#i managed to get lost two or three streets far from the hotel we were staying at... and we had already been in that market!!!!!!

[theophagie-remade]

High school fifth year trip to Barcelona you will always be remembered

[shawty-writes-a-little]

From Eden 2.

Part 1 Part2 Part3 Part4

Darkling x brekker!reader

Word count: 3k+

Warnings: fake deaths? Aleksander? He comes w his warnings S2 SPOILERS

Summary: The brekkers aren’t well with expressing concern without scowls and Aleksander haunts her dreams…but is it a dream?

An: ITS MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

—

From what y/n could gather of passage of time through the light of lamp lit street to sun rays, it was nearly about two days she was locked up where she was. When she was taken away she couldn’t gather where she was, but by the looks of the place from outside it seemed like a work space and where she was locked in was like a storage unit. Not difficult for Kaz to figure out either, pekka wouldn’t keep her at any obvious locations, Nina used one of wylan’s creations to help unlock the numbered storage under Pekka’s name which Jesper found out about. Nina escaped alongside y/n as Kaz outwitted pekka to escape the office of paperworks.

Everyone was quite out of state when they reached the cemetery, a certain new safe space that Kaz held. Even the wraith was hurt of the fight from the mad man. The entire walk to the shed at cemetery neither of them said anything, a sharp frown on both the brekker siblings’ faces.

As Y/n sat on the small of a seat inside the shed next to a lantern Kaz leaned to her level and roughly with his gloved hand moved his sister’s face from the jaw a bit to see her injuries, the punches and supposed beating from pekka’s men, it hurt more than Kaz’s pride. That was his family, the one person he had sole responsibility over to not get hurt and that’s what ended up happening. Being the man he was, always his expression unreadable, however as of now he gritted his teeth and called our “Nina.” And backed away for her to heal y/n. It seemed he was furious, he often let what he felt show on his face.

The small of the shed lit with three lanterns fell silent as Nina tended to Inej and y/n. Y/n gestured for Inej to be looked at rather immediately because her wounds were fresh and deeper whilst she had been quite alright pressing against most her wounds and the cuts on her face. “Two days…” Kaz breathed “Two days you have been back in ketterdam and you get kidnapped. Your favourite sport it seems?” Kaz taunted his sister, everyone had had quite the day and Kaz wasn’t one to point fingers for casualties and mistakes but his fear of loosing his sister resulted into suppressed anger of why she was lost in the first place.

“Oh?” y/n scoffed “Why I am really sorry Kaz…I am really sorry of all the bad blood you have with the entire population of ketterdam got to me. Let’s see next time when you’re outnumbered by a group of muscular men twice your size and the whole stadwatch apparently whe—“

“I would never end up the way you did.” Kaz stated interrupting her midway. Inej and Jesper shared a look with another that read how much they dreaded being here for the siblings quarrel.

“Surely.” Y/n nodded “You most definitely would’ve ended up worse than me because you are far more dislikable than I am.” Y/n added with a shrug, with that Nina snorted a bit as she continues to concentrate on inej’s wounds.

“You were placed in the smallest of room, most undisguised underground place we could find yet you managed to get yourself kidnapped!” Kaz replied running a frustrated hand through this hair “Quite the talent you have!”

“I wasn’t even on the streets…I was walking the hallway of the shady underground hotel you placed me in and the stadwatch were patrolling inside the hotel could you imagine?” She replied defending her circumstances. She wasn’t even aware of the weight of the problems on them by pekka at the moment so she truly did not believe strolling the small hallway to clear her mind would do any harm.

“What part of not to leave your room did you not understand?” Kaz replied raising his brow, more so agitated now.

“You did not tell me the stadwatch was after us, you did not tell me pekka was after us, you did not tell me about the crow club! You never do and that’s your problem you never explain any circumstances to me! You simply expect me to be the seven year old again in some cottage where you’d put bricks by the door and tell me not to leave?” Y/n replied, growing up after Jordie, Kaz picked up on his traits of keeping their siblings safe in ketterdam. The last place for children to be alone and safe but somehow Kaz managed from shelters under long stairways to footpaths to abandoned cottages every unfortunate place until he got where he was. It was a difficult long childhood of ‘y/n don’t open the door for anyone but me’ ‘don’t peek through the window’ ‘don’t answer if anyone is at the door’ ‘hide here if someone breaks in’. It was difficult but the two Brekkers grew up in the time and made it out of the hard childhood. It was very nerve wrecking and full of anxiety for Kaz to leave his sister alone whilst he worked here and there so the two could eat and frightening for little y/n to wait in an empty cold place hoping her brother could make it back. However things had changed by far better for them over the time and as of now y/n hated how Kaz viewed her as the vulnerable responsibility of his again but in truth when Y/n was kidnapped Kaz just felt like that child again anxious and worried the whole day if his sister was alright. “If I am that much of a responsibility and a bother to you why didn’t you just leave me on the other side of the fold!”

“It’s almost as if your stupidity spreads because I truly regret not doing so!” Kaz replied with a scoff as he left the room and after a long awkward silence Wylan and Jesper followed him out too.

As Nina wrapped up Inej both of them shared a sympathetic look to y/n aware that kaz’s last words must’ve stung a bit but y/n’s face wasn’t phased at the slightest. She had known Kaz and all his outbursts all her life, not that it didn’t hurt at the moment she was familiar with everything hurting she almost didn’t care to encounter with his words. With Aleksander’s passing, she was simply numb at the time, Nina began to heal y/n’s wounds and her cuts but all she could think of was Aleksander. Every moment spent with him flashing across her mind however much she wanted it to stop. She shifted in her place for Nina to work on her wounds and her touch took her back to certain moments.

“You are exaggerating!” Y/n exclaimed as Aleksander placed her on their bed gently, quite the upset frown on his face as he didn’t utter a word. There had been a certain casualty on one of the second army bases and y/n had gotten hurt, not something of a large extent yet Aleksander was unsettled far more than she was.

“Told you not to.” He muttered in a hushed quite cross-with-you way. He crouched on his knees by the side of the bed to attend the wounds on her face again after the healers had done so already. Y/n was aware she couldn’t ask him not to, he treated the slightest of scratch on her like his own. “Does that hurt?” He asked flatly as he gently rubbed the ointment by cut.

“I am alright Aleksander truly I understand you worry-“ she tried to explain to him but he wasn’t having any of it.

“You were bleeding y/n you are anything but alright.” Aleksander said interrupting her, “I just don’t understand what was the need for that huh? The troop could have handled themselves, what if you would’ve been injured far worse? What if the healers weren’t around to get you so fast?”

“Well I am not injured far worse and the healers were around.” Y/n stated with a shrug and a suppressed chuckle escaped her as much as she wanted to appear serious about her well being to Aleksander she couldn’t help but find his made up worse possible scenarios excessive.

“It isn’t funny y/n!” Aleksander exclaimed. “It wouldn’t be funny if you were seriously injured and I wouldn’t be funny if I had lost you alright?” He spoke agitated standing up as he turned away from her, getting difficult to look in the eyes of his love realising he’d almost lost her.

“Aleksander…” Y/n exhaled softly and stood up taking a small step to reach him and tried to make him face her by placing her hands by his shoulders but his firmly did not, “Aleksander look at me.” She asked him and forcefully got him to turn around to face her. “I am alright, flesh and bone. I am in front of you I am alright—I understand your worry I truly do but if you worry about the littlest of injuries on me you—“

“How can I not? My entire world lies within you!” He sighed and took her hands in his, he knew she wasn’t wrong with whatever she was promoting to say but at the same time they wasn’t anything she could say that would ever get him to not worry, ever get him to sleep alright any night she is away from her on army bases, “I don’t even want to go that far but everytime you end up in some casualty the mere thought of loosing you…just makes me-I don’t even want to think of a world where you don’t exist. It’s pointless existence, it’s dark, it’s excruciatingly lonely and with you it’s not so I apologise if you feel like I overbear you with my worry but is it not possible for a man drunk on love to hold his beloved as if he’s holding the whole world?”

Aleksander had said that day, where was he now? Where was he now to hold his world? Made it an immense thing for never having to be in a world without her did he not consider the same for her? True love consumes one’s soul, he made every whim and every inconvenience fade away…then he fades away himself. A place he’d never come back from. How could he simply just leave her for herself, she hoped for the circumstances to be reversed, her to die for once whilst he would be alive to deal with the hurt. The painful reality.

“Y/n!” Nina exclaimed pulling her out of her thoughts as she blinked her eyes for a moment and looked back at the heartrender, still solemn and neutral as if the most fond memories of her love didn’t haunt her mind, a trait like kaz’s…never let it show on your face. “Where did you just leave for a second saints…” she exhaled and finished the last of wrapping on her wounds. “There…that’s done! Are you alright?” Nina asked her and shared a look with Inej, they both saw how she looked confusedly out of place.

“Yes, doesn’t hurt.” Y/n replied with a shrug keeping her answer short, staring off into the stone wall.

“But are you alright?” Inej asked furthering Nina’s previous question with a different tone, she meant to look out for kaz’s sister just as much as she would for him. She is all family he has left, at the end of the day the void of family was always so heavy “Don’t pay much mind to what Kaz said, he didn’t mean it.” Inej said trying to console y/n who let on to be alright but was upset and seemed visibly annoyed at kaz’s remarks. If only she’d known.

“He is right though…I should’ve stayed at that side of the fold.” I should’ve stayed with him, I should’ve gotten a proper goodbye. All those morose thoughts occupied her head yet if she didn’t say it herself nobody would suspect it in their wildest dreams what she had indulged in. For now she felt it pointless to tell anyone either ways, Kaz would find her stupid given he already did and the others would show their pity and try hard to be sorry for her loss yet her grief was her own. Not as if their sympathy could bring him back and not as if their words would make her feel better. It was all her own.

—

On further days Kaz had y/n stay in wylan’s little laboratory given he had a clean slate out of stadwatch record and the crows were subjected to check in time to time so it was the safest place he could arrange at the moment, on the little couch in the damp laboratory of Wylan’s, Kaz had crouched to the ground strapping some knives on her sister’s boots “Oh how smart is that Kaz if someone were to attack me it would just take me about ten minutes to kneel, undo my boots, undo the knots on the knife, unsheathe the knife and stab them! How clever! Given just keeping a knife in my hand would take me about a second but why risk that? We’ve to ensure I end up almost dead again so you get to—“ y/n was about to taunt him sarcastically even more as Kaz tightly secured the knives by her boot and handed her one in her hands.

“I borrowed these from Inej.” He said and placed another one on her side “The ones on your boots are back up knives, keep these handy…” he said pointing to the ones he just placed by her sides and stood up with his cane back on his feet, “You are aware how to use them?” Kaz asked, he knew she was but he wanted to mock her on how he had to ask to ensure that. Typical sibling way.

“I don’t know I think I need to recall…maybe I can try the pointy end of knife on that Sokol river eyebrow of yours as practise?” She snapped at him turning the sheathed knife between her fingers.

“My eyebrows are perfectly normal.” He scoffed turning away from the couch she was sitting on and gave a nod to wylan as he left after giving him some instructions of what more he’d wanted of his lab sorcery.

—

After a few visits from Jesper and Inej here and there Wylan’s rants about certain chemicals and portions as he worked finally tired y/n as she dozed off on the couch on the underground laboratory. In her dream she found herself in council chambers. Council chambers she was familiar with it was a second army tent, dark outside with a lantern in her hand. She saw herself walk inside the tent as a voice called out in the dream, “My love…” said he as he walked out of the shadows. Aleksander.

For a moment she saw herself in the dream just pause, considering everything she was considering at the moment, throwing something at him—herself perhaps, shouting at him, crushing him for leaving her, “Aleksander.” She breathed as he walked across the table to her closer proximity.

“My my…” he spoke grimacing as he softly placed his hand by her cheeks to examine her cuts “Look at what they did to you.” He said to y/n as she stared at him, what hurt far worse was seeing him in her dreams knowing this is the only place she could do so.

“You left me…” her voice trailed off ignoring her remark as she looked away from him not meeting his gaze. “After everything…you made the selfish choice, you’ve left. You’ve left this world leaving it for me to exist alone…without you.” She complained, she did this in her head all day, this was yet another fragment of it just in her sleep she gathered. Her mind trying to comfort her, visualising the voice of her complains.

Aleksander took her hands in his gently, his touch, his touch felt so real, so longed as if she had been home for the first time but in the back of her mind she was aware this wasn’t real “You took off the wedding ring…” he pointed out with a hushed tone, not upset nor angry just solemn understandingly sad tone.

“You abandoned me…” y/n repeated the subject she brought up, she took her hands out of his and gripped the collar of his kefta “You abandoned me! You died…you made promised-you-I loved you..I-I love you! And you aren’t here you died you’ve left me and-“

“I am here aren’t I?” Aleksander reminded her gently bringing her face to look at him, look at him in the eyes. With a soft smile he tucked the strand of hair behind her ear, he seemed his relaxed self, as if this was one of the serene evenings at little palace.

“No you’re not…” she said letting out a dejected huff and tears prickled her eyes. Arguing with her own mind is what this would be given it was her dream yet Aleksander seemed so…himself.

“I am.” He corrected her “I am right here for you…I-I wouldn’t ever leave you. Didn’t I promise you that?”

“You promised me and yet you left…” she repeated as if to herself, getting her mind to confirm over and over he is gone and to accept that. “You…why are you doing this?” She said moving away and rubbed her eyes, “The ghost of you is haunting my dreams…” she groaned cursing her mind playing tricks on her.

“Y/n listen to me…” This time he firmly placed his hands on her shoulders and made him face her “I haven’t left you. I’m not gone…” with that he simply vanished and y/n breathed heavily jolting out of her dream. It was a dream…It was a dream? It took herself a few moments to come to terms with that herself and get used to the surroundings as she found Jesper and wylan by her side staring.

“Are you alright?” Wylan asked as she jumped out of her seat on the couch, baffled but settled into reality her heart raced so fast.

“You look like you were being chased by wild dogs in an open field!” Jesper commented at her frantic state but she was too out of mind to register that.

“What does that even mean?” Wylan asked Jesper quite confused at his phrasing.

“What like you haven’t ever been chased by dogs in an open field?” Jesper asked in a matter-of-factly manner.

“You could’ve just said she looked like she ran a lot what does being chased by dogs even have anything to do with this?” Wylan asked raising a brow, both of them indulged in petty debate as y/n panted leaning forward on Wylan’s desk for support “Ah don’t go near that!” He exclaimed as he stood up and moves the sizzling portion rack away from her, “Still are you alright? It looks like it was a bad dream…”

“You can talk to us about it if you want to.” Jesper offered her with a comforting smile.

“No-no—I uh-I am fine I just need some air.” Y/n replied out of breath and rushed to leave the lab leaving Jesper and Wylan confused and concerned.

—

HI HIIIII I turn 16 today

It’s my yearly tradition to post a piece on my bday and I have had the most hectic week ever but I made this possible regardless please let me know what you think <3

Tags: @gwenspter @mori1b2bpad @budugu @duchcess @sloppyzengarden

[mahvericks]

and contagious // john wick

Summary; as Jennie Kim once said, “ I’m going solo. ”

Warnings; swearing, violence, alcohol consumption, death, blood, torture ( not really but it needs a warning)

Words count; 6,4k.

If you enjoyed reading this, please consider liking, reblogging and / or leaving a comment in my inbox ♥

@mcgrathandwives​  @mrchiipchrome​ @xxxtwilightaxelxxx​ @hrts4zouis + 😌 anon ​

prelude | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Storming inside the house, you slammed the door behind you- still in complete disbelief of what you had just learned, it was hard to think straight or just find what to do next. All you knew was that you couldn’t stay with a liar, no matter what the context or reasoning behind was.

If you hadn’t been this beaten up and bloody, it would only have taken a few minutes to assemble the little things you had here- your gun and the clothes you had on yesterday. Going down the stairs, you felt your heart tighten as the dog happily came to welcome you.

It hadn’t been twenty four hours since you met this dog, yet you had grown attached to him and leaving him behind was hard- you’d miss him for sure. Maybe it was for the best, you knew it was better to not get attached to anyone and he would be safer if he was far from you.

Giving him a little scratch on the head, you barely could bend down without wincing in pain- your whole body was aching and begging you to take a break. Yet, you needed to go before it would get any harder. You had to go before you’d start weighting the pros and cons, you couldn’t lose time hesitating.

“ You can’t just leave like that, y/n.”

“ Of course I can!”

“ You have to calm down, y/n. We need to take a look at your nose and-“

Scoffing, you shook your head as you got up, “ I don’t need your help. I’ll do just fine on my own. ”

“ I know you can handle yourself, but if you go after them now- you’ll get yourself killed. ”

“ That doesn’t concern you anymore.”

“ Let me at least explain my-“

“ No. Goodbye John.”

Walking past the person you were starting to consider as family, you didn’t want to look back. Feeling a lump in your throat, you opened the door, intending on leaving quickly if you hadn’t been held back by John’s hand grabbing your wristle.

Dealing with many emotions at the same time, you felt lost between your anger and feeling betrayed, reacting without realizing it, you twisted John’s hand and in a swift movement, you reached for your knife in your pocket and pulled it out, putting it against his neck.

When you realized what you almost did, even if you didn’t intend to, backing away you lowered your knife, you couldn’t help but feel like a threat even when you didn’t want to be one, “ I’m sorry. ”

Turning your back on John, you made your way outside, heading to the Continental where you had the remaining of your belongings- you still had one night left to spend there, you would start looking for intel tomorrow.

Being back into the streets of New York after what happened earlier today was nerve-wracking. Having to stop a bunch of times to catch your breath, your body was starting to make you pay for what you had been putting yourself through this past week.

Everyday you were adding new wounds to your body, it was impressive you could do as much as stand by yourself. Yet, even if your body was so close to shut itself off, you weren’t done yet. You’d have to make people talk again and find wherever Viggo’s brother was hiding.

If you managed to make it through that, for the first time you’d allow yourself a break, enough for you to heal- you couldn’t do anything else as long as the Red Room was still active anyways.

Finally arriving at the Continental, you were relieved that you managed to get yourself there safely. Entering the hotel, you were welcomed by the concierge, Charon, if you remembered correctly.

“ Good evening, Miss. Coming back alone this time? ”

“ Yeah… Turns out I’m better on my own.”

The concierge didn’t seem to buy your words but didn’t say anything about it, “ would you, perhaps, need me to send the doctor to your room? ”

“ It’s nothing too bad, I’ll take care of it myself. I wouldn’t mind a drink though, if possible.”

“ Of course, Miss. Vodka, I presume? ”

“ Yeah- by the way, if someone asks for me, tell them I already left. Whoever it might be. I’ll be gone by the morning, anyways.”

Already making your way to the elevator, you stopped right away at his reply, “ even Mr. Wick?”

“ Especially if it’s him.”

Nodding curtly at your answer, he added, “ if I may, Mr. Wick cares about you, miss. Perhaps, you should listen to him or have a talk.”

“ Not for now, but thank you for your wisdom.”

Getting into the elevator, you could stop thinking about what Charon had said- you knew John cared about you, it was obvious but of all the things you could take, being lied to wasn’t one of them.

You’d need time to stomach this betrayal and think about it once you’d cool down- which wasn’t going to happen before a while.

As soon as you got into the room, you let yourself fall onto the bed, exhausted and in pain, you didn’t even care about putting blood on the sheets at this point. Closing your eyes, you loudly sighed, you didn’t know for how long you’d be able to keep going at this rate.

You didn’t move an inch for a couple of minutes, until you heard a knock on the door- probably the room service. Coming back in the room with a glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, you didn’t wait to sit down to take a sip.

Only bringing the bottle with you in the bathroom, you had to start taking care of your wounds, you had pushed it back for too long already. Firstly, you had to take care of your nose, taking a deep breath, you watched at yourself in the mirror as you approximately put your nose back in place.

Gasping at the sudden pain, you tried to blink the sudden tears away, you knew it was in reaction of putting your nose back in place but it didn’t make that any less annoying.

Next, you needed to clean up the messy state of your hand- it was going to be the hardest part to take care of by yourself. Even taking off the used and bloodied bandage was painful, “ fuck! ”

You weren’t completely sure how to make sure your hand wouldn’t get worse- besides cleaning it and putting a new bandage on you couldn’t do much. At first, you simply put your hand under cold water to get rid of the blood and dirt, the pain was enough to make you clench your jaw as hard as it was possible.

Waiting for your hand to dry, you couldn’t help but attentively look at yourself in the mirror, taking in each little cuts or bruises you could see- you had never been this much of a mess for as long as your memory could allow you to remember.

If Yelena was there, you knew how upset she would be to see you in such a bad state- she would tell you that you needed to be more careful because she wasn’t always there to have your back and that if you kept getting hurt like this she would have to kick your ass for not being careful.

Softly smiling at the thought of Yelena, you wondered where she was going to hide next, you knew her enough to guess she would leave Ukraine to go somewhere else, but the destination was unknown to you- much to your dismay.

You still wished you could reunite and stay together, have each other’s back as you always did before being freed from the Red Room- you were at a point where you wondered if it wouldn’t be less dangerous to be together.

Sighing, you wiped away the tears that were rolling down your cheeks, not without smudging some blood on your already bloodied face. You were tired of the constant pain that even alcohol couldn’t get rid of.

Taking another sip straight from the bottle, you then lifted up your shirt to check on your stapled wound, you were relieved to see that the wound was still closed, while a couple of staples had popped out most of them were still in place.

However, it didn’t prevent the wound from bleeding at the spots were the staples popped out. Taking a damp cloth, you carefully cleaned the now dried blood, grimacing each time the cloth touched your sensitive skin.

Once you were done cleaning around the wound, you grabbed a new bandage roll and wrapped it around your waist tightly enough to hold the staples in place.

Throwing all the used supplies in the trash, you wanted to take a shower to get rid of all the blood and dirt you still had on you but you had no strength to do that right now, now that you managed to clean your injuries, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do neither.

In the end, you opted to just rest for tonight and take a shower when you would wake up, before leaving the Continental. Leaving the bathroom, you took a last sip of Vodka before crashing down onto the king size bed.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

The following morning began worst than the night ended, not only you woke up halfway through the night due to yet another nightmare but also because you were having a beginning of a fever- an infection wasn’t something you needed to add on top of everything.

That being said, it wasn’t the only reason you considered this new day worse than the preceding one- after taking a warm shower and packing the little amount of belongings you had, you left the Continental once you gave back your key to the receptionist.

You spent the whole morning looking for people that you could make speak but all you ended up doing was, once again fighting. It just felt like a never ending vicious circle, each day progressively getting worse.

With all your cumulated injuries, you were slow and your fighting was sloppy. The worse part of this was that at the end, you wouldn’t even get anything useful out of them- all of this was worthless and you had no idea what else you could do.

At this point, you were wandering through the streets of the Little Russia’s neighborhood, it was the only place you knew where Viggo’s men were, at least used to until John and you showed up with the intention of putting an end to the Tarasov’s mob.

But that was until you learned about what John kept from you, right when you were starting to realize it wasn’t so bad to not only have Yelena in your life, that you had someone else you could call family, but now, you regretted letting him in, letting him gain your trust only to betray you.

Simply by thinking about this situation was enough to frustrate you more than you already were with this whole situation. You couldn’t believe how hard it was to find someone willing to speak, especially when you didn’t exactly know where to look.

Allowing yourself to take a break from walking, you sat down on the first bench you found, growing more frustrated by each minute passing by. Putting your head in your hands, you closed your eyes and tried to calm down, telling yourself it would lead nowhere if you were upset or frustrated.

After what you’d guess to be a couple of minutes, you heard voices coming from a bit afar, you didn’t really pick up whatever conversation was going on until you recognized some russian words. You remembered John telling you this was a russian neighborhood, but even knowing that you had to go and check who those people were.

Securing your sling bag on your shoulder, you walked towards the voices, as soon as you got to the corner of the streets, you saw a group of five men loading boxes in the back of a truck. It seemed suspicious enough for you to walk to them.

“ Hey! ” you said, earning the attention of the five men, noticing how they warily looked at you and reached for their back, probably for a gun, you did the same, “ does any of you know where I can find Abram Tarasov? ”

Now it wasn’t the smartest thing to ask for their boss straight forward, but you were at a point where you didn’t even care anymore, you simply wanted answers.

“ Who’s asking? ”

“ A friend.”

“ Listen kid, we’re going to give you one chance to go. You don’t want to get involved with us.”

“ Oh come on! Why do you guys always make it so hard?”

Sighing, you pulled out your gun before they did and opened the fire by shooting one of them in the tight and a second one in the shoulder before ducking behind a car parked close to you.

Moving on the side of the car, you covered your head as the windows shattered due to the bullets being shot at you. Waiting for them to reload their guns, you carefully walked from car to car to get closer to the group of men, still shielding yourself.

As soon as you heard them reloading their guns, you got out of behind the car and started to shoot at them again. This time, you shot one of them in the head while you missed the other shots only hit the truck they were hiding inside and behind.

Ducking behind the car again, you checked how many bullets left you had in your magazine- only four, thankfully you had another magazine in your jacket, but you doubted you’d have enough to kill them all.

Emptying the rest of your magazine on them, you dropped the emptied one and put the full one back in your gun. Taking a peak over the car’s hood, you noticed one of the four remaining men had a malfunctioning gun, not wasting a second, you shot him once in the chest and once in the chest- you only had to take three of them out and two of them were already injuried.

Taking cover right in time as a bullet flew past you, keeping the same strategy as it was working well so far, you waited for them to reload to shoot in direction of the men once again, hitting the only one that wasn’t injured yet, it already made it easier for you.

The pain would most likely distract them at some point and you’d use that opportunity to finish them. Noticing how the three men were too busy with the newly inflicted wounds, you sneaked behind the truck and went around the vehicle to surprise the men.

Grabbing the closest of the opponents, you wrapped your arm around his neck and snapped it as quickly as you could. His struggles were heard by the two other men who tried to shoot you, thankfully as you were still holding the man you could shield yourself with his body.

Pushing the body on one of the two men, you kicked the gun out of his hands and grabbed his arm to take him down with you- as soon as you were back on your feet, you shot him in the head.

Doing this, however, made you lose time and before realizing it, the last man remaining who you had previously shot in the shoulder grabbed you by your coat, harshly throwing you against the truck, your head meeting against the cold painted metal first.

Touching your eyebrows to check if you were bleeding, you didn’t have the time to move before being thrown again, this time you were thrown to the ground, as he walked to you, you swept him off his feet, making him fall too. Getting on top of him, you pulled out your knife and put it against his throat.

“ Where is Abram Tarasov? How do I get to him? ”

“ Go to hell, bitch!”

“ Do you really want to die here? ” you couldn’t tell if he didn’t want to speak to you or that he was afraid of his boss, either way he had no issue to get out of the situation, “ look at what I did to your friends.”

“ I’ll kill you first! ”

Frowning, you felt like you weren’t taken seriously even after killing four out of the five men and you hated that. Applying pression on the blade against his neck, you started to drag it on the skin, just enough to make him start bleeding.

“ Fine! He owns a smuggling ring and you need a pass to get in. It’s a card! Only his men get one, I don’t have it! We were just middlemen! Don’t kill me please! I-I have a family! ”

Truth to be told, after getting the answers you were looking for, you were planning on killing him, like you had done with the others- it was the safest thing to do for you but hearing that this man had a family made you hesitate, you didn’t want a child to lose her family, not after learning you used to have one before being taken away, “ where do I find Abram’s men? ”

“ You won’t need to find them.”

Before you could ask what the meaning of his answer was, the man punched you right below your ribs which was enough to buy himself enough time to disarm you, you were pushed on the side and in the blink of an eye, the man was back on top of you.

You saw him grab his gun which was lying on the ground a few centimeters away, as he tried to point the barrel to your face, you managed to grab both of his forearms to prevent the man from firing at your head.

Being clearly disadvantaged on this fight, it was incredibly hard to match his strength, every few seconds or so, the barrel would get an inch closer to point at your face- you needed to find a way to get out of this situation or this would lead you to meeting your fate.

You honestly tried everything you could, tried to kick him, make him lose his balance by tried to move away from him, hell you even went as far as spitting blood on his face- nothing seemed to work.

In all those years you had spent going missions after missions, having no other choice than putting your life in danger so many time, however you had been used to being the one on top with the gun, to be the one to end lives not the other way around.

The more seconds went by, the more you saw the barrel of the gun being aligned with your face. Gulping as you saw the man put his finger on the trigger, you moved your head on the side at the last second, dodging the bullet from only a couple of centimeters.

Disoriented and deafened due to how close of your head the shot had been, you blinked a few times, trying to get back to reality, you felt your body being forcefully pulled on your feet, trying to fight back, you somehow managed to land your fist in your opponent’s jaw.

Not having enough time to recover and correctly pull a fight, you were kicked on the same side you had previously been punched in, this was followed by a punch in your throat.

As air was knocked out of your lungs, you held your throat, trying to catch your breath but without succeeding as you were put in an arm lock to strangle you. Hitting the arm around your neck as hard as you could, you tried to break free from the lock on you, sadly you didn’t manage to do so.

Your lungs were burning and begging for air, your head was starting to hurt and your eyesight was getting blurry, finally letting your arms fall on your sides in defeat, you closed your eyes acknowledging this as your end, at least until your barely heard a gunshot.

Opening your eyes when you felt the grip of the man around your neck loosen up, you saw through your blurry vision that you had been saved by no other than John. Pushing the arm of the man from your neck, you lost your balance and fell to the ground.

You couldn’t begin to put in words how embarrassed you were at this moment. You were supposed to be one of the greased assassin the Red Room created, and here you were, barely able to breathe.

Struggling to get up, you bent forward putting your hands on your knees, you gasped loudly, finally inhaling air again.

You didn’t really pay any attention to John until you felt his hand on your shoulder while you were still trying to catch your breath- pushing away John’s hand, you wouldn’t forgive him just because he saved your life. Still panting as your breathing finally started to come back to normal, you spat some blood before wiping your mouth, “ how did you find me? ”

“ I went to the Continental but was told you left early this morning. You told me you didn’t know much of New York, I guessed you’d come back to somewhere you already went and when I heard gunshots I knew you were around. ”

“ What do you want? I’ve had enough yesterday. ”

“ I want to properly apologize but also explain why I didn’t tell you earlier but this isn’t exactly the place for that. ”

Scrunching up your nose, you could clearly see what he was trying to do and you weren’t going to give in, “ I’m not coming back to your home.”

“ I’m not asking you to. How about you come with me and I buy you something to eat? You must be hungry.”

“ No! I know you’re trying to bribe me into coming with you and forgiving you.”

“ I’m not. Did you even eat anything since you left the Continental? ”

Staying silent for a few seconds, you couldn’t hide the fact that you were starving and wouldn’t refuse something consistent to eat, even if you had to go with John, “ … no, I haven’t. ”

“ All I’m asking is that you listen to me- you don’t have to forgive me and you’ll get free food.”

You couldn’t lie and say you weren’t interested- this was one hell of a deal but your pride was still telling you to refuse, that you were better off without him and that you shouldn’t listen to his excuses, however the food ended up being too tempting, “ fine but i’m just coming for the food.”

Half limping, you made your way to where you left your bag, grabbing it, you then followed John to his car in silence. You didn’t like that you were already back with him- as of now, you could only see him as a liar, yet of all the people in New York, he was the safest person you could be around.

An uncomfortable silence settled in during the trip to wherever John was taking you to eat, until he broke the silence, “ listen, I know I fucked up-”

“ Yeah, you fucking did! ”

“ I thought it was the best thing to do to keep you safe and if I’m completely honest, I didn’t really think about what would be next until we got to the clinic. Not even an hour before, Viggo had confirmed you were my daughter and I just wanted to protect you- I didn’t want you to put your life in danger especially before you’d heal from your wounds.”

“ Well, that didn’t really work out, did it? That guy snitched on me to the Red Room and almost got me killed the day after. ”

“ I didn’t think about this possibility. I thought I was doing the best to protect my daughter. I was overwhelmed by the fact you were really here, alive, after being told you were dead for almost two decades. ”

While you were trying to act as if you didn’t care in the slightest about his explanation, deep down you were somehow starting to understand why he kept this from you. He wanted to protect you because he cared about you.

As he said himself, he wanted to protect you even if it wasn’t the best way to do so. You would have done something similar if it was to protect Yelena, so could you really blame him for doing the same for you.

Still, your ego wasn’t allowing you to forgive him- you feared that he would end up lying to you again. Scoffing, you opened the rearview mirror and checked your busted eyebrow bone as a distraction, “ you still lied to me. ”

“ And I regret it! I wish I could change the way this happened.”

“ You can’t change what you did.”

“ I know.”

Closing the mirror, you wondered if you would even be allowed to enter wherever John was taking you. Focusing back on the ongoing conversation, you added, “ I’m not forgiving you and I don’t trust you anymore.”

“ Fair enough. I understand that you need time to stomach it. Thank you for giving me a chance to explain myself.”

“ Didn’t really have a choice, I’m trapped in a car with you.”

“ You’re not trapped- I can stop and let you leave if that’s what you want.”

“ No! You promised me food, I want to eat now.”

“ What you’d like to eat?”

Shrugging, you didn’t really think about it until now, any kind of food would do as long as you ate something, “ I don’t care, I just want to eat.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

In the end, John took you to a place where they made sandwiches in front of you so you could pick whatever you wanted in it. You were actually surprised that you had even been let in without any questions as you were looking all bloody and beaten up.

You did get some weird glances from customers but didn’t care in the slightest, you’d only glare back at them to scare them away. This wasn’t preventing you from enjoying your sandwich- it was your first time eating one as you had never been given the choice to eat what you wanted during your time in the Red Room.

You had mostly stayed silent since your little conversation with John in the car, you didn’t have much to say as you were still upset with him, even if you now understood why he kept those informations from you.

You didn’t want to make it worse by saying something you shouldn’t say. Besides, all you could eventually say to him was to thank him for saving your life, once again, but you didn’t want to show that you were thankful for now.

On the other hand, you didn’t want to seem like an ungrateful asshole neither and so far, it’s what you were letting appear. Taking it upon yourself, you sighed and finally broke the silence, “ thank you for saving my life back there.”

“ You don’t have to thank me- you would’ve done the same.”

“ I wouldn’t be too sure about that if I were you.”

If you were put in a similar position where you were the one who could save John, you wouldn’t hesitate to do anything to save his life- but that being said, you didn’t trust yourself and what you could do when upset like you were now.

