#it was true. but she was alone for so long | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lamentationsofalonelypotato · 2 days ago

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@waynes-multiverse

Hi Wayne!! I was so excited to see your wonderful feedback 💚 I'm also very sorry this took me so long because April was long and May is already starting to spiral 😅

Aww, he’s already saving her. Why do I think that means something? 😂

Maybe.... 😉

Of course he did. Ben really always knows how to talk to the ladies 🙈

I know. He's soooooo charming isn't he? Doesn't he know just what to say to make a woman swoooonnn? 😒

Ooooh I’m sensing he doesn’t want her to walk home alone either. Someone already seems to have caught a little bit of feelings 😏

Pssshhhh... Girl, What? That's crazzzyyyy? Why would SB ever have feelings?

And I love that we have the same HC, Lee! I totally believe too that SB would just obnoxiously stare at a girl he likes – to the point it gets a little weird – and then cover it up with whatever stupid line comes to his mind lmao

Aww yay! I love that too! I honestly believe that the staring would be so uncomfortable- but he's just a baby (not for realsies but a baby when it comes to feelings LOL 🤣) and he doesn't know how to say what he's feeling! Well, doesn't know how to say what he's feeling in a healthy way 😭

Yep 💯 I’m already scared what Kripke will do to him in S5. At one point, is fanfic writers will have a hard time to redeem him 😅

Oh my word- ME TOO! I'm so scared that he's really gonna take him to the unredeemable place... I also feel like SB is gonna do something really bad in Vought Rising too and I'm frightened 😅 BUT that is what's fanfiction is for LOL

Ooooh? 👀 I’m guessing this is the finale at Vought Tower. I’m curious to see how you changed that ending. I always found that super hard due to Ryan (unless we pretend that kid was never there, which I’m fine with lol)

You're right! It is the finale at Vought Tower! 🤗 I don't go into too too much detail on that, but pieces of it are sprinkled through the fic 🥰 AND yes! For me it's kinda hard to write around the finale, because it's pretty set in stone. And I always give Ben the same job after in all my fics 😅 But it's funny because I just realized that I never mention Ryan in this fic at all 🤣 Whoops? Guess I forgot the brat LOL! But yes, let's just pretend he wasn't there 🤣

Oh, burn 😂

I was so proud of that zinger let me tell you 🤣

And I absolutely love her powers btw!!! 😍🌿🪴 Can I tell you a secret? My favorite superhero powers have always been either time or plant powers 😂💚

YES! Plant powers and earthbending powers are my favorite (time travel is super cool too)! I thought it was such a travesty that we haven't seen a plant supe in the Boys yet. I've got my fingers crossed for S5- if they do it justice 🤞🏻

Awwww, I hope she gets it 🥹 I honestly wanna give her a big hug. She sounds a little lonely (but maybe that won’t stay this way for long 😏)

She does deserve that though! I too wanted to give her a big hug when I was writing this. But I'm also happy you highlighted this little snippet, because that's a theme through this entire series. It comes up quite a lot 😅

And that high school boyfriend sounded like a real winner 🙄 (But good for her for locking that douche in a tree lol!!!)

Oh he was terrible 😒

Ah yes! Every woman’s worst nightmare 🙈 I’d be scared shitless for her, but knowing she has superpowers helps immensely with the anxiety. And I have a weird feeling SB will pop up, too, because he still didn’t want her walking home alone because he *cares* 😏💚 (That’s probably a curse word for him lol) And seriously, her powers are so freaking cool!!! 😍💚🪴🌿

Yep. The dreaded walk home 🫣 Oh yeah, definitely, the powers make it a little bit better, but still writing it I was anxiety city. I'm dead at "*cares* 😏💚 (That’s probably a curse word for him lol)" 🤣🤣 It's SO true- the one curse word he won't say.

Knew it!!!! Oh, Ben aren’t you just a fucking softie inside… Why you gotta be like this? 😂🙈💚

He's a big ol' softie- with a black heart of gold LOL. And I just had to drop in the touch her and die trope... because I can't be stopped. It's compulsion at this time point.

Also I love modern family, so watching Gloria beat up Jay like that on the gif was wonderful 💗

Oh, of course! Why am I not surprised, huh, Ben? 😏

He might have been taking a bigger interest in her well-being than he wanted to admit lol.

I’m sorry – you were gonna say? Before what, hmm? Oh, he’s already a complete goner, isn’t he? 😅💕 And of course he gave her an excuse and won’t admit to shit. A stroll? That’s what he’s going with. Who will buy that, Ben? You don’t look like the typical 2am stroller in the rain 😝 And it’s obvious he likes and that she’s at least attracted to his face when his mouth stays closed, but I’m honestly so fucking excited and curious to see how he will pull this off and win her over 👀 And I love his fucking argument of his attempt on her life being already a month ago 🤣🤣 Like bro, it ain’t the magic sentence you think it is lmao

Mhmm, man is already smitten.

Oh definitely... Ben always strolls in the middle of the night in the pouring rain. Doesn't everybody? No? LOL.

She is "attracted to his face when his mouth stays closed" 🤣☠️! I'm excited that you're excited to see how he wins her over! It is a wild ride, I'll say that much without saying too many spoilers lol.

And you're right, Ben is really out here like- it was a month ago, get over it! HE TRIED TO KILL HER! 🤣

Ugh, I hate when he’s a little right 🙄

He is. The one thing about the current century he understands 🤣

Whyyyyy, Benjamin?? Why are you like this? 😩

The toxic masculinity really coming in clutch at this point lol

Because dicks are hard 😏 I see myself out…

Actual footage of when I read this 👆🏻 GIRL STAWPPP, I'M DEAD 🤣🤣

Pffff, this is honestly so cute 😆💕 Yes, you use that excuse, gramps lol

I mean... imagine how awkward that is. THE POWER flickers! And Ben has supe hearing! I mean he's a little bit of a pervert, but I don't think he enjoys hearing that LOL.

Oh, Mike, you poor soul… 😂 And the fact that Butcher mocks him and he’s just oblivious to it all. Seriously poor guy lmao And of course, he was immediate cannon fodder for SB 🙈😆 But it says a lot when even Hughie had a hard time being nice to him lol But honestly, as much as she hated it, SB peacocking as her boyfriend probably gave Mike the rest. I was laughing so hard during that entire exchange 😂

The poor Mike trope is gonna trend this whole fic. Just wait til you meet Jake 🤣 And I know! Mike is one of those people who is just too precious for this world and he doesn't understand social cues like that 😭

Yep. The IMMEDIATE targeting system Ben has when he sees men who might be a little awkward and not so good around the ladies 🤣 I'm still cackling at "cannon fodder"- I love that usage here. BUT yeah, if Hughie is having a hard time then it must be almost impossible.

And yay! I'm glad you liked the exchange (peacocking LOL). It was my favorite part of this chapter- just the awkwardness and Ben being teasing and just (sexy) annoying.

Oh God 🫠🫠🫠 What I’d give to make out with this asshole 😩 (Probably had to give up feminism lol)

Ah yes, the day feminism took a vacation. I think I've seen that special, just like the "The Year Without A Santa Claus." 🤣 But oh yeah, my feminism would have to just shut it's eyes and put noise canceling headphones on.

Dead. I’m wheezing over here, Lee!!! 🤣🤣

Okay, hear me out. I love Mike's mother. She is literally my favorite side character in this entire fic. And she's just so wild, so unhinged (she's all of us). The more you see her in this fic, the funnier it is.

I’m sorry, my boy… but when exactly did we let you move in? God, he’s so fucking obnoxious sometimes 😂 So that’s his plan winning her over? Forced proximity? Why am I not surprised this is the best he could come up with. He probably thinks the Stockholm syndrome will help with his flirting lmao

Not the Stockholm syndrome 🤣🤣🤣 He really is obnoxious and the reader is just an inch away from throwing him off the roof!

I absolutely love that her apartment is full of plants!!! Total boho vibes 😍🌿 But hey, how neat! If they ever get together, she can grow weed for him 😆

Yes! Her apartment is the dream. I love plants so much- I have them all over my house so it was just so wonderful to write a reader like that 💚 And it's funny that you mention weed...

Gaaaah, I’m so hooked! I love their dynamic and can’t wait to see if she gives him a chance, and what he’ll do or how he’ll change to deserve it!!! Such a fantastic start to this series! 💚💚💚 And sorry for not getting here sooner or checking in with you more this month, friend! April was a little rough and I’m still majorly catching up with everything, but I’m so glad I finally get to read this wonderful series 🥰

Yay!! I'm so happy you like this one! It is again, another fic that was supposed to just be one chapter, but I fell in love with the reader and Ben and got turned into a series 😅

And oh no! Please don't apologize! I'm so sorry that I've been awol and haven't been able to read Time After Time! I loved the first chapter so much and I've just been running around like a chicken with it's head cut off for April and it's starting up again for May 😭 But it was so wonderful to read you comments friend! I hope that May is better for you than April 💗

Chapter 1: Are You Always Like This?

Pairing: Soldier Boy x f!reader, Reader POV

Summary: When you decided to work with Butcher and his merry band of supe hunters to take down Homelander, you never expected to be saddled with a sullen, grumpy, jerk like Soldier Boy when the job was done. The more you’re around him the more you hate him, but you can’t help but wonder, is he really as big a jerk as you think? Reader is a supe with plant powers. This takes place in an AU about a month after the end of The Boys Season 3, in which Butcher has let Soldier Boy continue to work with him on his team. (I'm real bad at summaries, please forgive me!)

Tropes: Enemies to Lovers (Implied/Eventual), Age Difference (Reader is in her 20s), Protective Ben/ Soldier Boy, Fake Dating

Word Count: 7.4 K (OOPS)

Warnings: I'm going to label this 18+/Mature because Soldier Boy (he's a warning and everyone knows it), swearing, mentions of sex, sexual innuendo, sexual tension, violence. Ben/Soldier Boy might be a little bit OOC.

Note: This is told from Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. There is minimal use of y/n. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!

Internal monologue is in italics and is in first person.

A/N: I know I know, I should be working on "You Call It Madness But I Call It Love," but this idea was swirling around in my head and I had to write it.

Spotify Playlist 🪴

Masterlist

Take A Chance On Me Masterlist

You Call It Madness But I Call It Love

"Alright Butcher, I'm done." You sigh closing the file in front of you and standing from the worn wooden table covered in empty Chinese food containers and stacks of papers almost as tall as you. "If I read another word about trying to stop an electrical current, I'm going to commit toaster bath and I'm taking you with me."

It was late, past two in the morning, but Butcher had a lead on a B-list supe that had been using his electrical powers to steal cars and run a chop shop business downtown. You had been close to catching him yesterday, so close in fact that your eyebrows were still a little crispy from when he shot a bolt of lightning at your face that you only dodged in the nick of time when Soldier Boy grabbed the back of your shirt and yanked you out of the way. Unfortunately, your shirt hadn't survived, it had ripped and you spent the rest of the day wearing one of Butcher's oversize Hawaiian shirts all the while Soldier Boy told you that it was a waste to keep a pretty little figure like yours covered up.

I hate him so much.

When Butcher had initially asked you to join his team a month ago you were excited, but then you found out that you were going to be stuck with Soldier Boy. The supe, that despite Annie's arguments should be given back to the government and put on ice, was allowed to join Butcher's team after he took down Homelander. Who was currently frozen on ice, somewhere. As long as Homelander was far from you, you didn't care. The guy gave you the creeps.

But the team still couldn't figure out where the electricity manipulating supe was hiding or where he was dropping the cars, which meant you had spent the past twelve hours staring at files and a computer screen so hard that you felt like your brain going to melt out of your ears.

"Do whatever ya want kid. I'm not ya damn babysitter." Butcher grunts, his face hidden behind his own file. His boots were on the table and he was leaning back in his chair so far that you were tempted to tip him over, all it would take was a good solid kick.

You smile at him. Butcher was adept at pretending that he didn't want you around, of course you knew how antsy he got when you weren't there to offer your opinion. You figured that he just liked pushing people away and given his history you understood that.

Annie sits up from where she and Hughie are cuddling on the couch. "Why don't you stay?" Her brow furrows with worry. Annie was big on the whole, "women not walking at home alone at night thing," which normally you didn't, but you figured that whatever was waiting outside the apartment was probably less intimidating than Homelander. And you could handle it.

"Because I'd like to sleep in my own bed tonight and not that godforsaken rickety cot in the corner that Frenchie got. Can't stand that one spring that always seems so happy to see me." You pull your leather jacket off of the back of the chair and whirl it around your shoulders, before bringing your hair out from under the collar.

Hughie snorts.

"Hey, that cot is an antique!" Frenchie crows from his highbacked chair spewing a mouthful of smoke into the air. Kimiko was sitting at the coffee table in front of him working on her writing, a thick black marker clutched in her hand. MM was taking the night off, but you thought he was probably trying to avoid Soldier Boy.

"Yeah well, that cot is about as old as grandpa over there." You gesture to where Soldier Boy is sitting in another one of the armchairs in the corner watching you while puffing on a joint.

He was always watching you and due to your inability to read his mind it made it difficult for you to gauge what he was thinking, but you assumed that it was the usual macho crap he spouted 100% of the time. But he wasn't checking you out, well this time he wasn't. You had caught him staring at your butt more than once, and he'd made several comments about exactly what he'd like to do to you, but right now an emotion glimmered behind his eyes that you couldn't place.

Soldier Boy stands from the chair. He was wearing a dark t-shirt that stretched over his chest and a pair of blue jeans that fit him just right, well, if you were looking at that. You were, but it was easier to pretend that you weren't. It was easier to pretend that he wasn't the most attractive man you'd ever seen in your life.

Damn it, why does someone so attractive have to be such a dick?

"A lady like you shouldn't be walking home alone this late." He frowns at you.

"Like me?" You arch an eyebrow.

"Good thing she ain't a lady." Butcher chuckles at his joke

You punch him hard on the arm, not enough to break it, but enough to make it hurt.

“Bloody hell woman.” Butcher rubs his sore bicep shooting you an angry look.

Not many people could look intimidating while wearing a Hawaiian shirt, but Butcher pulled it off. Not many people looked good in a Hawaiian shirt either, but Butcher pulled that off too.

"I'm serious." Soldier Boy's eyes narrow.

"Oh now you're so chivalrous?" You cock your hip to the side, planting your hands on your hips. "Didn't you try to kill me last month?"

"To be fair, you were trying to kill me-"

"Because you were trying to kill Annie. Where was the chivalry when you tried to tear me apart with your bare hands?"

"There are plenty of other things I'd like to do to you with my bare hands sweetheart." His grin turns wolfish. "I'd be happy to show you sometime, perhaps you'd like some company?"

"I'd rather spend an hour with that ancient spring than roll around with you." You tap your lip thoughtfully. “Then again I’m sure that cot is the same age as you and it can at least get it up.”

Annie muffles a snort behind her hand.

“Last time I checked everything was working, perhaps you’d like to see for yourself?” Soldier Boy smirks.

"Can't you keep in your pants for once?" Butcher sighs, tilting the file downward to glare at Soldier Boy.

You can't help but smile at Butcher's response. Butcher might have tried to push you away, but even you could see his protective instincts. That became wildly apparent whenever you went out on a mission alone and although you would think that it was annoying for someone to think they needed to protect you, in Butcher's case you made an exception.

Soldier Boy rolls his eyes. "She shouldn't walk home alone."

You wave your hand over the wilting fern on the kitchen counter, eyes shifting to green for a moment as it perks up. It was the only plant in the house and although six people lived in this apartment, not one ever remembered to water it. "And you shouldn't butt into my business."

Soldier Boy opens his mouth to speak, but Annie interrupts his train of thought.

"Wait y/n. Coffee tomorrow?" Annie asks ignoring them. She's sitting up from the couch, her body turned towards you with both of her hands on the back cushions.

She was one of your best friends, well, really one of your only friends. You'd grown up together and when Annie moved to New York you had decided to move and take some college classes in the city while you worked at a small garden shop after class part time.

The owner still couldn't figure out why nothing you cared for seemed to die.

You usually kept your status as a supe on the down low, and only used your powers when you really had to, which wasn't often before you joined Butcher's team. You'd only lasted two semesters before Annie came to ask you for help finding Soldier Boy and after that, Butcher asked you to join his team for shit pay. You accepted but you still worked at the garden shop part-time, also for terrible pay, but you loved it there.

Your powers made it easy to make sure nothing died and sometimes it felt like home being surrounded by plants. Caring for them was the one thing you seemed to be good at, and sometimes they felt like family.

You didn't have much family left, beside your grandmother and your older brother who still lived back in Des Moines, and sometimes it was lonely in the city. Annie was the only person who you'd been able to connect with since you moved, and now that you weren't going to classes the friends you made in college didn't really understand what you were doing with your life.

And telling them "oh I hunt down supes for a living and sometimes kill them" didn't really sound like something you could say in passing. It also did wonders for your dating life… NOT.

"Sorry babe, I'm at the shop tomorrow. But I'm off at 3 if you want to get coffee after?" You hold open the front door of the apartment, looking back at her expectantly.

You hated blowing Annie off, especially since the two of you hadn't been able to hang out outside of missions mostly because she was spending all her time with Hughie.

"Sounds great!" She beams.

And with that you disappear out down the hallway and into the night.

It's raining as you walk down the desolate streets. Cars splash water over the gum covered sidewalks that soaks through your tennis shoes and makes every step against the ground squish. But you ignore it.

You usually loved when it rained, loved to feel the cooling water pool against your skin, loved to hear the soft patter of it against the windows of your apartment, loved the earthy smell that came with the drops, but not tonight. You were still thinking about Soldier Boy.

You don't know why you let him get under your skin so much. You'd met men like him in the past and it was usually easy for you to brush them off, but not him.

I mean yes he is gorgeous, and maybe kind of charming when he's not trying to get into my pants, but I don't want just a one night fling. I want what Annie and Hughie have.

You think about your best friend and her loving boyfriend. You tried not to be jealous, but it was hard when the last time you had a lasting relationship was your first boyfriend back in high school who, when he found out you were a supe, was only interested if you had the power to shape shift into someone 'a little more busty.' The relationship ended with you locking him in a tree and the fire department having to come cut him out. He was fine, maybe a little more green than a normal person, but...

You'd heard that he got a job from the Green Giant Vegetable Company doing cameos as the Jolly Green Giant. So if anything, you helped him have a career?

Annie and Hughie were both head over heels in love with each other, knew everything about each other, didn't have any secrets, and it wasn't just sex, it was a close relationship with someone else who understood every part of you. You wanted that; and as much as you had avoided relationships in the past due to your supe status, you still hoped to find a supe that was kind and didn't think that they were a god for what they could do.

Why do so many have a god complex?

You think again about Soldier Boy. That wasn't the first time he had tried to coax you into bed and it wouldn't be the last, that was for sure. At first you had hoped that he would give up, it had been a month since you'd met, but he was still going strong, despite having a different woman in that apartment almost every night.

Maybe he's just really horny after being trapped in a lab all these years. Then again- You remember all the articles you read about him from the 80s, the ones that recorded his numerous escapades and think about his founding of Herogasm.

Maybe he's always like that, but he never comes on to Annie or Kimiko, only me. And I've threatened castration multiple times. You'd think he would care more about that than anything else.

You consider with a frown, clutching your jacket tighter around you. Rain trickled down from your hair and under the collar of your jacket to soak into your t-shirt. Your once light blue jeans were soaked to a dark navy with the amount of water that splashed up from the road and dripped down your back. For the first time in forever, you wished that it wasn't raining.

Probably should have just gotten a cab, but it's so expensive and-

"Hey baby." Someone calls from behind you.

Can't I just walk home without being hit on? One time?

"Not interested." You shout back, continuing to squish down the cracked sidewalks.

Three shadows peel off the wall of shops to your left blocking your path forward. Each is wearing a dark colored hoodie hiding their faces from view.

Is my luck really this bad? I never hear about Annie getting mugged or Hughie. And Hughie definitely looks wimpier than me.

"Don't be like that baby." The man behind you says.

You half turn your body so you can see all your supposed attackers at once. There are actually two men behind you, both wearing similar hoodies to the three now standing on your right.

Oh look they color coordinated their outfits… cute.

The man opens his mouth again.

"I'm gonna stop you right there." You hold up a finger. "I've been dealing with a horny 104 year old geriatric man all day long. Please don't push me right now." It was an attempt to warn them, but you knew they probably wouldn’t listen to you.

No one ever does.

"Sounds like you need someone to relax with." The man smirks steeping forward to grab your arm. "I'd be happy to ease some of that tension baby."

"Look. I'm going to give you a chance to walk away. To avoid making one of the biggest mistakes of your life. Because honestly you all have the worst luck in the world." You jerk your arm away from him.

"I like em feisty.” He purrs stepping forward again while the others laugh. “Come on baby-“

He doesn't get to finish his sentence. You grab him around the throat, lifting him in the air like he weighs nothing, your eyes beginning to glow a brilliant green.

“I did try to warn you.”

"She's a supe!" He shouts struggling against your grip.

You throw him backwards into the other man standing to your right before facing the men on your left. Each one has pulled out a knife preparing to rush towards you.

"I get it. Y’all are out late, you bought matching outfits, but do we really have to-“

The first one rushes you, waving his knife through the air in a frantic dance. He doesn't get the chance to make contact with your arm. Vines erupt out of the pavement, breaking through the cracks in the concrete, binding themselves around the man who lets out a savage cry, quickly silenced while the vines continue to wrap around his body until there's nothing left but a mass of struggling green foliage on the pavement and some muffled screams.

He's lucky, could have had him dragged back under ground.

His friends stand there for a moment, eyeing one another as if they're not sure what just happened. You can practically see them trying to decide if you're still worth the trouble.

“Anyone else?”

The battle that follows is swift, the sound of cracking bones and the soft thud of punches landing echo over the soft patter of rain in the night as you dodge their blows and land your own against them. The vines continue to spread outward snatching up the men who fall to the ground in front of you, dragging each one up the street light above that sends yellowed light over the desolate streets. By now each bound body hangs from above like a sack of meat in a meat cooler, moving with the struggling men inside while the muffled cries shatter the still silence of the night.

Sometimes it's really too easy.

And as you begin to turn back someone grabs you by the hair, yanking you into their sweaty embrace. The leader's hot breath sticks to your cheeks, the cool metal of his switchblade pressing down so hard on your throat that you feel the pinprick of blood begin to form under the tip.

“What are you gonna do now bitch?” He snarls in your ear.

"Give you one more chance to surrender." You spit.

Like I'm going to give him the satisfaction of me begging for my life.

"I'm gonna enjoy this-" The man begins to say, pressing the knife deeper into your throat, but the rest of his sentence is cut off with a strangled cry as he's pulled away from you.

What the hell just-

You turn around, freezing in shock.

Soldier Boy is crouching there in his t-shirt, jacket, and jeans over the man who just had a knife to your throat. His fist rising and falling as he punches the man in the face.

"Don’t you ever touch her." Soldier Boy snarls. His fist is already covered in blood, the man’s face a mass of bloodied tissue and bone.

"Stop you're going to kill him-" You run forward to stop Soldier Boy, but he doesn't stop even when you try to grab on to his hand.

"I said STOP." You shout louder, this time manipulating a vine to wrap around Soldier Boy's arm and restrain it.

Fuck he might already be dead.

"Let me go." Soldier Boy's eyes narrow. The usual green was replaced by a darkened pit with his rage. You'd only ever seen him this mad a handful of times, one of which was when the supe tried to zap you like a fly in one of those insect traps two days ago.

Why is he angry?

"I'm not going to let you go, until you promise not to kill him."

"I should." He snarls back at you.

"What are you talking about?"

He stands from the body, eyeing the last attacker who runs full speed down the sidewalk and vanishes into the darkness. "I should kill him for trying to hurt you." Soldier Boy says simply.

You wave your hand allowing the vine to let go of his arm. "Where do you come off so high and mighty? You literally tried to kill me last month."

"That was before I-" He shakes his head angrily, eyes still blazing.

"Look I don't need you to protect me. Given what I've had to deal with all day I was looking forward to kicking some ass."

"You did." He smirks nodding his head in the direction of the men hanging from the streetlamp above you. “I just thought that you were outnumbered.”

"Why are you here?" You sigh pinching the bridge of your nose.

"I wanted to go for a stroll." Soldier Boy shrugs. He flexes his hand, before wiping the blood on the front of the sweatshirt of the man on the ground.

"Uh-huh. Well I don't need you to protect me." You say again, crossing your arms over your chest. "I had this handled."

"You sure doll?"

"Look I get it- you think that you're some knight in shining armor because you have this macho complex. But I'm fine on my own." You begin to step around the bodies of the men on the ground moving in the direction of your apartment, but Soldier Boy follows you.

"Where do you think you're going?" You turn to look at where he falls into step beside you.

"You shouldn't be walking home alone."

"Well you're sure as hell not going home with me."

His lip turns up in a smirk, towering over you. Soldier Boy is easily a foot taller than you, so broad that it's impossible to look past his imposing figure. It would be attractive if he wasn't so damn annoying. "Come on sweetheart, I know you want me to go home with you." He purrs with a smile. "I think you'd really enjoy it if I did. And I'll even let you tie me up with those pretty vines of yours." Ben leans in towards your face and you take a step back.

"Hard pass. So what? Is this your big move? Acting all chivalrous just to get a woman into bed with you?"

"That depends, is it working?"

"No. Now go back to the apartment, before I send you there in pieces." You turn back to squish down the sidewalk at a faster pace, hoping he will get a hint and leave you alone. But you knew he wouldn’t stop. He practically thrived on teasing you, had been the bane of your existence since you met him. And nothing seemed to dissuade him.

"What is your problem with me?" He jogs to catch up. "And don't say that it's because I tried to kill you, that was last month-"

"I think that's applicable to this week and the week after that and the week after that." You count out with every finger to further emphasize your point, but you know that Soldier Boy won't give up that easy.

"Are you always this fucking angry?" He almost laughs.

"I don’t know. Are you always this fucking annoying?" You turn to face him narrowing your eyes.

Soldier Boy chuckles at your look, running a hand through his hair that has darkened in the spray of water, his green eyes watching you curiously. They were shinning now, not the blacked pits of hate they were when he was beating the guy two minutes ago. For a second, just for a second, you see how handsome he is all over again.

"Come on, give me a real answer and I'll leave you alone." He's smiling at you now, giving you one of those boyish grins that, if it were anyone else, would make your heart stop.

He just wants sex. He doesn't care about you. He won't ever care about you. Breathe.

"Fine." You sigh. "You might say you're a supe, but you're not a hero. People like you and Homelander, you don't care about anyone but yourself. You use your powers for you and on your own terms. You were going to kill that guy-" You gesture back towards where the body is still on the ground, the man's heart beat is dangerously low.

"He was threatening you. A thank you might be nice." Soldier Boy's cheeks flush as he glares down at you with darkened eyes, his anger surging back in his chest.

"Yes he was threatening me, but I'm okay and you could have just taken him to jail. You didn't have to beat his face in."

"So you're saying if he had been attacking someone else you wouldn't have done the same?"

"I would have subdued him and then waited for the police to get there. The men hanging from the streetlight aren't dead. We aren't the law-"

"Right so those guys can get off with a warning and then go on and do the same thing over and over again." He scoffs rolling his eyes at you.

"It doesn't give you the right to kill them."

"I suppose you don't believe in the death penalty either."

"I believe in the death penalty Gramps. I just don't believe it is our job to carry it out." Your temper was flaring against your skin distracting you from the chill of the rain as it soaked into your clothes.

"Do you have any idea how many women would love to be saved by me?" Soldier Boy asks. He shakes his head as if he can't understand you.

You didn't blame him, most people didn't, that was why you spent most of your time alone.

"I'm not one of them. So leave me alone." You turn to go.

