#keith moon x reader

[lil-melody-moon]

The fic I was talking about yesterday is already here, so: @fiammee @jimmysdragonsuit13 there you have it <3

I wanted to change some things, getting rid of (Y/N) mostly, but also wanted to try something new. Less depressive atmosphere if you may. Without further ado, enjoy <3

Likes, reblogs, kudos and comments are appreciated!

Title: A Night Trip (Keith Moon x Female Reader)

Summary: A simple meeting after a concert you got an invitation to, that was enough to start this weird relationship you got yourself into. Before you knew it, you fell in love with the biggest drunkard you ever knew in your life and despite telling yourself you'll never fall for such a person, you agreed to meet with him many times, which lead to this very night, where you simply longed for him.

[munsster]

hii!! i'd like to request a steve harrington x fem!reader fic pls <33 reader confesses to steve, but he says he doesn't like her. then reader's all 'okay fine, i'm gonna move on' and when she actually does that, steve is 🥺 lots of angst please and some steve grovelling teehee <33

gut feeling

A/N: okay yes 😏 i screwed this up the littlest bit, but i hope it still tickles ur fancy. also i’ve seen this done for king!steve and i wanted to write it for s4 steven

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Fem!Reader

Summary: You have big feelings for Steve, he’s just not sure he feels the same way. 3.6k words.

Warnings: angst, but it resolves into fluff, unrequited love trope, lots of feelings, friends to lovers?, CURSING!, italics, established friendship, feat. Keith 😑

"You think it would be gross if we kissed?"

Steve thinks you might actually sound hurt, but he also thinks the face he's making is hilarious beyond belief: kind of contorted and screwed inward, nose scrunched and trying really hard to batten down a grin. You glare at him from the passenger's seat, arms crossed tight over your green Family Video vest.

You think he's wonderful despite his naiveté. If only he knew how handsome you thought he was, all caramel locks and big brown eyes and the kind of smile that reaches his eyes before he's even thought of it. No wonder he has an ego up to the moon. No wonder he still manages to weasel his way into the creases and crevices of any living creature's heart. Even yours. Hell, especially yours.

"Yeah, duh!"—and he's so sure of it, you could cry—"You're like the little sister I never had!"

You chuckle but you look like you're about to hurl yourself out of the car or get yourself arrested for manslaughter. Thank God he's only a block away from your house, or he'd never see the light of day again. Does he really think of you like that? The soft laughter peters out into a grating silence that burns right down your throat and feels like hard metal settling in your lungs.

He doesn't dare glance over at you. He only bites down hard around nothing and grimaces, eyes set hard on the lines dashing beneath the grill of his car. Jesus Christ, he does not think of you like that. And he begs whatever stupid pride is keeping him steady in this nonexistent pissing contest to leave it be, but its jaw is set in the tender meat of the game.

"Don't have to be so jovial about it," you grumble.

"What?"

"Mine's on the left," you grumble, nodding out the window. Oh, he's definitely in trouble. You only ignore him like this when he's done something boyish to a fault.

"I know. I drive you home every—hey!"

"Bye," you coo, booking it up the steps to your door, refusing to turn over your shoulder for fear that you'll burst into tears upon seeing him smile or frown or crack the slightest look of confusion.

He watches you slam the door and rolls the passenger window up with a frustrated sigh. Where the Hell did that come from and why. All while you're sitting against the foot of your bed, chattering into the phone at Robin, still wearing your uniform and tugging at strands of your hair as expletives weave themselves between every three words.

"Oh my Fucking God, I'm so fucking embarrassed right now, Robs—Does he—? Does he think I'm some sort of fuckin' baby? I just don't—"

"He's just being Steve, okay? He probably didn't mean it—"

"The way he looked at me, Robin, I felt like a fucking imbecile. Of all the dickheads in the world I could fall for, my heart chose Harrington? Maybe I'm the idiot." You sigh and kick your feet out, the frustration winding up new nerves and letting them go like tight springs to fling out over your body.

She sighs and it rattles through the grainy speaker. "You're not an idiot; he has his moments. Don't beat yourself up, you know how he gets. He's probably not thinking straight, just... tell him? The worst he can say is—"

"That I'm like a sister to him? Oh, how delightful. That's even worse than just flat out admitting I'm unattractive."

"You're not unattractive, don't do that."

"I am to him," you groan.

"Hey," she hums after a beat of crackling silence. You close your eyes and grip the sickly yellow receiver a little tighter.

"I really like him."

"I know."

"And it sucks."

"I know." The other end rustles and you let out a curt sigh just as you move to stand. "I love you, and I'm here for you. Especially when dumb boys make you feel like shit. You'll always be the most amazing and most beautiful girl in my life, don't forget that."

"Thank you. I'll see you, Robs."

"Take it easy."

—

Steve wakes up to an ache in his neck and a soreness in his knuckles. You didn't call him last night. And he's assuming you didn't call him before school this morning because his alarm clock flashes eleven, first period starts at eight-thirty, and the tone his ancient landline emits is shrill enough to deafen a man. Let alone wake him up in a cold sweat. He concocts a sick feeling in his stomach of burnt orange shame and maroon guilt because he has to wait until closing shift tonight to explain himself to you.

But by then, he's feeling spiteful. You weren't home when he went to pick you up and he waited ten minutes and knocked on the door in bulk. Until someone who was not you answered and told him that you'd gotten a ride with some jerk from the Hawkins High football team. That's not how it was originally said, but that's how he heard it. So you're avoiding him? It makes him spit up a little in his mouth, and he's going about twenty over the speed limit the entire way to make it on time.

By the time he can fling open the glass door and hear the sound of the tiny bell, he spots you in the back corner with a stack of tapes under your arm. Listening to music. To drown him out. And it makes him frown. Six hours. That's how long he'd have to endure this, then he could go home and not call you and not be able to sleep.

The casette in your Walkman can only run for so long, right? But he watches you rewind it after an hour and a half and slumps against the front desk when you grab a new stack of tapes from behind him. He simmers down after the first half of the shift, and of course, the fact that you won't talk to him rubs him the wrong way, but what's even worse is that now you're bumming rides off of losers on the worst football team in all of Indiana.

He gets worked up thinking about that guy's motivation and how many times he probably tried to make a pass at you. Steve would never do that to you. Even if he wanted to, he's a gentleman at heart. He could beat that jerk to a pulp just imagining him giving you the look. God forbid that sucker puts his hands on you. Steve would get charged with battery before ever letting that happen.

It's not like he can say anything to you about it either. He's pissed, and he knows himself. He'd get all angry and confrontational, and you deserve better than that. It's his fault you got there first, and it's his fault you got to stocking, and it's his fault you're tuning him out. But he didn't think what he said last night would be worth all that trouble.

"If you keep up the optic blast, I'm gonna buy you a ruby-quartz visored monocle." And that droning voice could only belong to one overbearing manager.

"What do you need, Keith?" Steve grumbles, and out of the corner of his eye, he catches you looking to the front of the store to watch the encounter with a smirk.

"Duty calls, Harrington. Corporate sent us more shelf space. Need someone to unload it into the office," Keith murmurs, shooting a glance your way, "And, uh... it's kind of unwieldy, so get the kid to help you out."

It makes Steve's eye twitch because you're not some kid. And if you heard Keith refer to you as such, you'd unleash a fleet of curses on him. Only Steve is allowed to call you that. Because it's funny, duh. You're a year younger than him, obviously he's going to use that to his comedic advantage. Oh.

He lets out a sigh—"alright"—and leaves Keith to man the front while he skirts to the back of the store and leads you by the hand through the office.

"'The Hell, Harrington?" you hiss, but you keep your fingers locked between Steve's, abandoning the rest of the tapes on Keith's desk and jogging to catch up with his stride. As forward and demanding as his grip may be, you have to admit, the warmth of his palm is comforting and it makes your heart race because you've never held hands with Steve before. And in any other circumstance, you might've been able to enjoy it a little more.

"Keith told me to tell you that you have to help me bring a shelf in from the truck."

"Oh, I have to?" you bark, now pulling your hand away and putting your headphones around your neck once you exit through the back door with him. "And you didn't think to give me a warning before yanking on my arm?"

"Yes, you have to, and maybe if you weren't listening to that shit so loud, you would've been in the loop." It comes out far more harsh than he intended, and that was exactly what he was afraid of happening in a confrontation with you. His brow softens, and the tension in his upper back and jaw dissipates into his own self-pity party. "And I didn't yank on your arm. Or at least I didn't mean to, so I'm sorry for that much."

Steve hops up into the truck and offers you a hand you don't take as much as you both wish you would have. Because he looks like a kicked puppy, and you have to stop yourself from cheering yourself on. Maybe this will be your first literal step towards getting over him. Once and for all.

After about fifteen minutes of heaving and ho-ing, the two of you manage to haul the shelf into the office as per Keith's request. He was right: it was unwieldy. The awkward grip spots caused a lot of overlap, and you both flinched away from the physical contact in a matter of milliseconds. But Steve couldn't deny he felt bad, and you couldn't deny that you definitely still had feelings for him.

You grab your previously abandoned stack of tapes to scurry out of the office, but Steve stops you by the elbow. And you glare back at him.

"Sorry. The... yanking, I know"—he shoves his hands in his pockets and looks down—"Look, I'm not entirely sure what happened last night in the car, but it clearly made you uncomfortable, and I'd like to apologize."

He can see the neurons firing when he looks you in the eye, but he can also see that his apology wasn't effective in the slightest. Because you're still anger-ridden and fuming at him. You put your headphones on and go back to restocking shelves.

He checks the digital clock above the door. Two hours till eleven. Great.

And they creep by like refrigerated molasses. Second by second. Every time he glances at the clock, only a minute has passed. Eventually, though, he starts cleaning up for closing: vacuuming, cleaning the windows, fixing the display. And he finds himself getting a little more efficient at checking tapes back in and rewinding them only so you'll cruise by the front—scowling at him, but nonetheless at him—to grab a new stack and shelf it.

Five minutes to closing and a sleek, blue sedan pulls into the parking lot, and you practically beam at it, grinning and skipping to the front. You grab your bag from under the counter next to Steve's hip and shove your Walkman into it.

"You know, my car works perfectly fine," he grumbles, "don't have to replace me with some football jerk." He knows that struck a nerve because your smile immediately flickers away into a squint.

"That football jerk is bilingual, a painter, and lets me listen to the music I like in his car."

"But that's not the rules," he whines, desperately defending himself against some sports guy who's probably taking advantage of you.

"Well, I like him and he's nice to me." You sling your bag over your shoulder triumphantly, marching towards the door.

Steve is aghast at the implication. He thought you liked listening to the radio. Plus he took Spanish and art for the required two years, it's not that great of an achievement.

Still, he sputters out, "Yeah, well—"

You wave over your shoulder. "Later, Steve."

Since when did he become such a loser.

He watches jerk-face open the car door for you then glance over to wave at him with a perfect smile and perfect hair and perfect manners. What an asshole. Steve does not wave back.

—

"That's the kinda guy she likes?" he fusses into the phone, palming his face while Robin chuckles on the other line. This whole time he thought for sure you liked the self-assured, cocky, college-age boy type. And now you're dating a high schooler. Come on, jerk-face is not even that good looking.

"First of all, they're not dating. Second of all, don't lie to make yourself feel better; even I can admit he's basically a Greek god," Robin says, shoving a handful of popcorn into her mouth. "Third... why do you care? You’re acting like it’s your job to protect her, but it’s not. She’s an adult now, you know, she can take her of herself.”

He lets out a puff of air through his nose, blinking hard and leaning into the pale yellow receiver. Then mumbling: "She told you."

And she replies, cheerily: "Yup."

"Well—! I just... don't want to see her get hurt. I know that type of guy. I used to be that type of guy. He's bad news, I can tell."

"Right,” Robin scoffs, “It's definitely not because you love her.”

"I don't love her. She's just a baby, and we don't even like the same things. It would never work out between us, there's no connection." They both know it’s a lame excuse, but it’s worked up until this moment. It’s worked since the day you met. You’re too young, the end. Sure, you can be cute sometimes, but you’re also a pain in the ass and you two could never get along long enough to stitch together a real relationship.

But Robin sees through all of that shit. And she’s over it.

“Okay, maybe, but she listens when you talk about cars, and you buy the albums she likes even when she only mentions them once. Plus, you both love Dustin like he's an extra limb”—she’s right, you love that kid to death and Lord knows Steve looks after him like a son—“I think as much as you wretch and complain over her being too young and the connection not 'being there', it seems like you try an awful lot to get her to like you."

He immediately rejects the idea with a scoff.

"Of course I’d want a cool person to like me, old fuckin’ habits die hard. But that's all. She's cool and has a good sense of style and tells the best jokes and makes me feel smart and listens to me, and right now I'm feeling pretty crazy because maybe I do love her and I blew it because... because? Because I don’t know why—but she's probably sitting in some jerk's car listening to her favorite songs and watching him paint the sunset while speaking Spanish or whatever."

Robin closes her eyes, and Steve’s annoyed by the fact that he can hear her smirking. "Jesus Christ, I need to start charging you idiots for my time"—and she sighs—"Just... tell her all that cheese. And maybe throw in an apology or two. I don't know, do what you usually do when you pick up girls.”

He’s frustrated. And annoyed. But he throws a thanks at her anyway and stomps down the stairs and to his beamer. It’s not until he’s shrouded in the piercing light of the convenience store that he realizes three things: he’s still in his work uniform, it’s midnight, and he’s pretty sure he does love you. He grabs a bouquet, not even realizing it’s a bouquet of amaryllis and baby’s breath—he’d prefer roses, but ‘tis not the season, as the cashier told him.

Minutes later, he’s muttering under his breath like he’s mad, waiting for someone to answer your door. And thank God you do.

“Steve—?”

“Oh, shit, did I—were you—?”

“Oh, no, I was just…”—thinking about him—“nothin’. What’re you doing here?”

He pushes a furious hand through his hair, then tucks a chunk behind his ear, worrying at his bottom lip. More nervous than he’s been in his whole life. Then he flashes those soft brown eyes at you, and you’re toast. You step onto your doormat and shut the door behind you because he starts into his sentence like a blazing fire:

"I feel so stupid, and I’m sorry for saying you're like a little sister to me; I don’t believe that, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. You're not like a sister to me, you're like the only thing that matters and I feel like I wanna learn another language for you and take a cooking class for you and listen to your music with you. I just, I mean I’m trying to say you make me want to be a better person, and I feel like I’m already a better person whenever I’m around you. I... what I’m saying—and I promise I’m getting to it—is that I’m sorry for being so stupid and not seeing it before, but I think you're beautiful and I'd be honored if you'd forgive me and maybe consider letting me take you out sometime. Like on a date."

He’s breathing heavily, looking and feeling manic, and your eyes are wide as you slowly process his confession. It goes down like sweet wine, floral down your throat and settling in your tummy like candy. But still: what the fuck? Is he insane? Are you insane?

His hair is flopped to one side, and his work vest is snug around his shoulders. You step forward slowly, and the creases in his forehead seem to go smooth. And you point to the bouquet.

“For me?”

Steve glances down. "Oh, yeah, got em for you. Sorry they're not roses, it's not—"

"I love them, thank you."

He nods. And you smile. And despite how beautiful the soft pink and white flowers are, you’re not particularly focused on their safety when you hook your arms beneath his and rope him into a hug. It’s clearly just what he needed when he goes pliant and heavy against your chest, smiling into your neck as his hands wrap over your shoulders.

"I think we might both be stupid,” you whisper.

He chuckles. "Yup. Just a couple of stupids. Geez, what kinda pair are we?" You both pull away. Only to look at each other squarely. To see a smile creep and creep across the other’s face. And he cocks a brow and says, "By the way, worst twenty-four hours of my life—"

And that’s saying something after the last three years.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Steve, I was just so—"

"I know."

"So confused and disappointed, it was—"

"Torture, yeah, don't even think about doing that ever again,” he teases, pinching your side and scrunching his nose when you pinch him back.

"Yeah. Well, never tell me I’m like a little sister to you ever again.”

Gross.

"I don't plan on it"

With the slow bat of your lashes, and the tender curve of your lips, he can’t not think about kissing you. Not in this light. Not under the meddling moon, and not holding your waist like cupping pools of honey.

Then you look away. For all the shit you talk, he manages to make you far more shy than he ever anticipates. And it gives him butterflies to see you duck away.

"You know, I think you're pretty beautiful yourself, Harrington.”

Oh, he’s blushing now. The blood gushes hot to his face, he could sweat buckets right here and now. You can probably hear his heartbeat. Jesus Christ, what’ve you done to him? You can tell he’s nervous when he chuckles softly. "Does this mean I can start giving you rides again?"

You pretend to weigh your options. As if there would ever be a better alternative. "Only if you let me play my music sometimes.”

"Absolutely. I never liked the radio much anyway."

You let go of him only to cradle your bouquet in both hands, admiring the petals while Steve puts his hands back in his pockets.

"Then I'll see you later," he says. Grinning ear to ear, mind you.

"Yeah,” you coo, “I’ll see you."

With one hand on his shoulder, you plant a kiss on his willing cheek and let him go. But before he can make it to his car you holler, “Wait!” and he jogs back over to you.

"Did I forget somethin’?"

“Yeah,” you poke, "you forgot about our date."

He tilts his head a little, brows furrowed. "Our... our date? What do you mean our… Ohhhh”—he nods in understanding, suddenly hit with a wave of excitement and embarrassment—"Does tomorrow work? We could grab lunch or dinner or something and maybe stop by the arcade or—oh, the fair's in town, that could be kinda fun, unless you don't want to, I mean—"

"Steve?" you hum.

“Mhm?”

"I'd love to."

And suddenly his ego is miles through the roof; he's nodding and grinning and it’s like he can’t wait to wake up tomorrow just to see you again.

"Me too. Okay. Yeah! I'll see you then."

"Bye, Stevie.” You give him a small wave, and the shroud of plastic around the bouquet crinkles like the corners of his eyes at the idea of tomorrow.

masterlist

[iloveboysinred]

Life with Keith after the war [Domestic fluff hcs]

pg.13 fluff| Keith Kogane x gn reader

cw; fluff, domestic life, mentions of war

masterlist

-Okay so after the war against the Galra was won, you and Keith moved back to his house in the desert, opting to live a quiet life in isolation.

-it was peaceful and a stark contrast to the almost constant chaos of whirling around in space.

-you and Keith made some renovations to the home, fixing broken windows, re-storing the paint on the walls, and getting working appliances like a new fridge, a microwave and a bunch of new cups and plates.

-Mornings with him were your favorite, you always woke up before him, turning on some music and cooking breakfast for yourselves, watching the sun finish rising.

-he didn't wake up too long after you, your lack of warmth in bed basically forcing him to get up and look for you.

-He would find you in the kitchen, a cute apron that was much too long for you covering you from the mess of pancake batter all over the counter.

-"Morning Keith" "mmh morning baby. What's cooking?"

-he would come up behind you and wrap his arms around your waist, burying his face in the crook of your neck, his sleep laden eyes still not adjusted to the bright morning light shinning through the windows. He made a mental note to get curtains.

-He would hold onto your hips and sway side to side, following the beat of the music playing.

-you guys regularly visited Shiro, almost always taking home Tupperwares of food his husband would cook, never returning them back because Keith kept forgetting them.

-you guys had built a dog house outside for Kosmo, but he would just teleport right back inside, suddenly laying over you and Keith on the bed, wagging his tail like a puppy.

-You guys spent most of the day indoors, watching movies, talking about the future, loving on each other and trying to make up for all the times you couldn't be like this in space.

-Keith had become such a cuddle bug it was ridiculous, his hands were always wrapped around your waist, and he always had to be touching you, sub-consciously or on purpose.

-When you guys would sitting down at the dinning table, his hand would interlink with yours or rest on your thigh.

-you never went to bed before chit chatting about your day, exchanging I love yous and snuggling up under the covers.

-on the nights that you did stay up together, you and him would sit outside and stargaze, or stay in and watch scary movies with all types of sugary junk food, as if you guys were still teenagers.

-you regularly de-tangled and kept up with Keith's hair, it was so healthy and shiny.

-whenever Krolia visited you would all catch up, her sharing with you her earliest memories of baby Keith.

-he would blush and cross his arms, growing more and more embarrassed at every story. Your giggling not making it any better.

-after about a year and a half, Keith asked you to marry him. Much to Krolia's delight.

-you decided to have a small wedding, Keith not being the big flashy party type of man.

-You invited all the former paladins, as well as Ulaz and Krolia, everyone making sure to show up and celebrate your special day.

-you were over the moon once your vows were said and you were officially married, yanking Keith onto you and pressing a kiss to his lips, everyone cheering behind you and clapping.

-after the wedding, you guys laid in bed, just admiring each other, loving kisses exchanged between the both of you.

-from then on Keith just called you by your shared last name most of the time.

-"good morning, Mr/s Kogane"

-made it a point to let everyone know you were his spouse.

-he was such a sap, having multiple framed pictures of your wedding all over the house.

-Eventually the conversation of children came up, deciding when the time came you would adopt, wanting to give a child a family, just as Shiro did to Keith.

-Keith splurged as much as he could for the new addition to the family, buying clothes, food, toiletries, everything.

-he filled what used to be his room in the house with kid stuff.

-Shiro would frequently come over during this time, brining handbooks on parenting, offering useful advice on how to make the child feel at home and comfortable.

-When your new son came home you and Keith were over the moon, low-key freaking the little boy out with your enthusiasm.

-got a regular dog for him, scared Kosmo would teleport him to god knows where.

-it took a while, but he ended up warning up to you and Keith, you guys were a proper family.

-you and Keith grew old and grey.

-you would still hold hands on the porch, sitting side by side as the days would go by, but your love never ceased.

[violettduchess]

Welcome to the Sunshine and Starlight Content Creation Masterlist ☀🌙

A huge thank you from @lorei-writes and myself for all the wonderful entries! These challenges only succeed if people create for them and it's gratifying as a host and even more as a fan to see how many creations were entered!

Ikemen Prince

Beneath the Silver Glow - @ikeprinces-stuff (Male OC x Reader)

Colors of Sunrise - @violettduchess (OC Leyla x Silvio)

Overheard [Transcribed] -@lorei-writes (OC Viva x Leon)

Symphony of the Sky -@ikeprinces-stuff (OC x Leon)

Luloj, luloj...-@lorei-writes (OC Esther x Chevalier)

New Dawn -@fang-and-feather (OC Maeve x Keith)

Surprise Confessions -@inkys-garden (Male OC x Reader)

String of a Long-Forgotten Melody -@ikeprinces-stuff (OC Romarin x Leon)

Lunar Phase -@kaizoku-musume (OC Aurelia x Yves)

Lullaby -@violettduchess (Chevalier x Reader)

A Taste of Bittersweet Memories -@venulus (OC Lorenzo x Leon)

Bonfire Night -@moonstruck-writing (Luke x Reader)

At Midnight -@lorei-writes (OC Esther x Chevalier)

Constellations -@dododrawsstuff (OC Melinda x Chevalier)

Festival at Night -@violettduchess (Headcanons: Cyran, Matthias, Clavis and Chevalier)

Ikemen Sengoku

Ambitious Plans - @queengiuliettafirstlady (OC Juliet x Nobunaga)

Festival Memories -@eventinelysplayground (Yukimora x MC)

Sweet Kisses of Love -@queengiuliettafirstlady (OC Juliet x Kenyo)

Magical Charms Under the Moon -@queengiuliettafirstlady (OC Juliet x Kicho)

Sweet Delights at Dawn -@queengiuliettafirstlady (Kicho x MC)

The Goddess of Dragon and Demon (NSFW) -@afi-writes (Nobunaga x Reader x Masamune)

Glow of the Moon -@otomefoxystar (Ieyasu x Reader)

Ikemen Vampire

Constellations - @violettduchess (Arthur x Reader)

Across Time -@eventinelysplayground (Arthur x MC)

Late Night Tryst -@violettduchess (Faust x Reader)

A Dance of Colors -@eventinelysplayground (Faust x MC)

[foolinafable]

The future he deserves .ೃ࿐

Sokka x Fem!Reader Synopsis: Sokka dreams of a future- a future with you Word count: 700 Tags: fluff, slight angst, yue mention, children mention Notes: a small blurb I wrote a while back that I'm posting to keep the blog alive while I work on my long Keith angst fic- currently at 10k words. Please send in some requests!