“ Why? I trust you and know you have my back if something happens. ”

“ You shouldn’t trust me, that’s all. I don’t trust myself and what I’m capable of doing when I let my feelings speak for me. ”

“ You had my back multiple times already, you saved me more than once even when we barely met. I trust you and this isn’t going to change. ”

“ You’ll be quickly disappointed then. ”

“ I don’t think so. Anyways, did you learn anything from those guys you killed?”

Suspiciously squinting your eyes, you took another bite of your sandwich before answering him, “ why would I tell you? ”

“ I do have some unfinished business with them, too.”

Now, if he wanted to convince you to tell him what you learned today, this wasn’t a good reasoning to make you speak, “ that doesn’t tell me why I should tell you. Actually, it’s giving me another reason not to tell you.”

“ We should team up again. We worked well together and we both want something from them.”

Aware that John was right, it was still hard to agree with him- today had been an incredibly close call and you doubted you would get through the next one alive if you went after them alone, “ what do you want from them? ”

“ Abram is the one who has my stolen car. ”

“ A car, really? You’re ready to murder people for a car? ”

“ Look who’s speaking- as far as I know, you don’t mind killing people without being given a reason. ”

Hearing that made you feel like an asshole as John’s words were nothing else than the truth, you never needed a reason to kill someone and you were judging him for wanting to get his stolen car back, “ touché but I didn’t ask to be taught to mercilessly kill people from as long as I remember. ”

“ I shouldn’t have say that- I’m sorry. ”

“ No, you’re right. I remember you told me you fixed this car during your retirement, I don’t know what it’s like to dedicate hours to something you end up being proud of. ”

“ Yeah, this car means a lot to me. ”

Sighing, you didn’t like what you were about to say. You didn’t want to team up with John again, solely because of what he kept from you- it had only been a day and it still hurt but you had no other choice if you wanted to get to the monster, “ fine, let’s team up again but that doesn’t mean I forgive you. “

“ I know.”

Taking a sip from the beverage you chose to go with your sandwich, you took a bunch of seconds to debate if telling him the little bit of informations you learned today was a good idea- if you were to team up again, you didn’t have another option but to tell him what you knew.

“ They told me that to get to Abram, I needed a pass to enter the smuggling ring- or whatever his business place is called, and only his men get one. ”

“ I’ve heard about the smuggling ring- I more or less know where it is located.”

“ What about the pass?”

“ It’s a golden card. I don’t think they carry the card everywhere, only when they know they’ll have to go inside the said ring.”

Sighing again, if they didn’t always have that damned card with them it was just making it harder, you weren’t going to spend another night running after guys until you’d find one pass, “ so what do we do now? We pray to get lucky? ”

“ No.”

“ Then tell me how, mr. knows it all. ”

“ We find one of his most trusted men and take the card from him. ”

Easier said than done, you didn’t know any of those guys how were you supposed to find one of them right away, “ and how we do that?”

“ We wait for the night- that’s when most of their business happens. I know some of their faces, looking in the right places, it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“ Scouting again? It better be less boring than the last time! ”

“ You know, you really need to work on your patience.”

“ Why? I’m a very calm and patient person. ”

From the look John gave you, he clearly didn’t believe you one bit, you couldn’t blame him, you didn’t give him the best impression since you first meet, “ if I’m being honest here, you might be the most impatient assassin I’ve met.”

“ What can I say I don’t only have qualities! I don’t like having to wait, it’s fucking boring and a loss of time. ”

“ If you want to be a good hitman, you’ll have to work on that. We often get jobs that require a lot of waiting and scouting before killing.”

“ It’s better to just go straight to the target and kill them. ”

“ Sometimes, they know they’re being targeted so they’re very careful and if they can afford it, they pay guards to protect them. You might get a contract without knowing where the target is hiding and you’ll have to find them by yourself. You have to be ready to use a backup plan if it goes south. If you want to make a living out of this, you need to be patient, careful and silent. That’s how you’ll earn a good reputation. ”

While not wanting to admit it, you still attentively listened to John and made a mental note of everything he said, it was definitely interesting to hear his point of view and how he saw things as he had been considered as the best hitman for years, “ well I won’t be picking contracts like those, that’s simple. ”

“ It doesn’t work like that, y/n. ”

“ Then your job fucking sucks! You know what, it’s very american to make everything more complicated! ”

“ It’s not supposed to be easy or fun- we’re send to kill people. As I told you already, there are rules and you have to respect and follow them. ”

“ Isn’t there a saying or something that says “ rules are meant to be broken” ?”

“ Yes, but that’s bullshit. Remember what I told you about working for the High Table? ”

“ I do,” of course you did, the rules were pretty clear and serious, “ you can’t fuck around with the rules because if you break one of them, you get excommunicated and they kill you. ”

“ Exactly. Which is why you’ll always need to stay focused when you’re working. ”

Dramatically rolling your eyes, you understood what John was trying to say, but now that you were finally free and able to do things how you wanted to, you didn’t want to listen to new people, “ you know you can have fun and still be focused? ”

“ You’ll end up getting distracted and as I said, there’s no fun in killing people. ”

“ You’re only saying that because you worked alone- you should’ve worked with someone! We’re not doing to bad as a team, you said it yourself. ”

“ I stand by what I said- we’re a good team but-“

Hearing this, you didn’t let John finish his sentence, enlightened by the fact he thought you two made a good team, “ ah! See? And I know you think I’m fun to be around! ”

“ Now, that’s a stretch. I wouldn’t say that I consider you as fun. ”

“ Sure- I believe you,” snickering, you finished your drink before adding, “ so, what do we do now? Wait for the night? ”

“ No, we’re going to look around to find someone I can recognize- it’ll most likely be the night when we find one of them. ”

“ That sounds boring as hell. Should we go now? I can finish my sandwich outside.”

“ Sure, let’s go.”

Getting up, you glared at anyone who did as much as looking at you- most likely because of your still bloody face. It was annoying to you how people couldn’t just mind their own business.

Making your way outside along with John, you followed him to the car, taking a bite of your sandwich, you were about to get in the car when you noticed a stray dog wandering around, probably looking for food or water.

A wave of sympathy washed over you as you watched the poor dog all alone. Carefully walking to the dog, hoping not to scare him away, you kneeled in front of the dog, not without grimacing and gently petted the dog to reassure him.

Handing the rest of your sandwich to the dog, you smiled when the dog didn’t hesitate the food you were handing to him, “ I’m sorry I can’t take you with me. ”

Continuing to pet the dog until you hear John jogging to catch up to you, “ you can’t just run off to pet a stray dog when you see one, y/n! What if he got scared and bit you?”

“ He didn’t bite me, though.”

“ He could have.”

“ He didn’t! Look at him, he’s just a nice dog and shouldn’t be left on the streets to starve! I wish I could take him with me. ”

“ We already have a dog at home.”

The mention of having a home rubbed you the wrong way, even if you were teaming up with John again, even if you spent an enjoyable moment with him a few minutes ago, you were still upset and didn’t forgive him,“ it’s not my home, it never was.”

“ y/n- ”

“ No,” giving a last scratch on the dog’s head, you got up and walked back to the car, “ let’s go, we got stuff to do.”

[juniorgman187]

Fighting Fire With Fire (Reid Fic)

Summary: Reader must lower her pride after a date goes wrong and the only one who can rescue her is her mortal enemy - Spencer Reid.

A/N: This was a beast of a fic to write. It’s been in my WIP since September, and I managed to go from 11 pages to 22 pages in three days. It is now my longest fic thus far. I am insanely fucking proud of it and I hope it does well. Category: Angst Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid Content Warning: allusions to ‘catfishing,’ allusions to abduction, dub-con to taking provocative photos, alcohol, mentions of bruises, jealousy, carrying hug which implies weight of Reader (lmk if I missed anything) Word Count: 11.7k

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

I tried to play nice; I really did, but there was no getting through to him. Everyday started and ended with us fighting fire with fire.

Maybe the reason the two of you butt heads so often is because of how similar you are.

That’s what the team would say when Spencer and I got into one of our daily (sometimes hourly) arguments. 

They constantly encouraged us to get to know each other so that we’d finally see the likeness, and until recently, I wasn’t opposed to the idea. I was willing to do whatever it took to get him to like me. However, as previously mentioned, my willingness quickly dissipated in light of recent events. 

Voluntarily spending more time than necessary with him would be a recipe for disaster no doubt. 

Somehow, in a matter of a month, Reid decided that he simply did not enjoy my presence, which was the nice way of putting it. 

To be more crass, he loathed me to no end.

Initially, I was operating under the assumption that he wasn’t fond of change, and with me joining the BAU, the change was too much too fast for him, but after four weeks, his attitude toward me never deviated. Yet again, I made another excuse for him, arguing to myself that people are allowed to not like me. I could respect that, but where he lost my respect was how he made a conscious effort to remind me of how much he despised me. Even when I was at my nicest, he still treated me like a scelerate. 

If there was a prize for gaining a mortal enemy in the shortest amount of time, I guess I already won that without even trying. He hated me with a burning passion, for reasons unbeknownst to me, despite the fact that all I’d ever try to do was be his friend. 

For far too long, I kept denying the part of me that knew making peace with him outside of work wouldn’t go well and it’d simply go down in history as another failed attempt of mine to form a bond with him, so it was at this point that I decided to face the facts. 

He didn’t make it easy for me, either. It was hard having to be kind to someone that was only ever out to get me. 

He would constantly correct me but only after I said something incorrectly, just so he could prove me wrong. 

“If each police officer patrols a street, we’ll be able to cover the entire comfort zone.”

“Actually, we’d need three more officers if we want to cover the entire comfort zone. There’s still 2.347 miles that are unaccounted for.”

I never understood why he couldn’t just say his piece before me so that I didn’t look like an idiot, but I suppose that was the point. 

And he had this infuriating, unwarranted habit of judging my taste in cinema and literature. Anytime I told Emily or Derek about a movie I saw or told Rossi about a book I read, he felt compelled to share his antagonistic opinions as if I asked for them in the first place. Sometimes even spoiling the endings for me!

“Rossi, I just started reading Doctor Sleep!” I was so eager to tell Rossi that, so much so that I’d become blind to one dark cloud’s own eagerness to ruin the fun. 

“The hotel burns to the ground, but the ghosts don’t die with it.” 

He said it with such monotony and nonchalance, not even bothering to look up from his own book to watch my reaction to his menacing act. He just didn’t care!

The list of reasons not to like him truly did go on and on, so it was almost insulting how people would compare the two of us. 

They’d bring up the congruence in intelligence, the same affinity for reading, and closeness in age, but it only made me madder. The last person I wanted to resemble was Reid, except today, I gained another glaring similarity to him.

“Look at you two. Did you plan your outfits or something?” Emily playfully pointed out after I walked into the conference room. 

I eyed the doctor sipping at his cup of coffee who swiveled around in his chair to see what everyone else was seeing. Just from a short glance, I spotted his navy blue button-up with white polka dots that was nearly identical to the color and print of my dress.

“Well, looks like one of us has to go home and change.” His lips grew into a mischievous smirk behind the rim of his mug. 

Was that a joke? Did Spencer Reid make jokes now?

“Ha ha. Very funny.” I facetiously remarked, taking the only open seat at the table which was next to the jokester himself. 

“I’m kidding. You look really nice today.” He alleged without a hint of irony. He was complimenting me now, too? It was so unfamiliar that it felt like uncharted territory, possibly even a trap.

“Why? Because I’m dressed like you?” I wasn’t going to fall for his words now, maybe the version of me who would do anything to gain his approval would have. She would’ve smiled and said ‘thank you,’ but this me was going to challenge him if that was the last thing I ever did. “Bit of a narcissist are we, Dr. Reid?” 

“Mmm maybe,” He wagered, tilting his head from side to side as if to contemplate the possibility. “Or maybe I just really think you look nice.” 

Without even thinking, my heart skipped a beat. I was utterly repulsed by how I let his words have any effect over me. I couldn’t believe that he’d actually managed to fluster me with mediocre flattery. 

It felt like years that I had to sit next to Reid at the round table before Hotch dismissed the team for the flight.

30 minutes later, and we were on the jet. I’d taken one of the seats at the table opposite Derek and Emily, with Spencer beside me. 

Little things like this I could handle, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before he started bothering me. Morgan was listening to music and Emily was turned around in her seat, facing the back to talk to Rossi. Reid was playing himself in chess, and it took all of my self-control to not be a total asshole and knock the board and its pieces over and into the aisle. Luckily, I had a good enough distraction. 

Grant: can you ft tonight?

Me: we’ll see. i might have to work overtime. 

For the months that I had been talking to Grant, I was deliberately ambiguous about my job because I wasn’t exactly keen on telling him that I worked for the FBI and that I might not be able to FaceTime him since I was in the process of investigating a series of homicides. That’d surely scare him away and I was never one to flaunt my government job anyway.

Grant: you look stunning today

Me: you haven’t even seen me today 

Grant: don’t need to. 

Grant: you’ll always be stunning to me. 

“Who keeps texting you?” 

I looked up from my screen to see Reid fixated on his game but still engaged in my business. 

“No one,” I harshly replied, making a conscious decision to turn my phone on vibrate so he wouldn’t hear the chime of my text notifications.  

With one nimble side glance, Reid eyed my screen. I nudged him away with extra force.

“Nosy much?!” 

This stunned him. He wasn’t used to my coldness, he probably expected me to smile in a chagrined manner and not confront it - as I would have done - but now I was fighting back, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he liked it. 

I knew he could read fast, but how he managed to look at my phone so quickly it was like he never even moved his eyes - I didn’t know. Somehow, though, he managed to capture Grant’s entire username, and I didn’t doubt that he caught my entire conversation with him, too.

“Who’s Grant?” The name rolled off his tongue like he was insulted to even be saying it. 

“No one.” 

He didn’t respond soon after I said this, which I misinterpreted as a little victory for me since I almost believed he was going to drop the subject, but in true Spencer Know It All Reid fashion, he just kept going. 

“‘You look stunning today B-T-W. You haven’t even seen me today. Don’t need to. You’ll always be stunning to me.’ Doesn’t really sound like a ‘no one’ to me.” His recitation of my entire PRIVATE conversation with Grant embarrassed me. 

Did I forget to add his eidetic memory and speed-reading ability to the list of reasons not to like him?

“Shut up!” I nudged him, this time using much more force than the last. I was becoming more and more inclined to push over his ridiculous chess game so that he’d finally take me seriously. 

“Oh, really clever by the way. Vaguely insinuating that you ‘might not be able to call him because you’re working overtime’ just so you don’t have to disclose the true nature of your job.” Spencer’s sarcasm was thick.

“Are you just jealous because the only date you’ve been on was a fake one with a serial killer and not even your actual girlfriend while she was alive?” My reference to Cat and Maeve caught the attention of the entire jet. 

Each member mentally rolled their eyes thinking ‘Here we go again.’ And if that wasn’t their reaction, they were certainly cringing at the fight that was ensuing. 

Things had been suspiciously good between the two of us today so it was about time we argued. We were due for our daily quarrel.

“Oh, that’s right! The only girls who like you are victims in our cases.” Now this comment was referring to Lila and Austin. (I had Penelope to thank for filling me in on all of Reid’s ‘entanglements’ after I was first reassigned).

“Really? You wanna go there?” He sassed back, diverting his attention away fully from his chess game now. “Do you know how many people get ‘catfished’ when using online dating websites? Or the statistics on how many people are raped, assaulted, or murdered by said ‘catfish’?” 

“I’m not stupid, Reid. He and I have been talking for months. We’ve been on calls and Facetime before, too. We’ve just never met in person. Sound familiar?” 

“What Maeve and I had is not at all comparable to what you and this ‘guy’ have. And just because you’ve seen his face before doesn’t mean he’s not a serial killer or operating under an alias.” 

I had to scoff. Who was he to label our relationship valid or not?

“What’s it to you anyway? We all know you’d be ecstatic if this guy turned out to be a serial killer or catfish. You’d get to rub it in my face and say ‘I told you so.’” 

This touched a nerve. He hated it when I attacked his nice-guy facade. 

“Is it so hard to believe I’m actually concerned for your wellbeing?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Fine. If you think I don’t care about you, then don’t come crying to me when you realize he’s not the guy you think he is.”

“Oh, trust me, I won’t! It’s not like you’d be able to protect me anyway, Pretty Boy.” I sneered, using Morgan’s nickname for him as an insult got to him, and I could see it in the way his jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. 

Hotch had to interject now. “Alright, (y/l/n), Reid, that’s enough. We need to focus on what’s actually important.” 

I settled back down in my seat, facing forward and avoiding eye contact with Reid. 

“Have fun on your date,” He muttered under his breath. “Hope you survive it.”

Bastard.

For the rest of the case, I was on edge. Deliberately avoiding him was a much harder task than one might think. I had to wait at least ten minutes for my coffee, so I wouldn’t be at the machine when he was there, and if I had to guess, he probably took longer just to make me wait in agitation. I had to awkwardly squeeze into a new spot beside Rossi and Hotch when we were delivering the profile. I had to ask not to travel in the same SUV as him. 

And this exhausting routine went on for days. In fact, I’d managed to almost go the entire case without interacting with him. That was until Hotch sent us both in the field to apprehend the unsub. 

“Are you sure?” I asked with clear reluctance. 

“Are you questioning me?” Hotch replied sternly. 

“No, sir.” 

I was already on thin ice being the new recruit, so I knew better than to question any of Hotch’s orders. And as miserable as working with Reid was, I figured he’d at least ease up on the hostility when we needed to be professional. Evidently though, even in the field, he wasn’t willing to work together with me. 

It was a quick decision, not careless in the least, however. The unsub had locked himself in his warehouse and refused to leave unless we were brave enough to drag him out of there ourselves. The ultimatum he gave specified that only one of us could do it and we both agreed that I should go in, seeing as he’d underestimate my strength as a woman, and I’d have the upperhand when I inevitably apprehended him. 

However, he also explicitly told us that I couldn’t come in with a gun - it had to be an even playing field. 

“You are not going in without a gun,”  Reid ordered. 

“We don’t have time to argue about this - I have a spare on me, okay? There are three hostages in there, two of which are children.” Without giving him a chance to respond, I handed him my gun and holster.

Had I let him waste a single second more of my time, we wouldn’t have been able to save the three hostages and successfully arrest the unsub. I saw this as a victory and I was almost willing to celebrate it with him, but it wasn’t long before he let our enmity tear us apart again. 

When we got back to the precinct, I went to the locker room to change, then suddenly, Hotch came in. 

“I’ve been informed that you went in unarmed against a fellow agent’s orders. This matter will be discussed in my office when we get back. I should warn you, (y/n), you do not want to make this mistake again.” Hotch left me with those foreboding words, and I knew, I knew immediately that Reid was to blame for this.

If I took a look in the mirror of my locker, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I saw that my face was turning a bright shade of red. I was fuming - bursting at the seams from the anger building within me that was desperately fighting to escape. I could imagine myself as a cartoon character with steam blowing out either of my ears. I was about to go on a rampage, and no one - absolutely no one - could stop me. 

The last straw was hearing him come in. This was my opportunity to unleash what was already boiling. 

“What the hell, Reid? ‘(y/n) went in unarmed.’ Seriously?!” I undid the velcro on my vest so hastily out of my blind rage that the spiky side of the velcro strip nearly sliced my finger. “Are you trying to get me fired?” 

“If that’s what it takes to make you realize how stupid of a choice that was, then yes, I do.” He was so calm and collected in his inflection that it angered me all the more. 

“What are you even talking about? What ‘stupid choice’? You knew I had a second gun on me. And even if I didn’t carry it, I still would’ve had my vest on. I wasn’t going in unarmed or unprotected, so why would you tell Hotch that?” 

“In the time it would take you to assess the danger, react, and then reach for the gun at your ankle, the unsub would’ve been able to shoot you twice - if not more. That’s going in unprepared, which is going in unarmed.”

I scoffed in disbelief that he was actually reprimanding me. “Are you kidding? This is all based on a technicality? Did your eidetic memory somehow forget about what happened with Maeve? Because my memory didn’t. I know for a fact that you went into that warehouse without a vest or a weapon. And unlike you, I had a spare and my vest. AND I actually apprehended the unsub. Did you stop Diane?”  

This crossed a line and I knew it, but it was too late to take it back, and clearly, it was much too late to repair any relationship I had with him. We were far beyond the point of no return. 

He was so mad that he didn’t even answer me. The only response I could gauge was from his body language, which by the looks of it, all the signs of anger were plain on his face. He clenched his jaw so hard I could hear his teeth grind. Even his nostrils flared so primitively. His eyes narrowed down at me with a glare that said, ‘I’m the predator and you’re the prey.’

“Yeah, exactly.” I spat when he stayed silent. 

I turned around, starting towards the exit, but I was too furious to stop there, so I spun around and unleashed the remainder of my wrath that had been dying to come out. 

“Look, I get it. I’m the new kid around here, and it sucks when someone new comes in and changes up the team dynamic, but any mistake I make, or any mistake Hotch thinks I make, could send me packing. You’ve been working in this unit for years, and even if Hotch questions your choices, he won’t reassign you. He won’t even threaten it. He’s willing to overlook your mistakes because he knows that what you have to contribute to the team is too vital to let go, but I haven’t even had my chance to show him what I have to offer. So when I do make a mistake, there is nothing for me to fall back on, nothing to redeem me, and no safety net, but you? You have years of experience on your back to break your fall. So don’t you dare act like you’re doing me a favor by reporting my ‘mistake’ to Hotch. You might be costing me my dream job, and if you think that makes us friends - think again.” 

I stormed out of the locker room seeing red. 

This war was far from over. 

_ _ _

“You’re clenching your fists again,” Emily said under her breath. I was grateful that she said it in a hushed tone, otherwise she might’ve revealed my lingering anger to the whole jet, which wouldn’t have been good. 

I immediately unclenched them, opening up my hands to reveal small, dark C shaped imprints on my palms from where my nails had dug into them. 

I should’ve expected that she would’ve learned at least one of my tells by now. I did have many after all. Cheek biting, fist-clenching, leg bouncing. 

“Something bothering you?” She probed quietly. 

She set her book down to give her undivided attention to this conversation. That was enough to tell me that an excuse like, ‘Nothing, I’m fine,’ would not suffice. She wouldn’t be satisfied until I told her the truth, which I surely did not want to tell. So I settled for a half-truth.

“Hotch wants to talk when we get back.” 

From my peripherals, I saw her knit her brows together in confusion. “Is . . . is that it?”

“Mhm.” I lied. 

“But that’s not enough to warrant the fist clenching. Cheek biting - sure - you do it when you’re anxious, but not fist-clenching. You only do that when you’re angry about something.�� 

“Oh, so you have figured out all my tells,” I smirked.

“Pfft, I figured them all out the first week you got here, but I won’t tell you the rest, otherwise you might try and hide them from me,” She joked. 

I shook my head playfully. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just worked up about something - it’s nothing you need to worry about though.” Habitually, my eyes looked right up in his direction. I caught a glimpse of him sprawled against the couch, sleeping. He was lucky I wasn’t ranting about the little stunt he pulled earlier to Emily. He should be thankful that I was even trying to protect his reputation to her at all. 

“I get it if you don’t want to talk about it, but it does help. Take it from me, someone who really only trusts myself, you shouldn’t hide what you feel.” 

What you feel. 

I clung onto those words. 

What was I really feeling? 

Was I upset that instead of receiving praise for the arrest I made, I was scolded like a child? Was I angry that Hotch believed what Reid had to say about my “problematic behavior” instead of believing in me? 

Or did I feel betrayed that despite my best efforts to build a bridge, Reid was tearing it apart brick by brick? Burning it to pieces with the fire of his rage?

“Thanks.” I bleakly said to Emily. I would’ve told her the truth, but it didn’t feel necessary at that moment. If anything, it just would’ve reflected badly on me. 

Truthfully, she was the closest thing I had to a friend in the BAU, and if I wanted a permanent spot here, I needed to make more of them - and fast. 

“Hey, (y/n), we’re all going down to O’Keefs tonight to celebrate. You wanna join us?” Morgan asked, walking up the aisle and crouching down beside my seat to talk to me. 

“Oh, I wish I could, but I have to talk with Hotch when we get back,” I explained, smiling politely. 

“We can postpone the meeting till first thing Monday morning. I need to go home and be with Jack, anyway,” Hotch added. 

I didn’t realize he could hear me from where he was sitting, which made me all the more nervous that he might’ve overheard the entire conversation between me and Emily earlier. 

“Looks like I’m free,” I looked back at Morgan. “Does the offer still stand?”

“Anything for you, sweet cheeks.” He winked. 

Judging from the lightness of the atmosphere, everyone, except maybe Hotch and Rossi, would be celebrating at O’Keefs - including Spencer. 

I think I might’ve actually preferred to be scolded by Hotch tonight, instead of being silently glared at by Spencer, but it was already too late to revoke my confirmation of presence. 

Because, if Hotch could hear me from where he was sitting, then Spencer could, too. 

He already heard I was coming, and there was no way I was backing down.

_ _ _ 

In spite of the fact that I could barely hear myself think over the loud chatter and blasting music, I could still feel the rage radiating off of Spencer. You would think with how long his nap was on the jet, he wouldn’t be so cranky, but I guess he just couldn’t sleep off his disdain for me after our minor altercation. 

I wondered if the team could see it, too. The way he was burning a hole into me with his fiery stare. The tension was palpable, as it has always been, but remember - I’m not the one who wanted it that way. 

He started this. I was only making the feeling mutual. 

“So what about you, (y/n)? Are you seeing anyone?” 

I tried to hide my growing smirk behind the rim of my beer, but I knew I couldn’t hide much from them. Of course, right across from me, Spencer was glaring at me expectantly, waiting for the answer he already knew. 

“Oooh, look at her - she’s blushing! Spill.” Penelope ordered, beating her palm on the table so enthusiastically it shook all the drinks on it.  

“Well, there’s this one guy I’ve been seeing for a while,” The second I started speaking, I noticed Spencer rolling his eyes. I figured his apprehension was the only response of its kind that I would receive, but I was very mistaken. 

“How did you two meet?” Penelope giddily asked, nearly jumping up and down in her seat. 

“A dating app, actually.” 

The table went completely silent, and I immediately felt my stomach drop. It was as if I’d just said something very wrong. With just a quick glance in front of me, Spencer was basking in this. 

What a dick.

Emily hesitated to ask. “...Have you two met in person before?” 

Now it was my turn to hesitate to speak. “No, not yet.” 

I took another sip of my drink even though I wasn’t thirsty. I just wanted to hide any part of my face I could to shield myself from the five sets of eyes burning holes into me now, rather than just the one. Trying to make matters better, I spoke all too quickly, nearly sputtering on my beer. “I’m completely safe, though. Nothing sketchy’s going on, I promise.” 

“Of course,” JJ agreed. “We totally trust you,” neglecting to attach the cliche, ‘It’s him we don’t trust.’ But if she had, it would’ve spoken everyone’s bubble thoughts right about now. 

“Just be careful, mama.” Derek’s response felt the most sincere, and I honestly believed he was happy for me, but it didn’t change how much their judgement initially stung. 

For the rest of the night, I didn’t talk. No one noticed. 

Except maybe the last person I wanted to notice. 

I quietly slipped away somewhere in the night when the conversation was at its highest precisely so they wouldn’t question where I was going or if I was okay. If they had asked, the truthful answer to the former would’ve been ‘just outside to get some air’ and the latter ‘no.’

The cool breeze drifted through the door like rising fog and for the briefest moment in time, I felt suspended in the space around me - I’d finally caught my breath. That feeling wouldn’t last long, though. 

I’d intentionally gone outside to compose myself until I came back a person who wasn’t on the verge of tears, but apparently, trying to pull myself only resulted in my falling apart. A ball of yarn unraveling is the closest comparison I can draw to what I must’ve looked like, crying quietly on the street.

“I figured I’d find you here.” 

It was the mere sound of someone’s voice that shocked me, but it was the person whose voice it was that led to the frustration that followed. 

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be inside talking to the team of people who also agree with you about Grant?” 

He was too much of a nuisance to warrant exchanging eye contact with so I simply stared forward as I spoke and wiped the tears away that were still pooling on my lower lash line. I hoped he hadn’t actually seen me crying, but from what I could tell, he was probably standing there long before he said something. And if he was truly looking at me as deeply as it felt like right now, then he’d have noticed my bloodshot eyes, flushed cheeks, and unending sniffling. 

“Is that why you disappeared back there? Because you’re upset they didn’t exactly like the idea of your relationship?” The pain in the ass really tried, he really tried to get me to look at him by facing me and making these gestures with his hands that should’ve gotten my attention, but instead, I stayed put leaning against the wall, keeping my line of sight straight ahead. 

“(Y/n), they weren’t insulting you or judging you -”

“Then why did it feel like it?” For the first time since he’d joined me, I’d looked at him. I didn’t even mean to and I had every intention of denying him that privilege for the entire duration of our conversation, but as soon as I asked him my question, we locked eyes, and I saw it written all over his face. 

He felt sorry for me. 

Now, he could clearly make out how distraught I was from this unobstructed view of my face that was kindled by the dim, flickering yellow glow of the streetlight beside us. And he kept staring, looking into my eyes to read me just as easily and just as quickly as he read a book. 

“All we want is for you to be safe,” His voice crackled momentarily, and it actually touched some part of me for how genuine it sounded. “We weren’t trying to judge you or to insult you, and I’m sorry if it felt that way, but if we want your safety, and you tell us about something that could be potentially harmful, then of course we’re going to be apprehensive about it. That’s how people that care about you should react.”

“So are you saying that I don’t care about myself because I’m engaging in something risky?” Isn’t that the most ironic statement of this year? The definition of our job was risky, and even if this wasn’t the safest relationship on the planet, it was nothing like what we put ourselves through everyday being in the field. 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying -”

“So what are you saying?” I dared. He shook his head and sighed like he was about to give up, but I needed an answer. “No, please, do continue. Finish what you were gonna say. Since you apparently know everything, 187. Please go ahead - tell me what you think I should do.” 

Tell me what you really came out here to say, I ordered him with my eyes.

“I think I respect you more than you respect yourself, and that’s really saying something. Because if you actually liked yourself as much as I do, then you would realize that subjecting yourself to this nonsensicality of a long-distance relationship is not only dangerous - but insulting to your worth, too. You deserve more than that, (y/n).” He couldn’t have been clearer when he murmured a low and firm, “Much more.” 

The world was spinning on its axis too fast for me to process anything he said before snapping back at him. “So what exactly is it you want me to do?”

With utmost clarity in both annunciation and intention, he told me, “Break up with him.” 

Not a shadow of a doubt in his words. 

Then, like the phantom of the opera himself, he vanished back into the bar, but even if he had stayed, I wouldn’t have had anything to say to him. I was simply rendered speechless.

Circling back to my previous argument, I questioned once more why was it any of his business anyway? I was allowed to do as I pleased and I most certainly did not have to listen to him. And I didn’t. 

But I should’ve. 

_ _ _ 

My Monday morning meeting with Hotch wasn’t nearly as fire and brimstone as I thought it would be. It did however feel like the equivalent to an “I’m disappointed in you” parent speech. In some ways, I related to the average teen who was grounded. Except instead of my phone being taken away, it was my freedom. From now on, I could only follow executive orders that had been given to me. At least for the time being. 

It was clear that, deep down, some part of Hotch knew what I’d done was the right call, but he couldn’t give me any favors. Not until they were deserved on my end. 

Walking onto the jet after our meeting, however, felt more juvenile than the punishment itself. I was a kid again, re-entering my classroom after using the restroom, only to have all eyes on me as I came through the door.

As per usual, the only empty chair was next to Reid. There’d been too many instances of this happening to think it was just a coincidence. At this point, I had to assume it was by design. Whose design however? That I didn’t know.

“Hello, trouble,” He sang when I took my seat. 

I could only assume that this new nickname was based on what took place in Hotch’s office - thanks to him, need I remind you - but I didn’t care to know the origin because that would require talking to him, and for several reasons, that was the last thing I wanted to do. The first of which was what happened less than three days ago. An event we both hadn’t mentioned yet, and I hoped we never would. 

I took every preventative measure in the book. I changed seats with JJ. I moved to the couch. I even started reading in the little hallway between the kitchenette and bathroom of the jet to avoid sitting beside him, but against all my best efforts, he always found a way to bug me. When there’s a will, there’s a way. After exhausting any real reason he had to talk to me, he had to get creative. 

“You’ve been on that same page for four minutes and twenty-seven seconds.” I heard him say when he walked up to the kitchen to reach for the pot of coffee. Almost expecting I’d ask him what he meant, he added the explanation casually. “It never takes you more than three minutes and twelve seconds to move onto the next page. So either you’re not understanding the material or you’re not actually reading.”

It was utterly hilarious of him to imply that either of those things were definitely the answer. “What if I’m just taking my time reading this page, genius? Ever thought of that?” 

His eyes turned into slits as he leaned in closer to examine me. “You’re blinking rate just increased, too.”

“Stop!” I screeched childishly, pushing him away by his shoulders in an attempt to get him off my back, but he was far from off my back. No, he was right against it. More specifically, his hand was on the small of it. 

Leaning in so close that his lips were practically pressing on the shell of my ear, he whispered, “Come find me when you’re ready to tell me the truth.”

He didn’t need to know his words or actions had any sort of effect on me, so I kept the most stoic facial expression on, and I didn’t say a single thing back. He turned back around to leave with the hand on my back being the last thing to go. His lingering touch caused a shiver to run down my spine while paradoxically burning my body from the friction. 

I was disgusted with myself for having let him elicit any sort of reaction from me, even if he wasn’t aware of it. 

“Yeah ... well, d-don’t expect that to be anytime soon,” was my poor attempt at a retort to shut him up.

“Whatever you say, trouble.” 

_  _ _ 

Personal space can be a wonderful thing. Much less so when it’s invaded, however. 

After what felt like the longest flight ever, all I wanted was to take a shower and go to bed. My wishes were granted when I was able to wash off the stress and exhaustion and slip into a blush pink satin pajama set Grant sent me that I’d been meaning to wear. The plunging neck of the tank top was lined with lace and adorned with the tiniest little bow at the center. To match the shirt, the hem of the shorts were lined with lace that trailed up the small triangular slits on the side of the shorts, where at the vertex of them was the same little bow detail. For such a pure and innocent color as baby pink, you’d think it’d be somewhat less revealing. The longer I started at myself in the mirror while wearing it, the more aware I’d become of the intentions behind why Grant had sent it. 

How cute, I thought, rolling my eyes.

Gifts should always be appreciated, if for no other reason than the effort put into it, but this just felt slimy. There was obviously no valiant romantic intent behind the negligee, which spoiled the delight of receiving something out of the blue from him. What’s worse was that I wasn’t even sure how to thank him for something like this. 

Me: thank you for the pajamas. they’re so cute!

