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dimpled-gukkie · 5 years ago

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Call Me A Thief

a/n: Happy birthday Shay @today-we-will-survive !!!!! I can’t believe we’ve only celebrated two birthdays of yours thus far. It feels like we’ve been friends forever. Once again I’m going to say that I’m so thankful you’re my friend and thank you for being my rock and sometimes the only person I can talk to. I hope we can celebrate many more years together and that this is your best year yet! Love you - your ghost bestie/ whatever that really long one I never remember is

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Reader / Kim Taehyung x Reader (brief mentions of Jung Hoseok x Reader as a past relationship)

Genre: College AU, e2l, idiots to lovers, angst, fluff

Word Count: 31.3k

Warnings: mild language, minor self-hatred (more so in the form of self doubt), mentions of drinking but not descriptions, Jimin shows up tipsy, I guess name calling but it’s not that serious, a sick pet for a short minute, oc gets somewhat depressed towards the end but it’s resolved

Summary: In a series of truly misfortunate events, a thief, a plantnapper and a muse-seeking photographer somehow cross paths on their admittedly huge (40,000 students huge) college campus. At first glance they’re just strangers but the more they get to know each other the more they realize their roots intertwine. If the universe had kept them apart for this long, surely it wouldn’t bring them together for a disaster. Right?

You’re an idiot. Perhaps that stupidest person you know. I mean how can you steal someone’s bag thinking it’s yours? Especially when your backpack isn’t even black and yet here you are staring blankly at the black backpack that lies limply on the table in front of you. Staring at the bag you blink listlessly at it like maybe if you blink enough times the mirage will fade and your own backpack will be in front of you. And yet several silent moments later the black backpack still sits in front of you. You don’t even know who it could belong to. Your lecture consists of 400 students, the owner of the bag could be any of them. Even worse if you email your professor about it to return the stolen item you’ll be known as the girl who stole it. You’ll be a thief. Exhaling a large sigh you slump down onto the desk in front of you, a large thumping sound ringing through the otherwise silent top floor of the library, those around you unaware of the self-damning thoughts running through your mind.

“Wake up nerd.” Jimin’s voice says and you don’t even have to look up to know he’s looming above you, enjoying the fact that he’s towering over you for once. Oh the woes of the tiny man with the tiny hands. He pushes your shoulder with said tiny hands and you’re half considering becoming weightless and letting him shove your limp body out of the chair just so the feeling of your ass hitting the hard ground will keep you from thinking about your mistake. You can’t even make fun of Jimin for being a dumb blonde now. Well, you could say he’s killing your brain cells. Your lips quirk up at the thought, placated by the idea of pinning your mistake on your innocent best friend. After all, teasing Jimin is your favorite part of the day.

“Are you dead!” Jimin whispers and you shoot your head up just to glare at him.

“Don’t act so excited. Plus if I were to die I would not want to go out in a library. How unglamorous.”

“It would be rather tasteless wouldn’t it?” He pauses for a minute before his eyes widen. “Not that anything is wrong with dying in a library. I’m sure it’s cool.” He laughs awkwardly and you can’t help but chuckle. Ever since he watched that paranormal activity movie with Yoongi, Jimin is convinced that ghosts are real and that they’re listening to every word he says. Like they’d want to follow around a guy who spends his days trying to find the most incognito insoles and browsing the hair dye section at Walgreens. But alas Jimin has always been a victim of the spotlight effect and if you had to guess would view his life as some sort of reality tv show.

“Hey whose backpack is that? Are you meeting someone?” Jimin asks, nodding to the incriminating black bag still on the table. You groan and are in the midst of throwing your head back onto the table when Jimin forcefully stops you by wrapping his hands around your face. Unfortunately, he miscalculates which results in his palms slapping your cheeks while his fingers dig into your mouth that they’d mistakenly pried open. You sputter and scrunch your face in distaste, making a similar expression to that of a baby that has just tried a lemon.

“When was the last time you washed your hands?” You screech, unaware of the eyes on you. “I can taste the day old cheeto dust. You’ve infected me!” You whine, taking a swig of your water to gurgle like it’s mouthwash. “I need to eat soap or something.”

“I’m the victim here! Who knows where your mouth has been. Tell me, when was the last time you saw Jung Hoseok?” Jimin also screeches then proceeds to wince when you smack his arm.

“You ass! I haven’t seen him since we broke up a year ago, you know that.” Jimin nods while pouting, rubbing the spot on his arm like your slap stung. When he sees you looking at the movement his mouth pulls into a smirk as he rolls up his sleeve to reveal his bicep.

“Kiss it better?” He teases, yelping and jumping backwards before you can smack him again.

“You’re insufferable.”

“Ditto.”

“No one even says ditto anymore.” You scoff and he just shrugs.

“I’ll bring it back, after all I’m famous you know?”

“Just because you got ten likes on your tweet about your ex doesn’t mean you’re famous.”

“Say that to my 200 followers.” He runs his fingers through his hair, his own version of a hair flip, before returning his attention back to the incriminating item on the table. “So is someone here with you or…”

“I may have accidentally stolen someone’s backpack thinking it was mine…” You mumble, hoping that Jimin might not hear you. For a moment you think he might not have until you hear wheezing coming from beside you, Jimin practically sprawled across the floor as his laughter comes out in tiny squeaks. “It’s not funny! This is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done! All the bleach fumes from dying your hair has rotted my brain. This is all your fault Jimin.” You whine, bottom lip jutted and brows furrowed as you take on the expression of a kicked puppy. Jimin pauses for a moment in his laughter to observe your behavior before letting out two more huffs.

“Aww don’t pout kitkat.” Jimin coos, pinching your cheeks between his chubby fingers as he pulls them back and forth until you crack a smile. His plush lips draw into a smile of their own, his eyes creasing as he gently taps your nose. “See kitkat it’s not that big of a deal. Do you know who it belongs to?” When you shake your head ‘no’ he frowns a little before a mischievous smile pulls at his lips.

“Well we could always look through it? To find the name of the owner of course.” Of course. Not because you’re nosey bitches or anything.

“If I see one more skull I’m going to scream.” Jimin groans, throwing his head back against your pillows as a textbook you pulled from the backpack lays in front of him.

“To be fair it is an anatomy textbook and a skull is part of the human body. They’re at least doodling things related to the subject.”

“But the angst kitkat! I feel like this person only listens to MCR or something.” He whines, displeased with the artist’s choice of subject.

“I think they’re kinda cool though. The shading’s really good and look! This one is a skull made out of butterflies.” Your fingers run along the drawing lightly, careful not to smudge the artist’s hard work but enjoying following the intricate line work.

“Besides in this notebook there’s all types of different drawings. Some marvel stuff, some succulents. I even found a cute little dog drawing!” You say, turning the notebook around to show him the little dog scrawled in the margins, its small fluffy face smiling.

“You mean I’ve been looking at skulls for nothing?”

“I mean I don’t know why you thought you’d find their name in a textbook but I thought maybe you were interested in the subject or something.” You shrug, ignoring the glare Jimin sends your way.

“You suck.” He declares, sticking his tongue out at you when you look at him. You stick yours at him in response.

“Bite me.”

“Oh I see someone’s been watching 90’s movies lately. Tell me, do you imagine finding your own heath ledger like Kat? Or perhaps you’re more of the creepy ‘I’m gonna fall for my step-brother’ type like Cher. Though personally, I got to say I’m a big fan of the ‘childhood best friends to lovers’ trope but I digress. Hey have you found any clues yet?”

“Well we know they’re an anatomy student and like art. I also found ‘JJK’ scribbled next to a drawing on a scrap of paper that fell out of one of the notebooks so I’m hoping that’s their initials. So we can go through the class roster and hopefully there’s an angsty bio/medical student with those initials.” Pulling out your laptop you migrate from the floor to the bed, pulling out the roster for your english class. Ever so slowly you scroll through the roster, thankful to find only two names with the initials JJK.: Jeon Jungkook and Jung Jaekwan.

“I think we have an easy solution here. I stalk one and you stalk the other and we see which one was more likely to be in a punk band of some sort when they were in high school.” Jimin suggests, already heading towards your closet to find the best stalker outfit.

“Or we could just find their instagrams?” You say and Jimin flicks his hand like he’s physically brushing off your suggestion.

“Already tried, both private. That means they’re probably ugly.”

“Hey my accounts are private!” You exclaim and you can tell by the way Jimin’s shoulders slightly scrunch inwards that he’s stifling a laugh.

“Case in point. Anyways, what screams sexy Joe Goldberg? Like we’re definitely going full-stalker mode but like not ‘I’m going to kill you’ yandere vibes.” Jimin ignores the pillow you throw at him, continuing to babble about the perfect outfit like he didn’t just offend you.

“This is stupid.” You grumble into the miniature walkie-talkie Jimin bought from Walmart, dressed in large sunglasses, black tights and dress, adorned with your black docs. Ever the self-proclaimed fashion icon, Jimin dressed you in every black article of clothing you owned. The sun beat down on you from above, it was rather warm for a late spring day, and you tried to ignore the way sweat began to accumulate under the black ball cap (“It’s the Joe trade mark!”Jimin exclaimed when you protested him adding that to the already questionable outfit seeing as it is almost summer).

“And stealing someone’s backpack that’s not even the same color as your own is stupid but you don’t hear me criticizing your ideas.” He snarks back at you through the small device.

“It wasn’t like I planned on it! I told you it was an accident!” You screech at him, only to scream as another voice sounds out from behind you.

“What are you doing?” You turn around to face a guy with blonde hair, an old camera clutched between his large hands as he crouches down beside you.

“What are you doing?” You parrot, mind unable to conjure up a reasonable and not weird reason for why you’re here. Here being ducked behind an overgrown bush off to the side of the life science building in hopes you’ll see Jeon Jungkook emerge from the now-finishing Anatomy 101 lecture. It’s one of four and you’re hoping that your mystery man that you’ve loosely memorized from his profile picture- although half his face is obscured by large wire framed glasses that you can’t figure out if are real or for fashion- hears your beckoning call and comes out of those double doors.

“Photography assignment.” The guy holds up the camera to justify his statement. “Are you looking for something?” He glances at the surrounding area before noticing the walkie-talkie in your hand.

“Oh I used to love those as a kid!” Snatching it from your fingers he immediately talks into it and you face palm as you imagine Jimin’s face on the receiving end. “Houston this is starship one. We are prepared to land. Houston do you hear me?” The stranger giggles, lips forming into a peculiar grin before his eyes widen when Jimin’s voice crackles through the cheap speaker.

“Listen dumbass, I’m out here before 2:00 pm trying to resurrect your mistake and you’re playing games with a stranger?! Do you not understand that I sacrificed my beauty sleep for this? I’m seeing Soyeon during lecture today and you know I like to look good for her.”

Snatching the device from the stranger you hurry to appease your best friend. “I’m sorry Jiminie! But you don’t need beauty sleep, you’re already the most handsome guy I know.”

“I’m listening.” Jimin says after your pause.

“You could rival Aphrodite herself! In fact I’m sure that’s why she led me to steal someone’s backpack so you’d lose said beauty sleep so she could have a chance at being prettier than you!” You cringe at your own words, you don’t think you’ve ever laid it on this thick, but you need Jimin. He’s the only one you know shameless enough to help you in such an endeavor, I mean you’re literally stalking someone just to find out if you have their backpack. Plus you really didn’t mean to hurt Jimin’s feelings.

“That was a bit too much for my taste but I appreciate your sentiment. You’ve been redeemed. Now tell your friend he either needs to go or help us.” When you turn to said “friend” he’s staring at you with pink lips parted, strong eye brows pulled together in confusion as you watch him try to process what just happened. You can’t believe someone’s witnessed the monstrosity of this whole situation, much less someone so handsome. It really would be your luck. You must be cursed or something.

“You stole someone’s backpack?” Ahh it seems that tiny detail is what his mind has fixated on the most.

“No not stole, accidentally took. Why would you steal someone’s bag?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.” He shrugs, moving to stand up and you immediately scramble up after him, thoughts of finding whoever Jeon Jungkook is long forgotten.

“You don’t understand, it was an accident! I was tired and grabbed the one nearest me before walking out. And I’m trying to return it I just don’t know who it is so I was trying to see if this guy is missing a backpack.” You ramble, too lost in your narrative to notice the way he smiles almost fondly down at you.

“And the walkie talkie?”

“Oh you see we have two suspects-“ You start only to be interrupted.

“Suspects?”

“Yes suspects, I don’t have a better word. But I’m supposed to watch for one guy and Jimin watch for another- that’s the guy who cussed me out earlier- but I got distracted and now I just missed him which means I have to sit outside this stupid hall for the rest of the day to make sure he’s not in any of the other lectures to see if he was in this one and I just realized that he could’ve missed today which means I might have to wear this stupid outfit again-“

The handsome stranger raises his hand to stop your word vomit and you give him a sheepish smile when your words finally stop pouring out. “While I would like to stick around and hear more about your detective work, I have class in approximately ten minutes so I need to get going.” He says and you try to hide the way you deflate a little.

“Oh okay.” He smiles at you one final time before jogging in the opposite direction while you watch after him. Jeon Jungkook be damned, just who was that?

After your failed attempt at locating the aloof Jeon Jungkook- not that you were really looking because your mind was clogged with thoughts of your mystery man with the pretty smile- you trudge back to your tiny apartment in hopes to get some peace and quiet. The dream is destroyed, however, when you can hear the music from your neighbor all the way down the hall by the elevators. Agitated and sweaty, you march towards their door, more than willing to be an annoying neighbor if it means you can nap.

The cheap door rattles lightly under your heavy fists and you can’t help the satisfaction it brings you. Banging on a door is truly a great way to release tension it seems. A muffled “Turn it down so I can think!” sounds through the thin wood and the music lowers just barely. They might as well have not even bothered to fiddle with the volume at all. The door swings open and a guy with shoulders almost as wide as the doorway- you don’t know whether his shoulders are just that huge or if the door is that small, maybe both- leans against it lazily as his gaze flickers down your form.

“You’re not Namjoon.” Is the thought that makes its way out of your brain and into the atmosphere, the four word sentence stilling the air between you two.

“Well you’re right there sweetheart. I’m his much more handsome older brother. And you are?” He asks and you’re rather thankful that he decided to go with it rather than think about what type of idiot states who someone clearly is not. Maybe you really are getting dumber.

“Y/n, the lovely neighbor who just wants to take a nap. Which I can’t do if your music is so loud that I can hear it all the way down the hall.” He pauses for a moment to take in what you’ve said before pressing off the door to stand straight in front of you. He towers over you and you can’t help but shrink back a little.

“Namjoon did tell me about a nice neighbor but he never gave me a name. Though since you’re complaining about my music I wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re lovely.”

“Hey I had a long day!” You exclaim, raising back to your full height like that will somehow get him to take you more seriously. Though with the lazy smirk he gives you, your need to prove yourself only provides him entertainment.

“Well I’ve had a rather long day too, I’ve been babysitting all day.” A scoff of protest sounds from behind him and you try and inconspicuously look around the wide-shouldered man to see who else is inside Namjoon’s apartment. All you can see though is a random figure drowning in an oversized hoodie on the couch before the man at the door requests your attention again. Perhaps if you had looked a little harder you would’ve noticed the wire frame glasses sitting neatly on the glass end table. “Which is why I’m playing my music to relax. And drown out the incessant whining. ‘Seokjin get me water. Seokjin make me food. Seokjin do my math homework’, like I’m even good at such thing. I’m a liberal arts student.” You can’t help but laugh at the way he whines out the demands of presumably the other stranger in the apartment, his voice pitched higher than normal like he’s trying to imitate a child.

“Well Seokjin, I have just one request. Can you please turn the music down by like a third so I won’t hear it through the wall?” You bring your hands to clasp together in front of you, cocking your head to the side while batting your eyelashes up at him. He seems like the type to like aegyo. Evidently your assumption is very much wrong as he scrunches his nose in distaste.

“Please never make that face again. But I guess I can turn it down since you asked so nicely. Though next time you have a request for me at least buy me dinner first?” He says before waving at you goodbye through a laugh and shutting the door. The music now a quiet murmur in the hallway as you open your own apartment door. Odd, Namjoon never mentioned having roommates.

Apparently you too have surprise roommates as a tipsy Jimin appears at your door with a suitcase behind him as he stumbles into your apartment along with his small calico cat named Kimchi who immediately jumps out of his arms when she recognizes your apartment. “Jimin?” You say tentatively, almost like if you say his name too loud he’ll snap. “What’re you doing here at 2 a.m?”

“Mad at Yoongi. Living here now.” Is the only explanation he gives you before trudging into your bedroom, the bed creaking as he flops down on it meanwhile his suitcase still stands next to you in the living room. Kimchi pays no mind to her owner’s sad drunken form, kneading at your old couch until she finds a soft spot to curl up on.

“Jiminie, what did Yoongi do?”

“Told me he saw Soyeon making out with some guy in a bar yesterday.” Jimin sniffles, crawling over to lay his head in your lap when you sit down on the other side of your bed. Your fingers immediately weave through the soft strands gently similar to the way a mother would soothe her child.

“You’re mad because he told you?” You ask.

“Mad because he lied. Soyeon told me she couldn’t go to the movies yesterday because she had to study for an exam today. She even told me it went really well when I saw her in our com lecture. Why would Yoongi lie to me about that when he knows how I feel about her?” You can’t help the way you look down at Jimin pitifully, glad that he’s turned away from you so he can’t see the sadness in your eyes. Min Yoongi is nothing if not painfully blunt but he’s always been honest. So you know that he’s telling Jimin the truth, a truth that Jimin- blinded by his love for Soyeon that’s been growing since freshman year of college when they shared english 101- doesn’t want to hear nor accept. It’s a truth you’ve been trying to ease him into for months now, the fact that despite Soyeon knowing Jimin’s feelings she’s never made an effort to actually put effort into a relationship with him. She only drags him back in with faux affection when she can feel her hold on him begin to slip between her fingers. Jimin’s body begins to shake again as his mind drifts off to what Yoongi said again, your legs becoming slightly wet as his tears trickle onto them.

‘Aww Jiminie,” You sigh, moving a hand to wipe at his tears on the cheek available to you. “It’s gonna be okay, you and Yoongi will still be friends after this.”

“I just don’t know why he’d tell me that. Just thinking about her with someone else makes it feel like someone is stabbing me and cutting my heart out piece by piece. Make the pain go away kitkat. Please.” He whimpers and your heart breaks alongside him as tears fall down your own cheeks. You wish you could take the heartache away, you wish he’d never met Soyeon, that he found someone who loved him as much as he deserves. You wish that there was something you could do but sadly Jimin will have to get over his feelings on his own. There’s not much you can do besides wipe away his tears.

“I’m so sorry Jiminie, but it’ll get better. You’ll find someone who’ll love you more than she ever could.” it’s the only solace you can offer him at the moment and while now it does nothing you hope it plants a little seed in his mind to later sprout into hope for the future.

“Yoongi wasn’t lying was he?” Jimin says after a few minutes, voice so soft you almost miss it entirely.

“I don’t think so bub.” You whisper, brushing his hair back from his face softly.

“Can I still stay here? I just need some time away to think and figure out how to apologize.”

“Stay for as long as you need.” You tell him, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to the side of his head. “What’re best friends for?”

You wake up early the next morning to Kimchi sitting on your chest, patting your face gently with her paw. “Hi sweetheart.” You say softly and she responds by rubbing her face against yours. “You hungry?” You ask her to which she meows in response. Sitting up slowly she jumps off of you and waits impatiently for you by the door, yelling at you to hurry up. Rubbing your eyes you slip on your slippers before following her to the kitchen to make sure she doesn’t wake Jimin up. Thankfully you had babysat Kimchi earlier this year and have leftover food for her which you pour into a little bowl before moving onto making breakfast for you and Jimin. Settling on pancakes, because really who doesn’t like waking up to pancakes, you head downstairs to the nearby market to buy the necessary ingredients as well as a litter box for Kimchi. You’re not really sure how long Jimin will be staying with you but judging by the fact Jimin needs time to think about just how to apologize you can only guess the blowout between him and Yoongi was pretty bad. He’ll probably be staying for at least a week to build up the courage to even face your eldest friend.

Pushing the shopping cart through the empty isles of the shop- honestly you should come here only in the early mornings because there’s no one to get in your way when you glide across the isles on the back of the cart- you pause in front of the small plant section in the corner of the store. They’re mostly succulents and little flowers for people who’ve forgotten anniversaries and need to pick up one last minute but you contemplate bringing home a little aloe vera plant. Jimin has always talked about wanting to start becoming a plant dad and maybe this will cheer him up a little. Just before you can grab it because yes you do need that little plant to add to the forest that is your apartment, it’s snatched up by someone’s grubby hands. You squawk in disbelief- yes sadly squawk but it’s also 8 in the morning so do you really care- blinking at the plantnapper in shock. “That’s my plant.” Similar to the not-Namjoon Seokjin incident your mouth moves before your mind has time to process what you’re going to say.

“Is your name on it?” The thief says and you internally gag. Ugh he’s one of those guys.

“Yes actually it’s written as ‘fuck you’ in the soil.” You grumble, crossing your arms over your chest as you stare at your plant clutched between his fingers forlornly. You don’t even bother to look up at his face, his identity shall be nothing but a plantnapper to you.

“Are you always this pleasant?” He says airily and you almost look up at him just from hearing the smirk in his voice but refrain. He doesn’t deserve the satisfaction.

“Are you always such an ass?” You quip and to your anger he laughs. He giggles like you just told him the funniest joke of the century and you can feel your insides heat up as you struggle not to throttle him.

“If I recall correctly all I did was take this plant. You’re the one who started calling me names and cussing me out.” You hate that he’s right but you’ve always been known for your stubbornness.

“I wouldn’t have said anything if you weren’t a thief.” You tell him, reaching out to grab the plant from his hands when you notice his grip slacken slightly in confusion. If only he didn’t have good reflexes as he holds the little succulent high above his head.

“Ah ah ah,” He tuts and you finally look up at him, coming face to face with large round eyes glinting with happiness. You scowl further as you realize he won and got you to look at him. “Such a shame a pretty face is wasted.” He says, you can just imagine the ear-splitting grin hidden behind his large black face mask.

“Give me my plant.” You deadpan, wanting to end the altercation all together. You’d lost the will to want it so badly as soon as he pointed out that he was in fact right and you had been the one to start this petty argument, but now your desire to not lose has won over and you’re adamant on leaving with the plant still trapped in his hands.

“Say please and I’ll consider it.” He counters, unaffected by the sharp glare you send his way.

“I saw it first!” You whine and again he giggles.

“What is this, elementary school? Well in that case, you snooze you loose!” If it weren’t for the face mask obscuring his mouth you just know he would be sticking his tongue out at you. Just the thought irks you enough to submit to his will.

“Fine, can I please have the plant?” You sigh hating the way his eyes twinkle.

“Sure thing.” He says before setting it down on the highest shelf available, one you’ll have to scale the shelf case just to grab. When he notices your expression of both defeat and annoyance his eyes crinkle once more into a large grin as he pats the top of your head lightly. “Have a nice day!” He sings before walking off in the opposite direction. You flip off his parting figure before sighing and staring at the aloe vera plant helplessly. You can’t just leave it there in case he comes back to see if you’ve managed to snag the plant. If it’s still there that means he’ll have bested you three times and you can’t have that even if he is a total stranger.

Your feet are perched on the bottom rung of the shelving as you reach up aimlessly with one hand, your mind so busy cursing out the stranger that you don’t hear the approaching footsteps of another person until a hand comes over your outstretched one and grabs the plant. Not again, you groan internally.

“Listen-“ You begin, turning around fully ready to be faced with a smirking crinkly eyed boy only to sputter when you realize it’s the guy with the camera you couldn’t get out of your head yesterday. He has a little apron on, one that all the employees wear, and a large silver name tag that displays his name so prettily.

“Were you trying to get this little guy?” He asks, voice warm and smooth like honey as he gently strokes his finger along one of the leaves of the small plant. His brown hair is like the color of milk chocolate, softened by the early morning sun and he’s so beautiful and warm you fully forget how to function. Like your brain short circuits and for a moment you forget where you are and what you were saying.

“Uhh yeah.” You manage to spit out after awkwardly gaping at him for who knows how long. “Thanks…Taehyung.” His name sounds so natural coming out of your mouth- but that’s probably just because you’re secretly a hopeless romantic who gets caught up in pretty boys much too easily- and you can’t help but wish that you’ll get to say it many more times. He gingerly hands the plant over to you and you can feel your cheeks getting hot when his fingers brush your own.

“Anytime stalker girl.” He giggles. It’s such an endearing sound.

“Y/n, my name is y/n.” You tell him, nervously fiddling with the leaves of your little plant.

“Need any help finding anything else?” He asks you and maybe- just maybe- you ask him to show you where the cat stuff is. But only because you don’t know- you do- where the cat stuff is and not because you want to spend more time with him- like how you ask his opinion on what food flavors Kimchi would like when she’s not even your cat and you have food at home.

Thankfully Jimin is still asleep when you arrive home which means you can still surprise him. You were a little stressed when you realized just how much time you had spent talking to Taehyung- just the thought of him makes you smile like a lovesick fool, grinning to yourself in your empty kitchen as you unload the groceries- but it turns out the emotional turmoil Jimin’s going through is enough to make him exhausted. Kimchi watches you mix the batter curiously from the top of the refrigerator, her tail flicking gently almost like it’s swaying to the music playing softly from your phone. “Should I make bacon?” You ask her, nodding affirmatively when she meows back at you that yes, you should.

The bacon sizzles as it hits the hot pan while you stand as far away as possible, carefully placing each strip with salad tongs. You jump when the grease pops, mind flashing back to the time Jimin almost set the dorm kitchen on fire. For someone who had worked in a restaurant during high school you would think he’d know not to put water in a hot pan of oil. Kimchi also hates the sound, her tail whacking you in the face as it flicks agitatedly. You wipe at your tongue furiously after feeling what can only be cat hair in your mouth- possibly the worst texture of all time- before making eye contact with a sleepy Jimin leaning against the hallway wall. “You’re cooking?” He asks, no stranger to finding cat hair in uncomfortable places.

“Thought I’d surprise you.” You smile awkwardly, gesturing to the pan before flinching when the oil pops.

“Breakfast in bed? Your future boyfriend will be the luckiest guy out there. I didn’t even have to put out.” Jimin laughs, disregarding the way you internally gag at the thought of being intimate with Jimin. It’s not that you don’t think he’s attractive because lets’s be honest, with his plush lips that could rival any bratz doll, thick head of black hair and amazing physique from dancing- you really should’ve took him up on taking classes with him- he’s a straight stunner. His sweet and charming albeit snarky personality only makes him even more alluring. If only you hadn’t known him for so long- more like took baths with him as babies- you’d probably see him as something more than just an annoying, lovable little brother. You say little despite him being older because this man really does act like a five year old sometimes.

“Please never put that image into my head again.” You say, ignoring the way he rolls his eyes.

“It’s your fault for imagining it. Ugh now you’re making me think about it; when will the torture end?” He whines only pausing his dramatics when you put a stack of bacon and pancakes in front of him. Immediately he slathers them in butter and syrup, completely silent as he digs in.

“Wow thank you, Y/n you’re the best! I couldn’t ask for a better best friend.” You say sarcastically, patting yourself on the back before turning to flip your own pancakes.

“Thanks you.” Jimin sings through a mouthful of food, standing up to give you a sticky kiss on the cheek in appreciation.

“Gross!” You yell, wiping your cheek on a nearby dish towel before twisting it to snap it at Jimin. He shrieks in terror and you laugh manically, plating your own breakfast before sitting besides him at the counter top. The barstools creak under your weight- although what did you expect when you bought the cheapest ones available at Ikea- and you half worry it’s going to break but thankfully you don’t end up bruising your ass today. “I did such a good job. These are delicious, wow.” This time you really do give yourself on the back, proud to say that you’ve still got it. They’re fluffy, not burned, and edible. Someone needs to cast you for top chef.

Jimin chuckles from beside you, the two of you eating in silence until Jimin notices the small aloe vera plant next to the fridge. “You bought another plant?” He says exasperated, almost like your slight plant addiction has offended him.

“Firstly I told you the more plants the better the air quality. Plus more free oxygen.”

“All oxygen is free stupid.”

“Anyways, since you wanted to be a plant dad I thought you could start out with this little guy. It should be relatively easy but I can help you if you have any questions.”

“Oh, thanks. I guess I’m a proud father of two now.” Standing up Jimin grabs the little plot, cradling it between his fingers. “It needs a name.”

“Cherry.”

“I hate cherries.” Jimin says going so far as to pucker his lips and scrunch his nose to show his distaste.

“Not cherry cherries, Cherry.” You say, sighing and rolling your eyes when Jimin doesn’t understand the clear difference. “Only the best character in animal crossing, duh.”

“She doesn’t even wear Gucci.” Jimin scoffs and you place a hand over your heart, wholly offended by the slander taking place in front of you.

“Just because she’s not a hypebeast does not make her inferior. Besides aren’t you more of a YSL guy? Gucci is their direct competition.”

“I just- Cherry and Kimchi sounds horrible.” Jimin sighs.

“Please.” You plead, pulling your best puppy dog eyes. “I went through so much just to get it.”

“Did you embarrass yourself again?” Jimin’s voice is something along the lines of a disappointed mom- the one where they just kinda sigh it out because they shouldn’t have expected you to change- and you just flash him a smile.

“If you’re asking if I was mid-scaling a case of shelves to try and get Cherry from the very top and the hottest guy I’ve ever seen caught me in the act then yes. But I only had to scale it because this jerk wanted to flex his height and put it up there so I had to climb to get it. I mean he’s not even like super tall he’s just normal tall so maybe it’s an inferiority complex. Can tall guys have those?” You ramble, mid-tangent when Jimin raises a hand to stop you.

“Fine we can name it Cherry. But just know when people ask me why that’s the name I’m blaming you.”

“You act like Kimchi is not just as weird. She’s not even mainly orange.” Feeling a pair of eyes on you you turn and come face to face with Kimchi who had left her post on the fridge to make her presence known. If she had eye brows you swear she’d be glaring since her eyes have lost their typical round shape and are more angular. “Sorry baby you know I still love you.” You tell her, rubbing the top of her head until she purrs.

“Don’t listen to her Kim, she’s lying.” Jimin whispers conspiratorially to which you gasp. Pulling her into your chest you cover her ears as you cradle her.

“Don’t put such words in her head. I even bought new food for her!”

“Are you stalking me?” A voice you’d recognize anywhere, Taehyung’s, says to your left and you swear you’ve never turned faster in your life.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” You tease, chuckling to hide the way your heart races at the sight of him. HIs hair is a wavy mess today, toeing the line between bedhead and purposely but ever so sexy all the same. He’s wearing a thin, black sweater today tucked into some loose brown plaid plants and looks effortlessly good. It’s truly unfair for him to be this attractive, you’re not sure your heart- nor your stomach with the way butterflies are fluttering rampantly in your ribcage- can take it. “Besides aren’t you the one doing the stalking? After all I was here first.”

“Very true but I also caught you in the act the other day, so I can’t be too sure.” He teases, nudging your arm with his own. “So have you found the guy you’re looking for yet?” He asks, moving to sit next to a bench a few feet away and patting the spot next to him.

“Not yet, he’s more aloof than I thought.”

“A buddy of mine had his bag stolen recently too. Apparently you’re not the only kleptomaniac on campus.”

“I’m not a thief!” You exclaim, playfully slapping his shoulder as he giggles at you.

“Alright, alright.” He says throwing his hands up in mock surrender.

“Oh hey how’d your photography assignment go?” You ask, half curious and half itching to fill the silence between the two of you.

“Nothing really struck my interest.” He shrugs. “You’re actually the only thing I could think of the rest of the day.” He says it so casually like he’s talking about what he ate that day, completely unaware of the way you clam up beside him. How do you even respond to that?

Laughing awkwardly because your mind has shut down and you’ve been left to follow your useless instincts, you fiddle with the rings on your fingers. “Yeah you’re pretty interesting yourself.” You want to bash your head into the sidewalk. That’s the best you could come up with?

“Want to be my muse?” He turns to you then, looking at you like you’re the most interesting thing to him. It makes you nervous, what will he do when he finds out that you’re just average?

“If you want me to be.” You say softly, avoiding meeting his eyes. You’re mad at yourself for how shy you’ve become but you’ve never been in a situation like this before. Taehyung is just so blunt and sweet, but you’re so accustomed to loving insults that you don’t know how to respond in something that’s not sarcastic.

“I want to catch you in your element.” He says, reaching over to take your hand in his own. Your cheeks heat up instinctively and you turn away to hide it, turning back around when you hear the familiar shutter of a camera. You didn’t even realize he had it.

“I’m afraid I’m not that interesting.” You tell him earnestly, unable to hide your crestfallen expression.

“I beg to differ. I mean how many girls do you find that hide in bushes outside science lectures and use mini walkie-talkies?” You can’t help but crack a smile, imagining yourself from his point of view. That must’ve been quite the sight.

“That was a one time event. Well hopefully. I’m just kinda wishing the owner of the bag will just appear in front of me.” You sigh, looking forlornly at the life science building. You just knew the owner had to be in there somewhere.

“That’d be easy.” Taehyung laughs, his smile falling when his phone buzzes. “I have to go to class but I’ll see you again okay?”

“Oh okay. Should I give you my number then?” You ask, fumbling with your phone to bring up the contacts page.

“Sure, though I think through fate we’d meet again anyways. Don’t you think it means something that out of the 40,000 students on campus we found each other?” His eyes twinkle with mirth and you smile back at him, hoping that this is some kind of act of fate. Maybe you’ve even found your soulmate.

“I hope so.” You tell him, smile growing as a boxy grin takes over his face. You’ve never met someone so adorable. He waves at you goodbye, throwing you a cheesy kiss as he walks in the other direction, leaving you to squeal by yourself in peace.

After spending the entirety of your free time spent sitting outside the life science building looking for a face you barely remember at this point you give up. You’ll just have to bring the backpack to the lost and found and notify your professor that you found a back from your past lecture and brought it there so he could tell the class. You’d also have to look for your own backpack, your mind so focused on the fact that you had someone’s bag that it completely disregarded the fact that you didn’t even have your own. Thankfully you still have your laptop so you’ve been able to complete your home work but all your notes were in that bag. Trudging through the hallway you ignore the noise coming from next-door, praying that by the time you return from this adventure they’ll be quiet, you quickly grab the bag and head out. You’re surprised to see a frustratingly familiar face however and you make eye contact with the guy standing outside of Namjoon’s door. You’d recognize those stupid big eyes and black mask anywhere. It’s the plantnapper.

“You’re the thief?” He yells in disbelief, pointing to the backpack as if it’s incriminating. Well it is but it shouldn’t be to him. You only blink at him in surprise, still stood in the doorway to your apartment as your brain tries to process what this means. “I should figure as much after the plant incident.” He scoffs, eyes sharpening as he glares at your unresponsive form. He must know the person who owns this bag that has to be it. Or, oh no, what if he’s the guy who owns it.

Taking a moment to observe your self-declared nemesis, you take in the tattoos that poke out from his oversized black t-shirt, the man piercings in his ear, the all black (tattoos included) aesthetic. The only thing that doesn’t scream that he could like drawing skulls in his free time is the dorky bucket hat on his head. Stepping closer, you look in his eyes once again trying to imagine the ones from Jeon Jungkook’s instagram profile picture to them. It’s only when he crosses his arms at your scrutinizing gaze do you notice the wire frame glasses hanging from the collar of his shirt. Oh no, please not him. Anybody but him.

“You’re Jeon Jungkook?” You ask incredulously not believing that he’s right here in front of you. You thought the guy who drew the skulls and small plants would be a shy emo nerd not an arrogant asshole.

“So she speaks.” He says, reaching forward to wrench the backpack out of your hands. “Why’d you steal my bag anyways, thief?” He spits the word out and you glare at him, fists clenching at your side.

“I’m not a thief. I accidentally took it thinking it was mine!” You say indignantly, tired of having to retell this story so many times. You wish you would’ve just thrown it away. You would’ve if you had figured out the plantnapper’s identity sooner.

“You thought it was yours for two days? Are you stupid?” He asks and you suck on your inner cheek in irritation.

“No I was just trying to find you to return it personally, but now I wish I’d have just thrown it away or burned it.”

“Wait a minute…does that mean you’re missing your bag?” His eyes twinkle in amusement and he looks much too pleased with the situation for your liking. You liked it better when he looked angry because at least you knew what was coming.

“No.” You say, though you can hear the hesitance in your own voice at your blatant lie.

“So you’re telling me that you don’t have a blue bag covered in pins and a bunch of pink bunny notebooks?” When he notices your eyes widen because you realize he took your bag as well, a smirk takes over his already obnoxious features. “You wanna lie to me again?” He teases, grinning as he once again watches you sigh in defeat.

“Fine yes it’s mine okay? Can I have it back since you have yours?”

“Hmm I don’t know, I quite like some of the things you’ve written in the margins of your notebooks. Can you explain to me more about the sock puppet show?”

“That wasn’t me it was Jimin!” Another lie, you thought your little nephew might like it for when you babysit him, but he doesn’t need to know that. You refuse to give him any more blackmail material.

“I’m sure.” He says sarcastically with a roll of his eyes. “Do you really think I’m that stupid?” He asks and this time it’s your turn to grin.

“Do you want an honest answer?”

“What do you know, thief.” He scoffs and you scoff in return. Who knew someone could be so irritating?

“You’re the one who stole- and still has- my backpack!” You yell at him, enjoying in the way he pokes his tongue into his cheek in irritation.

“Because you stole mine first!” He whines, petulantly stomping his foot. You don’t suppress the urge to laugh to which he frowns. “Fine you want the bag? Then go get it.” Angrily he reaches into his pocket only to come up empty before banging his head on the front door rather harshly. The thud carries down the hall.

“That was pretty loud. Is it really that empty up there?” You reach up to knock your fist against his skull just to be annoying but he swats your hand away.

“I don’t have a key.” He sighs, before beating on the door so hard that it rattles yours as well. “Seokjin!” He yells and you take a step back from him just in case any of your neighbors poke their head out to see what the commotion is about. You don’t want to be associated with him. “Jin open the fucking door!” He yells again, his voice wavering as embarrassment takes hold. His neck and ears begin to turn red, the blush spreading to his cheeks as he pounds against the door almost desperately. If he wasn’t such a nuisance and your sworn enemy you’d probably find it endearing.

“You don’t have a key to your own apartment?” You tease, leaning against your own front door as you soak in his misery. It’s about time he do something stupid in front of you. Victory tastes so sweet.

“Shut up.” He snaps, jiggling the door handle like it’ll magically unlock itself. You’re actually starting to feel bad as you watch him wither inside, fully succumbing to the embarrassment of it all.

“Hey it’s okay, maybe he’s not home.” You say softly, placing a hand on his arm to stop him from knocking again. His knuckles are red from the harsh pounding and when he turns to you with eyes somewhat watery and a giant pout on his lips your heart cracks a little. You begin to even regret being so mean to him until the door opens and he returns back to normal.

“Finally!” He yells ignoring Seokjin’s annoyed face as he scurries towards the back of his apartment where you assume his room is.

“This kid, moving in here without notice and then rudely waking me up from a nap.” Seokjin rolls his eyes, moving to stand aside as Jungkook’s footsteps get louder as he trudges back towards you.

“Here’s your bag thief. Hope I never see you again!” Throwing your backpack at you he slams the door in your face leaving you to stare at it blankly. Just when you think someone isn’t half bad they have to prove you wrong. Scoffing you turn around and head back into your own apartment, blissfully unaware of the pair of eyes on you watching through the peephole.

When Jimin arrives home you’re still brewing in agitation from your encounter with your ever so pleasant neighbor- note the sarcasm. “So I’m guessing giving the backpack back didn’t go well?” Jimin asks, flopping beside you on the couch. Kimchi immediately jumps up after him, content to lay on his lap while purring loudly. You’re a little envious that he comes back home to something happy to see him, a loneliness you didn’t know you felt creeping up on you as you now know what it’s like to come home to something. There’s only so much comfort your plants can provide. Maybe you should get a boyfriend- Taehyung pops in your mind and you instantly smile, only to scowl when the buck-toothed loser takes his place- perhaps you should just get a pet instead.

“Let’s just say I never want to see Jeon Jungkook again.” You huff, crossing your arms as his stupid smirk appears in your head. You should’ve slapped it off him. He’s lucky you’re not a violent person otherwise you would’ve.

“Would food cheer you up?” Jimin asks, eyeing you with a smile because he already knows the answer.

“Is it free?”

“Always.” Jimin laughs, taking his phone out of his pocket- careful not to disturb Kimchi too much- before dialing a number you know too well. Your local pizza restaurant is famous on campus, fancy enough that people don’t feel like they’re just eating grease like dominoes but also cheap enough that it doesn’t feel like they’re breaking the bank on literal pizza. It’s college, if people are gonna waste their money it’s for sure going to be on alcohol.

“Hi I’d like to place an order.” Jimin says, giggling when he recognizes the voice of whoever is on the receiving end. “I’m glad you answered, I missed your voice. Maybe you could deliver the pizza too so we can spend a little time together. You haven’t taken your break yet have you?” You stare at him quizzically until you realize just what the little snake is doing. You hope to never be on the receiving end of Jimin’s flirtatious advances, especially knowing that he flirts with anybody to get what he wants. “Oh how disappointing I wanted to see you.” He sighs, going so far as to pout even though they can’t see him. “Maybe you can make it up to me somehow?” He asks sickly sweet and you only stare in awe as he flashes you a brilliant smile. The rat just got a free pizza, you know it. Hanging up the phone Jimin waggles his eyebrows at you, cackling evilly like he’s some kind of witch or something.

“You didn’t think I’d pay for you did you? I don’t even pay for myself.” He snorts- yes snorts- entirely too pleased with himself for your liking.

“I can’t wait till this catches up to you.”

“Then stop benefitting from it.” Jimin shrugs and you whine at him in response.

“But the perks are so nice. Ahh I feel like a bad person but at the same time I’m not the scammer.”

“I am not a scammer. I’m just taking advantage of my pretty privilege.” Jimin says and you only further your pout.

“Why don’t I get pretty privilege?”

“You just don’t have the face for it.” He says bluntly, screeching when you smack his chest.

“Park Jimin take it back!” You continue your assault on his chest until he grabs your hands in his own, using his strength to hold them away from his body.

“I just mean you’re not good at flirting! You’re just mean and shit.” He huffs, watching your reaction skeptically to see if you’ll try and lunge for him again.

“I can flirt. And besides I’m not mean, I’m an angel.” You say, taking your hands away to place them in your lap. You focus instead on Kimchi who is so unbothered by this whole ordeal that she’s fallen asleep.

“Yeah okay.” Jimin laughs, the kinda half snort-half huff type. “And if you’re not mean why did Seokjin text me about you yelling at someone in the hallway.”

“It’s not just someone, it was Jeon Jungkook. My rival, my arch-nemesis, my most hated person. He deserved it anyways, he called me a thief! Can you believe it?” You exclaim, irked by just the thought of your previous argument. It’s been so long since someone has surpassed your indifference and gotten so under your skin that just the thought of them makes you want to punch something. You think the last time you felt like this was in eighth grade and it’s as infuriating as you remember. You hate him.

“I mean you did steal his bag.” Jimin says and you turn so fast he actually jumps.

“Why does everyone keep saying that? It was an accident!” Jimin falls silent after that, finally realizing that he’s treading on thin ice. He didn’t realize that this Jeon Jungkook was such a sore spot for you, all he wanted was to tease you a little. The two of you continue to sit in silence, the only sound being Kimchi’s soft purrs and the occasional rumble from the old air conditioning system.

You want to say something, you know Jimin didn’t mean to make you so upset but you’re not goof at explaining your feelings. Or expressing emotions. You should probably try a little harder because glancing at Jimin through the corner of your eye you can see how glossy his eyes have become. “Jiminie I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.” You murmur, half ashamed and half uncomfortable with being vulnerable. It’s stupid, he’s your best friend and he’s seen you cry before but it never gets any easier. “Please don’t cry because of me. It-it hurts to see you cry.”

Jimin sniffles and you almost start crying on your own, distraught at the fact you made him cry. Despite his snarky remarks you know Jimin is quite sensitive and you’re so stupid for forgetting about that. “That was the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“That makes me sound like a bad person. You know I love you, I just don’t say it a lot.” You chuckle, somewhat in an attempt to lighten the mood. It’s gotten much too depressing for your liking. Hastily wiping his cheeks he smiles brightly at you and your chest doesn’t hurt as much when you realize that he’s okay.

“I love you too kitkat.�� He says, opening his mouth to say something else before the doorbell cuts him off.

“Pizza!” You cheer, jumping up and heading to the door quickly. The tension in your shoulders dissipating as you distract yourself. They rise up again when you realize just who is on the other side. “No.” You say, frowning as you’re reacquainted with his face.

“Yes.” He grins, the type that could give the cheshire cat a run for his money. “Now that’s $19.50.”

“The pizza was free.”

“I saw that but since it’s you…$19.50” He says and you scowl.

“I’m not paying for a free pizza. Besides you’re overcharging, can you even do math?”

“I’m charging for every second I have to speak to you.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one getting paid then since I didn’t chose to come to you, you came to me?”

“That makes no sense, my job is literally to deliver pizzas.” He says, shaking the box with your pizza like his red vest and the grease smeared across his cheek is not indicative of his job.

“Yeah and you’re doing a really bad job at it. So if you don’t mind,” Swiping the box out of his hand you hold it close to you before giving him a parting smile. “Goodbye.” Slamming the door in his face as he had done to you earlier, you lock it just before he can grab your handle.

“What about my tip?” He yells, banging his fist against the door. You only grin, fully indulging in the anger that seeps through his tone. Something about pissing him off gives you so much joy. Does that make you a sadist or something?

“Here’s a tip, stop bothering me!”

“That’s not even a tip, that’s a statement idiot!”

“Whatever you Bambi-looking headass!” You yell back, moving away from the door and presenting the pizza to Jimin like it’s a glorious prize. Jungkook is still banging on the door and do spite him further you have alexa play a song on full blast. It’s painful for your own ears but after letting it play for a minute, you turn it off completely only to rejoice in the fact that you can’t hear your nemesis outside the door anymore.

“I have so much I want to say but I’ll refrain for now.” Jimin says and you don’t like the way he’s looking at you. It’s almost like he knows something.

“Good idea. Now let’s eat, I’m starving.”

Two days later and you’re once again in your nearby market because Kimchi has now decided that her food is no longer good enough to eat. So to avoid your niece starving- as much as you love Jimin you refuse to co-pet-parent with him- you have to return to the store to buy her more food. You make a mental note to get a dog instead of a cat if you do decide to get a pet solely because they’re not picky about what they eat. Plus they’re rather loud with their affection which you appreciate. You can’t say you’re too mad about having to return to this store so soon though because you might get the chance to see Taehyung again. You’ve been hoping that he’d reach out to you at some point but you’re beginning to think he was serious about letting fate have you cross paths again. What if fate screws you over and you never see him again?