Sokka was unsure what he wanted for his future until he met you. After you blew into his life like a cool breeze on a summer’s day in the earth kingdom he saw his future so clearly, he saw it in your smile, the way you would hold his hand and pull faces at his jokes. He saw it in the way you cared for Aang, letting the boy rest on you to stop his nightmares, stroking his head and muttering stories to the air nomad. He witnessed it when you were with Katara calming the uptight girl and reminding her that she is just that- a girl as you braid her hair from behind, making sure she knows she isn’t alone and never needs to feel like she needs to look after everyone by herself. Even in the way, you would laugh with Toph, the two teasing each other like they had known the other their whole lives not just a few months.

Sokka was never sure if he wanted children, always considering himself a failure for not being able to look after the people of the tribe how his father wished- even if he was and still is a child as you like to remind him, but seeing you with his family like this made him want nothing more than to have a family with you forever. He found himself wishing for the future to come sooner, a time when you aren’t fighting the fire nation, when it’s safe when you're older and have a child or two to look after like you do with the others right now. It’s a comforting thought you both share, that one day you will have a bundle of joy to raise and love together, playfully arguing about what features your child would have when it gets later into the night inside of your shared tent snuggled together, you laugh as he pouts because you wouldn’t admit that a child with your nose would be adorable as you claim you prefer his- which in his opinion was absurd. Sokka kissed the top of your head as you settled in for the night and while some part of him didn’t want this moment to end he also can’t wait for the future you have together.     

He remembers being younger, pouting to his father as he tried to explain the importance and grace in the tradition that was betrothal necklaces to the boy who had dramatically stopped around, arms crossed at his chest claiming that he would never bother with one of those because he is never going to marry a girl- because that gross he remembered proclaiming angrily as his father (bless his soul) tried to teach him how to make one. At the time Sokka was confused as to why his father was doing this, forcing him to learn how to carve shapes out of stone as he was only young, he hadn’t even had his growth spurt yet, but later he would know why, when his father and the rest of the men left the village to fight the fire nation, he knew that he did it then because he was unsure if he would get the chance later on in Sokkas life. He thinks he is glad about it now and while he is still young he couldn’t help but imagine you wearing a necklace made by him to signify your love, it excites him even, fingers flexing at the thought as though they couldn’t wait to get started. He wonders what his younger self would’ve thought of him now, probably upset he is so lovesick but he wouldn’t have it any other way and he didn’t want to waste a second of this, of you. If Yue taught him anything it’s that you never know how long you are going to have with someone, so you should cherish every moment the world allows you to have, he often finds himself looking at the moon at night and asking her for more time with his love, never wanting it to end and he hopes the spirits even those that aren’t hers hear his pleadings and grant him it. Grant him the future he deserves.

[gauloiseblue]

Gauloiseblue's Bookmarks

A/N: Since there's no bookmark system like they had in AO3, I decide to make one on this site. Will update the list from time to time.

COD

Price

[The True Me] by @i-am-hungry-24-7 Useless by @syoddeye Lazy Saturday Mornings by @clementine-thedestroyer Price and Beauty Mark by @ohmygraves Growing older with john price. by @obsessivelullabies Growing older with john price; smut. by @obsessivelullabies Ex-husband price, but the “ex” lays on significantly blurred lines now. by @captainfern Ex Husband!Price by @moongreenlight (A/N: you have NO idea what this fic had done to me) The boys all collectively realize that you are the captain’s favourite by @dante-mightdie weird HC by @theycalledhimastar

Gaz

lavender skies by @yeyinde (A/N: Gaz girlie, please read this I'm begging-) I may love Kyle, but I can totally admit when he acts like a total weirdo (he doesn’t, he’s perfect). by @theycalledhimastar

König

Ex-Lover Konig with runaway reader by @diejager Dog Hybrid König by @comfortless Hades!Konig and Persephone!reader by @comfortless Aroura Borealis by @clementine-thedestroyer Underground Fighter!König X Rich!Reader by @melancholic-thing

Soap

Rugby player soap fucks you after a win by @vanderilnde Pushy ass cbf!johnny and benefit pay by @shotmrmiller Valentine Days with Soap by @killerpancakeburger cbf!johnny as the dog he is by @ghouljams

Ghost

soulmate au with ghost but it's the fucking opposite of rainbows and sunshine by @bi-writes

Poly/HC

Fancy (Vampire! Poly! 141 x Plus size! Fem! Reader) by @swordsandholly 141 80’s Arcade AU by @clementine-thedestroyer TF141 and "can I try your drink?" By @syoddeye (A/N: don't @ me) 141 when they need attention by @void-my-warranty TF141 when you gave him hickey when you're drunk by @gloomwitchwrites

The Arcana

Asra's Love by @bahrtofane Teen Asra and puppy love headcanons by @smoke-and-silver Trip adventures with Asra by @smoke-and-silver Arcana and Weddings (fanarts) by @bastart13

Random/Miscellaneous

A/N: I put all of the Ghost Band stuff here bc I'm not officially into the fandom, but they're so irresistible to read hnggg

THEN // if (then) FINAL PART (Ghoap Comic) Roach's puppy eyes Korangi pt. 1 Korangi pt .2 Korangi (sus) pt. 3 Korangi (even more sus) pt. 4 Ghoap food pt. 1 👍👍 Self-care (Ghoap short comic) Capt Price having a cheeky wank (audio) Barry Sloane thirst trap (maybe) Bare chested Barry- Barry ugly ass poems (i'm horny) Barry Sloane seducing clip ASMR Barry talking ASMR Barry (Price) pt. 2 The band Ghost wildin' Ghost band shenanigan: part 1 The Ghouls + Rut Season (HC) Swiss meets red velvet ‘you’ve got to press it on you.’ (Ghost Band HC) Nameless Ghoul NSFW headcanons Swiss relationship and NSFW headcanons .... yeah I'm normal I swear St. Vincent *heart eyes* Miyazaki's Retirement Declarations (chronologically) Hayao Miyazaki's "Inspirational" Quotes The Hand

Web Weave | Poetry

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe] - Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of deceased firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexeivich (transl. Keith Gessen) Robin Wood, “Psychoanalysis of Psycho” | Stoker (2013) dir. Park Chan-wook Stoker (2013) dir. Park Chan-wook and "The Lady of the House of Love" by Angela Carter This Is Me (Stoker 2013) Rice Paddies Home (What Is Home?) Whenever I see you, I remember AM I MAKING YOU FEEL SICK? // DEVOTION THAT EATS YOU ALIVE

[johnwickb1tsch]

Vino Veritas - Part V

A Destination Wedding Frank x Fem!Reader Fic

Attending the wedding of your ex-fiancé gets slightly better when you meet someone having just as miserable a time as you... Warnings: Nothing too serious holy shit. Cursing. Broken engagement. Nihilism, existential bullshit, copious amounts of sarcasm. NSFW. Angst. Grump/sunshine trope. Loosely based on the movie but I'm not that smart. Or bitter. 😆 chapter map.

V. Talking In Bed

You didn’t exactly pack sexy pajamas, so you make do with an old t-shirt you cut the neck out of, and your nicest pair of panties, forgoing your old sweatpants that are a size too big and have a hole in the leg.

“Is that…a rat?” asks Frank, looking at your t-shirt with a raised eyebrow.

You chortle while looking down at the grinning animal howling at the moon emblazoned on your chest.

“It’s a possum. I made it in art school…five million years ago.”

“Somehow, it suits you.” 

You laugh, crawling into bed with him.

As it turns out, it doesn’t stay on long anyway. You snuggle up together, having a glass of wine in bed, watching a medical drama. When the wine is gone, your attention soon turns from bad tv to making out. Frank asks between kissing you, “So was it Keith who made you feel like you take too long?”

The answer is absolutely yes. He’d guilted you for wanting your own pleasure, complained when you tried to direct him how to touch you, and that affected you forever with other partners, truth be told.

“Ah…yeah.”

“What a prick.”

You can’t help but laugh between kisses that curl your toes. “Agreed.” A moment later you pose, “Is it weird we're talking about your brother in bed?”

“Half-brother. And we've been bashing him all weekend. Why stop now?” 

You sigh, still laughing a little. “Fine. Yes. He traumatized me for life, the asshole.” 

As you say this Frank is kissing down your body. It feels wonderful, but you miss his full mouth on yours. “Hey. Where are you going?” you say, trying to pull him back up. 

“I'll give you three guesses,” he offers, pulling up your t-shirt to kiss your belly.  

“You don't...” Your breath hitches as his tongue dips into the waistband of your panties. Oh god. “…Have to do that.” 

“Have to?” He pulls down your panties a little with his teeth. You watch him down your body with a mixture of amusement and something unnervingly warm in your chest. He should look absurd like this, trying to chew through the strap of your underwear. When in fact…he moves you to the tips of your toes.

“What if I want to?” he asks. 

“Do you?” Somehow, you find it hard to believe. No one ever has wanted to before. It’s always a matter of course, and you sense they don’t enjoy it, which adds to your own anxiety about it all.  

“Yes.” 

That single word—and maybe his tongue exploring your hip, makes you squirm. 

“I like it,” he affirms again. 

“Really?” 

You sound so incredulous. 

“Yes. And, let me tell you something I hope you carry with you after this weekend. Anyone who gives head as good as you do deserves cunnilingus. Copiously.”

You giggle a little, and your panties are dragged down your hips. 

“Frank?”

“Present,” he says to your pubic bone, brushing your downy curls with the tip of his nose.

“I—”

But then his tongue touches your center, and you absolutely forget what you were going to say. 

“You can take as long as you want, baby.” 

The flat of his tongue running up your slit is a marvel, and you don’t think this will take long at all. “Oh.” It only gets better, as this man toys with your clit with the tip of his tongue, teasing you languorously. Pleasure begins to fill in between your legs, a warm, maddening pressure that makes you arch against him. “Oh god... oh fuck...You're really... good at this.” 

He moans in answer against you, that deep grumble that vibrates through your entire body. The most brilliant feeling coils and throbs inside you, insistent and inevitable.

“Frank... I'm going to cum.”

He makes a sound of encouragement, or so you assume. This orgasm breaks over you like the dawn, slow and scintillating, warm as sunlight. The tingling rush fills the cradle of your hips and spreads up your spine. You arch off the mattress, fighting not to crush his head between your thighs as this consuming sensation has its way with you. He licks you through the aftershocks, until you writhe and beg for mercy from overstimulation. 

He wipes his mouth on the sheets before climbing up your body, claiming your lips in a deep kiss. You can taste yourself on him, earthy with a hint of salt. You feel the blunt tip of him nudging at your entrance, and you crave the stretch of him entering your body like you need air to breathe. 

“Please?”

He slides inside you like you have always been his to claim, rocking his hips slowly until he's sheathed to the hilt. You are so sensitive after orgasming on his tongue, but it's wonderful. Everything is wonderful, and you wrap your legs around his hips, somehow managing to pull him deeper with a heel on his firm buttocks. 

“Fuck,” he sighs into the bend of your neck. “You are—” He bites down on whatever he was going to say about you, making another primal sound that raises gooseflesh all over your body. He takes this round slow too, and you love just feeling him, running your hands over the powerful contours of his body, the muscles of his arms and back as he unhurriedly fucks you into the mattress. 

“Think you can cum again?” he asks between kisses.

“I…don’t know,” you answer truthfully. The first orgasm was so complete—and the two before that, don’t forget—and you’re feeling pretty fucking satisfied with this day.

“Hmm. Can I flip you over?”

Although you’ll be sad to lose him in this perfectly connected missionary position, you nod. Maybe it was feeling too intimate for him. It was certainly…intense, for you, and maybe you need to pump the brakes before you start catching all these feelings for this man who obviously isn’t optimistic about the staying power of human relationships.

But then, you can’t help but muse, as he positions you on your stomach with pillows under your hips, that he doesn’t touch you like something disposable meant for his own pleasure. He touches you like he might break you if he’s not careful, like he can’t quite believe you’re real under his big hands and strong fingers.

Again he sheathes himself inside you, and a ragged moan is your reward as you tilt your hips and clench around him. You look up to find you can see the two of you reflected in the vintage full length mirror in the corner of the room.

The two of you should look absolutely look ridiculous like this, with your ass in the air, naked, joined. But all you can think is that this moment is beautiful. “Take off your shirt,” you request, and after considering you for a moment, tilting his head to make that lovely dark hair swing down around his eyes, he complies for you.

Your eyes meet in the mirror, and it is utterly electric, a primal thing you feel in the very marrow of your bones, your walls fluttering around his cock buried inside you. You really didn’t think it possible, but just looking at him like this turns you on all over again. “You are gorgeous,” you tell him, and just for a moment his fingers tighten on the meat of your hips, maybe hard enough to bruise.

You don’t mind.

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”

“Only if you mean it.”

“You are,” he answers without hesitation, and he begins to move, sliding completely out of you before plunging back into your tight little hole. He loses himself like that for a minute, using you for his pleasure and you gladly take it all.

“Why don’t you touch yourself?” he pants, slowing down inside you. You feel the strain of it in his back, the shudder in his arms.

“What?”

“Never tried it?”

Not with someone else in bed with you.

“No.” You’ve never been that comfortable with anyone.

“No time like the present.” The glide of his manhood inside you is maddening, his thickness stretching you in such a delicious way.

“You don’t mind that?”

“I’d love it. Take your pleasure, y/n. Use me. Cum on my dick again, I want to feel it.”

He seems so intent on it that you don’t want to deny him. Tentatively you reach between your legs, finding your swollen clit with your middle fingers, the way you would if you were alone…and oh. This is good, with him inside you. Inadvertently you clench harder, chasing your orgasm, the possibility of release not so elusive as you’d thought it would be.

“Yeah, like that baby,” he coaxes, and you glance up to see him with his head thrown back, concentrating on moving rhythmically inside you, for you. The thought fills you with such warmth, it’s as much of a turn on as his cock or your sticky little fingers. He bends over you, bracing himself with one arm so that he can touch your nipple, flicking you between his fingers in a way that sends sparks of pleasure straight to your groin, like throwing gasoline on a bonfire. You whimper, wanting it so badly suddenly and utterly surprised its even possible. You literally did not know your body was capable of this.

“So good,” Frank coaxes in your ear, the soft scruff of his beard against your cheek. “That’s my good girl, give it to me.”

You’re not sure what tips you over the edge; the praise, or the feeling of him utterly surrounding you while completely filling you, the timbre of his deep voice or his clever fingers on your tits or the way he moves his hips, but suddenly you are lost—the explosion of your orgasm hits you with a force that makes you see colors, bright oranges and yellows and peridot greens dance in your mind as your greedy cunt flutters on his cock.

Frank sinks his teeth in your shoulder as he thrusts quickly and deeply inside you, chasing your pleasure and soon following with his own, groaning into your hair. His hips snap against the pillow of your rear end, driving himself as deep as he can as he spills inside you. You feel the hot rush deep in your core, the aftershocks of your orgasm milking him further.

He collapses on top of you; you are too spent to protest. This is how you die; smothered by this beautiful man after the most mind-bending coitus of your life. Eventually you make a muffled sound that sort of sounds like, “I can’t breathe.”

With a satisfied sigh he shifts slightly, but does not abandon you, his heavy arm still looped over your waist, his manhood still sheathed inside you. His breathing deepens behind you, and you find you have zero interest in dislodging him. This is all too sweet, too perfect to be real. You doze together like that for at least half an hour.

He’s the one who stirs first behind you, kissing the sensitive skin behind your ear. “This has got to be the most decadent day of my life,” he muses into your hair. “Three rounds of incredible unprotected sex with a beautiful woman I just met a day ago. There has to be some catch. The gods will punish us accordingly for living too well.”

“Is it that hard to believe we’re allowed to have something good for ourselves once in a while?”

“Yes. That’s not how life works. What’s the success rate of a modern IUD?”

“99.8 percent.”

“Hmm. It’s not perfect.”

You snort, if not sleepily.

“Believe me, I am not looking to be a mother any time soon.”

“Ever?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really heard the tick tock of the maternal clock everyone talks about. Giving my life over to the thankless servitude of motherhood doesn’t appeal to me, for some reason.”

“Oh good. I was afraid I was the only one with mommy issues.”

“I do not have mommy issues.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Ok, maybe my mother and I are sort of at odds.”

 “Here we go.”

“She’s never really seemed happy in her conventional stay-at-home mother life-path, but she definitely tried to push it on me as the best choice when I was almost too young to know better.”

“There it is.”

“You don’t have to sound so pleased about it.”

He chuckles sleepily, pulling you closer into the warm shelter of his broader body. “Misery loves company.”

“What about you?”

“What what about me?”

“Do you…want kids?”

“I would rather be dead in a ditch.”

“Wow. Ok then.”

“Being alive is such a miserable farce, why would I knowingly inflict it on innocent children?”

You sigh, lacing your fingers with his. “Suddenly, it doesn’t seem all bad.”

“Think of all the pain you’ve gone through to get to this moment. Or maybe, that perfect, fleeting moment a little while ago, more like, the afterglow of which we are still enjoying. Was that really worth it?”

“Maybe.”

“For a half-tolerable day with a stranger who you’re never going to see again?”

This causes you to freeze in his grasp, holding your breath. For a long moment you feel like even your heart ceases to beat. “You…never want to see me again?”

It’s his turn to still behind you. “Not necessarily. That’s just…how these things go.” You can’t tell if he’s sad about it, or just resigned, the way he’s resigned to everything being total shit.

“They…don’t have to? If we decide…different?”

“Come on, honey. Please don’t.”

“Don’t what? Take exception to feeling like a throw away cocksleeve?”

“Did you expect me to propose?”

“Of course not. I just…you couldn’t even pretend until tomorrow morning that maybe I meant a little to you?”

Suddenly your throat is too tight, and your vision is clouded with tears. It hurts. Everything just hurts, and somehow it hurts worse now than when this whole fucking misadventure started.

“Oh my god,” you sigh, sliding out of bed. The air feels so cold without his furnace of a body wrapped around you.

“Y/n. Please don’t go.”

“Being around you feels like being electrocuted,” you blurt, looking desperately through the bedclothes for your panties. Where the fuck did he put them?

He slumps at hearing that, suddenly very interested in the wall.

“I get that a lot.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” you try to explain, unable to see very well through the film of your tears. Great. Nothing like having an argument with your beaver out.

“Oh yes. The good kind of electrocution,” he snarks, though there is a spark of what might be hope in his dark eyes.

“There is just something about you. You don’t mince words for anyone, you constantly tell the truth, and it’s exciting and low key uncomfortable, and I get some weird little rush out of knowing you might insult me any minute and then I get to verbally spar with you and you have some brilliant riposte for anything I say, it’s the most fun I’ve had with any man in a long time, and this whole weekend I’ve had this prickly heat just crawling under my skin and I’m pretty sure it’s your fault.”

 “You really talk it up, when you put it that way.”

You are so relieved, when anger arrives on the battlefield, and you’re able to get your shit together well enough to actually think.

“Look,” you say forcefully, pointing at him. “I usually fucking hate it when people say things happen for a reason.”

“Yes. It’s incredibly conceited.”

“Right. Because it implies when bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it, it was good somehow?”

“Go on.”

“But what if…”

“Oh God.”

“What if we met here, for a reason? Like my whole horrible fucking ordeal with Keith was somehow a trial…that brought me here to you?”

Immediately he shakes his head, something like panic in his eyes.

“Oh no. We’re not doing the this was meant to be thing.”

“You won’t even consider the sliver of a possibility?”

“You don’t even like me.”

“Who said I don’t like you?”

“No one likes me!”

“I do like you.”

He actually growls at this, as though the concept is so foreign, the possibility is terrifying.

But you also know that getting involved with a man like this is a bit like petting an abused dog. At any moment if it perceives you look at it wrong, it might snap, it might hurt you. With words, in Frank’s case, but to your tender heart that’s almost the same as taking a physical blow. Yet…you do not care. Because when things are good with this man…they are splendid, and you feel like it’s worth the price.

It’s worth a try, at any rate.

Yet the way he is looking at you—it doesn’t look good.

“You really don’t think this thing we have is special at all?”

You hate how much it hurts, to ask this question.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I am resigned to the fact that this will go no further than this weekend. These things never do. I’ll say I’ll call you, or you’ll say you’ll visit me, but it just never happens, and we waste our time on that glimmer of hope for some tiny aspect of life to not turn out to be complete shit—just to have it snatched away by the march of time.”

“Jesus, it’s so fucking terrible when you say it that way.”

“It’s just the truth. It’s life.”

You shake your head, whirling to go, panties or no. He can watch your bare ass as you walk out of his life forever.

“Wait, come on, don’t go.”

“Why not? What’s the point? What’s the point of anything?”

“Living in the moment?”

“Well, in this moment, I kind of feel like shit, so I think I’ll bounce.”

“Please don’t go.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because you like my company?”

“Yes.”

“Is it so fucking hard to admit that?”

“Yes, because any time I ever have the naivety to admit the slightest fondness for anything, the universe finds a way to snatch it away.”

You march back to the bed, jumping up to sit on the corner just out of reach with your arms crossed. You wait, looking around.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting to see if the universe strikes me dead.”

He gives that growling sigh that you are finding increasingly endearing as you get to know him. “Come here,” he says, holding out his arms.

Finally you crawl to him, and some restlessness settles inside you when he pulls you against him. From the small sigh he gives, you think he might feel the same way, and his grip tightens on you a little more. You’re not sure who kisses who, exactly, just that your mouths are pressed together, and for a little longer it seems like something is going right in the world.  

“If you haven’t noticed…I’m kind of a huge asshole.”

“Yeah,” you agree, and he snorts into the top of your head. “But you know what? You’re also kind of sweet…sometimes.”

“It’s a curse.”

“Only if you treat it that way.”

It just makes him hold you harder.

“No one can put up with me for long, y/n. Not even my own mother. My own father tried to kill me. It’s just facts. That’s why we’re going to enjoy the rest of this weekend, and when we get back home, we’re going to part as friends.”

You sigh, leaning even more against him. The film of tears is back, and you hide under his chin.

“You’re not even willing to try?”

“I’m doing you a favor. Believe me. I am what I am and it’s too late to fix me.”

“What if I don’t think you’re broken?”

“Very funny.”

“I meant it when I said I like you.”

