#instead of snap closures which are easier for me

[kerosene-saint]

I've been having a hard time doing up buttons on shirts and stuff which is really upsetting :[ saw a cool pair of pants at the thrift store today and I couldn't get them because they had like five fucking buttons on the front for the closure

[storiesforallfandoms]

like i’m gonna lose you ~ machine gun kelly

part one

word count: 2276

request?: kind of?

description: after a painful reconnection, he decides to prove to her that he will do anything to get her back

pairing: machine gun kelly x female!reader

warnings: swearing

based (partially) on this song

masterlist

As he promised, the news of Colson and Megan’s “breakup” came a few days after our discussion. The news broke first on an few online tabloids, then Colson took to his social media to “confirm the rumors”.

“We’re just not right for one another,” he wrote in his post. “I still love Megan as a friend, and we’re going to stay in each other’s life. We both want our privacy during this time.”

Strangely enough, the conversation we had plus the actual confirmation that the fake relationship was over gave me a better sense of closure than our actual breakup had. I knew why Colson had ended things, and I knew that what he had with Megan wasn’t real and that it was over for good now. It was better than thinking he had suddenly stopped loving me after all those years.

Even with that closure, though, I stayed true to my word. Colson unblocked me and re-followed me on all his social media, and let me know he had unblocked my number from his phone by sending me a text. But I wouldn’t budge on trying to get back together with him. With the closure I had, I was starting to feel like I could move on from our breakup and be somewhat happy again.

It was hard to completely move on, though, when Colson was still trying to reach out to me constantly. He respected my boundaries and would stop whenever I asked him to, but it also didn’t take too long before he would message me again. Part of me wanted to block him back - it would’ve been beyond satisfying to reverse the roles on him and leave him blocked and heartbroken without explanation. But I was also enjoying getting to talk to him again, even if I knew it would lead to more heartbreak eventually.

The day I arrived home from work to find him sat on my doorstep, I felt something snap inside of me. The built up anger and sadness from the past year was finally bubbling over, and I had the exact person who had caused it all sat on my doorstep.

I got out of my car and slammed the door so hard I was shocked the windows didn’t shatter. “Colson, you can’t just fucking show up on my doorstep unannounced. This is borderline stalking now.”

“I want to talk like adults but you just keep brushing me off,” he retorted. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“Respect my fucking boundaries maybe? Realize that if I’m telling you that I don’t want to talk to you or see you that I actually fucking mean it?”

He stood from the doorstep and shoved his hands in his pocket. “I know that you mean it.”

I glared at him as I tried to shove past him to get through my door. He moved to stand in my way again, which just made me feel even more angry.

“If you know that I mean it,” I hissed, “then leave me the fuck alone Colson. You’ve hurt me enough, I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“I know I hurt you,” he said. “And I know that there’s nothing I can do to fix that, but please, let me try at least.”

“You did try, and I turned you down, remember? Now fuck off.”

I managed to push him out of my way in order to get into the house. He stood on my doorstep watching me for some time, and I knew that meant he wasn’t going away. No matter how hard I wanted to let him go, I knew my heart wasn’t going to let me. I sighed heavily and turned to face him.

“This is your last chance,” I told him. “You can come in and we can talk like adults, but just know that whatever decision I make after this is my final decision. No more of this harassing me and showing up on my doorstep. If I tell you to leave and you show up again I will call the cops on you, and I have a feeling that’s the last thing your manager wants.”

Colson nodded and followed me into my house.

I watched as he looked around, taking in the familiar place that he once called a second home. Very little had changed since we broke up, except for the fact that I got rid of all the pictures I had of the two of us. I was sure he had noticed that.

“Your place was always so much cozier than mine,” he commented.

“It’s cause it’s smaller,” I told him. “Your place is good for all the people you have over, but when it’s just you and Casie it’s far too big.”

“It is,” he agreed. “I would prefer to live in a place like this.”

“You could’ve,” I found myself muttering. Unfortunately, I said it a little too loud and Colson caught the comment. His face changed then, a sad wave washing over him.

“I should’ve,” he said. “God, I’m a fucking idiot.”

“We’ve been over that.”

He followed me to the kitchen and sat down at my table. Despite it only being early evening, I decided this moment called for a glass of wine. I poured myself one, and decided to mix Colson a drink with the liquor I knew he liked most.

“Saying I didn’t mean to hurt you is the stupidest thing ever,” he said after taking a giant gulp from the glass. “Of course I was going to hurt you. I broke up with you out of nowhere and then just ghosted you for a year. I guess...I thought that would be easier. I didn’t want you to think I didn’t love you enough to fight for you over my career.”

“I’m glad you realize how shitty and stupid that idea you had was. I wish you would’ve told me from the start what the plan was. I wouldn’t have been as hurt if you had.”

“I know...I know.”

I took a sip of my wine and immediately wished it was something stronger, something that would get me fucked up within minutes of drinking it.

I was mentally kicking myself for letting him back in again. That time at the coffee shop hurt enough and that was an accidental encounter we had. But to actually bring him into my home when I was finally starting to move on? I must really like to be hurt, because it seemed as though I was constantly trying to hurt myself lately.

“What would you have said if I had told you?” he asked. “Truthfully.”

I took a moment to think the situation over, to try and decide how I would’ve reacted if he had told me from the beginning instead of just breaking my heart.

“I still would’ve been hurt,” I admitted. “Not by you but by your manager. He knew about us, and even though we never went public with the relationship, my friends and family know. It wouldn’t exactly have been as easy to explain the whole publicity stunt relationship thing to any of them. I’d probably try to come up with a better solution, and if that didn’t work then...I’d just have to accept it.”

“Would you have stayed with me?”

I was shocked by his question. “Of course I would’ve. Everything between you and Megan was fake, there were no real feelings. Sure, seeing the pictures and everything would’ve hurt, but at the end of the day it would be me you were holding and kissing and actually loving. I probably could’ve been friends with Megan instead of hating her guts.”

Colson looked down at his glass, which was now almost empty. “I thought you would’ve broken up with me if I told you the truth.”

“You don’t know me that well, obviously,” I said. “Colson, there were ways around this. You didn’t have to break my heart.”

I could see that his eyes were starting to become more wet with tears. He was trying to hide them, but once his eyes starting welling up, his nose and his cheeks became flush and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to swallow his tears.

“I fucking hate him, man,” he finally said, his voice cracking slightly. “He’s supposed to help me with my career, not put my career first over my own life and my happiness. And I hate myself too for thinking the best way to deal with this was to break up with you completely.”

I sat back in my chair, unsure of what to do. I wanted to comfort him, of course, but I didn’t want him to think that crying was going to get him off the hook. I was glad he was feeling my pain, but fuck did I ever hate to see Colson cry.

“I hated you, too,” I admitted. “I slandered your name to anyone who would listen. Eventually my friends got sick of hearing the name Colson Baker come out of my mouth, but they all knew how hurt I was.”

“Do you still hate me?”

I shook my head. “No. I never truly hated you. I just wanted to hate you, because hating you was easier than still being in love with you and watching you fall in love with someone else.”

He started to reach for my hands, but pulled away just as quickly. He sat back in his own chair, putting as much space between the two of us as possible. “There could never be anyone else. You’re my one and only, (Y/N), you always have been.”

I let the silence wash over the two of us. I wanted to let his words hang over us, to try and digest them and decide how I felt in that moment.

“I had a dream while you were on tour,” I said after a moment. “Well, a nightmare really. We had fallen asleep watching TV on the couch, and when I woke up I couldn’t find you. You weren’t in the house, you weren’t answering your phone, none of your friends or Casie knew where you were. I began to panic. I went driving and drove the entirety of Cleveland looking for you, but I couldn’t find you. Around the end of the dream, I was screaming your name and I could hear you calling back to me, but the more I ran to find you the further away you got. I eventually woke up drenched in sweat and crying because I thought it was real.”

“That was the night you called me,” he said. “I remember I was having a bad night mentally and all I wanted was to have you on the tour bus with me, in my arms. Then you called, and I thought it was like...a sign or something. Something good.”

I couldn’t help but smile at this. “I never told you because I thought it was a stupid nightmare, and I didn’t wanna be one of those girlfriends that calls in need of constant reassurance about their relationship.”

“I would’ve reassured you no matter how many times you called me.”

I looked down at my own glass, nearly empty as well.

“Can we ever go back from this?” Colson asked. “Can we try to start over after what happened?”

“How do you start over after spending five years with someone?” I asked. “We were basically married, how do you just go back to square one after that?”

“Well...you try and gain that trust back, then you try and get things back to how they were before,” he explained. “I don’t expect it to happen overnight, but I can’t be without you anymore (Y/N). It’s driving me crazy, you drive me crazy.”

I felt tears stinging my eyes, and I realized in that moment that Colson was now freely crying in front of me. God, we were both just messes. I wished none of this had ever happened.

“You really hurt me,” I said, my voice just barley a whisper.

“I know,” he said. “I know I did. I don’t expect you to ever forget that. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, I know that.”

“I’ll never forget it,” I confirmed. “But knowing the reasoning makes it easier to forgive.”

When he reached for my hand this time, I met him halfway.

“It won’t be easy,” I told him. “You know that, right? I’m not going to come running into your arms again after a few nights. You have to work for this, Colson.”

“I know,” he repeated. “I’ll do anything, (Y/N).”

Despite my better judgement, I sat forward and looked into his eyes. God, I loved those beautiful blue eyes more than anything in this world.

“You can start by kissing me.”

He nearly jumped over the table at this. He took my face in his hands and pressed my lips against his. I had missed this feeling so much; the pure passion that came with every kiss. I put a hand behind his neck to keep him close. I never wanted to let go ever again.

He pulled away first and rested his forehead against mine. “I’m so sorry, (Y/N).”

“I don’t want to hear those words out of your mouth ever again,” I told him. “We’re forgetting this, remember?”

He smiled. “Okay, then how about these words: I love you.”

I couldn’t help but smile back. The magic words I had longed to hear for so long, they sounded so right coming from his lips. “I love you, too.”

[theyreonlynoodlesmike]

Melting Wax, Crawling Vines: Part 3 (Vincent Sinclair x Fem!Reader)

<- Previous Chapter Next Chapter ->

Warnings: character death, intent to kidnap, violence, abusive relationships, domestic physical and verbal abuse, blood mention, stalking, basically the reader has been in her own horror movie

Word Count: 3302

Basically, when I said this was gonna be the darkest thing I ever wrote, this was one of the chapters I was talking about. Vincent is coming the next chapter though!!

@meanduck

You were at your sister's house, and you'd almost been able to relax. It had been three weeks since you'd left your ex, three weeks since you'd seen him. 

At first, he'd been heavenly. You'd cultivated your relationship, thinking that the pair of you were growing together. It wasn't until you'd been with him for a few years that you realized you hadn't. You hadn't grown together, he'd grown around you . He'd grown around your life like vines around a tree, taking root in your soul and wrapping tightly around your every activity. And, at first, you didn't even mind it. Your parents had passed away during your relationship and you'd only had your sister and him to keep you going. You thought he was simply keeping you upright, from falling over and being consumed by the earth. That he held you up and kept you growing. Until you found that his leaves were soaking up all your sun.

It'd been little things at first. Comments here or there. Things he would never say in front of your friends or your sister. Just things that chipped at your self esteem. Then, the comments became yelling at you until you cried. Then- You shook your head. You didn't want to think about the shiner on your cheekbone or your busted lip. You hadn't looked at a mirror in the entire week you'd been at your sister's. Usually, you'd been able to cover up the results of his anger, and you'd made sure to avoid anyone until it faded into something a little easier to explain. But a shiner right near your eye and a busted lip? One surprise visit from your sister was all it took for you to crumble, to tell her everything. You tried to explain that it wasn't his fault, that he just got angry sometimes, but she'd packed you away in her truck and had about a quarter of your things at her house the next day. 

He had called. Over, and over, and over. Your sister picked up the phone each time, and had started hanging up the second she heard his voice after only a day of his insistent calls. She helped you build yourself back up, even if you'd only break back down the next day. And she even insisted that you file a restraining order. You'd been granted a PFA, and you'd finally gotten an official restraining order earlier that week. Some of your friends still couldn't believe what they heard, and you figured not all of those ties were going to last. Especially when he was in their ear. So, you spent most of your time at your sister's house, which had grown quiet ever since he'd been given notice. No calls, no voicemails, nothing. You were almost at peace living with her.

The pair of you were sitting in her living room, eating ice-cream and watching reruns. You'd reached over to give her hand a squeeze, a silent thank you. She'd decided to stay home from work that night, simply because you weren't sure you'd be able to withstand the night by yourself. She'd understood, and she'd told you,

"They can manage without me tonight." She was a waitress at the nearby diner, one she'd been working at ever since you were teenagers. She always made the same joke. You were the one that went to college, she was the one that waited tables. That was just that. Your parents hadn't had enough money to send you both, and you felt a little bad about it now, but you were sure you could make it up. Once school started again in September, you could help her pay for her house. Maybe she could take time off and take some night classes. Even if she assured you she was content with how things were every time you brought it up, you thought it could be good for her. Helping her was easier than helping yourself, after all.

When a commercial began to play, both of you groaned.

"They always pick the worst times." Your sister said as she fumbled for the remote. You leaned back, sucking on your spoon as you said,

"That's, like, the point. They wanna keep you in suspense." You said, and she rolled her eyes before she started flipping through the channels to find something to watch until the commercials were over.

"Suspense, my ass." She said, and you stifled your laugh with another bite of the frozen treat. She smiled at you, and, for the first time in a really long time, you felt safe again.

***

"I thought a beer might fit the occasion better." Bo said, and you accepted the drink all the same. He might've been right about that, and you watched as he flipped the cap off for you before handing you the drink. You took a long swig, having sat up, and wiped your mouth after you pulled the bottle away from it. You stared down at the green bottle in your hands, wondering where you should even start. At the beginning? You thought. 

But where was that? Your first date? His first comment? The first time he hit you? You took another swig. You decided that that night was the only really important night. But you hadn't even pried open the wound yet and it already stung. You played with the rim of the bottle opening as you began,

"I wasn't completely honest with you, Lester. I'm not just moving. I'm- I'm running away-" You stopped yourself to take another swig. It was hard to admit, but how else could you say it? You were running. To a new town, a new job. A whole new life in hopes of abandoning him with the one you'd left behind. The boys had gone quiet to let you talk, but Lester pressed on by asking,

"From what?" And you grimaced. It wasn't a what. The monster in your nightmares, the person that had plagued your young adult life. He wasn't a what, even if he acted like it sometimes. Even if it would be easier to understand him if he was a what.

"A who." You quietly corrected. You stared down at the bottle, missing the look the boys shared. "I'm running from a who. He, um," You paused, blinking quickly to push back the tears before just screwing your eyes shut altogether. The palm of your hand pressed against the bridge of your brow as the images of that night flooded back.

***

Just after that feeling began to settle, you heard a sound of a car hitting gravel. Both of your heads turned and it only took a second for both of you to realize who it was. You'd both seen the car time and time again over the years. In a second, all safety had snapped. Your sister was launching herself off the couch, heading straight for the front door and scooping the phone up on the way. She was already dialing 911, but there was a pause. His car door didn't open and his feet didn't hit the gravel. You didn't have time to figure out what had stalled him, because your sister was already talking to the cops. She was already telling them about the restraining order and that he was here, unannounced. You were frozen on the couch, and all you could do was listen. Your heart was beating out of your chest and your mind was fuzzy. What was he doing? Why is he here?  

There were a million possibilities and then one made itself clear, one that shook you and made a cold sweat appear on the back of your neck. Your sister was supposed to work tonight. You were supposed to be alone.

When that door finally slammed, you threw the ice-cream out of your hands the second you realized. He wouldn't come through the front. He wasn't stupid. You ran to the back, locking the door just as a dark figure appeared through the blinds. A silhouette outlined by the setting sun. Your sister was grabbing you, yanking you away from it as the handle shook. He was trying to get in. You could feel tears beading at your eyes, but your sister was slapping a hand over your mouth when you heard the glass shatter and tugging you under the dining room table.

***

You didn't have the words to describe what he was. He was a lot of things, and summing him up seemed just a little too difficult in your current state. You waved a hand, waving away their hands when they reached out to touch you. You didn't need to be consoled. Well, perhaps you did, but you weren't sure you'd be able to keep your composure if you were. You didn't want to cry in front of strangers, especially ones you'd just fainted in front of. Instead, you tried to focus on telling them what you knew. You started with how you knew him.

"My ex-boyfriend. He, um, he's really-" Psychotic. Abusive. Violent . "Dangerous." That was the word you landed on. "I left my hometown to start over and to, well, leave him behind. But, he," You stared at your hands, before you took another swig. "He found my new apartment complex. That's why I-" You said, gesturing your hand to point out the current situation. You heard Bo suck in a breath. You looked up, seeing that he was lifting his brows and shaking his head. When you looked at Lester, he was rubbing the back of his neck. They were quiet for a moment, before Bo gave you a pat on your leg. His tone seemed to shift, a charming facade replacing it.

"Well, y'know, maybe he just wants to talk. Just wants closure. I mean, you did date him, so he can't be that bad." Bo said, and your face fell. His eyes followed the change, and his own attempt at a smile faded. You knew he couldn't have known. That he was just trying to be polite and make you feel better. You knew you shouldn't take it personally or snap at him. But, you couldn't help the coldness of your voice when you said,

"He killed my twin sister. The only closure he wants is to finish the job." And you downed the rest of the bottle.

***

You and your sister had been hiding. Under the table while he checked the living room, darting towards the living room the second he went back into the kitchen. He'd been talking the entire time. Almost as if he wanted you to know where he was,

"Yoo-hoo. I didn't expect you to be home tonight, I'll tell you that. But that's fine. I'm here to take your sister home." You'd heard him head towards the other side of the house, back towards the laundry room and the guest bathroom. "A restraining order? Now, I thought maybe she was just going to take some time to herself. Realize how much she missed me. But I got that notice and, well, I knew you'd stuck your hooks in deep." You could almost imagine him wagging his finger. He was heading towards your sister's study. "Y'know, you two might be identical, but," He paused. You could practically see him shaking his head. "I could always tell the difference. My baby she's just- She's a little softer, ain't she? And she's got that smile." He whistled. "No wonder all those kids listen to her. She could stop traffic with that smile. She's here, ain't she? Well, honey, stop hiding, okay? Just stop hiding, and we'll go home. I won't do nothing. Promise." And you could nearly hear him cross over his heart. Your sister placed a finger over her lips, and you held a hand over your mouth to muffle your cries. As if she believed you might really sell them out, surrender yourselves to him. She peeked over the couch, before she was dragging you by your hand towards the central stairway. She peeked past the banister, her china closet and umbrella holder on your left. You looked around, making sure he wasn't coming back. He was being quiet now, and the silence made it so the only thing you could hear was your heartbeat thumping in your ears. You looked down. There, leaning against the china closet, was a wooden baseball bat. You wrapped your hand around it, tugging it close to you as you sister leaned close to whisper,

"We head for the attic, close the stairs, and wait for the police to come. Okay? Don't look behind you and just run." She said, and you gave her a nod. But, just as you rounded the corner and got halfway up the stairs, you heard the slap of your ex's hand against the banister.

"Gotcha." You turned, and you didn't think. You swung, surprising the man and hitting him square across the face. Right across the mouth. In all the years you'd dated, you'd never once striked him. You hit him again, the force behind the blow making him fall back and land on his back. You wanted to hit him again. Make sure he wouldn't follow you up the stairs. Make sure he wouldn't bother you ever again. A rush of adrenaline had gone through you, and you knew it would be so easy. One or two more purposeful swings and you'd never have to worry about him again. But your sister was yanking the bat out of your grasp and pulling you up the stairs.

He was down, but he wasn't out. The second the pair of you had gotten the stairs to the attic down, you heard the top stair behind you creak. Your sister had ushered you to go up first. To get to safety. But you turned around, seeing that, while his mouth was bleeding, he could walk fine. 

"You bitch." He cursed, taking a step towards you on the landing. Your sister swung the bat, just as you did, but the element of surprise was gone. He caught the swing, and you hadn't been able to see the look on your sister's face as he yanked her forward by it. "Fuck you." He said to her, and you screamed a cry of,

"No!" As he wrestled the bat out of her grasp and threw her down the stairs. You stared, unblinking. People fell down the stairs before and walked away completely fine. And some didn't. Your sister laid in a heap, unmoving. You'd heard the sickening crack, the sound of bone crunching. A sound that let you know that she wasn't going to get up. She wasn't going to save you this time. You'd frozen, staring at the girl at the bottom of the stairs. At the face that had matched your own, but who's eyes had gone blank. He'd practically leapt towards you. His hands on your arms, his grip tight enough to crush bone. His breath was hot in your face as he spat out the words, 

"You think you can leave me? You think what she got was bad? When I'm done with you, you'll wish it was you at the bottom of the stairs." But the next sound was the sound of a siren, and you watched as your ex's head swiveled towards the door. Again, you didn't think. You threw your head forward, headbutting him hard enough to make your ears ring and to knock him back. You'd hit him right in the nose, and it was gushing blood. His grip loosened and you pushed him the rest of the way. You pushed yourself to turn around, scampering up the stairs. You yanked the stairs up just as he tried to pull himself up, and brought the string with you. You sat there, holding onto the string so tight that your knuckles had turned white. You were breathing heavily, and a sob racked through you as what just happened finally caught up to you. You laid on the floor of the basement, the smell of dust clogging your nose as you cried. For the first time in your entire life, you were completely alone.

***

"You hit him with a bat?" Bo asked, a soft chuckle of surprise leaving his lips. You'd explained what happened, how he'd broken in after hearing about the restraining order. If Bo hadn't already refilled your hand with another beer, you would probably be mortified that you were telling them this much. 

"And broke his nose." You said after taking a swig, wiping your lips with your sleeve once again. That was the only bit of satisfaction you'd gotten from the situation, even if regret outweighed it in multitudes. "I-I know it's not good to say this, but I really," You paused to take another swig. "I really wish she'd let me finish it. Then, then," The words were thick in your throat. "Then, she would've lived." You gestured with the bottle for a moment, your mouth opening as if you had more to say, before you snapped it closed. You were staring straight ahead, refusing to meet either of their gazes. Even if they seemed warmer than ever. "I should've killed that sonovabitch." You mumbled to yourself, taking another long swig until there was only about an inch left in the bottle. You sighed and pinched the bridge of your nose. "I need to- I need to call my friends. Tell them what happened." You were moving to get up, moving to stand. But Bo was placing a hand on your shoulder and saying,

"No, no. That's not a good idea, darlin'." And your gaze turned confused. His voice was as charming as ever as he said words that disturbed you to no end. "Obviously, one of them is a rat. How else would he have found you?" He asked, and you stared at him. Perhaps you were drunk, or maybe he was truly right. You looked away, considering the idea. "Or maybe one of them didn't mean to give it away. Either way," He sighed, shaking his head. "The less people know the better."

"Well, I've gotta- I've gotta head home then. He'll think I'm- I'm in my new town-" But Bo was cutting you off again.