You almost jump in joy when you spot the back of his head- should you be concerned that you already know what the back of it looks like- unable to suppress the small squeak sound that leaves you. Why are you so embarrassing? You give him an awkward smile when he turns around, nerves calmed by the fact that he grins brightly back at you. “So we meet again.” He says and you’re pretty sure your pupils have taken the shape of hearts from how you look at him.

“Yeah.” You breathe out like you’re in a lovesick trance- yikes your hopeless romanticism is showing.

“Did you come just to see me?” He teases and you actually choke on your spit because embarrassingly yes, you partially came for him. He only chuckles at your reaction, placing a large palm between your shoulder blades to rub soothing circles while you cough your lung out. You understand now why you don’t experience pretty privilege; how can anyone find such a mess attractive?

“I came to get more cat food.” You croak out, throat sore and scratchy.

“Didn’t you just buy some a few days ago?” He asks, head cocked to the side entirely too cutely as his brows draw together in confusion. You’re pretty sure you’re swooning and you look away before he can catch you.

“Yeah but she decided it wasn’t good enough so here I am.” You laugh awkwardly. You wish the conversation flowed easier and you weren’t stuck only talking to him about either you stalking people or cat food.

The air around you turns stale as silence settles between you and you twitch nervously. The silence is unbearable and you wish to fill it. “Will you help me?” You ask, once again falling into the trap of cat food as a topic.

“Sure.” He gives you an easy smile, motioning for you to follow him to the specific aisle. Maybe you should just break out of this cycle by asking him out. Surely you’ll think of something to talk about besides cat food or stalking if you’re away from the places you associate them with.

“Do you want to get coffee or something sometime?” You ask him, your words blurring together into a messy sentence as the words tumble too quickly out of your mouth. It takes him a minute to piece together what you asked and in that minute you regret your decision even more. Surely he’ll say no.

“I’d love to.” He giggles, his boxy smile so wide his eyes scrunch a little as his cheeks push against them. Your eyes widen in surprise as you’d been preparing yourself for what you thought to be an inevitable ‘no’ and that only makes Taehyung smile wider-if possible. “You’re so cute.” He coos, tapping a finger against the tip of your nose as you continue to stare at him dumbfounded. Maybe you should have a little more faith in yourself if someone like Taehyung said yes to you.

“Thanks.” You murmur, cursing yourself internally for being so shy. How has this man reduced you to a bashful mess with a single compliment? You’re sure if you looked in the mirror you probably wouldn’t even recognize yourself. Y/n without a witty remark? Unheard of. Maybe this is the change you need though, maybe this you is better?

“if you want to wait around for five minutes my shift ends and then we can go?” Taehung asks and you just nod, your brain trying to process the fact that you’ll be going on a date in five minutes with the hottest guy you’ve ever seen. Looking down at yourself you freeze realizing you’re about to go on a date in sweatpants and one of Jimin’s old hoodies from high school. You look like you just rolled out of bed.

Five minutes isn’t even enough time to get to your apartment though and you sigh, resigning yourself to looking frumpy. Grabbing whatever cat food is nearest- what kind of food Kimchi would like is the last thing on your mind- you busy yourself at the register, chatting with a guy named Soobin. He winks at you when Taehyung rounds the corner to get you, his apron gone and revealing his Celine t-shirt. “You ready to go?” He asks, coming up beside you. Nodding in response, he places a hand on the small of your back before gently pushing you forward and you fiddle with the rings on your fingers to distract yourself from the heat crawling up the back of your neck and across your cheeks.

You instantly recognize the cafe he takes you to and smile to yourself, already anticipating seeing a familiar tuft of icy blonde hair- another one of your hair dye experiences. Taehyung- ever the gentleman- opens the door for you and you give him a soft smile in thanks. When you look back to the counter Yoongi is giving you a quizzical look and you shake your head slightly as a signal not to ask. That doesn’t deter him from scanning you and Taehyung, his eyes lingering on the way Taehyung’s arm wraps around your waist. You don’t remember him doing that. “Yoongi!” Taehyung yells and you turn to him in surprise. He knows Yoongi? Yoongi has always kept a pretty tight circle so you can’t help but be baffled by this newly discovered friendship. You’ve never heard him mention someone named Taehyung before.

“Ahh hi Taehyung.” Yoongi smiles, this time shaking his head at you slightly. You guess it’s only fair since you told him not to ask as well no matter how much you itch to question him. You’ve always been nosey, it’s something you and Jimin bonded over. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” Yoongi continues, looking to you briefly to see if you register the bone he threw you. Ahh they must be old friends that lost touch.

“Yeah I haven’t seen you since winter break in Daegu. You always ghosted me when I asked to hang out.” Taehyung pouts.

“I told you I’ve been busy. I’ve had a lot going on, my roommate is always getting into trouble. Speaking of which, how is he?” Yoongi turns his full attention to you and you give him a pitiful smile as you can see the hurt in his eyes. It’s no secret Yoongi has always had a soft spot for Jimin and their fight must’ve been really hard on him too. You hope he had someone to lean on the way Jimin did you.

“He’s reached acceptance. I think he’s finally trying to actually get over her. He’s been staying with me this whole time. You can stop by later if you want?” You offer, completely unaware of the way Taehyung’s eyes flicker between you and Yoongi to try and discern your relationship. He’s never heard about you either. Min Yoongi sure has a lot of secrets.

“I’ll let him come to me. He might think I’m ambushing him or something if I come over.” Yoongi shrugs albeit sadly. Your heart aches at seeing him so dejected and you place your hand over his own.

“He wants to apologize, he did the first night. He’s just working up the courage.” It’s the only solace you can offer him at the moment but you hope it’s enough to make him feel even a little better. “I don’t think he’ll take much longer, he’s probably getting sick of me.” You laugh, grinning when you see Yoongi crack a tiny smile.

“Sounds good. Now head to the pick up counter, I punched in your drinks a while ago. It’s not like either of you get anything different anyways.”

“Thanks Yoon! I’ll buy you lamb skewers next time we hang out.” You tell him, leaving the register with Taehyung trailing you.

“So how do you two know each other?” Taehyung asks, sipping on his strawberry smoothie.

“We met when I made the mistake of taking philosophy at nine a.m. a couple semesters ago. We really bonded while suffering together and then he became roommates with my best friend and we formed an unbreakable trio.” You take a rather large sip of your caramel macchiato, needing a drink after speaking probably the longest sentence you ever have to Taehyung. Progress- sad progress because you’ve never had this problem before but progress nonetheless. “How do you know Yoongi?”

“We grew up together in Daegu. Next door neighbors and everything.” Taehyung smiles like he’s reminiscing in things you don’t know about but one day you hope to hear more if for nothing but to hear his voice- although some embarrassing childhood memories to blackmail Yoongi with would be nice.

“Yoongi’s emo phase must’ve been an experience.” You snort only to freeze when you realize you just made probably the most unattractive noise in existence. You’re pretty sure you hear Yoongi cackle at your embarrassment.

“He actually didn’t have one.” Taehyung whispers almost like it’s a secret and you can’t help the gasp that leads your lips.

“What?” You exclaim, placing a hand over your mouth. Your whole friendship has been a lie! “But he’s so angsty!”

“That’s because he bottles up his feelings.” Taehyung says and you remember another reason you and Yoongi got so close. You’re practically the same person when it comes to feelings and expressing them- in fact it’s one of the reasons you can read each other so well. “I just wish he’d reveal his soft side more often.”

“That’s why he’s my favorite tsundere.” You giggle, winking at Yoongi when you catch him glaring at you from behind the counter. You could tell he was listening in on you and Taehyung’s conversation- he was wiping the same spot on the pickup counter for two minutes- and you know he hates nothing more than being compared to a tsundere. Though you theorize it’s only because it’ll out him as a weeb. Not that his one piece set displayed in the living room of the apartment gives it away or anything. ‘I hate you’ he mouths when you look in his direction again and you only laugh, giving him a finger heart to placate him before turning back to your date.

Taehyung is just smiling at you, his gaze flicking to the window to try and hide the fact he was admiring you. It was nice to see that he was the one getting bashful for once as you watch roses cluster along his cheeks. He really is so cute. “You’re cute.” You tell him, happy at the way his eyes widen at your sudden boldness. It’s only brief however as he gives you a flirty smirk in return.

“Just cute?” He asks, leaning forward to look you dead in the eyes, enjoying the way you struggle to maintain eye contact.

“Yes.” You whisper with a final flicker of confidence, immediately regretting your poor attempt to tease him as he leans in further, his face a few inches from your own.

“Let’s change that, yeah?” Your breath hitches at him being so close, close enough that you find yourself looking at the small mole under his eye and following it down to the mole on his nose before finally landing on the one on his lower lip. Your eyes linger on his lips, which look much to kissable for you to turn your attention away from. They’re soft and pink, moistened by his tongue that slips out to brush across his bottom lip, dragging your attention back up to his eyes that flicker from your gaze to your own lips. You pinch your bottom one between your teeth as the tension brews between you two. Taehyung reaches a hand out to fall gently on your cheek, releasing your bottom lip from its hold with his thumb. Once it’s free he wastes no time to press his lips to your own and you sigh into him. You could get used to this.

Nothing can ruin your mood, not even a certain bambi, as you skip up the two flights of stairs to your apartment building. With slightly mussed hair and kiss swollen lips, you’re entirely too giddy for your own good. You’re in the midst of digging around in your bag for your keys when you feel something wet against your leg. Instantly you scream, jumping away from whatever just touched you and relaxing only when you notice it’s a little black Puggle. “Oh hello.” You giggle, bending down to pet the puppy. It wriggles in excitement, jumping out of your outstretched arms almost like a fish out of water. Finally managing to wrangle it into your lap you check for a collar only to find none. Shrugging, you take the puppy into your apartment, resolving to notify the office about the lost dog so they can alert the other residents and hopefully its owner. In the meanwhile though, you have a puppy to play with! An annoyed meow sounds from the couch and you cringe when Kimchi glares at you.

“Sorry Kim, this is only temporary.” You try and console her, attention diverted when the puppy barks at you. “Hi sweetheart.” You coo, rubbing her belly as she happily melts into you. “Your owner should really invest in a collar.” You sigh, hoping that whoever they are will realize they’re missing a pet soon. As cute as you think this little puppy is you’re not equipped to care for it.

You must play with the dog for twenty minutes before it knocks out, snoring lightly on your furry rug. Kimchi watches curiously from the couch and you can’t tell whether she wants to befriend or attack it. Your door frame rattles and you sigh, leaning your head against the couch cushion as your neighbor wakes up the sleeping puppy, “Lucy!” You hear someone yell, a slew of curses following as they run around the hall. Their footsteps are heavy enough that it startles the puppy, causing it to run to the door and bark incessantly.

“It’s okay sweetheart.” You try and soothe, pausing as the footsteps halt suddenly followed by a frantic pounding on your door. Kimchi- fully alarmed- runs into your bedroom for cover as you stare at your shaking front door, the puppy in your arms. After taking a deep breath you calm your nerves, pulling the door open only to get punched in the face. “What the hell?” You yell, almost dropping the dog as you raise a hand to your now bruised nose.

“I’m so sorry!” A voice, you now realize is Namjoon’s, says frantically. “I was just about to knock on the door again and I was already in motion. I wasn’t aiming for your face I swear!”

You close your eyes and inhale- for both a piece of sanity because this is the most Namjoon thing you’ve ever witnessed and also because your nose hurts so bad you could cry- and slowly open your eyes to look at the assailer. “Hi Joonie.” Is the only thing you can say. Your day only gets worse as an annoyingly familiar figure rounds the corner. How can such a beautiful day turn into a nightmare? If you didn’t know any better you’d think you were the oc for someone’s story.

“Why do you have my dog?” He yells in an odd mixture of confusion and irritation.

“This is your dog?” You ask, ignoring the way your nose is throbbing.

“If it wasn’t, would I refer to it as my dog?” Jungkook asks, his tone nothing short of condescending as he knocks against your forehead, knuckles barely brushing against the bridge of your nose but causing you to wince all the same. Jungkook pauses for a second, his hand hovering above your face as an expression you could almost discern as concern crosses his features. It’s gone in a moment, almost like a blip, before being replaced with smugness. “Did you run into a door or something? This is what you get for being a thief.” He snickers, moving to take the puppy out of your hand before you shield it away from him with your body.

“Namjoon punched me in the face. Also your dog ran away and came to me, I didn’t steal it. And I’m not a thief, I’ve told you a thousand times it was an accident!”

“He what?” Jungkook yells, spinning on his heels to face Namjoon in anger. His hands clench at his sides causing the veins running down his forearms to pop, his tongue pushing against the inside of his cheek. He’s glaring at the taller boy, his body almost teeming with rage. Such a shame someone so pretty has such an awful personality.

“He ran away. You should try being a better owner so he doesn’t flee at first chance. Also have you ever heard of a collar? It’s a great way to let other people identify your dog.” You scold, scratching the dog’s head as you do so.

“That’s not-whatever. Besides she’s a girl; her name is Lucy. And I did get her a collar it’s just a little too big right now but she’s not even supposed to really go outside before she gets all her shots.” Jungkook says, this time reaching forward too quick for you to avoid, snatching Lucy out of your hands before you can even think to counter his attack.

“My baby!” You cry, strangely attached to the little creature even though you’ve barely spent half an hour with her.

“I’m right here.” Jungkook winks, cackling as you proceed to gag.

“Tell me, does your neck ever hurt from your head being shoved so far up your own ass?” He cackles again and you’re sure if you were a cartoon you’d have smoke coming out of your ears. You’ll probably have to go to the doctor after this with the way he’s raising your blood pressure. You’ve never met someone so infuriating.

“Does your ass ever hurt from the stick that’s up it?” Jungkook retorts and you scowl.

“At least my pet didn’t run away from me.”

“She didn’t! I wasn’t even home when Namjoon lost her.”

“You’re saying you lost her but all I’m hearing is she ran away.”

“Whatever thief. What do you know?” He scoffs and you scoff in return.

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night, Bambi.”

“I’m just gonna go.” Namjoon says clearly uncomfortable with the tension surrounding you and Jungkook. You almost feel a little bad before you remember he literally punched you in the face. “I can’t believe you made Namjoon so uncomfortable he had to leave.”

“Me? You’re the one who started it.” Jungkook scoffs.

“I did not! You accused me of stealing your dog!”

“Because you’re a thief! How many times do I have to tell you!”

“Whatever Bambi, what do you know?” You huff, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Call me bambi one more time.” He growls and you smirk.

“But I think bambi really suits you. You have bambi eyes and everything.” You grin at the way he grits his teeth, taking a step forward to lessen the gap that stands between the two of you. He’s probably less than a foot away at this point and you notice he has a mole below his bottom lip.

“Shut up.” He says, his usually light voice taking on a deep and gravelly tone. Your mind buffers for a moment at the sound and you momentarily forget where you are. It’s like he hypnotized your or something.

“Make me.” You press, your breath hitching as you watch something flicker in his eyes too fast for you to catch. Lucy barking breaks the two of you out of your standoff and you both turn to watch as she proceeds to pee all over Jungkook’s arm. You can’t help but giggle as he grimaces in disgust. “Serves you right.” You sing, reaching over to give Lucy a scratch on the head.

“Whatever. At least I don’t do an ugly middle part every day.” He scoffs and you shrug.

“At least I don’t smell like dog piss.” With the final word secured you close the door, only to reopen it for a second. “Don’t forget to clean the carpet!”

When Jimin returns with a guilty smile and a box of taco bell you immediately grow suspicious, though you can already guess what he’s about to say. Jimin doesn’t have any hookups at taco bell so he even paid for once which means he must be moving out but doesn’t want to you to be sad. It’s a little too late for that as you immediately deflate, the loneliness you didn’t know you felt before Jimin moved in returning. “You and Yoongi made up?” You ask though it’s really just confirmation.

“Yeah we did. I told him I’d come back later today.” Jimin’s voice drips in misplaced guilt, for he really has no reason to feel bad for moving back home. You knew this would only be temporary.

“I’m so happy for you!” You say, making sure to raise your voice to convey a happier tone. You really are glad they worked it out but you’ll miss him. Looking around your apartment the plants seem a little less homey than normal. Maybe you should invest in a pet for real. Lucy from next door pops into your head and you smile. “I made a new friend next door so I won’t be lonely without you.”

Jimin gasps over-dramatically, placing a hand over his heart like you just stabbed him. “You’ve replaced me with Jeon Jungkook??” He asks and your eyes widen at the insinuation. Like you’d replace Jimin with anyone, especially Jeon Jungkook.

“Eww gross, like I’d even think of befriending him.’ You scoff.

“You’re like a little kid thinking their crush has cooties.” Jimin snickers and you glare at him.

“He’ll infect me with his stupidity! He’s a clown Jimin, he literally got peed on by his own dog earlier!” You exclaim and Jimin only laughs.

He hums for a minute before turning to you with a sly smirk. “You talk about him a lot you know? Got love on the brain?” Jimin teases, cackling at his own joke only to choke when you angrily shove a soft taco into his mouth. You grin at him wickedly when he turns to you, ignoring the way he returns his own glare.

“More like hate on the brain.” You say, taking a bite of your own taco before turning on the tv.

“There’s a fine line between love and hate you know? Also if I go into the bathroom and find a grease stain on my shirt I’m going to kill you.” Jimin goes so far as to flick your head with his warning, probably a small punishment for stuffing his face. In your defense it was the only way to get him to stop talking nonsense.

“You can’t even strangle me with those baby hands.” You quip, giggling when Jimin flips you off.

“I can’t believe I’ve lived with you for this long without going insane.” He huffs, feeding Kimchi-who has been beckoned by the smell of food- a piece of cheese. She grinds her teeth happily after swallowing it whole, sticking her head into the wrapper to try and find more morsels.

“That’s because you loveee me.” You sing, sending Jimin a heart and a flying kiss. As much as he detests it, he’s a sucker for large displays of affection. His cheeks turn a soft cherry pink as he shoves your shoulder a little too hard, making you topple over from your spot on the floor. The taco comes flying out of your hand, the remnants scattering as Jimin struggles to capture Kimchi before she can feast on the fallen taco. You sigh at the inevitable stain you’ll have to clean from all the grease but turning to the chaos that’s behind you- Kimchi is half wrapped around Jimin’s neck like a boa constrictor as he holds her to him to prevent her escape- you can’t help but miss it already.

Returning from your trip to Jimin and Yoongi’s apartment-somehow he collected more stuff than he brought with him in his short stay at your apartment and needed help carrying everything back- you run into Taehyung. “Tae?” You ask and he gives you the same expression.

“Y/n? You live here?” He asks equally as surprised and confused to see you. It’s a similar feeling to when you see a teacher out in public.

“Yeah. Do you?”

“No I was just visiting some friends of mine.” He says, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking on his heels as the two of you stare at each other. “Hey did you know your nose is turning purple?”

“Huh?” You ask until you piece together that you must be beginning to bruise. Thank you Kim Namjoon. “Oh yeah I just got hit in the face.” You laugh, consciously covering your nose with your hand.

“You should ice it. Have you done that already?” Taehyung steps forward, placing a hand on your wrist to gently pry your hand away from the offending object (ie. your nose).

“No.” You sigh because really that should’ve been the first thing you did but instead you wasted time arguing with Jeon Jungkook. Your nose is probably going to be super swollen and purple by tomorrow.

“Let’s get some ice for it, yeah? You should really take better care of yourself.” He laughs, taking your hand and leading you towards the elevators. You don’t know if a bruised nose needs two people’s attention but it’ll be nice to come home to something other than silence. “What floor?”

“Two, but we can just take the stairs.” You tell him, changing his direction to the stairwell on the opposite side of the building. He follows you quietly to your apartment, looking around the walls like he’s trying to find something specific.

“I’ve never come this way before. My friends always take the elevator.” He says, pausing beside you when you reach your door.

“Two flights of stairs isn’t too bad for me. Plus elevators make me nervous, there’s something about plummeting to your death in a tiny box that freaks me out.” You shrug, letting him inside before closing the door behind you.

“It’s like a whole garden in here!” Taehyung exclaims, spinning in a circle to take in the various potted and hanging plants that lie around your living room. You twist your rings as you watch him take it all in, worried he might find your plant obsession excessive or weird. You just really like the look of it and it’s nice to take care of something.

“Yeah, I might’ve got a little too carried away at the plant nursery.” You laugh, watching as Taehyung brushes his fingers along random leaves.

“I tried to take care of a plant once and I couldn’t even get it to sprout.” When he turns to you his eyes are filled with awe and you ease up a little bit.

“It takes a lot of work but it’s pretty calming for me. It’s nice to have something that relies on you to take care of it.”

“I get the feeling. That’s why I have Tannie. You wanna see him?” Taehyung asks excitedly, already fishing his phone out of his pocket. Nodding, you take the phone from him and observe the tiny dog practicing tricks in the video. It’s a mainly black Pomeranian, brown tufts of fur on its belly and legs with two angry brown eye brows that make you laugh.

“He takes after you with the strong brows.” You say making Taehyung laugh.

“You know what they say, dogs always look like their owners.” Your mind drifts to the black Puggle next door and it’s fake wire-framed glasses wearing owner. You guess they both have a rather cute boopable nose. “Now about your nose…” Taehyung says, drawing you out of your thoughts.

“Right!” Taking ice out of the freezer you place it into a tiny ziplock while Taehyung grabs the kitchen towel hanging off the oven handle to wrap it with.

“So you need to do twenty minutes on and twenty off. I could keep you company if you want?” You nod your head quickly at his offer, gesturing for him to make himself comfortable.

“Do you want anything to drink or eat? I have popcorn and other snacks.”

“How about we eat popcorn and watch a movie?” He suggests.

“Great idea.” You’re about to grab the box of popcorn from one of the top shelves of the pantry when Taehyung’s hand on your shoulder stops you.

“Let me do it. Don’t want you to hurt yourself any further.” He teases, ushering you out of your own kitchen. Walking back to the couch you watch him as he fumbles around your kitchen to find the bowls, giggling as he opens the same cupboard three times. You’re about to tell him its location when he finally finds it, cheering as if he’s won some kind of prize. With the popcorn made and your fridge raided for drinks he rejoins you at the couch while you pull up netflix.

“What do you want to watch?”

“How about a nature documentary?” He suggests and you just smile and nod despite the fact that you’re going to be fighting the urge to fall asleep for the next two hours. Oh what you’ll do for a pretty boy.

After spending one day alone in your apartment after classes you decide you no longer enjoy having nothing to come home to. You’re not quite sure how you used to do this just fine because now the silence is almost unbearable. You could go over to Jimin and Yoongi’s apartment but all your stuff is here and you can’t exactly just invite yourself over. Well judging by how many times Jimin has done that to you you probably could but it just feels weird. You also don’t think you can sit through another nature documentary with Taehyung despite how much you like him. You could barely stay awake last time, the twenty minute alarms the only thing keeping you from drifting off. Plus you had to watch not only animals kill and eat each other- while a necessary part of the circle of life, you don’t particularly enjoy watching life leave something. And most disturbingly, there was a whole segment on spiders and you hate spiders. Which leaves you with only one option: Lucy.

On your way home from your last lecture you go to the nearest pet store, picking out a little pink collar with cherries decorating it and a pink leash. Maybe you’ve gone a little overboard with the pink aesthetic- you may have been eyeing a pink onesie because you’ve always wanted an animal that lets you dress it- but the idea of e-boy Jungkook walking around his pink accessorized puppy makes you laugh. You bet the collar he bought her has spikes or skulls. With the presents in hand, you stop at Jungkook’s door knocking in a small tune.

The door opens and instead of Jungkook you’re met with Seokjin. “Oh hi, is Jungkook home?” You ask hesitantly. “I uhh brought stuff for Lucy.” You bring the bag in front of you to show him like it’ll validate why you’re here. You can’t have people thinking you came just for him.

“He just went out to meet the postmate guy but he’ll be back in a few minutes if you want to wait for him inside?” Seokjin steps aside to let you enter, ushering you onto the couch before getting you water.

“I heard Jimin and Yoongi finally made up.” Seokjin comments and you nod somewhat sadly.

“Yeah he moved out yesterday.”

“Being alone again must be a little lonely huh? Is that why you’re here? Not that I don’t mind you stopping by but it’s not like we’re very close or anything.”

“I missed Lucy.” You tell him. “But yeah it has been a little lonely. If you don’t mind me asking how do you know Yoongi?”

“We used to TA a biology class together. And I met Jimin when I was helping them move in but I don’t see him very often. He really only asks me to bring him food when he’s too lazy to cook.” Seokjin says.

“Yeah he’ll do about anything for free food.” You laugh and Seokjin smiles.

“It’s nice to know that you’re actually pretty sweet. I was worried you were just a hothead after listening to Jungkook whine about you incessantly.” Seokjin laughs and you look at him curiously.

“Jungkook talks about me?”

“All the time. Anyways, I’m always looking for new friends so I can learn more secrets so feel free to stop by whenever. I’m sure Kookie wouldn’t mind seeing you around more often.” He winks and you’re entirely too confused to fake a gag.

“But he hates me?”

“That’s his charm. He has that whole ‘I want to fight you but also kiss you’ vibe. Or so I’ve heard anyways. I just get embarrassing child vibes from him personally but I’ve also seen him in a Pikachu onesie singing the pokemon theme song too many times at 2 a.m. to see him as any less.” Before you have time to even process what Seokjin has just told you the door opens and you immediately stand up startled, the bag of goodies for Lucy falling off your lap and spilling onto the floor.

Jungkook pauses in the door way, his eyes the widest you’ve seen so far. The Wendy’s bag crunches as he clutches it tighter and the two of you stare at each other like you’re waiting for the other to make the first move. “I brought stuff for Lucy. To make sure she’s getting properly cared for.” You hurry feeling like you need an excuse to come over. Seokjin laughs under his breath from beside you.

“First a thief then a trespasser. Am I going to have to report you?” Jungkook asks and you scowl, crossing your arms across your chest. Just who does he think he is?

“Seokjin let me in.” You say stepping aside to reveal Jin who was watching the whole encounter unfold with a grin. His eyes glint with mischief when you turn to him and suddenly you’re afraid of his power. How many secrets does he know? Will he figure out yours?

“I thought we agreed not to invite random people in?” Jungkook sighs, almost like he’s scolding Seokjin. You frown. You’re supposed to be enemies, does that not mean anything to him?

“She’s not random. She’s my new best friend!” Seokjin yells directly into your ear making you wince before throwing an arm around your shoulder. You’re too busy looking at Seokjin confusedly to notice the way someone else’s eyes linger a little too long on the arm wrapped around you.

“Whatever. Just don’t talk to me.” Jungkook grumbles stalking towards his room when you speak up.

“But you’re the one talking to me?” You ask making him stop in his tracks and turn around to face you again. That’s when you notice the frosty in his hand that’s half melted and now running down the side of the cup and down his hand. “Did you postmate a frosty?” You ask, genuinely concerned with why he chose that when it’d be undoubtably half melted in the forty minutes it takes delivery.

“Maybe.” He says skeptically and you give him your best ‘are you stupid?’ expression because you have eyes and it’s literally in his hand.

“Did you not realize it would be melted by the time you got it?” You tease, a smirk pulling at your lips when he falters in coming up with a witty remark.

“Shut up.” He groans, turning back around and opening his bedroom door. A flash of black rushes past him and straight towards you and you can only cheer in glee when Jungkook sighs in exasperation. “Betrayed by my own dog.” He whines to himself as he leans against the door frame to watch you play with Lucy.

“Hi baby!” You coo, sitting down on the floor to hold her as she gives you as many kisses as possible. Giggling you fall back so you’re lying down, holding her up above you so it looks like she’s flying. Her little paws move rapidly as she attempts to get back to you, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she whines. “Sorry, sorry.” You chuckle, placing her back down on your stomach. Jumping off you, the bag catches her attention and she busy’s herself by climbing inside of it. Her head pops up with the bag still attached and you can’t help but laugh as she raises up on her hind legs and uses her paws to try and take it off herself. Snapping a quick picture, your airdrop it to Jungkook and Seokjin before taking it off her head.

“You wanna see the stuff I got you?” You ask, not sure what type of answer you were anticipating in response. You take her snort as a yes and show her the collar first. “You’re gonna look so cute in this. Plus I made sure it’s the right size.” You look pointedly at Jungkook who has moved from his position by the door to the kitchen counter where he snacks on his fries and commits the crime that is dipping them in his frosty. He looks away when he catches your gaze, face flushed a soft pink as he returns his attention to his phone. Bummed by his lack of response you focus on putting the tiny collar around her neck. The little cherry charm jingles as she shakes her head for a moment to adjust before she licks your hand in what you assume to be thanks.

“Jin look! Isn’t she so cute?” You hold her up to your face while showing off the new collar to Jin who claps in delight.

“I live for the pink aesthetic. She’s gonna be a doggy icon.” He cheers making you laugh.

“Only the best for my little Lucy. What do you think bambi?” You ask, turning to Jungkook who makes an OJO face, his phone pointed in your direction. You wonder what he was doing but brush it off to just him being weird. He’s probably looking for more pokemon onesies or something.

“Not too bad thief, not bad at all.”

When you return home to your apartment after visiting your neighbors turned new friends- excluding Jungkook who is teetering on the upgrade to frenemy because he actually wasn’t entirely awful- you feel light and airy. You’re almost as giddy as you were the day you came back from your date with Taehyung. Speaking of Taehyung you should probably text him or something, you haven’t really texted today. Though you’re feeling too lazy to text out an entirely conversations worth of words so you settle for calling him instead.

“Hey Y/n.” He says, surprising you for picking up on the first ring.

“Hey Tae. How was your day?”

“It was really good! I spent the whole day taking pictures of plants and stuff for my assignment. Your apartment really inspired me to capture the less sentient lives that intersect our own.” He says, voice so cheery you can practically see the smile you know he dawns.

“That’s really cool, you’ll have to send them my way after you’re done with them.” You say, glad that you could be of some help. He did ask you to be his muse after all.

“How’s your nose?” He asks and you pause when you realize you completely forgot about the bruise on your nose. In fact when you got ready this morning you didn’t even notice. Standing up from the couch you look at your reflection in the bathroom mirror surprised to see it’s only a small purple mark.

“There’s only a small bruise. I actually forgot I had it so I guess it’’s pretty good.” You laugh, opting to sit on the bathroom counter instead.

“That’s good, I was worried about it. Hey I was going to visit my friend’s dance recital tomorrow if you want to come? He’s been telling me it’s really good.”

“Sure thing. What time should I be ready by?” You ask mind already alternating between different possible outfits. You’ll need to look extra good while standing next to Taehyung while also looking casual enough that it’s not too much for a campus recital. You haven’t been to one since your ex’s last showcase a year ago.

“How about seven? You can help me look for a nice bouquet to give him afterwards. Since you’re a plant expert and everything.”

“I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert but sure. I’ll meet you outside my apartment?” You start to grow nervous as you realize you’ll need to come up with conversation starters so the conversation doesn’t lull. You wish you were better at talking to him.

“See you then. Goodnight Y/n.”

“Goodnight Tae.” Hanging up, you lean your head against the mirror and close your eyes, focusing on trying to lower your heart rate. You hope the more you spend time with Taehyung the easier it gets.

You’re panicking. Mostly because it’s 6:30 pm and you’re still not dressed. You hate your entire closet, nothing is good enough to wear. Your clothes are strewn across your bedroom and you’re pretty sure you could cry. You’ve at least done your hair and makeup when you were still happy with your previous outfit but after looking at it one too many times you picked it apart. A knock on your door startles you and you pray to God that it’s not Taehyung who’s arrived early. You sigh in relief at the sight of Jungkook, your nerves easing as you focus on the bright pink leash he’s holding and the squirming puppy at your feet.

“Hey thief we’re going to get something to eat on a walk and after you nearly burned down the kitchen this morning I thought I’d invite you. I don’t feel like smelling burnt eggs through the vent for the rest of the day.” He says nonchalantly like he can’t see your frazzled state.

“Sorry bambi but I can’t. I have a date to get ready for and I can’t figure out what to wear.” You sigh, leaning down to give Lucy a few scratches after she barks at you for attention.

“A date?” Jungkook asks, his voice cracking a little in surprise. He clears his throat as you snicker.

“Yeah. Hey do you think he’d hate me if I just showed up in this oversized tee like a VSCO girl because I think If I look at my closet one more time I’ll actually cry.” You half joke half genuinely ask because you’re so frustrated.

“I mean nothing you wear can make you less ugly.” He offers and you glare at him.

“Thanks. That’s really just what I needed. I don’t know why I even bothered to ask.” You deadpan, moving to close the door on him when he shoves his foot between it and the frame to stop it.

“I mean- you know that mini skirt you have? Tuck your shirt into that and wear some docs or something and you’ll look uhh reasonable. I uhh saw a girl wearing something similar earlier and it was cute.” He says, his words slurring a little in his panic to redeem himself and you crack the door open a little to look at him.

“Thanks bambi, I’ll try it. I dig the pink leash by the way, really makes you look badass.” You giggle, closing the door to drown out his shout of protest.

Turns out bambi does have somewhat of a fashion sense because after trying on his suggested outfit you don’t hate it which is enough for you at this point. Checking the time you realize you only have a few minutes left to make any finishing touches before you need to meet Taehyung downstairs. Checking your eyeliner wings one last time and spraying on perfume you hurry down the stairs and outside, tapping your foot anxiously as you wait for Taehyung. You hope you look okay.

“You look great.” Taehyung’s deep voice says from behind you, his arms encircling your waist as you turn around to face him. You look away bashfully once again reminded what a shy, nervous mess he turns you into.

“You do too.” You’re not just saying that to be polite, Taehyung truly does look good. Though when does he not? There’s something so effortlessly beautiful about him that you’re envious of. You wish someone would see you like that.

“All set to go?” Taehyung asks before linking your arms when you say yes. You wind up back at the familiar market where you and Jungkook first met. You laugh a little to yourself when you notice the row of aloe vera plants lined up on the top shelf. To your right is the flower section for those last minute bouquets and you turn your focus to them and Taehyung instead.

“I like this one.” You pick up a bouquet of sunflowers and show them to him. The flowers are a little on the smaller side since it’s just the beginning of their season but they’re still happy and bright. “I think it just looks really joyful. Plus everyone buys roses.”

Taehyung laughs at that, putting down the bouquet of roses he had in his hand. You squeeze your eyes closed when you realize you’ve accidentally made fun of his flower choice.

“He’ll like it. He’s always calling himself the sun anyways.” Taehyung shrugs, heading to the register with you tailing behind. You’ve only known one person who called themselves the sun but surely it’s not him. There’s seven billion people in the world, surely it can’t be that small.

Disregarding the hunch of who the flowers you picked out are for, you trot behind Taehyung and lace your hand with his own. He gives you a bright smile in return and a little squeeze, probably excited that he’s not the one initiating PDA for once.

After paying he leads the way towards the campus event center which isn’t much farther of a walk. The closer you get the more you remember and it’s not that you and your ex didn’t end on a good note it’s more so just that you didn’t anticipate seeing him, much less going to his recital and picking out flowers for him. But you’re probably just jumping to conclusions.

Getting settled into your seats, front and center, you relax a little. Taehyung’s hand is still in your own and to try and settle your nerves you focus on him- which you probably should be doing anyways since this is a date but your mind has never been good at sticking to one topic. “So how’d you get such great seats?” You ask before pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Thanks for bringing me by the way.”

“Of course. Oh, my friend is captain of the dance team and is a senior so he gets the best spots in the house. I only have to buy him food for the rest of the week as payment. I didn’t feel like waiting in line and getting a crappy spot.”

“Understandable. But if you’re buying food anyways feel free to send some my way.” You wink and Taehyung sighs.

“Once again I’m getting used for free stuff.” He cries dramatically and you giggle. “But since you’re my muse I guess it’s okay.” He says suddenly serious, taking your surprise to press a kiss to your lips.

“Taehyung!” You scold, lightly slapping his chest. "You can’t just catch me off guard like that.”

“Sure I can. You’re cute when you get embarrassed.” That only causes your embarrassment to heighten and he grins, placing another kiss against your lips.

“You suck.” You pout despite not really meaning it.

The lights dim and you both quiet down, turning away from each other to look up at the stage. It’s a lyrical piece first to a song you’ve never heard before but it’s pretty. As the lone harp melody plays a figure emerges from the darkness into the center spotlight only to be joined by several other people as the beat hits. Their movements are fluid like water, their shadows casted elegantly against the back wall of the stage. When the performance ends you can’t help but applaud- though you really are supposed to wait until the end to avoid disrupting performances. “That was so cool!” You whisper to Taehyung who smiles brightly at you.

“My friend choreographed it!” He whispers back, pride for his friend’s achievement seeping in his words. It’s cute. You both fall silent again as the other pieces are performed only resuming conversation once the show is in intermission.

“Your friend is really talented.” You tell Taehyung, unable to get the performance out of your head. It’s a shame it was the very first one as it’s outshined the rest for you.

“You’ll have to tell him when we see him later. I heard they’re selling snacks out front, do you want any?” He asks.

“I can get them if you want? Since you got the tickets and everything.”

“Sure, I’l just wait for you here. If they have any sweets can you get me some?” He asks.

“Sure thing. Be right back.” You smile, about to get up when he presses a chaste kiss to your cheek.

“Hurry back.” He winks and if it were anyone else you’d roll your eyes.

You huff in annoyance at the rather long line, texting Taehyung that it might be awhile before opening up a piano game on your phone. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Yoongi’s voice startles you and you jump back.

“Why do you not make noise when you move!” You ask. “This really supports the theory that you’re a vampire.”

“If you compare me to Edward Cullen one more time I will kill you.” You quiet down at that, the image of Yoongi’s Katana hanging above his bed- another symbol of his weebiness- surfaces in your mind. You’d rather not get close and personal with it.

“Noted. Anyways what’re you doing here?”

“I get extra credit on one of my music assignments if I come. I don’t really see the point but hey that just means I can put in less effort later since I have a safeguard for my grade.”

“It’s extra credit Yoongi not a free pass.” You snort, sighing when the line still hasn’t moved.

“Why’re you here?”

“I’m on a date.” You tell him before realizing your mistake. “Don’t tell Jimin, it’s not that serious yet and I-“

“Too late.” Yoongi says, pointing to Jimin coming your way. “Though Taehyung is not who I expected it to be with.”

“How did you know it’s Taehyung?” You ask.

“Know what’s Taehyung?” Jimin asks and you give Yoongi a pleading look.

“Her date.” Yoongi says and you flip him off.

“You’re on a date and you didn’t tell me?” Jimin asks and when you turn to look at him you can’t tell whether he’s more annoyed or hurt. Either way you feel awful but Jimin has a tendency to get too attached to your boyfriends and when you and Hoseok broke up he was crushed.

“We’ve only hung out a couple of times, it’s not that serious.” You try and console him but that only makes him even more upset. His nostrils flare and everything!

“A couple times! What happened to no secrets?” Jimin scolds and you feel even worse.

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to get too attached if it doesn’t work out.” Like last time doesn’t need to be said for him to understand where you’re coming from and he sighs before running his hand through his hair.

“Last time was on me but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know every aspect of your life.”

“You know I can see why you and Jin get along so well. Do you share secrets?” You ask Jimin and when he falls silent Yoongi decides to re-enter the conversation.

“Wait do you?” Yoongi asks. “If you told anyone about my One Piece set I’m going to kill you.”

“Jimin I’d be careful, he threatened me with the Katana five minutes ago.” You warn and Jimin visibly pales.

“I’ve only been talking to him about our ship. We just want our favorite emotionally stunted tsunderes to get together.” Jimin says causing you and Yoongi to turn to each other.

“It’s about you.” You both say at the same time only to look offended at each other’s assumption. You’re both so offended that you don’t even realize you’ve made it to the front of the line until the volunteer interrupts your bickering.

“What can I get you?” Scanning the table you see peanut butter m&m’s- only the best kind.

“Uhh one bag of regular m&m’s and one peanut butter please.” You say because you’ve never asked if Taehyung has a peanut allergy. That’s probably an important thing to know.

“One pack of oreos.” Yoongi says behind you followed by Jimin yelling for sour patch kids.

“That’ll be $10.50” She tells you and sighing- seeing as you’ve been roped into paying for those leaches you call best friends- you hand over the cash.

“You’re welcome.” You sneer while they smile sweetly at you.

“You’re the best Y/n! Oh and don’t think you’ve gotten out of me meeting Taehyung. Bring him to the apartment Friday night for game night!”

“Do I have to?”

“You bring him to us or we come to you, your choice.” Jimin shrugs.

“Fine.” You sigh once again bested by the tiny man with the tiny hands.

When you get back to Taehyung intermission is practically over meaning you only have enough time to get settled in and give him his snack before the lights once again dim and the show starts. You almost forget about the fact that your ex is probably who you got flowers for until he appears in the final set as the lead of a hip hop dance. His eyes widen for a split second when he sees you in his search for Taehyung but he hides it like the professional he is and carries on with his best performance yet. Hoseok is just one of those people meant to dance. You loved his passion while you were dating and admire it still even after not really talking to him for a year.

Taehyung didn’t notice the surprise on Hoseok’s face- probably because he wasn’t looking for it- and happily drags you backstage to find him. You’re a little surprised you can just walk back here with no one to stop you but you guess they’re all working on things to fix for tomorrow’s show and are too busy to worry about the two of you.

You find Hoseok in the middle of his dance team crowded around him, his face all smiles as he redoes his favorite move for them. You can’t help but smile fondly at the scene, it reminds you so much of when you and Hoseok first met. It was your first and only hip hop class and he was the instructor. You thought he took extra interest in helping you because you were so terrible and he wanted you to exceed which was true but he also thought you were the cutest mess he’d ever seen. “Hobi!” Taehyung yells, gathering his older friend’s attention as Hoseok leaves the group of dancers to greet you.

“Hey Tae.” He smiles, giving him that half-hug half-slap on the back that guys do.

“We got you flowers! Y/n picked them out.” Taehyung smiles, placing his hand on the small of your back to push you more into the conversation. You’d been standing slightly behind Taehyung not sure what to say to Hoseok, that is if he even wanted to talk to you.

“Ahh hey Y/n. You still know me so well huh?” He laughs, bringing the bouquet to his head. “Be honest, do I still look like them?” He asks and you roll your eyes with a smile.

“Nah you look more like the one on the bottom that’s wilted and dying. I can’t believe you’re so old now.” You tease easily falling into your old rhythm. Hoseok was always bubbly and playful, an easiness surrounded him that always made you comfortable, even now it seems.

“Hey it’s only been a year since we last saw each other, I’m only a year older!” He whines.

“You guys knew each other?” Taehyung asks and you pause. How do you explain to your date that his friend is your ex without it being awkward?

“Yeah we’re old friends.” Hoseok says, seeming to read your uneasiness and giving you an easy out. You give him a grateful smile.

“Yeah we just lost touch, though it’s good to see you again. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.” You mean it. Hoseok was your first love, he was everything you could’ve asked for but eventually you two fell out of love and ended it mutually before you began to hate each other. You’ll always have a soft spot for him and it makes you happy to see he’s doing so well.

“Yeah me too. I should’ve reached out sooner.” Hoseok tells you and you just shrug.

“Maybe it was best we found each other again now. Though I wouldn’t mind being friends again.”

“I’d like that. I missed my favorite tsundere.” Hoseok giggles and you groan.

“Everyone keeps calling me that today.” You whine.

“Tsundere? She’s much too shy and sweet for that don’t you think?” Taehyung asks completely confused about this whole interaction. You guess it makes sense because with Hoseok you were kinda like how you are with Jungkook. You’ve never been the bashful type until now.

“Shy?” Hoseok asks and Taehyung nods. You nod in agreement and Hoseok hums looking between you both for a few moments. “What’d you think of the performance?”

“The first one was great. I didn’t know you choreographed anything besides hip hop.” You tell him, grateful for the switch of topics. Hoseok is really saving you tonight.

“Yeah I thought I’d try new genres and become a more well-rounded dancer.”Someone yells Hoseok’s name from across the room and you all turn to see a short girl wave brightly at him, a bouquet nearly as big as her in her arms. “I uhh gotta go but thanks for coming by.” Hoseok says with a slight blush on his cheeks before scurrying over to her. You can’t help but smile after him. You hope this one works out for him.

“You ready to go?” Taehyung asks lacing his fingers in your own.

“Yeah, I’m starving. Want to pick up something on the way back?”

Taco bell in hand and a kiss goodbye you make your way back up to your apartment with a smile on your face. Today went much better than expected. Opening the door connected to your hallway you’re surprised to come face to face with Jungkook. So surprised that you take a step back and trip, beginning to fall backwards down the stairwell before strong arms wrap around your middle and bring you upright. His arm moves so one hand cradles your head and you both just stand there in shock as you process what just happened. You almost fell down the stairs and Jungkook caught you. You almost fell down the stairs!

“Don’t scare me like that!” You yell, pulling away to slap his rather firm chest.

“How was I supposed to know you were on the other side!” He exclaims,

“I almost died!”

“You probably just would’ve gotten concussed but…hey I caught you! Where’s my thank you?”

“You want me to thank you when you almost killed me??” You ask and Jungkook rolls his eyes.

“You’re so dramatic. Also you uhh threw your taco bell and I’m pretty sure that’s a rat eating it.”

“What?” You scream, jumping into his arms-not like you needed to though since they’re still wrapped tightly around you- hiding your face in his neck and trying not to picture that rat. You’re a bit of a hypochondriac so just the idea of what diseases the rat could be carrying is freaking you out. Jungkook only chuckles at you before reopening the door leading towards the hallway and carrying you towards your front door where you effectively release him. “You owe me dinner.”

“Do I?” He asks, raising an eyebrow at you.

“You made me drop my taco bell and I haven’t had dinner yet.” You pout.

“Do I always have to take care of you?” Jungkook sighs before unlocking his own front door and pulling you inside.

“What do you mean take care of me? I’m just a random person remember?” You quip but Jungkook ignores you as he scours throw his fridge. “Bambi stop ignoring me.” You whine which finally gets his attention.

“Sit thief.”

“If thief is your attempt at an affectionate pet name I hope you know I hate it.” You tell him, moving to sit at the barstool anyways.

“All the more reason to use it. Now thief, welcome to Jungkook’s ramen shop where we only serve the finest cup ramen. What flavor do you want?”

“If this is a restaurant shouldn’t you be wearing one of those big white hats or something? Also chicken please.”

“Boring choice but okay. Also I’m not wearing one of Jin’s stupid hats.” Jungkook says, turning on the kettle before moving to face you.

“So you’re telling me he has one? Here… In this apartment?” You ask, eyes glinting with mischief. Jeon Jungkook will be wearing one of those stupid hats even if it’s the last thing you do.

“I feel like if I say yes I’m going to regret it.” He tells you earnestly but you pay him no mind as you scour the kitchen looking for said hat. It’s not in the cupboards or pantry and you’re beginning to lose interest in finding it until you come across the linen closet in the hallway. You wouldn’t think it’s in there but the way Jungkook stiffens has your spidey senses tingling. With a flourish you open in the door exclaiming ‘aha!’ as you retrieve the item of your dreams along with an apron that says ‘kiss the cook’.

“Since you’re preparing my food I need you to wear a hat. I don’t want to find a hair that’s not mine in my ramen.”