“I like you too. It’s more than I can say for most people. Want to watch a movie or something?”

You nod, and you settle in together under the blanket to watch some stupid action flick. You can’t really focus on it, because Frank’s arms are around you, and it still feels like you have a live wire sparking under your skin.

[britany1997]

Howl at the Moon

Part three

Werewolf Steve x GN Reader

Part one, Part two

We all deserve some super sweet, stressed werewolf Steve fluff after my finals

Steve faced his own reflection in the employee bathroom. He gripped the sink as he breathed deeply, trying desperately to calm himself. It was the first night in a long time Steve had had to work an evening shift on the night of a full moon.

He rubbed his face with his hands, reminding himself that Family Video closed at 7:30, and the sun set at 8. That was more than enough time for Dustin to meet him at his house and make sure he was secured in the basement.

He sighed, but now he had you to worry about.

What if there wasn’t enough time? What if he got loose and found you? What if he hurt you? He grimaced at the thought. That wasn’t an option.

Steve splashed some water on his face. He could do this. Robin was staying late to close up, so he could leave a little earlier if he needed to, he’d be home in plenty of time.

Everything was going to be fine.

“What do you mean you lost him?” Robin whisper-screamed into the phone, her eyes darting around to Keith’s security cameras (which she was hoping were just for show.)

“He’s a giant, brown wolf! How do you lose one of those?” She hissed.

Dustin’s chattering on the other end of the line only made her groan and rub her temples.

“Well what should we do?” She asked, “do we track him down? Could we even get him home if we found him?”

God she wanted to slam the phone into the cradle repeatedly.

“Ok fine fine fine, you’re right. Just give me a second, I need to cancel on Vicky.”

Robin promptly hung up before Dustin could say anything else.

She sighed. Steve was going to be covering any shift she told him to till she graduated.

You hummed along softly as your Walkman blared The Cure. You were taking a walk through the woods by your house, picking flowers and stargazing.

As the tape switched between songs, you heard a soft whining coming from behind you.

You whirled around, only to be met with the sight of the biggest dog you’d ever seen.

You probably should have been intimidated by his imposing size, but he was so…friendly.

When you turned, his tail started to thump loudly on the dirt floor in excitement. His lips seemed to pull up slightly, almost as if he was smiling.

You were charmed, returning his smile with one of your own. You approached him hesitantly, hoping he’d let you pet him, but before you could reach out, he trotted over to nuzzle his head against your hand.

You laughed at his eagerness and scratched behind his ears.

The dog barked happily, obviously pleased with your attention. While you pet his head with one hand, he licked all over the other, forcing you to wipe off his slobber on your jeans several times.

After awhile, you began to wonder if this dog belonged to anyone. You checked around his neck, and smiled a bit when you didn’t find a collar.

“Do you want to come home with me?” You asked, scratching behind his ears once more.

The dog licked your cheek so enthusiastically, you almost toppled over. You’d take that as a yes.

You smiled as you lead him home.

Steve woke up to the familiar, post full moon pounding in his head. He groaned and rubbed his temples.

…

He rubbed his temples?

Steve froze. How could he not be chained to the wall right now.

His eyes darted around an unfamiliar, but cozy, living room as he realized he was most definitely not in his basement.

In fact, he wasn’t even in his house.

Steve panicked. He crept around, trying to find some semblance of an idea of where he’d ended up without waking the owners.

Whose house was this? Had he actually broken into someone’s home while in wolf form?

But everything seemed to be in perfect condition, even the front door! Wouldn’t he have torn everything up? He scratched his head in confusion.

Suddenly he froze.

Right there on the mantle was a picture of you.

He slowly, nervously, made his way over to the mantle. Scratch that, there were tons of pictures of you.

Steve wanted to scream. Somehow, he’d found his way into your home.

His head snapped in the direction of the stairs as he heard some rustling.

Steve knew he had to get out, and fast.

But there was the small problem of…not having any clothes.

In a panic, Steve grabbed a blanket from your sofa, wrapped it around his waist, and snuck out the front door as quickly and quietly as he possibly could.

He hoped a detour to his house wouldn’t make him too late to work. He was already envisioning the earful he’d get from Robin after, what he assumed, had been a pretty big escape last night.

He sighed, being a werewolf sucked.

“So you were just in their house?” Robin cringed, “how’d you even find their house? That’s super weird Steve.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know,” he groaned, “I have no idea how it happened, I told you I can never remember what happens on full moon nights.”

“It’s gotta be a wolf thing,” Robin decided, “you probably sniffed them out or something.”

“Yeah I guess, maybe we should-”

Robin and Steve’s heads both snapped to the front door as the bell jingled, signaling your entrance.

Robin’s eyes widened at the sight of you. She turned to Steve, then turned back to you, then turned to Steve again. “I’ll just uh- take my break then.” She slunk to the back room, but left the door open to hear everything of course.

“Hi,” Steve shivered. Did you see him leaving your house somehow? Did he somehow let you know it was him last night? Did you know what he was?

“Hi,” you replied, a pained smile on your face.

Steve’s gaze softened, “what’s wrong?”

You sighed, pulling posters out of your bag.

“I lost my dog,” you told him.

Steve’s face went white as a bed sheet. “Y-your dog?”

You nodded. “I found him wandering the woods last night and brought him home,” you explained, “I guess I haven’t had him for that long, but he was sooo sweet.”

You showed Steve the picture you’d drawn on the posters of the big, brown dog from last night.

Steve cleared his throat awkwardly. “He looks pretty uh… tough and intimidating.”

You shook your head furiously, “not at all! When I took him home last night, I put a blanket on the sofa for him so he could sleep there because I didn’t want him to shed all over my white bedspread right?”

Steve nodded as you related the tale.

“Well, I guess he wanted to be with me instead, because he sat outside my bedroom door whining! It was sooo cute.”

Steve cringed internally.

“I finally just went downstairs to pet his head until he fell asleep, he’s gotta be the most cuddly dog ever.”

Your smile fell, “I just don’t know why he’d leave.”

Steve felt tremendously guilty.

“Did you want us to hang one of your posters?” He asked.

Your head perked up, “could you?”

Steve nodded, “yeah, yeah of course. I’m uh something of a dog person myself.”

Your bright smile returned, “thank you so much Steve!” You handed him a poster, “it means a lot.”

“It’s really no problem,” he blushed.

Once you were out the door to hang more posters, Steve let out a deep sigh and crumpled to the floor behind the desk.

He felt Robin patting his back, “look on the bright side.”

“What?”

Robin smiled weakly, “at least they think you’re cute.”

Steve groaned.

Taglist🐺

@6lostgirl6 @misslavenderlady @crustyboypix @gothamslostboy @bloodywickedvamp @ria-coolgirl @rynsfandomsfun @dwaynesluscioushair @arbesa-mind @lostboys1987girl @anna1306 @arenpath @solobagginses @teelas-library @kurt-nightcrawler @bitchyexpertprincess @warrior-616 @f4iryfxies @palomam18 @dwaynedelight @walmart-icarus

[yan-snowcave]

♥️ Love is in the air~ ♥️

Reader x Yandere boys, Valentine headcanon's + drabble's

Words : 1K

Yandere's featured here :

- Alan [@hatchetmanofficial]

- Keith & Tenebris [@dualityvn]

- Casanova [@cannibalsweetheart]

- Friend [@stnaf-vn]

- Robin [@turnthepagevn]

A/N: While all of these characters have a drabble I'm not that confident in the Friend & Robin one I wrote ^^" I'm still trying to learn more about Friend and Robin but for now I will see this as a small test, so sorry if they are OOC

Also happy Valentines! Who needs a partner when you can have cheap chocolate the next day and yandere boyfriends >:3c

🪓🦌 Alan Orion 🦌🪓

• Instead of buying you chocolates or a bouquet of flowers he whittled a wooden heart locket for you with a love message on the back.

• Prepared a picnic under the starry night near the river where a lot of animals come by to drink or rest.

• He would be over the moon if you gave him chocolate filled with honeycomb.

[Drabble]

Pointing at the diffrent animals, Alan's head rested on your shoulder as he whispered facts about them. Whenever your eyes met you could see his love & devotion glistering in his eyes.

One of Alan's arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you into a passionate kiss.

Yes, you're sure that this is where you belong, next to your beloved Hatchet Man.

🪴🌹 Keith 🌹🪴

• Makes his own chocolate in the shapes of roses, if you like white chocolate he will even dye them red with green leafs.

• Takes you to a botanique garden, pointing at flowers that remind him of you before revealing their meaning. He also brought a cute, little lunchbox with food that you can share.

• At home you would be pulled into a comfy, cuddle session, while he showers you in kisses and tells you how lucky he is to have you by his side.

• He gives you a bouquet of flowers, it contains red, white (and even a black) Rose, red & white Carnations, pink Asters, magenta Zinnia's, Heliotropes, Hyssops, Sweet Pea's and White Gardenia's.

[Rough Meaning : Sweet love but also eternal obsessive, he will shower you in long lasting affection & won't ever forget you. You make him happy and he's willing to sacrifice anything to stay by your side since you're perfect in his eyes]

[Drabble]

A hand runs through your hair, sweet nothings are whispered into your ear, followed by a kiss on your cheek.

Flowers from the bouquet are tucked behind your ear as you return his affection through kisses, nuzzles and whispered praise.

Causing him to blush as your fingers intertwined at last.

🎮🌹 Tenebris 🌹🎮

• Failed at making chocolate so he just decorated the cupcakes with it, some slightly resemble those cute animal cupcakes. Just with very melted faces and wonky chocolate ears.

• Tenebris plays a love song that he composed for you on his guitar. If you praise him for it he will blush.

• Doesn't really get why valentines is that important to some people. He also buys the chocolate the next day when it's on sale & shares some of it with you.

• Thought the mistletoe tradition was also used on valentines day. He was very disappointed & confused when he learned that it's a Christmas exclusive thing. ("But it's all about kissing and Valentines is all about this shit! Your kind is really confusing, y'know that?")

[Drabble]

You two sat on the ground, backs leaning against the couch as the sound of button mashing echoed in the room.

Curses, popcorn and the occasional tease were thrown around. A few kisses were thrown in to distract the other from winning the game.

Of course, this lead to where you two are currently now; on the ground, laughing, arms wrapped around each other as Tenebris purrs in delight.

🫀 Casanova🫀

• Will bring you still beating human hearts instead of chocolates. One heart has a love message carved into it but you can barely read it with how mutilated it looks.

• Cooked a fancy dinner for you two, the table would be covered in rose petals with candles illuminating the room.

• Casanova would swoon [And be his overdramatic-self] over whatever gift you give him. Get ready to be praised, hugged and kissed, for best results get him a red & black coloured fancy knife tho.

• If you ever hinted (be it serious or jokingly) interest in owning a chainsaw he would get you a custom one, so that you two could match.

[Drabble]

Sitting next to a grave wasn't what others or you yourself would call romantic. But Casanova just knew how to change that.

Sitting on one of the Valentine gravestone's you listened to him, serenading a love song to you, his duo-coloured eyes never leaving yours.

Fiddling with the onyx ring on your finger, you slowly reached out to him. Silencing him with a kiss.

💛 Friend 💛

• Brings you your favourite sweets in a custom made box [tri-coloured like his shirt with stickers of your favourite animal/s on the box.] Which a custom, self-made plush swan is holding onto.

• Friend will take you to the cat café where you confessed to each other. He orders the valentine special, which is a strawberry milkshake with two straws and a plate full of diffrent sweet treats to share. [He will try to feed you and if you refuse he will pout, if you do feed him he will be happy but alsontease you.]

• Don't joke about marrying him on valentines, he will go and buy a ring if he doesn't have one already waiting in his pocket.

[Drabble]

Friend nuzzled his cheek against your neck, arms wrapped around your waist as he looked towards you.

Pink glowing eyes were reflecting the love he held for you. Such a deep love that simply couldn't be explained by mere words.

With a teasing grin, he took a bite out of the treat you held. Licking his lips as he whispered into your ear.

"As sweet as these are, I much prefer to take a bite out of you, Sweetheart.~"

📖 Robin 📖

• Made a reservation at a restaurant so you could share a classic romantic meal together, dance on the roof under the moonlight and share a special moment fit to be in a romance movie.

If you prefer an at home date, he would of course spoil you with a home-made meal & cuddles in his semi-eldritch/human form.

• His gift to you besides the classic flowers, jewellery, chocolate (made by Ellie because his somehow caught fire and almost burned down his kitchen.) Is a book he wrote for you, filled with every reason why he loves you and hopes that you stay with him until time itself ends.

• Would love to get a book you wrote yourself in return. He would treasure it and keep it somewhere safe, not wanting to risk it getting damaged by anyone.

[Drabble]

The moonlight shone down upon you two, candles burned gently as the wind rushed through your hair. As you took a sip of your drink your eyes locked onto Robin.

Who sat there silenty, skimming through the book you gave him before suddenly closing it. Grabbing your hand he placed a kiss on each knuckle, whispering a gentle promise against your hand.

"I will treasure this gift like I treasure you, my beloved.~"

[lil-melody-moon]

God, what am i doing with my life... Get new obsessions just before going back at university, of course! So, months ago I got that idea for a soulmate au where people are born in different decades and one half has to wait for the other in a world between real world and afterlife to go there together. Guess I came back to it and made a story for Keith Moon x Female Reader about it. Hope you enjoy <3

Likes, reblogs, kudos and comments are appreciated <3

Title: A Silent Wish

Summary: They say soulmates are born in wrong decades, that's why people are lonely. One of them, living earlier has to wait for the other to die to go to the afterlife with them. There's a chance for them to meet through dreams, if the connection between their souls is strong enough. One day, after another failed date you make a wish to meet your second half. It is granted immediately as you wake up in your dream world, being face to face with your soulmate.

[xxsycamore]

𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐙𝐕𝐎𝐔𝐒 ► MASTERLIST 🏖️🌞👙

Here you can find all the works created for this challenge hosted by me! (Link to the challenge)

I’ll be updating this masterlist gradually as the challenge progresses! (If you’ve created a work in the duration of this challenge and before the deadline - October 10th - and you can’t find it here, don’t hesitate to let me know!)

-> all works are explicit unless stated otherwise!

█ DAY 1, AUGUST 27TH - Sexy Lifeguard

Ikemen Prince

Rescue Me - Jin x Reader - @aquagirl1978

I’m Not at the Beach, This Is a Bathtub! - Luke x Emma - @xxsycamore

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Your Life in His Hands - Victor x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Sengoku

Sexy to the Rescue! - Shingen x Reader - @writingwhimsey

█ DAY 2, AUGUST 28TH - Drops of sweat running down the body

Ikemen Prince

Salt on Your Skin - Keith x Reader - @nightghoul381

Sweat running down body (non-explicit) - Cyran x Reader - @violettduchess

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Ikemen Sengoku

Private Lessons - Keiji x Reader - @writingwhimsey

█ DAY 3, AUGUST 29TH - Private pool skinny dipping

Ikemen Prince

Privacy - Nokto x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Ikemen Sengoku

Summer Lovin' With The Boss - Nobunaga x Reader - @writingwhimsey

Let Me Put on a Show for You, Tiger - Shingen x Reader - @xxsycamore

█ DAY 4, AUGUST 30TH - Naughty revenge after beach sports games

Ikemen Prince

Lesson Learned - Chevalier x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Naughty Reward (link leads to my reblog of her fic since her old tumblr got deleted!) - Leonardo x Reader - @princess-pray-a

Ikemen Villains

Ikemen Sengoku

Revenge is A Dish Best Served Wet - Masamune x Reader - @writingwhimsey

█ DAY 5, AUGUST 31ST - Picking swimwear together goes naughty

Ikemen Prince

Maybe, Someday - Yves x Reader - @aquagirl1978

Ikemen Vampire

Don't Make a Mess - Napoleon x Reader - @xxsycamore

Ikemen Villains

If Looks Could Kill - Ellis x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Sengoku

Dressing Room Rendezvous - Motonari x Reader - @writingwhimsey

█ DAY 6, SEPTEMBER 1ST - Water fight results in a see-through shirt

Ikemen Prince

Lakeside Dalliance - Jin x Reader - @writingwhimsey

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Translucent - Harrison x Reader - @nightghoul381

█ DAY 7, SEPTEMBER 2ND - Quickies at the summer festival

Ikemen Prince

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Behind the Trees - Jude x Reader - @nightghoul381

█ DAY 8, SEPTEMBER 3RD - Sex in open sea

Ikemen Prince

Kink Satisied (link leads to my reblog of her fic since her old tumblr got deleted!) - Clavis x Reader - @princess-pray-a

Must Be Something in the Sea Breeze - Licht x Emma - @xxsycamore

Beneath the Stars - Licht x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Ikemen Genjiden

Hot and Bothered - Ibuki x Reader - @aquagirl1978

█ DAY 9, SEPTEMBER 4TH - Sunset to sunrise

Ikemen Prince

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Sing for Me - William x Reader - @nightghoul381

█ DAY 10, SEPTEMBER 5TH - Hot skin + Cold sensations

Ikemen Prince

Just a Taste - Leon x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

Illusions of Hot and Cum (link leads to my reblog of her fic since her old tumblr got deleted!) - Alfons x Reader - @princess-pray-a

█ DAY 11, SEPTEMBER 6TH - A night too hot for sleeping

Ikemen Prince

A Night Too Hot for Sleeping - Chevalier x Reader - @xxsycamore

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

A Good Idea - Liam x Reader - @nightghoul381

█ DAY 12, SEPTEMBER 7TH - Riding the waves

Ikemen Prince

While At Sea - Silvio x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

█ DAY 13, SEPTEMBER 8TH - Forced to share a tent while camping

Ikemen Prince

Little Lies - Gilbert x Reader - @aquagirl1978

Pure Bliss - Rio x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

█ DAY 14, SEPTEMBER 9TH - Cooling off leads to discovering a new kink

Ikemen Prince

The Light of the Moon - Jin x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Ikemen Villains

█ DAY 15, SEPTEMBER 10TH - FREE DAY

Ikemen Prince

The Drunken Disaster - Gilbert x Reader - @nightghoul381

Ikemen Vampire

Late August Night Tryst - Napoleon x Reader - @xxsycamore

Ikemen Villains

[sonekwi]

☆ ⸻ the white paladin, keith x reader

chapter one: team bonding

characters/pairings: keith, female reader

genre: fanfiction

summary: you and your friends happen to be in the right place at the right time. you end up rescuing the pilot of the kerberos mission from the hands of the garrison after he unexpectedly returns to earth.

word count: 3,871

links: next, wattpad, masterlist

a/n: this is one of the first fanfictions i have ever written, but the original version is from when i was in 7th grade 🥲 - so, that said, enjoy this revised/rewritten version!

     "Galaxy Garrison flight log 5-11-14, begin descent to Kerberos for a rescue mission," Lance announces, shoving the yoke forward. The aircraft groans as it dives towards Pluto's moon, and you plant your feet to fight against the inertia.

     Your teammate, Hunk, whines from the back. "Ugh, Lance, can you keep this thing straight?"

     "Relax. I'm just getting a feel for the stick!" Lance smirks. "It's not like I did this! or this!" he jerks the aircraft side to side, intentionally making Hunk feel worse.

     "Okay," Hunk gags, "Unless you want to wipe beef stroganoff out of all the little nooks and crannies of this thing, you better knock it off, man!"

     You do what you can from your co-pilot position to help stabilize the aircraft. "You need to take this seriously," you warn. "This simulation makes up most of our final grade."

     "Quit worrying," Lance says, "I got this."

     "Do you?" you raise a brow, and he rolls his eyes.

     "We've picked up a distress beacon," Pidge says, a small blip blinking on his radar.

     "Alright, look alive, team!" Lance says, pressing various buttons in preparation, "Pidge, track the coordinates."

     "Copy," Pidge says and transfers the information onto the main dashboard in front of you. A three-dimensional map of the terrain is generated and you frown. The signal originates from within a narrow ravine, and the surrounding area is a nightmare; large boulders, spikes, cliffs, and overhangs.

     You wearily glance over at Lance, doubting his pilot abilities. Only a miracle could get him through the simulation without crashing the ship.

     The aircraft rumbles and shakes, and Hunk groans again. "Knock it off, Lance! Please!"

     "Oh, this one's on you, buddy!" Lance says and glares over his shoulder. "We've got a hydraulic stabilizer out!"

     You sigh, muttering under your breath. "It wouldn't be out if you would just fly straight."

     "I heard that," Lance growls.

     Hunk grabs his monitor to fix the issue and the aircraft rumbles again. He gags, swallowing down whatever vomit had come up. "Oh no..."

     The map on the dashboard glitches and buffers before going completely dark.

     "We've lost contact," you say.

     "The shaking is interfering with our sensors," Pidge explains.

     "Come on, Hunk!" Lance exclaims.

     "Sorry, it's not responding," Hunk says and removes his safety belt. He wobbles over to a gearbox for a manual fix, the excessive motion impairing him.

     The map suddenly regenerates and the distress beacon pops back up. You are about a klick from its location and approaching fast.

     "Never mind, fellas," Lance says. "Preparing for approach on visual."

     "Not happening," you say. "We can't fly properly until Hunk fixes the hydraulic stabilizer."

     "Agreed!" Hunk says, just before losing his lunch.

     "It'll be fine!" Lance says dismissively and pats the dashboard of the aircraft. "This baby can take it!" It rumbles again, "See! She was nodding!"

     "Lance, listen to us!" you argue. "We need to hang back."

     "I'm the one flying this thing! So what I say goes!" he glares at you.

     "Excuse me?" you gawk.

     Lance turns to the comm-spec, ignoring you, "Pidge, hail down to them and let them know their ride is here."

     You huff. Why does he insist on being so stubborn and cocky? Does he not understand the gravity of this? If you fail the simulation, you fail the class. But you decide to keep your mouth shut from now on. There's no use trying to talk some sense into him anymore.

     You watch as Lance comes up on an overhang. Instead of flying above or around it, he attempts to thread through the small opening. He turns the aircraft as vertically as he can, but fails. One of the wings clips the overhang and tears off. The alarms blare as the aircraft pummels to the ground, and the lights go dark upon impact. On the dashboard, bold red letters glow and your throat swells with frustration.

     SIMULATION FAILED.

     "Nice work," Pidge sarcastically comments.

     The door to the aircraft slides open with a hiss, and your commander beckons the four of you out. Reluctantly, you leave your seats and exit with your heads hung. You line up, mentally preparing for the berating lecture you'll receive.

     "Let's see if we can use this complete failure as a lesson for the rest of you students," Commander Iverson's voice booms with disappointment. He glares down at you and your team. "Can anyone point out the mistakes these so-called cadets made in the simulator?"

     A student shouts from the back of the group, "The engineer puked in the main gearbox!"

     Iverson turns to Hunk, "Yes, as everyone knows, vomit is not an approved lubricant for engine systems!" he criticizes. "What else?"

     "The comm-spec removed his safety harness," another student says.

     "The pilot crashed!"

     "Correct," Iverson says, "And worst of all, the whole jump they're arguing with each other!" he turns back to you, "Hell, if you're going to be this bad individually, you better at least be able to work as a team!"

     It takes everything in your power not to look away in shame, but you keep your gaze steady.

     Iverson continues, "The Galaxy Garrison exists to turn young cadets like you into the next generation of elite astroexplorers, but these kinds of mental mistakes are exactly what cost the lives of the men on the Kerberos Mission."

