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interstellargatorskinboots1812 · 3 years ago

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Tapped Into Your Mind & Soul Chapter 5

WARNINGS: It’s an Alfie fic, so obviously SWEARING.

As always, i am a complete comment whore so PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE drop me a line to let me know what you think of the story so far.

All Things are Subject to Decay and Change

Alfie's red Bentley barges it's way through London- a city of vibrant smog which is helping Arabella feel at ease. There is plenty of beauty to her in the soot-hazed stone of the passing buildings and even the Londoners who hunch by with sour faces and their misery reflected in the colour of the sky.

She is glad of the car's padded seats which absorb each of his sharp turns and brutal stops.

'It's like a circus round here', she comments with optimism, pushing her head further out of the window. Miles upon miles littered with curiosities - street artists providing depictions of escape on the cold pavement, costermongers shouting their trade and yards of train advertisements pasted onto lampposts in every colour. Alluring as the sound of jazz and the sight of the Charleston might be, London shrouds itself in so much more potential for her than flappers and frivolity. His irked voice snaps her from her thoughts.

'It's fuckin' 'orrible, too many animals in this circus'.

His knuckles are white from his grip on the wheel, intense focus directed to the trams and wagons weaving ahead of them. The car agitates over the metal tramlines, as a brown Hovis truck cuts in front of the car, coercing Alfie to slam on the breaks.

'Oh fucking hell!'. His tone is booming as he reaches into his pocket , pulling out a pistol to aim at the offending driver. Arabella's mouth slowly drops open, capturing his arm and pulling the gun under the dashboard, obscuring it from view. With narrow eyes she quickly looks around to scan the area.

'Have you lost your mind, Alfie?'

'Treacle, these idiots, they only understand one language.'

'Well, lets not have you arrested on my first night in London, eh?'

A small grunt emits from his throat. He yanks his hand easily from her grip and stashes his gun back into his coat pocket.

'Suit yourself,' he grumbles. The car has been overtook now on more than one occasion, another headache to add to his list. Still, best not to piss her off on her first night and so he turns his eyes back to the road ahead and daydreams of shooting the bollocks off the Hovis driver.

Twisting an unstrung strand of hair repetitively around her finger, she can't help but think about where they are going. It's going to be her new home for the foreseeable future and given the volatile looking environment of his work place, Arabella isn't holding out hope.

Moments later, the noise level begins to filter away as if they have turned down a road that is miles from any civilisation. Thriving with colourful flora within well tended gardens, regency era town houses stand majestically at three stories and with the fanciest of facades. A short and stoutly older woman canters down the pavement, before turning right into one of the houses and desperately trying to manipulate two heavy shopping bags in order to open her gate. Alfie slows the car down to a stop and beeps his horn, making the poor woman almost jump to the moon, she briskly turns around.

'Oh, vey Alfie! Are you trying to bring me closer to God?' Alfie opens the car door and takes the bags from her hands, opening her cast iron gate with ease.

'What did I tell you Mrs Goldman, mhm? No lifting and carrying these heavy bags, eh? Ishmael can take you to the market and bring you back.'

'Ah Alfie that poor lad does everything, I don't need him helping me as well. I ask God not for a lighter burden but for broader shoulders'. She simpers at him with a twinkle behind her brown eyes that Arabella did not observe before the lady spoke with Alfie.

'Worryin' about you yeh, will be the death of me! Now, tell me that landlord of yours 'as sorted that broken light fixture?'

'He's getting round to it'.

'So, that'll be a no then?' Alfie furrows his brow, making it crease with line after line and tilts his head to the side. 'You need me to have a word with him?'

Mrs Goldman chuckles earnestly before pinching his cheek between her thumb and forefinger.

'Don't be a Schmuck Alfie, the last time you did that my rent went up to pay for his hospital bill. Now, who is this beauty you're sharing your car with hmm?'' Looking around Alfie's broad shoulders, her gaze falls on Arabella who feels rather sheepish under her matriarch stare. Sighing, he pinches the tension from the bridge of his nose. The last thing he needs is for Mrs Goldman to start shooting her mouth off at her knitting circle and have the whole of the Jewish community gossiping before he has had time to formulate how he can position Arabella into his life.

'It should be fuckin' noted right, that nothing gets past you'.

Catching Alfie unawares, she uses her now free hand to provide a sharp whack to the back of his head, making his eyes scrunch. Arabella's eyebrows curve upwards as she swallows down the urge to laugh.

'This is Arabella Shelby, the sister of one of my close business associates. She's going to be staying with me until she gets settled in London'.

So, that's how he plans to play this. Arabella exits the car.

'Nice to meet you Mrs. . . erm...'

'Goldman, dear'. She shakes Arabella's hand, her light touch and weak grip showing just how delicate she is. Alfie was right, she shouldn't have been carrying those bags.

'Please accept my apologies for Mr Solomons lack of manners, I assure you dear, he does possess them somewhere'. She sends her a wink.

'I'll let you know when the search party I've sent out, actually find them.'

This tickles the grey haired lady who stomps her foot letting out a huge guffaw and patting Arabella on the arm.

'I like her Alfie, she is sharp of tongue as well as looks'. She flashes him a knowing smile, one that makes him shift from foot to foot. Much as he likes Mrs Goldman, he can muster no interest in her insinuating words.

'Right, well as much as I'd like to stand here as if i'm fuckin' not and be insulted, we have to get going. Miss Shelby here 'as 'ad a rather eventful day so, goodbye Mrs Goldman'.

She throws a harried glance at Alfie before returning a polite smile at Arabella.

'Now my dear, just you remember that I am but five doors down and that makes us neighbours. Should this Mazik get to you, just pop on to my door and i'll make sure you're always greeted with a cup of tea and a listening ear.'

Alfie knew that her words served only to aggravate him. He places a hand on Arabella's arm to lead her back to the car and curses his poor decision making for stopping here in the first place.

'Lovely to meet you Mrs Goldman, I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of one another'. Alfie's gentle push to the car, turns into a shove.

'I'm sure we will my dear, and it's Nelly to you.'

Alfie watches to make sure Mrs Goldman enters her house safely.

'Sister of a close business associate? Dread to think how you'll introduce me to people when I'm your wife.'

'Arabella, that woman has a mouth wider than the Thames, best to give her as little detail as possible and save her choking on gossip'.

Crossing her arm over her waist and tucking it in at her elbow, she turns toward her window. With a roll of his eyes, he starts up the car. They don't have to travel far before the vehicle is once again stationary. Straightening up in her seat, she observes the building in front of her. All of the houses on the street were identical in their architecture, stressed in uniformity – this one however, was built with a desire for individuality.

'There ya go, look. Home, sweet-fucking-home'. He walks around the car to help her out. She is mesmerised by the grand blossom tree that pushes the house into almost obscurity due to it's size, looming over the black front door. Pale pink pieces that have been wooed from the tree by the spring winds, gather under her feet, a reminder of life's fickleness. Concealing herself behind Alfie, her cautious spirit holds an inner negotiation with her resilience as they walk up a black and white tiled pathway. Inside the warmth of the house engulfs them both along with a nauseating charcoal smell. Her foot suddenly slides on something slippy on the marble floor. Bending down she picks up a folded piece of paper that is lay in the doorway. Alfie's name is written on it in the scrawled handwriting.

'Alright now, let's have a look and see if your suitcase has been dropped off... what's that?'

'You tell me, it's got your name on it.'

The blithe and animated Alfie Solomons she is getting to know is barely recognisable now as an ashen and turbulent man stands across from her, a wrathful look in his blue-green eyes. Frantically he grapples the paper from her hands and faces away from her to peek at the contents.

'Must be something awfully important'. She says, standing on tiptoes to see over his shoulders. The note buckles into pieces as he folds it in his fist, harshly.

'Who's asking you?' his quick-tempered reply takes her by surprise and she narrows her eyes at him, making him clear his throat.

'It's a betting tip if you must know. As an occasional bookmaker, I do need to keep a sharp eye out for the fastest horses'.

He stashes the note into his deep pocket. They both stand facing one another, Alfie towering over her by a good few inches. Neither of them speaking, just eyes setting fire to the other pair. The door at the end of the hall bursts open and commotion on four paws comes bounding excitedly towards his owner.

'Oh, 'ere he is look, the behemoth with a wagging tale. Ello mate, did you miss me?' Placing his hand onto his right hip, Alfie slowly bends down to fuss and stroke the solid bulk of his bull mastiff.

His incensed constitution replaced with playful humour by his four-legged friend. As if sensing the presence of a stranger, his dog bolts into an alert position and begins to bark anxiously and warningly at Arabella. Alfie prepares himself to calm down his probably panicked fiancé. He's not expecting the hand that comes to his elbow, pushing him aside as she crouches in front of the slobbering beast, offering her hand to smell.

'Hello, you. I've heard so much about you, don't you know?' She strokes her hand roughly over the top of the dog's head, which he immediately cocks and begins to excitedly wag his tail. 'See, your gruff and tough owner here is a huge softy when it comes to you, he doesn't shut up about you'. Alfie watches on as she undauntedly makes a fuss, not caring about the amount of froth being drooled onto what looks like an expensive, if not gaudy, coat.

'Well, his name is Cyril and he's supposed to be an all powerful and protective breed, but I will acknowledge that it appears I was fuckin' lied to about that'. He crinkles his forehead as he watches Cyril gracelessly roll onto his back so Arabella can rub at his belly.

'Well I think he's just perfect., i'm sure we'll get on like a house on fire.

'Let's see if you're still saying that when he's all over you at five in the morning because he wants to go out for a piss'.

Arabella looks up at him and shakes her head. 'I can see Cyril here holds all the power in this house'.

'Oh yeh? An how do you work that out?'

She pushes herself up to standing and offers him a condescending smile. 'Because Alfie, power lies in loyalty and I can see how dyed-in-the-wool you are with him'.

'That so? Well, lets see where my loyalty gets him tomorrow when Edna sees these muddy paw prints on her mopped floor'.

'Edna?'

He scratches Cyril behind his ears as he steps closer to her.

'My maid. Lovely woman she is, reminds me of me Mother. You'll meet her tomorrow. Now, do you wanna see your new home?'

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Arabella piano-plays her fingertips on the dark walnut dressing table, listening to the rain outside as it pelts the windows and drips from the alien roof. She could float half way to heaven as she kicks off her slippers and the plush carpet hugs at her swollen feet. Alfie has spent some of the evening showing her around his impressive home. A big house, one she dreamed of owning as a child with it's polished wooden floors and graceful bannisters. Nothing like her Small Heath dwellings. Is it possible she is beginning to get homesick for a place she isn't even sure exists? One with love and where her soul is understood. However, when he had shown her the fully plumbed copper bath tub, she was ready to say 'i- do' post haste.

Alfie is steadfast becoming a curious paradox – his abode is a beautiful palace, gleaming with a spotless silence. It's king, all the same is harsh and unpredictable with a flare of intelligence and good looks. Although she is hasten to admit it, he intrigues her.

Until Tommy sorts the delivery of the rest of her things, all of her is compacted into the small suitcase that she pulls from the bed to put away She puts on her nightie, a soft cream silk slip – although well worn, still immaculate. After an argument with Alfie regarding sleeping arrangements, they finally agreed that they should be adult enough to share a bed to make their relationship more realistic to his house staff. Standing in front of the floor length, mirror she watches as his mother's locket swings off her neck like a stranger. She pats the soft garment over her stomach - full from a delicious stew his maid had prepared, which she enjoyed alone. Alfie has secreted himself in his downstairs office and she has not seen sight nor sound of him all night..

The sound of smashing glass makes her jump, she can hear the thundering voice of Alfie barking out words she can't make out. Whatever the furore is, it's emanating from the upstairs landing. She quickly steps out of the room and sees the bathroom door ajar. Inside Alfie is desperately trying to wrestle Cyril inside a large fluffy towel. The floor around him is immersed in water and Alfie's shirt is saturated.

'Cyril, keep-the-fuck-still'. His fractious tone echoes off the bathroom tiles as he battles against his dog.

'Alfie, do you need some help?'

'No we've got this under control, ain't we boy'. As Cyril succumbs to submission, allowing his master to begin to towel dry his fur, Alfie looks up to acknowledge Arabella, his eyes immediately give her a once over and he feels the inside of his throat dry up as he spots her legs. Cyril takes advantage of his master's distraction and bounds his way out of the towel, bouncing his head off the copper bath in the process, before galloping his way to Arabella.

'Cyril! Ya daft, mad cunt! Get back 'ere now!' Taking not a ounce of notice, Cyril jumps frenziedly onto Arabella, wet paws pushing away at her.

'Get off 'er now ya demented lad! CYRIL! Fuck sake!'

Uncontrollable barks bite their way back at Alfie who is now tugging at his dog's paws, trying to gain purchase to pull him off her, flattened and trapped as she is against the wall.

'Fuckin' hell Cyril, what are you playing at, get off. . . stop trying to wrestle . . .CYRIL! I'm warning y. . . '

'SIT!' Her voice is loud and stern as she points to the floor with a free hand. Cyril obeys and sits down, Arabella following him to the ground, untwisting the towel from around Alfie's fisted hands and slowly patting down Cyril's blubbery body. The dog sits calmly, with his head held up majestically as if he is content in being obedient for her.

'Right fuckin' turncoat ya are Cyril. Get one whiff of a woman and you forget about me, eh?' He folds his arms and leans against the door frame, watching as Arabella softly finishes drying.

'It's all in the tone, Alfie. You have to be stern not erratic'. She stands up smugly in front of him.

'S'at so?' He looks her up and down once more, only this time he notices just how wet Cyril has made her and he swallows hard. The light fabric of her night dress is now translucent and he can make out the shape of her ample breasts and the enticing colouring of her nipples. The quick glance he gets before looking away is like a blow to his chest. Her body is certainly holding his interest but he knows he can't take any more of her in. He does not want to look at all, but this was unavoidable.

Clearing his throat and picking up the towel from Cyril, he gestures to her chest.

'You might need this, to erm cover . . . ' She looks down and immediately covers her chest with her arms, taking the towel from him to dry off.

'I'm sorry about Cyril, he can be a right lunatic when he wants to be.'

'They're just tits, Alfie', she says as she notices how he has turned his body away from her.

'No, they're not just tits- they're yours and it's not up to my maniacal dog to expose them because he can't keep bloody still'. He moves past her into the bedroom and reappearing a few seconds later.

'You can wear this if you like, whilst you dry that off. I promise it's clean'. He hands her one of his white shirts which she gladly accepts.

'You're nothing like I thought you would be, Alfie'.

'Yeh?' He moves closer to her. 'That's because, right, true power lies in the unexpected'. They both stare at the other, as if taking notes, before he breaks the chain and walks away toward the staircase.

'Cyril, come on', he pats his leg and Cyril follows, leaving her flustered on the landing. Was it possible that Solomons possessed a more human side that contradicts his reputation? She turns away from the stairs and hurries into the bathroom to change. Closing the door, she notices Alfie's black wool coat hanging from the hook. The coat he placed his secretive letter in earlier. An uneasy feeling washes over her, she always respects privacy, to her far too many people can't live in silence for fear of missing applause from an audience who don't even care. She has to see what has him so vexed though - if she wants to be ahead of him and her brother then she has to do some necessary digging. Before she can talk herself out of it, she plunges her hand into his pocket and pulls out the piece of paper. As she turns it over she can see that this is not the same note. This is a pink betting slip- after further rummaging, she realises he has moved the note elsewhere.

'Fuck' she says, annoyed. One final glance and she sees what looks like a phone number on the back.. She leaves the bathroom in a hurry, her hand concealing the slip.

TAG LIST: @clintbartoris @gameofpot @doomwhathouwilt @lokigirlszendaya @inkinterrupted @misselsbells06 @sunshineyourethebesttime

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theimpossiblescheme · 3 years ago

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30 for Fujiko?

There was a room off the Atlantis Club in Tokyo that not a single window could see into--only a tiny vent that filtered in the noise from the main floor. Usually it was reserved for shady underworld dealings and the occasional drunken hookup once the blood had been mopped away. But just as often it was a hiding place for people who couldn’t bear to be seen by anyone.

Fujiko went there to disappear more than she cared to admit. Sometimes it was after a heist went to hell. Sometimes she’d just gotten into a fight so bitter she needed a few weeks to lick her wounds and regain her voice. Sometimes she just felt... wrong, like her own skin had grown sticky and heavy and all she wanted to do was peel it off inch by bloody inch. On those days, she would drop a blank check on the bar, slip through a discreet side door and jam it shut behind her so no one could follow, and curl up in one of the chairs, pulling her coat over herself like a blanket. She would stay like that for days on end, barely touching her suitcase--Fujiko didn’t usually travel light, but she’d only had the presence of mind to throw together a few things before just going. All she had the energy to do was listen to the muffled music from the bandstand outside and try not to dwell on anything else.

Signore Baroni had been cleverer than she gave him credit for. Her latest mark must have been tailing Zenigata, he saw through her innocent disguise so quickly. He was also a lot rougher than she’d expected... so many bruises on her back, and she hadn’t even gotten a single diamond out of it. Fujiko slept on her side for a week and a half afterward, even after rolling onto the floor and remembering the airplane pillow and blanket she’d packed. But at least here, she knew she could sleep soundly for a while, with the anonymity that even the nicest hotel didn’t offer. Hotels still required a name and face, and right now Fujiko didn’t want either. Here in the dark, amidst the chaos of the city nightlife, nobody asked questions. The only human interaction she had was through late-night notes from the hostess attached to bottles of wine or boxes of leftover food from the kitchens, two-word missives in curly handwriting on a piece of cardstock: “They’re gone.” Telling her it was safe to use the phone or the restroom or even to just stretch her legs. Nobody would see her.

They were a small comfort to her, silly as it sounded. She never kept the cards, but she had the handwriting practically memorized. And just down the hallway, the bandstand’s moody jazz was as good as a lullaby when her eyelids grew too heavy.

When the fog had cleared, her wounds healed and her mind sharp once again, Fujiko would throw away every bottle and box and erase every trace of her presence before venturing out to freshen up. The last thing out of her suitcase was always a new set of clothes--something she hadn’t worn in quite some time--and a new hair dye kit. The Fujiko Mine that stepped out of that restroom was a brand new creature, free of old burdens, completely separate from the tired old thing that had first slumped through the doors. And as she emerged, there was a new spring in her step and ring in her voice, every dull edge sharpened and dangerous once again.

Baroni had a thing for cute blondes, so her hair was a dark blood red this time, and the demure curls were straightened until they lay sleek and shiny across her back. Already feeling lighter without so much mousse and hairspray, Fujiko practically glided up to the bar, setting her suitcase down beside her and rapping her knuckles around the side. “Just a mojito--nothing too fancy.”

The barkeep nodded and went to work; doors didn’t open for another hour, so he had no one else to wait on. By then, Fujiko would be gone, but it felt rude not to give some kind of goodbye. Entering from a nearby back office door, Ginko Hoshikage--club hostess and partner in crime going back many years--took the seat beside her, the smoke from her long cigarette trailing delicately after her. She’d also changed her hair, going from seafoam green to an almost periwinkle shade. “Already tired of wine, are we?” she asked with a smile.

Fujiko shrugged. “I just figured I needed something a bit lighter. Besides, I need to leave something in your cellars after almost two weeks, don’t I?”

“Oh, believe me, you barely left a dent.” Drawing an envelope out of one pocket, Ginko passed it over to Fujiko. “This came for you this morning, by the way.”

She barely had to look at it to know who it was from--she’d shut off her phone for a while, but handwritten letters were always more romantic. Sure enough, there was a summons from Lupin, his own handwriting an excited scrawl as he waxed poetic about a recently discovered Goya piece being displayed in the Prado in Madrid. Why not? Madrid was lovely this time of year, and a new Goya piece might sell for a tidy billion if she played her cards right. Poor Lupin... she’d still be able to make it worth his while. Much as she’d never say it out loud, she really had missed him.

“So I suppose you’ll be leaving us after all?” Ginko’s manner was nonchalant, but she still eyed her old partner closely as the barkeep arrived with their respective drinks.

“Mmm... maybe I’ll stay and finish up here first.” Playfully tipping the rim of Ginko’s rose spritz towards her, Fujiko grinned--actually grinned, and it came so naturally after two weeks’ isolation, she could have cried with relief--when Ginko pulled her glass away and swatted at her hand. An old friend’s cheerful scolding in her ear, a lover’s letter in her hand, a splash of sake washing away the cobwebs... and from the unobstructed window across the room, the sun warming her back, all pain forgotten.

The world was making sense again.

#asked and answered #the-golden-ghost #lupin iii #Ginko is such a cool character even if she only showed up once (twice if you count a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in Part 5)#and I wanted to include her as one of the souls Fujiko gravitates towards. :)

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you-can-call-me-wanda · 4 years ago

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Saying Goodbye

Pairing: Izzy Stradlin x Reader (Requested)

Author’s Note: I hope you enjoy! This is my first ever Guns N Roses imagine!

“Hey (Y/N), you coming to the party?”

You looked up from what you were doing to meet the gaze of your coworker, Chase. He stood across from you, wrapping up cables and sorting them before putting them away. He looked at you expectantly.

“Is there a party tonight?” you asked him. As a roadie, you weren’t commonly invited to parties. Sure, the road crew hung out after shows quite often, but those weren’t official hang outs really.

Chase chuckled. “Yeah, everyone’s headed over to some bar after we finish packing up the gear,” he said.

“Who’s everyone?” you asked.

“Everyone,” Chase said. He looked around and lowered his voice dramatically. “I think even Axl is gonna be there.”

“Hmm,” you hummed, thinking about whether you felt up to go out tonight. The party sounded intriguing, but you still had quite a bit of work to do before you’d be able to leave. It was rare that the members of Guns N Roses would be attending the same “party” as the rest of the crew. They were rising to fame, you were not. However, it wasn’t like you knew any of them very well, so it really didn’t matter too much that they were going to be joining everybody at the bar. Not to mention the fact that you were pretty shy and large social gatherings intimidated you greatly.

“I think I’ll probably just skip it,” you decided after thinking it through. “I’m pretty beat from the past couple of shows.” Guns N Roses had just played three nights in a row and you were tired from the constant rigging and unrigging of lights.

“Aw,” Chase said with a frown. “Well, if you change your mind, feel free to find me.” He finished packing up his box of cables and made his way down the hall, presumably to the buses outside.

You just sighed as you continued to work at dismantling some stupid light for travel.

You found yourself meandering through the hotel after you finally finished up your work for the night. It seemed like everyone else had gone over to the bar already, so you were on your own for the night though you didn’t mind too much. You figured you’d head outside for a breath of fresh air and maybe a quick smoke before going to bed early.

As you made your way through the lobby though, you quite literally bumped into someone.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” you said, gasping as your body collided with another. You looked up and were slightly mortified to see none other than Izzy Stradlin standing in front of you.

“It’s okay,” he said, giving you an awkward smile. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Neither was I,” you confessed, returning the smile.

You both stood there for an uncomfortable moment filled with silence.

“Um, your name’s (Y/N), right?” Izzy asked, reaching up to scratch the back of his head.

“Yeah,” you answered, surprised that he knew who you were. “And you’re Izzy,” you added, kicking yourself after saying so. Obviously, he was Izzy. He was part of Guns N Roses for fucks sake!

Izzy laughed a little at that. “Yeah. You’re not out with the rest of the crew tonight?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Nah,” you replied. “Not really my scene.”

“Me neither,” Izzy surprised you by saying. “I’m not a huge party kind of guy.”

“Really?” you couldn’t help but ask. You had assumed Izzy went out with the band all the time.

He shrugged. “It’s not so fun when everyone knows who you are.”