“I’m not wearing that.”

“Fine.” You say with a huff, placing the hat on the counter in front of you. “At least wear the apron?” You bat your lashes at him and he concedes, putting on the stupid thing with the frilly edges. Step one: complete.

When Jungkook is busy pouring the boiling water in the cups and trying not to burn himself you sneak up behind him, the hat clutched between your fingers as your knees bend in preparation to jump on his back. While not the most conventional method he’s annoyingly kinda tall and if you can get above him you have a better chance of securing the hat onto his head and getting him to keep it there. As soon as the kettle is placed down onto the counter you attack, yelling out a war cry as you launch yourself onto him and almost falling off in laughter at the girlish scream that makes it past his throat. Lucy is barking from what you assume to be his room and the apartment is a madhouse as Jungkook teeters side to side with your legs wrapped around your face and your fingers trying to center the hat on his squirming head.

“Stop moving!” You yell, accidentally bonking him square on the head with your fist.

“Ow! Stop fucking hitting me!” He yells back, once again squirming beneath you.

“I wouldn’t have to if you just stayed still! We could’ve avoided this if you had worn it in the first place.” You’re both too busy arguing to hear the footsteps of one of the other inhabitants of the apartment emerge from their bedroom but when you both spin around you’re surprised by Seokjin causally leaning against the wall with a smirk on his face.

“Say cheese.” He smiles, blinding you with the flash before you can hide behind Jungkook’s head. “Jimin will love this.” He snickers and like Jungkook’s hair is a joystick for him to move you pull it forward to urge him to walk towards Seokjin.

“Don’t you dare send that! He has enough blackmail material on me already!” You yell, your grip on Jungkook slipping as you attempt to stomp the ground only to realize mid-movement that you’re not actually on the ground. Thankfully Jungkook has faster reflexes then you and catches you before you can fully fly off his body, slamming your upper half into his back while his other hand slides higher up your thigh to secure you now around his hips. It takes you a moment to register that your leg is so warm where his hand is because there’s no fabric barrier and it takes another moment to realize your skirt has probably slid up an embarrassing amount. “Okay put me down, put me down.” You say, slapping Jungkook’s arm to force him into urgency.

“Alright, alright.” He says before ungracefully dropping you onto your ass.

“I hate you.” You tell him before straightening out your skirt.

“What were you two even doing?” Seokjin asks and you sigh.

“He won’t wear the stupid hat.” You grumble and Seokjin sighs.

“Kookie wear the hat.”

“Yeah bambi wear the hat.” When Jungkook is still adamant he won’t be wearing the hat you look up into their ceiling light dramatically before pouting.

“Look Kook you made her sad.” Jin says, gesturing to you still staring into the light.

“What’re you doing? You’re gonna make yourself go blind, stop.” Jungkook says but you hold up a hand to silence him.

“Hang on I’m trying to make myself cry.” You tell him and Jungkook only chuckles.

“You’re ridiculous. If I wear the hat will you stop?” Immediately you look over to him with watery eyes, blinking rapidly to try and get the annoying circles out of your vision.

“Yes.” You grin, clapping as he adjusts it to sit lopsided on his head. That’s good enough for you as you jump up in glee. You’re too blind- really those spots just won’t fade away- to notice the almost fond smile Jungkook sends you.

“You might as well take a picture. This is the only time you’re gonna see me like this.” Jungkook tells you and you grab your phone off the counter and point the camera at you.

“Say I love you” You tease.

“I hate you” Jungkook says and you giggle. All is right once again in the universe.

Friday finally comes along and you have a slight problem. You’ve been so busy with Jungkook and Lucy- you have to make sure she’s getting proper care and long walks- that you forgot you were supposed to invite Taehyung over to Jimin and Yoongi’s for game night. And now you’re frantically blowing his phone up at four p.m. hoping that he didn’t make plans already. Stupid Jungkook. Like the angels above have taken pity on you, Taehyung is thankfully free and fully okay with you dragging him to Jimin and Yoongi’s place. Per tradition, they provide the place and the drinks and you provide the snacks. Though you’ve been craving fried chicken lately so you’re someone tempted to bring over a whole meal instead. You’re still deep in contemplation when Taehyung arrives at your door, a bag of chips in his hand because he didn’t want to arrive empty handed. How thoughtful.

“Do you think I should bring fried chicken?” You ask Taehyung, grabbing a few things before you leave for Jimin’s.

“If you want to, I certainly wouldn’t mind.”

“Friend chicken it is. Bambi was telling me about this place yesterday and apparently it’s really good.” You ramble, slipping on your shoes by the door.

“Bambi?” Taehyung asks, following you once you’ve locked up.

“Yeah, a friend of mine.” You tell him, eyeing the old taco bell stain in the stairwell. You hope the rats enjoyed your five dollars worth of tacos.

“Is that their favorite movie?” Taehyung asks and you wonder why he’s so curious. Though you guess that’s not the most common nickname and maybe he’s just trying to get to know the people you hang out with.

“No, they just have big doe eyes. They’re kinda pretty sometimes.” You shrug, not thinking too much about what you’re saying.

“Hey my friend has eyes like that too! Though that’s a pretty common eye shape.”

“Yeah but I’d be able to recognize this pair anywhere. They’re quite distinctive.” Taehyung just nods, probably getting bored talking about a pair of eyes he’s never seen on a person he doesn’t know.

“Hey how come I’ve never really met any of your friends besides Hoseok? Are you hiding them from me?” You tease though you are a little curious. Sure he’s only meeting Jimin because Jimin basically forced you to do so but you’ve never even really heard him talk about his own friends.

“More like I’m hiding you from them. You’re just too cute; they might slip up and fall in love with you or something.” You laugh and roll your eyes, shoving his arm lightly.

“Yeah right.” You scoff, yelping when Taehyung nudges you to the side with his whole body in retaliation to your push. “You want to fight Taehyung?” You ask him, brow raised in challenge.

“Bring it cutie.” He laughs running down the sidewalk a bit as you attempt to check him. “No fair! You can’t just run away.” You pout, placated by the soft kiss he presses to your forehead. You take the moment of weakness to push him, giggling as you run away in the direction of Jimin’s apartment building with Taehyung hot on your heels.

There’s something unnerving about the way Jimin is observing you and Taehyung, a critical eye he’s never had before when you’ve introduced other guys. Normally he’s bubbly and warm, already giving them a hug like they’re his long lost friend but today he’s rather distant. It’s extra odd since he suggested you meeting but maybe Jimin is just feeling like playing the bad cop today. The doorbell rings and distracts you from observing Jimin who’s observing Taehyung as the boys watch you with anticipation. You’re pretty sure you can hear Yoongi’s stomach rumble as you answer the door while Taehyung heads to the bathroom.

“Oh hey Namjoon.” You say, not quite expecting to see his face. You haven’t really seen him since he accidentally punched you- you almost get the feeling he’s been avoiding you since.

“Oh hey Y/n.” He says sheepishly and you just give him an easy smile.

“You haven’t been avoiding me have you? Joonie I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?” He asks incredulously.

“No. The bruise healed already by the way, it was pretty small.”

“I’m so glad to hear it.” He breathes out, sounding pretty relieved.

“Just for future reference, if it’s an accident I won’t get mad at you for it.” You tell him.

“Good to know. Oh it’ll be $12.74. Half off for friends and family.” Namjoon smiles, a big one that makes his dimples pop out.

“You’re too kind to me Joonie.” You say, making sure to tip him 50% just because.

“You’re too kind to me.” He parrots but happily accepts, waving you goodbye before disappearing back into the hallway. Closing the door Taehyung reemerges from the back hallway and hurries over to give you a hand.

Setting the food down on the coffee table the boys immediately dig in, not even giving you time to grab plates. Sitting between Taehyung and Jimin, you happily munch away and the four of you eat in silence as My First First Love plays on the tv. Despite Yoongi’s claims that it’s cliche, you’ve caught him watching it every time you come over. He even teared up a little at the bridge scene.

When the wings are picked clean you ask Jimin to help you clean up solely to interrogate him from the safety of the kitchen. “Stop looking at Tae like that.” You whisper yell and doesn’t even look at you as he’s throwing the bones in the trash.

“I’m just trying to see if he’s the right choice.” Jimin whispers back.

“Right choice? You say that like there’s another option.” You say only to scoff. “Besides it’s my decision anyways.”

“But my ship.” He whines and you sigh.

“Just give him a chance okay? He’s really sweet and I want him to actually like you if this turns into something. Plus you’re the one who asked to meet him.”

“You’re right.” Jimin sighs. “He did think to bring chips after all. Jungkook would never.”

“Jungkook?”

“Who’s ready to get whooped in Mario Kart?” Jimin yells leaving you to stand alone in the kitchen, utterly confused. What does Taehyung have to do with Jungkook? Shrugging it off you head back into the living room, your seat next to Taehyung now occupied by Jimin who has decided Taehyung is his new best friend. He even gave him the matching controller, something you and Yoongi had to earn. Sitting next to Yoongi, you lean your head on his shoulder as Jimin teaches Taehyung the rules of Mario Kart.

“You good?” Yoongi murmurs as to not attract attention from the others,

“Yeah Jimin just confused me is all. You like Taehyung right?” You ask.

“Of course, he’s my friend. What’d Jimin say?”

“Something about making sure Taehyung is the right choice. Whatever that means. And he mentioned Jungkook which just confused me.”

“I think he meant that you just act very different around the two. From what I’ve seen you’re pretty meek around Tae and while it’s cute it’s a little out of nature for you. We’re just used to you being a spitfire is all.” Your mind drifts back to Hoseok’s shocked expression when Taehyung referred to you as shy. Was the you around Taehyung really so different? Sure you were more nervous and struggled to think of what to say and were half as snarky as usual but that’s not a bad thing right? You’re just evolving. Besides Taehyung likes this version of you. But everyone’s doubts has you wondering if it’s really you at all. You’d never change yourself for someone else, right?

You can’t get the thought that maybe you’re holding yourself back around Taehyung out of your head all night, leaving you to not enjoy game night. Every time you interact with him you can’t help but wonder if you’re being yourself or if you’re portraying an image you’re not. Because while Taehyung does make you nervous and sometimes does make you stumble on your words, the more you’re aware of how you might be changing your behavior the more you’re aware that you’re suppressing your harsher burns or remarks that you’d have no problem saying to anyone else. You wonder if Taehyung realizes how different you act with Yoongi and Jimin compared to him or just amounts it to the fact that they’ve been your long-term friends. You don’t know, you’re not sure of anything at this point regarding you and Taehyung. You wish Jimin never said anything because now you’re left second guessing.

The thought follows you into the week and even leads you into ignoring Taehyung’s texts if for nothing but to not accidentally lie to him. You don’t want him thinking you’re a fake person and at this point you’re so turned around that you’re not even sure how you could make sense of what’s going on in your head. The more you think about it the more you’re convinced that you’re not yourself around him but the more you convince yourself the louder your doubts get because what if you’re only convinced because you think you should be. The only time you get any solace is with Jungkook and Lucy so naturally you’ve been spending time with them. Though it’s only to see her of course, never Jungkook. Which is why every day you make sure to bring her something new. Whether it’s a costume- yes you went back and bought her the pink onesie, she hated it but you got a cute picture- some new treats, toys, or even little bows you never came empty handed because that would mean you also partly came to spend time with Jungkook. And wanting to spend time with Jungkook would mean that your annoying e-boy neighbor finally broke down your walls and created a little home in your heart. It would mean that he’s finally become your friend and that’s information that can’t get out. Besides if he finds out you think of him as a friend would that change the way he interacts with you? Would you no longer be able to make fun of him and call him names like bambi just to piss him off?

You think about this as you’re stood outside his door, a hand raised to knock on it and two coffees in hand- Jungkook had promised you to teach you all the tricks in Smash Bros so you could finally beat Jin tonight and it’d probably take a while so you needed to stay awake- paired with a pup cup from Starbucks for Lucy when the door swings open and Jungkook’s doe eyes are frantic. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Is all he says before pulling you into a hug, the pup cup falling to your feet as you struggle to hold onto the two larger drinks. He grips you like a child holding a teddy bear for comfort, his breath ragged against your neck as he hides his face in the crook there. You instantly panic because something has him obviously scared but try your best to remain calm to comfort him. As best as you can you wrap your arms around his back, careful to hold the two cold drinks away from him.

“You okay?” You ask softly although very aware the answer is no. You and Jungkook have never gone down this road before- one of soft words and touches- so you try and navigate it as best as possible even if that means asking redundant questions.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Lucy, she just keeps coughing and she’s spitting out this white foamy stuff and I don’t know what to do because she’s so hot that I’m scared to carry her in case she overheats and I-“ He sobs out, pushing into you harder as he tries and hides the tears. It’s a little futile however as you can feel him shaking around you but let him collect himself before gently pulling away to set the drinks down. Gingerly you wipe his tears as he hangs his head down in shame- probably from breaking down in front of you (his frenemy)- and you gaze up at him softly.

“It’s gonna be okay, I’ll go with you to the vet and we’ll deal with it from there. You can even hold my hand if you need to.” You joke trying to crack a smile to get him to cheer up a little but it doesn’t do anything for him. “Do you have a kennel for her or anything?” You ask and he shakes his head no, his bottom lip trembling.

“I’m such a bad dog dad.” He sobs and you’re so frantic to calm him down you place little kisses along his face to try and stop the tears. He tenses immediately when he pulls himself out of his thoughts long enough to realize what you’re doing and you pull away embarrassed.

“We can use a box with some thin blankets it’s fine.” You say, refusing to acknowledge what you just did. It’s something that’s better to just sweep under the rug and forget it happened. Grabbing a smaller box from recycling- you’ve never been so thankful for Costco than in this moment- you hurry to Jungkook’s bedroom where you can hear a little honks from Lucy. Gently opening the door you find her nestled in a bunch of blankets on Jungkook’s bed, the fan blowing directly on her while her head nuzzles his pillows. The footsteps behind you alert you of Jungkook’s presence and you nod to Lucy lying on the bed.

“See you’re not a bad dog dad at all, she loves you. She’s finding comfort in your scent right now.” Stepping into the room you gingerly walk towards her as to not startle to poor puppy, setting the box down beside you on the bed.

“Hi baby, we’re gonna go to the doctor okay?” You tell her, gently moving her out of the nest and onto the comforter as you hurry to stuff the little nest into the box. “Bambi do you have a hoodie or something that you’ve worn recently?” You ask and immediately he begins fishing for one in his laundry basket. The hoodie is just a plain grey and you feel a little bad at the inevitable stains but place it into the box anyways before turning back to Lucy. Carefully you slide one hand under her shoulder and head while the other slides under her bottom half before you carry her almost like a newborn baby into the box. It’s not the best crate but it’s the best you can do at a moments notice. Jungkook immediately takes the box from you, careful to hold it from the bottom as you hurry back into the living room and grab his keys from the rack and the two coffees- you’ll probably need them for the long night ahead of you.

Googling the nearest 24 hour vet clinic seeing as it’s around 9 p.m you hurry into your car and head off. You attempt to play music to calm everyone’s nerves but Jungkook turns it off and instead you sit in silence as your navigation occasionally calls out directions.

A ten minute ride later you’re once again hurrying, Jungkook sprinting through the doors when Lucy starts to gag. You follow after him, coming in just in time to see one of the Vet Tech’s take Lucy to the back. Jungkook slumps against the counter as the receptionist readies some files for him to complete and you take the clipboard from her after urging Jungkook to sit down. Quietly you fill out the information sheet for him, only occasionally asking him questions for things you don’t know the answer to. You’ve just sat down when they call for Jungkook, his hand finding your own and you squeeze it thinking he just needs a moment of comfort when he tugs on it, refusing to let go. “Come with me?” He whispers and you nod, immediately standing up to follow him with his hand still sat comfortably in your own.

“So we’ve took her temperature and she’s running a high fever and obviously she’s coughing but can you describe her other symptoms if she had any?” The Vet Tech asks and Jungkook nods.

“She uhh coughed up this white foamy stuff that kinda had the consistency of snot and she was gagging before we came here. She’s probably been coughing for the last couple of hours.”

“Did she do or eat anything out of the ordinary today?”

“She met my friend’s dog. I know she doesn’t have all her shots but I thought it’d be okay since he has all his.” Jungkook mumbles and the guy nods along while making notes.

“We’re just going to take a few tests to make sure we have the right diagnosis and then we’ll get back to you. We’re not that busy so it should only take an hour or two at most. If you’d like to go back in the waiting room we’ll call you back when we’re ready or you can wait here if you’d like.” He says before exiting the small room and disappearing.

“What do you want to do?” You ask Jungkook and he just sighs.

“I don’t know. Do you think this is my fault?” He asks, his normally sparkly eyes are dull as devastation and heartbreak take full form in them. It hurts you to watch and you almost feel your own heart break at his evident pain. As much as you love Lucy you only spend a few hours a day with her so your pain can amount nowhere close to Jungkook’s.

“I don’t think we should go there, especially when we don’t have a diagnosis. Let’s just stay here so you can nap. You look exhausted.” You tell him and he sneers.

“You want me to sleep when my dog could be dying?” He yells and you flinch away.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions. And she was puking up snot Kook it’s not like she was coughing blood. It’ll be okay.” You tell him, trying to be understanding and not take his yelling personal. “You don’t have to sleep alright?”

“Alright.” He sighs, sitting back down again before laying his head in your lap. “I’m sorry for yelling.” He mumbles, turning his head to bury it into your thigh to hide his embarrassment.

“I know, it’s okay.” You say softly, brushing your fingers through his hair. He closes his eyes and eventually his body relaxes enough that you realize despite his previous words he has in fact fallen asleep. You continue stroking his hair as he snores lightly against you, praying that for his sake Lucy is okay.

“Sorry that took so long, we had an emergency surgery and Lucy got put on hold for a little.” The Vet says as she barges in, your head banging against the wall as you startle awake. Jungkook groans from your lap, rubbing his eyes as he pouts at being abruptly awoken.

“It’s okay.” You croak out, voice hoarse from sleep. You stretch all your limbs, your back cracking wonderfully as the Vet waits for both of you to wake up, somewhat amused.

“We looked through the test results and it turns out she has Kennel Cough. It’s nothing too serious, it typically clears up on it’s own but since she’s not fully vaccinated we’re going to give her medicine to help clear it up faster and make sure it’s fully gone. By the time the medication is finished be sure to bring her back for her final vaccination and just don’t let her around other dogs until then okay?” You both nod and she gives you the prescription, before informing you that’d she’ll be right back with Lucy.

Checking your phone you realize that it’s currently 2 a.m. and you wonder just how long the two of you have been sleeping on these hard chairs. The vet appears shortly later with a sleepy Lucy- apparently they gave her some medicine to make her sleep through the night- along with a crate. “Figured you’d need a real one of these instead of a cardboard box. I already put her blankets and the jacket inside so she’s all good to go. Just make sure to stop by the front desk and sign out.” With a wave goodbye and a get well to Lucy she leaves the two of you alone again.

“Do you think the crate is free?” Is the first thing Jungkook says to you and you laugh, ruffling his hair.

“I don’t know Bambi. If not let’s just make a run for it.”

“Just what I want to be arrested for: stealing a dog crate.” He laughs, rolling his eyes as he presses a gentle kiss to Lucy’s forehead. “Let’s go home baby.” He says and for a moment your tired mind thinks he’s talking to you. Shaking your head of useless thoughts you lead him back to the reception desk where he pays for her care- the crate surprisingly was free- before you lead him back to your car where this time he lets you play music on the drive home.

Pulling up to your apartment complex, you park before taking the elevator this time to the second floor, too tired to walk up a measly two flights of stairs. You’re just about to fish your key out of your bag when Jungkook’s hand on your wrist stops you. “Will you come in and help me make sure she’s settled?” He asks and he looks so nervous while asking you that you can’t say no- not that you were planning to. Nodding you follow him inside after taking your shoes off, tucking her into her bed that’s in the corner of his room.

“Do you think I should let her up here?”

“Your body heat might make her fever worse.” You tell him and he visibly deflates. “It’s okay you can wake up bright and early if you want to sit by her side all day tomorrow. But she’s so knocked out she probably won’t even realize you’re not next to her right now.” It’s the most you can offer him as your own drowsiness sets in and every time you blink your eyelids stick together for a little longer.

“Do you just want to stay here?” Jungkook asks and for a split second you’re wide awake. “You just look so tired I don’t think you could make it the ten feet next door.” He chuckles and you roll your eyes.

“I could.” You huff and Jungkook doesn’t say anything as he observes you.

“You don’t have to though.” He says softly, moving to lay flat on his back.

“Touch me and you’re dead.” You tell him, the bed creaking as you settle down beside him. He hums in response and you roll onto your side, letting sleep take over.

Surprise, Surprise-when you wake up Jungkook has broken your rule. In fact his whole body is wrapped around you as his leg is nestled between your own while one arm wraps around your waist and the other has somehow slid under your neck. It’s entirely too domestic of a scene with a once sworn enemy and you scramble to get out of this position before Jungkook wakes up. Except he was either already awake or your squirming awoke him as he mumbles at you to stop moving before encasing his arms around you and rolling so you’re effectively trapped under him. It does render you motionless but it also renders you breathless since he’s so heavy. I mean really what is this kid eating?

“I can’t breathe.” You say into a mouthful of pillow only further suffocating himself. Jungkook only hums in response, snuggling into you further like this is the most natural thing for you two to do. You manage to turn your head enough to not be face deep in a pillow and choke out, “You’re too heavy. Get off.” as he finally gets the hint that he’s been killing you softly and rolls to the other side of the bed.

“Sorry.” He says at least having the decency to look remorseful and embarrassed by the fact that he almost murdered you.

“You broke my rule, I said don’t touch me.” You scold him, already reaching to the side to grab the pillow.

“But you cuddled me first!”

“Don’t care, I have to kill you now.” You shrug before whacking him in the face a little bit harder than you meant to. “Boom, headshot. You’re dead.” You giggle, probably way to nonchalant about the fact you woke up entangled in the arms of your nemesis but if you don’t think about it, it can’t hurt you.

“You really think a headshot could kill me, the indestructible Jeon Jungkook? Never!” Jungkook says, reaching around to grab a pillow to hit you with before Seokjin’s voice sounds through the other side of the door.

“Jungkook are you playing with your action figures again? I told you that’s weird.” You stifle the laugh fighting to break out with your hand, taking much to pleasure in the fact that Jungkook’s face is bright red and he can no longer look you in the eye.

“No Jin! I’m talking with Y/n.” He yells before his eyes widen at his mistake. He just outed you both as…cuddle buddies. The door bursts open at that, Seokjin being much to awake for whatever time it is in the morning with his phone pointed directly at you for incriminating evidence.

“It’s happening!” He screams, waking up Lucy who manages something that somewhat resembles her normal bark.

“Lucy!” You and Jungkook both scream, scrambling off the bed to check on her. Seokjin keeps his camera on you both as you and Jungkook fuss over Jungkook’s tiny puppy completely forgetting that he’s in the room.

“Everything is falling together so beautifully don’t you think Jimin?’ He whispers and you look up for a moment in confusion having heard him but he only winks at you in response. Seokjin sure has a lot of secrets.

You finally reach out to Taehyung feeling bad for ignoring him for a week but also needing closure. You need to see once and for all if you really are a different person around Taehyung. It’ll only have to be after the class that started it all, your 400 person lecture that is the whole reason you and Jungkook even became aware of each other’s existence despite being neighbors. You’ve asked him to meet you after class seeing that it’s the last class of the day for you and you didn’t think it was fair to keep Taehyung waiting any longer. He was a good person and he deserved to know where your head is at. You almost hope that if this doesn’t end up working that you can genuinely still be friends.

Jungkook has apparently decided to save you a seat- which is a little odd since you’ve never made an effort to sit next to each other before- if him flagging you down is anything to go by. He did make a good choice in seats though- choosing to be in the back and near the edge of the long rows- as it means you don’t have to climb over a bunch of people just to get to him. “Hi.” He breathes like he’s relieved to have you sit beside him. You wonder if he thought you’d just turn and walk in the other direction.

“Hi bambi.” You smile, pulling your laptop out of your bag and sticking it on the little tray connected to your chair. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”

“Anytime thief.” He actually snorts when he watches your face drop, apparently still getting satisfaction from the old nickname.

“Are you never going to let that go?” You sigh, slumping back into the chair and placing your head in your palm.

“First you took my backpack, then my plant, then my dog. Is there anything you haven’t taken from me?” He teases and you huff.

“I give you a cute nickname like Bambi and you decide to stick me with thief. Why do I even try to be nice to you?”

“Because I’m adorable and it’s impossible not to be nice to me. But if you’re really so hard done by it I guess I can call you Thumper.” He shrugs, cackling at the disgust that takes shape on your face.

“Gross. Matching pet names is what you came up with?”

“It’s thief or thumper, your pick.” He has an evil glint in his eyes as he smiles so wide at you that his whole face crinkles, his shoulders rising up to shake in laughter. It might be the happiest you’ve ever seen him and you suppose if thumper makes him so happy it’s not so bad.

“Fine thumper will do.” You murmur, chucking when he high fives himself like a total loser. The professor then comes in and the class falls silent- which is a little odd since normally this class is never quiet- as he turns to face you all.

“It’s come to my attention there is a thief among us. Last week a student reported their laptop missing from this class that has yet to be returned. If you know anything about this and have substantial proof as to where it is, you’ll receive extra credit on your next paper.”

“Any chance it was you, my favorite little thief?” Jungkook whispers, groaning in pain when you elbow him.

“No and like I’d share it with you. You don’t deserve the extra credit.” You whisper back.

For the rest of the class Jungkook is surprisingly quiet, so much so that you even forget he’s beside you. When you do remember he is though you get oddly creeped out because in the time you’ve known him he’s rarely ever quiet. Even if he’s not making noise with his mouth he’s tapping his foot or fingers along to an unknown beat and yet he’s eerily silent. Turning to him in concern you watch as he analyzes the back of everyone’s head in great concentration, moving along the row in front of you slowly as to gain every detail. “What’re you doing?” You ask, ignoring the professor as he wraps up the lecture. Looking at Jungkook’s screen you notice that he hasn’t even written down a single thing from today.

“I’m looking for the laptop thief.” He says nonchalantly like it isn’t weird to stare at the back of stranger’s heads for the past hour.

“And you’re finding that out from looking at the back of their heads?”

“Yes, I’m seeing who looks most like one.” He tells you and you turn to him fully to get his attention.

“Do I look like a thief?” You ask, unmoving as the people around you quickly gather their stuff and head out of the lecture hall.

“Yes.” He says matter-of-factly. A smile making its way onto his face as he can read the clear irritation on yours.

“How so?”

“It’s just something about you. One look at you and I knew you were it.”

“That’s because you saw me with your backpack in my hand dumbass. You’re not batman with your ‘here comes trouble’ detector.” You scoff, finally moving to put your laptop in your bag. You’ve only just realized you two are about the last ones in the lecture hall and the remaining few can probably hear your conversation. You don’t need more people thinking you’re a criminal.

“That’s- that’s not even a thing? Have you ever watched a superhero movie in your life?” Jungkook asks, like he can’t fathom the fact that you were just spitting nonsense. Honestly you had seen some superhero movies but you didn’t care much for them.

“In my defense, spidey senses are a thing as well as a guy who literally shoots webs from his hands? How does that make sense?” You can’t help the smile that takes over your face when he groans in agitation, turning around to catch him running a hand through his hair and fixing his glasses- you were right, he only wears them for the aesthetic which is why he never has them on at home.

“He was bit by a radioactive spider!”

“How did it not die when being around the radiation? It’s literally a tiny spider.” You ask and Jungkook just looks at you exasperatedly.

“People don’t die from radiation.” He deadpans, flicking your forehead for being stupid.

“But it’s a spider. Also how did he not die from being exposed to the radiation? Wasn’t he like a scrawny guy?”

“That was Captain America you idiot.” He scoffs, rolling his eyes as well. You knew that but Jungkook is too fun to piss off. Besides it’s only fair since you know he gets the same satisfaction from you.

“I know idiot.” You grin, flicking his forehead as you skip away from him and towards the doors.

He chases after you a matching grin on his face as he grabs onto your hand to slow you down. “So you’re purposely being irritating?”

“Don’t act like you don’t do the same.” You giggle, completely unaware of the third set of eyes in the room.

“Uhh am I interrupting something?” Taehyung asks and you suddenly remember you were supposed to meet him after class.

“Taehyung hi.” You smile at him awkwardly, taking a step away from Jungkook who drops your hand.

“You know Taehyung?” Jungkook asks you and you nod.

“Yeah I forgot I was supposed to meet him outside of class today.” You tell him before turning back to Taehyung. “Sorry about that by the way.”

“So Jungkook’s bambi?” Taehyung asks though it’s more like he’s talking it through himself. “And you’re the backpack thief.”

“That sounds like a bad rip off of Percy Jackson.” You joke, trying to displace some of the awkward tension in the air. No one laughs.

“Taehyung how do you know thumper?” Jungkook asks, his voice teetering on actually angry. It’s not the type you’re used to hearing for the one he directs at you is normally more light-hearted and teasing. This type is deep and gravely like he has hot coals burning in his windpipe.

“We went out a few times.” Taehyung says and you find yourself backtracking when you watch Jungkook’s face drop a little. You’re not sure why it drops but his downcast expression worries you all the same.

“It wasn’t anything serious though. It’s not like we’re officially together.” You don’t know why you rush to reassure him, especially since Taehyung is in the room and you’re talking about him, but you can’t help but feel guilty for his sadness. You feel a little bit like Jimin did when he moved out.

“So that’s it?” Jungkook finally speaks though his voice is noticeably weaker.

“Yeah.” You say, hoping that’ll solve whatever problem is happening between you right now. That seems like it’s the wrong answer though as he turns around and exists the doors on the other side of the classroom. You wish you could chase after him and find out what’s wrong but you don’t know what to say.

“Taehyung I’m sorry.” You start, after following him out to a secluded bench near the building you were just in. “I didn’t mean to say that I wasn’t serious about you. I do like you and our dates did mean something to me. I just- he looked so sad and I panicked.”

He’s silent for a long moment and you grow antsy beside him before he decides to speak. “Do I make you feel confident?” He asks, turning to you head on so he can read your body language as you try and process his question.

“What?”

“I was confused by why Hoseok seemed so shocked when I described you as shy and then I saw how you reacted with Jimin and Yoongi but I amounted to it being because you’re old friends. But seeing you with Kook who I know you only met a few days before me, I can’t help but notice you’re almost a different person. So, do I make you feel confident?”

“You…you make me feel nervous but that’s only because you’re so handsome.” You start only for him to cut you off.

“But you should be used to my face by now. Do you think Jungkook is handsome?”

“Of course but I don’t really see the relevance. Sorry let me rephrase, I’m not very good at expressing myself.” You ramble, mind sent into overdrive as you scramble to think of words.

“Sweetheart,” Taehyung says softly, placing a hand on your cheek to soothingly stroke his thumb along your cheekbone. “you deserve someone who you can easily express yourself to. You shouldn’t have to struggle to find the words.”

“But I’m like that with everyone, it’s just who I am.” You shrug but Taehyung stops you again.

“You’re not that way with Jungkook. I’ve heard you tell him off just fine in plenty of his stories about you. You never seem to find the wrong words around him. Even when you were stressed about his feelings being hurt just now you could find something to say. Besides, I don’t think we have half as much chemistry as you and Jungkook do. He almost kissed you that day Lucy peed on him.”

“He what?” You exclaim, pulling away from Taehyung in shock.

“I mean this in the nicest way possible but don’t you think it’s time you wake up and realize what’s right in front of you? Jungkook hasn’t been exactly subtle about his feelings for you and I think in your own way you weren’t exactly subtle about yours for him either.”

“So you’re telling me I like Jungkook?” You say, the words coming out slowly as you process the sentence. As odd as it sounds on your tongue you feel a small weight lifted off your shoulders.

“I’m saying that you should re-evaluate your relationship with him. I think you both mean a lot more to each other than the other thinks and it’s pretty easy to see on the outside. I just wish I would’ve figured out who you were sooner so I could avoid hurting my best friend.” Taehyung sighs, turning away from you to watch the people around you blissfully unaware of the mess that is your life.

“Best friends?” You exclaim. “But I never heard much about you, no offense.”

“We lost touch a little this semester when I became engrossed in my classes. If your portfolio is good enough they’ll show it to nearby galleries to display so I’ve been quite busy. The only bit of free time I’ve spent with you.”

“But we went to Hoseok’s show?” You say, still trying to piece it together.

“Again, time spent with you but since he’s my roommate I can’t exactly not show up to his recital. Also you and Hoseok are terrible actors, I could tell you were exes the moment you stood awkwardly behind me.” Taehyung chuckles and you slap his arm in response.

“Hey I could’ve been shy!”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Is that why you never talked about your friends much? Because I’d probably know them through Hoseok and that’d be awkward.”

“Yeah. I didn’t exactly know you were his ex at the time you asked me out. We’d only been living together for a couple months at that point.” Taehyung shrugs and you sigh. A lot could’ve been avoided if you and Taehyung had actually talked. Though you’re starting to realize that this is the easiest it’s ever been to talk to him now that the pressure of a relationship is off.

“Hey Tae, do you think we can try being just friends? I really do enjoy your company.” You ask, a little too nervous to look at him for his reaction. Facing rejection is never easy.

“I think we could work something out. Besides I don’t know if you noticed but this is probably the best conversation we’ve ever had. Ironically it’s about us breaking up, if you can even call this that.” Taehyung laughs and you laugh along beside him. Funny how some things work out.

The next task on your list is finding Jungkook. You look at the dining halls first- Jungkook’s favorite place despite the fact that everything is either soggy or undercooked- but he’s nowhere to be seen. Then you head to the library thinking he’ll go to the last place you’d think to look for him- which of course makes it your second- but he’s not there either. Your last resort is to head home and see if maybe you can find him there. Jin answers the door this time, jerking his head back towards the hallway where Jungkook’s room is.

“He’s back there sulking.” Jin whispers, handing you a tub of ice cream and a spoon. “He won’t let anyone in but I’m sure you’ll get special treatment.”

“Jin, am I in your OTP?” You ask. His eyes widen comically as he shakes his head side to side.

“No, of course not. What even is that? Sorry I don’t understand you and Kook’s nerd lingo.” He rambles and your mind- ever the hyperfixator- focuses on one word. In all the time that you’ve known your neighbors, you’ve never heard Jin use the word nerd. And you’ve been here countless hours every day. But one person you know that has an infinity for the word nerd is Park Jimin who you already know shares secrets with Jin.

“Hmm okay. Though you might want to tell Jimin your ship could be sailing fairly soon.” You wink, enjoying the fact that this time you’re the one leaving with a smirk and he’s left confused.

Knocking softly on his door, you ignore the way he groans “go away” at you and open it, ducking just barely in time for the pillow to graze the top of your head. “Thumper?”

“Hey bambi. I brought you ice cream.” Slowly standing up, you take in the way Lucy is wrapped up in his arms like a little plushie, a thick blanket wrapped around him as he burrows into the pillows the longer you observe him. Handing it to him along with the spoon you sit on the edge of the bed, picking at the loose threads as you try and find the courage to confront what just happened.

“Taehyung and I broke up, if you can even call it that.” You say suddenly, the spoon in Jungkook’s mouth falling against the mattress with a soft thud. You grimace at the hard stain that’s going to form but Lucy is delighted at the sticky residue left on the spoon. Lucky for her Jungkook is boring and likes vanilla ice cream.

“You what?” He asks, mouth hanging open until you push it closed.

“Don’t leave your mouth open, you’ll catch flies.” You giggle. “But yeah we decided we’re better off as friends.” You leave out the part that you decided you also might have feelings for Jungkook because today has already been an emotional day for you.

“Is-is there a specific reason why?” Jungkook asks almost pleadingly and as much as you want to give him the answer you hope he’s looking for you can’t. Not until you’ve slept on it, not until you’re sure that this is what you want. He deserves that at least.

“We just didn’t click the same. I was pretty shy around him actually. Can you believe that?” You laugh and Jungkook sighs.

“Why were you never shy with me?”

“You’re kind of infuriating. Besides Taehyung never pushed my buttons like you do. There was nothing to be snarky to him about.” You shrug, your mind momentarily thinking back to what Jimin said what seems like such a long time ago: you’re not good at flirting! You’re just mean and shit. While a little ineloquent for your taste it sadly does some you up. You guess you were forever destined to end up in an enemies to lovers.

It only takes two days for you to realize you’re an idiot. It only takes two days for you to realize that you may have accidentally been falling in love with your nemesis turned frenemy this whole time while not knowing it. You’ve always been bad with feeling but surely no one is that inept: well expect you of course. You should’ve seen it coming with the way he was constantly on your mind and began inviting yourself over to his place- something you don’t even do to your childhood best friend Jimin. Or that fact that you climbed in his bed, tired but competent to know that you’d probably wake up with his arms around you. And yet you continuously pushed these thoughts away under the pretense that he thought of you as nothing more than a frenemy at best- it was probably painfully obvious like when he put on the stupid chef hat to make you happy or when thief lost its negative connotation and became a sweet nickname for you. Perhaps the most glaring reason is the fact that he gave you matching pet names but in conclusion: you’re an idiot.

“How could I not notice?” You whine to Jimin as you walk through campus. You’re on a rather old path- one that’s less of a straight shot to the student union- enjoying the shade that the buildings provide from the sun. Summer is beginning to settle in making walking around campus your least favorite activity.

“They do say love is blind. Did you see that whole show they created? Yoongi and I made a shot game so whenever Jessica talked about her and Mark’s age gap we had to drink and I’ve never got wasted to fast in my life.” He snorts at the memory and you almost wish you had been there but drunk Jimin was undoubtably the clingiest Jimin. He was the epitome of the “I love you” drunk and as much as you did love him sometimes it was a bit too much for you to handle. Yoongi, however, loved drunk Jimin because Jimin gave him all the attention he was unwilling to express desire for. “I can imagine.” You laugh. “But I guess I don’t really know what to say. We’re rarely not arguing.”

“Yeah but isn’t it that ‘I want to kiss you but also punch you’ type?”

“Just how much do you and Jin talk about us? You’re starting to pick up on each other’s diction.”

“You should just give the people what they want and messily confess to him. It really sets the tone for your ‘i love you, I love you not’ relationship.” Jimin laughs.

“What should I say? Should I do it 10 things I hate about you style?” You ask, unaware that you’re passing the life science building,

“Yes! Give me an idea of the performance.”

“It’s not a performance, it’s a confession but nonetheless,” You pause and take a deep breath to gather your thoughts. “I hate the way you piss me off like the day we first met. I hate that I can hear your infuriating voice in my head all the time. I hate the way you talk to me like a friend. I hate the way I can’t stand to simply just be around you anymore. I hate the way you call me thief or thumper.” You’re too deep in your monologue to notice the way Jimin visibly panics in front of you, shaking his head rapidly from side to side to try and warn you silently to stop talking. Yet like any shakespearean play you run too long, too deep in your own feelings to notice the dagger you aim at your own heart.

It hits home when a shoulder checks into your own, a hurt, “If you hate me so much you could’ve just said so” coming from your favorite voice and you crumble. Because just like Romeo and Juliet you killed your love before it could have the chance to truly blossom. You think for once you might actually hate yourself as you watch his figure disappear as he breaks into a jog. Your heart cracks even further when you realize it’s probably because he’s crying- the imagine of him shoving his face into your neck to hide them from you resurfacing. And then you’re crying because you just ruined what could be the best thing you didn’t know you had. You wish you would’ve just said something two days ago because you don’t think you’ll get the chance to even speak to him again even if it’s just to apologize.

Silent tears streak down your cheeks- you thought it’d be a cool thing to learn how to do when you were younger (cry silently that is)- as Jimin leads you away from the curious eyes of the other students as they no doubtably wonder what has you crying at a little past noon on a weekday. You wonder what they’d think if they knew you accidentally broke the heart of the boy you’re in love with while planning a confession. It was a simple case of wrong place, wrong time and yet just like that he’s gone. You laugh at the irony of it all- you lost him before you even had him- and Jimin just stares at you with pity. You hate it and so despite knowing he’s just trying to help and that you’re being irrational you shrug him off you and sprint to your own apartment, hoping for solace in the silence. For once it’s nice to come home to nothing.

You can’t sleep. It’s been approximately twelve hours since you crushed Jungkook and you can’t sleep not knowing if he’s okay. He probably won’t answer when he sees it’s you- he won’t answer your texts or calls- and yet you can’t stop yourself from getting out of bed and knocking on his door. It’s asking for your own heartbreak but you figure you deserve it at this point. No one comes after five minutes so you knock again and wait another five. Not wanting to look like an idiot for standing in the hallway when no one is home- or at least willing to answer- you head back to your own apartment.

The next morning you wake up early in hopes to catch a glimpse of him going on his morning run- he always goes just before 8 a.m. so he can come back, shower, and then fall back asleep before he needs to leave for class- and yet his figure never emerges. Concerned you knock on his door and to your surprise Namjoon answers. Unsurprisingly he’s not happy to see you. “Go home Y/n.” He sighs. When he sees your dejected expression he pauses in closing the door on you. “Did you mean it?”

“No, he wasn’t supposed to hear that. I was um practicing confessing.” You murmur, looking down at your hands awkwardly as you reveal your true intentions to Namjoon. You feel much too vulnerable. “Have you ever seen the movie 10 things I hate about you? She confesses in a similar monologue to what I was attempting but I didn’t make it to the end when he heard.”

Namjoon hums for a moment before nodding like he’s come to a resolution. You wish he’d tell you what it was. “Give him time okay?” You nod solemnly before ducking back into your own apartment.

The next day you resolve to buy him a succulent plant, a little aloe vera one from the market Taehyung works at. The plant is what started this whole hatred turned friendship turned…whatever this is. If you hadn’t argued over one stupid little plant you’d probably have never spoken after you awkwardly returned his bag. You’d have no reason to. So you hope that while it’s not a big gesture, it’d at least be a small place to start. Quietly you sneak to his front door and place it on the welcome mat, knocking quickly before ducking inside your peephole. You watch in anticipation as the door cracks open before closing again, the little succulent still on the mat. You heave a sigh, wondering what else you could do.

The next month passes by slowly and every day you stop by the store to buy another succulent. You’ve started to associate them with Jungkook, picking one up for every day you think of him. Each one is named something different, tied with a different memory you have of him. Lucy: for obvious reasons. Frosty: for the first time you started to see him as something other than a frenemy. Bambi: for the man of the hour himself. And your personal favorite, thumper: a fuzzy little cactus that resembles a rabbit’s tail. Thumper also marks the day that started it all, the chain reaction that led to you discovering just how much your e-boy neighbor meant to you.

“Holy shit.” Jimin says, stepping into your apartment for the first time in a month. You’ve become a bit of a recluse, though you did apologize to him for shrugging him off when he was just trying to help you that day. The only time you do interact with people is when you go to class, the market or Jimin and Yoongi’s for game night. Other than that you just stay here alone, brewing in your self-made despair. “It’s like planet of the plants in here or something. Do I need to worry about you being a hoarder?” Jimin asks and you shrug.

“My mind kinda hyperfixated on succulents and the succulents remind me of him so I’ve been collecting them.”

“Have you tried talking to him?” Jimin asks.

“He wouldn’t pick up my calls and Namjoon said he needed time so I stopped trying. I tried giving him an aloe plant like Cherry but he didn’t accept it.” You sigh, picking up the plant he discarded and brushing along its leaves. Bonjour-dubbed the word sprawled across the welcome mat- wilts a little when you touch it and you wonder if your sadness is infecting it.

“This blows. Especially since it’s all over a misunderstanding.”

“Has Jin mentioned anything about how he’s doing?”

“I don’t think he’s faring much better. Jin has to take Lucy on her morning walks now because he barely wakes up in time for class. Apparently he’s taken up an interest in herbology though and is growing spices, wonder who he’s trying to remember.” Jimin nudges your shoulder and you roll your eyes.

“He’s probably doing it for Jin as a birthday present or something.” You’d rather not get your hopes up. He’d have talked to you by now if he missed you right?

You evidently get your answer as a harsh pounding on your front door wakes you up and half-asleep and a little uncaring about who’s on the other side you throw it open. Sleepily you rub your eyes while wondering why whoever was so desperate to talk to you is suddenly silent when the haze in your mind clears enough to register Jungkook stands before you with a 10 things I hate about you dvd case clutched in his hand. His eyes are red-rimmed and his cheeks are tear stained making you instantly reach up to wipe them away before you retract. He probably doesn’t want you to touch him. “Did you mean it?” He croaks out and you stare at him confused.

“Mean what?”

“When you said what you hate about me did you mean it?” Your eyes flicker to the dvd in his hand and it clicks.

“I love you.” 10 things I hate about you be damned. You’re done with dancing around your feelings and painting them in fancy words. Sometimes as you’ve learned from Taehyung it’s better to just be blunt.

“You- what?”

“I love your smile and the way your eyes crinkle when you laugh. I love the little things about you like the mole on the bottom of your lip or the way you’re always humming a random tune. You tease me and piss me off but I’ve never wanted to kiss someone in my life more than you. This past month has been awful without you and I don’t think I can stand another minute without you. So call me a thief, call me thumper. Call me whatever you want as long as I’m yours.” He’s silent for a minute before the dvd case falls to the ground, his hands instead reaching up to cup both of your cheeks as he brings his mouth down onto your own. His lips are softer than you expected, fitting easily against your own as he presses them to yours tenderly despite the urgency behind his actions. Gently he parts your lips open to deepen the kiss and you sigh into him, pressing your body into his own wanting to feel his warmth. He only parts when you both need air, the two of you panting as you still stay close together.

His breath fans your face as he places three gentle pecks to your lips, his head resting against your own. “I love you too thumper. I don’t think I’ve ever loved someone half as much as I love you.”

“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I wish I would’ve spoken to you sooner. And you know, for stealing your backpack.”

“Aha! So you do admit you stole it!” He laughs, grinning as you attempt to shove him away only to pull you closer. “But I’m sorry too, I should’ve heard you out sooner. And I’m sorry for always calling you a thief.”

“I already told you that was fine.” You laugh, leaning back to kiss the tip of his nose.

“Yeah but I know you hated it. I only kept calling you it though because you stole my heart.”

“Gross.” You fake gag, bending over to pretend to vomit. He giggles at your behavior, wrestling you closer to him as you try and turn around to walk away. “Who knew my boyfriend was so cheesy?”

“Stop pretending you don’t love it.” He says, finally looking up and noticing the terrarium that is your apartment. “Why do you suddenly have so many plants?”

“I got a succulent for every day I think of you.” You say, squealing when Jungkook attacks your sides.

“And you said I was the cheesy one!” He screams, chasing after you to tickle you further when you finally break free.

“Jimin our ship has finally sailed!” Seokjin whispers into the phone from next door. You and Jungkook had left your front door wide open, giving him a prime view as the two of you chased each other around, very much stupidly in love.