     Out of the corner of your eye, you see Pidge clench his fists and scrunch his nose in anger. Your eyes widen when he takes a bold step toward Iverson.

     "That's not true, sir!" he argues.

     "What did you say?" Iverson growls.

     Lance pulls Pidge back and slaps a hand over his mouth, "Sorry, sir! He must've hit his head with all the shaking, but point taken!" he says, tightening his grip on the ginger as if asking what the hell is wrong with him.

     Commander Iverson steps closer and your brother releases Pidge, cowering from the intimidation. "I hope I don't need to remind you that the only reason you're here is because the best pilot in your class had a discipline issue and flunked out. Don't follow in his footsteps," Iverson warns.

     Lance looks away with dejection, his shoulders trembling slightly as he keeps himself from crying.

     Then, Iverson turns to you, and your body tenses with fear.

     "And you!" he barks, "I expected better."

     ⁀➷

     At the end of the day, you storm back to the barracks and grumble to yourself. Once within the safety of your room, you grab a pillow from your bed and scream into it.

     "What happened?" your roommate, Nadia, asks. She doesn't bother to look up from her textbook, though.

     "Nothing," you huff. "I'm fine."

     "If it's your brother, you can throw a shoe at him," Nadia says.

     You aggressively tug off your cadet uniform. "I don't get it! He's so fricking dense and full of himself!"

     Nadia points to the closet, "I have a pair of high heels."

     "His skull is so damn thick, three people couldn't talk him out of it!" you growl, putting on some more comfortable clothes.

     "Aim for the eyes."

     "And why was I the fricken co-pilot!? I'm top of-" you stop when someone knocks on the door. You sigh, taking out your hair tie as you walk over. Placing it on your wrist, you repeatedly snap it against your skin.

     You open the door and see Lance and Hunk standing there. Without a thought, you slam the door in your brother's face.

     ...But he jammed his foot in the way.

     "Wait, (y/n)!" he says, smooshing his face into the cracked doorway. "I'm sorry!"

     "Sorry doesn't fix the problem," you say and lean against the door. You push against it a couple of times to get Lance to move his foot, but he keeps it there. "What do you want?"

     "Do you want to hang out with us?" Lance asks. "You heard Iverson today, he wants us to bond as a team!"

     "Hard pass," you hiss and push against the door again.

     "Come on, (y/n)!" Lance begs. "It isn't team bonding unless everyone is there."

     You roll your eyes. "No, I'm not letting you mess this up for me any further. Go bother someone else."

     With one last push, Lance moves his foot and the door slams. You sigh and drag your hands down your face. You want nothing more than to crawl into bed and hide under the blankets, but...

     "He's still standing out there, isn't he?" you look at Nadia, and she nods. Groaning, you grab a jacket and pull on your shoes.

     You open the door and quietly close it behind you. Looking at your brother expectantly, you try to ignore his smug face.

     "I knew you'd join us," Lance says, turning to head down the hall, "Let's go get Pidge."

     You roll your eyes and follow him. Lance leads you and Hunk through the barracks, avoiding the hall monitors like he's playing a stealth mission in a video game. You shush his dramatic humming multiple times.

     As you come around a corner, Lance stands. "Wait right here," he says, but as he moves towards the door it opens.

     He scrambles back around the corner, and the three of you watch as Pidge exits his room. He has a backpack slung over his shoulder, and suspiciously checks his surroundings before running down the hall.

     "Where do you think he's going?" you ask.

     "Should we go after him?" Hunk asks.

     You all share a look before agreeing to follow Pidge, and Lance takes the lead again. Carefully, you keep a short distance between you and Pidge so you don't lose him. You're confused, however, as he comes up on a maintenance stairwell. The three of you watch as he quickly types in the code to the door.

     The roof..? You furrow your brows as he disappears through the stairwell.

     Upon reaching the top, Lance opens the door to the roof slowly and quietly. He peeks out before waving you and Hunk closer and slipping through.

     The ginger sits at the edge of the roof, surrounded by various pieces of technology. His figure is outlined by the glow of the screens. Your brother smirks at you before sneaking up on Pidge.

     Lance grabs the headphones off of Pidge's head. "You come here to rock out?" he asks.

     Pidge jumps and screams. He places a hand on his chest, breathing heavily. "Oh, it's you guys..."

     "What are you doing up here?" you ask, walking closer.

     Lance looks over the tech. "Where'd you get this stuff? It doesn't look like Garrison tech..."

     Pidge smirks. "I built it."

     "You built all of this?" you ask, and Hunk hums excitedly.

     "Yeah," Pidge says, "With this, I can scan to the edge of the solar system," he explains.

     "All the way to Kerberos?" you ask and pick up a small device. You move it around in my hands, admiring the work put into it.

     Pidge hangs his head at my question and starts to pick at his fingers nervously.

     Lance irks. "You go ballistic every time the instructors bring it up! What's your deal?" he asks, and Pidge hesitates to answer. "Look, if we're going to bond as a team, we can't have any secrets!"

     "Fine," Pidge turns to the three of you. "The world as you know it... is about to change," he says ominously.

     "What do you mean?" you ask, setting down the device. You notice the notebook sitting on the ground beside him, and your eyes linger on it. On the paper is a crude rendition of what looks like a Transformers robot.

     Pidge continues, "The Kerberos Mission wasn't lost because of some malfunction or crew mistake," he says, "So, I've been scanning the system and picking up alien radio chatter."

     "What? Aliens?" Hunk exclaims.

     "Are we talking little green dudes?" you ask, your eyes widening, "Or something bigger and meaner, like Predator?"

     Lance rolls his eyes, "You're insane," he says to Pidge.

     "I'm serious," Pidge argues, "They keep repeating one word, Voltron," he grabs the notebook and holds it up. "And it's going crazier than I have ever heard it."

     "How crazy..?" you ask wearily, and as the words leave your mouth, the Garrison's alarms go off. You suddenly feel your body tense and your gut knots with dread.

     A voice crackles over the campus loudspeakers issuing out a warning, "Attention students and faculty! This is not a drill. We are on lockdown, security situation Zulu Niner. All students are to remain in barracks until further notice."

     The message is repeated a few times, and you feel worse. There's no way this is just a coincidence.

     Hunk stammers and points to something in the sky. "Is- is that a meteor?" he asks, "A really, really big meteor?"

     You look up to see a giant object falling towards the earth, burning up in the atmosphere. Your heart climbs up into your throat and fear floods through you.

     Pidge grabs a pair of binoculars and looks at the object. "It's a ship!" he exclaims.

     Lance takes the binoculars, "Holy shit! I can't believe what I'm seeing! That is not one of ours!"

     "No, it's one of theirs," Pidge says with awe.

     You watch as the ship plummets, crashing just a short distance away from the Garrison. The boom reverberates through your whole body, and your nose quickly begins to burn at the smell of sulfur and smoke.

     Below you, Garrison troops deploy and race to the crash site.

     "We've got to see that ship!" Pidge exclaims, quickly packing up his stuff before running towards the roof exit.

     "Come on, guys!" Lance says to you and Hunk.

     You sigh, following your brother and teammates. "This is not what I had in mind for team bonding."

     ⁀➷

     Perched on a ledge on the outskirts of the crash site, you observe the area. The Garrison had beat you to it and had guards upon guards patrolling, each one heavily armed. The alien ship, seemingly undamaged by the crash, was already loaded onto the bed of a truck. Off to the side, they had set up a quarantine tent.

     You watch as scientists and high-ranking officers walk in and out of the tent. You wonder if they found something. Maybe an alien or strange artifact?

     Pidge works on his laptop as Lance surveys the crash site with a pair of binoculars. While you and Hunk stand behind them, you keep your head on a swivel to make sure no one sneaks up on you. Things will only get worse from here if you're caught.

     "Hey," Pidge says, "They set up a camera inside the tent and I grabbed its feed. Look!"

     You walk over and kneel beside him, your eyes widening at what you see on his laptop. Inside the tent, a human is strapped down to a metal table, struggling against the restraints. A pair of scientists lean over him, performing a basic physical evaluation. Commander Iverson stands among them, supervising.

     "What are you doing?" the man asks and jerks his body against the restraints.

     "Calm down," Iverson says, "We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests."

     The man shakes his head, "You have to listen to me! They destroy worlds!" he grunts, "Aliens are coming!"

     Lance gawks at the screen. "That's Shiro! The pilot of the Kerberos Mission! That guy's my hero!" he exclaims.

     "Where's his crew?" you ask.

     One of the scientists grabs a syringe to draw Shiro's blood. "Do you know how long you've been gone?" he asks.

     "I don't know. Months? Years?" Shiro says, "Look, there's no time. Aliens are coming here for a weapon. They will destroy us! We need to find Voltron."

     "Sir, take a look at this," the scientist says, "It appears his arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic."

     "Put him under until we know what that thing can do," Iverson says.

     "No, don't!" Shiro begs. "Don't put me under! There's no time!"

     You watch with wide eyes as the scientists inject an anesthetic into Shiro, not heeding a single word that comes out of his mouth. Why aren't they listening to him? He's been gone for a year and was presumed dead. There's no way he's been alive on Kerberos this whole time. How are they not going to believe his story?

     "We have to get him out," Pidge says.

     Hunk sighs, "I hate to be the voice of reason, but weren't we just watching the security feed because there was no way to get past the guards?"

     Lance frowns and rests his chin in his hand. "That was before we were properly motivated. We just got to think."

     "I don't know," you say. "I don't think there's anything we can do..."

     Lance shakes his head, "We need a distraction."

     Bombs explode in the distance, their fiery heat blazing and kicking up dust. You scream and stumble back, your heart pounding. The noise nearly deafens you and you slap your hands over your ears in hopes of drowning it out.

     Hunk starts to freak out, "Is that the aliens? Are they here?"

     "No, that was a distraction!" Pidge says and points, "For him!"

     Barreling towards the crash site is a hover-bike, and as it pulls up behind a rock your eyes widen. You recognize the hover-bike and its driver almost immediately.

     "The Garrison is heading towards the blast, and he's sneaking in on the other side!" Pidge explains.

     "Oh, he is not going to beat us in there!" Lance barks and slides down the ledge, rushing toward the tent.

     "Lance! Wait!" you call out and follow him down, the gravel and dirt scraping against your bare legs. You curse yourself for wearing shorts.

     "Who is it?" Pidge asks, shoving his stuff into his backpack again.

     "Keith!" you shout to him.

     "Are you sure?" Hunk asks, following after you and your brother.

     "Trust me, I'd recognize that mullet anywhere!" Lance growls.

     By the time the four of you get to the tent, Keith is already inside. With the scientists knocked out, he cuts the restraints holding Shiro down, and sits him up. Barely conscious, Shiro can only manage to groan in response to Keith's questions as he slings Shiro's arm around his shoulders.

     "No, no, no! I'm saving Shiro!" Lance snaps and grabs Shiro's other arm.

     "Uh, who are you..?" Keith asks.

     "Seriously? The name's Lance?" your brother says, but Keith remains confused. Lance frowns with a look of hurt and disbelief, "We were in the same class at the Garrison! We were like rivals! You know, Lance and Keith, neck-and-neck?"

     "Oh, wait, I remember you. You're a cargo pilot," Keith says, furrowing his brows as the memory comes back to him.

     As they bicker, you exit the tent. You resume your look-out position from before and check the area. As your eyes move to wear Keith and set off the bombs, you spot the fleet of Garrison vehicles heading back to the crash site. Your heart leaps into your throat and you rush back inside.

     "If you both want to save Shiro, I suggest we get moving. The Garrison is coming back and they do not look happy!" you say, urging everyone out of the tent.

     At the sound of your voice, Keith's eyes meet yours and his face softens. For a small moment, you stop, a familiar feeling crawling out of the hole you buried it in. Neither of you has seen or spoken to each other since he dropped out of the Garrison. You were really good friends up until that point.

     However, part of you is thankful that he never reached out. You knew the little crush you had would never live to be something more, so it gave you the time you needed to move on. But, as your heart flutters with excitement, you realize that you never did.

     You force yourself to break eye contact and turn towards the exit. The group follows you, with Lance and Keith carrying Shiro out as fast as they can.

     "Is this going to fit all of us?" Pidge asks as he hops on the hover-bike.

     "No," Keith answers as he and Lance load Shiro onto the hover-bike. But once he's seated at the helm and everyone's on, he doesn't waste time. He revs the engine and the hover-bike roars to life, lifting a few feet off the ground.

     Just as the Garrison comes around the corner, Keith makes a sharp turn and takes off in the opposite direction. From your seat behind him, you hold onto Keith tightly to avoid falling off.

     The Garrison doesn't hesitate to pursue the group deeper into the desert, and Lance happily points it out, "Can't this thing go any faster? They're right on our tail!"

     Keith rolls his eyes and jabs, "We can throw off some nonessential weight."

     Expectantly, Lance looks around to see what he can toss off the hover-bike, but Keith's words were directed at the five extra people, "Okay, so that was an insult–"

     "Big man, lean right!" Keith shouts over his shoulder and Hunk does so. As the hover-bike sharply banks to the right, it jumps over a small ravine. You make the unfortunate mistake of looking down mid-jump, and your body floods with fear.

     "Not cool, not cool!" you exclaim and shove your face into Keith's back. You don't usually have a fear of heights, especially when you are piloting an aircraft from the safety of an enclosed space. Riding on a hover-bike with Keith at the helm, however, the risk of falling off is very prominent.

     "Are you seriously scared of heights?" Lance asks, immediately noticing it. "You're a freaking pilot!"

     "This is different!" you bark at him.

     "Wait, guys," Hunk stammers as he points ahead of us. "Is that a cliff up ahead?"

     "Oh, no, no, no!" Lance protests.

     "Oh, yes," Keith grins and increases the speed, heading straight towards the cliff.

     Everyone, except for Keith and Shiro (who is still very much unconscious), screams and clambers incoherently as the hover-bike dives right off of the cliff.

     You feel your stomach float up into your chest and your butt lift off of the seat as you fall. Your entire body buzzes with fear and adrenaline as you tighten your grip around Keith. If you fall off now, there's no doubt you will be dead.

     And flat as a pancake.

     "What are you doing? You're gonna get us all killed!" Lance screams.

     "Just shut up and trust me!" Keith shouts back.

     "I trust you!" you say, burying your face again. You truly do, though. Despite him being a reckless risk-taker, you know Keith would never put you in harm's way... well, maybe he would with Lance.

     You fall for what seems like an eternity before Keith rolls the throttle all the way, blasting the engines and maxing out their power. The hover-bike stops just before it hits the ground, and your butt smacks down on the seat.

     That's definitely gonna be bruised...

     With the Garrison having no way down the cliff, the group escapes.

[chickenfics]

the way I love the ocean

Relationship: Robin Buckley x Female!Reader

Summary: It was the summer of ‘87. Nothing in your life had prepared you for Robin, but somehow everything had begun falling into place. It all started with a movie and a pair of ocean-blue eyes, and suddenly you were dancing to a Jukebox in a long-closed diner, or racing down the length of a pier, swimming in the moon-dipped lake and walking her home down yellow-lit streets, talking about the way The Smiths sound like indigo and the best time of the summer is when the fireflies start to come out.

It was the summer of ‘87, and you were falling in love.

Word Count: 8.1k

A/N: She/her pronouns used for reader, and she is described as being able to ride a bike but no other descriptions are given. Y/N used sparingly.  

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged for future chapters!  

Fic Playlist!  Also on Ao3

Previous Chapter  Next Chapter  Masterlist

Chapter 2: Crickets

The evening air was cool -- thank god; the last thing you needed was to show up at Family Video a sweaty mess. You took your time, and the physical activity helped calm your anxiety as you watched the townhouses pass by in a line. The sky was lit in an orange glow, colored like someone had spilled paint across the horizon. Light from the setting sun bled through the patches of clouds, and the air smelled alive. Crickets set the backdrop, whirring loudly. You smiled. 

By the time you reached Family Video, you had a good feeling about tonight. You were still nervous as all hell, but it was a good kind of nervous. An excitement. 

The parking lot was empty save for one car, presumably Steve’s. You pedaled up to the side of the store, leaning your bike against the stone wall and hoping that no one would steal it while you were gone. Instinctively, you straightened your clothes, hands running over your body as you tried to make yourself look as presentable as possible. You wiped a bit of dampness from your forehead and then took a deep breath, holding it for three seconds before letting it out into the darkening evening air. 

You could do this. It was just hanging out with some friends. People did that all the time. It didn’t matter that you hardly knew anyone. People did that all the time, too; it was practically what school was. And anyway, relationships had to start somewhere, right? When you caught sight of Robin through the window, leaning over the front counter, her hair falling in a feathery sheet across her face, you knew that a little bit of anxiety would absolutely be worth it if it meant a chance with her. 

Suddenly you were aware of how tight your chest felt. Of the way you were standing, the sound of your breathing. Of how incompetent you were with small talk. God, what if there was small talk? Then Robin looked up and you were met with those damn blue eyes, clear as the ocean under a bright sun, and you thought your heart might actually burst apart into a hundred butterflies and flutter right out of your mouth. She smiled when she saw you, excitement brightening her cheeks as she gave an eager wave. You suspected then and there that your face would be hurting by the end of the night from all this smiling.

You gingerly opened the door. 

“Hi! Hey, you’re right on time! Uh, come on in. Not everyone gets to see FV after hours, haha. At least we’re not haunted, or anything -- just, you know, dusty shelves and weird smells. The floor’s also kind of sticky because of the, like, super cheap soap that we use to mop. Steve and I keep trying to convince Keith to change it but he’s set in his ways. He’s our manager, by the way, but he….” she trailed off, growing a little small despite her height. “Sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“It’s okay,” you quickly offered. “Keith sounds like kind of a pain. Soap isn’t really supposed to make things sticky, is it?” you grimaced, chuckling when your shoe made a velcro sound as you pulled it off the floor. 

Robin’s brow furrowed in disgust and perhaps a little embarrassment. 

“Ew, yeah. That’s, like, really gnarly.”

“Hey!” A voice interrupted as who you assumed was Steve sauntered out of the back room, pulling his Family Video vest off to reveal a polo shirt underneath. “Long time no see. So, are you gonna be like a frequent customer, or what?” 

He flashed you a grin, then stuck his hand out. You took it, letting him shake your hand with unexpected softness, considering his flamboyant, slightly loud entrance. 

“Steve Harrington, at your service. I’m this dipshit's chauffeur.”

“Ignore him,” Robin waved, nearly smacking Steve in the face as she stepped in front of him. You were pretty sure you were still smiling like an idiot. You were also pretty sure you weren’t going to be stopping anytime soon. 

“Anyway,” Steve continued, leaning around Robin to peek at you. “We’re just waiting for another friend to show up and then we’ll get this show on the road.”

“Sounds good,” you managed, smiling between the two of them. Your eyes flickered back to Robin when you noticed the girl staring at you. Her cheeks darkened to a deeper shade of pink. 

“Uh, I’m just gonna go back and… get ready,” she grabbed at her Family Video vest. “I’ll… be right back.” Holding up her pointer fingers, she waved them once as she backed towards the employee room, then spun on her heels and disappeared. 

That left you and… Steve. He was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. You picked at your sleeve and awkwardly crossed your ankles, suddenly not sure how to stand in a way that would be considered normal. 

You’d heard about Steve Harrington back in high school. Everyone had, and though you’d never met him, being a year behind, you knew vaguely of him thanks to all the rumors. Well… you knew vaguely of someone; the man standing in front of you didn’t seem much like the King Steve everyone talked about, and, though you’d only just actually met him, you got the idea that a lot had changed since high school. 

“She can come off as kind of weird sometimes, Robin,” he suddenly spoke up, jerking his head towards the back room. “But she’s great once you get to know her.”

You looked over at him, at the way his face was distantly fond, and you smiled. 

“She seems great,” you breathlessly agreed, trying not to be too fucking obvious. “And I don’t think she’s that weird. I mean… she’s weird, but, like, good weird. Does that make sense?” 

Your nervous laughter quickly became unnecessary when you saw how Steve was looking at you; like he was suddenly eager about something. Like he was pleasantly surprised. 

“Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense,” he nodded. 

You had just been floundering for the next available small talk topic, cursing your inability to behave like a functioning member of society, when Robin reappeared, her flannel revealed over a loose t-shirt now that the vest was gone, fluffing her hair with one hand and tucking the front of her shirt in with the other. 

She looked a little frazzled, and Steve turned back around to raise his eyebrows knowingly before grimacing at her. 

“You ready or what?”

“Hey, don’t give me that look. Eddie’s not even here yet, so it’s not my fault we’re running late--”

As if on cue, the roar of an engine echoed through the parking lot. A pair of headlights blinded the three of you before a sketchy-looking van came to a screeching halt next to Steve’s car. You weren’t sure if you hoped that was Eddie or wasn’t. 

“Finally,” Robin rolled her eyes. “I swear, that’s the last time we invite him to anything without at least a week's notice.”

“He said he was having a thing with the kids -- that dragon game or, whatever,” Steve lamely argued, shrugging. “Probably just ran late.”

“Well, in that case, we’re lucky he’s not, like, three days late.”

Steve’s lips curled into a reluctant smirk -- which morphed into an outright smile as a curly-haired, leather-clad man barreled his way through the door. 

“Sorry I’m late. Dustin’s a butthead.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” Steve shot back. You were confused. 

Thankfully -- or, maybe not thankfully, considering your brain almost left the building -- Robin lightly grabbed your arm and smiled encouragingly at you. 

“This is Eddie. Eddie, this is Y/N…” 

You managed to pull yourself out of the depths of Robin’s eyes and look over at the man, who flashed you a smile and a dramatic bow. 

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too,” you replied, smile widening at the way Steve rolled his eyes at Eddie’s theatrics. Though, you thought maybe you saw a hint of a blush. What were the chances that you’d been so worried about Robin when actually all three of them were… 

You mentally scoffed, immediately telling yourself that there was no way in hell you’d ever be that lucky. It just wasn’t possible.

“Alright,” Steve clapped. “You bozos ready? Oh, and… you,” he shyly added, seeming to remember that it wasn’t just him and his friends anymore.

“Steve!” Robin smacked his arm. “Have I told you to ignore him? Seriously, ignore him.”

“It’s okay,” you laughed. “I assumed I was included in the bozos, anyway.”

“I like her,” Eddie grinned at Robin, leaning his shoulder into yours.

You tried not to completely lose your cool. Had making friends always been this easy? How was it that you’d struggled all these years when over the span of a week and a few minutes you’d somehow met three new people that accepted you into their little group without a second thought? And somehow it had just…. worked.

You were still trying to figure it out as the four of you piled into Steve’s BMW. He and Eddie took the front and you and Robin climbed into the back. You breathed a shaky sigh of relief, glad that you’d get to spend the whole ride next to her. The drive-in was on the edge of town, so it would be a bit of a scenic route. Any worries you’d initially had that the ride would be awkward were immediately forgotten. 

Steve was insistent that they were going to miss half the movie -- the name of which you still didn’t even know -- and Robin had to keep telling him that it started at eight-fifteen so they had plenty of time. Eddie turned around in the passenger seat to tell you that they were “always like this,” and Robin groaned while Steve began protesting loudly and very defensively. 