“Oh,” you answered, not really sure what to say. “Well, I’m just going out for a smoke,” you said, beginning to move past him.

“You mind if I join you?” he asked. Truth be told, he had just come back inside from a smoke outside, but you didn’t need to know that. He found you interesting and wanted to stay in your company for a little bit longer.

You surprised yourself by nodding. “Okay,” you said.

The two of you made your way outside and to the side of the hotel building. There, you stood, leaned against the brick wall. Izzy lit yours and his cigarette with his lighter and the two of you smoked together in the quiet darkness.

After some time had passed and both of your cigarettes were down to the filter, Izzy spoke again.

“This is nice,” he mumbled, stamping out the cigarette but on the pavement. “It’s nice to have some quiet, y’know?”

You nodded in agreement. “Yeah, don’t get too much of that on this tour,” you said.

“Tell me about it,” Izzy responded. “I think you and I are the only people who know how to stop talking.”

You blushed slightly at his comment. This was your first time ever talking to Izzy and he was already grouping you and him together as the quiet ones.

“Well,” you said, gathering up some courage, “if you ever need some quiet company, just come and find me.”

That’s exactly what Izzy did.

In the following weeks, you and Izzy became fast friends. He would find you during the day, setting up for the show, and promptly drag you away from your work to go grab lunch with him. After his concerts, you would rush to finish packing up so you could go back to the tour bus or the hotel and find Izzy.

You and he were often left to do your own thing. So, while the rest of the band or crew would go clubbing or bar hopping, you and Izzy would go sightseeing or out for a meal. The tour took you all across the United States and the two of you spent your shared free time exploring all the new sights and attractions each city brought.

Of course, your favorite part of all this was getting to spend time with Izzy. He was quickly becoming one of your best friends and sometimes you would even catch yourself thinking of him as something more.

The feelings were requited. Izzy felt like he had found his other half in you. Someone who was more laidback and quieter like him, but also someone he felt he could talk to for hours on end.

The North American leg of the tour was quickly drawing to an end though and both of you were nervous for what the future had in store for your relationship. While you would like nothing more than to continue travelling with Guns N Roses as part of their crew, your contract would be ending with this part of the tour. You would be headed back home to your normal life and Izzy would be going to Europe.

Being a roadie had been a bit of a last-minute decision. You’d been in need for a paycheck and a friend of yours had known a guy who was able to get you this gig. It was kind of amazing actually that you were able to be part of such a big tour, but they had been pretty desperate for another set of hands that could start right away so you were hired. In your mind, this had always been a temporary position. You always knew you would return home and work towards finding a career that was more stable and didn’t take you so far from home for so long.

Izzy knew of your plans too. You had told him weeks ago, but knowing you were going to be leaving him ahead of time did nothing to ease the pain of knowing that he would be without you once again.

So, neither of you said anything about your feelings and instead chose to pretend like the end wasn’t coming.

It was at the airport where everything finally came out.

You weren’t even needed there but Izzy had insisted you come with him for a last goodbye. During the drive over, he slipped his hand into yours and gave it a tight squeeze. No words needed to be spoken for you to understand what he was trying to say. You squeezed his hand in return and rested your head on his shoulder. Out of the corner of your eyes, you watched the world quickly pass by through the window. You found yourself wishing time would just slow down.

When you got to the airport, most of the crew was tasked with unloading all the equipment and taking it to where it needed to be checked in. You made your way inside with Izzy and the rest of the band though, your job already over.

Izzy was still holding your hand as you walked in. He slowed his pace, letting the rest of his band pass the two of you by, so you and he could have a moment alone to say your goodbyes.

“You could come with us,” Izzy proposed, knowing entirely that you would reject the idea.

“Izzy,” you sighed, tears welling up in your eyes, “My whole life is here. My family, my friends- all of that is here.” You blinked your eyes shut tightly, trying to stop the tears from falling.

Izzy reached up to gently wipe away a stray tear that had managed to cascade down your cheek. He continued to cradle your cheek after drying your face.

“I know,” he said. His voice with tight with emotion.

You forced a smile onto your face. “Guns N Roses is going places, Izzy. You’re going to be flying all around the world, touring, and recording albums, and constantly moving. We’d be living in different worlds.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” he said softly. “I get it. Can you just promise me one thing?”

“What’s that?” you asked.

“Promise me you’ll always remember that I love you,” he said.

You pulled him into a passionate kiss the second the words left his mouth. Waves of emotion wracked through your body as your lips met his. It would have been the perfect kiss if you hadn’t known it would be your last shared with him.

“I promise,” you whispered, pulling away from him.

Izzy just nodded, not trusting himself to say much more without breaking down. He planted a small kiss to your forehead before taking a step back from you and picking up his suitcase.

“I guess this is goodbye,” he said, his own eyes now watery.

“I guess so,” you agreed. “Goodbye Izzy.”

“Goodbye (Y/N).”

All you could do was watch as Izzy turned away from you and made his way over to the rest of the band and the crew members that would be accompanying them on the next leg of their tour. Upon his arrival, Axl threw an arm around Izzy’s shoulders and threw a glance back at you. You paid him no mind though, too focused on Izzy’s retreating figure. You stood frozen in place as you watched them make their way together over to the terminal and eventually out of sight.

When he was gone, you tentatively raised your hand to your lips, remembering how his lips had felt against yours and heartbroken that you would never know the sensation again.

#izzy stradlin x reader #izzy stradlin imagine #guns n roses x reader #guns n roses imagine #wanda writes

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thesewordsareallihavetogive · 4 years ago

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I Used To Call You Home - Isaac Lahey x Reader

(gif source)

Summary: Isaac comes back from France after two years after leaving without saying a word. (Requested by anon: Could I have a teen wolf Isaac Lacey imagine where he comes back from France? It’s angsty but has a happy ending)

Word Count: 2660

Warnings: angst, fluff, cursing (what else is new)

a/n: hi! sorry this took so long, thanks for sending in the request anon! if i’m being completely honest i kinda like the title more than i like the actual fic (oops). but hopefully you like it and i did it justice! as always, please message me if you’d like to be added to my taglist!

masterlist

It was the last day of y/n’s first semester of college. It had gone by in a blur, really. The pack, y/n included, had still been recovering from everything that had happened with the hunters back in Beacon Hills, so to say her mind was elsewhere at the beginning of the semester was an understatement. She had finished all of her finals the day before so technically she could have already gone back to Beacon Hills, but given that her family all but disowned her when they found out she hung around with the “freaks” of the town, she wasn’t exactly eager to go home. When Scott’s mom found out that y/n was planning on staying on campus for the break she graciously invited the y/h/c to stay with them for the holidays. While y/n was looking forward to spending time with her found family, she found that now, with her classes over and almost a month of nothing ahead of her, she had more time to think about things than she’d like.

Despite her efforts, her thoughts always wandered back to him. The one that got away. If one could even call it that, technically they were never together. But that didn’t mean it hurt any less - in fact, maybe it made it hurt more - when he left without so much as a goodbye. y/n was packing up the last of her clothes for the break when her phone rang. When she saw the name, she could’ve sworn that her heart dropped through the floor.

Isaac.

She almost didn’t answer. She would’ve been smart not to, considering all the pain he caused her. But something inside her - the part that still loved him with every fiber of her being - told her to pick up the phone. The line was silent for a moment before she worked up the courage to say something.

“Hello?” y/n began timidly. Another beat of silence passed and she wondered if he’d called her by mistake. Or worse, as a joke. She heard him clear his throat and she let out a silent gasp as he answered.

“Hi… I’m… I’m at the airport, could you come pick me up?” Isaac said shyly. y/n could’ve been knocked over with a feather in her state of shock. He’s here. He’s in California. He’s home. On his end of the line, Isaac was almost sure that she’d hung up on him based on the lengthy silence that followed after he spoke. Though she couldn’t see him y/n knew that he was scratching the back of his neck, the way he always did when he was unsure or nervous. Before she could give herself a chance to be bitter, to be sad and resentful, to leave him hanging just like he did to her, she said yes. She was almost as shocked by her answer as Isaac was.

“Okay… um, yeah, I’ll be there soon. Give me like 45 minutes?” she stumbled over her words as she pressed her phone between her ear and shoulder while rushing around her room to pack the last things she’d need while back in Beacon Hills.

“Great, no rush. I can’t wait to see you, y/n,” Isaac smiled warmly before hanging up the phone. y/n stood still in the middle of her room, surrounded by sweaters and leggings with her mouth wide open. I can’t wait to see you, she repeated in her head.

“Fuck me,” she murmured under her breath as she shoved the last few items in her bag. “So much for moving on,” she muttered to herself, shutting and locking her door behind her as she left.

The drive to the airport from y/n’s college campus really wasn’t too far, much to her dismay. Sure, she was eager to see Isaac, but she was definitely not looking forward to confronting the feelings she’d been avoiding for years. As she pulled off the interstate she had to remind herself that they’d been friends since they were in middle school. They knew each other like the back of their hands. Well, they used to know each other anyways. She reminded herself that he always had her back and she always had his. Until of course, he left. No matter what she thought about, it always seemed to come back to that. He left home. He left the pack. He left her. There were some days it made her so angry that she could cry - so she did - but today it was more of a low simmer with the potential to burst at any moment.

The moment y/n pulled up to the terminal it all seemed to fade away. The hurt, the anger, the sadness, gone. Just like that. It didn’t take long after she parked to find him in the crowd. Her blue-eyed, six-foot-two scarf-wearing best friend stuck out like a sore thumb in the crowd of shorter travelers. Her breath hitched in her throat when they locked eyes through the window. As far as she was concerned, the rest of the world ceased to exist in that moment because all she could see was Isaac striding towards her car with multiple bags in hand. She snapped out of her daze and nearly tripped over her feet as she rounded the car to greet him and help him with his things.

Before she could say anything Isaac haphazardly dropped his bags on the ground, the safety of his belongings be damned, and wrapped his arms around her in a tight bear hug. A million scenarios had gone through y/n’s mind on the ride over but this was not one of them. Isaac buried his face deeper into her neck as y/n finally came out of her state of shock and returned the hug.

“I missed you so much,” he whispered quietly. His breath was warm, much warmer than the uncharacteristically frigid December night, and it sent a warm tingle down her spine. I missed you so much. God, she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She was convinced it had to be a joke, this whole thing was playing out as if she hadn’t spent an entire year putting the pieces he’d left her in back together. The worst part was that she knew him leaving had nothing to do with her. He had never meant to hurt her and she knew it would kill him if he knew how badly he did. But, she decided, that was a conversation for when she wasn’t dangerously close to getting a parking ticket for being in the terminal pick-up for too long.

“I missed you too,” y/n replied with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Isaac was instantly able to tell something was bothering her.

“Hey,” he said with a concerned smile on his face. “What’s the matter?” He genuinely cared, y/n could tell that much. She would’ve felt bad lying to him if she knew she’d get away with it, but she knew he’d be able to tell the moment the words left her lips.

“I’m fine,” she replied with her lips pressed into a thin line and an expression that Isaac couldn’t quite read. He knew something was up, but he also knew y/n. The last thing she would want is to talk about whatever was bothering her in public, so he squeezed her arm gently before effortlessly picking up all three of his suitcases simultaneously to load them in the back of her car. They were quiet for the first few minutes of the drive and a silent understanding passed between them. A lot has changed. The silence remained until Isaac glanced away from the yellow street lights reflecting off the pavement to look at y/n. She’d grown a lot in the time since he’d last seen her; her hair was darker, the bags under her eyes had faded to a lighter color and her skin was clearer. He was almost too wrapped up in rememorizing her features that he didn’t see a small tear slip down her cheek, followed by another, this one larger and faster. Almost.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” he asked, worry etched all over his face as he gently placed a hand on her arm. If she was being completely honest, y/n hadn’t even realized she’d let the tears slip out until he said something. She glanced in the rear view mirror before quickly rubbing her face with the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt.

“What? Nothing. I’m fine,” she managed to say without her voice cracking. A small sniffle escaped but she never looked away from the road. At first Isaac was patient, he really tried to be anyway. He realized that after nearly two years of radio silence he didn’t have much of a right to come back and act like nothing had changed. But every being - supernatural or not - has their limits, so when y/n lied about her feelings for at least the second time that night, Isaac got tired of being patient.

“Pull over,” he ordered gently, looking at her expectantly and drumming his fingers on his thigh.

“What? No, I wanna get back ho- to Beacon Hills by a decent time,” she answered, only tearing her eyes away from the highway momentarily to try to read his face. He didn’t miss the way that she avoided calling Beacon Hills ‘home’ and that spurred him on even more.

“y/n, pull over, Please,” Isaac pleaded. y/n, who was really not in the mood to unpack her feelings this late at night, almost said no again. When she took in the soft look in his eyes though, she melted. Just like old times. She pulled off at the next exit and parked in the nearest well-lit area. The place was so quiet that it reminded her of a ghost town. A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of the pack’s encounter with the ghost riders. Boy, did they have a lot to catch him up on. They sat in silence again for a moment as y/n was nervously wringing her hands together in her lap while Isaac studied her face.

“What’s bothering you? Seriously? Do you know how much it kills me when you’re hurting?” he asked sincerely. y/n let out a small chuckle at that. If only he knew. She thought about deflecting again but she knew that would accomplish nothing and he’d keep them there until the early hours of the morning if she didn’t tell him what was on her mind.

“Why didn’t you say anything,” y/n murmured in a small voice. A beat of silence passed before she continued again. “I know why you left, I get that. I know you were hurting after Allison died. Hell, we all were,” y/n took long pauses every now and then and Isaac gave her all the time she needed. “I… fuck, Isaac, I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell you this,” her voice getting louder and gaining momentum with each word. Here goes nothing.

“I- I loved you, okay? I loved you and you just left without a single goodbye. I was stuck picking up the pieces of myself for almost a year and loving someone who was gone. I lost my best friend,” she rushed out before she lost the courage to say it all. “I still love you,” she whispered quietly. y/n refused to look towards her used-to-be best friend after her confession. She started to regret the words the minute she was enveloped in the silence that followed. Loved. Love. I still love you. The words rolled around in Isaac’s mind for a few moments. When they’d finally registered he lunged towards her, narrowly missing the center console as he gently grabbed her face and pulled her in for a passionate kiss. y/n honestly thought that he was going to get out of the car and walk back to Beacon Hills after her admission, so when he kissed her like he’d been waiting to for years she let out a surprised gasp and sat frozen for a moment. When she finally snapped out of her daze she returned the kiss with a newfound fervor as she threaded her fingers through his brown locks.

The pair only broke apart when their lungs were screaming for air, and by then the car windows had managed to fog up a little. y/n smiled sheepishly at Isaac, who wore a grin big enough to crack his face in two. She looked down to her lap shyly as she chuckled.

“So…” she trailed off, a little bit lost for words.

“So…” Isaac mimicked, a playful look in his eyes as a smirk danced across his face. y/n rolled her eyes and playfully slapped his arm.

“Be nice to me, I could’ve let your ass freeze outside the airport,” she retorted, followed by a very mature display of sticking her tongue out at him.

“Oh, I think I was very nice to you,” Isaac wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. y/n groaned but nonetheless smiled at his boyish nature. The two years apart hadn’t harmed his sense of humor and y/n was grateful for that, maybe just as grateful as she was to have him back home. A few short but sweet kisses were exchanged before y/n drove back towards the highway. It wasn’t until they were nearing the exit leading to Beacon Hills that y/n realized she didn’t know where she was taking Isaac.

“Hey, umm, where are you staying?” she asked as she flicked on her blinker before merging into the right lane. Isaac looked at her like she’d grown two heads.

“With you, to Scott’s place,” he answered, confusion written all over his face. y/n’s jaw dropped and she tried her hardest to keep from swerving off the road.

“So they knew you were coming! And they conveniently forgot to tell me! And you conveniently needed me to pick you up from the airport! What the hell?!” she ranted. Truly, y/n was far too giddy from their earlier kiss to be angry with her friends, but the little plot they had orchestrated definitely had her brainstorming ways to get back at them. Even though Isaac was unaware that the pack had kept y/n in the dark, he found her outburst a bit amusing. During the remainder of the drive to the McCall house they alternated between playful bickering and laughing at each other’s stories from the past two years.

When y/n and Isaac pulled into the driveway they sat there for a moment, basking in the warm feeling of each other's presence. The air between them was quiet for a moment before Isaac broke the silence.

“You know, there’s something I meant to say earlier,” he began as he slowly leaned toward her.

“And what would that be?” y/n asked playfully as her eyes danced around his face.

“I love you too,” he murmured sweetly before pressing his lips against hers. Joy swelled in y/n’s chest as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in closer. After they pulled away y/n nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Scott, Stiles, and Lydia standing only a few feet away from the front of her car. Both of the boys wore knowing smirks and Lydia was swatting Stiles’s arm.

“I knew it! I knew it!” the red head squealed. Isaac chuckled as y/n’s cheeks began to burn bright red. She buried her face in his chest and he rested his chin atop her head, pressing a gentle kiss to her hair.

“I think this might have been part of their plan, too,” he whispered with a smirk.

a/n: if you saw me using italics 534988 times in this post, no u didn’t ❤

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#isaac lahey x reader #isaac lahey imagine #isaac lahey fanfic #isaac lahey fanfiction #isaac lahey x y/n #teen wolf fanfiction #teen wolf fanfic #teen wolf imagine #isaac x reader #isaac x y/n #isaac fanfiction #isaac fanfic #isaac lahey

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wireddless · 4 years ago

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Codeine Scene (Five H. x Reader) [2]

Codeine Scene Masterlist

Authors Note: Here this is! The rest of the story is in the works and hopefully will be finished in the next few weeks. I only expect this to be about 12-20 chapters long, depending on how much my friend and I edit this. This chapter mentions what it’s like to experience ADHD, as it’s not common within the writing community. I myself have struggled all my life with it, and only wish for it to be more represented in the writing community 💕

Summary: After getting settled into the Academy, Five and the Reader make a quick journey for some groceries. Things don’t go according to plan.

Warnings: Drug use (Marijuana), descriptions of mental disorder (ADHD), Mild gore (not terrible, you’ll know when you get there.)

Word Count: 2432

(Y/n)’s head rested on Klaus’s meditation floor pillow, the rest of her body on a pile of miscellaneous blankets from the linen closet. The high was really setting in, she was now feeling it in her body. Not half an hour after getting settled into the academy, Klaus offered to smoke (Y/n) out. And by god he did.

(Y/n) never had stuff this good before, and certainly not out of a rose petal joint. She could expect something as extra as a rose petal joint from Klaus, but she didn’t. It was really fucking pretty though, she’d admit. Klaus was sitting against the reading pillow at the foot of his bed, laughing with (Y/n) about something said in The Twilight Zone that sounded outrageous when out of context.

Mixed with the smoke of lavender incense, the remaining smoke from the weed lingered, allowing them to get higher without needing to smoke more. (Y/n) had taken an interest in how spiritual Klaus was. She herself was agnostic, but found Klaus’s overall method very tantalizing.

A record played in the background, on a suitcase turntable Klaus bought from a department store like two years ago. The Moody Blues, if (Y/n) recalled correctly. The song was slow, and physically felt good. Like laying down, but in the air. Of course she was also extremely high.

The song was reaching one of its many peaks, and (Y/n) swore she could feel the electric guitar supporting the vocals. Klaus filled his pipe with another bowl of weed and took a long, deep hit, before passing it to (Y/n).

“Mine already?” She gasped. The mere sight of the pipe being handed to her sent a euphoric feeling down her body. She sat up and took the pipe and grabbed a lighter from a bowl of them to her right. Inhaling, she held the flame over the bowl. The smoke felt terrible, but she held it in as long as she could. (Y/n) let out a long exhale, clouding up the room even more. She could feel someone at the door.

“The house reeks of weed, just to let you know.” Five spoke, leaning on the doorframe. His harsh words earned a chuckle from Klaus.

“It always does, stop trying to make (Y/n) feel bad.” Klaus took the bowl back from (Y/n) and took another hit. She ignored Five, and let the music in the background hold her attention. The song was called Nights in White Satin. She’s heard it before, but never appreciated it.

“Klaus where do you get your vinyls? I haven’t found a Moody Blues album anywhere I’ve looked.”

“Oh, I just snag them from Luther’s room.” He started. “After he and Allison finally figured their shit out and fucked, they moved in together just outside The City. They didn’t have enough room for his entire collection, so he took a box of them and left the rest. It’s really convenient if you ask me.”

“Seems like it.” (Y/n) hummed. She looked over at Five again and stared for a second. “You’ve time traveled right?”

Five tilted his head like a confused dog. “Yeah, why?”

(Y/n) spoke again, “Have you seen, firsthand, how large a dinosaur's cock is?” Before Five could even begin to think of a reply, Klaus sat up and chimed in.

“You know, that’s a really interesting question.” He complimented (Y/n)’s thought process. “Five, how large is a dinosaur’s dick?”

“I have never seen a dinosaur‘s Penis!” Five spoke, flustered.

(Y/n) hummed in response, amused. “Why do you think there aren’t like, fossils of dinosaur dicks? Like did scientists think it was inappropriate?”

“Because it’s made of muscle and tissue, those don’t fossilize, bone does.” Five groaned. Klaus and (Y/n) snort, their bodies scrunching up in laughter.

“Bone.” Klaus said in a pause between his giggles. Hearing the word makes both of them laugh even harder.

“I live with children.” Five muttered and walked away.

Klaus and (Y/n) continued to giggle like little children who stole their preschool teachers keys.

The reek of weed slowly started to fade. Five definitely had a contact high, but he didn’t mind too much, as he was still beyond functional. In a quick blip, he found himself in the kitchen, looking to make himself a quick snack. Upon opening the cabinet, he found no bread.

“Damn it.” He released an angered sigh, holding back the urge to kick a hole in the cabinet. The air around him constricted, and in a blue flash, he was back in Klaus’s room.

“Holy shit!” Klaus almost jumped out of his skin when Five blipped in front of him, and (Y/n) sat up quickly, not expecting him either.

“We’re out of bread.” Five spoke immediately, not even waiting for the two in the room to adjust to his presence. “I’m headed to the store, do either of you want to come?”

“Oooh I can’t.“ Klaus frowned. “My stomach hurts. But (Y/n) can go!” He looked over at (Y/n). “You can go right?” She nodded, not minding Klaus speaking for her.

“Yeah, it’s a little stuffy in here.” She lifted each hand up and down, keeping the heels of them on her leg. Five looked down at her and scoffed.

“Well come on then.” He walked out of the room, not waiting for her to get up. (Y/n) scrambled up and followed after him.

“See you in a bit, Klaus!” Her voice carried through the hallway as her feet hit each stair quickly. Five was a fast walker, she noticed, not taking any time to wait for her. Asshole.

Five’s car was in the alleyway next to the house, hidden from the peering eye of those walking along the street. (Y/n) grabbed the passenger door handle, and as she was about to open it, Five spoke.

“You might want to get in the back seat.” His voice became muffled as he plopped into the driver’s seat.

“What why-“ Before she could finish she caught sight of the tons of disposable coffee cups. “Ah.” She shut the door and got into the back instead. She awkwardly tapped her foot as Five put his car into gear and pulled out into the street.

The drive to the market was quiet, except for the putter of the engine, and gentle taps of the rain landing on the roof. Five found a parking spot rather quickly, it being a cool weekend and all.

“Just stay in the car, I’ll be right out.” Five grabbed his keys and slipped out of the car and walked through the parking lot to the market. With no music to focus on, (Y/n) tapped her foot quietly, trying to ignore the slight panic caused by the lack of stimulation.

The rain only slightly calmed her, but it hardly did anything. Her hands came together and the snapping sound of her knuckles cracking filled the car momentarily, before falling silent. Her eyes darted around, looking at the soaked ground, then at the gray sky, then to the cars driving by on the freeway.

