to come by for another tattoo and another night with you. But these passionate encounters, concealed by the shadows of late nights and early mornings, planted feelings in your heart that bloomed long after he left. Your body was beginning to confuse lust for love, or so you believed, and that could only hurt you both. You especially. It had to stop. No more. Never again. 
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Your tattoo gun buzzes in your hand, a bundle of needles punching delicate black lines into Mingi’s neck. Never again? Yeah right. This time he wants a death moth on the side of his neck. It’s beautiful, as all your work is, and nearly done. Something he’s thankful for because this hurts like fuck but pissed about because being straddled by you on the couch has always been the preferable position for him. Your thighs double in thickness when they’re spread around him. He can just zone out rubbing and squeezing them.
“Hey!” you squeak when he takes a particularly greedy handful of your ass, “Cut it out or I’m gonna fuck up your tattoo.” Mingi takes a deep breath, his toned chest flexing as his muscles contract. “You won’t fuck it up. You’re too good at what you do. That’s why I come to you.” “Oh, really? Is that the only reason?” He grins and you can feel him staring at you the way he always does before your clothes end up on the floor. It makes your palms sweaty and your panties wetter than they already were. “You know that’s not the only reason, baby.”
Mingi sinks his fingers into your pillowy flesh, leaning forward to kiss you with not a care in the world about it ruining his tattoo. His lips brush yours, heightening the warmth between your thighs and making your heart change rhythm to match him. You want him on you. In you. You need him. Love him. Love him. Love him? “You need to go,” you say, your voice shaking as you flick off the tattoo gun. You’re off of him in a split second, packing your things away.
“Wait, what’s wrong? Did I do something?“ He tails you in your mad dash around the shop, sick at the thought that he might’ve made you uncomfortable. “I can’t—you just have to go, Mingi.” Snatching his t-shirt from the front counter, you toss it at him without looking. You can’t bear to make eye contact. “Did I hurt you?” You unintentionally ignore him, too lost in the tsunami of repressed emotions wrecking your insides. Mingi takes you by the wrist, pulling you close to him before you can get away from him.
“Did I hurt you?” “You didn’t hurt me, okay? But if you stay you will.” Mingi’s hands cradle your face, his mind frantically scanning it for some sign of what’s going on inside your head. “Whatever I did to scare you…I’ll leave but I’d never intentionally hurt you” he swears, “I love you too much for that.” You’re both equally shocked at the words that leave his lips. You weren’t expecting to hear them and, though he means it beyond measure, he wasn’t expecting to it to slip out.
“No, no you don’t. You don’t” you mumble, backing away from him, “You’re just saying that to—” “To fuck you?” he scoffs, in slight disbelief of what you’re implying. “I don’t know” you shrug, “It’s why you sneak off here at 1am to see me isn’t it?” Mingi throws his shirt on, grabbing his leather jacket off of your workstation. “I’ve asked you on dates. I’ve invited you to dinner with my friends. I send you backstage passes to my shows and you never come.”
“I’m trying to be more to you. I just wish you’d let me in” he sighs, stopping to plant a tender kiss on your trembling mouth, “Goodnight.” You're frozen in place, your feet sinking into the checkered tile floors like quicksand, as you watch him walk out of the door. A little voice in the back of your head whispers that he’s right. You have been pushing him away, playfully brushing off his proposals because they must have been a joke. He’s him…a star...and you? You’re just you.
Ignoring the tears clouding your vision, you flop down in a chair and begin scrolling through the texts the two of you exchanged over the past week. You stop at a message sent 2 days ago, your heart stinging at the sight of a link for a backstage pass for both nights of his show. It reads: "It’d be nice to see you. Would love it if you came.” You could take the chance, gamble with your heart—you close out of the thread, swiping to delete it—but it’s better if you don’t.
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The roar of the crowd. The cacophony of instruments, harsh vocals, and borderline destruction laid out by the opening band. The chaos going on backstage to resolve last-minute disasters while his barely sober friends bullshit in the green room. The pure insanity of it all usually has Mingi wired but tonight he’s numb to everything. He leans back in his chair, checking his phone notifications. Nothing. At least not from you. He takes another sip of the beer he’s been taking child-sized swigs from for the past hour. It takes like piss, he doesn’t even like beer, but he has to calm his friends’ suspicions that something’s wrong by at least pretending he’s joining in on things.
“Party's here!” Yunho screams, bursting into the green room full of energy. Mingi perks up when he enters, the arrival of his best friend calming his anxiety. Yunho has no problem taking the social spotlight when Mingi isn’t all here and tonight he’s definitely somewhere far away. Yunho spots Mingi seated in the corner, staring into the mirror as he falls endlessly down some mental hole. “Still haven’t heard from her?” he asks, throwing his arm over Mingi’s shoulder. “No. I wanna call her, you know, but…I don’t know.”
Yunho snatches Mingi’s beer, chugging the remainder of it before tossing the bottle in the corner. “Listen to me, you forget her. There are plenty of fish in the sea. Actually, I brought a pretty fresh one for you tonight.” His face painted with a mischievous grin, Yunho slinks back over to the door to retrieve his surprise. Mingi rolls his eyes, his head thrown back in agony, “Yunho, not tonight. I’m not in the mood for this, man. I don’t wanna meet any fucking groupies.”
“I resent being called a ‘fucking groupie’” you pout, sneaking up beside him with the stealth of a secret agent. Mingi turns his head, squinting at the inverted image of you, “You—what are you doing here?” Your smile is awkward and endearing as you nervously fiddle with the lace trim of your black dress. “I’m letting you in...if it’s not too late.” By the way he hops up from his chair, his arms around your waist and his tongue down your throat in an instant, you already know the answer. But it still makes your head spin when he pulls away to say, “It’s not too late. It could never be.”
The head of a heavily pierced girl peeks through the door, her bubblegum pink hair swept into a high ponytail. “2 minutes til stage. Let's go!” she shouts like a drill sergeant and all of the men fall in line, rushing to get Mingi out on time. Yunho does what he can to put some distance between Mingi and everyone else, "He's coming! He's coming! Don't tear my man apart!" Mingi struggles to keep hold of you as what seems like a million hands pull him in the other direction.
“Just go. I’ll be watching so kick some ass, okay? For me!” "For you." You grab him by the shirt, sneaking in one last kiss, “Love you.” “1 minute til stage!” the girl’s voice booms once more. The tide sweeps him away until you can’t see him anymore but you still manage to hear a very excited “Love you too!” in that deep, raspy voice of his. You follow the herd, finding a spot off to the side just as he takes the stage.
Watching him perform, smiling at each other so hard your cheeks ache every chance you can, gets you high enough that you might as well be watching him from a cloud. When rips his shirt off, tossing it into the crowd, he reveals a chest covered in tattoos made with ink laced with silent admissions of your love. Only now they aren't silent. They're louder than every instrument on that stage. Because you're confident now that when it comes to taking a chance on love…on him…it’s so much better if you do.
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