#i told misty i was gonna sit down and write a fic about this and ended up analyzing oodles of phanspiracy evidence instead so here you go | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 4 years

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What’s yours is mine 1

Warnings: nonconsent and rape, allusions to abuse, stalking, possessiveness, pregnancy, and more tags to be added.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Pairing: dark!Ransom Drysdale x pregnant!Reader

Summary: After five years, your past is far behind you but just as you think you can live your happily ever after, your ex shows up at the worst moment.

Note: I couldn’t sleep and ended up writing this and it will not be a long ongoing series but it will be a few parts. But Roo you say that all the time. Yes, well, I’m trying and I’m sorry but I’m gonna try to not be the worst.

Hope you enjoy it. Thank you. Love you guys!

Please leave some feedback, like and reblog <3

“Oh my god, is that really you?” the voice made you stand stalk straight.

You took a breath and forced a smile before you turned to the indomitable woman. You never expected to see Linda again, not after you broke up with her son almost five years ago. And there she was, as rigid and righteous as ever, her thin lips curved in a mocking grin.

“Linda,” you greeted her in a singsong and looked around the grocery store. You never went to the overpriced organic market but your local shop didn’t have dragonfruit and you had a painful craving, “how are you?”

“Darling, I’m just great,” she held an empty basket on her arm, an odd sight as you never expected her to do her own shopping, “oh, and look at you!” Before you knew it, her hand was on your stomach and you struggled not shy away, “how far are you?”

“Um,” you looked down at the large ring on her finger and resisted the urge to step away as you often did in this situation, “almost five months.”

“And married?” she grabbed your left hand and pretended to admire the small teardrop diamond, “gorgeous.”

“Mhmm,” you waited for you to release you and swayed in place, “you barely look a day older than the last time I saw you.”

“You’re well? You look well,” she primped her short hair at the compliment, “oh, a baby.” She reached out again and you sighed as she rubbed your stomach, “for luck.”

You tried not to frown and ended up laughing at the tension, “well, it was nice running into you.”

“Oh, you know, I barely come down here but we’re headed up to my father’s place, you remember, such a cozy house, and Joni is in charge of food and well, I wouldn’t trust her with a plastic spoon so of course, I have a back up plan.”

You nodded along with her awkwardly, frozen in the spot as the dragon fruit barely seemed worth the torture. Linda was hard to please and alway derisive, but for as long as you were with Ransom, she had taken a keen shine to you. That alone came with an edge but it was rarely used to cut you.

You forced another laugh, “that sounds fun, getting away from the city.”

“Ugh, just another family gathering,” she waved it off with her free hand, “I’ll have to tell Ransom I ran into you, if he even shows up.”

“Well, I don’t think--”

“He’s grown up so much,” she interrupted, “you wouldn’t believe it. He got his own imprint in my father’s company publishing true crime. He’s really making a place for himself now.”

“That’s great,” you tried not to falter at the mention of her son. You hadn’t ended on the greatest terms and your relationship had been tumultuous and regrettable.

“I hope you have a great weekend, Linda,” you said, “but I got to--”

“Oh, not at all, I’m keeping you,” she squeezed your arm, “God, he was such an idiot to let you go.”

You nodded and swallowed through your tight throat, “I’m glad he’s doing better for himself.”

“You too,” she trilled, “oh, before I let you go, darling, is it a boy?”

You blinked and your smile wavered, “how did you know?”

“I could always tell,” she said, “so precious.”

She gave your stomach one last pat and disappeared into the produce section. You blinked as you looked down at the scaled fruit in your right hand. Chocolate, you needed chocolate.

You were rattled as you waited in the express line and put your things on the belt. You hadn’t thought of Ransom in a very long time. Not much. His shadow followed you around in those moments when your heart raced and your head spun, but you had learned to work through those fits. No one else knew what happened behind closed doors, they only knew Ransom, not Hugh.

You paid and shoved your fruit and candy into a paper bag. You headed out into the misty spring air. The rain had finally stopped and left the streets slick and shining. The sun was hazy as it clung to the last of the clouds and you inhaled the wet scent of grass and gravel.

You let your key hang from the ignition as you took a moment to gather yourself. You stared at the modest ring on your finger and held your stomach and you swore you could still feel Linda’s bony hand there.

You had a loving husband, Dez, and a son on the way. Ransom wasn’t a part of any of that and this was just a blip on radar, the aftershock of the storm that ended years before. You sniffed and turned the engine. You wouldn’t go back to that store, it was far too expensive and the clientele were certainly not of your ilk.

🍼

Dez was in the kitchen when you got home, the smell of steak and peppers rose from the frying pan. You kissed his cheek as he kept one hand on the spatula and you dropped your bag on the counter beside the stove. You went to the fridge and poured yourself a glass of water. You turned and leaned against the marble and drank deeply.

“So, hon, how was your day?” he asked as he put the spatula down and peeked in the bag, “hmm, odd pairing but I don’t hate it.”

“I had a craving,” you shrugged, “it was… okay,” you heaved, “what’s for dinner?”

“Steak fajitas,” he said, “I trimmed the fat for you and,” he turned and reached out to you, “and I got you some champagne… non-alcoholic, obviously.”

“You know it doesn’t have the same effects,” you kidded as you put your glass down and settled into his arms, “and well,” you looked down at your stomach, “we already got one drunken night growing.”

He laughed and bent to kiss you on the lips. He rocked you as the pan sizzled behind him. You closed your eyes and tensed as suddenly your head flashed with the memory of Ransom, of the way he’d kiss you, harder than Dez, and the way it always turned to more whether you wanted it or not.

“Hey,” Dez pulled back, “you okay?”

“Yeah,” you lied, “hormones.”

“Aw, hon, well I have the perfect dessert planned,” he purred.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhmm, strawberry massage oil,” he framed your face with his hand, “a nice long back rub…”

“Perfect,” you giggled, “why are you spoiling me?”

“Don’t I always?” he smirked.

“Hmm, rarely without reason,” you said.

“Well…” he voice trailed off and slowly he dropped his arms. He turned his back to you and grabbed the pan, stirring the contents with a shake, “I didn’t want you to miss me too bad.”

“Miss you?” you came forward and bent your arms over the counter, “where are you going?”

“Chicago, there’s some evidence down there we need to look at and they refuse to transfer it to our office so… bullshit confidentiality clause, but we need it.”

“How long?” your heart dropped.

“Well, I gotta leave in the morning but I told Gary I won’t stay longer than Monday.”

“And what did he say?”

“He laughed,” Dez shook his head, “I promise, I’ll do my best to be back as soon as I can--”

“No, I understand,” you said gloomily, “it’s just…” you cupped your chin and tapped your lips with your fingertips, “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too,” he said as he turned the burner off, “and this little guy,” he touched your stomach and you shivered as you remembered how Linda had done the same with her cold palm, “so, you choose a name yet?”

“Still not naming him Superman, babe,” you chided, “but no, I can’t make up my mind. God, it’s like my mind is in shambles, I can’t remember why I go in a room or even focus on one thing for more than two minutes before I’m distracted by what colour I want to paint the nursery and I can’t even decide on that because then I’m thinking about what kind of wood the crib should be--”

“It’s fine, you’re fine,” he assured as he opened the bag of tortillas, “you’re still there, you’re just… sharing a brain right now.”

“Wasn’t enough to go around in the first place,” you scoffed.

“Shh,” he arranged the plates carefully, like a five star restaurant, tortillas stacked, steak and veg together, a little dish of cheese, some sour cream, lettuce, salsa, all divvied out in a spectacular salsa you would only make a mess of.

“I thought the pregnancy would give me a chance to finish my book, but--”

“Well, you got maternity leave after that,” he said.

“From what? Sitting at my keyboard and crying? I’ll just be holding a baby and crying,” you sighed, “you said you’d take some time off.”

“I did say that and I will,” he grabbed the plates and nodded you out of the kitchen. He set the plates on the table and you sat as he went to grab two glasses and as many bottles. He poured you your spineless champagne and had a beer for himself, “I don’t want to miss anything.”

“You can’t take forever off,” you muttered, “we both know that. I could go back to copywriting and maybe--”

“Babe, that job made you miserable and you will finish your book,” he handed you a napkin, “I’ve read your stuff, it’s… you said your ex was in publishing?”

“Did I?”

“I thought you did, you never really… talk about the exes, which I love but, I think you said something about it. You don’t think he would--”

“No,” you snapped, “no,” you said softer, “he wouldn’t.”

“Sorry,” he said startled by your reaction, “I didn’t--”

“It’s nothing, I just-- exes, right?”

“It was a stupid suggestion,” he said, “I’m sorry, but… I have a client, he might have some contacts.”

“You don’t have to do that--”

“I don’t have to, I want to because the world deserves to hear your voice,” he insisted, “I hate to share you but I’d be selfish to keep you to myself.”

You smiled and unfolded a tortilla. Still, your heart raced as the second mention of Ransom that day had you on edge. Dez watched you build your fajita and you looked up at him.

“Well, since you’ll be in Chicago, maybe I’ll get a few pages done.”

🍼

The call came on Monday, Dez wouldn’t be home that night. You contented yourself to stay in with your laptop and sugar cookies. Still, you barely got a sentence done before you snapped your computer closed and gave up with a frustrated grunt. You slept, not well, and got up with some trouble as your hips ached.

A good morning text from Dez made you smile but there was still no promise of an impending return. You felt pent up in the apartment and lonely as its emptiness reminded you of your absent husband. Too tense to sit down and type, you opted to go for a walk, hoping it would calm your nerves.

You walked past the shop windows and stopped to peek in at used books and handmade candles. You had no destination in mind, only a restless step. There was a little store at the corner with locally made quilts and knitted sweaters. The smell of potpourri wafted out from beneath the painted door and made your throat tickle. Even so, your curiosity drew you inside.

A small woman greeted you from behind the desk. She held two needles as she crocheted some indistinguishable craft. You smiled and said hello as you headed down the centre aisle. You looked along the racks of quilts, floral, striped, plaid, and polka dot. You stopped at a bright yellow piece with honey bees along the border. You hadn’t thought of yellow for the nursery.

You felt the soft fabric and checked the tag. You lifted the quilt from the bar, content that it was worth it and a great motivator. You stopped before you could turn back, a familiar voice chilled your blood.

“It’s cute,” Ransom said as he stepped up next to you, “kinda girly for a boy though.”

You glanced over at him and folded the blanket over your arm. You backed up but as you turned he did too. He blocked your bath as he stretched his arm across the aisle.

“My mother told me you were expecting,” he said, “and she was right, you look good.”

“What do you want?” you whispered as you clutched the quilt.

“Nothing, just saying hello,” his mouth slanted.

“Hugh, I’m not stupid,” you hissed, “it’s been five years.”

“Hugh,” he repeated dully, “you remember your manners.”

“Leave me alone and let me past,” you tried to duck under his arm but he shifted his body over and backed you up to the end of the aisle.

“And married,” he taunted.

“He’s outside,” you lied, “if I stay too long--”

“I didn’t see him when you walked up,” he intoned, “he must be easy to miss.”

“Have you been following me?” you uttered.

“Only from the cafe,” he shrugged, “short walk.”

“Please, get away from me,” you quivered.

“I’m not doing anything--”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” you hissed, “now I will scream so move.”

“Mama Bear,” he crooned, “I love it, you’re so protective.”

“Hugh,” you warned.

“Sweetie,” he hummed.

You shoved his shoulder but he didn’t move. You hit him harder and he winced. He chuckled and stood straight. He waved his arm down the aisle and stepped aside.

“Don’t make a scene,” he said, “you always did like to be dramatic.”

“Fuck you,” you snarled, “don’t come near me again.”

“Don’t act like you don’t miss me,” he called after you as you dropped the quilt on the counter, “we were so good together.”

You left without buying, a shrill apology to the lady at the counter as you went as fast as you could out the door. The bell tinkled after you and the door clamored shut. You felt nauseous and dizzy. The last thing you wanted or needed was to ever see that man again.

#ransom drysdale #dark!ransom drysdale #dark ransom drysdale x reader #dark ransom drysdale #ransom drysdale x reader #fic #series #knives out #dark fic #dark!fic #what's yours is mine

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a-monsters-love · 4 years

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Hi!! I know this is super dramatic but I was wondering if you’d be willing to write some ✨angst✨ Maybe Todoroki, Hawks, Bakugo Midoriya (take your pick if that’s too many) reacting to their s/o taking a particularly bad hit for them? Enough to knock them out of a fight. If you needed an idea for a quirk, maybe a short burst teleportation quirk? Just an idea! Thanks for taking the time to read this! 🖤

Oh man, I love drama but let’s see if I know how to write angst, and I LOVE THAT QUIRK IDEA. I had a similar idea for a fic that’s been pinned until I get ✨inspiration✨ aND HERE WE ARE. Also thank you so much for the request and for being so polite 💛

The idea I had was inspired by Vanellope von Schweetz from Wreck-It-Ralph, like a glitch quirk. I’m gonna make the 1-A boys pro hero’s for this because it’s so much more work to do it while they’re still in school, I’m cutting Izuku cause I can’t see anything but crying or our feral child in the latest update and oh man it hurts too much.

These are a fraction shorter than I would’ve liked them to be however i wrote them on my phone so they looked longer lmao

——————

[Master List]

Todoroki Shoto:

Hours. It’s been hours since this fight had begun, or so it felt like. You were panting heavily, Shoto watched you stand your ground firmly. You took a deep meditative breath, you smiled softly at him and glitched. You appeared on a window ledge behind the steel villain and went in to distract him while Shoto went to work. He looked around and noticed you were cornering the villain where less civilians were around. The villain turned as if to attack you but made a quick action to attack Shoto off guard, you glitched towards your husband to stop the steel needles from impacting him. “(Y/N)!” He screamed, your hand was so close but the world went black.

Shoto watched as several thick steel needles pierced through your body, you smiled softly at him and you eyes closed before you hit the ground. Tears sizzled before they could run down his cheeks, he saw red and froze the villain quickly. He didn’t care about the repercussions, he didn’t care what would happen, all he wanted was for you to be alive at the end of the day.

He sat there with you in his arms as blood pooled around the two of you staining your respective uniforms. A medic removed you from his arms and he followed silently. He didn’t say anything in the ambulance, he didn’t say anything while you were in surgery, he didn’t say anything as you were transferred to a hospital room.

Days that passed turned into weeks before you opened your eyes, when you did you see his bi-colored hair as he slept snuggled into your arm leaned onto your hospital bed. You smiled softly and pet his hair with you opposing hand, a deep breath leaves you. Shoto stirs and rubs his eyes as he sits up, his left side lights aflame as his emotions run wild. “Hey.” You said, your voice was scratchy and muffled from the oxygen mask.

“Hey.” His voice shook as sat up, he clutched your hand in his and squeezed it lightly. “(Y/N)- I- you can’t…” His words hitched in his throat.

You sighed and smiled softly again, “I’m sorry, Sho.” Tears left your eyes, you couldn’t imagine how he must feel. “My body just-“ Moved on its own, you chuckled softly at the thought.

He chuckled getting the point of what you were going to say, he kissed your forehead softly. “Try not to do that again…” He nearly whispered the words, you could felt him shaking. You couldn’t promise you wouldn’t do it again, but you could promise to try.

Takami Keigo (Hawks):

You didn’t know how he could flirt while fighting, at first sure it was cute and sure you love him but, “Hawks! Is this really the time?” You tried not to hiss at him blushing in embarrassment and frustration.

He gave his award winning smile, “Of course, Angel! How else am I supposed to keep up morale?” You snorted at his comment and rolled your eyes.

“Focus, Birdy.” You jumped out of the way before colliding with cement being thrown at you. You glitched towards the villain before he could touch the ground again, as soon as you reformed in front of him your stomach felt hot. You coughed up blood and looked down. You materialized into the villains knife, looking back at your boyfriend a tear streamed down your cheek. “Focus…” Your voice was almost a whisper as your body fell towards the earth.

“DOVE!” His cry was almost a screech. Keigo’s eyes narrowed as he sent the last of his feathers towards you to soften your landing. “THAT’S ENOUGH.” He charged towards the villain but your words echoed in his mind ‘focus’. Hawks retrieved his longest feathers that now dripped with your blood, he saw red but kept hearing your words. He made quick work incapacitating the villain before rushing to find you. You’d already been taken into an ambulance and ushered off to the emergency room.

Keigo paced enough to wear a trench into the ground while you were in surgery. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as the surgery sign turned off. He was told to rest by a nurse but refused until he saw you.

You slept for a few days before waking up, when you did he was staring at you wide eyed. He was surprised to see you awake but gods was he relieved. He wore what one might consider pajamas, his sweatpants were pulled up to his knees, his shirt and sweater were disheveled. He had dark heavy bags under his eyes the indicated he wasn’t handling you being out very well. “Angel..” He spoke softly.

You smiled and winced painfully as you adjusted, Keigo stood quickly to help you adjust the lift in the bed. “Hey Birdy..” You coughed out, “You look like hell.”

He rubbed his face and snorted, “Dove. Is this really the time?” He was grateful you could make jokes even while on deaths doorsteps.

You smirked, “How else am I supposed to keep up the morale?” You teased, quoting his comment the day of the fight. You both chuckled softly before silent set in. “I’m sorry Kei, I should’ve been paying more attention.” Your hand grazed over your newest scar.

Keigo goes to say something with a smile but it quickly drops, he looks at his hands as they shake. “I… I don’t know what I would’ve done with out you…” He glances up at you with misty eyes. “Don’t scare me like that, (Y/N)…”

Guilt sets in your stomach as tears well in your own eyes, “I didn’t mean to-“ You reached out your arms and he climbed into the hospital bed beside you. You pet his hair until he fell asleep, you both knew this was part of being a hero but this was the last thing you wanted.

Bakugo Katsuki:

Just once, just once you’d like to have a normal date with your boyfriend. Sure, you’re both hero’s and sure, it’s not like villains had a schedule you could follow and plan around. Fuck, just once you’d love if King Murder Explosion himself would just let other hero’s handle things themselves.

You glitched around the street collecting and moving civilians, “Ground Zero, the western street is clear!” You shout up to him.

A smirk grows on his lips as he follows your lead, blasting the villain to the street you cleared. You start clearing the surrounding streets as you knew how your boyfriend was, blasty boi couldn’t avoid making a bigger mess than needed. “COME ON! SCARED?” He chided with the villain, edging him on.

The oversized criminal threw an empty car towards Katsuki who blasted it to the ground. Things being thrown and blasted back and fourth continued for a moment when you heard a cry for help. A child, you thought. You look back at the two fighting and glitched towards the sound, you teleported between rubble slowly finding your way to them. “Hey… it’s gonna be alright.” You said in a hushed toned as you found their little hand, glitching them into your arms. “Hey- Hi kiddo, I’m here now.” You pet their hair as the sobbed silently, trekking back to safety.

You could only glitch one person at a time safely, the last thing you needed was to glitch a possibly injured child into having a seizure. “(Y/N)!” You heard Katsuki shout, “LOOK OUT!!” He howled, you looked back too slow and glitched the child to safety.

By the time your quirk confirmed they had materialized safely you were struck in the head with a large chunk on concrete. Everything was dizzying and then black, “Suki..” You mumbled as you hit the ground.

The next explosion was loud, aggressive. Katsuki hadn’t seen that much rage since high school. After everything that happened and then meeting you, you the woman he wanted to marry, gods he saw red. He debilitated the villain in a series of large blasts, bellowing for medics who arrived at the scene. He screamed at them to hurry up and help you, screamed until he was sure it was burned in their brains before fizzling.

The world had never seemed so silent, everything ached. Everything was dull and lifeless as he waited for you to wake up. They claimed you’d be fine, Recovery Girl had come to see you. Now was just a waiting game, Katauki’s patience was thin but he’d wait for you for the rest of his life.

You woke that evening to quiet bickering, you can hear Katsuki on the phone. You assumed it was Kirishima, you smirked thinking about how much your boyfriend has calmed down in the passed years. “No, I couldn’t ask her! You really think I had the time? We’re in the fuCKING HOSPITAL!” He hissed.

You hummed, “..Suki?” You ask, he disconnects the line as soon as he heard your voice and walks over to your bed.

“Why didn’t you teleport to safety?” He jeered.

You sigh and look at the ceiling, “I had a child with me, I couldn’t.” You rubbed your eyes and looked at him. His gaze softened and he sat down.

He sighed and pressed his face into both of his palms, “Today was supposed to be fucking special, I always fuck this shit up.” You hummed in curiosity, a blush crept up his ears.

“Everyday is special with you, Suki. Stop being so hard on yourself.” You chuckle softly.

He looks up and rests his chin on one of his hands, the other reaches into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small velvety box, “That’s not what I meant...” He huffed and handed you the box.

You sat up awkwardly and took the box, opening it to see a ring set. It was simple but it fit the two of you, tears bubbles up in your eyes. “Katsuki-“ Your voice hitched in your throat and he slouched back in his seat while ruffling his hair. “Of course, oh my god-“ The two of you chuckled and you reached out for him to come closer, you pressed your lips to his for a chaste kiss. “So, who’s idea was it to make you do all the extra frivolousness?” You snort at him and he shot up.

He growled slightly ruffling his hair aggressively, “I KNEW YOU DIDN’T NEED ALL THAT SHIT.” You burst into laughter and groaned at the ache in your head, maybe you could get a day from him to go on a date.

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mego42 · 3 years

Text

fav lines tag

RULES: share your favorite sentence/paragraph from each one of your fics and tag 6 other fic writers to do it too :)

tagged by the talented brilliant incredible @foxmagpie (💖)

tagging: @pynkhues @hypermania @bethsuglywigs @riosnecktattoo @missmaxime @sothischickshe @joeyjoeylee

some ground rules: I’m only doing brio fic bc at some point when I wasn’t paying attention I wrote a metric fuckton of it and we’re already gonna be here all day bc my other ground rule is I’m allowed to interpret the concept of a line however i want. i’m also gonna tell you why i picked them bc no one can stop me. cool? cool. good talk.

your monster looks like mine

okay so my first choice for fav would be the entire ~conversation around whether or not beth had a choice when she set rio up bc oooof I just love how that came out so! much! BUT if I’m limiting myself to something closer to a line, I’m going with this one. i love what it establishes for rio’s emotional state when it comes to beth, i love how it captures their push/pull constant one upping battle, I love the rhythm of the flow of it and the grandiose verbiage (i was having a frankly unreasonable amount of fun with natural phenomena imagery throughout the whole fic and this captures a bit of it). idk I just think it’s neat.

