#i still don't know what the ice part is all about | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hyukascampfire · 2 hours ago

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𝓖INGER & 𝓢NAP ` ꕀ. k.th

you were the last person taehyun expected to appear on his doorstep. sweet and fluffy and oh-so-proper; he never thought he’d see you again. but... there you stand. and, much to his own chagrin, he fears that nobody else could get him more bothered. ׄ ⋆ ִ

་༘ ՚՚ ꒰ 🪵 ꒱ ･ 7.9k

ρairings gingerbread!taehyun x frosty puff!reader

𝒢 ‧̥ smut, fantasy, strawberry shortcake au

⍵arnings brat taming, brat tamer!taehyun & brat!reader, his cum is frosting, creampie, ofc no sex ed in strawberryland, thigh riding, oral m!receiving, cumming into mouth, cum eating, corruption of innocence & innocent!reader, banter, chubby!reader and buff!taehyun, manhandling, he throws her around a bit and she's so into it, they don't like each other but also def do, he likes to teach her manners, reader is also spoiled & rich and taehyun is not, hair pulling, he gets mean, no protectiom, let me know if i missed some!

✎୭ ashlynn's note this collab has been seriously so fun. writing fics is fun, but there's something about talking your friends and scheming all the yummy ways you can incorporate certain things into your fic. @thetxtdevil mae baby, thank you so much for being the best and even coming up with this idea. your mind amazes me... like actually. everybody did so unbelievably good, and i'm blessed to have been a part of it. now... let's get foody and smutty lol. some of this was written in a benadryl haze, but that's the fun part. i'm sorry mine came out a lil later than everybody else's, but hopefully it's still fun!

... back to the masterlist ⌇ back to strawberryland

Raising your fist to the door, your knuckles rap against it with a few thick knocks. The door is frosted around the edges in little swirling white puffs of icing, framing the gingerbread door. It’s the same all around his house: gumdrops and candy canes and the like, all twinkling with sugar crystals.

It’s all so sweet—unbelievably so. The man that calls it home is the very antithesis of sweet. He does not take after the gumdrop, nor the sweetness of the icing, and most definitely not the brown sugar and molasses of the gingerbread. Taehyun is the quick snapping of a leg, or the sharpness on your tongue when you get to the cinnamon and nutmeg.

You loathe it. Even being stood here, knocking at his door, you hate. He is everything uncouth and abrasive—he is everything you should not entertain.

Here you are, entertaining it. The door swings open. Your fingers and toes have begun to slow with the cold, like frosty-whip in the fridge. Through the forest, stepping over sugar bushes and cocoa streams, you had fought the bite. Why did he have to live all the way out here? Secluded, as though the rest of Strawberryland were beneath his meddling. You know why: it’s that he believes it. He is exactly as your parents told you he’d be, all those years ago. Of course, they were right. They always are.

When he catches sight of you at his door, his distant eyes morph, and his lip tugs into a scowl. The rise of his brows ruffles your feathers with an infuriating ease. “Is there something you want?” he asks. His tone is infuriating, too. It’s the kind of question that means much more beyond the words said. You catch exactly what he means—how he intends to get under your skin.

Hidden behind the door, he has one hand on the handle. It's an unspoken thing, too. He wants you to remember that he could close it. You can’t let him, or else you’ll have drug your pretty new furry winter boots through the powdered snow for him to slam a door in your face. “Yeah, actually. There is.” You run preening fingers through the ends of your hair. “We’re partners for the bake-off.”

“I don’t do the bake-off,” he says. His eyes would be chocolate and smooth if it weren’t for the way he wields them sharp. “Sorry. You’re gonna have to find somebody more your speed for that.”

Barking an incredulous, perhaps even snot, laugh, you look around. Snow comes down on the ground, sweet and creamy. It’d been enough of a battle to come here. If you were going to give up so easily, you would’ve turned your little bottom around perhaps two hours ago. Does he think you hadn’t considered that? It was a long walk; you had plenty of time to mull over the many things he might do. Sometimes, you imagined him diplomatic and affable. You stomped those wispy thoughts out. Perhaps it’s been years since you’ve spoken with him, and perhaps what happened between the two of you is dusted over, but you know better. Here he stands in front of you: bitter as ever.

“You’re just gonna leave me without a partner?” you say. Your jaw trembles, seized finally by the cold. “Everybody is already paired up. Literally everybody.”

Shrugging, he says, “I don’t see how that’s my problem. I didn’t sign up for it.”

Your brows knit. That means somebody else had signed him up. You have a sneaking suspicion who might’ve—Blueberry Kai always tells you that he just feels excluded. It’s hard not to laugh when he does. Taehyun? Excluded? He is exactly where he wants to be. Where most are sweet in Strawberryland, the snappy gingerbread finds it easier to justify his bitterness when he lives off in his little gingerbread home, out and away in his own neck of the forest only to be found by a winding gumdrop road, where he can pretend he’s above it all.

It’s entirely ironic. Him, better than you? Gingerbread, and all his ruggedness? His unpolished edges? Once, you’d believed that the two of you weren’t so different. That you could be friends, even. Seeing what he’s grown to be, you think you understand why your parents stepped in. Back then, though, as just that soft little girl who followed the charismatic boy around with crystal stars in your eyes, it had been the worst thing to ever happen to you. He had been so gravity-defying, moving through the soft, marshmallow edges and the sugar-whipped reality of Straberryland as something different.

No. Not gravity-defying. Rather, in the powdery and sweet sweet Strawberryland, you think that is the only thing with gravity.

“That’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” he echoes, letting a little patronizing laugh out along with it. “That’s sweet.”

It’s hard not to shift or cross your arms over your chest, abraded by the dripping sneer.

“What? It’s not. It’s not fair that, just because you don’t want to at least give it a try, I can’t participate,” you say. Really, you should just crawl back home and beg to join somebody’s duo, but you can’t lose like that. You can’t lose to him. If you leave it like this, then he’ll have gotten the better of you.

“Can’t get everything we want, huh?” he says, straightening up and taking the door in his hand once more. “Just because everybody else has bent backward to give you what you want doesn’t mean that I will.”

“Wait,” you say, sighing in a white swirl. “Don’t close the door. Don’t you know your manners? It’s rude. You’re just going to let me freeze out here? I walked all the way out here, and even got snow all over my new boots, just for this, just for you to slam a door in my face? I mean, a gentleman would at least invite me in to warm me up.”

Lips twitching into a laugh and his eyes suddenly alight, he says, “A gentleman, huh?” He pulls the door open a little further. The warmth from his home, warm and spiced and oh-so-inviting like oven-warmed gingerbread, brushes over your twinkling skin. “Sure. Show me your manners, then. I want you to ask me nicely.”

Your jaw tightens. Sending him a once over, sharpening your eyes, you decide to just do it. His tone is nasty, but you don’t want to be disqualified for not having a partner. Even if he’s the worst you could’ve been paired with in all of Strawyberryland. Or maybe the best, because it’s a gingerbread house competition this year. “Will you just do it?”

“I said ask nicely. Say please.”

He wears a mean smile—he’s having fun watching you squirm. So, you make a conscious effort to straighten up. “Will you please be my partner for the competition?” you say, making your voice sugary and batting your eyelashes in an overdone way. He thinks he’s funny.

Stepping out of the doorway, he motions you inside. It might look gentlemanly if it weren't for the sting in his eyes. You swallow down petty words and push through, your arms full with supplies. Arms aching, you finally let them clatter down over the countertop. The inside of his home is fresh-baked and spiced, aromatic like a true gingerbread cookie straight from the oven. You’re sure the glowing fire helps carry the smell in warm air. It wraps your cold bones up and smooths over some of the frayed edges. You’d been out there for so long… Nobody else had to walk that far for their partner.

Better just to get this done as quickly as you can. You just have to put up with him today, and you’ll be done, and then you can have fun with the competition. He won’t even show up for it; you’re sure.

“I’ll do it all if it’s that big of a deal,” you tell him, laying out the walls and warming the icing between your palms. “You can put the peppermint on, I guess. So then we can say we both worked on it.”

Hair is the fluffy brown of true gingerbread and dusted with snowflakes like powdered sugar. Taehyun shakes his head, and it moves with him. “No,” he says, the corners of his lips still turned up as though he knows something you don’t. He rolls the sleeves of his gaudy, knitted Christmas sweater up to his elbows. The corded muscle there, flickering with movement, catches you off guard. Gingerbread, built like that? Tearing your eyes off him with the effort of metal tearing itself from a magnet, you watch him approach the kitchen counters. “I’ll help. We’re partners, right?”

No matter what he says, there’s a twist of something sparkling in those sharp eyes that has you watching him closer—has you trying to gauge exactly what he’s playing at. “Uh… Yeah. Sure. If you want to, I guess.” You gesture at the walls. “Two for us, and ten for display. Can you start the walls?”

“Ten?” he says. “We’re making twelve gingerbread houses?”

With your lips pulled taut, you say, “Yeah… Twelve. Is that too much? I didn’t think any amount of gingerbread houses would be too much for you. That’s a little ironic.” Everything is warm in his home—even when you look down at your own hands to tug off your white woolen gloves, your skin that usually sparkles like frost rests just beneath the surface is tinged with the warmth.

“I can handle it just fine,” he says, taking the wall and base sections of one. “Just wouldn’t want you to ruin your pretty outfit. Twelve is a lot of icing.” He spits the word pretty out like it tastes bad. On his tongue, you’re sure it does. He never cared for pretty things the way you do. Your mommy always said that he was just jealous, but when the both of you were little, before your parents’ meddling, you learned that it was just a different lifestyle. One that you don’t understand, perhaps. Who doesn’t enjoy dressing themselves in lush furs and sugar crystals over their necks?

“I’ll be fine,” you say, snipping the tip of the piping bag open. “I wore these knowing they’d get dirty. They’re my baking clothes. My boots already got all messed up…”

“Oh,” he says. “You put on cashmere knowing you’ll get it dirty. Mommy and daddy paid a pretty penny for that, huh? And it’s your throwaway outfit?”

“Look. If you like it so much, I’ll let you have it when we’re done, yeah? Maybe you’ll make a pretty penny off selling it.” You ice a warm white line down the length of a wall. “Can you hurry? I’m already icing. I don’t want to be here all day.”

There’s a few long, thrumming moments of quiet, where only the sound of your piping back crackling fills his home. Finishing a wall, you tear yourself away from your work to spare a glance his way.

Taehyun’s jaw is tight, a muscle flickering where he grits his jaw in the low light that washes over him. There’s a fire blazing in his eyes, and though he doesn’t turn them on you, the smoke rolling from them is enough to make your skin warm. You’d successfully gotten under his skin. Why stop here, when seeing that look on his face is so fun? He looks as sour as an apple; as spiced as cinnamon. “Wall?” you say, sharp and haughty as you offer your hand out to him in an impatient demand.

Snapping his head up, he hands you a wall with the heat of a thousand ovens in his face. You feel the scald he intends for you with it, and you revel in it.

You bark commands at him, watching his shoulders grow tense and his lips twitch with each. Crush the candy canes, you tell him. Melt the icing. Sprinkle these over that. Soon enough, you’re sitting back and watching him work more than anything.

He doesn’t say a word. You see them brimming in his eyes, but he doesn’t let them burst out all venomous like you know he wants to. It’s quite the show.

“Would you at least help me hold this up?” he says, holding the walls of a house together with one hand. His hands are a mess of runny sugar and powdered sugar for snow, and yours are perfectly clean. You can at least help a little bit if you want to claim any part in the competition.

You reach for the piping bag, fat with the sweet sweet icing, and straighten a wall up. You trace the seams with it, thick and like glue. With a bit too much pressure, the side of the bag bursts. White rivulets of slow icing run down your fingers and over the table. You curse, dropping it to the counter. That’s all of your icing, flopped down and deflating over the surface all sad-like. It’d been so much, that you thought it would last you each house and then some. Of course, you hadn’t brought extra.

Bringing your sticky fingers up to your mouth, you suckle the mess off. It’s so very sweet—warm and weeping, nutty and spiced with something like nutmeg. It’s Taehyun: the smell of it, the way it spreads over your tongue… You stick your tongue out to catch it where some drips down your forearm. “Mmm,” you say, sticky-armed. “Tastes good.” That’ll be good on the gingerbread houses; maybe the two of you do have a chance at winning.

When you look up to Taehyun, he stands frozen in place, his hands still holding up a half-constructed gingerbread house. His eyes are different. It’s a look you don’t recognize—a look you’ve never seen before. Rather than deep and warm, his eyes are blackish and heavy. A swallow goes down his throat; a tense, barely contained thing.

You frown, your lips still a sugary mess. “I didn’t mean to make a mess. Sorry. I’ll clean it up…”

Clearing his throat, Taehyun says, “Yeah…”

He watches you clean the counters, where the icing had pooled, and now the bag is empty, with the same intensity. You can feel it on your skin in a foreign, itching way. You swipe and scoop and work at the spill, and still, he watches. He does not speak.

You survey the houses you’ve managed to finish. They’re pretty, and absolutely competition ready: looping swirls of icing like shingles on the roofs, peppermint chunks all red and white catching light where you’d sprinkled them into the frosting, gumdrops lining the paths true to Taehyun’s own home, and powdered sugar sifted over the entirety of it like snowfall. It’s all great, but there are only four. “What are we supposed to do now?” you say, lips pouty. “That’s all the icing I brought. We literally can’t make any more.” You wipe at a smear on your cheek. How’d that get there? “I think I’m gonna have to come back tomorrow… Can you hold on to the houses for me?”

“Yeah—yeah, sure. Tomorrow,” he says, blinking something away. He straightens. “It’s a long walk. I think you should get going.”

You want to say something snarky or ask him why he wants you out of the house so fast, but it’s true. Night’s creeping over Strawberryland, and you have no icing, and tomorrow’s the last day before the bake-off. If the two of you don’t work harder tomorrow than you did today, then you won’t even make qualifications. You’ll lose before even starting.

You never lose. Not like this, and certainly not to the man standing before you.

ꕀ

“C’mon. You can do better than that, can’t you?” Taehyun says, drooping icing from rooftops like icicles as you sprinkle crushed candies over the top.

You grit your teeth. If he’d been snappy yesterday, he’s made it his mission to be your worst nightmare today. You think it’s his sort of revenge for ordering him around how you did. “What would you like, then?” you say. Maybe it’s feeding right into what he wants, but your life has lent you a short fuse. “You don’t even care about winning. Why does it matter? Let me do it how I want.”

He’s in another sweater. The sleeves are bunched up to the elbow just like yesterday, but you think he’s making a point with it this time. The shifting of his muscles is a bit too intense for piping icing. You’d made it through three more houses, wrangling your inner demons with each passing snide remark or nasty smile the whole time. It doesn’t help that he keeps his home terribly toasty, and you run cold down to the core. You melt and melt until all that is left of your temper is a puddle on the floor beneath you. Gone.

“We’re partners, remember?” he says. He doesn’t even look at you as he says it. “I don’t do things half-assed, Frosty.”

You’re sent reeling with the old nickname. It’d been sweet then, back when it was just the two of you against the world, but now it’s gone sour like milk. It even comes from his mouth soured. It’s something that you thought you’d left a million lifetimes ago, never to hear again. With Taehyun, though, it’s hard to pretend that you are no longer that.

He will not let you forget that, at one point, the two of you were friends. An unlikely pair, especially looking at you now. You thought it was all nothing to you, but seeing him has kicked up dust.

“You don’t?” you say, shooting him a quick glare from the side of your eye. “That’s funny.”

Strong brows shooting up, Taehyun quits mid-piping to look at you. “Funny? What’s funny about it to you?”

You can’t settle the obnoxious smile that curls at the edges of your mouth, mean and taunting and falsely sweet. “Oh, nothing.” You shake a sifter full of powder against your palm. It falls like true snow down over the house.

“No, tell me,” he says, his eyes trained and heavy on your dismissive shrug. “Tell me what you think of me. I wanna hear it.”

Oh, this will be good.

“It’s just that,” you say, “you’re not really known for doing things the best way, you know? Living all the way out here, an ass when anybody tries to talk to you… Well, really, it’s just that nobody likes you. But, don’t worry! I’m sure there’s at least somebody that does.”

His face falls, the twinkle of delight at taunting you that he’d been holding in his eyes gone away. All that’s left is the peaking of something deeper and roiling from out of the cracks. You get the funny feeling that maybe you’ve taken it a step too far.

But, you never lose.

“Is that what it is?” he says. “I work for my shit. You? Everything you’ve ever had has been handed to you.” He measures his words delicately. Like a measuring cup full over the top, he cuts the excess words and coarseness off. He doesn’t say all that he thinks, but you see all he leaves unsaid toiling furiously behind his eyes.

His eyes. They’re clear and, sharp as they are, they pin you. It’s a reflection of that look he gave you yesterday: deep and swirling and wild. It’s more than that, this time, though. It’s laced with anger and bursting at the seams of him. You’re not sure he’ll be able to hold back whatever it is that storms just beneath his skin, this time.

“It is,” you say, punctuation your words concisely. “It’s exactly why my parents said I shouldn’t hang out with you. They said that I’m above… all this.”

Oh, you’ve absolutely taken it too far now. You don’t really mean it. Sure, that’s what they told you, but you don’t really believe it. For some time, you did, but not now. It’s too late for sorries, though. Taehyun’s jaw goes tense.

For a long, awful moment, you just stand there and burn in his silence. It’s worse than any words he might spit. It’s hot—hot, hot, hot, and you turn liquid in it.

In a blink, nothing more, you collide against his countertop. Something clatters and thuds behind you. The gingerbread houses? That doesn’t matter right now—all that your dizzy mind can manage is his body crushing you and his fingers biting into the plush of your cheeks.

Where he had fractured, like true gingerbread, he snaps. You can see it in his eyes; even you know when you’ve pushed too far. Perhaps you ought to have seen this coming.

His knuckles curl white around the edge of the counter beside you, and his fingers dig deeper into your face. He’s oh-so-hot up against you. “I’m sick of your fucking mouth,” he snarls. His breath is hot as it fans over your face, too. “Someone needs to put you in your place. Where are your goddamn manners?”

Your heart thrums in your chest, and your pulse goes wild in your neck. You can’t form the words to answer him.

“Quiet now, huh?” he says. The husk in it makes the place between your thighs feel weird. You don’t know what’s wrong with you.

He shut you up real quick. You’ll give him that.

That funny feeling does flips, roaring to life when his fingers hook under the waistband of your bottoms. “That’s your problem.” His eyes send a chill up and down your spine. “You’ve never been told no. You’ve always gotten what you wanted.” Peeling down all the layers, he tugs your knitted stockings and your little fur skirt, and your sweet frosty panties, too. They bunch at your feet. Between your thighs, right where those foreign, throbbing waves reign, cool air laps at a wetness there. The hair all over your body rises. You’ve never felt anything like it. “Not with me. I'll set you straight. I don’t put up with spoiled brats.”

“I’m not a brat,” you say. “You’re just an ass.” They’re the first words that come to you. Damn your temper.