"Listen, honey, if I was a crazy psycho like that guy," He said, making a gesture with his thumb. "The next place I'd look for you is in your hometown. Now, you were gonna have to stay the night in Ambrose anyways, right? I haven't even started on your car." He pulled back, throwing up his hands. "And Ambrose isn't even on a map. So , the smartest thing to do is to stay here, in this house, until you figure out your next move." And maybe you were just drunk, but Bo was making perfect sense. Still, you said,

"I couldn't- I couldn't ask that of you. I don't have money to pay rent and I don't- I probably can't even pay for my car- "

"You're not asking, I'm offering." He said, poking a finger at you and then at him. "And, as for payment, I'm sure we can work something out. Now, I-" He looked up, glancing at Lester. "Wouldn't feel like a good christian if I just let you leave after hearing a story like that. You'll stay in Ambrose, and we'll look after you until you figure out what to do." And you could feel your lip trembling as you looked at the man. You launched yourself forward, wrapping your arms tightly around his neck and hugged him before you could even think twice. He seemed surprised, and he awkwardly pat your back as you whispered a mantra of,

"Thank you." Over and over.

[johnsamericano]

𝓓𝓪𝔂 19:

ℓιυ уαиgуαиg

23 days of NCT masterlist.

taglist: @notbeforelong @whathamelon @curieouscapt @unknown5tar @mrcarbonatedmilk @silent-potato @ajhdr @gjheaaa

warnings: an extreme plot twist 😭, things escalate way too quickly, a bit of angst, this is so weird I’m sorry.

“Welcome.”

You heard your coworker greet someone as you finished giving the final touches to the tattoo you’d been working on for a few weeks.

“Dang, Sungchan. You’re gonna look hella fine with this.” You wiped off the remains of ink over his skin, getting up from your little stool to admire your job from afar. “Wanna take a look?”

“Hell yeah.” The tall boy straightened his back, walking towards the full-body mirror to look at the daisies decorating his bicep. “My girlfriend’s gonna love it, thanks y/n.”

“No prob.” You covered the tattoo before biding him goodbye.

As you ordered your materials, you heard the doorbell ring. Assuming it was Sungchan leaving the shop, you didn’t pay much attention to it.

“Y/n, come here!” Your coworker and friend, Xiaojun, shouted from the front desk.

“Coming!”

As you exited the room, an innocent looking boy invaded your vision. A big, black hoodie shielded his body from the winter cold, making his body look tiny inside of it.

“He wants a tattoo.” He lifted his pierced eyebrows, as if the boy’s request was some sort of joke.

“Hi, I’m y/n.” You extended your hand, allowing him to shake it vigorously. “Do you have any idea of what you’d like to get done...?”

“Yangyang.” He completed your sentence, an oddly wide smile imprinted on his face. “I actually have a picture of what I want.” He pulled out his phone from his pocket, unlocking it to show you the image of a beautiful woman smiling.

“Are you sure about it? It’s gonna take a while to finish it and I’m sure it won’t be painless.”

He blinked a couple of times before giving you another wide smile.

“I’ll be alright.”

“So I’m booked for the rest of the week, but we can start next Monday if you’re available.” You murmured while taking a look at your agenda. “If you’d like, maybe we can book the rest of your appointments in advance. And you can also send me that image so I can get started on the sketch.”

“That’d be great.”

It wouldn’t be until the next week that you finally saw the languid boy again. He was wearing a black tank top with a leather jacket on top.

“Ready?” You asked while pulling out your gun, Yangyang getting comfortable in his seat. “You can pay now or when we finish, whatever feels best for you.”

“Thank you.” He removed the leather jacket covering his naked arms.

His limbs were slightly built up, but most surprisingly, filled with intricate ink designs. You couldn’t help the small gasp that escaped your mouth, your fingers unconsciously touching the patterns over his fair skin.

“This is amazing.”

He giggled at your excitement, curious eyes gazing at you. Suddenly, you snapped out of your daydreaming.

“Sorry.” You shook your head, pulling out a piece of paper from your desk. “Here’s the sketch, we can change it if you don’t like it.”

“This is perfect, you’re really talented.” His eyes scanned the detailed sketch, smiling back at the drawn woman.

“Thank you.” You rolled up your sleeves, your ink-filled arms on full display. “Let’s get started.”

You spent about an hour in complete silence, only the buzz of your machine filling the room. Yangyang seemed to be handling the pain just fine, which made your job much easier.

“How long have you been doing this?” He asked out of nowhere, trying to start a conversation.

“When I was seventeen maybe.” Your eyebrows were knitted together as you drew shadows over the woman’s eyes. “The guy at the front desk and I opened this shop after deciding neither of us were attending to college. Guess studying wasn’t really our thing.”

“What did your parents say about it?”

“You know, the usual, but they got used to it after a while. They even got a couple tattoo a few months ago.”

“It must be nice having supportive parents.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The room went silent once again. Xiaojun turned on some music, the beat faintly reaching your workspace.

“So who is this woman?”

“My mom. She died from cancer a year ago.” You weren’t expecting him to say something like that so abruptly. Before you could open your mouth, he was resuming his answer. “Please don’t say something like “I’m sorry”, why would you be? It’s not like you knew her.” There was irony in his tone, which made you quite confused.

“Well yeah, but it must be sad for you.”

“She lived her life well, and that’s all that matters.” You hummed. That was a nice way of seeing it. “She actually helped me out a lot when I hit rock bottom a few months after we found out about her disease, even when she was at her deathbed all she did worrying about others.”

‘Why is he telling me this?’

“She must’ve been one heck of a woman.” A breathy laugh erupted from him.

“She was.”

“Well, I think we’re done for today.”

Week after week, Yangyang came back to the shop. The tattoo was turning out amazing and you couldn’t be happier with the results. Yangyang and you grew closer after that small, deep talk during your first session together, even going as far as exchanging phone numbers.

A few late-night conversations later, you were having your first date, which was followed by three more, every single one of them unique in its own way. The last one had taken place at the amusement park, the Ferris wheel serving as the perfect spot to share the sweetest kiss you'd ever received. Maybe it wasn’t very professional of you, but who could resist such a charming guy?

“Hey, y/n.” He greeted you with a small peck on your cheek, his silly smile pressing against your skin. After a small pause, he proceeded to take a seat at his usual spot.

You’d decided to wear a small shirt since the weather was getting warmer. Yangyang’s eyes were uncomfortably glued to your lower abdomen, making your hands clumsy as you prepared your materials.

“You’ve got a scar there.” A pinkish line crossed the right side of your tummy. For a moment, you were scared he’d think it was gross, after all, it wasn’t precisely a small scar, nonetheless, you carried it with pride. You were surprised to see there was no disgust in his look, instead, something you couldn’t really name.

“Didn’t I tell you? I used to have chronic kidney disease. I would’ve died if it weren’t for the transplant I received.” His mouth twitched the slightest, as if he was about to cry. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, sure, let’s continue with the tattoo.”

Halfway into your work, you felt a small drop of water staining your arm. It was Yangyang, he was desperately squeezing his eyes in an attempt to hold back the tears.

“Are you feeling any pain? I’ll try to be more careful, we’re almost done.” He shook his head. “What is it then, Yangyang?”

He pulled out his wallet, retrieving a pink card and placing it above your hand. As soon as you turned it around, you were met with a name you knew all too well, the name of the person who saved your life.

“How...?” Your words stopped as you realized that certain person and Yangyang shared their last name.

“I remembered your name from when my mom passed. One day, I googled you out of pure curiosity, what I didn’t expect was to actually find you, address and all.” A lonesome tear rolled down his cheek, staining his silver ring as it fell. “My mom would be glad to know her contribution is being used well.”

Your eyes watered at his words, giggling slightly at the odd turn things had taken.

“Thank you.” Your arms engulfed him in a bone-crushing hug. “Thank you so much.” Yanyang couldn't help but let more tears fall, he was finally getting the closure he needed. He could finally let his mom go.

Silently, he thanked his mom for having saved such a beautiful human as you, feeling as if her death hadn't been in vain.

“Crap.” You sniffled, nose adorably scrunching. “Alright, get up.”

You pushed him away from your body, grabbing your coat and swinging it above your shoulders.

“Huh?” Your hand was extended right in front of him, your pretty, pearly teeth on full display as you showed him the sweetest smile ever.

“I’m taking you out for ice cream.”

[im-just-a-random-fandom-girl]

trying to articulate my frustrations with Marvel’s treatment of female characters and characters of color

Hi, hello, hola, bonjour. I've been having a lot of thoughts about Marvel’s lack of diversity and of how they treat minority characters, so I'm taking a page out of Luisa’s (@its-tortle) book and just making a long, rambley post to get it all out.

Please bear with me while I try to encapsulate all of my frustration within the limitations of English language.

(ALSO, I'm white. I’m Spanish-American, but I do not have the ability to speak for fans of color and the other grievances they have. This post is just a combination of my own thoughts and what I've heard other people say on Tumblr, in YouTube videos, in articles etc.)

Now that we've had over week to collect ourselves after the WandaVision finale, because it was such a tearjerker and the end of a true masterpiece of a show, we really need to talk about how Marvel treats their their characters of color and female characters. I'll specifically be looking at Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, and Monica Rambeau.

Let's start with Sam.

Until Monica Rambeau became Photon just a few weeks ago in WandaVision, Sam was THE ONLY Black superhero in the MCU.

He first appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier 7 years ago in 2014, and he's been in 4 movies since then (not counting the post-credits of Ant-Man).

Let's see what we know about Sam in the MCU:

He was a pararescue airman in the U.S. Airforce

His wing-man, Riley, died in combat, prompting him to leave active duty

He works at the VA to help other veterans adjust to civilian life

That's it. This is all we know about his backstory, separate from Captain America. However, the MCU decided to include these parts of his backstory, (and exclude others) because they make him a better supporting character to Steve.

Sam's a vet - so is Steve. They have the same, early-morning run routine that alludes to strict military training. Steve is still new to the future and hardly knows or approaches anyone, but Sam is wearing his VA sweatshirt, so there's some sense of connection, one that is furthered when they talk about their beds being too soft. Sam is someone who can understand him, aside from being a super soldier.

Riley, Sam's wingman, died in combat - Hmm, haven't heard that one befo - oh, wait. *Bucky waves from the abyss of the Alps*. Yeah.

I'm not saying that these connections are bad, in fact, I think the opposite. In terms of storyline, these connections are incredibly important for their friendship. Steve is lost and alone in the future. No one he knows cares about him for any reason other than the fact that he's a super soldier, nor can he relate to any of those people on any level. Sam just fits. He's funny and kind and although they are 60 years apart in age, he can, to some extent, understand what Steve is going through in a way they no one else can.

But for the last 7 years in the MCU, all he's been is Steve's supportive friend.

Almost immediately after meeting Steve, Sam is dragged into an end-of-the-world battle. He readily agrees to put his life on the line to fight by Captain America's side. After SHIELD falls, Sam gives up his life for 2 years to help Steve find Bucky. When they find him, Sam, without a second thought, becomes an international fugitive to protect Bucky and Steve.

I mean, he practically says that he lives in Steve's shadow himself: 

"Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower."

Who does all this? Seriously? Sam is also a recovering vet. He, in theory, has a life, a family, a job, his own mental well-being to consider, but he immediately gives it all up to help Captain America, to follow in his shadow, to be his back-up and support in every battle. Marvel wrote him as a 2D character that lacks his own identity and agency.

Sam deserves his own storyline; he deserves to exist outside the orbit of Steve Rogers.

What Mackie has been able to do with the character is astounding. He took Sam off the page and truly brought him to life, turning him into a beloved character. I'm ecstatic that both Mackie and Sam finally (hopefully) get their time to shine in TFATWS, but it should have happened WAY sooner. Marvel has continuously overlooked Mackie, despite how much he brings to the movies and despite the significance of Sam as the only Black superhero. It's just so clear that they do not care about representation.

(And let's not start with the whole "Bucky should be Captain America" thing, thanks)

Next, let's talk about Natasha.

Nat has been in the MCU for 11 years, starting with Iron Man 2 in 2010. She was heavily featured in an additional 6 MCU movies (not including small cameos/post-credit sequences). She's one of the few female superheroes in the MCU, and the only one that's been there since the beginning. Nat was the only female superhero for 4 years until Gamora appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Let's see what we know about Natasha's history:

She's a former KGB operative and assassin, trained in the Red Room project

When she was a part of the Red Room, she was sterilized

Clint Barton got her out of the Red Room and converted her to a SHIELD agent

THAT'S IT. The second point is actually nauseating because this is what she says to Banner when we learn about her infertility in Age of Ultron:

"They sterilize you. It’s efficient. One less thing to worry about, the one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier — even killing. You still think you’re the only monster on the team?"

Like, actually, what the fuck? I remember watching this scene and having to rewind because I thought I mis-heard what she said. In truth, Natasha is probably referring to the terrible things she was forced to do as a KGB operative are what make her a "monster," but why in the world would they include this anecdote here?? It's just so distasteful and disgusting! It makes it seem like her infertility is what makes her a monster, perpetuating the misogynistic belief that the center of a woman's identity and purpose is to have children.

As Vox says in this article, the subject of Nat's infertility 

"rears its head sub-textually when Black Widow sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone. [...] It’s reasonable for Natasha to make the calculation that Clint’s kids deserve to have a dad when they come back to life after the Avengers complete their “time heist.” But because of that Ultron plot, there’s also an insidious implication that Natasha’s infertility renders Black Widow just a little bit more disposable than the rest of her teammates."

Furthermore, Nat's death in Endgame serves for nothing more than motivation for the other characters working in the time heist, WHICH ARE ALL MALE. Even then, the other characters talk about her death briefly (in a mostly unaffected manner), and by the end of the movie, she's been pretty much forgotten about,  completely overshadowed by Tony Stark.

I don't want to say that Nat shouldn't have died in Endgame. It caused me so much heartache and emotional pain, but I truly believe it was a great way to end her arc. CinemaWins on YouTube put it best:

"She needed to save her family, Clint included, finally wiping the red from her ledger. So much of her jouney in the MCU was trying to find her purpose, figure out which side she was on, and she finally feels like she's found it, just in time to die for it. 

"It's not wrong to feel cheated by her death, [but I think] she deserved this moment because of it's importance."

She says it in the movie: 

"I used to have nothing, and then I got this. This family. And I was better because of it."

Nat shouldn't have to die, but it's on her terms, and she is absolutely ready for it. Saving her chosen family... that is her purpose.

But altogether, over the course of the MCU, Natasha was cheated out of getting the storyline she deserved. Like Sam, she was relegated to the position of the supportive friend of Steve, but also of Bruce and Clint. For the audience, her identity is tied to this role that she plays. The identity and motivations she has independent from these other characters, her history, is skimmed over, and treated with immense disrespect.

It took 11 years, but it is thrilling that Scarlett Johansson finally gets to be the start of her own Marvel movie. There is no way that Black Widow will be able to completely make up for her and Natasha's mistreatment by the MCU, but I hope it will at least bring us some closure and allow us to have a better understanding of Nat's history and who she is away from the other Avengers.

Last, but certainly not least (despite what WandaVision may have you believe) is Monica Rambeau.

I spoke about this last week after posting about this review of the show, but it bears repeating.

Monica is a new character. You'd hope that, after 11 years of extremely limited diversity in the MCU, much to the dismay of fans worldwide, and after recognizing this and creating a movie with a cast like The Eternals, Marvel would try to get their shit together across the board.

Nope!

Monica was seriously the token diversity character of the show. It seemed like they would give her more depth after the episode during which they flashed back to the her during and after the snap, losing her mother, and seeing a little bit of what she's done as an adult since Captain Marvel, but that ended up being the most we got.

But why? Monica literally became a SUPERHERO. She became Photon! She deserved a much greater role in the show, especially in the finale, where she instead had maybe 5 lines and just stopped some bullets for about 30 seconds.

As the review I linked says, 

“There are so many black writers, fans, and critics noting how Monica got relegated to a complete lack relegated to meaningless best friend protector lacking in their own self agency and story except for making a shoehorned comparison of grief.”

Marvel made the same, bull-headed mistake that they made with Sam with Monica!

Let's do this again. Monica was snapped away for 5 years, and when she was snapped back, she learned that her mother had died. Losing someone you love and having the whole process of mourning and pain be complicated by the snap? What an interesti- oh wait. *Vision phases his head through the wall with a smile*

The only reason we got this backstory was because it made her a more sympathetic character towards Wanda. Her understanding of what Wanda is going through allows her to be the catalyst in the creation of the ideological fork in the road between herself, Darcy and Woo, who see Wanda as a victim of grief and loss, and Hayward and the rest of SHIELD, who see her as a dangerous threat.

How do you make the same, major mistake that you've been making for the past 7 years again? Guess what? You don't! Maybe it's not intentional, but Marvel, again, clearly doesn’t care enough about their characters of color to consider the roles they relegate them to in the MCU, realize what they've been doing is harmful, and then change it.

Hopefully, they will not continue to treat Monica this way and will remedy this in the next Captain Marvel.

In conclusion: MARVEL GAVE A FUCKING ROBOT AN ACTUAL ORIGIN STORY, A RELATIONSHIP AND MORE INDEPENDENCE THAN ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS.

But in all seriousness, Marvel needs to be help accountable for how they treat women and their characters of color in the MCU. I just looked at 3, but you could also make a similar argument about Rhodey, Hope van Dyne and Valkyrie, as well as Jane Foster, MJ, and Ned, although they are supporting characters and not superheroes. And I'm sure there are many others. Marvel (and Disney!!) has had an awful track-record, and change is long overdue.

[xfandomwritingsx]

Hold Your Breath - Chapter One: A Blank Page - Draco Malfoy

-gif source unknown-

Description: After decisions put you on opposite side of the war, returning to Hogwarts to finish your education proves to be challenging. Maybe closure isn’t the only thing you need from Draco.

Warnings/Labels: Angst. Hints of depression. Unhappy reunions.

Approx. Word Count: 3,000

A/N: I’m trying to keep the reader’s house open for interpretation, but I think it’s pretty plain to see that in my head, she’s a Ravenclaw. I’m also not a fan of this chapter. This is the chapter in which I converted what I had written of the oneshot into a longer piece so there are bits that to me still have a different feel than the rest. Makes it a little choppy when I read it, but hopefully it’s not bad for you!

Story Masterpost

-

September 1998

The world looks the same as it always has outside of the train window, but it all feels different. Colors still feel muted and even though there’s less chaos raging behind the trees, they still give you an ominous feeling deep in your gut. There are familiar faces on the train, but not enough to make you feel at home. Eyes either avoid yours or stare uncomfortably long. You feel out of place. You’re not supposed to be here.

But, yet, here you are. Your classmates have affectionately dubbed it “The 8th Year” at Hogwarts and even that makes you feel ill-fitting since you didn’t actually attend any of your 7th year so how could it possibly be considered your 8th? You had spent all of last year in hiding, most of which at The Burrow working to gain trust and prove your worth. You’d spent the end of it fighting on the winning side and risking your life for people you once hated.

You don’t belong.

And right now, if you could, you might just get off the train and call it quits on the whole 8th year idea. But you’re already committed now and you refuse to be labeled a quitter. It’s time to move on and build a life for yourself and you know that starts with finishing your education as best you can. So you swallowed the nausea and stayed.

You are one of the last ones off the train partly because you don’t like being in the crowd and partly because you hope it might lessen the stares. Armed with a bag filled almost entirely of long sleeved shirts, you take a deep breath and step onto the platform.

The air is warm, though the threat of colder weather ahead lingers in the air. You yearn for it, having taken a liking to the cold in the last year or so. Trees still hold their color so you suspect you have to wait just a little while for it yet. At least it gives you something to look forward to.

You begin your walk down the platform, feet padding gently along the wood. One step at a time, you tell yourself. One foot in front of the other until they suddenly stop when the sight of Draco exiting the train a few doors down causes your lungs to seize. You’d heard he would be attending so it shouldn’t have stunned you to see him, but it did. You had chosen to ignore the fact that you’d likely run into him, instead choosing to blindly hope you could somehow avoid him all year.

The thinning crowd of people allows you to see him fairly clearly. He’s looks good, well and healthy even. The little boy who broke your heart had grown into a man somehow. Perhaps in the four short months since the end of the war, he had healed. Maybe he was atoning for his wrongs. A softness in your heart grows as you watch him, letting yourself briefly daydream about a happy reunion filled with apologies and hope for the future.

His eyes scan the platform and when they fall on you, your heart speeds up anxiously. His look is not warm or friendly and when you recognize the façade painted on his face, your girlish fantasies are wiped away. He’s nothing more than the same boy he’s always been, playing pretend in a black dress jacket and trousers with a coward’s fear hidden behind his steely eyes.

He doesn’t even acknowledge you, just keeps scanning the platform before adjusting his jacket and continuing on his way. Pushing back the anger you feel starting to bubble, you tighten your grip on your bag and make your way to the carriages by yourself.

~~~

Your memories of him have always come in waves and the last two weeks have been no different as you settled into your new, old routine at school. You can go hours, even days without thinking about him and then out of nowhere, a memory will hit you so strongly that you feel like you’ve entered a pensieve.

Even now, looking at him across the great hall, you can still remember his touch. You can still practically feel his breath on your skin, your nails in his back. It was pain and comfort all in one. You remember how he’d laid his head in your lap afterwards. You still can’t be sure if the wetness left on your thighs was sweat or if he’d cried while he laid with you.

You cringe at how you had so naively thought that was the end of it. You were his salvation and he’d wake up the next morning and run away with you to the other side, to the right side of the war. But those had been foolish, little girl dreams. And you promised yourself after seeing him exit the train that you wouldn’t get involved with Draco Malfoy again.

So why can’t you stop staring at him?

Maybe because he hasn’t so much as acknowledged your existence yet and that, more than anything, pisses you off even if it shouldn’t. Despite your vow to yourself, you crave him talking to you, looking at you, noticing you’re alive for Merlin’s sake! Instead, you feel like you’ve been completely invisible to him. While this clearly made it easier to not get involved, it bothers you. He’s taking away your choice to be rid of him which is just rude.

Fingers snap in front of your face.

“Do you just want to hex him and be done with it?” Ginny asks next to you, a ghost of a smile on her lips. One positive of this year; the voluntary segregation of sitting with your house had been all but completely abandoned, allowing you to sit with the very few friends you have. “You could probably do it with minimal punishment.”

“I don’t want to hex him,” you argue softly, forcing your eyes back down to the plate in front of you. Ginny raises an eyebrow at you.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes!” You let out a huff and poke the food with your fork. “No. Maybe a little bit,” you admit. She nudges your shoulder with her own and sighs sympathetically. Ginny was never someone you thought you’d end up close with, but after staying with her family during the war, she’d become practically like your sister. She’s a better friend than you’d ever had before. Probably better than you deserve too.

“Have you spoken to him?” She keeps her voice quiet amongst the chatter in the hall. You look at her, full of irrational guilt, and shake your head in the smallest fashion you can. “Maybe you should.” You look back to him and remember the way he felt on top of you, whispering your name and the way your legs wrapped around his waist. But then, just as suddenly, you’re hit with the memory of him walking away from you in the middle of the night with a hollowness in your chest.

“I think that’s the last thing I need to do.” You force yourself to stop looking at him throughout the rest of your meal and attempt to join into jovial conversation at the table.

Fate, however, seemed to have heard your words and thusly thrust her middle finger out to you, because Draco is suddenly everywhere. It was inevitable that you run into each other, after all, you had classes together, but he still seems to be within your eyesight an excessive amount; sitting right in front of you during lessons, resting under your favorite tree, always managing to be where you can see his face during meals. Your only reprieve is your common room which you’ve taken to staying in during most of your free time.

Going strictly to and from classes and meals has become tiresome though. You’re starting to feel like you’re back in hiding and can feel a darkness creeping in. You don’t have an abundance of friends at Hogwarts. Or anywhere really. The loneliness threatens to eat away at you sometimes, but you keep it at bay by keeping your nose in your books; a coping skill you’ve become entirely too proficient at executing.

But today you venture out, book in hand, hoping to find a quiet place with a little background noise to read. A change of scenery and a breath of air may help the frayed nerves you haven’t been able to shake these last weeks. Your feet carry you to the library almost without any thought. It had been among one of the first areas rebuilt and reconstructed after the war and though they built it much the same as it had been, it had a distinctively new feel to it.

It’s a bit of a bustle with people, mostly first and second years who think studying is still the most important thing they can do. Idiots, you think. You walk around for a little bit, admiring the fresh wooden tables and shelves, before gravitating towards a back corner. There used to be a couple of chairs in a back row of books by the muggle section that no one ever frequented. With any luck, it might still exist.

Fate smiles down on you, but it’s a wicked smile because yes, your little nook is still there, but so is Draco. He sits in the armchair in plain clothes, an elbow on the armrest, and his face propped up on his fist as he stares down at the book in his lap. His platinum hair falls into his eyes, yet he doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. He looks so ordinary, like he could be any man in the world and it irks you in a way you can’t put into words. He’s not ordinary. He’s not any man. He’s Draco Malfoy.

You stare long enough for him to sense it and look up from his book. And for what feels like for the first time all year, he looks at you. He freezes for just a moment, as though he’s shocked or perhaps scared at the sight of you. Then in a blink it’s gone, replaced by a softer tone in his eyes.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, his voice a rush of warm nostalgia. He closes his book. “I can leave.” Even though you’re negatively shaking your head, he gathers the bag at his feet and stands.

“It’s alright,” you try to tell him. “I’ll just go somewhere else.” He’s already standing up in front of you, ready to slink past. There’s an urge to reach out and grab his arm. You repress it.

“No, it’s fine. You like this spot.” He says it so quickly and his eyes flitter to anything but your face as he passes. Before you can try to say anything else, he’s disappeared beyond more shelves of books, completely out of view.

You’re left standing there looking after him feeling entirely unsatisfied and empty with the interaction. You can’t put your finger on or voice what you wanted to happen, but that certainly wasn’t it.

Sighing, you concede to do what you had come for. Even that proves to be too difficult because when you settle into the chair, it’s still soft with his imprint and warm with his body heat. It gives you the barest sensation of having him wrapped around you. It reminisces more than it should of that too-long-hug you shared before he’d kissed you for the first time. The memories washing over you make it too difficult to focus on the words in your book. You snap it shut and leave. The common room is clearly the better place to stay.