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yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

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Desolation Destroyed My P****: Web!Jon, Gertrude/Agnes Repressed Homoeroticism, and Gerry faking his own death

Another installment in the slowly complicating Web!Jon AU based off The Convention on Chronographer Lane/The Monster at the End of This Book. You don’t need to know anything about the other two installments, the main story, or the actual Web!Jon story that will get WRITTEN once I’m done with Space Cadet. Full story under the cut. GERTRUDE POV BABY LET’S GO DON’T BE A COWARD AND EMBRACE THE GERIATRIC LESBIANS.

CW for body horror

2002

People did not call Gertrude for favors.

Somehow most of the community had fallen under the impression that it was a bad idea to owe a favor to Gertrude Robinson, because she always came to collect. Gertrude had worked hard to enforce this. Most of those in her...field knew better than to ask an enemy for favors, and Gertrude made a habit of collecting enemies. She was not in the habit of collecting friends.

Allies, maybe. She could count her allies on one aging hand and have fingers left over. Unfortunately, Agnes Montague was one of them.

Also unfortunately, Agnes disliked and distrusted the Institute so severely she only ever called when she knew Gertrude would be in her own home - so, at one am, on a Saturday. The shrill blaring of Gertrude’s almost unused home phone startled her from her nightly reading, and she was forced to bookmark her place before picking up the phone.

She never spoke first on the phone, and old precaution, but Agnes knew that. “Don’t worry. I’m only calling for business reasons. I need another favor.”

Gertrude’s lips thinned. “Agnes. It’s been a while.”

Six months and a week, not that Gertrude was counting. The last time Agnes had called her up asking for a favor was the first time they had ever spoken: a request for help escaping her cult. It had been a long, messy business. The burn scar had only just healed.

They had a moment of sentimentality, then. A moment of sentimentality that had begun so many years ago as their lives were tied together in that forest, and stretched forward in time and space to culminate in a single mistake. It was a mistake Gertrude was afraid she was still making now.

“I would have called, but it was still dangerous,” Agnes said cheerfully. She had been a morose and sulky woman, when Gertrude first met her. She had brightened considerably since they had won her freedom: like the turn of winter into spring. “It’s settled down quite a bit, which is why I need the favor.”

“You still haven’t paid me back for last time,” Gertrude said mildly.

But Agnes just laughed, warm and soft, despite the cold welcome. “I feel like we both got something out of that arrangement, don’t you?”

They did. Gertrude wasn’t sure which arrangement Agnes was referring to. “Fine. What is it you need? Within reason, Agnes. I’m not sure I have another great escape in me.”

“I need three false identities,” Agnes said, shocking Gertrude deeply. People only tended to call Gertrude when they need something murdered or blown up. Not that she minded. “You know everybody, and I’ve been a bit cloistered these past few years. I have a source who knows some people, but the person that we’ve been avoiding also knows those resources, so they’re right out.”

“Running an underground railroad, are we, Agnes?” Gertrude asked archly.

Agnes laughed again, and despite herself the sound still rang something buried and cold in Gertrude’s heart. “I figured I’d try my hand at the good guy thing. What can I say, Gertrude? You were a good influence on me.”

“Don’t mock me.” But Gertrude sighed anyway, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’ll get you in touch with who I use. If you give me your email I can connect you.”

“...what’s -”

“Never mind. I’ll pass your phone number along. Goodnight, Agnes.”

But the line crackled and fuzzed, and Agnes didn’t hang up. Neither did Gertrude. When Agnes spoke again it was soft - not hesitant, Agnes was never hesitant, but gentle. Agnes, Gertrude had found, could be more gentle than anybody else. “We never visited that lake.”

“Those are just dreams, Agnes,” Gertrude said - harshly, maybe unkindly. She didn’t know how to be anything else.

“Not to me. I - no, John, don’t eat that, you don’t know where it’s been!” Agnes sighed, sending a crackle of static over the line and catching Gertrude’s attention severely. “I have to go. Goodbye, Gertrude. Thank you for your help. Call me sometimes, will you? For personal reasons. I gave you my number for a reason.”

Gertrude hung up on her, deciding not to dignify any of that with a response. She hardly had the time to make - personal phone calls.

What foolishness. Agnes had infected her with such foolishness.

Gertrude went back to her book, mind working furiously, trying to remember if she had ever read of a ‘John’.

*****

Unfortunately, ‘John’ was about as common a name as they came.

Gertrude herself scarcely had any time to follow-up. Judging from Agnes’ words and tone, John was a child of some sort - had Agnes kidnapped somebody else’s child? Her child? (Gertrude had a very ridiculous thought for a moment before dismissing it, before grudgingly accepting that Agnes was made out of wax and that nothing was technically impossible). She gave Agnes her guy’s phone number and wished she could wash her hands of the matter. What Agnes did from now on would hopefully be none of her business.

Gertrude wished she could delude herself into believing that.

But Gertrude’s work was picking up, the rituals coming in faster and faster, and she found herself running about much more than she should at her age. Emma was invaluable, Fiona worked hard in research, and Michael was...sweet, but she trusted them with little information and trusted them less to watch her back. She couldn’t dedicate the amount of time she wanted to a hunch.

To make matters worse, Mary Keay had seemed to misplace her child. She was torn up about it, in her...own way. Gertrude wasn’t concerned. The boy was seventeen. He’d be back in three months with another two piercings, a Grateful Dead shirt, and no money. Goodness knows Gertrude had done it enough at his age. Did kids still trail along at Grateful Dead concerts? What was Gerry always listening to these days, Green Day? Green Day concert.

As such, it was two weeks before Gertrude even had time to follow up with her contact. It only took minimal application of her blackmail before he spilled what Agnes had him make, and the full details therein. Most importantly, her new listed address. That, at least, ought to be real.

As Gertrude rode the Underground to the humble London neighborhood where Agnes had apparently escaped her followers, sneering at young men who tried to give her their seats, she flipped through the paperwork. Agnes Montague, twenty seven - my, wasn’t she vain - born in London, England. All of her details seemed fairly legitimate. New NIN, credit score, false history, the usual. So it wasn’t her she was trying to hide.

The second file was more interesting. There was her mystery John. Jonathan, apparently. Jonathan Montague.

Gertrude’s eyebrows crawled up. What was her game?

The announcement of her stop echoed smoothly through the train, and she quickly folded up the papers and stuffed them back in her purse. It was a short walk from the station to the flat complex where Agnes was now staying, and she found herself ridiculously wondering what Agnes would look like.

Would her hair be the same color, the color of licks of fire straining into the night sky? Her eyes the same forest green, a rainforest any woman could drown in? Her skin rosy and soft, with full appearance of youth and longevity, never to age or decay? Gertrude was only barely sixty, but she was feeling her age with every year. Her living had been hard, and it was finally catching up with her.

What else would catch up with her, once she knocked on Agnes Montague’s door?

Apartment number 426, 1446 Frederick Street. The strange thing about it was the welcome mat set outside the door. There was a little smiley face. It was so incongruous with Agnes, yet so oddly fitting, that Gertrude found herself smiling.

She knocked once, twice. Her lockpicks were up her sleeve. Hopefully Agnes wasn’t home and she could snoop, but -

The door opened to reveal Gerard Keay, looking down at a loose crumple of bills in his hand. He was so busy counting them out that he didn’t see who was standing at his doorstep.

“Thanks, mate, we -” Gerard finally looked up, and his face whitened. “You aren’t pizza.”

“So I’ve been told,” Gertrude said dryly. “Are you going to let me in?”

He let her in.

******

So that was where Gerard had gotten to.

Agnes, who had been pulling soda out of the fridge in their small kitchenette, was much happier to see her than Gerard was. It was the first time anybody had been happy to see Gertrude suddenly turning up at their doorstep in a very long time, and it made Gertrude almost uncomfortable.

“I’m here for business reasons,” Gertrude felt the need to tell her, as she glared Gerard into sulking miserably on the couch. He had dyed his beautiful hair some nasty black color, which was either for disguise purposes or for...what was the word...goth? Goth purposes? Gertrude was very thankful she did not have children.

But Agnes just smiled at her, as if she saw straight through. Which was ridiculous. There was nothing to see straight through. “It would be pretty strange if you stalked me until you found my address and showed up at my home in the middle of the day holding lockpicks for business reasons, Gertrude!”

“It’s for personal reasons.”

“There we go. I would offer you some pizza, but it seems that it’s not here yet.”

“So it seems.” Gertrude turned her eyes on Gerard, who wilted. “I hope this is a valuable lesson in checking to see who is at the door before you answer it, young man.”

Gerard mumbled something.

“I know for a fact your mother did not raise you to be this careless.”

“My mother barely raised me at all,” Gerard grumbled.

“Fine. Then I did not teach you to be that careless.” That got an actual flinch out of him, and Gertrude sighed. “What is going on here, you two?”

“It’s a very long story,” Agnes said.

“Containing very many events I am under pain of death not to tell you about,” Gerard added. “Are you going to tell Mum I’m here?”

Gertrude sighed.

The flat was small, clearly newly rented. They had very little furniture, and what they did have was clearly liberated from charity shops and kerbs. Their living room held a battered television, one of those gaming consoles Gerard liked so much, a scuffed and thoroughly singed coffee table to match an equally singed couch, and a pair of overstuffed bookshelves. A cutaway wall revealed a small kitchen, with a nook that held a rickety kitchen table. None of it seemed particularly out of the ordinary for two young people, strongly resembling Gertrude’s own first flat.

She cautiously sniffed the air. No smell of candles. Hm.

She was just about to push the matter of how exactly the Messiah of the Eternal Flame and a bookseller’s son met and became flatmates when a crash and a thump echoed from the hallway. Gerard jumped off the couch, and Agnes bit her lip. Another rattle echoed from the hallway, and something deep in Gertrude’s mind recognized the sounds as those of a caged animal.

“What is that,” Gertrude said flatly.

“I’ll check on him,” Gerard said quickly, fleeing into the hallway. He knocked on one of the doors - Gertrude noticed that there were two on each side, three bedrooms and a bathroom - and said something quietly against the door, before cracking the door open a few inches. Gertrude couldn’t see what was inside, and she couldn’t maneuver herself closer without alerting Agnes.

There was another crash, and Gerard slammed the door shut quickly. He grinned broadly yet anxiously at Gertrude, tittering a laugh. “It’s nothing! Nothing to see here. Would you like a cuppa, Gertrude!”

“Hm,” Gertrude said.

They gave her a cuppa. She sat on the couch, Agnes and Gerard anxiously standing in front of her wringing their hands, and pretended to sip the cuppa.

“Promise there’s no human flesh in it,” Gerard said. Gertrude arched an eyebrow at him until he sighed, took it, took a small and exaggerated sip, and then passed it back.

It was only then that Gertrude tried some. She couldn’t help but smile. Agnes’ tea was always perfect.

“Can one of you tell me why, according to the government, you are now legally siblings?” Gertrude asked archly. She put one hand down on the cracks between the sofa cushions beside her, pretending it was for balance. “Without lying, please.”

Agnes shrugged helplessly. “Gerard didn’t want to live with his mother anymore and I wasn’t doing anything important.”

“We thought about faking a corpse but was afraid that would just excite her,” Gerard said, depressed. “Hopefully when I don’t turn up she’ll just assume I was eaten by a book.” He affected a faux-nasally tone that did, admittedly, sound a lot like Mary. “ ‘If he’s too incompetent to survive he’s no good to me as a son. Good riddance to bad rubbish, his whole line’.”

“Gerry won’t let me immolate her,” Agnes said seriously.

“She’s my mum, Agnes!”

“Immolating parental figures is very therapeutic.” Agnes patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. “When I set everybody who ever loved me on fire, I felt great about it.”

“It seemed very cathartic,” Gertrude said dryly. She dug her fingers deeper into the crack between the cushions until something soft and thread-like rubbed between her fingers. Bingo. “Why the false identities? Why not simply let Gerard live with you until he turned 18?”

“We want him declared dead,” Agnes said simply. “And we want him to have an actual identity for when that happens. This is the best way to keep him away from his mum. Besides, Gerard Montague has his A Levels and a diploma for uni. ” She shrugged. “And hopefully he’ll be staying with me for quite a bit longer than a year.”

Interesting. They really did know each other. Maybe they were even really friends - although Gertrude was forced to wonder what a woman in her sixties and a teenager had in common. Gerard had mentioned wanting to go to university, but they had all known it was a pipe dream. Dreams like that often were. Gertrude neatly withdrew her hand from the cushion, folding her hands over each other in her lap. She rubbed the thread between her hands, satisfied when she felt its loose, sticky elasticity.

How interesting.

“And Jonathan?”

Both of them froze.

Gerard broke first, laughing nervously and high pitched. “Who’s that?”

Gertrude lifted her hand, showing both of them the thin strand of spider-silk pinched between two bony fingers. Both Agnes and Gerard whitened. “I imagine it’s whatever Avatar of the Web you have locked in the back room that is responsible for these.”

They winced simultaneously, glancing at each other. Doubtlessly trying to come up with a cover story. Gertrude sighed, standing up from the couch and straightening her skirts. Nothing for it then. Her Glock was still strapped to her thigh, and a hunting knife at her other.

Gertrude knew very little about the Web. Just, she suspected, as it liked. It had no rituals, and held no explicit threat to the safety of the world. It was a threat, for sure. Even worse, a threat that Gertrude knew infuriatingly little about. But it was not the most immediate threat, and as Gertrude spent every day drowning under more and more immediate threats she held very little time for those which weren’t promising to end the world anytime soon.

Maybe that was why Gertrude was fully planning to leave this flat and never mention its inhabitants again - not to Mary, not to Dekker, and not to whatever scattered remnants of her cult that Agnes had left alive. Whatever Agnes wanted, it seemed to be closer to a normal life living with her friend than anything world-destroying. And whatever Gerard wanted...well, he was a good boy. He wouldn’t do anything dangerous to anybody other than himself. Mary didn’t have to know. Perhaps it was even for the best.

“You really don’t want to go in -”

“Gertrude, please, he’s in a rather delicate stage right now -”

Another thump against the door. As Gertrude left the living room, crisply walking down the thin and crowded hallway until she stood in front of a thin and battered-looking door, she could slowly begin to hear the faint but distinct sounds of...chittering. Skittering. It was a sound she had heard only once before, during a brush with the corruption.

Gertrude raised a hand to knock at the door.

A hand shot out, pale and thin, and clasped Gertrude’s wrist in its grip firmly. Despite herself, Gertrude’s breath caught. Agnes’ touch still did that to her, it seemed. When she glanced to the side, she saw Agnes standing next to her, mouth stubbornly set firm. Her long and silky orange hair tumbled over her shoulder, glimmering under the soft lights.

“The world’s a cruel place, Gertrude,” Agnes said. “We’re just trying to look out for each other.”

“We all chose this life,” Gertrude said, voice tinged with reproach.

But Agnes just set her jaw stubbornly. “We didn’t.”

It was a we that didn’t include Gertrude - but, of course, so little of Agnes’ life did.

Gertrude let her hand drop to the doorknob, and she didn’t meet Agnes’ eyes as she twisted the knob and let herself in.

Some part of her felt it very idiotic, to walk into what she knew was a spider’s lair. A ridiculous part of her mind couldn’t help but hum the little nursery rhyme she had learned as a girl. But if it was truly dangerous Agnes would have prevented her from going in, instead of asked her to. Some part of Gertrude trusted that, a part of Gertrude that somehow still survived despite everything.

It wasn’t that Agnes appealed to the softer side of Gertrude. It was more that Agnes appealed to the hardest and cruellest parts of her, her tough outer shell, that ached for a reassurance that even a woman raised in utmost cruelty could make the choice to be kind. That there was still goodness in the world. If even a Messiah of the Eternal Flame could smile like that, could look at Gertrude with those deep and unfathomable eyes, then maybe all of Gertrude’s efforts weren’t for nothing.

The room was white. No, not white - just covered in long, ropy strands of spider-web. Different shapes and sizes, different lengths and thicknesses. Some of it was wispy and gentle, like cotton fluff, while some of it was closer to rope. It wasn’t arranged in a spider’s beautiful pattern, an elegant nest: it was more like an explosion, as if it was thrown anywhere and everywhere without regard.

The webs didn’t cover everything in the room. A bed was clearly visible, draped with webs as it was. There was a closet, and several boxes stacked in the corner with loose clothing draped over them. That was every piece of furniture and personal item in the room. It was a minor miracle that the living and dining rooms didn’t have more spidersilk in them - a testament to Agnes and Gerry’s tidiness, or a sign that the inhabitant rarely left the room.

The inhabitant of the room was curled on the bed. It - he, perhaps? - was sitting upright against the wall, knees curled up against a chest, forehead resting on the knees. He was half-obscured by webs, but Gertrude could immediately tell that the figure wasn’t very old. Gerard’s age, or perhaps a bit younger.

The webs did little to obscure the four arms - two flesh, two hinged and black and hairy - curled around the boy’s body.

The boy didn’t look up when he saw her. Gertrude wondered if he even noticed. She was only just beginning to wonder what the thumps were when one of the spider arms lashed out and crashed against the wall, shaking the room.

Hm. This was Gertrude’s first Web Avatar, but if they all looked and acted like this then she could only assume that they would be much more obvious than they are. New, then. Maybe as new as those identities Agnes had applied for.

Normally she’d torch it and go home, but with both Agnes and Gerard in residence that option was out of the question. Her curiosity had been satisfied: she could turn around now and leave the room, knowing what it was Agnes and Gerard were protecting. She could let the inhabitants of this flat fade into obscurity, secure in the knowledge that none of them wished to harm her or the world.

But Gertrude was a bit too curious for her own good, or perhaps a bit too soft, because she found herself stepping forward.

Her low-heeled boots didn’t slide on the web, but it did stick. When she lifted her feet they tracked up thin spiderweb, and she resolved to burn this outfit once she made her way back to the Archives. After a few breathless moments, Gertrude found herself standing in front of the boy, who hadn’t seemed to notice her yet. Poor situational awareness. He’d fit in well with Gerard.

“Jonathan.”

The boy looked up at her, and anybody else would have bit back a scream.

He had eight eyes - black, glistening, unreal. Bulbous and unsettling, they skittered and twitched in strange directions, as if uncertain how to work or how to see. New, brand-new. Uncontrolled. The boy’s mouth parted in slight surprise, but it was obviously difficult to read any sort of expression.

He didn’t say anything. Gertrude found herself absently wondering if spiders had tongues.

“Do you know what is happening to you?”

The boy stared at her, long enough that Gertrude found herself wondering if he still clung to sentience, before slowly nodding his head. Good.

“Then you know how to stop it,” Gertrude said sharply, and the boy sat up straighter. “Stop moping about, now. Look around. You’ve destroyed your room.” She gave the boy a moment to look around, expression still inscrutable, before she went back on the attack. “You’ve sulked long enough. Put away those arms, now. Go on.”

The boy stared at her, coarse black spider arms twitching and curling.

“You know what’s happening,” Gertrude said firmly. “It’s your body. Not theirs. It’s your body, Jonathan. Bend it to your will. Not theirs.”

Slowly, disgustingly, the arms began to recede. They slid back inside his torso, sucking into his ribcage, shifting and clicking and chittering, until there was nothing left but an ordinary chest. Gertrude was even now able to recognize his shirt. It was one of Gerard’s. Green Day.

“Your eyes now. Come on, hurry up. I haven’t got all day.”

The eyes pulsed and twitched, bubbling strangely. One of them whirred, glistening with a thousand fractals.

The boy opened his mouth, and garbled speech came out. “I can’t...I can’t…”

“You have no choice. You must, so you will. Come on, Jonathan. Listen to me. It’s your body. It’s not theirs.”

The eyes melted back into Jonathan’s face, and that was so disgusting Gertrude politely looked up. She had seen worse, but no point in subjecting herself to it. When she looked back down she was shocked to see, for all appearances, a teenage boy.

He had a thin, severe face, and large cloudy grey eyes. His hair was curly and matted, and despite his posture Gertrude could tell that he was the kind of short and built that was straining up against an imminent growth spurt. His skin was a light brown, with thin lips and features that suggested mixed ancestry. He looked very much like a regular, if somewhat striking, teenage boy.

“There you go,” Gertrude said, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Who the fuck are you,” the rude child said.

“Jon!”

She had been so focused on Jonathan, that she hadn’t noticed when Gerard and Agnes entered. Gerard practically jumped onto Jonathan’s bed, mindless of the spiderwebs, and folded him into a tight hug. Jonathan clung back desperately.

“Don’t worry us like that,” Agnes said. She had appeared at Gertrude’s elbow, and moved forward to sit on Jon’s other side and give him a tight hug too that he returned just as fiercely. She looked up at Gertrude over Jon’s shoulder and mouthed ‘thank you’ to her, which she waved away. It had hardly been anything.

“I think I’m rather owed a full explanation now,” Gertrude said pointedly. “And I think young Jonathan needs a bath.”

“What? No, I -” Jonathan separated from Gerard, and sniffed his shirt. He pulled a disgusted face. “Ew. Yeah, okay.”

******

They did not give her the full story. Gertrude wasn’t sure what she was expecting.

Oh, they gave her the broad strokes of it. All three of them were ‘old friends’, despite one of them being sixty and the other two being actual teeangers. Gerard and Agnes, especially, gave off the air of having known each other for years. They both seemed less familiar with Jon, though no less affectionate. Gertrude felt like she was trying to put together a puzzle with mittens and no idea what the final image would be.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on Jon for a while,” Agnes said apologetically. They were all sitting around the rickety kitchen table now. Gertrude passed her teacup to reheat, which she did with a smile, and Gerard was at the door accepting the pizza from a confused deliveryman. Judging from the amount of takeaway containers, these two hadn’t been doing a lot of cooking. “He ran away from his grandmother’s a month ago. He made it to London and lived on the streets for a few weeks until I finally tracked him down. He’s been staying with us ever since.”

“When Agnes got in contact with me and told me that she found Jon, I figured it was time to bounce.” Gerard put some plates on the table and slid the pizza box into the center. Agnes eagerly grabbed the pizza and put a slice on her own plate. At Gerard’s look, Gertrude held up a hand in a ‘no thank you’ motion, and he shrugged. “Agnes has been trying to get me to stay with her since she lost her cult, but I figured I would just ditch Mum once I hit eighteen. Then...stuff happened...and I don’t really trust Agnes alone with a teenager anyway, so I left. Easy.”

“Thank goodness she’s only left alone with two teenagers now,” Gertrude said. She glanced at Agnes, who seemed unrepentant. “Is anybody looking for Jonathan?”

She shook her head. “Parents long dead. His Gran...she won’t look for him. Nobody will. I doubt any of them remember he exists. ”

“Did Jonathan make sure of that?”

Abruptly, Gerard looked very uncomfortable, but Agnes just nodded calmly. “Yes, likely.” At Gertrude’s ticked eyebrow, she continued, “She’s alive. But Jon...he’s convincing. We think. So far as we can tell. Nobody’s going to be looking for him, even the police.”

“Did we tell you how he was getting money while he was on the streets?” Gerard asked gleefully. “Apparently he can walk up to Canary Wharf bankers and convince them he’s their cousin visiting from out of state and ask them for spending money. They just believe him! Isn’t that wicked?”

“It’s easy. All you gotta do is make them feel guilty for forgetting you were coming.”

Jonathan, dripping wet from the shower and dressed in some cleaner hand-me-downs, appeared in the doorway. He walked forward until he was leaning against the kitchenette wall, accepting the pizza Gerard quickly passed to him. Clean and human, he looked like any other teenager. The only thing that revealed him for what he was were his eyes: empty, lifeless, and dull.

“Hey, you’re still human!” Gerard said, perking up. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Yeah, tons.” Jonathan masticated his pizza, grease dripping down his chin. He locked eyes with Gertrude, who was careful not to blink as she stared back at him. “Who’re you?”

“The Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute,” Gertrude said crisply. “Gertrude Robinson.”

Jonathan’s mouth slowly fell open, revealing the primordial mass of globby cheese. Gerard was nearly bouncing in his seat, mouthing ‘It’s her!’ over and over again.

“I told him about you,” Agnes said quickly - so quickly that it could have only been a lie. “Only good things, believe me!”

“I’m sure.”

“Wait,” Jonathan said, eyes darting back and forth between Agnes and Gertrude - who, Gertrude was somewhat embarrassed to find, were sitting somewhat close. “She’s the girl -”

“Girl who helped me get those new IDs for you guys,” Agnes said desperately. “Although she’s more of a woman. Say thank you, boys.”

Both boys mumbled thank-yous through mouthfuls of pizza.

“How did it happen?” Gertrude asked Jonathan carefully. She was careful to keep that - pressure off her words. Very few reacted well to it, and she didn’t want to deal with a rampaging spider teenager again. “Your transformation. And don’t speak with your mouth full.”

Jonathan sassily made a show of swallowing the whole mouthful of pizza before he spoke. “I trapped my entire secondary school in a nightmare web where they all got turned into flies and eaten by spiders,” he drawled. “Oh, wait. I got bitten by a radioactive spider and ran away to London to fight crime.”

Gertrude gave him a very, very unimpressed stare. Jonathan smashed more pizza in his face. For a boy that must have been raised by his grandmother, he had no manners.

A grandmother that he had likely done something to, to guarantee that she wouldn’t look for him. To ensure that an entire town wouldn’t search for him. Wiping a life off the map like that - what kind of teenager would do that without a second thought?

A boy who found himself turning into a monster, fleeing the people he could hurt so he could reconvene with friends that understood?

Or a newly born monster that shed its old skin the minute it could?

Gertrude, as a younger woman, would have tended towards the latter. As an even younger woman, a child, she would have said the former. Now, she knew better than anyone how it could be both: a boy’s motivations propelled by a monster’s impulses, until even limbs of flesh were puppeted by silken threads.

The Web was the fear of manipulation and being controlled, Gertrude repeated to herself, a mantra so familiar that it had worn grooves in her mind long ago. Jonathan had already proved adept at the art: swindling money to survive, erasing the imprints that a life left behind.

Was she being controlled now? Was it any coincidence, that Jonathan ran into the arms of the one supernatural force in England that Gertrude wouldn’t shoot on sight? That he was lying in wait with the disappeared son of two people who had once been prominent in Gertrude’s life, a little boy she had seen grown up into a kind man despite all odds?

Jonathan had inserted himself neatly, cleanly, and absolutely into Gertrude’s life. And he had done it almost even without her noticing.

Of course, it was also the nature of the Web to make one ask these questions. It wasn’t just controlling - it was the fear of being controlled. By even thinking about this, Gertrude was playing straight into his hands -

“Gertrude.”

It was Agnes, sitting by her, looking at her with a softly sad expression. Her hands were in her lap, but they were twitching as if she wanted to reach out and take Gertrude’s hands in her own. They would be so different - they had always been different - but occasionally it felt as if whatever warmth they carried was the only heat that warmed Gertrude at all anymore.

“If you don’t trust him, trust me.” Something flickered deep in Agnes’ eyes, like a hearth. Maybe that was Agnes: a hearth, house and home. “You can trust me.”

“Can I?” Gertrude asked, mouth unexpectedly dry. “How can someone like me trust someone like you, Agnes?”

Agnes smiled, baring teeth white and perfect as wax. “There’s nobody on Earth like you, Gertrude. You know that just as well as I do.”

Both boys had their hands slapped over their eyes, horrified.

Maybe that was what convinced Gertrude: not Agnes’ promise of a safe place to rest in a tumultuous and dangerous world, but the fact that both these boys found that promise horrendously yucky. It wasn’t human - Gertrude had the feeling that no emotion from Jonathan could truly be human - but at least it was benign. In this world, sometimes that was the best you could ask for.

“Fine. I put them in your charge, then, Agnes.” Gertrude drained the rest of her tea, eyeing the leaves critically in her cup as the boys whooped and Agnes exhaled heavily. Her tea leaves read a bad omen. That was comforting: she liked to know what was ahead of her. “If I hear any statements about a strange boy swindling businessmen out of their salaries then I’ll know exactly who is responsible. Am I understood?”

“They weren’t missing it,” Jonathan grumbled, before Gerard elbowed him in the side. “Fine! Fine, you won’t hear anything about it.”

Not what she had said, but she’d take it. The supernatural was at its least dangerous when it felt scared and hidden. Nothing was more dangerous than an Avatar who felt themself above human laws and rules. Or, at best, Gertrude.

They never tended to live long.

“Uh. Ms. Gertrude.” Gerard awkwardly creased his greasy napkin, expression tight. “Are you going to tell Mum?”

“Tell her what?” Gertrude asked archly. “I hardly think what Gerard Montague does is any of Mary Keay’s business.” As Gerard broke out into a relieved smile, Gertrude added, “Don’t give me any reason to charge after you, Gerard. You’re impulsive and reckless. Your mother’s kept you safe from yourself so far, but you’ve decided that you no longer need that protection. Don’t make me regret keeping my mouth shut.”

Jonathan snickered, ignoring Gerard’s flush. “Whipped.”

“I’ll speak to you outside, Jonathan.”

This time it was Gerard’s turn to snicker as Jonathan flushed and straightened away from the wall. “You’re in trou-ble!”

Good lord. This was why she hadn’t had children.

But he followed her out the flat anyway. The flat complex was smaller, just a few buildings connected by sidewalks and catwalks, and the flats opened into the fresh air. As they emerged onto the first story, Gertrude let Jon lean against the railing and turn his head towards the sun. The wind blew softly, and Jon exhaled softly as he closed his eyes. Issues controlling a human form meant that he likely hadn’t been outside very often lately.

“Tastes weird,” Jonathan decided finally, as if they had both been waiting solely for his judgement. “Air back home always tasted like salt. Everything was fresh and clean. It wasn’t anything like dirty, smoggy London.”

“Go back home, then.”

Jonathan snorted bitterly. He had turned his back to Gertrude, leaning on the railing to stick his head out. As if she wasn’t a threat. “Can’t. Gran doesn’t know I exist anymore. Trust me, nobody’s missing me back home.”

“How can that be? There must be school records, any kind of documentation. You must have known dozens of people.”

“Ah, that’s the genius of it.” Jon turned around, grinning lazily at her. He leaned against the railing, elbows back and resting on top of the metal frame. “All I needed to do was implant a few strategic suggestions. Just on the people who interacted with me the most, or the people most responsible for me. Gran, Mr. Heathcliff, Ms. Robbins, Dr. Yung.” He wriggled his fingers experimentally - like a magician doing a magic trick, or a puppeteer pulling strings. “Every time someone asks them where I am, they tell them that I never existed. And, you, know, wouldn’t they know? Jon’s Gran would know if Jon existed or not. So they doubt themselves too. Maybe Jon was never here, not really. Maybe he was just...a faint dream. The kind you forget the moment you wake up.”

“And the papers?”

Jon shrugged. “A person’s in charge of those papers. Ms. Hastings, school secretary. When she sees my student file, she’s going to ask my headmaster about it. And he’s going to say - who? And she’ll remember that I was nobody to remember at all. And those papers will become just so much garbage. When the cop, the government clerk, whoever, remembers that there’s no Jonathan to remember, that’s it.” Jon grinned at her, a proud kid showing her a perfect score on a report card. “Anything is beatable, Ms. Gertrude, if there’s human error involved. You can build the most perfect machine in the world, but so long as a human’s involved in any step of that process then it can go wrong.”

“Did the Web tell you that?”

“My Mother trades in lots of secrets, Ms. Gertrude,” Jonathan said, and in the turn of a second his eyes hardened into beetle-black shells, black and inhuman, before he forcibly pulled them back in again. Jonathan grimaced, gritting his teeth as he kept the transformation at bay. “Sorry. Sorry. I - I don’t want to hurt anyone. I won’t. Agnes and Gerry are going to help me. I’m going to choose what kind of mo - person I am. I’m going to choose right.”

“See to it that you do.” Gertrude stepped closer, and she knew that her face was stony and cold. Revealing nothing, with no weaknesses or cracks to exploit. She had lost every weakness long ago, save one. “I know where you live, Jonathan. I know what you’re capable of - even more, I suspect, than you yourself do. Mind yourself, and I won’t have to find a solution to your problem.” She let her eyes glint, just once. “I’m very good at finding solutions, Jonathan.”

Jonathan looked away first, of course. He swallowed heavily. “Mother told me about you.”

“All good things, I’m sure,” Gertrude said dryly.

“She says I’m not ready yet. She said we have someone else for you, but I’m not ready yet. She says I’ll be the King one day, maybe, but not today. I’m...still hatching. It’s uncomfortable. It’s so -” Something haunted flashed through Jonathan’s lifeless grey eyes, and he shivered. “It hurts. So much.”

“So I hear,” Gertrude said, no trace of sympathy in her voice. “Good day, Jonathan.”

She left Jonathan there: shivering, alone, and human for now.

She would see him again, she knew. A frightened teenage boy who promised her that he’d be king of the Web one day was a warning sign if she’d ever heard one. But if it was a warning sign, then it was one Gertrude was meant to hear. A shake of a rattlesnake’s tail: a creature that wants to go through the energy of biting you as little as you want to be bit, so save us both the trouble.

And maybe Jonathan’s comment, so offhand he may not even have realized that he was making it, was a warning of its own: a spider in her own camp. Who?

Agnes was waiting for her, by the Underground station. She didn’t know she got there before her. Young people moved so fast these days. She smiled and waved when she saw Gertrude, as if they both had arranged to meet there.

“What is it now?” Gertrude asked, exhausted. “Another favor?”

“Just a thank you for helping me keep the boys safe,” Agnes said cheekily. She stepped up, carefully, brushed a kiss to Gertrude’s cheek. Gertrude, idiotically, let her. “Call me, okay? For personal reasons.”

“Maybe,” Gertrude said, to the hearth that burned low in her heart, “if it’s for personal reasons.”

It wasn’t until she was halfway home on the Underground, thinking about noting down the address of Agnes’ apartment, that she found herself wondering what the address even was. Thomas Street...No, Jackson? 144...5?

What was she trying to remember?

No matter. Getting old again. Gertrude continued making notes in her notebook, reminding herself to search for a spider’s web, as the train rattled on for home, and the warmth of a kiss lingered on her cheek.

#my writing #tma #gertrude robinson #agnes montague #gertrude robinson/agnes montague #gertrude/agnes #tma fanfic #the magnus archives fanfiction #gerard keay #jonathan sims #web!jon

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crazynekochan · 4 years ago

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Okay, I have an idea for a AU. It comes based on how, aside from the pretty factor, we never really get to see Junko use her Ultimate Gyaru Talent in her plans. I was inspired by hearing about the Amekaji or 'American Casual' subculture of Gyaru and thinking "hey, yknow who this style reminds me of? Kazuichi" A quick reference to some samples before I get into my idea:

(Please excuse the fact that I didn't crop the screenshots)

Anyway- in this AU, I wanted to use how we all wanted Junko to manipulate the Remnants into following her and Kazuichi's trust issues. Junko, finding his talent to be one of the most immediately useful of the class and him to be one of the most easily manipulated and emotion driven of the class, decides to become his best friend! It starts slow, her beginning to hang out with him after classes and eventually during lunch, constant compliments, telling him what he wants to hear, comforting him when he trusts her enough to open up about his issues with trust. Soon enough, she's wormed her way into his circle, becoming his closest friend. He reveals that he didn't chose his appearance for his own happiness but for his image and she pounces. She insists that she can give him a glow-up- give him a partial overhaul. Help him with the god awful layering in his hair, maybe even make Sonia like him (or Gundham, depending on whether or not he has realized his feelings for him/given up on his crush on her if he has one at the start of this au). This is where the Amekaji Gyaru part comes in, she pretty much turns him into one. The way the class gets introduced to this style change is by Chisa coming by to round up Kazuichi when he doesn't come back after lunch. This is an approximation of what I think she would do on such short notice. (He was meant to have an expression but I gave up on that front on the sketch to have an easier go at designing his clothes without obstruction or scruntiching). Oh yeah, it's an Omegaverse AU btw, because I am predictable and pathetic lol.

I kinda want to make a fic with this and I'm planning on using Gundham's POV because he already likes Kazuichi before Junko began sinking her claws into him and he wound be concerned and conflicted from the get go. Because while Junko is very much using Kazuichi (though they don't catch onto that aspect right away), she's boosting his confidence. He's happy to have a best friend who cares about him seemingly unconditionally. But they also realise that he's becoming obsessive in a way that she's certainly not discouraging. He's always talking about her, texting her, hanging out with her, he even picks up some of her traits. At one point someone (Fuyuhiko most likely) would comment along the lines of "what are you in love with her or something" and Kazuichi would respond with something like "oh of course not! Junko deserves much more than me!" Or something equally self-deprecating and out of character like that. It's not healthy.

He would voluntarily watch the brainwashing video with Mikan (like in the Siren AU), believing that Junko just wanted to show him something cool. He would despair at the betrayal, since the despairs are aware enough to realise things like that. If he contracts the Remembrance disease, he would probably go for the convincing Ibuki into suicide route like in the Siren AU, for the opportunity to watch the despair. I love the idea of having an active despair in the cast and with this AU, instead of him just continuing to be devoted to Junko like in the Siren AU, I wanted him to actually come around as a Despair to Hope because of the others. Hajime is there now, he would've begun to be friends with Kazuichi and continue after Kaz remembers and he, being the good boy that Hajime is, actually treats Kazuichi like a real friend should. He didn't get to become close to Fuyuhiko before Junko got to him so he also becomes friends with him. Also, of course, Soudam happens. I'd imagine that they would make him come around enough to rebuke the Junko AI in the end.

Kazuichi definitely would feel guilty as hell when this is all said and done, however, the class would also feel guilty for letting him fall into Junko's clutches too. Also, the greater trauma of him knowing that his second best friend after the one in middle school pulled the same shit but worse? 👌👌👌. I have other sketches of them hat I plan to colour, so I'll be back. I'll link you the fic once I write it. Tell me what you think about this, please! Spare no thought! Oh yeah, I'm mentally calling this the Gyaru AU

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Mod: It will never stop being huge wasted potential that Junko didn’t manipulate all the Remnants by using their trauma and weaknesses, and specifically chose them for their useful talents like it was implied in the game, and instead just went with them being chosen at random because they were Ryota’s classmates

Having Kazuichi be Junko’s first victim is perfect, because with his talent he is super useful to her and can easily make her unstoppable the moment she has him under her control. And with his trust issues and straight up need to have a friend in his life he would be an easy target for someone like Junko, who can very quickly play him like a fiddle. Let him vent to her, tell him what he wants to hear, give him confidence and then put him into his place so that he becomes her loyal dog who sees her like some god who will do anything to please her, just like Mikan did. Until she then finally breaks him by betraying him like his best friend did in the past. The pain must be so unbearable for the poor guy. I feel really bad for him, but at this point the brainwashing is already in place sadly, so he will just get some high from being used and betrayed all over again and again

Kazuichi going through the simulation way past getting infected and having all of his memories must be such a trip. Because he has to pretend like nothing is amiss while everything else is going on and make sure that no one notices his change in character (Which could be hard for him to do, since he doesn’t seem like a good actor) I could even see him during the last trial to try and push the others into doing the wrong choice until they manage to make him believe in hope again and having trust in his friends that they will not betray him ever. Which must be so hard for him to believe after being lied to so many times by people he trusted blindly, where Junko even made him and the others do such horrendous things. But it wouldn’t be DR if hope doesn’t win in the end and everyone manages to have a future

Though the most hurtful part must be seeing everything from Gundham’s POV, because he is stuck with having to watch how Junko is getting close to Kaz. Which is at first of course a nice thing on the outside, but when Kaz starts getting seriously degrading about himself it’s really getting concerning but it’s already too late. Even more painful for Gundham when he might have had a bad feeling about the “friendship” but has pushed it onto him probably just being jealous or something and as such never intervened when he really should’ve done so, because then all of this could’ve been avoided where Kaz was turned into a pupped who got to build the most brutal killing machines imaginable for Junko’s absolute insane plan of creating a world of despair. When the truth comes to light he would be feeling such immense guilt over not having seen the signs and came to help Kaz when he still had the chance (Could be even something Junko could use against Gundham, both back at HPA and in the last trial if he’s still alive at that time in the AU)

Also the artwork of Kaz after his makeover looks sooo good! He is beyond cute and it mixes so well his actual nerdy aesthetic he had before with something more fun and colourful (quite literally) ♥♥

#submission #soudam #au #Gyaru Au #mediamaxine #danganronpa #omegaverse

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e-vasong · 4 years ago

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Leverage AU ideas

Submission (Hey, it looked like tumblr sent this to me under your real name, so I’m not gonna say who submitted it just in case that was an accident, but @ submitter if you want credit feel free to hit me up with a URL or something, or reblog this and @ me or whatever!):

Idrk how tumblr works but, for your leverage au: Vanya is Reggie’s real daughter which is why she has the violin but she was neglected bc reggie was obsessed with the others. The others are jealous of Vanya for her normal life/being Reggie’s real kid.

Eventually however she comes to the for help (probably bc of Lenard) and she helps them and they become a real family.

Maybe at some point she gets infected with a bio weapon that could kill everyone (maybe lenard tries to sell it to the commission) or learns dangerous information and they all have to save Vanya!

Oh God. (Presuming these are about the Reginald-As-Archie-Raises-The-Kids-As-Criminals AU.) These are so good.

The others are all homeless kids or kids from the system that Reggie plucked out and adopted because he saw tendencies in them that he believed, with training, could make them the best team of criminals around.

And this all translates so well to the canon dynamic where Vanya/the rest of the family both don’t really process the abuse endured by the other party.

Reginald neglects Vanya in favor of the others; tells them they have potential. And when Vanya asks to join in on the lessons he tells her that she has no talent at all. He tells her again and again how he chose the others, and the implication is clear. That if it had been up to him, he never would have chosen her at all.

Meanwhile, the others are jealous of Vanya, Reginald’s biological kid. They’re always aware, on some level, that he only took them in because he thought they might be useful--that it was money and power that brought them into his care, as if he’d bought them. That he could always just...put them back, in a way they feel he can’t do with Vanya. They look at Vanya, who spends her days practicing the violin and studying normal school subjects while they have to devote their days to things like disabling laser grids, swindling people out of their funds, and getting beaten into the ground in martial arts training, and they’re--they’re jealous. Of course they are, even if they don’t know it.

It takes them a long time (though not as long as in canon, I think) to realize they never should have blamed each other. It was always their father.

Instead of writing a tell-all book, Vanya turns over a bunch of information to the FBI. Their father gets arrested, a handful of the siblings get their covers blown on an important job and almost get killed by the mark’s henchman. It’s a shitshow all around. Their dad’s the only one to go to jail, though before he serves any real time a sniper takes him out through a courthouse window. They can’t figure out who did it; the mystery haunts them all for years. The others don’t get caught, but they’re still furious that Vanya almost got them killed.

(And later, much later, Vanya will join up with her family to run a con. Some of them haven’t let go of their suspicion and hurt yet. She doesn’t quite blame them, but it still stings. But here’s the thing. There are always people out there looking to exploit weakness. And Vanya will argue with her siblings. Diego will snap: don’t pretend like you care, you almost got us killed!

And Harold Jenkins will be waiting. Once a young homeless thief and grifter himself, Harold heard of Reginald Hargreeves collecting prodigious young criminals off the street and begged, begged Hargreeves to take him in. Hargreeves had sniffed, shouldered the child out of the way. If you really had any talent, Hargreeves had said, you would have conned me into it.

But Reginald Hargreeves’ vision had always been flawed. Harold is no perfect criminal, but he’s a dangerous one. And when Vanya storms out of the team’s homebase in the torrential rain, Harold pops his hood up, plasters the gentle, personable smile of Leonard Peabody onto his face, and sets his con into motion.)

They all split ways for a while, the way I described in my other post. Allison keeps grifting. Falls in love with a mark, Patrick, at one point. It ends badly. Ben and Klaus are a hacker/thief duo, except Ben has more scruples about who they victimize than Klaus, and it makes things tense as hell between them sometimes. Diego is working as a ‘retrieval specialist’ with an intense moral code and a willingness to turn on anyone that hires him if they prove themselves shitty enough. Luther gets out of the life and goes to live in the same apartment complex as Vanya. They end up staying close the whole time, with Vanya giving music lessons out of her apartment and Luther teaching martial arts classes.

And then they all get a missive. An invitation, a promise of a job. Luther almost throws it away, but Vanya stops him. We should check it out, she says. And so they do. And there they find all the others: Diego, Allison, Klaus, and Ben.

And Five. Five, the brother they’ve long thought dead. He looks tired. And after he fields their frantic embraces, their questions, and even lets them cry on him a bit (though he doesn’t look very happy about it), he leans back, and he tells them he has a job to offer them all.

He gets a chorus of rejections almost immediately. Vanya presumes she isn’t invited. Luther says he’s out of the game, and Allison says she’s trying to get out. Diego mainly seems skeptical that Five has anything worth offering. Klaus wants to go back to his apartment and not take jobs that are like, hard, or anything. Low risk only, please. Come on, Ben, let’s go.

Ben shoots Klaus a furious glare. Actually, he says. I can make my own decisions, Klaus. I want to hear what Five has to say.

Five has to repress a grin. Ben has always been Five’s favorite brother.

Five puts a manila folder on the table. His siblings pick it up, start passing it around. It’s not long before they’re frowning, clearly distressed by what they’re reading.

“His name is James Moore,” Five says. “He’s seven years old. He has a rare blood disease, but there’s a new experimental treatment that his doctors believe could save his life. His insurance company is refusing to pay for his treatment; they keep forcing the family to jump through loopholes. It’s a, uh, company policy that they didn’t include in the contract. Stall paying for treatment until it’s too late. Commit a moral atrocity, let innocents die, profit. Y’know how it goes. Age old story, really.”

“I don’t con sick people,” Diego says, and Five rolls his eyes.

“Good, because that’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“The insurance company?” Allison catches on first. Ben follows suit, eyebrows shooting up as he realizes what Five is saying. “You’re suggesting we con Perseus Insurance? Owned by one of the most powerful men in the world? That Perseus Insurance?”

Five leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees. He’s planned this speech. He has a plan to take down the Commission, but it involves moving a lot of pieces very, very slowly. And if he can take down some other bad people along the way? Good. But he needs a team he can trust. He needs his family, which means this pitch needs to work.

“The rich and powerful take what they want,” Five says slowly. “Right now, James and his family,” he gestures to the Moore file, “are suffering under an enormous weight. I’m suggesting that we provide...leverage.”

#long post #tua #the umbrella academy #leverage AU #WHOOPS #i want to say the vanya situation doesn't get that far? theyre closer in this verse #but harold very much is trying to destroy their family #luckily the others catch on and wreck his shit first #is five the sniper that killed their dad?#[sips tea] PERHAPS #submission

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galadrieljones · 4 years ago

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As You Were (Chapter 3)

Fandom: The Last of Us | Pairing: Joel x OC | Content: Fix-it | Rating: Mature

Masterpost

When Joel and Ellie take a wrong turn on their journey from Pittsburgh to Wyoming, they find themselves lost in a beautiful place with a dark and dangerous secret. While there, they meet a mother and son who, after a recent, tragic event on their family farm, are fighting tirelessly for survival. In an effort to find hope for the future, the two groups set out west together, growing closer over time, making choices and altering paths that will change the course of their lives forever.

This is an AU, starting after the events of the Summer chapter in the first game, and extending into the timeline of the second. Joel lives.