With the same hand he’d been holding your face in place with, he curls his fingers right into your scalp and yanks hard, baring your neck to him. You lose a strained squeak, tears pricking the corners of your eyes at the sting. If your heart had been racing before, it runs wild, now. You strain your eyes to look at him and his curled lips. Painted with a sneer, he says, “Watch your mouth.”

A swallow goes down your throat hard. It’s all unfamiliar: the aching between your thighs, the burning in your blood, and the dazing of your thoughts. “Taehyun, I… I feel weird. It feels weird.”

Something knowing passes over him. “Yeah?” he says. “Show me where. I can help.”

Show him? You hesitate, searching his eyes for an ounce of joke or aversion. You find none, and that pounding is syrupy-sweet, and he says he can help. That’s all you want; all you need. Taking a trembling hand, you bring it down your body, running the palm down the planes of your belly and resting it just over the spot where the lower bit gives way to the apex of your thighs. Going any further—the thought tightens your throat and pinkens your cheeks the color of strawberry frosting. “There. It feels weird there.”

Taehyun smiles a snappy, spiced smile. He likes that. “Want me to make it feel better?”

Your thoughts feel replaced by something powdery and weightless. You give him a dumb nod.

“Say please.”

Something bratty crawls up your throat, but you want help, and he’s the one who will give it to you. He’d meant that: teaching you a lesson. Melted around the edges already, you say, “Please, help make it feel better.” Your voice wavers.

“There we go. That’s how good girls talk. That’s how you ask to get what you want.” He nudges your thighs apart with a knee and slots it between them, pressed right up against that coolness. Right up against that need. “Grind down on it.”

Neck aching at the angle, you say, “Grind?”

He brushes his clothed thigh right up against you. The friction is delicious—sweet and melty and just what you need. It shoots yellow sparks throughout you.

It feels so good. Your mouth waters in anticipation.

“Grind,” he says. It’s harder, this time. Not a sweet suggestion.

You bring yourself back down on it, gasping at the contact, and you do. You grind, tummy tightening at every brush of the fabric hard and delicious. Your chest constricts, one hand flying up to dig your fingers into his shoulder and the other fighting the hand he has still in your hair. It aches and hurts, and so does the friction as you grow more gaspy and frantic.

It feels so, so good. You want more—you want him to touch you there and everywhere else. He smells just right all over you, nutty and musky like a gingerbread twist. “Taeh—hyun,” you mewl. It burns, but something slick eases the burn a little bit. Just enough for you to enjoy that burn.

“That’s it,” he coos. It’s not a sweet coo; it’s the type of sound one might make when you play right into their mean game. It’s mean. “Make yourself a mess on my thigh. I don’t even have to touch you. What would mommy and daddy think of you now, huh? What would they think if they saw their precious princess fucking herself on my thigh?”

No. That would be the end of you. You whine, thighs twitching. Something twists in your center, scary and foreboding, and still you chase it. None of your thoughts are solid enough to stop. Each time he flexes a muscled thigh or presses it harder into you, you shudder and curl your fingers into his shirt harder.

“Don’t like that, huh?” he laughs. “Then you haven’t learned your lesson. You’re no better than me; I mean, look at you.”

You want to cry when he pins your hips back to the counter, stilling your wild bucking. Squeezing your eyes shut, you claw and reach for that wave, even as it recedes from you. “Why?” you say, voice thin. It’d been so yummy—the sweetness still rests on your tongue. Your heart thumps hard, longing for it.

“I said, look at yourself,” he growls, taking his hold on your hair to crank your head down.

Right where you’d been on his thigh, there’s a sticky, marshmallowy mess. Your mess.

Taehyun releasing his grip on your hair is almost a relief, but he doesn’t even give you time to relish it. The walls of his house blur around you. All that you register in between the motions is his shoulder in your belly and your limbs dangling from you. You dig your hands into his back to balance yourself, but he’s got you.

He has you slung over his shoulder. He’s carrying you like you weigh nothing at all. That place between your thighs flutters anew. In all your life, you never worried too much about the plushness of your belly or your thighs. It is who you are; all mallow and soft around the edges and starkly sweet. But you did get nervous when somebody tried picking you up. Usually, you protest and giggle it off. Watching somebody strain to pick you up when they lift other girls like sacks of flour is just something that makes you feel a little strange.

But, Taehyun does not strain. He doesn’t huff; he carries you right down the hallway and into his room, and he even manhandles you down onto the bed with a bounce without so much as a sound. He is a solid pillar beneath you, and then he is a solid, muscled chest above you. With strong fingers, he pins your hands to the mattress above you. With the other, he leads your shirt up.

He’s so warm against your cold skin. His breath like waves from the oven over your mouth, he says, “You think you’re so much better than me because you have all this?” Curling his fingers around a necklace circling your throat, he tears it off with a clattering of a few snow-drop beads.

You gasp, glaring right into his eyes. “What the hell?” you hiss, arching your chest to wiggle beneath him. Your necklace. Who does he think he is, breaking your stuff? That was one of your favorite necklaces, and now it lies all over his floor. Still, your center pounds and longs for the return of his touch. Everything about him just calls for more from you. You don’t know how you went so long without him, or how you made yourself forget just how drawn you are to his magnetism. Maybe he is just what your parents turn their nose up at, and you too, but that does not make him any less a powerful personality.

He knows exactly who he is and what he wants, as solid as the gingerbread cookie. And you, plush and impressionable as whipped marshmallows, take to him just right. It’s something you once knew, but the sneered words of adults obscured that memory.

“Don’t whine,” he says. “I want to see your pretty neck without all that shit. That’s your problem: you’re spoiled.” He reaches down to mess with his pants.

His length springs free. Cheeks flushing, you take it in. You can’t look away, even as embarrassment crawls spindly legs over your skin at the interest you take in the sight. You’ve never seen anything like it—long and hot and weeping something thick and white from the slit at the pinkish tip. A pearl of it dribbles down, landing on your belly in a string where he holds it.

Taehyun collects that wetness and then urges more from the tip with a few drags down the length of it. Wrapping his fingers around it, he begins to slowly work his fist up and down it. It’s nothing short of impossible to tear your sights off it—it’s another thing that inexplicably fans the flames of something roaring in your center. “Do you want to touch it?” he says, watching your tongue dart out to wet your lips.

The sight of him growing restless over his pumping fist is enough to get you nodding.

“Fuck,” he says, sharp and under his breath. He lets his hand off it. “Go ahead. Touch it. I won’t tell anybody you did.”

When he frees your pinned wrists, you reach out a slow hand. You curl your fingers around it the way he had. Around it, your fingers don’t even touch. The weight and warmth of it make your blood tingle. Looking up, you search for guidance in those intelligent, swirling eyes. His bangs hang over his eyes as he watches.

Placing his hand over yours, he drags your hand up and down his rigid length the way he had. “Like that,” he says. “Just like that.”

You pump your closed fist up and down him, encouraged to squeeze harder and flick your wrist faster with each tight breath he lets slip. The skin of your palm gets stickier and stickier, the slick sounds making your ears and core burn just the same. You like that it makes him feel good—that he’s making those noises just for you.

It twitches under your fingers. “Feels just like I thought your pretty hands would…” he says, stomach tight. “See—what happens when you give up that bratty fucking act? Shit… harder—give it to me harder, Frosty…” Shivering at the name, you oblige him. You reach your thumb up and collect more of that beaded liquid from the slit, and you work your arm harder. Faster. Your forearm begins to burn, but you don’t let it slow you. All you want is more of this; more of him. Finally, he lets sounds out from his chest freely. He grunts and hisses through his teeth, letting his head fall back. “Holy shit. I’m gonna—gonna ice your face, okay?” he says. “You said you liked the taste, huh? Wanna taste it again? Give me your tongue…”

Whatever that means, you push yourself up and situate your face in front of his length, your tongue out. Taehyun’s sounds tighten, and his hips begin to stutter and chase your hand. He picks his head back up to look down at you half-lidded—to watch. With only a few last runs of your palm down his length, skin so slick that your hand just slips and slides up him, he growls through gritted teeth. The weight of him in your working hand twitches once more, and from that weeping tip he shoots dancing ribbons of white. It lands on your tongue hot and sweet, melting out all spiced and snappy.

Snappy like gingerbread. Like gingerbread icing. Swallowing it down, you meet his gaze. He pants, chest rising and falling, but there’s something clear and knowing in his heavy eyes when you do. You think you know now, why he’d been so dazed as you made a show of licking that same sticky icing off your hands and said how good it tasted.

When you release him from your palm, it glistens with his sweet essence. He softens in front of your eyes just the littlest bit.

Eyes just as hungry and still catching his breath, Taehyun says, “Open your mouth. I wanna see your tongue.”

Belly doing wicked twists, you do. You stick your tongue out for him, still laden with the headiness of his taste. He does taste good.

“Swallowed it all down?” he says, eating the sight of you with your mouth dropped open up. “You really are so nasty. They all think you’re so sweet—you think you’ve got them all wrapped around your finger.” He pushes you back down to the bed with a palm. “Well, not me. I know that you’re just as filthy as you are spoiled. Somebody had to deal with you.”

Like always, snarky words swirl in your mouth. All it would take is letting them fall off your tongue. But you don’t—not with the feeling between your thighs, and not with the way your blood, frost turned to snowmelt, begs for him to fix it. Not when you know that all it will get you is more of Taehyun’s wrath.

It’s not like what he says is true, or anything. That’s what you tell yourself anyway.

“Taehyun, please. I need it…” He takes a marshmallow thigh of yours, pressing it up so that it melds with your belly. Cool air reminds you once more of that strange wetness between them.

Dark, blown eyes catching the sight of it, his lips quirk into a scoff. “Need what?” he says, reaching a hand down. At the contact of his fingers, just as they had against his thigh, your hips jolt and an explosion like the breaking of sugar glass shoots down the muscles of your thighs. He scoops that stickiness up from its source, bringing the soft cream up to his mouth. Tongue darting out, he has a taste of you just as you had tasted him. “Shit—you taste good too, frosty. You’re so sweet, how’d you turn out like this? That’s okay. I’ll deal with you, and then you’ll be just as sweet as you taste.” That fat tip of him presses flush to the source of all your want. “I’ll straighten you out.”

You don’t know what means, and you are absolutely sure that you don’t deserve it, but any sass is staunched with the utter sweetness of the stretch in your center. Taehyun presses his hips up into you, slowly and internalizing the dropping open of your mouth, the pinching of your brows into a worrying line, and the press of your palms to his broad chest. He takes it and metabolizes it down like cream cake or the plumpest fruits, and he gives you more. More, all the way up until there is no length of him left to give, and nowhere else for him to go.

You feel so, so full. No amount of twinkling jewels or new skirts hold a candle to this. You don’t know what it is, and you don’t know why Taehyun knows, but whatever. Who cares? Breathing out a shudder, you squirm beneath him to search for that dazzling feeling he’d made you feel earlier.

“Stay still,” he barks, steadying himself beside your head with a sturdy, powerful arm. When had he lost his sweater? You don’t know. You might drool over the definition and warm skin there if he didn’t pull the length of him out until just the tip of him threatens to pop out, and then drive right back in before you could. A gaspy breath falls from your mouth, devolving into mewls and whimpers when he does the same over and over and over again, quick with snapping hips and the smacking of his skin against the soft skin of your bottom. Your thigh quivers in his hold, his fingers digging into the fluff of your thigh as he holds you into it.

Each and every time he slides up against something inside you that makes you feel different. Different from what you felt when you were on his thigh, and different from anything else you’ve felt in the entirety of your life. It’s deeper, right at the very bottom of your belly, sending your veins lazy and your hips twitchy. You want to chase it as much as you want to hide from its power, so all you do is stay in a hazy limbo of sharp gasps and long, drawn out mewls for more.

“No,�� he says, his face right in yours. The smell of him, manly and so very sweet like oven-warmed gingerbread, settles over your bones and wiggles its way through your thoughts. It does something to your melted mind, planting a need to cling to him right in the center. Your hands perch all over him: the hair at the back of his head, his working waist, his biceps that flex and strain with his effort, and finally around him so that you can push your cheek to his chest and feel his heart racing there. “You’ll take exactly what I give, and thank me for it. You don’t get to ask for more; not with your mouth.”

“Why?” you say, whining. “I want it—so bad. Please? I’ll be so… so good…” Your voice bounces with each collision of your bodies, and your toes flex and curl at the twisting in your core. Nonetheless, you want more. Whatever this is—this syrupy, pure goodness—Taehyun has shown you something that you will never be whole without again. He has bloomed a flower right in the chest of you, something hungry that will want and want this, and you fear that he will be the only one able to satiate it.

The thought of the smile he’ll wear, should you come crawling back to his doorstep just for this…

Taehyun stops, pushing off you with a curled lip. “What will it take to get you to fucking listen?” he says. He pulls himself from you, leaving you to whine and long for that feeling once more. You want to complain and pull him back over you, but with the fire churning in his dark gaze and the sight of his length, covered in that same white, whipped stuff you’d left all over his thigh.

You’d made a sticky, frosty, frothed mess all over him once again. Really, what would people think of you now? Your mom? Your dad?

Manhandling you again, he flips you onto your hands and knees and shoves your face into the bed. Any yelp or gasp that tears from your chest is muffled into the sheets. Taking the swell of your hips, his fingers like bites against the powdery, soft skin there, his voice comes from behind you. “Won’t you just listen to me? If you’re gonna be mine, you’re gonna have to start learning how to hear no.” Curling your hair up and pulling it like a handle, he snaps your head back into another stinging, awful tug. It turns the arch of your back into something that you can imagine is a sight to be seen. If the burning where you feel his eyes raking down the curve of it has something to speak of it, that is. You squeeze your eyes shut as if that’ll help you any. “You don’t get everything you want. That’s not how this works.”

You don’t say anything. You have nothing good or sweet left to say.

“Say thank you, and I’ll give it to you good, okay?” he says, running a flattened hand down your spine. “That’s all I want to hear. Show me you can be good.”

The last thing you want to do is to thank him. That would mean admitting that you’ve lost, and that ruffles your preening feathers. But you want that goodness back, you want his hips snapping into you and that tight knot back in your belly. You’d do anything for it; even forget your ego.

Your mind is gone, anyway. Whatever your rational self would do, it doesn’t matter. There’s one thing that you want right now, and getting it is so easy. “Thank you, Taehyun. Thank you so much… I’m sorry I’ve been a brat, and I’m sorry about what I said to you. Please, just… help me. Please, I need you so bad.”

You? Sorry? It’s absurd, and yet, you entirely mean it. Maybe it’s your lazy brain talking, or maybe he really has won.

“See? So sweet when you act right,” he says. “Let me show you what happens when you do.”

You could cry real tears when he sets that same pace, his hands bracing on your hips to pull you deeper into each thrust and the front of your body bouncing against the sheets with each. Your cries grow hoarse and beyond needy, and your insides twist and turn even more dangerously.

You are on the brink of something divine. Something that will melt down so well, good on the tongue and as smooth as chocolate, but as sharp as the snapping of gingerbread.

And, snap, he has.

“Yes!” you cry, straining your shoulders as you reach behind you and curl your fingers around the place where he meets your skin. “S..So good! Right there—thank you, Taehyun!”

He doubles down on you. His length hits a spongy spot in your core, pounding up against the walls there and turning your insides against you. It’s almost too good. “There we go,” he says, voice shaking with a growl. The delivery of his thrusts grows sloppy. You think he feels just as good as you do. “That’s what—” Falling over you, he supports himself with each strong arm dug into the mattress beside your head, his solid front melded to your soft back. “That’s what I like to hear. Here you go—fuck, I’m gonna give you what good girls get, okay?”

You hope it’s more of that melty icing he shot from his length earlier. The knot in your belly tightens, just on the brink of a glittery, bright explosion. “Mhm!” you say, your voice cracking. You want it—you want it so bad. The intensity of it, turning over in your veins and rendering your thighs jelly, sings in your ears. It’s a frightening greatness, but you rage against the urge to drop your hips into the mattress and run from it. You need to finally taste what you’ve been chasing. “Taehyun! Right there—please, don’t stop!”

You were demanding more from him again, but Taehyun didn’t stop this time. Not when his growls and whines against your shoulder tell you enough about how he’s feeling. He tongues and nips at your shoulders, the only sounds echoing off the walls of his room, the hollow smack of his hips against your bottom, and the only smell of the sweet mingling of his gingerbread sharpness against your heady marshmallow. It’s good enough to eat.

Crying out with a frantic whine, the feeling deep in your belly changes once more, and you’re writhing and squirming against him. Your hips buck and chase and run, wild and just as explosively as the tightness shooting down your thighs and up through your lower back.

Everywhere. You feel it everywhere. It’s in the continued bouncing of your body, in each nudge of his tip to a sweet, spongecake spot deep inside you, in his breathless pants into your skin, and in the curling of his fingers into your hair when he releases a hip to do so, and in your pleads when he chases his own delicious release. Your throat tightens, and suddenly the sheets are all too warm around you, and you realize with blistering intensity that another one of those knots builds up in your belly. It’s quicker, short, and bright. You’ve barely even made it through the last, but still, it comes.

“Holy shot,” he growls, hips stuttering and then stilling. He reaches a hand down between your thighs and finds a very sweet button. The breath in your throat catches, and in nothing more than a blink of an eye, you crash again, and then your bodies are two twitching, elated things. He presses himself impossibly deeper into you before shooting that same hotness, sweet ropes of sugary icing right into you, and your fluttering insides hold him tight and eat it up. Your heart pounds in your chest, running amok in your ears and your neck, and you try to catch running breaths to no avail.

Occasionally grinding up into you, though there is hardly any space between your joined bodies to do so, Taehyun shoots more lazy spurts for a few long moments. His breaths slow against your skin, and yours do in your chest. Slowly, you recover as two entangled bodies, all clammy and melted like left in the oven for a bit too long.

Pressing hot, wet kisses to the back of your neck, and then down your spine when he pushes off you and pulls himself out, his tongue darting out against your skin for some, he says, “Taste so good… So sweet, even on your skin…” He brushes the wild tangles of hair from your face and adds, “I wonder if you’ve gone all sweet inside, too? You look like it…” The mess of you, your thick creaminess staining your thighs and his runny load pooling from your hole, is all over. It even makes the sheets beneath you dirty with dribbles of his release as it drips. “I told you I’d get you sweet.”

If that sluggish, sugary thing moving through your veins is sweetness taking over you from the inside, perhaps you have gone sweet. Or, perhaps you now have every reason to become his worst nightmare—just if it gets you this.

You’ll play sweet for now. The softer kisses he seasons your skin with are no less enthralling than the delightful goodness still ebbing away between your thighs. You think that, for the first time, you have lost.

And, to your very own dismay, it tastes so very sweet.

... back to the masterlist ⌇ back to strawberryland

✎୭ ashlynn's note BRAT TAMER TAEHUN, amirite?