~~~

All of your interactions after that are all short and insignificant. He’s always there, but never looks your way. If he does have to speak to you, it’s always in a minimal way. It never fails to leave you frustrated and angry. Even your books aren’t easing your tension like they used to.

It's been nearly a full month now and throwing yourself into your studies hasn’t helped you any either. You’ve practically finished the coursework for half of your classes. Your homework is done well before you wish to go to sleep for the evening. You haven’t set foot outside the castle walls. You have so few friends, no family, and no one who can relate to your troubles. And the one person you’d counted on your whole life, your best friend and the boy you would have done almost anything for, barely even looks at you.

The suffocation of it all comes in the darkness of night. It crushes down on your chest and burns on your arm. Your fucking arm. You’ve scrubbed it. You’ve concealed it. You even went so far as to try to cut the skin off. Nothing works. That skull and snake are with you forever. And everyone knows it.

Some nights you can’t take it. You can’t merely lay in your bed and pretend sleep will come peacefully. So you leave your room. You wander the castle, trying to find those places that bring warmth to your heart and avoid those were people died.

Tonight, you go to the courtyard just to look at the stars. There’s something soulful about the sky. It’s where muggles look to when they pray to a higher power. It holds a universe more expansive than you could ever imagine. It could swallow you whole if you let it or maybe, just maybe one day it will show you how to be happy.

You forcibly don’t recognize that laying in grass and looking up at the sky had been something you and Draco used to do together. It works well enough to let you enjoy the activity again by yourself, but it blinds you to the idea that Draco might be doing the same thing.

You shouldn’t have been so surprised when you reach the courtyard and he’s there, leaning back on the fountain and staring upwards, but you are. When your shoe crunches on the gravel, his head snaps to you and with his own surprise, stands up.

Another short apology. Another move for a quick exit in the opposite direction of you. Your fists clench at your sides, unable to bottle in your anger any longer.

“Oh would you shove off with that?” you snap before he can slip back into the shadows. He turns and raises an eyebrow at you. “I was ready,” you tell him angrily. “I was ready to come back this year and hate you. I was ready to avoid you and shoot you pissed off glares from across the room. Then I get here and you avoid me!” His face puzzles for a moment.

“So you want me to try to talk to you so that you can tell me off?” A little bit of his old self, of the Draco you once knew and loved, comes through in an irritated eye roll. “Sorry to disappoint.” You let out a huff of air and cross your arms.

“Why are you avoiding me?” The puzzled look on his face returns.

“The way you’re reacting right now doesn’t answer that question for you?” He tilts his head and hums mockingly. “Not as smart as I thought you were.”

“Smarter than you are, clearly.” He grinds his jaw at your condescension and then he’s walking up to you, getting closer than he’s been all year and your bravery falters for a moment as your feet step you back and your arms uncross to hang useless by your sides.

“That’s why I haven’t approached you. I don’t need another lecture. I’ve been to trial. I’m on probation. I’ve had everything I’ve ever done wrong put out in front of me in excruciating detail. I don’t need you to give me another run through.” His eyes and his tone are cold, hard. You recognize it all too well and while he’s gotten better at hiding it, you can still see the pain underneath. It tries to soften you, but ultimately fails.

“They shouldn’t have let you come back,” you spit at him, instantly regretting the words when he pulls away. You don’t mean it. Of course you don’t mean it, but you say it with enough venom and hate that he believes it.

“We all made mistakes,” he hisses at you before glancing down to your arm. The heat of his stare practically stings and you have to resist that instinctive pull to hide it away. “I hear you’re the shining example everyone uses to demonstrate that not all bad guys hail from Slytherin, even despite the fact that you changed sides in the end.” The only reason you don’t crack your palm over his cheek is because you give in to the need to hold onto your left forearm tightly, your palm now busy cradling the skull of the Dark Mark underneath your shirt sleeve. “How’s that feel?”

“You’re horrid,” you tell him weakly. He tilts his head again.

“That is what everyone says.” He gives a shrug that tries too hard to be casual and finally steps out of your personal space. With a small shake of his head, he turns to leave again, but you refuse to let him get the last word.

“At least I tried to atone!” you call after him. He pauses, but doesn’t look back. “I did the right thing when it mattered!”

“And where did that get you?” he asks bitterly. “Where did it get your family?” You suck in a harsh breath and try desperately to hold back the tears that are abruptly burning behind your eyes. Dead, you think. It got them killed.

“They made their own choices.” It sounds rehearsed because it is. You told yourself those same words over and over again every night for months. Your parents weren’t good people. You knew that. They were still your parents though and when you heard He’d killed them, it hurt more than you want to admit. And Draco knew that. Draco knows your weaknesses and your soft spots and just how to twist a knife into you. Perhaps that’s why you hated him so much.

“You don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.” He still hasn’t even so much as looked over his shoulder back at you.