The words rip through him, a bright, blazing comet trail whipped across his sky, illuminatin’ his landscape, impossible to ignore.

Elizabeth’s spread out on the bed below him, golden hair tumblin’ around her face, mouth red and swollen, lookin’ up at him like she’s got him. Like she’s figured some shit out. Like she fuckin’ did something by putting that together.

Like Rio doesn’t fuckin’ know. Like that doesn’t fuckin’ haunt him, torment him, mock him every time she pulls some of her bullshit and he’s left picking up the pieces, knowin’ damn well what the right answer is but also knowin’ he’s always gonna be wrong when it comes to her.

a song inside the halls of the dark

another one where I’d pick a whole scene if I could BUT if the whole opening flashback isn’t on the table (idk I love it for 14,000 reasons including how it sets up the bookend structure for the chapter, how it sets up a bunch of the final payoffs, the tone of it, idk everything about it came out exactly how I wanted it to and I really love how it tees up the ending), then I’m going with this bit from the final brio scene. it ties back in a whole bunch of threads that have been woven in and out all the way back to the first chapter and closes them out in a way that also feels (to me) like a beginning which I love bc the whole theme of the chapter is it’s a beginning, not the end.

What does it mean then, that he’s slept so soundly beside her?

The playhouse glows softly. She wonders how many more times she can get away with sanding it before it weakens past the point of supporting the kids’ weight and the whole thing collapses.

Behind it, she can see the long shadow it casts reaching for the boxwoods bordering the yard. The lines of the structure frame windows of bright moonlight on the grass, eerily reminiscent of the windows that loomed large in the nightmares Beth abruptly realizes she hasn’t had in weeks. Not since that last night at Rio’s loft. And that’d been the last one since...his car. Canada. The night all of this started.

Beth blinks. What does it mean that she’s slept so soundly beside him?

A-live, alive, alive, I—

Her breath catches.

—

pills’n’potions

I don’t have any grand reasoning for why I picked this bit from the 4th (i think?) ~ch as my fav, I just really like writing annie and rio interacting and I especially love writing them with annie like, intellectually aware that she should probably be afraid of him but also spiritually incapable of not being herself and rio being wildly annoyed by it

"What?" He asks, giving the t an edge sharp enough to cut.

There's a pause. "What like you didn't hear me, or what like what do I want?"

[...]

"Hello?"

Now the sister sounds like she's getting annoyed, and Rio's really gotta do somethin' about the two of them runnin' 'round actin' like he's someone they can get away with not takin' seriously. Like he's some sort of pet. Defanged. Declawed. Fuckin' neutered.

"Get to the point."

"I mean, I kind of did in the message."

—

trade my heart for honey

the only thing sexier than rio being good at pool is beth being a fucking shark and rio being out of control turned on by it.

Dropping all pretense at being less than she is, Beth grabs the cue ball, positioning it slightly to the left of center where the felt is slightly more worn. Even without the tell, she's seen Rio put it there enough times to know it's the table's sweet spot. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Rio shift his weight before she tunes him out entirely, drawing the stick back and letting it fly.

It's as close to a perfect break as she's probably ever managed. The cue ball connects dead on, scattering the rest far and wide. The one and the six drop neatly into pockets, the four and five coming to a stop right on the edge of the left side and far left corner, nearly closing off that whole side of the table.

Every stripe remains in play.

"Solids," she says, not letting herself dwell on the way Rio's mouth hangs slightly open, his eyes glazed over.

—

swaying evergreens

the whole theme of this fic is the terrifying intimacy and vulnerability of sharing your most precious moments and memories with someone you care about and I like how this touches on that along with sort of nutshelling the double edged sword of grief-tinted memory which is another major theme

There's somethin' extra about these unguarded moments. That Elizabeth trusts Rio enough to drop her guard completely and give him this completely unvarnished look at her. It's been over a year since he's been back in her bed, since the first time he'd slept here, but there's still somethin' tentative about it. Like there's a part of him that's never going to be all the way over the first time he'd been here, that can't fully believe how far they've come, that this isn't going to crumble, melt, drain away.

Truthfully, Rio doesn't mind it, that faint edge. He's well acquainted with the different flavors of loss, and the threat of it's a counterpoint that keeps him sharp. Lets him know this is real but not somethin' he'll take for granted.

—

swear on a silver knife

there were a couple of sexy tension bits that made for strong contenders but ultimately this won bc I’m obsessed with how this reference to 306 came out.

“I told you. I got my own debts to pay.” He bit off the words like it cost him something to repeat them.

Beth shivered, abruptly right back at that picnic table, cheeks wet and staring at him, searching for any hint of the man she’d—she’d—anyone besides the cold, unfeeling stranger sitting beside her, blood so fresh on his hands she could nearly smell it underneath the scent of the cold, misty night rain falling around them, blurring her eyes, beading in her hair and on his eyelashes.

—

listening through the air shaft

this was a really hard one to narrow down but I ultimately went with this but bc I love it for a culminating look at how beth and rio’s relationship has evolved throughout the fic and also bc a version of this scene was the first thing I wrote for the whole fic so it was fun to finally get there with everything in place behind it. I also just love it as a reference for the dichotomy of both beth and rio and also how complicated that is makes being around them for everyone else

They aren't even doing anything, just quietly working side by side, but there's a synchronicity to their movements, a quiet peace that makes Dean feel more like an intruder than anything else that's happened today, and he hates it.

It’s so far from the guy that’d broken into his home, beaten him up. Who’d looked at him with those terrifying, blank, shark eyes before casually shooting him in the chest like it was nothing right where they’re about to sit down and share a meal.

A guy, Dean suddenly realizes, he hasn’t seen any hint of in a long, long time. It’s not that he doesn’t think that part of him isn’t there, it’s just...it’s weird, is all, how completely he puts it away.

It reminds Dean of Beth, actually, now that he’s thinking about it.

God. They look so...so domestic. Sweet. Disarming in a way that completely undermines everything Dean thought he'd known about the guy and their whole...thing.

He just—he doesn't get it, what Beth sees in him.

—

now use both hands

idk I just like this bit let me live

"What are you—what service?"

He makes himself take the route through the showroom that brings him right past her, leaning in and softly brushing a lock of hair out of her face for the first time in longer than he can remember.

Her eyes flutter shut, and he feels absolutely nothing.

"Helping sad, lonely housewives get off once their husbands are done with them."

Her eyes snap open, and he makes himself look at her long enough to watch the hit land and the hurt bloom.

He's empty, untouchable, she's nothing to him.

Rio doesn't look back.

—

I'd give her a HA! And a HI-YA!

you can take my made up backstory for rio and mick from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Mick had been there the first time Rio'd had to get his hands all the way dirty and had kept an eye on him when he'd gotten blackout drunk after, and Rio'd done the same for him. Every bloody, grimy step Rio'd climbed, Mick had been right there with him, watching his back all the way to the top.

The point is Rio's Mick's brother in every way that counts.

Mick'd seen him twisted up over business and twisted up over personal shit, but he's never seen him let both get twisted up like he had since that fuckin' weasel Boomer'd got his ass handed to him and Rio'd gotten curious about it.

—

as the world turns, the blunt burns

I pull this every time I have to pick a fav and I can’t even really explain it aside from I think I’m really, really funny and that’s enough

Beth suddenly sobers as much as she can when she feels like she's simultaneously floating away and sinking into the Earth and wipes her eyes. "Are you gonna get in trouble?"

"You're in the house, ain't you?" He's answering Beth but looking at Rio.

"Mick," Beth frantically tugs at his pant leg because apparently, he doesn't have all of the information. "We're in the yard."

"Yeah, Mick," Rio says, glaring. "You're in the yard."

Mick shrugs, and Beth realizes he isn't scared of Rio at all. That's a neat trick. How does he do that? Maybe he can teach her.

—

smoke, fire, it’s all going up

there are realistically many other better lines in this fic but this one never fails to make me laugh so it remains my fav.

"You- you-" She sputters at him, flailing around a little. "You were the one that started mailing me pieces of a dead body."

"You blocked my number." Rio snarls, which is not what he'd meant to say, and he hates that she trips him up.

"That is not a proportionate response!"

—

got a kiss (with your name on it)

it was this or the text exchange at the beginning of the fic bc I strongly believe established relationship brio would continually roast each other for their past dumbassery but the elizabeth kink won out

"Come here," Rio's voice is thick but insistent in a way that brings every cell of Beth's body to attention. She hooks her thumb over her bottom teeth and drags her lower lip a little, a gesture full of who me mock innocence, waiting for him to say-

"Elizabeth." There it is.

There's an endless amount of things that Beth finds ferociously, irresistibly sexy about Rio, but when he says her full name in that commanding tone? Even if she's pissed the fuck off and has no intention of doing what he wants, it gives her goosebumps.

—

say it’s all in my head (i remember what you said)

I will be real with y’all, I forget I wrote this fic a lot of the time hahahaha but! that means every time I’m reminded I go back and am like oh yeah! I like this! anyway there isn’t like, one specific but I really love most as much as I really like the tentative breathless nervousness and then also overwhelming so muchness and I like how this but captures both of those

For a single, breathless moment, she stands in the middle of the room, alone and terrified.

Then Rio wets his lips and comes towards her, moving with that languid grace she's never been able to look away from even before she had any idea why that could be.

All of the fear collapses like a dying star, sending a supernova of relief and molten heat zinging through her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Her head swims, and every cell in her body feels like it's leaning towards him- like she's made of magnets on a molecular level and he's the lodestone.

He gently pushes her bangs off of her forehead, slowly running his fingertip down the side of her face, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. He tilts his head towards hers and stops, going no further than halfway, leaving it up to her to close the distance.

She lets her eyes fall shut as she leans into him and tentatively touches her mouth to his for the first time.

—

the world is on fire (and no one can save me) / what a wicked game you played (to make me feel this way)

two for one!!! idk if either of these is my number one favorite line from either fic individually but I really like how they both play together. I like writing beth and rio pov and having them mirror each other’s narration both in thought and structure a lot bc I like thinking of them as two versions of the same

Beth checks her phone, nothing from Rhea, and sends a quick I'm here, text me when you're close, and I'll grab a table before wetting a paper towel and wiping away the last of her smeared mascara. With precise, brisk movements, she snaps open her bag and fishes out her compact, her lipstick, and her mascara; lining them up click, click, click on the tiny shelf below the mirror.

She can live with this; she has to live like this; she will live like this.

She flips open the compact and methodically dabs away the flush and pallor and shadows that are not grief, are not loss, are not anything other than shock and horror that she'd gone so far, that she'd lost control, that she'd killed a man (that man).

and

So what the fuck had he been doin' with Elizabeth fuckin' Boland, giving her chance after chance to cross the line? What the fuck was the point of a line if it might as well not be there at all? All because he liked her big blue eyes and the way she worked a tight sweater? Nah, that ain't him. That can't be him. That's the kind of shit that'll get you killed, and he's got three spent bullets in his pocket and a scar next to his heart if he ever needs the reminder again.

He shifts in the driver's seat, reaching into his pocket and fishing the bullets out. Lining them up on the dashboard with a definitive click, click, click. He looks past them to the brightly lit valet station. He's been parked in the back of the lot for ten minutes now, waiting for Rhea to give him the go sign. He ain't hiding, doesn't need to, Elizabeth ain't lookin' for him, he just wants to make sure he sees her before she sees him. Get a good look first, so he can size up the situation.

#good lord when did i write so much fic?????????#imagine if i hadn't onlly stuck w/ ch 12 of song #it would've taken me weeks to do this #tag games #my fic #shut up meg #gg related

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phantom-curve · 4 years

Text

find the strength, find the melody pt. 7

lmfao I love how I posted an update 2 days ago like “this fic will have sporadic posts! idk when they’re coming!” and then I spent the last two days writing this. when that insomnia inspiration hits ya gotta just go with it!

this chapter went in a completely different direction than I had planned on soooo yeah...honestly not sure where this is gonna end up! the characters from my OC novel that I’m loosely basing this story around didn’t have a connection before they ran into each other so when Julie gave me this I almost cut it because I genuinely wasn’t sure where it was going. I think I’ve almost figured it out and I’m pretty sure I know how this will end. and now we all get to laugh at me together because it’s definitely gonna be more than 3-4 chapters. it might even be more than 6. Luke’s POV will have roughly the same amount of chapters I think, possibly longer because boy oh boy does he have A LOT to say (most of it about Julie). fair warning: this one has an awkward cut off because of the way I need to set up the next chapter. sorry about that.

and now something I probably should be embarrassed to admit: I don’t remember writing the part where I managed to sneak an “I’ve Got The Music” reference in so now we know for sure this show has infiltrated my brain. it’s fine, I’m fine, at least I WILL BE WHEN WE GET A S2!!!! KENNY!!!! SAVE ME HERE!!! MAKE MY UNHINGED OBSESSIONS WORTH IT!!!!!

taglist: @blue-hat-girl, @lwhoscribbles, @bluefyoto94, @5sosmukefan, @moonlightxnder, @leahthewonder, @kat-maybe-not, @lukewearingbeanies, @imastrugglingartist

It was no small miracle that Julie made it through the afternoon without Ray asking for details about her supposed ‘plan’ to play with the Sunset Curve boys. She didn’t think she would have been able to pull off spinning a story quite as well as Luke had earlier. She had expected at least a small amount of interrogating about when she had started playing again, but apparently the news that she was playing at all, let alone with other people in front of an audience, was enough for Ray to ignore all of the other plot holes involved in this scheme. He seemed to have almost forgotten the meeting with Principal Lessa entirely, humming on the drive home, kissing her forehead and turning her loose to freak out alone in her room while he sat down to work on his computer in the dining room. Julie took full advantage of the time alone to restlessly pace her room and send Flynn a 911 text. Her bestie’s contact photo lit up the phone screen 30 seconds later.

“Okay, I’m hiding in the basement girl’s bathroom, so you’ve got exactly 5 minutes before I get too grossed out to stay here.”

Julie’s chest loosened at the sound of Flynn’s comforting voice. There wasn’t anyone else in the world that loved her the way Flynn did. It was reassuring and made it easy for Julie to let loose.

“Lessa told Dad about the music program and then You-Know-Who ambushed us outside of her office and basically forced me to agree to perform with them.”

“Voldemort was at Los Feliz?!”

Flynn’s gasp was overflowing with sarcasm.

“Flynn!” Julie whined. “Be serious! Luke showed up out of nowhere again! And he did the thing again! The charming his way into getting what he wants thing! And now I have to play with his freaking band! What the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was silence for a moment. When Flynn spoke again her voice was softer, more serious.

“You don’t have to play with them, Jules. You can tell them no, and they’ll have no choice but to respect that. The only person who can make you do anything is you. But...I kinda think you might want to play with them.”

“What?! No!”

Julie’s exclamation was a second late. Flynn didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Julie sighed.

“Okay fine. There’s something about Luke that makes me want to play again. Are you happy? He gave mom’s song back to me when I thought it was lost forever. He’s the only person who’s heard me perform it, and he...no one else has ever made me feel that good about my music before.”

Julie thanked her lucky stars Flynn wasn’t in the room to see her blush. There was a long moment of contemplative silence on the other end of the line. When she spoke again, there was that extra note of take-no-shit in Flynn’s voice that made Julie sit up and really listen.

“I think you should give it a chance. Who knows, maybe this is some sort of sign from your mom. You said it was a miracle he would have even found that song in the first place. You said it felt like she was there with you when you were playing. Maybe she made sure it would find its way back to you when you were ready for it.”

Julie didn’t say anything, just worried her bottom lip with her teeth. Her heart beat a little faster in her chest. It had felt a little too perfect to be just a coincidence. The way Luke kept appearing in her life at the exact moments she needed him someone or something to help her keep moving forward. Flynn sighed.

“Look, I’m not saying it is your mom. But I’m not saying there’s not some kind of greater power out there that keeps pushing the two of you together. I think you should give it a chance. If nothing else, you can get back in the music program and we can bring Double Trouble to life in time for our Junior Showcase!”

Julie couldn’t help laughing. Her eyes felt misty, love for her best friend welling up in her heart.

“I never agreed to that name you know. But thanks, Flynn. I’ll think about it.”

“Good. Now. I gotta get the fuck out of this grimy ass bathroom. Love you, bye!”

Flynn waited for her to return the sentiment before hanging up. Julie flopped back on her bed, letting her breath out in a loud whoosh as she hit the comforter. A glance at her phone told her she only had a couple hours until Luke and the other boys would be out of school and on their way to her house. She tried her best to ignore the way that thought made her stomach roll with a type of nervousness she would rather not name. It was easier to blame it on nerves over playing with new people rather than nerves over playing with Luke. Except...now that she actually thought about it, she had played with Luke before. Her head spun, eyes fluttering shut as she remembered the one music class she had shared with Luke last year.

She had only been a freshman, stuck in a lowly Introduction to Composition class. It was supposed to be for new songwriters. Julie had a little more experience than the rest of the class, after all she’d been kind of composing with her mom for a few years now, so when it had been time to write a duet for their final big project she had gotten paired up with the classmate whose skill level most matched hers. It was supposed to be a way for them to challenge each other and grow as writers instead of one person doing most of the work. Julie had been paired with Luke.

He’d been a grumbly sophomore, held back for failing his last semester of Intro to Comp the year before. He had been stuck there only for the second semester, forced to double up between their class and his second year Composition class. Julie hadn’t been all that excited about partnering with him. He hadn’t really seemed to care about the class at all, and even though Julie also sometimes felt like it was holding her back a little bit, she never once voiced that thought. It was a privileged mindset, and Julie was well aware that she had an advantage over her classmates since her mother was a professional songwriter. Luke, on the other hand, had made it well known that he felt like he was wasting his time just waiting to get through the semester so he could move up to the Advanced Composition class that he felt he truly belonged in. Julie could usually do no more than roll her eyes in those moments.

It was true that Luke was talented. His guitar playing was impressive, his lyrics were heartfelt and sometimes even downright poetic. Julie just didn’t think anyone deserved specific things in life because they happened to be naturally talented at something. Their songwriting experience had been...interesting to say the least. And short. It had ended abruptly when Julie’s mother had died 5 days later. In the end, they’d only worked together for two 40-minute class periods before she had been lost in the fog of grief that consumed her in the weeks following the loss of her mom.

Julie shot up in bed, eyes wide. She didn’t even fully remember what had happened with the half-finished song they had been working on. Errant notes echoed in her head, like a song that had only existed in dreams until now. She absently wondered if Luke had held onto that as well. It was no wonder she had kept that particular memory suppressed all this time. That time in her life had been particularly painful. Luke had been gentle with her though. Almost all traces of his typical arrogance gone in the two short class periods they’d had to work together. He had kept things light, steering their songwriting in the direction of a rock ballad more than a true duet. Julie hadn’t minded. She had been floating through classes by then anyway, on edge every second she was away from her mom’s bedside. It had been easier to work on something that didn’t have as many sappy emotions attached to it.

She groaned, burying her face in her hands. No wonder Luke had been so sweet with her. He must have had a front row seat to her breakdown throughout the last year. She hadn’t even realized it. Had never before seen the way he watched her from a distance, checked in on her during class. She should have. Now that she was thinking about it, trying to identify every instance, she could name a million. How had she missed it for so long? How had he gone so long without saying anything? The Luke she remembered was terrible at keeping his mouth shut. He had always been ready to speak his mind, never afraid to start a discourse. It didn’t track that he had been holding himself back. Unless...it was more about her musical ability than anything else. She remembered now; Luke had been thrilled to partner with her for the duet. He had made some remark about how her sound was the perfect complement to his. Maybe he only cared about the ways they would mesh as songwriters. She could only hope that’s what his words had meant.

She felt more secure in her footing as a musician when it came to dealing with Luke than she ever had as a simple teenaged girl. If it was just about the music she could compartmentalize better, keep herself from getting too emotionally invested. Music had always been a safe zone, neutral. She breathed in and out deeply, remembering the technique Dr. Turner had taught her to slow her breathing and recenter her mind. She could do this. It was just about the music. They would play a song together, Julie would get back into the music program, and life would move forward much in the way it had before. Except Julie would actually participate in class this time. She had the music back in her soul, she wasn’t ever going to let it go again. On her next exhale, she heard the doorbell ring. Showtime. Julie zipped down the stairs, ripping open the door before her dad had a chance to get more than three feet away from his computer. Luke, Alex and Reggie all stumbled back a step as she tumbled outside, pulling the front door shut behind her. The three teenaged boys shared a look.

“Studio. Now.”

Julie raced down the path to her mom’s studio before they could react, not even waiting to see if they followed her. If they were smart, if they truly wanted to do this, they would. She hauled the garage doors open, only turning around when she had the piano at her back. The wood felt warm and solid, almost like she had her mom as a support behind her instead of an instrument. The boys appeared seconds later, Luke leading the way. He stopped a couple feet inside of the studio, studying her with wide open earnest eyes. She let out a deep breath. Reggie spoke up before she could get a word out.

“Woah, Julie, this studio is so cool! It’s like a tiny home! A musical tiny home in a botanical garden!!”

His green eyes were wide, expression awed as he spun to take in the space that Julie and her mom had spent countless hours turning into theirs.

“How did you get chairs on the ceiling?! Are you, like, a witch and a siren?!! Man, you and your mom must have made some serious magic in here.”

Luke’s arm shot out faster than lightening to backhand Reggie’s bicep. Reggie cringed away, a soft owww! just barely audible over the loud sigh Alex let out as he buried his face in his hands. Reggie shrugged, looking back and forth between his bandmates before giving Julie a confused yet apologetic glance. What had he said wrong this time? The giggle that bubbled out of her was as unexpected as it was welcomed. Warmth blazed in her heart, memories of the time she had spent in here with her mom washing over her with a kind of hazy bliss she hadn’t ever experienced before. She gazed at Reggie, letting that same feeling of motherly love from the night before fill her up. It was all she could do not to react to Luke’s jaw dropping when she gave Reggie a soft smile.