﹙📋﹚ @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @hyucktapes , @bewitchless , @prince-jjae , @blankliving , @yaoizee , @stormy1408 , @missychief1404 , @izzyy-stuff , @miukuui , @lunesdesire , @304files , @sunoolver , @cherricola-star , @lickingan0rchid , @xylatox , @hmusunoo , @izzyy-stuff , @beomiracles , @joycelyjjj , @sunoolver , @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @apeachty , @fandomtrashsblog , @bewitchless , @yezzns2 , @hhoneyhan , @ethystclove , @darkdayelixer , @calumcxke , @biteyoubiteme , @bamgeutsz , @soobabby , @little-shiny-starr , @bambammtori , @bunniebun-posted , @heeambi , @bunnisoobin , @hwanghyunjinismybae if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

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artemisbarnowl · 19 days ago

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Me, when in the small city where I live: "20 mins to work is TOO LONG"/this place is SMALL and nothing should be more than 15 mins away"

Me, visiting Melbourne: "if I do not get this hot chocolate (one hour away) my life is meaningless and empty"

#im actually having many feelings about being here and what that looks like and why #because i already want to go home #i DONT actually i just wish i was staying in the city and all my friends we're close by #and that.....all the things i want to do didnt come with stupid travel time and also that the things i do alone actually meant something #having a nothing matters when you're alone sorts time #what does it matter if i spend an afternoon at the park or eat a cool flavoured ice cream #i want to share my experiences #and there is no one here with which to do so #so all of this is pointless #i don't know how to enjoy a thing for its own sake on my own #even with so much practice #this is probably part of why im still a bit insane about my ex #there is a friendly window to the life i want to live but its being denied because I didnt want it #i didnt want it because of the cost and the....retrofitting to make it the window i actually want instead of an imprecise facsimile

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2c75ff · 9 months ago

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tag dump;

General:

— ic ▸ what's so foolish about wanting to have a little fun? — ooc ▸ we're gonna hit you with the aftermath — inbox ▸ and what do you want now? — memes ▸ nobody is as strong as i am — headcanons ▸ a part of the game — drabbles ▸ you're hitting your limit while i'm just getting in it — countenance ▸ am i giving you a hot flash? — my art ▸ you ain't seen the best of me yet — crack ▸ your sensors must be malfunctioning — saved ▸ too much is not enough

Supplementary:

— musings ▸ my whole life all i wanted was a change of pace — aesthetics ▸ break out the gate with a rock in your walk — fashion ▸ talking the talk; put up or shut up — interests ▸ you know it ain't easy running out of thrills — audio ▸ we make it loud

Verses:

— main; post cell ▸ i still don't fuck with the in crowd

#— ic ▸ what's so foolish about wanting to have a little fun?#— ooc ▸ we're gonna hit you with the aftermath #— inbox ▸ and what do you want now?#— memes ▸ nobody is as strong as i am #— headcanons ▸ a part of the game #— drabbles ▸ you're hitting your limit while i'm just getting in it #— countenance ▸ am i giving you a hot flash?#— my art ▸ you ain't seen the best of me yet #— crack ▸ your sensors must be malfunctioning #— saved ▸ too much is not enough #— musings ▸ my whole life all i wanted was a change of pace #— aesthetics ▸ break out the gate with a rock in your walk #— fashion ▸ talking the talk; put up or shut up #— interests ▸ you know it ain't easy running out of thrills #— audio ▸ we make it loud #— main; post cell ▸ i still don't fuck with the in crowd #tag dump

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madlori · 4 months ago

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My ankle journey

I am sharing this with all you good people on the dash because I am so fucking mad it took so long for me to learn it and if I can spare one (1) person the agony it will be worth it.

So for like...oh, 8 or 9 months, I've been struggling with pain/inflammation/tendinitis in my left Achilles tendon. I don't know what caused it. It just started up (welcome to middle age, this shit happens). It wasn't severe enough to be debilitating, but it was annoying and limiting. It was also intermittent, in that some days it would be very painful and other days hardly at all. The kind of shoe I was wearing affected it a lot.

Now, I have bone spurs on both heels (it's just a thing that happens as you get older sometimes). I'm also aware that heel pain is usually the result of tight calf muscles that pull and irritate the tendon. I tried stretching that calf muscle. You know the stretch, this bitch right here:

I did it all the time. I also iced the ankle after walking for awhile, hoping to avoid inflammation. Results were...unsatisfying.

I went to:

A chiropractor

A podiatrist

A physical therapist

A bodywork coach

They all gave me some variation on the "strengthen your calf muscle, stretch your calf muscle" advice. I continued doing this without results.

I was getting frustrated, and a little afraid that this was just my life now. Finally, I thought...maybe some targeted massage might help. I asked for rec on a local FB site and was pointed to a woman who specializes in therapeutic massage including cupping, etc.

I went to her a week ago.

She spent over half our first session working on my left lower leg. Within about 10 minutes of making my eyes water, she uttered the sentence I did not know I had been waiting to hear:

"Oh, it's your soleus."

Excuse me, what?

"It's your soleus that's the culprit. It's all tied up and stiff." She started digging into it and I felt literal sparks run up my leg as she released adhesions and got the muscle moving a little. When she finally put the leg down, it felt like it was on fire with all the blood rushing into it.

She said, "You'll need to stretch your soleus. It'll clear up, but it'll take a bit of time - tendons take ages to heal."

But I HAVE been stretching.

"No, you haven't. The usual straight-leg calf stretch only stretches the gastrocnemius, that's the big belly muscle in your calf. That's not your problem. That stretch doesn't stretch the soleus. Don't worry, I'll show you how to stretch it."

My mind is spinning.

So here are the muscles in question:

The gastroc (as the pros call it) just attaches down the back but the soleus runs underneath it from the knee around the side to the heel. The lower part above the ankle is where it typically gets tight and forms adhesions.

To stretch it, you do the same calf thing where you put your foot back and press your heel to the ground, but you have to do it with your KNEE BENT:

The bent knee keeps the gastroc from engaging. It's one of those selfish muscles (like traps) - if you give it an inch, it'll just take over and prevent other muscles from working or stretching. There are other ways to stretch the soleus but this is the easiest and you can literally do it anywhere. I've been doing it while standing and waiting for things (the elevator to come, the toast to toast). You just put the heel back and bend the knee. It's kind of like curtseying.

The minute I did this stretch, I could FEEL where it was pulling on my tendon. I knew that THIS had been the problem.

The massage therapist also told me to stop icing my heel. She said icing is for an acute injury, but a more chronic aggravation needs heat, to increase blood flow for healing. She recommended elevation with heat every day (I've been doing it in bed during "phone before bed" time).

I have been doing the soleus stretch at least half a dozen times a day for almost a week, and the ankle is at least 70% better. It is still a little tight and tender, but the improvement is significant. I think a few more weeks will have it feeling normal.

I am...blown away by this. This massage therapist was able to pinpoint an issue in only a few minutes that eluded all the other professionals I saw. I can't wait to go back to her and have her solve all my other problems, tbh.

#massage therapy #soleus muscle #achilles tendon #bodywork #i am so mad i didn't go to her last winter #why did nobody else tell me this #physical therapy

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444lotus · 5 months ago

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how i manifested (+revised) my dream body ౨ৎ

This is my first post on my new account, though I am NOT new to the law and NOT new to loablr either. This post is specifically about how I manifested my dream body instantly with no technique besides knowing :)

PART ONE - the old story

In the old story, I was so fixated on my body and my weight all of the time, I was tracking my calories and weighing myself and my food obsessively and constantly gaining and losing weight. Back then, my beliefs were that 1) Excess food causes weight gain, 2) If I don't track my food and weigh myself, I will become too fat/skinny, and 3) There is something wrong with my body, and I need to diet/exercise to fix it.

Noticing these beliefs were key to changing the way I viewed food and my body, and therefore changing how I knew food to effect me and how I knew my body to be.

When I was overweight, I knew my body was too big, I knew I was eating too much, I knew excess calories made me gain weight. When I was underweight, I knew I had no appetite, I knew I was too bony, I knew that exercise makes you gain muscle which is why I had none, etc. I had to identify the limiting beliefs that made me know my body was a certain way.

PART TWO - writing the new story

Once I identified the beliefs that were holding me back and kept me from my goals ("I know I eat too much, even if I affirm I'm skinny, I'm still going to gain weight."), I could then change them. I wrote down a list of these beliefs, like I did above, and came up with reversals. For example;

"I overeat, so I will gain weight" -> "Calories aren't even real, so I can eat whatever I want and stay the same weight."

"I eat junk food, so I'll never be skinny" -> "I love how fast my metabolism is, I can eat junk all day and still stay so skinny." or "Junk food is just like other foods. Raspberries can't make me fat so neither can hamburgers."

"I don't exercise enough to be toned" -> "It's crazy how I'm naturally so toned and fit without trying."

The key for me was changing key beliefs that kept me dieting and exercising to lose weight, to sever the tie between calories consumed and weight, and hours exercising and muscles. These are limiting beliefs. We literally create our reality. Not ice cream, not soda and chips, none of that can overcome YOU as a divine creator. It sounds silly when you spell it out like that, doesn't it?

PART THREE - how i did it

Okay, now we understand that the secret is to change the rules of our own reality to allow us to know a higher truth (my higher truth? I am a skinny legend). So how do we put this into practice?

All you have to do is know. You set these rules, so you know they are true, reality is bound to them. You must know you are successful, know that reality is in the 4d, and feel truly satisfied in that realm. You can do this using whatever method you need to, but personally, I just knew deep within me that I was my ideal weight, and that nothing could change that, that is simply the reality, that is simply the way things are. I thought about old pictures I took of myself, and remembered how skinny I looked in them, I thought about the last time I saw my friends and how much littler they said I'd gotten, I thought about the last time I stood on the scale and how it read the exact weight I knew myself to be. And I just knew, deep within me, that was simply how things were.

And the last step, for me, was to feel truly joyful at this realization. To feel satisfied it came into fruition. Without seeking confirmation, because I already KNEW.

And what do you know? Pictures of myself in my phone from weeks ago, they were my ideal body. The girl I saw in the mirror when I stood up from my meditation? She had my ideal body. My clothes? XS and S, all of them. I had revised my ideal body all the way back to the day I bought them. And confirmed this by checking pictures I took in the dressing room.

I'm telling you right now it is possible if you know in your heart you've always had your desire. It's always been fulfilled within you. You make the rules because you are a divine creator. Nothing outside of you can change what you know to be true.

That's all for now ౨ৎ

#edward art #law of assumption #law of attraction #neville goddard #manifesting #revision #loassumption #loablr #loa blog #living in the end #affirm and persist #loa

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all4yoi · 4 months ago

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𝒩ot a bet﹕hyung line

𝑒nhypen x fem!reader ⚹ cw: each member ranges from 5-1k wc, fluff, lowercase intended, they swear, crying, uh someone kneels, not proud w heejake's 😞, not proofread ( lmk if i missed something! )

sypnosis : upon learning that you were merely the stake in a bet, they wasted no time in mending your relationship.

part one !

★ LEE HEESEUNG ( 0.8k wc )

"y/n wait!"

heeseung's voice only made you walk faster. you didn't want to humiliate yourself further by stopping and talking to him. all you wanted to do now was to just march out of the school, go home, lock yourself in your room and maybe eat a tub of ice cream while you ugly cry yourself to sleep.

"y/n, please." heeseung pleaded, taking your elbow in his grasp as he spun you around and pulling you closer to the point you can feel his breath on fanning your nose.

he looked at you pleadingly. "it's okay," you managed to say in a shaky voice. "i understand, you can all laugh at me all you want now-" he shook his head, "it's okay really!" you added, pursing your lips.

"i just want to be left alone now okay?" and even if he knew you didn't mean just 'now.' he'll respect your wishes and let you go, but he won't give up.

heeseung watched you walk away from him with a heavy heart, wanting nothing but to just explain everything to you before it was too late. he couldn't lose you, not like this.

when he couldn't see your figure anymore, he messily messed his hair and made his way back to the gym eager to teach a guy how to not spit nonsense.

it's been a week since that happened and a week since he's seen you in the school. he asked some of your classmates and club members but all he received were nasty glares and short cold answers. what happened between the two of you spread like wild fire the following day you walked away from him. everyone knew you were kind of a nerd, but they also knew you were a complete angel and had a heart soft as a pillow.

they also knew that betting on a person's feeling isn't exactly it. — more under the cut!

so throughout that week too, his popularity decreased day by day. he used to receive heart eyes on the hallways and joyful 'good morning, heeseung!'s by random students, now all he received were judgemental glances and they avoided him like a plague, scared to be the next target of a cruel bet.

he didn't care though, all he cared about was your wellbeing. it's been a week and you've still yet to show up to class, so imagine his surprise when you suddenly walk in to the room with your usual hair do, your bag slung over on your shoulder and your glasses almost falling off your nose bridge.

he sat up straighter, gulping as his eyes followed your every move. he could feel hear heart beating louder, as if it was calling for you, desperate to be near you again.

he needed to fix this, asap.

it felt like forever before heeseung heard the bell ring. as soon as he heard the annoying sound, he messily packed up his things and ran after you.

"y/n!" your forearm was then again grabbed by him. although this time, he turned you slowly. heeseung silently admired your face. he missed you so much.

"let me explain, please. it's not what you think. i promise." he whispered, vulnerability in his tone. the simple nod you gave was his signal to interlace his fingers with yours as he looked for an empty room.

you ignored the looks everyone threw your way, either worried and judging. all you could focus on was his warm hand on yours and how you missed it so much, you didn't even realize you both were now inside an empty classroom.

"there was no bet." you furrowed your brows, looking at him with mixed confusion and frustration. "i promise, there was no bet."

"why would they say that then?"

"i don't know, but i promise there's no bet. throughout the months we've been together everything i've said was real." he said, desperate.

heeseung stepped closer.

"what i felt for you was real," he scrambled to get his phone from his pocket, opening his messages app. "you can go through my phone all you want, ask any of my friends-" you raised a brow.

"not those friends! i mean sunghoon, jay, jungwon.. you know." your raised brow made him sputter. "to be completely honest, they've been ignoring me after they heard about what happened.."

you looked at him hesitantly as you scrolled through his messages with shaking hands. you scrolled for so long, you even reached to the messages months before you both got together.

he didn't have any messages to his basketball team group chat unless it was announcements from his coach. the group chat with his actual friends were only filled with his pining over 'the girl on the back of his biology class.'

"heeseung.."

"there's no bet, baby. i'd never do that to anyone." he whispered, stepping closer. "i can't lose you like this.. i love you."

you sniffled as you came crashing on his chest, letting tears fall again. heeseung immediately wrapped his arms around you, sighing in relief as he finally have you back in his arms.

"i was so worried baby." he mumbled, kissing your head.

"i love you forever. i'll kill everyone who tries to get in between us again," heeseung pulled you closer if it was even possible.

"and if they do, i'll make sure to fix everything even if it means the whole world would hate me."

★ PARK JONGSEONG ( 1.0k wc )

jay was confused.

the both of you had a very well planned date tonight, so he was utterly puzzled to see that you weren't responding to his messages. for heaven's sake, you didn't even read his messages, he was just left in delivered.

he had tried calling multiple times but was only met with your automated voice telling him to leave a voice message. it came to the point that he had enough and decided to drive to your house.

throughout the drive, jay wondered what could've happened. he couldn't think of anything that would make you upset like this, he hoped that you just fell asleep and forgot to have your alarm on.

walking up the porch of your house, jay rang the doorbell and was met with your mom who opened the door with furrowed brows when she laid her eyes on him.

"good afternoon mrs. l/n, is y/n home?" your mother's frown deepened, hesitantly looking at the stairs behind her before looking back at him. "i'm sorry jay, she said she doesn't want to see you?"

that caused jay to furrow his brows as well. "wha- may i ask why?"

"i was hoping you'd tell me." if jay was confused a while ago, he was even more confused now and frustrated.

"can i see her, please?" he pleads, the older woman hesitantly opened the door wider to invite him in, and before he could ascend up the stairs, your mom stopped him.

"jay.." he looked back. "i don't know what happened to you both but take it easy on her, alright? she's been crying, i can tell." jay gulped and only nodded, sending your mom a pursed smile.

he knocked on your bedroom door, when no response came, he tried to turn the knob and was thankful that it wasn't locked.

jay slowly opened your door, seeing you curled on one corner of your bed as your body shook from your sobs you tried to keep silent.

he could feel his heart break at the sight. stepping a foot inside the room, he mentally cursed at himself when he accidentally bumped on to your mirror causing your head to shoot up in alarm at the sound.

your already glassy eyes was once again filled with tears as your eyes met his. jay barely dodged the pillow you threw at him, screaming at him to "go away and never show your face to me again."

jay frowned and came closer until he was sat on the edge of your bed, ignoring the words you just shouted at him.

"baby.. what's- what's wrong?" he asked, attempting to hold your hand but you retracted it and tried to throw another pillow at him. he swiftly caught it and brought it back down gently beside you.

"was it worth the one month of free car wash?" you spat through hiccups. jay stayed silent, confused.

"of course it probably was, that's what you do right?" the sight of your swollen and red face kept breaking his heart, he was still confused on what you were talking about but he'll let you talk.

this way he knew how he'd make things better.

"make me fall in love with you in exchange of a month's free of car wash.." you muttered, your eyes still boring on to his. at your words, it finally clicked. "..am i really worth just that much?" another sob.

right, he had forgotten to end the call when his 'friend' came barging into his apartment. you had probably heard all the nonsense the guy sputtered.. but surely you must've heard the way he defended your relationship and swore at that him too?

"i thought.. high school days were done jay. please just leave me alone now. you got what you want." jay shook his head, coming closer and pulling your body to his.

he wrapped his arms around you, his hand rubbing your back as you sobbed hard. he didn't try stopping you when he felt your weak punches that you threw at his chest, his own tears clouding his vision but he didn't dare make them fall.

"you got it all wrong, baby." he whispered, rubbing your nape as your face now rested against the crook of his neck. he ignored the wetness there. "i'm guessing you overheard the conversation with sungjae?"

you nodded, now calmer but not pulling away.

"did you also hear the way i told him to drop the stupid bet he kept insisting to happen? the way i kicked him out of my apartment?" you stayed silent, only sniffling as a response.

jay sighed, wrapping his arm around your waist tighter and pulling you closer.

"the whole campus knows sungjae's an asshole, baby. he was a jerk who thought that being a dick to others were entertaining, and i guess that's why i was like that back in high school.. i wanted to be accepted in their group."

"but we're in college now, i left that group but somehow sungjae's here and is pathetically still stuck in the past." he pulled your face from his neck, cupping your cheek and wiping away your tears.

"i've loved you since high school.. and there's no bet, baby. the moment he had found out i was dating you, he kept bringing up a bet about how long we would last.. but i always shut him out, told him to cut it out and that there will be no bet happening, especially if you're the one getting betted on."

new fresh tears come rolling down your cheek, this time they were tears of relief. glad to know that everything was real, that you weren't just a toy.

"you promise you'll cut him off starting now?" you whispered, looking at him with big glassy eyes.

"i've cut him since high school, y/n. it's him who's keep clinging to me. but i promise he won't be saying anything about the both of us anymore." jay pressed your foreheads together, pressing a soft peck on your lips.

"you will forever be the prettiest and the only one i'll ever love this much in this world, my baby."

★ SIM JAEYUN ( 0.5k wc )

jake watched you run away in confusion, staring at the laughing crowd and turning to look at your locker only to be met with the note he has been telling everyone to throw away.

he angrily took it from your locker, ripping the small paper into pieces. "how many times have i told you to cut this shit out? do you want me to report all of you for harassment and bullying?" he raised his voice at the crowd who had stopped their laughter.

