#lloyd x annika

[chaos-vulpix]

Legacyverse: Llorumi [Post-Season 8] (Harumi x Lloyd)

Yeah... so I decided to make a playlist for these two. A musical depiction of their love... soaring through the air... crashing straight into a mountain... ah, young love

Hope you find some future inspiration here, @weekend-whip

Attention - Charlie Puth

Awake - Alison Wonderland

Backstabber - Kesha

Breathing - Yellowcard

Breakdown - Abby Wolfe

Bridges - Broods

Castles - Freya Ridings

Colder - Nina Nesbitt

Come Back For Me - Jaymes Young

Crawl Outta Love - Illenium ft. Annika Wells

Crossroads - Au5 ft. Danyka Nadeau

Decode - Paramore

Disturbia - Rihanna

Don't Hold Your Breath - Nicole Scherzinger

Don't Say - Robinson

Easier than Lying - Halsey

Energy - Keri Hilson

Fingers Crossed - Lauren Spencer-Smith

Grenade - Bruno Mars

Good Enough - Koven

Hard To Say Goodbye - Ekali & Illenium ft. Chloe Angelides

Hate Me - Ellie Goulding & Juice WRLD

Hollow Eyes - Synmata & KLAXX ft. EKE

Hope It Hurts - Dabin ft. Essenger

Hurricane - Galantis & John Newman

I Don't Like You - Eva Simons

I Hate Everything About You - Three Days Grace

Ignorance - Paramore

Illusion - Zedd ft. Echosmith

Just Tonight - Jimmy Eat World

Lie - Halsey ft. Guavo

Lost - Illenium ft. Emilie Brandt

My Delirium - Ladyhawke

Needed You - Illenium ft. Dia Frampton

Never Say Die - CHVRCHES

One More Day - Jason Ross & Blanke ft. Chandler Leighton

Outside - Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding

Playing God - Paramore

Saccharine Smile - Donots

Snakes - PVRIS & MIYAVI | Arcane: League of Legends

Somebody That I Used to Know - Gotye ft. Kimbra

Someone Else - Sullivan King

Sound of Walking Away - Illenium ft. Kerli

Supercut - Lorde

Sweet Nothing - Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch

Teeth - 5 Seconds of Summer

Tonight I'm Getting Over You - Carly Rae Jepsen

Without Me (Illenium Remix) - Halsey

Worth The Lie - MUZZ, Koven & Feint

You'll Be Alright - Ivan B

[lockwoodlitherland]

Despite the freezing cold temperatures clawing at the windows of the townhouse, Lloyd’s body was scalding beneath the dishevelled and half-discarded comforter. Beneath tightly closed lids, eyes darted erratically, and beneath a scratched and untidy hairline, eyebrows were furrowed so deeply that the tightness of the muscle movement contorted the man’s entire face. While most of the city slept peacefully, Lloyd was wrenched into another night of dreams that passed into existence with total clarity and faded into nothingness with the familiarity of memories and the chilling dread of a night terror. Sometimes all there was was noise. Sometimes it was like the entire force of an angry ocean was crashing against his skull. Sometimes it was just a singular noise that stuck with him for a few conscious moments. A loud pop. A crack. But by the time that Lloyd woke sharply some nights, it was nothing but a car backfiring somewhere on a distant street. He was sure of it.

Sometimes he felt like he couldn’t move at all. It was as if every digit and limb was constrained and held back from motion. Yet, there was nothing really to move for... as there was never any visual clarity to these non-sensical images that passed into smoke like dreams and imprinted like a nightmare. Sometimes, as he swallowed thickly in his sleep to dislodge the clogging discomfort in his throat, it was as if there was something forcing his mouth shut beneath the underside of his chin. Something stuck like tar in his lungs. Thick and smoky. Burning.

But when morning came, when the sun rose and his mind clicked on for the waking hours ahead, there was nothing but an itch. An itch that would usually pass with a scratch but often required a raking motion of torn fingernails. By night, something clawed to escape the depths of his brain. By day, Lloyd scraped and clawed to get in. 

The growing wind beyond the ‘safety’ of the home was picking up, rattling roadside bins and dislodging snow deposits from that day’s flurry. December had claimed its hold on Toronto and the entire city was bracing for the frigid winter ahead. Even the proud silver fir that glistened with red and gold in the centre of Trinity Square had looked slightly phased when Lloyd had wandered past it two days before. While hot drinks had been enough to temporarily cure the hearts of those with Canadian climate within their very composition, the Californian had tightened his coat around his neck and pulled his hat down further over his scratched face. 

"It's what they'll do to me, right?" "It wont hurt. It'll be easy. Better. Don't... scratch the wall.”