“We did. We made so much magic in here.”

The words were gentle and filled with a kind of genuine love that overshadowed all other feelings of awkward nervousness. Alex and Luke relaxed instantly, Reggie’s face losing all traces of uncertainty as he beamed at her with a smile so large it almost looked painful. Julie couldn’t help but let herself return it, just a little bit. The silence that settled between them was more comfortable, the tense moment from earlier broken. Julie studied the boys in front of her. She hadn’t ever thought of them as friends per se. They knew each other, would say hi if they encountered one another outside the walls of the high school, but at the same time, they didn’t actually know each other. Julie’s little run in with Luke the night before had made that painfully obvious. She wasn’t really sure what to make of them.

“Are you guys actually serious about this whole Showcase scheme? Did Luke even tell you about his dumb plan?”

“Hey! That plan is genius. Even your dad agreed. He seems pretty cool.”

Julie couldn’t help the fond way she rolled her eyes. Alex was quick to reassure her that they did, in fact, know about the plan.

“Not that I actually think it’s a particularly well thought out plan.” He stated with a lingering glare at Luke’s back.

The planner in question did his best to ignore the skeptical look on Julie’s face.

“Julie, you really don’t deserve to be out of the music program.” Reggie’s voice was soft and sincere. “You have the voice of an angel. If we can help convinced Ms. Harrison and Principal Lessa to give you your spot back it will be so worth it. And even if we don’t, it’ll be worth the looks on their faces when we rock the pants off that crowd!”

Julie laughed in spite of herself, slightly reassured even as she chewed nervously on her lip. Luke took a few bouncy steps forward, pulling her attention to him completely. His eyes locked on hers and she was sure she was drowning, throat tightening at the look he was giving her.

“You got this. I wouldn’t have come up with this idea if I didn’t believe it 100%.”

Honestly, that was what scared her the most about it.

“We don’t even have anything prepared.”

Her voice was barely a whisper, unsteady and wavering. Luke took a few more steps towards her, Reggie and Alex ghosting along silently a few feet behind him. Julie didn’t even notice, so laser focused on the brunette boy in the cut-up tank top in front of her. She watched his muscles flex as he reached into his back pocket, flicking out a piece of folded up paper in a move scarily reminiscent of when he had given her mom’s song back to her. He bit his lip, head ducking a little to be closer to hers as he unfolded the worn sheets of scrappy notebook paper. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, focusing on the messy handwriting in front of her.

“I thought you would say that.”

The smile on his face was so soft and sweet it should have been illegal.

“It’s called ‘Bright’. It’s a Sunset Curve song that we never performed because it’s missing something. Look,” his bare shoulder brushed hers as he shifted to point at the notes, warmth seeping through the thin material of her t-shirt, “it’s perfect for your range. I was thinking, if we add a little bit of piano here and here,” fire blazed a path up her arm as his fingers traced along the opening notes and chorus, forearm flexing against her own, bare skin brushing in teasing licks, “it’ll be perfect.”

Julie forced herself to focus on what he was saying, eyes roving across the paper. She hummed a little under her breath, hearing what he described in her head. His eyes lit up when he saw her get it, feet springing up and down as he dipped even closer towards her and started to sing.

We will rise, through the night

You and I

We will fight to shine together

Bright forever

His voice vibrated in her chest, the sound filling her with an emotion she couldn’t fully identify. Alex and Reggie bobbed along behind him, Reggie’s fingers plucking out the baseline on an invisible guitar while Alex nodded along to an unseen beat. Julie could envision the way the song would sound with a complete band, could practically see herself fitting seamlessly into the mix with her piano and vocals. She couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips as she joined in, reading the lyrics off of the page.

And rise through the night,

You and I

We will fight to shine together

“Go up high.”

Luke cut in, fingers twirling towards the ceiling. Julie automatically made the adjustment in notes to harmonize her voice with his for the last line, holding the final syllable for a beat longer than him.

Bright forever

“Yes!”

Luke’s arm pumped up and down, bicep flexing and distracting Julie momentarily. She dropped her head shyly, trying to hide her blush. When her cheeks cooled a moment later she looked back up at the boy in front of her. His eyes were glowing, smile stretched a mile wide as he stared at her. Unconditional belief in her was practically oozing from his pores. She felt her face soften as their eyes locked, giving him her own sweet smile that was meant just for the two of them. She thanked him with a gentle murmur, heart melting as he simply bit his lower lip and nodded.

A throat cleared in the background, and Julie was snapped out of their private bubble by the sound. Her entire face felt engulfed in flames as she looked over Luke’s shoulder to see Alex and Reggie still standing a few paces behind him. Reggie’s face was bright, his sunshine temperament back in full force. Alex was a little more guarded, but he was giving her an encouraging smile and there was cautious optimism swimming in his sage green eyes as he fiddled with one of his drumsticks. She inhaled deeply and let her breath out in one smooth exhale. The same sort of peacefulness from the night before settled over her.

“Okay. Okay, so we’re doing this.”

Luke’s whoop was so loud both her and Alex jumped. Reggie raced forward with a cheer to sling one arm around Luke’s shoulders and the other around Julie’s, pulling them so close to his chest that their noses nearly touched. Julie saw the blush staining Luke’s cheeks and felt her own warm to match. Alex coughed again.

“Reg, c’mon. Let it settle for just a sec before you go all human octopus on the poor girl.”

“Oh, right! Sorry, Jules!!”

Reggie released both of them quickly. Julie flicked her gaze between the three boys, enjoying the glimpses at their band dynamic. Alex’s words had sounded a bit exasperated, but there was a fondness running through them as well. He gave a half-hearted roll of his eyes at Reggie’s abrupt movements and reached his own long arm out to pull the dark-haired boy close.

“Help me unload the van? I still don’t trust our little Lukey boy with my kit.”

“Hey! That was one time!”

Luke sounded downright offended. The dark look Alex leveled at him in response had Julie choking back a laugh with a badly disguised cough. Clearly once of whatever he did was enough. Luke pouted, arms flexing as they crossed over his chest.

“You put your foot through my bass drum, and you think that isn’t reason enough not to trust you with it ever again?”

Luke sputtered, eyes flicking to Julie and back to Alex as his ears reddened.

“I told you I didn’t see it!”

“It’s the biggest part of the kit, dumbass. Literally the hardest thing to miss.”

Alex’s voice was as unimpressed as it was dismissive. Luke threw his hands in the air as the other boys headed out of the studio, laughing amongst themselves. It was clear this was a regular argument between the two, no heat or anger left in it, only a loving sort of tease. Like the way Carlos still brought up that time she accidentally gave him a concussion double-bouncing him off of their neighbor’s trampoline when he wanted something from her. Or the way her Tía would still laugh as she remembered the time her mom had almost gotten them both arrested for a bar fight on her 21st birthday, Ray affectionately filling in the parts that she tried to leave out. Warmth bloomed in her chest. This wasn’t just a band, wasn’t just a ragtag trio of friends. These guys were brothers. This was a family. And they were letting her into that intimate circle.

The thought was both humbling and nerve-wracking. This Showcase was a big deal. It wasn’t just some school assignment. This could impact their future as a band career-wise. They were all trusting her with this, fully believing in her, or at least, fully believing in Luke’s faith in her abilities. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever believed in her like that. Not anyone that hadn’t known her since she was in diapers. Her head swam, knees feeling a bit weak. She stumbled her way over to the couch, collapsing onto it with a barely audible huff. Luke was in front of her instantly, crouched down so they were face to face. His hands twitched in his lap, but he didn’t reach for her.

“Hey. Julie. Breathe.”

She sucked in a breath, zeroing in on nothing more than his face. After a few seconds she realized he was breathing in and out slowly, just loud enough for her to hear over the jumble of thoughts running amok in her brain. She matched her own inhales and exhales to his, the room slowly coming back into focus as her head cleared. He gave her one of those soft smiles she was starting to think of as hers.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. But I wouldn’t have stopped you in school if I didn’t think you were gonna rock it. I heard you last night. I listened to you for years before last night.”

His chin dropped in embarrassment for just a second before he pulled his gaze back up to hers. Julie felt like she was on the edge of a cliff. Not for the first time she wished she knew how long this version of Luke had been lurking under the surface. It took everything in her not to let herself step off that ledge and fall.

“Music is in your soul. It’s a part of you. Not everyone is like that, but you are. Your life without music...”

He tapered off like the thought was physically painful to him, eyebrows furrowing in a slight wince.

“Living without music would be like living in a world without stars: dark and empty and uninspired. You deserve galaxies, Julie. You deserve the chance to shine exactly like the star you are, and the world deserves the chance to hear you. Please, just...have a little faith?”

She saw it then. As he gazed at her with those bottomless ocean eyes, with that special smile on his lips and sincerity bleeding through every word, she knew. Luke was like her. Luke got it. In a way that no one else except her mom ever had. That’s what this was. They were kindred spirits, two sides of the same coin. And that feeling? The wind rushing through her hair and stealing her breath away while her limbs all turned to jelly feeling? That was definitely her falling head over heels off of the cliff and into Luke Patterson completely.

“Okay.”

She breathed out, and his answering smile set off the butterflies she thought had finally left her stomach. He stood up and held a hand out to her, easily pulling her to her feet in one smooth movement.

“You know,” his smile turned rueful, “eventually you’re gonna have to answer one of my questions with something other than ‘okay’. That’s a pretty passive word, and I’m not really a passive type of person. I wanna start hearing some ‘hell yeah’s and ‘awesome’s pretty soon.”

Julie rolled her eyes, moving away from Luke to set up her keyboard. He gave her a bouncy little shrug of his shoulders, and she let the levity of his joke wash over her, releasing the last bit of nerves. She could do this. Luke believed in her. Her mom believed in her. Hell, Alex and Reggie believed in her and she barely even knew them. She could do this, just like her mom had said.

Noise from the other boys making their way up the driveway had her rushing to pull both doors to the studio open so they could haul in Alex’s drum kit. The three of them left together to grab amps and guitars, Julie finishing the rest of the set up in the garage. Before she had time to overthink things or freak out again, they were all settled into their spots and Alex was counting down for their first run through. Fingers against the keys, Julie breathed out, opened her mouth, and began to play.

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sesamestreep · 4 years

Text

stack the deck with wild cards (chapter 1)

(read on AO3)

SUMMARY: The situation with Cassian is complicated even before Jyn finds out she's pregnant, but deciding to get an abortion should really be the last straw for him, right? If there was any chance he'd still want to date her, she thought it had to be long gone by now. And yet he always finds a way to surprise her. [AKA - The Obvious Child AU you didn't know you wanted]

A/N: I’m going to be posting chapters of this fic daily, since it’s already completed. I never write chapter fic, so I have no idea what I’m doing and please bear with me. Also, this fic (and the movie it gets its plot from) is about abortion, so if that’s not something you’re into reading about, you should really strongly consider not reading this. I promise you won’t hurt my feelings. For those interested, there’s additional notes if you follow the AO3 link above. If you want to blacklist any future updates of this fic on tumblr, I’ll tag it with [#stack the deck verse] for your convenience. Chapter 2 should be posted tomorrow. Stay golden.

The reality of the current situation doesn’t hit Jyn at the doctor’s office when she gets the news or even when she’s booking her follow-up appointment. It doesn’t sink in when they tell her how much it will cost or give her the information she’ll need or the prescriptions to fill. It doesn’t hit her when she’s on the subway, heading home and texting Bodhi with numb fingers to see if he wants to have a movie night, or even when his cheery reply—replete with emojis—comes through saying he can come over tonight.

No, the moment everything becomes real is when she’s standing in the wine aisle at Trader Joe’s, going back and forth on whether spending eight dollars on a bottle of wine so that she can drink all of it in one sitting is irresponsible when she’s pregnant but she’s also not keeping the baby. It’s only then that she starts crying.

She’ll blame it on the hormones if anyone asks, she decides, which might even be accurate. She’s not really a crier under normal circumstances, but even if she wasn’t pregnant, she’s pretty sure draining her savings account for a medical procedure that she wouldn’t need if she had just been a little more responsible with her body would make her cry no matter how tough she thinks she is. Lucky for her, though, she lives in New York City and no one bats an eye at a crying woman in the grocery store. An older woman with a toddler in the seat of her grocery cart passes by and nods in understanding without saying a word, which is oddly comforting.

It’s the reminder that she needs to be careful about her money that talks Jyn out of buying wine for this evening (Bodhi probably wouldn’t have any and she doesn’t need to drink an entire bottle by herself under any circumstances, let alone these, even if she really really wants to), but she goes on to throw whatever snacks she wants into the cart indiscriminately because it has been a spectacularly shitty day. She spends more than she should (what else is new?) and sweats profusely trying to drag all of it back to her sixth floor apartment. She slams cabinet doors in frustration as she puts everything away and then takes the longest, hottest shower her shitty pipes in her shitty apartment will allow. When she emerges, her skin is bright pink and she pokes her stomach viciously, somehow annoyed and confused and relieved all at the same time that it gives away nothing of her current condition.

She spends too long sitting in a towel on her bed, dicking around on her phone instead of getting ready and ultimately decides Bodhi doesn’t care what her hair looks like and so she runs a comb through it and calls it done. She puts on her softest, stretchiest leggings and an ugly sweater she raided from her dad’s closet when she was a teenager that she loves because it has been washed and worn so many times that the sleeves now have holes in them that she can stick her thumbs through. It’s easily the least glamorous look she could have come up with, but she’s pregnant and she’s mad about it, so she’s going for comfort over style.

By the time the buzzer goes off, signaling Bodhi’s arrival, Jyn has managed to light a few candles and put some of the snacks she bought into bowls, so at least it looks like she put effort into some part of the evening. She presses the button to let him up and fidgets as she waits to open the door. She has to tell Bodhi as a trial run for telling…well, everyone else, basically…but a part of her wants to tell no one, deal with it by herself and pretend nothing is wrong. Of course, that would be stupid—the doctor even told her not to try and handle this by herself—but it seems more appealing than the alternative at this particular moment. It’s not possible, though. She needs someone to come with her to the appointment, at the very least, and Bodhi will do it without hesitation, that much she’s sure of.

When she hears footsteps in the hallway, she undoes the locks and opens the door. She takes a deep breath that is immediately squeezed out of her when Bodhi wraps her in a big hug.

“It’s so good to see you,” he says, rocking her a little side to side as he embraces her. “I’m so glad you suggested this! I feel like I’ve barely seen you lately.”

“I know,” Jyn says, clinging a little. Her eyes feel misty again already and that is definitely the hormones’ fault.

Bodhi pulls back to smile at her and his eyes catch on the candles and food. He gives her a suspicious look. “Okay, if this is an intervention for spending too much time with my new boyfriend, I know I deserve it but also I would have expected a much better turn out. You couldn’t even get Cassian here?”

Jyn winces at the mention of Cassian’s name but she thinks she covers it quickly with a forced smile. “It’s not an intervention,” she says as she steps around him to close the door.

“So why all the fanfare for a regular movie night?”

“What fanfare? There’s no fanfare!”

“Jyn, you put cheese puffs in a bowl ,” Bodhi says, as if she’s being obtuse. “You’re gonna have to wash that later. You did not have to do that for me.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to make a joke— I’m nesting —but she refrains. “It’s no big deal,” she says, instead, and gestures to the couch for him to take a seat.

“If you say so,” he replies, still eyeing her warily and not taking the hint.

“Why don’t we sit down?” She finally asks, sounding strange and false even to her own ears. She leads the way over to the couch and Bodhi follows her, eventually lowering himself into the armchair with the same demeanor of someone approaching a wild animal.

“Jyn, seriously,” he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees once she’s curled up like a cat across from him, “is everything alright? You’re acting...odd.”

“Everything is fine,” she says, lightly, and hopes that saying so makes it true. “I just, uh, need to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

Jyn twists her hands together nervously, not sure how to get started now that the moment is finally here. “I need you to promise you’re not going to freak out,” she says, stalling for time.

“Ah, yes, that thing everyone says when everything is, in fact, totally fine.”

“Bodhi…”

“You’re leaving New York, aren’t you?” He asks, worried. “To be closer to Saw?”

“What? No, I—”

“Oh my god, it’s not Saw, is it?! He didn’t die, did he?”

“No, Saw is fine,” Jyn says, resisting the urge to rub her temple in frustration. “I mean, he’s not fine , obviously, he’s still sick, but he’s not—”

“Tell me you’re not quitting the band,” Bodhi interrupts. “Listen, I know things have been crazy lately, but I think—”

“Bodhi, I’m pregnant,” Jyn shouts, and the silence that follows is overwhelming.

“You’re…?”

“Pregnant. With child. Expecting,” she says, bitterly. “Yes.”

He looks like he’s been hit over the head with a mallet, which is bizarrely satisfying. She handled the news better and it was actually happening to her.

“How long have you known?” He asks, after a long time and with apparent effort. It’s not the first question she expected, but it’s not totally surprising.

“Like, five hours.”

“Five—?” Bodhi shakes his head in what she thinks is disbelief. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Jyn just blinks in response. What is he talking about? “Sorry?”

“You and Reece broke up like six months ago, how did you not realize you were pregnant sooner?” He asks.

“I…Bodhi, I’m not six months pregnant,” Jyn sputters. She smacks her stomach to drive home the point, which in retrospect is a stupid move, but she’s not thinking straight. “I mean, do I look it?”

“No! No,” he says immediately. “That’s why I was so confused, but you…you haven’t been with anyone since the breakup. You would have told me.”

When Jyn says nothing in response, just bites her lip, Bodhi narrows his eyes at her. “You would have told me, right?” He asks.

Jyn takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands. “I’m eight weeks pregnant,” she says, feeling close to tears again. “I found out today, I have an appointment in a few weeks to—to terminate it. I just need someone to go with me, the nurse said I had to, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“Jyn,” he says, placing his hand over hers. “Of course, I’ll go with you. I just—I’m not upset with you, you know that, right?”

She nods, even though she doesn’t feel altogether certain of it. She loves Bodhi and trusts him, more than she trusts almost anyone else, but she’s not convinced she deserves to have him be nice to her after she’s fucked things up this badly. He ought to be upset with her.

“I know,” she says, anyway. A single tear escapes, which is just perfect. “I’m upset with myself.”

“Are you okay?” Bodhi asks, delicately. “Did this person hurt you or force you in some way?”

“No, no. God, no,” Jyn says, pulling her hands free with more aggression than the act required. She wipes the tears away in annoyance. “Nothing like that.”

“Thank God,” he says, looking heavenward and everything. “Then why all the secrecy? I texted you the minute I finished hooking up with Taidu for the first time.”

Jyn laughs even as she continues crying. “I did not ask you to do that.”

“No, but...not even a braggy ‘I just got laid!’ text? I thought we were best friends!”

“We are,” she replies hastily. “I was just embarrassed.”

“Why?” He asks, intrigued. “Is this person weird? Are they famous?”

She laughs again, feeling better in spite of the bomb she’s about to drop. “No, Bodhi…”

“They’re not married, are they? Because I promise not to judge you, but come on!”

“They’re not married.”

“Good, because for a second I was worried you slept with Baze and that would definitely break up the band,” he says, solemnly.

Jyn smacks his shoulder half-heartedly. “I would never sleep with Baze,” she says. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Fine,” Bodhi says. “So, it was Chirrut, then?”

“Bodhi!”

“Well, you’re being so cryptic,” he shoots back. “If you just told me—”

“I slept with Cassian.”

Bodhi just blinks at her for a long, torturous moment. She’s never actually seen Bodhi yell at anyone before, so she doesn’t know if that’s what is about to happen but she braces herself for it anyway.

“What,” he finally says, flat like a statement and not a question.

“I had sex with Cassian and now I’m pregnant,” she says firmly, as if just admitting it out loud isn’t making her heart hammer in her chest.

“You’re pregnant with Cassian’s baby,” Bodhi says, disbelieving and Jyn winces. She��s been trying not to think of it as an actual baby, because she’s not keeping it. But if she did nothing for seven more months, she would have a baby and it would be Cassian’s, in a purely biological sense. She doesn’t admit to that line of thinking to Bodhi, though.

“Yes,” she says, instead. “Technically,” she adds, because she can’t stop herself.

“Technically? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just—Getting someone pregnant doesn’t make a man a father,” she says, with more heat than she intended. “Raising a child does. And there’s not going to be a child, so…that’s all I meant.”

“Sorry,” Bodhi says, placing his hands over hers again. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just so surprised.”

“You didn’t upset me,” Jyn replies, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s these stupid hormones, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. He moves to sit next to her on the couch, and she folds her legs up to give him room. “How did he take it when you told him?”

Jyn winces again before she can stop herself and she knows she doesn’t hide her reaction quickly enough from the way Bodhi stands abruptly. He always paces when he’s freaked out.

“Jyn, please tell me Cassian knows,” he pleads as he makes a circuit around her coffee table.

“I’ve only known for half a day! I haven’t had a chance to tell him!”

“Why would you tell me and not him?”

“You’re my best friend!”

“It’s his baby!”

“I wanted to make sure you could come to my appointment with me,” she says, and hopes the reminder is enough to make him feel sorry for her. He only stops pacing, but that’s still an improvement. “I was hoping you’d tell me what to do,” she adds, since it’s the actual truth.

“Well, obviously, go to your appointment,” Bodhi says, sinking back onto the couch.

“No, I mean—what I should do about Cassian?”

Bodhi looks over at her, confused. “What do you mean, what should you do about him? Tell him what’s going on.”

“I know, but how?”

“Same way you told me. Use your words.”

“Can I text him?”

“Absolutely not,” he says, scandalized. “You can’t tell him you’re pregnant via text. Who raised you?!”

“Saw.”

He acknowledges that with a nod. “Fair point.”

“I bet you’re going to say I can’t leave him a voicemail either,” Jyn says.

“You’re right, but mostly because no one under the age of eighty checks their voicemail anymore,” he says, patting her knee absently.

“Really?”

“Really,” Bodhi replies. “Just...sit down with him and tell him what’s going on. Same as you did with me.”

“It’s different with you.”

“It’s not that different.”

“It’s not your baby I’m aborting,” Jyn says quietly. “And you love me.”