Lying was easier over text message, in case you were wondering what the perks of a long distance relationship were. 

Grant: good, I’m glad you like them. are you wearing them right now? 

But sometimes, when you should lie, you don’t. And you regret it later on - take it from me. 

Me: yeah, they’re super comfy

Grant: great! i wanna see them on! take a pic 

As if to compensate for the indisputable hatred I had for this lingerie and what it stood for in our relationship, I did the only thing I could think that would make him think I really liked them. That I felt good in them. 

I took pictures - not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, Yelp review pictures, though - provocative ones. 

In the same breath I went to take them, though, Spencer’s words rang through my head. 

You deserve more than that. Much more. 

Shaking off the thought of Spencer, I decided against what the little voice in my head that sounded too similar to his would’ve said. 

To add to the illusion, I situated myself within the hotel sheets and used the front camera to capture my chest that was very much on display in this top. In the middle of rolling around the bed, trying to find the angles that wouldn’t show my face of dejection, the door opened. 

Instantaneously, I clawed at the sheets until they wrapped around me like a towel. I was ashamed to admit they provided more coverage than these ‘pajamas’ did.

My shriek of shock must’ve sounded familiar to the stranger intruding on me because no sooner did I scream than they questioned, “(Y/n)? What are you doing here?”

Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. 

“Spencer, what the hell are you doing in here?” I grumbled, struggling to maintain a tight enough grip on the sheets that would keep them from falling and unveiling a sight I desperately did not want him to see. 

“I asked you first.” 

Boy, if you only knew how badly I wanted to slap that smirk right off his face. “This is my hotel room obviously. Your turn.” 

Returning just the same tone, inflection, and vocals, he imitated me. “This is my hotel room obviously.” Like one of those magic tricks he’d show Henry or Jack, he miraculously flashed a room key between his index and middle finger that wasn’t there before. 

“No, that’s impossible.”

“I opened the door, didn’t I?” That damn smirk was still there when he asked this. Maybe, just maybe, if it hadn’t been so condescending, I would’ve thought his sarcasm was ... attractive. Disgusting, I know. 

“Well, if you actually plan on staying here, then you’re sleeping on the floor or the couch, got it?”

My question went unanswered until I turned around to follow where he’d traveled in the time that I spent pondering how this happened. Now perched at the window, sitting on the arm of the chair in a way that chairs weren’t meant to be sat on, he continued to stare silently at me. 

“What? What is it?” I urged. 

“What’s going on with the …” He made a side to side sweeping motion with his key card. “Bed sheets?” 

Consciously, I shimmied the fabric further up my body. Seeing as there was virtually no way to escape an honest answer, I confessed. “If you must know ... I’m wearing p-pajamas.” My own body was rejecting the shameful admission causing the word to stumble out of my mouth. 

He didn’t need to know any more than that to gather what kind of garments they were. He already figured it out.

“Did Grant give them to you?”

I almost rolled my eyes at the implication. “What makes you say that?” 

“Because I know you,” He punctuated every word perfectly. “And I know that you wear big shirts and sweatpants to bed because you don’t see the point of spending money on clothes that are only made for you to sleep in - especially if they’re clothes that make you uncomfortable like these ones clearly do.” 

Although, I greatly despised the fact that there was even a little bit of a chance that I might’ve agreed with him, I still defended Grant. “It was a thoughtful gesture.”

“Thoughtful, right,” He scoffed. “And which head was he thinking with?” 

I was baffled he had the gall to say such an innuendo. “Spencer!”

How dare he? So what if Grant bought me something provocative because he was physically attracted to me? At least someone was. 

Despite the ferocity plain on his face, he chose not to pursue this conversation. Visibly biting back on words he knew would hurt me, Spencer managed to sound remarkably genuine when he promised me, “I won’t look if you don’t want me to.” 

I want you to, was my very first thought. Oh, God, that’s so fucked up, was my second. 

He underlined his sincerity by turning fully around until he was facing the window. “But we should probably put the sheets back on the bed if you plan on sleeping on it.”

He was so patient as he waited for me to remove the cloth from my body. It almost made me feel guilty. He didn’t grumble or gripe, nor did he pressure me to do it at all. So by rights, there should’ve been no reason for me to take so long to let the barrier fall - he wasn’t looking at me. But I was just so goddamn embarrassed. 

This wasn’t me, and even he knew that. 

“You can turn around now,” I mumbled quietly once my safety net of a bedsheet had abandoned me. My arms were crossed over my chest and my thighs were pressed so tightly against each other as if to limit the surface area that Spencer could scrutinize. 

That never came. 

He did look, I could tell that much. But it wasn’t a look I’d ever seen before. It wasn’t rage or annoyance or pity. It was a look of lust. 

A look that made me positively weak in the knees. A look far more sensual than even my racy garments. 

“I’ll just sleep in Morgan’s room tonight, okay?” He offered once he finally broke out of his incapacitation. Grabbing the two opposite corners of the sheets that I was holding, it was a team effort as we arranged the covers where they belonged. It was probably the longest period of time we’d ever worked together without fighting or talking at all for that matter..

Not a single word was exchanged between us while Spencer gathered his things to leave for Derek’s. The room started to feel dangerously empty in the stillness. 

When he slipped past me to make his way out, I caught his upper arm, successfully pulling him back around.

I could’ve been sweet, I should’ve. But that wasn’t our thing. So I settled for what came naturally to us and what would set off the least amount of red flags - I didn’t play nice. “As long as you promise not to hog the entire bed with your behemoth body, we can sleep together -” Catching the words as soon as they came out and what they could’ve implied, I began backtracking. “Sleep in the same bed. Sleep as in rest. Not sleep as in … anything else.” 

Then, in one of those rare moments- he laughed. He actually laughed. Like a real, hearty, sudden laugh. “I know what you meant, (y/n).” 

I’ll never forget the smile that followed the world’s greatest laugh either. 

Oh, God, I’m so fucked up. 

_ _ _

Spencer’s POV

Domesticated animals are smarter than we give them credit for. Studies have shown that pets can actually sense time; They know when it’s time for their owner to leave for the day and when they’ll be coming home, too. 

Animals aren’t dumb - and neither was I. 

Like a dog sniffing out their owner’s imminent absence in the home, I could tell (y/n) was leaving the hotel room for the night. If her current state wasn’t convincing enough, then her behavior throughout the entire day supported that theory just as well. 

Whether it was her phone, the clock on the wall, or her watch, she was evidently keeping a close eye on the time. She did it so often, though, that you would think she would just use simple deductions to figure out what time it was by estimating the time it was when she last checked, but nope. She rarely let more than a minute go by without monitoring the clock.

My suspicions didn’t end there. What’s more suggestive was the anxious fidgeting. She had her tells of anxiety - everyone does - but this was a level of stress I’d never seen her exhibit before, not even in the field. 

She kept cracking her knuckles, even when she’d exhausting all the popping noises she could from them. Her leg-bobbing was another big tell, too. I tend to sit on tables rather than in the chairs at said table, allowing me to feel the earthquake occurring on the precinct floor. Her leg was bouncing up and down so vigorously it was practically shaking the room. 

I would’ve asked her what she was so impatient about, but I feared I already knew the answer.

Grant.

And if I never heard that name roll off her tongue again, it would be too soon. 

That didn’t mean I couldn’t ask where she was going, though.

Pretending to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I barely let my eyes venture far off the page when I loudly asked from the window seat, “So where are you going tonight, trouble?” 

The faintest sound of a chuckle erupted in the bathroom, most likely from the nickname I hadn’t let die yet. 

“Nunya,” was her ever-so mature answer. 

I didn’t want to give her the chance to say ‘nunya business’ like I knew she would, so I quickly interjected with a monotone, “How clever of you.” If she wanted to be a child about this, then so be it. 

“Let’s see. You brought your good heels out of your suitcase, which you only wear on special occasions. And you put on a different perfume than the one you usually use, so I’m assuming it’s new. ... If I didn’t know any better, trouble, I’d say you’re going on a date.” 

She peeked her head out of the bathroom doorway to say, “You’re creepy, you know that?” 

Seeing the small portion of her face that was embellished with a smile would’ve been enough if only I knew what dress she was hiding in behind that wall. I had yet to see that part of her ensemble, but if I had to guess, it would break my heart. 

“Just saying,” I casually lied while clearing my throat. 

“Well,” I heard her begin from within the bathroom. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Grant is meeting me tonight.” 

Kill me now.

“I thought Grant lived in D.C.” Not that that would change much if he was already here. 

“Yes, he does, but he’s driving all the way here to meet me. Seeee,” She drew out the word. “Would a serial killer do that?” 

I refrained from giving the obvious answer: Yes. 

“Well, I hope you don’t plan on bringing him back here. Otherwise, that’d be terribly awkward, don’t you think?” My allusion to the possibility that Grant would come back here to find me in her bed was borne from the intentions that were a complete contradiction to the words I’d just spoken. It, in fact, wouldn’t be terribly awkward. No, it would be fun. For me at least. 

I would have loved to have seen the look on his face, and the worry on hers as she tried to explain who I was and why I had any right to be in (y/n)’s gravity. 

The room went silent again while I stayed on the same page of my book and, unbeknownst to her, waited for her to enter the room. How long she was taking was starting to worry me, though. 

“Need any help in there?” I called out.

“Nope,” She said through a strained voice that proved she was indeed struggling with something. 

“Really?” I asked once more to give her another opportunity to lower her colossal pride. “Cause it sounds like you need help.” 

“Nope. I’m good.” Liar. 

I knew her too well. I counted down to the exact second when she finally scrambled to ask, “Can you help me zip up my dress?”

“Yyyup.” I’d already resigned to the fact that I would have to help her, bouncing happily off the bed when she finally admitted it and letting myself lose the page I was on as I tossed the book haphazardly behind me. 

I was forced to join her in the bathroom for it was already hard for her to humble herself enough to ask me for help, so she certainly couldn’t be expected to lower her pride again and walk out to a place more convenient for me. 

The first thing I noticed was that it was a space clearly not made for two. It was so cramped that I ended up right against her in order to fit. The second thing I noticed was how she made no movements to distance herself. She was so close to me that I could actually see the little hairs on the back of her neck standing up from where my breath ghosted on the area. The sterile smell of hotel bathrooms had been replaced by the flowery, aromatic scent of her new perfume, and my heart broke all over again. 

Using the back of my fingers, I cast a barely-there caress on her neck to stroke her hair out of the way to clear the path of the zipper. The little hairs on the back of her neck stood up again. 

She liked that.

“So do I get to know where you’re going?” I reached for the zipper on the small of her back. “For safety purposes, of course.” 

“Aww, you looking out for me, Dr. Reid?” She teased in a seductive tone while gathering her hair into a makeshift ponytail that for the shortest second recorded in time might’ve reminded me of a constantly recurring intrusive image. 

“Always, trouble.” 

The zipper fastened with absolutely no resistance all the way to the top. My eyes flashed to the mirror to catch her expression, which told me everything I needed to know. 

What a pretty little liar. She didn’t actually need my help. 

Comprehending that the realization dawned on me, she gave me what she knew would shut me up. “We’re going to The Rooftop at Lamont’s.” 

How effortlessly she slipped past me without a thank you or a glance in my direction served as a rude awakening.

“Well, you should take an umbrella with you. It looks like there’s gonna be a storm tonight.” This was my small way of coming to terms with the reality of the situation. 

“Eh,” She waved my suggestion off with a dismissive hand. “We’ll be fine. Oh, and don’t even think about stalking me!” She warned before exiting the room.

In the blink of an eye, she was gone - my peace of mind having left with her. 

_ _ _ 

The amount of sleep you need varies for each person and is affected by several factors. However, for most adults, 7–9 hours per night is the ideal amount. And I was slowly reducing that optimal quantity, hour by hour, until there was none left. 

I would continue to sacrifice my sleep so long as I was awake for her return. If she’d asked why I was still up, I would lie. Though I wouldn’t look half so pretty as she did when she lied. 

Losing rest seemed like such a small price to pay to make sure I was fully alert in the event that an emergency happened, even if I would suffer the consequences in the morning. But hey - that’s what caffeine is for, isn’t it? To re-energize oneself after staying up to guarantee one’s enemy’s safety. 

Yeah, I’m sure that’s exactly why Kaldi invented coffee in 750 A.D. 

Besides the thunderstorm, my mind also made great company for situations like these. Granted, the visions it would project kept me up for a reason - they were all so awful. 

There was simply no projected reality where things would turn out alright. 

If she had the time of her life on her date, she would come back to throw it in my face that I’d been wrong, and her admiration for Grant would have deepened. 

Or if he stood her up, she’d be devastated, but instead of letting me console her, she’d push me away as easily as she always did.

In a more neutral instance, perhaps she would admit it wasn’t as great meeting him as she thought it would be and the relationship would fade out for innocent reasons. Even if that seemed like the most favorable circumstance, she would eventually grow to resent me for planting the seed of doubt in her head in the first place.

But nothing- nothing I could have imagined would be as treacherous as what actually happened.

At exactly 1:09 a.m, my phone started to ring. I can’t explain to you what it was, but I just knew - it was her calling, and it wasn’t even her number.

“(Y/n)? Is everything okay?” 

If she said something beforehand, I couldn’t hear her because the storm was too loud and her voice was too quiet. “Did I wake you up?” 

I reassured her with a tone I didn’t even recognize. “No, no. I was awake. Why? What’s up?” The line went quiet again, forcing me to prompt her to speak in order to find out if she was still there on the call. “(Y/n)?”

“Spencer ...” She choked out a hoarse sob. “I need you. I need you to come get me, please.” 

My eyes clenched shut at the dreadful sound of her sorrow, and I jolted into action. After scrambling to gather the keys to her car that she’d left behind, I fled the room faster than ever before. 

“I’m on my way, (y/n). Stay right there. You’re at The Rooftop at Lamont’s right?” 

The poor thing took the longest pause in history, either from shame or disorientation. “He threw me in the back of his car and drove me all the way to D.C. I …” Her breath caught on her dry throat again. “I, um, I managed to escape and now I’ve barricaded myself in a payphone booth. I haven’t called the police yet. You were the first person I thought to call. I just, I just needed to hear your voice.”

My knuckles turned an unfamiliar shade of white when I gripped the steering wheel, picturing her caged up in a rectangular box, dialing my number instead of 911 just so she could hear my voice.

“Everything is gonna be okay. I promise you. My ETA is 1:28. That’s in 19 minutes. Are you okay being there for that long or do you want to find somewhere safer?”

I could no longer distinguish the difference between talking to her right now and talking to a victim in distress. I was speaking with the same tone and inflection but feeling a sharp pain in my chest that wasn’t there before. 

“I can stay here. Just ... don’t hang up, okay?” The fact that the possibility of me abandoning her over the phone even crossed her mind was more than enough to get me to drive well over the speed limit. 

The list of traffic infractions only grew from there because honestly? Screw my safety or anyone else’s. Her’s was the only one that mattered. She was the priority. 

She was my priority. 

Throughout the entire call, I kept repeating, “You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.” Frankly, it was something we both needed to hear. 

It was both the fastest and slowest 19 minutes of my life. Time no longer felt real when I finally found the payphone booth that boxed in my troublesome girl. No sooner did I drive up to the sidewalk than I ran out of the car to sprint the short distance to free her from her coop.

“(Y/n)!” I shouted, swinging the door open and throwing caution to the wind in the process. Immediately, she dropped the phone, not even bothering to replace it onto its receiver. 

The pouring rain had stripped her of her dignity. Mascara ran down her face in pigmented streams of black. Her curled hair was dampened into strings. But worse of all, it hadn’t washed away the darkening bruises on her skin.

“Oh my god, Spencer!” She cried as she ran into my open arms. 

Her body collided with mine in such a gentle manner that I had to wonder how that was possible at all or if it was a figment of my imagination. Was our collision actually that gentle or did it seem that way because of how good it felt to have her arms and legs latch around my entire torso, crossing and connecting somewhere in between?

With one arm under her thighs to hold her up, I pulled her impossibly closer to me by cradling the back of her head with the other hand. 

Her small hands found their way into my hair, a new sensation I tried not to indulge in so as not to let my attention stray away from the little life I was holding in my arms. 

She was so cold. 

Shivering from my warm embrace, her teeth chattered as she whispered, “I’m so sorry, Spencer. You were right I should’ve listened -”

“Shh, it’s okay, (y/n),” I said with the hopes that I could make the pounding heart that was thumping against my shoulder settle down until it reached her standard heart rate of 67 beats per minute. 

After a second of just holding her wordlessly, she spoke again. 

“I don’t wanna fight.” She surrendered so easily to me that I could hardly believe this was her at all. 

“I don’t wanna fight with you either.” 

That was entirely true. Fighting with her was the last thing on my mind. The first was getting her into my car. 

It was easier that I imagined it would be, but then again, it’s easy to do things when you’re motivated in this way. 

Before I loosened my hold on her to shut the passenger door, she squeezed me a little tighter, as if to be absolutely certain this was real and not some cruel dream.

“Thank you,” She hummed into the crook of my neck. From where her shoulder was digging into my throat, I couldn’t exactly respond verbally, so I settled for rubbing my hand up and down her back comfortingly. 

“Let’s take you home,” I basically said to myself seeing as it was too quiet to be discernible. 

“No,” She shook her head rapidly. “Take me to your apartment.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to go back to the hotel right now. I need to be somewhere I feel safe.”

My apartment is closer than the hotel, I reasoned, pretending it was the logic of it that made my heart swell and not the statement I would fixate on for the entire duration of the ride there. 

I need to be somewhere I feel safe. 

And that’s wherever I’m with you.

_ _ _ 

Reader’s POV

Porcelain wall tiles gleamed back at me, mocking my wretched misery. They were much prettier than me, but then again, anything else would be prettier than me right about now.

I certainly wasn’t the belle of the ball in my bare naked state. The fact that I was sitting in a pool of my own washed off dried blood didn’t help either.

I would’ve looked away from the bright white walls, but where else were I to look? Into the pair of eyes that I was deliberately avoiding? The ones that were staring a hole through me right now? No. I couldn’t bear to meet those eyes. So I kept looking forward at the mean walls - those mean, mocking walls.

“Is the water warm enough?” He asked, dipping a finger into the bathwater to test it himself. 

I watched as his hand snuck into the tub and swirled around some water, causing soap bubbles to revitalize. 

For a reason I didn’t know nor could remember at this given moment, Spencer drove me to his apartment. That memory of why I was here was fuzzy, but the rest following my arrival was more vivid. Perhaps because it was all unfolding right now.

“I think I should go,” I murmured. The bathwater had gone cold, and the silence was too deafening. If I didn’t leave now, then I would be trapped forever. 

I leaned forward with my knees still pressed to my chest to protect my modesty while I tugged on the silver drain plug of the tub to release the suction.

“You can’t go home. You’ll be alone again, and who will be there to help you that time?” 

“I don’t need anybody’s help.” I responded curtly. 

“Then why did you call me tonight?”

“Why did you answer?” 

He was stunned by how I didn’t miss a beat with my question, stunned enough to purse his lips in contempt. “Should I have declined your call then? Said ‘no’ instead and let you fend for yourself? You know what - my bad, (y/n). I sincerely apologize that I care about you.” 

I scoffed at his factiousness. “No, what you should’ve done is whatever the hell you wanted to do. But clearly, since you said ‘yes’ and came to my rescue like I’m some victim in a case - you wanted to be there. I could chalk that up to you having a hero complex, but I think it’s time for you to admit you just wanted to see me at my worst so you could throw it in my face like you’re doing right now.”

He clenched his jaw in fury, muttering under his breath, “I should’ve left you in that booth.” 

This crossed a line, but I was just as ready to cross it, too. 

“But I bet you liked saving me. Seeing me as a damsel in distress that you could white knight. You like that, Spence? Does my weakness settle your deep rooted fear of inadequacy in strength?”

Shouldn’t have done that. 

For a second there, I was sincerely scared of the response I might’ve just elicited, so I shot up from the tub and grabbed the towel on the rack, quickly wrapping myself in it and avoiding Spencer’s gaze the entire way out of the bathroom.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Judging from the loudness of his voice, he was right on my heels, following me close behind. 

“You’re smart. Figure it out.” 

“God, why do you have to be such a pain in the ass? I don’t want to leave you like this.” It never failed to amaze me how he could both show disdain and concern for me in the matter of a sentence. 

“Well, you’re not leaving me like this - I’m leaving you like this.” My clever remark angered him more.

Seemingly from out of nowhere, Spencer called out from the end of his hallway, “What are you so scared of?” 

Reaching the end of my rapidly fraying rope, I spun around to throw my arms out to my side in just the same defensive manner as he did. “Nothing! Maybe I just don’t wanna be stuck in the apartment of the man who hates me! Can you blame me?” 

He ran a hasty hand through his hair, pulling at the strands out of pure irritation. “Why do you keep saying I hate you? How can any of what I’ve done for you tonight suggest that?”

He’d chosen his words carefully and for that, he was smart. His inclusivity of the word ‘tonight’ meant I could only reference his actions from the past few hours, which wouldn’t help my case, as opposed to the months and months that he’d given me the cold shoulder, which would have helped my case. But again, he was smart - he had me in a deadlock. I couldn’t accept defeat, but what could I possibly argue against his point? 

My body literally shook from the power of the deep groan that tore through my chest. “God, what do you want from me, Spencer?” I wanted nothing more than to be far, far away from him, but my body was resisting all those urges. Lunging forward, I pointed the sternest index finger at him, staring the most unforgiving glare into his soul. “Tell me - tell me what you want! Because when I was nice to you, you-you treated me like shit. And then when I stopped being nice to you, you still treated me like shit. So what -” I had to laugh to alleviate the sheer rage I was feeling. “What the fuck do you want from me? Because it’s like no matter what I do, it’s just not good enough for you!”

His eyebrows had furrowed and his eyes softened. He didn’t look angry whatsoever. No, he looked hurt. 

“Not good enough for me?” He leaned down to my level to look right into my eyes. “You are everything … everything to me.”

With one last breath, I cried out in anguish, “Then why? Why do you hate me so much?” 

He gulped back the lump in his throat - the last barrier that kept him from telling the truth. 

“I ... I never hated you. I just need to be in control of my thoughts and feelings at all times, otherwise, I feel-I feel like I’m going crazy. Like I’m on the verge of a psychotic break that I’m genetically predisposed to have. But when you came around - I lost all my control. You were inhabiting my dreams, you were stealing my sleep, occupying more and more space in my brain until there was no more room left to take. God, I think about you all the time, and I literally cannot physically stop it. I have no control anymore,” and somehow him saying that sounded something like an ‘I love you.’ 

“The only thing I could control was how I treated you. I thought being awful to you would get you to despise me enough to make me despise you, too, and while it was easier to be angry at you, it was so much worse having you hate me.”

“I never hated you, Spencer.” Never. 

“You should have,” He rasped. “I know I don’t deserve you, but I wish to spend every day proving that I want you. Oh, I want you so bad,” He sharply inhaled through gritted teeth, and I unconsciously laughed in return. His pain wasn’t funny in the least. What was amusing was knowing that he had the same excruciating longing for me that I had for him. 

“I don’t want control anymore if it means I can’t have you.”

He leaned in so carefully that I almost didn't register the movement at all. Our hearts were pounding to the same synchronized beat. We were the shore and the tide one in the same. Our breaths would draw in and out, in and out, as he held my face so gently. We were still the shore and the tide, but more than anything we were drowning in the ocean of ourselves. The rising waters of his admiration threatened to flood every empty nook and cranny of the room until it swallowed me whole. All I could feel was him, everywhere, filling absolutely everything. 

“Wow ... I finally got you speechless,” The cocky bastard hummed happily, letting his words vibrate on the smallest part of my lip.

“Oh, shut up,” I declared through a smirk I needed to fight off before finally closing that nearly imperceptible gap between us. 

All the forces in the world couldn’t tear us apart after we connected. They were no match for the force Spencer’s hands had as they pulled me impossibly closer. The pressure might’ve even been unbearable had it not been for the velvety pair of lips giving me back all the oxygen it stole from my lungs just seconds ago. They were so soft, like freshly washed sheets, like biting into cotton candy, like floating for the first time, feeling utterly weightless in water. It’s sweet, it’s so effortlessly sweet. 

Not nearly as sweet as the words that followed our parting. 

“Not enough for me?” He repeated, recalling my previous claim. “You’ve had me since the day you walked in, trouble.” 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

fingers crossed this fic doesn’t flop!

complete taglist: @muffin-cup @s1utformgg @no-alarms-no-surprises-silence @jemimah-b99 @justanothetfangirl @kylab @rainsong01 @calm-and-doctor @inkstainedwritergirl @rexorangecouny @ashwarren32 @carooliina @fortheloveofcriminalminds @watermelongubler  @obsessedmaggiemay @k-k0129 @aperrywilliams @eevee0722 @spencersmagic @spencerreid-mgg @half-blood-dork @goldeng1rl8 @just-a-bunch-of-fandoms @random-human-person @masumiyetimziyanoldu @dreamer-writer-fangirl @kalamitykait @jinxy175 @apolloroid 

tag not working: @gloriousmuffinempathstudent 

[cryinginthebackseat]

you’ve got more poison than sugar - part iii

part i  part ii  AO3

Fandom: Call Of Duty

Pairing: Russell Adler x Bell

Words: 6.572

Warnings: here’s where the smut tag comes into play, boy with a copious amount of power play and yeah, it’s messy af

Author’s note: after three months, a couple of brainstorming in the bathtub, delays, revisions and self-doubt, chapter 3 is finally done. i hope you'll enjoy it. also, i don't think i have to warn you what will go down in this chapter.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Fast forward to twenty-four hours since he discovers that Bell is fucking someone, Lazar drops about half a dozen of dusty manilas on his desk. Adler’s eyes sweep over them. He recognizes Bell’s handwriting etched across the memo attached to one of the folders right away.

He picks it up. It’s becoming second nature to him lately; drawing himself to her, an ineradicable magnetic force pulling his end of the pole.

A muscle on his jaw twitches.

For a moment, Adler despises her. He allows himself to really despise her. She’s started something in his head- a war; an intangible, unmanageable riot and if he lets her, she’ll rearrange him until he’s insane.

And he can’t let that happen. He’s the one holding the leash here, not vice versa.

“This is what we have on Dragovich’s activities in Yamantau,” Lazar informs him, pulling him back down to earth.

Adler stands, keeping his face easy, neutral. “Is this everything?”

“So far, yeah. Bell says she’ll let us know if she digs up something more from the archives though.”

Bell- the Bell in question- can be heard sighing, like she turns the corner and finds herself at a cul-de-sac; hunching over her desk, reading, her fingers keep buttoning and unbuttoning the top of her shirt, madly distracting (him).

She remains in her seat, for pretty much the remainder of the day. Eyes glued to the pages before her, factory-like dedication. She hardly looks up when Sims borrows her pen or when Park stands over her, sipping her coffee, inquiring about her progress behind a plume of smoke.

The only- truly time Bell ever lifts her head from her work is when Mason approaches her desk. She gazes up at him, notes forgotten, a kittenish smile etched across her face, come-hither eyes that could have time hung in motion, or held at ransom, perhaps. Mason’s own smile is full-blown, too wide, too genial, as he stalks closer and closer to her table, her whirlpool.

Adler does a double-take, like his eyeballs only functioning for the first time. He might as well be hallucinating it because no... this can’t be right, can it?

But then Mason is touching her hand, a blink-and-you-miss-it movement that was not lost on Adler and oh, she’s looking at him hopefully now.

The knots in Adler's stomach are vertiginous. Realization rings in his head like a gunshot, nearly leaving him in a daze. There’s no denying it. Not when the exchange unfurls before his eyes like a broken, warped film reel and there’s nothing to stop him from seeing it.

The thought of her and him haunts the rest of his waking hours, until there’s absolutely no telling how far he’s fallen into his own pit. 

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ( Alex Mason fucked her that night.

Mason was in her bed; beside her, above her, under her. Inside her. He imagines her fingers digging into the mattress as Mason rolled her onto her stomach, mouth trailing down the ladder of her spine. Their breaths intermingled in the seraphic glow of her hotel room.

Alex Mason fucked her. It shouldn't leave an acrid taste in his mouth, but it does.)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ She haphazardly reaches for the mug and takes a hearty gulp of its content. It’s not hers.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Bell says, mortified and places the mug down noisily on the desk. “I’m sorry, I thought it was mine.”

The rim of his mug is now stained with her lipstick. Adler bites down on a careful retort.

He thinks he knows now. Why he lets it happen, why he thinks of her in metaphors, why she gives him that vertigo. The answer is at the tip of his tongue- he can almost taste it, like spoiled milk or rancid gardenia. But it’s much easier to ignore it until the words grow diminuendo and disappear, that he thinks he imagined it all along.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You can’t obsess without turning around and getting lost in the middle.

Or losing a part of yourself in the process.

The idea of obsession, to obsess, perhaps is a far riskier thing for a person to have than playing the knife game, blindfolded with absolutely no telling where to start.

Yet we all do it, despite knowing the very dark flipside it possesses.

Perhaps it’s the very nature of humans, tucked deep within the pigeonhole of our minds, suffused by the very promise of bogus achievements that usually leads most of us insane, thinking that obsession is essential to living. But without it, artists are corporate slaves, slack-jawed know-it-alls moving stiffly in the middle of the hullabaloo that is our world; Paris would be just as unrecognizable today without Napoleon’s artistic legacy.

Obsession is good.

Obsession is dangerous.

The very dichotomy should have us all warded off of it.

Yet, again, we all do it. Again, and again, and again until it taints our veins. And it’s always far too late until you realize, that yes, now all you see is her, the air has been poisoned by her perfume, that her name is now forevermore engraved in your skin, like an overgild tattoo.

That you end up in downtown Berlin, out of sight, out of mind.

He finds them there, in a shoebox-sized cafe. Ill-lit, low-ceiling, coffee-stained floor that shows the wear of three decades worth of boots, pantoffels and high heels and Adler is sitting in his car, nursing a beer with but one all-consuming, perplexing thought:

Bell and Mason.

Someone told him they arrived together, about an hour ago. The cafe has become their usual haunts, his source said, ever since they’ve returned from Ukraine and Adler just can’t wrap his head around this- them. In his head, they’re wholly different entities. Two proper nouns separated by a conjunction, or a comma if mentioned in a list.

They’re the kind of opposites that he thought don’t attract, yet here they are.

Perhaps it's inevitable, both are products of brainwashing. Maybe they sensed one another, speaking in code, like detecting an RF signal from a nuclear bunker.

Then the doors to the cafe swing open. They step outside, cheeks flushed, his arm wrapped around her waist, her lips glueing on the slope of his neck. Shaded eyes watch them from the opposite street, his disgust obvious.

Now, Adler wonders how this all began. Someone must have made the first move.

He wonders if it was her. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"You wanted to see me?"

Adler looks up from his desk and nods. "Lock the door behind you."

And Alex Mason, the root of all this trouble, obeys. Looking somewhat uncertain under the scrutiny of the harsh lights, and shuts the blinds. Unlike Woods, he takes a seat at the chair Adler sets up before the desk.

"What is it?" Mason asks, after a long, almost unending silence. His curiosity seeps through the room.

There is very little control when the first domino falls. Oftentimes, once it starts, it’s like crossing the Rubico n and the next thing you know, you are lying flat on the ground in some theater, 23 fresh stab wounds decorating your body and the beat of your pulse seems dim and distant, everything feels cold except your blood; warm, bright and thick like gasoline, crawling into every space until it goes into your throat and strangles you, kills you. Fini, kaput.

But then again, he's not Caesar and this isn't Rome.

Adler pushes the first tile.

"How long has this been going on?" he asks without fanfare, tight and composed as ever. Never mind the way his eyes ignite like cold blue fire behind his glasses.

"How long has what been going on?"

“You and Bell." And Mason blinks at him in surprise. Bingo. "I saw the two of you leaving for her hotel from a cafe in Downtown Berlin last night. So don't bother skirting your way around this.” Adler leans forward across his desk. He’s a man on a mission- there’s no stopping him now.

“Now, let me rephrase the question, how long have you been fucking her?"

"Hold on, hold on, you were stalking us?" Mason asks, waspish.

Adler winces inwardly. "I was keeping an eye out for my asset.”

“Asset?” Mason hisses, like Adler just blasphemed. “Jesus Christ, Russ, is that all she ever is to you? An asset? She’s your protégé, for god’s sake- a person! What is wrong with you?"

"Plenty. Or apparently, so I've been told.”

"I don't find you amusing.”

“I'm hardly ever,” Adler parries. Mason remains silent, yet the tilt of his lips translate exactly what words can't. "And you haven't answered my question."

“Bullshit. I don’t owe you anything."

"Listen, Al-"

"No, you listen to me. You may be calling the shots around here, but this has absolutely nothing to do with you. Whatever- or whoever - we're doing in our spare time is none of your business, do you understand? So you can just drop it," Mason seethes, bitter, and, much to Adler’s surprise, rises to leave. “We’re done here.”

"That's where you're wrong."

Mason has only managed to put a few paces between them before he turns around, once again stepping inside this metaphorical boxing ring.

"What?"

"This has everything to do with me," Adler says coolly. "You said it yourself, I'm the one who calls the shots here. Meaning, anything that could potentially fuck up my operation is my concern and I have the right to intervene should it needed. This, being a case in point."

Mason looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “What the hell does fucking her have to do with this whole operation?”

“Everything.” He says it like quiet resignation. It’s time to acknowledge the truth, he thinks, to that unusual idea that has been swirling in the deep recesses of his mind, that everyone’s weakness is varied.

Achilles had his heel, and Adler has her.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to, Al. You don't even know her."

Mason gives him a level stare. "And you do?"

Adler is so hard-pressed to say 'I made her' but even he wouldn't stoop that low.

"That is beside the point,” Adler tells him instead as he turns to his vice- one of them, at least- and lights it.

“There is literally no point to this conversation.”

“The point is, stay the hell away from Bell. I'm saying this for your own good."

"My own good or yours?"

Adler does not flinch, but his hand does ball into a fist under the table, how the fingers curl and then flex.

"Don't be ridiculous. I gain nothing from this except assurance." It's a lie, it's the truth. There's no in between. He doesn’t know which is which anymore. "You, on the other hand, I'm sure the old ball and chain wouldn't be near as thrilled about hearing this if word ever gets out."

Mason is quiet for a beat.

"Is that a threat?"

"Only once I pulled the pin," Adler replies, a dangerous undercurrent in his voice.

But the thing with Mason, he'll come to realize later, is how much, like with Bell, weaving through his mind is like trying to grasp for purchase in the dark as he, once again, does the unpredicted and smile- a venomous grin warps his face, like he’s mocking him, challenging him to move his piece on the board and make this mistake.

