#my own fault for lying in bed doing nothing for three hours instead of either getting up and being productive or going back to sleep

[lamortwrites]

I deserve to go back to bed

[the-bau-quinjet]

One Misunderstanding

Bucky x Reader

Summary: You struggle to fix Bucky's first impression of you. Bucky struggles with his own feelings.

Warnings: angst, Hydra things- like brainwashing and torture, a few curse words, panic attacks, anxiety

Word count: 5609

a/n: this idea came to me very suddenly, but I'm in love with it. Hopefully whatever I just wrote does it justice.

Masterlist

"Everyone, meet Y/N. She's the newest member of our little group, bringing in a whole new level of hacking and tech skills. Y/N, meet the team." Tony introduced you to everyone, eager to share your skills.

You turned to the group, getting ready to introduce yourself further, but instead tripped. You shrieked as you fell down the small set of stairs you were at the top of.

Sam, being the closest, caught you. "Good thing you've got tech skills." He chuckled as you righted yourself, firmly planting your feet on the ground.

"Haha, yeah. I'm not a big fan of violence." You winced as you said it, wishing you could take it back. You didn't want to get into the reasons as to why you don't like violence.

To your surprise, nobody asked why. You would have guessed they would have questions, but maybe they weren't interested in your past. They all had their own issues to deal with afterall.

"Eh, we don't need anymore people for fighting anyway. Welcome to the team." Steve greeted you warmly, as you would have expected from America's golden boy.

You gratefully shook his hand, glad to not have to talk about anything yet. Unfortunately, you tripped again when you tried to move back, falling into the one and only Bucky Barnes.

His hands steadied you, dryly laughing at your clumsiness. "You really are clumsy."

You did you best to not show how embarrassed you were. You couldn't deny the claim. Unless you were fighting, something you vowed to yourself to never do again, you were clumsy.

Being abducted and tortured by Hydra may have made you a competent fighter, but your aptitude for tripping over nothing never left.

"Right, sorry!" You greeted everyone else quickly, eager to get situated in your room. "I'm just going to unpack everything." You waved as you backed out of the room, bumping into the wall as you left.

-

You had just finished putting away your stuff when you heard a knock on your door.

"Come in!" You figured someone would have questions for you.

Unsurprisingly, Natasha was the one to step into your room. Of everyone there, you expected her to have learned about your past. It comes with the territory of being a spy.

"Hi, I was hoping to talk to you." Her tone was friendly, but clearly she was skeptical of you. Again, you weren't surprised.

"I thought you might. I'm assuming you read my file? Honestly, I thought everyone would." You laughed gently, shaking your head at yourself.

"I did. Your file is pretty bare bones though. I did some extra digging... Not everyone else is as nosy as me." She grinned, already pleased with your openness. "So, why'd you pretend to be clumsy?"

"Oh, it wasn't pretend. I've always been clumsy. When everything happened, and I learned how to fight, I thought my newfound agility would help. Turns out, it didn't. The only times I'm even the slightest bit coordinated are when I'm fighting or training, but I wasn't lying about that either. When I escaped, I promised myself I wouldn't hurt anyone else."

"Why join the Avengers at all then?" She looked curious, still unsure if she could trust you.

"I wanted to help people. I just didn't want to use the skills they gave me to do it. So, I learned how to code, figured I could help behind the scenes."

She smiled, letting down her guard. Clearly it would take some time, but you could easily see the two of you being close friends.

"So, nobody knows about what you went through?" She couldn't help but be curious about your past.

"Nope. I don't talk about it much, but it's not a secret. I'll answer anything you want to know." You smiled, eager to try and make a real friend here.

You spent the next few hours answering every question Natasha could think of. You told her about being abducted and experimented on.

That lead to even more questions, basically boiling down to the fact that you're not a super soldier, but you do have enhanced senses- and seemingly enhanced clumsiness for when you're not using them.

You told her about learning how to fight, and the punishments you would endure if you got it wrong. The two of you bonded over the shared experience.

Finally, you told her about how you escaped. When the Winter Soldier escaped, every Hydra effort possible was made to find him. That included you. Resources were spread thin, trying to cover more areas. It was the perfect opportunity for you to get out.

"Really, I owe my freedom to him. Even if he doesn't know anything about me." You felt the tears in your eyes, too many emotions swirling through you to keep it all in anymore. "Since then, I've learned everything I could about technology and coding, which pretty much brings you up to date."

Before she could ask anymore questions, there was another knock on your door. Quickly wiping the tears from your eyes, you called another "come in!"

Steve poked his head in the door, cautiously looking between you and Nat.