The wall had been placed and sculpted with skilled intent but something raw, almost unhinged, had festered inside of the man for so long. No longer was it simply a small irritation that took him by surprise on an unforgettable day; now it was an incessant ache that never ceased. The waves that crashed against his skull had once been little more than a swell but now they towered and battered and dragged him under until there was nothing but a pressing emptiness.

As the wind raged a little harder, Lloyd’s chest convulsed. There was warmth. A mist. In the back of his throat, a sob was wrenched forth. For once, an image appeared in the haze. The noise was chaos yet eerily still. The sob turned into a choking splutter. A warmth spread in his chest. The sweat on his skin pinned the fabric to his torso.  

His eyes flew open. Wild cobalt. Blonde hair came into view. Smooth and pale skin drawn slightly too taut over a sweet face. Where once there had only been laughter lines, crevices were etched far too quickly for all the wrong reasons. 

“You’re okay. You’re here...” The voice was light and delicate. Familiar. A voice heavy with sleep but brittle with concern. A tone that twitched upward at the end with the appearance of an uncertain smile. “It was just a dream.”

And for all Harley and Lloyd knew, that’s all it was. Neither could tell the other that their skin and clothes had been tainted by sinew and blood and stinking sweat. No one close to them had the ability to remember (except one) the look Lloyd had given as he looked into the eyes of the one woman he loved without question and had more queries than answers.

Lloyd’s chest heaved as his vision settled and Harley’s hand rubbed his torso soothingly. It wasn’t every night that he found himself in the spare room of Harley’s home but frequently he’d either been too exhausted, distant or intoxicated to want to return home. Especially when the world outside was so bitter and biting.

“I woke you up,” Lloyd whispered. Harley breathed out slowly. 

“Sort of.” “I’m sorry.”

“You can’t apologise for things you can’t control,” The blonde whispered. “Unless you were intentionally making all that noise.”

For a moment, they were both silent. Breathing slowed. The wind rapped against the window but the rest of Downtown was quiet. Hushed. Don’t scratch the wall. 

Harley’s hand fell away from his chest and she lifted herself to her feet. She moved with more awareness than she ever had. The unbridled energy that has once poured forth from every smile and action had been reigned in. In the absence of a strong counsel from a leading presence, Harley had become her own guide.

Lloyd could still remember the first time he’d laid eyes on her. The smile had been so genuine and bright that the room had seemed pale. When Harley McCallum smiled or danced or laughed... the world had to find a way to keep up. But even a sun uses up all that makes it and loses the intensity of what it once was. 

“Do you want company?” Harley asked quietly, looking at the man’s furrowed face. There was something about him that Harley didn’t recognise. She had never known this version of Lloyd and while she cared so much for him... there was something that she wanted to lock outside with the roaring wind. So it couldn’t touch him... or anyone else.

“You should sleep.” 

“Maybe.”

But without another word, she drew back the covers and slipped beneath them. She could feel the heat from his body. The thin layers of sweat on his skin. He shuffled backwards and let her move herself into his space. Into the embrace of his long arms. 

“You know you never told me why you came back to Toronto,” 

“For the warm climate and beaches.”

“Lloyd.”

Eventually he’d have to stop running. Torn between figments of moments full of connections. Was it escape he longed for? Could he even escape? Was there anything to escape from?

“I don’t know, Harley.” He felt her shift against him, her hair tickling his forearms.

The sound of the wind faded and the city braced itself for another onslaught of snow, and Lloyd was unable to recollect the next morning who descended into restive sleep first.

[lockwoodlitherland]

ANNIKA

She had spoken with Cass and Lil and... that night she knew it was over. It had to be their last together. Once again, she was being selfish and reckless with his life. She clung to the threads left between them as if they were a rope that might pull her up from some great suffocating depth; in reality the other end of that rope was tied in a noose that Anni tightened around Lloyd’s neck with their every interaction.

It has to stop, it’s not fair, it’s not real and it never will be again. Accept it. Cassie’s voice echoed in Annika’s head. For these quick fixes of serotonin she got by being with him she risked his everything, again. Risked reversing the very out she had engineered.

Anni thought on how much like an addict she had been, dipping back into his life again after going to great pains to wipe herself from it. She felt like she was going through a detox. She wondered how much the feeling of love was just biology, chemical craving, dependency, habit. Eventually her loving him had just become part of her muscle memory and she hadn’t noticed how deeply entangled he was in her every absecentminded action and idle thought, until she tried to be alone. They just existed together. Anni had found herself instinctively preparing two cups of tea and watching one go cold, buying bread for two and watching most go stale, signing birthday cards with two names then scribbling out his, throwing the card in the bin and buying another. Annika still squirreled herself away to the kitchen to smoke by the window, even if she woke up at 4am in bed alone, maybe especially because of that. Her autopilot was set to two. Lloyd had occupied a space in her life for so long and in such a specific way that his absence created a very real sense that a part of her was missing. So she went back, even though she knew it was bad and wrong and stupid and selfish, she needed a fix. But Cass and Lil were right. Enough was enough. She had to let him go.