All you could do was laugh so hard you were now one hundred percent certain you’d have the worst headache of your life by the end of the night. It didn’t matter -- you were having too much fun to even care. If Robin wasn’t bickering with Steve, she was smiling at you; little sideways smiles that made you feel like you were a part of the conversation even though you weren’t. Smiles that said “I’m glad you’re here” even though the two of you didn’t get much of a chance to talk directly to one another. 

Up front, Eddie made a comment about how Steve’s music was “killing him slowly,” and suddenly pulled a tape out of his pocket. 

“Woah, what the-- where the hell did that come from?” 

“Just be glad I have it, Harrington. Might be able to save this fuckin’ trip after all.”

“Alright, just-- not too loud, okay? We don’t want to scare the new girl off.”

“I don’t mind,” you butted it, smiling as Eddie whipped around to give you a gesture of thanks and then flip the bird at Steve. 

“Not everyone’s as high maintenance as you, Stevie,” he insisted, and going by the look on Steve’s face, Eddie was lucky the man was currently preoccupied with driving. 

“Hey,” Robin’s voice, low and melodic, pulled you back into the backseat. “How, uh… how are you doing? I hope this isn’t, like, totally weird or overwhelming or anything.”

“No,” you jumped to offer -- and actually scooted across the seat a little, that way your voices could stay low as Eddie’s music began to blare. “I’m good. This is fun. I don’t really have a whole lot of friends -- and definitely not friends like this, so… yeah.”

“Cool,” Robin breathed. “I mean! Not cool that you don’t have any friends, but, like, cool that we’re not super scary or off-putting.”

“I mean,” you scrunched your nose; Robin’s eyes seemed clearer in the dim light of the car. You wondered how that was possible. “Steve’s music taste is kind of off-putting.”

“Hey, I heard that,” his eyes turned from you to Robin in the rearview. “What, did you recruit her to bully me like the rest of you?”

“Oh, shut up Steve,” Eddie teased.

“Yeah, what happened to not scaring off the new girl? And you say we’re bullies -- you’re being a total bully.”

“After I drive you everywhere, too. Unbelievable.”

“Holy shit!” Robin suddenly rasped, Steve completely forgotten. “That reminds me. The tape! Did you listen to Tango in the Night?”

“Oh my god!” you turned to face her. The two of you had somehow gotten closer. “Yes! I’ve been listening to it, like, all week. It’s so good. Thanks for recommending it,” you shyly added.

“Are you kidding? Of course! I swear, it’s such a great album. God, the whole,” she started bobbing her head, hands gesturing as she hummed out a chorus before softly singing “Mmmn ‘someone with that kind of intensity,’” she laughed at your reaction -- wide-eyed and giddy -- then grew playfully serious again. “‘You touched my hand, I played it cool -- and you reached out your hand to me…’” She held out her hand in a dramatic gesture, and you grabbed it out of excitement, giving it a little shake. 

“Oh my god,” you half-squealed. “It’s so, like… romantic.”

“Right? It totally is!” Robin replied, reaching forward to grab your knee now, seemingly just as excited as you were. “And the whole, ‘if I live to see the Seven Wonders--’ and her saying that she’ll never see something so beautiful ever again.”

“Ugh,” you groaned, leaning back with an awed smile. “Literally amazing.”

“Literally amazing,” Robin repeated. “Okay, I’ve got to know what you think of ‘When I see you again…’”

By the time you reached the drive-in, you’d completely forgotten that it was where you’d been going all along. You would have been content to let Steve drive you right out of Hawkins as long as you got to keep talking to Robin. Your anxieties were gone, left somewhere in the taillights, probably curled up between the handlebars of your bike and awaiting your return. But for now, you’d forget that they even existed. How could you not, when Robin was smiling at everything you said, laughing in that way that made her nose wrinkle and lines appear across her skin; saying something funny and totally endearing before immediately apologizing, somehow thinking that you’d find it annoying. Her apologies came like second nature to her, but every time you waved them off they grew a little less frequent until, by the time the BMW pulled through the gates of the drive-in theater, she wasn’t saying it anymore. 

You honestly thought that she just forgot; her brain moving too quickly now, too excitedly, to even think about apologizing. And even though you sometimes had a hard time keeping up with her, she always had those quiet moments of reflection, of sudden shyness, where she would softly ask you what you thought about whatever she’d said, or something about yourself; your favorite color, what other music you liked to listen to, which season you thought was better because she was sure that people who liked summer were crazy but people who liked winter were even crazier. 

Spring, she said. She liked spring. You wanted to tell her how that made sense because her eyes were the color of a breeze and her hair was the color of a fawn, and her freckles reminded you of pebbles in a stream, and streams always looked the most magical in spring. 

You wanted to tell her, but you didn’t know how, so instead all you replied with was, “I like the time of year when the fireflies start coming out.” And she’d looked at you like you just got it. Like you understood exactly what she’d been asking beneath the words she'd actually said. 

Steve bought everybody popcorn and sodas from the concession stand. He didn’t even ask, didn’t mention it, just parked the car and disappeared dragging Eddie behind him, a quick glance at Robin in the rearview that seemed to conceal a tiny conversation within it. When the car doors slammed shut and the two of you were alone, you both sat back against your seats, silence, for the first time, finally settling between you. It was loud after following nearly thirty minutes of constant noise. You tried not to breathe too loud, at the same time thinking about how sweet Robin’s own breathing was. But not sweet in the way a grandma calls someone sweet -- more… sweet like strawberries or root beer floats, or the sound that trees make when everything is really still and quiet and there’s just enough of a breeze to make you feel like the Earth itself is alive. That kind of sweet. The kind that’s found in the dirt, underneath a pile of leaves and roly-polys. The kind of sweet that feeds the worms. 

“Hey, uhm… thank you for coming,” Robin softly started, and if her breathing was sweet, her voice was enough to feed the whole Earth until it bloomed. “I honestly kind of feel like we’ve kidnapped you, this is so crazy.”

“Yeah, of course… I’m really glad that you invited me…” you shifted. It was now or never, and then the night would be over and you’d regret it. “I, uh… I was actually really hoping you’d be the one to call me, a-about the tape. I thought maybe you’d just have Steve do it…”

“Oh,” Robin breathed, then shook her head. “Uh, trust me, he usually would. Getting numbers is usually his thing, haha. He’s always trying to pick up girls. Honestly, it’s kind of insufferable, working with him when he’s all like ‘hello ladies,’” she pulled a face that was fantastically Steve-esque and pointed finger guns.

You laughed, and she watched your reaction through those intense springtime eyes. 

“But,” you smiled. “You called this time?”

You weren’t sure what exactly you were asking, considering you knew she’d called. Maybe you were asking why. Maybe you were trying to figure out what Steve picking up girls had to do with her being the one to call you. Maybe you wanted to know if that meant what you hoped it meant. 

“Yeah,” she whispered, eyes searching your face. “Yeah, I-I did.”

“Alright ladies,” Steve ducked back into the car. “We’ve got two Cokes and two Pepsis. I guess we can fight to the death over them, or something…”

“Don’t call us ladies,” Robin grimaced. “And I call a Coke. Oh,” she turned to you. “Unless, what do you want? If you want Coke, you can have mine. I won’t fight you to the death, or anything,” she laughed nervously, smiling brighter when you laughed, too. 

“I’m fine with either,” you started, not wanting to be a bother, but Steve shook his head. 

“Nope, we don’t do that bullshit here unless you’re under the age of sixteen--”

“Steve has, like, six adopted children,” Robin interjected, her eyes widening adorably as she took a sip of her drink. “Sometimes Eddie and I co-parent.”

“Anyway,” Steve insisted. “You pick. What’ll it be?”

“Uh… I’ll take the other Coke if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Jesus, it’s so nice to be around someone who actually has manners,” the comment was directed toward the other two as he handed a cup and a bag of popcorn back to you with a smile. 

“Thanks,” you instinctively said, then smirked. “You know, it, uh, might have something to do with the whole… six adopted children thing.”

“See, you’d think that -- and it’s true -- but these idiots still have the shittiest manners of anyone I know, and this particular idiot,” he pointed to Eddie, “Got held back like four times. He’s practically thirty at this point and he still can’t say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to save his goddamn life.”

“Jesus,” Robin groaned around a mouthful of popcorn. “Can you stop complaining for like two whole seconds? You’re ruining the mood.”

“Oh yeah? And what mood is that?”

Robin ignored him and turned to you. 

“We need, like, a curtain or something.”

“How would we watch the movie, then?” you giggled. 

“Honestly, at this point, I don’t even care. Anything to get away from this dingus,” she threw popcorn at the back of his head. 

“Hey! Not in the car, man -- what is wrong with you?”

“So, Y/N, having any regrets yet?” Eddie asked with dry teasing as the previews began to play. Steve jumped to adjust the radio station for the sound. 

“Nope,” you easily replied, glancing at Robin out of the corner of your eye. “No regrets here.”

Her eyebrows raised slightly, eyes locked with yours until music began to blare through the radio. 

“Got it,” Steve announced, and all of you settled in for the movie. 

You still didn’t even know what you were seeing. It didn’t matter, anyway. You weren’t paying attention to what was on the big screen in flashing lights and pixelated graphics -- something about an alien, maybe? You couldn’t focus on much of anything at all the second that Robin scooted close enough for you to feel the heat coming off of her leg. 

Drive-in movies aren’t really meant to be viewed from the back seat of a BMW. Usually, if you’re in the backseat of a BMW during a movie you’re doing something else…

Your face heated at the thought, made worse by the close proximity of the most attractive girl you’d ever seen. In order to see around Steve and Eddie, you and Robin had to slide into the middle seat. Which wouldn’t have hindered your ability to watch the movie if it hadn’t been for Robin’s leg brushing against yours, or the fact that you could practically feel her breathing. The contact, at first, had been an accident -- one that Robin had softly apologized for, to which you could only reply with a hasty shake of your head and thoughts about all the things you wish you could tell her about all the things she was doing to you. But gradually, as flashy fight scenes and dramatic music carried on, Robin began to inch her leg towards yours. 

You watched it from the corner of your eye -- watched as she shifted closer, retreated, then shifted closer again. You watched her fiddle with one of the rings on her hand, then mess with the button on the sleeve of her flannel, buttoning and unbuttoning it until you were sure the string had to snap any moment now. When her leg finally found its way towards yours again, you tried to ignore the way your chest was threatening to burst open and instead did something that probably would have made that feeling worse if you hadn't already gone numb. 

You opened your legs, bumping your knee against hers. It was quick contact -- gone almost as quickly as it had been -- but it was enough to make the whole left side of your body vibrate with warmth. You could almost still feel the lingering warmth of her knee against your own, even through the layers of fabric that had separated skin. 

God, you wondered what her skin felt like. You weren’t sure you’d actually survive finding out. 

You weren’t sure you’d survive when Robin's knee bumped against yours, knocking softly against your thigh a few times before settling there, finally staying. From that single point of contact, your entire essence grew warm with the feeling of her. Right then and there, you knew you wanted more. You wanted to wrap yourself into her flannel. You wanted to get lost in the way she smelled, take that smell with you even after she left. You wanted to lay your cheek against her neck and listen to the sound of her heart in her throat. 

Instead, you managed to adjust in your seat. Your hip barely brushed hers, but this time she looked over at you, hair fanning across her cheek before settling back against her ear. Her eyes were wide, and somehow they were even brighter in the darkness; even bluer. They reminded you of the ocean at night, pale but not dark enough to be called grey; nothing short of a melancholy, silvery blue. A tired blue. 

Your face must have been a reflection of her own because she spent a few seconds searching across it -- flickering between your eyes, trailing down the bridge of your nose… your lips. 

You thought you might actually die when she looked at your lips, gaze quickly flickering back up to meet your eye, perhaps to see what she would find there. You weren’t sure if you were hoping she’d find the truth or something else. But, whatever she found, she smiled gently at it -- that soft smile, the one that reminded you of a warm room, lit dimly; just enough to be safe, but not too much to be glaring. 

You wanted to taste it. You wanted to see how it felt against your own smile.

Your hips stayed touching, and halfway through the movie, Robin shifted again, propping her arm just behind you. Her shoulders were slanting towards yours, and you’d never felt… safer. More secure. Being close to her was like falling asleep slowly when you were tired; it felt good. Natural, like a stretch in the morning. You couldn’t believe that you’d never felt this for another person before. You couldn’t believe that you were even feeling this right now with a girl you’d known for barely a week -- someone you’d only actually talked to twice, including the drive over. 

But nothing about Robin felt strange or unfamiliar. It didn’t feel like you’d known her your whole life, or anything like that; you just had the feeling that you didn’t need to know her to be sure that you already liked her. You also had the feeling that you wanted to know her anyway, because how much more was there to like? 

By the time the credits started to roll, the crook of Robin’s shoulder was pressed firmly against yours. Your faces were barely a foot apart, and though your back hurt from the odd angle you’d just spent the last hour and a half in, you felt like you were floating. It wasn’t until Eddie and Steve began to talk, arguing -- obviously -- about the movie and how it had ended, that the two of you leaned away from each other. In the quiet atmosphere of the movie, with the distracting hum from the radio and the flashing lights draped down onto the car, it had almost felt like you’d been in another world. But now that cars were starting back up, engines revving as people pulled out of the drive-in and through the gate, now that the movie was over and reality had returned, the real world came rushing back; the world in Hawkins, Indiana, where your dad was worried about you seeing boys and Robin touching you like that would probably wind up being a fluke. She’d just been trying to see the movie, anyway. 

But, when you chanced a look over at her, a comment about the movie that you hadn’t been paying attention to on your lips, Robin’s expression shut you right up. She was already watching you, and when she caught you returning her gaze, she arched her eyebrows in an almost knowing look. A wrinkle appeared between her brows, and her mouth was half-open like she wanted to say something, but then Steve was turning around in his seat.

“So, what did you ladies think?”

You opened your own mouth, but nothing came out. Robin’s eyebrows raised an inch further, and then she turned her head towards Steve, dragging her eyes away from you at the last minute. 

“I told you, don’t call us ‘ladies.’ And it was… good.”

  Steve turned sideways to glance at her. 

“You didn’t like it,” he said after a moment.

“No! That’s not what I said, I said it was good.”

“Yeah, which totally means you didn’t like it. What about you? What did you think?”

“Uhm,” you started. “Yeah, it… it was good. I liked it.” Steve looked a confusing mix between slightly exasperated and… smug. Like he’d been right about something. 

“The ending was a little weird,” you continued, and suddenly Eddie was throwing his hands up. 

“Thank you,” he insisted. 

“I’m telling you. I’m surrounded by bozos. And this time I mean you, too,” he pointed at you in the rearview, and you laughed at his almost motherly tone. He smirked, but he wasn’t done yet. “Seriously, you’re officially a part of this shit, now, so you’re fair game.”

“Can you stop harassing my plus one?” Robin insisted, leaning forward to say it as close to his ear as possible. He swatted her away like a mosquito. “I’d like for her to maybe want to keep coming around, and you bullying her isn’t helping, Steve.”

“Wha-- ‘bullying’ -- I’m not bullying anybody.”

“You are being kind of a douche, Stevie,” Eddie sang, eyes wide as he glanced around the car like he was a lawyer in a courtroom. 

“I drive you assholes everywhere!”

“I feel like at this point I might as well get ‘ignore him’ tattooed to my forehead with a big red arrow pointing to Steve,” Robin muttered to you, and your barely stifled giggles nearly exploded when Steve threw a wadded-up popcorn bag directly at her head. 

Robin gasped, feigning annoyance as she launched it back at him a moment before turning to duck towards you and breaking into laughter. Steve turned to Eddie. 

“They’ve only had one date and already they’re teaming up on me.”

Just like that, neither of you were laughing anymore. Steve, on the other hand, realized what he’d just said and was awkwardly trying to laugh it off. 

“I mean, haha, I was just kidding. I didn’t mean, like…” he took one hand off the wheel to rub the back of his head.

“Steve,” Robin hissed, shoving his shoulder before turning around to look apologetically at you, her usually rosy skin red with embarrassment. “I swear, I'm gonna get it tattooed.”

You laughed even though you were panicking because holy shit what if? Because… Robin seemed to be panicking too, so maybe that meant she was wondering the same thing you were. So… you had to say something. 

“I don’t mind. Besides, as far as dates go, this is probably the nicest one I’ve been on since I was in, like, seventh grade.”

You weren’t going to tell them that the ‘date’ you were talking about was when you and Elsie Brown had gone to the candy store in town and then held hands on the soccer field while you talked about what you wanted to be when you grew up. Elise wanted to be a singer. You wanted to go to outer space. Not be an astronaut, just… get away from everything. Space had seemed like a pretty good distance. 

“Oh,” Robin’s voice, raspy and slightly panicked, replied. “Yeah, I mean… same. Dates, haha, they can be, like, super weird, am I right?”

“I guess,” you pulled a face between a smile and a grimace. “Honestly, I haven’t been on many dates since I was in middle school and everyone was, like, married to each other.”

“Oh my god,” she snorted. “They totally were. What the hell was wrong with us all when we were kids?”

“I have no idea,” you laughed. “I guess it seemed reasonable at the time? Like, fifth-grade math was fucking hard, so might as well get married to fucking Brett Weaver underneath the bleachers because your parents would probably approve of him, if he’d, like, stop picking his nose.”

Robin burst out laughing, a fluttery, velvety sound, and you immediately loved it with everything inside you. You didn’t want to ever stop hearing it. 

“Ew, Brett Weaver. I remember him,” her nose wrinkled. “He used to do it just, like, out in the open even though we all told him to knock it off. He never even turned red or anything.”

"Which is crazy,” you added. “Because I can't even ask for directions without feeling like I'll actually melt into the ground." 

"Holy shit," Robin waved her hands in eagerness, her body needing to do something in the moment it took to catch up with her brain. "Me too! It's honestly an issue."

"It is," Steve confirmed. "If a customer's mean to her I have to peel her off FV's floor and wrap her in a blanket like the victim of a crime." 

"The sticky floor," you added, and Robin laughed harder, high and squeaky. God, this girl. 

“The sticky floor,” she excitedly insisted, grabbing your knees. “Oh my god, you’re so cool…” It took her a moment to realize she’d said it, and then she was trying to cover up the way her voice had gone all genuine with a timid joke. “I mean, to be fair, I only ever hang out with fourteen-year-olds and this dingus,” she nodded to Steve. “So I probably don’t have the best cool gauge on the planet.”

“Well in this case I don't think you’re wrong.” Eddie piped up, sounding like he knew something the two of you didn’t. 

“Oh jeez, I don’t know,” you felt your face getting hot as you fiddled with your hands. “Thanks, I guess…”

“Alright dipshits, everybody get buckled,” Steve insisted as he shifted the car into gear. It had taken a little while for the parking area to clear out, and he was finally able to pull into the exit lane. 

“That’s a new one. Am I included in the ‘dipshit’ category or just the ‘bozo’ one?”

“Well, now we’re gonna have to make a third ‘wiseass’ category. That’s a first, considering the rest of you are idiots.”

Eddie and Robin both began protesting at the same time -- Eddie because Steve had just called him an idiot and Robin because Steve was still being “a fucking bully, I know for a fact your mom raised you better, dingus.”

Steve insisted that you had started it, and then he’d sent you a smile and a wink in the rearview as Robin was still determined to defend your honor against her dumb best friend. You told her that it was fine; you had a reputation for being a little too sarcastic -- something your parents reminded you of constantly. The girl replied that her parents told her that she talked too much when it wasn’t appropriate. 

Eddie insisted that both your parents were douchebags and the two of you were just fine the way you were. 

“What do parents know, anyway?” he asked as Steve pulled out onto the road, adjusting the radio so it was only a soft hum in the background, the song lyrics indistinguishable under the sound of the engine and your conversation. 

It was late and the road was dark save for the slice of headlights that cut through the curtain of black pavement and the gaping darkness that made up the forest. Inside the car, a faint glow from the dashboard created a pocket, like a bubble in the ocean, where the four of you moved through the night at a leisurely speed. It felt like you were standing still in time. It felt like you were going everywhere and nowhere all at once -- like you were moving a hundred miles an hour but would always stay here, on this road, in this night, together. 

You and Robin had returned to your seats, and the distance between your thigh and hers felt like it spanned the whole universe. You missed the warmth of her body, being able to sense it in the air, moving particles around like a warm breeze until every inch of you was touched by it. You hated how it felt like winter in the absence of her spring. 

So you leaned in slightly, propping your arm up on the middle seat and tilting your head like you were looking out at the road. Headlights skipped over the pavement, the occasional loose rock, and you thought you could make out the pale-yellow center line that separated the sides of the road. It was eerie, but it felt familiar, too. It felt like a memory. After a moment, Robin’s hand was inching toward yours. It was nothing drastic, nothing strong enough to push you spinning into orbit or moving forward in space -- just enough to make it smell like spring again. And the only unfamiliar part was how your life as of only a few hours ago now felt cold and empty without that breeze. Without Robin and her warmth and her smile and her glorious flaw of talking too much. 

You wondered how you were going to sleep tonight. You wondered if you’d ever get to see her again. 

When Steve pulled into the Family Video parking lot, those questions rested heavily on the backs of your eyelids. You saw them every time you blinked. Steve put the car into park and everybody climbed out. Eddie opened your door for you, giving you a genuine, eager smile when you thanked him. He was so different from what you’d been expecting when his van had pulled into the lot. The same van that Eddie returned to after patting Steve on the back, shaking your hand, and giving Robin a hug with the declaration that he “had fun, even if the ending was stupid,” to which Steve rolled his eyes. He was smiling, though, and couldn’t help but give a determined “drive safe, alright?” before Eddie pulled out onto the road, his music blaring loud enough that he’d definitely piss some people off. He didn’t seem to care. 

When you turned back from the road, a faint smile still on your face, you found Robin watching you. When you saw her, your smile widened, though you tucked your chin to try and conceal it, hoping your expression didn’t give you away. But she tilted her head to follow you, pressing her lips together as the corner of her mouth twisted into a dimple that you wanted nothing more than to kiss. 

“I guess I should get going,” you weakly offered. “This was really fun… thanks again for inviting me…”

“Of course,” he replied, voice hushed. “I’m really glad you came.”

It felt like you needed to whisper, with how quiet the night was; crickets chirped softly, and you didn’t want to speak over them on the chance that you’d miss something important within their humming choir. 

Robin was a special kind of beautiful in the moonlight. Her hair looked even softer to the sound of crickets. Her skin, pale smoothness interrupted by dark freckles and blush, looked ethereal beneath such a quiet sky. The fact that you were in a video store parking lot was probably for your own benefit; you weren’t sure you’d be able to handle it if the two of you were somewhere even a bit more beautiful. You might have actually stopped breathing. 

You almost did when Robin took a step towards you, one hand crossed over her body to cradle the opposite elbow. 

“Uh, if… if my dingus friends haven’t scared you off yet… maybe we could do this again sometime?”

A smile bloomed across your face, and your brain was racing too fast to even register what was happening. 

“I’d like that,” you replied, a single breath hidden beneath the symphony of crickets. 

“Cool,” Robin replied, just as softly. “Awesome. Great. I mean… yeah, I-I’d like that, too -- if you’d like it. Uh…” She shook her head, never breaking eye contact with you. You felt like you were floating and sinking all at the same time, suspended in air. 

“Awesome… great,” you repeated with a smirk. 