Honestly, why is this the kind of guy I attract? You roll your eyes to yourself. Oh you mean, tall, dark, handsome, gorgeous- The other little voice in your head whispers in your ear. NO. You tell yourself. Please I just want one guy who's not a total dick. Why is that so hard?

"I still don't think it's a good answer." He huffs.

"Of course you don't." You roll your eyes and begin to walk again. The streetlamps above send an eerie yellow glow over the parked cars along the road and over the crackled pavement. If Soldier Boy wasn't here bothering you, you might have stopped to admire the water as it splashed underneath the suspension bridge beyond the crowded buildings, but you wanted to get home. Without him if possible.

You glance over at Soldier Boy again. He looks normal right now, always does when he's not wearing his suit. And when he shut up you could see why people were so in love with him. It was when he opened his mouth that it reminded you exactly why you didn't like him.

You stop in front of your apartment building and force yourself to smile. "Thank you for walking me home." You say through tight lips, hoping that the false sincerity will make him leave.

He gazes up at your building with a frown. "This is a pretty shitty apartment building."

"Thank you. Not all of us inherited millions of dollars from our parents."

He pauses for a moment continuing to look up at the building, before he sighs loudly. "Look, I-." He sighs again. "I can't take listening to Annie and Hughie fucking. They go at it every night and she always makes the power go off."

You knew that already. It was another reason why you didn't like staying at the apartment, because listening to your best friend get railed by her boyfriend was not your idea of a good time.

You look up at Ben, and for a second you see a glimmer of the truth, just a flash of something that wasn't like the misogynistic attitude he usually had and it made you pause. He almost looked, sad and it made you feel bad for him. Of course you felt bad for him before, when you found out his entire team just gave him away to be experimented on and when probably the woman that he'd come the closest to loving really didn't care about him at all.

It must be incredibly lonely to come back to a world where almost everyone you know is dead. Guilt builds in your chest at the thought. I had lost my fair share of people, but not everyone in my life and I certainly didn’t learn about it on the same day.

"You know I think that's the first honest thing you've ever said to me." You say quietly shifting from foot to foot.

He half-smiles. "Maybe."

You chew on the inside of your cheek considering. You weren't afraid of him. You knew that with your powers you could take him. You were stronger than most and harder to kill. And despite the bad things you thought about him and knew about him, you kinda thought he was relatively harmless, well, you didn't think he was a rapist.

"Fine. But you're staying on the couch. And if I wake up and you're anywhere near my bedroom, I'll castrate you." You warn as walk up to the front doors and type in the code to unlock them, with Soldier Boy following behind you.

When you make it to the third floor, you raise one hand to stop him from going any further. It falls against his muscular chest and you fail trying not to admire how it feels beneath your hand.

Why am I so thirsty?

"If you wanted to grab my chest doll, all you had to do was ask-" Soldier Boy begins to say, but you raise the hand to cover his mouth.

"Shh." You hiss. "We have to be quiet or Mike will come out-"

"Who?" He asks, muffled against your hand.

You hear a door down the hallway creak open, spilling yellowed light onto the dark blue carpet of the hallway. "Shit. Too late."

Mike steps out of his apartment with a wide smile as soon as he sees you. "HEY y/n!" He crows, waving his free hand enthusiastically. "I didn't know you were getting in so late, but I wanted to give you this." Mike holds out a giant casserole dish filled with something that you can't identify. It's multi colored with multiple layers, one of which looks suspiciously like rice and the next layer looks like cake.

There's no way I'm eating that. Maybe if I force feed it to Soldier Boy he'll leave me alone.

Mike was your neighbor, your neighbor who had lived next door to you for the past 2 years and was shamelessly in love with you. And as sweet as he was, there were a few things that you couldn't get past, most namely that he lived with his mother and that he had a mullet.

One time you'd had a nightmare about it ripping itself from his head, breaking in to your apartment, and smothering you in your sleep.

Not fun.

"Hey Mike." You smile tightly at him, dropping your hand from Soldier Boy's mouth. "Yeah I'm sorry I was out with some friends."

"You should have asked me to come! I love your friends." Mike smiles so wide you're afraid that it's going to break his face. “Especially Butcher. He’s so funny. Always joking-"

Poor Mike.

Every time that Butcher had come over to talk shop, he would mock Mike endlessly. And Mike was just too sweet to realize it. Hughie was the only one who actively tried to be nice to Mike, but even he found it difficult. Annie was the worst though, she'd tease you constantly about what your children would look like and had taken to photoshopping mullets onto pictures of babies and sending them to you at inopportune times.

"Maybe next time." You cough out an awkward laugh while Soldier Boy snorts behind you.

You continue down the hallway towards your apartment, the door next to his, and hope that he'll go back into his home, but no such luck.

“My mom made this for you!” He holds the dish out towards you.

“Oh um that’s so nice of her. But I can’t except that-“

Mike's mother comes to stand in the doorway of their shared apartment. She was wearing a bright purple Mumu, her makeup caked thickly on her face and her eyes accentuated with bright blue eye shadow. “Sure you can sweetie. You’re Mike’s special friend.” She winks before trailing her eyes up and down your body. “And you’ve got such a cute little figure.” His mother does a little shimmy as if trying to get you to do the same.

Kill me now.

“That’s what I keep telling her.” Soldier Boy purrs behind you.

“Don’t make me kill you.” You mutter back, knowing full well he can hear you with his super-hearing.

Oddly enough Mike does look suspiciously like his mother, they are both the same height, exactly three inches under you, and have the same mullet, but hers is a shocking blue-gray and his is jet black.

He blushes at her words. “Aww mom.”

Soldier Boy muffles a laugh before disguising it into a cough. You elbow him hard in the stomach.

“Well thank you.” You take the casserole dish with one hand, hoping that you can open the door and usher Soldier Boy in before he makes a comment. "I've had a long day and it's really late-"

“I helped her make this one.” Mike interrupts scooting closer to you, so close that you get a lungful of his terrible cologne, the one that the super sells for four dollars and smells like baby powder and Cheez-its.

“A man who can do it all.” Soldier Boy whispers to you.

Mike looks above your head as if noticing Soldier Boy for the first time. “Who’s that? I thought I knew all your friends.”

“He’s certainly very handsome-“ Mike's mother blushes from the doorway.

“Your brother?” Mike offers.

You can see his expression turn hopeful.

Probably thinking about how he can become friends with "said brother" and that will escalate our "relationship."

“I’m Ben.” Soldier Boy says, stepping around you to shake Mike’s hand. “I’m y/n's boyfriend.”

Your cheeks bloom a bright pink, unable to respond to the ridiculous statement that he just made.

Murder. That's what sounds good right now.

“Oh.” Mike’s face falls. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.” His eyes flick back to you, disappointment swimming in the irises.

You watch Mike’s hope begin to circle the drain.

“Well actually-“ You begin, but Soldier Boy interrupts you.

“Sorry I’ve been out of town for a while. We've been trying to do this long distance thing- you know how it is, late night phone calls-“ Ben trails off with a wolfish grin before dropping an arm around your shoulders. “But I just couldn’t take the long distance. Missed her too much. Phone call isn’t the same as sleeping in the same bed. Definitely not as satisfying. Not to mention there’s only so much my hand can do.”

Your cheeks bloom an even brighter red at his insinuation. That’s when Soldier Boy does something even more unforgivable, he pulls you tighter against him and kisses you right there in front of Mike and his mother. The kiss is searing, making everything in your mind go blissfully blank. It had been so long since someone kissed you, since someone had held you this close to them without trying to kill you. His tongue teases your bottom lip and before you can stop yourself you open your mouth wider to let him in sighing softly against his lips, while you grip the front of his jacket.

For a moment you can’t remember why you didn’t want him to kiss you, why you denied yourself of this for so long. And then Soldier Boy's hand slides from your back to grab a handful of your ass.

Right.

You slap him so hard across the face that you're sure it would have broken the cheekbone of anyone who wasn’t a supe.

But Soldier Boy only grins wider, squeezing your butt again. “She knows that I like it a little rough.” He turns his lazy gaze back to Mike.

You open your mouth to cuss him out.

“Well we should probably get going.” Soldier Boy breezes. “Probably going to be a long night. If you know what I mean. But we’ll try to keep it down. Then again my girl's a little loud.” He winks at your poor neighbor who looks like he might cry, while his mother stands behind him fanning herself like Soldier Boy is everything she wants in a man.

He's ten for ten with the older ladies I'll say that.

“Oh right. Well I guess I’ll see you around y/n.” Mike turns to go.

“Mike wait-“ You try to say but he’s already vanishing through the door.

“Nice to meet you Mark.” Soldier Boy calls at his retreating figure, getting his name wrong on purpose.

You don’t even use your key to open the door you're so mad, the plants inside let you in. As soon as it opens, you haul Soldier Boy by the front of his jacket through the doorway and pin him to the wall just inside.

The casserole dish lands on your counter and by some miracle doesn’t break.

“What the hell is your problem?” Your hand is fisted in the front of his shirt, eyes blazing with anger and embarrassment.

He only grins. “You didn’t want me to play along? Sounded like that guy had been trying to get into your pants for a while. Unless he already has been or you want him to?"

You flush a deeper shade of crimson. "That is absolutely none of your business!"

“Well if we’re going to be living together doll, I’m pretty sure it is my business.”

“WE AREN'T LIVING TOGETHER I'M JUST LETTING YOU CRASH ON THE COUCH TONIGHT AND THEN YOU'RE GONE.” You shout.

“I think you’re gonna get pretty attached to me sleeping here. Maybe even you let me sleep in your bed and even fu-“

You knock him back against the wall again. “If you finish that sentence I’m going to throw you out the window.”

“If you keep knocking me around, Mike's going to think you’re into some pretty kinky stuff.” Soldier Boy smirks down at you. “It’s actually turning me on a bit. Is it turning you on?”

“I don’t have to let you stay here.” You growl, releasing him.

“I think it’s because you like me.” He teases.

“I don’t.” You frown grows. “Okay couch is there goodnight.”

You point in the direction of the worn leather couch. You'd hauled it up three flights of stairs with Annie when you first moved in after you found a guy online selling it for nothing. And when you showed up to get it, he presumed to say it would be free if you let him take a picture of your feet. And after, when he had a black eye and a fun story to tell his wife, he gave you the couch for nothing as promised.

“No kiss goodnight?” Soldier Boy pouts his lips innocently.

“You already had one of those.” You snap thinking about slapping him again and trying hard not to think about how much you wanted to kiss him again.

Get a grip.

“Right. You liked it.”

“No I didn’t. And the next time you shove your tongue into my mouth I’ll bite it off.”

“You’re really violent for such a little thing.” Soldier Boy eyes you up and down as if sizing you up.

“And you’re really dick-like for someone who’s supposed to have the wisdom of the ages.” You turn towards the hallway intent on going to bed to avoid any more conversation with him.

"Whoa." You hear Soldier Boy say as he looks into your living room.

It was the reaction that everyone had when they entered your apartment. You had a small one bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building that you believed might be older than Soldier Boy. The kitchen and living room was mostly one room, the kitchen to the left with outdated appliances and a small circular wooden table with three chairs that served as your kitchen table and desk, and was separated by the large leather aforementioned couch that faced the wall that held two large windows. Beyond the front door was a small hallway that held the only bathroom in the apartment and your bedroom.

But that's not what was surprising.

Every open space in your apartment was covered in plants. There wasn't a single piece of unused space in your apartment. There were large standing monstera and fiddle leaf figs shoved into every corner and pots of dark green pothos bolted into the walls trailing vines to the ground so that every wall looked alive. Jasmine crept along the wall behind the tv that sat on an antique credenza between the two windows, sending the bright scent into the living room.

There was a large rectangular box bolted in the space above your sink where herbs and tomatoes hung down, probably a fire hazard, but you didn't care. The vibrant smell of mint, the spicy smell of rosemary, and soft tones of oregano and basil fused the air in your apartment with a life force that was impossible to ignore.

A large apple tree grew in a pot as big around as you next to the couch, with brilliant red apples hanging from it's branches, while a lemon tree and a tangerine tree intertwined their branches just behind the kitchen table. The refrigerator, once white, was covered in the tangled vines of blackberry and raspberry, hanging with full fruit, while a potted strawberry plant sits prettily on top of the kitchen table, the bright red fruit enticing.

It was a lot. You knew it was a lot, but helping plants grow was the only thing you were good at, the only thing that felt right. One day you hoped that you could move somewhere and open a farmers market, but today you were stuck here, with Soldier Boy, who probably thought that you were crazy.

"I mean. I knew you had plant powers but this is-" He begins to say.

"A lot. I know." You roll your eyes. "The bathroom is down the hall." You gesture with your free hand towards the darkened hallway. "I guess I'll get you a pillow."

Ben is still looking around the room dumbfounded, as if he's never seen anything like this in his life, and he probably hasn't.

He's been in a Russian Lab for the past forty years, I mean he's probably not used to seeing anything this green.

You find the extra pillow in the linen closet along with one of the crocheted granny square blankets you made last year when Annie and you had a Jaws movie marathon, and a towel, before you move back into the living room.

Ben is still standing awkwardly by the couch as if he's not sure what to do, and it's the first time you've seen him look lost.

"Here." You throw him the pillow and the towel before you drape the blanket over the back of the couch. "One night."

"Why are you working for Butcher?"

"What?" The question catches you off guard. You were expecting him to make another pass at you, maybe check you out again. He was looking at you, but it was different, his gaze was softer, curious.

"You don't seem like you-" He gestures around the room. "Like you fit."

You blink for a second. "Um."

"I mean Annie used to be one of the Seven, Hughie does whatever the fuck Butcher tells him, but you you're different." His brow furrows together as if he can't figure you out.

"I really don't want to do this with you."

"This?" He looks confused again.

"Opening up with one another. You're here for one night. That's it." You force yourself to say, but the reality was you were still surprised, surprised that he actually seemed to care.

Stop. He's changing tactics because nothing else worked. He's pretending to care about you because he still wants to sleep with you.

"Please."

You can't answer for a second. It was the first time that he'd said that word in front of you before, or acted this way. It was also the first time that it had just been the two of you, before Butcher had been there or Frenchie or Annie and Hughie, but this was the first time that the two of you had been left alone.

Maybe that's why?

You hesitate before you answer, he was the last person you really wanted to open up to.

"I don't know, it's not all that bad." You shrug. "Before I didn't really use my powers all that much except like this." You gesture around the room for emphasis. "And when I went to college everyone was so serious about their futures and I didn't really like any of the classes. The only thing I enjoyed was using my powers at Please Don’t Die, the plant store I work at. And then Annie asked me to come help her out-" You bite your cheek. "She's my best friend and maybe I wanted to spend more time with her."

"But is it what you really want?" He cocks his head to the side, holding the pillow in one hand and the towel in the other.

You'd never seen him look so calm before, relaxed, like being here with you was washing away any anger or frustration he still had about the past. It was confusing, and at the same time you could feel your heart beginning to betray you. It was hard not to fall for him when he looked so good, eyes soft, dark hair falling into his eyes, clothes still dripping rain on your hardwood floors.

No. I will not fall in love with him, I will not fall in love with-

"Goodnight Soldier Boy. I'll see you in the morning." You turn to go, ignoring his final question.

"You can call me Ben." He almost whispers it, the sound of his voice a low rumble that sends a shiver down your spine.

"What?" You look back at him.

"You never call me Ben. But you can, if you want." He shrugs his shoulders, before he shakes his head as if he's annoyed with himself for suggesting it. "Never mind, just fucking forget about it-"

"Goodnight Ben." You feel the end of your mouth twitch up into a smile and with that you disappear into your bedroom, locking the door behind you.

And deep down you know that it's not to keep him out, but to keep you in.

As always, thank you so much for reading!

If you liked this story be sure to read my follow up fic that takes place in the future:

Open Mic Night!

Or if you'd like to read another series please try:

You Call It Madness But I Call It Love!

If The Stars Wish It So

A/N: I know it's crazy to start another series right now, but I'm kinda feeling this reader and Ben together? What do y'all think about it?

A/N: Update I've made a huge mistake and started another series.

If you'd like to be added to the taglist please let me know!

(Photos for series picture from Pinterest)

Taglist: @roseblue373 @mrsjenniferwinchester

#soldier boy #soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #jensen ackles #wonderful mutuals 💕#lovely friends 💗#soldier boy fanfiction #soldier boy imagine #soldier boy fic #soldier boy au #take a chance on me feedback

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damneddamsy · 2 days ago

Text

falling | joel miller x fem!oc (part xii)

THEOREM OF BECOMING—Transformation is not a moment, but a process.

summary: The journey back to Jackson is full of make-believe of a life that almost feels like it's coming true.

a/n: woohoo, happy AAPI month! I'm sorry this update took so long, I was so indecisive on how I wanted this chapter to end, and what I wanted to depict, especially at the end when it was hard for me to decide where I wanted to place all of them... I just hope it turned out okay! one more chapter left before the epilogue :)

word count: 12,800+ words (dare I say, a short one?)

Joel tried to imagine himself at university. Outlandish things like, what would’ve happened if the world had given him a second door to open?

Because being here—goddamn. It was hard not to wonder what it might’ve felt like, walking into a place like this with a backpack and purpose instead of a rifle and regret.

What kind of kid would Joel have been, sitting in one of those chairs? Twenty years old, maybe. Hell—eighteen if he'd played it straight. No Sarah. No mortgage. No busted-up drywall jobs. No worry about gas bills or whether the AC would hold another summer.

Fuck no, he wouldn't do whatever it was Leela was doing in that lab, with data and diagrams that looked like chicken scratch to him. He would want a degree in something that lets the brain wander. A major in liberal arts, maybe. History. Music theory sounded nice. All that “not real work” crapola folks in his neighbourhood used to scoff at.

He’d always had a good head on him—just never the time or the cash to spend chasing someone else’s definition of smart. See, college wasn’t for men like him. Places like this weren’t made for people like him.

It was a gate you needed a key for, and that key used to cost fuck-ton loans and inevitable debt. More than he ever had or would have.

But that never meant he wasn’t curious. Never meant he didn’t know things.

Truth was, Joel used to like ideas. He liked stories. He read when he could. Listened. Paid attention. Watched old movies with Sarah, sometimes caught the way dialogue turned into meaning. Took in books secondhand, borrowed from neighbours, dog-eared and scribbled in. Kept his head and hands busy. When he worked construction, he could out-measure, out-calculate, and out-plan any of those stiff-collared pricks with their clean hands and degrees nailed to their office walls.

Tommy used to joke that Joel could memorize a script better than a foreman could read a blueprint.

“Man, you ain’t dumb,” his baby brother said once, picking dried cement off his hands. “We’re just poor.”

And he'd agreed. Their whole academic system was a racket, just a way of putting a price tag on knowledge.

Places like Caltech were always for them—it was for the bright ones, the born-lucky, the rich kids with trust funds and internships lined up like bowling pins. Kids like Leela, in fact. He'd never set foot in a real university, let alone one like this. All that prestige and legacy. Hell, even the labs looked like spaceships.

Joel had never even been on a real campus before the world went belly-up, and now here he was, boots echoing in a dead lecture hall, listening to Leela piece together the last remnants of science like she was born for it.

He stood halfway down the sloped aisle, one hand dragging along the edge of a long desk. The laminate was peeling at the corners. He could picture a thousand students slouched here over the decades, bent over laptops or spiral notebooks, yawning, scrawling notes they’d forget the second finals ended.

Behind him, Ellie climbed onto the stage at the bottom of the hall, testing the strength of the lectern like a kid playing teacher. Her voice carried, all grin and gravel.

“Bet you’d sit in the back row. Right, Joel?”

Joel smirked. “Only place I could get away with nappin’.”

“Or so you think. I’d definitely be front row. Raising my hand. Asking annoying questions.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t nothin’ changed.”

“Pft, whatever.”

Beyond the doors, down the corridor, he could just make out the faint click-clack of keys—Leela, working in the lab with that same eerie calm she always had when the world dropped away and it was just her and the numbers. Her silhouette had barely shifted in an hour. Her hair was loose, falling over one shoulder, half in the light. She looked like she belonged in there.

“Y’know,” he drawled out to Ellie from somewhere inside his head, “I think she and I… if we’d met like that back then… we’d’ve found each other.”

Ellie didn't tease him about it. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. I’d be the guy just tryin’ to keep up. Probably complainin’ about the campus coffee and the goddamn parking passes.”

She grinned. “She’d dodge you for two whole weeks.”

“Hm. Sounds ‘bout right.”

“Then one day you’d say something too smart that’d make her stop and think. And boom. Now you’re study partners.”

He sighed. “I ain’t smart, kiddo.”

“Nah, you’re smart.”

“Not that kinda smart.”

“Bullshit. You literally remember everything. Details. Faces. The way you describe a guy’s boots, I feel like I was there.”

Joel clucked his tongue. “You learn to read people when your life depends on it.”

She shrugged. “Still counts.”

He didn’t answer, but his mouth twitched—somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Hey, know what else? She’d’ve helped me cheat on a math exam.”

“Ha, no way. Leela would smack you across the face.”

He rubbed his jaw, the beginnings of a smile ghosting across his mouth. “But she’d tutor me. Make me memorise some dumb equation by makin’ it a song or somethin’. She hums that stuff sometimes, y'know? 'Spretty cute.”

Ellie gave him a look—half fond, half exasperated. “Jesus. Jesse was right. You're cuntstruck.”

“Ellie,” he muttered, more warning than scolding, but it didn’t carry much heat.

“Aw, c’mon, Joel. Can you just imagine a life where,” she sighed, “you just live that time-honoured, grey area of life? Be a normal dude with a college sweetheart or some shit?”

“How the hell do you know all that?”

“I'm just that baller.”

“Jesus.”

Now, Joel meant to leave it there, but the thought had already taken root.

He let his eyes drift toward the broken chalkboard at the front of the room, and the lecture hall around them seemed to grow in his mind—less ruin, more memory of something he never had.

He imagined Leela sitting at a desk beside him, in a school that let smart kids like her and dumbasses like him sit together—just one of those big halls with sticky floors and ceiling fans that clicked when they turned, where the smart ones always found the front row and the tired ones sat wherever the sun didn’t hit their eyes. She’d be chewing a pen cap, probably, maybe twirling a strand of hair around her finger, nodding all serious while some professor went off about Gödel or Fermat or one of those names that felt more like hexes than people. Joel wouldn’t understand a lick of it—not even on his best, most caffeinated day.

But maybe—she’d lean in, whisper it in Layman's for him. Not to make him feel dumb, but because she wanted him to know. All sweet, patient, gracious Leela.

He’d pretend to follow along, nodding at the right times, but mostly he’d be watching the way her mouth moved around the words, the way her brows bunched up when she really got into it. Watching the gears turn in her beautiful, brilliant head. Joel still did that, when she went off on a tangent in their living room between her blackboards, he'd just want her to kiss her until she was blue in the face.

He nevertheless would've fallen so damn hard for her. Right on his ass. No question about it.

Wouldn’t have taken him long to ask her out, either—not if they’d met like that. Not if she didn’t already know all the things the world had done to a man like him. He would have acted like his balls had just dropped or something—nervous as hell, but trying to play it cool. Sweaty palms, rehearsed lines in front of his mirror. Something about those big, dark eyes of hers, her fancy shoes, or her mint-condition books. Something along the lines of: I promise I’m more interesting than I look… though I realise the bar’s low since I’ve been standing here staring at you for the last thirty seconds.

And if she’d fold and giggle ‘okay’—and he liked to believe she would—he’d take her out someplace decent. Someplace with candlelight, silverware, suited waiters, cloches and folded napkins. He’d pick her up in front of her building. Show up with a fat bouquet of daisies. Pull her chair out for her at dinner. Hold the door. Call her ma’am without even thinking. He would be flat-broke in that life too, but he was raised right with Texan manners imbued upon him by Mr and Mrs Miller, after all.

Leela would probably tease him a little, maybe make fun of how stiff his shirt collar was or how he kept checking the long-ass bill like it was going to change. But she’d smile through it and offer to go Dutch instead. That rare, toothy smile of hers that made her look so young, unguarded and just a little bit shy.

He imagined them walking back across campus after—quiet, inseparable, arm around his. Maybe it was autumn. Maybe the crimson maple leaves crunched under their feet, and she kept pushing her hands into the sleeves of her coat like she always did when she was cold but didn’t want to say so. Maybe he’d offer his jacket. Maybe she’d take it. Maybe he’d blow into her hands in an attempt to kiss them.

Maybe that night, standing outside her place, she’d look up at him with that same quiet challenge in her eyes she had now—like she was daring him to be gentle.

And he would’ve been. Gentle as fuck. Their first kiss wouldn’t have been some clumsy, rushed thing. No desperation. No fear of the dark coming back. Just... time. Time you don’t know you’re wasting until it’s gone.

He imagined her fingers curled into his coat on maybe their fourth date, maybe he'd just taken her out ice-skating or bowling, and she would push the coat off him, and pull him a little closer. Stay with me tonight. A breath caught between their lips. And maybe—God help him—maybe they’d have stumbled into the fancy elevator of her expensive off-campus apartment, shoes kicked off halfway, giggling when she nearly tripped over her own purse left by the door. He’d catch her waist, steady her, and she’d glance at him with those mischievous eyes that already knew what he wanted. I want all of you.

They’d lock the door behind them, not because they had to, but because they could—because no one was chasing them, nothing was breathing down their necks. Just a night in. Quiet. Private. Theirs.

The desk lamp would still be on, casting light over her math books still open, forgotten now, pages fluttering. Her room would be warm, a little cluttered, with too many books for one person. A corkboard with pinned movie stubs and Post-it reminders. A polaroid of them, maybe, from some campus event—Joel squinting at the lens, Leela mid-laugh as always, her nose scrunched in that way he loved.

They’d peel off layers slowly. Clothes in a trail from the doorway to the bed. His shirt, her dress, his belt, her tights, his boxers. Her bra hanging from the lamp. They’d laugh a little, giggling some, fumbling with the condom in his wallet like it was a joke they’d made earlier in the week—about how just in case that had suddenly become now.

No pressure. No pain. First times. A night they got to have too late. No urgency, no hunger born from grief or fear. Just intimacy. Just plain, affectionate, stumbling, careful sex. Earned. Trusted. Wanted.

He pictured them afterwards, her curled against him beneath tangled sheets, tracing lazy shapes on his chest while the radiator clanked in protest against the cold. Nodding while they discussed their upcoming test, how she’d incentivise him with a kiss for each question he scored, fingers moving through her hair, catching on a tiny braid she must’ve done while studying.

The window would fog up by morning. They’d sleep through their alarms. Maybe skip class like dumb rebels. Maybe make breakfast instead—pancakes from a box, the batter too thick, the frying pan too hot. He’d burn the first one and she’d steal it anyway, kissing him with syrup on her lips. Good fuckin' morning to me.

They’d graduate together, in this life. He’d be in the back row on ceremony day, shoes shined for once, hair swept back neatly, watching his best girl stride across the stage to grab her scroll. Top of her class, honour roll, summa cum laude. Maybe he didn’t get a diploma of his own—maybe he took night classes, taking the slow route out—but he’d be there, standing up before anyone else, clapping like hell, hooting her name with his hands cupped around his lips.

And she’d find him later, tassel on her crooked hat flying, gown wrinkled, eyes shining, leaping into his arms, and he’d spin her about. Kiss her right there in the crowd like he was the luckiest son of a bitch alive.

And in that life—the life he never got—maybe they’d go on like that for years. Their families are all tight-knit, spending holidays together, all of them waiting on hand and foot for Joel to pop the question, but he promised his girl all the time in the world. No muss, no fuss.