"that's what i thought." he frowned, pushing past them and running after you.

jake knew what everyone was doing the moment it spread that he was dating you. he had received dms telling him he could do better and if he was merely toying with your feelings.

he had told them countless times to drop it, even going far as to almost punch the person who has created the bets if it wasn't for sunoo holding him back. he had hoped that it wouldn't reach you. it was another one of his reasons on why he always went to school earlier, just in case it was placed on your locker. unfortunately, you were earlier than him today.

it's not like he was tolerating it, he had tried countless times to report it but they'd only say it was probably only for fun and he shouldn't take jokes seriously.

but jokes were meant to be funny, right?

jake opened the door that lead to the rooftop slowly, peeking his head to look if you were there. to his luck, you were.

your back faced him while your bag was placed down carelessly beside your feet. jake approached slowly, not wanting to overwhelm you further.

"baby?" he mumbled loud enough for you to hear. you turned your head towards him, showing him your tear stained cheeks. "oh, y/n." he sighed and held your cheeks, wiping away the salty liquid off your precious face.

"jake.. why are you dating me, of all people?" you ask through tears, avoiding his eyes.

jake's eyes softened, he dated you because you were different from everyone who wanted to be like the everyone else, did that make sense? you were your own person, you didn't care about social status, wealth, his circle of friends, and whether someone was good looking or not. you were soft hearted, to the point that you had let others take advantage of that leading them to walking all over you.

and he hated that.

"why not you?" he said softly, tilting your chin up so that you could meet his eyes. "you're everything i've ever needed."

"you can tell the truth." you mutter, looking at jake. his mouth formed a pout, heart broken at the way you had so little love for yourself.

"i am telling the truth, baby." he whispers, taking your hands and placing them on his face before putting his own hands back on yours. "everything is a joke to them when i'm involved." you whisper, ignoring the way your voice broke.

"we don't care about what they think, they're all just jealous. everything we've been through and what i feel for you are real, no jokes." he smiled, pulling you closer to him.

"you promise?"

"baby i'd choose you over anyone in this world over and over again until the heavens above is tired of me."

★ PARK SUNGHOON (0.7k wc)

sunghoon frowned, confused and hurt. he wanted to fix whatever happened, so he took his phone from the couch and his car keys from the wooden bowl in his foyer.

it was when he was in the elevator that he noticed his phone was open. his breath hitched, finally knowing the reason for your departure and choice of words. sunghoon quickly left the group chat and started dialing your number.

it was true that you were a bet. were. he didn't even know why he agreed, maybe because he wanted so badly to fit in. he didn't want a repeat of middle school, so instead of being the bullied and made fun of, he was now the one doing those to others. he wasn't proud of it at the slightest.

that doesn't excuse his actions though. the longer he spent time with you, the deeper he fell. sunghoon never planned for you to find out this way, he already had a plan. first he had to get rid of his 'friends', tell you everything then ask you if you still wanted him to meet your parents.

guilt always ate him alive whenever you would stay over and sleep by his side. he couldn't bring himself to meet your family knowing he hasn't told you everything and the truth.

he felt like his heart would jump out of his chest as he stood infront of the door of your house. if he died tonight on the hands of either your father or older brother, he'd welcome death with open arms.

i deserve it.

he audibly gulped when the door opened, revealing.. you. the way your brows furrowed at the sight of him tightened his chest. he stopped you before you could even close the door on him.

"y/n please, let me explain everything.. o-okay?" the way his voice cracked and the unshed tears in his eyes almost made you give in, but upon remembering what you've read, the anger in you was back.

"explain what?" you spat, turning to look over your shoulder before back at him. "that all those months i've spent loving you," you pointed at him harshly. "was just for entertainment? tell me, what was in it for you, huh?"

sunghoon shook his head, the tears now flowing down his pale cheeks. "no, no! i promise, please i love you." he reached out but you stepped back, biting your lip as you held back the tears.

"just.. leave me alone sunghoon," he felt his heart crack even more. "you've had your fun, you can laugh about i all you want now." you were taken aback when he knelt infront of you, hugging your waist as he sobbed.

"what the-" sunghoon tightened his grip on you, muttering along the words of 'im sorry', 'never meant to be like this', and something along the lines of regretting something.

"sunghoon- oh my god." you groaned as you descended to face him. "please, i didn't mean to. i-" he hiccuped, "i'm sorry, i know it was stupid and there's no reason for me to accept the bet- but i just wanted to fit in. i wanted them to take me as a part of their circle- but, but i soon realized that it was stupid." he looked at you with swollen eyes, desperation swam in his dark irises.

"because i realized that hurting you isn't worth being a part of their asshole group. it started with a bet, i admit, but i truly love you, please believe me." a sob made its way out his throat as he clung into you, his arms circling your neck. "it wasn't a lie whenever i said i'd meet your parents, i was constantly trying to get rid of them first before i met your family, i didn't want to meet them until i've told you the complete truth."

your own tears descended down your cheeks, your heart hurting for yourself and sunghoon. you stayed on the floor wrapped around each other for a moment before you both helped each other up to your feet, he looked at you intensely with red bloodshot eyes. "i'm sorry, i understand if you don't want anything to do with me anymore."

"i understand hoon," you whispered, bringing your hands to cup his face. "but you have to understand too that i can't trust you fully right up again." he nodded, putting his own hands on yours as he kissed your palms.

"i know.. and i'll spent the rest of my life earning it again. i love you."

— ౨ৎ thank u for tuning in ! @j-jinxee @slp23 @unsurereader @heelovesmeknot @sunshine-skz @hoondrop @jooniesbears-blog @jordan1024 @heeswif3y @outroherrr @harufluff @cheeseball0 @yjwluver @woofie-nctzen-fanarts @itjengirl @emiliasstuffs-blog @isa942572 @lufcxx @alienqbrain @woniebae @baekxo07 @titttuaf @chuuswifereal @kyanmeai @isabellah29 @deezbin @skzenhalove @eneiyri @a4ruby @saxytalks @denleave1088 @imdelulu @powerpuffstuts @hoonatic @dollydigital @chososloverfr @dummyf @chanyeolchannie @oddracha @wonwushu @strawberrynull @ceciloveshee @loumin908 @cexg68 @grassbutneo @gardenwons @pag-yerin @bora04 @iluvnikism @jellymiki

— i couldn't tag those who's usernames aren't in bold :(

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soaps-mohawk · 4 months ago

Text

Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 36: To The Sea

Summary: It's time to move on. You're not sure where you're going exactly, but anywhere is better than Texas

Pairing: Poly 141 x reader

Word Count: 7,811 words

Warnings: ANGST, injuries, medical stuff, descriptions of pain and injuries, brief discussion about strangulation, mentions of PTSD and nightmares, so much crying, Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, angst, a very little sprinkle of comfort, language, mentions of medications, still very heavy emotionally

A/N: Not actually a lot of warnings for this one. It's a lot of dialogue and inner monologues. Not a lot happens, just mostly setting the scene for the next chunk of the story. Bring tissues though, the last part of the chapter emotionally wrecked me but also might be the best thing I've ever written.

11/30/24: **This Chapter has been edited and rewritten from its original version**

MASTERLIST | <- Previous | Next ->

It’s warm outside.

Not even the shade from the building can completely shield you from the dome of heat that seems to surround the base. It seeps into the concrete and asphalt that lock it into place, trapping everyone in a bubble that may as well be an oven. It’s always hot in Texas, though. You hate it. You’ve been spoiled by the cold, rainy seasons in England. You’d gladly take that over Texas.

You’d take anything over Texas.

The heat prickles at your skin, your arm starting to get sweaty in the sling. It had been Dr. Keller’s idea to keep your shoulder as still as possible so you don’t continue to cause yourself pain when you move. It still hurts, but at least you won’t instinctively try to use your left arm now.

Despite the warmth, there’s still a chill deep in your bones. The warmth of the pain medicine has worn off and you’ve been left with the perpetual ice that has seemed to coat your insides. Dr. Keller says it's the stress giving you a fever. Every nightmare, every flashback sends your body temperature spiking, your heart beating right out of your chest. You’re not out of the woods yet. It can take a long time to recover from that level of distress and the omega taking over. You almost regret it, but there was no guarantee you would have lived either way at that time. You did what you had to do, and it did work out in the end.

But at what cost?

Dr. Keller’s phone buzzes in her pocket and she pulls it out, staring down at the screen for a moment. “Kyle wants to come by.”

You don’t want to see him. You don’t want to see any of them.

“I think you should see him. Even if it’s just for a moment.” She squeezes your hand. “I’ll be right here.”

It’s a predicament. Dr. Keller supports your decision to keep them away, putting some distance between all of you for the time being. Yet, she also says being close to your pack will help your healing. Having your pack around will help your omega settle once again. She needs that safety, that security before she finally lets go completely.

You don’t want to be close to them, but you may not have any other choice.

You sit there in silence, picking at the fabric of your sweatpants as you wait for Kyle’s arrival. Sweat has started to bead on your back, the day only getting warmer and warmer as the sun moves higher in the sky. You want to go back inside, back into the cool air conditioned building. You want to crawl back onto the hospital bed and lay there for the next few hours.

You can’t.

Footsteps approach, but you don’t look up. You know who it is. You don’t want to see him.

“Kyle.” Dr. Keller greets.

“Christine.” He says back. It still throws you off, hearing Dr. Keller's first name. She'll always be Dr. Keller to you. Kyle turns his attention to you, still standing a few steps from the bench you're perched on. “Hi, love.” He says. The affectionate nickname almost makes you wince. You don't look up at him. You don’t want to see his face. “I wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing.”

You don't move, don't give an answer. You don't have an answer to give anyway. You shouldn't have to give an answer.

He lowers himself onto the bench, sitting as far away from you as he can. “It’s hot today.” He says, adjusting his hat. Always wearing a hat. Maybe that's why he and Price work so well together.

He stares at you for a long moment but you don't bother moving, your gaze still on your sweatpants. They're starting to get a bit warm, even with your perpetual chill.

“I’m not here to apologize.” He says, breaking the silence. “You’ve probably heard enough apologies to last you a lifetime.” He shakes his head. “Words can’t fix what we did. Nothing can fix what we did. All we can do is give you what you need, try and make you as comfortable as possible.”

Tears burn your eyes as you listen to him. He's not wrong, an apology won't fix what happened. No words will ever be able to fix what they put you through. You're not sure there's anything they could do that would make up for it. An apology still would have been nice, despite the fact you know how guilty he is. Their avoidance of you, their willingness to give you such space in an unknown place just proves how guilty they all are.

That doesn't make things hurt any less.

You slowly turn away from Kyle, angling yourself towards Dr. Keller.

He doesn't say anything further in that regard, taking your movement as an answer to his non-apology. He leans forward instead, resting his elbows on his knees. “I just wanted to let you know that we’re getting ready to leave soon. We’ll be heading somewhere safe, somewhere quiet and secluded. I think you’ll like it.”

Dr. Keller had informed you of that earlier after she went to speak to them. They've decided what to do, what's best for the pack again. You might have protested, except for the fact it meant you were getting to leave Texas. Where exactly they're taking you, you're not sure. You just know it's not Texas.

“I want you to know that we’re here if you need us.” He stares at you for a moment longer before pushing himself up to stand.

If, not when.

Maybe they're finally getting the message.

Dr. Keller stands, touching your right shoulder gently before she steps away with Kyle, speaking quietly with him, but you can still hear every word in the nearly silent space around you.

“In an attempt to remain a neutral, professional party in this situation, I feel it would be appropriate for me to tell you not to beat yourself up too much about this.” Dr. Keller says. “The unprofessional side of me has many words I’d like to say to all of you.” She clears her throat. “That being said, on a positive note I can say you’re all doing the right thing for once, prioritizing your omega and fulfilling her needs, even if her needs require you to leave her alone for now. I know it’s hard, I know every instinct is screaming at you to help her, but just take comfort in knowing you are helping her. You’re doing the best thing you can do for her at this time.” Dr. Keller puts a hand on his arm, squeezing it gently. “Even if it is tearing you up inside.”

“Thanks, Doc.” He says.

“I’ll see you soon.” She says, patting his arm before she heads back towards your bench.

You turn your head just slightly, not missing the way Gaz lingers for a brief moment before he turns his back on you, walking back down the sidewalk.

It hurts.

You want to cry with every swallow. No matter how much you chew, it doesn’t ease the pain of trying to swallow solid food. Even the worst sore throat you’ve ever had pales in comparison to this pain. Tears burn in your eyes as you eat, unable to refuse this time in favor of choking down some liquid nutrients. Even liquids make your throat ache, but they are easy to chug to get it over with at once.

This feels like torture.

Dr. Keller looks guilty as she spoon-feeds you the soup. Chicken noodle, something simple and easy but still something with some substance. It makes you think back to when you were sick as a child, your mother dutifully feeding you homemade chicken noodle soup until you reached the age you could feed yourself.

You do feel like a child again, unable to even hold the spoon. Well, you could hold it, but it would have come at the expense of some burns from how badly your hand was shaking.

So instead you sit here, being spoon-fed soup you can barely stand eating.

“I know.” She says as a tear finally falls, your inhale shaky from the ache in your throat. “You need something in your system for the sedative. It’s a long flight and you’ll be sick when you wake up if you don’t have anything in your stomach. That’s going to hurt a lot worse than eating now.”

Yeah. You’ve already figured that out.

“Strangulation is a tough thing to survive.” She says, dragging the bottom of the spoon against the edge of the bowl to wipe off any soup that might drip on you. “Then again, so is getting shot, and distressing to the point of your omega taking over.” She holds the spoon up to your lips, and you’re tempted to refuse. “You’ve survived a lot, more than most could. And to look this good after...”

You blink up at her, teary eyed and sickly looking, exhausted and bruised. Your left eye is still almost swollen shut, and your hair is tangled perhaps beyond saving, tied up in a bun at the top of your head. All just reminders of what you survived, all reminders of what happened to you. Of what was allowed to happen to you.

You’re not quite sure when the last time you had a real shower was either.

“I know.” She says, spooning more soup into your mouth. “You might not feel like it, right now.”

“I want a shower.” You say, your voice still hoarse and cracking through your throat. A real shower might solve a lot of problems for you right now. It won’t fix much, but being truly clean would make a lot of things feel better.

“I wholeheartedly agree.” Dr. Keller says.

You give her a look. You don't smell that bad. She should know, she’s the one that cleaned the blood off of you and the one who gave you the sponge bath this morning.

She gives you a look back. “I meant it would be nice to take a real shower. Once we get where we’re going, we can work on the logistics of a shower.”

Right. You can’t exactly stand for a long time on your own, not to mention the problem of only being able to use one arm without bringing blinding pain upon yourself. That’s where the pack would come in handy.

The thought of one of them seeing you vulnerable like that, putting their hands on you right now makes your skin crawl.

A shiver runs down your spine, your body shuddering uncontrollably. You grunt as your shoulder screams in pain, another electric jolt burning straight through your nerves and down through your feet. Fuck. You mouth the word, squeezing your eyes shut. It makes your stomach churn, the soup starting to burn a path back up through your esophagus.

“Breathe for me.” Dr. Keller says, putting a gentle hand on your right shoulder.

In and out. You focus on your breath, the only thing you can do without feeling like you’re going to go insane from the pain. It’s all you can do in this situation. It’s the only thing you can do at all. Breathe. Just keep breathing.

Sometimes you don’t want to.

The pain passes as it always does, leaving behind a subtle ache that will linger until the next flare of pain. It’s a constant, never-ending cycle that you can’t escape from. Weeks, Dr. Keller had said. It can take weeks to heal. You’ll be stuck in this cycle for weeks and weeks. What if it never heals? That is a possibility. It’s always a risk with any injury.

What if the rest of your life is like this?

You’re crying again, hot tears blazing a path down your cheeks. They won’t stop, they never stop. There’s a constant stream down your face, even in your sleep. You’ve woken to find your face and neck damp from the never ceasing flood of tears.

How you can’t wait for the time to come when you have none left.

You’d welcome the numbness at this point, greet it like an old friend and invite it in for tea. Anything over the pain and tears that won’t stop. The depression-fueled numbness that had filled you when Price and Gaz left, then Soap and Ghost would be a welcome relief at this point. Anything would be better than the pain.

You almost wish you were in a coma right now. Then you wouldn’t feel anything at all.

Dr. Keller puts the spoon back into the soup bowl before rolling the table to the side. She puts a hand on your head, gently stroking your hair as you cry. The room is silent aside from your sniffles, Dr. Keller not having to say a single word. The silence is almost a blessing. You’re tired of hearing words, of hearing people speak. There’s nothing anyone can say that will do anything to help you, to comfort you, to make it better.

There’s nothing anyone can do to make it better.

You’re so tired of being like this.

The sedative is kicking in before you even reach the airfield. She can see the way your head is drooping further and further forward in the car, your body jostling without any complaint. It had started kicking in before you even got into the car, as you offered very little resistance when Kyle helped her mauver you into the front seat. She chose Kyle out of everyone to help her in hopes it would be easiest on you. Your claimed alpha’s beta is a good place to start in rebuilding the bonds within the pack, and his calm demeanor certainly helps. He is a caretaker through and through, that beta trait prominent above the others in him. He would have made a good medic, had he gone that route.

Your chin drops to your chest as the car comes to a stop in front of the plane, your body slumping to the side against the door.

“She’s out.” Christine says, unbuckling her seatbelt.

“Makes this easier.” Kyle says, getting out of the car.

They maneuver you into the wheelchair, Christine easing your head onto your right shoulder to avoid aggravating the left. The less pain you’re in when you come out of it, the better, though pain will be unavoidable. Kyle pushes the wheelchair up the ramp of the plane, Christine following close behind. She’s glad she gave you the sedative before you left the med center to avoid as much pain as possible. She almost wishes she had given it to you earlier, as getting you into a sweatshirt had been a battle of its own. Though, the longer it stays in your system, the longer you’ll sleep through the flight. The longer you sleep through the flight, the longer they can delay the inevitable emotional storm of being enclosed in a tight space with your pack.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be out of it long enough for them to reach the cottage without incident.

John is waiting near the front of the aircraft, his eyes watching carefully as Kyle helps maneuver you into a seat. Even with the turmoil in the pack bonds, an alpha will always feel protective over their omega. There’s some things that can’t be undone, even in such a fragile state. Some instincts can’t be unlearned, no matter what.

“I gave her a sedative.” Christine explains as she gets you as comfortable as possible in the seat. “It won’t last the whole flight, but it’ll take a while to wear off regardless.”

“Is that more for her or for us?” John asks.

“Both.” Christine says. “Mostly for her. It helps with the pain of moving around, but it will also keep her calm in close quarters like this.”

“Here.” John says, handing her something. It’s a blanket, brand new by the feel of it. “Johnny made a store run this morning. It’s going to get cold in here, so he got the warmest one he could find.”

Christine takes the blanket, the fabric thick and soft in her hands. It’s a touching gesture, speaking volumes of their desire to still care for you despite everything, their willingness to do what they have to, to keep the pack together. “Perfect.” She says, carefully draping it over you and tucking it around you before John gets you secured in the seat.