“Fine,” you answer curtly, your hand still wringing around your forearm. When he leaves, you allow yourself to crumple onto the ground and cry. You feel so much hollower than the last time he’d left you in tears. Back then, the air had practically crackled with tension and death and war. Now the air is silent, calm and that makes it all the more unsettling. All the more finite.

~~~

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[moonknightly]

and you keep me holding on : santiago “pope” garcia x reader (five)

Word Count: 2.9k

Excerpt: “Around the four minute mark, he watched as Nathan’s hand moved into frame to stroke her cheek. Santi was just about to turn away, hating the way he touched her so tenderly when he was using her as nothing more than the sick focus in this game he was playing...”

Warnings: Mentions of past sexual assault, blood, gun violence, mentions of death — it’s a lot folks. Read cautiously. 

[SERIES MASTERLIST]

OCTOBER 22ND — DAY SIX

Santi isn’t the one to break the news to her parents. He still has no idea what to say to them, or if he even can say anything to them without making himself sick, without breaking down completely. He isn’t used to feeling emotion like this, doesn’t know what he can handle and what will send him spiraling. The last of his mental stability isn’t something he is willing to risk losing right now.

He is, however, sitting in Cameron’s office when she makes the dreaded phone call, and he can hear her mother sob on the other line, and all he can do is watch, numbly so, as tears flood Cameron’s own eyes. Santi knows that she hasn’t had the time to process it for herself — her complete and utter focus has been on both him and this case, and on top of that she still has a department to run and her own family waiting for her at home.

She has to be tired.

Santi is so, so tired.

The night before is a blur. He remembers Jay telling him about the video, and then there’s nothing until this morning, when Jay shook him awake to tell him Cameron needed him down at the precinct. He still doesn’t know what for. There was no way she was expecting him to do any work for the case, that much he knew, and so he hadn’t bothered fixing his hair or changing out of his sweats.

He sits quietly on the small sofa in Cameron’s office with Jay sitting to his left, both staring at nothing in particular. Santi’s leg is bouncing again, his elbow perched on it and knuckles resting against his bottom lip. He still refuses to believe that she's gone. Santi is so, so sure that she's still alive, but no one else seems to think so. He can’t even begin to put into words how enraged it makes him, how much it makes him want to scream and break anything he can get his hands on.

But then again, he hasn’t seen the video. He hasn’t seen what everyone else had seen, and though he really doesn’t want to, he knows that he needs to, if only for some sense of twisted, morbid closure. To put it all to rest.

And besides that, he can’t just take their word for it when there’s a gnawing, pulling feeling in his stomach telling him that they’re all wrong. It isn’t hope, and it sure as hell isn’t faith, because Santi doesn’t have any faith left to give, not in the squad, not in himself, not even in the boys — they’d offered their help, but he has nothing to give them, no leads to go off of and he knows that’s his fault because he’s not trying hard enough but it’s easier to just blame everyone else.

But that’s something he would deal with later, because all he can focus on is that damn feeling in the pit of his stomach. It’s more than faith or hope, and he honestly doesn’t have a word for it — personal assurance, maybe? All he knows is that he’s so completely positive that she’s somewhere, still breathing, still living.

“Garcia,” Cameron gently begins, causing Santi’s eyes to immediately flicker over to her. She hesitates for a moment as she looks him over, taking in his hunched appearance that was so un-Santi like it doesn’t even look like him for a moment. “I’m so sorry, but I had to-”

“I wanna see the video,” Santi mumbles, not caring about what she had to say, his words slurring together as if he had been drowning himself in liquor the night before instead of lying passed out on the couch.

His words catch Cameron off guard, and her eyes widen, only slightly but enough for Santi to notice. She quickly averts her gaze to Jay as she searches for the right thing to say, but she doesn’t know how to answer him. When almost a full thirty seconds pass in silence, Jay decides that he has to be the one to break it, not able to stand it.

“Santi, I really don’t think that’s a good-”

“Look, I’m just gonna guess that you called me down here because the feds want to talk to me, right? And you know, they’re probably going to show it to me while they’re accusing me of murdering my wife again-”

Both Jay and Cameron flinch, but Santi doesn’t stop talking.

“-and I’d say that’s a pretty shitty way to see it for the first time, don’t you?”

Now it’s Jay’s turn to be stunned into silence. He tries his best to put himself into Santi’s shoes, tries to figure out what he would personally want if he ever found himself in a similar situation.

But he has no idea what he would want in this instance, because he doesn’t know how to even begin imagining something so awful. He would never wish this on his worst enemy, which he knows is a terrible cliche, and it's hard enough as her friend, he just can’t imagine this from her lover’s standpoint.

But he knows that Santi is right, and that his first time seeing the video shouldn’t be when he’s being interrogated by Barnes and Graves. He sighs gently, and closes his eyes slowly before nodding his head.

“Fine. But you’re not watching it alone.”

Santi only nods in return, knowing better than to argue. He knows he won’t be able to watch it on his own anyways.

He stands, somewhat shakily, and inhales deeply, trying to calm the nerves that seem to have made a permanent home in his stomach over the last six days. Cameron offers her seat to him, and he sits without question, already feeling like his knees will give out at any second. Jay comes to stand behind him, and he takes one last look at Santi before clicking on the correct file, regretting it the moment he watches Santi suck in a sharp breath, a small gasp falling from his lips at the image that’s now displayed on the screen.

Just like the photo from a few days before, she’s tied up and gagged and she looks so utterly terrified it makes Santi’s head spin. She looks weaker than before too, and she’s only wearing her underwear. A wave of nausea hits and Santi swallows hard, and Cameron just wants to get it over with, so she hits play.

Immediately, Nathan grabs her jaw, pushing her cheeks together, forcing her lips to purse. It makes Santi’s skin burn, seeing his hands on her like that. His first thought is that he wants to break the fucker’s fingers, one by one.

The longer the camera focuses on her face, the harder and harder her glare becomes, and Santi feels that disgusting pride swell in his chest at the brutal fire in her eyes. That's his girl, so stubborn, never the one to go down without a fight.

She violently shakes her head once before attempting to thrash her arms, but she doesn't get very far with that, the ropes not allowing her to move hardly at all.

“Say hi to your husband, baby,” Nathan snickers, his voice dripping with venom that only adds to the fire moving through Santi’s veins. Maybe it was also due to the fact that he called her “baby”, but he knows he shouldn’t be focusing on that.

Nathan pulls the gag from her lips, and she gasps for air, gritting her teeth together but otherwise staying silent. When she fails to speak, Nathan laughs again.

“Is someone nervous?”

“Fuck you.”

“Again? We just finished not too long ago, sweetheart.”

She stays quiet again. Santi feels like he’s going to vomit, but he pushes the feeling down. He’s gotten really good at doing that in the last six days — at pushing all of his feelings down and away and locking them behind thick walls where he wouldn’t have to face them.

He can feel Cameron’s worried eyes on him, but he ignores them, refusing to pull his attention away from the screen in front of him.

“You wanna tell him about that, huh baby? You wanna tell your husband what I did to you? What you let me do to you?”

This time, she flinches when Nathan says the word “husband”, almost subtle enough to where Santi wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t paying such close attention.

“I didn’t let you do anything.”

“Mm, you did put up a pretty good fight sweetheart. You really know how to tighten my pants, don’t you?”

Santi doesn’t want to see anymore, doesn't want to hear anymore, but he can’t stop watching. He has to see it for himself, he has to. He needs to.

The video continues on for a few minutes, Nathan going into sick detail with every heinous act he performed or otherwise forced her into, because he knew Santi would see the video and he knew what it would do to him. Santi feels closer to faint with each passing second.

Around the four minute mark, he watches as Nathan’s hand moves into frame to stroke her cheek. Santi is just about to turn away, hating the way he touched her so tenderly when he watches her snap her head to the right and in one swift, solid motion, she has Nathan’s hand in her mouth and she’s biting down. Hard.

Nathan’s screams echo through the speakers, and Santi finds himself smirking at the sound. She has a good grip on him for several seconds before he manages to pull away, a bloody bite mark on the back of his hand. His screaming continues, and Santi actually lets out a chuckle that only increases Cameron’s concern.

But then suddenly, Santi isn’t laughing anymore, because Nathan brings the end of a gun down onto her head and the wound in her eyebrow splits open again. She groans, only briefly before she regains her composure, refusing to show how much pain she’s actually in. She’s grinning, and Nathan’s cursing.

“You’re going to pay for that,” Nathan says, a sadistic edge to his voice that puts Santi on complete alert, sets him on edge.

She chuckles, her grin quickly turning into a smirk that Santiago instantly recognizes. It was the same smirk she wore when she was being stubborn or when she was challenging something.

Or in this case, someone.

“Goddammit,” Santi mutters the second he catches it, because he knows her well enough to know that she was about to open her mouth when she should have just kept it shut.

“Bring it. Can’t get any worse than having you on top of me, can it?”

Not a moment later, a single shot rings through the speakers, causing Santi to jump in his chair, though he knows he should have been prepared for it.

He can see her eyes widen, but she doesn’t scream. She doesn't make a single noise whatsoever. She only stares at some faraway spot, her eyes watering and her jaw falling slack as she fades away into a state of shock while Nathan laughs maliciously. He grabs her cheeks again and holds them tightly while he forces her to look into the camera.

“You have anything you want to say to Santiago now? Huh?” he yells, and before she can answer, Cameron bends down and clicks out of the video.

Santi’s head jerks to the side, eyebrows furrowing as he looks up at the lieutenant. “What are you-”

“That’s enough. She didn’t say anything.”

“But-”

“Santi,” Jay murmurs, shaking his head slowly. “It only had a few seconds left. You didn’t need to see anymore of it.”

Santi sits there for several seconds, staring at the computer screen as he tries to decipher the emotions running through his brain. He can’t figure out how to feel or how to even make himself feel it — he’s just numb. He can admit that his chest feels a little bit emptier than it had before he walked into the office, and there’s a hint of anger, but nothing compared to what he’s been feeling all week.

If the movies and the books were right, he should be screaming, crying. Begging and pleading. He should be going through the same emotions he’d experienced on the phone with his mother, he should be inconsolable. Losing his mind and throwing things.

But he doesn’t have the urge to do any of that. At the very least he thinks he should have been having a similar reaction Jay’s from the night before, but there’s just nothing.

There is, however, two things that he’s absolutely certain of.

“She didn’t need to speak to say it,” Santi mumbles quietly. “She said that she’s sorry. That she loves me.”

Cameron raises an eyebrow, her head tilting to the side. “What do you-”

“I could see it in her eyes. You’re with a person long enough and words just kind of become redundant.”

Cameron hesitates as tears spring to her eyes. It’s hard enough losing a friend, but she almost believes it’s even harder watching a friend deal with losing his wife. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone love someone like you two loved each othe-”

“Don’t,” he snaps, effectively cutting her off. “Not past tense. Don’t do that shit to me.”

She sighs. “You know what I mean.”

“She’s still alive.”

“Santi-”

“She is.”

Cameron stays silent, again at a loss for words. Santi’s been forced to grieve for his wife once already, through the hope of finding her alive, and just when he was getting to a place where he was able to find just a little bit of light in the sorrow, he has to grieve her death. He has to go through the five stages of grief all over again, though he had never really finished the cycle the first time around, hadn’t allowed himself to.

Denial was the first. It was textbook—

“We didn’t see where it hit,” he says, interrupting her thought process.

She hesitates, considering his words for a moment. “No, we didn’t. But-”

“So he could have shot her in the fuckin’ foot for all we know. She could still-”

“If she had been shot in the foot, it would hurt more than it would have immediately thrown her into shock-”

“Not necessarily-”

“-and even so, the infection’s gonna kill her. Nathan can’t take her to a hospital.”

Santi only scoffs, leaning back in the chair, trying his hardest to keep his anger at bay. Screaming, arguing won’t get him anywhere.

Jay licks his lips, bracing himself against the desk, leaning forward so he can get a better look at Santiago. “You know the odds are definitely not in her favor.”

“But the odds aren’t completely zero, are they?”

“It’s…” Jay starts, pausing, sighing, knowing Cameron isn’t going to like what he has to say. “It’s possible. We’ve certainly seen people survive worse than a gunshot to the foot.”

“But like Garcia said,” Cameron adds, clearly agitated as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “We didn’t see where the bullet hit. It could have hit anywhere from the chest down.”

“So we should stop searching for my wife because of a possibility rather than take the probability and run with it?”

Cameron again doesn’t have anything to say. She doesn’t know what to say. As a friend, she wants to say no, they shouldn’t stop looking. They should never stop looking.

But as a cop, she wants to say that there’s nothing else they can do, not until they have a substantial lead, something else to go off of. They can’t even trace the video and the email back to an IP address, for some reason that they still can’t quite figure out.

“Cameron,” Santi mumbles, voice gentle, calmer than it had been just seconds before. He blinks, and Cameron can’t tell if it’s to hold back his tears or if it’s to give himself a moment to breathe, to work up the courage to speak again.

“I’m not going to stop looking until there’s a body.”

Cameron’s breath hitches, and she forces herself to swallow the lump in her throat, to not show how his words hit her right in the gut and knocked the air from her lungs completely.

“I know,” she sighs finally, shaking her head slowly and averting her gaze. “But I still think you need to stay away from this. You’re going to drive yourself mad, Santiago. You’re loyal to a fault and it’s going to cost you your own health.”

“It’s not even about loyalty at this point.”

Cameron shifts her eyes back to Santi.

“It’s just about knowing.”

Santi hesitates, running a hand through his disheveled curls, down his face, the pressure in his chest growing the longer he sits there with his thoughts running wildly through his head.

“She’s still alive because I don’t know that she’s dead.”

[thisbrokenmask]

Drift Away

pairing: female reader x Park Jimin

genre: angst (prepare your heartstrings)

word count: 5,192

warnings: Jimin is sad, that’s all

summary: jimin is home for christmas. so are you. it’s been several months since you broke up with him but he’s still hurting. will you give him the closure he needs?

a/n: so I wanted to write something nice and fluffy for Jimin’s Christmas Love, but this sort of happened instead. Crystal Snow has been one of my favourites since I first heard it, there’s something about the longing and complex emotions in it that’s always appealed to me, so I’m glad I got ‘Crystal Snow’ on my @btsholidaybingo​ card! (Also, don’t mind me projecting my break up from earlier this year, I promise I’ll write something happier for ChimChim soon) 

It’s only when conversation in the car dies down that Jimin begins to take notice of his surroundings. He’s been talking non-stop with his parents and his brother since they engulfed him in a big group hug at the train station, catching up with each other despite at least two calls a week to his parents and a text thread with his brother that rarely sits still for a full 24 hours.

Somehow, there is always something new to talk about, or something comfortingly familiar to talk about again, and he is thankful for that in the very moment he notices how close they are to home. Being close to home means being close to your parents’ house, and that means being close to you. 

He stares out of the window as the houses roll past, various colours painting his skin from the different light displays and decorations hanging from their eaves. Jimin has no doubt you’ve come home for the winter holidays, just like he has. You always loved Christmas, always itching to get the Christmas decorations up as soon as you could. He remembers how you would start talking about Christmas as early as the week after Chuseok and how he’d been amazed that he’d found someone who loved Christmas more than he did. Even he could wait until after Hangul Day before he allowed himself to even think of ideas for Christmas, but you were always two steps ahead of him. 

He wonders if you were as excited this year. 

His parents definitely notice the sudden quiet in the back of the car and glance at each other, silently repeating the conversation they’ve had several times over the last few weeks, questioning whether they should ask or leave him be. 

“Have you heard from Y/N?” his mother asks, long having decided that addressing the elephant in the room will help Jimin, rather than letting him wallow and fester in his own thoughts. He’s had long enough, she feels, and talking about you will only help him to move on. “Is she back for Christmas?”

“I don’t know,” Jimin answers truthfully, feeling an uncomfortable fullness in his chest that makes him feel a bit sick. His brother shifts in his seat across the car. “We haven’t spoken.”

“Oh,” his mother says lightly, faux nonchalant. Her barely-concealed acting would normally have irked him and he would have asked her to just be more direct, not tiptoe around him and treat him like a baby, but he’s tired. Tired of pretending not to care, tired of pretending he doesn’t still think about you. His mother quickly changes the subject anyway. “Well, Jungkook is home, isn’t he? Are you going to go and see him?” 

“Yeah,” Jimin nods once, unable to tear his eyes away from the world outside. He knows your street is approaching and he doesn’t want to miss catching a glimpse of your house. He wonders if your parents have put up the same lights they always do: bright white and twinkling, following the slope of the roof and lighting up the biggest tree on the front lawn. “Yeah, I’ll go see Jungkook.”

Christmas music is playing in the store when Jimin enters. A mix of American and Korean music playing over the speakers, old enough to give the music that slight tinny sound only old, weary speakers can provide. 

His mother has sent him armed with a list of things she deems absolutely essential, but he knows it’s just an excuse to get him out of the house, to get him to do something rather than pretending to watch TV while wrapped up on the sofa in his favourite blanket like he has been for the last two days. He knows, because he saw the full bag of flour in the pantry last night when he was quietly looking for a near-midnight snack. He knows, because there’s a carton of eggs in the kitchen that’s almost full and there’s enough sugar to sweeten the tea of the whole street at least two times over.

But she insisted, so here he is. 

He has the eggs, flour, sugar and a few other things from the list when he sees them, having just turned down the aisle they’re standing in. Your relatives don’t spot him straight away, your mother talking a mile a minute as she lists the pros and cons of two different brands to your little sister who, as always, is simply nodding along. Your mother will make her own decision, probably already has, but your sister is there to be her sounding board. That used to be your job, he remembers you telling him, until you hit 16 and had the excuse of school exams to get you out of the weekly shopping trips. 

He’s about to turn around and go down the next aisle, planning on circling back when he knows they’ve moved on, but then he hears his name being called. He looks up to see your little sister abandoning her post and running towards him. Your mother blinks as he gets closer, walking over to say hello as he’s too polite not to, and for the first time in his life he wishes he found it easier to be rude.

“Mrs Y/L/N,” he greets your mother with a bow low enough for his gaze to drop to the floor, his basket knocking against his calf before he’s straightening up again. “It’s nice to see you, I hope you and your family are well.” Jimin smiles at your sister, who smiles back and nods but moves back to stand by your mother. He can tell she’s holding back from hugging him and his arms ache. 

“Jimin,” she smiles back, but her eyes are sad. “It’s nice to see you, too. I’m very well, thank you. I hope your family are, too?” Jimin nods with a smile. “You’re home for Christmas?” Another nod. “That’s wonderful. Y/N is, too-” She cuts herself off, eyes widening apologetically. 

“It’s okay,” he assures her with a smile despite the constricting feeling in his throat. He holds back from asking about you despite the way his tongue itches to form the words. “I’m glad to be back home for a while. Speaking of which, I apologise but I must get back,” he holds up the slip of paper his mother pushed into his hand. “But it was lovely to see you both.” Jimin bows again to both your mother and sister, making sure to push his smile just that little bit wider to ensure they know there are no hard feelings. 

“It’s lovely to see you, too, Jimin,” your mother smiles. “It’s been so long.”

He knows. He knows exactly how long it’s been since so many things: the last time he saw your parents, the last time he saw you, the last time you spoke to him. 

“It has,” he agrees, and bows again before slipping past them. “Merry Christmas!” 

He waves goodbye as he walks away, waiting until he’s down the next aisle before trying to read the rest of his list with stinging eyes. 

He wonders if your mother will tell you that she saw him. 

It’s only a few days before Christmas Eve when Jimin finally sees you. He’s walking back from Jungkook’s house, his younger friend’s parents insisting on feeding him before he was allowed to go home. He almost doesn’t notice you, so caught up in the same thoughts he’s been having for months to even register people around him. 

But he hears your laugh and he can’t not look.

Jimin’s head snaps up so suddenly that he’s sure the movement alone catches your eye, but it could be the fact that he stops dead almost mid-stride. You’re on the other side of the street, walking towards the direction he’s coming away from, and you’re not alone. 

He thinks he recognizes one of the girls by your side from high school, but the other is completely unknown to him. He barely grants either of them a second of his attention before focusing back on you. You’ve cut your hair and dyed it a lighter shade, but it’s still you in those jeans he always loved and the jacket you bought with the money you saved up from your first summer job. 

He notices the exact second your eyes flit over to him, and the exact moment when they shoot back for a double take, a flash of recognition taking over your features. Meeting your gaze is like a pummel to the gut and the head at the same time; his brain feels dizzy and his knees waver like they might give out if a light breeze brushes past him.

You look away so quickly, so determined in the way you turn your head completely to look at your friend, that it takes him a few seconds to register the moment is gone. He feels empty, so empty, at how easily you ignore him. He feels empty, and then he feels so full of sadness and anger and hurt that he briefly convinces himself that he hates you as he turns to stomp back to his house. 

“Who was that?” he hears one of your friends ask incredulously, but his feet beat a muffled pace against the snow too quickly for him to hear your answer. 

Hey, how are you?

The text comes through hours later, lighting up his room as Jimin lays staring at the ceiling. Drying tracks itch his face from the silent tears he finally let fall once he knew his parents were in bed and most likely asleep. He couldn’t forget how easily you turned away from him, and from there his memories awoke to remind him of all the times you’d turned toward him, ran toward him, jumped into his arms and held on. 

It was, he’d believed, yet another night of his chest slowly ripping itself open, only to leave it for him to try and fix before breakfast.

But you texted him, and he chewed his lip desperately as he considered what to do. 

Hey. I’m alright thanks, you?

He had considered texting Hoseok to ask what he should do, but it was nearly midnight and he didn’t want to bother his friends any more than he felt he already had. This was his situation, anyway, and all the advice in the world to the contrary wouldn’t stop him from listening to the way his heart still called out for you. 

I’m good, too. I just wanted to say sorry about earlier.

Earlier?

Don’t lie, Jimin. I know you saw me, and you know I saw you.

I’m sorry I ignored you.

Jimin scoffs into the darkness of his room, a flush of anger rushing through him at your words. He doesn’t know if he believes you, as much as he wants your words to be true. He wants you to want him still, even though he knows things would be different now. He likes to try and convince himself he could trust you to love him again, but then he remembers how easily you broke his heart and he just hurts all over again.

Are you?

Of course I am! I felt awful, I wanted to say hello to you so badly.

Then why didn’t you? 

The question isn’t malicious or confrontational; he just needs to know how you think so he can figure out he feels. 

I didn’t know how to, you finally reply. 

Saying ‘hello’ is normally a good place to start?

I know, I know, I just

Jimin watches the bubble of ellipses come and go several times, waiting for you to get your words right. He always gave you that, even when the words would hurt him in the end. 

I didn’t know how to explain to the girls who you were.

His heart feels like a cold lump of lead in his chest, almost too heavy to beat.

Didn’t want to have to explain what I did to you.

Despite everything, he still hates to hear/read/see you feel guilty over what happened between you, because it means you’re sad. He’s still got a bit of hardwiring in him that makes him want to cheer you up, to protect you from pain and sadness even when he’s drowning in his own. 

I understand, he finally texts back, wishing he actually did. He doesn’t know how or why he’s the one comforting you when you were the one that broke up with him but here he is, lying in his childhood bedroom merely streets away from you, telling you he understands. Understands that you couldn’t tell your friends he was the guy you’d broken up with before you both left for college mere months ago. Understands that you dropped the bomb on him that you were pretty sure you weren’t in love with him anymore after two years of him devoting every atom of his being to your existence. Understands how you didn’t want to start college with a boyfriend you didn’t feel the same about anymore and might end up hurting in worse ways than just words. 

Jimin blinks back the tears that well up in his eyes as the thoughts pass through his head, his phone locked and clutched to his chest like prayer beads. He wonders if you’re the same, if you’ve been umming and ahhing over whether you should text him or if you’re casually resting on your side with your duvet wrapped around your leg like you normally did before you slept. He wonders if you’re in bed at all, or if you’re sat up at your desk and are only texting him now as an afterthought to your busy day.

Strange shadows appear on his ceiling when his phone lights up under his fingers.

Thank you.

He bites his bottom lip before releasing it and pressing the back of his hand to it instead, knowing his mother will notice in the morning and ask him what he’s been worrying about. He knows you’d ask the same, knowing him just as well, if not better. 

He figures this is his best chance to take his shot to ask.

Can I see you, at some point?

The bubble pops up then disappears again without returning, and he knows you’re trying to figure out how to say no to him nicely.

Just to talk. We could get coffee or something?

He doesn’t want to sound desperate, but he is, and he figures that you might give in if you realise.

No funny business, I promise. I just want to see you one last time, one last conversation and then I’ll leave you be. I just feel like I never really got closure and it would be nice to finally feel like I can move on. [Ever the people pleaser, he adds,] If that’s okay?

If you say no or you don’t reply, he’ll take that as closure and do his best to move on. It will hurt more, but he’ll know where he stands and then he can figure out where to step next. If you say yes, it’ll be awkward, but he’ll be able to figure out where his heart is much quicker by sitting across a table from you. 

The last few months have been disorienting and confusing and painful, spent trying to clumsily mend his heart when he wasn’t quite sure of the extent of the damage. He’s convinced himself that if he sees you and speaks to you, he’ll know whether or not he still loves you. 

If he doesn’t, he can finally put down the weight he’s been carrying and walk away lighter. 

He doesn’t quite have a plan yet for if it turns out he does. 

Of course. When are you free?

It’s bitingly cold on the 28th, the day you and Jimin agree to see each other. It was the one day you were both free that wasn’t too close to Christmas, New Year, or the day you were returning to college for the January term. It was the one day with the least potential for sentimentality. 

He gets there five minutes late, hoping you’re already there and seated rather than him being first. It seems you had the same idea, though, as you walk towards him from the opposite end of the high street. 

While he’s still far enough away to be sure you won’t be able to see it, a puff of white air escapes him as a laugh pushes his lips into a smile. He should have known you’d want to be the one who gets to walk in and withhold your gaze until you’re ready to look at him; you were always both so similar that way. 

He sees you falter and guesses that to be the moment you realise he’s the person walking towards you. Your pace slows slightly, hesitant, before you pick up your speed again. You probably hope he didn’t notice, and he’ll pretend he didn’t. 

You meet in the middle, outside the door to the cafe you used to come and sit in together all the time; impromptu dates, one of you wanting to be out of the house, the other jonesing for a hot chocolate like only Mrs Mae can make. 

Jimin opens the door for you and ushers you inside, and you breathe a gasp of thanks as you hurry into the warmth. Mrs Mae is still pottering about behind the counter, wiping and drying between customers. She turns and smiles before either of you can say anything and her apparent sixth sense is oddly comforting. 

Mrs Mae has always been observant, keeping an eye on everyone who comes into her shop yet somehow making them feel like they have all the privacy in the world in her plush seats. She still pertains that she knew you and Jimin were dating before even the two of you did, and she harbours the secret that she knew it was falling apart before you did, too. 

Her smile is two parts happy and one part sad to see you and Jimin together: pleased to see another pair of town kids all grown up and still coming to her little shop, pleased to see the combination of one of the sweetest couples she’s ever witnessed back together again, but sad to know both of your hearts are broken beyond repair for each other. She knows you’ll never walk into her shop hand-in-hand again, but she’s pleased to see you together nonetheless. 

The machine behind her is already steaming with two hot chocolates, mugs warming while they wait, and she waves you off to sit down before you can even order. 

Muscle memory guides you back to the table you always used to share, tucked against the window in the corner furthest from the door, and Jimin wonders if you notice before you sit down. Whether you do or not, he can’t tell, because you now won’t look at him. Your eyes are turned to the floor as you shrug off your coat, tucking it over the back of the chair, and you stare at your fingers on the tabletop when you sit down.

Jimin sits across from you, sinking into his chair and slowly pulling off his gloves. His coat is over the back of his chair, too, but he can’t bring himself to pull off his matching scarf and beanie, the navy blue contrasting his blond hair in a way that you can’t help but find yourself admiring. 

He doesn’t see how quickly you look away as his gaze drifts back towards you, but Mrs Mae does. She puts the cups of hot chocolate in front of you both, a third plate sliding onto the table between you. You both gape slightly at the two cookies shaped like Christmas trees, small ribbons of green icing criss-crossing over each other with little dabs of bright colours nestled between them. 

“On the house,” she says simply without flourish, tucking her tray back under her arm as she walks away before either of you can protest. 

You clear your throat as Jimin coughs gently into his fist and you finally look up at each other. Jimin feels a pang in his chest at how similar and how different this all is at the same time. The small hints of smiles on your faces are no longer coy and shy like they were when you came here together on your first ‘date’ as teenagers. Everyone insists you’re young adults now, and your lips are turned in an effort to alleviate the awkwardness between you. 

It’s nearly been three months since he last heard your voice and he feels tummy swirl as you open your mouth to speak.

“Good Christmas?” you ask feebly, not sure where else to start but thankful the recent holiday gives you something to talk about. 

“Yeah, it was good, thanks,” Jimin replies as he wraps his hands around his mug to keep them warm, wincing when the hot ceramic stings his palms slightly. “Yours?” You can see the genuine curiosity in his eyes and your heart pangs at the caring side of him that you miss. 

“Yeah, thanks.” You pull your own hot chocolate towards you, looking up to Jimin to offer him a cookie. He insists you choose first with a wave of his hand and so you take the one closest to you between your fingers but you make no move to eat it yet. You hold the cookie delicately with your finger tips, as if it might break if you dare to hold it any tighter. Jimin has already taken a small bite from the top of the tree, careful to produce minimal crumbs, and you wonder if he even noticed the small star on top. You normally save that bit for last. “Why are we here, Jimin?” 

He pauses briefly mid-chew, eyes darting to yours and cheeks flushing pink. He swallows and wordlessly pushes the empty plate towards you, positioning it under your hands that are already starting to break up the cookie into smaller chunks. 

“I just wanted to see you,” he says, looking down into the foam on his hot chocolate. The words are in his chest and it’s taking longer than he would like to get them to come out. It’s the closest experience he’s ever had to that awful limbo of waiting to be sick, although the cookie helps keep the nausea at bay. “The last few months have been… hard,” he finally admits, looking out of the window to the empty street. There’s snow on the pavement and only a few tracks of footprints have distrubed it. He can pick yours out easily. “I’ve gone back over everything you said and I know it’s over,” he says, giving you a pointed look that eases your fears that he was going to try and win you back somehow. “But I just feel like there was still something left to be said, somehow? Maybe I just needed to see you one last time to know how I felt about it all.” 

He trails off, pensively drawing shapes into the tabletop with his fingertip. You use the moment of silence to take a sip of hot chocolate and hiss when it almost scolds your tongue, the sound snapping Jimin from his thoughts with a smirk aimed at the table. 

“And?” you ask when he still doesn’t say anything. “How do you feel? Now that we’re here?”

He frowns, finger stilling, but takes a few more seconds to look up at you. “I don’t know,” he says honestly, and you can hear the sincerity in his tone. “I thought I’d be sad to see you, thought I wouldn’t be able to forget what happened and would want you back, but,” he shrugs with one shoulder, looking down to his cookie as he snaps off an outcrop of branches. “I dunno. I don’t want us to get back together, I know I can’t trust you not to hurt me again.” You swallow thickly, willing the tears away despite the pain in your chest. You deserve to no longer have his trust, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear him say it out loud. “I think, seeing you now, I’ve realised I just… miss you.” He still holds the smaller piece of cookie between his finger and thumb but his eyes are on you, and you aren’t so successful this time in keeping back your tears. You’ve missed him, too. 

Jimin panics when the first tear rolls over the apple of your cheek, his earring shaking as he drops both pieces of his cookie on the table and reaches a hand out to wipe your cheek before hesitating midway over the table. You brush at your cheek with your own hand, offering him a watery smile as you pick up one of your own broken bits of biscuit. 

“Sorry,” you breathe. “I’ve missed you, as well. It’s nice to know you’ve missed me, too, even though I don’t deserve it.” Jimin’s features soften and he goes to speak, but you cut him off, scared you won’t get your words out if you don’t do this now. “I know I was the one who ended it, I was the one who fell out of love with you and hurt you and broke up with you, but I still missed my friend,” you look up at him and see a soft smile on his lips, his cheek resting in his palm as he watches you. 

You briefly wonder if he’s enjoying seeing you hurting, then you remember he isn’t like that at all. He’s just happy to see you letting out the emotions you’ve been holding in for weeks. 