Bodhi looks over at her then, some strange mix of emotions playing out on his face. She half expects him to object and say something ridiculous like Cassian does love her, and the very idea stresses her out. When he doesn’t say that, though, she finds herself oddly disappointed.

“Cassian’s a good guy. He’ll understand,” he says, instead, as if she doesn’t know that somehow. As if that isn’t a huge part of why this situation sucks so bad. As if she isn’t mortified that she has to involve him in something like this. As if she isn’t furious with herself because this is going to blow any chance she ever had with him in the first place. As if she hadn’t already done that by hooking up with him and then never calling him afterwards.

“I know,” Jyn says, looking down at her hands. She doesn’t actually know that—that he’ll understand. She thinks she knows Cassian fairly well, in a casual way. They’re mostly friends through Bodhi but they see a lot of each other. She suspects, from things he’s said before about politics, that he’s probably okay with abortion in a general sense, but it’s different when it’s your potential kid. She can’t actually be certain he’ll be cool with it, but she’s also not asking his permission. She just thinks he deserves to know. Or maybe she just wants an excuse to call him, for all this is the worst possible one the universe could have handed her.

“It’s just weird,” she adds, after a minute lost in thought, “for this to be the thing I call him about, after we hooked up. It feels shitty.”

“Wait, hold on,” Bodhi says, waving his hand dramatically at her. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what you think I’m saying.”

“Have you not talked to him since you slept with him?”

“I haven’t,” Jyn says, bracing herself. Bodhi opens his mouth to interject, so she continues quickly, stopping him. “But, in my defense, it was right before the holidays and then he was out of town for like a month, so it seemed weird to reach out, and—”

“Jyn,” he says, and his tone is so full of reproach, it shuts her up immediately. “None of those are good reasons and I think you know that.”

“It’s not like he and I talk a lot anyway,” she objects, but it’s futile, if Bodhi’s unimpressed look is any indication. “We mostly see each other at the shows and the band didn’t have any in December, so I just haven’t had the chance. That’s all.”

“Okay, so none of it had to do with your overwhelming fear of intimacy and vulnerability?”

“No…?”

“Very convincing,” Bodhi says, and Jyn shoves him.

“Shut up,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, if that’s not what happened,” he says reasonably, “you have to tell me what did.”

“What—you want details?!”

Bodhi shrugs. “You hooked up with my roommate and didn’t tell anyone about it for almost two months. There must be a reason.”

“Maybe it was bad,” she says, petulantly.

He just gives her an arch look in reply, which she deserves. “Was it bad?” He asks, bored.

Jyn bites her lip, hard. “No,” she admits. “It actually really wasn’t.”

“Well, then. Spill!”

She sighs dramatically—more dramatically than the situation deserves, honestly, and it’s already a pretty dramatic situation. “What do you want to know?

“When did this happen?”

“By my doctor’s estimate, eight weeks ago.”

“Jyn, for the love of—!”

“I was just trying to lighten the mood,” she says, for all she was actually just trying to stall. “It was that night we played at that terrible hipster bar in November.”

“Jyn, we exclusively play at terrible hipster bars. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“It’s the one with the arcade games in the back? It’s changed names like three times this year?”

“ Oh , that place. Yeah. What is that place’s name?”

“No clue,” Jyn says, with a shrug. “But it was at that bar.”

Bodhi’s eyes widen, though whether it’s with shock or delight or both, she’s not sure. “You hooked up with him at the bar ?”

“No, no. We went home together afterwards, once the rest of you had left.”

“I knew it,” he practically shouts. “I knew something was up that night!”

“You did not!”

“Yes, I did. You can ask Taidu, I definitely said something about it to him.”

Jyn waves him off, not because she’s convinced but because she’s not going to bother Taidu about something this stupid. “Whatever.”

“You still haven’t told me how it happened.”

“Do you need me to explain how sex works? Because I feel like you get the general idea.”

“No, smartass,” he says with an eye roll. “I mean, you and Cassian hang out at bars all the time together and you’ve never hooked up before. So, what happened this time?”

“Well,” Jyn says, taking a steadying breath, “you and Taidu left early for some reason and you said you were going to stay at his place. And Baze and Chirrut left right after that, because I think that’s when Baze had that terrible cold.”

“Jyn, no offense, but who cares?”

“You asked me what was different about that night! I’m explaining!”

“Okay, fine,” Bodhi allows. “It was different because we all callously abandoned you.”

“Yes, thank you! Anyway, it was just me and Cassian at the bar and I had just ordered another drink when Baze and Chirrut decided to leave and I was giving them a hard time about it and Cassian offered to stay with me for another round, so I wouldn’t have wasted my money or have to drink alone.”

“How gallant of him.”

“No editorializing,” she snaps, and Bodhi dutifully mimes locking his mouth and throwing away the key. “Anyway, we had a couple more drinks, we had sex, and now I’m pregnant. The end.”

“Fine,” he says, giving up. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I was just interested because you’re both my friends and I love you. Also, I know how hard the break-up was on you, so I was excited that you felt comfortable enough to move on. But you clearly don’t want to talk about it, so forget it!” He pivots away from her on the couch and leans forward to grab some popcorn. “What movie are we watching, anyway?”

Jyn groans in frustration. He’s always been way too good at guilt-tripping her into anything she doesn’t want to do. “You’re such a brat!”

“What? I’m changing the subject, like you clearly want to!”

“I’m embarrassed, Bodhi!”

“I don’t see why,” he says, looking at her blankly. “Cassian is good looking and he’s not a creep. You could do way worse. You have, in fact.”

She punches him in the shoulder in retaliation. “Hey!”

“What? I mean, you dated Reece for two years and he wasn’t exactly a catch. Cassian is an improvement, in my opinion.”

“I see we’re not sparing my feelings anymore where Reece is concerned.”

Bodhi covers her hand with his own. “Jyn, that guy cheated on you for a long time, and then he broke up with you so he could be with the other woman—right before you went onstage to perform, I should mention—and he had the audacity to blame you for the cheating because you ‘didn’t give him enough attention,’” he says, with the most judgemental use of air quotes she’s ever seen. “I care about your feelings, truly I do. But I do not care about Reece and I will not pretend you aren’t way better off without him.”

“I’m not his biggest fan either,” she says, defensively. “But what does it say about me that I dated him for all that time without realizing what a dick he was?”

“That he was an even bigger scrub than we thought, because he managed to hide his true colors for so long,” Bodhi says, easily. “You’re not responsible for his actions.”

Jyn wants to believe him, and most days she already, mostly does. But sometimes she catches herself replaying the break-up in her head and the part where Reece said that if she’d really cared, if she’d really been in their relationship for the long haul, she’d have paid more attention to him and he would never have even thought about cheating. She’d left him no choice, with all her weird part-time jobs and her crazy schedule and her gigs with her silly little band all over the city in the middle of the night. If she were more together, if she knew what she wanted from her own life, she could have been there for her partner, but she was too much of a mess. Too much of a work-in-progress to be the sort of girlfriend someone wanted to be serious with.

“I know,” she says, half-heartedly. If Bodhi’s told her this once, he’s told her a thousand times. Maybe she’ll really believe it someday, but not quite yet. “It just gets in your head, when someone treats you like that. You start to wonder if you have a neon sign over your head that says you’re not really relationship material.”

“You do not have a neon sign over your head that says anything of the kind,” Bodhi reassures her, surprisingly earnestly. “If your relationship with Reece needed work, he could have brought those issues to you to resolve them. Instead, he cheated on you. He took the easy way out and then blamed you when it made him look like an asshole. That’s on him.”

Jyn sighs, hating how often she and Bodhi have to have this conversation or some variation of it. She wishes she could just magically not be upset about it anymore, but it’s not like she didn’t have trust issues before this. The situation with Reece just made them worse. That was part of the appeal of hooking up with Cassian; she wanted to get back out there and feel desirable again, but she couldn’t do it with just anybody. Cassian was safe because she knew him and trusted him, but they weren’t super close, so it’s not like hooking up with him would ruin their friendship. He knew enough of what happened with her breakup to know that it was just a rebound, but not enough about her mental state to worry about her when she initiated things between them. She didn’t need someone to worry about her; she just needed someone to take her home.

The bar had been surprisingly busy that night, probably because some local favorite band was on after their set and they had a weirdly devoted following. Even though the rest of their group had abandoned them, the spots around Jyn and Cassian at the bar quickly filled in with noisy patrons, which left them no choice but to lean close to each other when they talked. Cassian’s arm had been curled around the back of the barstool that she was perched on, not possessively but in a way that didn’t encourage anyone to interrupt them. Jyn didn’t object; she didn’t want to talk to anyone else anyway.

Something about having Cassian’s full attention, her elbow brushing his ribs anytime she reached for her drink and feeling the warmth radiating off him in the already overly warm bar, felt nice in a way that went right to her head. She was shamelessly leaning into it, both literally—if she had curled any further into him, she would be hugging him—and figuratively—asking him personal questions she’d never bothered with before and laughing a little too loudly at his answers in a way that would have probably made him suspicious if she hadn’t distracted him by constantly touching his arm. It was the oldest trick in the book, and he must have known that, but Jyn wasn’t really in the mood to be subtle anyway.

If he was wary of her motives in flirting with him so obviously, he hadn’t mentioned any of his concerns to her. Cassian tends to be wary as a rule, which is part of why Jyn trusts him. He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop too, just like she is. There’s a subtle understanding between them as a result. Other than that, Jyn had never given him much thought. Sure, he’s good looking, even when he comes to their gigs still in his clothes from the office, which make him look like an accountant. He’s not actually an accountant, though; he works at some organization that works with kids in the foster system, which is the sort of job that immediately put Jyn on edge when she first heard about it after he’d moved in with Bodhi. She’s technically a freelance illustrator, but since that doesn’t pay the bills with any consistency, she also works all sorts of other odd jobs to make up the difference. She doesn’t have a 401K or a high yield savings account, but she’s pretty sure Cassian does, even if he’s also probably underpaid. But he’s underpaid in the good way, the what-a-Saint way, while Jyn is underpaid in the no-one-values-your-skills, get-a-real-job way. So, at first, she’d been a little suspicious of him.

But, back then, he was Bodhi’s new roommate who also took him up on the invitation to come see his band play during one of their glamorous midnight slots at some crummy dive bar, which earned him a little respect in Jyn’s mind. When he kept showing up, she was surprised. It didn’t seem like his scene at all, but when she said as much to him one night, he’d given her a self-conscious smile and said that coming to Bodhi’s shows gave him the pretense of a social life when his co-workers asked what he did with his free time. He had a tendency to look worried or miserable when left to his own devices, but self-deprecation was a good look on him and it was nice to know he wasn’t dead serious all the time. They never became close friends after that, but Jyn always liked talking to him after the shows.

Something changed when she was going through the break-up, though. Cassian knew what happened, of course, enough to tell her he was sorry to hear about it from Bodhi, but they didn’t exactly talk in depth about it or anything. He treated her the same as he always had. The change had come from her, honestly. She’d always thought he was attractive, in that split-second way you decide when you first see someone, but she’d never given it any thought beyond that, really. But once the initial fog of I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening lifted after the break-up, she started to notice Cassian more and think about him in a way she hadn’t before. She was disappointed if he couldn’t make it to one of their gigs. She started to appreciate the dorky work outfits he wore to the dive bar venues they played and she liked talking to him after the set, when he’d give her his full attention like she was the most fascinating person in the world.

She couldn’t tell, though, if he was genuinely interested in her or if he just thought she was hot and (now) single. If she’d been smart, she would have figured that out before hooking up with him. Instead, the universe handed her the perfect opportunity to be alone with him, without any of their friends to talk them out of it or ruin the mood and she’d taken full advantage of it. She had felt almost dizzy with the possibility of it, that she could ask him to leave with her and that he’d probably say yes. Next to her, some drunk guy stumbled up to the bar and, in his haste, accidentally and rather fortuitously shoved her even further into Cassian’s arms. He’d tightened his hold on her to catch her fall and when she’d looked up, he was glaring at the man, who was completely oblivious to having made an enemy. It was ridiculously charming, to think he was offended on her behalf, as if her honor had been threatened. Really, what was she supposed to do then, except kiss him?

He’d been surprised, at first, and who could blame him? Sure, she’d been giving the corniest, most textbook signals that she was into him all night, but she hadn’t even known she was going to actually make a move until she did it. He recovered quickly, though, which was nice, and reciprocated immediately. Jyn’s not sure what she would have done if he’d asked questions or tried to talk things through first, even though she kind of expected it from him. They’d both had a few drinks, not enough to impair them by any means but just enough to embolden them.

His hand had come to rest on her back when she got pushed into him and she felt it flex, as if he was trying to hold her even closer. The other moved to her face as soon as she kissed him, though it was really just his thumb grazing her jaw, like he was worried she might turn away and he wanted to offer a slight incentive to stay where she was. She probably would have kept making out with him at the bar like they were college students or something, but she didn’t actually want to spend another second with the drunk patrons or the shitty band that was onstage. She wanted to be someplace else—anywhere else, really, so long as it meant she and Cassian could be alone. She pulled back, with great effort, and the look on Cassian’s face made her think he expected to be let down easy.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked, instead.

His eyebrows went up, as if that was the last thing he expected her to say. He closed his eyes, like gathering his thoughts was difficult at that moment. “I, uh—what are you asking?”

Jyn bit her lip, which was a bad habit of hers when she was nervous, but if it also happened, by pure luck, to look flirtatious, that was fine too. “I’m asking if you want to go back to your place and have sex with me,” she said, because she wasn’t about to waste time and not get exactly what she wanted out of this.

“Do I want that?” He’d asked, dumbfounded, and if she hadn’t just been having a completely normal conversation with him, she’d have worried he was drunker than she thought. But this was entirely her effect on him and it was incredibly flattering. “Do you?”

“I think the fact that I suggested it makes it pretty obvious what I want.”

Cassian had run his hand through his hair, clearly a nervous tic. “Yeah, but—yes, I would like that.”

He said the last bit decisively, as though he realized he might be accidentally talking her out of it with his hesitation. He needn’t have worried—Jyn has her mind made up about this—but she thought it was better to keep him on his toes than reveal that. She gave him a bright smile before turning to get the bartender’s attention. They paid their tab and got the hell out of there in record time.

When they left the bar, it was raining lightly, barely a drizzle at this point, but there was evidence that it had stormed earlier in the evening. The small heel on Jyn’s boots brought her close enough to Cassian’s height that, even standing outside the bar, she didn’t have to strain to reach him and pull him down for another kiss. His hands came to her hips to steady her anyway and she’d have happily continued like this for a while if the bouncers by the front door didn’t wolf whistle at them and ruin the moment.

They started walking to Cassian’s apartment without discussing it, like they agreed via telepathy that no cab driver would tolerate them given their current amount of PDA. It wasn’t a far walk, though, and Jyn had internally thanked the forces of the universe for making this happen at the closest bar to Cassian’s place, because she’s sure they would have lost their nerve over the course of a lengthy subway or cab ride. Instead, they headed for his apartment in silence, more because they were focused than not having anything to say. He held her hand the whole way, as if he was afraid she’d disappear if he wasn’t touching her. While they waited for a crosswalk signal at one corner, he pulled her into his side and kissed her again, like she really needed the reminder that he was a good kisser. How could she forget?

“He’s a really good kisser,” she says, suddenly, to Bodhi, as they sit together on the couch.

Bodhi scrunches up his nose, looking disgusted. “Who? Reece?”

“No! I’m talking about Cassian!”

“Oh!” His eyes light up. “I thought you didn’t want to.”

Jyn shrugs, noncommittal. She wants Bodhi’s reassurance that she didn’t fuck things up beyond repair and this is probably the only way to get that. “I’m obviously not going to tell you everything . But we can talk about it, a little. I guess.”

“Okay, but how good is he?”

“Is there an accepted scale I should use?”

“One to ten would suffice, I think. Ten being the best kiss you’ve ever had and one being…well, you already said it was good, so we don’t need to worry about that.”

She exhales noisily, not sure how to describe it. “I don’t know. I can’t even think of the best kiss I ever had.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

She punches him on the shoulder. “I hate you,” she says, petulantly. “It was really, really good. Definitely an 8.5 or a 9. Maybe a 9.5.”

“Really?!”

Jyn nods, feeling awkward. “Yeah. We made out for a really long time before we…well, before anything else happened.”

She doesn’t mention that she’d almost lost her nerve, when they first got back to Cassian’s apartment. Being in his bedroom, the idea of sleeping together suddenly became real and all of her tipsy confidence evaporated. She’d been in a relationship for two years—she’d thought she and Reece would move in together whenever their leases were up, even though she hadn’t had the confidence to bring it up to him before he turned around and left her for another woman—and suddenly she wasn’t ready to be with someone else. Naturally, Cassian had picked up on her change in mood and asked her what was wrong. She lied and said it was nothing, though he hadn’t looked convinced. To prove her point, she’d kissed him again, hard, trying to psych herself up, but he’d eased back, turning their kiss into something easier and softer. He’d kissed her like that for a while, his hands in her hair and on her jaw, not reaching for her clothes or straying anywhere new. It was only after they’d continued like that for a long time that Jyn felt her nerves mellow into pleasure and then sharpen into desire again. Even though they’d kept things fairly chaste, all of that kissing had made her want more, and she clearly had to be the one to take the lead.

“And was he a gentleman with you?” Bodhi asks primly, interrupting Jyn’s thoughts.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she says, with a frown.

“Did he…how do I put this…take care of your needs?”

“Oh. Uh, yes.”

“First?” He asks, clearly enjoying himself.

“Yes,” Jyn replies, through gritted teeth. She leaves out the fact that she’d not-so-subtly rushed them past the point of foreplay so Cassian wouldn’t get any ideas. Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part, that he would have even tried something like that with her, that she got in the way of some grand plan of his to gallantly fulfill her needs before worrying about his own, but he had looked surprised when she took them straight from kissing to taking his clothes off to fucking him. Maybe it was a pleasant surprise, maybe he was relieved to find someone who didn’t expect so much effort from him. She didn’t ask. She just knew that she couldn’t handle the idea of it being unequal, of him being smug or, worse, expectant with her. She didn’t want to owe him anything, so they were going to have sex once and then she could move on. Naturally, she hadn’t counted on getting pregnant.

“I told him I was on the pill and I wasn’t,” she blurts out before she can stop herself.

The way Bodhi swings around to stare at her would be funny, under any other circumstances. “Why would you lie about that?” He asks, unable to keep the judgement out of his tone.

“I didn’t lie ,” she says. “I thought I was on the pill! I’ve been taking it for years, so I didn’t think anything of it. I forgot to get my prescription refilled a few months ago and I was like, ‘who cares?’ because Reece and I had just broken up and I was convinced I was never going to have sex again.”

“But then you had sex with Cassian!”

“I know! And I forgot I wasn’t on the pill anymore.”

Bodhi covers his eyes with his hands. “Please tell me you used a condom.”

“Cassian definitely offered,” she says, trying to sound upbeat.

“And you said, ‘yes, of course, because you’re a man I’ve never slept with before and that’s the safest way for us to have sex!’”

“No. I said, ‘it’s fine, don’t worry about it, I’m on the pill.’”

“Jyn!”

“Before you yell at me, I would like to remind you I’m already pregnant, so the worst case scenario has already happened.”

“That’s not the only reason you should use a condom!”

“I know, but I got tested for STDs when I went in for my pregnancy test and nothing has come back positive yet, so hopefully I’m not that unlucky.”

“Listen, I know you’re going through some stuff right now and I don’t want to pile on, but that was really risky,” he says, looking more serious than she’s ever seen him. “You have to promise me that you’ll be more careful.”

“I promise,” she says, feeling like a teenager being chastised. “Believe me, paying out of pocket for an abortion is a pretty great way for me to learn my lesson.”

“God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my fault. Like you said, I wasn’t being careful.”

“That wasn’t—I’m not trying to hit your nose with a rolled up newspaper, Jyn. I’m just worried about you.”

“I know. This is why I was embarrassed. I made a complete idiot out of myself. And now I get to explain all of this to Cassian, which won’t be humiliating at all.”

“He’ll understand,” Bodhi says, with enviable levels of confidence. “He’s good like that.”

“I said I’d call him and I didn’t,” she says, trying not to cringe as she remembers how quickly she’d left after they’d had sex, how she hadn’t even looked Cassian in the eye when she promised to call. “Even if he was fine with a one-night stand, I still lied to him. I doubt he’ll be happy to hear from me, especially under the circumstances.”

“If the alternative is not hearing from you at all, I think he’d rather hear from you. No matter what the circumstances are.”

“I don’t know.”

“Jyn, you and Cassian are friends, even if you don’t think you’re particularly close. And you’ve slept together, which involves a certain level of intimacy—”

“Not the way I do it,” she jokes. Although there’s some truth to it, she thinks.

Bodhi smacks her with a pillow, which she completely deserves. “Call him or I’ll kick your ass.”

“God, fine!” She slouches down in her seat on the couch. “Do I have to do it right now?”

“God, no. I don’t want to be here for that conversation,” he says, grabbing another handful of popcorn. “Besides, you promised me a movie night. What are we watching?”

“I don’t care, as long as it doesn’t involve babies or pregnancy.”

Bodhi’s scrolling through the titles on Netflix as she speaks, nodding absentmindedly. “‘Sleepless in Seattle’?” He asks, when he lands on it.

“That totally has a baby in it!”

“The kid is, like, eight,” he argues. “And it’s not about the process of having kids!”

Jyn sighs, defeated. “Do you want to watch ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ Bodhi?”

“Yes, but I’m mostly in it for Bill Pullman.”

“Fine,” she says, settling in next to him. “I’m probably going to fall asleep in twenty minutes, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit,” Bodhi says, and hits play.

#rogue one #rebelcaptain #jyn erso #cassian andor #bodhi rook #obvious child #obvious child au #baze malbus #chirrut imwe #star wars #abortion #abortion tw #my fic #my writing #stack the deck verse #otp: built on hope #otp: your mother and i have been together ever since #anyway here's wonderwall

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i-am-a-closet-fanfic-fiend · 5 years

Text

The Art of Love (Part 1) ~ Steve Rogers x Reader College!AU

A/N 10/17/2020: Hi lovelies! So, this story is not going the way I planned. So I’m changing the title because I kinda lost the plot. The posted parts are gonna stay the same and I’m going to hopefully finish it. And the plot idea I had will show up in a different fic. This was previously Algorithm Knows Best. And is now just idiots to lovers. So enjoy?