Adler stares back, surprised despite himself.

He shocks him further by saying, "Go ahead, then. Pull the pin, throw the grenade, tell her. See if she cares."

Adler’s eyes narrow at his askance. He then drags his attention to Mason’s left hand, and something grave and familiar rises in his chest.

The absence of the metal band around his ring finger tells him why.

“You know where to reach her. If anything, I’m sure she’d trust your words better than anyone else’s. So please, do it.” And Mason’s so goddamn sanctimonious about it. He’s clearly expecting this particular reaction out of Adler. It only leaves Adler angrier.

Another long pause stretches, heavy and unkind.

"Fine. Maybe she won't mind, but I'm sure the Agency wouldn’t be as tolerant.” Adler takes one last drag of his cigarette. He has that ‘Having nothing, nothing can he lose’ look on his face that makes Mason frowns. “Not when you’ve been fraternizing with the enemy.”

"What?”

"Bell. She’s not who you think she is, Al. Tell me, who do you think is the sorry bastard we saved in Trabzon?”

Mason blinks. His face is blank with shock, then he shakes his head. And he keeps shaking it, almost manic. If he laughs, which one would come first, he wonders, the gun or his fist pummeling the side of his face?

“You’re lying.”

“And why would I lie to you about this?”

"No, no, no, Woods- he told me the guy’s dead,” Mason says, his words are shaky.

“He’s not. And he wasn’t a he."

A crease forms between Mason's eyebrows, the starting of another frown.

“Hold on, if she’s helping us get Perseus then why is she the enemy?”

"Because she doesn't know that."

"Doesn't know what?"

"That she's the enemy."

Mason holds his gaze for a moment, his expression tense, like a slingshot.

And that cold elastic band finally snaps.

“What did you do to her?” He’s openly glaring at him now, mouth tight, an icy fury that is no longer dormant and for the first time since Adler has known him, he finds the man dangerous.

Adler takes a steadying breath. “We did what had to be done.”

"You sick son of a bitch. You brainwa- You-” Mason clamps his mouth shut, trembling hands finding his head. “Shit. How could you?"

Adler ignores his colorful outburst.

“She resisted every form of interrogations we threw at her, Al. We had no choice but to implement MK-Ultra as a last resort. We needed what’s in her head.” Mason is silent in reply. Adler continues, “Look, it’s nasty business, I know, but some of us have to cross a line just to make sure that line's still there in the morning. And as much as I hate agreeing with Hudson, he’s right. We need to preserve our way of life.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to play God,” his voice is resentful and crisp. “Do you have any idea what you are doing? You could jeopardize everything, and for what? You’ve seen what this- this experiment did to me, this won’t end the way you think!”

“Lightning never strikes the same place twice.”

"You’re really willing to gamble on that?”

Adler scowls. “I don’t gamble, Mason. I calculate. And if by some chance I was given a second chance, I’d do it all over again. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Mason doesn’t say anything at first, his loaded gun stare never falters. Then, “The flag may be different, but the methods are the same.”

"What was that?”

“Someone warned me, a long time ago, about how people like you will use people like me or Bell as pawns in your own game. You’d do whatever it takes to get what you want- and my, how you get results, don’t you? But you’re actually no different than the rest of the assholes you're fighting against,” Mason tells him, like he’s spitting out acid in Adler’s face.

“Bell may be the enemy- heck, she could be the architect behind all the chaos Perseus has done, but what you’re doing to her is vile and unethical. There are many ways to make her spill the beans, yet you chose the most immoral method there is out there. I sincerely hope you rot in hell for this."

Before Adler could formulate a response to his tirade, Mason stands to his feet.

“You want me to stay away from her? Fine. Consider this as my formal resignation. After Yamatau, I’m done. I’m out of the team. And if you know what’s good for you, you stay the fuck away from me because I don't ever want to see your face again, do you hear me?” he snarls. “If you think Woods is dangerous, Adler, just remember I nearly could have killed my own president."

Then Mason turns on his heel and walks out of the room, once and for all. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The fist is very much expected, and so does the pain that follows.

"You're out of your fucking depth, shithead," Woods spits, venom lacing his words.

Adler doesn't even bother to retaliate.

He doesn’t see the point. He didn’t think it would get this far. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The garage grows quiet and stodgy with now Mason and Woods are out of the picture. Everyone settles back into their own normal rhythm, the same routine before both men set their feet here almost a week ago.

Hudson doesn’t take the news of their departure kindly, naturally. He stands in Adler’s office, pacing, fuming. Adler ignores him, trying to nurse the skull-splitting migraine he's having at his desk instead. The nasty black eye hidden underneath his glasses. A secret locked, the key thrown away.

His headache, thankfully, has subsided when Sims takes a seat on the other side of the desk, hours later after Hudson left.

"I'm not trying to cause an alarm here, but you'd better watch your back."

Adler's brows furrow but doesn’t look up from the papers before him. "And why's that?"

"'Cause I think you just pissed off the wrong beast," Sims tells him. Adler pauses, then lifts his head to look at his cohort. There's genuine worry flashing over his face.

“Are you talking about Bell?”

“Who else?”

If she's a beast, then what am I? What he wants to ask, but there's a knock at the door and he swallows the words down his throat.

"Come in," Adler says, pretending to be reading again.

The door opens and Bell, fucking Bell, enters his office. It's like watching a tiger pass by your hiding spot in near dark. Neither he nor Sims breathes a word.

Bell's gaze immediately swings to him, like a cosmic pull. She's watching him as she wanders over to the desk and the weight of her stare burns him like Greek fire.

He pushes the documents close, all the while returning her stare. He is never the one who backs out of a challenge, and at this point, he knows that she probably knows that. Maybe that’s why she initiated it in the first place.

"Bell, what is it?" Adler asks firmly, in possession of his full power in this place.

Bell produces three diskettes from her pocket. Something odd definitely shining in her eyes.

"These have been lying on Lazar's desk for hours, but he's busy, so I thought I'd deliver them to you myself," Bell says. And he's trying to work out on her angle but she is unreadable. As always.

Adler nods, frustrated and indignant. "You can leave them here. Thank you."

It is only once the woman leaves that the two agents share a dark, significant look. That was too close.

And it goes without saying, something needs to be done about this. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

March 7th. A's insistence on raising the dosage is illogical. Recent behavioural analysis indicates depression. Will monitor for the next few days. Considering lowering the dosage instead. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The elevator reeks of smoke, cheap Soviet air freshener and something far more poisonous than the devil’s spider, silky hands.

It embodies the woman standing next to him right now- this special animal, emotionless, a constant mystery wrapped with a warning sign.

Adler is tempted to shut his eyes.

Or get out of here. He doesn’t dwell well in this atmosphere, this limited space shared with her alone. He probably should have listened to Hudson about taking Bell for this mission, but she’s the only one he trusts who won’t fuck this up. Not to mention her spotless Russian has proven to help them blend in with the crowd seamlessly.

He needs her, whether he would admit it aloud or not.

But she puts his head in such a spin.

She’s been near-mute since they departed from Germany. She barely acknowledges his questions and orders, barely looks at him. She’s been treating him as if he’s another shadow on the wall.

He rubs the side of his jaw. Something does need to be done about this.

“Are you going to stay quiet forever?” Adler asks. He’s bad at this, but he can’t stand her silence for much longer. Not to mention, they’re at the Lubysnka- the fucking lion's den. If she wants to wallow over Mason’s absence or sinks into whatever melancholic feeling she’s in, she can do it later.

Bell hums, her mouth curls up like serpentine. Adler sketches a confused frown.  And she says, “I don’t know. Should I?”

And then, sudden and swift, Bell undoes the cuffs of her uniform. Beady eyes never leave his.

The sight catches him off guard. Somewhere in his mind, he curses something like ‘you’re a beast’ and ‘what the hell are you?’ at her, all in negative connotations. The effects she inflicts on him is maddening.

“What are you doing?” Adler doesn’t bother to hide his surprise.

Bell shrugs and gestures to the duffle bag at their feet. “Gearing up.”

Oh. Embarrassment wells up in him. Fucking hell, this woman will be the death of him.

Her fingers quickly move on to the buttons, still indifferent, nearly tearing them from the seams. The first glimpse of her skin and Adler can’t help but give in, openly stares at her in a way he has never imagined before. Her clavicles like daggers glinting in the lamplight.

Curiosity is a dangerous and heavy load.

He should have closed his eyes.

“Enjoying the show?” Her voice pulls him back from his musings. Her eyes still zero in on him, cutting him to pieces.

Her cleavage comes into view.

The lines on Adler’s face grow taut.

“What do you want, Bell?” He asks, intending for a bark but it ends somewhere like a plea.

“I want many things. As of right now, I want Alex’s cock inside me.” And Adler nearly chokes on his own breath. Bell, eagle-eyed as ever, caught the movement. “But it seems someone insists on being in control of everything, isn’t he?” she snaps.

Adler’s back goes rigid. Trepidation bubbles up in his chest.

Of course, she knows.

“It's not about control.” Adler turns around. He doesn’t quite know what he’s avoiding at this point, her flesh or the truth. “It’s about what’s right.”

He hears her uniform touches her floor as she laughs, mirthless, like broken chandeliers. “I didn’t know whose cock I’m riding is any concern of yours.”

“It is when he’s a member of the team,” he seethes. “What you’re doing with Alex will only lead to complications. And I can’t have tha-”

“Because this is all about you, isn’t it? It’s about upholding your precious reputation in the Agency, controlling the narrative the way you want it no matter how many characters you kill off in the process. It’s always about what you want.” Bell interrupts, not missing a beat. “You selfish motherfucker.”

"This has nothing to do with my reputation in the CIA."

She scoffs. "Spare me the crap, Adler."

Adler turns to fully face her again and holds his arms open, the way someone is facing the firing squad. “Fine. Fine, yes, I’m a selfish motherfucker. I did it because I thought it could ruin the operation. Is that what you wanted to hear? Now, what are you going to do about it?”

She says nothing at first. He silently catalogues her movements as she steps towards him now, half-naked and furious. He feels pinned.

Then, “What do you want me to do about it?”

His mouth dries at the implication. She is temptation, benediction, the coarse ice block before the carver.

How terrible it is to lose control, even just once.

A knowing, vicious smirk flashes over her face. Adler feels like he’s just shown his hand.

“You are one selfish bastard and a coward to boot, aren’t you?” Bell sneers before he has a chance to respond. “At least, Alex was brave enough to make the first move, but you…” her gaze raking up and down his figure coldly, a jeweller presented with second-grade imitations. Wind her up and this honey bee stings.

“You’ll always be the man who hides behind his shades,” she says, dry as dust, and steps back and snatches her clothes from the bag.

This is, without a single doubt, the longest elevator ride he’s ever experienced in his life. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adler arrived back in Berlin breathing a little harder. Worry wrapped around his neck like a noose, placed by Bell herself; the judge, jury and executioner.

The knot tightens every time his mind refers to her.

The agency trained him, specifically, to keep calm under pressure. He didn’t coin the title “America’s Monster” from his colleagues for nothing. They don’t fear him because he’s hot-headed or thinks in large-scale violence— guns blazing, napalm-induced flames over the hill in the morning, bloodied knuckles and fractured jaw, blood-soaked soles tarnishing the white marble floor. Someone can point a fucking shotgun to his face and he’ll barely flinch. Only monsters remain impassive to direct threats of violence.

But there’s something about Bell that elicits this visceral, primal reaction out of him. Something strange and new; lightning about to be uncapped from its chains.

It chokes him, frightens him to the core.

How gauche is it, don’t you think, that his own mind is conspiring against him?

Now, in the garage, where it dawns on Adler that she’s probably the only person who can make him walk around the city, feeling like a fool, he decides he’s had enough. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“I’ll drive you back.”

Adler apprehends Bell outside the garage. He kind of assumed she’d have a pistol aimed at his head right now, but she spins around, hands shoved deep inside her pockets and clayey mouth curls in distaste.

“Get in the car, Bell,” Adler says tightly, almost adding please.

But he would not beg.

The brunette remains rooted in her place. For a moment, a calculating look crossed her face. Always, always that sharp mind of hers turning and he wonders where it would take her this time.

“Try asking nicely,” she demands.

Adler’s eyes flash. She really is testing him. But fine, he'll play her game.

“Bell, would you kindly get in the car?” He is all but snarls, teeth gritting. Bell hardly wavers- he wishes she would waver for a change.

She does what he asked of her, finally, the shadow of a smirk on her face mocking him. Adler follows suit, teeth still clenched together, and starts the car and drives away.

It's sort of like a deja-vu, he supposes; him and her in this very same car, except that stupid krautrock music is absent this time. Neither says anything for the first twenty minutes. Everything feels heavily still.

Until he realizes she’s probably waiting for his move.

This might gloriously blow up in his face, yes, he knows this. Especially remembering the last time he was alone in a tight space with her, it had cost him his pride.

And his mind.

But he’s been here before, in the eye of the storm. He was at his calmest here. He has his cards prepared now.

Adler inhales deeply.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he utters resolutely. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t want to. “I was out of line, I admit it. Your affair with Mason should be no concern of mine but I really am just trying to look out for you.”

It’s weak, he knows. The words feel more like an anchor than an actual apology in his tongue anyway, but Adler didn’t expect that Bell would give him nothing. Not even an acknowledging hum, a scathing retort, a scoff. Nothing.

A twinge of irritation brews in his stomach. Why does she insist on playing games?

The car comes to a stop. They’ve arrived. Adler wrests his hands from the steering wheel to say something harsh to her, but Bell is already stepping out of the car.

She stands on the sidewalk; an enigma in royal red, and her lethal, all-seeing eyes gravitate to him in the night.

There is a long paralyzing beat where they just stare at each other- which seems to be a running theme between them lately. Adler is fuming, as he is confused.

It feels like hours, centuries, eons, but, like all magic, the spell is broken. Courtesy of a stranger hailing a cab behind his car.

Bell turns and walks inside the building. She doesn’t bother sparing him the final glance or extend her appreciation for the ride back and Adler thinks to himself, this universe, god fucking damnit, nothing makes sense here.

But it is also in moments like this that the world spins, when he notices a singular, significant detail that makes his stomach roll, nearly throwing him off balance:

Bell left the passenger door open.

And he’s insane- he has to be, right? He’s looking too much into this. It doesn’t mean anything. His mind conjures an image, like a graphic guideline or something, step one: get out of the car, two: make your way around and close the passenger door, and third: zoom out of the neighborhood while your sanity is still intact, all in that order. Easy to comprehend, to follow.

Adler only does the first two steps. He’s ass-backwards doesn’t even bother to digest the third step.

He enters the hotel instead and takes in the surroundings. The lobby is pointedly bare, but warm and smoky. The concierge is reading behind the counter- a young, wiry boy with shocking bleached hair- with headphones on. It’s late, he probably doesn’t expect anyone to check in at this hour.

A movement by the staircase catches his interest. He sees Bell climbing up the steps slowly, leisurely. Adler makes his way there.

Halfway reaching her floor, Adler has the inkling that she knows that he’s following her. Also, because the next she does is glancing back at him over her shoulder. He waits for her to push him down the stairs or wrap those delicate hands around his neck. She does neither. She doesn’t want him gone.

Yet, his mind betrays him. Only because she doesn’t know what other atrocities he’s committed to her.

She stops by her door, opens it and goes in first. Adler, without waiting for a formal fucking invitation, slips in behind her.

Her room is much smaller than his. The TV is still on- a German dubbed of All the President’s Men is playing- a stack of books and meds lying haphazardly on the desk table.

The door clicks shut behind him. Bell wanders over to the table and turns off the TV. Her back to him.

She doesn’t bother turning the light switch on. The green neon of the hotel sign outside illuminates the room, bathes her in it, making her look even stranger and faraway.

He doesn’t take off his sunglasses.

“What do you want, Bell?” Adler is all but snarling. His anger comes in a bottle with a twist-off cap. “I’m fucking sick of playing your games. I apologized, I admitted I was wrong- I fucked up, but what more could you want?”

Jesus, and now he’s losing his temper over a brainwashed Russian who rarely talks. How did it come to this?

She tugs off her gloves. Once again, barely acknowledging him. Apparently, if ignoring him is an art form, she is the fucking Monet.

Until:

“Take them off.”

Adler blinks hard behind his glasses. Like he’s just stepped into a whole different earth.

His mouth moves.

“What?”

“Your sunglasses. Take them off.”

He stares at her back. Trying really, really hard to make sure he’s not hallucinating this, but then Bell turns around, a finger tapping against her arm, waiting.

Realization hits him like an uppercut in the face and nearly leaves him in a daze. He’s walked into a trap. That much is clear as day. She wants him to suffer as she does. An eye for an eye.

Adler holds no modicum of control in her domain, not unless she gives the reins. Once again, she plays the judge, jury and executioner at her own court.

But, like before, he’ll play her game.

There, the glasses are off. His eyes, bare, blue like fractured ice, meeting hers. In the dark, he feels her eyes shift to assess his bruise.  

His heart booms against his ribs.

"Kneel,” she says glibly.

He obeys, again. His legs and hands don’t shake, but his mind is much less governable than his limbs. No, the CIA didn’t prepare a manual for situations like this and he doesn’t trust his instincts to help him dance his way around this.

Nor does he want to.

The thought fucks him up to a degree.

Adler should have known that it wouldn’t take an entire nation or continent to bring him to his knees, no, no. That would have been too easy, anyway. Although history has dictated and taught him that women are never to be underestimated, Adler hasn’t expected that one woman would be able to do the deed and succeed.

But then again, when that woman is Bell, he supposes anything is possible.

When Bell approaches him, he’s unable to take his gaze from her. Her eyes spangle with determination, an avenging soul in the neon lights. Her fingers work on the sash of her coat. The line of her mouth is flat and inscrutable. The air crackles with electricity and a promise of the unsayable, the unattainable.

She stands over him now, gloveless and coatless. She’s powerful like this and he can only crane his head up at her, ceding his fate in her hands, against his better judgement. She catches that.

Suddenly, something unpleasant breaks on her face, like when one’s smelling something foul or pungent.

Bell reaches down and grips his jaw painfully in one hand, her nails digging into his skin, and tilts his head sideways. Strange that his stomach leaps at that.

“Say you’re sorry,” she spits furiously. “And say it like you fucking mean it.”

He feels, suddenly, triumphant and chuckles darkly. Eight fucking long weeks and the beast finally shows her claws.

“Try asking nicely,” Adler parrots her words from before, not a beat missed. Two can play that game, he thinks. "Or are you above niceness, Bell?”

Her grip tightens.

"You’re one to talk,” Bell says. Then, rubs the pad of her thumb over his scarred cheek and it feels like forgiveness, or the beginning of it, at least.

His confusion spikes.

Her nose skims down his jawline.

A better, sensible man would apologize. He'd squander it until his tongue burns acid, he'd beg for her forgiveness like a man asking for repentance before his god.

“Why did you do it, Russell?” Bell whispers against his skin now, baleful and raspy. Her chest rising and falling too rapidly.

But he’s a sick bastard, a selfish motherfucker, a heartless monster. All he does is hurt the people around him. He doesn’t get to take from her, not after what he's done.

Still, Adler catches her wrist. Relishing the way her wrist bone grinds under his hold. He pulls his face back to look at her.

“You know why.”  

Her eyes flick dangerously to his lips.

Desperation really can make the most vulgar things tolerable.

“Then prove it.”

So he does. As his hand reaches up to her neck, past the delicious column of her throat and with a precise swift, Adler grabs a fistful of her hair, the feminine gasp escaping her mouth is like a jolt to his groin, and kisses her.

Bell responds in kind. That little beast. She grasps his collar and drags him up to his feet, impatient with want. She laps at him, bites and sucks. His free hand snakes around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer.

She pulls away, catching her breath, and his teeth skim down her jaw, her neck. He bites her there in retaliation, on the delicious junction of her neck and shoulder, into the fabric of her shirt, making his intentions clear. Bell chokes in surprise and scrapes her nails over his scalp.

It hurts. But with pain, along comes pleasure and it’s good. It’s so good, Adler melts with a shaky breath.

His gloves come off first. Next, she pulls him free off his jacket, his sweater and snakes a hand between his legs, stroking him. He bites off a strangled ‘fuck’ into her throat. He’s worked up real fast already. Adler manages to make a short work of her shirt, unclasping her bra before he’s all but pushes her onto the bed.

Adler settles above her, capturing her lips in another feverish, hot-blooded kiss. He tugs her zipper down and slips his hand inside her pants. Her cunt’s everything he’s come to expect: wet, warm and oh-so wrong. She sucks in a breath. Her hips move against his hand. His blood sings. She throws her head back against the pillow, while his finds her earlobe.

“Has this proven my point, Bell?” he asks. His answer starts on a moan and ends with a breathless ‘yes’.

He doesn’t let her come that easily. No, he wants to drag this out for as long as he can until it drives her mad. So, Adler peels the rest of her clothes away, pulls her shoulder and turns her onto her stomach. He pins her down, hard. She gasps loudly against the white pillowcase, her hand fists into the sheets.

Adler slots himself behind her. His hand tracing along her spine, followed by his mouth, just how he fantasized once upon a time. His other hand quickly undoes the snap of his pants. Everything has been poisoned by her and her only; she is in his tongue, his veins, his mind, his lungs. She takes the centrefold of his mind and it's ridiculous.

He presses himself against her ass. His mouth falls open. Her body trembles. She’s all sin and racing hearts and sweaty flesh. She’s perfect. His now free hand slides up to the nape of Bell’s neck, reaching her throat, pressing down. She makes this high-pitched, demanding noise as she moves her hips back against him, leaving him wanting, helpless at the thought of having her right here, right now, in the warm neon glow of her hotel room.

“Please,” Bell begs. He groans in response and he gives it to her. Fuck, he’d give her anything if she begs just exactly like that.

When Adler is finally inside her, he thinks his world drops dead. He sets a merciless pace. He is not a gentle man and there is nothing gentle in the supple arch of her back, a rose bent backwards in the wind, as he pants along her neck before he pulls out, twists her onto her back again and pushes deeper into her until she comes apart underneath him (he’s made sure she begs for it- please, Russell. Oh god, Russell)

(He didn’t have to. Russell Adler is never the kind of man to fall for his dark side, but Christ knows he is only one man)

[yannowhatigiveup]

My One And Only - Ch 3

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Thank you so much for all the votes! It means a lot. Here’s chapter three and it’s around 1000 words I’d say. The chapters will get longer! Also I wrote this some time ago when I only first got into the Maribat fandom so...some characters are majorly OOC and are weird

"Great!" She grabbed his hand and began walking to the cafe she spotted.

'This girl, I like her'

—————————————————————

They went into the cafe, got a table and ordered they're food. While waiting, Marinette decided to spark up a conversation. "So what brings you here to Paris?"

"I came for educational purposes" the boy said, inside hoping that she wouldn't press for more. Surprisingly, she seemed to smile as if to indicate that she knew he didn't want to continue this conversation. Then he realised something. "Oh how rude of me" the girl looked at him in a clearly confused way. "I never introduced myself" he reached his hand over the table. "Damian"

She shook his hand "Marinette".

"So, why were you in such a big rush?" Damian asked, smiling as he saw her blushing of embarrassment.

"Well you see we have this school trip and this girl in my class told me that the timings had changed I don't know why I believed her. So I've been scrambling all over trying to find the location because of that lying, two-faced little bitc-" she murmured the last part in Mandarin but was cut off by Damian‘s slight chuckle. Her face turned bright read as she realised he could understand Mandarin. "Wait so you know French, English and Mandarin?"

"Yes I do" Damian said, smiling at the comment Marinette said.

"Oh that's so cool! Do you know any other languages?" The excitement and awe in her eyes made Damian's smile a bit bigger

"Actually, Arabic is my first language and I also know Spanish too. Currently I'm learning Japanese " Damian said and the look on her face made him blurt out "You're honestly so adorable" in Arabic. The realisation that he had said it hit and her looked down at the table in embarrassment, he looked up to see Marinette blushing profusely. "Wait you know Arabic?"

Marinette nodded "I know how to understand it, say it and read it but I'm not so great in writing in it"

The blush in Damian's face just got bigger. "So you know Arabic, French, English and Mandarin?"

"I know almost everything you know except I don't know Spanish and I'm not learning Japanese" she giggled nervously. "Also did you mean what you said?"

"I wouldn't have said it otherwise"

Damian and Marinette kept chatting for an hour or two, about his brothers, about how much she hates Lila and other various topics before she realised what time it was.

"I shoot I gotta go, I'll pay then I'll leave"

"No I can pay it's fine"

She slammed her palm on the table. "I meant what i said" she threatened teasingly, Damian had picked up on this and laughed.

"Wait, if you want, you can come over to my hotel to talk more after you're done school"

"Really? What hotel are you staying at? I'd love to come"

"Le Grand Paris" Marinette nodded "You can tell the front desk you're doing to see 'Mr Damian' and I'm sure they'll let you in but if not-" he scribbled something down on a piece of paper "here's my number".

"Smooth" Marinette murmured in Mandarin and then scribbled something on another piece of paper. "Here's mine" she quickly grabbed her stuff, gave the money to the person working there and walked out before yelling "See you later Damian!" In Arabic as she left. Damian smiled at the thought of her, the main reason he wanted to invite her to his hotel room would be to ask her about what was going on. That was still his main objective but something had changed. Marinette made him happy, he didn't want to lose her. 'I want to build this friendship, hopefully to something more'.

Marinette hummed a tune to herself as she walked down the street, then Tikki flew out of her bag.

"You like him don't you?" The kwami said in her high pitched voice.

"Maybe I do" she hummed again.

"What about Luka and Adrien?"

"Luka is like a brother to me, Adrien sees me as a friend so I see him the same way" she stated. "And when I had a crush on them both, I didn't feel the way I feel right now.

"Marinette he said that he was visiting Paris, what are you gonna do when he leaves?"

"Probably cry myself to sleep" she chuckled sadly. "But thanks to him I know where we're going now!" She pulled out her phone from her bag to show Tikki the map. "Since I bumped into him, I looked around for a cafe to try and make up for it. This cafe is near where the rest of the class is. "If he wasn't there, I would probably still be lost by now. Tikki we're heading to more crowded areas" Tikki then flew into her bag. Marinette then spotted Alya and sprinted as fast as she could. Alya noticed.

"Marinette!" Alya shouted, gaining the attention of her classmates. Marinette then panted while Alya congratulated her for running this far.

"Marinette, I know you've just ran faster than you probably have in your whole life but I need you to come with me" Miss Bustier said.

Marinette nodded while drinking some water she bought from the cafe. "Yes Miss Bustier?" The girl asked after catching her breath.

"I need you to show me the messages Lila sent you, it could all just be a misunderstanding but I must see the messages first" 'Was that relief in Marinette's eyes?' Marinette then opened her chat with Lila and showed it to Miss Bustier. "All right, this looks intentional. Do you have any reason why Lila would do this?" Marinette remained silent 'I wonder why she isn't telling me anything' "Okay, I'll go have a talk with her you sit down and rest got it?"

"Yes Miss Bustier" then the teacher walked away from Marinette. Marinette walked back to her friends.

"So how did you manage to find your way?" Adrien asked.

Usually Marinette would fumble, stutter and mix her words up but it didn't happen this time. "I stopped by at a cafe to get some water and then the map made sense" It wasn't exactly a lie but it wasn't the whole truth either. "Speaking of water, I gotta go get more I'll be back!" She then walked away.

"Huh, that was weird" Alya muttered.

"What do you mean?" Nino asked.

Not remembering that Adrien was there with them she said "She didn't mix her words up, she always does that".

"Maybe she's just tired or dehydrated" Adrien put in.

"Even if she was she would still mix up her words" Alya began to wonder. "Something has changed."

Then Nino whispered to Alya "Do you think she likes Luka again?"

"I..don't know, but I'm gonna find out one way or another"

———

Taglist: @little-bluestar, @miracleofadisaster

[writingsbychlo]

poker night | stiles stilinski

word count; 9320

summary; you and stiles have grown close since leaving for college, and the pack coming to visit is the little push you need to finally cross that bridge.

notes; this is teh second fic for my birthday week/7,000 follower celebration!

warnings; smut, drug use, underage drinking.

Excitement and pure joy were coursing through your veins as you watched out of the open curtains down to the street below, the sun just beginning to set as the late evening moved into early night, and you heard Stiles chuckle from across the room where he was tipping various chips into different bowls to lay out beside the poker table he’d rented that sat in the middle of the room.

“Excited, much?”

“Yes!” 

You turned to look at him, giving him a pointed stare as you dropped your hand from holding open the curtains to instead place both of your hands on your hips, giving him a wide smile as you rocked on the balls of your feet, and he returned the wide grin, crumpling up the foil packets and dropping them all into the bin as he deemed the room ready. He was lucky, he had a rather large dorm, and all to himself, far bigger than yours was but you were still convinced that the pre-FBI program gave each of their candidates far better university living than the rest of you got. There was plenty of space for everyone to cram in, some of them choosing hotels in the area and some of them choosing to stay with Stiles, it had been a squeeze to get everyone in, but it was worth it.

You hadn't seen your pack since the day you’d left Beacon Hills.

It was hard to be away from them all for so long, after everything you had all been through, and yet you knew you had it easier than most. Stiles had only been a fifteen-minute drive from your accommodation, and so the two of you had grown infinitely closer than you had ever been, relying on one another heavily to make the transition easier. Lydia had called you every day for the first month and a half, and you’d all had weekly facetime sessions, but it just hadn't been the same.

With the first year coming to a close and everyone being far too broke to be able to afford to actually go anywhere, you’d settled on a few days up at college together for a small but parent-free vacation before the journey home. 

It was the perfect opportunity for you all to get unnecessarily drunk, excessively high, and eat a lot of junk food, all while not having to worry about any oncoming attack that might strike, as the year-marker of safety was quickly approaching. Naturally, Stiles had decided to set a theme, and where was the place that drinking and gambling was the norm? Vegas. So of course, Stiles had gone all out with renting a poker table and set, and hanging vaguely Vegas-themed decorations around the place. He was even wearing a t-shirt with a tux pattern printed on the front, and had managed to convince you into wearing your party shirt with the flapper-style tassels on to match. 

“C’mon, Stiles, it’s been almost a year since we’ve seen anyone from the pack, why aren’t you bouncing off of the roof with excitement?”

“I’ve seen one person from the pack all year.” He prompted, shooting you a playful wink and laughing as you rolled your eyes at him, before throwing away all the wrappers and holding his arms out for you in an invitation for a hug.

Accepting his offer, you moved away from the window and let him wrap his arms around your waist, barely a sliver of space between your bodies as you looked up at him and sighed. “I’m nervous. It’s been so long since we’ve seen them all, and I love them all so much, but nothing bad has happened since we’ve all been separated but what if just when we all get together again, something bad happens, and we don’t even get to enjoy it an-”

He shushed you gently, using one hand to weave through your hair and tuck it away behind your ear, his eyes fixed on you carefully as the playlist you and Stiles had spent a whole week building was playing in the background, waiting for everyone to arrive to appreciate it. “Bad things don’t happen when we’re all together, bad things happened because we were in Beacon Hills. We aren’t in Beacon Hills anymore, and we aren’t scared kids anymore, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You wanna’ cheer up? Nobody can be sad in faux-Vegas!” He cheered, waving his arm around the room, and you chuckled, catching his face brighten even further as he watched the worry slip away from your features, his lips brushing your forehead before he was tucking you under his chin, and holding you tightly. 

You were only still for a second, the two of you swaying slowly before you heard the tell-tale signs of a car pulling up outside, the engine dying and doors slamming, and an excited gasp left your lips. “I bet that’s them!”

His fingers laced with yours and he was moving before you were, the two of you speeding over to the window to peer out, catching sight of Derek’s black car, the man himself leaning against it and waiting as Mason and Liam pulled their bags out of the trunk, Scott sitting in the passenger seat with the door open and his bag in his lap. Both yours and Stiles’ phone were chiming a second after he put his own away, notification in your group chat as he informed you both that they’d arrived, unaware of you watching on from the window with anticipation.

The group was on the move, the car locked and disappearing from sight as they entered the building's lobby area, and Lydia had offered her own ETA as the others all chipped in theirs, and just like that, your fears were gone as you swung open the front door and peered out into the corridor while you waited.

Within forty minutes of the Beacon Hills group arriving, everybody was here, and drinks had been cracked open, snacks dug into, and you were all lounging around and catching up on missed gossip and news, sharing photos and stories that you had wanted to tell in person and saved just for this moment.

Pizza boxes were piled high within two hours, and smoke was filling the air, giggles and laughs shared all around as the group simply rejoiced in being back together once again. Liam and Mason had told you all about the latest shit that Coach had been dishing out, and all the pranks that they had committed, as well as Mason, blushing when Lydia and Kira had pressed him about Corey. Scott and Derek had given a brief update about everything that had happened in Beacon Hills, which was surprisingly little with all things considered, and Lydia had tried to inform you all about the advanced placement work she had been doing in her classes, but had lost you all at some point as it became far too complex for you all to understand, and so instead had switched to telling you about the cute guy she had met at the coffee shop three months ago. 

Kira and Malis had been travelling, the pair had recently been all over Europe exploring, and had even visited Isaac in France and Jackson in London, before they’d finally returned home to see everyone. They dished out all the little souvenirs that they had bought, and shared them out with you all before showing you pictures and telling you the stories behind each trip. You had shared your own stories, all the funny ones you had of Stiles falling over or spilling something in public, and he embarrassed you just as much, teasing you until your cheeks were red and he was cuddling you into his side and ruffling your hair as everyone laughed. 

It was like nothing had ever changed, and you loved it.

The night had drifted on with natural progress until the music had been turned down to a lower level with the late hours, and the hazy atmosphere had everyone moving sluggishly and lazily as empty bottles littered the floor and the stubs of many dead blunts sat in the ashtray on the edge of the poker table, even the wolves having a little wolfbane laced treats to help them hit the mood just as much as all of the non-wolves had. 

You were currently lounging across both Liam and Malia on the couch, lay out over them as you continually brushed off your midriff, crumbs dropping down onto your top each time Liam took a bite of the chip dish that was positioned between him and Mason, the two absolutely gone as they laughed and giggled among themselves about everything and anything. 

Alongside their voices, and the conversation between yourself, Malia and the boys, was the rustle of cards and clinking of poker-chips, and you were itching for more physical affection than you were getting now, your inhibitions lowered and your need for physical attention through the roof from the substances racing through your bloodstream. Your sights honed in on Stiles, hair messy from playing with it and back facing you, your chair long abandoned from where you’d given up on cards when they’d started the real gambling, and you’d remembered just how crap you were at the game. 