(Y/n)’s ADHD had gone untreated for years. When her parents passed and she was placed in her aunt and uncle’s custody, they took her off all medications. She had become quite used to the inability to wear certain fabrics, the anxiety caused by lack of or overstimulation, always moving some part of her body, or the dirty looks she was given when she overspoke when trying to make friends.

The sound of the door opening quickly shot her out of her thoughts. She was about to greet the person getting in, when she realized that it wasn’t Five.

“Shit shit shit shit!” He spoke under his breath, clearly panicked. (Y/n) was completely still, except for her hand, slowly creeping to the big silver wrench next to her. She was losing time as he quickly attempted to pull the panel off of the area next to the ignition.

Her fingers wrapped around the cool metal of the wrench, and she quickly pulled it towards her, trying to stay as quiet as possible. She inhaled as deeply and as quietly as she could, before speaking.

“Hey asshole!” The man in the driver seat jumped, not expecting someone to be in the back seat. He turned and looked at her before reaching in his pocket to attempt to grab something. (Y/n) lunged forward, attempting to hit him with the wrench, missing him as he fell back against the door, his hands whipping out a gun of some sort. Fuck.

She was lodged between the front and back seat, not able to move back in her panic. She was close to tears, but could hold them back. Her hands slowly raised, showing she wasn’t going to hit him.

“Ok, n-now put the wrench down.” His gun was still pointed at her. She slowly lowered her hand with the wrench in it, earning his trust. But now was the time to think fast. Before she let go she aggressively grabbed the barrel of the gun and pushed it up, giving her an opening to swing the wrench at his face.

A sickening crack and the loud scream of the man filled the car as she broke his nose. She wasn’t done though. She ripped the gun out of his hand, tossing it in the backseat before grabbing this man's head by the hair and slamming him into the steering wheel. A series of small honks from the car echoed in the nearly empty parking lot until she was done. Her hands were covered in the blood from his nose, a slight splatter on her shirt as well.

“Oh my god.” He was unconscious. (Y/n) managed to slip back into the backseat, no longer fearing for her life. She quickly stepped out and ran around the car to the driver's seat. “Oh my god.” She opened it and pulled the man's head back, resting it on the seats headrest. She had never really done anything like this before, so she was beyond skittish. Her heart and mind felt like they were going a million miles an hour, and she barely had a clue of what to do. “Oh my god what do I do?”

It took a moment before common sense truly hit her and she checked for breathing and pulse. Her first two fingers could pick up a heartbeat, a rather strong one as well. Her fingers moved to his Cupid’s bow, checking his breathing. She concluded that he was just knocked out, but she was still panicking.

“Hey!” Five’s voice made her jump. She quickly peered over the car and saw Five walking towards her with a few bags. “I thought I told you to stay in the car.”

“I know but something happened!” Five walked around the front and she stepped to the side, revealing the unconscious man below her. Fives eyes widened, surprised to say the least.

“Now the question is; what happened?” Five looked at the man, and then her once again.

“I-I was in the back of the car like you told me and this guy just got in and he tried to steal the car!” Her hand was shaking frantically. “He tried to-“ the word took a moment to process, her fingers showing that she was searching for the word. “Hotwire the car! He didn’t even see me and tried to rip the steering column cover off to get to the wires and everything!” (Y/n)’s voice shook. She was about to cry.

“Ok, ok, that’s a start. What did you do?” Five looked to her for more answers as he leaned down to check the man's vitals for himself.

“I grabbed the-the wrench and I tried to hit him with it but I missed and he pulled a gun out on me.” (Y/n)’s body slumped on the car, needing any support she could get as the adrenaline left her system.

“I don’t see a gun.” Five looked all over the man, not finding the weapon, before his gaze landed on it in the back seat. “Oh, go on.” He stood up and leaned on the vehicle as well. The grocery bags, now forgotten by his feet.

“So I made him think I was putting the wrench down, and then I grabbed the gun and threw it in the back seat, and- and then I hit him in the nose with the wrench and it got his blood all over me,” She gestured to her messed up shirt. “And then I,” her voice broke, the weight of what just happened now settling on her. “I started hitting his head on the steering wheel, and- and I couldn’t stop.” She was full on panicking now.

“Well you got the job done.” Five looked down at him again. “I think you broke his nose.”

“Oh my god I did?” She started panicking more now.

“Yeah, yeah but it’s fine, you didn’t kill him.” Five attempted to comfort her without pulling her into an embrace. He was awfully bad at it though. “Let’s just get him out of the car and go home.”

“We can’t just leave him here!” (Y/n) glanced down at him. “That’s fucked up!” Five scoffed and replied.

“Trying to steal a car is fucked up. He’ll be fine.” Five scooped his arms under the man and effortlessly pulled him out of the seat, dropping him on the ground next to the car, before grabbing the groceries and getting in himself. The groceries landed on the passenger seat with a plop before Five stuck his head out. “Get in the car.”

“Fine.” (Y/n) took one last glimpse at the man she assaulted before getting in, slamming her door shut in unison with Five.

“You got blood on the steering wheel.” Five sighed and wiped it off with a tissue from the box he kept in the center console. As Five pulled the car back out onto the freeway, he spoke. “I didn’t know you had that in you, back there.” His Mazda came to the set speed, giving him the opportunity to glance at (Y/n) through his rearview.

“I didn’t either.” (Y/n)’s voice was quiet, and shaky still. Brow furrowed, he spoke again.

“Well, you did a good job.” He chuckled, knowing she’d be fine. “Klaus would be proud. Now let’s get you home so you can get cleaned up.”

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alarawriting · 4 years ago

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52 Project #42: Lineage

The air outside Jiangpao International Airport was hot and humid. Karula had always found her home too cold except in midsummer, so it felt good to her, the hot air against her skin making her finally feel almost warm enough. Taxi drivers called out to her urgently, aggressively marketing their services.

“Lady! I can take you to Jiangpao, very cheaply! I have the best rates of anyone here!”

“Younger sister, I’ve got a luxury car! I can take you to Jiangpao in the greatest comfort! You want to hire me!”

“My car’s the fastest, lady!”

One of the taxi drivers – a young man, maybe her own age, maybe even younger – with a mop of unruly black hair, slightly overlong for Senchai men’s fashion, came over to her and gestured at her large, heavy suitcase. “Elder sister, can I take your bag? All these drivers yelling at you probably don’t realize you want some peace and quiet after your long flight.”

Karula smiled. “I’m not going to Jiangpao, though. I’m headed to Nandijao.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I can take you there, sure,” he said. “My rates are very good.”

“Well, you’re the only one who decided not to yell at me from your car, so sure. Take my bag.”

“Your Senchai’sho is very good,” he said as he loaded the suitcase in the trunk of his taxi. “I can barely tell you have an accent. Where are you from?”

“Foirais,” Karula said, “but both my mother and father came from here.”

“Ah. I think everyone seeing a woman who looks Senchai’in, dressed in Southern clothing and too young to be a business executive, probably assumed you were from the South; that’s why they were yelling. But most of them probably thought you were one of the Given-Away Girls, not your mother.”

“Is that what you’re calling them over here?” She dug the disused seat belt out of the crevice of the taxi’s seat. “Given-Away Girls?”

“Well, they were given away,” the taxi driver said apologetically. “It’s not a slur or anything like that.”

He pulled out of the taxi roundabout and gently followed the flow of traffic toward the highway. “So what brings you to Senchai?”

“I’m researching my past, and I’m an anthropology student doing graduate work on Senchai’a folklore,” she said. “So I’ll be going to the Great Library.”

“Oh!” The taxi driver glanced back at her, sounding genuinely impressed. “You got your approval papers? They don’t usually let foreigners into the Great Library.”

“Of course.” She’d hardly have flown all the way from Foirais if she didn’t have all her permits in order to do what she’d come to do. “My cousin is a physics professor at Nandijao University, so she pulled some strings.”

“But you said you were researching your past?”

“My mother’s heritage,” Karula said. “My father—” was a philosophy student at the University who became a dissident, and had to flee to Foirais to stay out of prison—“grew up in Nandijao. But my mother was, as you say, a Given-Away Girl, so we don’t have any idea who her relatives are. All we know is what town she was born in.”

“Well, if it’s a small town and you know her birthdate, the records at the Great Library might help you narrow it down, but I don’t envy you. It’s got to be like looking for a single worm in an entire barrel of rice.”

It would be. The Given-Away Girls – she’d never heard the term before, but it seemed so perfect, she wondered why not – had birth certificates that showed their actual town of birth and birth date, but their parents’ names had been replaced by their adoptive parents. Girls had traditionally been seen as a burden in Senchai – parents had to raise a dowry for them, and then the girls ended up caring for their in-laws once they were elderly, not their own parents. When demographics in the wealthy nations of the South, like Foirais, had shifted so that there were far fewer children available for adoption, parents in Senchai had learned that if they gave away their daughters at birth, they would receive large sums of money.

Fueled by the promise of riches and the desire to send their daughters to a place where girls were valuable enough that adoptive parents would pay large sums to have a daughter, a place where their girls might grow up to be wealthy and secure, many, many parents gave up their daughters for adoption… to the point where the female population dropped low enough that the government of Senchai outlawed dowry, and made such adoptions require permits that were rarely given. But by the time the government took action, over a hundred thousand daughters of Senchai had been adopted out to other nations, the history of the families they came from lost to them forever.

With a father who had family back in Senchai, Karula Lefaire – her mother’s name, which was traditional in Foirais for women – had more resources to research the issue than most of the Given-Away Girls or their children did. And she also had more reason to.

“It’ll be difficult, but I’ll enjoy the challenge,” Karula said. “And it gives me a good excuse to do research for my thesis.”

***

From Jiangpao International Airport, it was an hour and a half to her cousin Ren Seiri’s house. Small talk with the taxi driver passed some of the time, but Karula was very relieved when she arrived. She was by nature too solitary to truly enjoy being locked in a small metal box with another person for an hour unless they were a good friend.

Ren Seiri greeted her at the door. “Younger cousin! Come in, come in! I’ll have my son take your bag—”

“Don’t trouble him, I can carry it. I’m stronger than I look.”

“Nonsense, you’re a guest and you’re family from a long way away. Jai! Come help our cousin with her bag!”

Jai, who more or less bounced into the room, turned out to be around 14, taller than Karula but skinnier, and she was herself a thin woman. “Elder cousin, no, don’t burden your son! I can carry it!”

“No, no, elder cousin!” Jai said. “I’ve been lifting weights! Look!” He grunted as he lifted the suitcase over his head. It had wheels, but plainly he didn’t want to use them on the lacquered bamboo floor.

“Oh, well, that is impressive,” Karula said.

“Let me show you to your room, and then you must come have some tea. Perhaps some sweet bean buns. Or some real food. I have barbeque pork rolls and cold eel dumplings.” Seiri’s doctorate and professorship apparently didn’t stop her from behaving exactly like any stereotypical Senchai’in mother.

Ren Seiri was the daughter of Karula’s father’s significantly older brother. She was not quite twice Karula’s age, but she was plainly getting there. She was wearing a dress of Southern styling, but beautiful silk dyed in a very Senchai’a pattern, and elegant soft house slippers. Karula replaced her own shoes with house slippers before following Seiri and her son.

She finally got some time to herself by insisting she needed a shower and a change of clothes. It was an excuse, but a good one. Most people would, in fact, need a shower and change of clothes after so much time in the Senchai’a heat. Karula, unlike most people, hadn’t sweated into her clothes at all, and she found the air conditioning oppressive enough that she turned it off in her bedroom and then opened all the windows, letting the heat in. She ran her shower as hot as she could stand it, and pinned her long hair up while it was still fairly wet because the wet hair was chilly on her neck. The traditional Senchai’a gown and robe she dressed in were silk, but heavy enough to keep the heat in… not generally something a Senchai’in, or in fact anybody, would wear in high summer, but it would keep the bugs off, and it looked lighter and cooler than it was.

After her shower, her cousin insisted on feeding her tea, hot pork buns, cold eel dumplings, and pastries full of warm bean custard, plainly purchased fresh at a bakery less than an hour ago. Seiri had probably ordered them while Karula was in the shower. Karula didn’t eat the dumplings. Seiri said that it made sense that a woman raised in Foirais wouldn’t have a taste for eel, and Karula didn’t correct her.

Then Seiri bustled around the kitchen, making dinner, continuing to bring Karula cups of tea and prattle on about family members Karula had obviously never met, telling stories about Karula’s father’s childhood that she’d heard from her own grandparents. Karula appreciated the hospitality but this was driving her insane. This was much too much social interaction, but she couldn’t politely extricate herself from it. She eventually managed to turn the conversation to teaching Jai some Foiraisse and telling him about the city she grew up in.

Dinner was Seiri, Jai, Seiri’s husband Shaon, Seiri’s sister Leirin, and Leirin’s boyfriend, who was apparently only allowed to see Leirin when Leirin was at Seiri’s house because their parents disapproved of him and it would be absolutely scandalous for her to be alone with her boyfriend without being chaperoned by family. Seiri assured Karula that she would be meeting her grandparents tomorrow, but they had to travel from Jiangpao. She said this in a slightly derisive tone, not the mockery of a person looking down on a lower status person, but the mockery of a person who believes someone of the same status is putting on airs. So apparently living in Jiangpao was considered higher status, at least for well-to-do people, than living in a college town, and Seiri disapproved of this. Then they all spent the entire meal continuing to tell Karula all about the lives of people she’d never met.

Afterward Seiri showed Karula the photo album. She was very interested in the pictures her father had sent back to his family of himself, his wife and daughter; Karula had almost no pictures of her mother as an adult, as everything her parents had owned when her mother had been alive had burned in the fire. It was astonishing how much her mother had looked like her. They could be twins, if they hadn’t been a generation apart. But then Seiri insisted on showing her all the other pictures, of the cousins, and the cousins’ cousins, and the great-grandparents, and everyone’s in-laws, and by the time she was done with just one photo album Karula’s eyes were glazed over and she had to plead exhaustion in order to escape to her room.

Karula’s long-lost family were so friendly, so welcoming. Such nice people.

She was so looking forward to spending tomorrow in the Great Library’s archive, not talking to anyone at all.

***

Senchai was famous – or perhaps infamous – for its bureaucracy and record-keeping. The country had started keeping detailed records of its citizens on papyrus, nearly three thousand years ago, when the country had only been the city of Jiangpao and the immediate province around it. Twenty-four hundred years ago, the empire had expanded to the point where local provinces were storing all of their own records. Emperor Nan had decreed that every record should have two copies made, and the second copy should be stored in an archive in the newly founded city of Nandijao, “Nan’s Treasure”.

Since then, through dynasties, foreign occupations, and revolutions, through the expansion and contraction of Senchai as wars moved the borders this way and that, every citizen of Senchai had had all of their important records – birth, marriage, any certificates they’d earned for the right to practice certain professions like medicine or accounting, and death – stored as copies in the Archives. The Great Library of Nandijao had grown up around the Archives, and the University of Nandijao, Senchai’s greatest and most nationally renowned university, had been founded there for proximity to the Great Library.

A famous story was told of conquerors who’d come in and tried to burn the Archives, who had been driven back by librarians, professors, and students from the University, wielding nothing but sticks and their own belts with rocks or heavy bars of soap tied to the end. This story was held in some skepticism by many scholars, since the only records of the incident were held in the Archives, and the librarians were no more immune than anyone else to self-aggrandizing stories. On the other hand, it was also true that, had it happened, it wasn’t likely that records about it would have gone anywhere but the Archives. It was, after all, where copies of all records in the nation ended up; it sent records nowhere itself.

There was currently a major project underway to digitize the Archives. The digitization had gotten back only two hundred fifty years so far, but that was probably far enough for Karula’s needs. Probably. So she didn’t spend any time sifting through papers centuries old; she spent the day scrolling through digitized documents. It was still as quiet and undisturbed as she’d hoped. If only she could do this outside where it was warm, rather than in the air conditioning, it would be ideal.

It was lengthy work. There was a difference between a record of birth and a birth certificate. The record of birth stated that a certain mother had given live birth within a certain week, and the gender of the baby, but the father’s name and the child’s name were not recorded. It was done for the census, not to track the lives of citizens. The birth certificates were amended on adoption, and if the original certificate still existed in the Archives anywhere, it was probably in a file cabinet for inactive documents, older documents that had revised versions. So there was no record of Karula’s mother, specifically, but there were records of all the women who had given birth in the city of Chofu, in that week. Unfortunately, Chofu, while nowhere near the size of Jiangpao or even Nandijao, was still large enough to support thirty-one births of girls in the week of Karula’s mother’s birthday. And Chofu, being a port town, had been a major destination for pregnant women who planned to sell any daughter they might have to pale-skinned Southerners. Ten of the women who were recorded as giving birth that week did not appear on any birth certificates, and ten of the birth certificates were girls with Southerner names for parents.

This meant Karula had to trace back the family histories and origin provinces of ten women, any of whom might have been her grandmother. And then track back their families, though thankfully that went back to before the era of Given-Away Girls. And then compare to records of birth to make sure no daughters were adopted out to other families, because the fact that they’d have names in Senchai’sho would make it non-obvious that an adoption had happened. And then cross correlate that to whatever news had made it on paper to the Archives… because news was not a governmental record and there was no guarantee a newspaper would have been sent to the Archives in the first place.

She’d spend the first half of her days doing her genealogical research in the Archives, and the other half in the Library proper, reading folklore accounts, particularly the stories told in various regions. During the Revolution at the beginning of the century, the new leadership of Senchai had decided that folklore was ancient superstition that needed to be discarded as Senchai entered the New Century, but fortunately that had only lasted until the original dictator had died. The new government had decided instead that folklore was part of the rich cultural history of Senchai and should definitely be preserved, and they’d even sent people around to record the stories the locals would tell, and then take them back to the Library. It had been a spasm of nationalism that had resulted in Senchai joining in on the wrong side of a terrible war, but the effect, the attempt to preserve Senchai’s ancient culture, had continued onward even after the war.

After her work, she’d go walking in Nandijao. Senchai was the first place she’d ever been where everyone looked like her. In Foirais, where most of the citizens were pale people with round eyes and a wild variety of hair colors, Karula had had very few people she could look to who were similar to her. Here in Senchai, her accent made her an outsider, but she at least looked like the folks here. Mostly. There was the fact that they all had black or brown eyes, and hers were only brown at a distance; when she looked closely in a mirror, they appeared a tawny amber. But since she hadn’t run around looking deep into most people’s eyes here in Senchai, she assumed it was a normal variation.

It was a little bit sad that no matter where she went, she was an outsider. In Foirais, her eyes and skin marked her as “not Foiraise” to many of her fellow citizens even though she’d grown up there. In Senchai, she looked like the people, but the moment she opened her mouth, she revealed herself as foreign. So she tried to get by in talking as little as possible. It felt better, somehow, to be thought of a mute or selectively non-verbal Senchai’in than a foreigner. She explored the city, bought food, newspapers, occasionally tiny memorabilia – nothing large enough that it wouldn’t fit in her suitcase.

And then she’d go to her aunt’s house and spend the evening having to listen to her cousin and her husband talk, endlessly. At one point she’d gotten her cousin onto the topic of physics, in desperation. Cousin Seiri had been happy to talk about her own research, but then had drifted into the topic of her own doctorate, and then her college days, and then she’d monopolized the conversation talking about her youth for an hour. Finally, Karula had taken to cultivating a relationship with Jai, in self defense. He let her get a word in edgewise sometimes, and Cousin Seiri wouldn’t interrupt Karula and tell her about people she had never met and never would.

He was a good kid. Karula had always had a soft spot for kids. He liked playing football – the challenge of never using your hands, the excitement of making your body into the thing to hit the ball with rather than a stick or the parts of your body designed to hit things with – and he enjoyed making and flying kites. His father, also a physics professor, had taught him about aerodynamics when he was young, and they used to make kites together. He was also willing to talk for long periods of time about his favorite comic books, and science fiction, and he thought her researches into folklore were cool. Especially the part about creatures who appeared in many, many different countries’ legends. Dragons, phoenixes, the qilin and its resemblance to Southern unicorns, the different types of undead around the world.

She tried to pull her own weight by helping around the house – sweeping, washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen counter. At first Seiri insisted that she shouldn’t do any such thing, because she was a guest, but Karula had responded by pointing out that she was family, and she wanted to feel like family. After that, Seiri let her do chores… as long as they didn’t involve going near the burner on the stove.

The first time she’d done that, and the only, had been when she’d tried to put on hot water for tea. At home in Foirais, she’d had an electric stove, and in her dorm at university, there had been no stove at all – you used the cafeteria, or you heated food in a microwave. Cousin Seiri’s stove had a gas range. Karula had turned on the burner… and then stared, mesmerized, at the flames, the tea kettle still in her hand. Slowly she’d reached toward the flame with her free hand.

Seiri had seen her do it and pulled her away as she was about to touch the beautiful flame. “Oh, no, no! You can’t be doing things with fire!” She’d put the kettle on the burner herself and then pulled Karula away from the stove entirely by both hands, walking backwards, pulling Karula toward the family dining table. “I’m so sorry. After what happened to your mother…! I didn’t even think! Of course you shouldn’t have to do anything with fire!”

That night Karula dreamed. In real life, Father had held her, both of them screaming, begging for Mother to stop, as Mother had run back into their burning house, and Karula had struggled in Father’s arms to follow her, to pull her back. In the dream, Father wasn’t even there, and Karula ran through the burning hallways, opening doors into rooms her house had not actually had, looking for Mother. And then she’d found her, wreathed in fire, her eyes golden and glowing… and Karula had walked toward the fire, intent on immolating herself as well.

She didn’t normally remember her dreams, but she woke the moment she touched the flame, shaken, tears on her face.

***

After twenty-three days of running into the dead end of “there are no records of this at the Archives”, Karula decided to go to Chofu for herself.

“You make sure to get a good hotel,” Cousin Seiri insisted. “If I were you I’d get a Southern-style hotel. I know there’s a Hillain and a Morenta in Chofu, and they get good reviews.”

“I can stay in a Southern-style hotel anywhere near home,” Karula said. “I’m looking for something Senchai’a, but nice. Do you know any?”

“Oh, of course! But the truth is, Chofu’s just a small town in comparison to Nandijao, so I don’t know how many options you’ll have.”

The truth was, Cousin Seiri had never been to Chofu and needed time to contact her network of friends and family to find out what was good there. Karula trusted Cousin Seiri’s network better than she trusted official reviews, so she waited, and eventually booked a room in a Chofu inn called the Soaring Fish. It was a traditional inn, so a dinner buffet was served nightly, large platters of fried rice and stir-fried meats in various sauces, and the guests were expected to take whatever portions they wanted. Karula, arriving on a late train, was grateful. It was the first time she had stayed at a traditional Senchai’a inn; she’d stayed in many Southern-style hotels with restaurants attached, and in many of them the hotel served breakfast, but she’d never before been somewhere that the hotel itself served dinner. She was always happy to warm up with a hot meal.

The next day she went to Chofu’s Children’s Peace and Health Center… a euphemism for the place where parents could abandon children, no questions asked. Since the revolution Senchai had been torn between the modern ways they wanted to adopt and the traditional mores most of the country held. In past times, the traditions demanded total obedience from children to their parents, but nowadays children had rights, and parents had obligations to them. It was also a tradition for parents in dire poverty to sell their daughters as servants, but nowadays that meant the sex trade, so it was extremely illegal. The society’s safety valve was the Children’s Peace and Health Center, where runaways would be sheltered, and children even as old as adolescents could be dropped off by parents.