A/N: HI all so surprise! i’m here. With a kinda new thing. But not really. Let me explain when I started writing Cupid’s Code (which I’m still working on and hope to have more of soon) I had ya’ll weigh in on enemies to lovers or friends to lovers and most of you said enemies to lovers which I love it. And I’m excited, but I also love the friends to lovers trope as you all know, so I’m doing a companion piece. Set during the same couple of weeks as cupid’s code. There’s no real interaction between readers so it shouldn’t be too meta. I hope you enjoy. Here’s part 1

Summary: You and Steve have been best friends since sophomore year. Everyone thinks you should be more, but neither of you can see it.

Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers x reader (Platonic - for now)

Rating: K+

Warnings: None really, shitty date

Word Count: 601

Main Masterlist | The Art of Love Masterlist | Broken Hearts and Robot Parts Masterlist (Companion Fic)

You reset the song to the halfway mark as you tried to make your feet perform the steps you saw in your head.

“This would be a lot easier with a partner,” you grumbled.

“I’d offer to help, but I’d probably just step on your feet.”

You jumped at the unexpected voice, whirling to face Steve who was leaning against the doorjamb.

“Jeez. Steve. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry.” He wasn’t.

“What are you doing here?” you asked, pausing the music.

“I was bored. Figured I should get some work done. Then I heard the music. Figured I’d see who else was here on a Friday night.”

“Just me,” you shrugged, sitting down in a butterfly stretch.

“I thought you had a date tonight.”

“I did,” you told him curtly.

He pushed off from wall and kicked off his sneakers before joining you in the middle of the floor. “That bad, huh?”

“Worse than my blind date with Gil. He was late to meet me. Flirted with the waitress the whole night. Then actually had the audacity to try to take us both home.”

Steve’s jaw tightened.

“Who was this guy again?”

“It was just a guy from a dating app. I’m not seeing him again so it doesn’t matter.”

Steve frowned as you wrapped your arms around your knees which were drawn up to your chest. You looked so sad. The anger evaporated when he saw tears on your cheeks.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Why didn’t you just come over to my place?”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” you sniffed.

“You’re never bothering me.”

You shot him a half-hearted smile.

“Come on. I think my couch and some take out from Mr. Chang’s is calling our name.”

“What about your painting?”

“It can wait. I’ve got a much better offer,” he grinned at you.

You allowed him to pull you to your feet, and he held you at arm’s length for a moment, taking in the formfitting black dress.

“You look beautiful.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

“Come on. Let’s go home.”

Steve called in the food order while you bee-lined for his bedroom to change out of your dress. It was already in a pool around your feet when you realized your clothes weren’t in the usual spot in his top drawer.

“Hey, Steve.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Where are my clothes?”

“Oh, you left them on the bed last weekend so I tossed them in the hamper. I haven’t gotten around to laundry this week. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. But I’m stealing your clothes then.”

“Go ahead.”

You started rifling through his drawers looking for one specific shirt.

“It’s in the closet,” Steve called after a few minutes. “Next to the sweatshirt you like.”

You grinned when you found the light blue Henley t-shirt. It was your favorite. You threw on a pair of basketball shorts and finally joined him on the couch.

“Food will be here in ten.”

“Awesome. I’m starving.”

“You didn’t eat on your date?”

“No, we met at Triskellion. And once I met him, I didn’t feel like extending the date. So I didn’t order any food,” you shrugged, curling up under the blanket.

“Fair enough. What do you want to watch?”

“The Good Place okay?”

“Whatever you like, sweetheart.”

You fell asleep somewhere towards the end of season one, with your head in Steve’s lap. You stirred slightly when he moved you to his bed, just enough to tug him in beside you. Not enough to see the content smile settle over his features as he wrapped his arms around you and drifted off to sleep.

A/N: Yeah, so I was gonna wait and finish Cupid’s Code and then post this, but then I decided not to do that because this bit was working for me and cupid’s code wasn’t so I hope you enjoyed!

Tag List is Open - The Tag list for this story will be separate from cupid’s code so please send an ask

Update 3/15/2021: Hello, Lovelies. As some of you may have seen on the blog I have decided to suspend tag lists. If you would like to receive updates about new content please follow @naynay-writes and turn on notifications. Thank you! Xoxo, Naynay

Steve/Chris Tag List @isaxhorror @peachykeen3502 @patzammit @wordlesscaptain @coffeebooksandfandom @hereisanapplepie @mywinterwolf

Marvel Tag List @hdthdthdt @sophiatomlinson23 @misty-panther @supermusicallee @scarlettsoldier @acupofhotlatte @slender--spirit @petitesmate

Permanent Tag List @iamwarrenspeace @jayzayy @bexboo616 @neoqueen306 @santheweird @rowenaravencalw @buckitybarnes @prxttybirdz @sergeantjbuckybarnes @captainsamwlsn @broitsmydick @ailynalonso15 @nyxveracity @queenoftrash97 @walkingtravesty97 @lamia-maizat @memyselfandmaddox @lowkeybuckyb @whiskey2011 @averyrogers83 @lovingpeterparker @buckybarneshairpullingkink @beansparker @coralphantomninja @xxashy999xx @thisismysecrethappyplace @ravennightingaleandavatempus @paintballkid711 @whosmarisaaarw @silverkitten547 @yknott81 @mmmmmmmmmchicken

#Steve Rogers x Reader #Steve Rogers #Part 1

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walking-true-to-style · 6 years

Text

For My Life, Still Ahead, Pity Me || B.M.

Pairing: Gwilym Lee! Brian May x Reader (Can be read as Brian)

Song Fic: 39

Words: 2.55K (Not including lyrics)

Warnings: angst, suggested death

Gender: Unspecified

Synopsis: Brian has sent off with the other 19 volunteers to explore space and find new planets. He asks you to write of him while he is gone and promises to return in a year to marry you. This is one promise he may not be able to keep, though.

In the year of '39 assembled here the volunteers

In the days when the lands were few

Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn

The sweetest sight ever seen

You awaken to the sound of your lover, Brian, packing his luggage. You grimace at the sight.

Right…. Today is the day.

You want to be happy for him, truly. He has been wanting to do this trip since he first began working with 19 other esteemed astrophysicists of the world on this space travel plan. However, you know it would leave your daughter, Emily, without her father for the first full year of her life.

Brian notices you watching him from the bed and comes to sit down by you.

“Go back to sleep, my love. There’s still some time before I must go.” he takes your hand gingerly. You hold it tighter, which makes Brian look up at you. Your solemn eyes say so much more than what you want to let on.

“I’m going to see you off.” you tell him firmly. He seems slightly alarmed at your reprimand, but he knows better than to protest. Instead he replies with a soft smile and a nod. As if on cue to break the tension, your daughter begins blubbering in the room over. You both chuckle.

Brian pulls you up. He aids you in dressing Emily, and you all have breakfast together. You eat in a comfortable silence for quite some time. That was, until Emily thought it would be funny to sputter all her food onto the table

“Messy, messy” you smirk. Right as you get up, Brian sets a hand over yours. “I’ll take care of it, darling.” he assures you. He grabs a napkin and wipes up the mess Emily made and cleans off her face. She giggles and reaches out for Brian. He picks her up and holds her close to him, humming a tune in her ear.

“You are more precious than anything in this world. I wish I could watch you grow.” he coos to her. You feel a weight in your chest as he utters those words. The reality is setting in once again today.

You finish up getting ready and head to the airship harbor on the edge of town. You make it in time for Brian to make his speech after the head of the committee.

“Ladies and gentleman,” he begins. “We, the volunteers, gather here to begin one of man’s greatest exhibitions through space history has to date. Our work has brought us so far, and it will only take us farther. Our mission is to explore past our solar system to the next over in search of intelligent life, new civilizations, and another planet with which we will expand our views to new horizons. Traveling at the rate we are, it should be a year-long trip. We thank you all for your support, and we will return with news of worlds newly born.”

There is a thunderous applause as Brian finishes his speech. He looks to you in the crowd for approval. Judging by your misty eyes, he feels confident in his words. He makes his way to you and wraps you in a warm embrace and places a kiss on Emily’s head.

“You’re going to do amazing things…” you whisper to him. He holds you a little tighter, taking in your scent one final time.

“So will you and Emily.” he replies. He smiles at the sleeping baby on your chest.

“I’m going to miss you.” You dare not look at him at this point, not waiting him to see your tears that threaten to fall with each second. Brian places a soft touch under your chin in silent permission to see your face. You look up at him and the tears that previously prick your eyes fall.

“It’s only a year. I promise I’ll be back not a moment later.” he assures you.

“And then you’ll marry me, right? You ask, half-jokingly. Brian laughs brightly.

“And then I’ll come back and marry you!” He pulls you and Emily into a tight hug, planting a big kiss on your temple. You chuckle back, but the moment is severed by the head of the committee giving the signal for everyone to board. You and Brian exchange a worried glance. You bit your lip as he slips away from you. His hand runs down your arm and grasps your hand last second.

“I’ll miss you. Write of me please?” he asks you before running to the ship.

“I will!” You call back.

“I love you!” his voice echoes through the crowd

Your feelings don’t matter to you any longer. You would not let them stop you from supporting Brian, as much as you will miss him. He is the love of your life, and nothing will separate you too.

Not even space travel.

And the night followed day

And the story tellers say

That the score brave souls inside

For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas

Ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away

Don't you hear me calling you

Write your letters in the sand

For the day I take your hand

In the land that our grandchildren knew

Days, weeks, and months pass since Brian’s departure. Not once does he cry. The thought of you and Emily keeps him going. Every day he looks back toward Earth where you would be, as if he can feel your doting gaze through the cosmos.

You remain faithful to him. You admit, there is a chasm in your chest as you sit each day without him at the dinner table. Each night though, you take Emily to the beach across town in case the airship comes back early. And each day you would write in the sand in silent prayer for Brian to be safe.

“Please be home soon… I love you.” you say toward the starry sky.

You cope with Brian’s absence by telling stories of your lover to Emily. Though you doubt she understands a word of what you are saying, you can see the same twinkle in her hazel eyes that Brian had whenever he told you about the cosmos.

“When daddy and I first met, he was playing guitar in a band called smile” you emphasize the word to Emily, giving her the biggest grin. She smiles back at you and giggles, sending a warm tingling feeling through your body.

“And the first time he and I danced together in that pub, I knew he was the one.” You sigh happily at the memory.

As a year came to pass, Emily began to say her first word. You sob as you hear her emit the word

“Brian”

Perhaps she does understand your stories.

A year came and passed, then another, then another. The town around you has shifted. People have passed, people have been born and grown….Still, there is no sign of the airship. It breaks your heart, but you can only think the worst has happened.

Your lover is gone.

Still, you return to the beach every day with Emily, who at this point has grown into a beautiful young lady, and write letters in the sand, praying that Brian would return and marry you and share the rest of your life together.

“Why do we still return?” Emily asks you as you sit, listening to the waves beneath the blanket of night. Your gaze remains fixed on the cosmos above. It felt as if, if you looked hard enough, maybe you can see the airship.

“I suppose,” you sigh. “I still have hope that Brian is still out there…” your eyes trail the cosmos as your finger traces in the sand idly. Emily deflates slightly.

“I admire your dedication.” she says, defeated. She gets up from the sand and offers you a hand.

“It’s late… we should go home.” she tells you. You look to her, and you swear you can see so much of her father in her.

“You go on ahead. I may stay here a little while longer.” you tell her. She wants to protest, but she understands what this means to you. She gives you a nod and backs up slightly.

“Don’t stay out too late.” Emily demands softly. You nod to her and bring your gaze back to the horizon.

“Be safe Brian.”

+++

Years and years follow still, and still you go to the beach at night to watch for the airship. Your hope and dedication never fade in your growing age. Emily has since moved out and married a young man and bares children. She passes down the stories you told her in her youth. By this point, 20 more years have come and gone. You haven’t seen Emily in years. She comes back to your home with her family, though, when she receives the news that you have fallen ill in your waning age.

There you lay in the town’s hospital. You feel like a cyborg what with all the machines they’ve hooked you into. You stare blankly out the window, still gazing at the sky. Your mind was numb from the medicine the doctors gave you. All was quiet until a knock came at the door, snapping you from your trance. “Come in.” you call hoarsely. The nurse that had knocked pokes her head into the room before slipping in.

“(Y/n), you have some visitors.” the nurse tells you. You look at her in confusion.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone, but send them in.” She nods and ushers to your mystery guest outside. Your jaw nearly drops to the floor as a familiar face poked its head around the corner.

“Emily…” you felt damn near a sheer heart attack.

Though older now, likely in her 40s at this point, Emily was still as beautiful as ever. Her belly is swollen. She must be expecting soon. One more person enters. A male, likely her husband.

“Hey there.” Emily smiles weakly at you. Her tone is hushed. You take in the sight of her beautiful family and a few tears fall from your eyes. Emily rushes over to you and envelopes you in a careful hug.

“Wha- What are you doing here?” you asked her, shocked. She almost snorts at your question. “You think I wouldn’t come see you when I got the news?” Emily looks between insulted and concerned for you.

“Well. I’m glad to see you.” you grin at her. Suddenly you break into a coughing fit.

“Are you okay? Do I need to call a nurse?” Emily blurts quickly. You put up a hand as to say “no”

“I don’t need to see them again. What are they gonna do? Shove more needles in me?” you ask between coughs. You mean it to be a joke, but it comes out much more bitter. Emily chuckles sympathetically. As your coughing dies down, Emily begins introductions.

“Oh, uh. This is… Tom, my husband. Tom, this is (y/n).” Emily motions to the man leaning in the door. He steps up and takes your hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” he offers. You nod.

“And who will this be?” you inquire, bringing a soft hand to Emily’s belly. She looks down fondly at the lump.

“We haven’t decided yet, but we’ll let you know.”

You spend the rest of the day chatting and catching up, learning what Emily was up to for the last 20 years after she left home. She seldom came to visit, not that you mind. You understand her duties were with her new family coming along, though, you still missed her, and you make sure to tell her. She apologizes to you, and you forgive. Then, it came time for Emily to return home.

“I’ll come back again in a few days. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

In the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue

The Volunteers came home that day

And they bring good news of a world so newly born

Though their hearts so heavily weigh

Years come and go once again. The Earth has passed around the sun many times more. Emily has born her child, affectionately named “Mercury” after one of Brian’s and your mutual friends that Emily had come to know while visiting you at the hospital. While you were there, she and her family kept your tradition of visiting the beach at the edge of town, looking into the sky for the airship that carries your lover through the cosmos. Emily passed down the same stories you once told her as a child to Mercury. Emily then grew old after you and so did Mercury, who then kept the tradition going with their family as well.

It was a cool autumn night when the day came that an airship sails back into the sky harbor. A tall man with curly brown hair stands at the front of the ship awaiting eagerly to touch the ground he has so dearly missed.

“Many changes happened to this city while we were gone, eh, Bri?” a scientist comes up from being him. Upon further speculation, Brian notices just how vastly different the cityscape below is. Buildings have shifted, plants have been cut down and grown elsewhere, cars look incredibly different than they did before. It weighs his chest slightly.

“I.. suppose it does, yes.” Brian replied, cocking a brow. Still, it is his home and he is relieved to see it, no matter how different it seems. The airship touches the ground and the volunteers file out.

“No one is waiting for us. Not to sound ungrateful, but I expected just a little pomp and circumstance!” a man grumbles to his friend by Brian. “Maybe we’re ahead of schedule?” another pipes up.

“No way! One year exactly. We’re fine.” says a third. Brian sifts through the crowd. He ends up by the beach. There he spots a familiar figure, drawing in the sand. Though, they look somewhat older.

For the earth is old and grey, little darlin' we'll away

But my love this cannot be

For so many years have gone though I'm older but a year

Your mother's eyes from your eyes cry to me

“(y/n)! Oh, my sweet! I’m back! I missed you!” he yells. The person looks to him and gets up to greet him. He brings them into a tight embrace, picking them up and spinning them in the process.

“Brian?” they say almost in disbelief. He sets them down, nodding ecstatically. “Yes! Yes, I’m back, my love. Oh, we found so many new planets! So many worlds! I’ll tell you over supper!” he plants a million kisses on them and they wriggle free. Brian lets them go in confusion.

“(y/n)? Love, what’s wrong?” he asks, hurt by the action.

“(y/n)... That was… Wait, You must be (y/n)’s husband, but I don’t understand- you’re so young I-”

“Wait,” Brian stops dead. “What do you mean? W- Who are you? You look just like my (y/n).” his eyes are wide in fear.

“I’m Mercury. Emily- your daughter- is… was… my mother.” Mercury states with worry in their eye.

“I don’t understand. I was only gone a year!” his hazel eyes are wide with anxiety and insanity, trying to process what Mercury is saying.

“Brian, it’s been 100 years since the volunteers set off. Everyone assumed you all died already. Well, everyone but (y/n).”

“I don’t understand.... So you would be.”

“Your grandchild, yes.”

Brian runs a shaky hand through his hair. He rubs his temple with his thumb.

“So that would mean…” he trails off. Mercury offers a sympathetic look and sets a hand on Brian’s shoulder. “I’m sorry…” they offer. Brian falls to the ground, sobbing.

“Oh no…. No, no no…. (y/n)....” was all he could choke out between sobs. He gripped at Mercury’s coat, tears staining the fabric.

“I’m sorry.” Mercury says, rubbing his back. There they remain for a long while, as Brian processes the true length he has been gone.

He’d never see you again.

He’d never see Emily again.

All he has now is Mercury, the only remnant of your legacy. A spitting image of you.

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away

Don't you hear me calling you

Write your letters in the sand

For the day I take your hand

In the land that our grandchildren knew

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away

Don't you hear me calling you

All your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand

For my life

Still ahead

Pity me

A/N: Sorry it took so long! I really hope you enjoyed!

Taglist: @brianharoldmaysguitar

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transdarkwingduck · 5 years

Text

A Familiar Tune

i’ll be honest this has been sitting in my inbox since december partially bc of outside commitments along with the fact i know Absolutely Nothing About Guitar and taught myself for the sake of writing this fic lmao

Summary: Donald is enjoying a nice summer morning on the deck of the houseboat, guitar in hand and lazily strumming a song, when his seven-year-old nephew Dewey asks him to teach him how to play. As if he'd ever say no. Word Count: 1895 Requests: Open Read it on ao3 here (set before canon, HDL are age 7)

Donald sat reclined on the deck of the houseboat, relaxing in the cheap pool lounge chair he’d purchased a summer or two ago. The sun shone down on him in a pleasant manner, the gentle breeze blowing through his feathers kept the June heat from being too overbearing. The salty air in the Marina he found refreshing as always.

In Donald’s arms was his old and well-loved guitar, his one hand holding the neck and the other lazily draped over the bridge. His eyes were shut enjoying the sun warming his face. He felt the worn strings with his fingers and played an easy tune from muscle memory. It was a slow day, one of the few he managed to get off from work that wasn’t for one of his nephews’ school functions or extracurricular activities. The triplets were probably sleeping in, it was a rare quiet.

The gentle pad of webbed feet across the deck alerted him to the disturbance. He kept his eyes closed as the seven-year-old in question climbed up onto the lounge chair. Donald waited for Dewey to get settled before he opened his eyes and quirked an eyebrow.

“Your brothers still asleep?” He asked, still strumming a soft tune.

Dewey nodded, “Louie is. Huey’s reading.”

Donald made an affirming hum, “You want breakfast yet?”

“Nah, ‘not that hungry right now.” Dewey said with a shake of his head.

“We’ll wait for Huey and Louie to get up then.” Donald replied, content to relax and let the conversation lapse into peaceful silence while Dewey decided what he wanted to say.

“Can you teach me?”

Donald straightened up a bit, “Hm?”

“Teach me guitar? Like songs and stuff.” Dewey clarified.

Donald seemed pleasantly surprised, “ ‘Course I can, why the sudden interest?”

His nephew shrugged, “Dunno. Sounds cool I guess.” Huey had been the one who seemed the most interested in string instruments, he recently started cello lessons. While Louie loved to listen to music, not so much play it. Aside from the occasional sound effect on a keyboard or playing his DJ persona, Dewey hadn’t shown that much of an interest. It was a nice thought, the idea of teaching one of them to play since he’d picked it up at such a young age.

Donald gave him a soft smile, “Alright then let’s start.”

At his encouragement, Dewey crawled over to Donald’s lap and sat down. He shifted his weight, getting comfortable before looking up at Donald expectantly.

“Okay well first off I’m gonna show you how to hold the guitar, this one’s a little big on you but you’ll get the general idea,” He instructed. “This long skinny part is the neck of the guitar; these metal bits are called frets.” Donald gestured to the pieces of the guitar as he spoke. “You’re ambidextrous so what hand do you wanna use the most?” Dewey furrowed his brow, thinking for a moment. “I wanna use my left.”

“Mkay, when you use your left you balance the guitar on your left knee, hold by the frets with your right, and strum with your left hand by that big hole in the guitar.” Donald said, gently positioning Dewey’s hands in the right places.

Dewey mimicked Donald’s instructions, his beak pursed slightly in concentration. “So, when do I get to start actually playing music?”

Donald let out a laugh, “Patience, Dew. The guitar’s already tuned so I’ll show you how to do that later, we can start learning notes now.” At Dewey’s enthusiastic nod, Donald gestured for him to play the first string. “Each string has a name. This one’s called E.” Another string, “That’s A.” They went down the six strings, Donald naming each of them as Dewey played. “How I remember the order is EADGBE or Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie.”

Dewey muffled a giggle, “Why’d he eat dynamite?” He asked with a grin.

“That’s just a way to remember it, but maybe he didn’t listen to his uncle when he told him not to,” Donald playfully teased, gently tapping Dewey’s beak with his finger.

His nephew’s face scrunched up as if affronted by the beak boop, “I bet dynamite tastes gross. It’s the explode-y stuff, right?”