“I’ve missed my friend, too,” he says quietly as he reaches out to place his free hand over yours, stopping you from completely crumbling the biscuit in your hands. “That’s what I’ve realised. I think that’s why I’ve been struggling so much, because- yes, I was hurting and heartbroken and all that,” you almost laugh at how casually he says it now, a blase wave of his hand as if he’s talking about a minor inconvenience to his day. “But I didn’t realise how much I missed my friend. I think I made my peace with the break up a while ago,” he admits, his hand still on yours but you don’t shake him off, finding comfort in the weight of his palm over your fingers. “I could sort of accept that you didn’t love me anymore, because those things happen and you were honest about it. But I was still grieving, and it’s been so confusing trying to figure out why it wasn’t going away even when my head was telling me I understood it all.” 

You brush your fingers together to rid them of crumbs before turning your hand to hold his, your fingers wrapping around his palm. 

“I felt the same,” you say, Jimin’s gaze flicking up to yours from the vague spot in space he’s been staring at. “I thought I’d done the right thing; it was eating me up inside, knowing I didn’t feel the same anymore and I knew breaking up was the best thing to do. But then I went to college, and I met loads of new people and I thought, ‘This is great, I’ll be fine in no time.’ But I just couldn’t shake the feeling something was missing, something was wrong somehow, and I started thinking I’d made a mistake. Started thinking I shouldn’t have broken up with you, that I should have tried harder or something,” Jimin squeezes your hand gently, his skin still as soft as you always remembered it. You brace yourself for the words you know you have to say, for both of you. “I don’t love you anymore, and I know you’ll fall out of love with me soon, if you haven’t already. You’ll get over me and move on, and we’ll both be fine. I know we said goodbye months ago, but that was as partners; a boyfriend and a girlfriend saying goodbye. I think it’s time for us to say goodbye as friends, too.”

Jimin feels you pull your hand from his and he freezes, scared that you’ll get up and leave him here with two cooling hot chocolates and broken cookies, but you simply lift your cup to take a sip, needing the distraction. He considers your words as his hand slowly retreats back across the table, curling around his own cup but not lifting it. 

“I don’t mean we can’t be friends,” you say, neither of you able to look at each other. “But I think we need to say goodbye to the friendship we’re both mourning. I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to that, and I don’t want either of us to desperately hang onto it when we could be moving forward, figuring out a new friendship instead.”

Jimin catches the hopeful tone in your voice and finds his heart soothing itself from the gallop it was building up to. You don’t want to cut him out, thank God, but you’re right: he needs to let go of what you had before, so you can both make room for what you could have in the future. 

Outside, it starts to snow, and he watches the first few snowflakes fall around each other in their flurries. He figures they’re very similar to you and him in the way they dance around each other in their own spirals. That’s how you will be from now on; the two of you will be following your own paths through life, and you may come close to one another or you both may drift away on different flows of the breeze. 

Either way, he’s sure it will be beautiful. 

“Thank you,” he says finally, biting back a laugh when he turns to see you with a mouthful of cookie and a half-empty mug. You never could sit still when he got lost in his daydreams.

You smile shyly, cheeks flushing, and for the first time Jimin feels just that little bit lighter when he lets himself laugh. He needed this conversation with you, needed to talk it through with the only person who would understand. Knowing that you can - and will - stay friends soothes him, dulling the ache in his chest to just a bit of discomfort, and he knows it’s now possible for it to go away completely with a bit more time. 

He walks home an hour and another two hot chocolates later. You paid for your own, adamant he had to start treating you like Jungkook instead of his girlfriend, although you revoked this when he said he would have made Jungkook pay for his drinks, too. His chest is warmer now than it was earlier, although whether that’s from the lifted weight, the three hot chocolates or the hug you gave him before you parted ways, he’s not sure. 

If you would like to read any of my other works, please follow me and head on over to my masterlist ♡

[nyabby-keromatsu-kimori]

Bittersweetshipping Week 2021 - Day 2 - Stargazing

“That was such an intense battle!!” Kiawe shouted for the tenth time in the span of five minutes, pumping his fists in the air. “Now I’m all fired up!!”

“You know, you could always just ask Kukui if you can battle Incineroar,” Sophocles reminded him. When the match had first ended, Sophocles had been just as hyped up as Kiawe, but it had been a long day and everybody (apart from Kiawe, apparently) was starting to feel a little worn out.

It was seemingly a regular old Saturday, and for some reason Kukui had decided to treat the entire class (which admittedly was a pretty small group now that there were only 4 of them) to a day out. They’d been all around Alola, taking tours of Lush Jungle and Poni Canyon, having lunch at a very fancy restaurant and getting exclusive front row seats to the Masked Royal’s latest match. The group was now sitting outside the arena, waiting for Kukui to finish up backstage so that they could meet up with Burnet and Lei at a local restaurant for dinner.

“But don’t you think it’s kinda weird?” Sophocles asked. “I mean, Kukui’s always super nice to us, but this whole big day out thing is kind of a lot, especially since he’s been paying for everything. It all kinda just came out of nowhere…”

“Maybe he has something planned?” Kiawe suggested. “Or maybe today is special for some reason, like some kind of anniversary or something.”

“If that were the case, wouldn’t he wanna spend it with his family instead?”

“Guys, can you just drop it?” Lana snapped, taking her eyes off of Mallow for the first time all day in order to glare at the boys. Unlike them, she knew exactly why Kukui had been putting so much effort into keeping everybody occupied and distracted today, and the last thing any of them needed was to draw attention to it-

Suddenly, Mallow silently stood up and started walking away.

“Mallow? Where are you going?”

Mallow stopped when her name was said, but didn’t turn to look at anybody. “I-I’m, uh, just getting some fresh air!” she replied with a shaky voice before breaking into a run.

“But we’re outside??” Sophocles questioned, but his comment only earned him another glare from Lana, who quickly stood up and went after Mallow.

Mallow had already disappeared from view at this point, but Lana knew of a few places that Mallow might go to in order to be alone. It took a few tries to find the right one, and by the time she reached the small hill, the sun had already finished setting, the stars starting to emerge. Lana walked slowly so as not to startle Mallow, who was curled up in a ball, holding her legs to her chest and burying her face in her arms. As she got closer, she could hear the sobs that Mallow was desperately trying to muffle, a sound which always broke Lana’s heart no matter how many times she’d heard it.

Lana sat down next to Mallow, giving her some space but still staying within arm’s reach. They sat in silence for a bit as Lana tried to think of something to say, before Mallow lifted her head slightly and broke the silence.

“I thought it would get easier…”

“Hm?” Lana softly hummed, gently encouraging Mallow to continue.

“Thanks to Tapu Fini…I got to talk to her…get closure…and it’s been 8 years…but I still can’t get through the day without crying…” Mallow’s voice was quiet, unsteady, and she choked up a little. “She wouldn’t want me to cry…”

“There’s nothing wrong with being sad about losing a family member,” Lana gently reminded her. “Especially on the anniversary of her death.”

Mallow curled up more, making herself look smaller. Lana knew from experience that this specific movement and posture usually indicated that Mallow didn’t want to be touched at the moment, so instead Lana looked around for something to distract her with.

“Hey, look, it’s a Rayquaza.”

“Just the constellation though, right?” Mallow tilted her head slightly to look at Lana. Lana gave her a cheeky grin and a wink, and despite how low she felt, Mallow couldn’t ignore how her heart skipped a beat and was kind of glad that her face was already flushed from crying.

Lana pointed up at the sky. “And look, the Drampa constellation!”

Mallow glanced up at where she was pointing, then back at Lana, looking a bit confused. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that one…”

“And next to it is the Tsareena constellation!”

Mallow chuckled a little, smiling fondly at her best friend. “Okay, now you’re definitely just making it up.”

Lana shrugged. “Aren’t all constellations made up?”

“…yeah. I guess so,” Mallow replied. She knew Lana was just trying to distract her, and while it was only partially working, Lana’s presence and the fact that she cared enough to go to so much effort definitely helped her feel better. Eventually, she looked away in order to follow Lana’s gaze, staring up at the stars. “So, what other constellations are up there?”

--------

( @bittersweet-week​ )

[beholdme]

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 10

Chapters: 10/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can’t help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

"When was the last time we saw Gerry?" Jon asks in a panic. Martin looks up from the other side of the dinner table. The pair of them are at their typical Thursday night date, in Jon’s favourite Italian restaurant.

They had previously been studying their menus, but Martin had felt Jon’s tension from the moment they met outside the library. It wasn't exactly surprising, considering the recent developments in their relationship, but he was still acutely aware of it.

“You saw him yesterday morning before work, and I saw him today when he came into the bookstore to drink tea and read an entire book without buying it.” Martin reminds him. He’s already told Jon about seeing Gerry today, and he was there when they had all said goodbye the previous morning.

Martin is fairly sure that Jon’s issue is more with the fact that Gerry was pale and tear-soaked as Martin had kissed him goodbye, and that Gerry had clung to Jon like an oversized barnacle as they rocked together for a final moment before they both left him alone to his thoughts. Martin knew he had slept and painted, or at least, that was what Gerry had told him in the quiet moments Martin had taken to spend with him in between the aisles of books that morning.

“You should go over and see him if you’re concerned. We could go to the bar after we eat, and then you can go stay the night with him.” Martin tells him gently, nudging his foot under the table.

"Maybe it would be better for Gerry if you go alone," Jon replies quietly, staring at his menu and refusing to make any kind of eye contact.

Martin closes and sets aside his own menu, leaning forward on the table to focus his full attention on the idiot love of his life.

"Why? Because he and I sleep together and you think that makes our intimacy more important? Or because you perceive it's your fault that his heart is broken and because of that you think you don't deserve to feel any comfort you might get from seeing him?" Jon goes shock still at Martin's words, eyes simply downcast now, instead of pretending to read the menu they both have memorized. "Or was it both at the same time?"

"Yellow," Jon says unhappily.

Only Jonothan Sims could safeword out of a conversation. Martin thinks tartly. I bet he learnt that from Gerry.

Martin sighs and leans back, out of Jon's atmosphere. "I won't push a conversation you don't want to have, love, but you have to know that neither of those things is true."

"No?" Jon snaps, finally jerking his head up to look at Martin. "Not even you can deny that I demanded that confession. I don't know what I expected him to say-" Jon cuts off, words choked off. "But not… Not that. Not those awful, horrifying things. All that trauma dragged out and put on display like some kind of, of-" Jon stutters to a halt, pressing his eyes tightly closed as if to escape the thought that anyone had ever laid hands on their bright, beautiful boy.

"Like some kind of bloody museum exhibit? You couldn't have guessed. And you have a right to closure as much as anyone." Martin says emphatically. He reaches out to clasp their hands together, and Jon thankfully allows the contact. "No one could ever look at Gerry and guess that those skeletons live in his closet. That he hides those scars behind his sweet smiles and paint-stained hands."

"I was there, Martin. I was with him the night before he ran away. He already knew, had already decided to go, and I didn't notice." Jon bites out the final words, bringing his hand down on the table in frustration. It's the ultimate recrimination in his own mind.

"You can't know what you've never been told Jon, you aren't omniscient. You can't know what Gerry and I are thinking and feeling unless we tell you. Just like Gerry and I can't know what you're feeling when you avoid telling us things." Martin sighs, the exhaustion of several days of tears and worry dragging down on him. "We can pick up on it sometimes though, and we aren't scared teenagers anymore. Gerry will know you're avoiding him if you send me to check on him tonight and it will hurt him. If you're committed to him, and I know you are, then you owe him your bravery now. We all have to overcome our insecurities if we want to make this work."

Jon and Martin sit looking at each other for a few heavy seconds.

"I don't feel brave," Jon whispers across the space between them.

"I know, my love. Neither do I. But we are." Martin lifts Jon's hand to press a kiss to Jon's palm, just as Gerry had on their initial date in the bar. "We can be brave together, the three of us."

*

Gerry is not at work. They share a look of sinking fear when they don't find him working his shift at the bar.

He is at home when they let themselves into his loft, much to their relief. His posture and the general disarray fills Jon, especially, with fresh anxiety.

He leans against his art table, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the most jarring painting Jon and Martin have ever seen him create. If the angry swirls of color and violent-looking paint slashes even constitute a painting.

Gerry is wearing the same going-out clothes he had been wearing when Martin had seen him earlier, rather than his typical comfortable home clothes. He is covered in paint, and his makeup is smeared across his eyes from repeated rubbing.

Martin nudges Jon in Gerry's direction and moves off towards the kitchen.

"I do not want tea, Martin." Gerry's quiet voice manages to fill the space, hollow and empty, much like his facial expression.

"Good," He responds, hardly missing a beat. "I was going to look for the whiskey."

"Stop looking like a kicked puppy Jon, you didn't do anything wrong," Gerry says to him, offering his cigarette. Jon eyes the doorway that Martin just disappeared through, but ultimately goes over and takes it. They lean together, shoulder to shoulder, smoking and each trying to draw warmth from the other.

"Do you know what I thought about for years after you left?" Jon eventually whispers softly.

"What?"

"That last night we were together. Do you remember?"

Gerry laughs breathlessly at the question, pressing his eyes shut and curling slightly in on himself. "Yes Jon, I remember. How could I ever forget."

"That was the last time I had sex." Gerry finally looks over at him, no shock, no visible reaction at all really, but his attention focuses on him. Jon focuses his own attention on the painting, which is easier to look at than Gerry's face right now, despite its discordant energy. "I could never let go of that feeling I had after; like we were one soul separated by our ridiculous bodies. Like our intimacy, however desperate and hormonal, brought us closer together than anything else we could ever do together in this life."

Jon releases the confession into the room around them, finally releasing himself from the weight of it.

"And then I was gone," Gerry whispers back, voice small.

"And then you were gone. I was never very interested in sex as it was, and then even when I was in relationships after that, I never wanted to risk lying in someone's arms and finding a hole where that feeling should have been. Or maybe even worse, finding it there again, as if what we had wasn't as special as I had thought, and that was why you had just been able to walk away so easily."

"It wasn't. It was the worst thing I ever did."

"I know that now," Jon says, taking a long, grounding drag of his cigarette, "But that was the fear that sat in my chest and kept that wound bleeding, right up until the day that I watched you walk out of my library stacks, like some kind of literary saviour, reborn from my desire and ink and old parchment paper."

Gerry pushes off from the table they are perching on. "I understand if you don't want this anymore. I wouldn't want to be with me, either, if I were you."

"Gerry-" Jon tries to cut him off, but he plows on ahead, apparently deciding to just get the words out from where they've been suffocating him.

"You can keep Martin, obviously, you knew him first. You two were happy together before I plowed into your lives like a fucking freight train."

Martin himself, listening in the other room, doesn't particularly appreciate Gerry attempting to hand him off like a negotiating chip, but keeps his opinions to himself for the time being, in the hopes that Jon will handle the situation.

Jon watches Gerry for a moment as he starts moving things around, shoulders tense and movements aggressive. He rolls his next words very carefully around his mouth before he allows himself to speak.

"You did plow into our lives like a freight train." Gerry releases a sound of distress at the repeated words, and Jon slowly walks up to him and takes his shaking hands, turning Gerry towards him and hoping to finally encourage eye contact between them. "But we don't think that's a bad thing. We love you, Gerry Delano. I love you. I loved you when you were Gerard Keay, and I love you now and I loved you in a tiny box in my heart for all the years we were apart. I would be an idiot if I let this hurt between us keep us apart for any longer than it already has, and the last thing I could ever want is to watch you walk out of my life again."

Tears slip down Gerry's messy cheeks and Jon reaches up to brush them gently away.

"Please," Jon begs him, voice hoarse. "Please stay with me, please keep us here in your loft and teach me to paint my nails and be brave. Let Martin braid your hair and keep going into his store to read his books without buying them."

For a moment they simply stand, tears pouring from Gerry's tightly shut eyes while Jon clings to him and tries desperately to occupy the same space in the universe as Gerry does.

Gerry's eyes open slowly, teal irises only enhanced by the brightness of his tears.

"Yes," he tells Jon.

"Yes? You'll stay with us?"

"Yes. Always." Gerry pulls Jon further into his embrace and they cling together, crying quietly.

"Thank God," Martin mutters in the next room, running his hands up his face and through his hair in relief. Shaking it out and releasing the tension that had wound itself up in his gut, he gets up and starts moving about with purpose.

"Is Martin cooking?" Gerry asks incredulously as the scent of frying bacon reaches them through their tearful haze.

"Oh," Jon says, glancing up at the kitchen doorway. "I guess so. We never ate any dinner."

"Why not?" Gerry asks, sniffling.

Jon sighs, full of gratitude and long-suffering. "Because Martin wouldn't stop emotionally stripping me naked in public."

Gerry laughs wetly, imagination running wild.

"Also," he says, full of exhausted affection. "Because we love you."

"Oh." Gerry curls around Jon even more. "I'm glad."

*

Martin feeds them, and sends Gerry to shower, and puts on a movie for Jon to start. He doesn't touch any of the art things, but he tidies a little as he hovers around, waiting for him to emerge from the bathroom.

When he does, Gerry looks much, much better. The smudged makeup and paint are washed away, and his hair is wet. It all combines to make Gerry look very young, and Martin is reminded that he is actually the youngest of them, despite always seeming so settled into his life.

Martin takes his hand and tugs him towards the lounge section of the big main space.

"Martin, I-" Gerry starts.

"Not now, love. You and I will sort things out later when you've slept and had time to process everything else." Martin's tone doesn't invite any argument, and Gerry's teeth snap together as he closes his mouth.

The movie plays, but Gerry sleeps through it and so does Jon, mostly.

As the credits roll, Martin giggles to find himself somewhat drowning in sleeping men, despite the quiet heaviness still hanging in the air. Jon wakes at the motion, since Martin is almost directly beneath him, and yawns and stretches.

"How are we going to get our lumberjack to bed?" Jon asks, eyeing Gerry's long form with some trepidation.

"I could carry him, probably," Martin says, with no real confidence.

"Please don't," Gerry mutters into the side of Martin's neck, where his face is buried.

"Ah, problem solved," Jon says, leaning over Martin to kiss Gerry.

Martin hopes they wake each enough to walk to bed, lacking the desire to carry anyone anywhere at this time of night. Especially up the stairs to Gerry's loft, where the bed lives.

They make it up to the bedroom eventually, and collapse together, sleeping soundly through the night.

*

Gerry doesn't always like lying in the middle when all three of them are in bed together, being the warmest and the longest of the three of them, but the next morning that's where he finds himself.

The window lets in the cool, gentle light of pre-dawn, and Gerry shifts around, trying to orientate himself.

Jon is lying right on his edge, on his stomach, absolutely dead to the world, a halo of wavy black and silver hair surrounding him chaotically.

Martin is lying on his back, one arm threaded through Gerry's, the other thrown over his head. He breathes deeply, but shifts periodically, as if unsettled. Gerry turns towards Martin, bare chest pressing against his shoulder and feels dread settle into his stomach as he watches his partner sleep fitfully.

Gerry knows he won't be going back to sleep, but doesn't even consider getting up and moving away from the men in his bed.

Martin stirs at his movement, moving his arm to curl around his waist and draw him in close. Gerry buries his face in Martin's shoulder, arm thrown across his waist.

"What’s the time, Ger?" He mutters.

"Early still. Almost six." He whispers in return, peering over Martin to check the bedside clock.

He groans. "You alright?"

Gerry hums back, pressing a kiss to Martin's chest since it's so conveniently close by.

They lie together for a while, cuddled up close, sharing body heat and gentle comfort, until eventually, Martin surfaces properly, mostly to use the bathroom.

He comes back with a glass of water, which Gerry shares with him before they settle back as they were before.

Martin runs his fingers through Gerry's hair and Gerry traces patterns along Martin's chest through his shirt.

"I'm sorry," Gerry whispers into the cool semi-darkness.

"For having a breakdown?" Martin's tone is carefully even, although he continues to hold Gerry close.

"No, not that."

"You mean the part where you assured Jon he could keep me as if I were an unwanted child in a divorce. A feeling I'm plenty familiar with, actually." The carefully natural tone continues, and Gerry presses his fingers into Martin's side, hurt sliding through him at his own stupidity. His heart breaks to imagine how the careless words had made Martin feel.

"That's not what I meant." His voice is small and he hates the useless words, but he can't push any others out.

"Don't worry about it. I'll admit, I do normally prefer to be involved in the plans for my own future, but I'll let it slide this time." Martin smiles just a little, an edge of bitterness creeping in. “On the grounds of emotional distress.”

"Martin…" Gerry presses the word into his skin, curling even closer.

"I'll ask you this though. Did you really think I would just walk away with Jon after what's been between us?" Martin's voice finally, finally breaks just a little. Through the entire Mary confession, Jon's emotional struggle, their confrontations, and the oceans of tears, Martin had been completely steady, calm, logical, never falling into the erratic emotions of his partners, but this is what finally gets to him.

"I-I don't know what I thought. I guess I just couldn't fathom at that moment that you and Jon could ever want me again." Gerry slides his hand up, curling it around Martin's face and drawing it down to face him. "I'm broken, Martin, and I don't want my brokenness to break you."

Martin signs softly, turning over towards him, so they press together. Their foreheads touch and he kisses him gently, just once.

“You are not broken. What happened to you is fucked up, and anyone can understand you being messy and volatile sometimes, especially with how balanced you normally are. Maybe next time, ask us how we feel. Instead of, you know, staying up for two days, trashing your flat, and coming to my job to say goodbye to me without actually telling me anything.”

“Noticed that, did you?” Gerry asks, flushing.

“Yes, love. The complete lack of flirting, winking, and ass grabbing rather gave it away. You also paid for your drink. Very out of character.”

Gerry laughs and presses closer into him. “I have to keep you in business. Got to pay for something.”

Martin squeezes him reassuringly, rubbing their noses together.

They are quiet for a moment, and Martin frowns in consideration, before going on. “You and Jon aren't the only catalysts here. I would have fought for you if Jon wanted to pack it in and walk away. I chose you just as much as I chose Jon. Just as much as you chose me. Please remember that the next time you're tempted to treat me like a pawn in this arrangement, because I am not.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Gerry tells him, sincerity heavy in his voice.

“Then we'll say no more about it.”

[xxcxcs-blog]

Everything You Need to Stock an at-Home Bar

So you finally found the bar cart of your dreams, and you’ve loaded it up with your favorite liquor. While those are two very important steps to curating an at-home bar, to really make your setup recall that of your favorite watering hole, you’re going to want to add some barware and cocktail equipment. But that can be an intimidating task, especially if you’ve had more experience drinking cocktails than making them. The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money. “Most people in their home bar really don’t need that many tools,” advises Joaquín Simó, a partner at New York City’s Pouring Ribbons who was named Tales of the Cocktail’s American Bartender of the Year in 2012. “I say you start with the absolute basics and concentrate on the things that you like to use.”

If you’re in a pinch, Martin Hudak, a bartender at Maybe Sammy, says you can always use bartender tools you may already have on hand: “For your shaken cocktails, you can use empty jam jars or a thermos flask. For measuring, spoons and cups, and for stirring, any spoon or back of a wooden ladle.” But Stacey Swenson, the head bartender at Dante (which currently holds the No. 1 spot on the World’s 50 Best Bars list), notes that if you’re going to put stuff on display, you might want gear that’s both practical and stylish. “You want something that’s functional and also something that’s pretty,” she says. “If you’re putting it on your bar cart, you kind of put on a show for your guests.” With the help of Simó, Hudak, Swenson, and 28 other experts, we’ve put together the below list of essential gear for any cocktail-lover’s home bar.

Editor’s note: If you want to support service industry workers who have been impacted by the coronavirus closures, you can donate to the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation, which has set up a COVID-19 Crisis Relief Fund, or One Fair Wage, which has set up an Emergency Coronavirus Tipped and Service Worker Support Fund. We’ve also linked to any initiatives the businesses mentioned in this story have set up to support themselves amid the coronavirus pandemic.

According to Simó, all shakers “technically do the same thing, and there are very cheap and very nice versions,” so there’s really no superior option when it comes to function. That said, many professional bartenders use Boston-style shakers, which are basically two cups that fit into each other and form a tight seal to keep liquid from splashing all over you. “If you want to look like a bartender at Death & Co. or PDT, and you want the same kit, then you’re probably going to go metal-on-metal,” or “tin-on-tin,” Simó notes. Six of our experts recommend these weighted tin-on-tin shakers — which come in a range of finishes, including copper and silver — from Cocktail Kingdom, a brand that nearly every bartender we spoke to praised for its durable, well-designed barware. Grand Army’s beverage director, Brendan Biggins, and head bartender, Robby Dow, call this “the gold standard” of shaking tins. “Behind the bar, there’s almost nothing worse than shaker tins that don’t seal well or don’t separate easily,” explains Krissy Harris, the beverage director and owner of Jungle Bird in Chelsea. “The Koriko Weighted Shaking tins seal perfectly every time and easily release,” she says. And because they’re weighted, they’re less likely to fall over and spill.

For some people, a two-piece setup like the above shakers might be tricky to use comfortably. “Say you’re a petite female — if you have very small hands, then maybe using a Boston-style shaker may be a little harder,” explains Simó. In that case, a cobbler shaker may be the better choice, because it’s smaller than a Boston-style shaker and thus easier to hold. The other convenient part of a cobbler-style shaker is that the strainer is already built into the lid, so you don’t necessarily have to spring for an additional wine tools. Karen Lin, a certified sommelier, sake expert, and the executive general manager of Tsukimi, suggests this shaker from Japanese barware brand Yukiwa. “The steel is very sturdy, and the shape fits perfectly in my hands,” she says. “It is also designed well so you can take it apart easily to clean.”

You know how James Bond always ordered his martinis shaken, not stirred? Well, if you were to ignore Mr. Bond’s order and make a stirred martini — or any other stirred cocktail, like a Negroni or a Manhattan — you’d set aside the shaker to use a mixing beaker instead. A mixing beaker is essentially a large vessel in which you dump your liquors and mix your drink. And though you can purchase handsome crystal ones for hundreds of dollars, both Simó and Swenson agree that they’re kind of superfluous for a basic bar kit. “I don’t think you should spend any more than $25 on a mixing glass,” says Swenson. Harris agrees, saying that since they are the most broken item behind the bar, you should stick to a well-priced option like this mixing glass from Hiware that “doesn’t have a seam, so it’s stronger and very attractive.”

One of Simó’s hacks to getting a glass mixing beaker for not that much money is to use the glass piece from a French press, which is something else you might already own. If you want a dedicated one for your bar cart (that could serve as a backup for your French press), he says you can buy a replacement glass like this one, which has a capacity that is particularly useful if you’re making drinks for a lot of people. “I generally will take one or two of the big guys with me when I’m doing events, because then I can stir up five drinks in one, and it’s really convenient,” Simó explains.

According to Paul McGee, a co-owner of Lost Lake in Chicago, “finding vintage martini pitchers is very easy, and they are perfect for making large batches of cocktails.” Plus, they’ll look more visually striking on your bar cart. This one is even pretty enough to use as a vase when it’s not filled with punch. The photo shows the pitcher next to a strainer, but you’re only getting the pitcher for the price shown.

If you’re making a stirred drink, a mixing or bar set spoon is also necessary. “Three basic styles exist: the American bar spoon has a twisted handle and, usually, a plastic cap on the end, the European bar spoon has a flat muddler/crusher, and the Japanese bar spoon is heavier, with a weighted teardrop shape opposite the bowl,” explains Joe Palminteri, the director of food and beverage at Hamilton Hotel’s Via Sophia and Society. None of our experts recommended specific American-style bar spoons, but Simó told us that one of his favorite Japanese-style spoons is this one made by bartender Tony Abou-Ganim’s Modern Mixologist brand. “It’s got a really nice, deep bowl to it, which means you’re able to measure a nice, level teaspoon” without searching through your drawers, according to him. Simó continues, “The little top part of it has a nice little weight to it, but it’s not too bulky. So it gives you a really nice balance as you’re moving the mixing spoon around,” making your job a little easier.

Should your at-home bartending require a lot of muddling, Swenson recommends getting a European-style spoon like this, which he says will still allow you to stir while eliminating the need to buy a dedicated muddler. “You can actually use the top of the spoon to crush a sugar cube if you wanted to for your old-fashioned. I have one of those, so I don’t have to have two tools; I’ve got both of them right there.”

You don’t necessarily need a strainer if you’re using a cobbler shaker, since it’s already got a strainer built into the lid. But if you’re using a Boston-style shaker, you should get what’s called a Hawthorne strainer to make sure the ice you used to chill your drink doesn’t end up in your glass and dilute the cocktail. Three experts recommend this one, including Lynnette Marrero, the beverage director of Llama Inn and Llama-San and the co-founder of Speed Rack, who says it’s her absolute favorite because “it is light and easy to clutch and close correctly.” If you choose to buy this Hawthorne strainer, Simó also recommends getting “the replacement springs that Cocktail Kingdom sells,” telling us they’re a good way to give a worn-out strainer a face-lift. “They’re really, really nice and tight, and you can generally slip them into any Hawthorne strainer that you have.”A jigger is what you use to measure the liquor into the shaker or mixing glass. A hyperfunctional, albeit nontraditional-looking, option is the mini measuring wine decante from OXO. “I know some bartenders, including the ones at Drink in Boston, one of the best bars in the country, swear by those graduated OXO ones because they love the ability to read them from both the sides and the top,” explains Simó. “You can measure in tablespoons or ounces or milliliters, and it’s all on the same jigger.” Part-time bartender Jillian Norwick and Ward both love it too and keep the stainless steel version on hand (which looks a little nicer when left out). Noriwck adds that she’s in good company: “The peeps at Bon Appétit love it.”This fancy-looking jigger combines the functional appeal of the OXO measuring wine glass (it’s basically a cup that grows wider to accommodate different amounts of liquid) with the aesthetic appeal of a classic bar tool. It also makes measuring a snap: “This handy measuring bar table and stools is super-easy to use and enables the imbiber to essentially build all the ingredients of a drink in one go,” says Confrey.If you’re going for a more classic look but still want something practical, Simó recommends this double-sided metal jigger that has a one-ounce cup on one side and a two-ounce cup on the other. The one-ounce side on this strainer also has a half- and three-quarter-ounce lines etched into it to make it even more precise. “That gives you a lot of wiggle room” and will allow you to measure for most basic cocktails, Simó says. “From there, you really just have to learn what a quarter-ounce looks like in there, and you’re pretty much good to go.”

Biggens, Dowe, and Swenson prefer a Leopold jigger, which has a unique bell shape (with one bell holding an ounce, and the other two ounces) as well as lines etched on the inside marking both quarter- and half-ounces. “They’re really easy to hold and they have some weight to them,” Swenson adds. “Somebody who’s not really experienced using a jigger is going to be fine with something with a little bit more weight to it. And they look cool.”

Though it’s easy to want to get a different type of glass for every type of drink you make, that’s really unnecessary when you’re first starting out. According to Simó, “You can make 90 percent of drinks into a good, all-purpose cocktail glass like a rocks or a collins glass.” (While this section contains our bartenders’ favorite glasses, if you want to shop around, you can find most of these styles at various price points in our list of the best drinking glasses.) A collins — or highball — glass is the one that looks like a chimney, and generally you’re looking for something that’s about 12 ounces, like these collins glasses from bartender-favorite brand Cocktail Kingdom. “You don’t want a 16-ounce Collins glass because you’re going to be hammered after your second Tom Collins,” advises Simó.

[curiousconch]

Come Find Me

Epilogue Ricochet (An Open Heart AU) 

Catch up here: Series Masterlist 

Chapter Synopsis: With Bryce and Heather miles apart, will they find their way to each other again? 

Pairing: Bryce Lahela x MC (Dr. Heather Song) 

Words: 1.9k+ | Genre: Crime, Suspense/Thriller, Romance

Rating/Warnings: Mature (16+) / language, implications of mental health issues

Author's Notes: This is the last installment of Ricochet, my first ever fanfiction series. Thank you for every single person who took the time to read, comment and reblog! Working on this story has helped me recover from a slump, and I hope in its own special way, it did the same thing for you.

Also, disclaimer: Majority of the characters are owned by Pixelberry, except the main character Heather Song.

23 Months Later

It was a long time coming, but the lonely nights and hard work has paid off for ADA Bryce Lahela. Well, District Attorney Lahela, as of that day.

With his relentless pursuit of grandslamming all cases, he was officially promoted. And ever since, Bryce Lahela was on a roll.

First, Jordan Peter Anderson was contrite, yet still convicted for life imprisonment on two counts of attempted murder and one count each of kidnapping and stalking. He would be transferred to a mental health facility however, due to needed psychiatric treatments.

Guilty.

Second, Declan Nash was found guilty by a grand jury on conspiring to kidnap and murder. Though he denied the allegations until the end, he wasn't spared from justice being served to him. To add insult to injury, his reduced sentence for his role in the Panacea scandal was also reversed when the Boston DA appealed for it.

Guilty.

Third, the Boston DA presented their case and helped senate managers to impeach Senator Ed Farrugia so he can no longer run for any public office moving forward. To save himself from further public prosecution, he plead guilty on counts of kidnapping and attempted murder.

Guilty.