Graduation photos in front of some ivy-covered wall. Travel photos of the two of them from roadtrips and weekend escapes—mountains in Telluride, coasts in Monterey, lighthouses in Nantucket. Maybe later they’d rent a shitty apartment together in a big city even if he hated it—New York, or London, or some big German town with a zigzag skyline and a bakery on every corner—while she chased her PhD dreams and he’d just be happy to take care of them. Joel would take on carpentry jobs to keep the lights on and fix things around the building in exchange for rent. He'd play gigs, strum his old guitar, in pubs and bars all night for a good sum of cash. Patch the leaky sink with elbow grease. Assembling furniture that they couldn’t afford to buy. Shelves full of her notes. Coffee rings on the floor. Late-night supermarket runs. Eat dinner for breakfast and fall asleep with her textbooks open between them. The laughter of a life being made from scratch.

And maybe one day, not in a church, not even in a courthouse—but under that oak tree just outside her big, white house in Jackson, they’d say their vows. Soft ones. Barely louder than the wind. Just a handful of people who mattered, a patch of wildflowers in springtime, and the gold ring he’d carried in his pocket for years. Her hand in his, sliding the band into place. Her thumb brushing his knuckles while he tried not to cry. I offer you all I have, my dumbass and beating heart.

And she’d laugh when he picked her up, white dress, veil and all, just to prove he still could, and carry her over the threshold, whilst her sandals dangled from his fingers. They'd make love like it was the first time, on a nice, month-long honeymoon in the Maldives or Bali, on a linen, canopy-frame bed that wobbled by the time they were through.

And one day, he’d come home—sawdust still in his hair, tired to the bone, aching for his long shower—only to find a positive test on the bathroom sink, and they’d smile at each other like they’d just won the lottery. Those soft, teary eyes they’d share. You think we've got room for one more around here?

And from that moment on, Joel would've been all in. No half-measures. No second-guessing. Just him, right in her pocket. He wouldn’t leave her side unless he had to—work, maybe, or some emergency—and even then, she’d be on speed dial (not that she already wasn’t). He’d check in constantly. Make sure she was drinking water, eating enough. Sitting her antsy ass down.

Late at night, he’d press his ear to her belly, grinning when their baby kicked like she already had her mama’s fire. He’d murmur promises against her skin—about giving her the world, about love, about never missing a thing again. And he’d mean every damn word.

He wouldn’t miss a single ultrasound, even if the clinic was across town and the truck was coughing smoke. He’d be there for all of it—Lamaze classes, nausea, mood swings, sleepless nights, midnight drives for god-knows-what. He’d baby-proof every damn inch of the house, stock the cabinets with baby items, triple-check the crib screws, read every parenting book he could find, even the ones with goofy cartoon covers.

Overbearing? For fucking sure. She might threaten to divorce him half a dozen times before the third trimester—but he’d take it, all of it. With a grin and a kiss and a Yes, ma’am.

And when it was time—when the world narrowed to a hospital room and the sound of her hurting wails—he’d be right there, surgical gown and all, holding her hand through every contraction, brushing damp hair from her face, whispering through the panic, through his heart tearing in two: I’m right here, baby. I ain’t going anywhere.

And Maya would come hollering into their lives. Of course, that’s what they’d name her in this life, too. Radiant, beautiful, nascent Maya, looking just like her mama and holding his heart in her tiny fist. All that imagining he’d ever done—every if, every maybe—had somehow led to this little girl he called his.

He pictured Maya clearly in that other life—the one that never got to be. Toddling around their grad-school apartment, leaping onto his stomach in PJs on a lazy Sunday morning, giggling through a mouthful of sugary cereal while Leela chased after their little thief, trying to snatch the box from her sticky hands. One sock is on, and the other is always missing. Her wild curls bouncing as she ran to him when he walked through the door—always early, maybe this time in a stable job which involved him wearing a suit and tie, lugging a briefcase—arms outstretched, shrieking Da-da! like he was some kind of superhero, and without fail, he'd rain at least a hundred kisses on her before letting her go.

She’d throw a fit in the toy aisle over exactly the faulty stuffed animal, with lopsided eyes and a ripped tag, and Joel would fold like wet paper the second she pouted.

And if the bad times did come, the only arguments he and Leela might’ve had were the soft kind, inconsequential—disagreements over something like Joel’s brief, doomed venture into stocks, or Leela being scatterbrained with the grocery runs, or whether Maya should go to that elite preschool an hour away with the long waitlist and sterling reputation. Joel would’ve wanted the best for her, the kind of start he never had. But Leela would just want to keep Maya close a little longer, probably even attempt to homeschool her if she could swing it.

They’d make up over pizza on the couch—Maya asleep between them, still clutching that faulty toy, cartoons flickering on the TV. Their fingers would find each other over the back of her blanket, apology and forgiveness exchanged without a single word spoken.

And thereafter, the mornings were ones where he'd juggle coffee cups, lunch bags and backpacks, dropping Leela off at her university, her hair still wet from a rushed shower, pencil skirt on a tight ass that waited for it's morning squeeze, a thick binder clutched to her chest, a soft lingering kisses shared over the console; and then Maya in the backseat, singing along to the radio, squealing when he pulled up to her school next. She’d barely get her backpack on before she tore across the pavement to her friends, flashing Joel a quick flying kiss and a grin that damn near knocked the wind out of him every time.

And at night—the three of them crammed around a too-small kitchen table, Leela would sit, drafting her research papers or scribbling in a notebook, Maya in her lap, doodling in the margins, asking about black holes and dinosaurs in the same breath. Leela would answer every question like it was the most important one she’d ever been asked. Joel would just listen, smiling into his beer, tuck the moment away somewhere safe inside him, like a man who knew exactly how fragile good things could be.

And Maya would believe everything her mama told her. Because why wouldn’t she?

Joel blinked, staring at the cracked chalkboard. The room was silent, save for Ellie’s soft humming and the hum of distant power from the lab down the hall.

But that life—that life—wasn’t the one they got.

But maybe... maybe it wasn’t too late for some piece of it. Not the degrees or the papers.

But the love part. The quiet part.

Maybe that kind of life still had a place in this one. Maybe that was still real. Maybe it was standing just down the hall, surrounded by equations, stubborn as ever.

He smiled to himself, soft and stupid, like a man who’d just lived a whole other life in three minutes.

A loud metallic clatter broke the spell.

Joel turned—slow, blinking like he'd just woken from a dream—and found Ellie grinning at him, holding up a dusty diploma frame like she’d just pulled a sword from a stone. The glass was cracked in one corner, the name beneath faded and half-eaten by sun and decay. But scrawled across the middle in thick, unapologetic black marker was something brand new:

Dr. Leela Miller.

“Well,” Ellie said, lifting it higher like a trophy, “I didn’t know her last name, so…”

Joel stared. His breath caught on something warm.

“Reed,” he said, slow and quiet, like the name had weight. Affection weaved through it like a thread. “But this… this is fine.”

He could almost see it—this on the wall of that little apartment they never had. Over a desk cluttered with paper and empty mugs and one tiny sock, someone still hadn’t found the match for.

Ellie held it out to him like a kid offering a crayon drawing. “It’s probably not, y’know, technically accredited,” she said with a crooked smile. “D'you think she'll feel a little better?”

He snorted, folding his arms. “That's a ten-dollar word from a dollar-sized person.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

He gave her a look, soft and knowing. “Well, Leela won’t say it right now, but yeah. She will.”

Then he glanced across the hall.

There she was—his smartass, hunched on a table littered with papers and old, curling printouts. Leela had one hand braced against the edge, the other pressed over her mouth like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her fingers moved through a page, tracing lines of ink like a woman touching scripture. Like she was holding a piece of a language she'd thought was long dead.

Joel brought two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp, low whistle.

Across the hall, Leela jolted a little—more like a reflex than real surprise—blinking over at him with a stunned, empty look. It cracked after a second, softening into something small and sheepish, but Joel didn’t miss the way she moved, like she was dragging herself up from somewhere far away.

He tipped his head toward her, half a smirk pulling at his mouth, trying to keep it easy, light.

“Weather’s turnin’,” he called, voice carrying across the dusty floorboards. “We oughta get movin’ along before it gets any worse.”

“Um...”

Leela hesitated, staring back at the whirring, flickering monitor like it was something alive she’d been charged with keeping breathing. Her hand lifted slowly, clumsily, brushing her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist.

She gave a stiff little nod—obedient, automatic, like she wasn’t even aware of doing it.

Joel opened his mouth—half-ready to tell her it was fine if she needed more time—but Ellie piped up behind him.

“Ooh, we gotta head down to the coast first. Ay, you promised the beach, old man!”

Joel felt the beginnings of a headache forming behind his eyes. He turned slightly, cutting a look back at Leela for silent backup.

And Leela just shrugged. Just the barest hitch of her shoulders, like even the decision didn’t mean much anymore. Her mouth twitched at the corners, a hint of old amusement surfacing and dying again all at once.

“I've almost finished the upload,” she said, tapping the corner of the monitor, where some ancient progress bar crawled along painfully slow. “Just... eleven more minutes.”

Eleven minutes.

It used to drive Joel a little crazy, if he was honest. He’d thought it was grief or obsession. Maybe denial. He’d even thought as much, once—there wasn’t anyone left who cared about prime numbers and proof sheets. Leela's long nights hunched over scavenged paper, her fingers smudged with graphite and ash, scribbling until her wrist cramped. A fucking waste indeed.

No one needed the big hypothesis solved when there were clickers on the road and medicine running thin.

And now he saw it.

She wasn’t trying to bring the old world back. She was trying to make sure some vestige of it survived.

Not the comforts. Not its power grids or grocery stores, or monuments. But it's thinking. It's questions. The bones of the mind that had once built bridges and satellites and figured out how to split atoms. She was keeping that, preserving hope for the world that would eventually look back.

And she was sending it forward like a time capsule in the shape of code—across a patchy uplink, through battered infrastructure, to a settlement that might not even know what to do with it.

One day, someone would.

Someone with a mind like hers. Someone with less blood on their hands and more time. A student, a child, a generation down the line who’d never seen the world fall and might still wonder how it once stood.

She was sending it all to Jackson—not as salvation, maybe, but as seed.

Something to plant. Something to grow if they ever got a spring again.

And if that someone asked, if they searched—she’d be there. In the pages, in the math. In the margins, scrawled with her restless handwriting. A woman who had no lab, no colleagues, no safety, but still sat down and thought.

Joel rubbed his thumb over a dent in the metal of the desk. It was humbling, what she was doing. Quiet and unadorned, the way most real things were.

And for the first time, he didn’t feel far from her work. He didn’t feel like it belonged to a world he couldn’t touch. He was somehow a part of it, too.

He exhaled through his nose, scratching the back of his neck. Eleven minutes. Seemed like a small enough thing after everything they'd been through.

He shifted his weight, the old floor creaking under his boots, and his gaze caught on the diploma again—still cradled in Ellie’s hands, the cracked glass catching the faint grey light.

Dr. Leela Miller.

Miller.

His name. His... wife.

He hadn't expected it to hit him like that. The word sitting there plain and heavy, stitched onto her like it had always belonged. The beginning of his other life.

His name stitched there so plainly, so firmly, like it had always been meant to sit against her like that. A jolt went through him—sharp and unexpected—settling low in his gut like a stone thrown into deep water.

He could almost see it, just for a second—clearer than any dream he ever allowed himself to linger on: Leela standing beside him at some clean, sun-warmed courthouse, signing her new name across the marriage license with a little grimace, muttering about how bureaucratic nonsense would outlive them all. Joel, laughing under his breath, taking the pen after her, signing his name next to hers. The flash of a cheap camera. The clap of a judge’s hand on his back. Her grinning face turned up to his, awaiting a congratulatory kiss. And he would make it linger, pressing two, three, four kisses before he murmured against her lips: You alright there, Mrs Miller?

Yes, Joel didn’t feel the press of the world closing in.

He just stood there, hands planted firm on his hips, heart too big for his ribs, and thought, Maybe it ain’t the life I thought I'd have.

When he was young—back before the world cracked open—he thought he understood what a good life was supposed to look like. Steady work. A home. A little backyard for Sarah to tear around in. A dog, one of those loud mutts that drove the neighbours crazy. Bills paid on time. Supper on the table by six. Simple. Straightforward. A line you followed if you kept your head down and your hands busy.

He’d built toward that life once. Brick by brick. Sweat and sacrifice and stubbornness. And he’d watched it all turn to ash in a single night, leaving nothing but the brutal math of survival behind.

Wake up. Choke down rations. Shoot. Kill without a thought. Stay alive. Sleep with one eye open. Repeat.

Hope had been a dangerous thing after that, an unaffordable luxury. Like college.

But standing here now, and Leela hunkered over that blinking screen like she was fighting the universe itself to save what little good was left in it—Joel realised he’d been wrong about what makes a life and what was worth holding onto.

It wasn’t about clean houses or paid-off trucks or picture-perfect little towns.

It was about this.

It was about watching the woman he loved refuse to give up on the world, even when the world had given up on her. It was about Ellie clutching a battered diploma like it was the goddamn Declaration of Independence, blinking out the window like a daydreaming college kid who still believed she’d make it here. It was about Maya somewhere back home, waiting, safe, growing up in a place that hadn’t been paved over by fear.

It was about them.

So, why not... breathe life into that other reality?

Joel shifted slightly, his hand drifting to his pocket—more out of habit than thought. His fingers closed around the small thing he’d stashed there weeks ago, careful not to draw attention to it.

Rolled it between his fingers sometimes, in replacement for the brass button that Maya had bestowed on him—in quiet moments, when no one was looking. Like maybe if he kept turning it long enough, the edges would smooth out, the crack in the band would seal, and time would forget whatever broke it.

It wasn’t much to look at. Just a beat-up old ring he’d pocketed back in Vegas, half-buried in dust beneath a shattered display case. The stone was gone. The band was thin and cracked, barely holding together. Still, he’d kept it. Couldn’t say why at first. Just felt right in his hand—small, broken, stubborn. Reminded him of someone.

Lately, he’d been thinking about what he might do with it. How he could fix it, in his own way. Maybe shave a sliver of intricate wood into the place where the diamond used to be. Not anything fancy, maybe a flower. She liked sunflowers. Just something honest. Pine, maybe—she always smelled like pine sometimes. Or walnut, strong and durable, like him. Something alive, something that wouldn’t shine too bright, but would still catch the amalgam of Leela.

He didn’t know if he’d ever give it to her. Or when. Or if she’d even want it.

Hell, he didn’t even know what he’d say.

But he carried it with hope anyway.

That was the strange part. It wasn’t really the ring that mattered—it was the idea. That someday, there might be room for something like that between them. Not as some big gesture. Not to fix anything. Just to say: this is still yours if you want it. Just to prove he still believed in what could come next.

Maybe sometimes love looked like a broken ring in a calloused hand, waiting for a world soft enough to give it back.

The sharp things—the grief, the anger, the failure—they were still there, rooted deep under his skin like old thorns. They always would be. But for once, Joel could see something else threading through it. A quieter kind of ache. Not the pain of losing, but the ache of wanting.

He wanted the kind of life that didn’t just survive the world’s ending—but stubbornly, stupidly, beautifully outlived it.

He wanted her, and Ellie, and Maya, and every goddamn scraped-together piece of a future he never thought he'd deserve.

And in this dead place, in the flicker of failing light and old dreams burned onto curling paper, Joel believed—just a little—that maybe this had all been for something. After all, maybe they hadn't come all this way just to bury what was lost. Perhaps they were here to carry it forward.

Maybe they were the ones meant to build what came next.

His throat felt tight, but he welcomed it. A man could learn to carry that feeling. He should carry it. Get used to it. All these good things he was doing.

He slipped the ring back into his pocket, careful, like it might bruise. Gave the pocket a small, reassuring pat.

He glanced at Leela, at the way she leaned into the light like a plant aching for the sun, and felt that wild, wordless thing rise again inside him.

Ours, he thought. Not just hers. Not just his.

Ours.

The ocean resembled a busted mirror.

Not glittering or big or blue. Just slabs of grey and darker grey, churning slow under the breadth of a sky that didn’t give a damn. The wind came off the water in lazy fits, carrying salt and rot and the memory of heat that had long since packed up and gone.

Wind tugged at what was left of the boardwalk nearby, a few slats still clinging on like they didn’t know how to fall properly. Rusted carnival lights hung in strips. Booths were gutted. A souvenir shack had collapsed into itself, hurling faded postcards and cracked plastic mugs across the ground. He saw a cracked one half-buried in the dune: I Survived Santa Monica Pier. Bit fucking ironic.

The sea had taken it all back. The joy. The noise. The crowds. It felt biblical, in a way. Like the tide was the big guy's long exhale.

Joel stood at the edge of it all—boots half-buried in wet sand, stepping over a tangled snarl of sea-bleached fishing net fibres, arms crossed against the cold that kept slipping under his jacket. The pier beyond was a half-collapsed skeleton, stripped bare, its spine curling out into the surf with broken ribs of wood jutting upward. Boats still rocked gently in the distance—untouched, paint peeling, sails long since devoured by saline winds, hulls soft with barnacles and time. No lights. No squalling. Not even of birds.

Funny. He used to think that if they ever made it to the coast, something would change. That maybe it’d feel like the end of the road—or the start of something. No, this was just another place the world forgot.

Ellie was already out near the waterline, her boots discarded in a heap beside a tide pool. She’d rolled up her jeans and waded ankle-deep into the cold muck, laughing as she scratched her name into the sand with a busted piece of driftwood. She looked so small like that. Innocent. Her shoulders loose, grin so secretive. He didn't get to see that often.

He watched her kneel, tongue poking slightly out in concentration, and for a moment—just a flicker—it wasn’t Ellie crouched in the sand.

It was Sarah.

Not imagined, not hoped. Saw. Not older, not younger—just as she was the day he lost her.

Kneeling beside her, seaweed looped over her wrist like bracelets, giggling about how it was going to get washed away but doing it anyway. He could see her—clearer than anything. Her head of sunlit curls, tossed by the wind. Making a heart out of the seaweed. Lining the letters with broken shells. Elbowing Ellie with that half-teasing grin she used to have, the one that always said, Do not mess this up for me, Dad.

He clenched his jaw. Swallowed hard. Blinked until the double image snapped apart again, rattled the thought loose from his head, and it was just Ellie again, whistling tunelessly, digging up dead coral to decorate her crude scrawl in the sand.

Goddamn, was this what it was going to be now?

Visions. Ghosts. Fantasies of another life. Wishing, wanting. His mind folding over itself. Losing the thread.

Or was it just the many extremities of grief? The accumulation of too many years? Or was this the beginning of something slower and crueller? Alzheimer’s or some shit. Some fucking cordyceps variation they didn’t have a name for yet. Maybe he’d start forgetting the way back to Jackson. Maybe he already had.

He rubbed a hand across his face, dragging grit from his cheek. The salt clung to his stubble, and the ocean made his eyes sting even when the wind didn’t hit them.

A little ways off, Leela sat cross-legged on the sand, her back to the surf, little haphazard strands from her long braid slapping at her cheeks. A neat little pile of small seashells sat beside her, most of them dull with age and wear—but one, a tiny conch, recently vacated by some poor creature that hadn’t made it. It was still freshly pink inside, gleaming, faintly iridescent.

She had a needle gripped between her fingers, her brow furrowed as she carefully worked it through the shell’s spire. Every movement was methodical, like she wasn’t thinking about what she was doing, like it was all buried muscle memory. When she threaded the bit of twine through and tied a knot, she held the shell up between two fingers, inspecting, squinting at it like it was some precious thing instead of beach trash.

“For Maya,” she said quietly, flashing him a smile—small, lopsided, but real.

Joel let out a soft grunt of recognition. Awful lot of jewellery to be taking back to Jackson.

“Cute.”

He remembered that story—the one he hadn’t meant to overhear, but things stuck. Something about her old life, before Jackson, before her parents, before a child of her own. How she used to make little shell necklaces just like that one and sell them to dumb tourists along the coast back in her hometown. Overpriced junk, she’d said. That weird, lonely kind of pride people have when they remember who they used to be.

Maybe this was her way of passing it on. A sliver of childhood she could carve off and give to Maya. A small thing that said I was here. I was whole once.

He took a step closer, boots sinking into the sand, hands in his jacket pockets. “Still remember how to rip folks off, huh?”

She glanced up at him, just barely. “Who says this one’s not priceless?”

Joel smirked. “Better be. Our baby girl’s got high standards.”

That got a laugh. A real one—small, scratchy, but it cracked the stillness in a way nothing else had all day. Leela shook her head, still smiling, eyes on the necklace, watching the shell sway from its string.

A beat passed. Wind was threading through the bare bones of the city. Maybe this place had once been paradise. Joel didn’t know. All he saw now was wreckage. Absence. A ghost town choking on salt.

Behind them, far away, Ellie whooped, triumphant. “I told you, little bastard! Joel, look, that’s a motherfucking crab!”

Joel glanced over. She was crouched in the wet sand, a long stick in one hand, something small and wriggling and furious in the other. Her sleeves were shoved to her elbows, knees soaked through, hair wild in the wind. She grinned like she was twelve again. Like the world hadn’t burned down.

Another shriek from Ellie. “Holy shit—there’s more of them! A whole Jackson community!”

“Well, don’t just play with ’em. Grab a few. Might be good eatin’.”

Ellie wrinkled her nose, poking one with the tip of her stick. “Eat this? Dude, it’s got, like—claws. And it’s hard as shit.”

“That’s how you know it’s good,” Joel called back, deadpan. “Hard shell means there’s somethin’ sweet inside.”

Ellie gave him a look. “Oh, hear, hear—Wordsworth over here.”

Joel chuckled, shaking his head. “Just get a few, kiddo. We’ll see what we can do.”

“Fine,” she muttered. “But if it kills me, I’m haunting your lying ass.”

Then she dropped the crab anyway, watched it scuttle sideways into the surf with all the drama of a jail break, and burst out laughing—real, unguarded. Her laugh rippled across the beach like it didn’t know how rare it was. Like it didn’t think it was a goddamn miracle.

Joel turned back to Leela. His voice dropped, not meaning to get soft but unable to help it.

“So, is this what you pictured?”

He didn’t say the beach. He didn’t mean California. Didn’t mean the long road behind them—full of blood and breath and quiet, feral hope. Didn’t even mean the life they’d clawed together with broken fingernails and dogged luck.

Leela didn’t answer right away. She just looked out toward the horizon, the sharp line where grey sea met grey skies. Where the world used to open up into possibility, into summer vacations and shipping routes and postcards with skipping dolphins. Now it looked more like an ending. A sentence with no period.

Then she shook her head, just once. “Not even close.”

But she was still holding the shell in her hand. Still tying another knot in the twine. Still smiling, just barely. And somehow, that answer—quiet, and unfinished—was more honest than anything else she could’ve said.

Joel sat down beside her, his knees cracking like firewood. The cold bled through the seat of his jeans, but he didn’t flinch. Just sat. Facing the water.

Leela didn’t.

She was turned slightly away, angled toward the sand, toward the ground, like she’d taken some quiet oath never to look at the sea again. As if it had taken something and she wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of her eyes.

Joel laid his hand over hers, careful.

She stilled.

His palm was unpolished against hers, but he could still feel the tiny shape of the shell necklace beneath it. Warm from her skin. Light as a breath.

“Joel.”

Before she could ask him to get the fuck off her, he said, “Look, I just—”

“What do you think Maya’s going to be when she grows up?”

Leela’s voice was soft, half-swallowed by the sea wind. Not wistful, not dreamy. Just plain and curious, like she was asking about the tide.

Joel didn’t answer right away. His eyes slid back on the water—on the slow, thick roll of it, the lazy collapse of each wave as it dragged itself onto the sand. This landed hard—not because it was tragic, but because it was so normal.

And yet that question hung there. He rubbed his jaw in deep thought. That wasn’t a question people dared to ask anymore, not seriously.

Honey, what do you want to be when you grow up?

He'd asked Sarah that plenty of times. And her answer had been no-bullshit: a rockstar. He used to joke to her about it, how maybe she'd take her old man backstage one day and sign T-shirts with her primped face on it.

The world was too fucked-up now, no rulebook to follow. See, back in the old world, kids had answers ready. Doctor. Firefighter. Astronaut. Singer. Shit like that. You dreamed, you planned. You had options. Only now, the world didn’t want anything from its kids but survival. To grow up at all was a feat. To grow up and become something? That felt like a pipe dream.

Joel breathed out through his nose. He shifted in the sand, elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched against the wind.

“I dunno,” he said finally. “Ain’t somethin’ I let myself think about too much. We used to imagine the future. Now we’re just glad to get through the day.”

Leela said nothing. Just waited, steady, patient, the way she always did when she knew he wasn’t finished.

A bitter little smile curled the corner of his mouth. “Baby girl’d probably be a scavenger. Some real slick trader. Hustler like her mama used to be.”

Leela huffed softly.

“Maybe a sharpshooter,” Joel added. “Takes after Ellie. Bossy as hell.”

That made her laugh again—just a little. Joel felt it in his chest like the thinnest crack of sun through stormcloud.

He kept talking, quieter now. “Could be she ends up one of those quiet ones. People listen when she speaks. Not ‘cause she’s loud—but ‘cause she means her shit. Maybe that makes her a leader. Or a target.”

He hated that last part. But it was true.

The truth was—he didn’t really care what Maya became. He just wanted her to have the space to choose between gentleness and survival. To live long, safe, and full enough to even ask that question. And he hated the world for making him think all this shit.

“And maybe she’s just alive long enough for it to matter,” he finished. “It’s enough for me.”

Leela’s fingers paused at the shell’s knot.

Joel looked over at her, and she still wasn’t looking at the sea. Her face was turned away a little, but her eyes were distant—thinking hard, probably thinking too much.

“Does it scare you?” he asked.

She blinked slowly. “What does?”

“The future,” he stated. “What she might become.”

Leela was quiet for a long time. She pulled the twine taut, tied another knot. Maybe the third one in the same place.

Then she nodded, but it wasn’t sharp. As if something she’d carried for years, only just now saying out loud.

“I just can’t have Maya become like me, Joel,” she said.

Joel didn’t say anything because he knew what she meant. And she was fucking right.

Not just Leela's impossible intellect that she carried like a blade. Not Joel's desiccating anger. Not the endless spinning logic or the obsessive calculations that had driven her across the country in a haze of grief and purpose. Not the math or the memory or the way she could see ten steps ahead while the rest of them were still tripping over the first one.

No—she meant the burden. The self-blame. The detachment. The constant need to understand everything instead of just feeling it. The survival that looked like a function but was really just a retreat.

The way Joel disconnected. The guilt that never left. The way he didn’t flinch at corpses anymore because somewhere along the way, his empathy had learned to ration itself. The way he lived in his head because that was the only place he could guarantee no one would hurt him.

And because of all the ways they taught themselves to cope—none of them were life. They were pauses. Contractions. Damage control.

She sighed. “I thought I wanted that. I did. But after everything back there…”

She nodded toward the road that led back to the university. Toward where she'd left her hopes and regrets. A whole piece of her past.

“I realised that…” She tapped her temple, fingers light, like she was knocking on the side of something hollow. “She doesn’t need this.”

He didn’t press or fill the space like he normally would with some muttered acknowledgement, because this wasn’t a moment for patch jobs.

“This saved me,” she murmured. “The logic. The focus. It’s how I kept going after—after what happened. If I could just understand enough… if I could predict things, calculate the worst-case scenario, I could keep her safe.”

Her voice tightened. Just a bit. Joel heard it.

“She deserves more than that.”

Joel’s throat was dry. He swallowed hard, barely managing. “And now?”

Leela let out a long breath. Not weary. Just… stripped bare.

“Now I just want her to scream,” Leela said. “To run fast. To fall hard. To be loud, and wrong, and stupid—and free. I want her to feel so much that she doesn’t know where to put it. I want her to hit back, punch hard, when someone corners her. Not stand there frozen, plotting some clever escape like that’s gonna save her.”

Joel’s eyes flicked toward her.