Donald laughed quietly, “We are definitely not finding out.” He raised an eyebrow, “Now how do you know about dynamite?”

“Cartoons!”

He snorted, “Yeah I should’ve expected that.” Donald took notice of Dewey’s anticipated wiggling and a fond smile made its way to his beak. “Alright, alright, go ahead and give it a strum I know you want to. Use smooth and relaxed motions.”

Dewey whispered a quiet but victorious yes! under his breath. He strummed once, then twice, his face lighting up as he listened to the pleasant noise it created. At the encouraging nod Donald gave him he began to play the individual strings, doing his own little mishmash of what he learned and plucking whatever sounded good to his ears.

Donald’s expression had grown warm, a glowing sense of pride rising up in his chest as Dewey looked at him expectantly silently asking how’d I do? He chuckled and gave Dewey an affectionate hair ruffle, “Well aren’t you a lil Rockstar! What? Have you been secretly practicing behind my back?” He accused lightheartedly.

The praise got a giggle and a big ol’ smile out of Dewey which was Donald’s goal. “I’m the master of improv guitar!” He exclaimed.

“Well, oh great master how about I teach you some chords, huh?”

Donald had managed to teach Dewey a few of the basic and simple chords, guiding his fingers on where to hold the frets. He had been about to inform his nephew they could save learning more for another lesson when Dewey leaned against him.

“Can you teach me the one you were playing earlier?” Dewey asked, looking up at Donald.

He made a hmm noise, he hadn’t been paying any particular attention to what song he was playing, just going through familiar fingerings as he lounged about. “Sure, how did it go?”

“Like this-“ Dewey broke off to begin humming and recognition flooded Donald’s face. Her Lullaby. He hadn’t even realized he was playing it.

Donald smiled, one faint and nostalgic, “Of course.” The familiar ache of loss had dulled over the years but even if Dewey had asked back when it was still fresh and sharp, he would never refuse his boys such a request.

Donald pressed a kiss to Dewey’s cheek, ignoring his beloved nephew’s grumbling protests. He gently took ahold of Dewey’s right hand, leading it to the 20th fret of the D string, “You hold that down when you strum, let’s go note by note.”

And so they went, the original tempo slowed to an easier pace as Dewey puzzled out the notes with Donald’s patient hands to guide him to the right fret and right string. It was choppy, with a few missed notes and fumbling but it was still distinctly his sister’s lullaby. Donald couldn’t be prouder.

16 18 18 on the G string, 19 18 19 on B, 16 18 E, 19 18 19 B, 21 E, and 19 19 on B. Look to the stars my darling baby boys…

With Donald’s help, Dewey played through the song, once again looking up at his uncle silently asking him to rate his performance. Dewey faltered upon seeing the fond and warm expression on Donald’s face. “I did good, right?” He baited, seeking a compliment and not quite comprehending why Donald’s eyes looked just the least bit misty.

Donald blinked, shaken out of whatever soft memories had briefly crept up on him. His beak curled into a wide smile and he wrapped Dewey in a hug, “You did great! I’m so proud of you, that’s not a very easy song to learn and here you are playing like a pro!”

Dewey snuggled up against Donald, his face flushing as he looked somewhat bashful at the praise. “ ‘m gonna be super good at guitar, you gotta teach me,” He mumbled into Donald’s warm embrace, leaving no room for debate.

“I’d be happy to, Dew.”

They sat, curled up in quiet comfort for a few peaceful minutes. Before long Dewey’s restless energy got the better of him, he squirmed, and Donald gently released him from the hug. He understood his nephew’s need to fidget.

Dewey’s legs draped over the edge of the lounge chair, swinging absentmindedly. His little brow furrowed slightly; a telltale sign he was figuring out how to word what he wanted to say as he looked out at the ocean. Donald merely waited, feeling no need to rush him.

“I remember that song,” Is what Dewey says.

Donald’s eyebrows rose, mildly surprised, “You do?” It was as a while ago since he last played that for them, he found it impressive Dewey managed to recognize the tune.

Dewey nodded, “Mhm… You’d play it for us when we were little, a buncha other stuff too but that was my favorite.”

His expression softened, “...It’s my favorite too. Is that why you wanted to learn?” Donald’s voice wasn’t the most soothing per say when trying to get baby triplets to settle down for bed. So, wielding his trusty guitar he’d managed to find another way to get them to sleep, softly strumming sweet songs seemed to do the trick. He figured out the notes to his sister’s treasured lullaby and adapted them to guitar, at the time desperate to impart some gesture of comfort in their mother’s name.

Dewey nodded yet again, and Donald smiled down at him, his heart effectively warmed by Dewey’s admission.

Dewey raised his arms and stretched before curling up against Donald’s side, enjoying the pleasant rays the sun brought down on them. “I’m all guitar-ed out. Can you play for me some more?” Dewey asked, burying his head into Donald’s shirt.

“I think that can be arranged,” Donald replied, pulling the guitar close to him again and minding his cuddly nephew. He felt the faded wood beneath his fingertips and let his hands drift towards the strings as he quietly began to play.

It wasn’t long before they had company, the soft guitar traveling through the rooms of the houseboat.

First was Huey, padding out with a book tucked under his arm, clearly investigating the source of the noise. He took note of Donald and his guitar, along with his brother snuggled up beside him. A soft smile made its way to his face as he wordlessly plopped on the edge of the lounge chair. Huey got comfortable and cracked open his book, content to listen to the music while he read.

Then came Louie, quite obviously still groggy from waking up. He shambled out onto the deck and scrubbed at his tired eyes; desiring company having wondered where his family wandered off to. Louie gave a sleepy grunt in greeting and crawled up onto the chair. He curled up near Dewey, using Donald’s legs as a pillow and drifted off not too long after.

Donald let out a pleased hum as he continued to play. He was more than happy to enjoy the lazy summer morning. With the sun warming his feathers, the faint salt air, the gentle rocking of the houseboat, the sounds of waves accompanying his guitar, and most importantly: with his boys there to enjoy it with him.

#donald duck #dewey duck #huey duck #louie duck #ducktales 2017 #dt17 fic #fic #mine #ducktales fic #fun fact the frets and strings are actually how you play the moon theme #i did... SO much digging to find it #so now i have all of the moon theme on guitar #but yeah i did a lot of research on this so id appreciate rb!

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 6 years

Note

The Athena believes in big foot post made me think of what BuzzFeed Unsolved would be like in the Fae AU. Like would they encounter actual ghost and demons? Would they go to the law offices because they heard it's haunted? And what would Athena believe from the episodes, like would she believe in mothman (I meant to send this hours ago but I got distracted sjdjdg)(also im sorry if this is a stupid ask I just had an idea)

This is the least stupid ask and honestly? I have thought about it in the canonical universe. I love this thought, desperately.

Athena absolutely believes in Mothman. Just, always.

In the canon setting, Athena probably doesn’t believe in ghosts, because ghosts don’t really seem to be a thing, outside of mediums being able to channel spirits. Like ghosts really don’t seem to be able to do stuff on their own. Athena totally does believe in ghosts until she meets Pearl, who explains the magatama and stuff along with Phoenix. Athena and Trucy definitely sit her down and show her a bunch of Unsolved episodes, and Pearl is like “all of this is wrong, everything they are doing is wrong, I can’t believe they are doing things so improperly, this is shameful, they need to know the truth”

Which can only make me think, in canon, the way that the reputation of the Fey Clan recovers from Misty’s disgrace in DL-6 all those years ago is because Pearls calls Maya up from Phoenix’s office like “the next time we are somewhere with good wifi, I need to show you this show and we need to invite these people to Kurain Village to see some real spirit stuff”.

And that’s how Maya gets on Buzzfeed Unsolved and how the Fey Clan once again becomes famous.

Someone write that fic for canon, because if no one does I’m gonna have to, and I have lots of other things I want to do.

In the Fae AU, the show is like:

Shane: “We should try sleeping in a faery ring.”Ryan: “NO, BECAUSE WE’LL DIE.”

They probably still traverse the country doing ghosts and stuff, but all the weirdest stuff comes out of LA, and lots of people are clamoring for them to just, like, life-vlog from LA only and sooner or later there’s got to be some sort of proof of the supernatural that gets caught on camera, because stuff is so weird.

On the other hand, the fae probably know that people want to capture their existence on camera, and so they probably fuck with ghost-hunters and the like just on this side of plausible deniability. The kind of thing that Ryan thinks is proof, and Shane’s like “nah, coincidences.” “The spirit box told us to watch the Steel Samurai! It made a whole sentence about it!” “Yeah, okay, sure”

In the Fae AU, the spaghetti/apple tater demon was Maya.

#fae au tag #this is THE BEST ASK ARE YOU KIDDING god this is so quality thank you for my life #ace attorney bullshit tag #i was running bfu in the background while wriitng fic last night so this is perfect timing again #amethyst2900 #on one hand i feel a little weird about writing the bfu&maya fic bc shane and ryan are like......real people #but on the OTHER hand i desperately crave maya playing up the whole mysticism thing to the point of ridiculousness #while the clan elders are like 'WHAT IS THIS YOUTUBE THIS IS NOT TRADITIONAL YOU CAN'T DO THIS'

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yoongiment · 6 years

Text

miracle (jeongguk)

summary: "you were my miracle."

contents: ANGST, set in the future, illness, that’s all i’ll say heueuehue

word count: appx. 10k

a/n: wow it's been a minute since i posted a fic!!! this is comprised of many middle-of-the-night writing sprees and it is uhhh real sad. i have class in the morning and it's like midnight so i'll stop talking but yes thank u pls enjoy and leave feedback in my inbox if you'd like

It was a battle of finding tranquility within the depths of dread that plagued the seasons you found yourself drifting through. It was an eternal autumn, a constant shadow of death contaminating a forest with no exit; the winds of change only bringing forth the remnants of the departed life, swirling around you and clouding your vision with a majestic sight of fallen creation.

The brick pathway was coated in the stuff, leaving you wading through a sea of dead leaves, once golden turned brown under the deathly hands of Mother Nature. You gazed up at the sky, misty behind the spindly branches of the naked trees. It was going to rain soon.

The receptionist was no longer the old woman who had smelled his sweat and vomit far too many times and who had sent you bouquets of colors so strong they could almost breathe life back him. The man behind the desk now looked far too brawny to be sitting there, too handsome and young to be surrounded by so much illness, so much death. He sent you a smile, which you did not return, and then sent you on your way down the familiar white halls, fluorescent lights never bright enough to shine on the darkness of the other side of existence.

You thought of nothing, listening to the clack of your heels against the linoleum floors that had seas of blood, piss, shit, vomit, mopped away with the stinging scent of disinfectant and the tears of the mourning. You did not think of the way he used to smell, the creak of wheelchairs against that same floor. You thought of nothing at all, but also everything of him.

You paused for a moment, standing before the room he had been assigned. The sunlight, red like blood, poured in through the windows that were stained with rain droplets that were once there. You looked at the way it changed the color of your shoes before exhaling and turning into the room.

He, too, was gazing out towards the bloody sun, watching the leaves fall onto that brick pathway and the children of the ill dash through the piles. He turned to see who was at the door, slowly, as if the joints and muscle in his neck were made of bolted robotic parts. His eyes widened to saucers at the sight of you in the doorway; he sat up quickly, eyes reflexively squeezing shut at the sensation. He forced them open and blinked hard, in disbelief of what had made its way in front of him. He always felt like vomiting, especially now from the speed at which he sat up, but now even more so from the unbelievable sight, now at the foot of his bed.

There was a moment of silence, nothing in the room to be heard but his short breaths and heart that was working much too hard yet not efficiently enough. You wondered if this was a beam of tranquility to rest under in the midst of the dread that surrounded you.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

His tone was venomous as his shaking fingers reached for the plastic-covered remote to call the nurse, the doctor, fucking anyone. He rested on the emergency button and narrowed his eyes at you, daring you to speak.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you why the fuck you’re here?”

You matched his lethal tone, speaking in hushed words and wringing your hands with the thin white metal of his bed frame. The length of the bed separated the two of you, yet you stood acres apart, disconnected and partitioned by the ashes of a dead forest.

A dead forest, once filled with lush trees that kissed the sky, brimming with life and the essence of fate, now burned into mountains of ash and charred trunks, infertile soil bearing no sort of continuation of anything.

You towered over his hunched figure and pushed away any thought of him, any memory or pitiful image to stir your withered heart. You stood over a sick man, but the sick man was him and you were you. This was not an unfamiliar sight in your eyes.

“Isn’t it obvious? Why did you come here? How did you even know?” His eyes, glazed over from years of frustration and heartache, held roots of sorrow and fatigue. He was angry, fists clenched tight and shaking like leaves, but the sight of you also brought forth memories of pain worse than dying, fate shaken and crumbling at touch.

“Your mother.” You cross your arms and match his expression of flamed resentment and hidden woe. He huffs, leaning back and discreetly catching his breath.

“...What did she tell you?” His fiery front melts into the sad mug of a child, eyes searching for small details of your figure, anywhere but your eyes, his thumbs twiddling. You take a moment to inspect his face and take in the severity of what had caused him so much pain for so many years of his life, his childhood. He was ill, yet again, another flare up of something or other - Jeonggukie was sick, and it showed. You couldn’t tell if he had aged much in the time you’d been apart, the sickness cloaking any bit of youth he may have had left. Your harsh eyes inspected the circles shading his, the hollow of his cheeks and the ghastly image of such a skinny neck holding his head. This was the boy you loved so many years ago, plagued with illness before and damned again with it now. This was the boy you loved, chained to a hospital bed and dizzy enough to vomit even when he laid still. This was the boy you loved, or rather, what was left of him.

“You’re dying.”

He looks into your eyes, so broken, so weary of living as a bag of bones and so damaged in the wake of the storm that you brought over him all that time ago. You imagined that he would look at you with the same misery had he not fallen ill again. In the corner of your eye, a leaf stirs and floats down from its home in the branches, and you grimace at the parallel image of feelings stirring inside of your own heart. You hold your cold gaze to him, your past lover, past life, unwavering and filled with words unsaid.

“And what’s it to you?” His words are cold, full of disdain, and they shoot right against the crystalline surface of your own self. You are a bit taken aback at his ruthlessness and an icy silence settles between you. “What do you think this is? Your chance to get rid of your guilt before you can’t anymore?” Your jaw clenches and you look away from him for a second. “I’m dying,” he says your name and the sound from his tongue is alien after so long and with so much distaste behind it. “And I would rather do a lot more with what little time I have left than hear you get shit off your chest when you couldn’t care less about me. If you wanted to make amends, then you would’ve done it when I wasn’t in this fucking hospital. Okay?”

His eyes are filled with unshed tears, and yours stare at him with annoyance. He looks away, instead focusing on the flowers on the desk beside him. The leaves stirred again when you realized that those were your favorite.

“Are you done?” Your voice doesn’t waver. You speak with the level-headedness of the adult you’ve become, void of emotion and patience running thin. He stays silent, now picking at the skin of his thumbs. “Who do you think I am?” Your voice is hushed, not even louder than the beeps of the machines Jeongguk is hooked up to. “Do you...do you think I haven’t been hurting too? That I haven’t...been alone? Lost? You’re not my fucking charity case because I’m not guilty. I’m fucking sad!” Your eyes begin to burn and he looks at you with his sad eyes and his thin face and beanie that’s too big for his head. “I’m sad that we fucked it all up and wasted everything and spent years apart when you were doing okay when we could’ve...done something! Anything! We could’ve been anything but we were so, so fucking stupid.”

“If I wasn’t sick, then you wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me. That’s what already happened because we’re not meant to be like that. You’re acting like we didn’t break up for a fucking reason.” The heels of his palms massage his temples. You refuse to cry first.

“What was the reason, then? You broke up with me, you fucking idiot. Tell me the reason again. Tell me the reason again and I’ll fucking dare you to tell me that I don’t deserve to be fucked up over this.”

He says nothing for a long moment, still just staring into you. “I was twenty-three. I shouldn’t have even made it that long,” he mumbled darkly. “You knew I didn’t have much time left. You knew how fucking depressed I was, and you still left.” He grimaces, and you recognize the familiar sight of him preparing to vomit.

“I left because you told me to.” You are next to him now, sitting in the chair by his bed and looking up at him. He is going to cry and you know this. He is going to throw up now, and you know this too. You could’ve had your eyes closed in another room and you would have known this.

You grab the metal bowl on his bedside table and hand it to him. He grips it with white knuckles and tears hit the surface with a soft ping. “You left because I told you to.” More tears fell into the bowl before a cough from Jeongguk sent a wave of sick and a bit of blood after it. He sniffles and you hesitate to reach out, ultimately placing your hand beside his on the bed. “I didn’t want you to see me die. I didn’t want you to see me so sick. I knew it was gonna happen, but I didn’t think it’d happen years later.” His tone is full of remorse, like a child who had broken something. He stares into the bowl of his own sick, releasing more tears and dry-heaving a bit.

The room is quiet again, Jeongguk crying silently and you watching him. In a rush of boldness, you reach your hand to rest on his forearm, so thin and unreasonably warm.

“You think I would’ve just laid there and traumatized you? I had a dead man’s wishes. I didn’t want to hurt you.” You intertwine your fingers with his now and he doesn’t stop you. “We loved each other so much. You would have died too, if you saw me like that. I gave you a head start on life without me.” You sniffle now, and his head creaks over to where you are sitting below him. Your own big tears are swiped away by your hand and patter onto the blankets covering him. His brow is furrowed at the sight, heart clenching because he knows that you are the stronger between the two of you. “Because I loved you.”

He sets aside the bowl and lays down again, keeping you in his line of vision. You whimpered, placing a hand over your forehead in despair.

“But what do I have to be sorry about?” You cried and he runs a hand through your hair, an action that hadn’t occurred since you were a young girl. You were a woman now, an adult, while Jeongguk was laying in his deathbed, a familiar resting ground, decades too early. You couldn’t decipher whether he resembled a small child or an elderly man - what a strange sight it was to see such a young person plagued with death. He rests his hand back onto the bed, worn from the simple action of touching you.

“You...you were respecting my wishes. You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m sorry.” You reach out and cup his cheek, wiping away the thin tears and taking in the feeling of his skin and bones. “You have nothing to be sorry for, but I’m still mad. I’m so mad,” he sobs.

You grab his hand and kiss the back of it, shushing him and moving to rub his back so he can catch his breath. “Calm down, calm down. Stop crying.” You chuckle through your tears and his look of anguish doesn’t let up.

“I’m mad. I’m mad at you for leaving when I told you to. When it got bad, the worst, my mother and father and Junghyun never left my side. They were always there with me, but it was so lonely. It felt so lonely because you weren’t there.” He is bawling and you are standing over him, running a hand up and down his spine and trying to ignore the feeling of how greatly his bones protrude from his skin. “I told you to leave, but you shouldn’t have. But you did what I told you to do and it was all my fault and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He cries so much that his pillow looks like a storm came through the windows. You grab the bowl again and place it next to his resting head. He coughs into it, spitting and mewling and you grab a tissue from the bedside table and wipe his face.

Your breathing is heavy and uneven in your attempts to keep it together. If Jeongguk saw you cry the way your heart was telling you, he would surely need more than a doctor to help him.

“Don’t be. Don’t be sorry, baby. I’m here now.” Tears fell from your eyes softly; if Jeongguk’s crying was a thunderstorm, yours was a light haze of fog. You adjusted his beanie and smiled sadly at him, always the most sensitive boy. His crying calmed, now just a steady stream of tears and hiccups as opposed to the sobbing that had him gasping for air and you reaching for his emergency button. He was tired when you came in, and now he was completely exhausted. His eyes closed and you continued to wipe his face, your other hand rubbing his back and attempting to alleviate his ragged breaths. “We can only make good of what we have now. There’s no going back. So don’t worry about it.” He grabbed your wrist weakly and brought your hand to his running nose, blowing harshly into the wet tissue. You protested in disgust, wondering aloud how such a sick person could blow their nose to such a calibre. His eyes stayed closed and for the first time in so many years, you were witness to his smile.

Silence fills the room again and the gray skies begin to grow darker. “Is it raining?” He asks, voice heavy with weariness.

“No, not yet. Tonight it will.” You run your hand over his head, picking pieces of lint from his knit hat. He hums and grabs onto your hand again, placing it under his cheek against his pillow, damp with tears. The beeps of his machines keep on through your visit and you don’t have the heart to look over and attempt to decipher what they were there for. There was so much more going on from the first time he had faced death; so many more machines, so much more weakness. There was so much going awry with his body and you immediately pushed the thought away and the echoing of his mother’s words when she had called you in tears only a week ago. Jeongguk was dying again. He had cheated death and it caught up to him now. He was dying, and you hadn’t seen him in years. The proof was shown before you now and the weight of it was pushing onto you. Your other hand still moved back and forth across his back, over his shoulders and arms. Goosebumps deepened at your touch, the feeling that had left so long ago.

“Jeongguk-ah. What do you think would have happened if I didn’t leave four years ago?” You can’t help yourself from muttering the question to him, tone hushed and private from the rest of the world.

“I would’ve married you. Had kids.” He pauses, opening his eyes into slits and staring out at the dead leaves. “But we didn’t.”

You said nothing, instead leaning your head against your arm over his bed frame. His hand grabbed yours and you sat, looking into each other’s eyes and picturing the life that was swept away with the drip of his IV and the mopping of disinfectant. You were so young then, even so now. You dared conjure the thought of what may have been happening today had you not left his side before. Perhaps you’d have life in your womb, blossoming like the flowers rooted in your hypothetical garden in a house that existed only in your dreams; perhaps living a life of love on his borrowed time would have yielded so much more; perhaps he would not have gotten sick again; perhaps he would not have to die.

“You know better than anyone that miracles can happen.” You spoke with trepidation, not wanting to instill any false hope, but doing so anyways because it tainted your heart, slipped its way into your lungs and bloodstream and you felt it - you felt that there was still a chance. A small bit of hope that you had clung onto for so many years. He sighs.

“I already had my miracle.”

A knock on the metal doorway sounds and Jeongguk’s grip on your hand tightens when you perk up. A nurse smiles at you and you nod your head in understanding. Jeongguk kisses your palm that rests under his cheek and you run a hand along his shoulder once more before gathering your purse.