Orphans were sent there as well. Some of those were adopted out quickly; the Children’s Peace and Health Centers mediated almost all the adoptions in Senchai. Those who weren’t ended up in orphanages, but the Peace and Health Center that had brought them in would continue to look for adoptive or foster parents for them.

Karula had visited the center in Nandijao; it was elaborately hidden. A shrubbery maze, a basement level of tunnels, and a network of walkways above formed a labyrinth with many, many exits – at a park for children, at an office building for doctors, at a shopping center… and the Children’s Peace and Health Center. This ensured that it was almost impossible to tell whether a given person with a child was taking the child to the Center, or to a doctor’s appointment, or a play date.

Chofu wasn’t nearly so wealthy a city, nor nearly as invested in appearances. The Children’s Peace and Health Center was simply there, on a street near one of the bus stops. It was a Southern-style rectangular blocky building, built back when Senchai perceived the South as more medically advanced and progressive. Thus it was out of place, and very ugly. On her way to the front door, Karula passed a strange version of a revolving door. It was only half a person’s height, and instead of being a glass door, it was a crib and an opaque partition. Experimentally, Karula pushed the empty crib slightly, noting where it would enter the building.

It was at this Center that her mother had been presented to her future parents, had been adopted and taken away from her homeland. Had her biological grandmother laid her mother down in that crib and spun it to push her baby into the Center, to be taken by employees, never to be seen by Karula’s grandmother anymore?

Inside, it looked just like a Southern-style medical office, with a receptionist behind a clear partition. “Hello!” the receptionist said. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to research my mother’s history.”

“Oh, well, you must understand that we keep very little information on birth parents.”

“That’s all right,” Karula said. “I’ll take what I can get. How would I look her up?”

“Do you have the names of your open-hearted grandparents?”

Karula blinked. “Open-hearted?”

“Oh, we don’t like to use the term ‘adoptive parent’ here. It sounds like they’re lesser than birth parents somehow. Anyone who’d take a child into their heart and adopt them is open-hearted and generous, so we call them ‘open-hearted parents’.”

Ah. A euphemism. “I do. My mother’s mother was Charlée Lefaire, and her husband was Gantoise Lefaire.”

“And your name is?”

“Karula Lefaire.”

The receptionist’s eyebrow went up. “Your mother didn’t marry?”

“In Foirais, children take the mother’s family name, not the father’s.”

“Oh! Of course! Pardon me for prying, I’ve never met anyone from Foirais before. Most of the Given-Away Girls or their families come from Anacrisia or Southland.”

“Well, I’ve never been to Senchai before, so now we’re matched.” Karula smiled at her. “Do you have any record of either of my open-hearted grandparents?”

The receptionist typed, her long lacquered nails clacking against her keyboard. “Yes. Charlée Lefaire, and there’s Gantoise Lefaire. Oh, interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“Your mother would have been Jirène Lefaire?”

“Yes. Do you have any record of her birth name?”

“No, we don’t keep that. But she was adopted at 16 months, not infancy. And this says she entered the center only two weeks before her adoption. So she wasn’t an infant surrender.” More clacking. “I might be able to get some more detail. Prospective parents like to know if there was any family history of violence or drug abuse or anything like that which they might need to know about their new child.”

Karula suspected that children with problems like that in their past were probably the last to be adopted. Or second last, after disabled children. “So what kind of information would be kept?”

“It’ll tell me if she was a legal surrender – meaning, she was taken away from incompetent birth parents for legal reasons – or… oh. Oh, that’s different. I don’t see that often.”

“What are you seeing?”

“She was surrendered by the fire department. That only happens if the child is rescued from a fire and the parents are dead or can’t be found, usually. Fire department personnel do general rescues, so it could have been a flood or an earthquake…”

“No,” Karula said. “Fire does sound likely.”

“Did she have burn scars?”

“Nothing like that, but she had a… strange relationship with fire.” She didn’t want to talk about that. “The birth date on her birth certificate is 13 Sanwa. Is that the birth date you have also?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“But you don’t have her birth name?”

“No. As I said, we don’t keep that.”

What she’d said was that information wasn’t kept on the birth parents, but Karula said nothing. “Do you have her adoption date?”

“22 Ren.”

“That gives me a lot to go on. Thanks.”

***

The Archives back in Nandijao didn’t have perfect records of newspapers… but the Library itself kept copies of newspapers going back sixty years, all the way back to the Revolution. Karula’s mother would have been 45 now, and Chofu was a large enough city that newspapers would probably be kept from it.

On 4 Ren that year, a house fire claimed the lives of Bai Ji-Wen, 25 years old, and her husband, Bai Sanli, 30. They were survived by their infant child, who wasn’t named, but Karula could guess. Named after her mother, perhaps, Ji-Wen, or maybe Ji-Len. “Songbird”, and if it had changed to Ji-Len, “Little Bird.” Ji-Wen or Ji-Len becoming the Foiraise name Jirène made perfect sense.

Bai Sanli, born 30 years earlier, had married Tenra Ji-Wen when he was 26, whereupon she’d taken his family name. Tenra Ji-Wen, who’d have been 21 at the time, had been born in a fishing town thirty kilometers up the coast from Chofu, called Bangji. That was Karula’s next destination.

“Where are you going to stay?” Cousin Seiri was, in Karula’s opinion, overly worried about this. “That’s so far away! You’ll be out in the middle of nowhere!”

“It’s all right,” Karula reassured her. “I’m good at finding my own way.”

“But you’ll be a young woman all alone! Don’t you know what can happen to young women in the forest when nobody’s around?”

“I’ll be fine, Elder Cousin,” Karula said. “I’ll call and let you know how I’m doing.”

“But will they even have service out there?”

Karula raised an eyebrow. “Elder Cousin… the entire country was wired for land lines a generation ago. If I have no cell signal, I’ll just call from one of those.”

In addition to landlines and electricity, the government a generation ago had made certain there were train lines all over Senchai, so Karula didn’t have too much difficulty getting to Bangji. Once she got there, there was exactly one taxi at the train station, and the very bored taxi driver seemed very surprised to see her. “Oh! You’re a visitor!”

“I guess you don’t get many in Bangji?”

“I come out here every day and wait at the train station,” the old man said. “I’m supposed to be retired, but who can live off the government stipend? So I drive my taxi. But only two or three times a week am I needed, and usually it’s university students coming home to visit. Who are you here to see?”

“I’m a researcher from Foirais,” Karula said. “I’m here to collect stories from people. Is there anywhere I can stay?”

“Well, the Wangs run a bed and breakfast, but I don’t know if their room is available. I haven’t picked anyone up at the train station, though, so… probably.”

***

Mrs. Wang was also elderly, a small woman whose white hair was collected in a traditional Senchai’a bun. Karula had wondered how Bangji could support even one bed and breakfast, if they had so few visitors. Presumably the Wangs were also on retirement stipend. Strictly speaking, retirees on the stipend weren’t supposed to work; in theory, the government could reduce their stipend by the amount they made from side jobs. In practice, the government might possibly care about people in a retirement community, or in some areas of big cities where a lot of government ministers lived, but no one was ever going to come to Bangji and find out that old people had side businesses.

“Mr. Jo tells me you’re looking for a place to stay?” Mrs. Wang had come out to speak to the taxi driver, and then went around to the passenger side to talk to Karula. “I do have a room if you’d like!”

“That would be wonderful,” Karula said.

The room turned out to be small but very clean, decorated with rustic wooden sculptures of sea dragons, turtles whose shells glittered with stars, and giant fish-birds. This was perfect. It was legends of creatures like that that had brought Karula to Senchai, and out here to Bangji. A mandala made of sea shells decorated the wall above the bed, which was a mattress on the floor, covered in sheets in the traditional dark blues and purples of the squid ink the locals harvested and sold for textile pigment. A feather-filled silk comforter in a paler blue color was folded at the foot of the bed. The walls were thin bamboo, but solid enough for her purposes. There was one long, low piece of furniture with drawers running alongside one wall.

“This is beautiful. I would be pleased to rent from you.”

Mrs. Wang nodded. “We make our own breakfast at 6 am, but if you come down to the kitchen before 9 am, I’ll make you something. Typically our breakfast is rice porridge with smoked fish and fried dough twists, but if there’s something specific you want, I could make you anything. I used to be a cook at a local restaurant, before I retired.”

“Whatever you’re making for yourself is fine, as long as it’s hot. I can come down early.” Karula usually woke at sunrise, or just before it, the imminent appearance of the sun filling her with restless energy.

“Early is best,” Mrs. Wang agreed. “Our daughter sleeps late, and it’s best not to be at breakfast at the same time she is. So much energy!” She smiled.

“I don’t mind children, or their energy, but if you prefer that I avoid your daughter—”

“No, no! If she approaches you, feel free to be Elder Sister or Auntie, as you please. There aren’t a lot of children in Bangji… not anymore, anyway.”

“Because most of the town has become venerable, I imagine?”

“That, yes, but… well, there have been some tragedies. Several children have disappeared. The police weren’t able to find any common factor, and every home here’s been searched thoroughly, and there are no strangers in Bangji most of the time. So we think perhaps they were taken by wild animals, but no one’s found animal spoor, either.”

“That’s terrible!”

“We try to watch over Lai-Mei all the time, but she’s so young and energetic, and she behaves as if there’s no danger at all. We try to tell her, but she doesn’t always listen.”

“Well, if I run into her, I will surely try to caution her. Perhaps I can use my youth and energy to counter hers, and keep her safe.”

***

Mr. Wang was equally friendly and equally garrulous, talking to Karula about his garden, which was indeed beautiful.

“In my younger days I traveled all over Senchai,” he said. “I gathered up plants from all sorts of places. Back then we didn’t really think about things like invasive species.” He smiled wryly. “Nowadays I try to grow local plants only, but some of these are just too beautiful to do without even if they came from halfway across the country. Like these.” He showed her flowers with purple and pink bells. Another had clusters of tiny orange and red flowers making patterns that looked like larger flowers.

“You’ve lived here a long time,” Karula said. “I’m trying to track down my mother’s family. Do you remember anything about a family named Tenra?”

“Tenra? Can’t say I do. Mrs. Wang might know, though. As I said, I traveled, but she’s lived here her whole life.”

***

Karula spent the day gathering stories from people about legends in the area. People in Bangji were full of such stories, and they all claimed that this had really happened, to a friend of a friend. Stories of dragons who almost managed to barbeque the friend of a friend. Stories of the great bird-fish surfacing less than an hour’s sail away from the shore. Qilin in the forest at the base of the mountain to the west of Bangji. Malevolent demons. Witches who had certainly cast baleful spells and hexes on innocent people, oh, around 30 years ago.

She asked several people about the Tenra family. No one remembered them. This seemed strange to Karula; Tenra Ji-Wen had married at the age of 21, 50 years ago. Had she had no family by then? Had her family been transplants from somewhere else? Had they moved on? Surely one of the elderly residents of Bangji would remember. But none did.

When she returned to the Wangs’ bed and breakfast, she almost tripped over a little girl, perhaps 9 or so. “Well, hello.”

The girl looked her up and down, an almost insolent expression on her face. “Where did you come from?”

“Foirais, but my mother was born in Chofu, and her mother was born in Bangji, according to the records. Are you Wang Lai-Mei?”

“That isn’t a real person,” the girl said. “I’m Lun Lai-Mei.”

A child old enough to keep her original family name when she was adopted was probably one of the Thrown-Away Girls, a darker and sadder term for the abandoned girls who were surrendered to the Children’s Center as toddlers or older. “Ah. Well, Lun Lai-Mei, I’m Karula Lefaire.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Lai-Mei said. “I’ll just call you Elder Sister anyway.”

“Yes, but it’s polite to share my name with you, since you shared yours. I’m staying with your parents while I research my family.”

“I figured that. You definitely aren’t from Senchai, so why would you be here unless you’re a guest?”

“My accent makes it that obvious?”

“I could just look at your face, Elder Sister. You don’t look Senchai’in.”

Karula blinked. Both her parents were Senchai’in born in Senchai; how could she look anything else? “Why not?”

Lai-Mei smiled. “You’re too tall.”

Karula was a little on the tall side for a Senchai’in woman, but not to the point where she stood out. “I’ve met many Senchai’in women who are taller than me.”

“Well, it’s something,” Lai-Mei said. “I don’t know what.”

Lai-Mei herself didn’t quite look fully Senchai’in. She was beautiful, tiny for her apparent age, long straight hair pinned up with hairpins in the back that had seashells on them. In all respects but one she was the perfect picture of a Senchai’in girl… but her eyes were bright, vivid green. Perhaps her mother had had an affair with a foreigner, and that was why she’d been given away. Or perhaps it was a natural variation. Karula hadn’t met any Senchai’in with eye colors other than black or brown, aside from herself… and her own eye color was subtle enough that neither Cousin Seiri, nor Jai, nor anyone else who’d seen her up close in good lighting had remarked on it. But there were a billion people in Senchai, and many distinct ethnic groups, so perhaps green eyes was a rare but known phenomenon. Like red-haired people in Foirais.

“Lai-Mei!” Mrs. Wang called from the door. “Don’t bother the honored guest!”

“She’s not bothering me!” Karula called back. To Lai-Mei she said, “I might see you tomorrow if I’m not too tired when I come home.”

“This isn’t home for you, though, Elder Sister,” Lai-Mei said.

“This is my current base of operations, and that’s good enough.”

By Senchai’a standards, the child was extremely rude, but Karula found it a refreshing change, actually. All the children she’d met so far had had mostly perfect manners – Seiri might think Jai’s desire to monopolize a conversation talking about his interests was a flaw, but Karula, here to learn from Senchai’in people, didn’t see it that way. Lai-Mei was blunt. By Foiraise standards, she was actually fairly normal. Children were children all around the world, after all.

***

Elderly Mrs. Jin, 98 years old, was mentioned in a discussion in town of who might remember the Tenra family. So Karula went to her house. It was in better repair than she expected for a 98-year-old woman, and Karula could see why; two shirtless young men were working on the property, one clipping the hedges and one repairing a shutter.

“Is Mrs. Jin home?” she asked one of them.

The young man laughed. “Grandmother never goes anywhere anymore. What you want to ask is, is Mrs. Jin awake, and the answer is, probably not but she loves visitors, so go in and wake her up if you like.”

Inside, a middle-aged woman was pureeing rice and some sort of vegetable in a blender. “Hello! Are you here to see Grandmother?”

The term was a generic one of respect for the elderly, but Karula thought perhaps this woman was really Mrs. Jin’s granddaughter. “I’m doing some research to track down my mother’s family,” she said, “and Mrs. Jin was referred to me as someone who might remember my grandmother here as a child.”

“Oh, she loves it when people want to ask her about the past! Let me go see if she wants to wake up to see you.”

She ducked behind a sliding bamboo partition, and was gone for a couple of minutes. When she returned she said, “Come this way. Grandmother would be happy to talk with you!”

The old woman was reclining on a couch that was absolutely drowning in pillows. “This is the guest, Grandmother!” the woman yelled. “She’s staying at the Wangs’ bed and breakfast!”

“Glad to see they’ve got some custom,” Mrs. Jin said in a surprisingly strong voice for such an old woman. She was very small, with gray hair cropped in a modern short haircut, and Karula would have guessed her to be in her 70’s or 80’s. Then again, Karula had hardly met enough nonagenarians to have any idea how to tell a 90-something from a younger but still elderly person. “Come close, girl, and sit down on these floor pillows. Neither my eyesight nor my hearing’s the best anymore.”

“We keep trying to get her to go to the doctor to be fitted for hearing aids,” the middle-aged woman said.

“And I keep saying no! Because at my age, why should I travel? If the doctor wants my money, he should come here.”

“The national health ministry would pay the doctor, not you,” the woman sighed.

Karula took the offered seat, right in front of the old woman. “My mother was a Given-Away girl, but I managed to track down the identity of her mother. A woman named Tenra Ji-Wen was born here… maybe around 70 years ago?”

“Oh. Oh, I remember that. The Tenra family. Such a shame what happened to them.”

“What happened to them?”

“The father was in logging, if I remember right. Cut down trees, bring them to the city to sell to the middlemen who make logs into wood for carpenters. There’s a lot of forest around here, but in those days there was almost nothing else; you could barely get to Bangji except by water. There was a road, but it was packed dirt and full of ruts from the carts. Well, you know how it is. Every time it rained the whole thing turned into mud and we were trapped here.” Mrs. Jin nodded slightly to herself, her eyes – focused and bright a moment ago, unfocusing. Karula wondered if she was falling asleep, but it seemed she was just collecting her thoughts.

“I think it was… 40 years ago they paved the road? They were having a revolution, outside of Bangji, but it never came here. They came from the government to tell us how to run our lives, and we smiled and nodded and did just what we pleased as soon as they were gone. Found out later, they’d never returned! Bandits or wild animals or something. They disappeared without a trace. We didn’t learn until two or three groups from the government came through and then left. They were all vanishing. So the soldiers came, you know, because they thought we were killing these people, but we told them our protector spirit must be getting overly aggressive, and we hadn’t known it was killing. We laid down a lovely large tuna at the shrine and prayed for the protector not to kill the government workers anymore, and that did the trick. Soldiers were still suspicious, though. They quartered here for a few years, but eventually they realized, Bangji may hold to a lot of the old ways, but a lot of the newfangled stuff they wanted to bring in? We were already doing it.”

This was fascinating but had nothing to do with the Tenra family that Karula could see. For a moment impatience warred with her scholar’s curiosity. The scholar won. “Your protector spirit? Can you tell me about that?”

“No one who has ill intent toward Bangji can come here, and anyone who develops ill intent while they’re here, they never leave. The government people wanted to take away everyone’s land and make it the property of the state and then give it back to us to work on it. Well, that’s just stupid. We already live as a community; everyone takes care of everyone else. You know, everyone in the town calls me Grandmother and they all come by to take care of me, feed me, help me to the bathroom… I can’t walk on my own anymore. It bothered me at first, that everyone came, because I always used to do for myself. I took care of my kids and all their friends, and all my grandkids, and all their friends, and I was the one who did for people, and it was hard to get my head around being the one they were doing for, but you know what? I thought about it, and I earned it. I worked hard to take care of all those kids and now they all take care of me, and that’s the way life’s supposed to be, right?”

“What is the protector spirit?” Karula asked again.

Mrs. Jin cackled. “A dragon, of course! A sea dragon, what else would a fishing town have? We’re not large enough for the fish-bird to honor us with its presence, nor holy enough for qilins, but there’s so many dragons. The sea is full of them. The land too.” Her eyes went unfocused again. “It’s the land dragons you have to watch out for. So many of them died in the purges out there. So many. The children don’t even know who they are.”

“What’s the difference between a land dragon and a sea dragon?”

“Well, what do you think? One lives on the earth and one lives in the water! Land dragons have earth and fire and air in their souls. A lot of them breathe fire like the Southern ones. Sea dragons have water and air, no fire or earth, but they’re more magical.”

“And what is the protector spirit?”

Mrs. Jin went unfocused again. “I wish I knew anymore, young lady. Back in those days the protector was definitely a sea dragon, but the soldiers… I worry about the soldiers. For a while it was gone. Then it came back, but I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know if it’s the same one. I don’t know if the price is worth paying anymore.”

“Why wouldn’t the price be worth paying?”

Mrs. Jin shrugged. “You didn’t come here to listen to me ramble about everything and anything, though. You said Tenra Ji-Wen?”

“Yes.”

“I could tell,” Mrs. Jin nodded. “You look exactly like her. Exactly. We weren’t close; I didn’t have kids yet when she was born. She must have left, what, maybe she was seventeen? eighteen? How old are you, granddaughter?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Close enough. I knew her but we were out of sync; she was too young to be my playmate and too old to be my kids’ friend. But we all knew her. So hard she worked, since she was so small. She couldn’t even go to school. Someone had to take care of her father. She cooked and cleaned for him.”

“Wait, what happened to her mother?”

“Oh, I didn’t say? Such a tragedy, she burned. Whole house went up in flames when Ji-Wen was little. 2, 3? Something like that. The father was out, he was a logger. I mentioned that, right?”

Karula held herself very still, showing nothing of her reaction on her face. “You certainly did, Grandmother.”

“It was a miracle. Something preserved that little girl. They found her in the ashes, crying. Her mother must have gotten her into a cellar or something so the fire wouldn’t get her.”

“She didn’t have any siblings?”

“No, she was her mother’s first, and her poor mother never lived long enough to have another. The father didn’t even remarry until she was, I don’t know, 14 or 15? And the stepmother was respectful to the daughter, of course, we wouldn’t have stood for it otherwise, but Ji-Wen wanted to get away anyway. I think she probably wanted to get away the whole time, but she needed to take care of her father. So she left, a few years later. We never saw her again. Whatever did happen to her?”

“I’m not sure,” Karula lied. “I need to do some more research. I believe she’s dead, but the details…?” She shrugged. “It’ll come together from my research, eventually. Do you know where her mother came from? The one who died?”

“No. Sad to say I wasn’t the gossip back then that I became! Oh, I cared so much about what the kids my own age were doing, but nothing about the old people. That’s the problem with humans, you know. The young ones don’t think the old ones are people.”

“I certainly think older people are people,” Karula said, startled.

“I don’t exactly mean that. Like… we’re just here. We have our own lives, but the kids don’t care. Whereas we care about the kids, because we remember being them, but they don’t remember us unless they can remember past lives!” She chuckled. “You’re different, though. Most people who come to me with a question, they don’t have any patience for how my mind wanders. It’s been doing that since my 50’s, you know. Amazing when you think about it, I’ve been old for almost as long as I was young. If you count 50 as old. Most of the 50 year olds don’t, but the young ones like you do.”

“Your stories are fascinating. But I’m a student of folklore, and to a lesser extent history, and it amazes me to talk to someone as venerable as you, Grandmother. To be alive from before the revolution! The things you must have seen… Is there anyone coming to you to write down these stories?”

“Write them down?”

“Someone should, if no one is. Would you mind if scholars from Nandijao came here to write down the story of your life? You could tell them anything you’d like. Grandmother, you are living history and we should all learn from you.” Karula stood up. “I must go now, if there’s nothing you’d like me to do for you, but I would love to come back soon.”

“Yes, you do that! I’ll have Izhen make you tea. We still do it the old way, you know. I’ve got one of those new-fangled gas stoves for heating water, but we do it in the fireplace, just like when I was a girl.” She gestured at the fireplace, which, thankfully, was dark at the moment.

Karula bowed hastily, dragging her eyes away. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be back!”

Her hands didn’t shake until she was back in her room, safe from anyone’s eyes. The Wangs’ house also had a fireplace. But they hadn’t lit it since she’d arrived. It was summertime; they didn’t need to.

Karula had planned to take this trip on summer break because it made the most sense with her schedule. She was beginning to realize there was another reason why it had been a very good idea to do it now, as well.

***

No one but Mrs. Jin even remembered the Tenra family… which made sense, if they’d kept to themselves after tragedy struck. Mrs. Jin would have been a young woman when it had happened, but most of the town elderly were in their 70’s or 80’s; they’d have been children. It didn’t seem that there was anyone as old as Mrs. Jin, or even close.

If she wanted more detail on Ji-Wen’s mother and father—particularly mother – she’d have to go back to the Archives. But she wasn’t lying to flatter the old woman; Mrs. Jin’s stories were a national treasure and should be preserved at all cost. She wanted to stay here and listen to more of them. And she wanted to know more about this protector spirit. Would she be able to find independent corroboration in the death records of the government agents disappearing? That too was a question for the Archives, but to ask it, Karula needed more of the details.

***

Mrs. Wang wasn’t originally from Bangji, and Mr. Wang waxed garrulous about all the things he’d seen in his travels, but wasn’t nearly as talkative about anything local. It took conversing with six retired people before she found someone who could give her more information about the protector spirit.