“It’s going to be a long flight.” John says, taking a step back.

“It is.” Christine says, pulling out her thermometer. She takes your temperature, letting out a hum at the number that pops up on screen. “I need to monitor her temperature.” She explains as John gives her a look. “It’s been spiking when she gets stressed.”

“She's not quite out of it yet, is she?” John asks.

“Not quite.” She says, putting the thermometer back in her bag. “I’ve only seen two omegas successfully come back from that point, and I know the number across the board isn’t very high. It takes a long time for the body and the brain to get back to normal.”

“And on top of everything that happened...”

She stares up at him for a long moment. “She’s very strong. I knew she was a fighter, but to come out the other side even where she is now...” Christine shakes her head. “I didn’t want to say this at the time, but I was expecting the worst. When that call came in about what state she was in...” She bites her lip, holding the emotions back. “Her resilience and fortitude is what kept her alive. That and Simon’s courage to do what needed to be done.”

“I know.” John says, looking past her. “We all owe a lot to him.”

Christine puts a gentle hand on his arm. “You’re doing what’s best for her. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much it goes against every instinct you have, it’s what she needs.”

“That’s all that matters to us right now.” John says, staring down at her hand for a moment. “There’s nothing else we can do, so it’s time we start putting our priorities where they should have been the whole time.”

Christine gives him a small smile. “I’m proud of you for that. It takes a lot to unlearn the things you’ve been told since the beginning.”

The corner of John’s lips twitch before his face falls into the emotionless mask he’s been wearing for the last few days. “It’s about time we get our heads out of our arses.”

“I can’t blame you totally.” She shrugs. “We were all just doing what the initiative was telling us to do. We couldn’t have known. There wasn’t any room to question it.”

“I wish we would have figured it out sooner.” He sighs.

“Things might have been worse if the truth did come out sooner. If you started digging into the initiative too soon, Shepherd might have gotten antsy and taken more drastic measures to stop the truth from coming out entirely.” She glances down at you. “I think this was all inevitable.” She turns her gaze back to John. “What happened, happened. None of us can change that. All we can do is keep moving forward with what we have right now.”

He stares at her for a long moment. “The more time passes, the more I’ve come to realize why Kate chose you for this position.”

The corner of her lips turns up in a smile. “Well, I am rather good at my job, which, among other things, involves advocating on behalf of omegas.”

John huffs. “Wish we would have listened sooner.”

“You can’t change the past.” She repeats, looking down at you again. “But you can change the future.”

You woke from your sedation about four hours from Helston.

Well, ’woke’ might have been too strong of a word for it. Your eyes opened, but you were still hazy, movements sluggish and entirely unaware of the world around you. You floated between sleep and awareness for an hour before finally gaining consciousness completely. Awareness took quite a while to return, though. Not until they were moving you to the car from the plane.

Even still you’re groggy, slumped against the door in the back seat of the car. You blink slowly, eyes unfocused as you stare out the window at the blur of green passing by.

“How is she?” John asks from the driver's seat, glancing up at the rearview mirror.

“Cow.” You say, blinking slowly as the car passes a field of cows.

“Still out of it.” Christine answers from the back seat where she's sitting next to you. Your response might have been enough to answer that. “Better than being in pain, though.”

“How long will it take for her to get out of it?” Kyle asks.

“Hopefully she’ll be more lucid by the time we get there, but it could take a few hours for it to completely wear off.” Christine says, wiping a bit of drool from your chin. “Probably not a bad thing. This is a big change, and with everything that’s happened, it’s going to take some time to settle in.”

“Things are going to be rough.” Kyle says.

“Yes.” She agrees. “Being enclosed in a small space with the people you want to see the least in the world isn’t an ideal situation. It’ll be an adjustment for everyone. I trust all of your abilities to adapt, though. Just don't go in expecting things to be the way they were.”

John's hands tighten around the steering wheel, his knuckles going white. Kyle cracks his window open, prepared for the thickening of John's scent in the air. Christine knows she hit a nerve, but it needed to be said. Even if you were open to forgiveness right now, even if they had chosen to go after you right away, things still wouldn't be the same. Things won't ever be the same. It is their fault deep at the root of it. Those cameras were put up because of them, you were taken because of them. You were chosen for the “initiative” because of them, because Kate thought you'd fit in well with them. Their decisions shaped your life, and will continue to shape your life.

Can you ever come to forgive them? Christine likes to think so. She has the hope that they can put in the work and regain your trust and earn eventual forgiveness. She knows you'll allow them to try once the initial hurt and emotions begin to fade, once the two of you put in enough work to start processing the trauma around the events that happened. It will take time. Probably a long time.

She'll be there every step of the way.

“Ashley did some shopping for us, picked up some stuff to get us until we can get into town.” Kyle says, looking at his phone.

“Good.” John says, his shoulders starting to relax. “Should wait a couple days before going. Get settled in.”

“She's still working on cleaning up. Probably still be there when we get there.” Kyle says, putting his phone back in his pocket.

“That's fine. We’ll probably have to utilize her a bit.”

“Doubt she'll complain.” Kyle says, looking out the window. “Be thrilled to have something to do besides work.”

You let out a quiet groan, shifting against the door. “Hurts.”

“I know, honey.” Christine says, carefully adjusting your left arm. “I’ll give you more pain meds once we get to the cottage.”

“We’ll be there in half an hour.” John says, glancing up at the rearview mirror again before turning his eyes back to the road.

The half hour seems to take the longest as you continue to become more and more lucid and aware. The pain sets in first, your brain picking up on those signals before anything else. John’s knuckles are white around the steering wheel as you begin to whine and whimper around every bend in the road and turn he has to make, every jostle of the car. Every instinct in his body tells him to pull over and comfort you, but he can’t. It’s more important to get to the cottage, and there’s no guarantee you’d even let him. It might make things worse.

The last thing you need right now is for things to get worse.

Christine breathes a sigh of relief as they pull up to the cottage, glad she can finally get you somewhere more comfortable. You’ve been in far too many uncomfortable positions today, moved around too much. She would have liked to keep you in Texas a couple more days, but she knew as soon as you were able to travel, the better. The sooner they could get off the grid, the better.

The sooner they could get out of Texas, the better.

Kyle is getting the wheelchair out of the trunk when Johnny and Simon pull up, not having been far behind. They likely took a turn around the back roads to ensure no one was following and to keep things from looking too suspicious.

Christine keeps you from slumping out of the car as she carefully opens the door on your side. You’re more awake than you were, blinking up at her with almost startlingly aware eyes.

“Crutch.” You pout when she pulls the wheelchair closer.

She gives you a look. “Honey I'm not sure you could even stand right now.” You may be more aware, but that doesn’t mean your body is working as it should.

You let out a defiant noise as you attempt to get your legs out of the car, trying to hide your grunts of pain and discomfort.

She's tempted to stand there and let you try, but she knows all hell will break loose if she lets you fall. She's not willing to take that risk, not to mention it will cause you more pain to get you up off the ground.

“Come on,” She says, stopping you before you can get your feet under you. “Nice and slow.”

You let out a quiet growl of indignation but you allow her to help you, your legs trembling as she eases you up. Kyle is there with the wheelchair, getting it as close to you as possible so she can sit you down quickly.

“Ow.” You breathe, eyes pinched closed as you breathe through the pain.

“I know.” She says, patting your good shoulder lightly. She's glad she put you in the sweatshirt before you left Texas. It's chilly outside, chillier than it was further inland a few days ago.

It's hard to believe it's only been a few days since you were taken. Barely even a week. So much happened in such a short period of time. It feels like it’s been weeks since everything started, but then again, it had been weeks since John and Kyle first left. It had been weeks since you had been around your whole pack together by the time you were taken. The deep depression you sunk into before the events of the last week had been draining you slowly for weeks before this. It had started before John and Kyle were deployed, back to that day when you revealed the cameras and the secret you had been hiding from them.

How long you’ve gone in such turmoil.

How far you still have to go.

The path up to the door is rocky and uneven, the wheelchair jostling as she pushes it up towards the door. She can picture your face, the way it has to be screwed up in pain. You're silent though, holding it all in. She almost wishes you weren't being silent about it.

The door is already open, light shining from inside as she approaches. Kyle is in the house already, having gone ahead to greet his sister. John is right behind the two of you as Christine turns to wheel you up the steps into the house. His eyes are on you, focused and ready should you fall.

Christine would never let you fall, and from the way your hand is gripping the arm of the chair for dear life, you probably couldn't anyway.

She wheels you through the entryway, the inside warmer thanks to a fire that's burning. It's a nice cottage, far nicer than she had been expecting judging from the outside.

Johnny lets out a low whistle as he enters behind John, looking around. “Yer parents own this?”

“It was given to our mum by our grandparents. They did some...renovations before they passed it on.” Kyle says.

“Yer tellin’ me.” Johnny says.

It looks new inside. New wood floors, freshly painted walls. The furniture looks like she would expect to find in an English seaside cottage, though. Kyle’s parents went to France for summer vacation instead of utilizing the cottage, and none of his siblings had wanted to use it, he told them. It looks almost perfect, like it came right out of a home renovation show. Kyle’s sister must have worked some sort of magic to get it this clean.

It is a very nice cottage. It’s small, the door opening right to the main area. There’s two couches and a chair in the middle of the room around a coffee table. To the left of the couches is a fireplace, the fire already lit and crackling. It looks original, likely having been untouched in the renovations. There’s a door to the left of the fireplace closer to the main entryway. A bedroom maybe? To the right of the front door are two doors, one on the far wall and one facing the front door.

The stairs are in the middle of the house, leading up to the second floor where there’s likely more bedrooms. On the far side of the main area is the dining area and beyond that is a sliding glass door. Around the corner on the far side of the stairs is likely the kitchen. She can see the fridge from where she’s standing. It’s new. Very new. Makes her wonder just how long ago it had been renovated.

“Everyone, this is my sister Ashley.” Kyle says, introducing the other woman in the room.

“Hello,” she says, giving everyone a wave and a dazzling smile.

She’s dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt, her medium box braids pulled up into a bun on top of her head. They look a lot alike, her and Kyle. Tall and slender and stunning. They have the same smile and the same soft brown eyes. She's wearing scent blockers, but Christine can imagine her having a soft scent like lavender or something fresh like mint.

“There's two rooms down here, and two upstairs.” Kyle says. “The main bedroom is through there.” He points towards a door to their left. “I figure we'll give that to our omega. The bathroom in there has a walk-in shower.”

“Perfect.” Christine says. That will make getting you in and out of the shower easier at least, and you won’t have to go far to use the bathroom.

“You should take the other room down here.” John says, looking at Christine. “So you can be close in case of an emergency.”

And so you don't have to be too close to them, so you won’t feel like they’re hovering.

He doesn't have to say that part out loud.

“I put new sheets on all the beds.” Ashley says. “I also picked up everything Kyle sent on the list. Food, some clothes, some other necessities.”

You let out a quiet groan, Christine patting your head gently. You have to be exhausted and sore after the day. She should give you another dose of pain medicine like she said she would. You’re going to need it tonight.

“Let's get you laying down for a bit.” She says, wheeling you towards the door.

Kyle opens it for her, revealing a spacious room with a big window looking out towards the sea. You're going to spend a lot of time in front of that window, she thinks. The bed is in the middle of the room, and there’s two chairs facing the window. She’s almost tempted to sit you in one of the chairs, but laying down will be more comfortable for you right now.

You're still too out of it now to care much as she wheels you to the double bed. With Kyle's help they get you horizontal, Christine draping the blanket at the end of the bed over you. It’s not very soft, but it will do for now. She’ll have to get the guys to pick up some soft blankets for you when they go to town. She has a whole list of things starting in her head she needs them to pick up.

She leans your crutch against the end of the bed just in case you might need it for an emergency. She hopes you’ll yell first, but you always have been stubborn. Being mostly bed-bound has only made that worse.

“I’m going to go look through the things Ashley picked up.” She says, patting your leg gently. “Get some rest.”

Christine leaves the door open a crack as she exits, wanting to give you a little privacy as you nap, or at least she hopes you’ll nap. It’s going to be a rough adjustment, and you’re going to need as much rest as you can get.

“I’m assuming you’re Christine.” Ashley says, walking up to her.

“I am.” She says, giving Ashley a smile.

She can’t help but get lost in Ashley’s soft gaze for a moment. The Garrick siblings seem to share the same magnetic energy. There’s something almost ethereal about them. She could easily imagine them with glowing halos and angel wings. It’s almost like she’s being blessed with the opportunity to look upon her. She could spend an hour staring at Ashley’s face and not grow tired of looking at her.

“I picked up the items Kyle said you needed.” She says, motioning to the bags on the coffee table, pulling Christine out of her daze. “I couldn’t find the exact nutrient powder you asked for, so I got one that was as close as I could find.”

Christine glances through the bags. She was thorough, getting at least two of everything.

“I got warmer clothes for her too, since it can get chilly out here this time of year. Just some simple things for now until you guys get into town.” Ashley says. “I did some research too and I read that omegas like comforting things so I picked up some extra blankets and pillows” Ashley says, motioning to a couple bags sitting on the couch. “I also picked up this,” She pulls a stuffed dog from one of the bags, holding it up. “It was the softest one I could find. I thought it might help.”

A small smile forms on Christine’s face, her heart fluttering in her chest from the sweet, thoughtful gesture. Ashley doesn’t even know you, nor did she know exactly what happened to you, and yet she went so far as to pick up some comfort items for you. You have nothing right now, only the borrowed clothes on your back. All of your belongings are still on base, all of the things that you had built to make your perfect nest. Would you want any of them still? Or have they been tainted by the events of the last few weeks?

That Ashley thought to do this has warmth flooding Christine’s body. You can have some comfort now without having to wait for their trip to town. She almost feels the urge to cry. She wants to hug Ashley, thank her over and over for her kindness. Ashley has no idea how much her small act of kindness means, how much it's going to mean.

A smile forms on Christine’s face as she stares at the stuffed dog. “It’s perfect.”

You can hear it.

In the distance, the quiet roar reaches your ears as you’re dragged from the sweet arms of sleep. It must be a dream, or perhaps the sedative is still clinging to your mind, making you imagine things.

No.

You’d know that sound anywhere.

The effort to push yourself up to sit is a momentous one, every cell in your body protesting after a day of being moved and jostled. The last thing you want is to move right now, but you have to.

The pain meds have done little to help.

The crutch at the end of your bed must be a thousand miles away as you sit there and stare at it. The ache in your body only increases as you become more and more aware of the pain, almost as if it can tell what it is your mind is planning.

The door is cracked open, letting in a slit of light from outside. It’s dark in the room, the curtains pulled over the window. It’s a blessing compared to the bright yellow light outside the door. You welcome the darkness as your head begins to throb. You could call for assistance. You’d get more help than you needed. More help than you want.

No.

You need to do this.

The effort it takes to get standing nearly sends you back onto the bed. The pain nearly blinds you as your feet touch the floor, your body leaning against the side of the mattress out of desperation. If you fall, you’ll never be alone again. You can’t afford that. You don’t want that.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

The breaths out of your nose are short and sharp as you reach for the crutch, fingers trembling in the effort to fight the pain threatening to blind you. You’re trembling like a leaf in a storm as your fingers finally wrap around the cool metal. The rubber bottom drags across the floor as you tug it over to you, holding it against your chest for a moment.

Breathe. That’s what you need to do. Breathe.

In and out.

Nice and slow.

The pain is only a memory. The pain is nothing. The memories forming at the edges of your mind will take over and wipe out the pain and the misery. You just have to be sure. You just have to be certain.

You push yourself upright using the crutch, tucking it under your arm. You should go back to bed. You should rest.

No.

You need to know.

You need to be certain.

The first step you take nearly makes you sick.

It’s like watching a baby deer walk for the first time, knees wobbling, feet shaking. You lean heavily on the crutch, your determination the only thing keeping you from tumbling to the floor in a heap. That might almost hurt worse than forcing yourself to stand upright.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

Inch by inch you move across the floor, silently grateful for the socks on your feet. They allow you to slide across the hardwood, but they also pose a threat. Slide too far and you’ll lose your feet.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

The determination and your desire for certainty is what keeps you sliding inch by inch across the floor towards that strip of blinding light in front of you. It’s hovering before you, threatening you. How do you know there’s not one of them standing guard, waiting for you to try and leave? You can’t know. You don’t have a clue what’s waiting on the other side of that door. It could be nothing. It could be your entire pack.

Breathe.

In and out.

You take a moment at the door, resting your aching feet. Your body is throbbing from the effort to keep yourself upright, the sedative still numbing your brain and your movements. It’s like treading through honey, everything twice as hard as it should be. You can walk. You’ve done it before. You did it in the medical center.

You can do it here.

You use the crutch to push the door open more, your free arm still tucked in a sling to keep you from moving it. Reaching for it with that arm would have put you on the floor, would have caused more pain than you needed, would have made you fall.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

Breathe.

The light burns. Explosions of yellows and whites erupt behind your eyelids as you screw them tight against the sudden onslaught. The sun is in the room, shining its rays directly into your sensitive eyes. Your stomach churns, your fingers tightening around the crutch so tight your knuckles begin to ache. The oppressive light makes you want to recede back into the darkness of the room behind you like a vampire shying away from the light of day.

No.

You won’t be defeated by the harsh artificial lighting. You need to know.

You need to be certain.

The others are moving around. You can hear voices around the corner, voices upstairs with thudding footsteps. The air is thick with a mesh of scents, cleaning chemicals, and the burn of scent blocker. Your nose wrinkles at the sudden onslaught against your senses, your sedated brain making it all seem so much worse.

You need to know.

The hardwood floors continue and you use them to your advantage as you shuffle your way across the main area. The fire crackles as you pass, the popping of a log making you startle. Your feet slide again, your body pushing up against the crutch to hold yourself steady.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

Your target is dead ahead, a mile away but so close you can almost taste it. Just past the dining table and straight on till morning.

Despite your snail’s pace, no one seems to notice you shuffling your way across the house. It should make you upset, the fact that none of them notice you moving around, but instead it makes you glad. They’d try to stop you if they noticed you, turn you around and shuffle you back to bed. Or worse, they’d carry you.

How easily you could slip away, though.

Well...in theory.

Perhaps that’s why they ‘re not paying you any mind. How far could you really go in your current state?

Why would you want to stray from the only safe space you have?

The world outside is more dangerous with the state you’re in. Not just because of your injuries and your status, but also because you know Shepherd is still out there, and for all you know Graves is as well.

He could be waiting right outside the door.

No.

They’d know.

They’d protect you.

They failed.

You push past the fear in favor of certainty as you push forward, passing the dining table in your slow crawl towards the sliding glass door.

It poses an entirely new threat as you stand before it, staring out the darkened glass. You have to get it open. Getting it open takes strength and you’re down to one hand that’s trying to keep you upright.

You have to know.

You have to be certain.

You lean your weight on the crutch, ignoring the way it digs into your armpit as you reach for the handle. You click the lock, wrapping your fingers around the plastic before pulling. Your body screams with pain as you tug, the door sliding in the track as slowly as you had moved across the small living area. It’s almost as if it's mocking you.