Getting up onto wobbly legs, you made your way across the room, resting your hands on Stiles’ shoulder as you stood behind him, smoothing them down his chest and he placed his beer down, licking the excess of the bitter liquid from his lips and placing the hand on top of one of yours, squeezing lightly as he turned to look at you. 

“Hi, cutie. What d’you need?”

“Nothin’.” You sighed, slumping down further and resting your chin on the top of his head, used to the sweet little nicknames he fixed you with, and you relaxed against him as he leaned back a little further in the chair and pushed himself a few inches out front he table, seeming to predict your next words before you had even spoken them; “Was just feeling like I wanted some attention.”

“Hm, well c’mere, you can play cards, I’ve seen your poker face in the midst of some much more intense situations than this, I think you can handle it.”

You flicked him in the ear for his joke about all your supernatural struggles, but he held your hand and guided you around him to stand by his side, making space for you to sink down atop him and get comfy.

Slumping down across the boy’s lap with a deep sigh, your legs were slung across his at an angle, and his arms were quick to wind around your waist, one hand tucking itself under your shirt to seat on the heated skin of your waist, and the other held his cards limply in his hand, but his focus was no longer on them. You’d long since given up on the game, barely able to hold a focus as your mind spun from the hazy smoke in the air, and the taste of bitter-sweet alcohol still lingering in your mouth. 

Slightly sticky lips brushed your shoulder as he peppered the bare skin with sweet kisses, and you turned your head to give the boy a dopey smile, watching as his own face creased in a beaming grin in response. His eyes were blown wide, slightly widened and his hair messy from constant playing with it, the arm of yours that wasn’t sitting around his neck for support was lifting up so that you could weave a hand into the chocolate locks, and he sighed out softly at the contact, letting you twist in his arms to face him even more. 

“Like it when you play with my hair.”

“Mhm, I know.” 

Your words were mumbled in response and he chuckled under his breath as his eyes fluttered shut, tipping his head into your hand, before a voice coughed loudly and the two of your jumped, eyes snapping open and focus moving back to the poker table before you both, other members of the pack gathered around and smirking at you both knowingly, but you let out a deep sigh and only relaxed into the boy under you even further. 

“Stop looking at us like that.” 

“Like what, exactly?” Lydia all but purred out her words, and you shot her a pointed look, as the others around the table all tried to muffle their laughs of agreement. Derek was looking at his cards and trying to bite away his smile by nibbling on the inside of his cheek, Scott and Kira were pretending to discuss their hand at cards, but were shooting the pair of you small looks throughout their whispered conversation, and Lydia was staring at you with a challenging smirk. You could even feel the members of the others scattered around you watching on, the pack spread out around the smoke room, the funky smell hanging off of everyone and everything.

“You know what like. You’re looking at us like you know something we don’t, like it’s a joke only we aren’t a part of.” 

You felt a nose push at the underside of your jaw and tipped your head up to allow the boy more space to nose at the space under your jaw and by your ear, letting him just gain his own affections to his heart’s content, and this only spurred on Lydia’s piercing stare at the two of you. “You aren’t a part of a joke, and in fact, it’s incredibly unfunny. However, I do know something you don’t. We all do.”

“Care to share?”

It was the first night in almost a year that the pack had all been together. Lydia had finished her exams early, Scott had gotten ahead on his training with Deaton to create time, and Liam and Mason had ditched their last week. Derek had driven them all up here, and Lydia had come down from her college to see you all. Kira had come with Malia on the plane after they had recently finished their travels of Europe, and you had come across from your own dorms.

It was barely a travel, you and Stiles went to colleges that were only ten miles apart, and so you were hanging out regularly during the week, you were the only two that had seen each other in person since leaving for college and not just via facetime, and in this time, the two of you seemed to have grown even closer than you had ever been despite all the supernatural drama you had been through. 

“C’mon, you two have gotten so close since we all left for college.”

“So?” you and Stiles spoke at once, looking to Scott for his comment, before you were giggling and sharing glances in your utterly smoked out state, finding entertainment in your joint statement. 

“Nothing.. ‘sparked’ in that time?” 

You took a deep sigh, your eyes wandering around the room, flicking from Lydia to Malia, before back to the redhead who was watching you intensely. “Feels a bit weird to talk about this in front of two of his exes.”

“So, there is something to talk about!” Lydia shouted the words like she had suddenly realised the key to life, looking far more excited than someone who just discovered their best friends having feelings for their ex should look. “God, finally, I’ve only been staying with you for three days and the sexual tension is already too much for me to handle.”

“What are you talking about?” Stiles questioned, breath fanning over your face from where he was all but mouthing at your jaw, dry kisses pressed there as he held you to his chest tightly, having put his cards down on the table at some point so hold you with both hands. 

“When I left, you two were friends who would hug, now you’re this pair who are all over each other without even realising it! I mean, the two of you are closer right now than Scott and Kira have ever been!” The couple that was involved against their will let out various noises of complaints, being waved off by the redhead and they comforted one another with small kisses, both you and Stiles shrugging languidly. “Listen, Malia and Stiles ended ages ago, and Stiles and I were barely a couple, we didn’t even sleep together, so don’t feel weird.”

“Way to boost my ego, Lydia.” The brunette under you sighed, but you only squeezed yourself around him tighter, feeling him reciprocate the emotions and push his hand even further up over your ribs. 

“Even I can smell the arousal and longing rolling off of the two of you in waves. Just admit it to each other already.” Derek muttered, shifting his cards before pushing some of his counters into the middle, and despite all the alcohol and weed in your system, your eyes went wide as you shifted to look at the boy underneath you, his lips parted a little as he gave you a nervous smile. 

“You’re longing? For me?” 

He grinned widely, his head tipping to the side, cheeks flushed with warm heat, before he licked over his lips and nodded slowly. “Yeah, since like the first month when you stayed that whole weekend to binge marvel movies with me so I didn’t feel alone and you did that dance thing while you were making pancakes on Saturday.” He paused, thinking over his words, before he was leaning in a little and bumping his nose with yours as your hand came out of his hair to sit on his cheek delicately. “You’re aroused? By me?”

Your breath hitched, and he smirked very lightly at your response, his lips brushing yours when you nodded. “Yeah, ever since the day you came over right after going to the gym and you were all sweaty and asked if I minded if you used my shower and then you walked around with your shirt off before dinner. I definitely didn’t mind.”

He laughed lightly at your statement, his eyes glazing over a little as he remembered the day. “Are you longing, too?”

“Mhm. Are you also aroused?” Your question hung heavily in the air and he let out a soft sound under his breath as you asked him.

“Of course.”

“Cool.” You both spoke the single syllable word at the same time, your eyes closing as your fingers dug into his jaw a little, your breathing as light and shallow as everyone else in the room seemed to fade away. It was simply the two of you, sharing breath and his tongue brushing your lips when it peeked out of his mouth to wet his own, and you whimpered under your breath so quietly only he would hear it, to which his hands tightened on your flesh as he picked up on the sound. 

“You want to go back to your place?”

“Oh, definitely.” You nodded rapidly, and he beamed shifting in your lap, taking a swig of his drink as he downed the rest of the glass, and slipped his hand into your back pocket as the rest of the group stared at the two of you with wide eyes, shock evident on their faces about how easy that conversation had really been, but you didn’t care, because Stiles was running the pads of his fingers very subtly over your ass and squeezing through your pocket, even as he stared down everyone else in the room, and your skin was beginning to feel hot from something entirely other than the atmosphere in his dorm that you had all created. “We need a cab.”

“We can call one and makeout in the doorway while we wait, go get your bag.” He pulled his touch away from you, placing a playful slap on your ass and grinning at the way you squeaked before scurrying away to gather your belongings, and he was grabbing his wallet, throwing down a handful of notes on the table, quickly booking an Uber with the app on his phone. 

When your hand slipped into his again the shocked looks had morphed into smirks, the only three teams still sitting around the table were reshuffling cards and setting themselves up to play, Stiles telling them all not to wait up for him to come home, before he was pulling you from the room and towards the door. “You booked a cab?”

“Yes.”

“And we’re going to make out in the doorway until it gets here?”

“Fuck, yes.” He tipped his head to look at you, slamming the front food shut and guiding you towards the stairs you were so familiar with, as the two of you set off on your quick and stumbling journey toward the main entrance to the building. 

“Will you grab at my ass again like you were before?”

“Do you want me to?” He didn’t give you a chance to respond, however, before his fingers were leaving yours and moving over your lower back to grab at your ass roughly, feeling your shake as he curled you into his side, the two of you inching down the lower staircase. “Like that?”

“Yeah?”

“Honestly, I’ll do anything you want me to.”

“I’m going to remember that for later.” You punctuated your words with a nibble on his lower lip, glancing up into his swirling whiskey eyes through your lashes, and he groaned under his breath, letting himself nod slowly as he used his grip on your ass to pull your body flush up against his. His mouth descended onto your own once again, catching your lips in a fiery kiss, instantly parting as the lust took over your both, tripping and stumbling down the final few steps as he pressed you into the wall beside the door, uncaring for who may see the pair of you as his tongue tangled with your own, visible between your parted mouths whenever your heads twisted to the side for deeper access. 

It was sloppy and wet, and a clash of moans and whimpers as the two of you teased done another endlessly with a mixture of slow and ongoing kisses that alternated with needy and rushed ones, teeth clashing and lips dragging.

Hands roamed one another’s bodies, your palms tracing over the broad and hardened planes of his chest, the workouts he had been on for the pre-FBI fitness programs had done things to his body that lacrosse never did, and you were sure the day you’d seen Stiles do a pull-up was the day you realised rolling over guys may actually be a thing. The muscles twitched and tensed under your fingertips, and his hands were rubbing along you back all the way to your upper thighs, exploring your body as he pinched and squeezed in places that made your body jerk and twitch into him. 

His lips were working along your neck as your heart raced, your eyes closed and back arching up, chests pressed flush together, and the what around the two of you almost felt like it was too much. The fingers that were sitting low on your waist slipped even further, grazing along you covered pussy through you jeans, ad he pushed down teasingly on the spot he knew your clit would be, biting down on the joint between your shoulder and your neck when he heard you moan his name out breathlessly at the simple action.

He dragged his tongue over the spot, moving in to dip back down to kiss you, before the two of you were breaking through your haze at the sound of a horn honking, and the phone in his back pocket was buzzing. He was panting for breath as he pulled back from you, only one hand still touching you as his fingers laced with your own, a stark contrast from every part of him pressed to every part of you only seconds prior. 

“Good thing, one minute longer and I probably would’ve had my hands down your pants right here in the doorway.”

He gave you a sultry wink, before he was pulling you along to the car waiting on the edge of the road, ignoring your wide eyes and stuttering words, holding the door open for you and helping you inside like a gentleman, like he hadn't just threatened public nudity and a great orgasm only seconds prior. He was seconds behind you, confirming his identity and booking to the driver, and as the car took up motion on the short journey once again, he turned back to you.

“You okay, baby? You look flushed.” You turned to look at him, sensing the light tone in his voice that was playfully disguising the question underneath as to whether you still wanted this, and you nodded gently, taking his face in your hands and pulling his face down so that you could peck his lips. 

“I like it when you call me baby.”

“You do?” He dragged his nose along your cheek, brushing a kiss to your skin, the intimate and sweet touches making you blush hot and red under his touch, his chuckle so soft that only you could hear it. 

“Yeah. We could have been doing this for months, y’know.”

“Making out in a taxi and trying not to feel each other up to much before we get back to your place?” He joked, tucking an arm over your shoulder and you settled into his side, your hands playing with his other one as it sat on your thigh and squeezed lightly. 

“I was going to say being together, but sex works too.” Your words were whispered out, and he twisted until he was nuzzling affectionately into your hairline. 

“You want that? To be together with me?”

“Well, I wasn’t longing for fun.” You scoffed, and he shifted his hands to lace your fingers together, his arm squeezing you tighter to him. 

“I can’t say I always knew we were meant to be, or that I spent my whole child and teenhood pining after you, but I really think we would be special together, and I think we could go a long way together.” You rolled your eyes at his affections, but the alcohol and drugs in your body were making you emotional, and you sniffed away your feelings as you pushed your face into his neck, pressing a kiss to his skin in a silent acknowledgement of his statement. 

“Together, then.”

“Together.” He confirmed, and the scenery flashing by before you both was quickly coming to an end, Stiles confirming a payment to come out of his bank account, before he was thanking the driver and watching as you clambered from the car to stand before your own building, Stiles stumbling out behind you and pressing himself up to your back as the two of you giggled in your drunkenness. 

It was an awkward walk between the two of you, you back pressed to the wall of your elevator as you each tried to hit the right button for your floor, seeming to hit every single one but the right one, and the journey was filled with shared giggling ad little moans as you let him kiss and lick at your neck, marking your skin with red marks that would be dark by the morning. His hands had fished your keys out of your pocket, and he was holding them up before you as the two of you all but raced along the corridor to your room. 

The door slammed off of the wall as you made your way in, dropping the keys to the floor and kicking the door shut behind you as he navigated you on the path he knew so well toward your bedroom, the light feeling in the air gone as lust and heat replaced it, your mouths meshing together in urgent kisses that begged for more, wandering hands and tugs of material, your jacket pushed from your shoulder to the floor and your hands tucked underneath his t-shirt as you finally got to feel the abs that you had so often watched sweat run down when he’d taken you to do workouts with him, or showed up at your place straight after the gym or a run. 

Pulling his own shirt up and over his head, your hands were immediately drawn to the exposed skin of his chest. It certainly wasn’t the first time you’d seen him without a shirt on, but it was the first time you’d been allowed to actually look, to touch, and your fingertips were pressing into the smooth skin, palms flat to his flushed chest, pink and shining with a light layer of sweat from the heat forming between the two of you. “Damn, Sti.”

“What? Still thought I was the skinny kid with the buzzcut from sophomore year?”

“No, you’ve spent enough time wandering around without your shirt on while I’m around for me to know you’re hot, it’s just now I can actually appreciate it.” You flashed your teeth at him in a cheeky grin, and he gave a breathless chuckle in response, the muscles in his stomach tightening as your fingers dragged down over the taut flesh, until your nails were scratching at the trail of dark hairs below his navel, hooking into his dark jeans.

“I wouldn't have minded if you’d appreciated it before.” You tipped your head up, kissing along the underside of his jaw gently, licking at the smooth flesh from where he had shaved earlier in the day, and his breathing shallowed as you did, his fingers tightening on your hips. “Okay, no fair, shirt off, baby. I’ve been wanting to know what your tits looked like since you wore that red bikini to the pool party I took you to.”

You went almost the same shade as the aforementioned garment as he whispered the filthy words into your ear, and he pushed his hands up under your shirt, hands inching the flimsy material up until it was sitting just under your bra, his thumbs smoothing out over your skin and brushing at the wire of your bra. “You sure you want to do this? We don’t have to. I swear, I’d be more than happy to just cuddle with you and watch movies like we always do on Tuesday nights, just s-”

Your lips met his, pressing a deep and longing kiss to his lips, and he moaned into your mouth when the connection was made, your bodies coming up flush against one another as you moved your hands back up to loop around his neck. Your fingers weaved into his hair, one hand behind his head as the other cradled his jaw, and he tipped his head to the side, your noses bumping and brushing as his tongue dipped out to tempt your lips to open up for him. Instead of allowing that, however, you were pulling away, just enough until your lips were barely brushing his, letting him groan out in dissatisfaction. 

Pulling your shirt up and over your head and dropping it to the ground, his eyes widened as he took in the sight of your exposed chest, all other than the simple white bra you were wearing underneath, and your jaw dropped as you suddenly remembered the underwear that was clad on your body. 

“I wasn’t expecting this when I put my comfy underwear on today, I have way cuter bras than this.” 

He smirked, popping the button on your jeans so that they were loose enough for him to tug down softly, until they were tight around your thighs, your jaw hanging open as both of his palms slipped down to squeeze at your ass. “I was assuming you wouldn't be wearing the cute blue thong when you had no idea what would happen tonight. Besides, if you'll let me, I’d much rather have your underwear off and on the floor, with my head between your thighs and my hands on your tits instead.”

“How do you know about my cute blue thong?” You whined, tipping your head back with false-irritation in your voice, and letting him kiss down your neck as your hair fell back behind you. 

“You do your laundry with me every week, sometimes I’d see what was going into the machines, and that piece caught my eye, I always hoped I’d get to see it on you, and we have plenty of time for that. Besides, I’m wearing boxers with hotdogs printed on, so don’t worry about it.” His fingers moved one of the straps of your bra away, letting it fall away to sit on the side of your arm, exposing your shoulder to him, and you own hands found the clasp behind your back, undoing it for him and watching as his eyes focused in one your breasts, nipples already hard under the material, and he licked at his lips as he stared down at your chest. “Shit, you have such perfect tits.”

You took one of his wrists in your hands, dragging the limp limb up until his palm was pressing over your skin, a content sigh falling from your lips was beyond your control as his fingers twitched and he took control once again, squeezing at the fleshy mound you had given him access to. His thumb and forefinger pinched your nipple teasingly, rolling the taut bud between the pads, and your back arched up, pressing even further into him. 

Dipping down, he took the other between his teeth, pulling lightly before sealing his lips around it, his arm wrapped around your lower back so that he could tip you backwards, your hips pressing into his and the bulge in his jeans becoming obvious as you found yourself flush up against one another. 

“I really need to know what else that mouth can do, and what else you’ve got hidden, and then when we’re all fucked out, we can definitely cuddle and watch a movie. First, though, I want you to make sure I scream loud enough that my neighbours know your name.”

“And here I was thinking I’d be doing the dirty talk, huh?” He sighed out against your skin, pulling away from your breast with a ‘pop’, the skin wet and shiny and he moved back up to brush his mouth with yours. “You got it, princess.” 

His hands found your hips, pushing you backwards onto the bed, and he was pulling your jeans the rest of the way down your legs, taking your socks and shoes as he went, stripping you down to just the polka dot cotton panties you wore, and your hair fanned out around you on the bed as your chest rose and fell, mind spinning as you tried to gather yourself, the whole motion had happened so quickly. His hands were on your knees, pushing your thighs apart until he could settle on the mattress between them, and lick a long stripe up along your covered core, spit soaking you underwear, but the feeling of his hot breath against you was already making you tremble underneath him. 

“Can’t wait to taste you, I bet you’re sweet, hm? That okay? I’ve been dreaming ‘bout getting my head between these thighs, or having you ride my face, cum on my tongue, how’s that sound?” 

“Yes! Yes, to all of it, whatever you want!” Your words were promising for him, and he caught your eye as you propped yourself up on you elbows to look at him, his eyes blown with lust and dark as he hooked his fingers into the elastic of the waistband, tugging the material away from your swiftly, and he let out a noise that was somewhere between a growl and a moan as your glistening folds were put on display for him, with no barrier between. 

“Oh, fuck, you look so good. All spread out for me, dripping wet and blushing. You’re perfect.”

“I’m not perfect, Stiles.” 

“You absolutely fucking are, and I’ll prove just how perfect I think you are.” His lips descended onto yours as he leaned over you, one hand holding him up as you shared a sloppy and heated kiss, the clashing of teeth and tangling of tongues, wet sounds audible in the room as the two of you frantically dove into one another's mouths, exploring and becoming familiar with new territory. The other hand snaked down between your body, cautious fingers dragging along your drenched skin as two digits parted your folds, swirling in the built-up wetness and bumping against your clit. “Shit, you’re so wet. All for me, yeah?”

“All for you, Stiles, you really have no idea what you do to me.”

“Mhm, I think I do.” He joked, grinding his hips down into one of your thighs, pressing the erection that was straining into his jeans into your thigh, and you both let out whimpers at the action. 

“Then fuck me, Stiles, show me I affect you like you affect me. Fuck me, now.”

“I will, I promise.” He cooed, grinning into your skin, his face buried in your neck as he sunk a single finger into you, all the way down to the knuckle, feeling your velvety walls clench around him immediately, coating his skin in your juices. “I gotta’ open you up first, get you ready for m’ cock, okay? And, I do just really want to fuck you with my tongue.” 

With that, he was slipping out of your eyesight and down your body, his arms wrapping under your thighs as he situated himself between your legs, letting out a shaky breath as he lapped at his lips and stared lustfully at your centre. You felt drunk on his touch, everything in your world seeming hazy and blurry as he pressed kisses up along the inside of your thighs, his teeth dragging against the soft skin, and you felt your breath hold in your lungs as he came to the apex of your thighs. That second-long pause felt like it dragged on for hours, before his tongue was finally dragging slowly along your core, a trail from your entrance to your clit, and a loud moan tore from you at the feeling of his mouth on you. 

His lips sealed around your clit, sucking harshly, and your back arched up from the bed as he barely did anything, and yet pleasure was already spiking along your entire body. He dragged his tongue, flat and warm, over the bud and made sure that he moved as slowly as possible, teasing you endlessly, despite how much you wanted more. You wanted to remember this moment and make the most of it, but you couldn't think about anything but the pure bliss Stiles was giving to you, the way he was drinking up every drop of arousal you made, the way he was sucking and nibbling at your core in a most delectable way that had a heat curling in your belly and your body somewhere between relaxed and tense. 

Once he was satisfied that he had licked up everything you had already given, his mouth closed over you, the tip of his tongue poking and prodding at your entrance and teasing the hole, before dipping his tongue into you, and he groaned out as his mouth was flooded with more waves of your juices. You clenched around the wet muscle eagerly, feeling the way your own body was reacting to him like you never had with anyone else, and your hips rocked up into his face, rolling in repeated motions to meet the thrusts of his tongue in and out of you. 

“Fuck, Stiles!”

His chuckle was muffled against your core, the feeling of it vibrating along you body though, and the upturned tip of his cute little nose was once again you downfall, though now instead of being due to making your heart race, it was instead form the way it was nudging against the throbbing bud nestled between your legs, and you felt the nerves in you body zapping and jolting with electricity each time he tilted his head or dove into you even deeper than he already was. 

His fingers were digging into your thighs, holding you close to him as you cried out his name, and he was moaning into your centre with each flick of his tongue and drag of his lips against your dripping cunt, slurping sounds that would make a pornstar blush, and you brought up a shaky hand to thread into his hair, tugging on the chocolate locks in warning. You felt the heat overwhelm you, your body tensing and back arching up until it was no longer on the bed and your legs clamping around his head as you came, his name leaving your lips as a sob when he bit down on your clit just enough to spur on your orgasm with a little more power. 

Your body was shaking and muscles cramping up, your skin shining with a sheen of sweat and he continued to greedily lap at your hole until you were oversensitive and pushing him away prying your own legs open to release him, and when he popped back into your line of sight, he was wearing own of the cockiest looks you had ever seen on him. His cheeks and chin were shining, and his lips were swollen, hair messy from where your fingers were tangled in the strands and he kissed his way back up your body, smearing your sin with your own fluids, and taking his time in making sure he had kissed and licked at every bit of skin, until his mouth was moving across your cheek and back to your lips. 

“You tasted so fucking good, you want to try?” His words were deep, and seductive, and his voice was raspier than you had ever heard it, even in the mornings when the two of you had fallen asleep slumped against one another on the couch after marathoning a new TV show. You found yourself nodding before you even really processed the words, and he beamed down at you with a filthy smile, his thumb pulling your bottom lip down and opening your mouth just enough for his tongue to slither out and play with yours when his lips slanted across your own. 

It was a taste you weren’t used to, foreign in your mouth and unexpected and yet it was just a little sweet, like he had said. It was mixed with the taste of him, one which you much preferred but at this point every inhibition you had was thrown out of the window because right now you were drowning in the way his lips played with your own, his lips tempting yours into the interaction alongside his. For a few minutes, you just lay there, your fingers weaved into his hair as you made out, lazy and messy and hot in a way you couldn't even begin to explain, but each kiss left you breathless and craving more, and each flittering touch of his hands along your body as he moved them, dragging them over every limb and expanse of skin, had your body setting alight once again.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fucking incredible.” You smiled up at him dopily, and he laughed down at you, the moment so incredibly intimate that you felt like your heart was swelling up, and his finger tapped the tip of your nose, before brushing over your kiss-bitten and pouted lips, letting you kiss the pad of his finger. 

“Yeah? That’s good, I like this. Us. I like us being like this, it sorta’ feels like one of those lazy Sunday mornings. Don’t you think?” Your arms wrapped around his neck, and you pulled up your legs to clamp around his hips, humming thoughtfully as you considered his words. 

“I do, but-” you paused in your words, flipping the two of you over, and he let out a sound of sunrise and shock, before he was staring up at you in awe and swallowing thickly as he found himself on his back, watching your tits bounce above him as you leaned down, hair framing your face and lips barely touching his. “-if this was a lazy Sunday morning, you definitely wouldn't be wearing jeans, and I would be able to ride you a lot easier.” 

To emphasise your point, your rocked your hips down into him gently, your eyes rolling a little and eyes fluttering shut as the denim he wore grazed against your sensitive core, a wet patch being left over the bulge of his jeans, the two of you watching between your bodies as trails of slick leaked from you, covering the front of his pants each time you rose up and pushed back down into his covered erection. “You are everything wet dreams are made of.” 

His words were groaned out, his hands coming down between your bodies, and he rose his legs behind you, bumping you up just high enough that when his hips lifted from the bed with you sat in his lap, he was able to push his jeans and boxers down to his mid-thighs. His cock was pulsing with need, skin hot and flushed and dripping with precum, both of you letting out squeaky and broken sounds of satisfaction when his cock rubbed against your folds. 

Grinding down onto him, his legs fell flat, both of you far too needy for a connection to even undress him properly, and you sat up, hands splayed over his chest for leverage and knees digging into the mattress on either side of his hips, giving you the leverage you needed to be able to rock your hips into him. 

The head of his cock pushed against your neglected bead each time, his cock and thighs shining with your arousal as you pleased yourself, whimpering at each strangled noise he let out as his hands clenched by his sides, chest rising and falling under your palms as your dragged your pussy up and down his cock, feeling him nudge against your hole each time, but you were enjoying the build-up a little too much, and you could tell he was too, from the way his face was scrunched up in pleasure and the way his lips were parted to let out short breaths. 

“Please, princess. I need to be inside you, I have been wishing for this moment for almost a year, don’t make me wait any longer.”

You nodded, lifting yourself up as he quickly took himself within his hand, pumping himself easily with all the slick on his skin, before he was lining himself up, his eyes finding yours and his other hand finding your jaw, bringing your lips down to meet his in a tender kiss as he felt you sink down onto his cock, gasping against your mouth and nibbling on your lower lip as you took him into your warmth, inch by inch until he was fully sheathed within you.

He let out a long and shuddering breath when your hips met his, your walls clamping around him and flexing experimentally, and he wiggled happily, his whole body deflating as a look of ecstasy and joy took him over. “Holy fuck, you feel incredible.”

You rolled your hips back, circling them slowly as you adjusted to his size, and you felt the breath knocked from your lungs as he dragged against every inch of your walls slowly. There was no barrier between you, and your forehead dropped down to press against his as you experimented with the swivels of your hips and the movements you made, trying to find a rhythm of what worked best for the both of you. His hands came up to your hips, holding on tightly and helping you move, and when his noises picked up in frequency and pitch at the same time that your own eyes rolled back and your skin erupted in goosebumps was when you knew you had found the best way to move.

You left a series of prolonged and loving kisses to his lips, feeling him lean up into it as best as possible, before your nails were digging into his skin scraping lightly as you moved yourself back to sitting up on his lap. He stretched you out, his generous girth and length filling you to the brim, and he was tapping against spots you didn’t even know you had, bringing you more pleasure than you could possibly have imagined, and you clenched around him tightly and rolled the muscles in your stomach. “Oh, God! Don’t do that unless you want me to cum in like thirty seconds, because that was fucking incredible, but I won’t last if you do.”

His words were wheezed out and you smirked, repeating the action and watching the way he writhed and squirmed underneath you, and he shot you a mock glare, pinching at your thighs and making you jump in a way that brought both of you a little jolt of electricity. 

“You are a hazard to my fucking health, princess.”

A needy noise left you at the pet name, and you began to bob up and down on his shaft, throwing you head back as you took what you wanted, the feeling of another climax buildings as creeping through your veins and making your vision flash with spots as your eyes rolled, and your lips were drying with each quick pant you took for breath. The angle changed when he pushed himself up onto his hands, and a cry left you, your legs tightening around him as he pushed against a certain spot.

“There?”

“Right there, Stiles! Fuck, please!” Your hands were in his hair, his lips on your tits and teeth grazing your skin as he tried to buck up to meet your movements, and you only sped up more and more as you found yourself becoming comfortable in your motions. The room seemed to fade away, nothing mattered between the two of you except the way his hands felt on your body and the way his cock felt every time it slid out of you almost entirely, before you were slamming yourself back or him and crying out his name. 

His own mumbles of praise and arousal were spurring you on, your body feeling like it was on cloud nine, and you no longer felt intoxicated on anything except the feeling of his body underneath you, the way he looked at you lighting you up and the way he kissed you making you feel like nothing would ever matter again. Stiles meant everything, he was made for you, and you could feel from the way the pair of you fit so well together that nothing would ever matter again, as long as you had him and he had you.

Your muscles were growing tired, your knees aching thighs screaming out, but your climax was so close that you could barely even speak sentences now, nothing but his name and your begs for more, and you could feel him twitching and leaking precum within you as he neared his peak. He fell back until he was laying down again, his legs still popped up behind you and you followed after him, a hand on either side of his head as his thrusts into you became easier for him, your jaw slack and tears lining your eyes as pure pleasure overtook you. 

He picked up his pace, chasing his own high as well as yours frantically and the press of your chest to his, the feel of the short hairs at his base tickling against your overstimulated clit was enough to completely drive you into bliss. He was pounding into you, never letting up as he kissed your through your climax, feeling you scream out into his mouth as he muffled your sounds and made sure to fuck you through until you could no longer take it. You were scratching at his chest, shaking as everything all when into hyperdrive, feeling like you were floating as he flipped you over, holding your legs up and open as he desperately fucked into your abused hole, wetness on your cheeks as a third orgasm built, straight off of the second one and it all became too much. 

His fingers on your clit, his mouth on your chest, his cock stretching you out wide and dragging against your rim with each deep and penetrating thrust, and your fingers tangled in the bedsheets as you thrashed happily under him. Nothing had ever felt this good, no orgasm you’d ever had with anyone else or alone, nothing you had even imagined, and every nerve within you was sparking and crackling with energy as you finally exploded for a third and final time.

You clenched around him so hard that you dragged him over the edge with you, his body collapsing down onto you as he went entirely boneless, spasming atop you as the two of you pressed together and rolled through your peaks. Spurts of hot and thick cum filled you up in ropes, spattering against your walls and filling you up, so much so that each time he shafted you could feel him leaking out of you and dripping down into the bedsheets below, and he pressed multiple soft and chaste kisses to the skin that he could reach, before letting out a deep and satisfied groan. 

“Oh, my God. That was the best sex I’ve ever fucking had.” He was crushing you, but you still managed to let out a small giggle underneath him, before he was rolling himself off of you and pulling out, a relieved sigh on your lips as he did. “You’re incredible, absolutely amazing, the best. Just the best. Fuck, I can’t wait to do that again, and just be with you. This is going to be great, an-”

You pressed up to push your lips against his, and he let out a soft sound when you did, before his lips were curling up in a smile and he was kissing you back as best he could.

“You were rambling. You’re even more affectionate after sex.”

“Are you complaining?”

“No! God, no, I love it.” You rubbed the tip of your nose with his, before you were sitting up and grumbling at the protests your body made as you did. “I like it when you’re all clingy and needy, it makes me feel less weird about it when I do the same to you.”

“I like it when you get all touchy, and now I can really do something about it, because let me tell you, all those cute time that you’d come over and just want to cuddle me while I was cooking for us or when you’d hold my hand when we went shopping or lean into me when you’re tired? I wanted to kiss you so fucking badly, and now I can.” Long fingers brushed sweaty and matted hair out of your face, and he pressed his lips to your forehead, before standing up and shucking off the jeans that were still pooled around his calves, kicking off all the remnants of his clothing. 

“I can’t wait, because a little secret would be that I wanted you to kiss me in all of those times, too.”

“Good to know, princess.” You hummed, accepting the hands he was holding out to you, and his eyes scanned along your naked form, swallowing thickly and averting his eyes when he caught sight of the mess leaking out of you. “We should get cleaned up, then you can have those cuddles I promised you.”

“Bath time, then a movie?”

“Sounds perfect to me.”

[wastelandcth]

5 Years - cth

part of love songs for calum, a love series.

summary: calum finds himself imagining what the next five years hold for you two. based off the song 5 years - noah and the whales. 

author’s notes: welcome to my february series! where i’m writing blurbs based around love songs with calum! i hope you enjoy! 

warnings: mentions of implied smut. 

masterlist || request

Calum's life had never been predictable. Ever since he was a child he was never able to predict what he'd be doing a year from now. But when Calum met you, he started imagining what his life could be like if things worked out between the two of you. Whenever he was bored on a tour bus or when the nights alone on tour kept his brain awake, he'd imagine what life with you could be like in the next couple of years.

One day, when the February sun had shone high above in the sky and both you and Calum had enough time away from the busy lives to spend more than just the night together, you found yourselves at the zoo. The weather had been perfect and the zoo itself wasn't too busy, which meant that strolling through the empty walkways and stopping to watch the animals graze around their exhibits was the perfect way to spend the day.

"Did you know elephants have the biggest brain of any of the mammals?" Calum mumbled happily, looking over at you as you both stopped to watch one of the baby elephants trot after it's sibling, making little trumpet noises.

"Really? They must be very smart then," you mumbled, a smile on your face as you watched the little one jump into the puddle.

Before you knew it, your vision was black and you felt the warmth from Calum's hands on your skin. Laughing softly and trying to pry his hands from your eyes, you couldn't help but whine quietly as you heard the trumpeting from the elephants.

"Calum! Let me see!" you whined and managed to peek through in between his fingers just in time to see the baby elephant stumble into the puddle, both you and Calum chuckling as you leaned into one another.

Calum had a memory in his head of when you two went to the beach in Sydney. How the sun was so warm and the sand was soft against his skin. He remembered how excited you had been to see the famous beaches of Australia and you'd practically begged him to take you as soon as you'd settled into the hotel room. He remembers how quiet you'd gotten when you arrived at the beach and you'd finally got your first taste of the ocean breeze, how your eyes were trained on the waves and the horizon.