“Hey,” Steve’s voice interrupted your staring, and the two of you managed to drag your eyes away from one another. “Uh, shit, did you bike here?”

“Yeah,” you hesitantly replied. “It’s fine though, I bike pretty much everywhere.”

“Yeah, but it’s, like, pretty late,” Steve said, propping a hand on his hip, and suddenly you remembered that he was a bit older than you -- though it seemed like more than just a couple of years when he got that worried mom look on his face. “Come on -- throw your shit in the back, I’ll drive you home. Don’t want you getting kidnapped or anything.”

“Oh, you really don’t have to,” you waved your hands, but Robin was nodding. 

“No, Steve’s right. It’s super dark out, and we’re, like, surrounded by the woods, and you’re alone, so it would be, like, ridiculously easy for someone to just pull up beside you and yank you into a van.”

“See,” Steve raised his eyebrows and pointed at Robin. “Even she agrees.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean, dingus?” Robin glared at him before turning a pleading expression back to you. “Please,” she sang, folding her hands together. “If you bike home I won’t be able to sleep because I’ll be worried that a pervert kidnapped you and is selling your organs.”

“And she’s not even kidding,” Steve added. 

“I’m not.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” you caved, smirking. “But… I don’t know if my bike will fit in your trunk.”

“We’ll make it work,” Steve shrugged.

He insisted on carrying it over to his car for you and Robin rolled her eyes. You smiled, too distracted by the faces she was making at her friend’s chivalrous behavior -- comparable to someone who'd eaten bad food -- to notice that Steve had already managed to carefully shove your bike into the back of his car. He couldn’t close the trunk, but you told him your house wasn’t far and he didn’t seem worried about it. 

“Alrighty ladies -- hop in.”

“Jesus Christ, Steve, will you stop that,” Robin insisted, waving her hands before dropping them suddenly and staring at the car. “Oh. Shit, uhm…” she turned to you. “Do you want to sit in the front or the back? O-Or we could both sit in the back? I don’t really know how--”

“I don’t mind sitting in the back,” you offered before she could get herself too worried about it. You gave her a reassuring smile, and Robin’s anxiety seemed to deflate. Her shoulders loosened and she smiled back at you. 

“Okay cool. As long as you’re sure?”

“Yeah, totally,” you shrugged, already opening the door. “No big deal.”

“Okay,” Robin nodded, and you got the idea that she was reassuring herself now. 

You barely kept yourself in the back anyway. Leaning between the two front seats, you propped your elbows on the armrest so you could direct Steve to your house. You probably didn’t need to actually lean on the storage compartment to do that, but the minute you had, Robin had turned to and asked if you’d ever been to the diner in town because she liked their strawberry milkshakes. Before you’d had the chance to answer, however, she’d backtracked because “Of course you’ve been to the diner in town” so instead she asked you what your favorite flavor of milkshake was. 

You almost missed telling Steve where to turn onto your street. By then, you almost wished you had because as he pulled in front of your house, the porch light glowing glaringly onto the yard, you realized that the night was over and now you were home. Now you’d have to go inside and you wouldn’t see Robin until who even knew when. You felt a sinking disappointment fill your stomach as you got out of the car. But then Robin was climbing out after you and helping you pull your bike out of the trunk of Steve’s car. Her elbow brushed yours and instead of apologizing for it, she gave you a little smile and carefully maneuvered your bike onto the asphalt. 

“Well,” you scratched at your arm. “This is me…”

“Yeah,” Robin softly replied, scuffing the toe of her converse along the pavement. You heard the hum of crickets, the same backdrop as Family Video; no matter where you went in Hawkins, there would always be the song of crickets. 

“This was a lot of fun,” you whispered, glancing between the cherry red of her converse and the ocean blue of her eyes. Everything about her was color; she was like a rainbow, even in the darkness of night. The yellow from the porchlight your parents had left on lit up her hair like a candle, shadows slanting over her face, making her look even more stunning. 

You wanted her to come inside with you. You didn’t want this to be where you parted ways. 

“Uhm,” you continued, needing to say something. You were too scared to tell her what you actually wanted so instead you said, “It was a pretty good date… as far as dates go.”

You wanted to sound like you were joking. You guessed that you likely didn’t. Robin laughed anyway. The toe of her shoes jabbed into the pavement. You realized that she’d doodled on the white rubber, shapes that you couldn't make out in the shadows and dim light. 

“Yeah,” she laughed huskily. “Yeah, it was. I guess according to middle school logic, that makes us married, right?”

You smiled, glancing down at your feet again. 

“Yeah, I guess it does. So, uh… I guess that also means I’ll be seeing you around?”

“Um, yeah… sure,” Robin’s eyes widened like she couldn’t quite believe that you were real. You knew the feeling; you still hadn’t figured out if she was. “You, uh, know where to find me,” she lifted two fingers to her forehead in a salute. God, you wanted to kiss her. 

“Alright, well…” you murmured. “Night.”

“Night,” she replied, a soft whisper as she reached up to brush some hair behind her ears. 

She watched you wheel your bike up to the porch, and then she watched as you turned back around to give her a final wave before slipping inside. She also watched your door slam shut. It was only when the porch light turned off that she was able to actually move. 

When she ducked back into the passenger seat, Steve was already staring at her with that annoying look on his face, mouth half open in a grin. 

“Shut up, shut up, don’t even say anything, Steve, I swear.”

“Hey, I didn’t! I didn’t say anything,” he raised his hands in surrender before pulling the car back into the street. “Didn’t say anything…” he repeated, staring straight in front of him. Robin was rubbing her temples. 

“Holy shit, Robs.”

“Stop.”

“She’s so in love with you.”

“Steve,” Robin wailed, dropping her face into her hands with a dramatic smack. 

“What?! I’m being completely serious! Dude, she’s, like, head over heels. Robin,” he insisted, and the girl groaned. Finally, though, she looked up at him through her fingers and slightly smeared mascara. 

Steve smiled kindly and lifted a hand. After a moment of hesitation, Robin rolled her eyes and placed her hand in his. He gave it a squeeze -- and then a little shake, and Robin was trying not to smirk. 

“Be excited, Buckley,” he encouraged. “That was, like, really good.”

“Oh my god,” she groaned. “It was so good.”

“So good!” he agreed, nearly crashing the car because he was grinning so wide. Robin squeezed his hand back -- more out of stress than anything else -- and he took that as a good enough sign to let go of her and assume she was no longer at risk of flat-lining in his car. 

“What am I going to do, Steve?” she whispered, her smile not completely erasing the genuine worry in her question. 

“Easy,” he softly started. “You’re gonna get the fucking girl.” 

Robin scrunched her eyes shut. 

“And then you’re gonna get married -- for real, none of this middle school bullshit -- and I’m gonna plan your wedding because you’re way too unorganized for that--” Robin was laughing now. Steve smiled. “And we’re gonna have to bribe Max to wear a dress. I’ll probably have to buy her that skateboard she’s been wanting just for her to even think about it.”

“Oh my god,” Robin groaned again, but this time the pain of it was offset by her laughter. “Holy shit…” she breathed. “How did that just happen? What even just happened?”

Steve looked over at her and smirked. 

“One of us had to get lucky eventually, right?” 

And right now, with the rosy tint to her cheeks and the way she was absolutely vibrating with eagerness and excitement and anxiety -- all the symptoms of love -- Steve could safely say that he was glad it had wound up being her. 

________________________________________________________________

Taglist: @alonezz, @gaysludge, @gray-cheese

[violettduchess]

A/N: It was close but Keith won the short fic poll so here we are!

Keith x Reader

WC: ~550

He is never gentle. Your body is his to explore as he wishes, to bend and mold in his strong hands as he chooses. He is greedy, insatiable; his mouth and fingers sink in and bite where they want, always wandering and always restless and always hungry. He devours you, bite by bite, sets you aflame with the gnashing of his white teeth, the decisive grip of his long fingers. He leaves you a pile of ashes, the glowing remnants of a ruinous explosion that robs you of speech, of breath, of the ability to think. Even now he looks down at you, his golden eyes bright as he surveys the glowing embers you have become, and he smiles slowly, curling a strand of your hair around his finger possessively. 

Mine, says the gesture. 

Mine, says the consecution of red marks on your skin. 

Mine, says the hurricane of his molten gaze.

Yours, you answer with fingertips that trace the sharp lines of his face. 

Yours, you answer with a press of your kiss-swollen lips to the hard muscle of his bicep.

Yours, you answer with a nuzzle against his neck.

Somehow you find the strength to pull your sore body from the bed, the bedcovers a violent tangle on the floor. You reassure him you will be right back as you disappear into the bathroom, the adjoining room of white and tea green marble. He watches you leave, his long, naked body stretched shamelessly across the taupe silk sheets, a sharp, wolfish smile on his face. 

You need a moment to catch your breath, splash the heat of your skin with cool water, to settle back into the bones and muscles of your body. Smoothing your hair with your fingers does little to tame the wilderness created by his grip. 

Ah well, such is the price of passion. 

Feeling refreshed, you head back into the bedroom and stop. Keith is still in bed, but now the covers have been untangled and are pulled up modestly over his hips. He smiles, almost shyly, as you cross the room and slide into bed next to him.

“Hello, you.” Your words are warm and welcoming as you open your arms in invitation. 

He pulls you towards him, his patient fingers combing over your hair, smoothing down some of the tangle. His gaze is the warmth of a hearthfire in midwinter as it travels across your face, your bare shoulders. And there he stops, brow dipping in a frown. Across the slope of your shoulder is a red chain of bite marks. You cup his face with one hand, your thumb stroking the softness of his cheek.

“It’s ok.”

And it is. He sees the daylight of love in your gaze, the crescent moon of tenderness in the curve of your soft smile. And he finds himself returning it to you, so sweetly and with such open affection your heart feels full, heavy with the weight of his devotion.

He lowers his curly head, pressing a line of reverential kisses just below the marks, sliding his strong hands around your bare back, pulling you close to the sanctuary of his body. You melt against him, a sigh misty with pleasure escaping you.

Oh how you love them….with all that you are.

Tagging: @aquagirl1978 @alexxavicry @queengiuliettafirstlady @rhodolitesrose @ikemen-writer @bellerose-arcana @thewitchofbooks @aria-chikage @redheadkittys @tele86 @dear-mrs-otome @firestar-otomeobsessed @curious-skybunny @rhodoliteschaos @kpop-and-otome @writingwhimsey @mxrmaid-poet @silver-dahlia @wendolrea @otomefoxystar @nightfoxqueen @myonlyjknight @queen-dahlia @aceuuuuu @scorchieart @bubblexly

Dividers courtesy of @benkeibear

[tojiscrack]

𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄

: ̗̀➛ word count: 12.4k

: ̗̀➛ pairing: levi ackerman x reader

: ̗̀➛ notes: the new trailer being released scared the ever-living shit out of me. salty that my bbg eren wasn't even shown. not ready for the ending to be animated at ALL.

: ̗̀➛ things were going well for you (can you actually believe it?) this past week. however, that miracle seems to have an expiry date after another encounter with captain levi, in front of all your fellow classmates..

previous chapter :)

next chapter :)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

you'd had good days in the training corps, contrary to popular belief (quite literally popular belief, for marco had once informed you that the cadets had had a conversation about how you probably suffered the worst of the wrath of keith). and today was one of them.

you were over the moon after your frequent training sessions with captain levi. it had been a week since the first one, and although sleep was dragging at your eyes, you had never been happier. you could spend a thousand years doing countless laps just to be in the presence of those dazzling, silver-grey eyes --

"oi, are you even listening to me?" a wretched voice distracted you, pulling you out of your partial slumber.

drowsily and groggily, you blinked several times, your vision having been previously blurred, now moving into focus to form the view of jean's scowl in front of you. you averted your gaze to your right where you found marco staring at you fondly -- you were all in the mess hall, eating breakfast before regular training began. 

"i'm still half asleep. excuse me for blocking out your dramatic monologue."

before jean could start on you (you had prepared yourself by sitting upright and narrowing your eyes at him defensively) marco had helpfully intervened, calming the usual tension between you all.

"she does more training than the rest of us now," he had informed jean with a shrug. "give her this one, will you?"

jean looked betrayed. 

"you're usually the one taking no sides here, what happened to that, huh?" he demanded, clearly offended. he turned his glare to you once more. "it was you, wasn't it? you probably bribed him under the table or something, you devil --"

"and how do you suggest i do that, huh?" you grinned, wriggling your eyebrows suggestively so that jean's initial point had flown out of the opened double doors and his face had paled notably. much to your amusement, marco had turned a pretty shade of pink as well, the poor boy. you concluded that this was all jean's fault, as per usual.

marco coughed, looking uncomfortable. you laughed, pushing your bowl to the side, a silent gesture for sasha to come and down the rest of your porridge like every morning (it was routine by this point).

"calm down, marco. i'm only interested in one man and it's not you," you revealed. you took note of the way marco was scratching the back of his neck. "it was a joke, buddy."

"that is why you should be siding with me," scoffed jean, after gulping down the rest of his water from his cup. "hope you've learned your lesson, marco."

"'hope you've learned your lesson, marco'," you mimicked, in an unusually deep voice. "do you ever shut up?"

instead of jean throwing his spoon at you, which you could see he was contemplating on doing -- judging from the way he aimed it directly at your forehead -- he frowned, brows furrowing and unclenching his jaw. 

"what, got something on my face?"

"yeah, a weird smile," he responded with disgust. "why are you doing that? it's creepy."

"her smile never hurt anyone," marco intervened kindly.

"it's scaring me --"

"shut your mouth you donkey --"

jean choked. "i preferred horse."

"yeah? well donkeys are uglier," you stated without a skip of a beat. 

"what?"

"guys.."

"you'd be looking at a mirror if you ever came across one --"

"WHAT?"

you stopped, biting your cheek to stop yourself from laughing at jean's face. now, he looked more like a donkey than ever. marco, despite trying to play peacemaker (once again), covered his smile with his cup, bringing it to his lips as if you weren't sitting right next to him, aware of it all. 

"you're not the prettiest flower in the field either, l/n --"

"well let's think about this!" you exclaimed, clapping your hands and then resting your chin on them, elbows standing on the wooden table for grip. you faced marco. "would you rather be a flower or a donkey?"

putting marco on the spot seemed to startle him. he glanced over at jean -- who might just have steam shooting out of his ears soon.

"don't answer that," jean ordered bitterly. "leave marco out of it --"

"alright," you nodded, silently agreeing with him for the sake of marco's comfort. you searched the rest of the table. "connie!"

the bald-headed cadet, who had the end of his spoon in his mouth to play a game with his porridge (flicking it up with the spoon and catching it again), looked up at you, alert.

"would you rather be a flower or a donkey?"

he didn't even try masking his confusion, but he answered nonetheless. 

"flower, obviously," he answered, as though it were the most apparent thing in the world. and then he went on a tangent. "i think i'd be a lily. they look sick. and it's probably the only flower i know from the top of my head, now that i think about it --"

"no, you'd be a dandelion," you counterargued calmly.

connie looked intrigued. "why's that?"

"one blow and it's got no petals."

everyone on that table had started laughing. it was only mina who attempted to mask her snickering with a hasty cough, bless her. 

"what?" connie questioned over the sniggering (the table next to you was now taking part in the laughter too). "what's so funny?"

"back to my original point," you said, turning back to your main two friends with a smile (jean looked too safe for your liking, joining in on the laughter as if he wasn't the root cause of it). "thank you for calling me a flower, jean!"

he gave you a dirty look. "it's a metaphor."

"well mine isn't a metaphor, but i know i look better than you, that's for sure --"

"not true --"

"that's why you can't pull anyone --"

"rich, coming from the girl who thinks she's married to the strongest man within these walls --"

"what's your point?" you demanded sourly.

"you're delusional," retorted jean, drawing out the letters with more length so it sunk in. "no one would listen to a girl that has quite literally lost it when she says that i can't pull --"

"well let's think about this!" you exclaimed for the second time that morning, smiling all too wide with an air of annoyance. 

jean groaned, giving a pointed look to marco for assistance; marco shrugged. 

you looked down the table again. 

"sasha!" you called out. sasha had been finishing off your bowl of porridge when she heard you say her name. "sasha -- do you think jean's good looking?"

"hey!" snapped jean, kicking your shin under the table.

you shrieked, immediately clutching your knee in pain. with a sharp glare at the culprit from across you, you raised your leg and kicked the bench he was sat on harshly. he nearly laughed, perhaps at how you 'missed', but hadn't gotten the chance to, before he found that the bench had slid from right beneath his bottom, and he had crashed harshly to the floor. everyone else on that bench merely moved the slightest inch, and then laughed at jean.

"you won't.. say something embarrassing after, will you?" sasha asked hesitantly. "like you did to connie?"

"yeah, just so you know, i know what you meant!" connie had intervened heatedly, glaring at you with his eyes narrowed. 

you barely regarded him. "pipe down, dandelion."

as he attempted to shout at the rest of the table laughing, you glanced back at sasha, shaking your head.

"connie's on my bad side, he knows that," you informed her, remembering how he had made fun of your attempt at a wink. "you're good."

"phew," sighed sasha, chuckling. "anyway, sorry jean, but you're not that good looking to me."

"whatever, potato girl --"

"cut it out!"

the arguing had continued on the table. marco eventually gave up trying to stop it when sasha and connie had gotten involved, and eventually, even reiner and bertholdt found interest in the debate going on. it was almost a surprise, for the two barely interacted with situations like these.

"i don't think looks matter at all that much," hannah diament added softly. as all heads had turned to her (seated at the very end of the table) she blushed. "i think that you have to get to know the person first --"

"ouch, franz, she basically just said that you're ugly," you muttered out from the corner of your mouth, eyes wandering about the ceiling dramatically.

hannah had begun sputtering out protests. "n-no! i didn't and i -- i wasn't even talking about franz!"

franz, who was sitting across from her, had covered his face with a hand. but from what you could see, his ears were pink. the two were way too close with each other on a daily basis. the whole corps knew that they were an item, yet they still felt the need to deny it all the same. 

"you were giving him heart eyes across the table!" connie accused her, placing his head in his hands and then forming a face which must've been a re-enactment of what he had seen. "i saw you!"

the rest of the table agreed, and even after the conversation had ended, hannah had found it necessary to still try and convince a few people that she was most definitely not talking about franz ("i swear, it was just my opinion!").

breakfast had ended not long after, and the cadets were called to stand out on the training field and line up accordingly. you position was situated in between armin and eren and across jean. this was not the usual schedule that the cadets had to follow, however, keith had ushered you all out of the mess hall, declaring that he had an announcement to make. 

no one was more curious than you, for keith was not a known enemy to them like he was to you. it was good to know your enemy's next move, their ideals, just any info on them. but nothing had prepared you for what you were going to hear today.

as the rest of the cadets were coming out of the hall, taking their places on the field, you made eye contact with jean, who seemed rather annoyed with you. you honestly did not care, you just needed someone to talk to.

"what do you think he's going to say?" you asked, voice an octave lower than usual.

jean did not respond; he chose to glare at you instead, his eyes glinting in a way that practically screamed at you to shut-the-fuck-up. how very impolite.

fine, you supposed armin would be open to having a conversation with you (you refused to start one with eren, the bastard deserved what he got). 

"armin, what do you think he's going to --"

"leave him out of it," snarled jean, who had finally decided to speak to you. "don't drag innocent people into your bullshit."

"bullshit?" you repeated, irate. "it's a harmless question!"

"can you guys stop talking?" the devil's spawn asked from your right. his green eyes flashed angrily, and although his question addressed both you and jean, those same eyes focused solely on you instead, as though jean was no longer in the picture. 

"why are you getting involved?" you shot back, doing the complete opposite of what eren had asked of you, voice growing louder with every word.

eren's brows had furrowed to the point where there was a deep crease in between them. "shout louder, why don't you?" 

"no, no, no, you idiot," jean spat out, eyes narrowing at eren menacingly. "you think she won't do what you just said?"

"wha--"

"'cause she will."

"i will," you agreed. "what, scared of getting in trouble again?"  you were attempting to indirectly refer to the last time you and eren had spoken (or barely spoken, in that case, seeing as you had not said a word to him when you had keith reprimand him).

"no," grumbled eren. "but i've got a bone to pick with you --"

"eren, i don't think we should be arguing here of all places," armin whispered from your left. bless him, he's just like marco, you thought to yourself, amused. "just do it later."

eren wanted to argue -- it seemed like it, at least -- but ultimately let out a breath through his nose in frustration, glaring ahead, his eyes being forced to land on poor mina, who looked confused as to why she was being targeted (the con of having been placed opposite the anger-management-child).

you mouthed 'don't worry about it' to her, which eren had seen from the corner of his eye, and you noticed how the fists placed behind his back had clenched notably. what an angry child. 

none of you had to wonder where keith was for too long, for his booming voice had penetrated the still air the moment you had begun looking around for him. you had tried to figure out what the hell he was planning through the tone of his voice, but it proved to be more difficult due to the distance between you and him: he was shouting from somewhere far behind you, walking up and down the lines, saying something that barely touched your interest. 

until it did.

"this isn't your usual routine, so things will get confusing!" he had said. barely of any relevance to you, clearly. he continued loudly. "but that is no excuse! i expect each and every one of you maggots to know what you're doing -- DO NOT EMBARRASS ME!"

you repressed the urge to scoff aloud. you're literally an embarrassment to yourself.

"now," he went on, undisturbed by you or anyone else who dared to even breathe properly around him, "in preparation for your graduation approaching in a couple of months, you will be trained on everything you've ever known and more with a particular expert! straighten your backs, scums, you look like worms with that awful posture!"

there was movement in the lines, almost like a ripple in water. you hadn't moved an inch. who the hell was he to tell you that your posture was bad? your back was as straight as the wires shot out of the odm gear. 

"you will continue to train as normal, only, through the eyes of captain levi, member of the scout regiment!"

now that moved you.

jean's eyes shot over to you as you visibly turned around, standing on your tip-toes to try and get a good look. the captain was shorter than average, of course, and you weren't excelling in the height department much either, making it more difficult for you to see over the heads of those tall bastards behind you. unlucky for you, it was bertholdt who was placed directly behind you. it's as if..

it's as if keith placed you in that line-up position because he knew. 

he knew damn well what he was doing, saying his speech at a faraway distance where you knew captain levi probably was.

that bald homewrecker --

you could actually scream in frustration. 

"turn around, you fucking dingbat!" jean hissed, voice low but holding every bit of venom it would carry even if he spoke at his usual volume. "oi! listen to me!"

"leave me alone," you squabbled back, waving a hand at him without actually looking at him. "can you see him though? you're tall, jean, where is --"

"i'm not helping you, knucklehead."

"ugh, you're such a chicken."

so when jean did not help you (and you would never swallow down your pride and ask for eren's help) you turned back around and placed your fists against your back again, disappointed. today, you vowed to yourself: you will see him again, and he'll train you specifically. 

"you literally saw him this morning."

"shut your mouth, you donkey."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

you saw him.

but he was watching other people. he wasn't watching you, like he should be doing.

is that seriously how it's going to be right now? while you work your butt off with your dear friend marco, he was going to pay attention to other people?

the fake knife in your hand you had disarmed from marco only moments ago was now the centre of your thoughts. if you could just jam it directly into your chest, maybe then he'd pay attention to you, the little shrimp.