“Will you be back?” He looks to you with his wide eyes and you stare back.

“Yes.”

The storm begins later that night and the streets fill quickly with dirtied rainwater from the fallen leaves. The lights of the city sparkle in the water and dance with the pounding of the unending rainfall. A harsh tone of lightning fills your room with white light and you lay in bed wondering if Jeongguk was awake. You wondered if he was kept up with illness or if he had his music at full volume to drown the thunder outside his window. You wondered if he felt lonely and if he wanted to see you again. You pushed the thoughts away, sighing at the resounding ache in your chest.

“Bundle up. What if you catch pneumonia?” You wrapped a second scarf around his chin and he whined in protest. You pulled the knit beanie adorning his head a hair further down, covering his eyebrows which were furrowed in annoyance. He pulls down the two scarves and face mask and you gasp.

“Don’t worry so much, baby. I’m wearing four layers of shirts!” You glare at him, pulling the mask and scarves back over his mouth.

“Do you want a fifth one?”

He groans and kisses your head through the thick protection covering his face. He grabs your hand with his mittened one and all but drags you out of his house - holding your breath and tip-toeing as to not make even an inkling of a sound. He opens the door for you at a snail’s pace, every movement in slow motion. His eyes squeeze shut as he meticulously closes and locks the door, silently praying that his mother doesn’t wake up. When he finishes, you are already across the front yard, hand extended to him.

He waddles over to you, unable to walk properly with the amount of clothing you forced him to wear. It’s a night in February, stars gleaming for the two of you. You had just graduated high school the week before and Jeongguk begged you to take him to celebrate someplace other than the confines of his own bedroom. Your heart pounded quickly, constantly anxious of him and his shoddy immune system and constantly nervous of the striking presence of such a striking person.

You were eighteen years old, preparing to begin attending university and tasting the fruits of life; so young, still budding and lacking compared to many your age. You were so unsure of so many things, so hesitant; especially when it came to Jeongguk and his health. He filled the spaces of life with a body that didn’t function half as well as it should. He was beautiful, underweight and sickly-looking and even haggard at times - he reminded you of every season, each part of him making up a lifetime of changing winds and magnificent nature. Even at the age of eighteen, he was so sick, often bedridden and unable to partake in so much a boy his age must do. The fear and weight of it all struck you often, but your best friend had always grabbed your hand and held it, even from the confines of a hospital bed. You were afraid of him, not only from the scary encounters he often had with death, but also from how much you loved him.

“If you get worse from doing this, I’ll kill you myself.” You continued down the streets of bleak suburbia and his eyes twinkled. He swung your hands back and forth at an alarmingly rapid rate.

“Ah, dear. I’d let you kill me anytime.” You couldn’t see through the layers over his mouth, but he was smiling like an idiot and the contagious grin spread to your own face. He kissed your forehead, once, twice, again through the cloth. “How much farther?”

“Not long. And once we see it, we need to head straight back, okay?” You sighed anxiously, squeezing his hand at the thought of his mother’s outrage if she were to notice he’d left the house. He groaned at the night sky and the stars that fell over the two of you.

“Yes, yes, we’ll make it back. No one will ever know.”

“Except for us.” At that, he kisses you again.

It was not a far walk to your destination, but traveling through the woods at twilight had you and Jeongguk clinging to each other a bit tighter. He took a break twelve minutes from leaving his house, perching himself on a rock and positioning you between his legs. You attempted to pull his hat farther past his eyebrows as he cocked his head like an owl and observed the forest with wide eyes.

“It’s pretty,” he giggled. You smiled and ran a thumb across his cheekbone before grabbing his hands to pull him up and keep moving.

“We need to go fast. We’re gonna miss it.”

You reached your destination soon after to the tune of his slightly labored breathing and the snapping of twigs and leaves beneath his shaking legs. He let out a soft gasp at the sight before him and halted his breathing for a short moment. You kept your eyes locked on him instead and allowed him to grip your hand with even more of an iron fervor. The world had fallen silent; the sounds of the highway and busy city streets were far away from the refuge of the woods, and it seemed that even the birds in the trees had silenced themselves in the presence of you and Jeongguk. It was almost as if the world was bowing to you two, a gesture of respect to the boy who had already spoken to death before he was eighteen and to you, the girl who loved him.

You had taken him to the edge of the forest, a cleared spot looking over what was Jeongguk’s entire small world. From here, he could see the glass buildings of downtown and the glass windows of quiet suburbia, as well as the new world of the trees he had entered only that day. You stood together with intertwined hands over the tall cliff, the sun rising before you as if it moved for just your eyes, the eyes of lovers, to see.

His eyes were filled with childlike amazement, dazzled at the sight of his first sunrise. The orange hue engulfed him, casting warmth and light onto his frail body. In this moment, Jeongguk was more than the sickness that plagued his body through his entire life; he was unsure what he was at this time of being eye-level with the glow of the sunlight, but he knew that he had become so much more. His eyes began to fill with tears at this realization, bottom lip quivering at the thought of mere existence, the gratitude of owning something greater than hospital stays and toxic blood. The first tear falls with a soft “I love you,” Jeongguk’s weak heart swelling for you, you who had been the unwavering presence of the sun. It had been you, always, who lifted him and made him believe that he was simply so much more.

He sniffs and turns his face away from you, the fabric of his mittened free hand absorbing the fallen tears. He laughs bashfully when you try to walk around him and hold his face.

“You big baby,” you murmur endearingly, wiping his eyes with your own scarf. He lets out a choked chuckle and stares at you, taking in what was likely the only time he’d see you in this position, radiant in the heat of the rising sun. You did the same, fixing your eyes on every pore, every eyelash, all the minutia and the beauty he held.

“You look beautiful.” The whispered breath carries in the nip of the February winds and caresses your senses. You sigh softly and run a hand over the top of his covered head.

“You too.”

He pulls his face mask and scarves down past his chin and leans in to kiss you, for real this time. Your mind stutters at the contact, nervous at both the potential of unintentionally attacking his vulnerable immune system and at the raging butterflies that beat against your torso, fluttering about and flushing your cheeks. Your conscious warns you to stop, be careful to not get him even more sick and to get him back to the cage of blankets in his bedroom where he spent so many of his days. You gasp with his lips attached to yours as your body reacted to the overwhelming sensation of Jeongguk and he immediately presses his lips to yours again without a beat of hesitation. His hand grips yours even tighter and you let him kiss you, slow and sweet and in the illumination of his first sunrise.

You hadn’t watered the memory in years, instead letting it wither in the backwoods of your mind along with many other dreams of him that now seemed as though they were from a different life. The memory crossed your mind during the storm that night and again the next week when you walked along the brick pathway to him. The rain hadn’t let up in the days that passed and it filled the world with a constant gray tone and the scent of wet asphalt. Your umbrella drips onto the linoleum of his hospital floor and your heeled shoes leave a strange print of water behind you. His eyes trail over to you sluggishly and he stares at you, saying nothing.

“Hello.” You voice echoes in the silence of the room, save for the beeps of the machines and the light rain falling against the glass window. His lips purse a bit and he turns his head again, looking back through the glass towards the brick pathway to the hospital entrance and the naked trees that border it. You sigh softly through your nose and make your way back to the chair beside his bed, blocking his vision of the window. “How are you?”

He purses his lips again and he looks alarmingly like a rabbit. He scowls, keeping his eyes focused on the world beyond the glass.

“Why are you here again?” His brows are furrowed and he still does not spare you another glance. You glare at him, clearly irritated with his unadulterated hostility.

“To see you. We went over this last time.” You match his icy tone and he continues to pout, not looking around the bleak hospital room. He says nothing and you huff. “So? How are you?” He even goes so far to cross his arms and your heart thumps, reminded of your teenage days spent alleviating his anger of falling ill.

He sighs. “Sick.” His voice is raspy and his face is covered with a layer of grease that can easily be traced back to an unhealthy sweat he must have broken into earlier. Your hands rest on the metal frame of his bed.

“Sorry.” He hums in response and continues to avoid your eyes. Silence fills the room for a pregnant moment before you hesitatingly speak again. “Maybe, should we...talk or something?” Despite being in your late twenties, the weight of seeing Jeongguk again after such a long period of time turned you into the stuttering teenager you had left behind with your life with him. He rotates his head against his pillow to face your direction, still not looking directly at you. Perhaps you also made Jeongguk feel like he was fifteen again in the presence of a pretty girl.

“About what?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t respond once again and all that is heard is the constant chatter of the machines. You sigh and sit up straighter.

“About us,” you mutter softly. Jeongguk looks up at the ceiling now with a blank look of neutrality.

“Well, what is it you want to say?” His eyes finally flick over to you and he looks curious and almost defensive. You stare back at him, mouth slightly agape. You are drawing a blank and hurt begins to blossom in your chest for seemingly no reason.

“I-I don’t really know. I don’t know.” Your tone is worlds different from the cold voice you had used not one minute ago and so much the previous week. “What do you need to say?”

His lip twitches again. “I told you before.” Your form breaks slightly and you drop your eyes in sadness, having refrained from showing the emotion for so long.

“Then tell me again.” His brows furrow in annoyance with a sigh.

“You know what happened. Just because I’m sick doesn’t mean we were meant to be together. Doesn’t mean that we’re good together, or that we’re soulmates or tragic lovers or whatever.” He pauses, breaking eye contact with you again and focusing on the woven threads of the cheap hospital blanket. “Just…whatever.”

You shift in your seat to face him even more. You stare at him harshly and stop yourself from grabbing his face so he would just fucking look at you.

Your voice becomes quieter, laced with more sadness. “You loved me.”

He does not look at you. He begins to speak again, but you cut him off. “You did. And I loved you too. I loved you with everything I was and you fucking know it. So let me be with you for these last few times, okay? Can I at least have that?”

He looks at you now, his own buried sadness lining his eyes. He used to look at you with so much love. “You’re here now, aren’t you?” Neither of your faces moved from the frowns that adorned them, but your hands still moved towards each other’s. He intertwines your fingers and you rest your other hand atop his. You remain silent for a moment, momentarily ignoring the looming feeling of his limited time and instead sitting in the tranquil presence of a distant dream brought into existence.

“So what now?” You whisper, looking at him with concern as you’ve always done. His lip twitches and your own lips morph into a sad, small smile.

“Do you remember when you would come home from school?” His voice is small and sad but he smiles when he speaks.

“When you would be waiting at the door?” You laugh and Jeongguk’s heart quickens. “I got used to opening the door slowly so I wouldn’t hit your wheels.” You smile at him and he looks back to you with endearment.

“Do you remember my drawings?” His ears flush red as he tries not to look too hopeful. Your chest caves a bit at the memory of sitting beside him next to the window of your loft and watching in awe as he sketched every detail of you without looking up from the paper. Years later, you had found yourself sitting beside him by a window once again, now overlooking the red bricks covered in dead leaves and holding his hands that ached too much to pick up a charcoal pencil.

“Of course I do,” you whisper. He opens his mouth and you interrupt him again. “They’re under my bed.” He looks to you and smiles sadly once again, fingers curling slightly around yours.

“I haven’t drawn since.” The silence becomes thick and awkward and you run your thumb along his bony knuckles. “I don’t know, I just...was thinking about it, I guess. I miss it.”

“That’s okay.” He turns his head away from you and picks at his blankets with his free hand.

“Maybe I…I don’t know, maybe I could try. Drawing, try again.” He speaks slowly and with hesitation, like a teenage boy. There are many questions you have from this, many words unspoken and dissolving on your tongue. Was it rude to ask why he was thinking of those days? The times you shared in your studio apartment years ago and the sketches that were now collecting dust? Wordlessly, you slowly reached into your bag and pushed aside irrelevant documents and trinkets to pull out the palm-sized notebook you used for groceries and a pen that you hoped still had ink in it. You placed them in his hands and he looked at you with his sad eyes. He chuckles breathily and clicks the pen a few times before holding it still against the paper as he pursed his lips in thought. As graceful as the dancer he was never able to become, he lifted the pad to his face and began to create once again, just as if he had never stopped.

Sadness tinges your heart as you watch him complete the mundane activity that morphed into a treasured tradition with the years that passed. You wondered how the scene would play had you not left before; if he would still be in this hospital bed, beads of sweat running down his pale face as he concentrated on his work, sick as a dog but pulling through during your visits. A picture of a child on your hip visiting him with you flashed across your mind and you had to look away from him for a brief second, the pain of the thought too uncomfortable.

His hand stops moving across the paper and he stares at it with a sort of reverence. You can’t yet see what he had drawn, but the sad grin on his face had a small ember of hope drifting through your chest. He looks to you and sighs softly before turning the notepad and presenting his creation to you.

The ember in your heart sparks and catches fire. Your eyes widen and you stiffen, unsure of what to do and how to react.

Just as he had always done, without lifting his eyes from the paper, Jeongguk had created a detailed carbon copy of you using only a ballpoint pen on dollar store lined paper. It was like looking into a mirror, literally, but also into a different world - a world that you had left behind when you were a young woman, a world that burned with flames so bright they almost turned the whole place to ash. It was looking into Jeongguk’s world, the one that he told you years ago he didn’t want you in.

A light blush paints the tip of his ears and he rests back against his pillow, flipping the notebook closed.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. You move quickly to place your hands on his and the notebook.

“I love it. Thank you, Jeongguk.” His eyes, still doe-like well into adulthood, widen and he nods shortly. He hums a bit.

“You were always the best thing I could draw,” he mumbled shyly, using both hands to place the notepad into yours. You huff softly in a bit of disbelief that he was still so similar to the boy you loved when you were a young girl.

The two of you held hands for a bit and like before, a nurse strolling by gave a knock on the door as a wordless reminder that you needed to leave soon. You said a quick goodbye, curt and polite and Jeongguk hummed back to you with his eyes closed.

“I’ll be back - sometime, or, I - yeah,” you fumbled over your words and the last thing you saw before fumbling out of the room was a small smile from Jeongguk.

You cried in your car while the heavy storm filled the hospital parking lot. The rain beat furiously against your windshield as you sobbed with no sign of stopping. You clutched the small notepad with an iron grip and rested your forehead against the steering wheel, yelling and screaming and grieving. The weight of Jeongguk’s presence after his absence and the impending absence of his death weighed down upon you and you found yourself in hysterics over a picture he drew. You beat your hands against the wheel and cried, inconsolable and humiliated at the fact.

After a few long moments of bashing your hands against the steering wheel and dashboard, your cries hushed and you drew your arms around yourself, pulling yourself together and making yourself even smaller in this big, cruel world. You continued to blubber a bit, shutting your eyes at the pain of the memories of Jeongguk.

You thought of those days you discussed with him only minutes earlier - the days of lounging in your small loft together, hidden away from the world and filled with quiet embraces and charcoal sketches. You thought of being in love quietly, grasping fleeting moments of romance and cherishing what you had in light of Jeongguk’s poor health. You thought of the arguments, the awkward silences, the break-up and the regret of it all, clouding your mind and polluting the air.

He broke up with you on a day much like this day of thundering showers that rained sideways and with an angry force. The sound of it filled the apartment along with the soft hum of the television, some B-list anime that you’d both seen before streaming out into the atmosphere. You had come home from school or work or whatever it was to find him with his head against the couch cushions, resting himself without any other pillows or support. You scolded him softly as soon as you walked through the front door, lifting his head gently and placing a tacky throw pillow under it. His gaze remained blank and in the general direction of the TV, but you both knew that he paid no mind to it, or anything for that matter.

He had been like this more often than not lately - keeping silent and still, not looking at his sketchbook or you or anything. You even found yourself crying hushedly in your shared bathroom after a recent episode of especially cold distance. He was eating even less than before and barely bothering to do much else besides lounge in bed or on the couch. There was something deeply, irrevocably wrong with Jeongguk and you both knew exactly what had shifted within him.

Jeongguk was dying. He had spent his entire life dying, but felt the dreadful looming in his twenty-third year then more than ever before. His body shut down more, the progression of decay showing in his loss of mobility, control of various systems in his body, deterioration of his spirit and livelihood, et cetera, et cetera - with the shutting down of his body came the shutting down of himself, the feelings he once felt so strongly and the admiration he felt for anything at all that lived in the world that treated him so cruelly. His body was dying, and so was his soul.

You sat beside him on the couch and didn’t dare bring those thoughts forward. As his partner, it was dire that you kept up good spirit around him, never losing hope for another miracle, a sudden turn-around of his health, just something good to happen.

You didn’t dare think of how dead Jeongguk already was, though he sat before you and your fingers were intertwined with his thin, dry strands of hair. You didn’t dare confront those thoughts, not only to remain a positive force in his life but also to save yourself from the agony that would come from thinking of it.

“Have you eaten yet? Don’t tell me you’ve been laying here all day,” you smiled endearingly at him and mindlessly pet his head. His gaze remained unfocused in front of him, eyes glassy and void of life.

“What else is there for me to do?” His answer is cold and lifeless and you continue to run your fingers through his hair. You hold back a sigh and let out a hum instead.

“Well, what do you want to do now?” You began a new sentence that quickly puttered into silence, not knowing what to suggest. He closes his eyes and for a moment, you think he’s fallen asleep under your touch. The TV keeps going, the foreign language chugging along the dramaticized plotline of some sort of Superman, happy-go-lucky fictional character.

His eyes remain closed when he finally says it.

“I want you to go.”

You’re a bit taken aback at his unadulterated forwardness, but continue as if nothing happened nonetheless.

“Oh, o-okay. I can ju-”

“I want you to go. I want you out.” His eyes are open, but not as the wide, glittering saucers you stared into for so much of your life. You retracted your hand as if touching him burned you; your hand hovered above him, hesitant and hurt.

“Yeah, fine, I’ll -”

“I want this to end. I want to go to my mother and I want you to stay out of it.”

The room is silent as death, quiet and filled with an paradoxical heavy absence.

“What?”

He begins to push himself up, and he swats away your shaking, helpful hands. Your own eyes begin to glimmer with shining hurt.

“I don’t want this anymore. I just - I want to die in peace. I can’t have you hovering over me every fucking second you’re around me, I won’t die being coddled, I...I want you out.” He rests his forearms on his knobby knees and leans forward, looking exhausted from letting that off his chest. You stare at him with your jaw open, shocked and hurt and offended and - fucking pissed.

There’s another pause while your brain turns and melts to process his words.

“What?”

He doesn’t respond, instead continuing to stare ahead of him at nothing with a cold mug.

“Jeongguk. What the fuck did you just say?”

You are not sad. You are devastated, yes, deep down, but above all you are furious. Your hands and jaw clench and your breathing deepens and falls unevenly. He is stupid, he is so fucking stupid and you are in disbelief at how unbelievably idiotic he’d just proven himself to be.

“I don’t want to see you anymore.”

You refrain from grabbing his face and forcing his eyes on you. You stutter on nothing for a moment before the rage adjusts enough for you to start letting him have it.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t want me here anymore? Are you fucking insane?” You speak with so much venom that he begins to wring his cracked hands together.

“You stupid bastard. I’m good to you. I always have been. I’m your fucking best friend and I’m not going to let y-...us go out because I know you and I know you don’t mean it. You’re angry and upset but so am fucking I.” Angry tears are falling from your eyes like the drip of an IV. Your throat feels like it’s shutting. “I love you and you’re my fucking soulmate and you...you’re everything. You’re not fucking doing this.”

His eyes are closed and his head dips down in a humbled position (or is it just his sickness? You couldn’t tell). He says your name and it sounds wrong. There is no light in it, no admiration or endearment. He says your name as if he’s speaking to a child throwing a tantrum. Perhaps that’s exactly what he was doing.

“You’ve been overbearing since we were kids. You can’t just respect my last wishes?” He looks to you with dead eyes, face frowning and begging to just be done. You are still red-faced, breathing heavily and radiating anger. You shake your head slowly in disbelief.

“That’s not your last wish.”

“Yes, it is.” He says your name again and you both want to vomit. “It is.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Your posture begins to crumble and the devastation inside of you begins to reveal itself. “You’re my best friend, I know you. This isn’t what you want. What do you mean when you say that you don’t want me with you?” You reach out to him but he blocks your touch again.

“I don’t want you to see it happen. Truly, I truly do not want you there when it happens. When I’m at my worst. Please, please, just...go.” You are crying and he is not. You are still in disbelief and expect him to turn around and say that he’s kidding, or that he’ll ask you instead to turn around and come back as soon as you’ve got one foot out the door. You want to turn around and see him by the window, wearing his Daffy Duck pajamas and drawing you. He hadn’t drawn you in so long now.

You can only think of one word. “No.”

He sighs and heaves himself up to get into his chair. You don’t reach out to help him.

“No, how could…why would I ever do that? How could you ever think that?” Your whole body seems to cave in on itself with sadness. He sits in his chair with his hands on the wheels, but does not move away.

“It’s what I want you to do. It’s about the last thing I want you to do for me.”

“So you want me to fuck off?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment and you’re hanging off the edge of the couch staring at him. His hands retreat to his lap and he looks down; you wonder if he is sad too. “Yeah,” he says.

You scoff, though not intending to be rude. Wordlessly, you get up from the couch and walk right past him, abandoning yourself to your shared bedroom and locking the door, falling into the Jeongguk-scented sheets and pinching yourself to see if you were awake.

You stayed in bed for long period of time and you thought it had to be close to morning when you rose from the sheets once again. You never knew for sure.

You assumed that Jeongguk was still in the apartment somewhere, unless he (god forbid) wheeled himself down the many levels of the building and ventured into the icy night wearing only a thin cardigan and homely thermals. The click of the bedroom door’s lock echoed through the complex with an ominous thundering and your shuffling footsteps sounded of a dead woman’s. You searched for him with a clogged nose and swollen, red eyes, and almost wanted to laugh at how distraught you probably looked. Surely by now you had both calmed down and were ready to rationally discuss Jeongguk’s feelings, and surely he didn’t mean it when he said what he did. Perhaps some medication caught up to his body too harshly and he was speaking some sort of fever nonsense. Perhaps the anime he was watching coated him in a thin layer of desire for your decades-long love story to end with an explosion and a somber farewell. Perhaps being struck with the grief of losing his own life caused him to act hastily and carelessly. You didn’t quite know.