She wasn’t looking at him. Still had her gaze fixed on the necklace in her lap, the shell swinging gently as she tied and re-tied the same knot like it was muscle memory. Like if she stopped moving, she’d splinter.

And goddamn.

That’s when it landed. What she was really saying.

He’d seen people go quiet in the worst moments of their lives—seen them freeze, let it happen, disappear behind their own eyes. Not because they were weak, but because someone, somewhere, had taught them that silence was safer than screaming. That survival meant outthinking, not resisting. That pain was something to calculate your way around.

Leela had been that sort of survivor.

“I couldn’t even save myself,” she said, bitter, flat, after a beat.

The fuck kind of thing was that to say? Making it seem like it just made sense?

Joel’s fingers tightened gently around hers, unable to unclench his jaw. “That ain’t your fault,” he reassured to an extent, teeth gritting. “You sayin’ that like it was your choice.”

She said nothing. But the silence was answer enough. And Joel couldn’t sit with that.

“I don’t give a damn what you think you didn’t do,” he muttered, heat rising in his throat like bile. “Someone took... somethin’. They did that. You think being smart, or planning a way out—fuckin’ hell—none of that would’ve mattered.”

She shook her head once. Not in argument—just acknowledgement. “No. But it still happened. And I did nothing.”

Then, finally, she looked at him.

There was no shame in her eyes. Just a brutal clarity. The kind that only came from staring something dead in the face for years and deciding to live anyway.

“I know what I am, Joel. I know what it took to survive. I know what it turned me into. And I don’t want that for her.”

Joel didn’t speak right away. There was nothing to fix. Nothing to deny. He understood her too well for that. She wasn’t afraid Maya wouldn’t make it.

She was afraid Maya would—by becoming someone like her.

“Baby, she’s gonna carry us,” he said, a promise in his voice. “But she ain’t gonna be us.”

Then he reached out, covered her hand with his—rough skin on hers, grounding her.

“She’s got us, Leela,” he added, more quietly.

And he meant every word. He knew what it was to survive through retreat. To mistake numbness for control. To wear grief like armour and call it strength.

Leela didn’t flinch. But she didn’t smile either. Her face softened—like she wanted to believe him, that she was someone worth having.

“I hope so,” she said.

They sat there a while longer, the tide crawling up toward their boots whilst Ellie shouted at them about a jellyfish. Joel felt the sting in his joints when the winds picked up, faster, saltier, sharper.

He looked down at the shell again, their hands twined around it. Small. Pink. Still shining faintly inside. Something you’d pick up on a beach day with a little girl who didn’t know the world yet.

They couldn’t offer Maya that clean world they had lived in. But they could hand her a few pieces worth carrying. And she’d figure out what to build.

For one brief moment, he let himself believe his baby girl would have the chance to answer that question one day—for real.

What do you want to be when you grow up, Maya?

The fire had sunk lower to the forest floor, just embers now, red, pulsing like a heartbeat under ash. Shadows lean long against the trees. Night smells like salt and old leaves, smoke in cloth, and distant sea. Boots scuffed quietly on dirt. The silence that only came late, when everyone else was asleep, or pretending to be.

“Can’t sleep either?”

“No.”

“You okay?”

“Just thinking.”

“Night too loud? I've got headphones.”

A pause. Then: “Thanks... I'm missing home.”

“Oh. Me, too..”

“Hm. It's the longest I've been away from it.”

Another pause. “Yeah?”

“I keep wondering if I’d feel different if I got back. Things just magically change.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Fabric creaks. One of them tugs their sleeves down.

“Still mad at him?”

Pause.

“…He just left. You saw how bad it got.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And he didn’t tell me a word about the Fireflies. Or Caltech.”

“He thought he was protecting you. You know how he is.”

“That’s the problem.”

Another pause. “He said nothing. Just packed up and left. Like I’d only get in the way.”

“I know.”

“You think I meant it?”

“You sounded like you did.”

“I think I did, too. Then. I was just... so angry.”

“But now?”

A defeated sigh. “I don’t know.”

A beat.

“Maya watches the world like he does, too. I noticed.”

“She does that because she learns from him. You can’t raise a kid halfway in, halfway out. You can’t teach them to trust and then disappear when it counts.”

“Yeah, but—” Someone exhales sharply. Tosses a pebble into the fire pit. It hisses. “He came back, didn’t he?”

“Only because we followed him.”

“He came back because he’s never gonna stop coming back. That’s the whole point of him.”

Silence. A reckoning in the dark.

“You know what he told me once?”

“What?”

“He said—he didn’t think people like us got second chances. That we ruin too much. And still, every time he looks at Maya, it’s like he believes she’s the one thing he didn’t fuck up.”

Silence.

“He loves her more than he knows how to say. But he shows it. In everything. That’s the closest someone like him gets to a promise.”

“…he still left.”

“I didn't say he's good at it. He's a goddamn dick. And he was wrong.”

The voice is calm, blunt. Not trying to win. Just telling it as it was.

“But so were you. Saying you’d take her. Like she’s a thing you can lift out of him.”

Quiet again. Then: “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.”

“I just—she’s all I have. Everything good in me went to her. I had to follow him, and I have to keep her safe. Where do I win?”

“Jesus, she is safe.”

“No, I mean... he’ll break her heart someday, I know it.”

“Fuck no. Never Joel.”

“Hmph. You sound sure.”

“He didn’t break me. And the world gave him every reason to.”

Silence again. A longer moment, this time.

“Maya asks about you when you’re not there, right? She misses you. She asks for you. But when Joel’s gone? She watches the door. She won't leave it. That’s the difference.”

A breath.

“You take her away, and you’ll still have her. But she’ll never stop watching that door.”

Then the fire popped. A shift of posture. The brush of hair against cloth.

“He didn’t get to do all that before, you know. The whole marriage and two-parent household thing. Not with…”

Another breath.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And you’re still thinking about kicking his ass out.”

A creaking silence.

“I’m not good at staying.”

“Me neither.”

“Then why do you?”

A small sound. Could be a laugh or a sigh. “Because he’s good at making me think I can. I’ve seen what that man does when he loves someone.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“No.”

A beat. “It really should.”

“I guess that’s the difference. I'm not scared of him. Not like you are.”

“I'm not scared of Joel.”

“Bite me.”

“It’s more about what he’d give up. For us. For her. What it would turn him into.”

“A dead man.”

No response. But from the dark—

“You think you’re protecting him?”

“I think I’m trying to keep us all breathing.”

“Well. That’s one stupid way to live.”

A rustle. Someone folding their arms. “Do you hate me?”

“What?”

“For saying all this. For thinking it.”

“Of course not. If anything, it makes you more real to me.”

“…But?”

“But if you take her from him—really take her—it’ll kill him.”

“I’m not trying to hurt him.”

The silence after that settles deeper. One of them pokes at the embers with a stick, ash dancing up like fireflies.

Then, softer: “I know. That’s why it would.”

As if into the mouth of some ancient beast, the Jackson gates shut behind them with a final clank, steel locking steel, rusting, slow, a reluctant welcome, and for a second, it sounded like a cell door closing.

Joel walked under the shadow of it and didn’t say a word.

The sun hung low on the horizon, flooding the snow-melted streets of Jackson with a weary saffron. Familiar smells maundered through the air—woodsmoke, cattle, hay, pine needles thawing on the wind. There was boisterous laughter somewhere. Hammers. And it all felt just close enough to touch, but not quite real. Like something playing behind a looking glass.

He was back.

Somehow, again, he was still standing. Luck—or stubbornness, someone up there still not ready to let him rest—was still with him. He’d gone to California half-dead and half-stupid, and still made it out. And more than that—they had come for him. Ellie. Leela. They’d followed. Chosen to come after him.

Because he was worth saving. Because someone out there still cared if he lived or died.

That part stuck like a splinter in his chest.

He barely had time to register the weight of it before Tommy was on him, hauling him into a rib-crushing hug, laughing through a wet voice.

“Goddamn, you tough bastard. You just don’t die, huh?”

“Too much to live for, baby brother.”

Joel didn’t hug back. Not at first. Then he did—hands slow, uncooperative, gripping Tommy’s shoulders like he had to feel the bones to believe this was real.

Joel pulled back from Tommy’s grip like he’d just come up for air.

The noise of Jackson started to creep back in—the call of someone on a ladder, boots on pavement, a dog yapping in the distance. All the moving pieces of life.

He turned to his brother, voice low. “Maya?”

Tommy smiled, but it was tight around the edges.

“She’s doin’ just fine,” he said. “Caught the sniffles crying her eyes out, but she’s fine.”

Joel stiffened. “She sick?”

“I said she’s fine, Joel,” Tommy said, firmer this time. “She… she just missed her daddy, is all.”

Joel looked away.

Of course she did. And he hadn’t been there. Not for her fever. Not for the nights she cried herself hoarse. Not for the mornings when she didn’t understand why he hadn’t come back. He’d walked out with nothing but a note and the ghost of an apology, like that would hold up in a house full of silence.

They passed through the main square, Joel’s boots heavy on the stone. It all looked the same; that was what struck him most. The tedium. The cruel, gutting way the world carried on like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t nearly drowned. Like Ellie hadn’t pulled him back from the brink. Like Leela hadn’t followed him into hell and back.

Like Maya hadn’t cried herself sick.

Then, they turned the corner. And there it was.

The big, white house.

For a moment, Joel took it in. How much he missed this place.

Its porch was half-shadowed, steps dusted with snow. The gate creaked in the wind. He used to hear it from the bedroom. Used to fix it every two weeks, he could never find the right hinges. Used to—

He swallowed.

It used to be a shape in the distance. Something he’d catch through the branches of the old oak tree on mornings, sitting like a clean dream against the sky. Back then, it was just a house. Then it was her house. Then his. A home that was anchored in history and laughter, and Leela’s quiet hum as she flipped a page in her notebook. Full of Maya’s shrieks, toy horses skittering across the floor, her squeaky boots thumping against the wood.

Now, it just looked... tall. Unreachable. Like he’d have to climb back up the whole goddamn mountain to get inside again.

He had left something whole and returned to find it grown in his absence, evolved without him—carved deeper, tighter, stronger. Or maybe that was just him. His fear of losing.

Tommy called out, “Maria’s up ahead—she brought baby girl down the block to get some fresh air. Cranky all goddamn morning. She won't listen to anyone unless it's me.”

“Why's that?”

He sighed. “Guess I remind her of her old man.”

Jesus Christ, this was going to hurt like a bitch.

Joel’s head lifted.

And then he saw her.

A small figure on the porch.

Standing just like she used to, on the top step—like she always did when she waited for him after patrol. One mittened hand resting on the railing, the other clutching that old stuffed horse, ears chewed and fur matted from love.

She was watching the path. Waiting. Lips trembling like her whole world had been breaking every hour they were gone.

His feet wouldn’t move.

Her curls were a little softer now, matted, darker. Her coat was buttoned crooked, boots mismatched, nose splotchy from a recovering fever and maybe something else—like she knew something was coming. Some part of her did.

He took a half-step forward and stopped himself.

Then—

“Mama!”

The word left her like a crack splitting open. Her eyes widened. Her whole body leaned forward as if pulled. Arms out. Little hands grabbing at the air.

“Mama, mama—ha—come—Mama—”

It was the kind of sound only babies could make. Too raw to fake, too loud for their size.

And she teetered on the step, wailing.

Not to him. Not even a glance.

Just attempting to barrel forward to her mother, stubby legs churning, the toy horse flopping from her hand.

Joel felt it like a bullet.

Every effort she took—away from him, toward Leela—landed heavy in his gut. It was instinct. Pure. Unforgiving. She had learned that when someone disappears, you hold tighter to the one who doesn’t. The one who stayed.

Joel barely noticed Leela rush past him, knees bending, a ghost trying to reassemble a body—and didn’t even register the blur of movement until she was halfway to the porch, arms already outstretched. Her eyes were wet but unshed, her mouth twitching like she was keeping herself stitched shut by force.

Maya crashed into her, as if her mother made her real.

“Mama, Mama…”

No trembling. No collapse.

And the sound she made then—Joel had never heard it before. Not from her. Not from any baby. It was half-relief, half-fury, all heartbreak. Like something in her had cracked wide open from the waiting.

He staggered, stopped walking altogether.

Leela lifted her, spreading kisses on her cheeks, nose and hair, rocking her like she was trying to put every second of the last few days back inside her arms. Maya’s sobs were hiccuping now, her face buried in Leela’s neck, her whole body trembling.

She pulled Maya in like she meant to disappear with her. Pressed her face into her curls, kissed the top of her head and closed her eyes like that was where all the warmth lived now, shushed her with slow, circular bounces, murmuring nonsense in that gentle, rhythmic tone only mothers had.

“It’s okay, Maya. Shh, Mama’s here now. Mama’s here.”

While Joel stood frozen on the road.

He didn’t know when his hand had clenched into a fist or when his breath had left him.

He didn’t feel anger. Not at Leela. Not even to himself. It was something deeper. Older. Like watching a life he’d dreamed of grow old without him. A desolation.

And Maya—was still crying. Still hiccupping. Her fists balled into Leela’s coat. She hadn’t even looked at him. Or maybe she had, but didn’t know what she was looking for.

He wanted to step closer. Just one more step. Reach out. Soothe her. Say something. But his feet might as well have been nailed to the frozen earth.

He had nothing in his hands. Not even the strength to say her name.

Ellie moved up beside Leela, brushing Maya’s curls back from her sticky, tear-wet face. She said something. Leela nodded. And they all began to walk up the porch steps together.

Joel didn’t follow. Not yet.

He just watched.

Watched how tightly Leela held their daughter. Watched Ellie glance back at him once, her face unreadable, before she jogged past him and followed Maria and Tommy down the road, and away.

Watched his whole life move ahead of him, step by step, without turning around.

Leela’s arms were tight around Maya’s little body, the baby’s sobs quieter now but still hiccupping against her mother’s shoulder.

All he knew was that he’d left all of this behind with nothing but a note and a mission and the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could do something that mattered. Maybe he could fix something.

He eventually trailed behind them like a ghost.

They reached the porch. Leela didn’t pause. Just hitched Maya higher on her hip, the little girl whimpering against her shoulder, and stepped inside.

Maya twisted as they crossed the threshold, her arms flailing, her cries rising in volume. A shrill pleading screech.

“Da-da! Come, come!”

“Maya,” Leela tried to shush.

“No, no! Da-da, pease!”

Her voice punched through him, sharp and high and raw.

“Da-da-da-da—...”

The door closed with a soft, final click. Over.

Somewhere inside, the baby girl's cries still carried over in fresh pricks at his pummeled heart.

Joel stood there, one foot still planted on the step below, like a man halfway to salvation and halfway to hell. He hadn’t moved. His hand—useless at his side—twitched, searching for something it had forgotten how to reach.

The latch echoed louder than any gunshot he’d heard these past weeks.

He stared at the wood grain of the door, the same one he'd walked through a hundred times before, and now couldn’t seem to approach. A stupid part of him still thought maybe it’d open again. That she’d come back, that she’d say—something. Let him hold Maya just once.

But the house stayed still.

So Joel sat. Dropped like a felled thing onto the top step, legs spreading, elbows propped on his knees, fingers pressed to his lips. Because where else did he have to go?

He stared at the dirt packed under the railings, at the porch slats he’d helped mend last summer. He wasn’t sure he had the right to look at any of this anymore.

It hurt to breathe. Not from the bruised ribs or the deep-healing wound in his side. The knowing. The understanding that he’d done this. The rot. The shame. The guilt. The want to fight Leela, argue, and bash against the door.

And when he rubbed a hand over his face, he felt it—wet.

Tears. Real fucking ones.

He stared down at the shine on his fingertips like it was a new language he didn’t speak.

Crying. Goddamn. So he was still capable of that.

After all this time. After the blood. After the fear. After the killing.

It wasn’t the pain of the trip. Not the near-drowning, not the way his ribs still clicked when he breathed too deep. Not even the damage done to Leela’s precious math notebook, still folded at the bottom of his pack like a prayer he couldn’t read.

It was this silence that used to be his favourite harmony. This porch. This big white house across the street, standing like a lighthouse in the middle of the Wyoming snow.

His big, white house.

Or maybe it never had been his. Maybe he’d only been borrowing this life. A thief in someone else’s dream.

In this big dream, he might not be welcome anymore. He’d left thinking he could prove something. That there was still good he could do. That it mattered if he bled for it. That the sacrifice would mean some shit when he brought it back.

Only now—he was just a man sitting on the porch, hands empty, spine bent like a penitent.

He was still the loser. Always had been, hadn't he? A man who couldn't hold onto what mattered, even when it was pressed into his hands. Slipping through his callused fingers, sand in an hourglass.

“Da-da.”

A tiny voice. Raw. Exhausted from crying.

He blinked. Looked down.

Two tiny fists rested against his knee, barely covering them.

She stood there—his baby girl—in her yellow footie pyjamas, curls plastered to her forehead with sweat and tears, her cheeks flushed and snotty, a fist now halfway to her mouth. A warrior, somehow. She looked like she'd marched out here on stubbornness alone.

“Up, up, Da-da,” she said, her voice barely more than a breath, lips rounded to an 'O'.

He didn’t move. His hands stayed clenched on his knees, like he wasn’t sure if they were still allowed to touch her.

He just looked at her—like he was seeing a miracle and wasn’t sure he deserved to touch it. This small miracle with her tangled hair and her crooked little mouth, trying to be brave. Her big brown eyes stared straight through him, full of a deep, solemn thing children shouldn’t carry but sometimes did.

Maya wobbled slightly, off balance, still reaching. Her coat sleeve bunched at the elbow, her fingers finding a fold of his jacket and tugging. It wasn’t strong. It wasn’t a demand. Just a little pull. A tiny act of faith.

“Pease, da-da.”

That was it.

That was all it took.

He broke. Open like a thundercloud. A dam giving way after too many winters.

No big sound. No shudder. Just a quiet, helpless noise from the back of his throat, a beam giving out in a storm, as he leaned forward, reached for her with hands that shook, that had pulled triggers and choked men and now dared to try and lift someone so little and innocent. Someone still his.

He drew her in like she was the only warmth left in the world.

She wrapped her arms around him, little boots stomping onto his ribs, one arm locked around his neck, her fingers fisting the collar of his shirt, and burrowed in like she’d never left him. Like there’d been no time apart. Like he hadn’t abandoned her.

She just clung. The way babies always do. She didn’t care about the mess. Her dainty love hadn’t learned conditions yet.

His throat narrowed, his chest hitched once, sharp—then again, then again. He dropped his face into the crook of her neck and let it come, loosening that lock in him that had been latched since Sarah died. The kind of crying that doesn’t make sound, that just happens. Tears soaking into the fabric of her coat, into her hair, into his beard. He breathed her in like it might fix something, might make him whole.

“I got you, baby girl,” he sniffed.

She smelled like cinnamon. Like sleep. Like their kitchen in the mornings when Leela was fresh from her shower, Maya would toddle in and reach for a bite of breakfast with both hands.

She smelled like everything he’d fought for. Everything he might’ve lost.

Maya leaned back slowly, the softest untangling of her arms, her tiny body still half-draped over his chest. She blinked at him, her brows drawn close in a look far too serious for her little face. Her mouth tugged slightly downward, curious and concerned all at once.

Joel tried to smile for her. Tried to smooth his face. “I'm okay, it's okay.”

But she saw it anyway. The tears, still clinging to his lashes, streaked into his beard.

She stared, her little hand floating uncertainly in the air between them, fingers flexing like she knew there was something she was supposed to do but wasn’t quite sure how.

Then—clumsily, earnestly—she reached up and touched him, just one little hand against his cheek.

Joel looked from her eyes to her palm.

So small, it barely registered, but he felt the gentle tap, the warm pressure. He felt her try to wipe it—like she’d seen done before—dragging her palm across his stubble, awkward, too hard, leaving a streak of baby drool behind.

She sniffed. Then tried again, this time gentler. The way her mama would do it.

“Mm-mm, no,” she told him.

And then—her other hand went to his hair.

A soft, patting motion. Adorable, pure toddler comfort. No finesse, no words.

She looked at him like she was waiting for him to stop crying. Like she believed he could. That he should. Because Mama always did, when she wiped Maya’s tears. Because after the tears came warm arms. And sometimes applesauce.

Joel let out a sound that wasn’t a laugh, wasn’t a sob—just breath. Cracked, quiet. “You takin' care of me?”

His hand cupped the back of her head. His forehead rested against hers, their noses nearly touching. Her fingers were still in his hair.

“Da-da, no, no,” she resonated.

Joel’s heart clenched again—but differently this time. More like remembering what it was for. Beating for her. Alive for this.

He kissed her temple, the warmth of her skin soaking through his bones.

For a moment, the world held still.

No howling wind. No boots on snow. No years of silence pressing down between now and what he’d lost. Just this: the tiny weight of her heart against his chest. Her trust, folded into his jacket like a brass button or her mama's ring in his pocket.

The floorboard behind him creaked.

Joel didn’t lift his head. He felt her before he saw her. The air changed when Leela entered a space—like some internal pressure recalibrated. Softer, but tighter. She didn’t take up more room than she needed, never had. But somehow, her presence always rearranged it.

She stepped to the railing beside him and leaned, arms resting along the wood. The porch light behind her cast a low, golden ring along her dark, frizzed-out hair on her shoulders. The fire inside flickered behind the curtains.

She said nothing at first. Just looked at him. Looked at them.

Like she was trying to map it out—this man, this child, this picture she couldn’t quite trust yet, this picture that didn’t match the one she’d carried around for too long—of absence, of damage, of a man who left too much behind.

Joel didn’t look at her straight on. His eyes stayed on the horizon past the railing, that dim stretch of pine and powder blue, mountains against the dusk that bled into dark. He could feel her gaze, though. The questions in it. The ache. The absence they were both pretending didn’t sit between them like a third body.

“Joel,” she murmured, the first ripple on still water.

He swallowed. His arms tightened almost instinctively around Maya, who shifted with a faint hum, fist tucked against her mouth once more.

“Just let me hold her for a bit,” he said. It came out low, like an apology, or a prayer through gritted teeth.

A breath passed. Then, quietly—

“You can hold her as long as you want.”

He finally looked at her. Her face was turned to the dark, but he could see the fine edge of exhaustion there. Not the kind that came from no sleep—but from too many nights spent enduring what no one saw.

Her voice was softer when she added, “Do you want to shower first?”

Joel blinked, the words hitting him sideways. What a normal fucking thing to say. So regular.

His mind fumbled with it—like she'd offered him a cup of coffee in a warzone. Like there hadn’t been a canyon gaping between them only days ago, carved out by silence and anger and too many things said too late.

The absurdity of it almost made him laugh. Almost. But the sound got stuck somewhere in his throat, tangled with something older and harder.

The wind stirred again, tugging at the hem of her sweater. She didn’t smooth it down. Just let it flutter around her thighs like she didn’t feel the cold.

“Leela,” he said, low, worn, like gravel under tired boots.

She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak right away. Just leaned a little further into the porch railing, her fingers curled loose around the wood. Shoulders rising. Falling.

Quieter this time—less like she believed it, more like she needed to—“Come inside, Joel.”

Not an invitation. Not a plea. Just something said because it had to be. Like muscle memory. Like faith said out loud.

“You don’t belong anywhere else.” A beat. Then, “And it’s cold outside.”

Joel looked down at the little girl in his arms. Maya’s cheek was pressed to his chest, her lips parted, her breath warm through his shirt. Her small hand clung to the collar of his jacket like she thought he might still disappear if she let go.

He felt it again—his daughter. His reminder. His consequence.

She came to me, he thought. She still comes to me.

Even now. After everything.

He shifted his weight and rose, careful not to jostle Maya. His knees ached. That old pain in his spine flared, but he barely felt it. She was heavier than he remembered. That, too, was a gift.

Across from him, Leela didn’t move. She didn’t offer him a hand. Didn’t clear the way. But she didn’t block it, either.

The door behind her stayed open.

Oh, here they were again.

Same porch. Same house. Same damn man, more or less.

But different. He wasn’t pounding on the door this time. Wasn’t driven half-mad by a baby that wouldn’t stop crying. He wasn’t walking in blind and bitter and ready to do a good thing just to silence a bad one.

Now he carried that baby in his arms. His baby. His girl.

And Leela—she was the one with the door now. Not just the one behind him. The one she kept closed for years, locked and latched and bolted from the inside, because too many people had barged through without asking.

Joel stepped forward.

Not past her. Not through her. To her.

The space between them was close. Intimate. He stopped just short of touching her, close enough to feel her breath ghosting warm in the cold.

She turned her head, finally. Just enough to see him.

Their eyes met. A half-second. A heartbeat.

There was no forgiveness in that look. Only recognition. And maybe—God help them both—want. A bit of love. Still there, under the rubble and the ruin.

He didn’t say, Thank you. Couldn’t. Didn’t think they’d be enough if he did. And she didn’t say, Welcome home.

When he stepped through the door beside her, the warmth met him like a memory.

As he crossed the threshold, this time he came to carry it all. To be part of it.

Maya stirred in his arms, murmuring something soft and wordless. Her thumb found her mouth again. Her head dropped against his shoulder like she knew this place of hers. Like her little body remembered what his mind kept trying to forget.

Joel blinked hard, the air in his lungs thick.

It was the same spot he’d once stood when he almost didn’t come back. When he’d looked at Leela in that doorway and thought about forgetting this ever happened.

Now she stood just behind him. A quiet key turning in an old, rusted lock.

And he thought: This is how it happens. Not with a grand gesture. Not with a reckoning or a flood of apologies. Not with big dreams of another life coming crashing down.

But like this.

A door not closed in anger. A man not barging in. A home not yet reclaimed, but not lost either.

Step by step. Word by word. Warmth bleeding slowly into cold skin.

Not a finish line or a full repair.

A place to start again.

One last time.

taglist 🫶: @darknight3904 , @guiltyasdave , @letsgobarbs , @helskemes , @jodiswiftle , @tinawantstobeadoll , @bergamote-catsandbooks , @cheekychaos28 , @randofantfic , @justagalwhowrites , @emerald-evans , @amyispxnk , @corazondebeskar-reads , @wildemaven , @tuquoquebrute , @elli3williams , @bluemusickid , @bumblepony , @legoemma , @chantelle-mh , @heartlessvirgo , @possiblyafangirl , @pedropascalsbbg , @oolongreads -> @kaseynsfws , @prose-before-hoes , @kateg88 , @laliceee , @escaping-reality8 , @mystickittytaco , @penvisions , @elliaze , @eviispunk , @lola-lola-lola , @peepawispunk , @sarahhxx03 , @julielightwood , @o-sacra-virgo-laudes-tibi , @arten1234 , @jhiddles03 , @everinlove , @nobodycanknoww , @ashleyfilm , @rainbowcosmicchaos , @i-howl-like-a-wolf-at-the-moon , @orcasoul , @nunya7394 , @noisynightmarepoetry , @picketniffler , @ameagrice , @mojaveghst , @dinomecanico , @guelyury , @staytrueblue , @queenb-42069 , @suzysface , @btskzfav , @ali-in-w0nderland , @ashhlsstuff , @devotedlypaleluminary , @sagexsenorita , @serenadingtigers , @yourgirlcin , @henrywintersgun , @jadagirl15 , @misshoneypaper , @lunnaisjustvibing , @enchantingchildkitten , @senhoritamayblog , @isla-finke-blog , @millercontracting , @tinawantstobeadoll , @funerals-with-cake , @txlady37 , @inasunlitroom , @clya4 , @callmebyyournick-name , @axshadows , @littlemissoblivious } - thank you!! awwwww we're like a little family <3

“”

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raelemond · 15 hours ago

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Hi. I was wondering if you could point me to resources or forums that’ll help me explore kink. I’ve been holding myself back for a long time and now I don’t even know where to start or how to find community

hi anon, sorry it took so long for me to respond, I've been traveling!

there are a few things you can do. I'll start with what i did, but this is going to vary by country and location. I recommend you start by making a fetlife profile. fetlife is basically kinky facebook, but you don't have to put any information you don't want to on it - I'd just recommend not using a picture of your genitals as your profile picture, those tend to get autobanned from groups.

then, go look for "events" and filter by location - try nearby cities if your area doesn't turn up at first. what you really want is a "munch", which is going to be a group meeting in a public space for kinky people to mingle. you can also filter by education, but I recommend munches first, just to meet people so you can get an idea of what the community is like.

depending on your city, munches can differ by age (35 and under is typically called TNG/The Next Generation - I personally dislike what they stand for, but it's an option depending on your age), interests, gender/sexuality, and location. some are free, some ask you to purchase food from the venue, some ask for donations, and some cost money. the majority take place at bars, which can be an obstacle.

as someone new coming in, particularly if you're young and/or seem to be a woman at first glance, you might get a lot of attention. I'll just suggest that you do NOT play alone with anyone immediately, and people trying to encourage you to stay isolated from the community is a bad sign. anyone trying to say their way is the One True Way is a bad sign.