"I've been sent to stop the interrogation." He grinned, stepping farther into the room.

Nat rose from her spot on the bed, kissing him on the cheek while rolling her eyes. "It wasn't an interrogation. We were bonding."

"Yeah, over what?" He chuckled, trying to figure out what the two of you had in common.

Maybe it was the look in your eyes, or maybe Nat just likes knowing more than everyone, but she smiled conspiratorially at you before responding. "Girl stuff, babe. Just girl stuff."

You smiled as the couple left the room, grateful for not having to explain everything again.

-

Over the next few weeks, the team constantly teased you for your clumsiness. Well, not the whole team. Nat knew the truth, so she never said anything. Peter never teased you either, although that is likely due to the teasing he endures as well.

Weirdly enough, you bonded with the kid over it, eventually telling him about your past as well.

Normally you could shake it off. They clearly didn't mean anything by it. Except Bucky.

Whenever he said anything, he stared you down. His eyes felt like they were piercing your soul. You're not sure exactly why, but he didn't seem to like you much.

Which wouldn't be an issue if you didn't have an embarrassing crush on the man.

Really your infatuation started when you first escaped Hydra. His own escape lead to your freedom, so you admired him. When you found out he was working with the Avengers to help people, you admired him even more.

Watching him on missions is really what caused the infatuation to blossom into a full blown crush.

You, however, would adamantly deny that if anyone ever asked. Which is what just happened.

"What?!" You nearly tripped, again, with how quickly you turned to look at Wanda and Nat.

"You heard me." Nat stared at you, a neutral expression on her face. "When are you going to do something about your crush on Barnes."

"I, I don't- I don't have a crush on Bucky." You stuttered, a lackluster job at denying the truth.

"Please, Y/N. It's so obvious!" Wanda joined in.

The three of you hung out a lot around the compound. It was nice to have a support system to lean on when things got hard.

"Well, even if I did, which I'm not saying I do! He doesn't like me. I don't know what I did, but his eyes feel like daggers whenever we're in the same room." You started out strong, but quickly morphed into a sad resignation. It genuinely upset you that Bucky didn't like you.

"I think I might know what that's about..." Wanda bit her lip, immediately feeling guilty at having said anything.

"What!?" You eagerly turned to her, needing answers. You shuffled your way across the room, never fully rising from your seat on the ground.

"I don't know if I should tell you! I'm not even supposed to know, but sometimes his thoughts are really loud!" Her guilt multiplied.

"You have to tell me now! Then I can fix it!" You were practically begging at her feet from your position on the floor.

She looked at Nat, who just shrugged in return. "Not my place, although I would love to hear it."

"Ugh, fine. But you can't tell anyone I told you!" Wanda glared at the two of you, unable to say no to your pouting face. "The first day we all met you, do you remember what you said?"

Your face scrunched as you tried to remember. "I'm not a big fan of violence?"

She nodded, looking at you as if she just told you everything.

"So?" You asked incredulously, unable to follow her train of thought.

She rolled her eyes, having to spell it out for you. "He kind of took that personally..."

Immediately, you sunk completely to the floor. "Oh, god. Fuck! That's not what I meant at all! I just meant I don't personally like using violence! Shit, shit, shit." You continued to mutter to yourself as Nat and Wanda shared a look.

"Why don't you like using violence?" Wanda asked, intrigued by your reaction.

You thought back to your conversation with Nat the first day you got here. You told her it wasn't a secret, it just wasn't something you brought up.

"Can you just look in my head? I don't really wanna explain it, but I want you to know." You asked, glad to share you past with another friend.

Wanda nodded, seemingly doing nothing until realization dawned on her.

"Oh shit." She whispered, not even realizing she said it out loud.

"Yeah." You huffed out a dry laugh.

"Y/N... I'm so sorry." You smiled at her, having worked through most of the trauma already. "You totally have a crush on Barnes though."

That earned a real laugh. "Hey, that's not what you were in there for!"

"It's not my fault! You were thinking it really loudly!"

The three of you laughed together until you sunk back into a pit of despair.

"What do I do? How do I fix this?" You whined, laying back on the ground like a child.

"I think you just need to talk to him. Explain what you meant." Wanda shrugged, unsure of any other advice to offer you.

"She's right. Just talk to him." Nat nodded along as you whined on the floor.

-

After a few days, you finally worked up enough courage to try and talk to Bucky. He had just finished training, so you knew exactly where he'd be: in the kitchen.

Walking in, you were glad to see him pulling ingredients from the fridge.

"Hey Bucky, can I, um, talk to you for a minute?" You stuttered through the words, nervous about what he would say.