It’s open only as wide as you need to crutch your way through, doing your best not to knock your left shoulder against the frame.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

Breathe.

You can smell it.

The salty sea air invades your senses, slipping up through your nose and straight into your brain. Memories come flooding back of childhood vacations back when things were simpler. Back when nothing mattered but the sand and the water and avoiding getting chased by your brothers carrying the piece of seaweed they found.

Polkadot bathing suits, bright red to be seen easily. Toes in the water, sand everywhere. The nap in the silent car home.

How simple life was back then. How easy life was.

Your heart aches for those days again. The days when you could exist without a care in the world, trusting your pack would keep you safe, trusting your family would care for you. Your mind yearns for that sense of safety and security again.

The world is grey as you hobble across the porch, the grey seeming to go on forever. You missed it, the chill in the air, the gloomy grey overhead. How you yearned for the gloom of England while stuck in the heat of Texas.

Anything is better than Texas.

Your forward shuffle pauses at the edge of the deck, your eyes looking out into the grey. Your breath catches in your throat as you stare out into the distance, the ache in your chest intensifying. It blocks out the pain in your body, numbing you to everything else as you stand there, legs trembling from the effort of going the short distance from your room to the end of the porch.

You can see it.

Emotions swirl inside of you like a hurricane as you stare out where the grey water meets the grey sky in the line of the horizon. Those emotions threaten to choke you as you stand there trembling at the edge of the porch. There’s a breeze, a cold one that bites through the fabric of your sweatshirt and into the skin below, but you don’t care.

You can’t care.

Your legs shake from the exertion, the neverending exhaustion that’s settled deep into your bones. It’s not just a physical exhaustion, but a mental one as well. It’s been a long week.

Only a week.

So much has happened in a week.

You want to sit. You want to sink down onto the porch and rest.

If you fall, you’ll never get up again.

There’s a pain in your chest as your breath catches in your throat. The emotions are whirling, tightening around your chest, squeezing your lungs until they feel like they might pop.

Breathe.

In and out.

You needed certainty. You needed to know.

You can hear it. You can smell it. You can see it.

A single tear rolls down your cheek as you stare out at the sea.

NEXT ->

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#call of duty #call of duty fic #poly 141 x reader #task force 141 x reader #john price x reader #captain price x reader #kyle garrick x reader #gaz x reader #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #soap x reader #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #a/b/o #omegaverse

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caramelkoo · 3 months ago

Text

be still my heart — jjk [one]

the one in which you get a sex dream about the grouchy hockey player you work for.

genre : childhood best friends to frenemies to lovers, physical therapist!reader x hockey player!jungkook, slow burn, smut, fluff, angst

word count : 5.2k

chapter warnings : strong language, mature, slight smut (because im a tease), reader’s name is Destiny, jungkook is a bit grumpy towards her (she makes him nervous leave my boy alone), fat shaming (not by any of the main characters), oc had daddy issues, mentions of allergy. that’s about it, please let me know if i missed something.

a/n : here it isssssss drumrolls please because im so excited for this. jungkook as a hockey player??? *deep breaths* enjoy my lovely people. you’re so so loved. asks, reblogs and likes are much appreciated. kisses <3

read part two here

˚୨୧⋆｡˚

“Babe, you know you're not going to win right? Don't be wasting your breath.” Bella challenges.

You’re sitting on the chair in your office going through the personnel file of the players. Verifying their names with their contact numbers and photographs which, you’re not going to lie, look like mugshots. Jeez, does smiling a little bit cost them? Anyways, once you’re done you close the file and look up at your assistant bickering with her boyfriend. Phone pressed against her ear.

You mime hanging up the call and she lifts her index finger, indicating for you to wait. She throws in words like hmmm, yeah, you don’t know what you’re saying, yeah i love you too. Once she’s done, she drops the phone on the glass table in front of you and leans back in her chair.

“He thinks I will let him get away with anything just because I love him”

You chuckle, “What’s going on?”

“You know, I’ve been wanting a cat for so long I even made a pinterest board for that. Last Sunday he surprised me with one and when I told him that I lowkey manifested it, he was not having it. I even showed him the mood board and I NEVER show it to anyone. Evil eye is real.” she all but cries out.

That’s Bella for you. Highly spiritual and a firm believer of the universe. She claims that everything happens for a reason. She’s like a little ball of sunshine. Ever since you joined the Ice Dominators’ hockey team as a physical therapist, she’s been assisting you and you couldn’t be more thankful seeing the lack of female workers here. Seriously, there's no other female worker here except yourself and Bella which is so diabolical to you.

And it’s not like the men on the hockey team are a bunch of misogynist jerks. On the contrary, they act like they’ve known you for years. It didn't take you long to feel like home here. They are obedient, friendly and pretty nice. Few of them are married with kids while the rest of them remain single. They’re not like a bunch of teenagers, they know what they’re doing.

Except one, what’s his name? Jeon Jungkook. You would describe that man as crude and closed off to a pathological degree. You still remember when you asked him to come to your office so you can look at any possible previous injuries, he lied to your fucking face. Claiming he doesn’t have any when you could clearly see him hobbling sometimes just a tiny bit when he walked away. Years and years of dedication towards your studies have made you capable enough to catch that it is an old injury.

Despite your better judgment, you blamed it on the fact that his team lost the game that day. Poor guy was having a bad day and took it out on you. Big deal.

“Earth to Destiny” Bella waves a hand close to your face and you shake your head as you look at her.

“Leave the poor man alone” You plead and then ask, “Any details about the new player? I’ll have to add it in the file”

“Not yet, as far as I know they’re still contemplating the guy named Park Jimin or something”

That gets you real quick. Park Jimin. The name feels like acid on your tongue .The last game being unsatisfactorily resulted in the federation trading one of the players. It was cruel but was done for the better. Bound to happen sooner or later. You had expected it but what you had not expected was you both sharing a same room, sharing the same air.

“Alright then. We’ll cross that bridge when it’s—”

Knock, knock

“Miss Kim, sorry to interrupt but the manager is asking for you” Taehyung’s head pokes through the door.

You stand, picking up the file and sliding it into the tableside drawer, running a free hand over your scrubs. Bella does the same as she plucks her phone from the table and puts it inside her back pocket.

You look at him. “Sure Tae, thank you for informing”

He flashes you a quick, pretty smile before leaving. Bella turns to you with a worried look on her face.

“What do you think it is for?”

You bite your lip. “I have no idea. I wanna say it's about the new player but who knows?”

You hope it is and as unfortunate as it is for you to discuss him, you will have to hold your own. You know better than to be invited into the manager’s office. Though, judging by the temperament of him you would not predict anything. Last time when he called you, it was about Jeon Jerk, asking you to be more serious about your job as if it was your fault the man spared you the necessary details.

The asshole asked YOU to do your job better by virtue of HIS player not being sweet enough to listen. Maybe, there is indeed a misogynistic asshole going around and it’s the manager. No wonder women don’t volunteer to work for him.

Since, You love your job —god knows you wanna keep doing it— you kept quiet and took every jab he threw at you.

“Wait, Do I have time to pray? Should I pray?” she’s clearly panicking and you pat her on the shoulder.

“Just hope my job is still intact” you say, warily reaching for your purse. You both head out.

˚୨୧⋆｡˚

“Miss Kim, have a seat” James nods at the chair before him.

Once you’re settled, he continues, “I asked for you to join me here regarding the upcoming game. Care to fill in about the status of injury assessment?"

You clear your throat, “Absolutely, I was planning on getting on that today”

“Well, I would love for you to do it soon as you know we have a new player in the team with us now”

You jerk, leaning forward. “We do?”

“Yes, and if you can please hurry with the assessment I would be grateful. You can do that right? Not too much of a work for you, eh?”

Someone give him a medal from the way he's trying to hide the venom in his voice.

“Sure I can” you give him a firm nod.

James Adams is an entitled, self centered asshole who thinks he’s above everyone else just because of his position. You reckon he does anything for the team besides talking bullshit. He kind of reminds you of your dad who also has the nasty habit of thinking the world of himself.

You’re all about self love but when that self love turns into chronically demeaning everybody in their close proximity, it boils your blood. This man in front of you is no better than your father. What's that saying? Out of the frying pan into the fire.

So you say nothing further and excuse yourself. You would have barfed in his face if you stayed there a second longer. Actually that's not a very bad idea. Bella is standing outside waiting for you as you close the door behind yourself.

“What did he say?”

You bark, “Bunch of horseshit”

“Typical”

˚୨୧⋆｡˚

Jungkook

There is a buzzing noise somewhere around Jungkook. Fuck, his head hurts. He frantically searches for his phone, still not opening his eyes. When he finds it, he slides his thumb on the screen and picks up the call.

“Dude, how big do you want your coffin to be?” He loves his best friend but right now he would rather be sleeping than listen to him bark in his own ear.

He finally squints his eyes open, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Have you looked at the time?” says Taehyung.

“What time- FUCK!!!” he shrieks as he looks at the clock.

Somebody kill him right now. No wait, he’s gonna die either way so why bother. If he didn’t scream loud enough before, he does now. He all but jumps off the bed when he sees the blondie on the other side sleeping like she fucking owns it, wearing nothing but a thong. She must have heard him malfunctioning because soon she stirs, groaning as she slowly wakes up like a Disney princess. Who the heck is she and how did she get in here? Then it comes to him.

“Please Jungkook just take me to your room and fuck me. Show me what those hockey hands are capable of.”

He wants to swallow a fistful of iron nails. Speaking straight from his shoulders, he has made plenty of bad decisions throughout his career and this is not his first time bringing a puck bunny up to his room but it has never come to this. Missing his hockey practice because he was too exhausted to get his sweet ass up and run to the academy.

Taehyung screams from the other side of the line, “Are you there? Hello?”

Shit, he forgot he was on a call.

“I’ll be there soon. Cover for me until then.” With that he presses the red circular button and ends the call with him muttering some curses.

He glances back at the blondie, “Why are you not gone yet?”

She’s looking at him with those fuck me eyes she had last night but right now when he’s well aware of the fact that he’s in hot water, they don’t do shit to him. Coach will have his head on a platter today for sure. Honestly, they wouldn’t have done shit to him if it was not for the great deal of alcohol last night.

“I thought of you as a morning sex person” she twirls a strand of hair with her finger, sitting up now. Her tits hang free and he can see his hickeys decorating her chest.

He wants to laugh. She’s not even close to his type. His type is the woman in blue scrubs with her brunette hair slicked back in a ponytail. His type is the woman who looks like she could be watching grass grow rather than to look at him. His type is the woman who walks into a room and lights it up. His type is the woman who is too bright for him and his mundane personality, who has a face worth millions. His type is Kim Destiny.

“No need to waste your precious time thinking about me. You can go”

He places his phone back on the table and saunters over to the bathroom, not bothering looking back at her. He has boundaries and he intends to keep it that way.

He quickly goes through his routine of taking a shower, making a cup of coffee, sliding into a pair of sweatpants and the Ice Dominator’s jersey with his name on the back. Not in that order, of course.

The girl is thankfully gone by the time he finishes. Once he’s done with his coffee he picks up the car keys and a protein bar from the kitchen counter and heads to the academy hoping his limbs remain intact by the time he’s home.

The Academy is bustling as usual with players keeping themselves busy with hockey and their gym sessions. He heads straight for the rink not even bothering to change into the uniform. He needs to see for himself that everybody is still on the ice. Everything comes after that.

Surprisingly, he sees not a single guy when he reaches there. His heartbeat stops.

“Hey Pixie, where are the boys? Did they already leave?” he asks the brunette kid who looks like he just saw a ghost. Or it’s just Jungkook who he saw.

He shakes his head, “They’re all in the gym. The doc called them earlier, said she had something important to get done with them”

Jungkook gives him a quick thanks and walks towards the gym. What could be so important that she had to call the boys mid practice? Is someone hurt? Is she hurt? His heart leaps in hid throat as he runs. Fuck, please let him be wrong.

The first thing that he sees as he enters the room full of equipment are his teammates. Taehyung and Yoongi are in the corner lifting weights, Namjoon is using the treadmill as he runs on it. The rest of the boys are all scattered around doing their own thing. He still can’t find Destiny anywhere but her assistant, Bella, is talking to Namjoon while holding a file so he lets out a sigh, relieved that nobody is in fact hurt and in need of help.

“Do you wanna get a tattoo on the peni— oh look who’s here. Jeon Jungkook as I live and breathe.”

Taehyung drops the weight on the ground before walking up to him. He’s dressed in a black tee and sports shorts. The man looks good in everything. Bet he’d look in a sack too.

“Whoa!! Why do you look like you wanna kill somebody or wanna get killed? Is everything okay?”

Jungkook lets his face relax, focusing more on the eyebrows which had gone tensed due to his unnecessary anxiety. “Yeah, all’s good. The practice ended early?”

“The practice ended just on time. It’s you who’s late” he pats my shoulder.

He runs his fingers through his hair and walks towards the bench, dropping his bag on it. Taehyung follows him ignoring Yoongi who’s calling him back for the weightlifting.

“Doc wanted to assess our injuries for the last time before our game if you’re curious which, I know you are. You’re always curious about her”

He winks at Jungkook and he punches him on the chest. Taehyung laughs as he rubs the spot.

“Keep your voice down, will you?”

Bella’s voice echoes across the room, “Jeon, you’re up next”

He takes out his water bottle, takes a swig and stands. A wince leaves him as he gets a flashback of the last time he had to face her. It didn’t go very well and he’s sure she hates him now. He would too. After all, he not only talked to her rudely but also lied through his teeth about his injury. It’s pretty old so he had not felt the need to mention it.

He sees a guy coming out of the office just before he’s about to enter. He has brown hair long enough to reach the nape of his neck. Even from where Jungkook’s standing, he can say the man doesn’t reach above his shoulders. Who the fuck is he? Oh wait, he must be the new player that got traded down here. The guy must have sensed him making a hole through his head by the way he’s staring because he’s begins walking towards him with a bright grin.

“Hey man, you must be Jeon Jungkook? Heard a lot about you. I’m Park Jimin” He holds out his hand, asking Jungkook to shake it and he gives it a firm handshake. Word to the wise : never give someone a weak handshake. His grandfather has been asking him to do that ever since he was 15, said it doesn’t leave a strong impression and he’s be lying if he says he was wrong.

He offers Jimin a nod, “Nice to meet you. Excited to get on the rink with you.”

He takes his hand back. “Oh the feeling is mutual but—”

“Jungkook, please join me inside”

Destiny’s voice cuts him off as she looks over to both of them with an eerie expression on her face. Her eyes bounce between them, resting a second longer on Jimin. Does she know him? Do they have a history? Wait, are they a thing? Even if they are, why does it bother him? Jungkook couldn’t care less about the pretty physical therapist who wears her blue scrubs like armor and white crocs with strawberries on them.

He gives Jimin another nod and follows her into the office. Although, he’s not sure if a massage table and a stool resting beside it counts as an office. The room which she works in is much better. This one is just for examinations and massage therapy so he guesses it doesn’t need that much of an upgrade.

She gestures towards the table, “Please sit”

He says nothing and settles himself up, clearing his throat.

“Look I know we got off on the wrong foot last time and it could have gone so much better, but we can still start over right?”

Destiny takes a deep breath, filling her chest with air. She’s wearing her hair in a bun today. It sits at the top of her head and some strands are set loose cascading down her face. God, she’s pretty.

He looks down and back up at her. “Sure”

Her face shows her annoyance with the one word response. He doesn't blame her. He'd be pissed too.

She’s quiet for a moment, “Why don’t you tell me about your knee injury to start with?”

“What are you talking about?”

She sighs, “You know what I’m talking about Jungkook. Please don’t make me work for it. It’s my job to know about your past and present injuries, if any. The manager has already given me crap about it”

He freezes. His hackles rising and his relaxed face long gone.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing”

He levels her with a stern face, “What.did.he.say?”

She’s not obligated to answer him. Hell, she could just slap him in the face and leave but he needs to know what went down with that son of a bitch. When and if she decides to let him in the details and it turns out something wicked, he’s gonna hunt that man down and make his life miserable.

Much to his surprise, she takes a step back and starts talking. "He called me in his office today and," she halts,

"Well let's just say there were some words thrown around which clearly meant he thinks of me as a feather brained bitch"

He might look unbothered from outside but the indignation inside him could just about burn the whole city down. He tries to keep calm and pries some more.

His jaw clenches. "What else?"

Destiny shakes her head, shuffling on her feet. “Jungkook it’s really not that seriou—”

“It is serious. You work for us, you tolerate our asses and in return if we fail to give you the respect which, you deserve by the way cause it’s the bare minimum, we might as well save everyone’s time and money by giving all of this up.”

“Why do you care?” she shakes her head.

He takes a step forward, “Because you— Because you work for us, Destiny. You look out for our bodies, our injuries, our fuckups. Is that not enough?”

She barely reaches his shoulders. It’s cute how she has to crane her neck up in order to look him in the eye. She keeps looking at him for a long minute, searching his face.

“You think I don’t know that? Do you really think I don’t have what it takes to ask for my own dignity?”

He takes a long step back. This conversation was as unforeseen as they come. The room gets filled with heavy silence and he can hear Destiny’s heavy breath. He can tell she’s trying to calm herself as if his words have blindsided her.

Needless to say she’s a tad bit taken aback. Jungkook would be too if someone who never bothered to speak a word to him and when he did, there was nothing pleasant about his tone suddenly started to care.

But that’s where she’s wrong, nothing about his care or concern for her is sudden. He still remembers the day she accidentally drank the almond smoothie Bella brought not knowing the fact that she’s allergic to it. She’d started choking the second it went down her throat. He also remembers how Yoongi injected the epipen against her thigh as she came back to life.

Meanwhile, he stood behind shaking in his goddamn boots. Too scared to let her out of his sight and too pathetic to hold her close. Yeah, he’s not proud of that.

He sighs, “You know that’s not what I meant—”

Namjoon walks inside with a hand towel around his neck “Doc, you about done? The boys are being incorrigible over there. If you don’t hurry, one of them is gonna call a tattoo artist and get their dick tattooed. Right here”

The room falls silent.

“Jesus” she looks over to where the guys are bickering about something, propping her hands on her hips. “Yeah, give me a minute.”

“Sure” and with that he walks away.

She picks up a blue file from the stool, not looking at him. Why is she not looking at him?

“If you don’t want to tell me about your injury right now, that’s fine. Since, I know it’s pretty old and It’s unlikely that you’re gonna get affected by it in the upcoming games, there’s no need to worry. However, I would still suggest you be careful. Anything can happen out there and your knee is in a vulnerable position. Don’t pick unnecessary fights, don’t let the opponent know your weak link.”

She glances at him, dropping the file back to where it was.

“You can go”

Without a preamble, he heads outside, passing Taehyung. He hears him cracking a joke about penis tattoos and piercings with his girlfriend’s name on it. Destiny cracks up and Jungkook wonders if she would have done the same, had he been the one cracking the joke. Only, he doesn’t crack jokes. Not around her at least. It’s not like he's some grumpy bastard who wants nothing to do with anybody around him and thinks of him as omniscient.