I played with someone at my first party, which I had been invited to via the munch. At the party, there were DMs who could help if anything went bad.

if searching like this doesn't get you results, I'd suggest going to a local sex toy store, or other adult store, and ask about local kink communities, if any exist. unfortunately my kinky student from Brazil stopped coming in, or I'd ask how to find a community there because she said it's much harder to find people.

I'd also think about what you're interested in and what your limits are. when I first showed up at 18, I freaked people out by saying "I'm up for anything" - in my head, that meant I was interested in discussing most things, or dipping a toe in, but I didn't know how deep kink could go. The boundaries of "anything" were spanking, flogging, and caning for me, along with D/s stuff I barely understood. so, to avoid my mistake, I definitely recommend having some specific things you want to try and ask questions about.

before the lacigreen weirdness happened, she was a really competent sex educator (if not the best for medical advice) so I'm going to point you to this video for a really brief overview. the only thing she gets wrong is that she misses one of the words in BDSM - it's an acronym that stands for six words: bondage, discipline, Dominance/submission, sadism, masochism.

the words kink and bdsm are often used interchangeably, and they mostly are, but you can be into kink without being into D/s, for example.

please feel free to send more specific questions if you want!

#bd/sm community #bd/sm kink #bd/sm education

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httpsdana · 1 day ago

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Heyyy, love your work🤍

would you write one of Yildiz and reader being in an argument and reader crying because of the accumulated stress(happend to me today, sm alike:(

Breaking Point~Kenan Yildiz

・❥・prompt list

・❥・masterlist -> part 2

・❥・who I write for

・❥・a/n: im so sorry you're feeling like this :( hopefully this can make you feel a bit better <33

It started so stupidly. A left dish in the sink, and now both of them were just yelling nonsense at each other.

"I'm always the one who has to do every single thing in this house! You never help with anything!" she yelled, throwing her arms in the air.

"What?" Kenan snapped back. "I'm always trying to help, but you're too damn stubborn to tell me what's wrong!"

"Nothing's wrong!" she said through gritted teeth.

"Listen, if something's wrong, you have to tell me, because I can't read your damn mind," he said, his tone lower this time.

Tears welled up in her eyes quickly, and before she could stop them, they started falling down her cheeks.

Kenan noticed immediately, stepping closer and cradling her face in his hands.

"Hey, hey, don't cry, baby. It's not worth it," he muttered, confused by her sudden breakdown.

He let her cry into his chest for a few minutes, full sobs and hot tears streaming down her face.

After a while, she calmed down a bit and pulled away from his embrace. When she tried walking away, he was quick to pull her back in.

"Hey…" He cupped her cheek, making her look up at him. "Tell me what's really wrong. I know you're not crying over an unwashed dish."

She shook her head, then let out a long sigh.

"I'm just very stressed, and everything has been accumulating. I feel like a failure," she took a deep breath before continuing, "and nothing I do seems to be enough. And now you probably think I'm dramatic for crying over this-but I'm just so tired, Kenan," she mumbled, her eyes welling up again.

Kenan felt his heart shatter at her confession, cursing himself for not noticing how she'd been feeling earlier. He pressed a long kiss to her forehead, his lips lingering on her skin.

"First of all, you're not a failure. You're the most successful woman I know," he said, pressing another kiss to her cheek.

"Second of all, you're more than enough, my love. You have no idea how amazing you're doing, and I'm so proud of you and every single thing you've accomplished," he added, kissing her other cheek.

"And finally, I don't think you're dramatic. You've been under a lot of stress, bottling everything up without telling me. It's my fault I didn't notice earlier, and I'm so sorry. But I promise you-none of the things you said are true. You're so strong for carrying all this weight alone. But let me help you carry some of it now, okay?" he said softly, pulling away to look at her tear-stained face.

She nodded hesitantly before wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you," she mumbled against his hoodie.

"It's okay. I'm sorry for leaving that dish unwashed in the first place and not noticing how you’ve been feeling," he muttered against her hair, brushing his lips against the top of her head.

They stood there in the kitchen for a while, just wrapped in each other’s arms and enjoying the silence.

"I love you," he whispered, as if his voice might break her even more.

"I love you more," she whispered, pulling back just enough for her lips to graze his jaw.

He leaned down slightly, pressing his lips to hers in a soft, tender kiss, one that whispered 'I'll always be here'

my taglist: @barcapix @paucubarsisimp @spidybaby @mxryxmfooty @n0vazsq @joaosnovia @ilovebarcaaaa @f1lover55 @jajajhaahaha @universefcb @mariejuli (lmk if you want to be added!!)

#football #footballer imagine #football x reader #football imagine #football blurb #football one shot #juventus fc #kenan yildiz fluff #kenan yildiz imagine #kenan yildiz fic #kenan yildiz fanfic #kenan yildiz blurb #kenan yildiz one shot #kenan yildiz oneshot #kenan yildiz x you #kenan yildiz x reader #kenan yildiz x y/n #kenan yildiz #kenan yıldız

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lila-lou · 14 hours ago

Text

✨Beyond his true fate - Part 1/14✨

Summary: Sequel to "His true fate".

(Jensen hasn't been happy for years. But it seems almost impossible for him to escape. After another nasty argument between him and his wife, he decides to visit his ´former´ best friend for his birthday. Back in Austin, an encounter awaits him that will turn his life completely upside down.)

Pairing: Jensen x Reader

Warnings: Language, age gap, tough topics

Word Count: 5779

A/N: English isn’t my first language, please be lenient. DISCLAIMER: Everything is purely fiction. I do not intend to attack or hurt anyone. The story is, of course, entirely made up and meant for entertainment purposes. I love them all.

Day 1 Jensen stared at his phone, thumb hovering over your name in his call log. Five missed calls. Five times he let it ring until it went to voicemail. Five times he hoped, prayed, begged that you would answer.

You didn’t. Your last message had been clear: “Jensen, please. I need space”.

He hadn’t replied. What could he say? That he didn’t want to give you space? That he wanted to get in his car and drive straight to wherever you were, pull you into his arms, bury his face in your neck and apologize until his voice gave out?

Instead, he shoved his phone into his pocket and turned toward the living room, where Zeppelin was currently attempting to stack pillows taller than himself. Arrow was chasing JJ around the couch with a stuffed animal.

Jensen forced himself to smile. Forced himself to laugh when Zeppelin collapsed into the pillows. Forced himself to focus on them and not the aching hole in his chest where you used to be.

But that night, after he tucked them in and the house was quiet, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the spot where you should be. Where you belonged. And for the first time in a long time, he felt truly, completely alone.

Day 3 He found one of your sweaters in the laundry. He hadn’t noticed it before, tangled up in the mix of clothes from before you left. It still smelled like you.

He sat on the couch with it in his lap for hours, rubbing the soft fabric between his fingers, his chest aching so damn bad he could hardly breathe.

Jensen had never been the kind of man to hold onto things like that. He wasn’t sentimental about clothes or perfume or little trinkets. But right now? Right now, he would have given anything to hear your voice. To hear you hum under your breath while cooking, to feel your fingers thread through his hair when he sat on the couch beside you, to have your body pressed against his at night—warm, soft, real.

But all he had was this damn sweater. And a silence that was suffocating.

Day 5 Jensen took the kids out for ice cream, trying to distract himself with their laughter. It worked for a little while. Zeppelin got chocolate all over his shirt, Arrow declared she was officially “too old for baby flavors” and got something she hated, and JJ? She barely said anything.

She was watching him.

And later, when the other two had gone to bed, she sat beside him on the couch, arms crossed, her sharp eyes way too knowing. “You look like shit, Dad”, she finally said, her tone blunt.

Jensen scoffed, running a hand over his face. “Thanks, kid”.

“Are you gonna fix it?”.

Jensen looked at her then, feeling the weight of everything press down on his chest. “I don’t know”, he admitted.

Day 7 The kids went back to Danneel’s today. The house was too quiet after they left.

Jensen paced the kitchen, his phone in his hand, your number pulled up for what felt like the hundredth time.

Just one message. Just one call.

But every time, he stopped himself. Because if you wanted to hear from him, you would have called by now.

Instead, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink.

Then another. Then another.

By the time he stopped, his head was heavy, his limbs sluggish, and the only thing he could think about was the way your lips felt against his. The way your voice sounded when you whispered his name in the dark. The way you had looked at him the last time you spoke—broken, distant, done.

He didn’t deserve to call you. Didn’t deserve to beg.

Day 9 The whiskey burned going down, but he barely felt it anymore.

Jensen sat on the couch, staring at the dark TV screen, the bottle sitting half-empty on the table beside him.

He had ignored his emails. Ignored his agent’s calls. Ignored everyone except the bartender from the local place he had gone to earlier that night just to get out of the house.

But none of it mattered. Because no matter how much he tried to distract himself, the only thing he could think about was you. And the fact that he had no idea if you were coming back.

Day 12 Jensen hadn’t shaved. Had barely slept. He was a mess, and he knew it.

The couch had become his bed, the bottle of whiskey his closest companion. Every time his phone buzzed, he snapped his head toward it, hoping—praying—it was you.

But it never was.

Day 14 Jensen barely registered the sound of knocking at first. His head was pounding, a dull ache from too many sleepless nights and too much whiskey. He had half a mind to ignore it—until the knocking turned into full-blown pounding.

Groaning, he rubbed his hands over his face and pushed himself off the couch, stumbling slightly as he made his way toward the door. He swung it open without checking, expecting maybe the mailman, maybe a delivery—hell, maybe even you.

Instead, it was Jared.

Jensen blinked, his vision hazy. “What the hell are you doing here?”.

Jared gave him a once-over, his expression unimpressed. “Checking to see if you’re dead”.

Jensen scoffed, stepping back so Jared could walk in. “I’m fine”.

Jared shut the door behind him and immediately let out a low whistle, taking in the disaster that was Jensen’s living room. The coffee table was cluttered with empty glasses, the bottle of whiskey still sitting there, and a blanket was thrown haphazardly over the couch—the only place Jensen had been sleeping.

“Yeah”, Jared muttered. “You look great”.

Jensen rolled his eyes and dropped back onto the couch. “Why are you really here?”.

Jared exhaled through his nose, crossing his arms. “Because you’re a miserable fuck when you’re heartbroken, and I figured you’d be too stubborn to reach out for help”.

Jensen scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m not heartbroken”.

Jared raised an eyebrow. “Really? So, this”,—he gestured around the room—"this is just your new aesthetic?”.

Jensen shot him a glare, but Jared wasn’t fazed. Instead, he dropped onto the armchair across from him, leaning forward slightly. “Look, man”, Jared said, his voice softer now, more serious. “I know you. And I know you’re hurting. But you can’t just sit here drowning yourself in whiskey and self-pity, waiting for her to come back”.

Jensen’s jaw clenched. “She won’t even talk to me”.

“Yeah, because she’s hurting too”, Jared shot back. “And from what I can tell, she’s not the one who fucked this up”.

Jensen exhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face. He knew Jared was right. He didn’t need to hear it.

Jared leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Jensen, do you even want this kid?”.

Jensen’s stomach twisted, and for a moment, he couldn’t even answer.

Jared shook his head. “That’s the problem, man. You’re waiting for some grand epiphany, but that’s not how it works. You either step the fuck up, or you lose her. It’s that simple”.

Jensen let his head drop back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. His chest felt tight, his mind racing, his heart a mess. “I don’t know how”, he admitted finally, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jared exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “Then figure it out. Before it’s too late”.

Jensen closed his eyes, his fingers gripping the blanket on the couch. Because deep down, he knew—he was already running out of time.

Jared leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms. “Alright, enough”.

Jensen barely cracked an eye open. “Enough of what?”.

“This”, Jared gestured around the disaster of a living room. “This whole pathetic, self-loathing, whiskey-drenched thing you’ve got going on. It’s over”.

Jensen scoffed, running a hand through his messy hair. “What, you gonna fix my life, Jare?”.

Jared didn’t flinch. “No, you are. Because I’m not letting you sit here wallowing while (Y/N) is out there figuring out if she can live without you”.

Jensen’s stomach twisted. He already knew the answer to that. You could.

Jared stood up, towering over him with that stubborn-as-hell look Jensen had seen too many times. “Get up”.

Jensen groaned. “Dude—”.

“No. Get the fuck up”.

Jensen blinked up at him, momentarily caught off guard by the edge in Jared’s tone.

Jared gestured at him. “You look like hell, man. When’s the last time you shaved?”.

Jensen rubbed a hand over his scruff, glaring. “I don’t know. Who gives a shit?”.

Jared let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, see, that’s the problem. You don’t give a shit. And that’s why you’re losing her”.

That one landed deep.

Jared didn’t let up. “You say you don’t know how to do this? Fine. But sitting here doing nothing sure as hell isn’t helping”. He pointed toward the stairs. “So go shower. Shave. Clean this place up. And when you’re done, we’re gonna figure out how to make this right”.

Jensen exhaled heavily, rubbing his hands over his face.

Jared stepped closer. “You don’t get to be the victim here, Jensen. You did this. But you can still fix it”.

Jensen looked up at him, his jaw clenching. He wanted to snap back, to tell Jared to fuck off, to say he was too exhausted, too broken. But deep down, he knew his friend was right. So, without another word, he pushed himself off the couch and trudged toward the stairs.

“Atta boy”, Jared muttered, shaking his head as Jensen disappeared toward the bathroom.

As the water hit his face, Jensen let out a slow breath. He had to fix this. Before it really was too late.

Jensen ran a towel over his face, exhaling as he walked back into the living room. He felt a little more human—showered, shaved, wearing clean clothes—but inside, he was still wrecked.

Jared was sitting at the kitchen table now, arms crossed, watching him expectantly. He had cracked open a beer but hadn’t touched it yet.

Jensen sighed, dragging out a chair before dropping into it. “Alright”, he muttered. “Let’s hear it”.

Jared lifted a brow. “Hear what?”.

Jensen gestured vaguely. “Whatever lecture you’ve been dying to give me”.

Jared shook his head. “Nah, man. I’m past the lecture phase. Now, I just want the truth”.

Jensen looked down at his hands, jaw clenched. He wasn’t ready for this. But at the same time? He was fucking exhausted from running from it.

Jared leaned forward. “What are you so scared of?”.

Jensen swallowed hard, his throat tight. He ran a hand over his face before finally forcing the words out. “I swore I’d never do this again”.

Jared didn’t say anything, just let him talk.

“After the twins, after everything with Danneel…”, Jensen exhaled heavily, gripping the edge of the table. “I told myself I was done. No more kids. No more sleepless nights, no more stress, no more feeling like I’m failing at being a dad when my career is pulling me in a hundred different directions”.

Jared nodded slowly. “So when (Y/N) told you she was pregnant—”.

Jensen let out a humorless laugh. “I panicked. I shut down. Because I knew what was coming”. He shook his head, staring at the wood grain of the table. “The late nights. The exhaustion. The pressure to be everything all at once”.

Jared’s voice was quiet but firm. “And the difference this time?”.

Jensen hesitated, his chest tightening. “This time… I can’t fuck it up”.

Jared frowned. “What do you mean?”.

Jensen looked up at him, his green eyes stormy with emotions he hadn’t let himself feel until now. “I already screwed up one marriage, Jared. My kids already have to split their time between two homes. And now I’ve got this—this perfect, amazing woman who actually loves me for who I am, and I’m fucking ruining it”.

Jared exhaled. “Jensen—”.

Jensen shook his head. “I don’t get a redo if I mess this up. (Y/N) deserves more than that. This baby deserves more than that”. His voice cracked slightly. “And I’m so goddamn scared that I don’t know how to be enough for them”.

Silence settled between them.

Then, Jared leaned back, crossing his arms. “Okay”, he said simply.

Jensen blinked. “Okay?”.

Jared nodded. “Yeah. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to do something about it”.

Jensen let out a breathless laugh, shaking his head. “You make it sound so fucking easy”.

Jared smirked. “It’s not. But neither is sitting here feeling sorry for yourself”. He tilted his head. “You love her?”.

Jensen’s chest ached. “More than anything”.

Jared nodded. “Then prove it”.

Jensen exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. He knew Jared was right—he had to do something. He had to prove to you that he wasn’t just going to keep running, keep shutting down when things got hard.

But how the hell was he supposed to fix something that felt this broken?

Jared studied him carefully, taking a slow sip of his beer before setting it down. His tone was different this time—slower, more deliberate. “Have you ever thought about proposing?”.

Jensen’s entire body tensed. His green eyes snapped to Jared’s, his breath hitching for just a second before he forced himself to scoff. “Jesus, Jared”, he muttered, shaking his head. “I’m trying to fix things, not push her away even more”.

Jared didn’t flinch. “I’m not saying you gotta do it tomorrow. I’m just asking… have you thought about it?”.

Jensen looked away, jaw tight. His hands clenched into fists on the table. “No”, he said automatically. Then, softer, almost to himself, “Not really”.

Jared hummed like he didn’t quite believe him. “Okay. And why not?”.

Jensen let out a humorless laugh. “Because marriage is right next to ‘another baby’ on my list of things I swore I’d never do again”. His voice was rough, bitter. “I barely survived it the first time. You really think I’d be dumb enough to sign up for that shit again?”.

Jared’s expression didn’t change. He just nodded like he had expected that answer. “And yet”, he said slowly, tilting his head, “you´re kinda willing to do the whole baby thing again for (Y/N)”.

Jensen opened his mouth, then shut it.

Jared leaned forward, his voice even. “So maybe this isn’t about marriage itself. Maybe this is about the fact that Danneel took that idea, chewed it up, and spit it out until all you see when you hear ‘marriage’ is something ugly”.

Jensen clenched his jaw, his chest tightening. Jared wasn’t wrong.

When he thought about marriage, he thought about fights behind closed doors. About feeling like a failure no matter what he did. About a relationship that had turned into nothing but resentment and obligations.

But when he thought about you?

He thought about quiet mornings with your legs tangled in his under the covers. The way you absentmindedly played with his fingers while you watched TV. The way you whispered his name in the dark, soft and certain, like you never doubted he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Jensen swallowed hard, rubbing his hand over his face.

Jared was watching him carefully. “I’m not saying you gotta run out and buy a ring right now”, he said. “But if you want to show her that you’re all in? It’s gotta be something big, man. Because right now, she thinks you don’t want this—don’t want her. And if you don’t do something to prove otherwise, she’s gonna walk”.

Jensen’s chest ached. Because that was his biggest fear. Losing you. Losing everything.

He exhaled slowly, his hands still gripping the edge of the table. “I don’t know if I can do marriage again”, he admitted, his voice raw. “But I know I can’t lose her”.

Jared nodded, like that was enough for now. “Then figure out what the hell you’re gonna do about it”.

Another week had passed. Another week full of Jared pushing, prodding, and dragging Jensen through what he sarcastically called “therapy sessions”. Another week without a single word from you.

It was fucking killing him. But at least now, he was trying.

Two days ago, in the middle of another long conversation about what the hell are you doing, man? Jensen had suggested painting the nursery.

It had come out of nowhere. One second, Jared was rattling on about emotional vulnerability or some shit, and the next, Jensen had blurted it out. “I should probably paint the nursery, huh?”.

Jared had frozen mid-sip of his beer, staring at him like he’d just spoken a foreign language. “You what?”.

Jensen had shrugged, playing it off. “She’s not gonna get rid of the baby”. Saying it out loud made something heavy settle in his chest. He cleared his throat. “And even if I still don’t—I mean, I don’t—”. He groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. “Fuck, I don’t want this, man, but I know I have to get there somehow. And I sure as hell won’t let her leave me over it”.

Jared had watched him carefully for a long moment, then simply nodded. “Then we better get some paint”.

Which led them here. To a damn hardware store.

Jensen walked down the aisles with his hands in his pockets, eyes scanning rows of paint samples while Jared followed behind, arms crossed like some judgmental therapist. “So… you’re painting the nursery”, Jared mused, eyeing Jensen with an annoyingly smug look. “Big step”.

Jensen rolled his eyes, grabbing a handful of swatches. “It’s just paint”.

Jared scoffed. “Right. And I suppose you just accidentally wandered into the baby furniture section earlier, too?”.

Jensen shot him a glare.

Jared grinned. “That’s what I thought”.

Jensen sighed, glancing at the blues, greens, and neutral tones in his hand. “I have no fucking clue what I’m doing”.

Jared clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You got this".

Jensen huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah, yeah”. His eyes flickered over the soft pastel colors, and before he could second-guess himself, he grabbed a few cans of paint. “Let’s get this over with”.

Jared didn’t say anything, just smirked knowingly as he followed Jensen to the checkout.

Jensen dipped the roller into the tray, watching the soft, muted green coat the surface before pressing it against the nursery wall. The rhythmic motion—up, down, up, down—was the only thing grounding him, keeping him from spiraling into the thoughts he had been trying to avoid all day.

But the silence made it impossible to outrun them.

It was just him, the paint, and his own fucked-up mind.

He hadn’t told anyone, not even Jared, why he chose green. But he knew. Deep down, he knew.

It was the color of your sweater—the one you always wore around the house, the one he found in the laundry after you left, the one that still smelled like you.

And maybe, on some subconscious level, he thought if he filled this room with something that reminded him of you, maybe—just maybe—it wouldn’t feel so terrifying.

Jensen sighed, pressing the roller harder against the wall. The sound of it gliding over the drywall filled the empty house, the scent of fresh paint mixing with the whiskey lingering on his breath.

He still didn’t know how to want this. That was the worst part.

He had spent years swearing he’d never do this again. The sleepless nights, the crying, the constant feeling of never doing enough. He had already lived through it, and he had barely survived it then.

And now? Now, he was older. His patience was thinner. His life was different.

So why the hell was he here, rolling paint onto these damn walls like a man preparing for a future he still didn’t know if he wanted?

Because she’s leaving you. The thought came so fast it knocked the wind out of him.

Jensen froze mid-roll, his grip tightening around the handle. That’s what this was, wasn’t it?

That’s why he had spent the past two weeks drowning himself in whiskey and self-pity. Why Jared had to drag his ass off the couch just to function like a normal human being. Why he was standing in a half-empty nursery at one in the morning, painting walls for a baby he had spent months trying not to think about.

Because for the first time, he felt it.

The empty space beside him. The missing presence of the woman he loved. The gaping hole you had left behind when you walked out of that house.

And if he didn’t fix this—really fix this—he was going to lose you.

Jensen swallowed hard, his chest tightening as he stared at the half-painted wall. He needed to stop being a coward.

The next morning, Jensen woke up stiff as hell, his back aching from falling asleep on the floor of the half-painted nursery. His hands were speckled with dried paint, his shirt a mess, and his head still a little foggy from everything running through his mind the night before.

He had never planned on getting this far.

Never planned on standing in a room he was preparing for a baby. Never planned on thinking about cribs or carpets or curtains.

But here he was.

With a groan, he pushed himself up, rubbing the sleep from his face before reaching for his phone. He knew what he had to do, but fuck if he was going to do it alone.

Jensen: I need your fucking moral support today.

It didn’t take Jared long to respond.

Jared: Moral support for what?

Jensen exhaled through his nose, running a hand over his jaw before typing back.

Jensen: Baby store.

Jared: …holy shit.

Jensen: Shut up and get your ass over here.

Jensen locked his phone, rolling his shoulders before standing up and taking a good look around the room. The green walls were dry now, the color softer in the daylight. The room still felt empty as hell, but it was a start. And he was going to make damn sure it didn’t stay empty for long.

Jared was already waiting when Jensen pulled into the parking lot, leaning against his truck with his arms crossed and an absolutely shit-eating grin on his face.

Jensen groaned before even stepping out. “Don’t”, he warned the second his sneaker hit the pavement.

Jared just chuckled. “Oh, I am gonna”.

Jensen rolled his eyes, shaking his head as he walked past him, straight toward the entrance. Jared followed, his grin only widening. “I just need a crib”, Jensen muttered. “Maybe a carpet. Some curtains”.

Jared raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot coming from the guy who, just a couple weeks ago, was acting like this baby was an alien invasion”.

Jensen shot him a glare. “Moral support, Jared. Not moral commentary”.

Jared held up his hands in surrender, still grinning as they stepped inside.

The second they entered, Jensen felt like he had been hit with baby shit everywhere. Cribs. Strollers. Little clothes that were way too tiny. Shelves filled with things—things that made his head spin, things he had completely forgotten about from when his own kids were babies.

This wasn’t just picking out a crib. This was preparing for something he had been trying to run from for months.

Jensen swallowed hard, but before he could backtrack, Jared clapped a hand on his shoulder, grinning like the bastard he was. “Alright, man. Show me where the cribs are”.

Jensen sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Let’s just get this over with”.

Jensen had faced a lot of difficult things in his life. Grueling film schedules. Long flights. Even longer nights. Divorce. But nothing—nothing—could have prepared him for standing in the middle of a baby store, staring at rows of cribs while Jared fucking Padalecki grinned at him like he had just won the lottery.

Jensen let out a long breath, crossing his arms as his eyes scanned the options. Too many choices. Too many colors. Too many damn cribs that all looked exactly the same.

Jared, on the other hand, was having way too much fun. He leaned against a display, arms crossed, watching Jensen with pure amusement. “Never thought I’d see the day”, he mused, shaking his head. “Jensen Ackles, shopping for a crib. It’s like watching Bigfoot pick out furniture”.

Jensen shot him a glare. “Shut the hell up”.

Jared smirked. “Nah, man, this is too good. Should I call Gen? Maybe get Danneel on FaceTime? This is history right here”.

Jensen groaned, running a hand down his face. “I swear, if you don’t shut up—”.

Jared just laughed, clapping him on the back. “Relax. I’m proud of you, dude”.

Jensen rolled his eyes, pretending to be irritated, but the words did hit somewhere deeper. He didn’t respond to that, though. Instead, he turned back to the cribs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Which one of these things is… I don’t know. The best?”.

Jared raised an eyebrow. “Best at what?”.

Jensen exhaled sharply. “Best at keeping a baby alive, Jared. Isn’t that the whole point?”.

Jared snorted. “I mean, yeah, but it’s not that deep, man. Just pick one”.

Jensen frowned. “It’s not that simple”.

And apparently, it wasn’t—because before he knew it, he was running his hand along the wooden railing of one crib, testing the bars, then moving to another one, checking its sturdiness like he actually knew what the hell he was doing.

Jared watched in amusement as Jensen muttered to himself, comparing features, shaking cribs slightly to test their stability. “Wow”, Jared drawled. “You’re really putting your dad instincts into this, huh?”.

Jensen scoffed but didn’t stop inspecting. “It’s a crib. It’s gotta be solid. What if the kid starts climbing? What if the bars are too wide?”. He frowned at one and moved on to another. “What if it’s got some cheap-ass paint that chips?”.