Chapter 3: The Driftless

“When you’re lost in the darkness, look to the light.”

After dinner, Joel insisted on cleaning up. Cici said she'd show him around the kitchen, the downstairs. The food had been really good, like way too good. Ellie had never had lamb before, ended up eating almost as much as Noah. At some point, though, while everybody was making small talk, she became dreamy. She was looking out the window, pressing her thumb lightly to the blade of her knife, finding shapes in the stars. Noah came over after everybody was finished with the meal and asked her if she wanted to come with him, out to the Crow's Nest, to help him with something.

"What are we doing?" said Ellie. It was probably about ten o'clock and full dark outside.

"It's a mess out there," he said, throwing the shotgun strap over his shoulder. "I just have to go haul some stuff out. You can come, if you want."

"Yeah, sure," she said. She smiled and closed up her blade. "Let's go."

But then, Joel said, "Ellie."

His voice was big, and deep, like space. Whenever he said her name like that, she immediately found his eyes. Something about choosing to stick together like they had. You can't really unstick.

"What's wrong?" she said.

He was standing with his hands in a basin, which was full of soapy water. The faucets didn't work anymore, said Noah. Nowhere in the whole house, or on the whole property. The running water was completely unusable. Ellie thought it was a little funny, seeing Joel do dishes. She'd never thought of him like that before. He wiped his soapy hands on his jeans, and then he looked down at them and seemed to reassess what it was he was about to say. She was listening. "Just be careful," he said, looking at her in a way that meant compromise.

"Sure," she said. "I will."

"Thanks, Ellie."

"She really listens to you," said Cici, once the kids were gone. She was taking the vacuum out of a broom closet by the front door. "Or is that just when other people are around?"

Joel stopped what he was doing, his hands back in the soapy water. Admittedly, he felt like a stranger in a kitchen like this. It had been too many years. "You mean Ellie?"

"Yeah," she said. "It can't be easy, with just her dad."

"Ellie ain't—she ain't my daughter," said Joel, remembering, suddenly, that Cici did not know. Noah knew, but the particulars of their relationship at large had not come up yet. It just wasn't important. "I'm just looking after her. For the time being."

"Oh," said Cici. She was surprised. "I'm sorry. I just figured."

"It's okay," said Joel. He started washing the plates with a sponge. "Back in Boston, there was a lot of...violence. A small group of us were trying to get out of the QZ," he said, scrubbing. "My brother lives out west, got some sort of set-up there, so that's been our plan, to find him. Some of us got as far as Pittsburgh. But me and Ellie, we're the only two made it this far." He looked down at the plate. It was like a coral color, porcelain.

Cici was quiet. When he turned around, she was just holding the cord to the vacuum cleaner, staring at it like she had forgotten what it did. "Well, we're glad you found us," she said. “Despite the circumstances.”

"Us, too," said Joel. "Y'all said you were in need of some real help. I've been wondering what kind."

She went to plug in the vacuum, but she didn't turn it on yet. Instead, she just stood, like she was piecing something together in her mind. "Infected,” she said. Then she was examining her fingernails. She had her hair braided about halfway down her back. She didn’t seem to want to look him in the eye. “They been tearing up our land,” she went on. “More keep coming, from up the river. And every time they do, they blow the mines on the perimeter. Yesterday, they brought down a tree. Noah had to rewire the entire valley and dig a whole new trench. I help as much as I can, which is usually enough, but given the volume of work, there’s only so much I can contribute these days, reasonably. I just—you coming along, it’s like happenstance.”

Joel took a deep breath, looked down at his watch. He had his sleeves rolled up above his forearms. “How many mines you got down there.”

“Over a hundred,” she said. “There’s IEDs, too. Some can be detonated remotely.”

”Who’s building IEDs?” said Joel.

“I am,” she said. She offered zero explanation. “All the maintenance, everything, it’s getting to be fucking impossible.”

“Well,” he said. “Like I said earlier, I’ll help in any way I can.”

”Thank you,” said Cici.

"Do you have any idea what's bringing them down, the hordes?"

"We got some idea," she said. She bit off a hangnail. She told him he needed to talk to Noah.

"Okay," said Joel. It was a little like she had given up. He didn’t like that. He knew she was keeping something from him, but he didn't press. "You know I thought we might be able to get to all this over dinner,” he went on, “but then the food turned out to be a little too good. I forgot to ask."

She started loosening the plaits of her braid, smiled to herself. "Thanks," she said. She was a subdued woman, at least for the time being. "I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a girl eat as much as Ellie."

"It's mostly canned rations in the QZs," said Joel. "I ain't surprised. Other than squirrels and rabbits, we ain't had real meat in some time. Ellie's certainly never had lamb."

"Was she born in the Boston QZ?"

"I guess so," said Joel, realizing he didn't really know. "The woman who raised her, more or less, she was a Firefly. You know that group?"

"Yeah," said Cici, leaning on the vacuum. "I do, actually. A couple Fireflies came through here, maybe five years ago. They were looking to recruit."

"Anybody go with them?"

"No," she said. "They were spouting off all sorts of plans. Said there was gonna be a cure. But they were focused up in Minneapolis. We had a whole community here, going strong for a while. It was safe. Nobody wanted to risk leaving, not on a lark like that."

“Well, that makes sense," said Joel. He finished the coral plate, set it on the drying rack, then set forth on a plate that was more of a custard yellow. He didn't ask what had happened, with their community, and why it was she and Noah were out here all alone. He washed the dishes.

Cici turned on the vacuum, cleaned up under the table, and around Joel's feet. When she finished, she put it away and started wiping down the surfaces with a damp towel. When the dishes were all clean and drying, and Joel was drying his hands on a linen towel, she brought out the rest of the wine from dinner and poured it into two small mason jars, one for each of them. They sat down at the kitchen table, trying to undo a little bit of their strife as they stared down at their wine, their hands, their knees. As two adults, they were somewhat unaccustomed to small talk. It was easier to hide things, for both of them. They were trying very hard though. Joel could tell that Cici was, not uncomfortable, but a little awkward. She just didn't know what to say to him.

"So," he said, after a little while. "Noah. He's what, eighteen, nineteen years old?"

"He's seventeen," she said, drinking. "He'll be eighteen in a couple weeks though."

"He's big for a seventeen-year-old," said Joel, drinking. "Pretty tall."

"His dad played football at Madison," she said. "He was a tight end. It runs in the family."

"You don't say."

She got a little red in the cheeks, and sipped her wine. "Noah is a good son. He does right by me, and by this farm."

"I can tell." Joel drank some of his wine, too. It was a little thin, made from cabernet grapes they had grown in a vineyard out back. That’s what Noah had said. Grapes don't grow in Wisconsin like they do in California, he'd said. But they do grow. "I will admit that I was a little surprised,” said Joel. “You look kind of young to have such a grown-up son. That's a compliment, by the way."

It was like she was trying to smile, but she hid it. "I'm thirty-six," she said. "I had Noah very young."

"I get it," said Joel. "You don't have to explain anything to me."

They sat for a little while, drinking their fruity wine and listening to the nature sounds coming in the open windows. The river rushing, snaking through the property like a silvery ribbon, the crickets big and deep. The clock on the wall.

"You know, I noticed, on the drive in, this place don't look like what I thought Wisconsin was supposed to look like."

"How so?"

"It's so hilly," he said. "With the stone ridges and the outcroppings, the rivers and the terrace farms. I thought Wisconsin was supposed to be pretty flat."

Cici got up then. She went to the record player, on a shelf by the TV, and she was rifling through a stack of vinyls. "Most of it is," she said. "But where we are, it's different. You ever heard of the Driftless Area?"

"No," said Joel. "What the hell's that?"

She chose one vinyl from the stack, slid the record from the envelope. "It's this small area around the upper-Mississippi, in the floodplain of southwestern Wisconsin mostly, some parts of Minnesota and Iowa. During the Ice Age, you know, the glaciers came down, flattened out everything. That's why Wisconsin is the way it is, but down here, in this tiny little corner, it escaped glaciation, somehow. It just missed us. There are no leftovers from the glaciers, or glacial deposits I guess, and so that's why the terrain looks the way it does, like the waterfalls and the cold streams, all the tributaries and big ridges and everything, the high forests. There's no drift. It's driftless." She was centering the record on the spindle.

Joel was looking down into his wine, feeling dumbfounded. "You're telling me the geography around here ain't changed in a hundred thousand years?"

"More or less," she said, setting down the needle. "It's some of the best trout fishing in the world, where we live."

"Y'all must fish a lot then. Does Noah get out there much with his line?"

"Not anymore," she said. Something about the sound of her voice, he knew that was the end of their talk on the Driftless.

The record player crackled and clicked. A song came on. The music filled the house. It was almost joyful. Joel had been daydreaming at first, but then he realized that he recognized the voice. "Is this Ryan Adams?" he said.

”Yeah," said Cici. “You know his stuff?”

“I do,” said Joel. “I saw him live in Dallas, all the way back in, what was it now, 2004?"

”Really?" she said.

”Really.”

”That's amazing. But you’re so old.”

He laughed. This surprised him, the sudden levity between them. “Well, I was a teenager.”

”What are you now, like forty-five?”

He gave her a look. "You gonna guess my age, Miss Cici?"

"I don't know," she said. "I'm sorry. Is that weird?"

”Not really," said Joel. "I'm just messing with you. If you must know. I'll be forty-eight at the end of the month.”

"How old is Ellie?" said Cici.

"She's fourteen," said Joel.

"What does she like?" said Cici. “I mean, what are her interests?”

Joel wrapped his hands all the way around the mason jar, as if to heat the wine within. "She likes comic books," he said. "I try to pick them up for her, whenever I find some. I've heard her sing, too, whenever we're on the road. She ain't half bad, and she tries to whistle every now and then so I think she likes music. But the place she grew up, it was basically a military prep school. Real stifling. She ain’t really used to having the liberty of interests."

"I thought you said she was raised by Fireflies?"

"It's complicated," said Joel. He swallowed some of the wine.

"I see," said Cici. "How long have you two been traveling together?"

"A couple months," said Joel, right away. "Seems like forever."

"I'm sorry about your people, from Boston," said Cici. "The people you said you lost. I don't know what to say."

Joel saw the shape of Tess, darkening the doorway. It seemed to drop a shadow, over the room, his insides, just for a second. He blinked. “You don't have to worry about me,” he said. Then he looked at Cici. Her face was pretty. Anybody would have noticed as much. "I'm fine."

Her eyes were dark, her braid undone over her shoulder. She drank her wine and said softly, "Okay."

Once they got outside, Ellie looked up. The sky swam darkly. The stars here were like nothing else, she thought. Maybe a million ribbons, maybe fishes in a black pool. It seemed to breathe up there, to teem. Teem. That was the word. She wanted to tell Joel. She thought it was a neat word, he might appreciate. She was used to feeling desperate, warm floods—of emotions, which she would then bury deep inside of herself.

She followed Noah, trailing slightly behind. They spoke little. He did ask her how she felt about it, out there. The farm.

"I love it," she said. "You're so lucky."

They walked back down to the gate where they’d first met. When they finally got to the crow’s nest, Ellie needed a boost up to the ladder, and then he followed up behind her. When she got to the top, she dusted her hands off on her jeans and looked around.

It really was like a little nest, she thought. It was totally his. There was an oil lamp glowing on a low table, and stacked up beside it were dozens of paperback novels. Names like Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Jim Harrison. Noah started cleaning up, right away. Tidying things, sweeping the floor with an old straw broom. There were a couple bean bag chairs with neat, psychedelic patterns, and a battery-powered hot plate, and some dirty plates, bottles and mugs. She could tell he spent a lot of time in the crow’s nest, alone. She could tell that maybe he liked it to be neat and clean up there at the start of each new day.

As he stacked up the plates and things and swept the floor, she flipped through some of the novels on the table. There was one book that was open, conspicuously, on top of the rest. That one, she did not touch, for fear of losing his place. “You like to read?” she said, stupidly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you ever read comics?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “I have a bunch inside.”

“Sweet,” said Ellie, looking around. There were some posters on the wall, nothing she recognized. One was for a band called Pearl Jam. “I was reading this one series. It’s called Savage Starlight. I mean, it’s stupid. You heard of it?”

“No,” said Noah. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about this chick,” she said. There was a quilt, draped over one of the bean bags. The craftsmanship was very lovely. Ellie ran her hand over the soft knitting. “Her name is Dr. Daniella Star. She’s like a scientist. She invented some kind of crazy time travel, and it’s just like, her adventures in space, I guess.”

“Sounds pretty intense,” said Noah. He dumped the dirty plates into a canvas rucksack. He set the broom against the door jamb. “There’s a comic store in Viroqua. We could go pillage it, maybe tomorrow night? I bet you’d find some of them there. They have a lot of super obscure stuff. And the town isn’t too badly looted. There’s a lot left.”

“Really?” said Ellie. “Are there any people there?”

“No,” said Noah. “Not anymore.”

“Right,” she said.

They climbed back down the ladder. Noah said, "You wanna see the river?"

Ellie said yes. Hell yes. She did want to see the river. She'd never really seen a river, not a real one, not up close. Or at least she didn't feel like she had. They went along a little grass path. Ellie looked up some more, up at the stars, the Milky Way, listening to the nighttime birds and the crickets. Then they came to a river. Noah stopped, and she stopped. It was just this small thing, smaller than she had expected, maybe ten feet across, cutting through the grassy field, snaking around like a ribbon. It was enchanted, almost haunted, how it rippled. Little rapids, here and there. It was so beautiful.

“What's this river called?” she said.

"Technically it’s a creek,” he said, surveying, real pensive. “It flows out of the Kickapoo River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi.”

“Man,” she said."This whole place. It's like, perfect. Like a dream. In the QZ, we couldn't leave. We couldn't go outside the gates. If we did, and we got caught, they wouldn't let us come back. But here it’s like, you're free. Do you love it?"

“I guess,” said Noah. He’d set down the rucksack, his shotgun. “I mean, I don’t know anything else. You didn’t like living in Boston?”

“Not really,” said Ellie. “But I guess—I guess I didn’t really know that until I left with Joel.”

"Why'd you guys leave."

"Too dangerous, I guess. Some...bad stuff happened. In Boston it was pretty bad, but then in Pittsburgh...It’s a long story."

Noah waited, like maybe to see if she was going to keep talking. When she didn’t, he just said, “So he’s really not your dad, huh?”

“No,” said Ellie. “No. He’s just—Joel.”

“He seemed to get kind of worried when you left the house.”

“That’s how he is,” she said. “We’ve been through a lot together.”

“Like back in Pittsburgh?” he said.

She was watching the dark river in the moonlight, all unfolding, the tall grasses on the other side, blinking with fireflies. “Pretty much,” she said.

He took a deep breath then, which made her nervous. He got down to one knee, opened up the rucksack, and from inside, he took out a clear empty bottle from up in the Crow's Nest.

"What are you doing?" she said.

He didn't answer. He just blew the inside of the bottle dry, and then he dipped it into the river, filled it up with water. "It's not perfect here, Ellie," he said. “I know it seems perfect to you, and free, but it’s not.” He fashioned a lighter from his pocket, let it illuminate the bottle.

Ellie crouched down beside him, curious, but confused. She looked at the water in the bottle. She sensed a darkness, all around them. In Noah’s voice, hidden in the moonlight and the greenery of the terrain. But she didn't understand. "What do you mean?" she said. "Is this about what you said upstairs, how we shouldn't drink the water? What's wrong with it?"

"All the water, flowing out of the Mississippi, down from the north, is poisoned," he said.

"Poisoned,” she said, gazing into the light. “With what?”

He pocketed the lighter, tossed the bottle into the river. They watched it sink. “Spores.”

#the last of us #tlou #the last of us part 2 #tlou2 #joel tlou #ellie tlou #joel miller #ellie williams #as you were

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troped-fanfic-challenge · 4 years ago

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The Master List of the Summer 2020 Chopped 3.0: The 100 Fanfic Challenge!

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in this third run of our full Chopped Challenge! We are so happy that this fun little idea that we got from @chants-de-lune continues to be such a success!

In this event we had Historical Body Swaps, Sci-Fi Reunions based on TV/Movies, Epic Platonic Fantasy Heists, and Crazy El Dorado Adventures! We received so many creative and exciting fics that were a thrill to read. We hope you guys had as much fun writing and reading these fics as we did, and we hope you’ll join us for more events in the future.

Please check out all the Chopped 3.0 fics below. Don’t forget to leave the authors some love!

———

Round 1: Historical Fics

Tropes:

Body Swap

Competing “Businesses”

Meet Ugly

First Kiss

On a Tear (Rated M) [Emori/Murphy/Raven] by @sparklyfairymira

Summary: Raven Reyes doesn’t get along with John and Emori Murphy - the owners of the only other speakeasy in Arkadia. What happens when her world is turned upside down and she finds herself inside Emori’s body?

2nd Place Best Overall, 3rd Place Theme, 1st Place Body Swap Trope, 3rd Place Competing Businesses Trope, 1st Place Meet Ugly Trope, 1st Place Tie First Kiss Trope, 2nd Place Best Dialogue, and Most Unique Pairing Winner.

A Change of Heart (Rated G) [Bellamy/Clarke] by @queenemori

Summary: When Clarke’s mother informed her she’d be spending her summer in England’s newest seaside resort, she did not expect such an eventful trip. She was only sent to see if they actually posed a threat to her family’s resort in Brighton. She did not at all expect to make an enemy of the architect’s nephew. But when an unusual situation arises, Clarke and Mr. Blake must learn to work together, no matter how much they dislike each other.

Or, a loose Sanditon AU

1st Place Best Overall, 1st Place Theme, 3rd Place Body Swap Trope, 2nd Place Competing Businesses Trope, 3rd Place Meet Ugly Trope, 1st Place Tie First Kiss Trope, and 1st Place Best Dialogue Winner.

May We Meet Again (Rated T) [Bellamy/Clarke] by @changingthefairy-tale

Summary: Clarke and Bellamy both show up to assassinate the same target. Chaos ensues.

3rd Place Best Overall, 2nd Place Theme, 2nd Place Body Swap Trope, 1st Place Competing Businesses Trope, 2nd Place Meet Ugly Trope, 1st Place Tie First Kiss Trope, and 3rd Place Best Dialogue Winner.

———

Round 2: Sci-Fi Fics

Tropes:

Based on a TV Show/Movie

Reunion

Kiss to keep cover/keep a secret

Forehead touches

and i’ll never say i love you (but i meant it all along) (Rated T) [Bellamy/Clarke] by @bellamysgriffin

Summary: When Coach, a dating system that pairs you with someone for an allotted amount of time and gives no way to bypass its rules, matches Bellamy and Clarke together, they find an immediate dislike for the other. Luckily, they only have to spend twelve hours together and then they can go their separate ways.

That is, until Coach matches them again. And again. And again. Until they start to wonder if something deeper is going on.

Or, Bellamy and Clarke in Hang the DJ

1st Place Theme and 2nd Place Based on a TV Show/Movie Trope Winner.

Per Aspera Ad Astra [Through Hardship to the Stars] (Rated G) [Bellamy/Clarke] by @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold

Summary: It’s boredom one fateful night that leads Clarke Griffin to ditching the first basketball game of the season. That same boredom then leads to her choosing to hang out with one Bellamy Blake – which should feel weirder than it is since they haven’t really been friends since his sister’s disappearance two years ago.

But then their night really takes a turn.

The two of them discover a strange audio frequency that could change the small town of Arkadia, New Mexico – and the future – forever. Dropped phone calls, forgotten tapes, and strange lights follow Bellamy and Clarke as they race through the night on a scavenger hunt to discover the truth. That maybe there was something more to Octavia’s disappearance, maybe there’s more to their friendship than being just friends, and that maybe they aren’t as alone in the universe as they thought.

2nd Place Best Overall, 2nd Place Forehead Touch Trope, 2nd Place Tie Kiss to keep cover/keep a secret Trope, and 1st Place Reunion Trope Winner.

through the muted waves (Rated T) [Murphy/Emori] by @the-most-beautiful-broom

Summary: Scientists call the Tomorrow People the next stage of human evolution, the government denies their existence, but their cocktail of psionic abilities have made homo superiors the target of Eligius. Even though Eligius has closed the project that allows Tomorrow People to override their genetic inability to kill, they still relentlessly hunt them, desperate to neutralize their abilities. When Murpy wakes up in Eligius headquarters, he knows he’s returned for a reason…if only he could understand his connection to the brown-eyed girl who keeps cropping up on the corners of his memory.

3rd Place Tie Theme and 2nd Place Tie Kiss to keep cover/keep a secret Trope Winner.

in the red snares (Rated T) [Octavia/Lincoln] by @justbecauseyoubelievesomething

Summary: The prevailing theory around the existence of Slayers (her existence) is that a variation of the alien parasite the miners unearthed deep in the Sub Stratum started infecting hosts in order to combat the vampire parasite. Octavia scoffs at the thought. The theory is probably right, especially since Monty is pretty confident in it, but she still hates the whole thing. The Slayer parasite really needs an upgrade in her opinion.

3rd Place Best Overall and 3rd Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

The Cockroach (Rated T) [Murphy/Emori] by @mobi-on-a-mission

Summary: “This is the cockroach hailing Mission Team Alpha. It’s Sol 30 here on good ol’ Planet Alpha. Not that it’s really a planet, but eh whatever. Technicalities, right? Anyway. Systems check. Arm: healing. Bugs: normal. Radio: shitty. Attitude: good.”

1st Place Best Overall, 2nd Place Theme, 1st Place Forehead Touch Trope, and 3rd Place Reunion Trope Winner.

I’m No Hero (Rated T) [Murphy/Emori] by @queenemori

Summary: It’s 2052 and Reapers are wreaking havoc on mutants and humans alike. Murphy is recruited by Kane and Jaha to go back in time to prevent Octavia Blake from starting an international crisis that made the future much worse. But going back to the past comes with some side effects, mainly having to do with some relationships that Murphy left on bad terms.

3rd Place Tie Theme, 3rd Place Based on a TV Show/Movie Trope, and 3rd Place Forehead Touch Trope Winner.

from angels or devils (Rated T) [Octavia Blake] by @dylanobrienisbatman

Summary: Octavia was dead, and then she wasn’t. The nuns say it was the gift of an angel, but they may not know as much as they claim.

Will she be able to learn to channel it’s gifts, or will she be claimed by the villain who has followed the Halo through time and space?

3rd Place Most Unique Source Material Winner.

Can’t Tell if this is True or Dream (Rated M) [Echo/Gabriel] by @kuklash

Summary: “Do you understand your mission, agent?” A cloud of smoke punctuated the Director’s question, streaming from his mouth in thick, grey ribbons.

“I am to evaluate the necessity of the work Dr. Santiago is doing and report back at the conclusion of the investigation,” Echo repeated her instructions. Her lungs filled with second-hand smoke and she stifled a cough.

“I hope you appreciate the delicacy of this mission, Echo.” His intense gaze bore a hole into her’s. “Gabriel is not to know the nature of your assignment.”

She met his gaze with equal intensity as she stood up to leave.

“I understand, sir.”

1st Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

There are some things written in the stars (Rated G) [Bellamy/Clarke] by @changingthefairy-tale

Summary: Dear Bell,

I know you have a million questions. When I planned to come see you in Sau Paulo, I knew I wouldn’t have much time, and there was just too much I wanted to say. But also so much I knew I couldn’t. My only hope is that this journal answers some of your questions, and by some miracle saves your life.

My name is Clarke Griffin, a historian. We’ve never met before today, in your time at least. In 2019, I would be just starting my professorship at Arkadia University back in the states. That’s honestly the only reason Murphy didn’t fight me on seeing you — no chance that I’d cross paths with myself. He wouldn’t have been able to stop me, mind you. But he’s definitely the better pilot, so I’m glad he was on board.

I’m getting away from myself. It’s hard to remember a time when you didn’t just instinctively know what I was thinking. It’s felt a little like you’ve just known me my whole life, the way we’ve always been in sync. Let me start from the beginning, just rip the bandaid off…

Or the “Timeless” AU you never knew you needed. Submitted as part of the Chopped Challenge: Round 2.

3rd Place Kiss to keep cover/keep a secret Trope, and 2nd Place Reunion Trope Winner.

Healing AIs, Healing Hearts (Rated T) [Octavia/Raven] by @spacekrulesbians

Summary: Raven and her mother were a perfect team, working with damaged and mistreated AIs and tech. When tragedy strikes, however, Raven has to figure out how to make it on her own. And then there’s that new assistant her mom hired, making things interesting.

1st Place Most Unique Source Material and 2nd Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

inconceivable (Rated T) [Bellamy/Clarke] by @kindclaws

Summary: The first touch of his fingers on her wrists makes her whole body shiver. She’s so painfully aware of him being just behind her, of the wonder and the impossibility of his existence here, that she has to remind herself to keep breathing as he slowly picks apart the knots binding her hands together. “If I turn around, will you be gone?” she murmurs. “Is this a bad dream? Will you be dead again when I wake up?”

“I’m real,” he says softly, and finally the last knot falls away and her hands are free.

It’s practically inconceivable.

(Chopped 3 presents: The Princess Bride. In space, bitches.)

1st Place Based on a TV Show/Movie Trope, 1st Place Kiss to keep cover/keep a secret Trope, and 2nd Place Most Unique Source Material Winner.

———

Round 3: Fantasy Fics

Tropes:

Heist AU

Character gets given a potion that makes them unable to lie

Garnderer AU

Forehead kiss

What Is Mine (Rated T) [Jordan & Hope] by @memoriisendgame

Summary: Jordan learns the important lesson of family and friendship as he attempts to get back something he feels he rightfully deserves.

5th Place Best Overall, 3rd Place Tie Heist AU Trope, 3rd Place Forehead Kiss Trope, and 2nd Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

A Change in the Weather (Rated T) [Murphy & Clarke & Raven] by @sparklyfairymira

Summary: Murphy leans over, plucking a weed from between the Bitter Spolwoods. “There you go. All better now. Can’t let that mean old weed try and strangle you, can we?” He grabs the water jug by his side and waters the ground around the plants before stroking the purple leaves. “You’re doing so well here. Look at you getting so big.”

“Are you talking to the plants again?”

Murphy grins as he turns to face Raven. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. I always talk to the plants. Why do you think they grow so well?”

“They’re plants, Murphy.” Raven raises an eyebrow as she stares at him.

“Exactly.” Murphy turns to the plants again, lovingly stroking the leaves. “Ignore her. She just doesn’t understand.”

Or: A friend is kidnapped causing Murphy, Raven, and Clarke to join forces with others to save him, all while set in a magical fantasy world.

3rd Place Best Overall, 2nd Place Truth Serum Trope, 1st Place Forehead Kiss Trope, 1st Place Tie Gardener AU Trope, 3rd Place Best Descriptions, and 3rd Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

We will begin again (Rated T) [Raven & Gaia] by @dylanobrienisbatman

Summary: Over two centuries ago, Man stole the Giant’s Heart from where it was protected by the Witches, and with it, they gained great power. But the longer it is away, the more damage is done to the planet.

Can Raven, along with her companions, return the Giant’s Heart to the Witches and restore balance and prosperity to the world?

1st Place Theme, 1st Place Heist AU Trope, 1st Place Best Descriptions, and 1st Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

picture me in the weeds (before i learned civility) (Rated T) [Clarke & Murphy] by @probably-voldemort

Summary: There are three days from when Clarke was seven that she doesn’t remember. Not odd in itself, except for what those days contain. She remembers leaving her house with her neighbour John to play in the woods like they did every day, and then she remembers coming home three days later. She has no memory of where they’d gone or what happened or why John never came back.

Now, Clarke returns to the woods for the first time in sixteen years. After running into someone from her past who shouldn’t exist, Clarke begins to wonder if everything she’s believed for years could really be a lie.

1st Place Best Overall, 3rd Place Tie Theme, 2nd Place Forehead Kiss Trope, and 1st Place Tie Gardener AU Trope Winner.

talos bless us (Rated T) [Echo & Raven] by @spacekrulesbians

Summary: When Bellamy gets himself captured by Imperials, sisters Raven and Echo plan the ultimate heist to break him out of a closely guarded fort, aided by a dark elf and a khajiit.

4th Place Best Overall, 3rd Place Tie Theme, 3rd Place Tie Heist AU Trope, 1st Place Truth Serum Trope, and 2nd Place Gardener AU Trope Winner.

truth lies in an abyss (Rated T) [Bellamy & Clarke] by @justbecauseyoubelievesomething

Summary: “Thank you for meeting me here.” Her dark blue hood obscures most of her face, but when she tilts her chin towards him, her green eyes flash in the starlight.

He nods demurely. “I take it you have a proposition for us?”

She hesitates. “Is it true what you can do? Enter the Fade?”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t true.”

“And are you as good as they say you are?”

Bellamy lets a faint smile cross his lips. “I don’t know what they say, but I can assure you I take the utmost pride in my work, Lady Griffin.”

A Fantasy Heist AU for the Chopped 100 Challenge

2nd Place Best Overall, 2nd Place Theme, 2nd Place Heist AU Trope, 3rd Place Truth Serum Trope, 3rd Place Gardener AU Trope, and 2nd Place Best Descriptions Winner.

———

Round 4: Championship Fics

Tropes:

El Dorado

Frikdreina

Telepathy

Free Space

The Life We Seek To Find (Rated T) [Emori/Murphy] by @memoriisendgame

Summary: “Alexia and Blue, they’ll have a better chance there. You will have a better chance there. Trust me.”

Murphy and Emori make the daring decision to travel across the unknown wasteland of Earth in order to find the so-called ‘City Of Light’ in the hopes of finding a better future for their little family.

-Loosely based on “Bird Box” in the sense that there is a safe haven a long journey away.

1st Place Frikdreina Trope, 1st Place Telepathy Trope, and 2nd Place Tie Best Plot Twist Winner.

Am I dreaming (Or is this burning an eternal flame) (Not Rated) [Emori/Murphy/Raven] by @sparklyfairymira

Summary: A post-apocalyptic story of soulmates.

Murphy never thought he’d meet his soulmate - let alone find out he had two. But that’s just what he does while he and Bellamy searched for Octavia. And now he’s expected to help save the world? This was not how he was expecting his life to go.

3rd Place Best Overall, 3rd Place Tie Theme, 3rd Place Tie Frikdreina Trope, 2nd Place Telepathy Trope, 2nd Place Author’s Choice Trope, and 2nd Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine (Rated T) [Emori/Murphy] by @queenemori

Summary: Emori doesn’t do normal. That’s something she’s never had in her life. It’s why she doesn’t really question it when she starts having weird dreams that have absolutely nothing to do with her. And why she doesn’t question it when she happens upon the subject of the dreams, either. Like this mysterious guy, she’s just along for the ride.

A modern retelling of Emori and Murphy’s first meeting.

2nd Place Best Overall, 2nd Place Theme, 3rd Place Tie Frikdreina Trope, 3rd Place Author’s Choice Trope, and 2nd Place Tie Best Plot Twist Winner.

leave my loneliness unbroken (Rated T) [Bellamy/Clarke/Raven] @justbecauseyoubelievesomething

Summary: When you turn ten years old, you hear your soulmate’s voice inside your head.

Or so Raven’s been told.

3rd Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

Rattle the Stars (Rated G) [Octavia/Lincoln] by @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold

Summary: Even as humanity spread itself through space, the universe remains the true final frontier. Outlaws rule the fringes of galaxies and for those who are down on their luck, it’s not an easy lifestyle.

Octavia Blake grows up on stories of a fearsome bandit named Charmaine Diyoza and dreams of one day going on her own intergalactic adventures. She’s eighteen when that becomes a reality, a chance encounter leading her on a treasure hunt throughout the galaxy in search of the famed El Dorado, a Treasure Planet made entirely of gold. Along the way she makes allies and enemies –– but one person in particular guides her along the way. A cyborg named Lincoln helps her blossom on the ship and come into herself and she can’t help but fall for him, even as she learns that not everything is as it seems. But with the mysterious map in hand, unusual friends, and her own belief in herself, she might just discover more than gold on this adventure.

1st Place Best Overall, 1st Place Theme, 1st Place El Dorado Trope, 2nd Place Frikdreina Trope, and 1st Place Best Plot Twist Winner.

until the next, my beloved (Rated T) [Luna/Raven/Roan] by @spacekrulesbians

Summary: Luna and Roan set off to find the legendary city of Eden, where it is said there is gold stretching as far as one can see. As Raven cannot come due to her blindness, Luna takes it upon herself to keep sending her messages.

3rd Place Tie Theme, 3rd Place Telepathy Trope, 1st Place Author’s Choice Trope, 3rd Place Tie Best Plot Twist, and 1st Place Most Unique Pairing Winner.

lost in the woods (Rated T) [Clarke/Murphy] by @probably-voldemort

Summary: Murphy can read minds, but only sometimes. It doesn’t help him not get lost on a class hiking trip.

3rd Place Tie Best Plot Twist Winner.

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ellebabywrites · 5 years ago

Text

The Supplier - In Exodus

Type : Oneshot (Part of The In Exodus Series) // Angst // Fluff // Smut // Cartel!au

Warnings : none

Author Note : FINALLY WE HAVE AN UPDATE !! I’m not going to lie, I’m super insecure about this because it’s been so long and I’m just second guessing everything, so feedback would just be really helpful to my soul sksksksks... I hope you enjoy lovelies !!

Everything had gone to plan for Kyungsoo. He’d achieved everything he had wanted to, accomplished all of his goals. He lived contently, sharing his modest farm only with a Border Collie named Hailey; a few chickens; horses and cows. Being the town of Exodus’ lead supplier of milk and eggs was always something he was proud of. Being the lead supplier for one of the biggest drug cartels in the country… less so.

No one suspected the sweet, quiet man; who rides into town with crates of produce and his dog smiling out of his truck, as being the root of all evil that plagues the once quiet town of Exodus.

Kyungsoo doesn’t like to talk about it. Pretending he’s nothing more than a simple farmer is a lot easier than facing the realities of his chosen life. Because that’s the harsh truth of it - he chose this. When an old friend came to him with the idea, he didn’t even consider turning it down; but now more than half of the town was riddled with crime; drugs ran through the streets like candy and cartels from all over the country were constantly fighting to come and get a taste.

Living so far out of town, isolated on the farm wasn’t just good for business, but also for maintaining his ignorance.

---

At 5:30 am sharp the roosters start crowing, forcing Kyungsoo awake from his slumber so he can get ready to start the day. Hailey is already in the kitchen waiting for her breakfast when he sleepily makes his way downstairs, rubbing the dust away from his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater.

“Okay Hailey, I’m here I’ll get your food,” the fluffy bundle of excitement bounced around at the sound of Kyungsoo pouring some of her kibble in a bowl, before getting himself some cereal. They mirror each other, as the pair sit and devour their meals.

It’s a Sunday, which means that it’s time for Kyungsoo to swallow his pride and go check on the supply. 6 days out of the week he can pretend that there’s nothing there; the back fields are empty and he has no business wandering back there; and thanks to cameras Chanyeol had installed, it didn’t hinder the business at all. Except for Sundays. Sundays Kyungsoo has to take the trek across the farm and take stock.

He delays as much as he can; taking extra care in tending to the animals for the morning. Mucking out the stables till they were pristine; making sure each individual hen was alright and collecting their eggs. By the time it comes to feeding, Hailey is impatiently dashing back and forth across the grounds.

“I know you like the walk Hailey, but I’m busy right now….. Don’t look at me like that, I’m not wasting time…. Okay maybe I am wasting a little time but c’mon…” The big dark saucers staring up innocently at Kyungsoo finally get’s him to relent; putting away the last of the feed and reluctantly walking to the back fields.

With each step Kyungsoo tosses away the willful ignorance he maintains for the rest of the week; he’s forced to take a look at what he’s become, what he’s apart of - whether he likes what he sees or not.

Hailey runs ahead on the path, stopping to sniff around the neighbouring plants to the ‘fields of evil’ as Kyungsoo likes to call them. She chases the birds and bathes in the warmth of the sun while Kyungsoo does his weekly check; ignoring the huffs and puffs that fall from her owners lips, used to his disdain but blissfully naive as to why anyone could hate such a beautiful part of the land.

“I wish I had your life Hailey,” Soo sighs, watching how his only company lounges so carelessly in the grass, completely innocent as to what the two were doing. “It’s all good here pup, let’s head back now okay?”

The walk back is far more enjoyable for Kyungsoo; being able to reattach the armor of denial to his soul as he, quite literally, puts his dealings behind him. The wind blew against his face in a way that feels like it’s washing the sin away from his face.

Don’t misunderstand, Kyungsoo has no issue with the drug itself. It’s natural; it’s relatively harmless; it’s good business, especially for someone like him. The real problem lies in the consequences his little business venture had had on the town he had once loved so much. It became infected with greed and want and impulsivity.

If people didn’t want a hit, they wanted in on the money. Kyungsoo’s tailor made euphoria had attracted other cartels from across the country, all wanting a piece of the action; a cut of the profits; control of the territory.

Exodus quickly replaced all the families, young and old, with groups of rowdy wannabees and snakes. The few innocents left lived as secondary concerns to the drugs. Police were swamped. Gangs grew more dangerous. People either lived in fear of violence or withdrawal.

It was all Kyungsoo’s fault. That’s how he felt at least. As the supplier, he had brought this on Exodus. He had opened Pandora’s box and now all he could do was hide out at the farm and pretend for 6 days a week that he was nothing but a simple farmer.

---

Breaking the usual peaceful silence Kyungsoo is accustomed to, a gleeful laugh fills the air, knocking Soo out of his thoughts and immediately putting him on guard. Rounding the corner at the edge of the stables, grabbing the nearest weapon (shovel) he can find, Kyungsoo takes slow steps towards the noise.

No one comes to the farm, especially uninvited, even his own members make sure to call first. A million thoughts race through his mind. Who is it? The police? A member of a rival group? Someone trying to steal a bag and get high? He’s been warned about a group called MX trying to make advances in Exodus as of late - could they have found him already?

“Oh you’re such a good girl huh, You can’t eat my hair though that’s where I draw the line,” The closer Kyungsoo got to where the horses were, the louder the sounds grew.

“What are you doing?”

Startled by his presence, you jump away from the spotted horse your were chatting to.

“Oh sorry, I-”

“What are you doing here?” Kyungsoo takes a tentative step forward, hand gripping the shovel tightly, unsure if he would actually go through with using it.

“I just saw the horses and-”

“You came up here? No one comes here.” His voice remained stoic and firm, making you feel uncomfortable with the growing tension. You didn’t have bad intentions, but he didn’t know that.

“Oh...really? But why, it’s so pretty here,” when his expression doesn’t change at your attempt to lighten the mood, you clear your throat start stuttering out an explanation. “I uh...I just saw the horses from the road and uh…”

“You need to leave.”

His eyes flicker back and forth between your own and the hem of your yellow dress dancing in the wind around your knees. The crease between his brows deepening with every passing second you remained still in front of him.

But before you can shrink away from his intimidating gaze and leave; Hailey comes running to your feet, bouncing up on her hind legs trying to coax your attention away from her owner. When you immediately drop to your knees and endulge the pup, Kyungsoo lets himself relax a little and release a deep sigh. He’s pretty certain that you’re nothing more than a harmless tourist who had naively wandered up to the farm, clearly enchanted by the animals; but he has a quarter bag full of product in his jacket pocket and even the thought of you finding out makes his palms sweat.

“Look..” his voice wavers watching the way you fuss and fawn over Hailey, and for some reason he feels an unfamiliar twinge against his ribs. “I’ve got lots to do today, I..I’m sorry but you’re going to have to leave.”

“Of course, I’m sorry for intruding,” standing up straight, you brush away the stray hairs flying into your face and start taking backwards steps away, “I..It really is a beautiful farm by the way!” Before you turn and move completely out of sight, you send Soo a shy wave goodbye, hoping that he wasn’t as upset as he looked at your presence.

---

Later that night, Kyungsoo tries to wash away the guilt he’s grown used to feeling after those weekly visits to the back fields. He showers and washes the debris out of his hair; brushing his teeth, trying to remove the bitter taste of regret from his mouth. All the while thinking of you…

How did she even get up here? No one’s come up here for so long, let alone someone as pretty as her…

“What..” His thoughts are interrupted by Hailey’s huffing across the room, “Don’t give me that look..” The pup tilts her head in apparent judgement, looking up at Soo with her big doe eyes. “I was just thinking about changing the horses feed this season… that’s all…”

---

A few days pass and eventually Kyungsoo is able to forget about the strange girl who had wandered onto his farm and had been occupying his thoughts. He’d returned to the quiet, peaceful, reclusive life he had grown comfortable with.

Walking down the muddy pathway back towards the farm, Hailey trailing along at his ankles and a pair of empty milk crates thrown haphazardly into a wheelbarrow being dragged behind them; Kyungsoo wipes the sweat from the side of his face against his shirt.

Wednesdays are delivery days. He gathers all the courage he can muster; puts on a brave face and heads into town. If it wasn’t for the constant reminders of all the damage his little side business had done to Exodus, maybe he would actually enjoy these visits. But of course he doesn’t.

In the distance, Hailey spots you first; fiddling with your fingers and nervously rocking on the heels of your feet against the farm’s gate; chewing your bottom lip till it was swol.

“Hey! I’ve been waiting here for hours, I thought I’d missed you,” excitedly you run up to where Kyungsoo stood in shock at your sudden appearance. A red bow pinning back your hair and slight gloss over your lips, the peach tint to your cheeks illuminated by the golden hour light pouring through the trees above.

“Why are you here?” Cursing at himself for how harsh his words sound, Kyungsoo picks his chin back up and walks straight passed you, calling for Hailey to follow.

“I um.. I just moved into Exodus, you know the town that’s like, that way,” you turn quickly to follow him towards the farm, gesturing back down the road he had just came from.

“Why are you at my farm again?” Though a question, he made no effort to suggest he actually cared for an answer, quickening his steps as if trying to shake you off his tail.

“Exodus isn’t exactly a cheap place to live and I guess I overestimated just how far my savings would stretch,” chuckling nervously as you listen to yourself divulge your financial problems to a near enough stranger, you swallow dryly and run slightly ahead so you can confront him face on, “Look.. I’ve tried everywhere in town and no one is hiring, I remembered you from the other day and I thought maybe you could use some help?”

Kyungsoo watches curiously as you use your body to block his path and wide eyes stare up at him pleadingly; in that moment he feels his resolve melting slightly and allows his mind to indulge in the thought of seeing your face every day, but Hailey nosing at the bottom of his leg soon knocks him out of it, returning him to reality.

“I don’t need any help, sorry.” Once more he tries to walk passed your defeated self, biting back the small voice in his mind begging him to reconsider, but you’re too quick.

“Please! I..I work hard, I promise I won’t be any trouble...and I’m great with animals! I can do whatever you need I…” your outburst startles Soo, your desperation clear from how you start lowering yourself down to beg quite literally, on your hands and knees before him. “I really need this to work out, you’re my last hope…”

The small voice in his mind had grown considerably louder watching your face blush a deep plum colour in embarrassment, fingers interlocked and held out in front of him. ‘Give her a chance!’ ‘You could use the company!’ ‘She seems harmless and sweet, help her!’ But then of course the booming voice of his conscience shouts out reminders of the hidden secrets that the farm hides… could he really risk you getting involved with all that? Did he even want you to know about it? No.

You were the only person in the entire town that was left beautifully untouched by the darkness of EXO. He couldn’t be selfish… could he?

“Fine… come back tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do..”

---

Reluctantly, Kyungsoo kept to his word and the next day when he saw you skipping up the pathway to the farm, he racked his brain for bits and bobs you could help out with.

“Hi!” you wave excitedly when you see Soo walking out towards you, trying to ignore the line buried deep between his brows as he sizes you up. Dressed in cotton shorts and a baggy shirt, you know you must look terrible and you’re hoping that’s the cause of his expression, rather than how you keep showing up disturbing his peace.

“I’m ready to work, what’s first boss?”

---

Over the next few weeks you managed your way around the farm, never seeing too much of Kyungsoo, but managing nonetheless. At first he spent every day by your side, guiding you through every step of what would become your daily chores, making sure you got everything exactly the way he liked it; and then once he was sure you could handle it, he disappeared.

You didn’t mind too much though, the abundance of animal friends you had were more than enough to keep you company - but that didn’t stop you wondering about your allusive new boss.

Sometimes you’d catch a glimpse of him in the distance, working on his own chores with Hailey following closely behind, the same indifferent expression painted on his face. He moved on autopilot, never showing any kind of emotion when he sensed you near, as if he was keeping himself guarded like you could destroy him at any moment. He tended the fields; collected the harvest; made his deliveries before disappearing back into the farm house for the rest of the evening. Whenever you could catch a moment you tried your best to break the tension, cracking jokes and asking questions, anything to get more than five words out of him. You only managed to break his tough exterior a handful of times; your impression of the postman being the one that really got him to smile; before he bashfully retreated back to the cool persona you’d become all too familiar with.

Kyungsoo, still skeptical, kept his eye on you while you were at the farm. The small voice at the back of his mind still not totally convinced you weren’t somehow working with MX; not that you had given any indication whatsoever that you were secretly part of a rival drug cartel that is; he was just being cautious.

Yeah… Cautious… He’s just being cautious when he times up his chores so he can listen to you talking to the cows while you milk them; it’s a cautious chuckle when he watches you get chased around the yard by the chickens when you forget to drop all of the feed from your overall pockets. He’s being especially cautious when he does the books inside the stable office, rather than his kitchen, so he can watch you muck out the paddocks, fall into the bales and stand up with stray strands of hay littered throughout your hair. Kyungsoo is just a cautious guy. If anything he’s being responsible.

And the longer Kyungsoo can keep telling himself those lies, the longer he can go without facing reality. That with every lame joke; blushed cheeks; childlike awe and innocence - he falls more and more for you and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

---

After a couple more weeks of denial and pining, Kyungsoo decides he’s had enough. He’s determined to knock down a few of the walls he’d built up when the longing to be close to you, talk with you, touch you; all becomes too much.

Before he even rounds the corner he can hear you talking gently with the hens ‘wow you ladies are so good! Look at all these eggs you’ve got for us today!’

“Hey stranger!” you call out, smiling brightly as he slowly makes his way over to you.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo mumbled back, as he sheepishly looked down at the basket of eggs you’d started collecting.

Almost on instinct, Kyungsoo starts putting more eggs into your basket. There’s an awkward silence as Kyungsoo wracks his brain for something, anything to say. Why didn’t he think this far ahead when he decided to do this?

“So…” he starts, you look up immediately in shock that he was actually trying to have a conversation with you, “What brought you to Exodus?”

“My mom died; my dad drank; I left. Same old story…”

You try not to think back on the days before Exodus. Sure, it wasn’t exactly paradise here, but to you anything was better than home. She’d been sick for a while; your mom; she was diagnosed with a Glioblastoma a little over a year ago. The tumor ate away at her body, her soul; taking everything that made her ‘her’ before she passed. When she finally found peace, your father hit rock bottom. He was always a heavy drinker, but when your mom died he just went overboard; and then came the violence. A push here and there turned into a slap, which then turned into a punch. Purple bruises fade to a sickening green under your farm clothes, goodbye presents from him when you decided to leave.