He barely looked at you, nodding his head for you to continue.

"I just, I wanted to apologize." You trailed off when his head snapped up.

"For what?" Well shit. How are you supposed to explain this one without ratting out Wanda.

"Oh, well, um... I just thought maybe I said- I did something that upset you. Uh, you just don't seem to like me very much, which is totally cool, you don't have to like me if you don't want to. I just didn't want it to be my fault... Fuck." That went horribly. Taking a deep breath, you started over. "I didn't mean it."

Bucky is looking at you like you have three heads. "Didn't mean what?"

"That I don't like violence."

"So you do... like violence." He'd somehow grown more confused.

"Well, no." You paused, unsure of how to explain yourself.

"Then you did mean it." His soul piercing stare is back.

"I-"

"It's fine, save it. Some people get to choose not to be violent." And with that, he left the kitchen, abandoning his post workout smoothie.

You stared at the doorway, in shock over how poorly that went. You stood there , unaware of the 25 minutes that had passed, trying to figure out how it could've gone better when Steve found you.

"Y/N? What are you doing?"

You didn't hear him, too lost in the memories. Memories of Hydra, forcing you to do things you never wanted to. This happened from time to time if something triggered you into remembering, otherwise you had a handle on your emotions.

"Y/N?" Steve said your name again, concern evident in his voice. He gently laid a hand on your shoulder, trying to get your attention.

Everything happened so fast after that. The feeling of someone's hand on your shoulder caused you to panic. With all the memories of Hydra in your head, your training kicked in instinctually.

You grabbed Steve's arm, pulling him closer to you for better leverage. Before he could question your moves, you flipped him, pinning him to the ground.

The second you made eye contact, you realized what just happened. Horror and regret flashed in your eyes.

In an effort to get off him, you threw yourself backward, knocking into a cart full of pots and pans. The clanging of metal hitting the ground echoed through the small room.

Steve sat up slowly, trying to register the turn of events. You sat in a ball on the floor, tears pooling in your eyes, mumbling apologies over and over again.

Sam, having heard the commotion from the pots and pans, ran into the kitchen ready to fight.

"What- What happened?" He asked in confusion, lowering his arms from their defensive position.

"I don't know." Steve looked at you, still trying to figure it out.

"Y/N?" Sam's voice was gentle, but it still startled you.

You jumped from the ground, rushing to help Steve get up. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to. I never wanted to hurt anyone again." Your breathing was picking up, short bursts of air leaving your lungs. Your hands were shaking as you pulled him from the ground.

Your panic increased as you took in their concerned expressions.

"Hey, look at me." Steve's Captain voice, came out, urging you to make eye contact. You followed orders, breathing rapidly, your whole body shaking.

"I'm going to touch you now, is that okay?" His words were gentle, but commanding, causing you to nod in response.

He pulled you into a tight hug, rubbing soothing circles on your back.

You wanted to explain, to tell them what happened, but all that came out was a pitiful "Bucky".

"Do you want me to get Bucky?" Sam asked, trying to understand you.

The idea of Bucky coming back caused your panic to increase. You shook your head rapidly, "No! No no no no no." You kept repeating the word, shaking in Steve's arms.

"Okay! Okay, no Bucky." Sam reassured you, voice calm and soothing.

You’re not sure how long you stood like that. Sam moved around the kitchen, cleaning up the pots and pans you had knocked over.

When your breathing steadied, Steve asked, "Do you want to talk about what happened?"

You nodded, leading the two men to the couch in the adjacent common area. You sat for a minute, unsure of where to start.

"Why don't you just lead us through it all?" Steve suggested, still rubbing your back.

You nodded, grateful for the starting point. "I went to the kitchen to apologize to Bucky."

"What for?" Sam interrupted, already confused.

"Sam! Just let her talk." Steve muttered, slightly annoyed.

"Sorry!" He glared back at Steve before turning to you, "Sorry, please continue."

You couldn't help but laugh at their banter.

"Right, I wanted to apologize for what I said the first day I met you all. I realized how it sounded, so I wanted to try and fix it." You paused, waiting for the recognition to hit them.

It didn't take long. The two men nodded, silently urging you to continue.

"Honestly, Wanda told me that was why he always seems mad at me. You have to know, I never meant for it to come across that way! It's more of a personal, 'I don't want to be violent' than shunning others for doing what's necessary." You took a deep breath, not eager to relive the conversation.

"Anyway, I told him I didn't mean it. I just couldn't explain it right, and he got upset, which makes sense!" You turned to look between them, not wanting them to think you were insulting Bucky in any way. "I don't hold what he did against him. It wasn't his choice, and I completely understand that. I just couldn't put that into words when I was talking to him, and I made everything worse."