On the sentencing trial of the the three main perpetrators, Bryce argued against bail and advocated for how much psychological damage has been made to the victim and their relatives, becoming the champion of the absent main victim, Heather Song. He succeeded to persuade the court to agree to the original terms. And Bryce, in his sharp gray suit as always, stood a little taller that day. But the latest scoop the press feasted on was the surprise federal conviction of the young DA's own parents, proven to have conspired with others to scheme against both Ed Farrugia and the Edenbrook doctor. This was announced by the federal court on Friday, almost two years after the almost fatal events. They both lost parole privileges and have been given hefty penalties by the FBI.

Bryce considered all of them a triumph. A satisfying closure to the bitter chapter of his life. Most importantly, it was a step closer to her. To reuniting with the love of his life.

Even in the middle of his newfound fame, it was her who motivated him. It was memories of her who helped him endure all those sleepless nights. Even the news of her triumphs in her field inspired him to work harder. When things went tough or didn't go his way, he would always think: what would she do if she was in his situation?

It has always been her.  And he missed her so much.

And on that final day of hearing, as the media clambered around him at the steps of Boston's city court, she was the only one in his mind. His head was kept cool even in the most stressful days by the simple thoughts of her.

Facing his adoring crowd, he thought of her and in a snap he was his usual confident self. Charming, even for the most livid of journalists with the sharpest of tongues. He addressed a barrage of questions about the latest development of the case. But a sudden, unexpected question made the ever-confident Bryce Lahela falter a little:

"What do you plan to do next, now that it's all over?"

In all of the past two years, if someone had asked him that very question, the answer would always be the same.

"I believe it's time to collect on the promise made to me by someone," he said with a smirk directed to the camera, consciously knowing that the person who needed to hear his remarks was listening. He excused himself and went on his way, several of those lens struggling to stay on his figure as he stepped inside his new sleek black car.

Hundreds of miles away, from a living room TV in Baltimore, a pair of hazel eyes watched the evening news earlier that afternoon. Still in her usual work clothes of a white ribbed turtleneck shirt and dark jeans, Heather Song couldn't help but grin back at the smug face of Bryce Lahela, chuckling as she held a glass of the same white wine that she once shared with him so many nights ago.

"Well I guess that's my queue to pack," she muttered to herself as she turned off the TV, and switching on her speakers. Shawn Mendes' crooning voice singing Fallin' All In You played in the background as she went to her bedroom, preparing for her long-awaited return to Boston.

As Heather collected her belongings, she thought of the life she built there in Baltimore. Living in a strange city with nothing to remind her of what she left in Boston was a surprisingly refreshing restart.

The first thing she did after moving in was to make an appointment for a therapist, who helped her deal with the trauma of everything she experienced. The months of consistently visiting her doctor helped her recuperate, as she worked on rebuilding the passion she somehow lost for a while when she left Edenbrook.

As she slowly found her strength again, she focused on her cancer research, providing a happy reprieve in her loneliness. The research she led has been lauded by the medical community as the most advance step medicine has made towards the cure for cancer. The plaque for which their team's efforts were recognized sat on a prominent shelf in the middle of her own office at Johns Hopkins. It was the work she was most proud of ever since she became a doctor. It was where she flourished, even more than as a diagnostician. In her video calls with her mentor in Edenbrook, she never forgot to thank Ethan for nudging her to the right direction. She often joked with Naveen as well, telling them they had good hindsight, and it was the best decision that she trusted them both.

Her friends frequently facetimed, often weekly and during drunken nights at Donahues. There was never a day that she didn't miss them.

Recalling the great times she has had in her isolation proved to be good for her. She was able to find herself once again, her mentors were right. Her career weren't overshadowed but instead shone in the months she spent by herself in Maryland.

Yet she missed this one person so much, but witnessing his career flourish certainly made it easier and the nights longing for him worth it. And she couldn't be more prouder. She watched every news coverage he was featured in, liked every post he was tagged in, asked for news of him from the gang once in a while. In her own subtle way, Heather continued to love him, even from afar.  But not knowing when and where she'd see him again ached her heart for so long. She tried to seek answers from him so many times, yet she wasn't able to dial his number.

She was in the middle of her thoughts when suddenly her doorbell rang.

"Must be Farley again," she sighed, lightly brushing back her now long brunette hair before she trudged to her entryway.

When she opened the door, she barely was only able to glance at her visitor before he dipped her down and kissed her.

The lips that pressed upon hers were soft and familiar. The visitor's scent she knew so well excited her, making her respond to the kiss. A couple of breathless minutes after, Heather can finally express her amazement, inviting the very much welcome guest inside.

"I told you I'd come find you," she said teasingly, beckoning him inside her apartment.

"There was no need, Heath, because my eyes never left you," Bryce winked at her and smiled his megawatt smile, making Heather melt inside. He was still wearing his gray suit from the press conference that afternoon, making it known that he flew straight to her after he wrapped up the case.

Bryce kept track of her, no matter how difficult. Sienna and Jackie had filled him in with updates from her, refusing to let go of his connection with her for the last two years as he waited and waited for the right time to reconnect.

It took a long time, yet finally, the months of waiting flew by fast. As if the calendar and the seasons anticipated their reunion.

Though it was agonizing to watch each other from afar, making their chosen path all the more difficult, it proved to be the final test needed for the love that they had. Distance and time apart can either make you or break you, but for them, it only made them long for each other more.

Not even for a second did Heather look at someone else, she was Bryce's alone, as promised. And she knew that, finding him tonight in her doorstep, it was the same for him.

As they stood in Heather's living room, staring at each other to trace the tiny changes in their appearances since the day they saw each other last, the unspoken longing was more than they could bear.

He pulled her once again in his arms and held Heather tight, savoring the jasmine scent of hers that he missed so much in the past. She wrapped her arms around his waist in return, finally able to lean on his warmth after so many cold nights.

"I hope you didn't mind me barging in here without so much of a warning," Bryce whispered into her ear, as he tucked his head in between the nape of her neck. Heather silently shook her head, struggling to stop the happy tears from falling, leaning into the warmth of the man whose arms she longed be in for a long time. "I couldn't wait a second more to move on from what happened and just be together, you and me, no hospital, no stupid senators, no overbearing parents, no threats, just us." Bryce said softly, almost afraid that this wasn't all real. He dreamt about this moment so much that he thought this might just be his imagination, conjured by the many sleepless and lonely days of the path they chose for themselves.

"I'd love that so much, Bryce," Heather spoke gently into his ear, hoping that those few words were more than enough to convey that this was real, and that the warmth and love she still felt for him is still true since that fateful day in a Boston cafe.

His lips touched her nose, her cheeks, then found her mouth once again, thirsty of her after so long apart. Heather allowed him, tilting her head to deepen the kiss as her hands settled on the nape of his neck, fiery passion and warm tingling slowly rising inside.

There were no more games, no more lies. The worries of losing Heather disappeared, finding her in this new place but seeking his same old embrace, his same old kiss. Bryce felt joy and an overwhelming relief, that finally, finally, Heather was his, and him hers and hers alone.

The promise that it gets brighter from then on was uttered. And a vow that when the rain does come, they'd hold each other tighter. No more letting go. Like a stubborn bullet that never quite hit its target until now, Heather ricocheted off Bryce Lahela's walls and broke them down until he couldn't resist being hit anymore.

The tenacious, snarky, and smart woman in his arms hit him where it mattered the most. And he knew full well that not another day will be spent looking behind, just forward. Because finally, he found the right woman to fall all in for. And that's Heather freaking Song.

Fin. A/N 2: Sorry for the retag, but I had to repost this because I somehow got the initial version deleted. 😑😥 Tags: @eleanorbloom @ejustlurkshere​ @choicesficwriterscreations​ @openheartfanfics​

[originofjaehyun]

Prelude: After Story | Part 3 | Make Your Day

Prelude: After Story Masterlist

Word count: 4,330

Warnings: Suggestive

Part 3 | Make Your Day

“Just by your existence, you already shine radiantly like this.”

Prev

Read Interlude: No More Drama

Tag list: @justineasian​ @elauniesdream

A/N: I started Interlude: No More Drama series back in March, and I never knew that the series would go this far. Prelude: After Story is a mini-sequel that I actually didn’t plan –since I started to write Interlude during the Neozone era and I didn’t know how they would bring the repackage album, but truthfully I’m very proud of where it is. I think it is quite interesting to see things from Yuta’s POV! 

I hope you’re not bored at this, but I wish I could convey my gratitude better. I already wrote my thank you during the end of Interlude, but I’d like to say thanks again. Really, receiving warm messages especially during the current world situation does brighten up my day. So I hope that my writings could help to entertain you, to make your day (no puns intended hahaha).

This marks the end of Interlude: No More Drama and Prelude: After Story series! I personally think this is a milestone for me as a writer (especially this is one of my first published work). In the future, I would probably go cringe when I re-read this when I’m able to write a better story, but nevertheless this is the first stepping stone and it doesn’t change the fact that I will always feel proud of this. I really like how the story unfolds and how the character develops, and I think this is the perfect closure to end the series.

Thank you for loving them, and enjoying the ride with the characters!

Much love,

Dee

The same reaction, always, whenever Yuta received a guest.

You took a moment to admire his house. It’s late, but after stepping inside, you are greeted with the large window –displaying the amazing view of the cityscape.

He took off his suit, throwing it to the armchair. “Please be comfortable. Sorry for the sudden invitation, I realized I might be slightly pushy now that I've started to sober up. I can’t believe I let a woman drive me home.”

You giggled softly. “Please, gender shouldn’t prevent you from driving safely. Anyway, you have a very nice place.”

He scoffed. “It’s humble, but I like this place. The view is very charming from here. Well, sit down, I’ll grab our glasses and some ice.”

Of course, his apartment is anything but humble. You quickly scanned the room as you make your way to where he pointed his couch is. There are weird ornaments as a part of the house decorations here and there, like a vase with Japanese ceramic technique with a single dark crimson rose and few decorations of octopuses —you never knew how those could blend in together. Nevertheless, it has its own charm and the place screams his personality.

“Here,” He passes you a glass that is filled with caramel-colored liquid. The sound of the ice touching the glass snaps you from your daydream. “It’s Hibiki 12. I hope you don’t mind whiskey?”

You accepted the glass with both of your hands. “I’m good with anything. Out of curiosity though, do you always have a Japanese liquor on hand?”

A wide grin appears on his face, showcasing the perfectly aligned teeth. “To be precise, I always have Hibiki around because they are easier to drink. I managed to snatch a bottle of champagne and bourbon, though. Do you prefer those instead?”

“Would never refuse an invitation for a bottle of good quality champagne.”

“Seems like you’re a heavy drinker, Miss. I must say I think I’m pretty good at handling my alcohol, but I want to make sure there’s no accident tonight.”

You slightly flinched at his last sentence but managed to control your expression.

“Ah, I think just normal? I could manage if we could keep the pace slow –though I’m pretty sure that’s not what you wanted tonight.”

Yuta smirked, taking a seat on the floor across you. You followed him, taking a seat near him since it would be rude for you to remain seated on the couch while the house owner is being casual and sitting on the floor.

“Actually, not really.” He said while twirling his class, taking another sip. “I was thinking of taking it slow tonight.”

You shifted your stare to see him. “Is that so.”

While you thought it was quite careless for him to invite a stranger –technically you are up until the car ride where you briefly introduce each other– to his house, you’re not the one to talk since you also waltzed into his apartment without any second thoughts.

Both of you don’t mind the silence, as he continues to spin his middle finger around the rim of his glass. Either the alcohol starts to kick in, or he is consumed by his own thoughts. His cheeks start to flushed like cherry blossoms, and his mind is in a daze.

“I–” Yuta finally breaks the silence. “Was thinking a lot about my own feelings. On the contrary to my look, I think I’m actually the type of person who feels a lot. Most of the time I decide things based on my feelings.”

You didn’t respond, so there’s a momentary pause before he bridges his story together. You didn’t respond because you didn’t pay him any attention, but you just feel like right now what he needs is to let out his feelings, bare to the table.

“When I received my invitation, I feel like the ground below my feet shattered. But at the same time, it would be rude of me to reject it when she was so excited about her wedding. I was thinking how could this person be so dense to invite me that are still wallowing in sorrow?”

You took another sip of your whiskey, keeping your mouth shut while listening to his story.

“As I entered the venue today, each and every of my step seems harder. Like, I was regretting saying yes to her invitation.”

He then looked down at his almost empty glass. “Then I saw her face. And it feels like... all the answers that I’ve been looking for was there. That today was the day where I truly feel thankful that I made that decision. I’m glad she looked happy,”

He took another sip, finishing whatever left on his glass. “I’m glad that I could end this and make it into a proper memory.”

There it is.

The man in front of you smiled when he reached the end of his sentence. But you can see how that smile was wrapped in sadness.

You know by the way he talks, he is a man full of passion. His directness that is sometimes always too spontaneous. But it’s not the blazing-type of passion. Maybe because of his past, there’s always a trail of woe that surrounds him. That keeps him from burning his surroundings.

Like a blue flame.

“I’m sorry, it must be weird to suddenly listen to my sad story,” He said as he rises up. “Let me refill your glass. Should we take other liquor? I was thinking of switching it up to wine. I didn’t lie when I said there’s no more regret, but in order for me to truly accept it, I guess I kinda need to feel my feelings? I need something to dull the pain.”

“I thought you only stole bourbon and champagne?”

“You can’t call it a Nakamoto residence without a vast amount of alcohol gallery, you know?”

Finally, a hint of delight starts to replace the somber mood. “Again, I’m a guest so I’ll take anything. For your reference, though, I’m more of a red wine person.”

He curls his lips upwards, chiseling his well-structured cheekbones, “Got it. Also, please be more comfortable. I’m the one who suddenly invites you, after all.”

As he walks toward his wine fridge, you reactively rise up, about to offer your help. You’ve been sitting on your feet for quite a while, and your legs are definitely not ready for the sudden movement. You almost slip to the ground, but as if it was a shoujo manga, Yuta manages to catch you.

“Careful!” He said as he holds your upper arm, preventing you from falling.

It feels like the universe planned this all along, as cliche as it might sound.

You get to see his face, up close. The way his eyes pull you in, glistening from the alcohol that he had consumed.

It would be a lie if you told him that you’re not attracted. How could you not? The man in front of you is obviously good looking, but his demeanor, the way his voice travels through the air.

It was all just too alluring.

You avoided of the what-could-have-happened-next scenario by breaking the eye contact, looking away. It is a different case for Yuta. Because the sight of your neck, now burning in the vibrant pink flush is like an open invitation for him.

And he is not Yuta if he is not a decisive person.

He leans in, giving you a soft kiss on the lips. A kiss you didn’t see coming, but most definitely sending electrifying feels to your spine. A kiss that is mixed with the bitterness from alcohol. Yet Hibiki is sweet, so you long for more, kissing him back in the process.

The kiss that was started gently, suddenly rises up as both of you wanting for more. He dives in, checking if you felt the same way. You reciprocated, biting his lower lips. Asking him to pace up the speed.

You thought he would gladly eat you. To your disappointment, however, he separates his lips from yours.

“Are you fine with this?”

His whispers are gentle, yet able to give you goosebumps. He knows, that even under influence he should earn your consent before moving on to the next step. That surprises you because you thought the alcohol would turn him into a beast. But Yuta remains as a gentleman.

So you shyly give him a nod of approval, much to gain his wonderful smile. He leans forward to kiss you, but this time in a much more aggressive manner.

As he trails his lips to your neck, soft moans escape from your lips.

“Wait,” You stopped him half-way, which he only responded with a confused face. “Can we, uhm, perhaps move somewhere else? I… never done this… so I don’t know if I’m doing this right,”

Seeing how nervous you are, and the way you panicked over this, Yuta couldn’t help to chuckle softly. 

“Of course, that is rude of me,” He kissed your temple, followed by gentle strokes on your head. 

“Come.”

He stands up, offering his hand in which you immediately accept. He guides you to his room. His room didn’t shy away from being loud, some might even perceive it as odd since he opts to choose eccentric pieces to decorate his sanctuary. But everything seems to mesh well together with his plain beige wallpaper. There are a few unfinished canvases at the corner, most notably a painting of roses.

You were busy admiring his room to realize that he was waiting for you at the corner of his bed. Arms wide open ready to embrace you.

You giggled at the scene, but then you remember that you fall into his arms means it won’t stop at just there.

“Can I... use your bathroom first?”

You can feel the heat collecting on your cheek. You were embarrassed to ask such a question, but Yuta understands where you are coming from in a heartbeat, and you are glad for that.

“Please,” He said, gesturing to you to find his bathroom. “But once you’re done, we’re not stopping, yeah? I think I’ve been good for being patient, don’t you think?”

You smiled at his remarks. “I’ll be quick.”

You practically skipped your way to the bathroom. You checked yourself, at least making sure you smell pleasant. Then before leaving the bathroom door, you took your time in front of the sink. Contemplating with yourself in the mirror.

You are about to fuck Yuta.

The words repeated inside your head but soon vanished at the sight of a foreign object. Not that you are used to his apartment, but everything in his apartment was coated with his character, except this dainty jewelry.

It was a delicate, simple rose gold earrings. You noticed that Yuta rocks multiple piercings on both of his ears. But none are this delicate. It seems these were too plain for his liking.

Who am I to judge?

You said to yourself. You literally just know this man tonight and you’d be damned to judge his taste. Who knows, maybe he has those days where he wants to lay low. Whenever he’s going to meet his clients, perhaps? But you feel like keeping such delicate pieces in the bathroom has a potential of him losing it, so you call him out.

“Yuta?”

He hummed as a form of reply.

“You shouldn’t keep your earrings near the sink, you know. You might wash them away by accident.”

Suddenly you can hear his footsteps, rushing. You didn’t lock the door and you are glad that you didn’t because he would probably break the door open. He rushed to grab the pair of earrings, and the color on his face fades away. The smile that once appeared on his face was no longer there.

This gains your confusion. What does a rose gold earring mean to him that he had to act this way?

A rose gold earring.

A painting of roses.

A single rose that was fresh, as if it was treated with the utmost care.

Then you remember that the sight of a rose is definitely not a stranger for you, especially the last three days.

You decorated the hall with roses.

The couple carefully selected the specific color of the roses, making the last few weeks like a nightmare looking out for the vendors.

Of course, you even arranged her bouquet with roses.

“Ah, I just like roses,” She said to you when you asked why she picked roses as one of the main flowers. “As cliché as it might sound, I think roses are one of the most stunning flowers out there. They’re beautiful but surrounded by their thorns so you got to treat them gently unless you want them to prick you. Also, I think it’s because of the roses that we’re back together.”

“Did we?” Her fiancé finally looked at her after busy playing with the ring on her fingers.

“Don’t you dare to forget you add water to my shower gel.”

You could remember the laughter vividly in your head, but the last thing that you would want right now is to laugh. 

“I get it.” You tried to act though, but there’s a crack in your voice. “I get that you just told me you were trying to forget about her a few minutes ago.”

You can feel like your vision is about to start to blur, but you took a deep breath to prevent a single tear to drop.

“I’d like to blame it on the alcohol, but I guess I’m at fault too.”

Was it the way he always smiled so brilliantly? His weird and odd taste that makes you furrow your brows the moment you step into his place? The way he comes to your shop every week to buy fresh flowers and look at them so lovingly?

Perhaps, because he could enter your heart so easily. Who knows, you might have already fallen for him the moment he requested for roses the first time you met him.

You get that you only get along well, and what are the chances that these things happen so smoothly? You’re not a princess out of a Disney movie.

He evidently holds the pair of earrings so dearly, and even though you’re not the type of person who puts your feelings on your sleeve, it is inevitable that you felt the sharp pain on your chest.

“I never do this, Yuta. And I don’t plan on doing these things, if that someone doesn’t think about me at this very moment.”

Your words startled him, and before he could speak up, you gave him your last words. “Please, don’t ever take this so lightly, especially to me.”

You walked past him, grabbing your belongings in the living room before walking outside. You are glad Yuta didn’t chase you, because it would hurt your pride if he knows that you cried a river when you walk your way to your car.

--

It’s nearly a week since you closed your flower shop. This is your business and to be frank you are still upset about what happened after the wedding party. The newlyweds paid a hefty amount of money so you can survive a bit without operating. Though, this small shop that is also connected to your home upstairs will need to open soon in order for you to be able to pay your bills. Furthermore, your love for flowers is far too great for you to leave them without any attention. 

You closed your shop, telling your customers (especially your regulars) and putting a sign in front of the shop that you will be back after a week of break. You also told Mark that he wouldn’t need to come. He accepted it without pressing for further questions, but it’s so like Mark to make sure you’re alright.

“I’m fine, really. You don’t need to pay for my shift this week either.”

“Are you sure? I was thinking I could give you half of it.”

“No, I wouldn’t feel good taking money without putting any effort into it. But most importantly, you sure you’re fine, Noona?”

You sighed in relief, glad that Mark is well-raised and how he always cares about the people around him. “I’m fine, Mark. I think the wedding frenzy got the best of me, so I was thinking of having a short break so I could have a fresh start.”

“Well, it was overwhelming, not gonna lie,” Mark said as he recalled how he helped you prepare for his brother’s and new sis wedding. “I guess if you say so. Please if there’s anything I could do to help, let me know Noona.”

You replied with a simple yes, throwing your phone to the bed after you ended the call.

The past week, all you’ve been doing is to wake up early in the morning, tend the flowers, eat your breakfast, and go straight to nap. It’s a bad habit, yes, but that is how you cope with sadness.

Sad? Am I entitled to feel so?

You only know Yuta briefly, he is a regular. The fact that you know that he’s a Japanese before he told you so is probably trivial to him.

“We’re out of camellias, I’m terribly sorry sir.”

“Do you know when the next batch will come?”

“Unfortunately camellias are not in season, so it will take a while for us to restock it.”

He sighed, then he looked at his wristwatch. It seems like he doesn’t have that much time to browse the catalog.

“Is there a reason why you’re looking for camellias?”

“Ah, not really. It reminds me of home. I just came back from there last week. I thought of getting roses, but I changed my mind.”

“Home?”

“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t from here. I’m a Japanese, you see.”

“Oh! I didn’t notice.”

He shyly scratched the back of his head, still not used to people complimenting his bilingual ability. You find his reaction charming, unconsciously giggling at it.

“Then, sir, I assume you’re in a hurry. May I give you a suggestion?”

“How do you know I was in a hurry?”

“Well it was easy since you immediately asked for camellia and looked at your watch the moment I told you we don’t have one.”

He lets out a smile. A smile so warm that sunflowers might face toward his direction immediately. “Indeed, I have to meet someone this evening. So your help will actually good for my favor. I was thinking of buying flowers for my dining table, do you have any suggestions?”

Now it’s your turn to smile. “I think buttercups would be perfect.”

—

Yuta has been thinking a lot about what happened last Saturday.

Especially how he should talk to her.

It’s easy to spot her store, Yuta and Doyoung practically passed by it every single morning on their way to the office. The sun hits the flower store perfectly. Not too harsh, just a bask of the golden ray. Usually, he would see how the beautifully bloomed flowers were displayed on the store windows. But it’s already day six and the store shows no sign of operations.

He reads the announcement board in front of the store; “Paradise will be closed for an inventory check. We will be back to serve you next week!”

He feels dejected. Yuta couldn’t just ask Mark for her number, that would have raised so many questions. Yes, Yuta kissed her, but was their relationship that close for him to ask for her number? The fact that both of them are not sober is also a part of Yuta’s concern.

So instead, Yuta planned to visit the florist (especially since he’s been skipping buying flowers for a week —his vase longed to be filled with any arrangement) as an excuse to meet her. But now he even lost that very reason.

He was about to step away before a tune leaked out from the front door.

Someone is here.

Without hesitation, Yuta knocked on the front door. The one inside, however, did not expect any visitor. Yuta can hear how the person inside scrambles their way to open the door.

“Yes?”

She lets out a professional smile, and it fades almost instantly as soon as she sees Yuta standing in front of her door.

“Hi.”

“Yuta!” She closes her mouth, surprised that she shrieked. “Uhm, I… didn’t expect you to come. But our store is currently close, so if you’re looking for flowers, unfortunately we—“

“I want to talk to you.”

Again, it’s so very Yuta to cut to the chase.

“I want to clarify a few things.”

She finally looked at him. She tried to remain calm, keeping the expressionless upfront. But Yuta could see how her pupils were quivering. She was trying to be brave.

“I’d like to apologize for three things. One, the way I reacted at that time. It was only mere minutes after I said that I’m truly happy for her. As a human being, don’t you think it’s understandable that I reacted that way?”

She nods but remained silent.

“I’m typically an extrovert, but I’m very territorial with my personal space, and I let her go beyond the lines that I created. In a way, she is precious to me.”

This time, she didn’t respond.

“And she would probably always be. But that doesn’t mean I could only have one precious person in my life.”

She furrowed her brows, and Yuta smirked as he continued.

“After that night, I think a lot about my feelings. How I truly felt.” He scratches the back of his head that is not itchy, but because it takes a lot for Yuta to bare his feelings like this while being sober.

“And the answer remains the same. I genuinely feel happy for her. So I thought, it would only be right to properly keep everything away, little by little instead of throwing it away out of anger. Forcing myself to move on from her. Because I, too believe –as narcissistic as this might sound, that I was a part of a chapter in her life that she holds dear too. It might be slow progress, but I will get there, eventually.”

“Secondly, I apologize for not apologizing for kissing you that night. There is no regret, the attraction is mutual anyway.”

She tilted her head, before realizing what Yuta actually meant. “Wait, you knew?”

He chuckles. “Going back to Osaka was the turning point. Probably everything that I need. It forces me to start fresh, exactly like what I did when I first set foot in this country. It let me accept that I’m actually the type of person who feels a lot. Like how I admit that I’m hopelessly romantic.”

The cold atmosphere starts to melt away, with the addition of the sun seeps in between the leaves on the nearby tree.

“So afterward I’ve been looking into subjects that I never knew I would be interested in, for example, flower languages. Might be the very first reason why I came to receive buttercups from this place.”

“So what you said…”

“Well, I guess I can say my third and last apology. I’m sorry that I am a hopeless romantic kind of guy. I’m very direct, people often told me that I intimidate them sometimes just by doing nothing. But it is just my outer shell. I might not be as strong as the way people view me. Now that you know, it might put you off, huh.”

She finally laughs, “Yuta, I am a florist. This is my field.”

As if her laugh is contagious, Yuta too, unconsciously smiling back.

“I guess, it’s been quite a journey. At least for me. Maybe I’m the one who holds onto the feelings, thinking that I should hold into it for as long as I could possibly can. But life doesn’t work that way, you know? And probably the time you gave me daffodils is one of the signs, too. I just brushed them off because of my stubbornness.”

“Maybe, just maybe, I want to start seeing life as it is. To enjoy the present. To enjoy life as moments. To experience the wonderful charm of its magic. One of the magical moments started here, and I love to cherish them while the magic is still here. In fact, it’s been a long time since things are going smoothly for me. So if I can be ever so selfish, would you let me?”

She was stunned by his remarks. Eyes blinking rapidly, completely unprepared for his sudden proposal.

Yuta had expected it. It’s barely a week, and to receive this kind of confession —although not necessarily a boyfriend-girlfriend confession— from a man who just told you his grief can be confusing.

The confused face started to fade, and she left without replying to a single word. 

Yuta thought she rejected him, asking him to leave the shop.

Well, you deserve this, Nakamoto.

As he was about to walk away, she came back with anthuriums on her hand. Taking a moment to catch for her breath as she was rushing to grab these flowers.

“This is?”

“You don’t want an answer?”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. I mean, yes I told you I’ve been learning about flower languages but it’s mostly from Google, and I can’t possibly remember the meaning of every single flower?”

“I can.”

“You are a florist, my dear.”

She laughed lightly, a tone that was like jiggles of bells to Yuta’s ears.

“Can you move closer? I want to whisper these words to you.”

Yuta motioned to her immediately, obediently following her request. As her lips almost touch his ear, Yuta can feel his blood rushing to his ears.

She said, gently to his ears. “I hope you’ll be happy today.”

[xfandomwritingsx]

Hold Your Breath – Chapter Three: A Strong Brew - Draco Malfoy

-gif source unknown-

Description: After decisions put you on opposite side of the war, returning to Hogwarts to finish your education proves to be challenging. Maybe closure isn’t the only thing you need from Draco.

Warnings/Labels: Tension. Lots of tension.

Approx. Word Count: 3,400

A/N: Okay… I reference “a foot” as a measurement of length here. I’m sorry. I’m American. I know it’s wrong. But a meter was too long and saying 30cm just sounds so specific. Please don’t skewer me.

Story Masterpost

October 1998

You sit in Headmistress McGonagall’s office the next day, wringing your hands in your lap and feeling small. You had no intentions of leaving your room today and had intended on staying in bed wallowing in your sadness. A summons from McGonagall put a pin in that plan however. You must admit, even though walking through the halls had been daunting, it did make you feel better to at least put on fresh clothes and wash your face.

McGonagall rounds her desk after shutting her office door and stands next to her chair instead of sitting in it. You take a breath, strangely nervous, and look up to her. Her face is fairly expressionless, but her eyes are soft.

“You have Hogwarts’ and my personal apologies for what happened at the ball,” she tells you sincerely. “The behavior that boy displayed was unacceptable and there are quite serious repercussions in process.” You give a small appreciative smile, but lower your head down again. Honestly, you didn’t want such a fuss to be made. It makes disappearing quite difficult. “We want you to know you have the full support of the Hogwarts staff and your efforts in the war are not forgotten nor minimalized.” Her voice is stern, but compassionate and while you feel as though you don’t deserve the praise, it does give you a little bit of validation which takes a little bit of weight off of you.

“Thank you.” Your voice is sheepish, but you at least look up to meet her eyes as you speak.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” she asks kindly. You take a moment to think, eyes darting side to side for a moment, feeling like you should have some kind of an answer.

“I don’t think so,” you say finally. Before she can speak, a knock on her door interrupts.

“Come in,” she beckons. You hear the door open, but don’t look back, not particularly interested in seeing who has entered. That is, until she greets, “Ah, Mister Malfoy. Please step in.”

The look on his face when you turn around is something between irritation and forced complacency. You notice a bandage on his right hand, but he shifts it closer to his side and tries to keep it out of view. You turn back in your seat and focus on your hands again.

“Madam Pomfrey assured me your hand will heal by the end of the day.” She nods her chin towards him as he approaches her desk to stand at the empty chair next to you. “Mister Dolohov’s face, however, will unfortunately have remaining bruising for some time due to a sudden shortage of arnica.”

Wait a moment. Did Draco hit Dolohov? You glance to Draco just in time to see him look away from you and avoid your questioning eyes. You take another look at his hand, the bandage around the knuckles. He did, didn’t he? But why?

“You understand we do not condone violence of any kind, even for altruistic reasons.” Her tone is stern, but there’s something in it that lacks the powerful scolding nature the words demand. In fact, she sounds even a little bored with the lecture. She hadn’t sounded particularly remorseful about Dolohov’s bruising either. “Therefore, you will be given two detentions each week for four consecutive weeks which will be served out in the library under my supervision.” Draco sighs heavily and barely contains an eye roll.

“Yes ma’am,” he says arbitrarily.

“Now,” she snaps at him, clearly not amused with his lack of respect. “As you understand I am a busy woman with a school to run and may not always be able to attend your detentions in person.” There’s a sly undertone despite her stony expression. “I expect that at these times, you will behave properly and serve your detention out on your own.” Both you and Draco catch up to her at the same time. Detention without supervision? Clearly just a formality. “Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” he repeats in a much more respectful manner now that he realizes he’s not actually being scolded.

“Try not to punch anyone else if you can help it,” is her dismissal to him before she looks back to you. “Are you sure there’s nothing more we can do for you?” she asks in a much gentler tone. You simply shake your head, still trying to process the evening itself, let alone the apparent news of Draco punching the boy. “If anyone troubles you further, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”

Draco leaves first with you trailing behind. You feel as though you should thank him or at least say something to acknowledge what he did. It was an act of chivalry, even if it was a violent one. It was a protective gesture. Could he possibly still care about you? Or did he just feel personal offense since he also bears your same mark?

“Draco,” you call to him before he’s able to hurry himself away.

“What?” he snaps bitterly as he spins on his toes back to you, face full of irritation and impatience. The gratitude sputters and dies on your tongue and you feel yourself draw back with pause.

“Nothing,” you sigh. “Nevermind.” There’s a small shake of his head and an angry eye roll before he twists back around and whisks himself away.