Kyungsoo swallows dryly, immediately regretting opening his mouth, “I-I’m sorry..”

“It’s alright,” you wish he’d look up at you so he could see the gentle smile on your face, maybe then he’d actually believe you. But instead Soo keeps his eyes glued to the eggs, trying to make it as discreet as possible that he’d slowed down his movements, in an attempt to buy enough time for his confidence to show up.

“I like Exodus,” you say, smiling to yourself at the thought of your little flat in town.

“You like Exodus?” he questioned, not meaning for his voice to come out as loud as it did but not really minding too much when you giggle at his reaction.

“Yes! I love it here! The people; the scenery; the animals! How long have you lived here?”

It’s bittersweet for Kyungsoo; thinking back on the memories he has of the farm, of Exodus, before everything good was ruined.

When Kyungsoo was young, he moved into Exodus to live with his Grandmother on the farm. She was a small woman with wispy silver hair and eyes that smiled as bright as the sun. To anyone else she looked as fragile as glass, with a hunched back and frail fingers; but Kyungsoo knew she was strong. Working on the farm alone for years; tending the animals and collecting the harvests; she was a machine against all appearances. She was his favourite person.

She took him in and taught him everything he knows about the farm. If she could only see now what he’d done with his inheritance, he was sure that she’d be rolling in her grave.

“My whole life,” he answered quickly, not wanting to talk to much about the past, afraid it would break down the wall keeping his guilt at bay.

Luckily you saw he was reluctant to speak any more on the subject, quickly dropping any questions that were bubbling up inside of you in favour of drawing out a little more conversation.

“Oh, you must know all the hotspots ‘round town huh? I’ve been here a little over a month already and I still feel like a lot puppy,” you confess, not meaning for it to sound as pathetic as it came out and blushing at the realisation.

“I could show you around,” Soo felt the words race up his throat before he could swallow them down, “I mean if you wanted to…”

“I would love that,” you agreed bashfully, both turning your attention back to the coop of hens that you’d been distracted from.

After another moment of awkward silence, Soo uses up his remaining shreds of courage, “I could.. I could show you the lake tomorrow? It’s my favourite place in town...if you want”

When you glance up to see the blush painting his own cheeks, you no longer try to suppress your growing smile. Nodding along and smiling dumbly, watching Kyungsoo stutter a quiet ‘okay’ before taking the basket of eggs out of your hands and walking away before he throws up with nerves.

---

The next day you arrive at the farm bright and early, ready to work off the butterflies in your stomach that formed at the thought of spending time with Kyungsoo. Would you call it a crush? You suppose so. You find yourself looking for him constantly; feeling nervous when he’s around; yearning for any type of conversation that could tie you over till the next day. Your cheeks are rarely without a rose flush and you’ve lost a few too many ribbons trying to keep your hair somewhat decent throughout the day.

Yes you most definitely had a crush.

You however, were completely oblivious to the fact that Kyungsoo had been secretly harbouring feelings for you too. Not that he had made it obvious in any way that is. The stronger his feelings grew the more closed off he became. To Kyungsoo, you were perfection. The perfect mix of innocence and light, he had never met anyone like you before. He found your habit of talking to the animals adorable; the way you fill silences with bad jokes endearing; the way you weren’t discrete in any way when you watched him with curious eyes, nor when you tried to hide the blush on your cheeks when he looked back.

But you were too good. If anything the time you’d spent together in the last month or so had only proved that. Kyungsoo wanted so badly to keep you away from his life with EXO, to keep himself from falling too hard; but what was the harm in showing you around town a bit? He hadn’t heard you talk much about your life outside of the farm and besides, since having you around everyday it was harder for him to lie about not feeling so lonely.

“Soo!” You yelled out, he loved when you called him that. You waved overhead to further get his attention from across the yard, before running up to him. “I made us lunch, ya know, for the lake,” you let out shyly, holding up a basket filled with goodies.

Kyungsoo was too flustered to give a proper response, instead opting to take the basket from your hands and quietly suggesting the pair of you get going.

“Which, which way is it?” you giggle, watching Kyungsoo’s eyes widen when he realises that he hadn’t made any attempt to move.

“Oh, sorry it’s uh, just this way,”

Hailey watched the pair of you curiously; wagging her tail at the sight of you both stuttering over your words and giggling like nervous teenagers, impatiently waiting for her promised trip to the lake - but when Kyungsoo lets a giggle slip at his own mistake, Hailey quietens her whimpering not minding the wait.

The lake was even more beautiful than Kyungsoo had described; surrounded by trees and flowers blooming every colour of the rainbow. The water was calm and the reflection of the sun glistening on the surface was inviting, the grumbling of your stomach being the only thing stopping you running and jumping straight in.

Hailey ran ahead finding a spot beneath one of the trees, with the pair of you giggling at her excitement, following her lead.

“Let’s eat first shall we?” Soo asked, worried if he waited any longer then his own stomach would start making noises and there was no way he could deal with that embarrassment.

The two of you sat down in the spot Hailey had so kindly picked out, devouring the packed sandwiches and selection of nibbles you’d wrapped. You talk shyly about how beautiful the weather was and how cute Hailey looked rolling around among the flowers. It was an innocent type of awkward. Both hesitant with your words but at the same time not wanting the other to stop talking. Kyungsoo had laughed at the strawberry jam on the side of your lips, wiping it off with his thumb before he could think about it too much. You made him a daisy chain bracelet while he told you all about the latest mystery book he’s reading, not that you were paying too much attention, more focused on securing the frail stems around his wrist. He didn’t mind.

When you both got up to leave, even Hailey wasn’t finished witnessing the cuteness that was your ‘unofficial’ first date. She sprinted at your ankles, making you lose your balance and fall face first into the lake. Kyungsoo was mortified, dropping everything to try and help pull you out - but when you grabbed onto his outstretched hand you couldn’t resist pulling him in with you.

“I can’t believe you just did that!” He yells, the sound of your laughter drowning out his protests. When you don’t stop, head falling back with glee, Kyungsoo splashes the water around you.

“Hey!”

“You pulled me in!”

“Hailey tripped me!”

After a beat of silence, you both erupted into a fit of giggles, splashing and chasing each other around the bank like children high on a sugar rush. It was the most fun Kyungsoo had had in a long time; being able to let himself relax and just be himself with someone, he hoped the moment would never end.

Just as you were about to swim right passed him again Soo reached out to block your path, inadvertently forcing you to crash straight into his chest. He must have let his eyes wander down to the curve of your lips for just a split second, because in the next moment you have your hands placed firmly on his shoulders while your lips gently touch his own.

It takes 5 seconds before you realise that he’s not responding. He’s not responding and you’ve made a terrible mistake. You’re kissing your boss and he’s not doing anything.

“Oh my God…” you push yourself away from him with more force than you intended, letting a wave of water separate the two of you. Bringing your hands up to cover your face, you can’t bring yourself to look at him. “I’m so sorry..” you mumble against the palm of your hand, forcing yourself back to the waters’ edge, pulling yourself up so you can make a clean escape. Unfortunately your foot catches and your slip right back down.

Kyungsoo wants to move to help you. He wants to say something, ask you to stay. To go back in time just 5 minutes and have a do over. But he’s frozen in place, watching you stumble up the bank and grab your things, watching you run back down the path and out of his sight.

When he does finally regain control of his body it’s almost scary how quickly he lashes at the water, cussing under his breath at what he’d just let slip away.

---

Getting out of bed the next morning was torture. The last thing you wanted to do was go to work and have to face Kyungsoo after you’d so badly misread everything yesterday.

Somehow you managed to drag yourself to the farm but there was absolutely no way you could bring yourself to see Kyungsoo. So, you did the only rational thing you could think of, get as much done in the first few hours as possible then run off to hide in the fields till Soo had finished his deliveries.

That’s where you were when Hailey found you, pulling strands of grass absentmindedly.

“Oh hey Bub, what are you doing all the way out here?” You gently ruffle behind her ears when she walks right up to you, nosing for attention. “You wanna go for a walk girl? I could the company,” At the sound of that Hailey pipes up, running in excited little circles by your feet.

She runs ahead of you through the fields, stopping every few minutes to make sure you were still following her. It was adorable, and cathartic, taking a stroll with the ball of happiness that was Hailey; the warm breeze helping clear your mind.

Eventually you find yourself in an unfamiliar part of the farm, Hailey was wagging her tail as she led you in and out of the tall plants.

“What the hell,” you mumble, walking further into the garden. “Did you know this was back here Hail?” But the pup just kept walking.

You’re not an idiot, you know what this is; but why was it here? Did Kyungsoo know about this? If he does then what the fuck was he doing? A million different thoughts race through your mind the longer you walked around the unfamiliar place.

“What are you doing!?” Kyungsoo’s deep voice booms from over your shoulder, sending a chill up your spine so cold you daren't turn around. “What. Are. You. Doing,” he repeats.

Taking a deep breath you force yourself to face him, eyes wide and teary when you see the look he’s giving you. “Soo what is…”

“Who said you could come back here!” He cuts off your questions with a raised voice, ignoring the pang in his chest when your eyes start to glass over. “Hailey come here now,” she runs over to him immediately, leaving you standing alone in front of them.

“Can’t you just do your fucking job! Get out of here!” Kyungsoo sighs heavily, running his hand through his hair and turning his back to where you’re standing there, shaking.

He didn’t yell because he was mad...okay maybe a little, but only at himself. He just panicked, you weren’t supposed to see all of this, he didn’t want you to see. It was the one thing he was most ashamed of in his life, and you were the one person he never wanted to see him like that; and now he was shouting at you, watching tears fill your eyes.

When he did finally turn back around you were gone.

“Stop looking at me like that Hailey...you brought her up here,” she was looking up at him with such disappointment, he knew he fucked up, “yes I know I went overboard… just...let’s just go.”

---

“Just do your fucking job” he had said. That’s what had upset you most. “Do your fucking job” As if you hadn’t spent your every waking hour on the farm doing everything he had asked of you to near perfection. If that’s all he had to say then that’s all you would do. Your fucking job.

You went straight back to work, not bothering to try and hide away from him anymore, maybe it was petty but if he was going to shout at you about working then you’d make damn sure he saw you doing just that.

Making sure everything was perfect; animals fed; equipment put away; you didn’t even stop to talk with the animals as you got on with things, nor did you hum along with the birds that sang as you worked.

Kyungsoo watched you for the rest of the day, he felt guilty for snapping at you, guilty for why he snapped in the first place. Just as the two of you had started to get somewhere he had ruined it. You wouldn’t even look at him, let alone talk - he needed to fix this.

It was getting late and you were making your last rounds in the stables, checking the horses were okay for the night. One of the mares had somehow gotten into the wheat field and strands of the grass matted throughout her mane. You didn’t mind taking the extra time to clean her up, rather than give Kyungsoo another reason to complain about your work ethic.

When Soo notices the stable light still on he decides it’s now or never.

You’re untangling Zoey’s braids, pulling out grass and brushing it back down again. Kyungsoo sees you flinch when he approaches but still you won’t look at him. He wants you to say something because he has no idea how to start. But you don’t, only turning to leave when he steps closer.

“Wait, wait Y/N please,” his voice is small but it makes you stop. Not that you’d admit it but you hated the tension brewing between you both today, after weeks of falling for him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to shout earlier… please just look at me again Y/N,”

Your eyes are already glassy and your bottom lip is held tightly between your teeth when you turn to face him. You look so hurt he thinks, how could he let himself get so angry before?

“I… didn’t want you to see that… I don’t want you to see that part of me. It’s not something I’m proud of and I don’t want you to think of me that way,” he explains nervously. Will you run? Will you hate him? Will you ever be able to look at him like you did the day before again? Oh my god he’d completely forgotten about what happened at the lake.

Hesitantly he steps forward reaching out and cupping the side of your face, having to stop himself from retreating back when you freeze under his touch.

“I don’t want you to think I’m this horribly evil person… not when I think you’re the most perfect, beautiful human being I’ve ever met… I don’t want to scare you away…”

Not sure how to react to his confession, you just look up at him trying to read if he really means what you think he means so you don’t end up embarrassing yourself again. Could he actually like you? Crushes never like you back... yet here he was, cupping your cheek and looking at you like you were everything.

“I would never think that you know,” closing the gap between you with a single step, you lean further into his touch, as if giving him permission. His lips are chapped and uncertain. Moving against your own gently just in case he had misread something, only pushing for more when you grip onto the fabric of his shirt, anchoring his body to your own. After a second you reluctantly pulled away, foreheads pressed together while you both tried to collect yourselves.

He really just kissed you… that means he likes you...right? He’s looking at you like he likes you… and he kissed you like he likes you… so..so he does, right?

“I really like you,” can he read your mind now? “Please like me back.” I guess not.

“I like you very much Kyungsoo, very very much.” The second - well, third - kiss was even better than you could have imagined. Passionate and needy as all the walls that had been building up between the two of you, finally came crashing down; his fingers threading through your hair and your arms wrapping around his neck, too scared to let go incase it was all a dream.

“You should stay here tonight, it’s far too late for you to be walking back into town now,” Kyungsoo knows full well you walk home at this time every single day, but he can’t help but want to keep the moment for a little longer, if not for just one night.

---

The farmhouse is dark when you both stumble your way inside, the warm interior a stark contrast to Kyungsoo’s cold persona, but somehow still making perfect sense. Neither of you turn on the light, instead just standing in front of each other, trying to figure out what to do next.

Even in the darkness you know that Kyungsoo is looking at you, you always know. His eyes burn your skin with such intensity that it gives you chills; even when he tries to make his stolen glances discreet, you can always feel him.

“What is it?” You ask with a nervous giggle, you feel so conscious under his gaze.

“It’s just..you’re beautiful,” He has no idea where this sudden rush of confidence has come from, but seeing you standing right there, he suddenly wants to confess everything he feels. He wants to tell you about all the times he’s had to stop himself from staring too long at your lips, or how they’re just as incredible as he’d imagined. He wants to tell you about every sinful thought that ran through his mind late at night, long after you’d left and how he’d wished so badly for you to touch him.

He feels the heat crawling up his neck as those thoughts rush to his mind, he’s held back for so long, now that the barrier is broken he doesn’t want to wait anymore.

And as if you could feel his desire through the air, you both rushed towards each other, in a clash of teeth and tongue your bodies melded together in a haze of lust and impatience. His hands move down to grip your hips firmly, not enough to hurt, just enough to keep you close.

When you pull on his neck slightly Kyungsoo gets the message and hoists your thighs to hook around his waist, the new angle making it easier for you to kiss him and him to move you to the bedroom.

You don’t even realise you’re in a different room till you feel the soft sheets below you, Kyungsoo prying open your legs so he can slide between them while leaving hot kisses on the side of your neck.

“Is this okay?” He asks, fingers dancing up your thighs insufferably slow. You whisper a quick ‘yes’ before going back to kissing him.

“What about this?” you feel his hands toying with the elastic of your panties, the burning fire in his eyes never leaving you own, watching how your face, your body, reacts to his movements. When you feel him press firmly on your clit through the thin fabric, you can’t help the way your breath stops.

“Is it okay if I do this?” He’s teasing you now. Sliding down your pliant body till his face is level with your heat; slowly pulling the cotton panties down your legs, exposing yourself to him. “So beautiful,” he whispers against your skin over and over.

You’d slept with people before, shared those intimate moments with one or two ex boyfriends in the past - but never have you felt the love and passion that came with sleeping with Kyungsoo. His touch. His kiss. The way his hips rolled into yours at an excruciatingly slow pace but hitting all the right spots inside of you. His eyes never leaving your face, lips never leaving your skin. One hand wrapped behind your back to keep you as close as possible while the other rubbed dangerous circles on you clit. It was perfect.

He loved the way your skin glistened with sweat as your hips desperately bucked up for more; the way your hand moved down and squeezed his ass with every thrust; the way your eyes squeezed shut and mouth fell open when you finally let yourself give in to him.

---

“I’m sorry Hailey I got distracted,” Kyungsoo was trying his best to whip up some late breakfast, leaving you to sleep for a bit longer in bed. In the midst of everything that had happened the night before, he had forgotten that Hailey had been shut out of the bedroom and had to sleep alone downstairs.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, giving the pup a stern look, “but don’t go chewing up her shoes just because you spent the night on the couch okay? I like her.. More than like her I think, even if she can’t milk a cow to save her life.. I like her and I know you like her too,” Hailey responds with a bark in agreement, liking the happy energy coming him.

“In my defense, it’s just Daisy that doesn’t let me milk her and I’m 90% sure it’s because she doesn’t like me!”

You’re standing against the door frame, hair tied back messily, wearing Kyungsoo’s button down shirt from the day before, a flustered blush on your cheeks and smile tugging on your lips after hearing his words.

“Daisy likes you!” Kyungsoo tried to reason, turning back to the pancakes in an effort to hide his growing smile and flustered cheeks; but that had only left his back exposed and when he felt you wrap your arms around his waist and cheek press against his shoulder blade in a back hug, well he might have just died a little bit.

“Daisy would sell me for half an apple with zero hesitation!”

It feels strangely normal to sit at Kyungsoo’s breakfast table, eating overdone pancakes and talking about the day. It feels even stranger that it doesn’t scare Kyungsoo. Having you so close, letting you in; when he watches you fuss over Hailey while simultaneously trying to keep her from jumping up and stealing your pancakes - he’s not scared anymore. He only feels love.

A phone ringing in the other room rips him out of the new found comfort. It’s his ‘work’ phone, meaning it’ll be the Boss, meaning something is very wrong. Kyungsoo excuses himself quietly and you can tell from the way the smile vanishes from his face that something is up.

“Hey,” out of earshot Soo answers the call, afraid of what he’s about to hear.

“Something’s happened. We need to meet at the farm today.” Junmyeon’s voice is stern and cold on the other end of the line. It means this is serious.

“Is everyone okay?”

“Baek’s hurt, not too bad but enough. MX are moving in and we need a plan, we’re on our way to you now.”

“Okay I’ll be ready, see you soon.” When he hangs up the call, the sound of you cooing at Hailey reaches his ears through the halls and Kyungsoo curses.

You can’t be here.

“Uh Y/N, I’m really sorry but I need you to leave.” He looked panicked and it left a sour taste in your mouth.

“Is everything okay? What’s going on?” Just by looking at him you could tell something had spooked him. He was stiff and cold, eyes refusing to meet your own and he seemed as desperate as anything to get you to leave.

“Everything’s fine just..please leave.”

“I’m not leaving till you tell me what’s wrong Soo, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It’s a...work problem.”

“Great I work here, how can I help?” You know what he’s trying to imply but you can’t leave, not when he looks so shaken and not when you’d just gotten him to open up.

“Y/N…” Kyungsoo sighs in exasperation, you really were relentless.

“Look, you do what you need to do and I’ll take care of the farm. It’s business, I understand Soo, really.”

Without a word, Kyungsoo walked over and gently kissed your forehead before retreating back into the other room. He didn’t like the idea of you being here with the rest of EXO, but if he was being honest then he didn’t like the idea of you leaving any more.

With a deep breath, you quickly got yourself changed and headed out to work. You weren’t entirely sure what Kyungsoo’s other ‘business’ entailed, but you figured that it would probably mean he would be busy for the rest of the day. Which must have been right as Hailey opted to spend the day with you for a change.

---

“Well well, who are you and why don’t I know your name?”

You’re in the middle of leading some of the horses back into the stables when an unfamiliar voice calls out from behind you. You turn to see three men walking up the path of the farm, the one who’d shouted out earning a shove from the shorter of the trio.

“I’m Y/N, can I help you guys?” The taller one smirks at your offer, finding amusement in the causality of your question.

“Where’s Kyungsoo?” The shorter man asks flatly, clearly not as amused with the situation as the other two seem to be, much to your confusion.

“He’s a bit busy at the moment, is there anything I can do?”

“You could give me your number gorgeous and we cou-”

“Knock it off Sehun!” Kyungsoo shouts, quickly making his way over to the four of you, “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“Well don’t keep such a pretty face all to yourself then,” Sehun jokes, sending you a wink to further annoy the others.

“Enough.” The shorter man, Minseok you later learn, orders tiredly. “We’re meeting the others in town, get your stuff.”

“You’re leaving?” You don’t want Kyungsoo to leave, as much as you’re trying to pretend to be fine with everything, the idea that he was somehow caught up in the very obvious drug problem in Exodus was more than a little worrying - especially when he seemed so bothered by it himself.

“I have to... “ Soo could tell you were trying to hide your worry and he felt himself waver for a second. But Exo need him and the safest place for you during all of this would be the farm, even if it meant leaving you there alone. “Stay here while I’m gone, watch Hailey for me?”

Blocking the other three men’s view of you, Soo stands in front of you and cups your face lovingly, it felt like a goodbye and you didn’t like it. He leaned down to give you a gentle kiss, looking you in the eyes when he whispered ‘I’ll be back soon.’ How long that would be, you didn’t know.

---

It had been weeks. Not a word from Kyungsoo, or any of Exo for that matter.

In the time you’d had alone at the farm, you’d done your research on the group and their role in Exodus. It shocked and scared you sure, but you knew Kyungsoo and nothing could change the feelings that had blossomed over your time together. If anything, the new found knowledge was making you feel more concerned for him. Was he safe? Was he hurt? Was he ever going to come back?

Each day you woke up in Soo’s bed; did your daily chores; walked Hailey - hell, you even went as far as keeping checks on the supply just incase anything went wrong. Every night you spent hours sat in front of the living room fire, pretending to watch whatever rerun was playing on the television; Hailey at your feet, doing just as bad a job at not watching the door.

“He’ll be home soon Hailey, don’t worry” you were absolutely not projecting your worries onto the dog…. She was just very anxious. “They probably have lots of stuff to get through, that’s all…”

Hailey had gotten used to your rambling about Soo by now. Accepting the way you would talk about your feelings as if they were her own, your worries were hers, your hopes were hers. It comforted you.

But when you sleep in an empty bed every night with only the sounds of the growling winds outside in competition with Hailey’s snoring - you just want him to come home.

---

Heavy rain pounds against the windows of the farmhouse, that and a mix of late night tv soon lulled you to sleep on the red sofas. Hailey on the floor beside you and a half eaten sandwich left on the coffee table. That’s how Kyungsoo finds you.

He quietly slipped off his soaked coat, wincing at the pain in his shoulder from the events of the last few weeks, a mix of purple and green bruises painting his skin. He’s tired and the sight of you curled up on the sofa, face illuminated by the dwindling fire is more of a welcome than he could have ever hoped for.

“Good girl Hailey,” he whispers at the pup, keeping her calm so he could get to you without waking you up. God all he wants is to hold you, kiss you, tell you how much he’d missed you and hope you say the same; but you look so peaceful he daren’t wake you.

“Thank you for waiting my love,” he says softly, letting his fingers play with the ends of your hair gently before giving into temptation completely and joining you in lying down. Wrapping his arms around you and pulling you into his chest, almost as holding you was physically grounding him in the moment, reminding him that everything was going to be okay.

179 notes · View notes

officialthiamlibrary · 5 years ago

Note

Do you guys have any long slow burn AU fics to rec?

We sure have! 😊 Enjoy!

(Please not that this list only contains stories over 30k.)

Anchors by @thiamlife

Liam Dunbar has had enough of being out of control. So he decides to shut his wolf off for awhile… the only problem is it could end up getting him killed.

Theo Raeken had never been good with feelings. But he can’t fathom the idea of losing the little beta. So he makes it his personal mission to help Liam find his way back to the supernatural. Lines will be crossed and there may be no coming back from it.

[NR / 42.2k / complete]

Vargary by @lovelylittlegrim

Liam is worried everything will go to shit once the elder pack members leave Beacon Hills.

It does, of course, but he has Mason and Corey there to help him out.

He also, surprisingly, has Theo Raeken.

[TeenUp / 38.5k / wip]

Just too good to be true by @raekentheoryarchive

Liam has the worst luck when it comes to girls. Things just keep crashing and burning. Mason tries to convince him that maybe it’s time to come out, to date a guy instead, but his best friend won’t hear it. So he and Corey decide to find him the ultimate date, someone who’s exactly his type—snarky, tendency to punch people, and tough enough to put up with their volatile friend. Bad boy Theo Raeken is the perfect fit, despite his murky past and caustic personality. And the fact that he won’t do it for free. What could go wrong? // 10 Things I Hate About You AU.

[TeenUp / 56.2k / complete]

Midnight into morning coffee by @pettigrace

In an anger fit, Liam slashes his social studies teacher's tires. Enter Theo, who is an enigma surrounded by rumours, saving him. In return, he just wants Liam to pay his lunch. Easy, right? Liam would have never guessed the lane he starts walking by accepting the deal.

[TeenUp / 138.5k / wip]

On the same side by @teen-wolf-af

Liam is an FBI agent. Theo is an untouchable drug lord. There's a chase, some grudging trust, and finally the falling in love. It may seem unlikely, but in the end, they find themselves on the same side.

[TeenUp / 101.7k / complete]

Compared to the moon by @flyde

Theo Raeken is back in Beacon Hills. He is an outcast in a world where people show their true colors as actual colors beneath their skin, because Theo himself is a blank page. Joining the lacrosse team, he hopes for one last shot at finding a real place to belong. But things don´t start off too great, especially not between him and the team captain, Liam Dunbar.

[Explicit / 143.8k / complete]

Desolate by @glitter-cake20

Liam involuntarily becomes an Alpha. He refuses accept the new wolf and instead runs away, leaving Beacon Hills behind, and takes to a small cabin in the Colorado mountains for refuge, mostly from himself. He subdues the alpha wolf in him... Until one day when he has absolutely no choice but to let it out.

[Explicit / 60k / complete]

I can't not love you by @raekentheoryarchive

Liam's a little lost in life. His latest relationship has fizzled out, his best friends are about to be married, and he’s rapidly realizing he doesn’t want to be the best man without a date. So, inspired by their tale of rekindled romance, he decides to track down all his exes and figure out which one was right for him all along. The problem is that several have been out of contact for years, and he has no idea where they are. The solution? His promiscuous, struggling musician neighbor Theo, who happens to have dabbled in the police academy long enough to be good at digging up dirt and finding people. But time is running out, the wedding countdown clock ticking ever closer, and if Theo can stop flirting with him for maybe five seconds and find his former flames, he might have a shot at this. || What’s Your Number AU.

[TeenUp / 48.6k / complete]

Wilful Entrapment by @RedCoral

Theo looked at him from head to toe in the dingy bar they were at, his expression thoughtful and deadly serious as he said, "So tell me Liam. Are you sure you're not a parking ticket? Because you've got fine written all over you."

Liam laughed so hard, he almost fell from the barstool. "Oh my God. Is that what you're going with?"

"Did you know people are more likely to laugh at the jokes of people they're attracted to?"

[TeenUp / 41.9k / complete]

Tougher Than The Rest by @glitter-cake20

Theo is horribly self conscious about his body, but a pair of blue eyes sees him for what he truly is.

[Explicit / 44.1k / complete]

The Last Of Us by @raeken_09

A bizzare fungal infection breaks out all over the world, causing people to lose their minds and turn into infected monsters. The remainder of civilisation was quarintined in cities while soldiers kept a close watch on who goes in and out. The McCall Pack is fractured when it proved that the bites of the Infected were deadly to werecreatures. After a careless night out to just be normal teenagers Liam and Mason are bitten. So why does Liam live to see te morning?

[Mature / 50.3k / complete]

Vacancy Signs by @lovelylittlegrim

Theo and Liam are in Manhattan negotiating a pack allyship when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. Now, the two of them have to find their way back to Beacon Hills without getting eaten by zombies or killing one another.

[Explicit / 89.6k / wip]

Just like a tattoo, I'll always have you. by @mmmwddd

The pack has just defeated the Ghost Riders and for now everything is fine. At least until Liam’s sixteenth birthday when his soulmark shows up with a name that he was not expecting.

[NR / 31.4k / complete]

Happiness is a four-letter word by @glitter-cake20

Liam goes out looking for trouble, instead he finds the beginning of a road that could change everything for him.

[Explicit / 93.4k / complete]

Highway to Hope by @flyde

Theo has been obsessed with this youtube guy who posts videos of himself singing in his car. Watching every video there is of Liam, Theo finds himself falling in love. When Liam's songs get more and more sad and dark, Theo starts worrying. The shadows beneath Liam's eyes get darker in every new clip, his voice huskier, his driving a little too fast, a little too reckless. Paying close attention, reading between the lines, Theo can tell Liam is not okay. And then the catastrophe happens.

[Mature / 41.4k / complete]

Scepticism by @sweetest_thiam

Everyone told Liam to avoid the kid in the hallway, but that scrutinizing gaze was just too tempting.

[TeenUp / 50.9k / wip]

Red by @extrasteps and @ajp-37

Theo returns from hell but has lost all of his powers, including his chimera status, making him completely human. He also has a red string of fate wrapped around his left wrist, connecting him to Liam, the one who brought him back. When Malia attacks him, she nearly kills him, and Liam and Lydia step in, all but forcing Scott to bite him and make him a werewolf. Making Theo pack, and the growing connection between him and Liam, changes the whole outcome of season 6.

[Explicit / 134.1k / wip]

We Who Wait by @wolfenboyb

Liam is the son of a local preacher struggling to get good grades, to fit in, to live up to his father's expectations. Every spare moment is spent at the church or school, much to his best friend's annoyance. So when Mason drags Liam out to an underground all-ages punk rock show he's thrown into a world that frightens and excites him. Especially when he meets Theo, the pink haired, in-everyones-face vocalist that gives no fucks and causes trouble where ever he can. And he has a close eye on the preacher's son.

[TeenUp / 83.3k / wip]

The boy I shouldn't want to love by @dan13la-blog-blog

Liam comes back to Beacon Hills after years, when his mother decides to get remarried. His big shock is finding out that his new step-father's son is the same guy that back then in elementary school used to bully him, making his life a literal hell...

[Mature / 161.6k / wip]

#thiam #officialthiamlibrary #thiam fanfic #fic recs #slow burn #long stories #mod: janna #otlansweredask

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eeveedel · 6 years ago

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Hi everyone, here’s another fic rec for you! Today I decided to post about a trope that I feel like I don’t talk about enough but that I absolutely love: magic and supernatural fics! I organized the below fics by trope so you can find something you love no matter what kind of fantasy you’re into. I hope you find something you like and be sure to show any of the fics mentioned here lots of love if you decide to check them out!

Vampires

Run and I’ll Give Chase by Madalynn_Bohemia (24k)

“You go out every night and maybe you’re able to drink without hurting anyone, but you’re still thirsty, aren’t you? Still have an itch you can’t scratch. A need you can’t put a name to. You desire a companion.”

“You mean a keeper?” Harry corrects with venom in his voice. “Someone to put a leash on me.”

“Wouldn’t need a leash, love.” Louis whispers sensually, and he is suddenly behind Harry, too fast for his eyes to keep track of. “You’re practically pliant just by being in my presence. Of course, if you’re into that sort of thing, I could always get you a lovely collar with a matching leash once you decide to take me up on my offer.”

Or, Harry is a fledgling vampire without a maker. Louis is graciously offering to fill that role.

Howls Like a Beast (You Flower, You Feast) by indiaalaphawhiskey (16k)

France, 1754. Château de Versailles.

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

Louis had rolled his eyes, exasperated and flippant in the way only beautiful, young boys could be when faced with the affections of a baby prince. He had run his finger down Harry’s cheek then, had forced him to look into his eyes as he delivered the final blow.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.

Read you like some kind of poem by mentalistcbm (11k)

He likes to imagine that he’s always aware of Harry’s eyes on him, but the spark that flashes across his body at how often Harry licks his lips while looking at his throat doesn’t feel like something he’s explicitly and consciously acknowledged before, but it feels familiar. Usual. Right.

(Louis is human, and Harry is lucky enough to be his vampire boyfriend.)

Waiting on You by emma1234 (76k)

“Vampires,” Louis says with disgust, glaring over at the vampire who is noisily slurping from the woman’s neck nearby.

Zayn gives the neat fang marks on Louis’ neck a meaningful look.

“Can’t live with them, can’t live without them,” Louis finishes, ignoring Zayn when he rolls his eyes.

Louis takes a long sip of his milkshake, presses his fingers against the marks on his neck, and definitely doesn’t think about the vampire who left them there.

Love Endless by wubwubnparmaham (171k)

The year is groovy 1973, and eighteen-year-old Louis Tomlinson is perhaps the gayest teen to ever grace the gloomy, hateful town of Fortwright. Would be fine if he wasn't so viciously bullied at both home and school for such a "harmful" sexual preference.

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this story, haven't we? Believe him, Louis didn't think he was anything special either.

Until he found the mansion. The notoriously haunted mansion hidden deep within the forests of his tiny blip of a town in Bumfuck Nowhere, Idaho. No one with a brain ever goes near it, but Louis could use a little excitement in his life...and possibly a Band-Aid or two.

After discovering the mansion was less abandoned than he'd thought, he's now left with the most riveting mystery of a lifetime, every new finding leaving him with more questions. Who is this elusive owner, and why won't they show themselves? Why is there a set of journals in the same handwriting that span over centuries? Why in the world is there a padlock on the refrigerator...and who the hell is Alexander?

Nocturnal Creatures are Not So Prudent by patdkitten (24k)

Louis is a white witch with a little black cat named Hemlock and a best human friend Liam (they're a lot like Samantha Stephens and Louise Tate). When he's dragged out to a new club Liam's heard about from a friend and classmate, Louis comes face to face with that which witches do not touch: a charming vampire by the name of Harry.

Werewolves

Amaryllis by hattalove (146k)

"Where are we?" "Um. A little while out of London?" Niall tries, seemingly the only one willing to not be mysterious and provide Harry with information, and. Oh. "London London? As in, the capital of England London?" he asks, just in case he'd misheard. "No, the other London," Louis laughs, low and biting. He comes closer finally, the moonlight just enough to reveal a sharp-cut jaw and pale skin. "Sorry, Pup." Nobody's ever called Harry a "pup". Frankly, he finds it quite insulting, but he lets it slide to try and comprehend his current crisis.

or the one where harry gets bitten by a werewolf. louis is the mysterious not-quite alpha, liam and zayn have Things going on, niall is their token human, and together, they watch a lot of TV.

Break open the sky by karmelised (20k)

Being a werewolf isn't always easy. Especially if you have no idea what you're doing.

or, Werewolf au. Harry might be a werewolf, but he still wants to experience Uni like everyone else. Turns out he learns a lot.

Mermaids

Coax the Cold by MediaWhore (86k)

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

Sirene by iwillpaintasongforlou (4k)

Harry stumbles across a strange and beautiful creature -merman Prince Louis of Sirène- as he walks along the beach one night. When a bit of magic Louis had never dared to believe in has him trading in fins and scales for real human legs, Harry takes it upon himself to show him exactly how this new human body works.

(Louis is a merman who turns into a human and Harry takes him home and takes him to bed.)

If the Surface Begs You Home by QuickedWeen (17k)

Harry is a mermaid from the underwater kingdom of Mercadia who is a little too fascinated by life above the surface. He's kicked out of his home after he winds up pregnant, and has to figure out how to make his way in the world. Louis is the darling of the small neighbouring seaside village who came home after university to take over their local library, and can't seem to stay away from the mysterious pregnant mermaid his friends introduce him to.

To the light by fondleeds (13k)

“Hey,” Louis kicks his leg out at him, misses by a mile, but Harry’s cheeks still glow at it, all close-mouthed smile and dimples. “It’s Christmas. I refuse to let you be lonesome and dejected on Christmas.”

"It’s not Christmas yet,” Harry says, matter-of-fact, like he knew that before Louis told him about it that first week of December, when the lights had started appearing and Harry had risen out of the water with such wonder and dreaminess in his eyes, the last dustings of snow caught in his wet lashes.

“It’s the Christmas season,” Louis responds. Harry rolls his eyes at him.

AU. Harry is a mermaid lost at sea and Louis is a boy determined to make his first Christmas a memorable one.

Witches

Forget-Me-Not by SexyAsswoMan (26k)

“I- I can't move” the elder one finally croaked out, and with more distress Harry came to see that the vines had wrapped itself around the lad's ankles. With a dumb nod Harry took a couple of steps forward. He could see Louis flinch with his sudden movement but he tried not to think about it. Instead, he lifted his hands, and tried his best to concentrate, hoping his power would listen to him just this once around the other man and untie him. Ever so slowly, the vines started to detach themselves from Louis's calves, and soon enough, the man was free.

With shaking legs, Louis stood up from the position he was in, and suddenly the air around them got thicker.

“You're- you're a witch.” Louis hissed under the harsh wind, making Harry flinch at the accusation in his voice.

Where Harry had something he did not wish to have. Louis was just trying to figure him out.

Burn by anchortied (21k)

Louis is plagued by nightmares of being burned at the stake. Every time he closes his eyes he can see the flames, smell the smoke, taste the acrid smell of his own death in his nostrils. There is nothing he fears more than this. Besides being something other than what he truly is. Which is, to say in the very least, a powerful witch. One of the most powerful in in the world, as far as he knows. His magic can't even be matched by Liam, who learned quicker than anyone he's ever met, or Niall, who's magic fire could burn through a whole village in a mere moment if he wanted to. When Louis meets Harry however, he realizes that his magic isn't as strong as he thought. And as he tries to navigate through this magic, and the trials of friendships and lost loves that come along with it, Louis finds that being powerful is more of a plague than he realized. A plague that infects more people than he is comfortable with. (A Witch AU based off of The Craft -a very loose interpretation)

Fae

Black with Autumn Rain by whimsicule (93k)

“Thank you,” Geoff says, taking a sip of his tea. “What did you tell him?”

Louis has a sip as well, lets the tea burn down his throat too quickly, too hot, and he feels it all the way down to his stomach. “The truth. Essentially,” he replies after a moment, licking his lips, relishing the slightly bitter taste of the brew that’s never quite strong enough for Louis’ liking. At least it’s not decaf. “That my dog scented it. That I didn’t touch the body. That I came here first thing.”

Geoff nods pensively. “Did he believe you?”

“Probably not. There’s only so many people who can drown on dry land before it gets fishy.”

or: Harry is a journalist, Louis has lots of secrets and the moors aren't exactly the ideal place to rekindle a lost romance.

Boiling Blood Will Circulate by whoknows (42k)

The wait isn’t long before something starts rustling in the bushes. Harry takes aim, squeezes the trigger, body moving unconsciously. They’re motions he’s done a thousand times before, and his body knows how to do it without the input of his brain now. It’s what makes him such a good shot.

He misses. The shot misses.

Something howls in the woods, a pretty clear indication that Harry hit it, but there’s no telltale sounds of a big body dropping, no animal charging out at him to take him out before he can finish the job.

Something does turn and run, though. “Fuck,” Harry spits out, scrambling to his feet and slinging the rifle back over his shoulder, giving chase. He’s not going to lose this hunt.

The trail of blood goes on longer than Harry thought it would. He doesn’t know how long he runs for, but his muscles are burning, chest heaving with exertion, until the trail just - goes dead. No more blood, just like that.

“Fuck,” Harry says.

Fairy Tale Inspired

Elysian by wonderlou (81k)

“What could be it, Niall?” Harry asks gently with a sigh. He slouches down further into his chair, crossing his arms lazily across his chest. He is bored. He has been bored for five years straight, but even more so now that his one interest has shut himself out entirely. Harry had not even heard from Louis, not since last night, not since he had gotten on his nerves so much that he was torn between knocking him out and smiling in surrender to the slight awe he felt. Louis is opinionated like no one he’s ever seen, but his voice is honeyed; high-pitched and indignant. Harry is nothing short of entranced.

Or, Harry is running out of time to fall in love, but with Louis, it seems as if there’s all the time in the world.

Red by frosteddream (26k)

Shockwaves were sent through the village after the McPherson family was savagely killed. There were people who feared the beast that did it, and then there was Louis, or, as most people liked to call him, Red. (Little Red Riding Hood AU.)

No Place to Call Home by suspendrs (21k)

“What are you smiling about, Harrison,” the boy spits, body language suddenly getting defensive. “I’ll have you know that I’m-”

“Harry,” Harry interrupts, giggling. “My name is Harry. And if you’re not called Peter, then what are you called?”

The boy tilts his chin up slightly, surveying Harry like he’s checking if he’s worthy of knowing something as important as his name. “Well, Herschel, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Louis.”

Or, Louis isn't Peter Pan and Harry isn't Wendy and Neverland is nothing like Harry thought it would be, but it's perfect anyway.

Mythology Inspired

Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight by alivingfire (110k)

Louis is an angel who is just a little too bad to be good, Harry is a demon who is just a little too good to be bad, and they're both a little too in love to be impartial when angels and demons go to war.

You Flower, You Feast by stylinsoncity (18k)

He's King of the Underworld, but don't assume Louis has it all. He could stand for some excitement in his monotonous, eternal life and maybe, even.....a soulmate.

(Despite not having a soul.)

And along came "Harry".

Miscellaneous Themes

Through Eerie Chaos by MediaWhore (102k)

For as long as anyone can remember, Old Hillsbridge Manor has always been believed to be haunted. Everyone in the village agrees and keeps a respectful, fearful, distance. New in town after a bad breakup and an internship that led to disappointment rather than a permanent job, Harry Styles figures taking pictures of the decrepit building could be a great new creative project. Or at least a much-needed distraction while he searches for a job and crashes at his parents’ new house. No one warned him about the apparitions though; about the music, the laughter, the people who flicker and vanish when you call after them, the echoes of a past that should be long gone… Harry has never believed in spirits but even he can admit that there’s something weird going on. What starts as mere curiosity evolves into a full-blown investigation and soon enough, Harry finds himself making friends with an aristocrat from the 1920s and struggling with finding the best way to tell him that he’s dead.

The Ghost Hunter AU where Niall lives to prove ghosts are real, Zayn is a skeptical librarian and Harry gets caught up in a century-old mystery and catches feeling in the process.

the impossible now by stylinsoncity (64k)

A wish on Christmas Eve sends Louis to an alternate dimension where Harry is a member of One Direction.

my heart is breathing for this moment in time by usedtothebeach (159k)

When Louis first saw Harry at the 2010 X Factor Auditions, he thought he was watching a peculiarly special stranger. But Harry has known Louis ever since he was five years old.

Because Louis has a rare genetic disorder that causes him to Time Travel to important moments in his past and in his future - and to Harry, always to Harry. When they're put into a band together, it seems like everything Harry has been waiting and wishing for has finally come true. Except for the small fact that Louis doesn't know that Harry is in love with him- that Harry's always been in love with him. Fate, it would seem, is just getting started.

A story about growing up and growing together, and the impossible love that makes it all worthwhile.

Truth in Your Eyes by summerwine (15k)

"...I found it half spilled over by the loveseat not too long ago.” Louis eyed him imploringly with a slight curl to his lips. “My mate gave it to me as a gag gift. He bought it during his gap year from some novelty shop in Belfast. I never did get to try it. I was always sort of intimidated by the label.” Louis twisted the bottle in his hand, revealing the label written in gold, and only now visible to Harry’s sober eyes. Truth Serum.

#god tier fic recs #larry fanfiction #larry fanfic #larry fanfic rec #one direction fan fiction

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pengychan · 6 years ago

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[Coco] Nuestra Iglesia, Pt. 6

Title: Nuestra Iglesia Summary: Fake Priest AU. In the midst of the Mexican Revolution, Santa Cecilia is still a relatively safe place; all a young orphan named Miguel has to worry about is how to get novices Héctor and Imelda to switch their religious vows for wedding vows before it’s too late. He’s not having much success until he finds an unlikely ally in their new parish priest, who just arrived from out of town. Fine, so Padre Ernesto is a really odd priest. He’s probably not even a real priest, and the army-issued pistol he carries is more than slightly worrying. But he agrees that Héctor and Imelda would be wasted on religious life, and Miguel will take all the help he can get. It’s either the best idea he’s ever had, or the worst. Characters: Miguel Rivera, Ernesto de la Cruz, Héctor Rivera, Imelda Rivera, Chicharrón, Óscar and Felipe Rivera, OCs. Imector. Rating: T

[Tag with all chapters up here.]

[Also on Ao3]

A/N: you know you’re a complete dick when two novices and a fake priest show at your doorstep to beat the crap out of you. (Art in this chapter is by Dara and @senoraluna!)

***

It didn’t take too long for things to settle into a routine.

Miguel had known no one would question the altar boy spending a lot of time with the parish priest – after all, they assumed he’d taken him under his wing to share teachings and whatnot; just the opposite of what was going on – but he had feared Héctor would say something about it. Along with the fact he was spending a lot of time with Padre Ju-- Father John, because now for some reason he wanted to learn English, it drastically reduced the amount of time they got to spend together.

And instead, he hadn’t said anything. They still met up often to play and sing, and Ernesto joined them – something the congregation had been surprised to find out at first, but hadn’t argued against – but Héctor’s mind seemed to be elsewhere. It was like he hadn’t even noticed how little time Miguel actually spent with him now, and it stung a bit… but it was for the best.

As long as that did mean he was thinking about Imelda, which he wasn’t entirely sure of.

“Are you sure he said nothing about her at all?”

“No, muchacho. If he had, I would have remembered to tell you. You ask something like four times a day,” Ernest muttered, flipping through the pages of the book. Miguel had to admit he was impressed by how good his memory was, how easily he memorized and repeated words he didn’t understand. It had taken Miguel a year as the altar boy to learn everything at heart; Ernesto was already almost there, and it had only been a couple of weeks.

“Not even in confession?”

“No. I’m pretty sure I would have recognized his voice, and plus no one I heard from lately confessed to anything nearly as saucy as wanting to bang a nun.”

Miguel blinked. “… Why would he want to shoot her?” he asked, and Ernesto gave a guffawing laugh.

“Hah! Sorry, kid, I forget-- er. I mean, no one has confessed to anything nearly as saucy as wishing to marry a nun. Though you wouldn’t believe the amount of chicken-stealing that goes on in this town.”

That made Miguel chuckle. “Confession should be a secret.”

“I’m not naming any names. I don’t get to see whoever is confessing, remember?”

“Still!”

“For the record, one of the sisters stole some candy that was meant for you at the orphanage.”

“What??”

“Do what you will with this information. I made her say twenty Hail Mary. If it helps, she felt bad.”

“As she should!” Miguel protested. It was pretty rare for them to get any candy at all; that someone would take it from them was a horrible injustice. Ernesto seemed to notice his scowl, and pushed the almost empty glass of wine over to him on the table. “Come on, have a sip. Won’t tell if you don’t.”

Well, that almost made up for the loss of candy. Miguel took the sip, held back a grimace – the taste was awful, but it wasn’t about that; it was about getting to say he drank it – and looked back down at the book. “At this rate, you’ll be able to say Mass next Sunday. The Easter one for sure!”

“Good. I’ve had it with Padre Culo Blanco’s bore fest. There are only so many times you can stand being told you’re going to hell before lunch time,” Ernesto scoffed, then shrugged. “He’s not bothering me, at least.”

“I heard Sister Sofía say that he’s avoiding you. He gets out real quick if he hears you coming.”

“… She mentioned as much to me as well, yes,” was the reply. “Maybe he’s afraid I’ll infect him with my lack of proper Catholicism, but works for me. He seems to have picked Héctor as his victim. I mean, pupil.”