Mr. Sho was in his 70’s, but still quite vigorous. “It’s all the fish!” he boasted. “Here in Bangji, we eat nothing but fish, and it keeps us healthy and strong!”

“I can see that,” Karula said. “I’m surprised no one but Mrs. Wang seems to be in their 90’s. All of you retired people seem so healthy!”

“Good health is a treasure,” Mr. Sho agreed. “But we do our duty. Jin Tai-Lee is the town grandmother, you know. We all love her.”

“Yes, she seems so.”

“So we don’t let her go to the temple. Better we go, before our health starts to fail us.”

Karula blinked. When had they gotten onto the subject of attending the temple? “Which temple?”

“There’s only one,” Mr. Sho said. “The shrine of the protector spirit. Where we sacrifice part of what we catch. Large fish, when we bring them in. Many fish, when we can’t get a big one. One time we gave a bucket of crabs!” He laughed.

“And the elder people in the village do this?”

Mr. Sho nodded. “Sometimes the protector doesn’t like the offering. Well, gods and spirits and demons, they all must get bored with the same food every day.”

“What happens if the protector doesn’t like the offering?”

Mr. Sho leaned forward, his expression very serious. “It’s absolutely vital to do, you know. No one comes to Bangji anymore. There used to be bandits and pirates, and the protector spirit would save us. Then there were people from the government, who wanted us to live the way they were trying to force the rest of the country. But nowadays there’s nobody. We drive trucks full of fish down the road, now it’s paved, and we drive on back. No one for the spirit to protect us from.”

“So without anyone for the spirit to protect you from, I guess you’re afraid it’ll be angry and bored if you don’t give it good offerings?”

“If it doesn’t like the offering… it would be very bad for it to come back to the village to find one it prefers,” Mr. Sho said somberly. “So we old people bring it, and that way, if it doesn’t like the offering we provided, well…”

“Wait. Are you telling me the protector spirit – the protector spirit takes elderly people as a sacrifice?”

Mr. Sho nodded. Karula couldn’t see any sign on his face or in his voice that he was joking.

“Is there a specific time it’s done? Would it be safe for me to go up to the shrine, or would the spirit assume I’m a sacrifice?”

“Nobody knows anymore,” Mr. Sho said, sadly. “We do what we can, but the spirit… well, we don’t speak ill of it. It might be listening.”

“It’s not protecting you?”

“We don’t know if it is or not,” Mr. Sho said. “All we know is what we have lost.”

***

“I’m probably going to return to the Archives for a while,” Karula said, as Mrs. Wang served dinner. It was a bed-and-breakfast, not a bed-and-breakfast-and-dinner, but Mrs. Wang was treating Karula more like an actual houseguest than a paying guest. “But I’ll be back.”

“I wanted you to play with me!” Lai-Mei said angrily. “You’ve only been here a few days!”

Karula smiled indulgently. “Maybe I could find time to play with you tomorrow. My train won’t leave until afternoon.”

“Lai-Mei, this is a guest. Behave yourself!” Mrs. Wang scolded.

“It’s all right,” Karula said.

“There aren’t any children around here for her to play with,” Mr. Wang said apologetically.

Karula remembered Mrs. Wang telling her that there weren’t many children here because some of them had disappeared, possibly taken by wild animals. She’d wondered, then, why the police hadn’t been called, why there hadn’t been extensive searches. Yes, this was far out into the countryside, but how could anyone do nothing when children were disappearing?

But Mr. Sho had implied, very strongly, that the protector spirit needed to be appeased with the lives of the elderly citizens who brought the sacrifices, from time to time. And that if they didn’t, the spirit would come to the village to find something to take.

Modern Senchai’a scholarship followed the same line as the South. There was no such thing as spirits. Nothing supernatural in the world. No dragons, no fish-birds, no qilin. Everything could be explained as fossils that ancient people had found and speculated on, or mistakes humans had made long in the past that had been carried forward in legend. Karula hadn’t truly expected to find any evidence that any of the stories she collected had any reality to them.

And yet… it didn’t surprise her. Somehow. She considered it a genuinely reasonable theory that a protector spirit turned malevolent might have taken children – to eat? What did the protector spirit do with the sacrifices? – because it wasn’t pleased with the quality of what had been provided to it.

Was she being too credulous? Probably. Was this most likely the nonsense of peasants without any modern education? That could well be. But what if it was real?

She needed to see the death certificates. She needed to see how many children had been born here, and how many had died. She needed to return to the Archives.

But first, she wanted to see the shrine.

***

The sun had just come up the next morning when, fortified with one of Mrs. Wang’s hot breakfasts, Karula headed for the cliff where the shrine to the protector was.

Bangji was a tiny bump of a peninsula, bounded on one side by the start of the Mingshen Mountains and on the other side by thick forest, which climbed up the mountains to the extent that it could. The shrine looked out over the cliffside that faced the ocean, looking toward the east and the sunrise. There was a winding path up the side of the cliff, with steps.

It took her an hour to make it all the way up. She was young and healthy, her legs strong; she wondered how long it took elderly people to get up here, carrying a big fish. How did they get a tuna up these steps? A large tuna would need two people to carry it at the best of times. She tried to imagine two old men, trying to tandem-carry a gigantic slippery fish, up a mountainside staircase that took a young healthy person an hour. Then she imagined that those two old men knew that if their protector spirit didn’t like the tuna, they themselves might be eaten.

After all that, the shrine itself was an anticlimax. Throughout most of Senchai, temples were large, elaborate things, or at least as large and elaborate as poverty-stricken locals had been able to build. During the revolution many of them had been destroyed, but when the new leadership came in after the revolutionary leader had died, their push to restore Senchai’s lost traditions in the name of nationalism had gotten most of those rebuilt with modern materials and architecture. They were also, generally, shrines to ancestors. The spirit worship thing was more like you’d find in Niyong, to the east. Which was not that shocking; much of Senchai’s eastern coast had a lot of Niyong’s culture, customs and food intermixed with their own. And with Bangji being relatively isolated from the mainland, it was even more likely.

But Karula had never seen any evidence that Niyong’s spirits were real, let alone that they’d travel to Senchai for worship.

An actual Niyong shrine would generally be made of wood. Bangji’s was made of stone instead; there was plenty of easily accessible stone nearby, as the cliff face was a plateau, with another cliff a short distance inland, on top of it. It was a simple rectangular building with terra cotta tiles for a roof and white and gray stones mortared together for its walls. Inside, a candle burned in front of a tapestry showing Bangji, from the perspective of the shrine on the cliff, so the individual buildings were embroidered too small to make out much detail about them. There was no representation of the protector spirit itself anywhere, but there were some smashed pieces of terra cotta that might have once been statues.

Outside, facing the ocean, there was a very large stone circle with a very small stone wall ringed around it, and a pedestal about twice as high as the tiny wall in its center. Stains on the pedestal and a slightly fishy smell suggested that here was the place they sacrificed to their protector.

There was no evidence of a real protector spirit here. There was no evidence of human blood, but there was probably a lot more fish sacrificed than people, so that proved little. None of it told Karula anything except that Bangji had borrowed some customs from Niyong, which was hardly a surprise.

Two-thirds of the way down the steps, she was met by Lai-Mei. “Elder Sister! I thought you’d gone back to Nandijao and forgotten your promise!” the little girl said indignantly.

There was either a protector spirit, a wild animal, or an evil human being taking children from the town and killing or kidnapping them. Karula felt cold. Had the Wangs never told Lai-Mei the danger, or was she just that headstrong and self-confident? “Why aren’t you home? Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here?”

“I wanted to find you. I was afraid you left.”

“I told you I wasn’t leaving until afternoon, and it’s dangerous out here. Lai-Mei, the reason you don’t have playmates your own age is that children have died. Or vanished. It’s not safe for you.”

“But it’s safe for you?”

“I haven’t heard of young adults disappearing.”

“It happens sometimes,” Lai-Mei said vaguely. “But we can be careful. I want to play a game of hide and seek with you!”

“I was going to go back to the house and change clothes. I’ve been up the mountain and I’m all sweaty.”

“What’s the point to that? If you play with me you’ll just get sweaty again, right?”

The child had a fair point. “…all right. But why don’t we go down to the base of the cliff? I don’t feel like this is a safe place for hide-and-seek.”

“Okay!” Lai-Mei began skipping down the stairs. Even with longer legs, Karula had to rush to keep up. She smiled indulgently. She could see where the Wangs’ complaint about Lai-Mei’s energy levels came from.

The base of the staircase was an area Karula had explored fairly extensively since coming to Bangji, though obviously she couldn’t know it as well as a child who’d lived here for years. Lai-Mei turned and looked up at her as Karula stepped off the stairs. "Now let’s play Hide-and-Seek," she said, a bright smile on her face. "And if I find you and catch you, I'll turn into a dragon and eat you up."

Karula grinned. Children's sense of the fantastic always delighted her. "And after you eat me up, then I'll chase you?"

She laughed. "You won't be doing anything. You'll be eaten."

"Oh, of course," Karula said, still smiling. "All right, I'll go and hide, and you count to a hundred."

"To ten."

"Oh, no, it has to be a hundred. I'm a stranger to this area-- you need to give me time to find a good hiding spot." Karula took games very seriously, and had no intention of losing to Lai-Mei. She thought it was wrong, in general, to throw competitions to make kids feel better; adults who deliberately lost to children gave them an inflated sense of their own ability. And in some senses, her mother’s death by fire when she was a young child had aged her, made her too burdened to easily make friends with the carefree innocents most children were. She had missed out on a lot of this kind of simple play when she’d been a child herself. Maybe she was enough of a child to want to win the game for its own sake.

"That's fair. To a hundred, then." Her smile showed tiny white teeth.

Lai-Mei covered her face with her hands to count. Karula ran through the woods. She could think of several places she’d found in her explorations that would make good hiding places.

It was a forest. At the base of a cliff. There were plenty of large rocks jutting out of the ground, and plenty of tree coverage and brush. Karula found a spot behind one of the large rocks, where a scrubby bush had grown because a tree couldn’t take root near such a large rock. She was able to climb over the rock and carefully lower herself into the spot where the bush met the rock, shoving parts of it out of the way. Lai-Mei would be too short to see that the top had been disturbed, and from the front of the bush, there’d be no disturbance visible.

She was alone with her breathing for all of two minutes. Then a shriek split the air. “Found you!”

Karula looked up, expecting to congratulate the girl on her expert finding skills.

Lai-Mei was standing on the rock… looming. There was no other way to describe it. Like a tiny nine-year-old girl suddenly had enormous invisible mass, ready to reach down and crush. And her pupils had turned to slits, like a cat’s.

"I see you," Lai-Mei caroled. "And now I'm going to eat you up."

It made no sense why Karula suddenly felt fear. This was still a nine year old girl. Lai-Mei’s smile was full of sharp teeth now, tearing carnivore teeth, and her pupils were slits, but she was a child. Still, Karula rolled herself sideways along the rock to get out of the brush, and started running as soon as she was out.

Lai-Mei leapt down from the rock, over the bush, which should not have been possible for a child her age, and landed. Karula knew this, not because she was watching – her eyes were focused in front because she was running – but because she heard the thump of the child’s landing, a short distance behind her, and no sound of rustling branches or leaves. She glanced behind herself, once, very quickly. Lai-Mei was there, grinning hugely now, her mouth all teeth, and her skin had started to take on the mottled pattern of scales.

Karula kept running.

Around trees, rocks, bushes. Through all kinds of cover. Dodging this way and that. And behind her, Lai-Mei never faltered, never stumbled. She laughed, the high-pitched laugh of a little girl playing a fun game, as she chased after Karula, and the sound of the laughter was never cut off by heavy breathing. This was easy for her. Fun. She was playing cat and mouse, dragging out the game.

“Do the Wangs know?” Karula screamed back over her shoulder when Lai-Mei was entirely too close.

That sobered the girl slightly. She stopped shrieking and giggling. “No, they don’t, and I don’t want them to. They’re my parents! I’m here to keep them safe.” Then she giggled again. “I get really hungry, though…”

Karula was rapidly running out of breath herself. She used her adult height to grab a tree branch that was too tall for Lai-Mei – too tall for herself, really, but amazing how high a person can jump when their life depends on it – and pulled herself, with arm strength and then support from her legs walking up the tree, onto the branch. Lai-Mei looked up at her. “Do you think that’s going to stop me?” she giggled.

“I want to know why,” Karula said. “Why me?”

“You’re an outsider. I can’t eat any more children. People with children are moving out of the town. They’ve been here, their families, for hundreds of years and they’re running away because of me. I have to protect Bangji, and that means I can’t have people just running away and moving out. If they keep doing that there won’t be a town.”

“Have you considered maybe eating the fish they bring you?”

Lai-Mei made a face. “I ate fish. I ate a lot of fish. Fish is boring all the time! And the old people who bring it are crunchy, like I burned them. They don’t taste burnt, but they haven’t got any more juice in them than if I did. I want prey who’ll run away from me and get their blood pumping, and I don’t want it to be anyone who lives in Bangji. That means you.”

“You’re not the original protector spirit, are you. What happened to it?” The longer she could keep the girl talking, the more of her breath and strength she could get back. Also, the scholar in her wanted to know, even if she was about to die.

Lai-Mei shrugged. “Dunno. Probably got killed in the revolution or the purges or something. A lot of dragons died that way. My parents probably did too. I didn’t even know I was a dragon until I came here and went to school and then I saw pictures.”

“You’re a fire-breather? So, a land dragon?”

“I don’t know. I just told you, all I know about dragons is what I’ve read! It’s not like anyone ever came along to take me to dragon school or something.”

Dragons taking human form. The massive upheavals of the revolution, and the rebellions, the counter-revolutions, the purges. A quarter century or more of violence. Things in Senchai were peaceful now, but hadn’t been as little as ten years ago. Nandijao and Jiangpao had been peaceful enough, civilized, calm, but her father had had to flee or else he’d have been taken in the night like his friends were, and out in the countryside, government officials had still been bringing down soldiers on the heads of small towns like Bangji, because they weren’t “modernizing” fast enough. Maybe they still were.

Karula thought of a dragon in human form killed by gunfire, or a bomb, a level of violence that even a fantastic, magical creature had never evolved to deal with. She thought of an egg left behind, of a baby born able to shapeshift, and humans taking in a wandering child. Senchai’a dragons were supposed to be ancient and wise, but how would you ever get to be ancient and wise if you were young, and untaught by any of your own kind? “Why do you have a last name, then?”

Lai-Mei giggled. “Haven’t you figured it out?” She traced a character in the air with her finger. “Lun!” And the character she traced, the word she spoke, was the word they’d both just been using. Dragon.

“The Children’s Center taught me how to read and write when I was very little, and I learned to hide myself. I could only eat the other children if it was safe to. I wanted to go someplace where there would be more to eat, so I ran away and I found the Wangs, and Bangji. I found that they feed dragons here, as long as the dragon protects them. So I told them my name was Lun Lai-Mei. But I never told them the characters.” She sketched her true name in the air. Dragon Pursue Fierce.

“You have the order wrong,” Karula said. “You should have been Lun Mei-Lai. ‘The fierce dragon is coming?’ The way you have it, it sounds like ‘the dragon pursues ferocity’.”

“I’m going to kill and eat you, and you’re correcting my grammar? I was three! Or four, I don’t remember exactly.”

She changed, unfolding from a girl-child to a small dragon. A land dragon, with the serpentine body of a Senchai’a dragon, and wings, and nostrils that snorted puffs of sulfur. She was no bigger than a minivan and no longer than a hearse, and her head was just slightly larger than an adult’s proportions would be, but she was definitely a dragon.

"You see, Elder Sister?" she laughed. "I've caught you now, and become a dragon. And now I'll eat you up."

I’m going to die here, Karula thought. She could jump out of the tree and keep running, but she had no advantages against Lai-Mei anymore; the dragon was bigger than her, and could fly, and her serpentine body could probably twist through the trees. There was no way she was going to get out of this one.

Not like this. Not without… not without the fire.

It had started when she was a teenager. A candle, a gas burner, a fireplace… any fire mesmerized her, and she’d had intrusive thoughts about self-immolation. Like her mother, who’d run back into their burning home. As she’d gotten older it had only gotten worse. Her food had to be hot, but she couldn’t cook it herself if there was a flame involved, or she’d put her hand in it, try to immolate herself. She’d come here hoping to find out why, if there was a connection of some kind between the things she felt and the way her mother had died… and she’d found evidence that her grandmother and her great-grandmother had died the same way.

She’d wanted to find something to save herself. But if she was going to die anyway… she wanted to taste the fire.

“Are you sure you’re a dragon there?” Karula taunted her. “You look to me more like a big dog.”

“…What did you just say to me?”

“You heard me.” Karula grinned, as insolently as she could manage. “You call yourself a dragon? Maybe a lion.”

Lai-Mei lunged at her with a shriek, but Karula dropped to the ground, dodging the large mouth. “Oh, yes, use your teeth!” she yelled mockingly. “Dragons are supposed to be ancient and wise, not brute beasts! But sure, you’re totally a dragon!”

“Nothing you say will matter when I tear you apart!” Lai-Mei growled.

“Oh, but you’ll remember it. You want to think of yourself as a big strong dragon because you managed to terrorize some children and some superstitious old people, but I know the truth! If you were a dragon, you’d be able to flame me to death, but you haven’t even tried! You don’t even have any flame!”

“I’ll show you flame!” Lai-Mei snarled, and breathed a blast at Karula.

Karula screamed.

It burned, it was agony, but it was a cleansing agony, like the feeling of ripping off a scab or drenching a cut in rubbing alcohol, times a thousand. It was agony, but it felt right, it felt like she had been waiting for this all her life. She fell backward into light so blinding and red it was the same as darkness, as her flesh charred away. But her scream never stopped, growing higher in pitch and harsher, more tinny, and wings unfolded from somewhere as their prison of human flesh burned away, and her scream was the shriek of a giant bird. And her eyes opened.

Lai-Mei slithered backward a few steps and reared her head back, startled. “What—”

And Karula knew, now.

The memories of her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, ancestor after ancestor going back thousands of years. Give birth to an egg and set yourself aflame so the baby bird will carry all your memories, all that you are. Learn to take human form. Branch out, have more children. Boys who will carry the trait into the human population, so there will be more of your kind, eventually, more lineages. Girls who will become you as soon as they die in fire.

Karula was the Phoenix, and had always been, as her mother before her, and her mother’s mother, and backward to the dawn of time. And the Phoenix didn’t die in the flames. The flames burned and purified, took away the human shell if the Phoenix was born in one. The ancients had had it wrong. There was more than one Phoenix and there had been for thousands of years, but within a single lineage, the daughters all carried the memories of the mothers and all the ancestors backward through time.

She spread her wings and shrieked again.

Lai-Mei screamed. "What-- what are you? You-- you were human--!!"

"No more human than you, little dragon," Karula called to her, with a voice that was the song of a bird. "I am the Phoenix. I was your guest, and you tried to kill me."

She rose into the air, wings flapping, and then dove at the dragon with a predatory screech. Lai-Mei breathed another blast of fire at Karula, but the flames that seared her strengthened her, so soon after her rebirth. She raked at the dragon’s eyes with her talons.

Screaming, Lai-Mei took wing herself, flying like an awkward chick. She wasn’t used to flight, not combat flight, not against an equal opponent. Karula was smaller than the dragon, but not by much; the part of her that was still Karula the human scholar wondered how she could possibly be flying at the size she was, and how Lai-Mei could possibly be flying, when both of them were far too large for their wingspans. The part of her that was the immortal Phoenix knew that the physics of the human world didn’t apply here. Karula flew ahead of her, almost effortlessly, still mocking her. She had never flown before, but she was the Phoenix and had flown a thousand thousand times, and in that she had far more experience than the nine-year-old dragon.

Though Lai-Mei ripped at Karula and blasted flame, the bird’s greater knowledge of flight made her more maneuverable. She dodged each time, easily, taunting the dragon-child with challenges that were fierce bird cries. Karula’s beak and talons were less deadly-- she scored the dragon many times, drawing blood, but there was no hope of defeating her that way. Instead, she maddened the child, so that when Karula winged away from her, Lai-Mei followed, coming after her as the name she’d chosen suggested.

Karula flew and flew, and Lai-Mei followed and followed, always to the east. They closed with each other more than once, Lai-Mei’s teeth closing on fiery feathers, Karula’s talons slicing a leathery wing – but Karula would always break free, climb and head east, and Lai-Mei followed in her rage. And thenthey were over the deep ocean.

Karula climbed steeply, straight toward the sun. As the sunbird, the Phoenix, the bird of fire, she could look straight into the sun without penalty. It was not the same for the dragon. Land dragons were creatures of caves and mountains, with no more resistance to the light of the sun than a human would have. Lai-Mei tried to pursue upward, but was blinded. She leveled off, looking around herself for the phoenix, glancing upward sometimes… but never far enough upward. It wasn’t noon yet, but it was close enough that aiming straight at the sun brought Karula almost directly to the top of the sky.

She dove then, landing hard at the scruff of the dragon’s neck, and dug in with her talons, pinching off the nerves to the wings and paralyzing them, as her weight drove them both downward. Lai-Mei screamed and struggled, her wings beating feebly and erratically. The pressure points to fully paralyze her wings weren’t accessible to a phoenix’s talons, but near-paralysis and weakness would do the job as well. She twisted her serpentine body and tried to bite Karula, but the bird was in exactly the position that the dragon couldn’t reach her from, and Karula’s enormous wings drove both of them down toward the ocean.

When Lai-Mei hit the ocean, she sizzled and steamed. The sea dragon who’d been Bangji’s protector spirit, long before Lai-Mei’s birth, would have thrived in the ocean… but that dragon wouldn’t have breathed fire. And wouldn’t have eaten the children in the town she was supposedly protecting.

Karula took care not to touch the water herself as she submerged the thrashing baby dragon, and with the power of her wings she held her there, Lai-Mei’s head thrust down by the bite of Karula’s talons in just the right places, until her struggles weakened.

She turned into a human girl again, causing Karula to reflexively let go of her as the feeling of thick scale under her talons changed to soft human flesh. Lai-Mei bobbed to the surface, gasping, and looked up at Karula pleadingly through the waves. "I'll be good!" she wheezed, struggling to stay afloat and to get enough air. "Please, let me go, Karula! I'll never hurt anyone ever again!"

Karula hesitated. Could the little dragon truly be blamed for knowing nothing of what it meant to be a dragon, of having the morality of a beast, when she had lost her dragon parents and mentors before she even hatched? And it would break the Wangs’ heart when Lai-Mei never returned.

As it had broken the hearts of the parents of Bangji when their own children had never come home.

There was no blame here. No moral culpability. Lai-Mei had become a monster. It didn’t matter whose fault it was that she had done so. It was tragic how the dragons had failed her, how the people of Senchai and their violence had failed the dragons. But she had eaten human flesh. The human Karula Lefaire might have wanted to take pity on a little girl… but the Phoenix knew that, to protect the dragons and the phoenixes, all the wild magical creatures of the world, and to protect the humans as well, a magical beast who’d eaten human flesh couldn’t be allowed to live.

She landed on the child, letting her weight push the girl underwater. Lai-Mei thrashed and struggled, and tried to pull Karula down into the water with her, where her own magic would fizzle and be extinguished. But Karula had wings, and they were stronger than anything a human child’s strength could bring to bear.

In the water, a human could live longer than a land dragon, whose fire was part of their life force. But humans couldn’t breathe water either. Karula held Lai-Mei under until she stopped moving and air stopped bubbling out of her mouth.