Calum took many pictures on that trip, pictures of the view from the ocean so he could show you whenever you felt down. He took pictures of the food you both ate, of the good plates, and the more questionable midnight snacks you'd find yourself eating. But Calum's favorite picture was one of you laying on the Sydney beach, the sun shining down on you while your head was in his lap. He'd kept that picture close to his heart, making sure he reminded you that you could always go visit the beach and stare at the ocean whenever you wanted to.

The first time you and Calum got drunk together, it had been an accident. A night out to dinner with the band had led to both of you drinking way too many glasses of wine from the Italian restaurant that Ashton had raved about for more than a month before the guys all decided to make a night out of it. The pasta had been very cheesy and the wine had been strong, which had led to both of you leaning into the other as you walked down the cobblestone streets of the little plaza.

You were leaning against the wall, watching as Calum took a pull of the cigarette he had lit a few minutes ago. His head was tilted back as he let the puff of smoke leave his lips.

"I'm drunk." he mumbled quietly, his words slurred and his chest rumbling with laughter, "Don't think I've ever gotten this drunk this fast, Whatever they put in that wine, oof." he chuckled and nodded, holding out the cigarette to her.

"Mm, it was definitely a strong one." you chuckled, taking the cigarette from his hands and taking a pull, feeling the burn in your lungs as you exhaled.

"I think I love you," he whispered as you both stood next to each other in silence. "I have for a while."

"I think I love you too."

Calum always felt happy when he was around you. He could be himself, not the Calum Hood that was known for being a musician and a heartbreaker. He could be the Calum he always was when he was by himself. That night, after he'd told you that he loved you and you’d said it back, things had changed. Calum wasn't afraid to be that person he had been hiding away for so long. He wasn't afraid to just show up in the same hoodie he'd worn for three days in a row because he knew you'd still love him.

He'd mentioned it to you, on a day where you were both tangled in the bedsheets and his curls were stuck to his forehead while your hair was sprawled out over his chest. How happy he felt with you, that he'd never been as happy before then he was with you. You had smiled up at him, pressing a kiss on to his collarbone tattoo. "Yeah? Well, I'm always pretty happy when I'm just here with you."

Calum loved making love to you. He loved how he felt close to you whenever he had you under him or on top of him. He loved how you squirmed under his touch while his hands held your waist tight to the end of the bed. Making love to you was different than the casual sex you two were usually having. It was soft kisses and hips meeting in the bed that you both had shared many times before. It was soft grunts and whines that left both of you as you chased a high. He loved the little noises you would make as their hips met. Calum loved how at the end of every night he would end up tangled in your arms, chest heaving, and kisses being left on his skin.

"Do you think this feeling will ever go away?" you asked him one night, your hands running through the curls that you had been pulling not too long ago.

"Hmm?" he asked softly, "I hope so. I love being in love with you." he chuckled, his lips leaving a trail of kisses from your shoulder until they met yours, your legs pulling him closer for the long night you had both been craving.

Sometimes when Calum got lost in his head, with thoughts of what his future would look like, he realized just how easy it would be to lose you. All the moments he'd come up with, a house with a big yard for dogs, a car big enough to hold a stroller and car seats, and even just two rocking chairs on a porch where you could both sit and enjoy the Australian summer. Those could easily be lost, with mistakes and fights where Calum's emotions got the best of him, gone and never to become a reality.

He was lying in bed one night, far away from the home and from you, when his thoughts caused his heart to race. When he realized just how easily he could lose you and everything you two had built.

"I just don't understand how you could be so selfish, Calum?!" you groaned, your hands running through your hair for the tenth time in a matter of seconds, "How could you think you could make all these big decisions without thinking of me?"

"You're just being dramatic. It's part of my job, you knew this would be the case. You signed up for this!" Calum threw back, his own eyes rolling as he finished packing up his suitcase.

"You’re leaving for almost two years, Calum!" you shouted, tears pricking your eyes, "Did you even think about how that would affect me?" you asked and scoffed, "Of course you didn't, all you do is think about yourself."

Calum didn't know when things had gotten this bad, when the small little arguments turned into fights where he would end up at Ashton's house, trying his best to fall asleep on the leather couch. But he was tired of all the fighting, tired of all the insults thrown between the two of you. He thought that maybe if he just broke things off, that things would get better. But then there he was, watching you grab our bag and walk out the door and he never felt so scared in his life.

"Cal?" your voice whispered, bringing Calum back to reality one day, "Are you there, sweet boy?"

"Hmm? Yeah, sorry, just got lost in thought." Calum mumbled and chuckled quietly, "What were you saying again?"

"That's okay," you laughed and shook your head, "I was saying we should stop by that gelato place near our Airbnb, they had a lot of cool flavors."

Calum nodded, smiling as he watched you take a sip of the Italian wine you'd been nursing. The sun was setting behind you, making the perfect background of reds and oranges. The small getaway that Calum had planned for you both had been the perfect way to get some time together afterlife became too much and schedule conflicts meant you two hadn't seen much of the other person in a few weeks. It had also been your six-year anniversary, which meant each day of your trip was filled with little surprises from one another. Little moments where the love you had proved every bad thought Calum had wrong.

taglist:  @hoodhoran @finelliine @moonlightcriess @dinosaursandsocks @mxgyver @calpops @karajaynetoday @notlukehemmo @calumrose @devilatmydoor @lyss-xo @lowkeyflop

[sunsoothed]

last love

prompt fill time! i got this prompt ages ago, i think when the show was still airing, and i just finished writing it in two days or so. it's turned out to be much longer than i intended, and i'm pleased about that. there is bye bye balloon date and a night spent in busan. warning for one instance of referenced internalised homophobia.

word count: 2294

read on ao3

enjoy!

-

Unfortunately sunny, the day reigns. There is a flyer slid cleanly under Jipurgi Law Firm’s door, inoffensive to the eye, nothing special. It is Chayoung who first takes note of it, hearing the paper flap as a draught sings through the office.

She stands in her heels, staring down at the complexity of colour, before she finds a very, very familiar face.

“Byeonhosa-nim,” Chayoung says, as she bends down and picks the flyer up, “You didn’t tell me you got another job.”

Vincenzo furrows his brows, leans back in his chair to observe what Chayoung’s got her hands on to make her hypothesise such a thing. He leans back far enough to catch sight of the flimsy flyer, distantly notices the Bye Bye Balloon logo, and in his shock, manages to tip his chair back entirely.

-

Minutes later, Vincenzo holds an ice-pack to the back of his head, seated at the table in the middle of the office. Chayoung sits at the head of the table and Mr Nam opposite him, the both of them eagerly awaiting an explanation while the flyer sits innocently on the table. Vincenzo can see his own tired face reflected back at him.

“Seokdo-hyung asked me to model for him,” Vincenzo mumbles.

Chayoung leans forward, her hands clasped together and forming a triangle with her forearms. “I didn’t hear you, could you repeat that?”

Vincenzo shoots her a dirty look, and replies with a scowl: “Seokdo-hyung asked me to model for him.”

“Wow,” Mr Nam nods. “Wow,” He repeats, and then he claps.

With a deadpan expression, Vincenzo hits his head with the ice-pack.

Chayoung bites her lips to hide a grin. “Modelling, then?”

“He said I owed him,” Vincenzo mutters. “You can see I’m not happy about it.”

Chayoung ignores him completely. Her massage toy materialises out of somewhere and taps him on the shoulder.

“Do you get a free ride if you modeled for them?”

Vincenzo glares first at the toy, then at Chayoung. “How would I know.”

“Tch.” She glares back. “I’m going to ask them.”

Before Vincenzo has time to process what she’s saying, Chayoung skips out of the office. His panicked byeonhosa-nim! fails to reach her ears, and with a sigh he resigns himself to his fate.

-

It’s a week later that Chayoung drags him to spend a night in Busan, quite literally pulling him by the hand into the train at five-thirty AM. The one backpack of their shared necessities for one night slings heavily over his shoulders.

Seokdo-hyung had already started setting everything up at the port, or so he’d told them, when they’d called him last night. He also specified that they needed to arrive before nine in the morning, then he harped on about logistics of wind direction and whatnot, and Chayoung had put him off speaker and returned to going through Vincenzo’s cupboard.

Of course, she had shown up at his place uninvited, and of course, he let her do whatever she wished.

And so were the consequences: one bad cup of espresso at the train station and three hours in-and-out of sleep aboard the train. Chayoung shakes him awake fifteen minutes before they arrive, something unmistakably soft in her eyes as he removes his head from her shoulder.

“You’re like a cat,” She tells him, smile mild and indulgent. When he asks her to, she refuses to elaborate on it. “You just are.”

-

Chayoung takes his hand the moment they get off the train. Vincenzo stares down at their joint hands, then at Chayoung’s face, an obvious question in his raised eyebrows.

“You’ll get lost,” She explains. “I bet you’ve never been to Busan before.”

Vincenzo opens his mouth, always ready to argue with her, before he realises that she’s actually right. “I haven’t,” He acquiesces. “Lead the way.”

When Chayoung grins at those words, there is a blush high on her cheekbones, reflecting in the morning sunlight. Vincenzo wants to kiss her.

-

So it turns out Seokdo-hyung is actually competent at his work, for he had everything prepared when Vincenzo and Chayoung arrived on site, still holding hands. He had nothing to say to that.

“I’ll take you for a nice ride around the coast, but since you both aren’t actually using our service, you get none of the on-flight snacks and we’ll come down before we use up too much fuel. Clear?”

“Clear!” Chayoung exclaims, determined in the sharpness of her eyes. Vincenzo just nods.

Seokdo-hyung claps his hands together, then gestures for them to get on, scampering on once the both of them are standing in the basket. They’re high up in no time, Busan’s urban landscape majestically below them.

“I usually don’t do this,” Seokdo-hyung starts up, after they drift for a few minutes. “But it’s difficult to get licensed to pilot this, so I’m glad I can put my skills to use.”

“You have a very mysterious past, Mr Nutria,” Chayoung calls from across the basket. “How random is a hot air balloon license.”

“Ah,” Seokdo-hyung stares out into the distance, exclaims somewhere between wistful and egoistic. “I’m full of surprises.”

Vincenzo and Chayoung share a smile. Vincenzo shifts closer, so that they’re both sharing the same view, shoulder to shoulder.

“I’ve never seen something like this,” Chayoung tells him, voice soft. She leans into his shoulder to be heard, Vincenzo automatically leaning down to accommodate her.

“Me neither.”

Chayoung laughs, airy and giddy, her eyes on his face for just a second before she continues to take in the scenery. “It’s nice up here, isn’t it?”

Vincenzo blinks softly at her. “Mm. It’s a little cold, but yes, nice. Very nice.”

“You always underdress because you want to look cool,” Chayoung tuts. “I expected this.”

Vincenzo, who has never been so perceived and so personally affronted, only stares mutely as she produces a woolen scarf from her handbag. Before he has the opportunity to ask her exactly how she managed to stuff it in her bag, she’s throwing it around his neck, wrapping it tightly.

“Too - too tight,” Vincenzo winces, as Chayoung pulls the ends of the scarf; constricting his throat.

Chayoung’s eyebrows shoot up in alarm, then fall back down in annoyance as Vincenzo grins at her. She shoves his shoulder.

“Idiot,” Chayoung huffs, pointedly looking away from him.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” Vincenzo starts, placating her with a hand on her shoulder, “If you managed to kill me like that?”

“You’re seriously asking to be killed now,” Chayoung replies, diluted astonishment. “With your mother’s scarf, too. You’re very dedicated to giving yourself a horrible end.”

“That won’t be a horrible end,” He says, toys with the scarf around his neck. “At least, not for me.”

“Not after all you’ve done?”

Vincenzo exhales and bites the flesh of his lower lip. Then he nods at Chayoung.

Chayoung drapes an arm over his shoulder. “Then we’ll go together.”

“Byeonhosa-nim —”

“We’ll go together,” Chayoung vows, leaving no room for argument.

-

Early evening, Seokdo-hyung has already made his way back to Seoul. Vincenzo and Chayoung have since walked enough to exhaust themselves and eaten too much off the streets of Busan to need dinner. Chayoung still stops him by a convenience store near the Hyatt, and puts two packets of ramen’s worth of bills on his credit card.

“I spent all my money treating you,” Chayoung explains, when Vincenzo holds his mouth open and eyebrows raised throughout the billing process. “Be grateful.”

“On no, of course,” Vincenzo sarcastically inclines his head. “It’s not like I’ve been carrying your luggage the whole day.”

He still holds the door open for her when they exit.

“If it’s too much for your old, weary shoulders, I’ll carry the bag.”

“When we’re outside the hotel?” Vincenzo smiles his fake smile while looking up at the building. “Thank you for your kind offer, byeonhosa-nim.”

Chayoung smiles back smugly.

-

Well, turns out she wanted him to suffer more.

“There’s only one bed.”

Chayoung just shrugs. Vincenzo scrunches his brows.

“Where will I sleep?”

“On the bed,” She replies.

“And where will you sleep?”

“On the bed.”

“Byeonhosa-nim,” Vincenzo begins, but he doesn’t know where he’s going with it. “Byeonhosa-nim.”

“Byeonhosa-nim,” Chayoung parrots back. “Is it a problem?”

Between Vincenzo’s quiet crisis over the bed and his stuttering, Chayoung has very happily dug her clothes and toiletries out of the backpack.

“I’m going to change,” She calls over her shoulder. “Don’t just stand there.”

Vincenzo, who had been planning to just stand there for a good few minutes more, does not budge an inch. In fact, he’s in the same position when Chayoung returns from the bathroom, mouth minty and feet bare.

“Byeonhosa-nim,” She says softly. “Is it really a —”

“Byeonhosa-nim,” Vincenzo interrupts her. “Can I kiss you?”

-

When the sun announces the first of its presence, it’s palpable through the translucent curtains of the hotel room. Chayoung awakens from her catnap against Vincenzo’s shoulder, her hair draped over his chest. She hums, content, runs a hand over his torso, eventually settling on the curve of his waist and clutching.

“You’re awake?” Vincenzo’s dry voice sounds from above her. “Did you sleep well?”

Chayoung smiles up at him. “Very well.”

Vincenzo responds in kind; he holds her by the waist, guiding her slightly upwards for a kiss.

“You would, after you exhausted yourself like that.”

“Why do I get the feeling you talk to all your hook-ups like that?” Chayoung wonders while she lightly traces his jaw with her free hand. “Is this how you usually do this?”

“This isn’t a hook-up to me.”

“No?” Chayoung’s fingers stop shy of his lips.

“No,” Vincenzo confirms, bends down to kiss her fingers. “It’s much more than that.”

She sighs against his chest. “For me, too. You’re not a hook-up.”

Vincenzo kisses her forehead.

“But…”

“But?”

Chayoung hides her face in his neck. “But I won’t say this is some first love thing either.”

That draws a laugh out of him. “First loves are overrated anyway.”

Chayoung peers at him. “Sounds like there’s a story behind that.”

Vincenzo tilts his head to look at her. Chayoung gets the hint, lazily boosting herself up on her forearms. Vincenzo, freed from his entrapment, takes a moment to relieve the cricks in his neck, then sits back against the headboard of the bed. Chayoung drapes the sheets over her shoulders and sits beside him.

“Back in Italy,” Vincenzo starts, after retrieving his lighter from his bedside, “There was this upperclassman at my high school. He was also Korean. He used to tutor me, in our school’s library, every Wednesday evening.”

Vincenzo clicks the lighter open and shut a couple of times.

“I realised I liked him and I had a crisis about it, like any fourteen-year-old would. I definitely detested that part of me for a good while. It wasn’t — isn’t something that was exactly… orthodox. And to a fourteen-year-old, no matter what you’ve seen, when you discover something for yourself, it’s always pretty monumental. So I… I tried to avoid him for a few weeks, but he found me each time, and he’d speak my mother tongue and cajole me into a better mood. He never asked what had me so down.”

Vincenzo closes the lighter and holds his thumb down.

“I thought of him day and night. The more I made myself avoid him, the more I’d think of meeting him, the more I met him, the more I’d want to see him again. It was like that. But that wasn’t why I really thought of him as my first love, I think. It was after he graduated, he gave me a present, a letter. He said he was proud of me. And then…”

“And then he left?”

Vincenzo looks at Chayoung with a reluctant smile. He nods.

“That’s when I knew I loved him. His absence hurt like my mother had abandoned me again.” Vincenzo swallows. “But you know how it is for fourteen-year-olds. I did forget him. I did forget that part of my identity as well. But I like to keep him in my memory. He was kind to me, I was so much more naive. It’s nice to remember him, because I can remember a different me. It’s somewhat a tribute to Park Joohyung, the boy I once was. Before my world changed forever.”

Vincenzo swallows into the silence once again. Chayoung sighs.

“I can’t compete with that.”

A laugh, punched out, but a laugh nonetheless. “This isn’t a competition.”

Chayoung sighs again, leans against his shoulder until her cheek is squished against it. “My first love was this boy who used to walk to the bus stop with me. He always had some kind of candy on him, and he always shared it with me.”

“How Pavlovian.” Vincenzo drily remarks.

“What did I say? Nothing that can compete with your sob story.”

Vincenzo scoffs lightly. “We won’t end up like that.”

“We won’t,” Chayoung agrees. “We’re old now.”

Vincenzo bends his head so that they’re eye to eye. “Your timing is horrible.”

“What? Were you going to confess your undying love to me or something?”

Vincenzo’s mouth hangs open in affront.

“You were,” Chayoung says, then covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh my god, you were.”

“You ruined the moment,” Vincenzo curtly informs her. “Forget it.”

“You can’t do this to me —”

“I can,” He decides, and sits with his arms crossed and mouth sealed shut.

“Come on.”

“Byeonhosa-nim.”

“Vincenzo Cassano.”

“... Jagiya?”

That makes him look at her.

“I love you,” Chayoung seizes the opportunity. “Now say it back.”

Disgruntled cat that he is, it takes more than one try to get Vincenzo to say it back. But once he starts, he doesn’t stop.

[theimpossiblescheme]

sleep to you who wander

(As far as I’m concerned, The Castle of Cagliostro already has a perfect ending, especially for what’s supposed to be Lupin III’s final adventure.  But what happens after our heroes ride off into the sunset and life continues for them, anticlimactic as it might be?  I wrote this after pondering that very question, with help from @dying-suffering-french-stalkers and her reference to a simiilar scene in The Princess Bride, where the ride off into the sunset doesn’t go quite so smoothly.  We’ve had a looooot of DM conversations on the topic, and this was the result--I hope you guys enjoy it!)

“Did we lose ‘em?”

Meeting Jigen’s eyes in the rearview mirror for a second, Goemon glanced out the back window.  There was a reassuring lack of sirens on the road behind them.  “We lost them.  Fujiko must have headed them off at the border.”

Lupin let out a quiet chuckle from the passenger seat.  “Oh, so she wouldn’t share the plates, but…”  He trailed off and sank further down, tempted to tilt the seat back, but not wanting to scare the poor unsuspecting samurai sitting there (not that ending up in a blushing Goemon’s lap wouldn’t be nice…)

Besides, they’d have to make a pit stop soon, anyway.

“Hey, Jigen?  As soon as we find a petrol station, pull over.”

“We’ve got plenty of fuel still.  And don’t tell me you gotta take a leak—”

“Just pull us over, all right?  I gotta take care of something.”

A pause.  Jigen and Goemon’s eyes met again through the mirror.

“… Get me some cigarettes while you’re in there?”

“Done.”

The last of the Cagliostro countryside turned into the Italian countryside, and the back roads turned into the streets of Ventimiglia, Italy.  So many people were out on the sidewalks, perusing shop windows and outdoor stands, lined up across each block in herds, almost drowning out traffic… what day was it?  Lupin realized he hadn’t even been keeping track—the only indication he’d had of the time passing was the newspaper clipping of the Count’s failed wedding.  The fashion markets happened on Fridays, right?  He remembered Rebecca mentioning that to him… how long ago now?  It couldn’t have been too long, could it?  Maybe if he watched the crowds now, he could catch a glimpse of long blonde hair streaked with blue (or maybe she’d gotten bored of that color and switched to pink or purple or something.  Women did so love changing up their hair), but he couldn’t twist that far without a rib digging directly into his lung and making him gasp.

Where the hell was a petrol station when you needed one?

It took about fifteen minutes of Jigen honking furiously at pedestrians and growling for them to “share the goddamn road” before they were moving at full speed and finally pulling in beside one of the pumps.  Jigen emphatically buried his spent stub of a cigarette in the ashtray, driving his own point home.  “You promised—”

“Don’t worry, I’m good for it.”  Lupin tried to reach for the First Aid kit under the seat as nonchalantly as possible as he opened the door and rose to his feet…

Jigen was too quick on the uptake.  Grabbing his wrist and twisting his arm just so, forcing Lupin to look up at him?  “Whaddya need it for?”

“C’mon, it’s not a big—”

“What do you need it for?”

… Well, right now, the last thing Lupin needed was to have the truth choked and yanked out of him.  Even sighing made his chest hurt.  “Get my jacket off for me, would you?”

Jigen obeyed, pulling it off carefully by the arms and draping it across the back of his own seat.  At the same time, Lupin unbuttoned his black shirt until the wrappings and bandages underneath were showing.

There was actually less blood than he’d expected.  Maybe he hadn’t torn everything open… just enough to make a mess, though.

Over his shoulder, he heard Jigen hiss in shock and the back passenger door open as Goemon bounded out.  “Why the hell didn’t you tell us?” came Jigen’s choked voice as he almost jumped out of the driver’s seat, letting Lupin’s head fall back against it.  Lupin almost made a joke about how he’d been cheated out of laying in two very choice gentlemen’s laps, but it died in his throat as he let his back fully stretch out for the first time in hours.

“Wasn’t really the biggest thing in on my mind,” he admitted, unable to keep from wincing, but forcing himself to relax more as Goemon knelt and inspected his wounds.  “We had a wedding to stop, a princess to rescue, a treasure to uncover, a Count to defeat… kind of a packed schedule, even for us.”  Still, getting into a fight in a clocktower and then plummeting several hundred feet into freezing cold water on top of that didn’t exactly do wonders for multiple gunshot wounds and a concussion.  Who would’ve thought?

“You still should have told us you were in pain,” Goemon replied somewhere near his waist.  He lay one cool hand over where one of the bandages had come loose, a warning and a request, and Lupin nodded and gritted his teeth in anticipation.  “We could have helped you when you first came back.”

“Yeah, I know… I just had a lot of my mind.”  Goemon went slowly and gently as he tightened the wrappings, occasionally mopping up the blood with a paper napkin from the glove compartment along the way, and Lupin tilted his head back for any friction to distract from the sting and pull in his skin.  Normally when he was being treated like this, he would either playfully swoon over his wonderful nurses and how good they were with their hands, or he would rail loudly at how unfair it was and that he couldn’t be slowed down like this.  Right now, he didn’t have the energy for either.  His chest was still tight, and it had nothing to do with the bandages.

“If you ever need help, just let me know.  I’ll come running from anywhere on earth to save you.”

Just don’t need me yet, kiddo—I’m not in the best shape for it right now.

“You gonna be okay?”  Jigen’s voice again.  The seat right above his head dipped, and Lupin looked up to see him crouched right above him, his knee almost grazing the top of his hair.

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine.  You know me—it’s gonna take a lot more than this to knock me out of the running.”

“Says the guy who was knocked out for three days straight not that long ago.”

“But isn’t that why I have you?”  Lupin tilted his head further back and shot Jigen the brightest, most charming smile he could manage.  “To gallantly nurse me back to health when my strength fails?”

Jigen didn’t answer, but he did mutter something that sounded like “smug little prick” before raking a hand across Lupin’s head, fingers digging through his hair into his scalp.  Lupin shamelessly leaned into the touch—it was enough to make up for the lack of Goemon’s hands after he tied off the last of the bandages and buttoned Lupin’s shirt back up to the collar.  He still couldn’t tie a necktie, but Lupin didn’t want to bother with it right now.

“Do you know where we’re heading next?” Goemon asked, offering a hand to help Lupin straighten up.

“Not a clue.”  He tried to pass it off as casual, his usual devil-may-care recklessness, as he rose to a sitting position in the passenger seat once again.  “You guys have any ideas?”

Jigen shrugged as he climbed back in behind the wheel, but Goemon hesitated, still kneeling right outside with the First Aid kit in his lap… ears going slightly pink.  “I… may have one.”

“Oh?”  Now Lupin was extremely alert.  “Well, you know I’d loooove to hear it, Goemon!”

“I would like to go back to Japan--Suminawa’s village, specifically.  I have… some loose ends I’d like to tie up.”

No sooner had those words left his mouth than Jigen let out a knowing cackle.  “You’re wanting to see Murasaki again, aren’t ya?  Isn’t it about time you made an honest woman of her?”

Goemon’s extremely pink face was answer enough for both of them.

“Hey, that sounds great!”  Lupin leaned forward, shifting just so he could sling an arm around his partner’s shoulder.  “Tell you what—we’ll make a road trip out of it.  Just the three of us.  We’ll just drive until we need to find a ship across, and if there’s any place you guys wanna hit along the way, we can do it.  Doesn’t even have to be a heist—if you guys wanna go sightseeing or shopping or anything at all, just let me know!”

It felt a bit like stalling, and maybe it was.  Maybe he just didn’t want to let Goemon go just yet.  Maybe the prospect of him settling down (even if it was with a nice girl like Murasaki) felt a little too much like never seeing him again.  But he’d already left way too soon after the three of them hightailed it out of Monaco, and as nice it was to spend all that time on the road with Jigen… the Fiat’s backseat did feel pretty empty.

And there was still that tightness in his chest he wanted to put off dealing with for as long as possible.

To his relief, Goemon nodded.  “That does sound nice… as long as you don’t get us lost on the scenic route through Russia on the way.”

“Hey, that was one time!”

“And the only time, right?”

Before Lupin could say anything, Jigen was cackling again and actually aiming a gentle kick right at the small of his back, forcing him to his feet.  “C’mon, dumbass—you’re still on cigarette duty before we hit the road.”

***

He had planned for a couple of heists along the way.  Just a couple—there weren’t many places Lupin hadn’t already stolen from or at least had a memorable encounter therein.  At some point over the campfire, he’d dug out a collection of old roadmaps and traced the many annotations he’d left in it.  Every continent, every large metropolitan area in every country.  X-es and checkmarks over where he’d been, notes scribbled in the margins.  Lists of traps to look out for, supplies to bring with them.  Lather, rinse, repeat on every page.  Sheafs of hotel stationery tucked into the bindings with diagrams and estimated floorplans and arrows mapping out everyone’s positions, including Zenigata’s.

(Where was Pops now, anyway?  Was he still out there looking for them?  Had he given up?  Hell, there was a chance he’d stumble across their little campsites any second… in which case, Lupin was tempted to just offer him a sausage and tell him to take a load off.)

Very little empty, unexplored space left on any of them.  That, too, sat heavy somewhere in Lupin’s chest.

But he did want to eke out a handful of smaller jobs.  Mostly second tries at treasures they hadn’t quite managed to steal, moving from one museum to another.  The Faberge Museum had apparently found more eggs to display, and what the hell, it might be nice to have something pretty for the hell of it (and they’d lost their old haul somewhere in a Moscow hotel the last time) …

It seemed only appropriate that Fujiko beat him to it.

The Fiat had parked overnight along the Moyka River Embankment, nestled inconspicuously among the other cars.  The engine was running just enough to leave the heat on, and Goemon was sitting upright in the backseat, head lolled gently against his chest, while Jigen had tipped his own seat all the way back so that his head nearly rested on Goemon’s knee.  Lupin had spent the past six hours driving, and his jacket was actually buttoned for once so he could burrow into the neck, trying to force himself to sleep.  Jigen’s snores didn’t usually bother him, but right now they were unnecessarily loud.

He'd almost mistaken the rumble of Fujiko’s bike for another snore.

But as he leaned his cheek against the window, there it was.  And there she was.  Still blonde, her surplus military uniform traded for her old red biker’s gear.  Goggles pulled up over her forehead as she sidled up to the car, eyes finding Lupin’s and giving him a slight, amused smirk as he could only blink at her at first before rolling down the window.  She’d been so far ahead of them… how had she caught up?  Or rather, how had they caught up with her?

“Nothing there that we haven’t already picked over, unfortunately,” Fujiko said, hefting a large satchel into her lap.  “Still… I did manage to come away with a few little beauties.”  With some effort, she lifted out a large golden egg latticed with starbursts and topped with a diamond the size of an eyeball.  And when she cracked it open, a miniature red coach, also studded with gold and propelled by golden wheels, tumbled gently out.

Lupin couldn’t help but whistle.  “Very nice… I don’t suppose I can get you to share, Fujicakes?”  He pressed his hands together under his chin like a child praying at Christmas, tilting his head up and exaggeratedly batting his eyelashes at her.  “I’d settle for just the coach, y’know.”

“Not a chance.”  Fujiko quickly tucked the treasures back into her satchel.  “I know appraisers who would pay in blood just to touch the Imperial Coronation egg.  And last I checked, you came away from Cagliostro empty-handed.”

“Hey, I was the one who uncovered the Roman city underneath the lake—that has to count for something!”

“But you can’t exactly carry a city, Lupin.”

“Well, not with that attitude.”  As if he couldn’t still picture it perfectly, even after so many weeks.  Or months—had it been months since they started?  It felt like hours since he’d been there walking the ruins, jumping across causeways Clarisse couldn’t reach so he could catch her on her way over.  He’d stolen San Marino, he’d stolen Paris, he’d stolen New York City more than once, and now he had this little piece of Cagliostro… there was something romantic about that.  Something suitably grand for the world’s greatest thief.  Lupin the First would definitely approve.

Fujiko just hummed skeptically and let it go, repositioning her bike in preparation to drive away.  “So where are you all off to?”

“Back to Japan—Goemon wanted to patch things up with Murasaki, and I told him we’d make a trip of it.  What about you?”

“Mmmm… I haven’t decided yet.”  There was a note of wistfulness in Fujiko’s voice, in her eyes… Lupin always found that particularly beautiful.  Not that she wasn’t a knockout when she was confidently conning her way through droves of men, himself included, with that hard set in her face and that edge in her smile—lesser men had died just for a glimpse.  But these spare moments of uncertainty, especially in the dim light when she still had some plausible deniability, were that much more precious.  Lupin had missed seeing them, now that they weren’t in such close quarters anymore.  “I know at least one dealer in France who would pay pretty handsomely.  And I haven’t been back there in a while… you know, I actually miss it.”

“Even with all the bullshit from last time?”

She actually laughed, if only just a little.  “Even with all the bullshit from last time.”

“Hey, say hi to Ami for me.  And save me a reservation at the Ritz—we could catch up.”

There was something oddly final about this, too.  Maybe he was just overthinking things; after all, this was Fujiko, who couldn’t be bothered tying herself to any one city or any one man or woman.  They’d see each other again someday.  It was almost inevitable.  That was why he didn’t bother giving her a date—maybe it would be months, maybe even years, but at least that table would be there, waiting.

Still… he pictured this going differently.  Maybe after one more grand heist, one more merry chase through the hallways of some huge museum or manor house before they emerged onto a balcony and Fujiko leaped onto the ladder of a waiting helicopter, leaving him with empty hands and tingling lips once again.  Or maybe one last tumble, for old time’s sake (not that there was room in the car for that, and Jigen would bawl him out if he dragged them all to a hotel just for her).  This felt… weirdly anticlimactic in comparison.

Maybe that was only fitting.  It wasn’t really an end per se, or at least it didn’t have to be.  Nothing ever really ended between them.

Fujiko smiled.  “We’ll see how things turn out.”  And she started to turn around to leave…

“Oh, Fujiko?”

She stopped midway through lowering her goggles.  “Hmm?”

Lupin was tempted to ask for a kiss, or even to just take her free hand and kiss it in farewell.  But neither felt right at the moment, and on the chance she’d refuse he didn’t want them to leave on bad terms.  So instead he just gave her a smile.  “See you around.”

Her own smile brightened, and she gave him a wink in return before revving her engine and riding off down the road.  Lupin watched her go until the motorcycle was a dot in the distance before sinking back into his seat, not even bothering to roll the window back up.  There was a breeze coming in from off the river.  Beside him, Jigen had backed nearly all the way up and off the passenger seat toward the back, still laying flat with his hat over his face, but nearly on top of Goemon, who barely registered his presence.

It was a nice night.

***

It was a nice night when they finally dropped off Goemon as well.  They’d long since lost track of how long they’d been on the road--the Fiat had lasted several dozen tanks of gas, two flat tires, one fussy engine that Jigen had taken multiple attempts to jumpstart, and a barge across the Sea of Japan.  By the time they reached Murasaki’s village, the air brushed coolly through the open windows, the caps of snow on the mountains nearby had grown whiter, and the trees rustled red and gold.

The world had been green when they started out, Lupin noted.  Maybe he just hadn’t noticed the change.

Halfway through a familiar glen, where a small roadside garden stretched slowly into view, Goemon motioned for them to stop.  “I can walk the rest of the way.”

“You sure?”  Lupin pulled over to one side and parked, but didn’t kill the engine just yet.  “We can drop you off right on her doorstep, it’s no problem.”

“I think I would rather talk to her alone when I get there.  We’ll have a lot of ground to cover… since I’ve been gone so long.”  Climbing out of the backseat, sword in hand and travelling hat tucked under his arm, Goemon came to stand in front of them.  “So we can say goodbye here.”

Oh, to hell with that.  The second he and Jigen climbed out after him, Lupin reached out and took Goemon’s hands and, when he seemed receptive to that, swept him into a hug, one hand on the back of his hair.  There was so much he wanted to say… most of it variations on thank you.  For putting up with his nonsense, for coming through every time they needed him and every time they didn’t, for staying by his side even when Jigen couldn’t, for being so absurdly loyal and brave, for making him laugh and feel alive even from the moment they met, for letting Lupin make him laugh when he thought he never would again, for letting him be a part of his life at all… they’d be here all night if he kept counting the reasons.

For now, one quiet “Thank you” would do before he pulled out of the hug and gave Goemon a kiss on each cheek.  “You take care of yourself, okay?  Her, too.”

Goemon nodded, throat suspiciously tight as he moved onto Jigen, who wrapped him into his own tight hug.  “Don’t be a stranger,” Jigen murmured before dropping his voice and whispering something only he could hear into his ear.  Lupin didn’t try to listen, tempting as it was--he just stood back alongside them, hands in his pockets.  When Goemon finally stepped away, his jaw stuttered with the beginnings of half a dozen parting words before snapping closed as he gave them both a nod.

“Travel safe, you two.  I’ll… I’ll be in touch.”

Lupin gave him the same smile he’d given Fujiko, feeling it pull even more at his lips this time.  “We’ll hold you to that, y’know.”