That night just before Lloyd walked out the door Annika stopped him, grabbed him, they had stood holding one another for what simultaneously felt like far too long and not nearly long enough. She tried in that moment to commit every feel of him to memory: the specific warmth of his skin, the way he smelled, the dip in the back of his neck where her fingers fit so precisely, the exact weight of his arms as they wrapped around her, the crevice beneath his jaw where she rested her head, the way she folded into him so completely and perfectly like a bird folds in its wing. She was desperate to remember this. When he stepped away from her she remained motionless and Annika wanted so badly to tell him that she loved him. She didn’t. He left. She knew she would never touch him again.

More than anything she remembered the silent vacuum that consumed her space once he left that final time. She felt as though all the air had been sucked from her and she was floating up from a great depth, as if the bends were setting in; filling her skull with pressure enough to explode it and producing bubbles in her blood that flowed into her muscles, causing them to seize and crumple up. Her body felt so so heavy. Her legs disappeared beneath her, she decided to succumb to the bends. She sucked oxygen in big gulps through what felt like a key hole in her throat . Anni lay with her cheek against the cold wooden floor. Her vision was fuzzy as the door seemed to bend away from her in the dull red glow of the LED strip lights that ran across the ceiling. Fuzzy or blurry? Annika realised she was weeping, wailing, she couldn’t control her breathing. She could hear herself but it was far off, happening in her body; she felt like she was trapped away from that, just looking through her dead eyes as she sat in her own head.

Anni wasn’t sure how long she had stayed like that, hours? Or maybe it just felt like hours. It certainly felt like the end. At some point she began to breath normally again and her face muscles relaxed. She peeled herself from the floor and crawled to sleep on her couch because it wouldn’t smell of him.

[lockwoodlitherland]

ANNIKA TRACE & LLOYD RIVERS || (PLAYLIST)

***

[lockwoodlitherland]

“And that's why they hurt you, you hurt ‘cause you’re hurt too.

I hope it doesn’t hurt you, to forget lighting up our last cigarette. I pray, darling, that you'll be alright here, when I have to disappear. I hope it doesn't leave you alone here, that one perfect day we spent together last year. I hope, darling, you'll feel so lovely.”

[lockwoodlitherland]

lannika

"Lets run away," she whispered, leaning down to his ear, one set of fingers walking up his stomach, the other holding hair behind her ear.

Lloyd looked at her with calm deep eyes, a smile curling across his soft lips. "Lets run away," He repeated breathlessly before leaning up and pressing his lips firmly to hers, a smile curving them even further.

[lockwoodlitherland]

LLOYD & ANNIKA

“Annika…” He said again, seemingly finding it hard to form words. He stepped back and set on the edge of the sofa.

“Could we make it work again? Me and you? I mean…I didn’t realise it before but something in my mind knows that I want this. I want you…“ He frowned and ducked his head, almost confused. He was sure he wanted her, he just needed to get his heart in on it too. “Maybe…”.

“Maybe, huh?” Anni gave a smile and let out a fast breath of air through her nose that might have constituted a laugh. 

She wasn’t so sure. She wanted him, she wanted him to want her. But all she ever did was hurt him. It seemed to be the only thing she was good at these days; hurting the people she loved.

Annika moved towards him, sitting on his lap and leaning her temple into his cheek. She gave a sigh, long and through her nose, fidgeting softly with her fingers in her own lap, gazing down at their legs, meshed together. Anni closed her eyes, defeated. She was tired, exhausted, she hadn’t slept in days and it felt like longer.

“I…” Anni had to take a deep breath. Nuzzling her forehead into his cheek, she began breathing in his familiar, calming smell. She held herself there for a moment, eyes closed, wishing that she could stay here like this with him forever, hiding from the world. It’s consequences.

“I love you”.

It seemed that even if Lloyd had outwardly forgotten how the treat Annika there were little bits of memory that still remained about how he’d once held her because Lloyd did remember the happier times he’d spent with her after all. His arms were strong and protective. Even if he didn’t love her like he once had, he could still hold her and keep her safe. He could do that. 

When she said ‘I love you’ he didn’t even tense up, but for the first time with Annika he couldn’t say it back. Not because he wouldn’t, just because it wasn’t love he felt for her. He adored her, yes. Respected her and really felt for her but not love, not this time round. 

“You must be tired.” He murmured, looking at her face, his eyes now soft, like they usually were around her. With an easy motion he picked her up and gave her one of his trademark lazy smiles. “If you don’t mind staying of course…”.