Jared blinked. “Dude. Babies don’t just come out the womb climbing like monkeys”.

Jensen ignored him, still scanning the options. His eyes landed on white crib—solid wood, no flimsy parts, simple but sturdy. He ran his hand over the rail, nodding to himself.

“This one”.

Jared smirked. “Oh, so now you care about the details?”.

Jensen shot him a look but didn’t argue. Because, yeah, maybe he did care. Maybe picking this crib meant something. Maybe it meant he was trying.

Jared must have sensed the shift, because his smirk softened into something more genuine. “Alright”, he said, nodding. “Let’s get it”.

After the crib was loaded onto a cart, Jensen turned toward the next item on his list. “Curtains”, he muttered.

Jared raised an eyebrow. “You actually giving her a choice on those?”.

Jensen huffed. “She’ll pick everything else. I just wanna get something neutral”.

Jared smirked but didn’t argue, following as Jensen made his way toward the fabric section. And somehow, some-fucking-how, Jensen found himself holding up two different sets of curtains, actually considering shades like it was the most important decision of his damn life. “These?”. He held up a soft gray set. “Or these?”. A muted sage green.

Jared blinked. “Dude. They’re curtains”.

Jensen glared at him. “Yeah, but they gotta match the room”.

Jared snorted. “Alright, Martha Stewart. Go with the green. It matches the walls”.

Jensen grumbled but tossed them in the cart.

Next up: a rug.

Jensen wandered toward the aisle, scanning the options before stopping at one with a soft, plush texture. Simple, neutral, nothing fancy—but it looked comfortable.

While Jensen was focused on loading the cart with the essentials—crib, curtains, rug—Jared had somehow wandered off to another aisle. And that was never a good sign.

Jensen found him standing in front of a display of tiny baby clothes, holding up an impossibly small onesie with a goofy grin. “Man”, Jared muttered, half to himself, half to Jensen. “Maybe I should have another one”.

Jensen groaned. “Oh, hell no. Gen would kill you”.

Jared smirked but didn’t put the onesie back. “I mean… look at these”, he said, holding up a tiny pair of socks between his fingers. “They’re like… this big”. He pinched his fingers together dramatically.

Jensen exhaled, rubbing his forehead. “Jesus, Jared”.

Jared laughed, tossing the socks back into the bin before glancing at Jensen. “You know the gender yet?”.

Jensen shook his head, his fingers tightening on the cart handle. “No. Won’t know for another four weeks or something”.

Jared nodded, his expression turning more thoughtful. “You gonna find out?”.

Jensen hesitated, glancing down at the items in the cart. The crib. The rug. The curtains. The first things he’d actually bought for this baby.

For his baby.

“Yeah”, he admitted, voice quieter now. “I think I wanna know”.

Jared grinned, nudging him with his elbow. “Good. That way, I can get you something really obnoxious”.

Jensen rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. Because, for the first time, he realized—he actually wanted to know. And maybe that meant something.

Eventually, Jensen stood in front of the rack, staring at the onesie like it had personally offended him. The design was so familiar, but just… off enough to avoid a lawsuit.

Jared stepped up beside him, taking one look before bursting into laughter. “No way this is legal”.

Jensen scoffed, shaking his head. “Someone at Warner Bros. is definitely gonna lose their shit if they see this”.

Jared picked up the tiny black onesie, reading the white lettering aloud. “‘Saving People, Hunting Things… My Family Business’”. He whistled. “Damn. They really just went for it, huh?”.

Jensen crossed his arms, smirking. “I mean, they changed like, one word. That’s gotta count for something, right?”.

Jared grinned. “Yeah, let’s see how well that argument holds up in court”.

Jensen let out a short laugh, shaking his head as he reached for the onesie. He turned it over in his hands, fingers brushing over the fabric. It was small. So damn small. His throat tightened a little. Before he could overthink it, he tossed it into the cart.

Jared’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait—seriously?”.

Jensen shot him a look, raising a warning brow. “Don’t”.

Jared bit back a grin, holding up his hands. “Just saying—you’re actually picking out baby clothes. On purpose. This is a big moment”.

Jensen rolled his eyes. “It’s just a onesie, Padalecki”.

“Yeah, yeah”, Jared said, clearly unconvinced. “And the crib was just a crib”. He nudged Jensen’s shoulder. “Admit it, man. You’re getting into this”.

Jensen sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I don’t know what I’m doing”, he muttered. “But if I let you pick shit, my kid’s gonna end up in a ‘Uncle Jared is my favorite’ onesie, and I refuse to let that happen”.

Jared grinned. “I mean… that can still be arranged”.

Jensen groaned. “We’re leaving”.

Jared laughed as he followed him toward checkout, watching as Jensen—Jensen Ackles—paid for a crib, a rug, and a damn Supernatural-adjacent onesie.

Maybe he wasn’t all the way there yet. But damn if he wasn’t trying.

That night, Jensen sat on the floor of the nursery, surrounded by unassembled crib parts, screws, and an instruction manual that looked like it had been translated into English by someone who had never seen a crib in their life.

He let out a slow breath, rolling his shoulders before picking up the first piece of wood, aligning it with another.

Alright. Let’s do this.

The rhythmic process of assembling the crib—slotting parts together, tightening screws, rechecking everything—gave him something to focus on. Something to do. It kept his mind from spiraling into places he didn’t want to go.

But as the frame started to take shape, something inside him shifted.

Jensen sat back on his heels, looking at the half-assembled crib in front of him. It was real now. Tangible. A thing that was going to hold a baby—his baby—in just a few months.

His hands rested on his thighs, his fingers curling slightly as he exhaled.

For weeks, he had pushed this away, refused to let himself think about it too much. But now, sitting here, surrounded by baby furniture and walls he had painted himself, the truth settled in his chest like a weight.

This was happening. No matter how scared he was. No matter how much he hadn’t wanted this. It was real.

And maybe—just maybe—he was starting to want it, too.

He let out a slow breath, brushing his fingers over the wooden frame, imagining tiny fingers gripping the edge one day, little kicks against the mattress, quiet breaths in the middle of the night.

Jensen swallowed hard, his throat thick with emotion he wasn’t ready to name. He reached for another screw, tightening the last side panel into place.

And for the first time since you had left, he let himself think about the moment you’d see it. Would you be proud of him? Would you even care? Would this be enough?

He didn’t know. But for the first time in weeks, he knew one thing for sure. He wanted you to come home.

———————————

A/N: Hello and welcome back, lol. I didn't want to keep you waiting for the first chapter any longer, even though I still don't know when I'll post the following chapters. I might post one or two chapters per week, but maybe just one. I don't have a fixed day for that. Just a heads-up in advance.

And of course, please let me know what you think.🥰

Taglist: @blackcherrywhiskey @baby19sthings @suckitands33 @spnfamily-j2 @lyarr24 @deans-baby-momma @reignsboy19 @kawaii-arfid-memes @mekkencspony @lovziy @artemys-ackles @fitxgrld @libby99hb @lovelyvirtualperson @a-lil-pr1ncess @nancymcl @the-last-ry @spndeanwinchesterlvr @hobby27 @themarebarroww @kr804573 @impala67rollingthroughtown @deans-queen @deadlymistletoe @selfdestructionandrhum @utyblyn @winchesterwild78 @jackles010378 @chirazsstuff @foxyjwls007 @smoothdogsgirl @woooonau @whimsyfinny @freyabear @laaadygisbooornex3 @quietgirll75 @perpetualabsurdity @pughsexual @berryblues46 @deanwinchestersgirl8734 @kr804573 @iloveeveryoneyoureamazing @iloveeveryoneyoureamazing @barnes70stark @roseblue373 @shanimallina87 @ascarriel @deanwinchesters67impala @thebiggerbear @quietgirll75 @barnes70stark @kellyls04 @spxideyver @ralilda @americanvenom13 @ozwriterchick @lmg14

#jensen ackles #jensen x reader #jensen ackles smut #jensen fucking ackles #jensen ackles fanfiction #jensen ackles the boys #jensen ackles x you #jensen ackles x reader #jensen x y/n #jensen x you #beyond his true fate

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yanderes-galore · 2 days ago

Note

Can you do yandere Ancients Hero reaction when they figure out reader marry them only because of their status, power and wealth not because reader love them ? I crave for some angst.

I usually don't do this many characters so the HCs will be short... However, I feel certain CRK characters are a package deal.

Yandere! Ancient Heroes with Darling betraying them

(Small HCs - Excludes White Lily due to plot)

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Self depreciation (Pure Vanilla), Delusional behavior, Angst, Kidnapping/Imprisonment, Worship yandere (Pure Vanilla), Denial, Possessive behavior, Isolation, Golden Cheese is your sugar mommy, Dubious/Forced relationship.

Pure Vanilla

Pure Vanilla attempts to be understanding of your betrayal.

It does break his heart into just about a million crumbs... However, Pure Vanilla seems like he'd just blame himself for your betrayal.

After all, if you used him... Then he must have done something wrong.

Pure Vanilla is probably the easiest one to manipulate.

He's so caught up in what feels like 'true love' that he doesn't notice you aren't genuine at first.

Ever kiss, every hug... it all felt like you loved him.

He's convinced you love him.

He values your input and consent, he dedicates himself to you fully.

Even the wedding is rather traditional, him kissing you by the altar as you become united.

At first, Pure Vanilla is deep in his fantasies.

He's convinced you're perfect, practically worshipping the ground you walk on despite being a king.

Although... Soon you show your true colors.

You become distant and only act affectionate to fool those around you.

Pure Vanilla quickly becomes... delusional.

Maybe you're just in a mood?

Maybe he's done something wrong?

He's unable to think that you're uninterested in him.

He's given you so much... yet he's so willing to give you everything just so you love him.

He's a submissive yandere, constantly buying you gifts and offering affection just for your attention.

He doesn't want to lose you.

In fact, he allows you to have anything you want as long as it means he won't be alone.

You want power and fame? Fine...

Just don't leave him... Please love him

He's not manipulative, you're the one manipulating you.

He'll be your submissive husband and toy if it means he doesn't feel alone.

While it hurts him that your love isn't exactly as he imagined...

Pure Vanilla will be compliant, willing to be your little pawn and be used in whatever way you wish...

All he asks for in return is for you to at least pretend to love him... or love him genuinely at some point.

Hollyberry

Hollyberry is delusional, just not believing you're using her.

Part of her probably knows better, telling her a sweet cookie like you was just using her.

However, she's always been a rather jolly soul.

She's a cookie who loves to party, who cherishes friendship and happiness above everything else.

She no doubt met you at one of her grand parties and fell for you.

You were such a sweet cookie for her... She couldn't help but want to smother you.

Hollyberry is an intense lover, alway dragging you for drinking and dancing.

You were simply putting up an act, knowing if you tolerate her behavior you can have access to her kingdom.

Hollyberry is overwhelming, giving you all sorts of courtship gifts.

She's affectionate and loud... Especially when she proposes.

She wants to wed you, to make you her sweet spouse!

You accept, after all, you're after power.

Afterwards you become apathetic to Hollyberry's many parties and affection.

She doesn't understand it, it probably doesn't occur to her that you're trying to use her.

She just assumes you're feeling insecure and tries to help you feel better through more parties and contests.

She's all sweet smiles, holding you close and claiming loudly that she adores you.

It isn't until you break her fantasy by snapping at her that you don't love her that she gets upset.

She doesn't want to believe that.

She tells you that you must just be... overwhelmed.

She'll try to give you your space... but she'll be back to love you!

Hollyberry is either oblivious or willingly ignoring the fact you're using her.

Who cares? She has you and she can love you all she wants now!

Sure, maybe you don't love her now...

Yet maybe she can change that with enough dedication to show you you're perfect together!

Dark Cacao

Dark Cacao is stern and no doubt forces you to be corrected.

He's a cookie focused on protecting his subjects and kingdom.

He has had his fair share of usurpers in his long life.

I imagine it takes a long time for him to get attached to you due to all of his experiences.

Unfortunately, you abuse such trust.

You whisper sweet words to him, giving him soft smiles that melt his cold heart.

The stoic ruler's facade cracks around you, making him go a bit soft as he speaks with you.

Dark Cacao thought he could trust you, he thought he could finally find someone to love after so many years.

You two would spend many long snows together, perhaps even sharing kisses in secret.

Soon enough Dark Cacao gives you what you want... He marries you to make you his.

All he really wants is to make you his, to protect you like he does his kingdom.

Things went well... the wedding was dark and small, yet it meant so much to him.

Yet... months later you snap his trust in half, like it doesn't matter.

As time goes on, you become colder to him, often trying to take over his duties.

It isn't long before you slip up and Dark Cacao realizes you're simply another usurper using his vulnerability against him.

While he'd normally have you executed... He can't.

Even after you betrayed him, he still married you because he loved you.

So... He takes a different approach.

He punishes you... forcing you to be isolated and only allows himself to see you.

He orders for you to be sealed in a private cell in the dungeons.

Guards often watch you unless Dark Cacao is there.

He didn't wish to imprison his love... He was hoping he could take a chance.

He was hoping he could find someone to love and support him.

However... If you're simply going to betray him...

He'll force you to crave him.

He'll isolate you, he'll be the only cookie you properly see.

If you don't love or need him like he does with you...

He'll just mold you into the way he wants you to be, just to have that happy ending he craves.

Golden Cheese

Golden Cheese may make things transactional between you if it means she still garners your attention.

After all, you both have a certain greed to you.

Sheesh... if you just wanted riches, you could've told her!

Golden Cheese is willing to smother her obsession in golden riches as long as you love her.

Essentially, with no other way to say it, Golden Cheese would just be a sugar mommy to you.

If you marry her, be a part of her kingdom, and pledge yourself to be hers as her most beloved treasure...

She'd practically give you anything in exchange for your worship.

At first when she's courting you she's already giving you all sorts of gold.

She pampers you in affection, sitting you in her lap as she peppers you in kisses.

It isn't surprising that she proposes to you, wanting your hand in marriage.

She does it out of greed, no doubt to keep you in her kingdom.

So, this is just two greedy people benefiting from each other.

When she notices you acting colder or prioritizing riches over her... She's both hurt and impressed.

Ah, no wonder she fell for you...

You're just as greedy as her.

She'll confront you, tell you she knows your whole plan... then give you a choice.

She could simply have you thrown into the dungeons until you learn to respect her and her kingdom... or...

She could make this so you both benefit.

You can have anything you want but her Soul Jam... in return, she just asks you to worship and love her.

You're both greedy cookies, yes?

Why not satiate both of your desires?

While she is originally hurt... Golden Cheese is quick to use your greed against you.

Sure... you can have fame and riches...

So long as you promise yourself to her and no one else, she'd practically give you the world.

#yandere cookie run #yandere cookie run kingdom #yandere pure vanilla cookie #yandere hollyberry cookie #yandere dark cacao cookie #yandere golden cheese cookie

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muse-hodgepodge · 13 hours ago

Note

The dragon knew that Ysayle had called forth a primal in the name of his beloved Shiva but also knew that her true spirit rested within himself. It was his sole comfort over these many long years. So imagine his utter shock when the eugief speaks up about grief.

There was another mighty roar at the smaller man but he does not attack nor flee. Instead he just huffs, "you speak from experience then little one... You know the grief of losing one you hold dear and then dealing with it... I can see it in yours eyes. So you would know then that your mission is a futile one. There is no way to console the grieving, rage fueled Nidhogg. His mind has long been stuck upon but one thing... Seeing Ishgard suffer and burn in the name of our sister." He growls lowly before adding on, "and you are wrong about one thing, I do not grieve for my beloved Shiva as she has never left me. You should take care of who you preach to next little traveler, it may get you killed." With that said he turns as if to leave.

Zossaux then speaks up, "so you will do naught to help nor stop us then...? Whatever may happen next, you could live with it?" That does stop the dragon and he merely huffs, "his war has long since become the stuff of madness." With that the dragon lifts into air and leaves them all be. The warrior sighs and shakes his head, this was one battle that he could not win but, "it seems that if we are to stop Nidhogg it will be alone. But at least he will not be stopping us either..."

Ysalye, for her part, was unaware of the full story herself. She had hoped her channeling of Shiva would bring her closer to understanding. But was it all delusion on her end? Did she truly understand so little?

"Tis not Shiva, that stays your claws." Suddenly, the eugief speaks up. Stepping forward, putting himself before the great dragon.

"It is grief. I can see it in your eye. You grieve for the loss of not only your beloved Shiva but also for your sister. Ages pass, time marches on, but you, and perhaps even your brother, are no closer to fulfilling your grief. You try to hide yourself away from both others and your own emotions. While your brother buries himself in what he calls righteous revenge. But in truth, you both simply are unable to move on from your grief." Heismay speaks, from what sounds like a place of experience.

Estinien is admittedly surprised by the gumption from the older man. It was as if he didn't let his fear or concern stop him from calling it out as he saw it. The question was, would Heismay's words find purchase?

#travelers of the multiverse #;ic #muse: zossaux

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rogue-durin-16 · 9 hours ago

Text

HEAD-TO-HEAD (drabble)

Summary: Joe thought she was pretty. Had he just said that, things might have been different for them. Maybe they wouldn't have gone head-to-head at each other for three years like it was a contest.

Pairing: Joseph Liebgott x Reader

Genre: angst splattered with fluff/rivals to lovers

Tags:

Head-to-head: @derersketnoget @ladystardustfromarss @lanadelray1989 @chanshugsaretherapy @hoddystark @sxalbatf @jetjuliette @luvrottt @fromjupitertocentauri @ecompstolemysoul @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @bitter-post-millennial @gotxpenny @knight-of-thesun @scottstr3et

Band Of Brothers: @fernando-jpg @chubbypotatoepie @tvserie-s-world @clumsy-wonderland @lordndsaviorwinters @lanadelray1989 @chanshugsaretherapy @hoddystark @gotxpenny

Permanent taglist: @randomparanoid @karlthecat15722 @thebutchersdaughtersblog @amourtentiaa @comfort-reads

Warnings: language, smoking, brief PTSD, super light allusions to suicidal thoughts if you wanna read it like that

A/N: this is too damn long for a drabble but look away. LOOK AWAY. NOW. ENJOY<3

Head-to-head masterlist

Band of Brothers masterlist

Rogue-durin-16 masterlist

The sky hadn't changed in days. Same murky stretch of clouds occasionally allowing the stars to peek through, same biting wind. At least it all felt a bit warmer now, either because of the nights spent indoors or due to the slightest temperature rise that the first days of March brought to Mourmelon. I leaned on the outer wall of the barracks, hands in my pockets, cigarette burning too low to draw from. I didn't bother lighting another.

The barrack door creaked behind me. The sound attracted my gone gaze, and I met hers for an instant. I couldn't tell who looked away faster.

"You're gonna freeze out here."

"Ain't that bad." I tossed the stub to the ground, grinding it with my foot. "You lost?"

"Looking for you."

I spared her another look, longer. Her arms, until now crossed, unfolded to fish out a pack of smokes.

"Okay," She lit a cigarette, the flame catching her visage just enough for me to see the dark circles under her eyes. "Let's talk." Plain, simple, with her foot half-turned like she was ready to bolt if it went sideways.

"Oh, now you wanna talk?" I asked, mouth curling bitter at the edges.

She took a long drag, held it, then breathed out slow. "Well, now that I don't wanna blow my brains out, yes."

I scoffed, searching for something in the distance that would distract me from the tightening of my chest and the ghost of the deafening shot ringing in my ears. "You forgot how to be funny or what?"

"I dunno, Joe," she accompanied her quiet response with a shrug. "I forgot a lot of things."

We stood in silence for a beat, the wind rustling through the barracks' roof above us. Inside, someone laughed too loud. It felt like a different world.

"So?" She prompted, shifting from one foot to another. "Do you wanna talk or not?"

I found myself at loss of words, not even knowing where to start. Every sentence I rehearsed came out wrong in my head, and if it came out wrong in my head, it'd sound fatal out loud. So I settled for the thing that felt most true.

"I don't know how to do this." Not without it ending up badly, I wanted to add. I didn't.

She exhaled a defeated sigh. "Makes the two of us."

Another silence followed, heavier than the last but not as sharp. The wind cut sharper, clearing up the night sky ever so subtly.

She looked down at her cigarette like it would give her answers, took another drag and held it out to me, like the gesture alone was a truce.

I took up the offering without a 'thank you', and we stood still, shoulder to shoulder, sharing the same smoke like it might fill the cracks we couldn't name.

She inhaled a sharp breath before breaking the quiet. Didn't look at me while doing so. "You think we're friends?" The question hit soft but landed hard. She didn't mean for it to matter as much as it did. An afterthought in delivery. A loaded gun in disguise.

For a change, I took my time to answer —which in retrospective, might have made it all heavier.

"It's something I've been thinking about lately." She filled my reticence with another sentence, another absentmindedly voiced thought. Perhaps to give me time without being too obvious about it, or maybe to cover up the fact that she had made the air between us ache.

I twirled the cigarette between my digits. The paper was torn from her teeth, still damp at the end.

"No." I said, taking a drag, the taste of her mixing up with the burning sensation. "No," I repeated, blowing the smoke away. "we're not friends."

There was no accusation in her expression, only a quiet kind of acknowledgment. She had known the answer before asking, and wanted to hear it from me anyway. Tactless and unceremonious, but sincere nonetheless, as sad as it was.

"Friends don't..." I cleared my throat, kicking a pebble away from me. "They don't treat each other like we do. You know that."

"I know." Her hands buried deep into her jacket, seemingly to preserve the cherished heat we had been missing for months. "I'm just tryin' to place you somewhere."

I spun my head to check on her, only to find her eyes as lost as mine in the horizon of the camp, slightly squinted, as if she was trying to put something together.

"Do you even like me?" Her question wasn't sad, nor angry. It was curious, the way you ask about the the drills scheduled, or whether the mess is still serving coffee.

"You don't gotta place me anywhere." My words had no malice, and I prayed for her not to hear a fight in them.

It should've been easy to say yes. But it never was, not with her. Not when I didn't even know if she fell into that category. Like. Seemed like an understatement. Sounded off. No, I didn't like her, and I wasn't about to lie to her, but the truth was tangled up into anger and denial, and I didn't have it in me to unravel it.

I rubbed a hand over my jaw, trying to crack a response that would convey the overwhelming mess I felt for her without digging my own grave.

"You drive me crazy."

Her brow pinched slightly. She hadn't expected that, but it was something manageable, a confession already known among us. She could work with that. She just needed to find her own way to do so, so she asked, "'S that good or bad?"

"Ain't a compliment."

I was fast—faster than what had become usual. It left her stunned for two seconds, having lost practice when it came to giving it back as good as she was handed. With the corner of her lips twitching, she let out a small huff. "Alright, Liebgott."

There wasn't a smile on her face, but some of the tightness had eased out of her shoulders. The cigarette hung forgotten between my fingers, smoke curling between us in slow, lazy spirals. I handed it back, my fingers brushing hers too deliberately to pass as casual.

"Just a kiss, huh?"

I didn't miss the way her jaw tightened. She would have rather chewed glass than have to go there again. But because she humored me just long enough to keep me hooked, she asked, "You're still thinking about it?" Her eyes met mine, guarded, expectant. A bit eager for an answer, a bit confused by where I wanted this to go.

"That what you asked Grant after fucking him?"

"Oh, fuck off." She dismissed me, mentally taking a step back. I was trying to make her jump. She saw it clear as day, and chose not to give me the satisfaction. "Just answer the question." She urged, her lips wrapping about the cigarette immediately afterwards.

I looked straight ahead, jaw locked. If I wanted this to go anywhere at all, it was my turn to relent. "Yeah. I'm still thinking about it."

Stillness on her part. Not a single reaction to my admission, not even a quick glance out of pity. Then—

"It felt good." It could've passed as a slipup, but she was determined. "The kiss."

"Yeah. Fuck." My mouth went a little dry, but I pushed through, just like she had. "It felt good."

She nodded once, almost to herself. "We shouldn't do that again, though." It functioned as a full stop on the topic, but she tried to go further, "You and I... We're-"

"I know."

I cut her off, unwilling to hear what came next. We remained suspended in the moment for a while; two ghosts trying to play house with her burning Lucky Strike and the ruins of a conversation.

"Rumor has it they'll have us jump into Berlin." she tried, flicking the ash to the side, too casual to be genuine.

I latched onto the chitchat like a man drowning. "I heard the drop won't be ours."

"Doesn't matter." She paused, staring back past the shadows casted by the barracks. "One way or another, we're entering Germany."

I hummed affirmatively, disinterested in the superficiality of the exchange, yet not wanting to give up on recovering whatever normalcy we seemed to be regaining.

"How d'you say Nazi pig in Yiddish?"

I couldn't help but snort at the levity of her tone. "What?"

"Come on," she insisted, glancing at me for the first time in minutes. The glimpse of her old self peeking under her shell mimicked the starlight seeping through the clouds. "Teach me a bad word, I'll make good use of it."

"Fuck. Okay, try uh..." I cursed under my breath, rummaging through the memories. "Alright, try schweinehund."

It was her turn to laugh like she used to when I talked nonsense just to get a rise out of her. "Sch-wine-what?"

"Jesus, that's awful." I winced. "Schweinehund."

"Schveinyhoond?" she tried again, lacking knowledge but not determination.

"You're butchering it." I scrunched my nose at her, not bothering to hide my annoyance. Not that she minded it anyway. "You want the Krauts to shoot you twice?"

She huffed, putting out the cigarette against the barracks' wall behind us. "Just say it again."

"Schweinehund." I complied, slower this time.

"Schweinehund?"

"Close enough. They'll know what you mean."

"You sure that's not a compliment?" She attempted a joke that somehow landed.

"Yes, Y/n," I retorted, putting emphasis on her name. "I'm pretty fuckin' sure it's not a compliment."

"Just making sure." She gave me a distracted shrug, sneaking one last tentative glance at me before stepping back, her hand reaching for the door's handle. "Let's go in, yeah? I don't miss freezing my ass off."

Let's go in.

Not I'm going in. Not Wanna go in.

Let's go in, she commanded, so I followed.

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lheslie · 2 days ago

Note

Helloooo!!! I see the req is open so.. may i? :3

What if.. drunk!goo x fem reader? Say, the reader get mad at him then he wasted himself (bcs this time, it is his fault). He was about to call gun but called reader instead. The rest is up to you, but please make him cry for forgiveness hahaha.

Thank you in advance, have a nice day🫶🏻💛💛

Drunken Sorrows

OMG A REQUESTTTT AFTER A YEAR @-@ THANK YOU!!

I'm posting this rn in a sleepover it took me long to write this-

Requested by: Jonggunkitten

I hope you like it!!!

Thank you for requesting!!!

It all began when Goo came home heavily injured, you were profusely worried about his current condition, he was absolutely beat up and blood spewed all over his body, whilst he laughingly shrugged it off.

You despised seeing him injured, what made it worse is that he didn't see that you were also hurting because of this. Because who would wanna see the man they love looking like they came home from the brink of death? And he just laughed it off like his life didn't matter.

"Babe it's just a scratch." He laughed again seeing how adorable you were being mad at him while you bandaged his wounds.

"JUST A SCRATCH?" You yelled rage echoing in your throat as tears streamed down your face.

"I can see so much of your muscles that you might aswell be skinless!" She sobbed— knowing he would never take this seriously.

Goo's heart started to ache because of this, and thought another joke would help 'lighten the mood up' and said.

"You're overreacting babe, look." He flexed his newly bandaged muscles.

"Barely a scratch, I can survive that." He looked at you as you grew silent.

"Babe?" He questioned, as you suddenly stood up and marched to your bedroom and slammed it shut, he jolted in fear and proceeded to follow in pursuit.

He tried knocked on the door before trying to open it, but it failed.

His heart ached, because he had never seen you this mad before.