And with that, Goemon turned, let in a deep cleansing breath that eased the remaining tension in his shoulders, and started off down the road.  His partners watched him go until he, too, was only a dot disappearing around the bend in the wake of a tiny indoor light glowing yellow and drowning him out.  Saying goodbye to Fujiko had felt strangely unsatisfying, but somehow just right.  This… this just felt right. 

Didn’t stop his eyes from burning against the dark, though.

Lupin hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten--how long they’d been standing there--until Jigen nudged him, a fuzzy indigo blur in the shadow of the car.  “C’mon.  Let’s find a place to sleep.”

Neither of them moved for a few minutes after that.  Even with nothing left to see but the fireflies in the grass.

***

“You can take that off now, you know--it’s starting to creep me out.”

Lupin grinned behind the mask of Zenigata’s face.  “Hey, maybe Pops’ll take the hint and join us for a breather.”  It had been almost a year since they’d seen hide or hair of the good inspector (hell of a thing to process), and Lupin was starting to miss him.  And after all, no matter where he was in the world, there was no better way to summon him than somebody reporting a false sighting.

Jigen rolled his eyes, but patted him on the shoulder as the elevator landed and he peeled back off down the hotel hallway.  “Yeah, well, you go change.  I’m gonna go check out our room--they better have been serious about the bar.”

Once he was alone, Lupin ducked through the doorway to the courtyard, glancing around him before pulling off the mask and tucking it into the pocket of the great brown overcoat before slinging it over his shoulder.  There were still a few weeks left before the snow stayed down in drifts, so for today the sky was blue and clear, and piles of grey slush clumped around the remaining patches of grass and the little patio that had once been surrounded by summer flowers…

He’d almost walked right on past, but his eye finally caught the figure sitting on the sofa.  Surrounded by large antique suitcases, flanked by an old man in rough-hewn gardener’s clothes and  two hulking security guards the size of professional wrestlers.  A petite figure in a purple dress, red hair pinned elegantly at the nape of her neck and hidden by a wide-brimmed hat.

Lupin recognized her in an instant.  She recognized him, too--as she rose and rushed over to meet him, her arms went out as if to hug him, but at a start from one of her bodyguards, she resisted and forced them back down to her sides.  Instead, she held up a hand for him to kiss, as befitting a proper young lady, but as he did so her voice was breathless with excitement.

“I knew… I just knew we’d meet again someday, Mr. Thief.”

And the ache in Lupin’s chest yawned so fiercely he feared it might swallow him.

***

Their hotel room did not, in fact, come with a bar.  With much grumbling, Jigen had taken them to the one across the street.  It was admittedly a very nice place--the staff were friendly, the drinks were great, and the in-house jazz band had the tact to slow things down after a certain hour and more than a few patrons needed cut off for the night.  Right now they were playing a melancholy piece for saxophone and piano, more of a reflection than a true song.

It gave Lupin something to focus on… the ice in his glass was melting and the condensation leaving rings on the table, but he couldn’t bring himself to drink.

“Been doin’ an awful lot of sighing there, buddy,” came Jigen’s voice beside him, slowly nursing his own glass of scotch.  When Lupin didn’t rise to the bait, Jigen heaved a long-suffering sigh of his own.  “Look, I’m not gonna choke it out of you in front of a buncha strangers, so you might as well tell me now.”

“All, right, all right…”  Where did he even start, though?  It was all a disorganized jumble in his head, and that bothered him more than anything.  That, and the stupid lingering anxiety of how Jigen might react.  He raised his melting glass and downed it, desperately drawing energy from the burn in his throat.  “You’ll never guess who I ran into earlier when we first checked in.”

“Better not have been Pops--at least not while you were still wearing his face.”

“Nope.  Clarisse.”

Jigen’s face softened a bit.  “No kidding?”

“No kidding.”  Lupin wanted to smile, but he only managed a slight upturn of his lips.  “She’d snuck into Japan to ask for help establishing a tourist program for Cagliostro.  She was just on her way home, though, so we… we didn’t actually get to talk much.”  But there was so much more to the conversation, short as it was, that Lupin wished he could go into.  How Clarisse had dedicated so much to dismantling the tools of her family’s corruption and making public statements to the world about undoing the damage.  How she was personally helping to convert the underground printing press into shelters for the poor.  How she’d spent her seventeenth birthday touring her kingdom and getting to know her subjects, even taking the afternoon to make tea for an old woman and her grandchildren.  How Christopher was still a good friend, how Karl was still lively as a puppy even as “an old man in dog years.”  How healthy she looked now that she was no longer a prisoner in her own home, how she wore the poise of a queen when she was still so young.  How much difference a year had made for her.

How much it hurt to say goodbye to her twice.

“Glad she’s doing okay.”  Jigen’s voice was soft, as if intuiting everything Lupin wasn’t saying.  “She’s a good kid.”

Lupin nodded, staring down into his empty glass.  He was tempted to ask for another, but the way his mind was now, it would only lead into a dark drunken spiral, and he didn’t need the additional static in his head.  This was a conversation he needed to have sober.  “I don’t know how I’m ever gonna top it.  Cagliostro, I mean… we saved a princess, we saved a whole kingdom, we uncovered this whole conspiracy, we found the city under the lake… kinda hard to go any bigger.”

Jigen tipped his head in agreement.  “Not to mention how often you almost got yourself killed.  More than usual for you.”

Oh, if he only knew… there had been a split second, right before he and Clarisse hit the water, that he thought if he were to actually die--not just faking it for the sake of a scheme, but for real--it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.  Foiling the Count, shielding her from the impact.  Being the hero for once.

A few more drinks, and he might wonder if it was a shame the fall didn’t kill him after all.

“What haven’t we done at this point, Jigen?”  He knew how tired and pathetic he sounded and couldn’t bring himself to care.  “We’ve been on the road together for how long, and now it’s just us… what else is there left?”  He thought back to his collection of maps, how many checkmarks and X-es marked where they’d all four stayed and stolen.  How many places they could never go back thanks to bounties on their heads and warrants for their arrest, how many people they’d left behind.  It was hard keeping in touch when you were constantly moving around; so many unopened letters and dropped calls from Rebecca, Ami, Maki, Laetitia, and he’d lost track of how many others sat waiting for replies that would never come.  Before it might have felt freeing, but now it was just lonely.  Especially with Goemon and Fujiko gone and the roads ahead of them drying up.  The world felt so much hollower.

It took a few minutes for Jigen to answer.  The saxophone wailed plaintively from the bandstand as he drained the last of his scotch and sat contemplating, leaning heavily forward with his arms crossed over the table.  “You remember a couple years ago in Paris?  I told you to consider retiring now that things were getting more complicated?”

Lupin looked over at him.  “You still think I should?  Just… pack it in for good?”

Jigen gave the briefest of shrugs.  “It’s an option.  If you ever wanted to.”

It was strange to even think about now.  He’d joked about it on plenty of occasions, and Jigen had promptly barked at him to shut up and not treat the topic so lightly.  And he’d taken breaks before, usually for the sake of a woman who’d caught his eye and even once for Fujiko.  But the idea of well and truly retiring… how would he even spend it?  His grandfather had still taken undercover jobs on the side--as a tutor, a museum curator, a Minister of the Interior, even as a private detective.  That might not be a terrible idea; Lupin had rather enjoyed his last stint at solving a mystery rather than causing one.  And even if he didn’t go with that, he’d still promised that girl Marie he’d ask after her someday after she’d helped him.  He might actually have time for that now.

His father had died in a train crash that left only two survivors.  Even as a teenager watching the last car go up in smoke, Lupin had promised himself that he’d never die like that.  Every close call, every false alarm since then had simply been to head off what everyone said was inevitable at the pass.  To steal himself more time.  And now, for once, he had an abundance of it.

At least until he looked in the mirror one day and found more wrinkles under the makeup, more grey under the black.  He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

For now, he managed a small, humorless chuckle.  “Honestly… it’s the one thing I still haven’t done yet.”

“Figured out what you wanna do?”

“Not yet.  I might stay here for a while, make a few calls until I do.”

“Well, you’re not gettin’ rid of me, I hope you know that.”

“... What?”

“You heard me.”  Jigen tipped back the brim of his hat, exposing his eyes and the total honesty therein.  “I know we’ve been having this whole farewell tour, but… where you go, I go.  I meant it then, and I mean it now.”  A few years ago, there might have been some flicker of uncertainty in his voice, as if afraid that Lupin might turn him away, but now that fear was gone, replaced with a gentle conviction.  Offering reassurance instead of asking for it.

Lupin wanted to cry.  He hadn’t even begun to plan how he would say goodbye to Jigen, even on the way to the hotel.  Nothing seemed like enough, even the wildest, tenderest night of passion before they parted ways.  Knowing his track record so far, it might have been something unremarkable, a final cigarette or meaningless conversation in an alleyway before Jigen exited one way and Lupin another.  Either way, one last goodbye in this endless series seemed inevitable.

But here was Jigen still.  Until the end of the line.  Sparing him any more.

He still felt unbearably tired, but he let that fatigue sink comfortably into him as he leaned against Jigen’s shoulder and slipped a hand into his.  “I’m glad.”

[mmilkbreadd]

Chapter twenty five: “The End”

Masterpost - Prev.

Warning(s): a bit of swearing ; post-timeskip manga spoilers!!

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Or aka, ‘The Sakusa Kiyoomi Theory’

Act One: “Who is Sakusa Kiyoomi?”

Saturday, 6:23 am, “y/n's home”

“You're late,” said y/n with crossed arms, she was already waiting for him at the door of her house. “I hope this doesn't become routine.”

It was already morning in the streets of Paris. Tendou Satori and her neighbor (and best friend), y/n l/n, were walking towards their famous bakery and chocolate shop, ‘Sweet Strawberries.’ It was a small place with a few tables to sit for tea and delicious things to eat. Also, although it was small, it was quite crowded.

“Woah, how angry you are today, little baker... More than usual, actually” y/n shook her head at her friend's comment. “But obviously I already know why, and it seems that you know why too.”

Y/n decided to ignore what Satori had said, and keep walking quite ahead of him. It was still an hour before the store opened, but they already had several orders that were due to deliver around nine in the morning. A three-tier wedding cake, forty heart-shaped chocolates for the anniversary of a married couple, and of course, the strawberry cake for someone named Sakusa Kiyoomi.

Around a quarter to seven, they arrived at the bakery, and they got down to work to get all the orders completed on time. 

Tendou was more dedicated to the chocolate part, of course, and to serve customers. Despite y/n had advanced a lot in terms of her social skills, she still needed to learn a little about how to communicate normally with a person.

“That 'Sakusa Kiyoomi' has a Japanese name, do you think he is too?” y/n asked, wiping flour from her hands.

“I don't know, they could be. But doesn't that name sound too familiar to you?”  Satori replied.

“That's exactly what I was thinking!”

“Weird.”

“Yeah... Anyway, the customer asked not to make the chocolate so bitter so add more milk to that please.”

“Yes, boss!” Satori made a military signal and continued his work.

Act Two: “Pretending to be Sakusa Kiyoomi.”

8:39 am, “Paris” (?)

Bokuto Koutarou, along with Miya Atsumu and Hinata Shoyo were lost in Paris. They had circled the Eiffel Tower at least five times. But it seemed they hadn't realized it yet.

They were more lost than Bokuto studying math. But a simple city would not defeat them so easily... would it?

“Maybe we should have brought Sakusa,” Hinata said after round number six.

“And hear him complain about how dirty everything is? No thanks,” Atsumu Miya replied, shaking his head. “We don't need Omi-Omi. I, Miya Atsumu, am enough to know where we are.”

Atsumu put a hand on his chest, pretending to be offended. Bokuto and Hinata looked around, ignoring the enormous tower behind them, wondering where they were.

“And where are we then?”

“Paris, of course” he replied. “I can’t believe you’re seriously asking that, Shoyo.”

Hinata and Bokuto looked at each other, unable to believe what their teammate was saying.

“Sure…” Bokuto said, getting his phone out of his pocket. It was time to be the serious person of the trio. “Akaashi, we got lost” and that time was now over. Koutarou was crying as he spoke to his friend, who was on another continent. “No, I can't stop crying, Akaashi. I swear I was following the steps you wrote on the map so we wouldn't get lost, but Atsumu wanted to take the lead, so he broke the instructions, and we don’t know where we are. It's all his fault...! No, Sakusa has not come either.”

“Hey! It wasn't my fault,” the dyed blonde complained, crossing his arms. “And we never needed Omi-Omi!”

“Okay, Akaashi, I'll do it. Bye, love you… As a bro of course” Bokuto finished saying and hung up. “He told me I have to call Tendou. Is the only way.”

Hinata started shaking his head from side to side, while Atsumu slapped his forehead with his hand. Then a message came from Keiji; It was the number of Tendou Satori himself. Bokuto started dialing the numbers that appeared on the screen of his phone, on Hinata's.

“Wait wait, shouldn't I speak? He might recognize your voice” Hinata said, awkwardly taking the phone from Bokuto's hands. 

“He would also recognize yours, Shoyo. I'll do it.” Atsumu snatched the device from him and pressed the call button. “Hello, sir, what’s up? I'm Sakusa Kiyoomi, could you help me get to your store? I'm a bit lost... How did I get your number you ask? Eh– It's on your website dude! You should delete it, some people pretend to be someone else and you should not fall for that...”

Act Three: “If Sakusa Kiyoomi was real, we should have brought him.”

10:04 am, “Sweet Strawberries Bakery and Chocolate Shop”

“I can't believe it took us almost two hours to get here! It wasn't even that far from the hotel” Hinata said looking towards the building that was a few meters in front of them.

“Six blocks. Can’t believe it either.” Atsumu wiped the sweat from his brow. “And now that? Are we going in or not?”

Bokuto went pale. He was going to see you, after so many years without communicating or having exchanged glances. He never imagined that he would see you again after that cold day in Miyagi. He had made a thousand scenarios in his head of how you two meet again: in some distant future you visit your hometown and he visits Hinata, and thus you meet in the park or on the street. You would have your own family, and he would have his. But that would happen in many years, not now. Not at this moment, when neither of you had grown enough... When he hadn't managed to forget you yet. But these weren't Koutarou's inventions, this was reality.

The incredible and stupid reality.

“I don't want to go in,” Bokuto said suddenly and stopped walking. “I’m not ready.”

Atsumu, who was already one step away from the door, turned to see him. Hinata collided with Miya's chest because he was walking right behind him.

“What are you talking about? Let's go in now” Atsumu said walking towards the ex-owl. “We didn't change the whole tour just so you don't go see your little girlfriend… We change it so you do! Don't be scared, do it now or you'll regret it for life. I remember how you talked about her during practice, and I even want to meet her after that! Come on dude, use the little braveness you have left.”

It seemed that Atsumu's words, or Hinata's smile next to him, made Bokuto take courage and head towards the entrance of the shop. 

A bell rang before three pairs of feet echoed through the small place. There was a great smell of chocolate that invaded every inch of the establishment. Hinata paced around the place until the sound of a door opening made the three teammates turn their heads to where the sound was coming from.

“Welcome, what can I offer-- So all of you are Sakusa Kiyoomi, huh?” Satori Tendou said, coming out of the back-room. “You see guys, I never believed this would happen. It makes me think a lot too… So, is Sakusa Kiyoomi even real?”

Atsumu, Hinata, and Bokuto were paralyzed in place for several seconds. The former Shiratorizawa monster stood with his hands on his hips, staring at them.

“Is it Sakusa Kiyoomi? Tell him I'm coming in a minute!” y/n yelled from the back room.

“Oh no, y/n, it’s someone much better!” Tendou replied, holding back his laughter. “You won't believe it even if you see this!”

Then, silence took over the place until a few quick steps interrupted it. A figure appeared through the door, with several boxes in their hands. A pile of boxes so big it covered their face.

“Help me, Satori, I'm going to fall” y/n complained, and after Tendou took out the boxes that covered her view, she saw her friend smiling widely. “What?”

Satori, who couldn't contain his laughter anymore, gestured with his head towards the three statues in the middle of the place. And finally, seeing her friend's face, he started to laugh out loud.

“Kou?”

“A-and Hinata!” shouted Bokuto nervously. Shoyo looked at him and then pointed at Atsumu.

“And also Atsumu!”

“And Saku– shit, we should have brought Omi-Omi after all…”

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Note: I am very very very very sorry for not posting this sooner, but I had thousand of things going on in my life. Now I’m better and ready to finish this beautiful, and crazy, love-story.

I hope you loved it as much as I did. I truly enjoyed it writing, and I’m happy to finish it too.

I’ll appreciate it a lot if you comment down below what you thought about the series. I’ll read you later -Tina.

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Tags in reblog!

Thanks for reading🥰

[sithsecrets]

beside one another | din djarin x reader

The hunt for a quarry takes the Mandalorian and his crew member to a fancy hotel in Canto Bight. The two lie beside one another under the cover of darkness, and the meaning of home comes into sharp focus.

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3.3k words

Mentions: typical rich people bullshit, people are a little scared of din, a little bit of pining, “there’s only one bed!”, sharing clothes, NO SMUT

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When Mando tells you that the next quarry’s hiding out in Canto Bight, you can’t help how excited you sound when you ask how long you’ll be staying. He’s his usual stoic self, even in the face of your curiosity, but you do detect a hint of annoyance in his voice as he tells you not to get excited.

“But it’s Canto Bight!” you declare, and the baby echoes your tone by cooing brightly on your hip. “It seems so glamorous!”

“You’ll feel differently once we get there,” Mando states, and then he’s punching coordinates into the navigation system, seemingly done discussing the matter. You buckle into the passenger seat with the baby, settling him on your lap so he gets a good view through the windshield during takeoff. He loves this part for some reason, despite all the rattling and the noise, and he squeals in utter joy like you thought he would.

“At least someone’s excited,” you declare, teasing the Mandalorian for being so grumpy. The man himself says nothing to this, but you’re too pleased with yourself and the prospect of visiting a new place to care.

Before Mando hired you to be his one and only crew member, you’d never really left the Tatoo System. Sure, you’d made a quick trip to here and there, visited a moon or two in your time, but never anything of substance. New places are your favorite thing to collect right now, and you can’t wait to cross Cantonica off your list. You heard stories of Canto Bight when you were little, saw a few holograms of the opulent streets— you can’t wait to see it all in person, even if Mando’s not excited in the slightest. You’re sure it’s different for him, all the traveling and the going to places he’s never been, but the novelty hasn’t worn off for you yet.

The journey to Cantonica is a short one, and before you know it, the Crest is touching down in a sleek, high-class receiving hangar. The landing coordinator sounds like a snob over the comm, making more than one comment about the state of the Crest. But the tone shifts completely once you, Mando, and the baby emerge from the ship, all of the personnel suddenly very accommodating. You’re used to seeing people (the smart ones, anyway) regard Mando with equal parts respect and fear, but this is just excessive. Someone ushers you and the baby out of the sun and into a small office, rushing to offer you a cool drink, and the foreman himself comes out to talk business. The content of he and Mando’s conversation is lost on you, though you do get to watch them talk through a little window.

(Later, you’ll learn that the man let Mando park the Crest here for a fifth of the usual price, but this won’t come as surprise by the time you find out.)

Mando hails a cruiser for the three of you, and then you’re zooming across the dessert on your way to Canto Bight. As the sun slips lower and lower in the sky, the lights of the city become brighter and brighter on the horizon, stoking your excitement. Mando’s minding the baby, so you get to fully enjoy the ride, taking in all you can as the vehicle flies over the sand. Within minutes, sand becomes grass, grass becomes pavement, and then you’re in Canto Bight proper, surrounded on all sides by wealth and luxury. The driver drops the three of you off in front of a grand hotel, and then he’s off without a word, speeding away to pick up another fare.

You, Mando, and the baby make your way inside, and you’re immediately blindsided by the realization that this hotel isn’t a place for you, not really. The interior, much like the building’s exterior, is more opulent than any other building you’ve ever been to, but it’s the people that make you feel like you’re a stain on their carpet. Every single being in the lobby, human or alien, is made up in the galaxy’s finest fabrics and most expensive jewels. They glitter and gleam in the light, and your casual, comfortable clothes looks like rags in comparison. A ball of nervous, self-conscious energy forms in your stomach, the anxiety only made worse by the fact that all eyes are on you. Well, all eyes are on Mando, as they so often are, but you as part of his entourage are subject to scrutiny by mere association. Thankfully, the patrons of this establishment seem more awed than judgmental, but that doesn’t the attention is any less disconcerting.

Before you and Mando can so much as approach the reception desk, you’re stopped short by a man dressed in sharp clothes. His dark hair is perfectly combed and parted, and you catch a hint of expensive cologne as he introduces himself as the resort manager. Mando declines to shake his hand, but you let the man squeeze your palm for a brief moment.

“We need to book a room,” Mando states, trying to use this as an excuse to end the exchange. The resort manager, however, brushes off the attempt with ease.

“That’s already been taken care of, sir.” He gestures towards the elevators with one well-manicured hand, smiling what you can only describe as a customer service smile. “If you follow me this way, I can show you and your companions to your accommodations.”

“We don’t have lines of credit on this planet,” Mando cuts, tone taking on an edge as fishes around for some money. “We just want—”

“Sir,” the resort manager presses, and you have to admire the way he keeps his voice steady even though he looks like he might piss his pants any second, “I assure you that it’s been take care of. Now please, follow me.”

Mando pauses for a moment, staring down this well-dressed, handsome man as if to size him up. But then he nods, and Mr. Manager leads the three of you to the elevators. You ride up up up in a private car, sitting in relative silence the whole way. The manager does most of the talking, asking a few subtly invasive questions about why you’re here— right up until Mando essentially tells him to fuck off. After that, conversation centers mostly around the baby and the amenities available at the hotel, and then you’re walking out into a quiet corridor. It’s not a private floor by any means, but the spacing of the doors lets you know that not many people stay up here. That’s a bit of a relief, at least in your opinion, because the guests here seem rowdy. And drunk. So fucking drunk…

The suite is— Well, the suite is fucking ridiculous, to put it bluntly. It’s four rooms, five if you count the little kitchen area as its own space, and everything is decorated just so. The furnishings are opulent, the upholstery is rich— the ‘fresher alone is bigger than the common area of the home you grew up in. The manager says something about how you shouldn’t hesitate to ask for anything you need, but you barely here him, awestruck in a way by the luxury all around you. Mando sees your escort out, and you can’t believe how casual he’s being about all of this.

“Do—?” The baby makes a discontent noise, ready to be let out of his pram, and you lower him down without giving the action much thought. “Do people always do things like this for you, or…?”

Mando turns to look at you. “Only when they’re scared shitless. As far as all those people are concerned, they’re my next quarry.”

Having received the message, you leave the conversation at that, opting to go and unpack instead of prodding Mando further. The baby toddles about the suite at his leisure, oscillating between cooing at his father and playing on the bed while you work. He’s broken into a basket of complimentary snacks, and you watch as he munches on cookies and chips and a full range of other fine foods. You should probably stop him on the premise of all that ruining his dinner, but Mando’s making noises about going out to do some reconnaissance this evening. With him gone, it’ll just be you and the kid, and you think he can have a treat just this once. Besides, he might crash from the sugar rush, and you could score an evening to yourself in this big fancy hotel room.

“Send me a comm if I’m not here when you wake up,” is all Mando says before he leaves, though he does tilt his head in acknowledgement when you tell him to be safe.

As you suspected, the Child begins to wind down not long after his father leaves, lapsing into a junk food-induced coma with a bag of chips still clenched tightly in his little green hand. You clean up his face and lay him down in his pram for the night, tucking his blankets just so before you click the cover shut.

Virtually alone now, there’s not much for you to do besides bathe and get ready for bed. And so, you do just that, lingering in the bathtub simply because you can. When the water’s gotten too cool for your liking, you climb out and play with the products that have been left out on the countertop, rubbing some expensive lotion into your skin. After that, it’s time to curse quietly to yourself in the bedroom— in all your haste and excitement to pack for this trip, you managed to forget to bring something to sleep in. Mando packed two extra shirts for himself instead of one, however, and you study one of them at arm’s length for a long moment. Wearing another person’s clothes to bed is definitely something you should ask permission to do, that much you know, but… but Mando’s not here, and you need something to wear now. Finally, you slip the garment over your head, deciding that you’ll just apologize later if he gets worked up about it.

Dressed and freshly bathed, your next order of business is to procure some food for yourself. The baby’s still asleep when you get out of the bathtub, so you forgo getting him anything. You do, however, order something that’ll be good for Mando later, something filling that can be eaten lukewarm or even cold when he gets back. Everything is delicious, and you climb into bed full and content.

Even though you’re tired, sleep doesn’t come easily. You find yourself thinking of Mando, and you lie awake wondering what he’s up to— wondering if he’s safe. He’s always doing this, going out for indeterminate amounts of times to hunt his prey, and you worry about him each and every time he’s gone. It’s silly, you know, and for so many reasons. He’s a Mandalorian, for the Maker’s sake— he can take care of himself just fine— and it’s not like he’s yours to fuss over anyway. Sure, the man employs you, but your emotional investment in his safety has grown a bit intense over these past few months. As much as you hate to admit it, Mando’s different to you now, more important than he used to be. The fact that you have feelings for him at all like this is borderline idiotic, but… but sometimes you wonder if he feels things for you too. You don’t have any concrete evidence, your assumptions largely based off of two passing comments and the tilt of his helmet, but still, you cling to the hope that he wants you the same way you want him.

It takes some time, but the sounds of the city do eventually lull you to sleep. You don’t wake again until the early hours of the morning, disturbed by movement in the other room. The clang of Mando’s spurs is a dead giveaway, and you relax as soon as you realize that it’s just him. You try to settle down and drift off again, but you find that you’re suddenly wide awake. So instead, you listen to Mando go about his business, tracking his footsteps from room to room. You hear the shower run in the ‘fresher for a little while, and then a chair scrapes against the floor in the dining room a few minutes after that. The tinkling of a utensils tells you that Mando’s eating the food you got for him, and he must like it, too, because he doesn’t just inhale the plate and move on.

Earlier, after you and Mando realized that the suite only has one bed, he offered to sleep on the couch, and you’d agreed to that. Now, though, you don’t like the idea of him trying to fold his beskar-clad body up on the cushions in the living room. He’s the reason the three of you got this room in the first place, even if he never asked for the special treatment, and you think he’s entitled to at least sleep on the ridiculously soft bed. Still, it’s a presumptuous thing, asking him to lie down with you, and you’re not sure you’re brave enough to do it. You are brave enough, however, to ask him how his surveillance mission went, so you slip out of bed and pad towards the dining room.

“Mando?” you call, voice sounding rather loud in the still darkness. You wouldn’t want to catch him without his helmet on, so you’re giving him a warning.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Mando affirms, and you know the coast is clear by the electronic tinge to his voice.

He’s still sitting there at the table when you turn the corner, and the Mandalorian does seem a bit taken aback by the sight of you. Only now do you remember that you’re wearing his clothes, and two thoughts cross your mind: Will he be pissed with you? Does this shirt even cover your ass properly?

“Is—? You’re wearing my clothes.” Mando is expressionless in the helmet, of course, but the tilt of his voice is indicative of surprise.

You flush, tugging on the hem of the shirt. “Yeah, I— I forgot to pack something to sleep in, and you had an extra one. I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” the Mandalorian says at once, cutting you off. A pause, and then he’s much more collected, much more like himself again. “It’s not a problem, really. No big deal.”

You nod at that, and then things are casual again. You ask Mando if he got any good information about his quarry, and he says that he did. He thanks you for getting him some dinner, and you say that it was no trouble.

“The baby’s sleeping?”

“Yeah,” you affirm, jerking your head towards the bedroom. “I have him in his pram. I think all the sweets put him in a diabetic coma.”

Mando doesn’t laugh, but the little huff that comes from his vocoder is enough to tell you that the joke landed. “Good,” he says, “I’m glad somebody’s getting some rest.”

There’s a lull in conversation, the two of you looking at one another from opposite ends of the dimly lit dining room. You lean in the doorway, mock-casual as you toy with the hem of your borrowed shirt.

“You don’t have to sleep on the couch, you know,” you say softly, finding it difficult to make eye contact with the visor as you speak.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” the Mandalorian replies. “You got in bed first, so I’m not going to make you move now—”

“No, no,” you chide, interrupting him. “I—”

You take a breath, deciding that now is as good a time as any. It’s time to rip off the bandage, and if this goes to shit, you can always chalk your actions up to exhaustion later.

“I mean, you could come lie down in bed too,” you say quickly, fidgeting nervously. “With me.”

Mando doesn’t say or do anything for one long, agonizing moment, and you’re sure you’re going to throw up. But then…

“Do you want me to lie down with you?”

His voice is quiet through the modulator, almost soft in a way, and the sound of it makes something inside you flutter.

“Yeah.”

You’re almost whispering, and you wonder what the Mandalorian thinks of you in this moment, how you look to him standing there in his clothes, asking him to come to bed with you. It must not be an ugly sight in his eyes, because he stands and walks to you, murmuring, “Come on.”

Mando checks on the baby as you crawl back in bed, rearranging the Child’s blankets, giving him an affectionate little pat. The pram clicks closed, and then Mando’s faltering at the edge of the bed.

“I can’t—” His abandons his words in favor of a display, gesturing towards the armor on his body, to the room as a whole. “This isn’t—”

“I know,” you say softly, because you do. The armor makes him feel safe, makes him feel strong, and he won’t be able to sleep if he takes it off in this strange, foreign environment. “Just take your boots off. Or are those made of beskar too?”

It’s a silly joke, but it earns you a little huff through the vocoder nonetheless.

“No,” Mando retorts, tone light. He takes off more than just his boots, unclipping his utility belt before he sits down on the edge of the bed. It takes Mando a minute to unlace his boots, but when he’s done, he finally lies down beside you, not even untucking the blankets on his side.

“You don’t want some covers?”

Mando shakes his head, and you have to admit that his big, beskar-clad body looks out of place in this even bigger, soft bed. You wonder idly if it would be different on the ship, if Mando would take all the armor off and lie beside you there too. You could never ask him to take the helmet off, that would be too much, but if he was on his own turf instead of holed up in some hotel suite… It’s too late to be worried about all of that now, though, so you force yourself to relax and enjoy this moment.

“This place is sort of fancy,” Mando says to you, voice cutting through the darkness, and you nod in agreement.

“Yeah, but I like the Crest better.”

“Really?”

You nod again. “It’s… warmer. Everything in this city is so cold. The building’s are pretty, and the streets make a pretty picture, but nobody’s supposed to live here. It’s all for show. Very plastic. I see why you weren’t excited to come here.”

Mando says nothing to this, though somehow you know that he’s not taking pleasure in being right.

Feeling bold, you move a bit closer to the Mandalorian. “I’ll be happy to go home.”

“I’m getting the quarry tomorrow,” Mando says, “probably before nightfall. We can be back on the Crest and off Cantonica before it’s time for us to sleep again.”

You like to think there’s a promise in that, an indication of what’s to come, but you’ll just have to wait and see. You’ll just have to hope.

“Good.”

And as your last act of bravery for the night, you reach out across the sheets and grab Mando’s hand.

He doesn’t pull away.

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in March

Thought I’d chronicle the films I’ve been watching over the March period, from the 1st to the 31st, and how I’d rate them. If you’re looking for something to watch, perhaps this will help. A lot of these movies are available on streaming services also.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - 10/10

I hadn’t watched this in a couple of years but I was blown away. Peak Scorsese.

Rushmore (1998) - 7/10

Not the best Wes Anderson movie for me but still fun.

Lion (2016) - 8/10

I discussed this at length on my podcast: The Sunday Movie Marathon. Great movie!

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10

Now this is one of the best Wes Anderson movies. I discuss this more on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Fantastic, funny and I watched it twice because it’s so much fun.

Inception (2010) - 10/10

Discussed on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Best Christopher Nolan movie for me, Inception is just breathtaking.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) - 5/10

This might be Anderson’s weakest film (at least from what I’ve seen) but it’s still not as bad as a lot of directors at their worst.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - 10/10

I was really on an Anderson binge in March. The Royal Tenenbaums is one of the most wholesome movies I’ve seen and certainly one of his best films.

Rome, Open City (1945) - 4/10

This was filmed in Nazi-occupied Italy and from that premise, the film enticed me. Despite having some interesting qualities, I do feel that initial pull is most of what the movie has going for it.

The Prestige (2006) - 7/10

I showed this to my brother and for what it’s worth, he enjoyed it. I do think this is one of Nolan’s weaker efforts but considering how much I like it, that speaks a lot to Nolan’s filmography as a whole.

Nostalgia (1983) - 10/10

I watched Nostalgia three times in the space of a week and reviewed it on The Sunday Movie Marathon. It’s phenomenal.

Kangaroo Jack (2003) - 1/10

Another one I watched for the podcast. Kangaroo Jack is truly terrible and it upset me a great deal. Avoid this movie.

Stalker (1979) - 10/10

Another Andrei Tarkovsky movie (director of Nostalgia). I watched this again during the day before my second watch of Nostalgia and while it’s hard to compare such different movies, I enjoy Stalker more. It’s a staple of Russian cinema for a reason.

Four Lions (2010) - 5/10

Watched for the podcast. I didn’t really gel with this comedy but it would certainly appeal to someone who enjoys the humour, as my co-hosts did.

Revolutionary Road (2008) - 6/10

This Sam Mendes joint was a tad too melodramatic but still boasted some great performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Metropolis (1927) - 6/10

This silent film is a staple in cinematic history. Its themes are as painfully relevant today as they were in the 20’s, yet despite that I found a lot of it to be intensely boring. After it hit the hour mark, I started playing it at 1.5x speed.

Crimson Peak (2015) - 4/10

A lot of great set design and costumes and colours, yet the story itself was madly uninteresting.

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004) - 10/10

Who doesn’t love a good movie written by Charlie Kaufman? I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon and after a third watch, it is as fascinating as it is gut-wrenching.

Godzilla (2014) - 3/10

If you wanted to see Godzilla fight a bunch of monsters for two hours, then this is not the movie for you. There’s maybe about ten minutes total of on-screen Godzilla action and considering that’s really all anyone’s watching this for, it’s amazing the titular sea lizard occupies so little of the movie.

Prisoners (2013) - 10/10

Brilliant mystery thriller by my favourite director, Denis Villeneuve. Discussed on the podcast.

Eraserhead (1977) - 7/10

David Lynch’s debut feature film went down in my estimations this time around. You can listen to why on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Still, Eraserhead is a very good movie.