He had wheeled himself over to the window and your heart stirred achingly at the sight. There he was, as you’d seen him so many times, yet so unfamiliar. There was a time in Jeongguk’s life when he saw the upcoming end as an opportunity to fill his time with the richest beauties in his small world; most of his time was filled by you. Now, as he approached what looked to be his true ending, he welcomed it and spent his days anticipating his final breath. He had become so tired, so ill of so many years of being ill, being poked and prodded and tortured. He was preparing for the farewell of his body on earth by also preparing the farewell of his soul, and with that came his farewell to you.

You stood behind him and made no sounds but he knew you were there. He says your name again. “I’m serious.”

Your face crumples and you harshly rub at your falling tears. A broken sob makes its way out before you turn around and kneel before him.

“I don’t get it,” your cries are desperate. Your hands rest on his knees and he looks down at you apathetically. “I don’t understand why.”

For the first time that evening, he begins to choke on his words. “My last…my last wish of you is to leave me be. I want to be with my family. You’ve done…” a pause as he collects himself, “so much for me. This is what I need from you now. I’m sorry, but I need you to respect what I want.”

He looks at you for a tender moment. Gone is the look in his eyes from that night you took him to see the sunrise; that Jeongguk is gone, and who is before you now is simply remnants of his old self, the old self that has been packed away and already moved beyond this world.

“I want you to go.”

You ask him why once again with such hurt in your voice that he looks away for a moment; how long has he known that he didn’t want you in his final days? How long has he been keeping you around until the time came to shoo you out of his life?

He tells you simply - he has known since he was a boy, even before your graduation and the sun you saw that morning. It seems that he’s known forever.

Your goodbye to him was simple as well. You retreated back to your room that night and did not come out until dusk the next morning. You didn’t dare look out the window at the rising sun. He slept in the guest room that night and you stood behind the closed door for a long moment with your hand on the doorknob. With furrowed brows, you let go and moved past the room, exiting the apartment and holding yourself to not look behind you.

It had been years and years since then, both of you now adults living drastically different lives. His mother had kept minimal contact with you for that first month apart, most likely to Jeongguk’s request. The last you had heard of him was that he had moved back in with his parents and the waiting game had begun. While Jeongguk waited for death, you waited for anything - a part of you, the teenage girl in the sunrise, desperately wished for him to arrive on your doorstep, standing and healthy and all, asking you to forget everything that happened and offering you his hand, or least just a fucking kiss or something. You wanted your happy ending with him, but as time drew on and days turned to years before you, you knew that piece of fate had been drowned away with the storm he carried in his death-riddled hands.

You still laid your head against your steering wheel, taking shallow, fast breaths and continuing to cry at the thought of it all. Jeongguk was your soulmate and you had known since you were children.

He was your soulmate, made of the same matter and pieces of sunlight, and he had pulled away from you for so many years in preparation for his impending grand exit where he would arise back into the stars from which he came. For what should have been the most golden years of your life, he had instead prepared you for the gaping hole in the earth he would leave, and still, it was far too big for you to handle.

“Why are you calling? You were just here.” His voice sounds weak over the tinny cell reception and you pause to take it in before responding.

“I didn’t even know you had my number still saved.”

He pauses now, and the sound of the downpour fills your ears.

“What is it? Are you okay?”

Again, you take a long moment to respond, relishing in what was sure to be one of the last times you heard his voice.

He feels a chill on the back of his neck in worry for you. “Did something happen?”

“No. I just - I’m just...calling. I’m just calling.”

You can’t see it, but you feel the smile that blooms on his face.

“Jeongguk,” you say for no particular reason at all.

“Jeongguk.” You are still crying and his chest clenches at the sound.

“Yeah,” he responds. He says your name back to you, whispered in awe as if it would blow away if he spoke too harshly.

“I’m just calling.” Your mind is swimming, not even attempting to process what you’re saying before it leaves your mouth. It’s so painfully obvious that you are crying.

“Yeah? You missed me?” He speaks so softly and when you close your eyes, you are taken back to when he would whisper to you in bed all those years ago, sweet nothings and filthy pillow talk and love and soul and passion.

You whimper and he clenches his bed sheets with pale fists.

“I’m going to,” you whisper.

Both of your eyes widen and he is stunned, unable to think of a response.

“I’m gonna miss you. I’m gonna miss you so much.” You are sobbing grossly now. “I’ll miss you, Jeongguk! I love you so much and I’m so sorry and I’m going to miss you!” You are bawling again, overwhelmed with the intensity of your confession.

“Y-yeah, baby, I know, just, just stop crying!” He laughs uneasily. “I know, baby…” his voice begins to shake. “Stop talking like that, stop talking as if I’m already gone. I’m right here. I’m talking to you now, don’t worry. I’m right here.”

Your breathing evens out eventually, and the adult in you urges you to apologize for acting like a child, but you can’t bring yourself to it. You can’t bring yourself to apologize for unleashing what has been inside of you for years now.

“Jeongguk, do you love me?”

He lets out a breath in awe. It had been so long.

“Always. I love you, always.”

Jeongguk moved back in with his parents for the final time after weeks of your visits. He remained stagnant for a while, but it meant nothing when he was remaining in such poor condition. You followed him blindly, taking an extended leave of absence from your job and leaving the idea of quitting completely in a close pocket of your mind. You didn’t know what to expect, but there would be an aftermath, a life after Jeongguk’s death, the giant, gaping hole he would leave behind in his departure. There was going to be a you after him and you were unsure who you would be. Surely she would be far, far from where you were now.

Jeongguk’s condition worsened rapidly with his discharge from the hospital. He spent his days in the bedroom of his childhood with you in the same chair pulled up by the frame. Though neither of you wanted to say it, he was going to leave the way he started - next to you.

He had become lucid in the past week or so, falling in and out of consciousness at the strangest times and becoming unable to decipher what was real and what was not. Nonetheless, you stayed at his side, wiping his forehead of clamminess and watching him slip away once more, for the final time.

His family members rotated between you sitting with him, each getting alone time with him and making their best efforts to hold a conversation with a man that could barely do even that. He spoke nonsense as if he was having a fever dream and he would soon be back on his feet with some bedrest and Tylenol.

His mother had warned you that his condition had worsened to a point she had never witnessed before. She told you of what her counselor had advised her to do in the painfully recognizable last days and you listened half heartedly with a polite smile.

She was telling you to say goodbye. You had begun to do just that.

You often found yourself stroking his face absentmindedly, thumbs running over the texture and the protrusion of his cheekbones. It was as though you were blind, reading his facial features and attempting to decode who he was to you and what it felt to feel for the last time. You whispered his name.

His eyes remained closed, but the weak bunny twitch of his lip let you know he was listening. You felt a slight lean into your touch and closed your eyes for a moment, trying to imagine when he would do that with fervor.

You whisper his name again, just because.

“Jeongguk,” once more, once more. “I...I love you.” You are unable to think of anything else to say. He leans further into your touch and you kiss his clammy forehead.

“I love you. I’ve loved you since we were kids.” You smile and run your thumb over his lips, which twiched with what you knew was a smile. “I’ve never loved anything else, not like I love you. You know that right?” With a soft smack, he kisses your palm and you lean forward to kiss his lips.

“I never stopped. Not for a second, I swear. I’ll never stop. Okay?”

You know he won’t open his eyes, but you wish that he would.

“I love you. I love you.”

His breathing is shallow and thin and your gut tells you that you will have to yell for his mother in just a moment.

But for this second, you allow yourself one moment of selfishness, one moment, one more kiss, one more goodbye, once more, once more. You kiss him again, and his lips twitch.

With the rasp of the last time he’d speak, he whispered to you as he always had.

“You were my miracle. I love you.”

Your hands intertwine and you wipe a tear from his eye before yelling out for his family.

“I love you. I love you.”

And once more, he whispers too.

“I love you.”

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ehyde · 7 years

Text

Family and Blood

“Hak, I didn’t know what the dragon’s blood would do! It’s not just power, it’s—”

“You would do anything for him,” said Kija.

“You burn for him,” said Jaeha.

And Shinah said, simply, “you love him.”

Tae-wu looked down, and didn’t deny any of it.

A fic about the idea that Suwon is Ouryuu incarnate, and the dragon gods have granted him warriors of his own. Tae-wu is torn between his loyalty to Hak and his newfound dragon-blood loyalty to Suwon--and his conflict forces Yona to finally really think about her own bond with her dragons.

I didn’t end up going as deep with these ideas as I originally wanted to, but this is all I’m prepared to write on it at the moment, so here it is.

(Suwon is not actually in this story. Sorry.)

2662 words, gen

Yona squeezed Hak’s hand as they looked down over Fuuga. The rain had stopped nearly an hour before the town came into view, but the grey overcast sky and misty haze that filled the air were hardly easier to see through than the rain had been, and Hak had turned as gloomy as the skies the closer they got.

“We can turn back,” she said. “I know you don’t want to put your family in danger.”

But Hak shook his head. “I want to learn the truth of these rumors as much as you do, Princess,” he said.

“We could have gone to see Lili—”

“She’s as likely to be in Kuuto as in Suiko,” Yun reminded her. “And if the rumors are true, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her father if he decides we’re enemies.” Beside him, Shinah shook his head in agreement.

“We could go back to Ik-su…”

“No. I’d rather see the truth myself than rely on that guy’s words.” Behind his refusal was an accusation—wasn’t this something the priest should have warned them about?—and Yona only nodded.

As she stepped forward down the hill towards Fuuga, raindrops began to fall from the sky once more. Yona dropped Hak’s hand and pulled her hood tightly around her head.

It was two days ago, at a market near the edge of the Water Tribe, that the rumors had first reached their ears. They had gone there with the express intent of seeking out information; since returning from Xing, they’d heard not a word of the king’s activity. After such a large war effort, that had made them all wary. But they hardly had to even ask for information—the new stories were all anyone could talk about.

“Did you hear? The Four Dragons are fighting at King Suwon’s side!”

“You missed the best part—the dragon gods themselves descended from the heavens, and proclaimed Suwon as their brother Hiryuu!”

Alarmed, Yona had looked to Zeno, but before either of them could speak up, the crowd kept going. “No, no, not Hiryuu, but Ouryuu. It makes sense, right? Ouryuu’s the Sky Tribe’s dragon, after all.”

“But the Four Dragons were Hiryuu’s warriors,” the first man had protested. “Not Ouryuu’s.”

“I told you, it wasn’t the dragon warriors, it was the gods.”

At this point, all of Yona’s dragons were looking to each other nervously. “If the dragon gods came down, wouldn’t we feel it?” Kija asked. But Zeno only shook his head.

“It was the dragon warriors, though,” a woman spoke up. “Or at least, it is now. The gods gave their blood to King Suwon’s generals to protect him, just like in the days of old. I’ve seen it myself,” she added proudly. “Our General Jun-gi has the eyes of a dragon.”

Everything else they’d heard had been variations on those stories, passed between who knew how many tellers from the truth. The dragons could not sense any other dragon presences; Zeno put on his brightest smile and claimed to know nothing of Ouryuu. If they wanted answers, they’d have to get them themselves.

As they approached Fuuga’s gate, Hak stiffened in alarm. It took Yona a moment longer to realize why: the gate was unguarded. “Ah…” came Jaeha’s voice from behind them. “Well then.” Yona glanced back—Jaeha was looking upwards—then followed his gaze. High atop the great stone gatehouse sat Tae-wu. Spotting Yona and her friends, he leapt down to meet them.

His hair was a green as bright as Jaeha’s, and the jump spoke for itself. “Hak,” said Tae-wu, a stricken expression on his face. “Hak, I didn’t know it would—” Then he stopped, his eyes falling on Yona and the rest of the group. “—oh! You really are—you feel like him, princess,” he said. “I guess I never noticed before—”

“Oh!” Kija exclaimed. “Shinah, didn’t you once say that the king—” He faltered as all eyes turned to him. “...felt like Yona?” he finished.

So it was true, then. Whatever it meant, it was true. “Hak,” she said. “We’ve found out enough we can go—”

“No,” said Tae-wu. “I owe you more than an explanation, but I can at least give you that. Come inside.”

Hak was greeted with as much enthusiasm as he ever had been—but the members of the Wind Tribe had never officially met the dragons before. “You mean our young lord isn’t the only Ryokuryuu?” Jaeha, unsurprisingly, attracted the most attention.

“Shut up, I’m not even supposed to be Ryokuryuu at all,” said Tae-wu.

“Aw, don’t say that, Young—” a man began, then broke off. “Oh, does that mean you decided not to go—”

“C’mon, let’s go somewhere we can talk,” Tae-wu muttered, interrupting the man. He took Hak by the hand and pulled him away from the crowd.

“Well,” said Jaeha as they all followed Tae-wu, “it’s not what I pictured when I imagined meeting the next green dragon, I’ll give you that.”

Tae-wu led them to Fuuga Castle’s empty great all. He looked like he wanted to speak up, but simply stared from Hak to Yona.

Finally, Hak spoke up. “That hair makes you look too much like Droopy Eyes,” he said. “It’s weird.”

“Weird,” Tae-wu agreed. “I can outrun Han-dae now, leave him in the dust. That’s not supposed to happen.”

A long, awkward silence. Neither of those things were what bothered them the most, and they both knew it. “Tae-wu, why don’t you start from the beginning?” Yona prompted. “Tell us what happened.”

Tae-wu nodded, and began his tale. “There was a coup. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but it was that advisor of his, Keishuk. We were summoned for a five tribes meeting, but when we arrived—I don’t know why Keishuk thought it was a good idea to stage a public execution with all the generals there. Show of power, I guess. But that was when the dragons appeared.”

“You truly met the dragon gods?” Kija demanded.

Tae-wu nodded. “You didn’t? How did you get your powers?”

“They’ve been passed down for generations, since Hiryuu first descended from the heavens,” said Kija.

“Oh. Then Ouryuu—I mean Suwon—”

“Suwon never descended from the heavens,” Hak said sharply, and Tae-wu looked down. Zeno, meanwhile, was frowning.

“Ouryuu…” he said.

“Are you—are you Ouryuu’s warrior?” Tae-wu asked, as he registered Zeno’s yellow hair. “It’s weird to think of him as a god giving away his powers.”

“Still, Zeno has some questions—”

Tae-wu shook his head. “My king still says he has nothing to do with the gods. I don’t know if he even remembers.”

Yona was about to say that wasn’t so odd—she didn’t recall anything about her own alleged godhood, after all—but Hak spoke first. “Your king?”

“Hak, I didn’t know what the dragon’s blood would do! It’s not just power, it’s—”

“You would do anything for him,” said Kija.

“You burn for him,” said Jaeha.

And Shinah said, simply, “you love him.”

Tae-wu looked down, and didn’t deny any of it. “Hak, I remember what he did to you and Yona, but—when he sent us away from Hiryuu Castle, it was the worst feeling in the world. This isn’t me, Hak, I don’t know how to—I don’t know what to do!”

Hak looked away. “You chose to drink the dragon’s blood,” he began, but looked away without finishing. Yona swallowed. Suwon...had his own dragons? He was a god? No, he was...like her, whatever that meant. She glanced from Tae-wu to Jaeha and back again. Her dragons had said things like that before, about what they felt in their blood, but Yona had always tried to ignore it. She wasn’t forcing them to do anything. But Tae-wu...it really seemed like he didn’t want to feel this. Yona stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the new green dragon, and wished she knew what to say.

Then the doors to the hall flew open and Han-dae rushed in, Hak’s little brother Tae-yeon sitting atop his shoulders. “You didn’t tell me Hak was here! I had to hear it from Saki,” he accused. “And you weren’t planning to let him go without seeing Tae-yeon, were you?”

Yona smiled as Tae-yeon practically leapt into Hak’s arms. Even though Hak had made it clear it was his own choice, she still regretted all the times he’d had to stay apart from his family because of her. Tae-yeon’s arrival eased the tension in the room...or at least it did until Han-dae spoke up again. “So, young lord, gonna challenge Hak to a duel again? You might actually stand a chance this time.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t count on it,” said Jaeha. “I’m not sure I could take Hak, if it came down to it.”

But Tae-wu, whose face had filled with panic at Han-dae’s words, seemed if anything relieved by Jaeha’s comment. “Calm down,” Yona said. “No one’s asking you to fight anyone.”

“But what if he does?” Tae-wu asked. “If my—if Suwon asked me to fight Hak, I’m not even sure I could refuse!”

“Of course you could!” Yona assured him. “Look, my dragons are traveling with me because they’re my friends, not because I ordered them to. Jaeha didn’t even want to come with me at first.” But as she spoke, she began to wonder—the fact that Jaeha had changed his mind wasn’t exactly an argument against Tae-wu’s fears, was it?

“The dragon’s blood is pretty strong stuff,” Zeno agreed. “But it doesn’t control you. Zeno can promise you that.”

Tae-wu looked down. He hardly looked reassured. “...sure feels like it does,” he muttered.

“Well, you said he sent you away,” Yun reasoned. “King Suwon never wanted the power of the dragons, so he’s hardly going to ask you to do something like that.”

“...I was going to go back,” Tae-wu admitted. “I hate the idea of it, but I can’t stand being apart from him. I was just trying to do what was best for the Wind Tribe, I didn’t want—”

Tae-yun wiggled out of Hak’s arms and hurried over to Tae-wu. “You’re going away too?” he asked.

“I—” Desperately, Tae-wu looked back at Hak. “Order me to stay here!” he cried. “Lord Hak’s words are absolute, that was what we always said. So if you—”

Hak shook his head. “That’s your decision to make, General,” he said. “And I don’t want to do that to either of us. Besides,” he admitted. “Yun is right. What you’re worried about—Suwon won’t ask that.” Yona remembered that time in Shisen, when both Jaeha and Kija had fought to keep Hak from Suwon. If Tae-wu was ever forced to stand between the two...it would be Hak’s doing, not Suwon’s. Should Yona be grateful that Hak now had even more reason not to let that happen?

“Hey, kid,” Jaeha said to Tae-yeon in the silence that followed. “We green dragons can fly very fast, you know. I’m sure your...brother?” He shrugged. “Will visit you all the time.”

Tae-yeon perked up. “Is that true?”

“Yeah, I—I guess it is,” said Tae-wu, wiping his eyes. “Tae-yeon, you should go play with Han-dae for a while. I need to talk with Hak and his friends for a while.” At Tae-yeon’s look of dismay, he quickly added “I promise big brother Hak will play with you, and stay for a long time before he has to go again.”

“So,” said Yun when they were alone again. “Are we going to ignore the fact that Suwon is supposedly Ouryuu? That seems...important. Maybe we should go back to Ik-su after all.”

Hak looked away. “There was a time I’d have sooner believed godhood of him than of Yona,” he admitted. Yona wondered if he still felt that way—if she really thought about it, she did.

“Ik-su might have something to tell us,” Yona began, then hesitated. She knew what she wanted to do, but she didn’t want to put Hak through that, not now.

He read her mind anyway. “But you want to talk to Suwon.”

She nodded. “I never tried to think that much about what it meant, that I was supposed to be Hiryuu. If it’s him too...I really should think about what that means, shouldn’t I?”

Tae-wu cleared his throat. “If I can—I mean, maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything? The heavens had nothing to do with anything Ouryuu’s accomplished, and he’s not following any plan of theirs now. If you’ve been ignoring it too, then maybe—”

And yet he slipped back into calling him Ouryuu without even realizing it. Yona thought back on all the times she and Suwon had met by chance, all the times they’d found themselves working from different angles towards the same goal. And she thought back to the words Ik-su had spoken to her long ago. “It would be nice,” she said, “if we could both simply live.” She turned to Hak. “It doesn’t have to be right away. I’d like you to finally be able to spend some time in Fuuga. But eventually...yes. I would like to talk to Suwon again.” Hak closed his eyes and nodded. He would support her, as he always had.

“This is all…” Tae-wu began, “it’s a lot. Are you—are you really going to stay for a while?”

Yona looked to Hak, who took a deep breath, then nodded. “Of course we are, Tae-wu,” she said.

“I know I made the wrong decision, Hak, but I’m trying to make the best of it, and—”

Hak shook his head. “You didn’t make the wrong decision.” Tae-wu looked up at him, eyes widening in surprise. “You probably don’t know this, but when Kan Su-jin rose up against Suwon, even Princess Yona chose to ride to his aid. Personal matters aside, a coup like the one you described would have been bad.”

“It was bad enough,” said Tae-wu. “His own Sky soldiers turned against him, he was in prison for days, he had no one…”

“How awful,” said Hak flatly.

“...right. Sorry, Princess.”

Yona smiled to let him know she wasn’t bothered...well, not by the sympathy he felt for Suwon. That the dragon’s blood had so drastically changed his feelings...she glanced back at her own dragons. What was it Kija had said when they first met? No matter who you are or what your intentions may be, I am your dragon. It wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be.

“Anyway, knowing you, you didn’t make a decision at all, did you?” Hak went on.

“I...was already halfway to the gallows when the dragons appeared,” Tae-wu admitted. “I wasn’t really thinking at all.”

“Figured,” said Hak. “So while you might think you’ve got some hard decisions ahead of you, when the time comes, it’ll probably be like that.”

“You know it could just as easily be like that and be the wrong choice,” Tae-wu said.

“No,” Hak said with confidence, “I know you’ll do what’s best for the Wind Tribe.”

Later, when Yona and her friends were alone again, she approached Jaeha. “I kept thinking about how I would free Hak when I had the chance, and he didn’t even want it. I didn’t even think—”

“Yona, dear?”

“Do you want to go back to Captain Gigan? You never wanted anything to do with ‘Hiryuu’ in the first place, did you?”

Jaeha sighed. “So that’s on your mind now? Ah...it’s true I felt that way. That was before I knew you.”

“But you changed your mind. Was it really because of me, or was it the dragon’s blood?”

“I’ve asked myself that question more times than you can imagine, believe me. In the end...I’m happy here. You’re family, all of you.” And Yona knew the dragon’s blood couldn’t make him feel anything for Hak or Yun, but… “Yona dear?” Jaeha asked. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m wishing I was there when the dragon gods appeared,” said Yona. “I have some questions for them.”

#akatsuki no yona #akayona fanfic #ouryuu suwon verse #tae-wu #my fic

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