"Sweetheart? Y/N? I'm sorry." He knocked on the door hoping for a response

"LEAVE ME ALONE, SINCE YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT YOURSELF; YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE ALONE." You yelled.

"I DON'T WANT TO HOPE DAY AND NIGHT FOR YOU TO COME HOME SAFE I'M DONE." You continued.

His eyes widened at those words, he really did fuck up this time.

He hurt your feelings, the only woman who genuinely cared for him: the woman who knew him, who understood him for who he was, and he took a blind eye from the pain you were feeling.

He was left mute, he never did this before, and he didn't know how to fix it; he genuinely didn't know how to make it up to you.

He quietly took of his hand from the door handle, while his heart sunk into deep despair, regretting his decision.

He slumped on the couch, grunting 'I should give her some space, I feel like shit about this' he thought to himself as he took his car keys and drove to a bar.

He sat down at the bar counter, as he started to order, and after a few bottles, his heart started to pour out.

The bartender had taken notice on how he drank a lot like he was trying to drown himself full of remorse.

The bartender, who started to clean some of the beer glasses, had approached him and asked a questioned.

"A penny for your thoughts?" He asked, bartenders usually don't do this and it's considered very unprofessional.

Goo sighed, as he slumped down opening his mouth as he began to say his feelings deep inside his chest which caused his chest to hurt while tears started to form on his eyes.

He chugged down more alcohol to berid this fake facade of apathy.

He knew that his job was malicious, yet he still took this path of greed.

This abstract lavish lifestyle that he stays continiously bound to his entire life.

He doesn't know how he could protect the both of you, while there are plenty of people after him for the the crimes he commited.

You were the only one that gave him true happiness, the only benevolent thing in his cruel world.

He started to bawl whilst he attempted to call Gun, he accidentally clicked your number instead, calling you. The tears in his eyes were meticulously overflowing.

While, you were laying in bed seeing the caller I.D on your screen, you reminisced for a bit on what had happened earlier.

You regret shouting and saying those hateful things.

You grabbed your phone from the nightstand and answered his call, patiently waiting for what he might say.

As you leaned to your phone, you start to hear the sounds of sniffling from the other side.

You could hear Goo speaking incoherently about how he regreted treating you today.

But instead of hearing your own name, you heard Gun's name.

'He clearly mistook, or misclicked the wrong number and called me by mistake.' You clenched your nasal bridge.

Upon hearing his incoherent apologies, your heart softened.

"Gunn...pick me upghhhhm I'm attt ughhhhh the bar near that that uhhhh (Randomplace)." He slurred dropping his phone on the bar counter.

You softly sighed, standing up to pick him, you immediately knew where it was thankfully you went there with Gun and Goo before.

You drove to the bar.

When you entered the bar you looked around to catch a glimpse of him.

Then on the corner of your eye, you spotted him still sobbing incoherently with his eyes closed.

You approached the blonde haired man, tapping his back.

"Let's go home." You softly spoke, as he looked at the voice which had called his name he saw you.

He immediately jumped into your arms holding you within his embrace hugging you tightly as if he was afraid of you running away from his grasp.

He started to cry even more while he slumped his whole body on you giving you a heavy weight.

"G-goo! I can't carry you!" You worriedly say as his heavy weight made you out of balance.

"Goo, your snot is on my clothes now, ewww." As you can see a thin life of slime gushing out of his nose to your clothes, you asked the bartender for some tissues to wipe away his snot, throwing the tissues to the trash can.

"Okay that's enough I forgive you, don't do it again." You told him.

He held you tightly as he whispered "Thank you..." kissing you on the cheek his arm is on your shoulder trying to carry his weight, leading him to your car.

You drove back to your shared penthouse.

Goo was still dead weight, wobbling himself to the door entering your penthouse.

"Goo I am NOT letting you drink like this anymore." You sternly told him.

"MhMmm, anything for you my pretty wifeyy." He giggles hugging you tightly as he pecked and sucked on your cheek with a loud plop sound leaving saliva on your cheek.

"Did you just suck on my cheek" You looked at him with disgust smelling the stench of alcohol on your cheek.

You walked him to your shared bed, plopping him down, as he also pulled you in his embrace locking you in his arms.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry...I love you so much please don't leave me....Mmmm" He whispered in your ear, hugging you tightly.

"I love you too." You kissed his nose, giggling to his cuteness.

He suddenly opened his eyes, looking at you.

"Hello beautiful." He then started to dive in kissing your cheek to your neck.

"AHHHHH!!! GOO STOPPP!!! YOU STINK OF ALCOHOL" You yelled trying to free yourself from his strong grasp.

He then stopped at your request smelling the scent your hair.

"I love you, I love you, I love you." He repeatedly declared.

"I know I know, go to sleep." You commanded him. As he kissed your forehead.

Still holding you tightly in his embrace promising to himself never to let you out of his hold.

#lookism x reader #lookism headcanons #lookism webtoon #lookism #lookism kim joongoo #kim joongoo #lookism goo #lookism goo x reader #goo kim #lookism kim joongoo x reader

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humanrindswrites · 16 hours ago

Text

practice - four

summary: after 6 months of being long-distance, it's finally premiere night, and y/n is ready to take a huge step in her relationship with bill

pairing: bill skarsgård x female reader

warnings: NSFW, smut, oral sex (fem receiving), fingering, protected sex, loss of virginity, mentions of masturbation and phone sex, tooth rotting fluff

word count: 5778 words (oops)

a/n: i've teased enough about this part and how long it is and now it's finally here so I hope you enjoy 💕

one | two | three | four | epilogue

Y/N had always known that her job meant that she would never be in a ‘normal’ relationship, but she’d never expected her first-ever relationship to be long-distance.

From the very first day of pre-production, she knew Bill had another project lined up right after theirs, but the fact that she wasn't going to see him in person for another six months didn't settle in until she was standing in the airport with him, trying her best not to cry.

”You can always come with me, you know,” Bill said as she clung to him like a baby koala, afraid to let him go.

“You know I can’t,” she said, her voice watery and just audible over the surrounding crowd. “I’ve been away from the studio for too long.”

While Y/N’s usual acting gigs weren’t as far-flung as Bill’s were, she was still kept busy. She could have worked anywhere, but she knew that her regular cast mates on her animated series would miss her if she went globe-trotting with her boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

Just the word made Y/N feel giddy like she’d drunk too much champagne. Even though she and Bill weren’t public with their relationship, she wanted to scream from the rooftops that they were together. Telling her parents would have to do for now.

“If you ever get the chance, let me know,” Bill said. “I’ll talk to the director, and I’ll buy your plane ticket for you.”

He took her face in his hands and gently angled her head up so he could see her. Her eyes were shining with tears that threatened to fall as she looked up at him.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Y/N whispered and stood up on her toes to rest her forehead against his. She didn't care that the people around them were starting to stare and whisper to one another; this wasn't about them; it was about her and Bill. They were the only people in the world at that moment.

She felt him smile softly before he gently pressed his lips to hers, giving her one last kiss before he left.

“I’ll miss you too, baby,” he mumbled against her mouth, not in any rush to pull away from her. “I’ll call you as much as I can.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” She drew him in and kissed him again, her mouth lingering against his as she moulded her body into his, making sure that it remembered him.

She could have stayed there until her legs gave out if it wasn’t for Bill’s assistant tapping him on the shoulder to pull him away.

“Looks like we’ve gotta go,” he said as he stroked her face with the back of his fingers before he picked up his carry-on bag and went to follow his assistant. “I’ll call you as soon as we land.”

“Safe travels,” Y/N called after him as he disappeared into the crowd.

And just like that, he was gone.

True to his word, Bill had called and FaceTimed Y/N as much as he could, no matter where in the world he was or what time it was. Even if she was already in bed and half asleep, she would still answer for him.

Most of the time he’d call her to just talk or see how she was, but her favourites were when he was desperate to hear her voice as he stroked his cock. She loved hearing him purr down the phone, encouraging her to touch herself along with him until she was crying out for him and he would spill his cum into his hand. Her fingers still paled in comparison to his on her body, but they would have to until she saw him again.

Y/N felt like a completely different person than when they first met; she was no longer the shy, timid girl who wasn’t even comfortable being naked alone, but instead a woman becoming more and more confident the more she shared her body with him.

Unfortunately, she was never able to fly out to see him; she simply couldn’t find the time between recording sessions. But, somehow, she never felt lonely without him since she knew he was just a call away. The virtual tours he’d given of his numerous living spaces had been comforting; she’d seen where he was staying in Vancouver and Prague, but her favourite was seeing his home in Stockholm.

“There’s still time for you to fly out here,” Bill had said over FaceTime one night. Or, rather, afternoon. “I’ll get you a ticket, you don’t have to pay for anything.”

“I wish I could, but I just can’t find the time,” Y/N said as she turned over in her bed, trying to suppress a yawn. “I’ve got to get so much stuff done before we go to New York.”

“Tired?” he said with a soft chuckle when he noticed her struggle to keep her eyes open.

“Mm-hh.” It was past midnight in LA but late morning in Stockholm when he’d called, but she still picked up, fumbling with her phone on her nightstand and almost dropping it in the process. “I don’t mind being up a little longer.”

“You really should sleep, especially if you’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.”

“I’ve got a fitting in the morning for my premiere outfit,” she mumbled, her words slurring together as she sank further into her bed. “I don’t even know what colour I want.”

Y/N’s eyes fluttered back open, and she saw Bill studying her face and chest, more specifically her cleavage. She wore a navy blue camisole that was slowly being pulled down by her constant rolling around, showing him just enough of her breasts to distract him from his thoughts.

She could see that his green eyes were dilated, the pupils blown out as he gazed at her through the screen, and his lower lip was slightly caught between his teeth.

“What about blue?” he said when he finally dragged his eyes away from her chest. “You look good in every colour, but I think blue suits you the most.”

“Hmm, blue…” Y/N trailed off as her eyes drifted closed again, sleep finally pulling her into its claws.

“Y/N?” he softly said once she’d gone quiet, and her phone fell out of her hand.

Bill waited for a few seconds to make sure she was asleep before breathing out a soft laugh, a soft smile creeping over his face.

“Sleep well, baby,” he said before ending the call. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Six months went as fast as they’d come.

Press week was finally here, and Y/N could barely contain her excitement at getting to see Bill again after so long. The five-hour flight from LA to New York felt like it took a whole day, and knowing that she wouldn’t see him for another day once she’d landed made her feel restless.

As soon as she’d got a message from him that he’d landed, she rushed out of her hotel room and made her way down to the lobby to wait for him. Even though she knew that the traffic in New York was a constant pain, she didn’t mind waiting for him. It was nice to get out of her room for a couple of hours.

The hotel that production had put her and the rest of the cast up in was a lot nicer than the mid-range hotels she was used to staying in whenever she attended conventions or the cheap motels she and her parents used when they’d travelled to California for auditions when she was a child. She couldn’t help but feel out of place in the marble-clad lobby as she watched people mill around in designer clothes while she perched on a plush velvet sofa in her trusty yoga pants and hoodie.

The sun was starting to set, and Y/N could feel herself sinking into the couch when the sound of suitcase wheels caught her attention. She stiffly sat up and turned around in her seat to look where the sound had come from and beamed to herself when she saw that familiar tall silhouette in the doorway. Y/N jumped to her feet, almost slipping on the smooth floor as she got up, and scurried through the giant room to meet Bill halfway.

As soon as he saw her, he let go of his suitcase and held his arms out for her to run into. He was mostly the same as the last time she’d seen him; his hair was slightly shorter and he was a little more muscular, but to her, he was still perfect.

She breathed him in as she tightly wrapped her arms around him, her eyes squeezed shut so that she wouldn’t cry as he returned her embrace and stroked her back tenderly. She couldn’t believe that it had really been six months since she’d last seen him in person; they’d talked on the phone so often that it was like he’d always been by her side.

Her head still rested on his chest, she heard Bill talk to his assistant who went to sign him in while they continued to stand in the lobby, tangled in each other. All she wanted at that moment was to be completely alone with him, but she would have to settle for being surrounded by other hotel guests for now.

“I missed you,” she said softly, her voice just loud enough for only him to hear. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” he said, his voice rolling in his chest.

They finally broke apart from each other just as Bill’s assistant came over to give him his room key, and Y/N followed him, her hand in his as he led her up to his room. She offered to help him with his bags, but, ever the gentleman, he declined and rolled them through himself.

As soon as they were completely alone, Y/N found herself pushed up against a wall, with Bill’s mouth on hers. He kissed her as if he were starved, holding her face with both of his hands as she clawed at his shirt.

“I missed you so fucking much,” he mumbled in between kisses as he trailed them from her mouth to her neck. “I’ve wanted to touch you like this ever since I left.”

Y/N opened her mouth to speak but could only let out a small whimper as his hands travelled down her body to pull her hoodie off her. He dropped the garment to the floor and stooped down slightly to pick her up, her legs wrapped around his waist as he carried her to the bed and placed her down on her back.

Her body started to tingle when his hands slid under her shirt, skimming her bare skin until he reached her breasts. His mouth latched onto her jaw as he squeezed her breasts softly, his long fingers dipping underneath the band of her bra to toy with her nipples.

She could feel her clit start to tingle and swell the more he touched her, his hands stroking their way down her body to hold her hips still.

But something about it didn’t feel right.

“W-wait,” Y/N choked out when his fingers skirted dangerously close to her clothed pussy. “Baby, wait.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just…” she started before turning her face away from him.

Deep down, she wanted to keep going. She wanted him to touch her there and make her feel good, but the time just wasn’t right.

“Hey, it’s okay, you can tell me.”

“I’m just not ready for that,” she finally said in a small voice. “Sorry.”

“If you’re not ready, then you’re not ready,” he said and stroked her face tenderly. “We don’t have to do anything right now.”

He rolled off of her, keeping her in his arms as they lay together on the mattress. She could have stayed like that forever, his arms around her waist and her fingers in his hair as they simply enjoyed each other’s company.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Bill said when he eventually tore himself away from her. “I got you something.”

“You didn’t need to get me anything,” Y/N said as she stood up and watched him root through his carry-on bag. Although she was curious to see what it was.

“Okay, close your eyes,” he said once he’d found what he was looking for. Y/N shot him a suspicious look. “Close them.”

Y/N rolled her eyes before closing them and covering them with her hands for added effect. She felt him gently turn her body to stand where he wanted her and brush her hair to the side before draping something around her throat. She couldn’t help but shiver when she felt something cold touch her skin and fought the urge to open her eyes again before he’d finished putting it on her.

“You can open them now,” he said, his voice close to her ear before he softly kissed her shoulder.

She took her hands away from her face and slowly opened her eyes again to see their reflections in the mirror before them. Around her neck, Bill had placed a necklace; its delicate silver chain circled her throat, and a heart-shaped diamond pendant sat just underneath the base of her throat, the light blue stone shining in the low light of the hotel room.

Y/N gasped softly as her hand drifted up to touch the pendant, turning it around so she could watch how it sparkled. It didn’t go with her outfit at all, but she didn’t care about that.

“Oh my god,” she breathed as she turned around in Bill’s arms and stood on her toes to softly kiss him. “It’s beautiful.”

“I guess that means you like it,” he said against her mouth.

“I love it. Thank you. I never want to take it off.” She set herself back down and pulled away from him so she could see him again. “I don’t have anything for you, though.”

“You don’t have to get me anything, baby,” he said softly as he raised his hand to cradle her face in his palm. “I’ve got you.”

Of all the new experiences Y/N had been having lately, a premiere was not what she’d expected to be the most intimidating. Talking to people and repeating the same answers had just become routine, but those interviews took place in quiet rooms where she had one or two people with her, not outdoors near a screaming crowd that made it difficult for her to hear anything.

She took a deep breath before stepping onto the red carpet, her legs wobbling slightly as she adjusted to walking in her new heels. A tall mirror was fixed to the wall at the entrance, and she gave herself one last glance before stepping out. Despite having a reasonably long career, she’d never seen herself looking the way she did: her hair had been styled into loose curls that draped over her shoulders, her makeup was light enough to highlight her features but just dramatic enough for the event, and she wore a floor-length strapless gown in midnight blue with a bodice that skimmed her torso and pushed her breasts up just enough to show a tasteful amount of cleavage. The only jewellery she wore was a pair of simple diamond earrings and the necklace Bill had given her earlier. It rested on her chest, sparkling in the bright lights.

She looked and felt like a movie star.

Y/N could have looked at her reflection forever if a warm hand on her bare shoulder hadn’t pulled her out of her thoughts. She shifted her body away from the mirror to look behind her and saw Bill standing close to her. A smile broke out across her face as she stepped into his arms, trying to keep her face away from his blue suit as he hugged her tightly.

“Hey, look,” she said when she pulled away from him. “We match.”

“We do,” he said with a smile of his own, holding her forearms so he could get a good look at her. “You look beautiful. I told you blue was your colour.”

Y/N felt her face burn, and she briefly turned her eyes away from him before looking at him again. His eyes were soft and dilated as he looked at her, and his tongue briefly darted out to wet his lips as if he was trying his best not to kiss her in front of everyone. She wanted to feel him so badly, she didn’t care that they were surrounded by people who would broadcast their relationship to the world; she needed to kiss him, to have his hands on her.

Anything.

The premiere went a lot easier than Y/N had expected; she was still nervous and Bill kept close to her as much as he could in between signing autographs, posing for photos, and taking interviews of his own. She would glance over in his direction to make sure that he was still there, and he would give her a soft, comforting smile in return as if to tell her that she was doing well.

It certainly helped her calm down, but her feelings had been replaced by something entirely different.

She’d known the whole time they were together that she wanted Bill to be her first, the one to take her virginity, but she didn’t realise just how badly she wanted him until they stood in front of the cameras, his hand skimming over the curve of her waist until it rested on her hip, gently pulling her into him.

Y/N was one hundred per cent, undeniably in love with Bill.

She may have been reduced to a nervous, stuttering mess around him before, but now she felt like she was warm from the inside out. Even when she couldn’t think of the words to say to him, she didn’t feel like she was going to make a fool of herself. It was as if he understood her down to her core, and she understood him just as much.

She wanted to have him entirely, body and soul, for as long as she could.

By the time everything was over, Y/N had made her mind up: she didn’t want to wait any longer.

Once she was alone in her hotel room, she pulled out her phone and tapped out a message to Bill.

Room 308, I'm ready now.

He’s not coming, Y/N thought as she lay on the hotel bed and stared at the ceiling. You should have waited until tomorrow, he’s probably already gone to bed.

As soon as she’d got back to her room, Y/N had taken her dress off, removed her makeup, brushed her hair out, and taken a shower, making sure she was as clean as possible, using scents that she knew Bill liked on her. But that was an hour ago.

It was nearing 2 am, and instead of getting ready for bed, she was lying on top of the sheets, wearing only a fluffy white robe and the necklace that she still hadn't taken off. Her eyes were starting to grow heavy with sleep, and she could feel herself sink further into the mattress when a soft knock at the door caught her attention.

Y/N pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed and planted her bare feet on the plush carpet before making sure that her robe was properly tied. The last thing she wanted was to flash her late-night visitor.

She stood on her toes to squint through the peephole, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Bill standing on the other side, looking like he’d just tumbled out of bed. He’d changed out of his suit into a plain t-shirt and grey sweatpants, his hair was dishevelled as if he’d been running his fingers through it, and his eyes were tired.

Y/N immediately opened the door and held it open wide enough for him to step inside.

“Oh my god, were you asleep?” she asked as she shuffled backwards slightly and let the door close behind them. “I’m so sorry, Bill, I should have waited until tomorrow for this-”

“Are you sure?” he asked, cutting off her babbling. “Are you sure you’re ready now?”

“What?” Y/N asked, momentarily forgetting why she had asked him to come to her room in the first place.

“Y/N, I would wait forever for you, but I need to hear you say it,” he said, his voice low as he kept his body close to her, her back almost touching the door. “Tell me what you want.”

Y/N took in a shuddering breath and swallowed thickly as she tried to find the words she wanted to come out of her mouth. She’d come so far since that first kiss; she felt like a completely different person, but this was one last hurdle that she needed to overcome.

“I want you,” she finally said, trying to keep her voice steady as her heart hammered in her chest. “I want all of you. I want to feel you inside me. I want you to fuck me. Please.”

“Do you trust me?” he asked, his fingers twitching as he fought the urge to reach out and touch her.

“Yes,” she breathed as her heart pounded in her chest.

That was all Bill needed to hear.

He bent down and picked her up with ease, his hands pushing the robe up her body as he kissed her neck and caressed her soft, freshly moisturised skin. Her robe started to come undone when she wrapped her legs around his waist, resisting the urge to grind her bare pussy against him as he carried her to the bed and gently placed her down on the white sheets.

Y/N watched him as he pulled his shirt over his head, exposing his bare torso to her, and he gently pulled the tie of her robe open. She heard his breath catch in his throat as he saw her completely naked in front of him.

Bill had seen and touched Y/N’s body before, but seeing her this way was entirely different. Tenderly, he traced a finger from her jaw and down her body, studying her intensely as she shivered and squeezed her thighs together.

“Look at you,” he breathed and cradled her face in his palm as he leaned down to kiss her. “My beautiful girl.”

Her cunt clenched at that and her legs opened on their own, welcoming him into her embrace as his tongue slipped into her mouth. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and stroked his back as he pushed his hips into hers, letting her feel how hard he was under his clothes. Even without seeing, she could tell that he was bigger than she was used to. Her toys at home were usually on the smaller side, never any bigger than five inches, but she didn’t feel scared or intimidated at all.

“Tell me if you don’t like something, okay?” he mumbled against her mouth before trailing his kisses along her jaw and travelling down her body.

Y/N nodded and bit her lip, holding back a moan when she felt his large palms skim across her body, starting at her breasts before moving down her sides and sliding back up again. Her eyes fluttered closed when she felt his lips on her skin, trailing down her neck to her breasts and around her nipples before sinking lower and lower.

“I want to taste you,” he rasped as he spread her legs and kissed the insides of her thighs. “Can I?”

Y/N nodded frantically and licked her lips, almost begging him. “Please.”

His eyes darkened with desire as he stood up to kneel in front of the bed and gently pulled her to him. He gazed at her dripping pussy and ran the tips of his fingers through her folds, feeling how wet she already was for him.

“I already knew you felt good, but you look just as good,” he purred as he placed her legs over his shoulders. “I bet you taste even better.”

Y/N couldn’t help the impatient whine that escaped her throat, and she placed her hand on the back of his head, guiding him to where she needed him the most. She felt his breath brush against her clit when he chuckled softly and kissed her clit, sending a spark throughout her body.

Finally, he dragged his tongue up her slit, painfully slow as if he was savouring every milimetre of her under his tongue. Her hips bucked into his face when he flicked the tip of his tongue against her clit and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.

“Don’t do that,” he mumbled into her hot skin as he took his hand off her leg to pull her hand away from her face. “I want to hear you.”

He didn’t care that it was the middle of the night; he didn’t care that she was too shy to let her voice fully fly free. He needed to hear her sweet voice. He needed to hear her beg for him. He needed to hear her moan his name.

She took hold of his hand and held it close to her chest as she focused all of her attention on him, revelling in the feeling of his tongue on her wet pussy. Her breath came out in gasps and moans as she pulled his hair, making him moan into her clit, sending vibrations through her.

“Fuck, Bill,” she whined when he slipped his fingers inside her. “It feels so good.”

He hummed in agreement and wrapped his lips around her clit, sucking on it gently as his fingers stroked inside her. Her sweet spot was found with ease, and he curled his fingers into it, timing them with his mouth to slowly and steadily bring her to climax.

She whined and moaned as he continued to worship her, reluctantly letting go of his hand so he could gently press down above her pubic bone to push her sweet spot into his fingers more. She wanted the moment to last forever, but the knot in her stomach was about to stop and she couldn’t help how her cunt clenched around his fingers.

“Want me to make you cum?” he asked her, his lips brushing against her clit. Y/N nodded frantically and clenched her fingers in his hair. “Cum for me, baby. Cum on my tongue.”

He curled his fingers harder and sucked on her clit more harshly as she writhed on the bed above him, his name spilling from her lips as he wound her closer and closer to climax. Her whole body felt like it was on fire as he touched her, her stomach twisting itself into a knot as her pussy tightened around his talented fingers.

Y/N threw her head back against the mattress as she let out a loud cry, her clit twitching in his mouth and her pussy clenching around his fingers as he coaxed her orgasm out of her. He held her bucking hips down with his free hand as he helped her to ride out her high, her breath escaping her lungs in gasps and whines as he slowed down his movements.

Bill gave her clit one last kiss as he slid his soaked fingers out of her and climbed back up her body to kiss her, slipping his tongue into her mouth. She whined when she tasted herself on his tongue, the taste sweet and tart against his lips.

“I was right,” he said between kisses. “You do taste as good as you look.”

“That was amazing,” Y/N breathed as she tried to catch her breath, nuzzling against Bill as he caressed her face.

“You want to keep going?” She nodded. “Good, go lie down for me.”

Y/N reluctantly tore herself away from him and shuffled up the bed as she watched him push his sweatpants and underwear down to the floor, revealing his hard cock to her. She swallowed thickly in anticipation, her thighs trembling slightly at the thought of having him inside her.

“Oh, wait,” Y/N said once she’d taken her place against the pillows. “Did you bring a-”

She didn’t get to finish her question when she saw him pick his sweatpants off the floor and pull a wrapped condom out of his pocket. She briefly felt stupid for even thinking to ask, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Can I?” she asked when he climbed onto the bed.

“Do you know how?” he asked in return.

She nodded and took it from him, tearing open the silver foil and pulling the thin rubber out. Gingerly, she took his hard cock in her hand, feeling how soft and warm the skin was as he twitched in her palm before carefully rolling the condom onto him. A fresh gush of arousal pooled at her entrance at being able to touch him, and she would have stroked him if he hadn’t gently pushed her shoulder to lie her down again.

“This shouldn’t hurt,” he said after gently kissing her forehead, “but tell me if it does. Try to relax.”

Y/N took a deep breath and willed her body to settle, her arms going slack as they circled his shoulders. Her breath hitched slightly when she felt the tip of his cock at her entrance and she let her breath out steadily when he slowly pushed inside, her pussy burning slightly as it stretched out to accommodate him.

She winced once he was settled inside her, her cunt clenching around him on its own.

“You okay?” he asked as he stroked her hips with his thumbs. “Does it hurt?”

She shook her head. “It’s just… different.”

He was definitely bigger than what she was used to.

“It won’t feel like that forever,” he said as he softly rolled his hips against hers, his cock slowly sliding inside her. “You’re just so fucking tight.”

He kept a steady rhythm as he slowly fucked her, helping her get more and more used to the feeling of him inside her and stroking her clit so that he wasn’t the only one feeling something. Once she gasped softly and her back arched, he knew he’d found her sweet spot and pulled her legs to wrap around his waist.

The change in angle was delicious and Y/N couldn’t help but moan and roll her hips into his every time the tip of his cock brushed against that spot inside her. Her manicured nails raked down his back, no doubt making red marks on his pale skin.

“How’s that feel?” he purred in her ear as he sped up his thrusts slightly.

“So good,” she moaned and let her head fall back onto the pillow.

She kept her legs wrapped around his body as he took control of hers, driving her further and further towards her coming climax. Her body simmered like a pot of hot water, and she basked in how he steadily fucked her, his cock sliding in and out of her needy cunt as his thumb toyed with her hard clit.

She could hear how wet she was, her slick making it easier and easier for him to fuck her. Her eyes rolled back in her head as her cunt fluttered around him, her climax already starting to boil over. She wished she could have lasted longer for him, but it just felt too good.

“You gonna cum, baby?” she heard him ask through a choked groan.

She forced her eyes back open so she could look at him and saw how his face was flushed, his brow furrowed in pleasure, and his lips slightly parted. She opened her mouth to answer him, but could only moan instead.