It half killed Annika when the words that came out of his mouth weren’t the ones that she wanted to hear. That she craved, that she needed, to hear. But it hurt more to know that it was her own fault that they were gone. That she’d probably never hear them from Lloyd again. She had to leave, she had to go, she had to run. Panic began to well up in her chest, moving up through her throat, threatening to drown her. This wasn’t good for either of them anymore.

“No, no, I have to go.” Annika wriggled in his arms until he set her down. His acts of kindness, the way he treated her, it felt forced now, wrong. It was all wrong. 

“I’ll let you get back to sleep.” Anni stooped to pick up her duffel bag, hoisting it over her shoulder. She wanted to apologise to him, to cry and become submerged under the bed sheets that smelled so suffocatingly of him. But it was better this way. 

“It’s fine.” Annika felt pathetic, embarrassed. She hurried towards the door, bile and hot tears rushing up from her stomach, her chest, begging to erupt immediately before she could escape this shitshow.

[lockwoodlitherland]

“The damage is done. I would have died. I would have loved you all my life.”

[lockwoodlitherland]

MARITZA

“It’s like…” she looked up at the Silver Fir, standing proud and heavily adorned in reds and golds in the centre of Trinity Square. The canopy of fairy lights cascading down around them glimmered bright and glassy against the green of Annika’s tearful eyes as the words caught tight in her chest with the rest of her breath.

“It’s like waking up from a dream, you know? Everything is warm, like the sun on your skin. Everything is so reassuringly normal and mundane. Some things are shit, but it’s fine, it’s easy enough, the stakes aren’t that high. Like comfort watching your favourite show. But that’s, that’s just your life, and you can’t believe that it’s your life.”

Anni flexed her gloved fingers around the steaming hot cup in her hands. Wisps of hot whiskey-infused steam mingled with the breath that danced from her glossy lips as she puzzled her feelings out into words.

“But then you wake up and it’s sudden and cold and shocking. And you realise that the dream isn’t real, it’s not your life, you’re pretending. That horrible niggling feeling, it explodes, like when you first turn on the shower and the water’s freezing cold. It’s uhm… it’s overwhelming.”

She took a deep breath, sucking the whiskey wisps between her lips suddenly. Maritza knew that the breath held back a sob like a barricade. She wanted to take the drink away from Annika. The girl was nearly two years sober from opioids now, but the drink was still a coping mechanism Mari hadn’t been able to get her to shake. She reached forward across the bench and put her hand over Annika’s. It was clasped so tightly around the paper cup Mari wasn’t sure how it hadn’t crumpled.

“I think it’s time for the grief counselling Anna, it’s been over two years since he-“

Anni pulled back from Maritza at this suggestion. It was disguised by her taking a sip from the cup, but Mari knew Annika by now; as her sponsor it had been Maritza’s job to learn, read and risk assess all of the woman’s queues.

“I can deal with it on my own Mari.”

Maritza pulled her hand back from across the table with a sigh, balling her fingers into a fist, both against the bitter cold and out of a sense of frustration.

“Which is why you dragged me away from my kids’ ‘End-of-Semester-Christmas-Dinner-Gala-Bonanza’ on a Wednesday evening for an emergency meeting in the Winter Village?” 

Annika glared at her. “Christmas dinner” she muttered into her cup, lip gloss leaving a plum stain against the white rim “it’s the first of December.”

Despite this reaction Maritza knew that being blunt and honest was the best method of getting through to Annika. Their openness and low threshold for bullshit was why they’d chosen each other in the meetings.

“Anna. I can’t help you if you're not going to help yourself.”

Anni set her jaw, gaze falling back to the tall Christmas tree that lit up the murky winter sky above them.

“I’ll be fine for months.” She protested limply “I’ll forget and my life just goes on. Friends, family, work, rinse and repeat. Maybe I even meet someone, and they’re nice and they like me and I like them and it’s fun and maybe it’s even getting a little bit serious and then…” her lip quivered and her perfectly shaped eyebrows dipped into a frown below the rim of her woollen hat as the tears welled again. Eyes glistening with the bright reflections of the festive lights that danced around her, their grief didn’t match their setting. “I wake up. I think I see him in a crowd. I think I hear him in the next aisle. I remember. Especially at this time of year…I remember what I did to him and the last time I saw him. I remember what we had and I want it back. I remember the fact that I’ll never see him again, even though it feels like he’s just in the next room. I can never go in. I just…” finally a sob broke free “I can’t go in. And it’s raw again. And I ruin everything. All the good things that I have. I just burn it all to the ground. I miss him. He’s gone and I remember he’s gone and why. And I just want to use so badly, because I know that will make all of this go away. I know I’ll go to sleep again, where he doesn’t exist at all… After everything, everything I did, I want to forget too. So badly. I want to forget.”