“Héctor says he goes along because he wants to learn English.”

“Why would anyone?”

“Beats me,” Miguel said, then paused a moment before speaking again, unable to keep his concern out of his voice. “What if he told Pa-- Father John, and he’d telling him to stick to his vows?”

“Then it will be a pleasure to undo his holy work,” Ernesto muttered, and Miguel smiled a bit. It had been a real stroke of luck, getting an ally like him. A lot of people agreed that Héctor and Imelda should at least give it a try, but none of them was in the position of authority Ernesto held. “Is there any way you can get him to talk to you? He’s acting weird. I want to know if it’s about Imelda.”

“I’ll offer to lend an ear, since he looks troubled,” Ernesto said, and frowned. “What about this Imelda? I have only seen her from afar. So-- Sister Sofía says she’s been acting odd.

“I’m not sure,” Miguel admitted, unable to keep some disappointment from seeping into his voice. “She’s with the other nuns most of the time, and there are so many of us in the orphanage – I don’t really get to spend much time with her these days.”

“Did you use to?”

“Oh yes, before she became a novice! I played with her brothers. She was a bit stern, but really nice to me. I’m sure she’d be a good mamá,” he added, only to pause and blush when he realized he’d said too much. “I mean-- not that I need-- she’s not that much older than me...” he babbled, and shifted on his chair when Ernesto raised an eyebrow, “I mean… to any kids she and Héctor may have.”

“… You’re hoping they’ll get you out of the orphanage, huh?” Ernesto said quietly, and Miguel nodded. There was a sudden lump in his throat, and he tried to hold back some tears.

“It’s not that important. I really think they would be happy together. They can’t be my parents, you know? More like older siblings. They’re only… maybe twelve years older than me. I don’t need parents. I’ll be out in a few years anyway, and… it’s not that bad, it just isn’t...” Miguel sniffled, and reached up to wipe his eyes. “It’s not that bad,” he added, trying with some success to keep his voice firm. It wasn’t a lie. Most of the time it really wasn’t bad - it was just how things were. But sometimes, when he tried to imagine having what he never got… sometimes it hurt.

There was a pause, then a chuckle, and Ernesto reached to ruffle his hair. “Chin up, niño. We still have time to get them to see the light. I’ll get Héctor out of the clutches of the Holy Church and into the trap of holy matrimony if it’s the last thing I do.”

That caused Miguel to laugh a bit. He was already feeling a bit better. “Heh. Is it really a trap?”

“Oh, yes. A very tight snare, but hey, there are people who walk in it happily. As there are people who willingly take the vows. I’d do neither unless I had a rifle up my-- at my temple, but you know. Judge not, lest you be judged.”

A grin. “Spoken like a real priest.”

“Either you’re a good teacher, or Padre Juan is contagious,” Ernesto quipped with a laugh before finally looking down at the book. “All right, let’s see if I can remember this one...”

***

“… And these are the irregular verbs. You will need to memorize them, but other than that it’s pretty straightforward – far more logical than Spanish.”

For the seventeenth time since lunch, when he’d been subjected to not at all casual comments about Father John’s distaste for secular music - Héctor had to fight an overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. “I see,” he said instead, and smiled, teeth clenched. The man’s sermons were bad but God, he somehow managed to be even more condescending while teaching English – and the fact he didn’t seem to be aware of it made it even worse, somehow. “I’ll do my best to memorize them ahead of the next lesson.”

Father John smiled, as always entirely oblivious of how eager his pupil was to be out of there. “You are a very quick learner. I took more time than that to learn any Spanish, despite the fact I had heard it spoken by servants while growing up.”

God, give me patience. If you give me strength, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

“I see,” Héctor said, his voice a bit tighter than he should have allowed it to be, and Padre Juan seemed to pick that up, because for once he actually had the good grace to look embarrassed.

“I… I meant nothing by it, I simply… I grew up fairly close to the border, and--” he trailed off, suddenly even more uncomfortable. Of course he would be: he’d all but admitted that he’d been born and raised on land stolen from Mexico. Fitting, that.

Despite the annoyance, Héctor couldn’t help but feel somewhat bad for him, so he decided to put him out of his misery with a smile and a quip. “You grew up in northern Mexico, you mean,” he said, and the anxious expression on that round, white face faded in a relieved smile.

“Heh. I suppose,” he said, and hesitated for a moment before reaching into a drawer at his small desk. He pulled out a small book that seemed close to falling apart, and handed it to him. “I kept forgetting to give this to you – it’s my dictionary, so that you can look up any word in English if you wish to. I no longer…” a pause, and he made a face. “I rarely need it now.”

… Well, now that was going to be useful, if he was ever to attempt translating that letter – given that he would be able to get his hands on it in the first place. Maybe he should speak to Sofía about it. “Oh, thank you. This will be… very helpful.”

Unaware of his thoughts, Father John Johnson smiled. “You’re quite welcome. You have a lot of potential – I am sure you’ll lead a congregation down the right path, one day.”

“Oh, I do hope so,” Héctor said, smiling back, but it was with a sudden sense of dread, a weight on his chest telling that maybe, just maybe, he actually did not. “But perhaps Padre Ernesto would benefit as well, you know? I could suggest he joins us here,” he added.

He’d meant it partly as an attempt to change subject, partly as a jest at Padre Ernesto’s expenses – unfair, how he was spared that guy’s company despite being the parish priest – and he wasn’t prepared for the reaction it got him: Padre Juan grew even paler, like he’d causally suggested he should put a rattlesnake down his shirt. He blinked, taken aback.

“Father John? Are you all right?”

The other man blinked, and nodded quickly. A neutral expression was back on his face, as quickly as it had slipped off. “I doubt Father Ernest would take on the offer,” he said, his voice somewhat stiff. “I… my apologies. My head spun for a moment. It might be best for me to rest.”

“Would you like to see a doctor?”

“No, thank you,” Father John replied, and smiled almost like he meant it. “I’ll be fine with a bit of rest. I apologize for the concern I caused.”

Héctor reassured him there was no need to apologize, but he was extremely relieved when he finally walked out of the door, holding the dictionary to his chest and with a rather confused frown.

Inside the room, John Johnson stared at the wooden door for a few moments, lost in thought – those awful, awful thoughts – before he locked it and walked up to the chest of drawers with heavy steps, unbuttoning the cassock. He bared his torso before kneeling and opening the bottom drawer, already uttering a prayer under the silent gaze of the crucifix on the wall.

The familiar weight of the whip in his hand was a cold, cold comfort.

***

With all messages placed – under a flower pot for the seamstress, at the Gonzalez crypt for the gravedigger, inside the box of offerings for Imelda or Sister Gisela or whatever the hell she wanted to be called now – his work for the day was done. He should return to his regular duties so that no one would suspect a thing, and he would… but first, there was something else he wanted to take care of.

Looking after a horse was time-consuming, smelly, and definitely an extra chore he did not need. Besides, what use did a parish priest have for such a fine horse? None, that was it. There were others, however, who could put it – Dante, Padre Ernesto called it – to a better use.

He had time; no one would look for him for another couple of hours. No one looked for him unless they needed something from him, after all. Ungrateful bastards, all of them.

Glancing around to ensure no one was there to see him, Gustavo walked silently behind the church and towards the stable.

***

He was not in a good state of mind to hold confession; John had no problem acknowledging it.

Beneath the cassock, his back throbbed horribly. He had prayed, he had cleansed himself, and then he’d been torn from his thoughts by a knock at his door and a request to hold confession that day - something on how Father Ernest’s horse had gone missing, and he’d gone looking for it. John could hardly believe the man had put a horse above his holy duty, but perhaps he should stop letting it surprise him. He’d sighed, and taken on the task.

Most confessions concerned minor sins, but this one - this woman - wasn’t seeking to confess as much as she was looking for advice, although what she had in mind had to be a sin.

“You wish to leave your marital home. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I… I must, Padre. For my safety. He was always a… a difficult man, but since his mother died… last night he lost his mind, and… he left marks, and I… I feared he wouldn’t stop until--”

John scoffed, causing her to trail off. Such weakness, such low moral fiber, trying to flee at the first sign of hardship! “Did you not take that man as your husband?”

“I did, but--”

“In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer? You took a sacred oath, binding you for life!”

There was a hiccupping sob. “He also promised to love and honor me, Padre. And he… he does not…” her voice broke, and for a few moments there were only tears.

Father John Johnson was not, contrary to popular belief, made of stone. The woman’s plight did stir something in his chest. He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath to keep his focus, and reached under his right sleeve. Across his forearm, there was a thin raised scar - the mark of the one and only attempt he had made to shield himself from rightful punishment, twelve years earlier; such insolence from his part, a boy thinking he knew better than a wise man he’d angered thought his failings. He traced it with his fingers, his mouth pulled into a tight line.

“Clearly, your failings caused anger.”

“No, I… I am sure I have many failings, Padre, but this time I had done nothing. He flew into a rage for no reason--”

“The anger of the head of a family is never without reason,” John all but snarled, causing the woman to fall silent. He regretted his harshness, but not his words. It was a simple fact - the head of the family had a duty to discipline. It was right. It was not out of cruelty, it couldn’t be.

It hadn’t been out of cruelty. John couldn’t stand to think otherwise.

He was right. He sought to correct me. “He meant to correct you, certainly,” he finally spoke again, his voice calm. On the other side of the confessional, the woman was weeping. A sign of guilt - he had wept, too - but he couldn’t stay indifferent to it. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “You need to ask God for guidance on how to better yourself.”

“I try,” the woman choked out. “I do, Padre! But nothing I do is enough, and I fear he may… one day, if he doesn’t stop-- I don’t fear death, but we have little children, I can’t leave them behind--”

“It is for the sake of those children that you need to mend what is broken. Your foolish idea to leave the marital home goes against the Bible - urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. And you’d turn your back to that? Taking the children from their father--” he paused, and something in his throat made it hard to force the next words out. “No child should leave their home, unless… unless forced.”

Father, I beg you. I’m trying-- I’ve been praying, I will overcome... I-if this is a test He put on my path, I am sure that with your guidance-- Mother, please, I’m sorry...!

His back burned now as it had burned then. John leaned against the side of the confessional, and the pressure made him feel faint - but it steeled his resolve, cleared his mind of doubt and misplaced pity. Through the haze of pain, his voice rang out firm. “You must endure.”

“I…” her voice faltered, so thin and pained. “It’s so hard, Padre.”

“The Lord puts hurdles in our path. Anyone can do their duty when it’s easy. But each step you take away from your place will take you farther away from God. Think of that, and pray to the Holy Virgin for guidance,” he added. He was meant to give absolution, now, but he did not. After all, that had hardly been a confession; she had asked for advice, had received it, and it was up to her to either follow it or defy God’s will. "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, a shaky whisper - “for His mercy endures forever” - and then then the woman stood, and stepped away. No one else came to kneel at the confessional, but John sat in there for a long time afterwards, eyes shut, pressing his back against the wooden wall.

He needed to confess himself, too; he had gone too long without doing so, and he had sinned in thought; no amount of payer or self-inflicted penance could replace absolution from another priest. He wouldn’t be worthy of saying Mass or even receive the holy bread until he receive it… but there was one priest in that town who may confess him, one priest only, and he couldn’t confess it all to him. Father Ernest would know it was him; his accent would give him away the moment he he let out his voice spoke the unspeakable.

And John found the idea more unbearable than any punishment he could inflict upon himself.

***

In such dark times, it wasn’t so rare for somebody to break down on the steps of the church.

Especially when funerals were held, Imelda had seen it happening with widows and widowers, people burying their sister or brother. She had seen children mourning their parents and, most heartbreaking of all, parents mourning their children. Sometimes they wept quietly, sometimes they sobbed loudly. The woman sitting on the steps leading to the courtyard her children were playing in along with a few orphans - Fernanda Rodríguez, she recognized her as she stepped closer - was definitely trying to be silent, and utterly failing at it.

Thankfully, none of the children noticed - much less Fernanda’s own. Imelda and Sofía quickly ushered her inside, offered her a glass of water, and managed to calm her down enough to explain what had happened. Once she did explain, Imelda was ready to murder two men: her husband for reducing her in that state, and the gringo for telling her she had to endure.

“Let me go, Sofía, I just want to talk--”

“No you don’t,” she cut her off, holding her arm tighter. Her voice was a low hiss. “Sebastián Rodríguez wouldn’t be above trying to wring your neck, too. And Padre Juan--” she made a face. “Well. I’d like to see that, but he’s saying nothing most other priest wouldn’t.”

“No, that’s not true!” Héctor would never. “He--”

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” Sofía snapped. “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he--”

Imelda snarled, turning to glare at her. “What’s with the lesson? You agree with none of it.”

“But the Church does. You go confront the gringo, he writes of it to someone higher up, and--” Sofía began, only to suddenly pause… and then let go of her arm. “... Come to think of it, go right ahead. Might be the quickest way to ensure you never get to take the vo--”

“What-- Imeld-- I mean, Sister Gisela? Sister Sofía? What’s happening?”

Héctor’s confused voice caused Sofía to trail off, and Imelda turned. He was in the doorway, standing far closer than they’d been in some time, but Imelda was too furious to care.

“Rodríguez happened!” she spat, venom in her voice. “He decided to beat Fernanda, again! It’s like he tried to strangle her, and the gringo-- when she turned to the confessional for help, he told her to endure - that it was her fault! If he kills her, it will be on his head!”

Héctor blinked again, as though struggling to take in the words - then, slowly, his expression darkened. By the time she paused to draw breath, she was almost taken aback to see a fury that matched her own. Somewhere in the back of her mind, there was a cry of triumph.

Héctor would never!

“... Is Fernanda here?” Héctor asked, slowly. “Her children?”

“She’s in there - we let her have some time alone. Her children are playing outside.”

A nod. “Good,” Héctor muttered, and turned to march down the hallway, fists clenched.

“Héctor, wait!” Sofía called. “Get Padre Ernesto to talk to the gringo, he will have to listen--”

“He can deal with Padre Juan,” Héctor replied, marching out. “I’m paying a visit to Sebastián.”

As both Imelda and Sofía blinked, speechless, they could hear a familiar voice suddenly ringing out. “Oh, here you are! Where are you going in such a rush? About to waste more of your ti--”

“Get the hell out of my way, Gustavo!”

There was a surprised yelp, more steps, and then silence. Sofía turned to Imelda.

“I’m not saying he’s a man to marry,” she said. “But, if he survives, he is a man to marry.”

For once, Imelda had no retort.

***

It was just a horse.

The voice echoing in the back of his mind sounded aggravatingly like his father’s and, even worse, he knew it was telling the truth. Dante was just a horse; after what he had been through and what he had seen, in the barracks and in conflict - after all he’d had to get used to - the fact he had disappeared shouldn’t bother him that much. He may have stuck with him through thick and thin, carried him across a desert, made him laugh when he grew stubborn and had to be bribed with food - but he was just a horse.

And yet, he was his horse; the sight of that empty stable, with no sign of him anywhere, had far more than he liked to admit. Ernesto tried to tell himself that maybe he’d just wandered out, maybe the stable wasn’t shut properly. He really wanted to believe it, because it meant Dante may be back later, and that space aching cold in his chest would cease to be.

Meanwhile, he’d find Gustavo and grill him over what the hell happened, how could he let it happen, how come he couldn’t even close a fucking door right.

At least, that had been the intention - but, the moment Sofía rushed down the stairs to meet him, he coud tell there was something urgent going on. Namely that Brother Héctor had apparently decided to tempt his fate by confronting a guy who, according to her account, was the size of a bull and with a temper to match.

“... He’d break him over his knee, and Imelda won’t be able to keep it from happening!”

“Imeld-- the novice? She went with him?”

“Ran after him, really. Which I sort of hoped she’d do someday, but... not like this.”

“And I’m supposed to put a stop to whatever is about to happen?” Ernesto asked, but of course he already knew the answer, and he didn’t like it. Goddammit, he didn’t want to get into a fight. That hadn’t been part of the plan, never mind the fact there hadn’t really been any plan at all. He didn’t want any sort of trouble, but it seemed to be following him like an orphan dog. And speaking of orphans, hadn’t Miguel told him that damn town was a quiet place?

“Unless you want to hold a funeral or two, yes,” Sister Sofía was saying, as he knew she would.

Ernesto did his utmost to hold back a groan. Miguel wouldn’t like it at all, seeing the two lovebirds have a joint funeral rather than a wedding. Plus, of course he was supposed to get involved, being the parish priest and all. It was a damn mess and of course, of course Padre Juan was to blame. If he didn’t get his face smashed by the village blacksmith first, Ernesto would make sure to have words with that accursed gringo. “Fine. Fine. What’s the guy’s house?”

A nod. “It’s the house with the black gate, at the end of the main road and then on the left - it’s a bit isolated and the only house with a gate like that, you can’t go wrong,” she added. “I’ll stay here with Fernanda and her children.”

“Not coming for moral support?”

“You have my thoughts and prayers.”

“Gracias. That’s absolutely useless.”

“... And possibly something else, if you do come back in one piece.”

“That’s… slightly better.”

“Good. Now go do your holy duty. Or something.”

As he turned to run - another thing he hated doing; he could dance for hours, but running just about killed him - Ernesto thought, bitterly, that he could get there so much faster if only Dante wasn’t missing.

***

Later on, Héctor would laugh about what had happened, about Chicharrón's grumbles that he'd seriously miscalculated Rodríguez's size, and his odds to come out a winner. He'd say that he was right, he'd miscalculated, but of course that wasn't really it and Cheech had to know it, deep down. Héctor had known well that, if a fight broke out, he’d go down and would go down fast.

The thing was, he was too angry to care.

"SEBASTIÁN! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! OPEN THIS DOOR!"

It took some banging, and the door opened, letting out a string of profanities about being awakened at that ungodly hour - namely, eleven in the morning. Sebastián Rodriguez was as tall as Héctor but far wider, with the broad shoulders, deep chest and muscular arms that come with being a blacksmith. He’d been handsome, once, and maybe he still was, but it was hard to see it through the reddened skin, the bloodshot eyes and stubble covering sagging cheeks.

He looked all the world like an angry mastiff, and the thought Fernanda had been told to take her children and just return under his roof, at his mercy, made Héctor’s blood boil.

“Shut up!” he snapped, causing the man’s stream of curses to stop. Sebastián looked very confused for a moment, as though the fact someone - let alone a novice around half his weight - could scream at him had never crossed his mind, as unlikely as the sun rising from the West. Before he had time to process it, Héctor pushed him back, causing him to stumble back inside his living room - an impossible feat if he hadn’t been too stunned to react. “You’ve hit your wife for the last time, cabrón!”

The mention of his wife seemed to finally snap him out of his confusion, and he scowled. "What did that puta go around to say?" he growled. "The lying bruja, can't even keep a clean house. Did she run to the church? And what are you going to do, little priest?" his scowl turned into a very ugly smile, and he jabbed his middle finger painfully against Héctor's chest. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You go back and tell her that unless she wants me to give her a very good reason to cry, she will be back ten minutes ago and start getting my lunch rea--"

SMACK.

Héctor may not look like it, but he knew how to pack a punch: you don't spend your childhood in an orphanage and occasionally in the streets without learning a thing or two. He felt the blow all the way up to his shoulder, but he didn't care: all he could focus on was the grim satisfaction when Sebastián staggered back, holding a hand up to his nose, which was already gushing blood. There would be hell to pay, but oh, was it worth--

Retaliation came fast, faster than it could be expected from a guy that size. It hit him in the face, quite literally, before the sense of triumph had even faded. Suddenly there was blood on his tongue, his head bounced off the wall behind him, and the ground rushed up to meet him.

Héctor gasped, dazed; something small and hard fell out of his mouth along with a mouthful of blood. He tried to stand, but a sudden kick to his stomach sent him sprawling, knocking all air out of his lungs. He gasped, looking up to see Sebastián bringing up a booted foot.

"Pinche cabrón! I'll teach you to mind your own goddamn bus-- aaagh!"

Something flew through the air, hitting him straight on the already bloody nose. He let out a cry of pain, stepping back... and then froze, staring at something past Héctor like he couldn't believe his eyes.

"What the-- has the entire world gone mad?" he blurted out, once again too stunned to do anything but standing there, staring. Héctor groaned, turning to look up... and then froze, the expression on his bloodied face probably not too different from Sebastián’s. Standing above him in her white robes and headdress, a shoe in her hand and a scowl on her face, was Imelda.

No, no, no, what are you doing here? He's dangerous-- he won't hesitate--!

"Bastardo," Imelda spat, her voice so cold it sent chills down Héctor's spine. "You lay a hand on him, or your wife and children, or anyone else ever again, and you'll be very, very sorry.”

Sebastián blinked a couple of times and then, as Héctor had feared, the surprise gave way to something else - fury. His fists clenched, and Héctor made a supreme effort to stand up, if shakily, between the two of them. His ears buzzed, his face hurt, but he steadied himself.

"Imelda, go... go away."

"And let you get yourself turned into a wet spot on the floor?"

"I wasn't about to-- all right, maybe I was, but if you stay--"

"You just rushed here without any sort of plan, didn’t you?"

"Why, do you have one?"

"Well... no."

"See? You need to get out of he--."

"Not leaving you here, I'm no--"

"... Are you two done?" Sebastían asked in a low growl. “What the hell is even happening? Since when is it any of your business what a man does in his own damn house? You both get out of here this instant and send my wife back, or else--”

“Oh, señor Rodríguez! Buenos días. I was just looking for you!”

Both Héctor and Imelda turned to see Padre Ernesto walking in, a charming smile on his face that didn’t falter when he saw the blood on his face. Sebastián reached up to rub his head.

"Has the entire fucking Catholic church decided to meet in my house to tell me how to deal with my goddamn wife?" he blurted out. "Am I hallucinating this? First a novice punches me, then a nun throws a shoe at me, and now the parish priest shows up for a lecture?"

“Technically, she is also a novice,” Padre Ernesto said, still smiling, and reached to put a hand on Héctor’s shoulder. He gripped it more tightly than necessary. “My apologies for the intrusion. I believe it’s best for all of us if we return to the church, you return to… whatever you were doing, and we all forget this unpleasant incident, sí?”

“Fernanda is not coming back here,” Imelda snapped, and Héctor nodded in agreement.

"Not her, nor the children," he said, and glanced at Padre Ernesto. "Padre, please. You haven't seen what he did to her!"

"She's my wife!" Sebastián bellowed. "And I will do what I want with her until she learns!"

Padre Ernesto sighed, and let go of Héctor’s shoulder. "See, all of you said exactly what I feared you'd say," he muttered, turning to Sebastián. "Well, it seems there is only one way to solve this unfortunate mess," he added, getting himself a sneer.

"Oh? And what will you do, priest? Read a passage of the Bible, say a prayer, or--" he began, and never got to finish: Padre Ernesto was almost as tall as him, almost as broad, and moved just as fast. His fist collided with his face with a loud, satisfying crack, and this time the man didn't just stagger back: he fell like a sack of potatoes, howling curses and covering his face.

As he struggled to get back up under Héctor's stunned gaze, Padre Ernesto turned to them. The pleasant smile was still on his lips. "Ime-- Sister Gisela, I suppose? We never met properly."

Imelda raised an eyebrow, and a smile tugged her lips. “We have now. My pleasure.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Padre Ernesto replied, his voice so smooth, then he glanced at Héctor. In front of them, Sebastián was lifting himself up to his knees, sounding like a furious bull. “I don’t think the Lord’s message has quite sunk in. I might require your help, amigo.”

Slowly, Héctor smiled and cracked his knuckles. “Oh, my friend- you don’t even need to ask.”

***

“You mean, he just… left?”

“Yes. Awful, no? To leave town in such a rush, leaving behind a wife and children. But you know, he had this terrible bout of bad luck and clearly figured a change of air would do him good.”

“Bad… luck?”

“Oh, the worst luck,” Héctor said, turning to glance at Ernesto. “He fell down the stairs.”

“Into a door,” Ernesto added. “And just as he was getting up, he stepped on a rake.”

“Then stumbled back and fell on a chair.”

“And he was hit by a shoe.”

“That’s when he decided it was time to leave but imagine what rotten luck, a gust of wind slammed the front door right on his face.”

“Again.”

“I think it broke his nose.”

“Definitely broke his nose.”

“So he decided to just leave without taking anything.”

“Makes you wonder if he angered God. Can’t argue with His will.”

“We’ll be praying for him.”

“Huh? Oh, yes. Right. Intensely. May the Lord grant him peace and all that.”

“We let him know he’ll always be in our thoughts.”

“And that we’d look after his family very, very closely.”

“In case he returns.”

“He means, until he returns.”

“Of course, of course.”

“Good thing Ceci has offered Fernanda a job so she can keep supporting the kids, eh?”

Among the small crowd gathered outside the church, there were plenty of sceptical looks and some raised brows… but absolutely no protests. It looked like no one had really liked Rodríguez that much. Even so, of course someone just had to speak up.

“... And what happened to you?”

Ernesto and Héctor exchanged a glance. Ernesto probably didn’t look so good - he’d managed to fix his hair, but he was pretty sure his throbbing face would sport bruises for a while - and Héctor looked pretty awful, with an eye swollen shut, a bloodied nose and a split lip. Still, he grinned widely at him, showing off a gap where one of his front teeth had been knocked loose. Ernesto found himself responding with a grin of his own. Yes, he did like that guy.

“Well, it seems that bad luck is contagious. We tripped.”

“But nowhere as badly as poor señor Rodríguez did.”

“Now, can’t you see they need to get their injuries tended to?” Imelda suddenly spoke up. She’d been quiet for a while, having returned first - and without a scratch - to tell Sofía what had happened, and to keep people from knowing she’d been part of that awful string of bad luck. “Move along, let them get inside the church,” she was adding, and her gaze softened when she glanced at Héctor. “... I’ll see you at mass.”

“Of course,” Héctor replied, and Ernesto had to drag him up the steps before someone could notice the dumb, dreamy grin on his face.

***

“Oh, Father Ernest. I was wondering where you-- Father Ern-- Brother Hector! What in God’s name has happened to you?”

John’s voice came out as an undignified screech, but he couldn’t help it: he hadn’t expected to walk in the sacristy to find both men holding bloody towels, bruises blooming on their faces. He walked up to them in sudden alarm, entirely forgetting his own aching back, and the annoyance of having been left on his own to deal with confessions faded entirely.

“Were you… were you attacked? Good God, is there anything I can do to help?”

Father Ernest looked at him, and what would have been the most charming smile he’d ever seen, if not for the fact the fury beneath it was suddenly palpable, filling the whole room. It was then that he realized Brother Héctor was staring at him, too, his face an expressionless mask.

“There is something you can do to help, yes,” Father Ernest said, his voice smooth, and stepped forward. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a word.”

“What is i--” John began, but he didn’t get to finish the sentence. Next thing he knew, a hand was around his throat and he was slammed against the wall with stunning force, turning his back into a mass of white-hot pain. He let out a strangled cry, unable to draw in enough breath to scream properly, and reached blindly to grasp Father Ernest’s wrist. Though a veil of tears, he could see him staring at him with something not too far away from disgust.

Oh God, oh my God, does he know? How could he…?

John tore his gaze away to glance at Brother Hector, to silently ask for help, but with growing dread he realized that no help would come from him: he looked as disgusted as Father Ernest.

“Listen here and listen close, Padre Juan,” Father Ernest all but snarled, staring at him right in the eyes. “Today’s confession of Fernanda Rodríguez was the last one you’ll ever do in this parish. You should count yourself lucky that we stepped in before she could follow your enlightened advice and go back home to that animal.”

… Wait, was that it? Despite the hand on his throat and the throbbing pain in his back, for few moments relief was all he could feel… followed by mild surprise, and then anger. He had done nothing but his duty - how dare that man, that insult to Catholics everywhere, get his filthy hands on him and presume he could berate him for doing so? “What… what have you done?”

Father Ernest grinned. “What we had to,” he said. “Todo modo para buscar la voluntad divina.”

Hearing the words of his oder’s founder from him made John scowl. “This- this is not divine will!”

“So divine will is sending a woman back to a beast? Interesting.”

“I gave advice… aligned with the scriptures,” he wheezed. “If you ever even bothered to read-- a woman who fails to submit to her husband--”

“I don’t care,” Father Ernest growled, causing him to trail off. He was suddenly acutely aware of how close he was, how much stronger; it made his head spin, cold sweat on his brow. “Look what he did to us, cabrón! What do you think he’d have done to a woman the size of sparrow?”

“I-if she’d minded herself, as to not anger him--” John began, voice shaking, but a sudden tightening of the grip on his neck cut him off.

“Well, you mind yourself now, as to not anger me,” Father Ernest sneered. “You are a guest in this parish - my parish. I’m taking it back, and I suggest you remember that or leave. You’ll never even look at the confessionals again. Don’t bother with Mass this Sunday - I’ll take care of it. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

It was far from the first time John was threatened, and he should have reacted with defiance, told him he wasn’t surprised such a poor priest wouldn’t know what the scriptures said about man and wife; he should have threatened to write to the Archidiocesis to inform them of such insolence, and then followed through with it… but right there and then he could only think of how awfully close he was, and he suddenly feared that closeness more than his fury.

No no no no no. Please, no. Let me go.

Unaware of his desperate thoughts, Father Ernest was growling, “Have I, Padre Juan?”

“Y-yes!” John choked out. He was way, way past even thinking of correcting him on his name. It didn’t matter. He just needed out of there, away from him. “I won’t-- please, let me go!”

His broken voice caused the man to pause, looking down at him - and the tears of fear, pain and frustration in his eyes - for just a moment; then he snorted. “I have met cowards, but you beat them all,” he muttered, and let him go. Even more terrifyingly, he gave him a smooth smile the next moment, as though nothing happened. “Well, it’s all sorted, then. Thanks for hearing me out. You’re excused.”

“I--” John hesitated, back pulsing with pain, heart hammering in his chest, and thoughts in turmoil as he struggled to grasp what had just happened. He brought a hand to his neck. “You--”

You have made a mistake, he wanted to say. The Archidiocesis will know. The Archbishop will know. You’ll be sent away, or defrocked, you’ll regret this, you… you...

Words failed him, and he swallowed. His hand grasped the crucifix and he turned to look at Brother Hector, at the dried blood still on that blank face. A childish part of him screamed that it was unfair, it hadn’t been him to raise his hand on that woman. He’d never been violent or cruel, never harsher than required - never harsher to others than he was on himself. He was fair, and the farthest thing for a coward. He did what he had to do to serve God, even if it wasn’t easy.

Anyone can do their duty when it’s easy.

“I didn’t-- I wished harm to no one. The scriptures, I only advised--”

“I said you’re excused,” Father Ernest snapped, and that was it. Without even daring look in his general direction, trying to muster as much dignity as he could, John walked out of the sacristy as quick as possible - back to the safety of his room where his Bible, an old letter and his whip awaited, to help him get a hold of himself again. His back still hurt, but clearly not enough.

And once that was taken care of and his mind clearer, he’d think of his next move. He may not be wanted in that town, he may be hated by the clergy for some petty reason, but so was Christ and He did not turn back from his duty, so neither would he. He refused to leave a town in such desperate need for his help, in the hands of a priest who hardly deserved to be called such.

Father Ernest was not fit for his role, and he would need to go before he doomed the entire parish and corrupted even Brother Hector, the young man who showed so much promise. John had to protect him from such influence, and he would.

He had no power to remove a parish priest, of course, but someone else could. They would, once they knew what madness was going on in Santa Cecilia.

He just needed a pen, and paper.

***

[Back to Part 5]

[On to Part 7]

#pixar coco #ernesto de la cruz #miguel rivera #hector rivera #imelda rivera #coco #fake priest au

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boldmistakes · 6 years ago

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white beaches & northern lights (seblaine, 1/1)

summary: In the years since the world got totally fucked by an apocalypse of the infected, Sebastian Smythe had created a new reality which operated on two very simple principles. One was survive. The other was keep Blaine safe, no matter what. Unfortunately, leaving the failing safety of a Quarantine Zone would put these goals to brutal test. [Zombie!AU in The Last of Us verse] [~12k] [A03] warnings: well, it’s zombies! violence, gore, death, past child death, dismemberment notes: a WIP from last year for seblaine sunday’s zombies prompt for oct. 8th, polished up and posted to prove i’m not dead! set in the ‘verse of the amazing game the last of us, where the zombies are caused by a fungal infection with various stages -- more details at AO3.

“We need to get out.”

Blaine nodded. Down on the street, a sobbing woman was forced to her knees by a soldier and shot. Sebastian reached out, tugging Blaine away from the window.

“You don’t need to see that.”

“Don’t I?” Blaine asked. “Shouldn’t someone?”

Sebastian cottoned on. “Plenty of people saw that. Have seen that.”

“It doesn’t count if you don’t care.” Blaine’s troubled gaze slid away, and then, slowly, he said, “I don’t want to stop seeing.”

“You won’t.” Sebastian ached to extend his reach, to wrap an arm around Blaine, hold him ... but Blaine still wore that ring. A barrier as sure as the walls of the Quarantine Zone they lived in -- and just as much of an illusion of safety, if you asked Sebastian. “C’mon. Let’s pack.”

“Okay.”

Blaine didn’t move, and Sebastian tugged again, more insistent. Blaine went, but it didn’t feel like acquiescence. Sebastian grit his teeth against it, and with teasing and reassurance in turn he managed to get Blaine to pack up his meager possessions. He didn’t comment when Blaine picked up a blood-stained felt rabbit and pressed it to his face, politely turning his gaze away. These were little things Sebastian knew how to navigate since Everything, Then, The End Of The Fucking World and Its Fucked-Up Sequels, whatever you wanted to call it. In today’s world, you made your own reality, and Sebastian ...

Sebastian had designed his with Blaine in mind. He’d had no other choice.

The QZs were supposed to protect them, but well, put armed maniacs in charge of keeping the peace and shit inevitably hit the fan. Armed resistances sprang up in return, Fireflies and riots and crazy-rage fires sweeping whole districts, with anyone not feeling suicidal stuck in the middle as they tried to make a living in a dying city.

Back in the Everything-Then-End Of The Fucking World, the QZs had been a beacon of hope. Relative safety from the infected, shelter, heat, supplies. Everyone had flocked to their promise. Sebastian had too, after a hellish time searching for signs of life in his family, his boyfriend, his sanity because fuck , these things weren’t supposed to happen.. Had heaved a sigh of relief when he’d seen the razor wire-and-concrete protections.

Then he’d had to take that breath again when he’d come across Blaine Anderson, of all people, in a rations line. Blaine, and Kurt, and their daughter, a little sweet thing. Old grievances were put aside so they could protect each other. Solidarity through circumstance, or maybe growing up, or maybe need before want. It had worked, for a while. Then, with time, with the hunger and the slips in the barriers and rising death counts, with the chaos of trapped animals chewing at their legs, it became just Sebastian and Blaine and his daughter.

Then just Sebastian and Blaine. Alone together.

That was years ago, but Blaine had never quite recovered. Always seemed to have a foot in another world, a world where likely his husband and daughter were still alive. His own reality to help him survive, and Sebastian couldn’t blame him. Who didn’t fantasize about an escape? Well. Not Sebastian. He had always accepted things as they came. That was probably why Blaine had once called him heartless.

(“You just don’t … care. ”

Blaine hadn’t even been angry. )

It was good Sebastian was cold. It was good he knew to be ruthless. It was what had kept the two of them alive.

So what if he told himself Blaine appreciated it, deep down?

They left come dawn, sneaking out through tunnels Sebastian had learned smuggling. There was no legal exit from a QZ. So desperate to keep the human race alive you weren’t even allowed to be suicidal -- or, as Sebastian had once heard it, a pioneer .

Nothing new left to find now, though. Just relics, modern history in frozen tableaus.

Sebastian had been as far as the furthest outlet mall out west before, but now they were headed south, needing warmer climates. He kept an eye on the world around them, suspicious of the unfamiliarity, even though he must have walked up this cracked blacktop highway years ago to get to the QZ in the first place. His own car might still be stalled somewhere along the hundred mile winding stretch of it, like all the other stripped cars scattered over the road like abandoned toys.

(“The cow goes moo, the piggy goes oink, the bunny goes -- uh -- hop?” )

Sebastian grabbed Blaine’s hand as Blaine started to lag, long days spent lying in his bed staring at the ceiling punishing him now. Blaine stayed at their hands but said nothing, didn’t grip back. Not a surprise, but Sebastian still frowned. Turned his eyes forward. Kept alert. The only time he let go was when they had to separate to climb over a car, but then they’d reunite, the bridge of their arms a tether -- and though Blaine faltered, he never stopped.

They didn’t speak. The only sound was their footsteps, the rustle of their bags and gas masks against their hips, the sounds of nature reclaiming wild space in whistling calls of wind and bird, the whir of insect activity, the occasional coyote howl.

It was … nice. Nicer than Sebastian had expected, since he’d stuck to more travelled pathways before. The greenery was alive, flowers bursting ripely, bushes hanging heavily with berries, the air fresh and sweet the way it had been in the dull Ohio springtime, driving past green fields. There was also nobody around for miles, infected or otherwise.

“It’s good,” Sebastian told Blaine, as they passed by a burnt-out husk of a gas station whose lettered sign read SURVIVORS INSIDE. “You can’t trust anyone who lives outside the walls. Total maniacs.”

“We’re going to live outside the walls,” Blaine said after a moment.

“Yeah.” Sebastian hefted a shoulder. “And I wouldn’t advise anyone to trust us either.”

Blaine’s gaze flicked back at the gas station, and he frowned.

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Me, then.”

“Still terrible.”

“I’m not trustworthy.”

“I trust you.”

Sebastian smiled at that. “Well, you’re the only one who should.”

Blaine nodded slowly and looked away. “Do you trust me?”

That surprised Sebastian, who paused them a moment, the sun warm on his back as he turned, tipping Blaine’s chin up with his free hand.

“Of course I do. Who else?”

Blaine smiled, and for a second he could be seventeen again, their first meeting, sweet and faraway from here. Then it faded, his expression undone, and Sebastian set them walking once more, brutally smothering any disappointment.

Those smiles had never been for him, anyways.

For a long time they were just … walking.

They slept during the hottest parts of the spring days, in shifts, then doing most their travelling at night, their flashlights doing the work where the moon failed them. If either of them had been afraid of the dark before, they’d gotten over it by getting a crash course in what went bump in the night during the whole apocalypse thing, and there was something refreshing in a world of caution about being fearless as they wandered. Old country roads gone to weed or major highways whose lights had long since gone out, it was all the same, just a path. In the blackest nights when the moon was gone and the clouds heavy and they couldn’t even really see each other, they still had the warm grip of their joined hands, and that was as good as roadsigns for Sebastian.

Since they had no real destination, it was, as high school motivational posters might have said, all about the journey.

(Sebastian had a silly fantasy about a white tropical beach somewhere, coconut and crab, just the two of them, but it hadn’t been a reality when planes existed so it was even less likely now.)

Sometimes people said the cold stopped the infection in its tracks. Sebastian thought that was bullshit; the only thing proven to help was gas masks to keep out the pollen and amputation of any area that had been bitten or scratched -- and the latter was heavily debated. It was, he felt, and Blaine agreed, better not to freeze your ass off in snows and ice just because you thought Canada sounded neat .

“If we make good time we should avoid this winter,” Sebastian said over dinner (or rather, breakfast) of squirrel stew that night.

Blaine nodded, and abruptly said, “I’d never want to do an Ohio winter without a house.”

“Definitely not.”

“It makes you think about homeless people,” Blaine continued, stirring his stew slowly. Sebastian hoped that wasn’t a commentary on his cooking; skinning something cleanly was harder than it looked, even with how good he’d gotten with a knife. “How hard it would have been for them.”

“Technically, we are homeless,” Sebastian pointed out. He paused, then laughed. “Christ, now there’s an idea that would have made a younger me actually cry.”

Blaine laughed too. Sebastian’s smile grew wider. “I can’t see you crying.”

“I’m sure it happened once or twice, not that I can remember.”

“Uh-huh …” Blaine took a bite, chewed, and there came the overcast shadow to his unusually bright expression; Sebastian sighed and returned his attention to his own food.

That was definitely gristle. Sebastian made a face, flicking it into the flames.

The fire cracked, pop. Threw embers. The light of it gleamed on Blaine’s wedding ring that slid down his finger, sized for more well-fed times. Blaine was terrified of losing it, and Sebastian was startled to realize Blaine slept with his hand curled in a fist to protect it. Before, they’d had separate bedrooms, and that door was always closed to him. Now, under the sun and stars, there were no secrets.

“You could put it on a chain, you know.”

Blaine blinked at him. “What?”

“The ring,” Sebastian said. “Your ring.”

Blaine offered his hand out. “It’s a wedding ring.”

“It being on the ring finger was a bit of a tip-off, yes.”

“Then you know I can’t take it off.”

“It’s not like I’m suggesting you toss it,” Sebastian said. “Just … move it elsewhere.”

Blaine returned to eating, shaking his head. “No.”

“C’mon,” Sebastian said. “It could be like -- closer to your heart. Whatever.”

“It’s a wedding ring,” Blaine snapped. “It stays on the ring finger. Discussion ended.”

“Fine,” Sebastian ground out, “don’t come crying to me if you lose it.” Blaine flinched, and Sebastian instantly felt like a jackass. “Hey, I didn’t mean …”

“I’m going to bed,” Blaine said, setting his half-eaten food down. “The ground. Sleep. Whatever.”

“You just woke up an hour ago --”

“I’m tired.”

With a petulance ill-suited to a man creeping towards forty, he retreated to the softest patch of ground under the tree they’d picked, and rolled over, putting his back to Sebastian. Sebastian shook his head, and though he’d lost his appetite himself, forced himself to continue eating.

He’d choke on as much gristle as it took to be strong enough to survive.

A few days later, after a series of thunderstorms that soaked them through and flooded creeks they’d been crossing, shunting their path back to civilization, they came to a mid-sized town -- or maybe village was a better descriptor. There was no sign, so just Nowhereville, West Virginia by Sebastian’s guess -- and it was the first tall buildings they’d seen in awhile, silently agreeing it was smarter to keep to less-travelled paths after a herd of clicker had driven them off their last highway. The sunset was brilliantly red, and felt unnecessarily ominous as it painted the world around them in bloody shades.

“I don’t like it,” Sebastian said, staring at the quiet streets and red-brick buildings. It was like something from a Rockwell. “We should go around.”

Blaine didn’t say anything, or even nod, but he stepped off the main road into the tall grasses that ringed the village, which was sheltered by a wide river on one side, and a bluff of reddish dirt on the other. Sebastian followed, keeping an eye on the town as it fell to the left behind them. It was a half-hour’s hike to get to the top, legs straining and trying not to slip on the soft dirt, before they finally hit a peak crowned by a short stone wall and a plaque referencing some old Colonial bastard. Sebastian leaned against it as Blaine hunkered down to retie his laces, taking a sip from his water flask, eyes closing briefly.

If they could trust others, this was the kind of place you’d claim. Set up a community, farm the nearby land, take advantage of how naturally defensible it was with the bluff on one side and the river on other. As was, chances were somebody else had had that idea and they were waiting down there like jackals to snag unsuspecting travellers …

“Oh god!”

There was startling energy there and Sebastian’s eyes flew open.

“What?”

“Look.” Blaine pointed. It only took a breath to spot the problem: down in the town square there was a flurry of movement, still visible in the fading light. A small group was backing away from a rush of runners; one gunshot, two; a runner went down, but then the gunman was hit by an unexpected clicker whose rattling shriek echoed all the way up to where they stood.

Nobody was screaming. They knew better than that; sound attracted more.

“They’re dead meat,” Sebastian reported, watching as the still-living trio rushed to climb on top two cars crushed together, then taking fire at the clicker. Judging by how it kept clawing hungrily after them, they missed. “Terrible aim.”

“We should help,” Blaine said urgently, and Sebastian grabbed his elbow before he could do something crazy.

“We should die, is what you’re saying.”

“Sebastian!” Blaine so rarely said his name; it made Sebastian’s grip loosen, and Blaine jerked away from him.

“Don’t do it --”

He made another grab for Blaine, but he was darting down the bluff, boots kicking up dust as he skidded dangerously fast through red dirt and grass. Sebastian swore, and for a moment that went on far longer than he cared to admit, he contemplated walking away. Finally turning his back on the depressed deadweight he had saddled himself to because, what, they had known each other for all of five minutes in high school and Sebastian liked his ass …

You could be free, something whispered in the back of his head. Relying only on yourself.

“I need someone to watch my back when I sleep,” he said aloud, and it was some old desire to hold onto appearances that sent him skidding down that hill.

He couldn’t be the crazy guy who talked to himself in public. He couldn’t be -- alone -- with his thoughts.

“Christ,” Sebastian muttered when he caught up with Blaine at the bottom of the bluff, Blaine drawing his gun and cocking it. “At least put your mask on. That’s too many for this place to be clean.”

Blaine glared at him. “I’m not stupid.” He tugged his mask on, and Sebastian mimicked him, hiding the roll of his eyes. Then his own gun was in hand as they crept silently around a large old church; the shrieks of the runners and the chittering of the clicker was louder here. They were making good time before a shift on stone announced a runner emerging from behind an overturned car for them; Blaine slammed it in the chin with the butt of his gun, and Sebastian stepped in smoothly with his knife, grabbing the runner’s hair and slamming the blade deep into its rotten, mushroom-filled skull. It choked, then died.

They were alive, in a way. Sebastian never did get over that oddness.

“C’mon,” Blaine said, then set off again. Sebastian dropped the body and followed. They got to the square to find at least seven runners swarming up the overturned cars, grabbing at the threesome with needy hands, cries rising and falling like broken waves. Blaine took a step forward; one of the survivors, a young woman, saw them and screamed.

“Please,” she begged, and then her stomach was torn open.

“Blaine,” Sebastian murmured, reaching for him, but Blaine didn’t need to hear it. He stopped, shoulders slumping, and they silently watched the strangers die. Once the last of their screams had faded, he finally made contact, cradling Blaine’s shaking shoulder.

Time to go. Blaine turned around, and Sebastian couldn’t read his expression through the flat glass planes and dark branching mouthpiece, but he knew him. He offered his hand, and Blaine accepted it, his gun dangling sadly from his other. Sebastian squeezed Blaine’s limp hand, and then they walked off together, carefully skirting the feeding frenzy.

Not that they actually needed to eat you. No, then this whole thing wouldn’t be pointless, would it?

They stopped at midday, and Blaine offered to take first watch.

Sebastian lay down in the shade, throwing his arm over his eyes. He tried to sleep, but Blaine was too quiet; Sebastian peeked, and saw that Blaine was sitting there, knees drawn up to his chest, staring off to nowhere as he slowly spun his wedding ring around his finger.

Kurt had lost his before he died; Sebastian had noticed that. He’d pretended not to notice that Kurt had lost it by throwing it at Blaine after a blazing row where Sebastian had lain his bed and felt like he was eight again, listening to his parents build up to their spectacular climax of a divorce.

That was why he had never gotten married. Well, that an inability to hold onto a relationship for more than six months and the end of the world. At least one of those hadn’t been his fault, too.

“You’re thinking loudly,” Blaine suddenly said.