“It’s okay,” he said softly and leaned down to kiss her lips. “You can cum for me, I’ve got you. I’m right behind you.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, her orgasm swept over her like a wave. She threw her head back onto the pillow as her back arched and her cunt clenched tightly around his cock, a series of whimpering moans escaping from her throat. She could feel him throb and pulse inside her as his hips stuttered against hers, and he moaned against her mouth before she felt him spill warm cum into the condom.

He stilled inside her, savouring her warmth before reluctantly pulling out and pulling the finished condom off of his cock.

“Fuck, you feel good,” he sighed as he tied the rubber in a knot and discarded it on the nightstand to throw away later. He lay down on the bed beside her and pulled her into his arms. “You feel okay? Nothing hurts?”

Y/N smiled at him and shook her head before resting her cheek on his warm chest, basking in the afterglow. She could still feel the ghost of him inside her, her pussy was a little sore, but she truly didn’t mind. She took it as a reminder of him.

After a while, she lifted her head again to look at him. His face was still flushed, but this time was relaxed; his eyes were soft and adoring as he looked at her, a small smile on his lips.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said, once she caught her breath.

“Like what?” he asked as he stroked her hair.

“Like you love me.”

He smiled softly and brushed a lock of her hair out of her face before stroking her cheek with the back of his fingers, trailing them down to her jaw. Their lips met again, she could still taste herself on his tongue when it brushed against hers.

“Maybe I do,” he whispered against her lips.

“Maybe?”

He pulled away from her to look her in the eyes and gently stroked her face as he smiled softly.

“I love you,” he said softly.

Y/N’s breath hitched at hearing him say it, her heart blossoming as a smile of her own broke out on her face.

“Say it again.”

“I love you,” he said, his eyes sparkling in the low light. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

tags: @unlimitedlust @muchwita @malenoradgn @a-differentbrandof-beans @laniirackssss @voidofsunlight

#bill skarsgard x reader #bill skarsgård x reader #bill skarsgard x y/n #bill skarsgard x you #bill skarsgård x y/n #bill skarsgård x you #bill skarsgard fanfiction #bill skarsgard smut #x reader #reader insert #rpf #real person fiction #bill skarsgard #bill skarsgård #*my writing #*female reader #*nsfw

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scary-grace · 2 days ago

Text

Designated Villain (Chapter 3) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

You loved BNHA's ending, mostly, but a few weeks after the last chapter is published, you get isekaied into BNHA on the day the story begins. That would be a dream come true, except you ended up in the body of a common criminal, and instead of enjoying life in your favorite fictional world, you find yourself struggling to survive in a world that's much crueler than you ever imagined. Armed with nothing more than BNHA Tumblr brainrot and a highly suspicious iPod Shuffle, you set out to fix the few things that are wrong with BNHA's ending. But as you learn more about the villains you hated and every change you make pushes the plot further off the canon storyline, it's not long before your feelings about the ending start to change. (cross-posted to Ao3)

(dividers by @cafekitsune)

Chapters: 1 2

Chapter 3

Life with a criminal record, let alone life as an escaped inmate from the Shizuoka prefectural jail, is one slammed door after another, right in your face. You can’t get a job when you’re wanted by the police. You can’t get a place to live, either. You could get both of those things if you could get a new identity, but new identities are expensive, and you barely have enough money for food and rent on your capsule at the hotel – because you can’t get a job, because you’re wanted by the police. It’s a vicious cycle, one you can’t pull yourself out of easily. There’s only one way to get the money for a new identity, and it involves going back to what you apparently did for a living before you were arrested. Stealing.

Or being an accomplice to stealing, more accurately. You know how to pickpocket, but you’re usually better as a lookout, which means that when you do get hired by larger crime rings, your job is to stand clear and signal if you see trouble coming. Of course, that does mean you’re assisting on larger thefts, which means more trouble if you’re caught. You have a lot of bones to pick with the person whose life you wound up in, but the way she handled herself when it came to criminal activity is a big one. She’s the most visible member of any team, because she’s the one who’s outside while a theft is going on. And she didn’t bother to disguise herself even slightly.

You can fix that. It takes more money than you want to spend, but you’re able to accumulate a handful of wigs, colored contacts, and stage makeup. And regular makeup. And makeup remover. Your participation in fandom back home was limited to the internet on a regular basis, but you always went all-out for cons, to the point where people snapped photos of you in your cosplay every time. You know how to handle a wig properly, and how to contour the hell out of your face without it looking like that’s what you did, and how to put in contacts without it taking five hours. Add a few accessories – a pair of glasses, a few hair clips, a piece of conspicuous costume jewelry – and you can alter your look almost entirely.

Crime bosses and gang leaders swing by the capsule hotel every so often, looking for fresh minions. You stay away when they come by, and when a job seems like it suits your skills, you volunteer yourself. At first it felt awful to purposely involve yourself in criminal activities, so much so that you’d cry yourself to sleep after finishing a job, so much so that you could almost feel your soul rotting away. Now you’re a little better at handling it. Now you can remind yourself that it’s for the greater good. If you want to do anything to influence the outcome of BNHA’s story, you need people to listen to you, and for that you need a new identity – because if you learned anything from the villain plotlines, it’s that no one listens to a criminal.

When you’re not standing watch over various robberies or hiding from the cops, you try to get your bearings, both in the world of BNHA and the genre you’re stuck in. You might be in a shonen manga, but you’re also in an isekai, and since you weren’t familiar with the conventions before, you need to understand them now.

At first you weren’t even sure that BNHA had isekais, but apparently it does, and as far as you can tell, they can be divided at a basic level into transmission or reincarnation – either the protagonist gets somehow yoinked into the other world, or they die in their own world and are reincarnated into the new one. Either way, they usually take their quirk with them, and the world they reappear in usually needs saving. Stories where the protagonist doesn’t become a main character are vanishingly rare. Stories where the protagonist becomes a villain are nonexistent.

When you try to apply the tropes to your situation, you hit trouble immediately, because you don’t know whether you died in your world or not. Regardless of whether you died, you know the person whose life you stepped into did. You tracked down the pictures the photographer took after the person’s body landed but before you woke up in it, and you look undeniably dead. It must have scared the hell out of everybody when you woke up.

Regardless of the method by which you got here, the question of why you’re here in the first place is even harder to answer. Magic doesn’t exist in BNHA, which means that summoning doesn’t exist, either. Unless there’s somebody with a quirk that lets them see into other dimensions and grab things out of them – but if there is, why on earth would they pick you? Maybe it was an accident, but if it was an accident, why did you find yourself here on the exact day the story begins? You’re pretty sure it wasn’t an accident, but that’s as far as you get, and you don’t have any proof. Well. One piece of proof.

When you searched your backpack, you found a sky-blue iPod Shuffle, out of date in your time and practically ancient in this one. There are a couple weird things about it, including that you can’t skip or go back to songs and it never runs out of charge, but the weirdest thing of all is what’s on it. Every single song is a song you’ve heard at least once before, because it’s a song from your world – and because there’s no overlap between music in BNHA’s world and music in yours. You’ve googled each song as it comes up. There’s no record of them anywhere.

So that’s the grand total of what you know. You’re here for some reason, and there’s at least one piece of your world here with you. And then there’s the final piece of it, one you didn’t spot in any of the isekais in this world. In those isekais, it’s sometimes inadvisable for the protagonist to tell people about the world they really came from. But it’s never physically impossible to talk about it the way it is for you.

You know you should be doing more. You should be finding your way into the main characters’ midst, finding away to warn them about what’s coming and solve the few loose ends in BNHA’s ending. You have a vague thought about saving Hawks, and him being so thankful that he agrees to go on a date with you, but you don’t have time for fantasies. You don’t really have time for anything except trying to scrape by each day. Being a criminal is exhausting. Your options are so limited that you don’t know how to do anything different. You’re haunted by what happened in the prefectural jail. And as you fall asleep each night, the words of the villain stan you were fighting with echo through your head. You think you’re better than they are, but you’re wrong.

You’re right. You are better than them. They chose to be villains. By the time you stepped into this other person’s life, she hadn’t left you any choices at all.

When you wake up every morning, the first thing you do after leaving the capsule hotel and finding some food is to check the news, seeing if any of the characters have popped up in it. All Might is everywhere, naturally, but so are Endeavor and Hawks and the other top heroes. The new school year is starting soon, but there wouldn’t be any news of the students just yet, just like there wouldn’t be any news of Shigaraki and the League of Villains. You check next for anything about Magne. You know she escaped successfully, because she’ll join up with the League months from now, but you can’t help but wonder where she is, what she’s doing. You always thought villains were selfish, out for themselves and nobody else. But Magne saved your life.

Sure, she used you as a battering ram, and it took weeks for the bruises to fade, but the fact remains that she could have used somebody else. You’re still here because of her. And that leads you to a slightly less vague thought about what to do with your knowledge of BNHA’s future. Magne’s going to die this year, when the League of Villains first crosses paths with Overhaul. Maybe you’re supposed to save her.

You don’t have a clue how to do that. You might have a quirk, but it’s weak, absolutely no match for Overhaul’s. And saving one villain’s life is a really weird reason to get isekaied. But it might be worth a try. And you’ve still got months left to figure it out.

After you go through the news, you default to longform articles, trying to gain as much knowledge about your new world as you can. What you find isn’t necessarily pretty. While the villain stans from your world are still the most dramatic people on the planet, you have two eyes and a brain that works, and if even half of what you’re reading is true, it means they weren’t wrong about everything.

Stain and his few weird fans in your world get points for calling out just how ridiculous it is that heroes are subsidized by the government while most of them are running side hustles and grabbing sponsorships at the same time. You’ve looked at the numbers, and if you were paying taxes, you’d be pissed about where so much of them is going. You thought quirk counseling was a nice concept, and while it might be, you’ve also read testimonials from people whose experiences with it traumatized them – which means that the Toga apologists have something to hang their hat on other than the word of a psychotic teenage girl. You never quite doubted heteromorph discrimination, but there’s a ton of it if you decide to look. And you know firsthand from your borrowed memories that the social safety net has a lot of holes.

So it’s got flaws. The governments in your world have flaws, too, but that doesn’t mean they should be ripped down completely. Shigaraki is still absolutely insane. Even if you understand where some of the others are coming from a little bit better, you’ll never sympathize with him.

Today’s news is uneventful, other than the usual All Might-related gushing. You check for long-form articles and feel your stomach drop. Chilling New Details Emerge Regarding Shizuoka Prison Riot.

It wasn’t a riot. Not even close. You click on the article without thinking about whether it’s a good idea. Months have passed since the deaths of nine guards and dozens of inmates in a riot at Shizuoka’s prefectural jail, and authorities report that they have determined the cause of the riot to be an inappropriately pulled fire alarm. It wasn’t inappropriate. You smelled the smoke, saw the flames. The electric fence didn’t short out on its own. It’s unclear at this time who was responsible for inciting the riot that broke out within the prison yard. The investigative team shared that they are considering multiple suspects, but cautioned that it is possible that the culprit is among the fifty-one inmates who died, most of who were violent criminals with multiple felony convictions.

Violent criminals. That’s you, or people like you, and although you didn’t exactly chat with your fellow inmates, you knew that a lot of them had similar records as you, when they’d never hurt anybody but the heroes who chased them. When this reporter inquired as to the possibility that the culprit was among the seventeen inmates who escaped, the head of the investigative team demurred. “Based on the distance between the fire alarm and the only escape route, it would have been impossible for the individual responsible to reach the yard in time to pass through safely. That being said, the criminals who escaped were able to do so through an unusual degree of cooperation, suggesting that they may have been aware of the plan.”

You and Magne weren’t aware of anything. You were running for your lives, and you got lucky. And it wasn’t a riot. How stupid does this reporter think you are? How stupid are the people who read this? The Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform rejected the conclusions drawn from the investigation, citing reports from eyewitnesses who saw smoke and flames emanating from the men’s wing of the jail. A spokesperson for the organization place the blame for the incident on a lack of a proper evacuation plan, a poorly designed facility, and “callous disregard for the lives of the inmates.” Said the spokesperson: “Rather than a riot, this tragedy would be better described as a crowd crush, in which the victims had no control over their fates once they entered the bottleneck. To hold them responsible for their own deaths while rendering the jail officials blameless is morally reprehensible. The government had a responsibility to keep the inmates safe, which they failed to uphold. The CCRJ will continue to call for further investigation in the hope that such tragedies will be prevented in the future.”

You feel a surge of relief. At least someone cares about what really happened. You dislike real criminals as much as the next person, but you can’t walk through a crowded area without being dragged back into the memory of the crush, and no one deserves to die like that. When you scroll down to the comments, though, nobody agrees with you. Only one or two people are willing to come right out and say that they’re glad the inmates died, but everybody else is crying over the guards and conspicuously ignoring the prisoners. You keep reading, your blood boiling a little more with every second, until you hit a comment about how the inmates brought this on themselves by behaving like the animals they are and officially blow a fuse. This person is asking for it. You don’t feel bad at all for unloading on them.

You drop a list of twenty sources about crowd crushes – you’ve been researching them – then get down to business picking apart the commenter’s every word. It’s not until you find yourself typing up a sentence that includes the word “compassion” that you realize who you sound like. You delete the entire sentence, tell the commenter that you hope their spouse cheats on them with all their friends, and press post before backtracking off the page at high speed. The sooner you get your new identity, the better. Living on the wrong side of the law is messing with your head.

It's a pretty spring day, and you look normal enough that you can hang out in the park without anybody calling the police on you. You keep your eyes peeled anyway as you take your copy of The Night Land out of your backpack. You’ve had the book for six months now, and it’s a really slow read. Maybe because you’re slower than you used to be, or because it’s so sad that you don’t even want to know what happens next.

The future isn’t a sexy future. It’s pretty much the worst-case scenario you can imagine, and the main character knows just enough about the world before to know what humanity lost. Worse than that, there’s a hole inside him where the girl he loved in a past life used to be, and there’s nothing in the whole world that can fill the space. You’ve had boyfriends before, but none of them felt like an essential piece of you, something you could never replace if they left. You don’t have any idea what that’s like, and you don’t want to know.

The story is hinting that the main character will be reunited with his love interest, but it’s not happening fast enough, and even if they get a happy ending, humanity’s still unequivocally doomed. You like your endings happy, which makes it weird that you’re still reading this book. You finish a chapter, put it away, and take out your Shuffle instead. Time to roll the dice.

Save me, I can’t be saved, I won’t. I’m a president’s son, I don’t need no soul – People Say, Portugal. The Man. Weird choice. You zone out for a second, trying to remember the last time you heard it, and tune back in for the last half of the chorus. What a lovely day, yeah we won the war, may have lost a million men but we’ve got a million more –

Dark. You give the skip button a try to no avail and settle in.

Something else about being a criminal – while it’s the most stressful thing imaginable, it’s also really boring. You listen to music until you get bored, walk around the city until you get bored, hop a train and hang out for the circuit of the city until you’re bored of that, too. All the things you’d do at home – homework, shopping, school, socializing – are things you can’t do here. You didn’t realize how much you counted on the simple structure of your everyday life until it vanished out from under you. If this keeps going much longer, you’re worried you’ll start committing crimes just to keep busy.

It’s a relief when it’s time to go back to the hotel. You check back in, coughing up the nightly fee, but the woman at the counter stops you before you can head to your capsule. “A boss came by today,” she says. “Looking for help with some big operation. Almost everybody signed on.”

You missed a job opportunity. That’s not great. “How big?”

“So big they’ll take everyone who comes,” she says. “And they aren’t cheaping out, either. The payout should be pretty good.”

“How good?”

She names a figure, and your heart lurches. With that much, plus what you’ve already stored away, you’ll be able to buy a new identity and finally leave all this behind. “You said they’ll take everybody?”

“That’s right. Just get to the staging ground tomorrow by noon. Want the address?”

Yes, you do. You take it, thank her, and retreat to your capsule to think. The address is in Aomori prefecture, reachable from here within two hours. Some part of you wonders if this isn’t a little too good to be true, but while you might be terrible at being a criminal, the other people who use the capsule hotel as a home base aren’t. One of them would have smelled a rat if there was a rat to smell, and they’d have warned off the others. If they all felt comfortable with it, you probably can, too.

You go to bed early, have the usual set of nightmares, and wake up early, too. No time for your usual checking-over of the news today, and no need to contour or wear colored contacts – your support gear covers the lower half of your face and hides your eyes. All you need is a wig. This time you go for shoulder-length, textured, navy-blue, securing it to your head and pinning it out of your face. You can put on your support gear once you get there. You won’t look anything but weird if you wear it on the train.

The trip to Aomori is uneventful, and you get there early. You take some time to scope out the warehouse everyone’s supposed to meet in, watching as a steady stream of people trickles in. Most of them are sort of conspicuous. You might stand out just by how non-conspicuous you are, and if there are real villains in the group, you want to limit your exposure to them. You wait until five minutes before the operation is supposed to begin, then don you mask and goggles and slip into the building.

There are at least eighty people inside, and even though the room is spacious, you feel a sharp jolt of fear. You can’t see whoever’s directing the operation, and if they’re talking, they’re too quiet for you to hear them. You need to get closer. You preemptively raise your hands to chest-height, and even though cold sweat is beginning to ooze down your spine, you start working your way through the crowd to reach the front.

The crowd gets denser up front. Too dense for you to be comfortable. You tap the arm of the man next to you. “What did I miss?”

“Split up into teams based on quirks.” The man you’re speaking with is tall, broad-shouldered but skinny, with a skull-type mask over his face. He looks familiar, but you’ve never met him before. “What can you do?”

“Um, I can make flashes of light,” you say. “Bright ones. I can distract people or blind them for a few seconds.”

“Huh.” The man studies you. “You ought to be up front, then. The boss might have that thing with him, but if you can disorient All Might for him there might be something in it for you.”

“All Might?” you squeak, and suddenly it occurs to you where you’ve seen this guy before. Never in person, but in the manga, in the anime. He’s the electric type who takes Kaminari hostage at USJ. “Wait –”

The man gives you a push, propelling you forward into the group at the front. You fall down and scramble up as fast as you can, but the others have already closed ranks around you. You can’t even turn. All you can do is face front, your breathing shallow with panic. Up front is the person in charge of all of this, flanked by a column of billowing purple-black mist on one side and a monstrous bird-beaked thing on the other. It takes your mind a second to pull the pieces together, and once you do, your heart stops in your chest.

Shigaraki Tomura looks almost exactly as he does in the manga you read, the anime you watched. Like that, but smaller, somehow. Even though he’s standing on a crate, you can tell he won’t be much taller than you when he steps off it. He’s skinnier in person, too. His clothes hang off of him, and the hands encircling his limbs, his throat, and his chest only emphasize it. He doesn’t look enormously threatening like this, but you know better – and even if you didn’t, the mad glint in the one red eye that’s visible through the fingers of the hand on his face would tell you everything you need to know. Shigaraki is dangerous. Probably crazy. He could quite literally kill you without lifting a finger.

And somehow that’s not the worst part. You’re here with a crowd of villains, led by Shigaraki, Kurogiri, and the prototype Nomu. This is the start of the attack on USJ. And you’re about to be part of it.

“I don’t expect you to deal with All Might directly,” Shigaraki is saying, in a raspy voice that makes your skin crawl. “That’s what Nomu is here for. Kurogiri will scatter the students, and the other teams will deal with them. Your job is to handle the other pro heroes. Two of them – Thirteen and Eraserhead.”

“Who?”

“He’ll be harder to deal with, but we have numbers. He doesn’t do numbers,” Shigaraki says. Shigaraki’s in for a fun surprise. You feel a surge of mean-spirited triumph. “Good. You all got paid already. Get to work.”

They already got paid. You missed out on the money and you’re about to be dragged into a fight the villains are going to lose. You can’t escape with the crowd packed this tightly, so you vengefully pickpocket the villain next to you, stealing the bundle of cash they’ve tucked away and storing it inside your coat. Shigaraki steps off the crate and turns away from the crowd. “Kurogiri, now.”

A massive warp gate opens in front of you, and when you glance back, you see gates opening throughout the warehouse, groups of people vanishing into them. Shigaraki steps through the gate first, and the crowd lurches into motion after him. You have no choice but to stumble along with them, through the warp gate and right into the middle of the worst mistake you’ve ever made.

USJ is enormous and brightly lit. More than a few people lift their hands to shield their eyes, but with your goggles on, you don’t even blink. You struggle to recall the USJ arc, the chain of events leading to the heroes’ victory. If you were in a different attack group, you’d have a better chance, but you’re in the group that’s going to face Aizawa head on – and Aizawa delivers that group a curbstomping for the ages. You’d know. You had a little crush on Aizawa before Hawks showed up, and you watched this fight scene in the anime way too many times.

You wonder if you should help him, and at first that seems like the right thing to do. Wouldn’t preventing Aizawa’s catastrophic injuries be a great reason to be transported from your world to BNHA’s? For a moment, you’re convinced. But then you remember that you can’t fight, and worse, you remember what your quirk actually is – flashes of light, bright enough to blind someone. If you start throwing out flashes, you’ll blind some villains, but you’ll blind Aizawa, too. If you try to help Aizawa, you’ll make things worse for sure.

Maybe you can stop Shigaraki instead. He’s skinny and not that much taller than you, and if you knock the hand off his face he’ll have a huge, embarrassing, pathetic panic attack in front of everyone. But Shigaraki’s flanked by Nomu and Kurogiri, both of whom could oneshot you without breaking a sweat. If you go after Shigaraki, you’ll be killed instantly. You know that’s not why you’re here.

If you can’t help Aizawa and you can’t fight Shigaraki, there’s only one thing you can do. The instant you’re clear of the warp gate, the instant you’re sure Shigaraki is looking the other way, you dive sideways into the bushes lining the central plaza. There are boulders in there. You hit one of them and split your lip open, but it also provides the ideal cover. You duck behind it, curl up, and cover your ears as the attack on USJ ramps up into full swing.

It’s quieter than you thought it would be. In the anime there are all kinds of sound effects to go with the score, but all you hear are the thuds of fists and feet striking flesh, and Shigaraki’s raspy commentary on Aizawa’s fighting style. You remember running across people who ship Eraserdust, but you never got the vibe, and you aren’t getting it now. When he’s talking about Aizawa’s quirk and signature moves, he sounds more like Deku than anybody else.

Deku’s going to get hurt in this fight. So are All Might and Thirteen. You’re going to sit here and hide while the heroes suffer, which is so cringe and cowardly that it makes you want to rip off your skin. It shouldn’t matter that you’d be useless to them, that you’d actually make things worse. Heroes act, regardless of the consequences. Heroes find a way. You might not be a hero, but you’ve never thought of yourself as a coward before.

There has to be something. You rack your brain and come up with a plan. It involves getting close to Shigaraki – stupid – but while he’s distracted by fighting Aizawa. If you get your hand up in his face before he Decays Aizawa’s elbow, you’ll give Aizawa a better chance to keep fighting. Maybe a chance to get clear of Nomu. The longer he stays up, the closer it’ll get to All Might’s arrival, and the longer Shigaraki’s attention will stay away from Deku and Tsu and stupid Mineta. And all you have to do after you throw the flash at Shigaraki is to get out of the way.

You get to your knees, keeping your eyes on the fight, preparing to make your move – and then a thought strikes you, freezing you in place. What happens after you help Aizawa? Even if you help Aizawa, you’re still a criminal. And not just a criminal. A fugitive. It won’t matter that you helped Aizawa. The police will arrest you. And when they do, they’ll take you right back to Shizuoka prefectural jail.

No. You aren’t going back there. You’re never going back there. You sink back down, reminding yourself that Aizawa survives this fight, that everybody does. Nobody here needs you to save them. The only thing you can do right now is save yourself.

But how are you going to do that, exactly? For the criminals at USJ, there’s only two ways out – in handcuffs, arrested, headed for jail, or through a warp gate alongside Shigaraki. You’re going to have to dive through the warp gate and escape to the League’s hideout. You can’t do that without being noticed by somebody, if not the heroes, then definitely Shigaraki or Kurogiri. You’ll be throwing in your lot with the League of Villains, at least temporarily. Are you really that desperate to stay out of jail.

You remember the massive crowd in the jail yard, fleeing the fire only to realize there was nowhere else to go. Remember the smell of sweat and vomit. Remember watching a woman die standing up, right beside you. No way are you going back there. You’ll take your chances with the League.

But that means you have to time this perfectly. It means you have to watch Nomu beat Aizawa half to death, listen to Shigaraki’s off-brand villain monologue a lot more closely than you ever wanted to, stand idly by while he threatens the students. Then All Might gets there, and somehow things get exponentially worse.

For you, at least – the air displacement from the punches he throws hurl everyone else backwards, and someone as skinny as Shigaraki doesn’t have a prayer of anchoring himself. He goes flying and lands in the same bushes you’re hiding in, right on top of you as you’re trying to crawl away. Shigaraki swears as his shoulder strikes the same rock you hit earlier, and you yelp when his elbows dig deep into your back. He doesn’t notice you, doesn’t even look your way, before scrambling back in to his feet and racing back in. The only evidence that he was here is a single model hand, lying forgotten in the undergrowth.

It's a small hand, smaller than yours – a kid’s hand. You want absolutely nothing to do with it, and you don’t want to give it back. You’re not compassionless like the villain stan says you are, but even if you were, you’d still be able to acknowledge that the stuff All For One did to Shigaraki was extremely messed up. Not that it justifies any of the stuff Shigaraki did. Has done. Is going to do? Still, the missing hand isn’t even on his radar, and since you’re going to have to escape with him, you might as well build up some goodwill – if that’s even possible – by making sure he gets the stupid hand back.

Besides. It’s a little kid’s hand. You don’t feel right leaving it there. You yank your sleeve down over your own hand, pick it up gingerly, and drop it into another inside pocket of your coat. Then you get to your knees, steady yourself with a hand on the rock. And get ready to run. You’re going to have a really small window to make this work, and you still might get killed in the end. Being a criminal sucks.

Shigaraki’s lost-my-shitty-dad’s-hand panic attack is even more pathetic in person. So pathetic that you actually feel bad for him for a minute. It doesn’t last long, because he gets back to trying to kill people the second it’s reattached to his face. You see him charge at All Might, see Deku launch himself into battle with three out of four limbs broken, see Kurogiri block Deku’s way and Shigaraki’s hand emerges from the warp gate – and then you hear the gunshot.

That’s your cue. The heroes are here. You break cover, and rather than attacking the heroes at the top of the steps the way the other villains who’ve gotten back up from Aizawa’s beatdown are doing, you head towards Shigaraki and Kurogiri. Neither of them notices you. Shigaraki’s bitching about the failure of the attack, his back to the heroes like a moron. He’s going to get shot a bunch more times, and he’s going to deserve it. It’s not until you’re out in the open, fully exposed, that you realize you’re just as much of a moron as Shigaraki is.

Snipe is here. He’ll be shooting at Shigaraki again any second now. He’s probably shooting at any villain who’s up and moving around right now, and that includes you.

Damn it. The first shot rings out, blowing through Shigaraki’s leg, and you throw out a flash on instinct. Not a little flash, either. The biggest one you’ve ever thrown, because you need to obliterate Snipe’s aim if you want to get out of here without a bullet hole or three. Kurogiri enfolds Shigaraki in a warp gate, instantly, and there’s a corner of it left open.

You see Kurogiri’s yellow eyes shift sideways to you. If you jump through the warp gate and he closes it, he’ll cut you in half. But he doesn’t. He leaves it open, and as more shots begin to sound, you dive through the warp gate and out of USJ right behind Shigaraki.

Right behind him. So right behind him that you almost land on top of him. He’s sprawled out on the floor, arms and legs extended, and you throw yourself sideways to get clear. Sideways. Then as far out of sight as you can.

<- Chapter 2

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