The “protector” of Bangji was dead. She had never been an adequate protector – the price she’d taken from the village for her protection had been far, far too high. But the village expected a protector, and in a nation where bureaucratic zeal was fond of stomping out dissidence, variance, and any deviance from the One True Approved Way, a tiny village that held to the old ways in so many things was in danger, without a protector.

Karula climbed toward the sun again, and then banked, turning toward the village. Someday perhaps she would be human again; someday she might bear a daughter to be the Phoenix after her. And having already undergone her transformation and mastered her relationship with fire, she wouldn’t be compelled to immolate herself before the daughter was old enough to understand. She’d be able to teach her child before once again becoming the bird of fire. Someday. Perhaps.

But right now, there was a village whose only protection from a harsh central government that demanded obedience and order… was floating dead in the waves, with the marks of Karula’s talons in her flesh. And that meant Karula had an obligation.

She swept over the town, once, her fiery wings making a contrail in the air as she passed. The villagers looked up at her in amazement. And then she turned, and climbed again, and landed at the shrine.

On the land she could hunt for herself, but she could not dive into the sea to catch fish. There were no large wild animals around here, and people needed their goats and pigs to survive. She would not take from humans what they needed to live any more than she would take their lives.

But she hoped they would bring the next offering soon. She was hungry. And she hoped it would be hot.

***

Sorry, apparently 11 am on Monday is the new best time for posting my 52 Project fics? Still gonna try to get the next one out by Friday, though.

#52 project #fantasy #china but not really

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koolkat9 · 3 years ago

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HWS Germany Ship Week 2021: Day 5

Prompt: End of a Long Day

Paring: GerEng

Word Count: 1281

Winding Down

It had been a long day, but that was a given with any meeting day. Nothing ever got done at best and at worst, multiple fights broke out. What was the point of meetings nowadays? Arthur had joked many times in the past Afonso that it was more like a daycare for nations than a professional meeting, but in recent times that was becoming less of a joke. And poor Ludwig worked tirelessly to try to get something out of it, only to lose his temper at everyone’s immaturity and adjourn the meeting, barely having covered the topics that needed to be discussed.

This particular meeting had taken an even worse toll on the German. He had already been working himself to the bone with paperwork and other tasks for his boss on top of prepping for the meeting. And of course, the other nations did not make Ludwig’s job as host any easier and he ended up cutting the meeting short because he had barely any energy to keep everyone in check. In the aftermath of it all, Arthur was left with an exhausted and miserable lover.

They walked hand-in-hand down the hallway that seemed to go on for miles, Arthur watching for their room number. As soon as they found it and got inside, Ludwig beelined it to the bed, collapse onto it. Letting out a light chuckle, Arthur made his way over to the sink, filling up the room’s kettle with water to make some tea for himself and Ludwig. He joined his partner in bed, two styrofoam cups in hand. Without a word, Ludwig heaved himself up, settled into Arthur’s side, and took his cup. “Danke,” he murmured, taking his first sip.

Arthur gave him a smile, his hand moving to Ludwig’s hair to comb through it. “You’re welcome, love.” They drank their tea in silence, content just to be laying together with the worries of the day behind them. Arthur continued to run his fingers through Ludwig’s hair, messing up the meticulously gelled back. His hand eventually traveled lower, reaching the German’s neck finding the area incredibly stiff and knotted. “Oh darling you’re so tense,” Arthur exclaimed, “Maybe you should take a bath or something.”

Ludwig only shook his head, hiding his face in Arthur’s side. “I’ll be fine,” he mumbled.

“Okay...But after we finish up here I propose we go on holiday out of the country. You desperately need one. Maybe Italy or something.” As he spoke, he began massaging Ludwig’s neck almost absentmindedly, his tea now off to the side. “See the Colosseum, have some quality wine-”

“Leave it to you to think about the alcohol,” Ludwig laughed lowly.

“Hey!” Arthur gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted. Go sightseeing, eat gelato, we could even visit Feliciano. Or we could always go to Japan even. Get off the continent.” Arthur went on, listing off all the possible destinations and things they could do, making Ludwig’s smile grow with each one.

“On your stomach,” Arthur demanded about halfway through. Although he didn’t want Arthur fretting over him, he found himself complying, not having the energy to argue (plus, his back was a little achy). His hands trailed across the German’s back, noting areas of the most tension, then getting to work on those areas. As he worked, Arthur resumed their previous conversation “Then there is Australia, but that’s a bit far don’t you think? Maybe Canada would be better and I’m sure Matthew and Al wouldn’t mind us borrowing their cottage for a week.”

“The one we went to last summer?” Ludwig asked though it broke out into a pleased hum as Arthur dug his fingers deeper into his shoulders.

“Yes.”

“Mmm. I think that one sounds the nicest.”

“Then it’s decided. I’ll talk to Matthew about it tomorrow.” With that sorted out, Arthur could now focus solely on massaging, kneading into the skin until the muscles below loosened. As Arthur continued to work, Ludwig let out pleased noises while allowing his body to melt into the mattress. Arthur may have denied the fact, but he was skilled with his hands. By the time Arthur was finished, Ludwig felt much lighter and more relaxed, it was just what he needed.

“Now with that out of the way, how about some dinner?” the Englishman offered, leaning back on the headboard.

“Can we eat in?”

“Of course love.” Arthur reached over to the nightstand, grabbing hold of a room service menu, and placed it in between them so they could look over it. Ludwig sat up to get a better look. Once they had picked out what they wanted, Arthur dialed the number while Ludwig settled down into the pillows once more.

“I know it’s early, but maybe we should change into our pajamas,” Arthur suggested, going over to his suitcase and pulling out his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. While over there, he got some pajamas for Ludwig as well and laid them out on the bed before changing into his own.

Ludwig begrudgingly sat up once more, his eyes lingering on his lover as he slipped the t-shirt on. The shirt itself was quite familiar. “Is that my shirt?”

Arthur turned back to him, a sheepish grin on his face. “M-Maybe.”

Ludwig rolled his eyes, though there was a smile on his face. Although he was tired and hated putting PJs on this early, he followed Arthur’s suggestion.

Dressed in their PJs and the food on its way, they propped up the pillows and leaned back, and flipped through the movies they could rent. In the end, they picked Labyrinth. Actually, it was more like Arthur got this longing look in his eyes, hesitating for a minute before moving on.

“If you want to watch it, you can watch it,” Ludwig said with a chuckle.

Arthur turned to his boyfriend, brows furrowing. “But this is for you. Are you sure?”

“Ja. Right now I don’t really care.”

With a kiss on the forehead and a soft ‘okay’ Arthur flipped back to the movie and selected it. Not long after there was a knock at the door, signaling the arrival of their dinner.

Arthur ended up paying for both dinner and movie despite Ludwig’s protests. “Consider it a gift from me to you for all the shit you put up with,” Arthur had said as he set out the food on their table. Ludwig couldn’t help but feel giddy at the reasoning, any argument soon fell away, and instead, he took a seat at the table with a 'thank you.'

They ate in comfortable silence, making small talk occasionally such as asking how the meal was. Arthur had spoiled them, getting each of them a cheesecake for dessert. Not necessarily Ludwig’s first choice, but cheesecake was good and this particular one was delicious.

Bellies full, the two lovers returned to the bed and hit play on the film they had set up prior. They took a similar position as when they first got here, Ludwig nestled into Arthur’s side with Arthur combing his hand through the other man’s hair (and they wouldn’t have it any other way).

“Have you seen this one before?” Ludwig asked, his voice tired.

“Yes. I mainly like it because of David Bowie.”

Ludwig shook his head, laughing softly to himself. “You and David Bowie.”

“Shhh, it's starting.”

Not even fifteen minutes in, Ludwig was fast asleep, arms wrapped around Arthur’s waist as if he was a teddy bear. A warm smile spread across the Brit’s face as he leaned down to place a goodnight kiss on his lover’s head before returning to his movie.

#germanyshipevent2021 #hws #hetalia #gereng #engger #geruk #hws england #hws germany #fluff #end of a long day #massages #fanfiction #hetalia fanfiction

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alpacaparkaseok · 4 years ago

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7 Secrets <pt. 4>

GENRE: Soulmate!au BTS!

WARNINGS: none

WORD COUNT: 3274

Part 4 woohoo! I just really love these girls and their friendships with each other. I kind of wanted to spotlight some of their friendships/back story a bit more in this chapter, just to round out the story a bit more. I swear we’re getting to the good stuff. Also, has anybody else noticed that the word count is steadily increasing? Lol you don’t mind, right? Anyways, thanks so so so much for all the love the story has received so far, I was seriously not expecting anybody to even see it haha. So thank you, it means so much! I’ll probably have part 5 up really soon! Enjoy!

By the time morning rolls around, I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. A quick glance at my phone tells me what I need to know: it’s nearly 10:30. I wince at the time, it’s a rare occurrence when I sleep in for this long. However, judging from my jet-lag and my eyes that are still a little red and puffy from my emotional breakdown last night, I’ll let this one slide. Heaven knows I needed some extra rest.

I stretch and put on one of the hoodies I left behind in my closet from last year, glaring at my suitcases that still need to be unpacked. I’ll add that to the to-do list for today.

Brushing my teeth, I inspect myself in the mirror. I already feel lighter, more at ease. It was a good thing to open up last night. All of my worries haven’t been put to rest, but I feel less overwhelmed. Happier, too. Happier than I’ve felt in a while.

As I descend the stairs to the main level I can hear the mixture of voices, Ichika’s voice piercing through the others as she talks about running out of her favorite cereal.

“Wow,” I mumble as I finally enter the kitchen and dining area. “I think this is the first time everybody else is up before me.”

“Did we wake you up?” Seohyun looks guilty, but I shake my head no.

“Just woke up, actually. I can’t believe I slept for so long. Where’s Soon?” I notice that there is one missing.

“In here!” I follow the sound of her voice, leading me to the living room where she sits underneath some blankets on the couch. The TV is on, and I scowl as my heart kicks into high gear.

It must be the boys’ latest interview, I haven’t seen this one yet. I curl up next to Soon silently, and she resumes her focused attention on the TV. While Kyun-soon may not be as outward in her devotion to the boys, Jin in particular, she is always the first to watch the latest interviews and performances. That is, when we don’t watch them together.

“Which one is this?” I whisper, careful to not distract her too much. Her eyes glisten, and I turn to see Jin giggling in the background.

“iHeart radio,” she whispers back.

Eventually everyone wanders in after hearing the boys’ voices drifting in from the living room. Ichika munches loudly on some toast before nearly choking on it when Taehyung comments on something.

“Ugh,” she groans as we laugh at her. Nobody can blame her, it’s happened to the best of us. “That boy is going to be the death of me.”

I try my best to focus on all of the boys, but I can’t help it if my eyes keep drifting back to Namjoon. He sits in the front as per usual, Jimin on his right. He has a pleasant smile on his face, and not for the first time do I wonder what goes on in his head during these interviews. If he thinks that the interviewers questions are as dumb as I do.

A single camera is in the living room. There’s one other in the entire house, in the kitchen. They automatically turn on at certain times of day, the schedule is hanging up on the fridge. I’m rarely in the living room as is, much less when I know the camera is on. A quick glance confirms my suspicions; there’s a little red light on the camera. It’s filming us. Try as I might, I still can’t help but react when Namjoon offers his adorable dimpled smile at the end, thanking the interviewer and ARMY for the interview.

“Thanks for having us!” Namjoon’s voice echoes through the apartment. “We love you ARMY! We can’t wait to see you soon!” He blows a kiss to the camera, then immediately gets embarrassed after.

I get embarrassed too, the red in my cheeks all too noticeable.

“Aw, look at Beth! She’s embarrassed!” Himari pokes my side, and I tug at Soon’s blanket in order to hide my face.

“So cute!” Seohyun giggles from where she stands behind the couch. “You two are just alike. Oh my gosh you’re going to be so awkward around each other, aren’t you.”

I glare up at her, Seohyun chuckling lightly even as her eyes remained glued to the screen. “I’m not embarrassed…”

Aera laughs wickedly. “Not embarrassed? Beth, I’m sorry, but as cool and calm as you try to be, we all know what your weakness is.”

We laugh together, even as the interview ends and something else comes up on the television. It’s mere background noise as I try to deal with the sudden flood of emptiness that overtakes me. No, not today, I tell myself. I feel happy today.

“What’s the plan for today, boss?” Himari asks, taunting me with the nickname I usually use for her.

I yawn, stretching against Soon who doesn’t seem to mind. No doubt her mind is elsewhere at the moment.

“Well, I’ve got an editorial meeting this afternoon for Webtoon,” I sigh, rolling my neck. “Then I’m free for the rest of the day after that. What are you guys going to be up to?”

Everyone goes about talking about their plans. All of us have some form of work, Minsuh and Seohyun are attending university too. I plan on jumping back into school for my master’s soon, but I just can’t decide where to go yet. It would be fun going to school with them, though. It’s hard to decide when I’m constantly traveling, I’ll probably have to settle for online classes.

Minsuh and Seohyun excuse themselves to go to class together, promising to be back before I get back from my meeting. I smile at Seohyun’s backpack, an assortment of pins adorning it. The centerpiece, of course, is a “Trivia: Seesaw” pin.

Kyung-soon yawns, easing herself off the couch. “I’ve got a couple of clients today, so I’ll be out until later. But I bet I’ll be back before you, too. Your meetings last forever.”

I grunt in agreement. They do last forever. Long enough for Soon to show two different clients houses and still finish before me.

“Where are the houses that you’re showing?” Soon is a respected realtor in Seoul, and it’s no secret that she loves her job. She can make any house a home, in my opinion. She certainly has a knack for making people feel at home, myself included. She’s one of the reasons I survived those first few months after I found out about my soulmate.

“Not that far, you know that one night market you got lost in for hours and Himari and I had to come pick you up?” Himari chuckles at the memory even as I wince at the embarrassing moment.

“Yup,” I mumble. “It’s close to there?”

“No,” Soon gives me an evil smile. “I just wanted to embarrass you again.”

I launch myself off the couch after Kyung-soon, caught between yelling and laughing. She’s smart, locking herself in the nearest bathroom where I can’t get to her.

When I return to the living room Aera, Ichika, and Himari are wiping the tears off their faces as they laugh at me.

“That really was embarrassing,” Himari says. “How long were you lost again?”

“Oh, shut up.”

↔

The rest of the morning passes with no further incidents, although I do go about cursing at my luggage as each suitcase seems to have no end in sight. I typically stay for roughly six months at a time here, which is what I’ve planned for. That should put me here over Christmas this year, returning at the tail-end of January. Just in time for tax-season in the states.

It would be a real pity if I missed that, now wouldn’t it? Himari and Ichika sneak into my room to observe the damage, wincing as I tell them that I still have one bag left to go.

“We’ll be back in a bit, but if we aren’t back in time for your meeting, good luck!” Ichika gives me a thumbs up before heading back downstairs. Himari lingers for a moment, assessing the piles of clothes I’m currently trapped between.

“Having fun?”

I give a dry laugh. “You have no idea. Ready for your lesson?” Himari and Ichika work together, tutoring kids in Japanese. They tend to spend the majority of their time here every year, and over the past three years they’ve created quite the reputation. Apparently the two of them are a dynamic duo.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Himari replies. She’s hesitating, that much I can tell. We may have only known each other for three years, but we know each other inside and out. Outlandish circumstances tend to lead to strong bonds.

“What are you wanting to say?”

She laughs at my intuition. “Ah, right. That. It’s just,” she fidgets in my doorway. “Are you doing ok? I saw you and Kyung-soon up on the balcony last night, it looked like you were having quite the conversation.”

I sigh, a little surprised that I didn’t notice when the others came back. I must have been in my own little world last night.

“I’m...better now. I was just overwhelmed, and Soon was able to wring some emotions out of me.”

Himari nods, the concern in her face fading. “Good, I’m glad. You know, Beth, you can talk to me if you need to. I was getting worried over the last little while, it’s been hard not seeing you and having to guess about your emotional state. If you need anything, I’m here.”

I stop folding a shirt, laying it aside as I rise and make my way to Himari. She meets me halfway, enveloping me in a tight hug. Neither one of us talk about our emotions very often, rarely do I feel the need to. But the fact that she’s so willing to listen makes me thank my lucky stars for friends like Himari.

“Thanks, Himi. I’m so lucky to have you, truly.”

“Oh, I know.”

With that Himari leaves me to my unpacking frenzy, leaving me alone in the house with Aera. It doesn’t take long until she’s knocking on my door, her room just down the hall from my own.

“Need any help?”

“Please.”

With the two of us working together we finish much sooner than I had anticipated. Aera makes me laugh, stating that she thought I should have brought more clothes.

“What do you mean more clothes? I’m pretty sure these are all of the clothes I own.”

Aera looks at me in feigned shock. “Are you kidding me? It’s high time I take you shopping. What time is it?”

We check the clock and notice that I only have a couple of hours left before I have to leave for my meeting. Not nearly enough time to go shopping. Especially not in the huge city of Seoul. Instead we settle on my bed, the two of us staring wistfully at my photo of Jeju Island.

“We should go back,” Aera mumbles from beside me. I hum in agreement. “That was such a great weekend.”

“That weekend was the weirdest weekend of my life.” I laugh as Aera smacks my shoulder. “What? It was! Within literally one week I found out I had a soulmate, he was famous and one of my role models in life, and that I had these six other girls in the same situation and I was shipped off to an island for a weekend to ‘bond’ with them. Don’t tell me that’s not weird.”

Aera nods beside me, eyes sparkling as she recalls that weekend. “Yeah, it was weird I guess. I don’t know, I was just so happy that I had six new best friends who would always be linked to me since our soulmates are inextricably linked with each other. I had thought for so long that I would be all alone on this crazy journey. I guess I was just so happy that I wasn’t alone anymore that I didn’t think about the weirdness of it all.”

I forgot about that. Aera was the first soulmate BigHit found. She’s from downtown Seoul, certainly the closest to our boys. Apparently Mr. Bang found her almost six months before he found me. He hadn’t informed her when he found the others, preferring to not get her hopes up until all of us were found and agreed to the terms of agreement he set us.

When I think about those six months Aera went through all alone, not able to tell another soul that she was impossibly linked with Park Jimin, I can’t help but admire her even more for her quiet strength.

“That must have been horrible, not being able to talk to anybody about it.”

Aera only nods, eyes still glued to the photo. “I’m not going to lie, it was. I thought I was going insane most of the time.” She laughs drily at the memory, and I scoot closer to her. “Do you remember what it was like meeting each other? For a second I thought that Mr. Bang had messed up and that we were soulmates!” She shoots me a fond smile.

“You can say that again.”

“Why would I say it again?”

We look at each other blankly before I burst out into laughter. “Oh, sorry! It’s a phrase in English. I guess it doesn’t translate over very well, does it?” We both giggle, the moment seeming so calm. “It’s true, though. What you said. We all just...clicked. It makes me wonder.”

The moment I walked through the doors of the house we were staying at and met my six best friends, the world became a much brighter place. I had arrived later in the day due to meetings, and I had been so nervous. I was cursing myself the whole ride over, calling myself an idiot for agreeing to Mr. Bang’s idea of “bonding” with my soul sisters. It seemed like a ridiculous idea, but the thought of having other people to lean on and talk to was too tempting to pass up.

The second I met the others, I could feel the warmth and love our friendship would bring. It was like, for a split second, I experienced all the emotions we would go through together. The heart-wrenching tears, the nights filled with laughter and silly antics, the worry and adoration for each other. Above all else, I felt the pillar of support that promised to be a constant throughout our friendship.

It was, in a word, overwhelming. Which I’ve noticed has become a common theme over the past few years. Overwhelming, yet exhilarating.

“Wonder about how it will be to meet Namjoon?”

I nod, laughing at how even the mention of my soulmate seems to have me melting. It can be inconvenient at times, especially when I’m in a meeting and somebody brings up the band. It’s pretty hard to play it cool, so instead I’ve learned to just excuse myself to the bathroom whenever that happens. Can’t have anybody thinking that I’ve got a schoolgirl crush on BTS.

“Well, look at it this way.” Aera rolls off of my bed, stretching like a cat. “I’m probably just going to pass out. No questions asked. The second I lock eyes with Park Jimin, I’m going to pass out cold.” I let out a startled laugh as Aera feigns seriousness. “So, as long as you don’t pass out, you should be good. I’ll take up all the embarrassment, there won’t even be enough left for you. Which is good, I think. Because if it was that intense just meeting you guys, and we’re not even directly connected, then I can only imagine how intense it’s going to be with those weirdos.”

With that little speech, Aera flicks a strand of long brown hair over her shoulder and marches out of my room, leaving me dumbstruck.

“Um, Aera?” I call after her, heading toward the bathroom to finally get ready for my meeting.

“Yeah?”

“I really hope I get that on video.”

“What, me passing out in front of Jimin?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh-ho, you’ll regret it if you do. Better watch it, little girl.”

↔

It’s been so long since I’ve been in Seoul that I decide to leave nearly an hour early for my meeting, taking the option of the bus over car. Aera didn’t mind, she was leaving anyways. She was off to a high-end boutique she had just pitched some designs to. She was obviously nervous, but I had no doubt the boutique would gladly welcome her ideas. Aera was an up and coming designer, she had even recently designed a dress that was worn overseas at a film premier.

I was on the bus for just shy of an hour as it made its way across Seoul. I didn’t mind one bit, it allowed me some extra time to simply reconnect with the city and map it out in my head. It was something I often did, in order to prevent future mishaps...like getting lost at a certain night market for hours on end.

I was so lost in my mental map-making that I almost didn’t notice the bus’s approach to the Webtoon office building. Scrambling off the bus, I made my way to my first meeting.

Everything went pretty much according to schedule. I was able to review the panels that my illustrators had prepared for the upcoming season of my book-converted-toon “Young Rising”.

It was all too easy to dive into the work that awaited me there, happy to back among my friend and editor. He was the same prestigious editor who had been there that day Mr. Bang came to visit me. I have no idea what Mr. Bang told him, but my editor never asked me any questions about it.

Apparently it was so nice to be back that I didn’t even notice the time until the sun had set. I glared at the clock on the wall in the drawing room, claiming that it was already well after 9 pm. Add a bus ride onto that, and I won’t be home until nearly 11. I pulled out my phone to text the girls only to find a flurry of texts already waiting for me.

7:32 Himari loml: Don’t tell me you’ve decided to go back to the states already, you just barely unpacked.

8:01 Himari loml: Wow, did you miss work that much? More than me?

8:17 Aera 💛: Are you staying late tonight? Let me know.

9:08 Kyung-soon☺️: I swear if you’re lost at another night market, I’m not coming to get you.

9:28 Kyung-soon☺️: I’M KIDDING I SWEAR TELL ME IF YOU’RE LOST I’LL COME GET YOU

9:32 Ichi: Beth I drew you a picture while I was in class, come home so I can give it to you.

9:38 Himari loml: Ok

9:38 Himari loml: We’ve got a situation here

9:39 Himari loml: Seriously, come home ASAP

9:41 Himari loml: Minsuh is on her way to the office rn. Let me know when you get this.

What started out making me roll my eyes suddenly comes to a halt as I keep scrolling through my notifications. It’s only when I return Himari’s text, letting her know that I’m fine, that I notice the missed call from 9:35.

Missed call: Bang PD 😟

Previous - Next

taglist: @mae-musicbitch

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slash-em-up · 4 years ago

Text

In-Flight Entertainment Pt. 1: ChromeSkull x Reader

This was supposed to be a one-shot; but then it started creeping up on 2k words and I figured I better chop it up. Part 2 will be up soon and 90% smut.