Sebastian lowered his arm. “ I’m thinking loudly?”

“Yes,” Blaine said firmly, then hesitantly continued. “Do you … want to talk about it?”

Must be a good day, then. Or it was just the recent reminder of their mortality.

“I’m fine,” Sebastian said. “Don’t worry about it, tiger.”

Like Blaine needed more to worry about. Like Sebastian had anything to worry about, except for the obvious.

“Okay.” Blaine dropped his hands, and his chin to his knees. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Okay,” Blaine repeated. “It’s fine. You sleep.”

Sebastian nodded, and shifted his arm back over his eyes. Sleep still didn’t come, but he tried to think a little quieter, for Blaine’s sake.

Weeks passed. Summer was coming in, hot and clinging.

Under the moonlight through an apple grove they spotted a swollen, misshapen giant of a creature that moved in lumbering steps, swarmed by smaller runners and clickers like a queen bee with its hive. A bloater; Sebastian had heard of them, but never seen one. The stage of infection that came before they ended up splattered on the ground somewhere, releasing spores.

“Jesus,” Blaine breathed, once they’d put a hundred yards between them and it.

“I wouldn’t want to have to take that down,” Sebastian said, with great feeling.

Blaine nodded emphatically. “Definitely not.”

They saw bridges collapsed under the weight of too many cars. They saw a small nomadic group living in a graveyard who shot at them when they’d stepped too close; Sebastian had felt a rare thrill of real fear when stone had chipped near Blaine’s head in an explosive spray. After a gunfight they’d gotten away, then saw a towering tree growing through a car in the middle of a highway. They saw rotting runners nailed to trees, still squirming and hissing, and rotting humans swinging from tree branches. They saw a baseball diamond turned to a field of blood-red flowers, swaying gently in the breeze. They saw a lake with a dozen canoes drifting eerily, unoccupied. They saw two clickers melded together in one misshapen thing. They saw a thousand deer, tails white against the night as they ran silently through the grass.

Sebastian saw Blaine smile more. Saw some of that tension slip from his shoulders, saw him actually talking. It came in fits and spurts, a rusty tap needing work, but it was like … it was like Blaine was coming alive again.

“I love this,” he’d even said one night, staring up at the miles of unspoiled starfield. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian agreed, resettling his backpack. “That’s a plus for no light pollution.”

Blaine smiled. “I’ve always wanted to see the northern lights,” he offered. “It would be easier now.”

Sebastian grinned back. “I think we’re headed the wrong direction for that.”

“True.” Blaine shrugged. “But who knows where life will take us.”

“Yeah, I never would have guessed ‘zombie apocalypse’ myself …”

He’d never called it that before, but at some point, you had to accept the obvious.

Blaine’s eyes widened. “Don’t call it that!”

“What? Why not?” Sebastian squinted back.

“You’re not supposed to,” Blaine explained. “It’s … tacky.”

“Tacky? Did I skip over Miss Manner’s Guide To The Living Dead?”

“Obviously.” Blaine nudged him. “Besides, they don’t eat people. Not really.”

“That’s true …”

“I hate it,” Blaine admitted, tone turning thoughtful. “It’s such a waste. All this death, for nothing.”

It paralleled his own thoughts so neatly that Sebastian had to reach over and wrap an arm around Blaine’s shoulder, pausing their pace through farmfield furrows to half-hug him. Blaine froze, let out a slow breath, then relaxed. Almost pressed himself against Sebastian fully … but then, before long, Blaine pulled himself away.

“We should keep moving,” Blaine said, tugging his backpack strap straight.

“Yeah. Let’s.” Sebastian followed him; Blaine didn’t take his usual grip of Sebastian’s hand, and Sebastian couldn’t quite bring himself to reach out.

It felt like something had shifted, but he couldn’t say what.

Summer became fall, their feet ached, and they accidentally walked into a city at twilight because the only other roads had collapsed into impossible-to-traverse canyons of junk and infected just begging to give you either tetanus or a bad case of life after death.

“Should we go around it?” Blaine asked, staring at the concrete jungle with concern.

“It would take too long,” Sebastian said, which Blaine already knew, because he nodded.

“We’ll be fine,” Blaine said, and then moved to climb over the schoolbus blocking the way. Sebastian followed, and they paused on top of its rusted yellow hood, staring out over the miles of stalled and stripped cars. It was like a ship graveyard. Sharing a look, they carefully jumped down and made their way into the heart of the city, weaving through the wreckage. They hadn’t been in a city since the QZ; it was odd to be swallowed up by concrete again. This was greener, though, and falling apart in a way even the most ragged quarters of the QZ never had been. The stink of moss and vines in close quarters, even a deer running by in leaping strides.

There were also no infected and no people, that they could see. A ghost town.

Sebastian stepped a little closer to Blaine, but kept his hands free, one resting on his gun, head turning slowly to listen for any sounds.

Night fell, the moon high and painting deep pockets of shadows that seemed to pulse when you looked at them too long. His foot hit a rock. It bounced and echoed, skittering across the sidewalk. Blaine looked back at him reproachfully, and Sebastian winced in apology. Blaine’s hand was on his gun now, and they picked up their pace while still trying to move silently.

The buildings were getting taller. Spindly skyscrapers, some apartment buildings tipping like a jenga tower mid-fall, stately stone buildings looking unchanged except for end-of-days graffiti and threats. The streets, oddly, were cleaner. Odd was not good. Sebastian gave up on pretense and unholstered his gun, slipping his finger to caress the trigger. They were coming up to a broad four-way intersection, which looked so untouched it could have been the Before if it weren’t for the absence of streetlights and faces and cars. Just wide-open spaces ...

A clatter sounded. Blaine’s head shifted. They stepped aside in tandem, moving into the shadows of an old bank, and then froze at the sight of two men, bearing machine guns, turning the corner. The pair talked quietly, too quietly to be heard, but their bearing was casual. They must not have seen the intruders. Blaine glanced at him, eyes wide, and Sebastian nodded slowly.

Guns like those they hadn’t seen since the QZ either. Guns like those meant resources, and you didn’t fuck with people who had resources unless you had any to give back, and they were down to eating snails. Sebastian had an inappropriate, longing surge for a little restaurant in Paris that he would never see again, and then his mother, overseas with it, and then he and Blaine started to move once the duo had their backs to them. They turned the corner to the opposite direction where the men had come from, and stopped at the sight of an encampment in the street, spilling out from large buildings. Armed adults moved around the barriers, smiling, chatting, faint music even playing.

He’d never been so unhappy to hear Niel Diamond. It left the two of them like deer in headlights.

“Dammit,” Sebastian hissed, and they slowly began to retreat. Except once they turned around, they saw that the patrolling pair were coming back … and then they looked up, and saw them right back.

“Hey! You two!”

“Run,” Sebastian ordered, but Blaine started to raise his hands slowly.

“We just want to pass through,” Blaine called to the men. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Put your guns down,” one man, a redhead, ordered, after a glance at his bearded friend.

“Don’t do it,” Sebastian told Blaine, his finger tense on the trigger. “Don’t.”

“Only if you lower yours,” Blaine said, ignoring Sebastian without a look at him. “I’ll put mine on the ground, slowly, just please, lower yours too. We can work this out, gentlemen --”

Gentlemen? Blaine was going to get them killed. Sebastian couldn’t see anything, not the guns or the men’s faces or even Blaine. All he could think of was his aching feet, and the comfortable weight of his own gun in his hand. Mouth dry, his arm swung up, and everything zeroed in on the red hole that blasted into one of the redhead’s forehead.

The echo of the gunshot seemed delayed, the second one tripping on it. Both men dropped, and Sebastian grabbed Blaine’s arm as alarmed shouts came from the direction of the camp.

“Sebastian!”

He ran, dragging Blaine along. There was resistance, but it slackened when a burst of machine gun fire chased them to a clear street. Someone was shouting at them, and something split a line of fire across his leg. They ducked around the next corner, and Blaine pointed to an alley; they ran for it, spidering up and over a chainlink fence, another alley, then shouldering up against an ajar red door that tore the pair of them through a blood-stained coffee shop, then out a shattered window. Down the street. Around a corner. The shouting was becoming more indistinct, distant threats that had no words, only intent; Blaine pointed at a mall across the way.

They ran, breath panting, feet setting up a thunderous pattern, Sebastian white-knuckling Blaine’s arm in his hold; more gunfire, shouts, but not close, like hearing a wolf’s howl on a cold night, they needed to get inside -- no time for niceties, Sebastian raised his gun and fired again, shattering a display window in a diamond spray that they leapt through, glass scoring their cheeks and a mannequin sent flying to skid across the oil-slick floor. They didn’t stop, making deeper into the mall, down an escalator, past a fountain that bubbled with a collapsed infected who sprayed spores, couldn’t risk stopping to put on masks so they just held their breath and dived through to the other side, lungs burning, legs burning, everything tense as the hard, rattling breath that begged to escape --

Clear air, but an obstacle; the roof caved in past at least four stories, sunlight streaming down on the mess of beams and plaster and concrete that formed a mountain to block the way forward.

“There!” Blaine said, pointing to a small gap where a beam rested against the wall. Sebastian eyed it doubtfully, but they had no choice -- they both heard an echo --

“There!”

-- in the distance that was no real echo, but the dogs at their heels. They rushed the narrow, dark crack, more an absence than an entrance, and Sebastian tried to nudge Blaine through it first, but Blaine shoved at him instead.

“It doesn’t look stable,” Blaine insisted hurriedly, eyeing the structure; he wasn’t wrong. “If anything moves when you go through, I have more of a chance getting in second.”

That was true. Sebastian moved to the gap, slouching to fit, and Blaine made an impatient sound.

“You have to let go of me!”

Sebastian looked back, unsure, then realized he was still gripping Blaine’s arm. He let go, to see that Blaine’s arm had gone white, a handspan of red marking the boundary where the blood needed to rush out. Sebastian opened his mouth to apologize, but Blaine shoved him.

“Move! ”

Sebastian shook his head, trying to clear his muddled thoughts -- was this even a good idea, he shouldn’t leave Blaine behind, he had to leave Blaine behind, that dead weight -- then moved to slip into the gap. His shoulder brushed the beam; it groaned, shuddered, stopped. Holding his breath, Sebastian inched his way through the gap as fast as he could, feeling his way through the dark.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he muttered under his breath, fighting the urge to turn back.

Blaine would be fine. They still had time. Sebastian shut his eyes for a moment, and soldiered on, groping out the open side of the gap --

Something grabbed his arm.

Sebastian’s blood ran cold.

“No --”

It bit down on his wrist, nails tearing into his flesh. Growled. Nausea rose.

“ No! ”

Copper exploded across the tip of Sebastian’s smarting tongue, and he shoved himself through the final bit, tackling the creature that was making work of him, his fingers twitching weakly as nerves severed. They fell to the ground in a tumble that smelled of mildew and death, and Sebastian reared back, pistol whipping the thing across its forehead. The flesh split and poured yellow-black, but it still didn’t release his wrist, and Sebastian aimed the gun, tugged the trigger --

The creature shifted. The bullet went through Sebastian’s mutilated hand and exited out the back of the infected’s skull, blowing an ugly splatter up behind its head. Sebastian exhaled, the edges of his vision going black for a moment, then tried to tug his hand free. It took two tries, and then Sebastian fell back, looking around frantically as he pressed his arm to his chest.

No more infected. But he was -- he was --

“Sebastian!”

Blaine was there, grabbing him.

“What the hell happened --”

“Are they behind us?” Sebastian asked, swaying briefly despite Blaine’s hold on him, the whole world swaying like the earth was buckling.

“Yes, we have to -- no, you can’t -- fuck --”

Blaine let go. Sebastian continued to move with the ocean he’d suddenly found himself in, and kept moving, until pain flared dully along his side as he hit the ground. A flurry of gunshots splitting the air, a loud rumbling -- god, was this really an earthquake? -- and then Blaine was back, grabbing him and hauling him up.

“Get up, Sebastian,” he ordered, voice as cajoling as the one he’d used on his daughter, all those years ago, Sebastian watching them together and so sure Blaine had been destined to be a dad, one of those things Sebastian had never wanted for himself, the ways their lives were never meant to align -- “Get! Up!”

That was more drill sergeant, or maybe coach during practise. Sebastian levered himself up with no conscious decision to do so and Blaine dragged Sebastian’s uninjured arm over his shoulder, wrapping a strong arm around his waist.

“Blaine,” Sebastian managed thickly, then spat blood.

“We’re going to fix this,” Blaine assured him.

“I’m bit,” Sebastian said, and swallowed laughter. “I know it’s not zombies, but Blaine, this is really -- I’m fucking dead.”

“No, you aren’t. I can see the infection, it hasn’t --”

“There’s nothing you can --”

“I don’t believe that!” Then Blaine froze, staring at something; Sebastian blinked eyelids which grew heavier with each thudding heartbeat at the sign declaring a hardware store. An inkling of a horrible idea hit him.

“Blaine, no --”

“We have to.”

Blaine walked them to it, half-dragging Sebastian, who shook his head. That swaying feeling was coming back. He might vomit.

“It’ll be cleared out,” Sebastian said weakly.

“I’ll find something.”

“I’m not sure …”

“I can’t lose you,” Blaine snapped, and his tone was still hard, hard enough to break something in Sebastian, who stopped resisting, let Blaine drag him through the dusty interior that was indeed cleaned out of anything useful. Blaine was muttering under his breath, but Sebastian couldn’t hear anything over the pounding in his ears.

“Blaine …”

“Shh …”

He must have blacked out for a few seconds, yet he was still moving -- what was that smell? Had he thrown up? Or was it something else? Something that smelled like -- engines, his car blew out on the way to a QZ ...

“Sebastian, you can lie down, but you need to hold out your arm. Okay?”

Cajoling, teacher, daddy-voice was back. Sebastian opened his eyes with difficulty, fairly certain the world had spun more since he’d closed them. He was on -- the ground, this was the ground, why was Blaine wrapping a belt around his bicep …?

“Blaine -- what --”

“It’ll be okay.”

“What are you --”

“I just need you to hold still for me, okay, Sebastian, please --”

Sebastian couldn’t move. He hurt too much, blood on fire. He tried to tell Blaine that, but blood and bile bubbled up from his lips instead. Then he saw a gleam in the darkness, bright and cutting, like that damn ring …

Blaine had an ax. Sebastian mangled a cry.

“Blaine, what the fuck --!”

Blaine ignored him. Adjusted his stance. Kissed the ax blade to Sebastian’s arm. God. His arm. The wrist down was mangled red; the wrist up was the pale blue of his veins turning a sick green, climbing higher, interrupted only by laddered torn flesh. A middle-school rhyme came back to him in a distant sing-song: Across the street, not down the road …

“Blaine, stop!”

“I have to -- I’m sorry.”

“You don’t -- don’t --”

Sebastian couldn’t do this. He’d bleed out. Die. He’d survive. Be useless. He couldn’t -- he couldn’t -- that was his arm -- and for the first time ever since the world had fallen apart around him, Sebastian Smythe well and truly panicked.

“No, no, I changed my -- no, stop, Blaine --!”

He tried to jerk away, but he had no strength left. It was like a waking nightmare, frozen, forced to watch the world move around him. Blaine raised the ax.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine said, or shook, voice trembling, as he tightened his grip, knuckles white, that ring. “I have to, I’m sorry --”

No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t --

“No, Blaine, just let me go --”

“NO!” Blaine was barely anything to him now, blackness stealing what tears welling in his eyes hadn’t, a vague shape beyond his understanding. “Stop moving.”

“Blaine, please --”

“Shh,” Blaine murmured, and his fingers briefly touched Sebastian’s cheek before there was a rustle and a grunt of him lifting the ax again. “It’s okay, shh …”

Blaine swung. Blood sprayed in an arc over both their faces. Sebastian screamed, and everything after that, it wasn’t his to know.

He had fevered dreams.

Deer falling to wolves by the thousands, throats torn out, hearts eaten still-beating. Those three people they’d failed to save, getting in one of those beat-up clunkers and driving away, laughing. Kurt, braiding flowers, something about, “For you sweetie --” and his daughter’s laugh, bright and pealing, saying, “Uncle Seb!” the way she’d used to. His mother, falling to the blows of a mob, or maybe just dancing ... Blaine’s voice talking from somewhere too close to be as far away as it sounded, a litany of “I’m sorry”s and “Please don’t leave me”s ... His last boyfriend, blowing skunk-smoke kisses in his face, and then his arm, curled around his own neck, squeezing.

Sebastian woke to a new world.

“Sebastian?”

Sebastian experimentally raised his arm, ignoring the wave of blinding pain, feeling as if his fingers were twitching, but seeing nothing but the bizarre stump of his elbow.

“How are you -- how are you feeling?”

Sebastian tried making a fist. He did. He had? He hadn’t. He had nothing to make a fist with. Which was a shame, because he kind of wanted to punch Blaine, and that was his dominant hand.

Had been his dominant hand. Did that make him left-handed now?

“Your fever broke two days ago, I was -- so grateful, you have no idea --”

It must have worked. No sign of infection. He was starving, but he didn’t feel sick. Fever must have done it, scoured him clean, inside-out.

So it seemed the rumours were true. Here Sebastian was, living proof. Living.

“Can you -- can you hear me, Sebastian?”

“Yes, Blaine,” Sebastian said, voice crackling from disuse. He swung his gaze to Blaine, who sat there, hands twisting atop his thighs. “How could I fucking not.”

Blaine stared at him, then down at his lap, mouth working silently. Sebastian, exhausted, slumped back against the dirty mattress he’d woken up on.

“I made soup,” Blaine finally said, quietly. “Are you hungry?”

Sebastian sighed. He was almost beyond hunger, that’s how hungry he was. “Of course.”

“I’ll get you some --!”

“No,” Sebastian said, eyes shutting. “Let me sleep.”

“You need to eat --”

“No.”

“You need to eat --”

“Or what?” Sebastian cracked an irritated eye open to glare at him. “Or you’ll force feed me? Hack off my other arm so I can’t stop you?”

Blaine was silent once more, and Sebastian shut his eyes again. He was half-asleep when Blaine spoke one last time:

“I’m sorry. I had to.”

Sebastian ignored him in favour of satisfying his exhaustion. At least it was simple.

The autoshop was big enough, yet it never felt smaller then when Blaine was there.

Sebastian couldn’t look at him, pretended to sleep -- did sleep -- as often as he could to avoid it, staring at the car lifts and the broken-down car (no gas) and the cheerful, faded signs declaring Service with a smile! Free air freshener with each consult! Oil changes done by the best!

He’d had an ego about his car. What guy didn’t? After it had broken down on him halfway to a QZ, he’d walked. He’d walked the soles off his too-expensive sneakers, afraid to stop with the howls of wolves in the air. Only the clothes on his back and ...

His phone and its charger. No service. Kept it alive because games were a good distraction for bored kids. About five years ago, when Blaine was having a fit locked inside their bathroom and needed monitoring, he’d turned the thing on, and played Solitaire until Blaine’s choking sobs died off along with his screen.

And then he’d tossed it. Another relic of a bygone age, useless keepsakes.

“Move it,” he told Blaine, the first words he’d managed in ages.

He was staring at the blood-stained ax, resting near Blaine’s side of the floor. Blaine nodded, and left, hiding it somewhere out of Sebastian’s current realm of invalidity in the shop.

“I should have cleaned it,” Blaine said softly when he returned. “Should have moved it. Should have -- sorry.”

“‘Out, damn spot?’” Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him, challenging. “Like that would help me forget?”

Blaine’s eyebrows snapped down, dark pair to the circles furrowed beneath his eyes, almost inhuman looking in his brief rage, mouth opening, but then he … backed down.

Sebastian swallowed disappointment as Blaine turned tail and fled.

They were, essentially, trapped inside the mall.

Even if Sebastian was in a condition to be moved, they couldn’t. They could still hear patrols outside on high-alert after the … incident .. and this end of the mall was closed off. South exit caved in, stores built up against another building to the north, security screens in front of all the windows and doors, elevator defunct, the gap they’d entered through collapsed, and the rising doors of the autoshop could only be opened with power, something in short supply since the collapse of modern society.

At least it wasn’t the worst place to be trapped, just because someone had camped out here for a while, leaving behind rations, a mattress, and a stack of airport novels.

As to the occupant -- well, he had tried to eat Sebastian’s arm.

Sebastian stayed in the autoshop, recuperating, or more honestly alternating between frustration and mind-numbing trance states brought on by reading about the adventures of an intrepid reporter who never seemed to die no matter what situation he ended up in.

“You’ll regret that someday, buddy,” Sebastian muttered, pressing the book to his knees as he carefully turned a page with his free/only hand.

He’d been indulging himself in the crazy-talking-to-himself hobby more. It echoed Kurt’s snide voice in his mind -- “There’s no reason we can’t do the apocalypse in style,” -- Sebastian forced to have his clothes patched with careful hands ...

Fuck. Sebastian could do with a drink. He’d happily be an alcoholic if alcohol wasn’t harder to get than food, these days.

Maybe Blaine would find some as he explored and Sebastian could guilt him into handing it over. Unfortunately, Blaine hadn’t found anything half as fun, just scribbling his findings on a copy of the mall map he’d torn down from an info stand, insisting on going over what meager information and supplies they had ad nauseum.

This was a bunch of ramen, a pack of water bottles, a ladder, a car jack, a pack of cards, a screwdriver broken at the hilt, and that fucking ax.

“We can climb the cave-in,” Blaine suggested, as their food stores grew lower.

Sebastian raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Seems like a two-handed job to me.”

A pointed wave of his amputated arm, which Blaine could never quite look at.

Blaine shook his head. “Right … well, we’ll think of something!”

Sebastian bit back a sharp comment. If Blaine decided to abandon him right now, he’d die, and Sebastian wasn’t keen on that. He’d survived. Now that the damage was done, he could accept there were ways to work around one arm, as long as it meant continuing to draw breath. There was always a way. He’d swallowed that bitter pill long ago.

What he couldn’t take was Blaine’s forced optimism. He’d never had much a taste for hypocrisy.

“Maybe we could use the ladder,” he offered, once he’d reigned in his temper.

“I’ll work on it,” Blaine promised. “Don’t worry.”

Sebastian couldn’t help a side-eye at that, and a frowning Blaine did as he’d so mastered, and left.

It was getting colder out.

Sebastian could feel it, left/remaining/only hand pressed against the metal of the garage door, his heat leeching away. Rains came through the hole in the ceiling, washing over the mall floor, and the smell of rotting things only grew stronger.

“We should move before it starts to snow,” he told Blaine.

“I’m trying,” Blaine shot back, then crumpled. “I’m sorry --”

“Stop apologizing!”

“Then what the hell do you want from me, Sebastian!”

“Nothing!”

Blaine shook his head, dismissal painting the lines of his face.

“If only that were true.”

“What’s that supposed to mean --”

“I’m going to go check outside.”

Blaine climbed out the hole in the roof. Sebastian watched him go, rubbing his aching, bandaged stump. He didn’t return to the autoshop until he saw Blaine return.

Blaine found Sebastian. He looked grim.

“There’s no way down. No fire escape or anything.”

“Great. We’ll scratch that one off the list.”

“You don’t have to take that tone …”

“Tone?” Sebastian snorted. “I’m just being me.”

Blaine stared, then sighed. “Sebastian …”

“Look. We just have to find a way to next door. It must have functioning doors.”

“There’s no way to the other building, I’ve checked …”

“Where there isn’t a door, you make one.”

“Just like that?” Blaine’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. I’ll scout out for a place.”

They had no tools, and those walls were all concrete, but neither of them said anything.

Blaine smashed the glass that encased the elevator chute, then used the ladder as a way up to it, climbing the cables to the second floor -- safer than climbing the caved-in section, he said. He had hopes of checking out every floor this way.

Sebastian did aimless circles, taking peeks at his arm. It was healing, no longer the open wound it had once been, but it wasn’t a pretty sight, lumpy and pink and scar-stretched.

“This is why he never went to medical school,” he said to himself, giving it a poke and immediately regretting it as he was swamped with the pain of tenderness.

Blaine came back bearing gifts: a decorative throw and a pillow.

“I found them in a stockroom. Here …”

He went to place them on the mattress Sebastian had claimed, and Sebastian shook his head. The sight of the small comforts filled him with uneasiness, which was irrational, so he tried to smother it. “You should take them. You just have floor.”

“You’re the injured one.”

“I’m healing,” Sebastian said brusquely. “In fact, you take the mattress.”

“No, I can’t --”

“Do it, and I’ll take that hideous pillow.”

“Hideous?” Blaine held it up, staring at the faded pattern of owls curiously. “I think it’s cute.”

“More your style than mine,” Sebastian said, shrugging. It pulled at the skin of his arm, and he winced, rubbing it. Blaine glanced up at the movement, then returned his attention to the pillow, squeezing it.

“You never liked things just for being -- cute? Pretty?”

A memory from a different place, a different time: “Shame about Blaine. He was pretty.” How hard it was to reconcile that carefully put-together Blaine from eons ago with this bearded, armed, and bootcut-jeans one that kneeled before him. Still handsome, of course, and somehow, that made Sebastian’s ever-present anger these days rise sharply to the surface.

“Never was that kind of gay.” Sebastian looked around, deliberately pouring on the scorn as he continued: “I’m sure you’re wishing it was Hummel trapped in a mall with you instead.”

Blaine dropped the pillow, fist curling around the gleam of his wedding band as he jumped to his feet. He rounded on Sebastian, a storm raging behind his eyes.

“That’s low, Sebastian!”

Sebastian didn’t flinch. “But true.”

“I never said that!”

“Yeah, well, I know you. Never needed to say a thing.”

“Right.” Blaine threw his hands up. “So no need to ask. Just assume.”

“Christ. I am not doing this.”

Sebastian turned his back, clumsily running his hand over his face, fingers no-longer-there twitching with the desire to do it more neatly. He kicked at the mattress, biting the inside of his cheek.

“No, we are doing this. I want you to just say it!”

“Say what?” Sebastian whipped back around, stepping into Blaine’s space, glaring down at him. Blaine jerked his chin up, mouth twisting. “What am I not saying?”

They held gazes for a tense, breathless moment, waiting for something to snap, and then Blaine went to speak but -- he was interrupted by a sudden, rattling bang on the garage door. They fell silent, heads turning to stare at the corrugated metal. The room echoed with its begging, bang bang bang, underwritten with a pained moan that echoed up into a shriek. Not human. That was a relief. They stepped apart, no eye contact made, and quietly moved to either side of the room. They settled into opposite corners, trying to ignore the animalistic knocking, Sebastian on his mattress, Blaine leaning against the tool chest, hugging his knees. Sebastian lay down, trying to find a comfortable position, not that he’d been able to in the months since he’d come out of his feverish sleep.

He dreamed of classics class in university, droning over The Velveteen Rabbit to a comfortable weight on his arm, and his last boyfriend, who he’d been just about to dump when the apocalypse had taken care of that by making a monster of him … odd dreams, disjointed, taunting him with promises of understanding ...

He woke up in the -- night -- day? -- to an itchy nose.

Groaning, Sebastian reached up to scratch his nose. It didn’t seem to ease it, tugging him more out of sleep, and he opened his eyes. No hand in front of his face -- oh.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know about phantom limb syndrome. His brain really needed to catch up with itself.

Lowering his hand (ish) and kicking the helpless rage he felt, he used his other hand to scratch his nose, then paused as he heard something … skittering? rolling on the ground?

He turned his head, and squinted. Blaine was lying on his side, head pillowed on his arm, eyes just visible in the dim light, tracking back and forth. His hand moved; gold streaked across the ground; his hand moved, batting it back.

The ring. Sebastian shook his head, and went back to sleep.

Blaine was glowing with triumph.

“I found a way out!”

“Where?”

“Under the elevator!”

“... What?”

“I was on the fourth floor. There’s a manager’s office there, and there was paper half-burned, I thought it was useless, but it’s actually blueprints. Apparently there’s a service tunnel to next door, on the ground floor of the elevator shaft.”

He pulled out this charred blueprint with a flourish, unrolling it for Sebastian to see. Sebastian nodded slowly as he scanned it; Blaine wasn’t wrong.

“Problem: the elevator is on the ground.”

“Not totally.”

“There’s a few inches, so what? Have a Drink me! potion?”

Blaine pointed with a showman’s flair -- (he didn’t sing anymore, not since his daughter, but Sebastian couldn’t blame him; he couldn’t remember any words himself) -- at the car jack that Sebastian had been using as a footrest. His eyebrows went up.

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Blaine echoed, almost mischievous. “If we can get it up just enough to slip under and open the hatch, we’ll be good. C’mon.”

Blaine grabbed the car jack, grinning, and Sebastian followed, quietly amazed.

In rare good luck since they’d entered this miserable place, the plan worked.

They got the elevator up, and Blaine was able to shimmy under and pop the hatch with the ax, after a cautious look at Sebastian, who forced his face even. Once it was open Blaine gazed back at Sebastian expectantly, hopefully, and Sebastian had to smile, though it soon faded.

“We shouldn’t just rush in there,” Sebastian said, crouching outside the gap and staring at the tiny hole.

Who knew what was hiding in that darkness. He was running out of arms to sacrifice just groping around.

“Yeah …” Blaine peered into it, and shone his flashlight. The light flickered; Blaine impatiently gave it a shake until the beam steadied. “There’s a ladder, it goes down, about fifteen feet … looks like spores, too.”

No surprise. They gathered in closed-off areas. Another good reason to avoid small spaces.

“Should throw a rock and see what comes running.”

“I’d rather nothing know where we are …” Blaine looked between Sebastian and the hole, then nodded to himself. “I’ll go in. Scout it.”

Sebastian’s gut gave an awful twist. “No.”

“Sebastian,” Blaine said, uncertainty flicking across his eyes for a second. “I need to.”

“Right. Blaine knows best. I forgot.”

Blaine glared at him, and then shook his head. “I’ll just see if there’s anything down there, and take care of it.”

“You could die.”

Blaine muttered something under his breath -- Sebastian had no idea what, though the tone wasn’t flattering. He wondered if Blaine was cursing him out. How ungentlemanly.

“I could die anywhere,” Blaine said aloud, peering back into the hole. “Anytime. That’s what life is.”

Sebastian reached out to grip Blaine’s ankle, breaking an unspoken boundary they’d refound, a line redrawn as harshly as the first time, when Blaine had screamed “Don’t touch me,” at Sebastian’s attempt to comfort, a little blood-stained felt rabbit between them ...

“Doesn’t mean you should take unnecessary risks.”

“‘Unnecessary risks’,” Blaine parroted, mouth twisting. “I’ll be fine.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Well, I am.” He’d almost forgotten how damn stubborn Blaine could be. It made his teeth grind. “So I’m doing this, and you can’t stop me.”

“Fine.” Sebastian rolled his eyes, let go. “But remember, if I’m in no position to stop you, I’m in no position to save you, either. Doesn’t matter what I hear.”

Blaine looked him over inscrutably, then shrugged, tone bitter when he replied.

“Fine. I’m not asking you to. Stay here.”

With that, Blaine pat his gun, his knife, tugged his mask on, then shifted around to slip his feet in the hole and climb down. Sebastian watched him disappear a piece at a time, listened to the dull sound of booted feet on the rungs until they faded, and kept his vigil, looking on silently.

Nothing for a good long while.

Then --

Was that a distant scuffle?

Some kind of shriek?

Sebastian leaned forward, straining to hear --

A gunshot. Echoing. One. Two. Then no more.

He swallowed, shut his eyes, and started to count.

Kurt had died in a random stabbing. No rhyme or reason, never sure who it had been, and Sebastian had broken more than a few fingers trying to find out.

Their daughter had been infected. She’d been discovered, and taken care of. He was sure Blaine had never forgiven Sebastian for not getting her out, but …

He hadn’t known. He’d never known. She’d seemed so healthy, so herself, smiling at him all rosy-cheeked and sweet, listening to his not-at-all child-friendly bedtime stories with shock and awe.

“Daddy, one more,” she’d said, curling chubby fingers around his, gaze pleading. And Sebastian … Sebastian had left. Needed to get to work.

Incredible the kind of cat-in-the-cradle bullshit that could be pulled on you even after the apocalypse. Fuck. He’d never asked for that. Never asked for any of it. Should have left earlier, found himself a nice little abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere and shot anyone who got within a hundred yards of him.

But he couldn’t pretend being too smart to sleep alone was the only reason he’d stuck around. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t …

He was at nearly a thousand mississippi's when he heard footsteps.

Sebastian followed Blaine back to the autoshop, a little dazed.

“There were a couple clickers, and one on the wall, but other than that, it was fine … I took care of them. That ax saved my life when I ran out of bullets ... there’s a door on the other side. I had to jimmy the lock but it leads out! To a storeroom I mean, I think it was once a Brooks Brothers actually --” Blaine showed off a bowtie he’d curled around his fist like a bandage, miming a playful punch “-- I couldn’t resist, well, just one more door between us and freedom! We’re set!”

The manic energy was hard to manage after the tension of his wait. Sebastian blinked slowly, rubbing his aching temple, and stared at the cloth-wrapped hand.

“You’re not hurt, are you?”

“Huh? No, I was … well, I hate punching them, I don’t want to get a cut … I was thinking how nice brass knuckles would be but for now wrapping my hands seems good …”

Blaine began to unravel it, continuing to chatter (“-- wish I still had the stuff I used back when I was boxing, that was great, sporting goods on floor three was cleaned out though except for hockey pucks, lots of hockey pucks --”) as Sebastian looked unsurely at their scattered things. Should they leave? It had to be November, at least. They didn’t have much in the way of winter wear. Should they just use the tunnel to get food and come back here, where it was safe?

No. Nowhere was safe. Nowhere was safe. He couldn’t let himself forget --

Blaine had fallen silent, staring down at his now-bare hand. Stomach plummeting and drawing out memories of torn flesh and the cleaving of an ax, Sebastian stared, but he didn’t see any kind of injury.

“What’s wrong ..?”

“I …” Blaine turned his hand over, to and fro, frantically, looking at it like he might tear it off himself. “It’s gone!”

“What’s --”

Blaine’s head darted up, eyes wide and frantic. “I need to go back.”

“What?”

Sebastian grabbed Blaine when Blaine tried to march past him, shaking his head at Blaine’s radiating terror. Blaine stilled, but couldn’t contain his trembling.

“Let me go, Sebastian.”

“What’s going on?”

“My ring. It’s gone.”

Sebastian looked and realized Blaine was right. No ring. Not even really a tan line. Like it had never been there. Sebastian swallowed.

“Blaine …”

“I -- I don’t know what --” Blaine shook his head. “I have to find it.”

“Blaine, it’s --”

“Don’t say just.” Blaine jerked away from his hold, sending Sebastian a sullen look like a starving, mean stray. “Don’t ever say that.”

It sparked something in Sebastian, this implication. That Blaine was the only one standing here, less than he once was. So he did as he’d always done best, and lashed out.

“And what if it’s gone forever? What then.”

“It’s not!” Blaine gave him a shove, propelling himself back, away from Sebastian. “It’s not!”

“But it could be. What then? Are we going to stay here until we starve so you can find it? Sorry, buddy, but dying for a useless hunk of metal isn’t on my to-do list --”

“Shut up!” Blaine hissed. “Why are you being so mean.”

“I’m being realistic! For fuck’s sake, Blaine, I’m the one who told you how to keep it safe! But you didn’t listen --”

“It wasn’t right! I couldn’t -- god, you’d never understand, why would I think you could …”

Sebastian pinned him with a look. “Understand what? Losing things?”

Blaine sucked in a breath, gaze darting to what remained of Sebastian’s right arm, and then his shoulders drew a tight, angry line as they straightened out.

“You think amputation is anything like losing your soulmate?” Blaine asked, and now it was Sebastian’s turn to be shocked, the callousness of the words ugly in Blaine’s normally kind mouth. “To losing your child?”

“Don’t use her like that. Fuck, even he deserves better than that --”

“Like your insults are any better --”

“Maybe not, but -- shit, Blaine, you’re not the only one with family! Loved ones! That’s all of our stories!”

“You love nothing,” Blaine told him, his now-bare left hand unfurling and then slamming into a tight fist over and over, hitting his own chest, eyes growing damp past the hot anger radiating from them. “You have no idea --”

“Fuck you,” Sebastian spat back. “Fuck you and -- you know what? I have done -- everything for you -- we’re only here, alive , for you to yell at me because of all I’ve done --”

“That’s not true!”

“Then what the hell do you think --”

“You’re the one who shot those guys!”

The words rung out, somehow more damning than anything else said so far. Sebastian shook his head, trying to figure out Blaine’s logic.

“What the fuck does that --”

“You shot those guys . And then we had to run, here , and you got attacked, you got us trapped, and it was your fault.”

Blaine didn’t look triumphant, more desperate, as the words landed low in Sebastian’s gut, sure as a hit, making him flinch. He battled a swell of guilt with righteousness.

“I had to!”

“No, you didn’t,” Blaine informed him. “They were going to talk!”

Sebastian snorted. “No, they weren’t.”

“They were lowering their guns!”

Sebastian blinked. No, that wasn’t -- he tried to think back to that day, the moon full overhead, the distant music, the two machine guns. They’d raised them, hadn’t they? The barrel up, the imminent threat, Blaine next him -- god -- Blaine --

“No, they were -- they were going to shoot.”

“They weren’t! I was handling it,” Blaine insisted, a hitch to his voice. “And you -- you went and did that! You murdered them!”

“I had to!”

“Why do you think that!” Blaine ran his hands over his hair. “You think I don’t know that you do these things , but I do, I always have, and I -- I always told myself you had to, but you -- you just shot them --”

“To protect us. Protect you.”

Blaine gripped his curls, mouth turning down, and he stared at Sebastian for several long seconds, tired lines around his eyes standing out all the more starkly. His brows lifted, almost marvelling.

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“It’s all I have to believe,” Sebastian replied, and the truth of it scared him.

What was he without Blaine?

“But we’ll never know, will we?” Blaine said, shaking his head, hands sliding down to cup the nape of his neck, holding onto himself. “Because you -- you tell yourself this, but when it comes down to it, that’s what you do, you -- I -- that’s not how I want to be protected.”

“Then what the hell do you want?”

“I want you to -- I want you to talk to me.”

“About what. The weather?”

“About --” Blaine swallowed a choked, laughing sound. “God, you can’t think of anything? How about your arm? Don’t act like you haven’t been silently judging me over it --”

Sebastian shook his head stubbornly. “I haven’t.”

Blaine sneered at him. “That’s a goddamn lie, Sebastian!”

“You saved my life, Blaine. I fucking know that,” Sebastian shot back, and pointed at Blaine with the stump; Blaine flinched. “You’re the one who can’t face what you did.”

“Because you’re blaming me!”

“I’m not! Christ, do you know what really bothers me? You want to know the real reason I’ve wanted to just -- just go?”

Blaine turned his face to press his mouth against his arm, brows furrowing, throat bobbing, and then he glanced back. “If you want to leave, you should.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m offering the why. Yes or no, Blaine, it’s a simple fucking question.”

Blaine took a deep breath, then stepped forward, releasing his neck and spreading his hands out to Sebastian. “Fine! Yes! Talk to me.”

“Because you’re pretending you give a shit.”

“I -- what’s that supposed to mean?” Blaine asked, almost like he hadn’t intended for it to be a question, the words reluctantly dragged from him.

“That you are an emotional zombie. For years I’ve had to all but wipe your ass while I looked out for you, and you could barely -- barely look at me -- and then -- and then when it’s my time to go you suddenly -- suddenly you’re willing to just do something like that. It’s not what you did. It’s that -- it’s that you only …”

Want me when you can’t have me. Sebastian swallowed, and turned away, covering his mouth and its unforgiving tremble with his hand. He felt sick, as sick as he’d been when the infection had first grabbed him.

“Really?” Blaine snapped, and the fury in his voice gave Sebastian pause. “You -- you said it yourself. After she -- after I lost them -- I, I was done Sebastian, I was -- but I couldn’t. Not when you -- you needed me -- and I’ve hung on, and that was for you, but you -- you didn’t do it for me, don’t pretend you did it for me --”

“So what you’re saying,” Sebastian began, speaking over Blaine, turning back on him with disbelief, “is that all this is some sick kind of revenge?”

Blaine’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Forget it. You don’t hear a word I say, do you?”

“Oh, I hear plenty, trust me.” Sebastian reached over, grabbing him when Blaine tried to step away, fear lancing through him. “But why don’t you illuminate me some more.”

Blaine sighed, and it was like finding a dead jellyfish on the beach, empty and sad. He didn’t try to tug away, just bored holes into Sebastian with his hard, wet gaze. “Why bother? All we do is talk past each other.”

“Then walk away,” Sebastian told him, feeling like he’d absorbed all the anger that had fled Blaine. “Turn around and walk off and leave. But if you don’t want to do that, tell me what it is you mean!”

“I can’t make it any clearer!” Blaine told him, a hint of a waver to his voice. “You don’t protect me, Sebastian, you protect what I do for you.”

“What …” Sebastian let go of, stepped back, unease splitting him inside. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means …” Blaine laughed, short, sharp, bitter. “That I could have been anyone.”

“You can’t really believe that,” Sebastian said, and it was his turn to marvel, searching Blaine’s face frantically for some suggestion of jest.

“If it had been me who died instead of Kurt --”

Blaine hadn’t said that name since Kurt had died. Sebastian sucked in a breath.

“Blaine, I fucking hated your husband.”

Sebastian hadn’t said the name either, and he didn’t feel like joining Blaine there quite yet.

“I know you two -- butted heads, but I also -- I saw you two together. So many times. Just … talking.”

Sebastian couldn’t even be angry; it was like seeing a map written in a topsy-turvy dimension, like Alice had come back and told him to look down for the sky.

“I --” Sebastian shook his head. “About you. I was telling him off, half the time!”

Their daughter, upon hearing that Sebastian had been to France, had instantly assumed that Sebastian knew how to do French braids. “Pleaaase, Uncle Seb?” Sebastian, not being a twelve-year-old girl, had turned to Hummel, and Kurt had taught him. “You’re a natural,” he’d told Sebastian, smiling kindly, and sometimes, sometimes things were good between them.

They were rare, but -- maybe hate was too strong a word. They’d shared something. Of course they had. Everyone did, who had seen what they had. But Sebastian -- Sebastian had known where he stood. He’d always known.

How could Blaine not? Was that really what this was? You love nothing? Sebastian could laugh.

“That’s only a half --”

“Blaine,” Sebastian interrupted again, but this time his tone had gentled, such a terrifyingly vulnerable thing that left him incapable of hearing his own words himself without cringing away, rather registering them with how they landed across the landscape of Blaine’s raw expression, “I love you.”

Blaine half-smiled, confused, then slowly shook his head. “What …”

“I’ve always loved you,” he continued, gesturing to encompass Blaine. “It could never have been just anyone.”

Blaine was now just staring at him, mouth parted, brows drawn low, a faint shake still tugging at his otherwise still gaze. Embarrassed, Sebastian continued, words growing softer but no less steady:

“And fine, if that’s selfish. If it’s selfish to love you and want to see you stay alive, because I need you, because I think you needed me … then fine, I’m selfish. We all fucking knew that’s what love is anyways -- selfish, horrible, desperate … but it’s love.”

“It’s love,” Blaine echoed, and then, “Why did you …”

He didn’t finish, looking almost confused, and Sebastian shrugged helplessly.

“Never say anything? I figured you knew.”

Blaine looked to his feet, then jerked his chin up. The sweet sting of embarrassment was reflected in his face.

“I think …” he grew even more shame-faced “ … I did know.”

“Yeah.” Sebastian huffed, tucked his hands -- hand -- into his pocket, shrugged again. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt. You love nothing. “Yeah. You did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No more apologies, Blaine.” Sebastian nodded at Blaine’s left hand. “You had your reasons, and I had mine. That’s … human.”

Blaine curled his hand into a fist, then slowly, slowly, smoothed it out, and then they both stood there in a silence that just verged on awkward, not quite making eye contact. It had been a furious argument and a whimper of an end, a just-forged sword slipped directly into water, and Sebastian had only steam left to breathe. His chest felt tight and hot, and he sighed to release it.

“I really don’t blame you for saving my life,” Sebastian said quietly. “And I’m sorry if you felt like I had. I probably would have done the exact same thing.”

Blaine crossed his arms, mouth moving softly, still not looking at Sebastian, and then carefully replied:

“I’m sorry … that you had to save me. And I’m … god, Sebastian, I’m thankful. I am.”

Sebastian smiled at that, and Blaine suddenly made a choked sound, shoulders hunching, and Sebastian stepped forward, offering an open arm; Blaine squeezed his eyes shut and with another half-sob he moved to hug Sebastian, tight and all-encompassing, tucking himself under Sebastian’s chin, and Sebastian held him back as fiercely as he could, some weight he couldn’t name slipping from his shoulders but leaving him with a feeling of grace. Of … peace.

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he’d ever known what that felt like before now.

That night, a blizzard raged outside, early winter come calling.

They slept tangled on that dirty mattress, breathing each other’s air, hearts beating against each other, feet tucked together, intimate and warm.

Blaine’s left hand was still curled in a fist, but now, Sebastian’s curled around it.

“I really am sorry about your arm. I wish there’d been another way.”

“Eh, it’s fine. I’m a leftie with jacking off anyways …”

“Right. … Where do you find the privacy to do that, exactly?”

“Privacy? No, I’m just very quiet. Ninja masturbation.”

“I …” Blaine laughed, nose crinkling at him. “That’s a skill, then.”

Sebastian, fond, nodded, and finished clumsily packing the last of his things; thankfully, Blaine hadn’t offered to help.

“Ready?” Sebastian asked, standing up and slinging the pack on.

“As ever.” Blaine adjusted his straps, smiled grimly. “Let’s get going.”

They slipped under the elevator, through the tunnel.

They both looked for the ring, not pausing, but flashlights sweeping the dark, lighthouses in the night, but nothing to be found, nothing to be warned for. There was only the dead and the soft puff of the spores, swirling through the beams, a quiet reminder of what awaited them all.

They left through the storeroom, up and out, through a field of empty mannequins and scattered hangers. Blaine briefly paused outside to stare up at the half-burned logo, thoughtful reflection curling his mouth, and then he looked back to Sebastian and smiled, offering his hand. Sebastian accepted it, his heart maybe a touch softer in his chest.

They left the city hand-in-hand, making tracks in the snow, their way soon swallowed up behind them by further falling drifts, with only forward to go.

“We should find a settlement,” Blaine said, and Sebastian nodded.

“Yeah, we should.” He knew they needed the help, now. “But we keep an exit strategy.”

“Of course.” Blaine leaned into him. “I think we just proved we can never be trapped.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Sebastian let out a huff of a breath, watching his breath swirl and part the air. “I guess we make a pretty good team.”

He sent a sly grin at Blaine, who smiled back, almost shy.

“We do,” Blaine agreed. “It’s why we’re still here, isn’t it?”

They squeezed each other’s hands, a warm moment that spread like waves on a tropical shore, the future of possibilities, white beaches and northern lights, and in understanding, they kept walking.

the end

#glee #blaine anderson #sebastian smythe #seblaine #my writing #blaine x sebastian #barbie's otp #happy halloween!

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