There’s just something about Destiny which puts him at loss of words. Knotting his tongue it in such a way where he can’t get an expression out. Only look at her and god, does he look at her. He's not stupid. He knows it’s a crush but she’s like a mirage to him. She’s unreachable, forbidden and so fucking beautiful.

Does he want to make her his? Yes, Is he going to risk his career and hers over it? Absolutely not. So, he makes use of the only right nobody can take away from him. Not even her. Admire her from afar. Fantasize more about tasting her, licking her slender neck and worshipping the ground that she walks on and one day if she lets him, Jungkook will do anything to turn all of that into reality.

He finds Yoongi seated on of the benches, scrolling on his phone.

Facing him, Jungkook speaks in a low voice. "Do you have any idea where James is?"

˚୨୧⋆｡˚

Destiny

Never have you ever wanted to run away as much as you did when you saw Jimin in front of yourself, standing all tall and proud. You had wished it to be a dream, wished you just had a nightmare about him joining the same team you happen to work with but reality is a goddamn bitch and it bites hard when it does. He had grown out his hair longer but he still has the same smile, same eyes and the same charm he used on you back then. Park Jimin is a man people don’t ever forget once they see him. He has an aura which traps everyone so hard they can never escape. How do you know? You have been a victim yourself.

You meticulously go through the consequences and eventualities of being in the same room as him again. You seeing him everyday and him reminding you of every single detail you have tried so hard forgetting about, the boys finding out about you both and putting you through the wringer or worse, him. The possibilities are endless and you feel the sudden urge to square everything with him.

Contrary to what you had thought, he reacted pretty normally when he saw you as if somebody had already told him about you. You had expected him to get shocked or at the very least pretend to be shocked.

Having said that, he just gave you a single nod as if you're someone he passes by every morning at the park. Are you this forgettable? Are you someone people just brush aside like that? Your father’s words echo in your ears like loud drums,

“You know, nobody will love you if you keep looking like this. Eat less”

“Girl, do you ever stop eating? Every time I see you, you're stuffing something in that mouth of yours!!”

“Don’t come running back at me when no guy gives a shit about you”

You were 10 and he was an asshole. He still is.

Thanks to him, you now have a tendency to cook when you're stressed over anything. It brings you comfort and diverts your mind from the excessive overthinking. You would go bald if it puts the voices into silent mode.

After already wasting half of your life speculating what to eat, counting calories and whatnot, you came to the terms that you can’t actually operate that way and began eating whatever the fuck you wanted. Yet still, you need to go a long way in order to fully love yourself and your body. It's a journey and you're moving ahead step by step. One day at a time.

One would even say you're hot. You have received compliments from several people over the course of time except you don’t have a thigh gap, your arms jiggle and you also happen to have a love handle. You would have adored them if it wasn’t for your dad making you feel shitty about having them.

A knock on your door stops you midway as you're kneading the dough. Biscuit runs over to you, jumping on the counter.

“Coming”

The knock comes back again, this time slightly louder.

“Oh my god wait I’m coming”

The door swings open and you gasp. “Mina?”

She passes by you, dragging her suitcase along with her.

“Hey bestie”

You close the door and follow her further into the hall. “What’s going on? What’s with the suitcase?”

Your best friend’s sudden arrival must have caught you by slight surprise but your cat is rather pleased to see her. Traitor. She starts clawing at her feet excitedly.

“What a good girl you are? Yes, you are” Mina coos at her and then glances up at you from where she has biscuit nestled in her lap,

“I need a place to live for a few days because my shitty boss kept rejecting all my articles and I really wanna bring her something worth the front page. Apparently, writing about the famous coffee shop around the corner and their secret ingredient being maple syrup wasn’t good enough.”

You round the counter and continue kneading the dough for your strawberry pie. It’s not unlikely for Mina to show up unannounced. In fact, she has done that plenty of times but the suitcase was never involved. This one is new.

“So you decided to barge in here without even asking?” You tease.

She flashes you a dramatic look. “Look at us, Destiny. Aren’t we the same girls who giggled about living together after college? With matching slippers and movie marathons?”

“Okay okay you dramatic bitch. How long are you here for?”

Biscuit runs to do her business and she gets up, setting her suitcase to the side.

She sighs, “Not sure. As long as it takes me to come up with a new topic to write about–HEY— why don’t I just write on the hockey team you work with? What are they called? Ice…ice”

“Ice Dominators” you fill in for her.

She slaps her thigh. “That’s the one”

You shrug, “I mean you can, but you’ll have to call in on the coach first. He operates everything inside and outside the team”

Coach Ian is too nice to turn her request down. He’s one of the most genuine people in the federation. Maybe this is why the team is so strong and united. He respects every single boy and receives it tenfold. It's a mutual thing.

“Shit, How come I didn’t think about that” she bites her lip, her enthusiasm replaced by nervousness.

“Don’t worry. He won’t make you work for it. Ian is as nice as they come” you assure.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. As you watch, she opens your fridge, taking out the box of frozen blueberries and pops one into her mouth.

“Do you want me to give you a hand?” she mumbles while chewing.

You point towards the bathroom, “Go and take a shower, right now. You stinky”

You duck the blueberry she throws your way, laughing as you do. Giving your cheek one last kiss, she excuses herself.

˚୨୧⋆｡˚

Warm hands roam over your thigh, squeezing them. You muffle your moan with your palm and take every thrust.

“Yeah, you like that? You like how I’m pounding into this ass right now?”

You gasp.

“Such a good girl” he praises.

The man behind you presses a kiss to your naked shoulder as he rasps in your ears, “Were you walking around all day dripping for me?”

He pulls his cock out and thrusts again. You meet him with equal passion and hunger.

“Tell me”

You nod.

“I need your words, Destiny”

You cry out, “Yes Oh god, Yes. I wanted you in me so bad”

He cups your pussy and rubs your clit with his palm until you're rolling your eyes to the back of your head and squirming. Thrust after thrust he brings you to your sweet release while talking dirty things in your ear. You're about to melt into a puddle of goo. He’s got you totally at his mercy.

“So beautiful like this. Taking my cock so well huh?”

“Ahh it feels so good, right there. Just right there, don’t stop”

He bites down your shoulder, “Come for me and let everyone outside hear the name you’re screaming, you dirty whore”

Your heartbeat picks up as you squeeze him with the tight ring of muscle, orgasm crashing over.

“FUCK. Oh my god Jungkook!!”

Your eyes fling open and you sit up so fast your head starts spinning. Everything around you is pitch black. Wait, where am you?

Mina is at your side in an instant, “Destiny, are you okay babe?”

You look around and release a sigh of relief. You run your fingers through your hair, ruffling them.

“Yeah um… I’m fine. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

Except it wasn’t. It was one hell of a dream where you were getting fucked into oblivion by your player. You're not even going to lie and say that you didn’t like it. C’mon you're a woman of needs, it’s just that, him fulfilling those needs was not on the cards for you even if it wasn't real.

You check the time on your phone and wince at the bright light flashing up at you. It’s 2:45 am and you just had a back breaking sex dream about a man who you want nothing to do with. Who, as beautiful as he is, annoys the hell out of you with those one word replies and grumpy face. An edgy feeling threatens to rise.

Oh god it’s going to be awkward now. It’s only normal to walk on eggshells around someone people have these sort of dreams about. You have read your fair share of books where the female character gets a sex dream about a man and then they don’t talk to each other for the rest of their lives. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch but it might as well not be.

Yeah, you admit you guys don’t talk to each other a lot as it is, or are longtime best friends tiptoeing around their feelings, but you're afraid you're gonna have to ignore him forever for the sake of your own sanity.

I’m so fucked. You think.

tags - @httpjeonlicious @lovingkoalaface @rpwprpwprpwprw

2K notes · View notes

onmyyan · 3 months ago

Note

hi again i'm the Anon who asked if you take commisions only or requests as well. I love your writing style<3

Soo could you write about Batmom reader, where reader took care of bruce's children as her own. But then bruce gets a mistress, reader still stays becuz of the kids but when everyone started to become cold to her and insult her ' X (mistress) is better mom then you ever were' she leaves gonthem. Then everyone realises she (mistress) was just after their money. They go to batmom's room to apologize only to find it empty. They try to find her everywhere but couldn't. And finally when they do, reader rejects them since she was having the time of her life without responsibilty but gets kiddnapped by the batfam?

Honestly i wanted to commision but i'm flat broke and i'm too busy studying to work and on top of that i don't have my own phone (i use my dad's old laptop) soo yeah... I hope you consider this.

A/N: Loooove this request thank you for sending it in <3 fem reader yandere themes lmk if you want a part two

The (L/n)'s were a wealthy and prominent family in Gotham, right up there with the Wayne's when it came to power over the city, the two families were in business together which is why when Bruce Wayne personal attorney came to you with a marriage proposal, you weren't surprised.

A marriage of convenience. You thought you knew what this would entitle, you knew this wasn't out of love, that this was required of you, it had nothing to do with what you actually wanted, but you were dutiful and signed, inking your name on the paper felt like a deal with the devil.

Bruce hadn't bothered to officially meet you until the day of the wedding, it was beautiful and well done but lacking any form of love of affection, CEOs and other rich folk you didn't recognize filled the pews, the ring felt cold when he slipped it on, his vows perfectly rehearsed, and not an ounce of warmth in his eyes, you knew that night you should have annulled the marriage, but something made you hold on, something your mother had said to you as the makeup artist turned you into the visage of a bride.

"You'll learn to love each other, your father and I did after all." And she wasn't lying, your parents married for convenience as well but had grown to love one another, so maybe you could do the same?

A year after the nuptials Dick Grayson is thrust into your life. Haley's circus was famous in Gotham for its incredible death defying shows, but on this night death would walk the stage, taking with them Dick Grayson's parents in a horrible display, You and Bruce had consoled the boy for only a moment before Bruce was talking to the officers, he'd decided Dick was coming home with you, of course without asking your opinion, but it didn't matter, you felt such pity and grief for the boy, it made perfect sense to you, he was shut down for the first few months, he called you by your name and you had no problem with it, making it clear you never wanted to try and replace his mother, the ice between you two melted one day, one kind word at a time, he couldn't help but confide in you about school or his friends, because you were more emotionally there than Bruce was.

Like the night you caught him sneaking out, a packed bag in hand and the keys to one of Bruce's many cars in his hand. Instead of yelling for Bruce or Alfred you simply smiled at him, "you should take the audi, it's the safest car here."

"..You're not going to try and stop me?"

You shake your head no, still offering that kind smile.

"You know yourself best Dick, if you're unhappy here I won't stop you from finding your peace." He took a moment before tossing you the keys and reluctantly making his way back inside.

You find out about Batman because of Dick. He'd come home with some nasty bruises and it wouldn't take long to put two and two together. Them both being missing at the same time, Dick started to pull away from you, one night, after hours of trying to get to sleep in a bed much to big for one body, your legs decided a walk was necessary, the halls were dark and quiet, giving the manor an eerie air, quietly you walked the long hallways intending on stopping by the library, as you turned the corner you seen Dick in a hidden elevator, the doors just slamming shut as your eyes tried to register what was there. Seconds after the doors close a wall appears, as if nothing was ever there. It's not long after that you see a brief news clip of the caped crusader and his new sidekick, because the longer you stared at the screen, the more familiar they began to look, that dead tight lipped scowl on Batman's face, it was one you'd had the pleasure of looking at for the past few years.

That night you confronted Bruce, he seemed surprised you'd figured it out, but he didn't deny it. Simply saying, "It's late (Y/n), get some sleep."

You nearly divorced him then and there for endangering a child the way he was, but after a moment of thought, you realized Dick would need a real parent around so you stayed, making Bruce swear to be careful.

Jason comes next and he takes to you a lot faster than Dick. He craved the warmth you offered, you two had inside jokes and a closer relationship than him and Bruce, but that all changes the day he dies. You're broken, a ghost haunting the manor with your presence, and Bruce is no comfort throwing himself into the Batman role, you begin to hate him a little with this particular betrayal.

Tim was another hard egg to crack but you were desperate after Jason's death, so you took his verbal lashings with a smile, were always there to offer a helping hand with any of his projects despite the help never being accepted. Tims wound from losing his father is too raw, he takes a lot of his anger out on you. And you weathered the storm with a soft, warm smile.

Damian hated you, from the moment he arrives, which is bitter enough as is because it meant Bruce was unfaithful, he's spitting out insults and comparing you to his 'perfect' mother.

Things weren't great in your life, but one day they started getting noticably worse. Dick no longer responded to your check in texts, Jason (now reanimated which was a heart attack in and of itself) saw you as the enemy, you didn't leave Bruce after what happened to him, so in his eyes you betrayed him, Tim ignored your existence as best as he could, and Damian? He'd started staring at you with this smug look on his face, like he knew something you didn't.

Bruce had all but ran from you, he didn't sleep in your shared room anymore, he barely spoke to you at breakfast, if it wasn't for the cameras he wouldn't touch you.

And it's all because of a woman named Rachel.

Apparently Bruce had introduced this woman to the family, bringing her around when you weren't, slowly replacing you, it was no wonder they started to pull back.

Alfred is the only reason you find out, having enough of the blatant disrespect, he calls you to come home early one day saying it's a dire matter. Of course you comply, and walk in on a discomforting sight. The whole family was gathered at the dining room table, plus a woman you'd never seen before, she sat close to Bruce, toying with his hand intimately. Her green eyes lock with yours and the smile she gives you forms a pit in your stomach.

There's silence before Bruce stands up, he walks over calmly, "Can we take this in the other room." But it wasn't phrased as a question.

"No" you licked your lips, a nervous habit from your youth. Bruce seemed taken back by your sudden backbone. He nods silently.

"I want her gone Bruce. I am your wife. You will show me that semblance of respect."

"I- of course." You don't wait for the words to settle instead, you calmly walk to your room, face unreadable.

Locking the door behind you, your body slides against the frame, a silent sob wracks your frame, your hands covering your mouth, you wouldn't give them the satisfaction of hearing your cries.

The next morning you wake up to breakfast in bed, a generic yet elegant spread of food lay on a tray in the empty spot Bruce used to stay. The man himself sitting in the chair beside the bed, staring at you with that practiced smile he used to appease people.

"Good morning."

"What's this?" You sat up straight, sleep evaporating from your form as you took in the threat before you.

"An apology. I never meant for yesterday to happen."

"What a comfort that is." Your piercing (e/c) eyes stare at him blankly, unreadable. "How long."

"A year." You scoff pushing the breakfast away from you like it was poisonous. "But its not what you think, Rachel is a childhood friend, a year ago our relationship, evolved into what it is now, but I was never intending to go behind your back."

"Ah of course, your intentions were pure." The words dripped venom, grabbing your robe you quickly dress before standing and walking to the door, "Thank you for the wonderful talk Bruce, really your people skills are top notch." Your hands gesture to the door. He leaves without a word.

The rest of the day is as usual, Bruce avoids you like the plague, the rest of the family acted as if you weren't there. Which made leaving all too easy.

Your lawyers had the divorce papers ready and hour after you called them, signing them felt like the first act of self love you'd done in years. Slipping them into Bruce's study you took the time to analyze the room you never entered.

It matched Bruce that's for sure, pictures of every single person in the family. All except for you.

Walking out the door, wrapped in your ankle length black faux fur coat, the garment whipped in the wind, the designer sunglasses on your face hid your eyes from the world, hair in a slicked back bun, your heels echoed against the pavement, a sleek black car was waiting for you, you look back at the house that had caused you so much misery then got in the back of the car, never looking back.

Life goes on for about a week, your absence goes unnoticed, that is before Rachel is trying and failing to blackmail Bruce out of a billion dollars, she'd collected evidence he was cheating on you with her and presented it to Bruce with a grin, it was only as he went through the pictures of himself and Rachel, did he notice the yellow envelope with his name written on the front.

Hey puts the heartbreaking matter of Rachel's betrayal on the back burner, Bruce opened the envelope and felt his heart completely stop at the word divorce written in bold lettering across the top, your signature was already there, waiting for his to join it.

Ignoring Rachel completely now he turns in his chair, turning the paper over and over as if it would magically change. But it remained the same. Alfred knocking on the door of his study broke him from his trance. "Master Wayne, miss Rachel." He says the latter's name with no warmth. "Escort Rachel to her car Alfred."

"Bruce have you heard a word I've said? I'm serious I'll go to Gotham daily right now if you don't -"

"Now Alfred."

That was all it took for the screaming woman to be firmly escorted off the premises. Bruce all but ran to your room, he didn't bother knocking, and despite knowing in his heart you were already gone, he couldn't help but check anyway.

Your room was empty and cold, he couldn't believe the date he'd read on the divorce papers, it was dated a week ago, meaning you'd been gone for a week and he hadn't noticed. No one had.

That is until Bruce remembers there's someone in the house nothing gets by.

"How long have you known she was gone Alfred?" He asks leaning on his knuckles the divorce papers stared back at him taunting him. "Since the moment she left." The older man replied simply his hands behind his back. "Why didn't you tell me immediately?" Bruce felt himself tense, "Because you've hurt that woman enough Bruce. She deserves at least this." He gestures to the daunting divorce paperwork before turning to leave Bruce with his thoughts.

The news of Rachel's betrayal shook the manor each member feeling violated by their trust being broken. But it was nothing compared to their reaction once they finally realized you were gone.

"That was rough." Jason says after watching Rachel being dragged out of the manor, he blew air out of his cheeks arms crossed over his chest, he looked towards the hallway that lead to your room, you had to have heard that he thought to himself.

Dick sighs through his nose, "Someone should check on (y/n), Rachel was screaming so loud she definitely heard that." No one volunteers so Dick rolls his eyes and heads towards your room.

He lifts his hands to knock but noticed the door was open, pushing it further he's met with a baren room, his brow furrowed in confusion before he makes his way to Bruce's study. "Hey B, have you seen (y/n)? Her room is like weirdly empty."

Dick found his Father where Alfred left him, leaning over the divorce papers silently a storm in his eyes.

As he steps closer and reads the paperwork Bruce was staring so intently at, his heart stopped.

"Holy shit- are those real?"

"Yes." Bruce finally spoke his voice horse. There was a moment of silence before Dick left the room practically running down the stairs to alert the others.

"(Y/n) left Bruce." He said still processing the information, "No fuckin' way." Jason says pushing himself off the counter he leaned on. "Her room is empty and he has the papers, she's gone."

Each member of the family had different reactions to this information.

Dick tries calling you only to be met with a disconnected number, his heart hammering in his chest, he wasn't as close to you as when he was younger sure, but you were a constant in his life, always had been, a pillar of support, and suddenly you weren't. It felt like the floor had gotten pulled out from under him.

Jason curses under his breath, his mind working a mile a minute, he had barely spoken to you since his Resurrection, something he deeply regretted as the information of your leaving sinks in like a brick thrown into a river.

Tim, ever calculating is trying to figure out where you went, you were a figurehead in his life, someone that was literally never not there, sure he wasn't close to you in the slightest but that doesn't mean he wants anything to happen to you, someone as quiet and soft as you on your own in Gotham? It didn't sit well with him. Not one bit.