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You were not ashamed to say that you hated airports. Absolutely hated them. The bustle, the smell, the overpriced coffee… There was nothing about them that inspired less then complete loathing in you. So when your boss gave you a heads-up that you’d be traveling to LA for a company meeting, you could only groan internally.

Nothing ever seemed to go right when you flew - a belief further cemented by the unexpected snowstorm that had caused your current situation: A ten-hour layover in Denver.

You were going to be so late for your meeting.

Your carry-on seemed to weigh a ton as you lugged it off the plane, cursing yourself for not fixing the loose wheel before you left as it swerved and pulled your case back and forth behind you.

Sighing heavily, you adjusted the barley-hull pillow wrapped loosely around your neck so it wasn’t pulling on your hair quite as uncomfortably, and searched for the sign to direct you towards your next gate.

On the other side of the airport. Great. At least you didn’t have to worry about being late for take-off.

Passing through the airport, you couldn’t help but glance around at the multitude of shops and small restaurants that peppered the space. It almost looked like a mall, if you discounted the weary look your fellow travelers all seemed to be sporting and the cases trailing behind them like colorful dogs.

You’d have to stop somewhere to eat. The small package of pretzels and soda you’d consumed on your first flight had done little to tide you over, and now you were feeling more than a little peckish. And thirsty. And stressed. You’d kill a man for a decent Old Fashioned.

Arriving at your gate, you plopped down onto one of the barely padded seats with a sigh. Nine hours and twenty-three minutes until takeoff. A family of six sat next to you, immediately starting in on a very loud and expressive argument. It was definitely time to go find that airport bar - but first, you needed a quick refresh in the ladies room.

Dropping your carry-on with the rest of the luggage you trotted across the large hallway, having extricated your makeup bag from your case before leaving it with the desk-steward. There were a pair of eye-masks in there calling your name.

It was insane how enjoyable leaning up against a hard wall with your eyes closed could be after five hours cramped in Coach. You stretched up and down on the balls of your feet as your muscles slowly relaxed, leaving you feeling a bit better than when you’d arrived. Now you just needed food.

That was the only thing on your mind as you shuffled back to the desk and snagged your case from the luggage corral.

Even your case felt lighter. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a horrible layover after all.

“Excuse me Ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to come with us.”

Aaaannnddd you’d spoken too soon.

You spun quickly, taking in the very large, very serious looking men in suits standing shoulder to shoulder behind you.

“…Me? Me, Ma’am?”

The suit-twins eyes narrowed.

“Yes, you Ma’am. Don’t try to run, we’ve already got security on alert.”

You gaped in shock.

“Why would I try to run? I haven’t done anything!”

One of the men sneered as the other looked at you like you were an idiot.

“So that’s your bag, is it Ma’am?”

You blinked.

“Uh, yeah it’s my…”

Your voice trailed off as you took a closer look at the bag you were holding.

Sharp corners, no scratched metallic paint, a gleaming ‘RIMOWA’ screeching up at you from the side…

Well that explained the wheel…

The silver hard-sided case was definitely not yours.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I must have grabbed this one by mistake. I’ll take it back, I’m so -”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple ma’am. You’ll still need to come with us.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------

You were getting the distinct feeling that you were fucked. Or, were about to be.

What the hell was in that suitcase?

The suited men had ushered you quickly to a side-elevator, punching a code into a keypad before pushing a button labeled ‘P’.

They’d yanked the case from you the first moment you were out of public view and now seemed intently focused on making sure you stayed still and quiet.

Even minutely adjusting the pillow still draped across your shoulders had made them both twitch like they were expecting a fight.

The elevator ding sounded ominous as you were quickly led down a gleaming, white hall - each side covered from floor to ceiling in magnificently large windows, offering a spectacular view of the departing planes and the snow-covered Rockies far behind.

The only break in-between were what looked like small sitting rooms. It dawned on you that these must be the VIP lounges. Like, the VIP-est of the VIPs. Shit, who’s luggage had you stolen, Lady Gaga’s??

You were brought to an abrupt stop at one of the closed doors, pausing outside as one suited man knocked quietly, entering after some unknown signal, bag in-tow; as the second man stayed outside - never removing his eyes from you.

“I can apologize in person if that’s what you’re after. I’m a big girl, I can own up to having grabbed the wrong bag - I just think the whole secret service thing is a little over the top…”

The guard didn’t blink.

Ok, this was getting ridiculous.

“I’m SORRY MR. OBAMA, I DIDN’T MEAN TO STEAL YOUR CASE!”

Your arm was grasped firmly as the suit dragged you a little closer to the door.

“BEYONCE? I PROMISE I WON’T DO IT AGAIN!”

The grasp on your arm turned into a solid shake, nearly knocking you against the wall.

“Shut up!” the guard hissed.

You sneered up at him.

“COME ON SNOOP DOGG, I THOUGHT YOU’D BE COOLER THAN THIS!”

The door opened, allowing the other guard to exit with a look at you like you’d just signed your own death certificate.

“He wants to see her.”

“He, who?!”

The man grasping your arm pulled you quickly, spinning you into the room and closing the door firmly behind you.

You blinked, trying to get your eyes to adjust to the sudden dim lighting of the small room; taking in the plush modern couches lining the walls, the two-person dining table, the open pair of suitcases on the glass coffee-table, and then finally, to the man sitting casually behind the luggage, inspecting a pair of underwear from your case.

“Ah… Pitbull. You were going to be my next guess…”

A single brown eye flicked up to meet yours, followed by a loud snort and a half-smirk.

His head tilted as he examined you, and you did the same.

Gaze wandering from his black dress shoes, up his long black-clad legs, over his broad torso - dress shirt uncuffed and sleeves rolled up to expose fully tattooed forearms - then finally to his face. You weren’t an expert by any means; but even to you it was pretty clear he’d undergone some extensive reconstructive surgery at some point. His entire face, all the way up to his bald head looked… off… The black leather eyepatch was also a little bit of a give-away.

He allowed you a few more moments to take him in before reaching down and pulling a phone out of his pocket.

You jumped slightly as an electronic voice sounded through the room.

“I’ll have to address security with the airport. You’re either an exceptional thief, or they really suck at their jobs.”

Now it was your turn to snort.

“Believe me, of the two, they’re definitely more likely to just suck at their jobs.”

His gaze never left you as he reached down and plucked out the romance novel you’d stuffed into your bag for the flight, waving it teasingly.

“I almost believe you.” He typed.

You looked down, starting to feel embarrassed.

“Look, I’m really sorry for this mix-up. I swear I didn’t know it was your bag.”

Without commenting, the man rose from his seat.

Holy shit, he was tall.

He walked slowly, like he had all the time in the world and knew you weren’t going anywhere.

He stopped as he reached the small dining table, leaning down to open a mini-bar placed inconspicuously against the wall and grasp two small bottles of alcohol.

He shook them in your direction and raised his visible brow in question.

“God, yes.”

He snorted again and made short work of pouring the libation into a set of non-descript glasses; offering you one before motioning for you to take a seat.

You relaxed back into the pale leather, pausing for a moment to quickly (and hopefully discreetly) remove the pillow from around your shoulders.

The glint in the man’s eye told you he’d noticed and was once again amused by you.

You took a large gulp of the liquid in your glass and almost immediately started choking on it.

“FUCK!” you hacked out “What *cough* the fuck is this?!”

A broad grin and shaking shoulders met your watery eyes as the man reached over to type something into his phone.

“I understand ASL, unless *hng* you’re just some wacko who doesn’t like to talk.”

The man nodded before setting his phone back down.

‘It’s Lagavulin. Not exactly something you try to shoot.’

You took another - much smaller - sip and nodded.

“I’m sure under different circumstances it would be wonderful.”

‘Different circumstances?’

“Yeah, well it’s kind of hard to enjoy something so nice when you’re being accused of stealing and are more or less imprisoned.”

The man leaned back in his seat.

‘I know you didn’t take my case… at least, not for any reason I’m concerned about.’

You blinked.

“You do?”

He nodded succinctly before signing.

‘If you knew who I was and were trying to take my case, you wouldn’t have drunk something I gave you so readily.’

Again, you were feeling more than a little dumbfounded.

“So… I can go?”

A long arm motioned towards the white door.

‘Anytime you like; do you have somewhere pressing you need to be?’

You thought sadly about the uncomfortable chairs and family of six waiting for you back at your gate.

“… Not really.”

‘Layover to LA?’

“Yeah! You too?”

The man nodded, looking at you sympathetically.

‘Guessing you’re not business class.’

You laughed out loud at that.

“Ha! No way, who’s got the -… well I guess you do.”

He answered with a shrug.

‘I’d like to buy you dinner, by way of an apology for all the hassle today.’

A small smile crossed your lips as you thought about it.

On one hand, he’d kind of had you kidnapped and implied that if you’d known who he was you would have expected him to poison you or something… But on the other hand, this was definitely the most interesting trip you’d taken, and it was largely in part to do with this guy…

Eh what the hell.

“I’m Y/N.”

The man grinned widely, showing off his perfectly straight, white teeth.

‘Call me Jesse.’

#jessica writes #jesse cromeans #jesse cromeans x reader #chromeskull #chromeskull x reader #laid to rest (2009)#chromeskull: laid to rest 2 #horror movies #slasher fiction

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nextqueue · 4 years ago

Text

Love and Volleyball

Genre(s): college!au, romance, slow burn, coming of age, friendship, drama, angst

Pairing: Johnny x OC black female (certain NCT members make appearances)

Word Count: 5.3k

Summary: Soraya is starting her first year of university in Chicago on a full ride volleyball scholarship. Her life hasn't been very eventful and a guy she meets one night is determined to change that.

[a/n]: This is my first fanfic! I plan to add more to this story if you guys like it so lemme know what you think. Thank you 🥰

~~~Soraya~~~

“Mom. Mommy. Mother. Female that pushed me out of her vagina!” My mother finally stops fawning over my belongings long enough to listen to me.

“I got it. I’ll finish decorating it later.” she gives me a withering look because she knows I’m lying.

“I’m still not moving until I meet your roommate so you can stop tryna get me ta leave.” rolling my eyes I examine the rest of the room liking the simple double room layout.

Excited for my first year of college doesn’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling right now. Finally all my hard work paid off. The four years of only studying and practicing in high school lead me here to this moment. Chicago State University became my dream college after a class field trip in my junior year, I fell in love with the city and the overall vibes it gave me. I didn’t have a specific school I wanted to attend, my mother did, but I knew I wanted to play some type of sport. When senior year came around and the scholarships started rolling in for all three of the sports I played I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know which school to pick let alone which sport.

The answer was made for me when a letter from Chicago State University came in. My mother wanted me to take the basketball scholarship to Duke but I had already made my mind up.

A loud bang followed by multiple voices shouting brings me out of my reverence. Looking at my mom we move in sync to the door. Before we can even touch the knob the door bursts open and a tall asian girl all but falls in followed by four more bodies.

“Oh! Hello! Sorry for the commotion.” addressing my mother and I in a heavily accented tongue. Japanese I presume from the conversation I hear from her family.

She is really beautiful, standing at like six feet two inches. Arms and legs long and muscular from what I can see under her clothes. Her hair is cute short in a pixie cut which accentuates her face well, bringing out her delicate features. Her face is small, lips full, eyes large and nose small and straight. When she smiles rows of perfectly brace aligned teeth flash at you.

The girl and her family drag in hella suitcases all the while talking over one another. I laugh at their dynamic while my mother looks offended at the intrusion.

“Um...hello? Yeah, excuse me what are you all doing here?” shaking my head at what is to come I try to stop it before it does.

“Oh, my name is Miyabi and I am on the volleyball team. This is the room I was given. We just came from the airport.”

As my mother was fixing another round of probably intrusive questions I jump in.

“Are you from Japan?” my curiosity winning out as usual.

“Yeah! How did you know?”

“Good guess.”

The smile that over takes her face makes me smile as well. She introduces her family to my mother and I before starting to unpack. I have never seen a group of people move as fast or as efficiently as hers did within the span of 20 minutes. Her entire side of the room was cleaned and fully decorated, clothes placed neatly in her side of the closet, desk organised and bed made. My mom and I watched as they interacted with each other for the first ten then continued setting up my side. All we finished setting up was my desk and bed area. Finally convincing my mother to leave the rest for me to finish we head to the cafeteria with Miyabi and her family for some lunch.

The campus is filled with new students moving in with their families much like Miyabi and myself. It’s nice to see so many different demographics of people in one place, a complete 180 of where I grew up. Montana is predominantly caucasian so I got used to being the only dark skinned kid, it became normal to me to be the odd one out. Now in a place like this where so many look like me I feel more out of place than I ever did in Montana.

Miyabi’s family leaves to rest at their hotel before they leave tomorrow, each one of them crying over having to leave the other. Before they depart her mother takes my hands in hers and asks in broken English if I can look out for her. Not knowing what else to do I promise her I will.

My mother leaves a little while after, our goodbyes far less emotional. I make her promise to let me know when she arrives safely back home and she makes me promise to at least send a text once a day to let her know I’m still alive. The rest of the day Miyabi and I explore the campus and get to know each other.

She is a middle blocker and was personally recruited by the head coach. When she learns I am a wing spiker her shock is unrestrained. Being so used to this reaction I just laugh it off. Standing at only five feet eight inches I am more in line with being a librero than a wing spiker but my athleticism and vertical leap do more than make up for my lack of height.

We meet a few more of our teammates along the way and introduce ourselves. They tell us about a party being thrown at one of the frat houses tonight in celebration of new pledges, suggesting we come. They part ways with us when some guys from the basketball team come up to them. Never being much of a partier it takes Miyabi unleashing a potent dose of puppy dog eyes on me for me to agree to go. I also would feel terrible letting her go out her first night here alone although she does well interacting with others, I doubt she would have any trouble making friends.

Heading back to our room we spend the next few hours unpacking and picking out our outfits for tonight. Both of us came here in very travel savvy fits consisting mainly of oversized shirts and sportswear. Summer hasn’t completely abandoned us yet so we both opt for lighter more summery clothing. Keeping my look simple I throw on a pair of high waisted mom jeans and a white tee tied in front with my old white Keds. Miyabi’s fit is a little more extravagant but suits her bubbly personality well. Black and white plaid schoolgirl skirt paired with a white skin tight faux turtleneck tucked into them and the sickest pair of white platform boots I have ever seen.

“I am so mad we don’t wear the same shoe size right now.” I gush at her as I salivate over her shoes.

“I can send you the link of where I got 'em if you want.”

“Girl, please do cause those are everything.”

We both opt to keep our makeup light and soon we are making our way to the frat houses. Other people are walking in the same direction as us clearly having heard about the party as well. Soon enough loud music can be heard and flashing lights become visible, the amount of people we see increases also. A large group has formed around what looks to be a group of guys, pledges I’m assuming. Pushing our way to the front Miyabi and I watch the guys be put through a rough series of trials, from drinking water with a goldfish in it, to being forced to streak. Things like this never interested or entertained me so I tell Miyabi I am leaving to go check out the rest of the party, she grabs my arm telling me we go together everywhere. Agreeing with her we make our way into the house. The music is loudest there, people are everywhere and all over each other. Finding the kitchen quickly Miyabi drags me with her to find drinks for the both of us. When she offers me a Corona I decline.

“No thank you sis. I don’t drink.” she nods and switches drinks to a Coca-Cola for me.

Taking the unopened can I thank her and we chat amongst ourselves until the girls we met earlier find us and drag us to the dance floor, the living room, where we spend the next hour dancing our lives away. I break away first to get water.

Finally making it to the kitchen through the mobs of people packed in one place I catch my breath. The only other person in the kitchen with me is a guy. He smiles softly at me when he notices me. He’s cute, well more than cute. Standing well over six feet he towers over me as he straightens up from looking in the fridge for something. Smiling back at him I put my locs up in a messy bun away from my neck as I crouch in front of the open fridge looking for bottles of water.

“What are you looking for?” a voice startles me a little, peering around the fridge door I see the guy watching me closely.

The lighting in the kitchen is dim but enough for me to see just how beautiful he really is up close. Longish dark brown hair messily falling into his eyes, pretty down turned eyes, pretty brown down turned eyes that look sleepy hidden behind glasses. Round glasses that sit atop a gorgeously straight nose bridge. My hand itches to trace his features as I lay my eyes on his lips. A deep cupid’s bow, plump pink lips that upturn at the corners, the most striking part of his face to me besides his eyes. Clearing my throat to answer him I stand tucking the last loc away from my face.

“Bottled water.”

“Thought so. They are outside in the cooler out back.” gesturing for me to follow him he leads me through the house to the backyard where the setting seems more intimate. Couples holding to each other tightly and strangers finding comfort in deep conversation.

“Here you go.” he hands me a bottle of water. I thank him then go to sit on the steps of the deck we are on.

I don’t expect him to sit next to me and jump a little when he does. His large frame filling the rest of the space on the staircase.

“Johnny.” holding his hand out for me to shake he looks into my eyes. Looking from his eyes to his hand and back again I shake his hand lightly.

“Soraya.”

The smile that over takes his face makes me hold my breath. It is beautiful, adding a youthful effect to his overall look. His eyes crinkle up into slits and my heart skips a beat.

“Nice to meet you Soraya.”

~~~Johnny~~~

She is beautiful, one Soraya. With her long black locs, mischievous feline eyes, high cheekbones, a cute upturned button nose and lips so large, pink and soft looking I find myself staring at them anytime she speaks. I remember seeing her in the cafeteria earlier today with who I assume is her mother and the tall girl she came to the party with. I couldn’t stop looking at her then just like now. She looked mean and unapproachable at first but the longer I watched her interact with everyone around her I realise she is so full of life that you can’t help but be drawn to her.

I watched her dance with her friend and some other random people that she welcomed to be in her presence. Deciding I was being a little too creepy I left to go hang in the kitchen away from the girls trying to gain my attention and my friends getting wasted.

I never expected her to walk in, let alone by herself. Her skin glowed in the soft light of the kitchen. Little beads of sweat dotting her forehead. When she began fanning herself and tying her hair up I couldn’t look away. She crouched in front of the open fridge and I truly noticed all of her for the first time. Her body caught my whole attention. She is tall, not tall like her friend who clearly stands over six feet, but tall enough to be noticeable. Her arms and legs are long, her waist small, hips wide but not too wide and even though the pants she has on are kind of baggy you can tell her legs and ass are quite ample. She looks athletic and quite flexible. It’s not easy for people to squat into the crouched position she is in unless they have an Asian heritage or some sort of dance/gymnastics background. When I asked her what she was looking for I wasn’t prepared for what she sounded like.

There was a slight presence of an accent which made her deeper voice sound all the more sexy to me. I wanted her to keep talking to me somehow.

When she sat on the porch steps just watching everyone interact with each other my heart lurked in my chest. She looked so at peace but so lonely sitting there I couldn’t help myself when I sat next to her. I want to know everything about her.

“Nice to meet you Soraya.”

“Nice to meet you Johnny.” loving the way she says my name and the little smile that graces her lips. I throw all caution to the wind.

“Are you a freshman?” she doesn’t avoid my eyes as I ask her questions and that makes me nervous. Usually the average human can’t hold eye contact for more than a few seconds especially in this close of proximity. I like to hold eye contact with people because I feel a surge of power and excitement when they look away. She doesn’t waver though and I find myself fighting to keep hold of her gaze.

“I am.”

She has freckles and little moles all over her face and parts of her skin I can see. I want to count them all. I remember my mother telling me where you have moles is where your lover kissed you most in your past life.

“Do you play a sport?”

“Volleyball.”

“What position?”

“Wing Spiker.” her answer is surprising to say the least. I figure she would be a libero with her smaller size. One look at her face tells me she is used to this assumption.

“Your vertical must be ridiculous, makes sense though.”

Cocking her head at me she asks what I mean.

“Your legs. I can tell they are really powerful not to mention long. Your arms are really long too and your hands are huge.” She looks away from me for the first time since I sat next to her and I see her play with one of the rings she wears.

“What about you? Do you play a sport?”

“I used to my freshman year, I’m a junior by the way, then I got hurt.”

“What happened?” she looks back at me, her eyes holding concern and warmth.

“I blew out my knee last year. Now I just redshirt. I was never really into sports intensely anyways. It was just a way to pay for school.”

“What sport did you play?”

“Soccer.”

“Really? My little brother plays, he’s really good.”

The way her face lights up talking about someone she loves makes me feel funny. I want her to light up that way when talking about me. It’s been a while since I felt like this about anyone.

“How many siblings do you have?”

“I have two younger brothers. Kyle and Andre. Seventeen and Thirteen. Andre just turned thirteen in August. Do you have any siblings?”

I want her to look at me this way for the rest of eternity. She holds stars in her eyes and has my heart in her hands already.

“No, I’m an only child.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-one. You I am assuming are eighteen.”

“I’ll be nineteen in a few weeks.” September. Her birthday is in September.

“Nice.”

“What is your majour and what are you passionate about since sports ain’t it?” her question catches me off guard. She seems to have relaxed some.

“Music. I majour in music. I’m the DJ for the campus radio station also.”

Her eyes open wide at my revelation. The way she listens and takes in information is cute like it is the most amazing thing she has ever heard in her life. It’s honest. She can’t seem to hide her emotions well all being shown on her face.

“I’ll have to subscribe!” I chuckle at her excitement.

“What is your majour?” I tried to guess what she would be studying but the longer I talk with her the less I can grasp an idea. Maybe some sort of psychology, something to do with people.

“English majour with a minor in International Relations.” Yupp, would have never guessed that.

“Why those?”

“I’m not from America. I am from Barbados and have always loved to travel, to write and love learning languages.”

“Ahh, that makes sense now.”

“What makes sense?”

“The little accent I hear.” shock passes through her eyes.

“You can tell?”

“Yeah, only cause my parents are from South Korea and I grew up around accented English. I’ve always been able to tell no matter how slight it is. You say certain words differently.”

Nodding her head she starts speaking to me in Korean. I am so shocked I don’t hear a word of what she said.

“W-what?” Repeating what she said I am floored at her fluency.

“How do you know Korean?”

“I told you I like learning languages.”

“Yeah, but Korean? That’s kind of random.” I laugh a little.

“Not really.” She goes on to tell me the story of how she came to speak Korean and I can’t help but like her more than I already do.

“Have you ever been?” the way she speaks about the country you would swear she has been or is Korean herself.

“No, sadly I haven’t. I have plans to though. Have you?”

“Twice yeah. I was born here though, in Chicago.”

“How was it?”

Stars light up her eyes as she leans closer to me without realising in her excitement. She smells so good, not like the annoying fruity perfumes most women wear but something more earthy and deep. Under the lights from the house her skin looks even softer than before. Swallowing heavily I glance quickly at her lips. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Why does she affect me so badly?

“It was great, there is alot to do and it’s alot more diverse than you think in some places.”

She hangs onto every word that exits my mouth even leaning against my shoulder slightly as we trade stories late into the night. After talking for hours she suddenly jumps up.

“I have to go find Miyabi.”

“The girl you came with?” seeing her panic a little over her friend is cute. She leaves me sitting there as she all but sprints back into the house. Trailing after her I watch as her body relaxes visibly upon seeing her friend sitting in the living area playing a game of Never Have I Ever with a few other people.

“Soraya! There you are. Come play!” tugging Soraya down to sit next to her she declares the game restarted.

A few of my friends are in on the game as well so I decide to join.

“John where you been?” one of my best friends and teammates asks. He is sprawled out on a couch looking at peace with himself. Yuta’s eyes flit to Soraya momentarily then back to me raising an eyebrow.

“Around.” is all I say sitting down next to my friend Taeyong.

The game starts pretty mildly with innocent topics such as stealing or skipping class. Soraya still has all her fingers up and is quietly watching everyone around her lose fingers myself included.