~~~

November 1998

The chatter and fascination with what happened at the ball calms down a lot faster than you expected. Dolohov was put on a strict probation and not allowed to use magic unless supervised by a professor. The opinion of his punishment was split amongst the students. Many thought it was too harsh for such a small prank. You were surprised to hear how many people had agreed it was fitting, however. Granted, they weren’t necessarily concerned about you as a person, but agreed that bullying in general was intolerable and severe punishment was warranted.

Jane, the girl from the dance who has become increasingly friendly towards you, walks you to potions this morning. She doesn’t loop her arm with yours like Ginny normally does, but she stands close enough and talks directly to you, making it very obvious that she is with you. You appreciate it. The halls are much easier to walk with a friend.

She leaves you with a wave and a smile and a little bit of hope that today will be a good day. That hope is broken when Slughorn announces the assignment for today; a partner project. You know what’s coming next because whatever God existed out there clearly has it in for you. There’s exactly zero surprise in you when he pairs you with Draco, only dread and defeat.

Everyone stands from their seats to shift around and sit next to their partners. It’s obvious Draco has no intention of moving from his original seat, so you gather your things and approach him. The bastard doesn’t even look at you. You give a huff and noisily sit down to his left, scraping your chair deliberately along the floor as you scoot in. He still doesn’t look over to you.

Two potions, one grade. That is the assignment. You can either work together to ensure a good grade or you can work alone, one on each potion, and just hope the other doesn’t mess theirs up. Judging by the way Draco slides the recipe for the Calming Draught across the table to you, you assume you’re going with the second option.

The rest of the classroom is filled with reasonable chatter as the other pairs discuss their assigned potions and how to handle them. It makes the silence coming from Draco all the more noticeable, but you push through it.

It’s about halfway through the lesson when your potion turns a dull grey and has a sickly smell permeating from it. You’ve clearly done something wrong. You rifle through your notes, the recipe, your potions book, trying desperately to figure out what went wrong.

“Merlin’s beard! Stop stirring it!” Draco hisses besides you. You look to your cauldron dumbly, not even having realized you’d forgotten to end the enchantment on your wooden spoon so it continues to spin round and round. You grab the spoon and snatch it out of the cauldron, embarrassed by the mistake. “You always were rubbish with potions,” he comments snidely.

“Rubbish at potions, dreadful at charms,” you say mostly to yourself, staring at the ruined potion with disdain. “Is there anything I’m not terrible at?” He gives an annoyed sigh at your side and then quickly stands to leave. You glance at his potion while he’s gone and of course, it has that indicative silver vapor floating up from his perfectly brewed Draught of Peace.

Your shoulders slouch and you put your face in your hands. Perhaps you could find some satisfaction from taking Draco’s grade down with you. Serves him right for being a prat.

There’s a clatter on the table in front of you and when you remove your hands from your face, you see ingredients splayed out on the table. You look at Draco quizzically as he starts to open the bottle containing lavender.

“I don’t fancy a failing grade today,” he tells you sharply. “Make yourself useful and measure out the peppermint.” He pushes another bottle to you before coming back around the table to sit in his chair. You expect him to pull the cauldron towards him in order to take over, but instead he moves his chair closer to you in order to reach it. You try not to look at him or pay attention to how close he is as he uses his wand to clear the contents. “Let’s not use a stirring enchantment like a first year this time.”

“Are you going to mock me the whole time?” you snap at him as you do your part and carefully put the peppermint sprigs on the scale.

“Only when you deserve it.” His reply makes your skin prickle and an anger bubble in you, but it fades rather quickly when he briefly looks at you from the side of his eye and his lips just barely turn upwards from his scowl. It’s a phrase you’ve said to him many times over the years, sometimes seriously and sometimes friendly or flirtatiously. And he’s repeating it back to you, making a callback to your friendship. You have no words for him.

You’d imagined saying that sentence in a completely different manner before. You’d had fantasies of him beneath you, begging for release and you kissing along his skin teasingly. Only when you deserve it. You never had a chance to attempt making that fantasy anything more than that, having only been with him the one time, but that didn’t stop your mind from conjuring the image up periodically. It has been quite some time since it resurfaced, but now that it’s there again, it’s hard to shake.

When you don’t offer him a reply, Draco returns to the potion, taking the peppermint from you and crushing it with the mortar. You feel as though you should have said something, should have acknowledged that his reference was not unwanted, but you can’t bring yourself to find anything appropriate to say.

“Measure these again,” he instructs, handing the mortar with the peppermint back to you. “After they’re crushed, you typically lose a little bit of weight. Usually not enough to make a difference, but every bit counts when the potion brewer is incompetent.” It’s said much more sharply than his last jab and you straighten your back, trying not to let it hurt you.

“Seeing as how you’re the one doing all the work so far, I am assuming you’re referring to your own incompetence,” you quip back at him. He leans back in his chair comfortably and fans his hand over the table.

“If you want to do it yourself, by all means, give it a try.” Bristling at his challenge, you huff and face the table fully with determination. You will not let him be so satisfied.

You dump the peppermint into the cauldron and pick up the jar of pre-mixed base liquids. You struggle momentarily with the lid, but manage to get it off without making a fool of yourself or spilling the contents everywhere. Chin held high, you begin to pour the jar on top of the peppermint. Draco’s hand is suddenly covering yours, holding onto you and titling the jar back up. The contact startles you, your body giving a small jolt as he puts a hand on the back of your chair and leans in near you.

“Slower,” he commands, his voice almost a whisper this close to you. “It’s a Calming Draught. If you rush it, it doesn’t work.” He guides your hand, directing the liquid to flow languidly from the jar. “Better.” You can feel his breath just barely reach your neck. His arm is outstretched, nearly outlining your own and his chest bumps into your shoulder. He’s practically cradling you into him and you’re not entirely sure how you feel about it.

The warmth of his body is familiar. Your body remembers what it feels like to have his arms wrap around you, to hold you tight and give you comfort or pleasure. Your arm tingles at the memory of his fingertips gliding down your skin, intertwining his fingers with yours. You remember it, feel it, all too easily.

But there’s still that anger, the resentment that fights the warm, good feelings. It puts a block up and prevents the threat of euphoria rushing in. It’s the thing stopping you from turning your head to look at him which you’re fairly certain ran a high risk of ending up with his lips on yours. Instead, you focus on your breathing, on calming your racing heart.

When the jar is empty, Draco releases your hand and the jar, pulling away and leaving the space beside you with an empty chill. He crosses steps off of the recipe with a quill before tipping the feather towards the cauldron.

“Stir it five times. That’s all,” he instructs, seemingly oblivious to what his presence had done to you.

“Slowly?” you confirm, somewhat surprised your voice didn’t quake. He hums and nods approvingly, but keeps his focus on the recipe.

He continues to direct you on what ingredients to add when and how many times to stir the concoction. He’s firm in his instructions, but the jabs have ceased at least. He’s also keeping his distance and remaining in his chair, away from your personal space. And that… makes you anxious somehow.

You find yourself wondering if he’ll come back and when. Any movement he makes, you feel yourself tense up with anticipation, but he doesn’t come any closer than he already is. What’s more is that you recognize the tension is not unpleasant. You aren’t dreading his warmth. You’re craving it.

You glance down. There’s absolutely no more than a foot of space between your chairs. Almost unconsciously, you uncross your legs and shift your right one to shorten the empty space. It’s not enough to touch him and you take a moment to contemplate if you even want to. If he’s allowed to touch you, to get into your space, shouldn’t you be allowed the same?

You twist your hips towards him, planting your foot firmly in the space between the chairs’ front legs. You put your weight on it and lift up from your chair, reaching across the table in front of him to pick up a piece of parchment with notes on it that you don’t particularly need nor want. Your knee bumps into his and your sudden arrival into his personal bubble seems to shock him ever so slightly as he looks up in confusion. You sit back down quickly, but place yourself on the right most part of the chair which allows you to keep your knee pressed to his.

You give him a shy smile as a show of thanks for letting you steal his notes and pretend to read them. Your eyes gloss over the words, but you can’t comprehend a single one with Draco making no move to shift away from your touch. He doesn’t push back either though. He focuses back on the recipe and lets you just stay there.

That is until his hand is on your knee. It pushes you away and doesn’t linger and for a moment, dread drops down into your stomach like a stone, heavy with rejection. His push is gentle though and it has a purpose when he stands up next to you in the space your leg had occupied and leans over the cauldron to peer inside. He’s close again now, this time his hip is the part of him almost pressing into your shoulder as he hinges his waist and puts his hands flat on the table.

“Come here,” he tells you. You follow his lead, hands on table and leaning over the cauldron. “What do you smell?” You take a moment to refocus on the potion and inhale deeply.

“Lavender,” you tell him. “It’s faint though.”

“Exactly.” His palm shifts on the table and the side of his hand molds to yours. “That means it needs more. You shouldn’t have to think about it. It should be potent.” He leans away from you to grab the bowl with the extra lavender. In doing so, she shifts his hand again, the heel of his palm drifting away from you, but his little finger making up for lost contact by slipping casually over your own.

“I thought we used what the recipe called for?” It’s hard to focus on the potion, but you do your best even with air trapped in your chest and the urge to slip your entire hand under his.

“The heat was a little too high,” he explains. “It reduced too quickly. We can fix that by adding a pinch or two more.” He lifts the bowl up towards you, encouraging you to do the honors. His expression is even and unbothered by the two of you touching. He waits patiently, watching you carefully until you make the decision to use your left hand to pinch the lavender with and deliberately leave your right one with him.

His expression remains unchanged as his little finger reaches and strokes the knuckle of your ring finger a single time before resting back down over your pinky. Why was such a small touch so invigorating? How did he keep such a straight face? He must know you’re not unaffected by this.

“More?” you ask quietly after dropping a single pinch into the cauldron. He takes a moment, contemplating and curling his little finger to wrap under yours.

“Can you handle more?” The flirtatious tease comes to his voice just as quick as it comes to his eyes. It’s a challenge, but it’s at least recognition that you hadn’t been imagining everything he’s been doing. You keep your eyes on him as you add another pinch to the potion. “Good,” he praises. “Now stir.”

He pulls away slowly, letting his touch and his warmth drag along you as he sits back in his seat. You let out a breath you’ve apparently been holding and give the potion a delicate, calculated stir. Draco settles back in his chair and crosses his left ankle over his knee, causing his left knee to protrude into the space between your chairs. You have no doubts that the motion is made with intent.

You oblige his silent invitation. Sitting back down yourself, you lean over the table to take notes and shift your right knee out towards him again. It slips beneath his and he pushes down just enough to encourage you to stay there. You don’t dare to look at him, but you can’t keep the smallest smile off your lips as you wait for Slughorn to come by and grade you.

It’s only when he comes by do you break apart and you become acutely aware that you’ve been in a classroom full of people this entire time. Had anyone noticed anything? Surely, they hadn’t. The interactions had been so miniscule and everyone was focused on their own potions, yes?

Slughorn presents you a solid E grade which pleases you greatly. Draco, ever the perfectionist with his grades, had been holding out hope for an O, but it didn’t come to pass. This causes you to be unsure if you owed him a thanks or an apology and end up giving him neither as you clean up.

“Astronomy,” Draco says as he’s putting books into his bag. You look at him, utterly confused.

“Excuse me?” He doesn’t look at you.

“You asked what you’re not terrible at,” he explains as though it was obvious. “You’re quite brilliant in astronomy.”

“Oh.” A compliment. A real, no backhand compliment. “Thank you.” He gives a small nod in response before slipping the strap of his bag over his shoulder, ready to leave.

“Practice your potions more,” he advises and then turns to leave without another word.

You watch him go, still a little confused and excited by the whole lesson. What in the world did any of it mean? What did you want it to mean?

Best not to think about it too much.

---

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[hoodoo12]

Rawed

This was written as a trade for the fantastically talented @clairjohnson, who’s simply an all around awesome person.  NSFW, Movie Beetlejuice/f!reader. Nasty garbage man warning tinged with dub con sex.

“Tasty little snack.”

You jumped. The voice came from behind you, from a corner you’d just passed that you were sure was empty. Laughter bounced around you. “Even wearin’ a skirt, like you’re lookin’ for someone to just come along and slip a hand--or something better--right under your clothes.”

You knew you shouldn’t acknowledge the words, shouldn’t acknowledge the truth behind those words, but that didn’t suppress your shudder.

That gravel-filled laughter came closer, filled your ear, like a scouring pad brushed lightly across your skin. It made you shudder again and reflexively, you smoothed down the fabric stretched across your thighs, as if you expected someone to do exactly what was suggested.