Damian didn't know what he was feeling at the news, he supposed he should feel nothing, after all you were nothing to him, but there was this nagging feeling in his chest that he couldn't quite place. And he hated it. How dare you leave and upset his fragile ecosystem?

Meanwhile in the Bahamas, far from Gotham and the neglectful family you'd left behind, you sat lounging on a private beach, a knitted hammock cradles your body, a designer baby pink bikini covers you, a matching sunhat protects your face from the hot sun, you can't wipe the smile from your face, humming a tune from your childhood you barely flinch when someone takes the seat besides your hammock.

"Do I want to know how you found me?" You ask, eyes still closed as you bask in the warmth. You knew only one person had the sources to find you on your own island, and despite how much you resent the man, even his presence can't ruin your shine in this moment.

"You're my wife (Y/n), I'll always know where you are." Bruce speaks softly as if trying not to startle you. "Former wife." You correct cracking an eye open, a small smirk curling on your lips.

"Not until I sign those papers- which I never will."

"huh, I thought you'd be thrilled." You muse to yourself before folding your tanning mirror and setting it aside, you take off your Louis Vuitton sunglasses, blinking your pretty (e/c) eyes up at him, "Figured you and your little Twinkie would have tied the knot by now." You laugh softly, the sound, unfamiliar to Bruce, sent warm shivers down his spine, it causes his lips to quirk up in a small grin.

"She's gone."

"Well, I don't care."

There's a beat of silence before he's offering you his hand. "Will you walk with me? I know I don't deserve it."

You sigh before getting up, ignoring his hand, you nod your head reluctantly, "Well? Hurry up I've got dinner at six."

His smile remains as he begins leading you along the shoreline. It's relatively quiet between you two as you walk side by side, a peace between you both you hadn't ever felt. "The manor isn't the same without you." He breaks the silence, "I sincerely doubt that." You laugh at the very notion. "It's true- it's colder, quieter, I want you to come home."

"That was never my home, you made that abundantly clear."

He winces as if your words cut him, "I know I haven't been a good man to you, I know I've failed you time and time again but I..I looked at those divorce papers and my heart stopped." He admits running a hand through his hair.

"You can't leave me."

"I can't?." You scoff, your movement halting, "I'm a grown woman- I'm taking responsibility for my own happiness, you can't stop me."

"I wasn't asking." He says softly, his hands in his pockets, he had this fond look on his face, like he was staring at you for the first time, in a whole new light. "You can't make me." You say, brows furrowed, "You belong back home, you're supposed to be with me, till death do us part, remember?" He steps forward making you step back, your eyes wide, hands shaking, you back into a wide chest, spinning to face Dick, who's grinning at you, he's in his Nightwing costume, he gives you a small wave of his hand, you scrunch your face in confusion, "What the hell-" your thought is cut off by a small pinch in your neck, the needle in Bruce's hand is empty in seconds, he's cradling your stumbling form, holding you tightly, "Don't worry - I'll fix this."

Your sleeping body is gently carried to the batplane, Bruce holding you close to his chest as Dick pilots the plane, he whispers promises into your hair, rocking you against him as he swears on his life to make things right, weather you liked it or not.

#yananswers #anon submission #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x y/n #yandere dc imagine #yandere dc x reader #yandere batfam x reader #yandere batfamily x reader #yandere batfamily #yandere bruce wayne x reader #yandere jason todd x reader #yandere dick grayson x reader #yandere tim drake x reader #yandere damian wayne x reader

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olive-main · 1 month ago

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Hi, hope you’re well! Saw your request for angst ideas. If you’re interested: Reader has been part of the Inner Circle for years, like an og member. Post war she watches Az fall in love with Elaine or Gwyn. She’s known they’re mates, but he’s always told her he loves her as a friend, and nobody else knows they’re mates. She watches as his relationship grows, maybe they’re having a kid or whatever, this can be all the angst you see fit. She’s finally had enough and decides to leave (either for work as an emissary or for herself). Maybe as she starts to rebuild, Az and the IC realize how much her loss impacts them. But when they go see her, she’s thriving. Ending can be whatever floats your boat, maybe she’s with Eris or thriving in Day as Lucien’s advisor, or something else all together.

To Love and Let Go

Pairing: Azriel x Reader

Summary: An unrequited love, and a one sided mating bond. What will reader do when she can no longer watch Azriel fall for another female who isn’t her?

Wc: 2.9k (gah dayum)

A/N: ok, this is the longggest fic I've written to date, but I don't hate it...and I may be persuaded to write a part two with multiple endings bcs I'm indecisive asf. Requests are still open and highly encouraged since I'm on break and have a bunch of free time, clearly.

The stars are mocking tonight, their gleam far too bright for the storm brewing inside you. Velaris has always been beautiful, but tonight the city feels suffocating. The laughter of your family echoes around the River House’s dining room, filling the space with warmth and joy.

You sit at the edge of the long table, wine in hand, your smile carefully in place. Cassian is in the middle of one of his stories, something about Azriel and a drunken spar decades ago. The table erupts in laughter, and you can’t help but glance at him.

Azriel sits across from you, his shoulders relaxed, his shadows soft and relaxed as they curl lazily around him. He’s laughing—quiet and rare, but enough to tug at your chest in a way you’ve never been able to stop.

Beside him, Gwyn is radiant. She laughs, bright and genuine, her hand resting on his arm as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. His hand shifts, fingers brushing over hers in a way that’s intimate, tender. Simple. Devastating.

You lift your wine to your lips and down the rest of the glass in one burning gulp.

You’ve known for years that Azriel isn’t yours to have. When the Cauldron whispered of your bond, it hadn’t been the joyous revelation you’d dreamed of. Instead, it had been a curse.

You feel it even now—that golden thread tying your soul to his, pulling taut every time you see him. But Azriel never acknowledged it, not once. How could he when he didn't even know it existed?

“You’re my best friend,” he’d told you long ago, sitting beside you on a rooftop in Velaris, the two of you cloaked in silence and shadows. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

And you’d smiled. Smiled and tucked the truth deeper inside yourself, burying it so far down you almost convinced yourself it wasn’t real. Almost.

The conversation shifts around you, but the words blur together, distant and unimportant. You force yourself to stay, to laugh when you’re supposed to, to nod in all the right places.

Across the table, Gwyn leans closer to Azriel, whispering something in his ear. He smiles at her, that soft, secret smile you’ve seen so many times over the years. But it’s never been for you.

The ache in your chest spreads, sharp and relentless, until you can’t bear it any longer. You push your chair back, the legs scraping loudly against the floor.

“Everything okay?” Mor asks, her brows furrowing as she studies you.

You nod quickly, forcing a tight smile. “Just need some air.”

No one questions you, and you’re grateful for it. You slip out of the room and onto the balcony, the cool night air rushing to meet you. The stars stretch endlessly above, and for a moment, you close your eyes and pretend this life isn’t yours.

But the bond hums faintly in the back of your mind, tethering you to someone who will never feel the same way.

—

You grip the balcony railing, the cool metal grounding you as you draw in a shaky breath. The quiet should feel peaceful, but it doesn’t. Not with the sound of their laughter spilling through the open door behind you, not with the bond thrumming painfully in the back of your mind.

You’ve endured this for years. Watching Azriel laugh, fight, live, all while pretending your heart doesn’t shatter every time he smiles at someone who isn’t you. Gwyn. Elain before her, and Mor long before that. All the women who could never feel what you feel for him—but were lucky enough to have his attention anyway.

And then there’s you, his best friend. The one he trusts, confides in, leans on. Just never in the way you ache for. Even before the bond snapped, you’d been in love with the Shadowsinger. He was always the calm amongst the chaos of your family, the one you could seek refuge in.

The sound of footsteps interrupts your thoughts. You don’t need to look to know it’s him. His shadows reach you first, curling gently around your wrist, hesitant and curious. They always do that, as if they sense the things he doesn’t.

“Are you okay?” Azriel’s voice is soft, warm in a way that makes it harder to breathe.

You release the railing and turn to face him, your mask firmly in place. “I’m fine. Just needed a moment.”

His brows pull together, his hazel eyes studying you in that unrelenting way of his. “You’ve seemed… distracted tonight.”

You force a laugh, shaking your head. “I’m not distracted. Just tired, that’s all.” The lie was easy on your tongue, a lie you’ve repeated more times than you can count.

His shadows shift, curling tighter around you. “You can tell me if something’s wrong,” he says, his voice low, careful.

You want to laugh again. Wrong? Everything is wrong. Your mate is standing in front of you, looking at you with concern while his love sits inside, waiting for him. He doesn’t even feel the bond that’s been tearing you apart for years. How could you possibly tell him the truth?

“I’m fine, Az,” you say again, stepping back, putting distance between you. “Go back inside. Gwyn’s probably wondering where you are.”

Something flickers across his face, but it’s gone before you can place it. He hesitates, his shadows brushing against your hand one last time before retreating.

“All right,” he says quietly. But he doesn’t look convinced.

You watch him go, his wings casting long shadows across the balcony as he disappears into the house. The bond hums faintly, pulling at your heart even as you stand there alone.

—

A part of you wants to blame yourself for never telling him about the mating bond. It was known Azriel always longed for a mate, so much so he had made the bold claim of Elain being his mate once upon a time. Now, he's with Gwyn under that same notion. Unfortunately, your heart had wanted him to love you without the influence of the bond.

Your thoughts persist as you force your eyes shut, trying and failing to fall asleep.

Instead, you lie awake in your bed, staring at the ceiling as the weight of it all presses down on you. You’ve built your entire life around the Inner Circle, around him. And for what? To watch him build a life with someone else? To keep breaking your own heart over and over again?

No.

When dawn comes, the decision is already made.

—

“Are you sure about this?” Feyre asks, her hand resting lightly on your arm.

You stand in the foyer of the River House, your bags already packed and waiting by the door. The soft morning light filters through the windows, casting golden hues over everything. It should feel warm. Comforting. But all you feel is the ache of goodbye.

“I’m sure,” you say, and your voice doesn’t waver.

Rhysand stands a few paces away, arms crossed, his violet eyes sharp and assessing. You were like a sister to him, someone he’d protected and seen through every phase of life. “You don’t have to do this,” he says gently. “We can figure something out. If you need time off, time for yourself—”

“I need more than time, Rhys,” you interrupt, forcing a small smile to soften the blow. “I need space. A fresh start. This is the right move for me.”

You’d rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, carefully framing your departure as a professional opportunity. An emissary position in Day Court. Helion had been eager to accept your offer, praising your skills and promising a new challenge that you could sink your teeth into.

It wasn’t a lie. You would thrive in Day Court. But it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Feyre’s grip on your arm tightens, her lips pressing together as if she’s holding back an argument. “I just… I don’t want you to feel like you’re running away,” she says softly.

You glance past her, your eyes catching on the open archway leading to the dining room. You can feel him in there, his shadows faint even from this distance. The bond pulls, a sharp tug against your ribs.

“I’m not running away,” you tell her, even though part of you wonders if that’s exactly what this is. “I’m choosing myself for once.”

Rhys nods slowly, his expression unreadable. “If that’s what you need, then we support you. Always.”

A lump rises in your throat, but you swallow it down, turning to hug Feyre. “Thank you. For everything.”

—

Azriel watches from the shadows of the dining room as you leave. He doesn’t mean to linger there, doesn’t mean to eavesdrop—but he can’t help it.

He hears Feyre’s quiet goodbye, Rhys’s reassurances. He sees the way your shoulders straighten as you step out the door, as if you’re carrying a weight none of them can understand.

Something twists in his chest, sharp and unfamiliar.

He doesn’t understand it. You’ve left Velaris before, gone on missions and trips for weeks at a time. But this feels… different. Permanent.

For a moment, he almost steps forward, almost calls out to you. But then the door closes, and you’re gone.

—

The Day Court is a world apart from Velaris.

Here, the sun always seems to shine, casting a golden glow over Helion’s sprawling palace. It’s vibrant, full of life, and for the first time in years, you feel as though you can finally breathe.

Helion welcomes you with open arms, praising your work and throwing you headfirst into new projects. The days are busy, your nights peaceful, and slowly—very slowly—the ache in your chest begins to fade.

You make new allies and friends. Lucien, especially, becomes an unexpected source of comfort. He understands unspoken bonds, the pain of being tied to someone who doesn’t want you. For the first few weeks, most, if not all your time was spent by his side.

“You’re free now,” he tells you one evening, the two of you sitting on a balcony overlooking the Day Court gardens. His amber eyes glint in the fading sunlight. “It doesn’t feel like it yet, but it will. One day.”

You smile, a real smile, and let the words settle in your chest.

—

Back in Velaris, the Inner Circle feels the void you’ve left behind. Cassian complains loudly during training sessions about how things don’t run as smoothly without you. Mor keeps suggesting trips to Day Court, half-joking but half-serious. Even Feyre finds herself reaching for you during meetings, only to realize you’re no longer there.

And Azriel…

Azriel notices most of all.

He misses the quiet way you steadied him, the way you always seemed to know what he needed before he did. The balance you brought to the group. To him.

At first, he tells himself it’s just an adjustment. You’ll be back eventually. But as the weeks stretch into months, he begins to realize just how deeply your absence has cut into his life.

The shadow of the bond hums faintly in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t understand why.

Not yet.

—

It’s Feyre who suggests the trip.

“You’ve been working too hard,” she tells Azriel, shooting him with a look that leaves no room for argument. “We all have. A visit to Day Court will do us some good. Besides, it’s been too long since we’ve seen her.”

Azriel hesitates but eventually agrees. He tells himself it’s curiosity, that he just wants to see how you’re settling in. Since you’ve left his relationship with everyone, Gywn especially, has grown distant. He tries to find you in her, comparing the small things that shouldn’t matter—and every time it only makes his heart sink.

When they arrive, they find you in the Day Court gardens, laughing at something Lucien has said. The sunlight catches in your hair, your face glowing with a happiness Azriel hasn’t seen in years.

The gardens are breathtaking, a vibrant sprawl of golden blooms and gleaming fountains that seem to echo the brilliance of the sun overhead. But Azriel doesn’t see any of it.

His focus is entirely on you.

You look radiant, the golden hues of Day Court seeming to highlight the confidence you’ve gained in your time away.

Lucien leans closer, his expression soft yet intent, and the sight makes something dark and ugly twist in Azriel’s chest. It’s not the first time he’s seen Lucien or been jealous of the male, but this—this—feels different. He used to feel that pang of jealousy when he blindly pined for Elain, now with you it returned with a greater force.

He doesn’t understand why these feelings have suddenly spread through him. You’ve always been his friend. His anchor. But as Lucien reaches out to brush a stray hair from your face, Azriel feels like he’s watching something slip through his fingers.

“Az?” Feyre’s voice pulls him back. She’s watching him with careful eyes, her brow furrowing.

He shakes his head and straightens his posture, forcing his expression back into neutral territory. “I’m fine.” But he isn’t.

Before Feyre can press him further, Lucien notices their approach and gives a low whistle. “Well, well. Velaris sends its finest.” His tone is teasing, but there’s warmth in his amber eyes as they flick toward you.

You turn, and when your gaze lands on Azriel, your smile falters. It’s a subtle shift, but he sees it. Feels it.

“Rhysand. Feyre. Azriel,” you greet, inclining your head slightly, your voice polite but distant. As if they were strangers and not the family you chose all those centuries ago.

He hates it.

The reunion is cordial at first, filled with pleasantries and talk of work. Lucien stands close to you, his presence steady, his hand occasionally brushing yours in a way that grounds you. Azriel’s shadows stir restlessly, but he forces them into submission.

“You’ve done well here,” Feyre says warmly, her gaze sweeping over the garden. “It suits you.”

“Thank you.” Your smile is genuine, though it doesn’t quite reach Azriel. “Helion has been… generous with his trust.”

“And with his emissary’s time,” Lucien adds, grinning at you. “She’s a natural. Can’t imagine how Day Court managed before she arrived.”

The praise makes you duck your head slightly, a faint blush blooming across your cheeks. Azriel’s jaw tightens.

“Sounds like you’ve been keeping busy,” he says, his voice lower than usual.

Your eyes flick to him briefly before turning back to Lucien, but there’s something guarded in your expression. “I have. It’s been… fulfilling.”

The word stings more than it should.

—

Eventually, Feyre and Rhys drift away with Lucien, leaving you and Azriel alone amidst the golden flowers. The silence stretches between you, heavy with unspoken words.

“You’ve been… different,” he says finally, breaking the silence.

You glance at him, your arms folding across your chest. “Different how?”

He hesitates, searching for the right words. “Happier,” he admits.

The softness in his voice almost makes you falter, but you stand your ground. “I am,” you say simply.

His shadows curl around his feet, agitated. “You left so suddenly,” he says, his tone sharper now. “One day you were there, and the next you were… gone. No warning. No explanation.”

You raise an eyebrow, bitterness creeping into your voice. “I told you I needed space. I told all of you.” You pause for a second, staring at a cluster of white lilies. “Why does it matter now, Azriel?”

“Because I miss you,” he says, the words raw and unguarded. “We all do. But me… I—” He stops himself, jaw clenching.

You laugh softly, but it’s a hollow, bitter sound. “You miss me now? After I’ve finally started to find peace? After you’ve built a life with Gwyn?”

His shadows surge forward, brushing against your arm, but you shake them off. “Don’t do this, Azriel.”

“You’re my friend,” he says, and the words make your heart twist painfully.

You whirl to face him, your eyes blazing. “No. I was never just your friend, Azriel. I was your mate.”

The truth spills out before you can stop it, sharp and cutting. He freezes, his expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.

“What?” His voice is barely a whisper.

You laugh again, a broken sound. “The Cauldron tied us together centuries ago, but you never felt it, did you? You never even noticed.”

His shadows pull back, retreating like they’ve been burned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it didn’t matter!” you snap, your voice rising. “You didn’t want me that way, Azriel. You never did. And I wasn’t about to force something on you that you didn’t feel.”

He stares at you, his usually stoic face cracking with something raw and uncertain. “I—”

But you shake your head, cutting him off. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve moved on.”

“You’ve moved on?” he echoes, his gaze flicking toward the direction Lucien went. His voice lowers, dangerous. “With him?”

“Yes,” you say firmly, though the word feels heavy. “Because he sees me, Azriel. He knows what it’s like to be unwanted. To feel second-best.”

The words are a dagger between you, and you can see the way they strike him, the way his shadows twist and writhe.

“Is that what you think?” he asks quietly, his voice breaking. “That you were second-best?”

Your throat tightens, but you refuse to back down. “I don’t think it. I know it.”

For a moment, neither of you speak. The bond hums faintly in your chest, but it’s different now—fading, unraveling as you finally let go of the male who could never love you the way you deserved.

“I’m happy here,” you say softly, your voice steady. “And you… you have Gwyn. You have your life in Velaris. Let that be enough.”

Azriel doesn’t argue. He just stands there, his shadows a chaotic storm around him, as you turn and walk away.

This time, you don’t look back.

Aaannd scene XOXO ~

#oneshots #scenarios #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #azriel shadowsinger #azriel x reader #azriel angst #azriel fanfic #lucien vanserra #lucien x reader #azriel x you #request #reqs open #angstmas #azriel acotar #azriel spymaster

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