Raiders of The Lost Ark (1981) - 6/10

The first Indiana Jones movie proved to be a fun romp and Harrison Ford plays the character beautifully. I’m just not a big fan of Spielberg and his average verging on pretty good but rarely ever great movies. Perhaps on a second watch, I may enjoy this more.

The Seventh Seal (1957) - 9/10

Watching this movie again was so much fun. So far, it’s my favourite Ingmar Bergman film. It’s a celebration of life and love, with an underlying sense of dread as death looms ever-present.

Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom (1984) - 5/10

I can tell why this generally looked on as the weakest in the trilogy. Harrison Ford is still great but the movie dragged a lot and felt more like a bunch of things happening for the sake of it rather than a fun action/adventure.

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) - 7/10

The Last Crusade was a lot of fun and maybe it was Sean Connery’s inclusion, or perhaps the bottle of wine I drank through the movie elevated my enjoyment. But alcohol aside, I still believe this to be the best in the series.

Justice League (2017) - 2/10

People really weren’t kidding when they said this was bad. I watched this in preparation for the Snyder cut and I was not happy. This took years off my life.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) - 3/10

Barely any better and double the run-time of the original. I discussed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon and I was certainly not impressed. Better luck next time, Zack!

The Truman Show (1998) - 10/10

Brilliant movie and one I would highly recommend for a stellar Jim Carrey performance. This was another recommendation for the podcast.

Eighth Grade (2018) - 7/10

I was impressed with Bo Burnham’s debut feature. This is a coming of age story centred around a young girl growing up in the modern world and how it can affect the youth of today. Burnham shows a deep understanding of youth culture and a real knack for filmmaking.

Bad Education (2019) - 8/10

A real “yikes!” movie. If you want to learn a bit about the embezzlement that took place in an American school back in the early 2000’s, you need not look further than this tight drama with fantastic performances from Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney.

Twelve Monkeys (1995) - 8/10

One of the only movies where the time travel makes sense. I recommended this for The Sunday Movie Marathon and it’s pretty great.

Ready Or Not (2019) - 7/10

Despite a premise that is not wholly original and a super goofy third act, Ready Or Not is gory, violent fun with a lot of stylish art direction.

Dead Man (1995) - 3/10

Recommended on the podcast. I really did not get a lot out of Dead Man. It’s a very slow movie about Johnny Depp going through the woods and killing some people on the way, but it’s two hours long and hugely metaphorical and sadly it just didn’t connect.

Misbehaviour (2020) - 6/10

A big draw for me in Misbehaviour is Keira Knightley; I think she’s a great actor and I’m basically on board with anything she does. I’d been wanting to see this for a while and I was shocked to see just how relevant it is (being set in 1970) to the world we find ourselves in today, where women are still fighting to be heard and to be treated equally. While the film is not spectacular, I still got a lot from its themes, so recently after the murder of Sarah Everard and how women are being treated in their protest.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb (1964) - 7/10

I was surprised at just how hilarious this early Kubrick movie is. While I can’t say it floored me or took any top spots, it’s still a great examination of the military and how they respond to threats or try to solve problems and the side of war we don’t often see in films: the people in the background sitting in a room making crucial decisions.

Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10

Wow! I can’t believe I’d never seen this before but I’d never really had access to it. Taxi Driver is a beautifully made movie with so much colour and vibrancy. De Niro puts on perhaps his best performance and Paul Schrader’s timeless script works miracles.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) - 5/10

Classic Tim Burton aesthetics in a pretty by the numbers, almost Supernatural-esque story eked out over an hour and forty minutes.

Seaspiracy (2021) - 6/10

Everyone’s going crazy over this documentary and I agree it tackles important issues we’re facing today surrounding the commercialization of the fishing industry, but a lot of what’s presented here is information already available to the public. The editing feels misplaced at times and the tone is all over the place. Nonetheless, it’s still quite fascinating to see good journalism being done in a way that exposes this side of the industry.

Pirates of The Carribean: The Curse of The Black Pearl (2003) - 8/10

Super fun and a great first instalment in a franchise that sadly seems to have peaked at the first hurdle.

My Octopus Teacher (2020) - 8/10

Great cinematography and a lovely premise, this documentary has garnered an Oscar nomination and I can see why.

The Sisters Brothers (2018) - 8/10

A really solid western I was happy to watch again. It’s a shame no one really talks about this movie because it is excellent with stunning visuals and great performances.

Pirates of The Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) - 5/10

A strangely massive drop in quality from the original. If I didn’t like the whole concept of this franchise so much, I might have had a worse time.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) - 8/10

On a second watch, Tarantino’s first feature is still wildly impressive.

Life of Brian (1979) - 7/10

This is perhaps my third time watching Monty Python’s Life of Brian and it’s still incredibly funny, however it never manages to measure up to its predecessor (and one of my all time favourites), Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

[keisurin]

station 16 ; kuroo tetsurou

masterlist

29 // 30 // 31

“you have now reached station 16,” the automated message ringed into your ears. you and kuroo decided to meet up there since it was the location you both linked at and the agency wasn’t too far from there. being at that station made you realised you haven’t been in miyagi for quite awhile. “it’s been almost a week, i should go home tonight or get a hotel,” you planned to yourself since komori and his family had plans and you did’t feel like staying at their house while they weren’t there.

“lost in your thoughts?” kuroo ruffled your hair. “hey! don’t mess with my hair.” kuroo giggled when you started to brush your hair out properly using your phone screen as a mirror. “don’t worry, you look good,” he spoke making you stop alomg with the fact he tucked a piece of your hair behind your ear giving you goosebumps. “lets go.”

taking one train to get to your destination, with a bit of walking you reached the agency. standing infront of the door you blew into your hands for some warmth.

“nervous?” kuroo asked. “like hell i am.”

the silence you created while your eye’s were plastered into kuroo’s made him feel the cold you did. “you got this y/n,” kuroo said as he stuck out his fist for a fist bump. your eyes examined his fist then the ground. you chuckled softly thinking about how friendly his gestures had been to you. so friendly like nothing happened yesterday.

the i love you. maybe kuroo forgot about it, it’s not like he gave time for that type of stuff but it had been stuck in your head. it didn’t bother you, you just wanted to know in which way. which type of i love you was it? a friendly one where someone would end up saying yea i love you but as a friend or was it the romantic type of way? one which would end up with a relationship— why were you even thinking about this? the answer doesn’t matter. you snapped out of you thoughts knowing that being here could potentially end up with you having a successful career, you should have to worry about what you he intended or didn’t.

“it’s you and me?” you smiled and fist bumped kuroo making him smile.

“it’s you and me.”

you walked in the agency having to go through some official personnel. the entrance smelled like really good paper, there was muffled talking and some camera’s clicking sounds. felt like home to you or at least a heaven.

“this is ms.kane’s room, she’s free to meet up with you now,” one of the workers guided you two and left with a smile and a bow.

wanting this nervousness to go away you straight away entered. “goodmorning ms.kane, it’s an honour to be here,” you knew how confident you can be. this is any other meet up you’ve have with your friends. it’s okay.

“goodmorning l/n,” you noticed the shocked look she had on her face. you were afraid you looked bad or something. you took a glance at kuroo but he gave you the signal to walk in. “i see you’ve brought in kuroo aswell but y/n i didn’t think you’d look so young,” you laughed at the comment. she was so sweet, you didn’t see how this could go bad.

it seemed to be a casual job interview, “when did you start?” “why do you do photography.” all simple answer questions. you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for photography. you don’t know what you’d be doing without photography, life would probably just be extremely boring without it. you three we’re having a grandtime, she asked if kuroo would like to model for them to which he said a simple maybe. at this point he was kinda just sitting there like he was you manager or better yet, your bodyguard.

but suddenly, kane’s voice got deeper, “y/n, we really love your work here in kaneko and we’d be super lucky to have you here.” but. you knew something was coming. “but one of your potential models doesn’t seem comfortable with it.” you snickered to yourself. who else could it have been than kosuke nao? “we are willing to give you a chance although if you can’t cooperate then- okay that’s crazy,” kuroo stepped in. “you’re telling y/n to cooperate or else what? she’ll get fired? im sorry for my bad manners but it’s not y/n’s fault if anything happens. she is nothing but mature. i don’t know who this model is you’re taking about but i have a pretty good idea on who it is. you tell them that hey should be able to cooperate cause y/n knows what is right to do.”

there was silence filling the room, you saw the way kuroo’s eyebrows furrowed angrily. “i understand. i’m sorry,the model kosuke is just a very trusted model here at kaneko- ah so it was kosuke,” kuroo once again cut in. “did he do something to you?” kane was clearly curious.“constant backlash on y/n since last year, the cause of y/n’s fall down, spread of rumours, took y/n’s photos and said he took him by himself. he’s not my most favourite person i’ve met this year,” you couldn’t help but hold in your smile. he sounded like such a badass, a badass that was saving you? heaven.

“i had no idea, im so sorry this happened to you y/n and i’m sorry for assuming way too quickly though i will have to speak to kosuke first.” you nodded and took a glance at kuroo who was staring at you. “thank you,” you mouthed to him. “well this interview was fun,” kane awkwardly laughed. “y/n you are such a strong person, thank you for coming here today and speaking on this situation. thank you aswell kuroo. for the mean time i still have to discuss this so please be patient and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” the professional talk made you cringe yet you liked the reassurance that you still had a chance.

after a few more words, you and kuroo were dismissed but before you two were about to leave, kane called you two, “by the way, i would like to know, are you two dating?” you choked on your saliva. “i- um no?” you quickly respoded to which kane laughed and smiled. “i see, well see you soon l/n.” swiftly bowing and leaving you and kuroo looked at each other once again.

it seemed to be a thing that would happened every hour with you two. that quiet yet comfortable few seconds of just looking into each others eyes. but this time it was different. you jumped in for a hug. the height difference made you tip toe a bit. “this is probably going to be my 420th thank you to you,” you softly chuckled. “that number, really?” “shh don’t talk about it.”

you both parted from the hug, “uh i’ll walk you back to komori’s place?” he asked. “oh no it’s okay i have to like transport my bags from sakusa’s place then find a hotel cause i was supposed to go back to miyagi today but then the interview came and i’m kinda tired so i don’t have the energy, and now komori isn’t even home so i don’t really wanna stay there like it’s a lounge area.” “sakusa allowed you to keep your bags at his place? impressive.” “right?” you giggled and started to walk to the exit and hummed trying to plan what do to. “you want to stay at my place?” that offer made you jump. “damn kuroo, get my number first, be a gentleman!” you joked. “sleep on the streets tonight.” “why sleep on the streets when i can sleep on your cold floor!” “because you belong to the streets.” you had the pikachu shocked face activated an kuroo had his hyena laugh on. “let’s go collect your bags,” kuroo ruffled your hair like he did earlier.

haa. you were falling for him.

taglist status: closed

taglist - @roseonfireinwinter @chaelysian @june-phantom @starry-sunrise @montys-chaos @dae-kirei @mx-minxx @cece-lives-here @dekumiya @chokemelevi @animewithmemes @anhphunnnn @firebonbon @vanilla-beanzz @princessmidas @shslmel @nekomateammanager @deimmortales99 @peteunderoos @airheadpillar @princeabomination @yafriendlyfangirl @krxstynnn @mxshimoo @nekomateammanager @listless-motion @heyheysey @ntngann @hadeswh0re @doublekrecs @boosyboo9206 @prcttylittlcthing @rachelexe @simpletype @hallothankmas @euphorihan @kisskenma @bellesowl @just-snog-already @kageyamasgirl @shigarakiskitten @elianetsantana @makemealive @saturnfarie @fckkei @amberisnotcrazy @iloveyouasmuchaspoohloveshoney @sbaepsae @mint-mai @winunk 

[deberiaestarescribiendo]

The Lost Children #Writer Wednesday Din Djarin Modern Day Bounty Hunter x f!reader

For #Writer Wednesday created by the amazing @autumnleaves1991-blog and tagging @clydesducktape (thanks a lot for the hard work of compiling everything each week)

Summary: This a part 2 of a fic I wrote a few months another Wednesday, read it here. After you scape with Din and your child, you try to find a life again even if that means he has to leave you.

Warnings: Language, talking about neglecting children or abandoned kids, guns. This is fluff with angst and Din being a softie but a dumbass expressing feelings

A/N: I'm super tired, so be ready to find many grammar and mispellings I didn't have the time to really read it through.

The lost children

For a bit, that’s what he said, what he promised until you’re safe and settled.

“So you can keep your little kid in the babycare with the rest of the kids while you’re working. One of the cabins to the right of the front office we’ll be entirely yours. We only ask that you keep clean and in a good state”

“Of course” you’re shining, happy and excited

“You heard that Greg, we’ll have a place on our own” your arms hold the baby tightly, rocking him softly until he giggles. When you turn to Din, he can see your eyes glowing, kissing little Greg’s head, you whisper thank you

Thanking him? what for? He just pointed out that small, almost entirely ripped from the wall, announcement of a local hotel in the middle of the woods that looked for personnel willing to work and live in the resort when they were stopping at a gas station.

It is a perfect place to hide and live a peaceful life and let a baby grow up in the middle of nature. Greg and you could be happy. So why is he thinking that he should make up some excuse so you don't stay, so you don’t leave him. He should be selfish and grab your hand and run away again like you’ve been doing for weeks now, but that’s not life for a baby, and you deserve it, leave the past behind. And him, even if he doesn’t want to admit, it’s part of your past of that runaway woman that commited many mistakes.

But Din’s a bounty hunter, his life on the road, from one job to the next would only make you unhappy, and at the end, you would hate him; and that’s it’s not an option.

Nothing has made Din happier than seeing you smile at him, the little comments here and there you tell him praising him and thanking him one, twice, a thousand times for helping you, the way the baby caresses his face with his small hand and those big eyes looking at him intently until he smiles with only those two little teeth. The way you look perfect, almost like a Madonna from the Renaissance, when the street lights hit your face while he’s driving and you hold your baby against your chest, both of you sleeping in the car.

Would you think he’s a creep for staring? There’s a warmth that grows inside him when he stares at you and baby Greg. A warmth he doesn’t want to let go. He cannot offer you a good life and Din doesn’t want to force you to live like he does, just because he’s so selfish to let you go.

“So what do you think?”

The manager leaves them to think about the offert. And Din balances his big body from one of his legs to the other, hands on his hips, he sighs

“I think”

I think you should be with me

I think I should protect you

I think I should protect Greg

I think I want to be with you, the both of you, forever

I think I love you

But he doesn’t say it

“I think you should take it. It is a good place for a kid”

You frown, even baby Greg looks at him puzzled from the crook of his mother’s neck

“Yes, it seems great, quiet...And I like that Greg could be with other kids. But what about you?”

Your eyes look big, pleading, there’s a question, a petion in them but you don’t say it with words so maybe Din is imagining it, he wants so bad that you will stay with him that maybe he’s making that up

“I will go and…”

And miss you

And miss Greg

And be alone again

“Start the business again somewhere else” he shrugs, and he sees the light flicking in your eyes, the idea in your head being shattered, you’ll never ask the question and he will never answer.

“But you can stay a few days, right? Rest, eat properly for once and repair the car”

“I don’t know…”

What would hurt more? leaving already or prolonging it?

“I don’t want to be this direct, Clint...” he likes that you keep using that nickname you gave him when you’re in public. You only use his real name when you’re alone. Making it even more special, it’s intimate, more anything he has ever felt.

“but you need a shower. And I do too and this stinky baby” you bury your nose on little Gregs neck and it makes him laugh out loud that angelic and sweet giggle hits him hard and before he even knows it, Din is nodding

“A few days won’t hurt”

It’s surprising how they fall easily in a routine. How they seem to find a perfect way around each other, a perfect model like the stars and planets always circling around each other and never colliding. You, dancing softly in the kitchen humming while you stir the soup, baby Greg chasing his little frog while Din holds his back so he doesn’t lose his balance

“Hey, you want this?” Din smiles fondly to the baby and with his long arm places the soft toy far away from him “C’mon like before “ his big hands on his side while the babe excitedly starts crawling towards his frog

“Hey! look! he’s getting faster!”

You smile at them, that big and serious man has the proudest smile, so bright and pure watching your baby grow before his eyes.

It’s been almost a week and he’s still repairing the car, or so he says. The manager hasn’t asked any questions and just assumed they are a family. And you must accept that you do look like one, a broken and weird one, but more than anything you have ever experienced.

And you wish he stayed forever that he could be a father to Greg, he certainly acts the part.

“Dinner is ready.”

The scent of the pines, the bugs chirping and the soft crackle of the fire is the perfect lullaby. Your baby has taken the habit of falling asleep against Din’s wide shoulder while the three of them enjoy the small porch outside the cabin.

“I think the car is ready”

The words you fear the most float in the air and you’re almost tempted to ignore them

“Hmm” you don’t face him yet, just look at the trees and try to swallow the pain “And where will you go?”

“Don’t know yet”

“How will I contact you?”

“I…”

“Do I have to search on Craigslist? Some old codewords in the newspaper? How do you even find a bounty hunter?” you’re laughing, but it really doesn’t hide the pain in your tone

“I have a phone” Din rolls his eyes at you but he’s amused, surprisingly he’s smiling more since you met him, he’s not that stern or cold as you pictured him when he caught you

“That would have come in handy when we were lost in the desert”

“I mean a fixed one”

“You have a house then?” you turn to him, lowering your voice midsentence as you see your son sleeping peacefully on Din’s arms

“Sort of”

“I will need you to expand that a little bit more Din”

Din in the quiet of the night, the moon, the stars and the fire illuminating your face he admires you pronounce it: The tip of your tongue showing softly between your teeth and he wishes to see you repeat it one, twice a thousand times.

“My family, my...it’s difficult to explain, anyway, it’s my safeplace, where I go to rest, I get the information for my next jobs, etc”

“Oh...okay, so I call you there?”

“Yeah you could, and write if you want” he offers with pleasing eyes

“Penpals, great” you answer and it sounds more sarcastic that you intended

“You could send me pictures of Greg”

Din lowers his eyes to the soft crown of the baby, that soft place on his head where he smells so sweet and tender. He can believe that he’s going and there will be no nights like this.

“I will do”

Your eyes get teary watching him softly kiss you babe, carrying to his crib whispering sweet words so he doesn’t wake up.

“So I’ve packed many water bottles, and those protein bars in case you get yourself lost in the desert again, cowboy. Sadly you won’t have my unparalleled company” you joke tapping him on his arm

“No, I won’t” Din forces a smile “I...Take care” he awkwardly squeezes your forearm

“You too-Shit!” you scream slapping your forehead “The sandwiches! I knew I forgot something. I made you something for lunch. I’ll be right back”

You press little Greg to Din’s arms before running away leaving them with wide eyes and a confused look

“Take care of you mother, kid, sometimes she can be a lot to handle”

“Hi, Ken” you say breathly as you storm inside the reception and get inside the staff meeting room.

“Hi! Has your boyfriend left already?” He asks while writing something on his agenda

“Not yet” you say looking for the lunch bag you had prepared inside the fridge. You hand stops midway when you heard her voice

It is horrible, we have not consolation, our baby has been kidnapped and we have no information

Her fake cries fill the room, some national tv is making a report on the kidnapping of little Greg. The tragic zoom at her face fades away when they show a picture of your baby.

“Fuck…” you mutter

I need him back. He’s my baby

“He’s not your baby, you bitch” you spat under your breath

“What did you say, hun, you need something” Ken raises his eyes to you, one eyebrow arched, he follows your eyes to the TV

“That baby looks exactly…” and then you know

You grab your sandwich bag and strom out as you did before. Din is holding Greg on his hip while he finishes loading the trunk with his bags

“We’re out of here”

You cry when you reach to him, pushing him away, you close the trunk door

“Wait what happened?”

“No time, let’s go”

How has this man trusted you so much as to run away with you? For all he knows you could actually be a kidnapper, that story about leaving your son with someone you trusted and that eventually you discovered that they were assholes could be fake. But he doesn’t. He runs away, drives and drives without asking a question.

“She had the guts to say it was his son, he isn’t. She barely had it for a few months until I could settle my life. And then she asked me for a crazy amount of money because children are expensive you know I fucking payed for a a new pool in her stupid house, while my son was always dressed in old clothes, too big or too small. They didn’t care for him”

And on top of trusting you, he lets you rant away all you anger

“There’s no way I’m giving him back. I rather die!”

He stops the car, the road again is silent, dressed in the colors of the sunset

“Calm down, you’re scaring him” Greg looks at you with trembling lips not knowing why he should be scared or angry, he just knows that his mama is upset “He will stay with you, I promise”

“The police must be searching for us” your warm tears cloud your eyes

“They won’t find us where we are going”

He ditches the car somewhere and you see him burning it. He carries the big bag on his back and hands you water and snacks from time to time.

“Just a few miles more”

The red stone looks like some ethereal cathedral around you, a palace in the middle of nowhere almost like another world, magical and eerie. If there’re marks or signs you don’t see them, but Din walks among the rock so sure of his steps searching among the labyrinth of rocks. And suddenly…

You hear the soft clicks of many guns' trigger locks going off at the same time. But Din softly whistles some tune and from all over: up the rocks, between them, children come out. Kids, all different from one another, some really young, others tall and weirdly looking teenagers in that mixed age where they are not a child nor an adult and others already grown to be young adults.

“Din” a curly haired girl dressed with camouflage clothes runs towards him with open arms, she has a crooked smile as she has lost some of her front teeth

“Hey, gumball!” Din bents down when she hugs him, her sweet face pressed against his belly

“Who are they?” a boy, holding a shotgun to his side, his face full of red dots, frowns at you

“They’re friends who need help” Din explains raising one of his arms trying to calm down the group

“Are they lost too?” Gumball asks

“Yes” Din nods

“But she’s a mum” some kid screams from above

“Mums can be lost too. C’mon, we’ve been walking for hours, can we go home?” he answers

“Of course, let’s go. Boba will be happy to see you” Gumball grabs Din’s hand and smile widely jumping happily through the stone corridors

“Wait, Din, what the fuck? who the fuck is Boba? What are these kids doing here?”

Gumball fires a concerned look at you

“She said two bad words”

“Gonna let it pass, Gum, she’s a bit scared and tired” Din smirks your way and you question in silent muttering the fuck again and again

“I see you pronouncing it, you know?” Gumball rolls her eyes “No bad words or you pay the price”

“Yes, understood, sorry” you close your lips hard trying not to ask more questions until you arrive home or whatever that is.

After a few minutes of turning left right, left right, right left you’re completely lost until the stone towers open up a way to a plain and on it, a ranch.

Some horses roam around nibbling on the pale green grass that grows on the land. A house on the centre is painted white but the paint looks old and chipped.

Now in the clear you count the children that surround you, ten, ten kids in the middle of nowhere.

“Welcome to the Watch” Din smiles at you, he almost look shy and earning a upset look from Gumball, he releases her hand and holds you with his big palm on your back

“What is this place, Din?”

“Home” he simply answers

The kids run through the porch screaming and opening without a care the door to the house

“Yeah, I heard you, little heathens” a masculine voice screams from the interior

His hard steps clack on the ground and you hear the spurs before you see him arriving with his leather boots, his used jeans and a low cowboy hat covering him from the sun

“I thought something must have happened to you” he says, evaluating Din. His tanned face is covered by a long and twisted scar from his lip to his forehead, he has dark eyes like Din but colder in a way, very deep and when they fall into you, you hug your baby tightly without thinking it

“I see” he says “C’mon on in, that baby can’t stay too long in the sun”

The house is nice, surprisingly tidy given the fact that there are ten kids living in it. The furniture looks like the exhibit of an old auction house, each one of them completely different of style, color or age from the other.

The man that everyone call Boba gives some orders to the group and they efficiently start doing what he asks

“Prepare a room for our guests”

“Bring water and food”

“Prepare some fresh fruit for the baby”

You sit, little Greg with eyes wide open. As any baby he’s absorbed by all the children around him, and he reaches with his little hands trying to grab them

“Little fella wants to play, you can leave him on the rug if he wants to”

“He’s fine here, thanks” you say holding him although Greg is already removing your hands from him wanting to explore

“Boba, we have nowhere to go” Din explains sipping on his cold water

“I guess, you have never brought anybody here” He reclines himself on his rocking chair watching Din intenly

“We need to protect them for a while, until we can find a solution”

“You’ll be safe here, you know that, you can stay as long as you want, just respect the house rules” and he points to a wood board, engraved in them are a few rules

Be respectful of yourself and others

I finish my tasks as promised, ask for help if I can’t

I will not curse

Be clean of yourself and your environment

Protect your family and your house above all

“They seem...pretty logical, won’t be a problem to follow them” you smile uncomfortably

“Well, somebody said you have a potty mouth, young lady. So watch it, but for the moment, you may rest, we will see for the rest tomorrow” He sighs when he gets up and taps on Din’s shoulder before he goes to the kitchen

“Let’s make dinner” you hear him scream, before the rumbling of pans and chopping and children screaming start

“Din…” you say after a moment

“I know you have a million questions”

“Duh!” you laugh nervously

“This is my family, we’re not related by blood but by circumstances. Lost kids, abandoned, neglected; we have a safe place here and in time we go out in the world and make our own life but we always have the Watch over us. A place where we’re watched over, taken care of, listened…” his caramel eyes glow and you see his strong and stern facade crumble before your eyes, in this place he can relax. He feels safe so you can too, right?

“We’ll be fine here” He reaches for you hand, the one that holds little Greg caressing him with your thumb, and covers both of you squeezing softly

We, it’s the second time he has referred to you as a group, you and me and Greg, We.

“We’ll be fine” You smile back, lowering your face, you kiss his knuckles, leaving a warmth there Din will be holding for hours.

You don’t notice, but the whole time during dinner he passes his thumb over that small place of his skin where you kissed him.

(Hey! remember when you read that fic in May? I continued it...so sorry that it took so long, I've taken the liberty of tagging you since you were interested in a follow up from the first one @fangirlalexia @childrenofthewatch )

[bangchanshehe]

Bodyguard Lee Pt. 2

You met a kind stranger wandering the streets of Athens who was willing to go out of his way to help you. But across the globe weeks later you cross paths with him again. Could having this many unexpected meetings be a happy coincidence or an ill-fated destiny?

word count:2k

Three days later you were back in Seoul and unpacking your luggage. It had been the most exhausting and chaotic week of your life and you were happy that you were finally able to at least get back to your normal routines. And while things weren’t going to slow down for you any time soon you at least had more of a sense of normalcy.

You smiled to yourself as you unpacked all of your trinkets and threw your used clothes into the laundry. But most of all you were excited to see your mom and share with her the necklace that you had found for her while you were out looking for souvenirs. You thought back on that night and smiled to yourself.

The man that had helped you in Greece gave you such a good impression of the city that was so miserable for you so far. As the two of you drove past historical buildings and prominent locations he explained their significance. And any place that you wanted to go to he took you there with a smile on his face. by the end of the night you felt like the two of you had been friends who had met each other for the first time in a while as opposed to the strangers that you were. The two of you talked amongst yourselves and you found out that he was a Korean national who was working in Greece. Most importantly there was no pressure to act a certain way in front of him because of who you were, everything was completely natural instead. If it wasn’t for his assistance you would have gone back to your hotel empty handed and upset that you weren’t able to find anything to bring back. And In the end you weren’t able to get his last name to give him a proper thank you or even find him on social media but you would always remember his first name. Taemin.

“shit” you screeched out as the sound of your ringtone startled you out of your fond memories.

You pulled out your phone and took a deep breath before you answered the call from your manager. You couldn’t go a single hour without someone from your company trying to contact you about something. you had just gotten dropped off outside of your apartment less than 30 minutes ago, and you were happy that you were able to be in your own space once more. But now you were back to being the busy entertainer once more.

“hello?” you asked bitterly, not even bothering to conceal the disappointment and frustration in your voice.

“y/n, tomorrow morning the company wants to recruit some new security team members to travel with us while you go on tour. I’ve sent you their resumes so take a look and let me know who your top three are. They want to hire the new members as soon as possible so they can start their training.” Your manager quickly barked out before she hung up on you.

You pulled the phone away from your face and double checked that she really hung up on you, and the moment you confirmed you scoffed. What the hell… you thought to yourself. I guess she needs the time off as much as I do too.

You quickly opened up your email and looked at the recently received message and scowled. You had never hired someone before and you didn’t know what to look for in a resume to make an educated decision on who to hire. And you honestly didn’t care who would end up being on your security team as long as they would protect you and were professional.

You clicked on the message and opened the attachments to see ten resumes in total. You let out a sigh and meticulously went through each persons accomplishments and previous employment. Each one of them had a lot of strong accomplishments and experience that would make them valuable members. And you were completely at a loss as to who to choose until you looked at the last resume. He was last employed by the Korean ambassador who was stationed in Greece, he had lost of merits and rewards and he seemed to be very professional.

You grinned to yourself and mentally congratulated the man for being in the running. You scrolled up to see his name and information and your eyes almost jumped out of your head when you saw his application headshot.

“Taemin?” you asked out loud in complete disbelief.

The chances of this happening was slim to none. No, it was less than that. It was almost impossible.

But if his resume didn’t already speak for itself his helpfulness and courtesy of helping you in Greece did. You didn’t really care who the other two members would be, but you knew for a fact that you wanted Taemin as one of your members. It was the last thing that you could do for him since you weren’t ever able to properly thank him.

You immediately emailed your manager back that you didn’t care who the other two were but you absolutely wanted Taemin on your team, and then shut down your laptop. You were excited to see Taemin once more and congratulate him on getting the job. You imagined how shocked he would be to see you once more but this time as a prominent entertainer.

The next morning you got up with a smile. It felt good to sleep a normal amount of time and in your own bed again. You took your time enjoying your morning coffee and you relaxed as you got ready. You had opted to wear something more casual and comfortable for the day since you had worn such heavy and extreme clothes during your shoot.

when your manager had finally arrived at your apartment she gave you a call and you quickly grabbed your belongings and met her in your van.

“good morning” she said chipperly

“morning” you replied back

“today your schedule is a little tight” your manager said with a sorry tone “this morning we have a photoshoot for promotions, then you have a vocal and choreography training session. After a short lunch break you have an interview and then in the evening you have a meeting with the producers and event coordinators.”

You leaned forward towards your managers seat “will we have time to see the candidates for the security team?” you asked her hopeful that you would be able to greet Taemin on the team personally

Your manager hummed and looked at the clock “im not too sure what time their final interview is but with your schedule today its pretty unlikely.” She said

You sat back in your seat and let out a small sigh. It was too bad that you wouldn’t be able to see Taemin, but this was your life. Constantly missing out on the things that you want to do.

The time was currently 7pm and you were staring at the sunset as your day finally came to an end. You were waiting for your manager to pull your car around in the garage when you had made eye contact with someone who you didn’t expect to see.

“y/n-ssi” one of the directors called out to you.

You had immediately turned to him with a professional smile and bowed in greeting but inside you were dying. You had hoped that he was going to simply pass by you but instead he had stopped right next to you.

“I wanted to introduce you to the newest members of your security team.” He said holding a hand out towards the three men that were behind him.

Your eyes immediately widened and your attention was heightened. You didn’t think that seeing taemin would be possible today but you were gladly proven wrong.

“this is Seonghwa, Minho, and Kai” the director stated their names

As soon as you saw the faces of each of the new members your smile immediately turned into a frown. You had looked at each of the men and then up to the company director. Sure you had seen each of the men’s resumes and they were highly qualified, but if you had met any of them on the side of the road and asked for help you were sure that none of them could give you the same treatment as Taemin gave you in Greece.

“director, may I speak to you for a minute?” you asked him and he gave you a gesture to walk a distance away to speak. Once the two of you were a few yards away from the gentlemen you whispered your questions. “what happened to Taemin-ssi?” you asked “I really liked his resume and thought that he would be really good for the job.”

The director gave you a smile before he answered “we did too. His resume and previous employment was quite impressive. However, he wasn’t interested in a job that required leaving the country. He is interested in more of a regular full-time job in Korea.” He answered

You lowered your head and let out a small sigh. Although you were hopeful to run into him again it was understandable that he would want to stay in Korea since he had been in Greece for a while. And you couldn’t blame him for that. He probably also had a family in Korea that he missed dearly.

“I understand” you said to the director

The two of you shared a mutual look of agreement before you approached the new men once more.

“congratulations on joining the team.” You said to the men giving them a smile “ill be off now. have a good night”

The men politely bowed and responded with goodnight and get home safely. You had bowed back politely and then retreated to the parking garage where your manager would pick you up.

You hadn’t received a message from your manager yet that she had arrived but you wanted to get out of the building as quickly as possible. Your hopes of having taemin joining your team was a bummer, but you were more upset that you wouldn’t see him again more than anything.

It had felt like for the first time in a long time you were able to make a friend who wasn’t under any sort of impression or had expectations based on what your career was. And maybe you were reading too much into that night in Greece, but you really did feel like Taemin had become a friend. Or maybe it was just your brain creating a scenario out of nothing since you needed companionship so badly.

You had felt a tap on your shoulder and you had turned around without looking at the person. You were looking down at your feet when you had asked “can we stop at the convenience store before you drop me off at home?”

“sure. What do you need?” you heard a man’s voice asking back

You had immediately snapped your head up when you heard the voice that was so unfamiliar to you. You looked up at the mans face and was unable to recognize him past his black hat and mask that hid his facial features.

“im sorry, you must have the wrong person.” You said quietly and hid your face hoping that you could simply back away from the situation and wait inside for your manager.

“no, ive got the right person” he man said and his eyes crinkled in a smile

You looked him up and down and red flags went off and alarm bells rang in your head. The man pulled out a box cutter just far enough out of his jacket pocket for you to see as he pushed the blade out all the way.

“quietly, I want you to get into the car.” The man said in a scattered and panicked voice

You put your hands up and you began to take small shaky steps towards his car door. As you got closer the man circled around so he was no approaching you instead of you stepping towards him. When you opened the car door and sat down inside he began barking commands at you.

“put the ankle cuffs and handcuffs on.”

You nodded your head and you began to place the cuffs around your feet. But as tears sprung to your eyes and your hands began to shake you weren’t able to put on the cuffs as quickly as the man wanted you to.

“faster!” the man yelled and you began to sob

You tried to calm yourself down as you blinked away your tears and tried to focus. But the fear that swept through your body only made things worse.

How had no one seen you on the security cameras and come to help. What was taking your manager so long that she wasn’t here already. And why was this happening to you?

You had finally snapped the handcuffs on when you had heard a loud crunch and a body had hit the pavement next to you outside of the car. You looked down at the man who was now lying still and let out a loud sob when you saw the mans mask. When you realized that the danger was finally gone you looked up to who had saved you, and you completely lost control of your emotions.

Of all people who you had hoped would help you never did you imagine that it would be Taemin to your rescue.