When the questions made their way around to Yuta I could almost hear the trouble start.

“Never have I ever slept with more than three people in one night.” He looks directly at me daring me to lie. Glaring at him I begrudgingly lower another one of my fingers.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Soraya staring at my hands. Ashamed for once in my life I wish she didn’t have to see this side of me.

~~~Soraya~~~

More than three people in one night. Chuckling softly to myself I see him peep at me from the corner of his eye. The guy is funny, seeming so calm and collected all night but now I see as usual you can’t judge a book by its cover and humans are far more complex than they ever care to admit.

The questions continue and all my fingers stay spread. I realise my life has lacked any real excitement or adventure, this realisation makes me melancholy. At least I will win this game it seems. Everyone in the room has either folded all their fingers or on their last two or three. Miyabi has three fingers left. Johnny has two.

“Never have I ever stolen a friend's crush.” Johnny brings me out of my stupor with his question. Looking up at him I see him staring down the guy lounging on the couch.

Yuta I think his name is. A cheeky fellow with a serious expression and a lovely smile when he does use it. His appearance is kind of messy but in a very aesthetically pleasing way. Hair dyed a bright red and long, pulled back into a half updo bun. Yuta puts his last finger down with a smirk on his face. Looking between the two of them the tension is palpable.The moment passes and the game continues with everyone none the wiser. Finally it is my turn, I have only folded two fingers so far and for very minor things compared to what the others have done. Wanting this game to be over I choose a question everyone will most likely have to put a finger down for.

“Never have I kissed someone.”

As I thought everyone who was left put their finger down. I win the game. Johnny openly stares at my hands, an unreadable expression on his face. Miyabi yawns loudly declaring she is tired and ready to go to sleep. Checking the time on my phone I see it is well into the early morning hours. Excusing us I let Miyabi lean on me as I lead us out of the house and back to our dorm. The walk was longer than when we came with her full weight on me so I stop and help her up onto my back. Carrying her the rest of the way on my back we reach our place of residence quicker.

Dropping her onto her bed heavily and taking her shoes off I search through my things for makeup wipes to clear both our faces.

Tonight was an experience, my first real party that wasn’t a team dinner or school dance. The drinking, smoking, and general freeness of it all was not something I am used to. Talking to guys also was never on my radar but talking to Johnny wasn’t so nerve-wracking. He was intriguing and very honest in the way he speaks something I notice you don’t see very often these days. I wouldn’t mind talking to him again, finding out the story behind the apparent wild choices he made and the obvious tension between him and Yuta.

Gently wiping the little bit of makeup from Miyabi’s face then applying some of my moisturising lotion just so her face wouldn’t be dry when she wakes up. Taking care of my skin I finally change and make my way into my bed.

Waking up I check the time, sighing when I see I haven’t been asleep for more than two hours. Insomnia is a bitch and she just keeps coming back.

Rummaging through my backpack I pull out my diary, in times like these it’s the only thing that gives my mind peace. Writing has always been a safe place for me, when I would forego parties I would write about them. When I lost a game I would write that I had won as if the words scribbled onto paper or typed onto a document could change the past or predict the future. I write until Miyabi wakes up then we decide to go to the cafe for breakfast after we wash up.

It’s still early when we enter the cafe so not many people are present. Entering the line for breakfast, Miyabi and I chat about last night.

“No, but listen! He was so cute and charming. Yuta I think his name was and he is Japanese too from Osaka. I think he might be on the soccer team.” Yuta. That name…. I think it’s the name of the friend of Johnny’s from last night.

“We can go to a practice later if you would like.”

“Can we really? I didn’t get a chance to talk to him long last night but…wait what about that guy you came in with before the game? He was cute and seemed into you.” she watches me with a twinkle in her eye, a hopeless romantic type, not what I would have pegged her for. Cute.

“Johnny. Yeah, he was nice.”

“He seemed more than nice. All throughout the game he was watching you.”

“Mmmm.”

“He seemed surprised when you ended the game with that question. I’m curious too, have you really never kissed anyone?”

~~~Johnny~~~

Waking up early for my morning run and exercise I can’t seem to get Soraya off my mind. Her innocence baffled me. When she implied she had never kissed anyone I wonder if that was the truth or if she just wanted the game to end? She looked tired so maybe that was it, she just wanted to go sleep and didn’t want to be rude. But what if?

Coffee. My body is screaming for coffee as I end my run, deciding to stop by the cafe. It’s empty, the few people in here don’t look like they have woken up fully yet. The coffee here is surprisingly good, not what I’m used to but tasty enough.

Scanning the cafe I see two girls looking a lot livelier than the rest. The shorter one looks familiar, it’s hard to make out her features without my glasses but it looks like Soraya. Her hair is covered by some sort of scarf and her clothes are extra baggy sweats. The coffee machine pings bringing me out of my stupor.

You should go talk to her Johnny. Yeah. Yeah. Do that. It’s no big deal. She’s the same girl from last night right? Right. Let’s do this!

Making my way over to her I pause when I hear the conversation she is having with her friend. The same friend from last night.

“No, I wasn’t lying. I haven’t kissed anyone.” she chuckles a little then fills up her plate with more food.

“Seriously? Like ever? Never? Why?”

Yeah, why? I want to know why too.

“It just never came up or was a priority of mine.” I am sure my face looks stupid right now.

“Wait does that mean you have never had a boyfriend?”

Surely she had to have had a boyfriend. What man or even an adolescent boy would see her and not want to date her? In the daylight she is even more mesmerising. She looks warm in her oversized grey hoodie and matching grey sweat shorts. The scarf hiding her locs is a pretty golden yellow. The starkness of the colour against her skin is gorgeous. The way she stands like she is the most important person in the room is quite attractive as well.

“Correct. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

Coughing from shock I alert the two women to my presence.

“Oh! Johnny right?” her friend addresses me first.

“Hey. Morning.” I wave at them. Wave? Come on John.

“Morning Johnny.” the smile that falls on her lips makes my heart stutter. Dimples. Fucking dimples. Of course she has to have dimples.

“Morning Soraya.”

~~~Soraya~~~

My goodness he looks so good. Like he just came from working out or something. His hair pushed back with a sportsband. The shirt he wears is black and sleeveless, giving me an unobstructed view of his arms and damn it if they look amazing. His joggers are black as well but fit him so perfectly I wonder if they were specifically tailored for him. My eyes travel up from his feet to his eyes. Those eyes. Like freshly made honey straight from the comb of the most hardworking bees.

“Are you here for breakfast?” Miyabi breaks the ice once again. Her bright personality proving to be a joy to have around.

“Uh, yeah.” he grabs a plate and begins adding food to it.

Watching him fills me with a sense of warmth.

“Come eat with us.” the words leave my mouth before I can stop them. He looks surprised but nods and finishes piling food on his plate. He follows us to a table near the windows.

We eat in silence for the most part each one of us taking turns to make polite conversation with one another. Miyabi finishes eating first then leaves claiming she has something to do but as I watch her leave she has a shit-eating grin on her face and is making obscene motions behind Johnny’s back. Rolling my eyes I focus on the gorgeous man in front of me. The sun is hitting one side of his face just right, highlighting his sharp features and bringing out the lighter tones of his eyes.

“What’s your favourite colour?” I blink a few times not sure what I heard.

“Huh?” smooth as sandpaper Raya.

He smiles softly and repeats the question.

“Violet.”

“Violet? Isn’t-” cutting him off with a hand before he can even finish that statement I go off on a tangent about the differences in the colours Violet and Purple, going so far as to pull up a chart on my phone.

“You get that alot I see.” he laughs like a teleprompter wrote it out and I find it so endearing.

“Yeah. Only artists seem to understand what I mean.”

“You should meet my friend Taeyong then, the shorter guy I was sitting next to at the party. He is an Arts majour.”

“I would love to!”

“Give me your number and we can all hang some time then.” smooth Mr. Johnny. Real smooth. Don’t think I didn’t see what you did there sir.

I give him my number because truthfully I was looking for a way to ask him for his as well, he just beat me to it. Talking some more I learn quite a bit about this man. As more people fill the cafe the quiet almost magical bubble we had for ourselves pops. Figuring there is no point in dragging this on I make up an excuse to leave.

“So, can I text you sometime?” standing outside the building to the cafeteria I get shy as I watch literally everyone that passes us stare at our interaction.

“If you would like. I must warn you though, I’m terrible at replying unless I deem you important or entertaining in my life.” he smiles at my words and says he will just have to become both before he leaves.

Watching him jog away I can’t help but fawn over him. I didn’t come here to this school to date but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to try it out.

#johnny #nct #johnny fanfic #johnny romance #johnny angst #johnny fluff #johnny scenarios #nct fluff #nct 127 #johnny series #seo youngho #johnny seo #love and volleyball #nct fanfic #taeyong #yuta

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bangtan-madi · 4 years ago

Text

546 Days Without You — Eleven: Day 412

Pairing — Seokjin x Reader

Tags — boyfriend!Seokjin, older brother!Yoongi, producer/songwriter!MC, military au (ish), idol au (ish)

Genre — fluff, angst

Word Count — 3.1k

Summary — Kim Seokjin is your entire world, and that world falls apart the moment he and your older brother Yoongi are conscripted into the South Korean military.

Part — 11 / 15

Warnings — minor language

Previous — Next

Days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months. Time flies by as you travel from Korea to Europe, then to the Americas, then to Australia. In the four months that have passed, the amount of concerts has crossed over two-dozen. You've crossed into at least half as many countries across six continents, and this is only the half-way point.

Shortly after the new year, the group finds itself emptying out of the plane. Having landed in Nagoya minutes before, at an ungodly hour of the morning, you struggle to keep yourself awake. Gravity pulls your body towards the earth. The soft rain falls, creating a lullaby for the weary souls trekking towards the ride to the hotel. You'd like nothing more than to let the ground swallow you whole.

Tour has left most of the members worse for the wear, despite the joy and fulfillment that it brings on an almost daily basis. You considered it a gift from the gods that you had a whole 36 hours before the show. Everyone needed a good shower, a proper meal, and a long night's sleep after leaving Melbourne after the last show. If the next concert was going to be a success, the boys and you needed it desperately.

Along with some cheering up. It isn't lost on you that this is the last show for the next month. After Nagoya, you'll all be heading back to Seoul, where Hoseok and Namjoon will begin final preparations for enlistment. Their date is just under a month away; once mid-February arrives, you'll be saying goodbye to two more members.

It's the thought that's consumed your mind as of late. A lot has happened since Seokjin and Yoongi were conscripted; over a year has passed. Both the time and space have allowed you to reevaluate your stance on conscription.

A soft hand shakes your shoulder, bringing you out of your quasi-dream state and back to the moment. Jimin offers you a hand, assisting you in stepping from the car. The hotel is dimly lit against the Nagoya sky, and the famous castle stands high against the horizon. Any other night you might stay and admire for longer, as this city was one of Seokjin's favorites, but you willfully allow your closest friend to tug you into the building.

As Sejin checks the group in for the next few nights, you throw your arms around Hoseok's neck, mumbling, "Up, up."

The brunet bends down, scooping you up and cradling you against his back. Hands under your thighs, arms around his shoulders, head lulling against the crook of his neck, you welcome his comfort — quite literally with open arms. The youngest member kindly grabs your suitcase. Breathing deeply, your eyes flutter shut once again.

"Jungkookie's right," you slur on the short elevator ride to the upper floor. "You do smell nice."

Hoseok's laugh reverberates through his body, one of the greatest sounds turned to one of the greatest feelings. It's joy taken physical form.

"You're so cute when you're delirious," he chuckles.

"Don't make me out-rap you next time we perform. I have no problem taking my brother's place in 'UGH.'"

Hoseok slides the key to one of the rooms. "Oooh? Threatening me now, are we?"

Nodding against his shoulder, you tighten your arms when he tries to put you down. "M'comfy."

"[Y/n]-ahhh."

"Fiiine."

You drop your clingy arms from around his neck, and Hoseok settles you onto the queen bed in the center of the room. Jungkook drops off your suitcase, giving a small wave before departing for his suite across the hall.

A sudden vibration originating from your jacket pocket causes you to stir. A soft, quiet chorus from Seokjin's last song plays. Your exhaustion suddenly fading, you tug the phone from your pocket. Your boyfriend's face glows on the screen, giving you the option to accept or decline a face-to-face.

A grin spreads across your face, and you accept without hesitation. The call connects, and suddenly you're able to see him. He's already dressed in uniform, the patches on his collar revealing yet another promotion that happened over the new year. This status gives him even more freedom than before, and he can pretty much call you whenever he wants. Yoongi has reached the same status, although he tends to send you more voice memos than actual calls. Just like the two of you used to do.

Seokjin laughs, eyes crinkling up at the corners, at the sight of you on your side. Cheeks mushed up against the pillow, eyes barely open, curled up into a fetal position, you must be a sight for sore eyes.

"Just landed, I see?"

"Shut up," you murmur.

"You look exhausted, Jagi."

"That's because she is, hyung," Hoseok interrupts from across the room. He's finished dragging his suitcase into the room, then opens the door that leads to the other bedroom in the other suite. "Can't you call some other time? We're about to crash."

You roll your eyes and snicker. "Someone's getting cranky."

"He's right,"

Seokjin chuckles, bringing your attention back to his face.

"I just got up, and I wanted to check in, make sure you got to Nagoya safely. That's all. Don't want to keep you up."

Giving a thumbs-up, you force a smile and pull yourself into a sitting position. "Never better! Slept the whole way. How the hell are you up so early?"

"You know me: I'm always the early bird!"

"Yeah, except the earlier you get up, the more chaotic you are. Remember the punching bag and yoga mat incident?"

"Well—"

"—Or the time you about choked on mangos, after calling yourself elegant?"

"Aish! I get it! At least I don't snore when we stay at any—no, every hotel."

Hoseok returns to the doorway, toothbrush shoved into his mouth and an unamused expression on his face. He gestures with a flourish of his hand. "Wrap it up with loudmouth. I'm dead. We can admire your bickering tomorrow when we're human again."

Giving the older member a nod of assurance, you watch in mild amusement as he leaves for the washroom once again. Turning your eyes back to the phone, you find Seokjin mirroring your playful, mischievous expression.

"We're the worst, aren't we?"

"Oh, definitely."

Seokjin sighs, then straightens his posture.

"Do me a quick favor before I hand up?"

"For you, anything."

"Wooow, cheesy, [Y/n.]"

"Be quiet or I might change my mind!"

"Can you show me the Castle? In the center of Nagoya? I'm sure your hotel can see it. You can see it from anywhere, pretty much."

Your smile softens at his request. Swinging your legs over the side of the bed, you step towards the balcony door. Even through the window, Nagoya Castle is stunning. Once the door is opened and you step out into the crisp air, you flip the view around so Seokjin can see what you do. The lights around the castle case brilliant golden light across the white and green structure.

"Wooow,"

he breathes, causing you to smile at the screen.

"That's just like how I remember."

"Wish you were here to see it in person."

"You know I would be if I could."

Flipping the screen around so that he can see you once again, you ask, "When can you use the time off you've built up? I didn't think there was anything you had to wait for after your first year."

"Not on paper there isn't," he nods, running a hand over his shortened black hair. "But you haven't been back in Korea since before then—way before then—and I can't leave the country while on leave, so..."

"You can take a day off without us being there, you know."

Seokjin shakes his head stubbornly.

"Not vacation time. Nope, I'm saving all that for when you come back."

"We'll be back for a few days when Joon and Hobi enlist, their ceremony and such," you mention.

"I know..."

His sentence trails off, awkward and hanging in the air. Your boyfriend's eyes avert yours, and something in his voice cues you to pry further.

Tilting your head slightly, you lean against the railing of the balcony. "Why the hesitation?"

"I'm not hesitating, it's nothing."

You cock an eyebrow and smirk. "You're a liar, Kim Seokjin. Fess up."

His lips pull into a smile, and his eyes flutter shut. Not out of exhaustion, as your own so desperately crave, but out of near-annoyance.

"I was going to surprise you, fool! I was going to take off those days and show up at the dorms without telling you...but I guess you read right through me."

To say your jaw dropped in surprise would be a huge understatement. Eyes gaping and breath caught in your throat, you gawk at your boyfriend as he bursts into laughter.

"Surprised, Jagi?"

"Um...yes! You—wait, how? What?"

"Korean, [Y/n]. You can rap for god's sake."

You shake your stun away, forcing watery eyes to remain held together. "You're serious? I'm really gonna see you in less than a month?"

Seokjin's laughter fades, but his eyes are still sparkling.

"Very serious. I've already gotten the time approved."

Tears prick your eyes, and you lower your head into your sweater sleeve to hide from his gaze. This only amuses Seokjin.

"Getting all soft on me again? Your cool exterior is crumbling."

"I hope you know that this is all your fault, you ass. I never used to be this close to crying all the damn time."

"It's cause you've been without me for so long, isn't it? I'm your cure."

The balcony door slides open, revealing a sleepy, disheveled, and unhappy Hoseok. He doesn't say a word, only glowers at you—whites of his eyes hardly visible as he squints—until you sigh, "Fine, I know, I know. Time's up." After which he nods once and disappears back into the hotel.

"I'll go,"

Seokjin agrees, voice lighter than when he first called.

"Gotta do some work sometime today."

You blow a kiss to the camera, one that he pretends to catch and hold against his chest, over his heart. "Love you, miss you, but you know all that."

"I do,"

he teases.

"Love you, miss you, even more."

The next morning, you're awake after most of the other members. The sound of Hoseok drying his hair brings you out of peaceful slumber, much to your grumpy chagrin.

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!" he cheers, already fully awake even before coffee.

You give him the universal sign of love and affection, otherwise known as the bird, and stumble towards the other bathroom. Hoseok giggles at your less-than-pleasant attitude and goes about his business as you struggle to get ready.

After stepping from the hotel room, refreshed and ready for the unplanned day, Jimin appears with a cup of coffee extended towards you. "Fuel for m'lady," he greets.

Grateful for the favor, you give him a swift hug and walk at his side towards the recreational area on your floor. Suited with a pool table, miniature bar, breakfast nook, dining and sitting area, it's a perfect place for the whole group to spread out and hang in the free time. Since the members and staff take up most of the rooms on this floor, you basically have it all to yourselves.

"So, what's the plan for the day?" you announce as you enter.

Taehyung looks up from his platter of local tamagoyaki; beside him, Namjoon continues to read the book in hand. "I don't think we've decided," the former states.

"The show isn't until tomorrow night, so we have time to kill," Jungkook states from the breakfast bar. He's piling every kind of Japanese breakfast cuisine he can find onto his plate. "Sejin says we can kill time here if we want."

"Or we can go out and explore with the managers," Hoseok adds as he enters the room. "I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel claustrophobic."

"Agreed," you mutter. Taking a long sip from your coffee cup, you walk towards the breakfast bar and snag onigiri. Looking around, you make sure that the members are the only ones present. No managers, no staff, no cameras. "I have an idea."

At your lowered voice, you catch the youngest's attention first. Jimin grins in your direction, and you flash them both a mischievous wink. "Aigoo," Namjoon breathes.

"I think we all need to get out of here, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I kinda wanna explore Nagoya like a local. No security, no managers, no babysitters. Think about it--when's the last time we did that?"

"Went out without Sejin or security, and outside of Korea?" Taehyung asks, and you nod. He takes a moment to contemplate, eyes flitting upwards as he thinks. "Honestly, I can't remember."

Hoseok pipes up. "Since before Wings, probably. We're never really alone anymore."

Sensing trepidation from the members, you hop up onto the back of the sofa, perched with legs crossed. You press the tips of your fingers against the opposite hand's, creating a mirror image of mischief in front of your wicked grin.

"Here's my proposal. I've been to Nagoya a couple of times with Seokjin. It's one of his favorite cities, so I know all the best spots for fun. I also know how to avoid staff for the same reason."

"Yeah, you're an expert," Namjoon scoffs.

You hold up a hand in his direction. "Be quiet, Bonsai Boy. The Queen is speaking."

"She's spent too much time with Jin-hyung," Jungkook murmurs under his breath, and you choose to ignore him for now.

"So...who's going to take a leap of faith and trust me?"

Jimin mirrors your folded-hands, then slowly moves to rub them together with a slightly evil chuckle. "I'm in."

"Of course you are."

Jimin grabs the Taehyung and Jungkook by the arm, dragging them closer to you. "They are, too."

Seeing neither Maknae put up an argument to the contrary, you turn your hooded gaze to the eldest members present. "What say ye, Jung Hoseok and Kim Namjoon?"

Hoseok begins bouncing on his toes, clapping his hands together as he turns towards the leader. His smile is bright and wide, earning a sigh and shake of the head from Namjoon.

He gestures towards you with a defeated smile, dimples showing at the corners of his mouth. "Lead the way, Ms. Queen."

Having the agreement from each member, you clap your hands once and announce, "All right! Everyone go grab what they want for an afternoon and evening out. Make sure to grab a cap or beanie and glasses so we can blend in. I'll text the managers and tell them we're going to be hanging out in my room and that we want some alone time. Done it before, and they've never bothered me so I think it'll work. Meet back here in two minutes."

"How do you expect to get out of the hotel without being seen?" Jungkook inquires as he removes his arm from Jimin's grasp.

You reach up and pat the younger boy on the head. "Don't worry. I'm magic."

As everyone scurries back to their rooms, you text Sejin along the way; you give the listed excuse, and then grab a jacket and shoulder bag. Hoseok tosses you one of his beanies, and you pair it with your sunglasses.

Once reconvened, you nod for the boys to follow you. Pressing a finger to your lips, you tip-toe down the hall. The members follow suit, equally as quiet and sneaky, like a series of ducklings behind the mother goose. Instead of going towards the elevator, you lead them to the opposite end of the hallway. The staircase is unmarked and unguarded, but you've stayed at this hotel before on a previous trip and remembered it from then.

Opening the door, you usher each of the boys inside. "Go to the second floor. There's a fire escape we can take from there that will put us outside the building without having to run into everyone waiting in the lobby or the fans outside."

"You're eerily good at sneaking around," Taehyung repeats the sentiment from earlier, though he's smiling instead of shaking his head.

Your grin widens. "Did I ever tell you that my first date with Seokjin involved us sneaking into a theater to hear the live orchestra perform?"

"That makes a lot of sense," Namjoon chides in his usual passive-aggressive tone.

Once outside the hotel, around the corner from the entrance where most of the fanatic fans and insistent reporters pool together, you turn to the boys with two thumbs-ups. "Free at last! So, where do we wanna go? I know the best miso katsu place you'll ever visit. Or maybe we do something outside...or maybe a bit of both! What are we feeling?"

"We just ate," Jimin states, patting his stomach to show he doesn't have any room for more food at the moment.

Tapping your chin, you think back across all of the times Seokjin had taken you on various tours of Nagoya over the years. It's at least half-a-dozen times at this point, and on those days, you'd had a variety of adventures. Food, art, thrills, history: he'd shown you them all. You've explored the Castle and various other historical shrines and temples, and you've been to just about every food market and restaurant in the Showa-ku and Kita-ku wards. Museums and galleries have been ventured, as have tours of local wildlife and expansive parks. There have been many a shopping excursion, and you're an idiot if you think that Seokjin hadn't taken you to an amusement park or arcade at least a couple times. Holiday festivals, cosplay summits, local music--you've done it all.

But there's one adventure you had two years ago that's stuck in your mind ever since, the one day you both had more fun acting like children than any other date prior. A massive grin spreads across your face, and you grab the two oldest members' hands, dragging them towards the nearest subway station.

"Woah! Where are we going?"

"The Meijo Line!"

Taglist — @joyful-jimin, @gracehiii, @live-2-fangirl, @rjsmochii, @btsnatalena

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