You continued through the house. No further laughter or disembodied voice followed you, and you relaxed. Your heels tapped loudly as you walked down the hall unmolested. You turned, and suddenly he was there, waiting in the living room. Your hand went to your throat.

“Trying to avoid me, babes?” “What? No, no, I was--”

In a flash, between less than a blink of an eye, he was right in front of you, staring down at you, smiling ferally. The smell of him: fresh turned dirt, damp clothing, the base note of mild mustiness filled your nose like his laughter had filled your ear. He had a way of seeping in any little crack he could find. “You were what? Hmm? Getting dolled up, trying to sneak out, trying to leave and meet up with someone--”

He interrupted you, you interrupted him. “I wasn’t!” His smile, already rictus, widened. “That’s right. You weren’t.” He grabbed you then, quick as a thought. His nails weren’t broken but they were strong and they dug uncomfortably into your upper arms. You gasped. “Gonna prove it, baby.”

It could have been a question but was more of an order. Again you gasped, and for a second you thought he was going to lean down and kiss you, but he didn’t. Instead, one of his hands snaked under your blouse, rucking it up over your bra. Your bra itself followed, pushed haphazardly and slightly painfully over your tits. His other hand, instead of slipping to your back and snapping the closure of your bra to give you some relief from the awkward position he’d put it in, worked at the tiny zipper of your skirt. It was too delicate to handle his ham fisted attempts to undo it, so with a frustrated snarl he simply hooked his fingers under the waistband of it and forced it down over your hips. A seam popped and tore. It was just as painful as what he’d done up top, but you didn’t complain. You knew better than to complain. When it made it passed the widest part of you, it fell easily, pooling at your feet. Caught on your heels, it left you half-bared in front of him, with your wrinkled shirt and thin panties. Under his heavy, lusty gaze, you automatically draped a hand over your chest, and the other twitched towards your pubic area. That wasn’t the best idea. He cocked an eyebrow at your audacity and licked his lower lip with his pale tongue. “No,” was all his said, and your hands jumped away like you’d been stung. His hand took the one at your groin’s place. You weren’t sure if you were flushed or if it was just that he was room temperature, but he felt chilly as he cupped your pussy. He gave it a bit of a squeeze, and despite yourself, you groaned a little. It’d be nicer if he’d pushed his hand under the cotton of your panties too, so there was no barrier between you and him, but he seemed content that you were frustrated. Your panties were thin enough that he was able to slip his longest finger between your folds. You groaned again, and he jerked his hand away. He scrutinized you, nodded to himself, and took a step back to work his belt buckle open. When he caught you staring, he stopped. Reaching for you, he caught your chin and applied pressure on it till your jaw opened a little. He slipped his thumb inside. You had no clue where his hand had been and the taste was nothing more than mold, but you closed your lips on the digit anyway. “You know what I want.” With his thumb crooked on your tongue, you lifted your eyes to his and nodded. “Then squat. This cock isn’t gonna suck itself.” Immediately you kicked away your discarded skirt and dropped as he said. reaching for his half-undone belt and fly. He didn’t help at all, which you expected. The zipper was stiff with what you hoped was dirt, and when you finally were able to open his trousers his pale cock sprang free. No underwear for him, even if the corpse he’d pilfered his favorite suit from had been wearing any. 

You pushed his trousers to the tops of his knees, and after steadying yourself--the heels made that a little easier, as well as kept you more level with his groin--you leaned in to catch the head of his cock in your mouth. His fingers twisted into your hair and pulled your head back to look up at him before you managed to so much as lick him. “I want your legs spread. No touching yourself. And this better be the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten, baby,” he told you, brooking no argument. “Wet and sloppy. I want to hear you moan with my cock in your mouth. I want you to gag.”

His tight grip precluded you from actually managing to nod your understanding. Instead, the moment he loosened his fingers, you opened your mouth and moved forward, finally taking him between your lips as you continued to keep your eyes locked on his. You kept your eyes open, even though it took you a moment to get used to the chill of his skin and the slightly sour taste of his flesh. His cock was thick enough that you had to flatten your tongue and relax your jaw to pull him further in. Inconsiderately he popped his hips forward, which you expected and had time to prepare for by holding your breath.

The unlubricated skin of his cock dragged a little more than you’d have preferred, and when he pulled back out, you took a second to release him entirely. Being out of the warm heat of your mouth unexpectedly made his head, which had lolled back at the initial first thrust, snap back down to you. His lips twisted in a scowl, but when you heavily licked up the underside of his shaft, giving him a thick coating of spit then immediately took him in again without further hesitation--and without further resistance--he gave a low moan of approval. With that, you did as he asked. Wet and sloppy, because you didn’t give yourself time to swallow any spit. Gagging, because his cock not only filled your mouth with girth but because when you pushed yourself to your limits and your nose was buried in the rat’s nest of pubic hair at the base of his cock, it was just to the point of making you retch. He, of course, always wanted a little bit more, and never tried to stop fucking your face. That slight hip movement plus his hand tangled into your hair gave him more of the gag he wanted, and you had to pull off him to gasp for breath as he chuckled. Still, you went back to it before you’d caught your breath completely. That earned you a startled cry of delight. You blew him hard and fast, alternating suction and depth. Spit coated your chin, and dripped down your neck. You decided he’d probably rather have your tits completely exposed and managed to unsnap your bra and shimmy out of it and your shirt. Drool made its way to your chest.

When you were able, when you were on an outward pull and not flush with his groin, you looked up at him. Many times he was looking down at you, his eyes half closed, looking deeper set in their dark hollows; when he wasn’t his head was tipped back and you got to see his throat work as he swallowed around the moans and softly muttered words that didn’t quite make it to your ears. Before long, your eyes watered; your jaw ached; your lungs burned; your legs trembled. The noises he made hitched higher, with a more urgent note to them. At one point, when you had pulled out enough to only have the head of his cock between your lips, he yanked back on your hair. “Look at me,” he growled, and you lifted your eyes once again. He gazed down at you, eyes half-lidded. “Your mascara is ruined. You’ve soaked us both in drool. My cock looks so good in your mouth, baby--you like this, baby?”

He wasn’t as detached as he wanted to sound--his pale eyes had blown dark with arousal and he had no need to breathe but his mouth was open, his lips coated with a thin veneer of his own spit. Still, he cocked an eyebrow, waiting for an answer. You nodded to the best of your ability and moaned, slipping your tongue around the head of his cock as you did. The extra stimulation from your tongue and the vibration made him groan a bit. “Good, that’s good, baby,” he praised, and rocked himself on the balls of his feet, just to slip a little in and out between your lips. His eyes darted down you, to your tits and stomach. Then they dropped to your legs, with your thighs still spread as he’d told you, not allowing for any friction or pressure on your pussy while you blew him.

“I bet that pussy is wishing it had some attention, isn’t it, sweets.” It was intoned more like an observation, not a question, but you nodded anyway. You ached down there, and wondered if he was just setting you up for disappointment by talking about it but planning on blowing his load in your mouth or on your tits. He’d pulled that nasty little trick before. “Better do something about it, then. Up.”

Gratefully you got to your feet. You wobbled a little on your heels, and made a motion to kick them off, but he told you to keep them on, and physically picked you up to spin you around. “Bend over, baby.” The only clothing left on you was your underwear and shoes. As you obeyed, bending at the waist, you felt your panties tighten over your pussy, showcasing it. Although they were shoulder width apart, you kept your legs straight and put your hands on your knees to help keep your balance. An appreciatative noise came from behind you, and before you could look back over your shoulder, his hands were at your ankles. His fingernails scratched up your legs, maybe not enough to break skin, but enough to leave stinging red trails after them. You steadied yourself as you felt him move closer and plant a kiss on the back of your thigh, and then his mouth was within a breath of your cotton-clad pussy. “You’re so fucking wet,” he announced, as if you didn’t know you’d soaked your panties.

What you weren’t expecting was for him to drag his tongue over the thin fabric on your pussy. You startled and almost fell forward, even as you moaned. Your precarious stance finally must have registered with him. He didn’t acknowledge it verbally, however; he simply picked you up again by the waist and carried you to the couch. Setting you down in roughly the same position you’d been in, now at least you had the support of the furniture to lean on for what you knew was coming next.

His fingers hooked under the elastic of your panties and pulled them over your ass and down your legs. He left them where they stayed, just above your knees, and instead of his mouth again, his fingers dipped to your pussy, slipping through your folds, orienting himself to where he needed to be even as you arched your back to try and get a little more stimulation out of him. He brushed over your clit twice more, making you moan. The blunt--and chillier--head of his cock replaced his fingers, collecting your wet along your pussy, before nudging into you. Once he started, like your mouth, he gave you little time to adjust. You gave an opened-mouthed cry as his cock stretched you open. It’d lost any heat it’d leeched from your mouth and felt cold filling you. You didn’t care. You reveled in it. His cock would warm again soon enough. After getting his bearings--he always paused after first shoving his cock into you from the spike of pleasure, not that he’d admit that--his hands kept a tight grip on your sides, and he fucked you roughly. He slipped out once, making both of you groan, and you helped resituate him, then kept your hand on your pussy, feeling his cock plunge into you. It was wet now, and the additional pressure on your clit was worth losing the support from that arm. His grunts were interspersed with random words and half-phrases: “Good girl”, and “take it”, but his favorite was just, “fuck fuck fuck fuck,” repeated just under his breath. 

Each thrust made air burst from your lungs. You mewled and pressed your chest to the arm of the couch for more balance. Trying to angle yourself so he’d hit that magic spot inside you didn’t work out well, however; being both hobbled by the panties still around your knees and going up on your toes in your shoes made your feet slip. He’d also reached forward and grabbed a handful of hair, pulling your head back, which didn’t help your balance at all. You losing your footing made him growl through his explosive panting. He gave you a smart slap on your ass which stung more than it should have because of his ring, then, just as abruptly as he’d pushed into you, he pulled out. “Get up. I want to see your tits anyway,” he said as a half explanation. “Lay down.” A little dazed from the sudden feeling of emptiness in your pussy and the new order, you were slow to push yourself upright. Before you could turn and do as he said, you were bodily picked up again and put exactly in the position he wanted you: flat on your back on the couch cushions, angled so one leg draped off the side, knee bent at a ninety degree. Your high heels supported that limb. He shimmied your panties off the rest of the way. As he flicked you in the other calf so you’d open your leg widely, he bunched your panties in his other hand and shoved them into his trouser’s pocket--

“You’re still dressed?!” you exclaimed. It was more shrill than you’d mean it to be, but that was lazy, even for him. In the middle of wiping his thumb over his lower lip as he stared down at you splayed before him like a buffet, he glanced back up at your face. “You just can’t get enough this sexy body, can you baby?” he replied saucily, and even as you rolled your eyes his suit was thought into a heap on the floor. He stood before you in all his grub-pale, moldy glory. You rolled your eyes again but reached for him. He gladly fell on top of you but didn’t return the embrace; once again he found exactly where he wanted to be and rutted into you. With a solid base, his pace was even faster and snappier now, ramming into your cunt hard enough to make you squeak with each inward thrust. Even as he held himself up with rigid arms, you grabbed at him and pulled him down. His tepid torso against yours made goosebumps break out on you, but you were soon used to the temperature difference. The smell of damp earth easily became unnoticable, even when he buried his face into your neck and his hair was against your cheek. You clutched at him. Keeping him held tightly to you shifted his position just enough that his pubic bone pressed against your clit, sending sparks of increasing pleasure from your groin up into your stomach. Rougher treatment aside, that plus the delicious friction from his cock in your pussy had you tumbling towards orgasm at a pace that surprised even you. It wasn’t going to take much more. The points of his hips slammed into you mercilessly, he’d started up his “fuck fuck fuck” chant against your ear; you grabbed at his ass just in case he had the sadistic notion of stopping--you were almost there, almost there-- His teeth latched onto you, into the soft juncture between your neck and shoulder, giving you a sharp painful contrast to the bliss throughout the rest of your body. With your flesh between his teeth, he roared through his release, his hips juttering once, twice, then keeping his cock buried deep inside you as he came. Maybe it was just your imagination, but it was almost as if you could feel his cool come fill your cunt.

Despite the fact he’d done little to voluntarily help you along, the sensation of being filled, plus the heavy, now unrelenting pressure on your clit, and yes, even the ache from the bite pushed you over the edge. Ecstasy dragged you under. You cried out as you came until your voice was gone. Once you drifted back to reality, you had to untangle yourself from around him. You hadn’t even been aware you’d wrapped your legs around him, or that you’d grabbed him by the ass so hard your fingers felt stiff as you unclenched them.

He pulled away with a smirk, before leaning back in--not to kiss you, although your lips parted in anticipation, but to lick the spot he’d bitten you. Like the rest of him, his tongue was cool and maybe he hadn’t meant it that way, but it soothed your shoulder a little. Then he pulled back and away and out of you. Unstoppered, a gush of wet fell from your pussy. That caught his eye, and he paused to pull his fingers through your pussy again and the come dripping out of you. Slickened, he even rubbed your borderline overly sensitive clit for a second, making you jerk and cry out again, but you weren’t sure if he was deliberately trying to pleasure you or not. As your panting slowed, your brow furrowed, trying to understand what he was doing with the come he’d collected on his fingers. You never could guess what might be going through his mind--

Instead of shoving his wet fingers into your mouth or licking them himself, he simply wiped them dry on your leg, from your inner thigh to your knee. “What’re you doing--gross! Beetlejuice!” you exclaimed, sitting up to get out of his reach. “Easy on the ‘B’ word there,” he replied but without much malice, dropping beside you on the couch. You got up, found the piles of discarded clothing, and seriously thought about using his suit to wipe yourself clean. But you knew he wouldn’t care and wouldn’t clean it off, and you actually didn’t know what might already be on it, so you opted for your own blouse. Once the majority of the wet was gone, leaving only a thin, drying residue behind, you turned to find him staring at you with open appreciation on his face. You hadn’t meant to give him a show as you bent to wipe yourself up, but apparently you did. Finally you kicked off your heels and joined him on the couch, plopping down without invitation on your back so your head was on his leg, looking up at him. With a glance down at you, he put one hand over the mark he’d given you. Like his tongue, the cool touch was soothing. He was smoking, of course, as he tended to do after sex, as if he could still have a nicotine addiction. You watched his lips close around the end of the cigarette. After he took a drag, you made an inarticulate noise to indicate you wanted some too, and he held it to your mouth for you, instead of passing it. You pulled on it, holding the bitter smoke in your lungs for a moment. Letting it out, you gazed up at him. He was sated and lazy after a romp like that, and you couldn’t help but smile a little. “You know, there doesn’t have to be all the pretense,” you said. He cocked an eyebrow and he looked down at you without dropping his chin. “The whole, ‘you’re dressed up for someone else, I’ll show you you’re mine’ schtick,” you elaborated. “I’m happy to wear whatever you want, just for you.” He snorted, blowing smoke out his nose as he replied, “Don’t I fuckin’ know it, baby. I do all that possessive stuff to get you goin’. You love it. If I was sticky sweet, you wouldn’t know how to take it. Prob’ly think I was an imposter and kick me out.” Hearing the faint teasing amusement in his tone, you returned his snort but it was more like laughter. You also turned your head to bite his stomach, which made him fold in the middle. That made you laugh harder, and you spent the rest of the evening passing the cigarette back and forth and idly lounging. 

fin!

[merryfortune]

Day 16 / Indigo

Clover and Violets 2021

Ship: not applicable | Aoi/Pandor

Universe: VRAINS

Word Count: 1,659

Rating: T

Tags: Canon Compliant, Post Canon, Past/Referenced Character Death, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Grief

   Having been hurt before by deceiving facades and untrue appearances, Aoi knew better than to wear her heart on a sleeve but with such an abomination on her wrist, the own barricade that Aoi had put up around her heart had begun to crumble because of the inherent wrongness of it.

   Aqua was her partner. The only Ignis - or other Ignis-like creature - which should make a home in her Duel Disc was Aqua. Not Pandor. 

   But to protect herself, not only did Aoi adopt personas and other duplicitous facades of her own, adapting her enemies’ strengths into her own, she knew better than to voice her heightened disagreement with this plan of Revolver’s. So, she accepted this program named Pandor into her Duel Disc even as her grieving heart screeched not to.

   So, she collaborated with this program who seemed amiss. 

   There was something eerie about Pandor’s eyes. They gleamed a bloodlet magenta that was all too knowing. Implying that maybe, just maybe, she knew that Aoi did not approve of her. Or maybe Aoi was imagining such hostility as Pandor went to length after length to assist Aoi how she could in her part of the crusade against the Ai: the last Ignis remaining. 

   What Aoi did not expect was that Pandor would still be by her side when she awoke from the misfortune that had been wreaked upon her when she and Akira had lost their duel to Ai.

   When Playmaker had won against Ai, she and Akira were returned to their apartment. Almost like nothing had even happened but there was a bitter, hollow feeling and neither of them spoke. Even though they had slept for hours - days, even - Aoi was just so, so tired so she retreated into her bedroom to sleep because not thinking was so much easier than thinking.

   There had been so much to sort out - mentally, emotionally, physically - that when Aoi saw that miniature hologram of Pandor rise out of her Duel Disc, that Aoi was just completely and totally exhausted by her appearance. She tore off her Duel Disc and she threw it at the wall.

   She wasn’t Aqua - and she never would be Aqua.

   Her Duel Disc didn’t break when it smashed against her bedroom wall but Pandor’s expression did. She knew when she was not welcome so she disappeared, even when her programming, tailored to the whims and sensitivities of humans, told her not to. That Aoi needed companionship or the space to talk through her feelings but again. She knew when she was not welcome; she had been given that internal warning before around her very own creator, Revolver, after all.

   Aoi wept with her knees to her face in her bed after she had thrown her Duel Disc away. She just needed to get it all out, as wet and ugly as it were.

  Aoi spent a few days trying to readjust to life without Aqua before making the leap to reaching out to Miyu and seeing if they could reconnect. And despite all the fears and tragedies that crushed Aoi’s heart and soul, Miyu was ecstatic to see her. She welcomed her with open arms, as out of the blue seeming as it was.

   Miyu listened readily, if tersely, about Aqua once all the hugging and crying was done and the questions about why and how began bubbling to the surface. Pandor listened in, too. Not recording for the sake of privacy but listening in for the sake of better understanding Aoi. Aoi didn’t even know she was there, lurking beneath the surface with a sorrowful look. 

   Aoi could have spent hours at the hospital with her friend, it felt good to reconnect with Miyu. She wasn’t the exact same person that she was ten years ago but she was still so bright and bubbly and heartwarming. It was relieving for Aoi to know and see that despite her hardships, Miyu was going well. And she felt that knowing why she was taken as a child for that cruel experiment gave her closure she never realised she needed. It was just a shame about Aqua.

   Miyu wished, desperate and forlorn, that she could have met the Water Ignis - and Aoi felt the same. She bit her lip, refraining from mentioning Pandor and how inherently wrong it felt to have a second artificial intelligence inhabit her Duel Disc. Pandor noted the silence but she didn’t mind it. 

   Unfortunately hospital visitor hours came to an end but Aoi felt a lot better about the events of the past few months having finally been able to talk with Miyu about it.

   Aoi returned home via Cafe Nagi, she was feeling a little bit thirsty and a little bit peckish. It was a little bit concerning to hear from Kusanagi that Yusaku was still in the shadows, hiding but she had faith. She hadn’t before meeting up with Miyu but knowing she was doing fine, she wanted to believe that Yusaku was as well. Taking her snack and her drink, Aoi kept going.

   When she got home, it was later than she thought it would be. No wonder she had been feeling hungry earlier, it was basically time for dinner, even if it wasn’t all that dark out because of summer and daylight savings, her body clock hadn’t changed with the digital numbers. 

   Akira wasn’t home either, Aoi was mutably unsurprised to figure out so she retreated into her bedroom, thinking she would get a text saying to program the maid-bot to put dinner on later or, if she was beyond lucky, a text saying he would be home at an hour acceptable eat. So, until then, Aoi figured she wouldn’t do much except unwind. She’d had a big day and it was going to get bigger still.

   Aoi reached out for her phone charger to plug it in to play on and as she did so, Pandor made her presence known. She rose out of the surface of Aoi’s Duel Disc, glitchy and holographic, intangible, and she put a hand on her breast then bowed. Aoi glared.

   “I thought you disappeared.” she spat. “For good.”

   “I was unable to help myself.” Pandor spoke in soothing tones that made Aoi feel prickly and patronised. “I wanted to observe you, if I have done something wrong, I desire to amend it.”

   Aoi wanted to bark at Pandor, telling her she hadn’t done anything wrong but amends didn’t mean much but she didn’t. Instead she huffed and she puffed, holding back tears.

   Pandor tilted her head. “I was hoping having an open dialogue would-”

   “Stop trying to psychoanalyse me!” Aoi snapped. “I’m sick of being poked and prodded, treated like I’m made of glass. I’m fine.”

   “O-oh, my apologies, Blue Maiden, I did not mean to underestimate you.” Pandor murmured.

   “Look, y-your not Aqua and it feels like your trying to force yourself into where she was for me.” Aoi shakily explained.

   “That was not my intention either,” Pandor replied, “is there some way I can prove to you that’s not my intention?”

   Aoi harrumphed, sad and bitter, uncertain what to say.

   Pandor nodded and then she expanded. She drew herself completely out of the Duel Disc and Aoi’s eyes went wide. She was afraid, uncertain as to what to do, and let Pandor project herself outwards to Aoi. Sketchy beams of light projected from the Duel Disc and Pandor knelt in front of her, haloed by this whitish glow. 

   She looked calm; her eyes had a melancholy ache to them and then she spoke, “I know nothing of humans,” she confessed, “my own creator does not trust me because of my predecessors to say nothing of his own, his father. You gave me a glimpse of an outside world I cannot begin to comprehend, I desire you companionship and forgiveness. I just want to understand humanity and be close with these people; form true connections with them. With you. I - I want this because this is all I am programmed to be permitted to want.” 

   Pandor’s speech fell on crestfallen ears. Aoi hiccupped. She clawed at her face, pushing tears out of her eyes. She couldn’t believe it. She was empathising with some automation which only had a fraction of the life and free will that she had. She saw herself and her relationship to Miyu - and even the other Lost Incident Victims such as Yusaku and Takeru - reflected in that. 

   For a robot, she was heartbreakingly earnest and Aoi responded to that. It pierced her heart, as guarded as she was because it was so simple and innocent. She could recall too many people who had tried to get close to her purely because she was connected to SOL Tech, so many people were under the misguided notion she was some princess who had everything. She barely had anything: she felt as though she came from rags, barely seeing any of the riches that had put her in her present position.

   She smiled. “Thank you, Pandor,” she murmured, “I understand you better now. I-I’m sorry for pushing you away. For putting words in your mouth.”

   “You are very kind, Aoi.” Pandor told her. Assured her.

   Aoi smiled a very painful smile and she flung herself forward. She hugged Pandor who raised her hands tentatively, unable to touch Aoi as her arms phased through the hologram. So, she hugged herself, warm and tight, and buried her face in the pixels of Pandor’s neck and shoulders.

   Pandor patted Aoi’s back and she felt it. Aoi could swear she could feel the motion of Pandor’s kindness: her metal hands, her best efforts.

   She wasn’t Aqua. She wasn’t trying to be Aqua but she was trying to be there for Aoi and at the very least, Aoi could appreciate that. It was like the colour indigo as an emotion. Tearful and trying and full of grief, not quite blue but its own thing.