"y/n, don't get distracted again," marco told you gently, whilst you threw the knife at him (he caught it easily with one hand). it was his turn, again, to try and stop you from disarming him. "i'm sure he has his reasons."

"you look for the good in anybody," you reminded your friend, bitterly. "there is nothing good about this -- ah!"

marco, the sly devil, used your distracted state to his advantage by jamming the knife forward in an attempt to hit your chest. you bent back into a bridge to dodge, and then flipped yourself backward to straighten yourself up in surprise.

"that was low, marco."

he shrugged, chuckling. "i did what i had to do."

"you're just as bad as him," you told him, as if expecting him to drop down to your feet and kiss them, begging for your forgiveness. "both you and jean." 

"i never thought i'd see the day where you put me in the same category as jean," replied marco, smiling that innocent smile.

you raised your brows at him, folding your arms over your chest in disappointment. "neither did i, but people can surprise you."

marco thought for a moment, silent as he gazed at the floor, before surprising you when he looked back up.. not exactly at you, but staring at something behind you, eyes wide.

"what's wrong wi--"

"he's looking!" he alerted you.

you stared at marco, snatching the opportunity to impress captain levi as you straightened up, mouthing a 'what?'. and when marco nodded frantically, you did what you had to do. rapidly, you used your two hands to grab the arm where the knife was held, slid underneath it to pin his arm behind his back as he bent forward in response. you took the time to quickly knee him in the chest, which caused the grip on the knife to fall as he throws it up in the air (presumably for him to catch). you don't let him, releasing him from your grip and kicking him to the ground, hurriedly extending an arm to catch the knife successfully. 

you spun on the spot, breath heavy as you eyed the captain..

who wasn't even looking your way.

you glared at the ground, before slowly turning to stare at your friend on the floor, who was gripping onto his side in pain. 

"you lied to me?"

"what?" gasped marco, his kind, freckled face now overcome with confusion. "no! he -- he really was looking --"

"don't lie to me!" you snapped, throwing the knife at him and stomping your foot in anger. "i did all of that for nothing."

"traitor," marco had the audacity to say, as he sat upright and reached for the knife. 

you shrugged, grinning at him. "i did what i had to do."

marco smiled. "typical."

you and marco continued to train together, occasionally glancing back at the moody captain every few minutes, and you yourself felt as though your husband was starting to rub off on you: no longer were you the bubbly and bright person you were that very morning. now, you were just as grumpy as him, and he was the root cause of your sudden change in mood. in your own mind, you believed that even if you were the same now, you were still made for each other.

less than half of an hour had passed by, and it seemed that keith was now copying you in being aggravated. you grit your teeth together as he shouted for everyone's attention. of course, you thought, eyes narrowed at the bald man making his speech, in order to steal captain levi's heart, you have to become just like his wife. well, you decided, as you listened in, keith was smart for that one, though this was unusual for his game-plan. 

you shrugged it off: he could never be you.

"i'm tired of the same old partners!" he called out roughly. "you won't learn if you don't battle with someone different!"

there were murmurs following his comment, but no actual movement. that aggravated him even more.

"well what are you waiting for, you bunch of sloths? SWITCH!"

several people jumped up at his demand, and immediately, all of the pairs began forming one big huddle, people picking different partners obediently. not you, of course. you still wanted to be with marco. 

"where the hell do you think you're going?" you snapped at him when you saw him standing up and turning away. "you're my partner."

marco scratched the back of his head, smiling at you. it was a mask, you knew. marco always followed orders to the best of his ability. 

"you heard commandant shadis," he said, his voice smooth like water. "he wants us to change partners."

"i still want to be yours!" you remarked, annoyance seeping from your harsh tone. 

marco laughed at you. this guy even had a gentle laugh, too. what was not so innocent of him? marco didn't have a single bad bone in his body. 

"i want to be your partner too, but we can't, y/n," he told you, gesturing to the movement of people around you. "i'm sure you'll find someone better than me anyway. i've had my ass handed to me multiple times now --"

you tried catching the eyes of people passing by, but it almost seemed as though people were purposefully avoiding you. you rolled your eyes, raising a brow at marco.

"all right, whatever," you said, yielding at last. "i hope someone else beats you up better than me."

marco raised his eyebrows, looking as though that could not be farther from the truth. "you're the best at hand-to-hand, y/n. i doubt that." and then he walked away, finding a new partner, one who you recognised to be milieus zeremski. 

you shrugged, turning away. was that the reason why people were avoiding you? it wasn't quite like you to wallow in silence wondering about it. so, naturally, you spoke up, of course. 

"hey," you caught mina's arm. she turned to you with a smile, and you hurried to finish off your question. "why's everyone avoiding me?"

mina's eyes widened and you were now swallowed whole by the soft black in her eyes. 

"oh," she began, chuckling quietly. "well, it's kind of a good reason, if you ask me. everyone knows you're good at close combat, so no one really wants to bare the brunt of your anger. speaking of, are you all right? i've noticed that you aren't quite as happy as you usually are."

you smiled back at her in an attempt to be polite. mina has never annoyed you, and the two of you usually met up with a couple of other few girls before bed to have a comfortable chat. 

"i'm fine, but captain levi is pissing me off," you grumbled.

"i'd ask why, but i'd better find a partner for myself," she responded, looking around. "good luck though!"

and then she walked away, leaving you staring after her, deep in thought. perhaps there was something good out of not having a partner... a plan was forming in your head, and maybe it was obvious, because even as jean walked past you, he made sure to comment on it.

"stop making that thinking face and find a bloody partner!"

he was lucky you were too busy thinking, otherwise you would have marched over to him and given him a black eye to sport for the entire week (and more). 

ignoring him, with an even more irate expression on your face, you thought to yourself carefully. if you had no partner, the attention would be on you -- specifically the attention of a certain someone. someone who had been neglecting you lately. the plan was perfect! all you had to do was make sure everyone stayed away from you (not a problem there) and then not only would he have no choice but to pay attention to you, but if you were lucky, you could also manage to be partners with him, captain levi!

part a of the plan was working: people were avoiding you. you waited for a bit, standing in the centre of the huddle, making no movement to search for a partner. it pleased you how, at the same time, this would be defying keith's orders too; a bonus point. 

until you heard someone call out to you, the voice distant and far.

"hey, y/n!"

just ignore it, you thought to yourself, the rhythmic beat of your heart speeding up and becoming less in tune with your breathing. it'll go away, it'll go -- 

"y/n!"

the voice was closer.

"y/n l/n!"

the voice was clearer.

"l/n!"

the voice was masculine.

"i'm talking to you!"

the voice was right behind you.

now you were angry.

you turned around, jaw clenched and brows furrowed deeply, staring up at the culprit. you couldn't believe it. had he still not learned his lesson?

eren jaeger.

you could actually gauge out his eyes in frustration. why wouldn't he just stop being so nosy? stop being so annoying? stop being so bothersome?

"get away from me," you demanded, making a move to walk away.

and the boy.. oh this boy.. he had the nerve to pinch at the sleeve of your jacket to stop you.

the worst possible scenario for your plan, because now it looked as though you were partners. eyes darting to captain levi, your blood boiled when you saw that his attention was elsewhere. slowly but surely, you turned your head to glare daggers at the brunette tugging at your sleeve. you ripped your arm out of his grip and gave him one of the dirtiest looks you could muster.

"don't ever touch me again."

eren did not take this lightly. "you were ignoring me, what did you expect?"

"can you just stay away?" you shouted, indignant. "now's not a good time!"

"i have to ask you something," he continued as if he hadn't heard you.

"go away!" you hollered, almost desperately. "ask me another time, okay? just. go. away."

he followed you like a lost puppy even as you began walking away, hoping to create some distance. you nearly contemplated running.

you stopped walking in annoyance and he nearly bumped into you when you stood your ground. you glared up at him.

"why can't you just listen?" you whispered, voice shaky with spleen. you had now resorted to using hand movements to prove your point. "why do you have to be so nosy? why can't you just bother someone else? WHY?"

eren was persistent despite your anger and your demands. "why did you get me in trouble with the commandant the other day?"

you stared at him in actual disbelief. of all the things he could have asked, it had to be a question as dumb as that? this very question was about to tarnish your plans, and it couldn't have waited? he couldn't have waited for a better time to ask, like you basically promised? 

if you were angry before, then lord knows what you were feeling now, because you were seeing red.

"l/n!" keith yelled at you as he drew closer. "who's your partner?"

you took in a deep breath. just in time, you thought to yourself, and then jabbed a finger in eren's chest without even looking at him.

"him," you answered, voice low. "he's my partner."

eren had no time to protest before keith shouted at the two of you to begin the sparring by standing in your starting positions and getting into formation. 

and that was how eren found himself on the floor (he put up a good fight, better than most, you must say) with you above him, panting with each punch you gave him.

"why --"

punch.

"-- won't --" 

punch.

"-- you --" 

punch.

"-- learn --" 

punch.

"-- your --" 

punch.

"-- lesson?"

when you paused to catch you breath, eren took the moment to fight back, flipping you over with him looming over you. his expression was something that you had never seen before. 

all right, perhaps that was a lie. you had seen it before, but it had never actually been directed at you. usually, jean was at the receiving end of that look -- his brows knitting so close together, a deep crease formed in between them; his teeth gritted and jaw clenched to the point where a vein was actually bulging at his neck. 

"WHY DID YOU GET ME IN TROUBLE?" he demanded, apparently furious at your ignorance to his question. 

you immediately gagged, recoiling back and turning your head sideways. 

"god, what the hell did you have for breakfast?" you choked out, your nose abused by the rancid smell that had protruded from his mouth. 

he might have been angry, but you were angrier. 

without another second to waste (the time in which his anger was slightly masked over with a look of confusion) you brought your hand to the back of his neck and forced his head to clash against yours. he let out a loud yelp and you took over, securing your place over him once more. 

your punches resumed, attack after attack, and you did not even think to stop. not even when you noticed, from the corner of your eye, how people were focused on you and your fight (perhaps they had been watching the entire brawl, perhaps only you had noticed them now).

and even when eren barely fought back, you continued.

"i --" he uttered between punches, teeth gritted and jaw clenched, "concede!"

and still you did not stop. 

in fact, you gripped onto his short, brown hair and pulled his head up with it, slamming it back down every time you said a new word.

"you --"

slam.

"-- tarnished --"

slam.

"-- my --"

slam.

"plan!"

slam.

"l/n," you heard keith call out, somewhere far back in your mind, perhaps, because his voice sounded low through the ringing in your ears. "did jaeger say he concedes?"

you didn't answer, but eren did.

"i conce--"

"shut up!" you snapped, and placed a hand over his mouth to prevent him from completing his sentence. 

"L/N!" keith all but bellowed at you. his voice was clearer now, probably because of how loud he was being. "GET OFF OF THE BOY NOW!"

there was a dull ringing in your ears and all you could focus on was beating the brunette to a pulp. he deserved it for how nosy he had been: perhaps this would teach him a lesson. stop sticking your nose in places where it shouldn't be, otherwise you'd get it beaten into your face by y/n l/n.

well, he could stick his nose in business that did not belong to you, you didn't mind that of course.

but seriously, had it been anyone else, they wouldn't have found the need to actually go up to you and ask you why you did what you did. you thought it was obvious? for example: connie, who you had publicly embarrassed for publicly embarrassing you with your failed attempt at a wink; jean, who you had managed to get sent to the stables as punishment for not helping you when you were in trouble with keith. 

eren was no different, he did not get special treatment.

he got you in trouble with keith, so you would get him in trouble with keith in return. there was no genius needed to figure that out, and if he so desperately needed one, armin was practically the leader of geniuses. why did he choose to confront you? you made it crystal clear that he could ask his question another time, that now was not a good time, that he should go and bother someone else for the time-being. 

but no. he just had to be so persistent. so stubborn.

when you made no move to get up, the higher ups had taken it upon themselves to stop you. rough hands had slid around your waist and pulled you up, dragging you away from the poor brunette, whose chest was heaving up and down with each breath he took, looking as though he had just survived a bear attack: dishevelled and fatigued. 

you, in question, were the bear: your own hands gnawing at the pale ones tightly gripping your abdomen, your eyes practically glinting red, and the hairs at the back of your neck sticking to your skin. you did not know who the person dragging you away was, but whoever they were, they were nex--

"oi, stop fighting," his voice came out harshly against your ear. 

you complied. 

your eyes met his, lost in the pool of grey that were glinting in a way that made them look almost silver-like.

did you say that he was next? 

no, that was a mistake -- you would never say that.

not to him, at least.

even though you had stopped struggling against his iron-like, tight grip, captain levi still found the need to continue to pull you away from the training sight. you were going to question when he was going to stop, until you realised that he already had -- you were the one holding onto his arms now. 

he didn't even say anything, but you did not need to look back at him to know that he was probably scowling at your action.

"this is ni--"

"let go of me."

"yes, sir."

you dropped to the ground after releasing your grip. he did not bother helping you up, but you did hear him sigh when you made no move to get up. you looked over your shoulder at him, chin tilted high into the air, a hand hovering over your brows to shield your sensitive eyes from the bright sun.

he was pinching the bridge of his nose, looking stressed. you would murder whoever made your husband so stressed out, you promised this to yourself. 

"what's wrong with you?" he demanded out of no where.

when your features only moved to form a look of confusion, he felt the tiring need to clarify.

"when your opponent gives up, you stop anything else you plan on doing."

"oh i know that," you stated with a smile. did the captain really think that you were not aware of that?

"which concerns me even more," he said, rubbing his forehead exasperatedly. he regarded you crossly. "get up."

you did as you were told, even taking care to salute once you stood up. there was, however, one thing that was stirring up in the pit of your stomach. it was an aching feeling, something that you had never felt before. 

the time of its arrival was significant, too. you had just noticed that due to eren's actions (the constant pestering, as annoying as it was) captain levi had paid more attention to you, more than he originally would have if eren had just left you alone.. and the poor boy.. you had beaten him to an extent where he actually chose to concede. what made it worse was the fact that eren jaeger barely ever gave up. you had driven him to the point where he just had to.

you snuck a glance at him: he was being comforted by armin and mikasa, both of whom had gotten a scolding from keith for not focusing on their own training. you didn't understand them, for if it had been jean who had gotten quite the beating from one of your classmates, you would have stood there and laughed. 

but, arguably, you wouldn't have done that for marco. see, for marco, you'd have done what armin and mikasa were doing for eren. now you understood.

"what, feeling guilty now?" captain levi coldly interrupted your thoughts. you didn't respond, the guilt causing you to be rendered speechless for the first time in a while. "you should. the kid looks like he came out of a war because of you."

"i --" you began, your salute now softer in your hesitation. "i just got a little angry, he was bothering me!"

"you get as good as you give."

"what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"oh, i'm surprised you understood that."

"i didn't."

"never mind then."

you thought about it for a moment and then scowled at him once it clicked. was he insinuating that you were bothersome, and therefore eren (as some form of stupid karma) was being bothersome to you? 

"wait --"

"no," said captain levi, firm. "get back on the field."

but really, the whole reason why eren got such a vicious beatdown was because you thought his persistence caused some disturbance in your plan for getting the captain to notice you. so you didn't actually want to leave and return to the training field.

"but who's going to be my partner?" you questioned, trying to sound innocent.

captain levi folded his arms over his chest, but did not respond to your question. after a good ten seconds of him simply staring at you (perhaps the more accurate word would be 'glaring') he caught the attention of the rest of the cadets. 

"your combat needs a little work," he called out to everyone, looking mildly disappointed. "but we can't work on it for as long as i initially wanted to. unfortunately, some people can't control themselves."

you almost choked on your own spit. you had been standing behind him, tall and poised, nodding along to everything he had been saying. until, of course, that last line. you stared at the side of his face, outraged and offended. was that a jab at you? publicly, too? 

you didn't care that you looked visibly stupefied by what he had said. you didn't care that everyone was now staring at you with amusement. what you cared about was why your husband was acting the way he was. what had gotten into him? was that comment really necessary? 

that horrible comment, meant to clearly reference you, might give keith the opportunity to sneak his rancid self into your closed relationship. in fact, he was probably conjuring up some mini plan in his head right now, and it was all because of your soulmate. perhaps you needed to have a chat with him sooner or later about the way he spoke about you. you weren't at all impressed with his behaviour.

"get the odm gear out," captain levi ordered loudly. "we're moving onto the manoeuvring gear training."

he looked over at you, his infamous, neutral expression plastered over his face as he watched you carefully. 

"what, are you no good at it?" 

perhaps you had been looking rather disappointed -- you felt like it -- otherwise he wouldn't have felt the need to ask such a thing. you raised your brows at him, straightening up immediately and shaking your head.

"'course not," you denied, because it was still true. 

you weren't bad at using the gear at all. you were good, just not as good as, say, mikasa. she was an absolute monster with it. you will never forget the time you had suggested playing tag. the memory of it made a shiver run down your spine. 

"i just like hand-to-hand better," you answered, trailing along behind him as he walked further on, heading for the trees where the gear is best used. "can't we do more of that?"

"you're bold," he said, voice laced with chagrin, "to even suggest that when you're the reason i had to stop it."

"you didn't have to stop it completely," you said with a frown. "keith usually puts me on a time-out when i do something he doesn't like. everyone else just continued."

"keith?" he repeats, his eyebrow twitching as he looked down at you, stopping before the first tree you guys had been met with. 

you almost did not understand what he was getting at, before his gaze hardened and you remembered one of his first orders he had given you. refer to keith as commandant shadis. 

"i mean.. commandant shadis."

"right," said captain levi, continuing on with his walk. 

you followed on after him, keeping close to him even as more voices and footsteps could be heard somewhere far off behind the two of you. when you turned to see, the rest of the cadets were passing down the gear, securing it on each other as they walked into the woods simultaneously. perhaps it would have been a better idea to do the same, leave the captain on his own to wear the gear and prepare yourself, but you just.. did not want to. and that was a good enough answer for you to continue walking alongside the captain.

"never heard of a time-out being a punishment before," he commented vaguely. 

"during the gear training, he usually makes me sit on the tallest tree branch and just watch everyone else," you told him, almost as if you were telling off of your arch-nemesis. 

"that's why you don't want to train?"

you shrugged. "call it trauma."

"you're using the gear," the captain told you in a there's-no-argument type of way. he stopped, turned, and looked down at you as everyone began catching up to the both of you. "you'll be the first if you keep protesting."

"what? why? i already used the gear this morning. with you."

"i'm aware," said the captain. and then he walked past you, taking a spare manoeuvring gear out of a large box held by reiner (no surprise, he was, arguably, the strongest out of you all) and held it out to you. "you're up."

people had now surrounded the area you were standing in: deep into the woods, with lots of trees and space to move around simultaneously. it was perfect for the use of odm gear. 

you slowly took the gear from his hands, examining it for scratches, dents, or random breakage. the last thing you needed was to fall off the trees and die from the use of a faulty wire or something. 

"but i don't have a gas cylinder," you tried reasoning, even as you secured the straps over your chest and the ones behind your knees. 

"don't worry," the captain responded, going as far as to even help you with the ones you could not reach: your back. you felt him swat your hair away, tightening even the ones you had done yourself for extra precaution. "i've heard that your own gas is a great substitute, fart girl."

your jaw dropped (as did everyone else's). you were absolutely mortified as you turned your head ever so slightly to look back at him. unlike everyone else (all of whom were now stifling their chuckles and giggles) he remained unfazed. and despite that comment that made heat rise to your cheeks, he still handed you a gas cylinder to attach to your side. 

embarrassed, angered, and absolutely petrified, you could not even register the fact that he was expecting you to take the cylinder from him, for you were too shocked to even think straight. this was embarrassment to a point that you had never actually experienced before. everyone knew about the situation where you had been rather confident in releasing your own gas, but you had assumed that they would have forgotten: no one had mentioned it for quite some time.

until now. 

and it was all because of your uncontrollable husband.

ex-husband, now, because as much as you loved him, this was crossing the line.

leisurely, you took the cylinder from his extended hand and stared down at it. you could barely concentrate as the laughter from your peers travelled to your ears in a manner that was not very graceful. traitors, they were -- the lot of them.

now you definitely did not want to use the gear. you held the cylinder up as if to hand it back to the captain.

"i can't do it," you told him, your nerves spiralling inside you.

he looked as though he did not believe you, which made sense, of course. if you were him, you wouldn't have believed yourself either, not when he had watched you fly around with glee early that very morning. 

i have to lie, you decided in your mind. there was only one issue, however. although lying was your expertise, lying whilst racked with nerves is not. you either stumbled over your words or lied about something that was not relevant to the topic.

"why not?" said captain levi, looking sceptical. 

everyone was silent now (save for the occasional snort here and there).

"because i did odm training tomorrow so i don't need to do it yesterday," you answered, barely taking a breath before attempting to undo your front straps.

there was silence. if it hadn't been daytime, you were sure there would have probably been cricket noises here and there.

"what is she even saying?" you heard connie call out, and you had to physically restrain yourself from shooting your wires deep into his chest. 

"well don't look at me," shrugged jean, sounding defensive. when you followed the sound of his voice, you saw that he was leaning back against a tree with marco, who was looking startled. 

if the earth could just swallow you whole, you'd be extremely grateful. you had to leave. you just had to. there was no way you could ever show your face to these people ever again. maybe you could leave and change your identity: from y/n l/n to n/y n/l, from female to elamef, from 20 years old to 02 years old. whatever it be, you had to leave. 

so you tried to. 

you took a step forward, but barely made it any further than that before you felt your head being tugged back by some type of force -- captain levi had pulled you back by your hair.

"not so fast," he said, barely moved by your actions. it was almost as if he had predicted it. "fix your straps and attach the damn cylinder. you're up."

you swallowed down on nothing, trying to ease yourself. you could barely register the crunching of twigs and leaves growing closer to you -- marco had taken it upon himself to help you fix the straps you had undone. 

as you stared up at the trees, you felt him politely take the gas cylinder out of your own hands and slowly attach them to your gear. his face was right beside your ear, keeping his voice low when he took the opportunity to speak. 

"stop scheming," he murmured, and you were certain that nobody but you could hear him. you did not question what he meant, although he felt the need to clarify. "got that look on your face.."

you had no idea what look he was talking about, but you could not deny the fact that (in truth) you really were conjuring up a plan in your head, figuring out the steps and the advantages you'd have with the position of the stagnant trees. 

anytime someone would use the gear to fly up and above, they'd move forwards, using their advanced speed and agility to reach the finish line where another higher up would be standing. since keith was not around, you concluded that it would probably be him. but if you wanted to leave, you could just turn the other direction and go backwards instead..

you bit back a smile.

besides, it was not as if anyone could chase you down without the captain's permission: you'll be long gone by then. 

as marco tested the strength of the gear for you, rattling and shaking it with all his might, you found that it was secure on you, less likely to break. you smiled at him as he took a step back, whispering out a 'good luck' before taking his place against the tree next to jean again, being so positively encouraging as to give you a thumbs up for extra measure. 

"you finally ready?" your ex-husband asked. 

you did not bother answering him, and turned away, digging your feet into the ground as you gripped onto your blades.

"hey, why're you facing that way --"

too late. you had already clicked the top trigger, firing your anchors into the nearby trees before you clicked the bottom trigger to fire out your compressed gas. 

and up you went, the rest of the captain's sentence trailing off into nothingness the higher up you went from the ground. 

the force of the flight against gravity resulted in the wind forcing your hair back as you continued to shoot out your anchors, flying in the opposite direction to make it back to the main base. you could hear people yelling after you, their demands that you return dying out the more you moved. you laughed loudly, which might have been a mistake seeing as the wind you were pushing yourself against flew right into your open mouth. 

you closed it immediately, but still found yourself smiling as you flew through the woods. this is what they got for underestimating you, for making fun of you. the thrill of using the gear to defy physics was already feet-tingling as it was. however, adding more thrill to it by opposing the rules made it feel even better, like you were on cloud nine with all the excitement. 

exhilaration had never felt better.

until you heard his voice somewhere behind you..

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

the captain watched after you with lazy eyes. 

it had shocked him at first, he wouldn't deny it. he genuinely thought that he had you under control at this point. 

he was wrong.

though he couldn't say that it surprised him too much, now that he was really thinking about it. he hadn't realised just how sneaky you were, far sneakier than any cadet he had ever encountered. it was clear that you had no shame, which was probably the reason why you were able to do things usual people could not. he could barely tell if you were actually embarrassed by the new nickname he had given you.

and new nickname it was, for your fellow classmates were now addressing you by it.

"look at fart girl go!" 

"only fart girl would do shit like this."

"do you think fart girl did that on purpose?"

there was only one place you could be heading for -- back to the main training field, straight to your dorm. captain levi had been so preoccupied with thinking about what the hell he should do about you, that he had not realised the silence that had consumed the rest of the cadets he was no responsible for. 

he stared at them, eyes particularly focused on the two boys that he knew you were tight with. both were tall, one significantly taller than the other, with lighter hair and a longer face. the other boy had soft freckles decorating his features, a softer look about him. 

the main factor that the captain had caught on to (which made them different to the rest of the cadets staring up at the sky in awe) was how unsurprised they seemed. it was almost as if they had expected nothing less from you. 

the boy with the freckles caught the captain's eye, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck with a smile.

"er -- permission to go after her, sir?" he asked, in an almost tentative manner. 

captain levi looked back up at the trees. "permission denied," he said, though not unkindly. 

he seemed to be thinking to himself. this training session had not gone to plan. and it was all because of you. you were really beginning to become an itch on his side, one that he could not quite seem to reach. a headache, even. and usually, he would be able to cure it with a simple cup of tea. you were proving to be as difficult as keith shadis had mentioned.

"any volunteers to go up next?" he asked, looking around at them all. and then he exhaled through his nose. "and if it's not clear enough already, you move that way." he pointed to his right. 

in the end, an enthusiastic, green-eyed boy jumped up at the opportunity to prove himself. it was only after a couple of seconds of light staring did he realise that it was the very boy that you had savagely beaten. the captain thought he had a staring problem, for the boy had an odd sort of attachment to the wings of freedom etched upon his uniform. perhaps he was another one that wanted to join the regiment of literal death.

while the boy adjusted his gear, captain levi addressed the rest of them.

"training's no different. you'll take turns after you hear the commandant's call that he's reached the end. you'll be timed," he instructed, mind half distracted. "and you," he added, talking to the green-eyed boy. "when you get to shadis, let him know that i've got to deal with a rogue cadet."

the boy raised his eyebrows.

"rogue cade--"

"he'll know exactly what i mean."

despite looking slightly confused, the green-eyed boy simply shrugged, planting his feet into the ground. the captain searched his pockets, before sighing in frustration at the realisation of something that (surprise-surprise) you had been the cause of. resisting the urge to simply take off and tackle you, he called out to the rest of the cadets.

"anyone have a pocket watch?" he asked exasperatedly. 

if one of them did, perhaps you'll be safe. 

if none of them did, however... well it's a good thing that you had a head start.

you got lucky: a girl with pigtails stepped forward with a shaky smile and handed the visibly annoyed captain her own pocket watch. he took it from her, nodding when she saluted and returned to her position in between a tall, dark-haired boy. he stared down at the pocket watch in his hands. how was he supposed to monitor wherever the hell you had flown off to and time the cadets at the same time?

"you," he said suddenly, walking towards a short, blonde, blue-eyed boy who had been looking displeased with the practical training (the captain had eyes everywhere). 

the boy immediately perked up, straightening his back and saluting, eyes wide at being addressed by a higher up. 

"sir!" he squeaked, seemingly surprised.

"at ease," said captain levi, aware that shadis was probably beginning to get impatient now. he extended his arm, the hand attached to it presenting the other girl's pocket watch. "you look capable. time them like usual. i have business to attend to."

the boy looked hesitant, but did not look as though he would suggest an alternative option as he took the pocket watch and nodded. 

"i'll be back soon," he stated loudly, his voice laced with authority. "so don't mess around."

and he took off, trailing after you without another word.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

perhaps you shouldn't have stopped at a tree branch to rest your legs. the adrenaline rush nearly had you lose control in your moment of exhilaration.

you didn't know it yet, but the captain was after you. not that it mattered too much, of course. you were wise enough to go deeper into the woods than to simply go for the main base -- it was merely a resting point. you'd go back to moving soon anyway.

you had taken it upon yourself to rest on the highest tree branch possible, legs outstretched and back flat against the ongoing tree trunk. nobody would find you here unless you wanted to be found, and after that round of embarrassment, you certainly did not want to be found. with not only being higher up than it was actually allowed (unless you were told to sit in time out) your small form was obscured behind several leaves and branches, hidden away like a prized gift. 

from that high up, everything looked so small. bushes that you knew were rather wide and difficult to get through looked as though they were nothing more than several obstacles for an ant. 

maybe it's time to get a move on now, you had thought to yourself calmly as you secured the straps on your knees and adjusted the gas cylinder on your side. you would never forget the time daz's gas cylinder slipped out of its small case during flight; everyone had been considerably more careful since then, including you, as reckless as you were.

you nearly tumbled out of your standing position on the tree branch when you heard a loud shout of your name. and it wasn't just any shout...

"L/N!" captain levi practically bellowed from somewhere far away.

no... you thought, alarmed. that didn't make sense. he wasn't allowed to leave the cadets unsupervised. was he not supposed to be busy with timing everyone? was he not supposed to alert someone else that you were missing? why had he taken it upon himself to find you? 

oh this was bad... this was really, really bad.

the captain was practically a machine of some sort. his hearing was immaculate too, just like a bat. it didn't matter if he would ever go blind one day, his excellent hearing made up for the lost sense. 

he was, perhaps, the only person who would be able to seek you out, even with your fabulous choice of hiding. 

although, now that you thought about it, sasha had several heightened senses too, but it was not as though you had heard her voice call out your name several seconds ago.

you kept an eye out for any closeness of ruffling leaves, any rough movement, or the sound of gas being pushed out of its cylinder to enable flight against gravity. so far so good, you had almost convinced yourself that you were being paranoid. maybe that had been a sign for you to get back to your dorm. and quickly, at that.

you relaxed your stance against the tree, relieved. perhaps that had been your second mistake in the same minute.

"L/N!"

you actually did fall this time. panicked and alarmed, you had no choice but to hurriedly click the top trigger of your controller grip, your wires shooting out to latch themselves onto the tree branch you had fallen from, leaving you hanging upside down in the air. 

it was silent now, only the sound of your blood pounding in your ears as the liquid dived to your brain. your head was beginning to feel heavy with the added weight. 

he was listening, you knew. he had heard the sound of your wires and the latch, and he was probably trying to track you down.

you had to make a move. now.

taking a deep breath in, you pulled the lever, reeling the wires back in as you fell several feet. heart pounding against your chest, you clicked the trop trigger again, shooting your wires against a tree to your left and a tree to your right. with great impulse, you pushed your legs over your head to flip yourself, no longer upside down. 

"cadet l/n!" you heard him yell, almost as if he had spotted you.

you wasted no time in clicking the bottom trigger, your gas shooting out of its cylinder as you took off, flying through the trees and making it back to main base.

with a short glance over your shoulder, your teeth gritted once you realised that the captain was nearly hot on your trail.

"get back here, that's an order!" he snapped, displeased and unimpressed with this game of cat and mouse.

you clenched your jaw, turning away from him and continuing your trip despite his order, your fingers working in that similar pattern: top trigger, bottom trigger, and then back again. 

and then you had been met with another problem.

because your hiding place had been deeper into the woods, going for the main base would take longer, especially now that you needed to be quicker because of the man following after you. you had to think fast, then. 

"l/n!"

going for the cadets would be quicker as you could run through the training field and head for the dorms, take the short cut, and be out of sight. men weren't allowed in the girls' barracks after all.

"l/n, turn around and --"

it would be a brilliant plan. other than the fact that you had to face everyone again, but you could tolerate it. just for a bit. 

instead of latching your wires onto a tree to your left and a tree to your right, you hooked them both in the same direction, swinging all the way around to change your direction.

and then you head back, using more gas because you knew that the captain, although stumped by your choice, was now closer than before. squinting your eyes, you could see that the area you had escaped from was growing closer and closer, yet the cadets there had grown smaller and smaller. when you were only around twenty trees behind, you could see that the training had continued: armin had been tasked with the job of timing the cadets. 

of course. that did make sense, after all. 

"l/n!"

the eyes of the remaining cadets had turned to you. you caught marco's eye (jean was no longer there) and gave him a grin, one that he did not know whether to return or not. instead, his eyes merely travelled to the presence behind you, looking worried at the sight. 

you flew over your classmates, almost as if it was your turn to be tested (armin had muttered a 'should i time her?') and continued to fly off.

but the captain was still trailing after you. 

"oi, fart girl!" he snapped angrily.

now that...

that stopped you.

you were now hanging low in between two trees your wires had gripped on to. 

you looked over your shoulder, eyes narrowed and brow twitching. looking down, you could see that you had barely made it away from where the cadets originally were (originally, for they had now come running over to you and the captain, who was standing on a tree branch higher than you, glowering). 

"what did you just call me?" you asked lowly. you landed yourself on a different tree branch, looking up at him with an expression of contempt.

captain levi clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

"if i'd known that you would've responded to that rather than your own name, i would've said it sooner, fart girl."

you contemplated ridding yourself of your gear and simply diving head first into the ground. dying and never returning seemed a better option than to stand where you currently were and simply take the degrading lecture. you never got embarrassed. EVER.

so why, now, were you feeling heat rise to your cheeks? why was the hairs on your neck standing up? why were you curling in on yourself and avoiding the gaze of the captain?

the conclusion: you were embarrassed.

and to an extent you had never thought was even possible to reach.

"so you've found her!" a booming voice from below you called out to the captain.

keith shadis.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

you hadn't been let off lightly (that was obvious, special treatment did not exist in the training corps even if you thoroughly believed that you deserved it).

but as you slammed the door to your room with ill-contained anger, you became well aware of what keith and captain levi were going to do. 

angry with not only yourself, but with your ex-husband and your arch nemesis, you aggressively pulled open the drawer attached to your bed-side table, strong enough to actually detach it completely. and that only made you more indignant. 

you placed the broken drawer on top of the table and pulled out your long forgotten diary. dust had collected on top of it, flying around your eyes when you blew it away and patted at it. it was a silly, old thing. something to just write your thoughts in (one of the villagers in your home town suggested it a long time ago, and that was a different story). it had been neglected for a while, every memory of using it locked in the back of your mind all the way up until now. 

it was a journal styled book, with pages incredibly similar to the texture and warm colour of fresh parchment paper. as you opened the book, your eyes merely skimmed over the rough doodles and bad handwriting:

you sighed as you stared at the first couple of pages of your diary. those were easier times, ancient ones, but easier all the same. that version of you, the one that first started the corps, clearly did not know what difficulty she'd be put through later on. 

you hurriedly flipped over to the next blank page. your eyebrows raised when you looked at the date of the last time you had written in there: november 29th 848. that was just before your meeting with commander erwin. you hadn't updated your diary on that event, but that was fine. you had other matters to address. 

pulling your wooden chair back eagerly, the legs screeching loudly against the floor boards, you sat yourself down and reached for your pen, writing down the date and the events of your dreadful day.

it hadn't been too long before you found yourself completely invested in writing more and more in your diary. but because of the new (and constant) gentle knocking on your door, you had to stop yourself, making a literal note to update the book soon. 

after being publicly embarrassed, you were almost one hundred percent certain that the person behind your door was marco. he had seen it all and he was always the type to comfort you when you needed it. right now, though? you needed time to yourself. you needed to vent out your anger. you needed to scream, be put in a room where you could smash things (particularly the heads of your ex-husband and your rival). 

surprised, you nearly kicked yourself at how the thought of hitting your ex had even come to mind, even if it did sound enticing. 

knock, knock!

your chair squeaked against the floor as you stood up, pushing it away from you absentmindedly as you turned to the door and silently shouted curse words at it. to be fair, your words weren't directly targetted at the person behind the door, more so at keith and captain levi. still, you had taken the anger out on yourself all the same, gripping onto the roots of your hair in a silent threat to pull it off your scalp. 

you mimed punching the door, fists clenched as you shook them.

the door had opened.

and it wasn't even marco that had been behind it.

it was mina.

and she had just witnessed your silent tantrum, eyes narrowed as her brows furrowed, hand held up as if she was about to knock again.

you froze, moved back to a normal stance, and stared back at her, blank faced.

"erm," she began, clearing her throat and wiping the palm of her hand on her pants. "you didn't come down for dinner, so i was wondering what you were -- what you were up to..."

you didn't say anything, tilting your head to the side as you awaited for a complete explanation of what she needed now.

"but if you're busy..." she continued, sounding unsure of how to react. her brows rose after the odd look on her face left. "well you looked busy --"

"get out."

"ok."

you had followed her out of your dorm despite the weird encounter.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

captain levi was very irritated. 

very.

and who was it all because of?

well you of course! you were, he decided, practically the bane of his existence.

he had spent the last twenty minutes or so having a discussion with shadis about you in the commandant's office. the two had gone through a list of the punishments you had been given for previous misbehaviour (and mind you, there were a lot). captain levi had never seen so many reports in one file.

it only made his stomach flip over on itself when he had reminded himself that he would probably have to deal with this in a couple of months seeing as you were adamant on joining the scout regiment for whatever stupid reason. were you giving him a simple taster of what was to come? was this you preparing him for the trouble you would have him endure once you joined? 

shadis had informed the captain that he had inflicted every form of punishment the training corps allowed to be used on its cadets. 

every. single. one. 

and your behaviour, if anything, had possibly turned over to be at its worst: it seemed that disrespecting the captain of the scout regiment was crossing the line, for shadis had come up with a brand new form of punishment, designed specifically for you... and if the training corps ever encountered another cadet as wild as you in future (though it was clear that both shadis and captain levi doubted it ever would).

and shadis, the actual bastard, had put the job of breaking the news to you to him -- captain levi. 

that was what pissed him off.

firstly, you weren't even at dinner where you should have been. each cadet is legally required to be provided three meals a day, and it was crucial that everyone had their foodwith the amount of training and energy needed for a regular day. 

secondly, your friends had no idea where you were too. apparently, you hadn't been seen since the cat and mouse game you had played earlier. when he asked them why they hadn't looked for you (were they not supposed to be your friends?) they made it quite clear to the captain that you evoked fear from everyone -- even if they did not voice this. 

so you were missing and captain levi had no idea when he was supposed to alert you of your brand new punishment. oh, and did he mention that the punishment was supposed to start from tomorrow, too?

he stood by the double doors of the mess hall, watching as the girl with pigtails -- the one who had handed him her pocket watch earlier -- walked past him, heading towards the dorms. 

he was the captain of the scout regiment. scouting did not mean that he had to scout the whole of the training fields in search for you, a regular cadet. this was never mentioned in his contract; he had not signed himself up for this. even escaping the wrath of a titan was easier than the task forcefully handed to him by shadis, the bald coward. the commandant was your mentor, his responsibility. not the captain's -- at least, not yet.

after contemplating his life choices for a few more minutes, he found himself growing more agitated at the realisation that you were probably hiding in your dorm room.

the very area in which men were not allowed to enter.

he huffed, brows furrowing in fury and eyes glinting with annoyance. only you would put him through the shame of walking down the girls' barracks where he was not actually allowed to be. 

and that's where he found himself: walking down the girls' barracks in search for your dorm, ignoring the odd glances sent to him by several random female cadets as he plucked up the courage to ask one of them where your room was.

he did not wait for any questions the second the answer was given before darting forwards to find you.

where the hell is hange when you need her? he grumbled to himself in his mind, a black cloud of negativity looming over his head as he neared the door to your room.

he probably would have yelled out in frustration if he wasn't already being watched by several people. 

your stupid door was left open.

and that only meant one thing.

he stepped inside, dread filling his stomach: you were absent.

i walked all the way down here for nothing? he questioned silently, repressing the urge to kick the leg of your wooden chair and snap it in half.

he nearly turned away, about to storm off when something had caught his eye. your drawer was broken, left unattended on top of your table. he drew closer, unsure why, but he did, mildly interested.

the drawer was nearly empty, filled with hair ties and a few pens. 

but the thing sitting beside it was what peaked his interest more than he would have liked.

curious, he eyed the open book, feeling foolish when he had come under the impression that he had seen the nickname he had given her written down somewhere there. 

but he was right.

his eyes scanned the page, pointer finger sliding down the paper when he had seen it:

'he made everyone call me fart girl!'

and he felt even more dotish when he had taken more than a minute to realise that this was your diary.

he flipped the page back, more engrossed than he would have liked to admit as he picked up the thick book and leaned against your table to read. 

what the fuck?

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

he was back in his own office, having analysed your diary once more.

it was a good thing that his reaction time had been tested several times on expeditions, for he was equally prepared when the door had open loudly without warning.

he knew it was hange: she was the only one in the entire regiment who had never bothered to knock. 

and therefore, there was more haste than he usually had in hiding that book of yours inside his own drawer (much less prone to breaking, might he add). 

but perhaps he had been a little more slower than usual, or maybe the look on his face was more neutral than usual, for hange's eyes had narrowed behind the usual glasses she wore, looking at him with that look.

that look, the one where she used her brain to uncover secrets, puzzles and complicated plans.

there were few things in this world that worried captain levi. along with you being one of them, that look hange had settled comfortably on her face was another.

"what?" he snapped, irritated.

maybe his bark had a little more bite to it too, because the section commander's brows rose significantly.

"why do you look like that?" she asked, ask though she were uncovering the most fascinating thing in the world. it was the look she had when trying to discover the nature of titans. 

he stared at her, deadpanned.

"like what?"

"like you've just seen a ghost," she answered, stepping inside his office without his permission (as per usual, he had gotten used to it). "like you're hiding something --"

"get out."

"not until you tell me what you're hiding!" sang hange, walking further inside despite the captain's demand that she leave.

"not hiding anything," he lied calmly, picking up his discarded pen and scribbling random notes over his very important papers. he would worry about the damage later, he decided. "now leave."

hange continued as if she hadn't heard his final comment. "no! now, what's your secret, levi?"

"hange --"

"come on, levi!" said hange, standing up straighter than usual and placing a hand over her heart. "i won't tell anyone, scouts honour!"

it didn't take long before levi had finally decided that he had had enough and personally kicked hange out himself. 

she found herself standing outside his office, face met with his office door. 

she would find out what the secretive shorty is hiding.

she was determined.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

can anyone guess what her punishment will be? i highly doubt any of the guesses will be right... as mentioned, it's very unique ;)

all characters belong to hajime isayama, apart from y/n, who i've inserted into the story myself.

previous chapter :)

next chapter :)

taglist: (send an ask to be added)

@inkthgoat @loki1230 @leviackermanst @laccey @awesomeness1679 @wandavengerberg @marumxy

[bestshipsmackdown]

Ships 100% Going into the Bracket:

[I will be checking spellings at a later point, as well as ages and familial relations. So as long as everyone followed directions, these will be going into the bracket.]

With Nine Submissions:

Kim Dokja x Yoo Joonghuyk from Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint

With Eight Submissions:

Percy Jackson x Annabeth Chase from The Percy Jackson Series

Gideon Nav x Harrowhark Nonagesimus from The Locked Tomb Series

Yang Xiao Long x Blake Belladonna from RWBY

With Seven Submissions:

Adora x Catra from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

@bracket-bracket x @thecompetitionshowdowntournament x @ultimate-poll-tournament from tumblr.com

Evan Buckley x Eddie Diaz from 911

With Six Submissions:

Fred Jones x Daphne Blake x Velma Dinkley x Norville “Shaggy” Rogers from Scooby-Doo

Luz Noceda x Amity Blight from The Owl House

Lance x Keith from Voltron: Legendary Defender

With Five Submissions

Marinette Dupain-Cheng[Ladybug] x Adrien Agreste[Chat Noir] from Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir [Miraculous Ladybug]

Kazuki Kurusu x Rei Suwa from Buddy Daddies

With Four Submissions

Jack Harkness x Rose Tyler x The Ninth Doctor from Doctor Who

Link x Zelda from The Legend of Zelda

Eda Clawthorne x Raine Whispers from The Owl House

Phoenix Wright x Miles Edgeworth from Ace Attorney

Hiyori Suzumi x Yujiro Someya x Aizo Shibasaki from Honeyworks

Naruto Uzumaki x Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto

Nomi Marks x Amanita Caplan from Sense8

Mike Wheeler x Will Byers from Stranger Things

Nancy Wheeler x Robin Buckley from Stranger Things

With Three Submissions

Laura Moon x Mad Sweeney from American Gods

Caitlyn Kiramann x Vi from Arcane

Troy Barnes x Abed Nadir from Community

Imogen Temult x Laudna from Critical Role

Edward Nygma x Oswald Cobblepot from Gotham

Will Solace x Nico Di Angelo from Heroes of Olympus

Hikaru Indou x Yoshiki Tsukajinaka from Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu

Will Parry x Lyra Silvertongue from His Dark Materials

Rose Lalonde x Kanaya Maryam from Homestuck

Gon Freecss x Killua Zoldyck from Hunter x Hunter

Dustfinger x Resa from Inkheart

Gimli x Legolas from Lord of the Rings

Merlin x Arthur Pendragon from Merlin

Bakugou Katsuki x Todoroki Shouto from Boku No Hero Academia[My Hero Academia]

Todoroki Touya[Dabi] x Takami Keigo[Hawks] from Boku No Hero Academia[My Hero Academia]

KJ Brandman x Mac Coyle from Paper Girls

Perfuma x Scorpia from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Reki Kyan x Langa Hasegawa from Sk8 the Infinity

Korra x Asami from The Legend of Korra

Dream x Hob from The Sandman

Enid Sinclair x Wednesday Addams from Wednesday

Buffy Summers x Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Caleb Widowgast x Essek Thelyss from Critical Role

Eddie Kaspbrak x Richie Tozier from It

Bugs Bunny x Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes

Magnus Chase x Alex Fierro from Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

Bakugou Katsuki x Kirishima Eijirou from Boku No Hero Academia[My Hero Academia]

Dean Winchester x Castiel from Supernatural

Thats 49 ships guaranteed for entry into the bracket.

That leaves 15 ships to be added. It’s currently Sunday, so I will leave submissions open until Tuesday, April 4th at 11:59pm EST. With the likelihood of needing more ships to qualify, a few preliminary rounds will take place using ships that only have 2 submissions each. Those will commence after submissions have closed.

The ships listed above do not need any more submissions to qualify, so send in propaganda for ships you don’t see!