Tears popped into your eyes again, upset at what he must be going through. You weren't with Hydra for but a tenth of the time he was, and you didn't endure the same level of brainwashing.

"He said something about some people not being able to choose not to be violent, and then he left. I don't know how long I was standing in the kitchen replaying the conversation, but it brought up bad memories for me." You sighed again, working up the nerve to tell them everything.

"Wanda and Nat already know, but I guess it's your guys's turn. This was so much easier to just have Wanda read my mind." You laughed at your own joke, the two men sharing a concerned look.

"I was taken... by Hydra. They experimented on me, gave me enhanced senses, trained me to fight, and punished me when I did something wrong." Again, tears sprung into your eyes, occasionally falling down your cheeks.

"Why wasn't this in your file?" Steve questioned, more to himself than you.

"I haven't got a clue. I guess nobody knew about me? But, I escaped. They didn't brainwash me like they did Bucky, because I don't have the serum. Or, at least, I think that's why." You shook your head, refocusing on the important parts.

"When every available Hydra agent was tasked with searching for the Winter Soldier, I took it as on opportunity. Their resources were spread thin. I was able to getaway."

You went onto explain your reasoning for joining the Avengers as a tech specialist, trying to convey the same earnestness you did with Nat.

"You can ask Nat or Wanda too. Nat found out day one, Wanda a few days ago." You wiped your tears, hoping they believed you. "Actually, Peter knows too."

"I was stuck in all those memories when you came into the kitchen. I didn't even register that you were in the room, so when you touched me I freaked out. I never meant to hurt you!"

You looked at Steve fearful that he would be upset.

"Y/N, I believe you." You cried tears of relief at his statement, genuinely exhausted from the day. "It's not your fault, and you didn't hurt me. Just caught me off guard. You're surprisingly agile when you want to be." He tried to lighten the mood, glad to hear you laugh.

"Well, I train in the middle of the night sometimes. I- I want to be able to get out if I'm ever forced back there." Your voice was quiet, admitting a secret you hadn't even told Nat.

"We won't let that happen." The sternness of Sam's voice surprised you.

"Thank you." You wiped your tears a final time, looking between the two men. "Now, what do I do about Bucky?" You refocused your energy on fixing your relationship with the super soldier.

"He never would have said what he said if he had known." Steve started the conversation, defending his friend.

"I know. I don't hold it against him, I just wish I could explain. I get so nervous when he looks at me like that." You rambled, too tired to filter your thoughts.

"Like what?" Sam asked, eager for more information to tease Bucky with.

"Huh? Oh, I don't know. Like he can see into my soul." You deadpanned, earning a laugh from both men. "I just want him to like me." You nearly whined, upset by your poor relationship.

"Like you, huh?" Steve grinned. Nat and Wanda chose that exact moment to walk into the room, eagerly joining the conversation.

"Barnes? Did you tell him how you feel?" Wanda squealed with excitement.

You buried your head in your hands, avoiding the knowing looks the four of them were surely sharing. "Not exactly." You gestured to your head, hoping Wanda would figure it out and share with Nat.

"Ooh... It didn't go well, basically Barnes got upset, Y/N flipped Steve and had a panic attack, then told these two everything." Wanda explained to Nat quickly, trying not to make you relive it.

"We need a plan." Nat declared.

"No, I just need to learn how to have a conversation with the man." You rolled your eyes at yourself. "I'll try talking to him again." You went to leave the room, turning around to glare at them. "And none of you can say a word of this to Bucky."

-

Despite you request, Steve still tried to talk to Bucky.

"What's up with you?" Steve questioned, trying to subtly pry into Bucky's thoughts.

"Nothing. Why?" Bucky answered in a questioning tone, trying to figure out Steve's motives.

"I heard you talked to Y/N is all. How'd it go?" He gave up on the subtle approach pretty quickly, knowing Bucky wouldn't answer a question that wasn't asked.

"How did you even hear that, punk?" Bucky deflected.

"Not the point. Answer the question."

"Not great. I messed it up." Bucky sighed, annoyed at himself for barging out of the room. "She said wanted to apologize, that she didn't mean what she said." He ran his hands through his hair, struggling to explain where it all went wrong.

"Would've been fine if I could follow what she was saying. She was rambling about me not liking her, which you and I both know isn't true. Ugh, i've never been mad at her. I'm mad at myself! At Hydra for making me a monster! How could she ever like me if she doesn't like violence? My entire past is violent." He huffed, having worked himself up again.

"You're not a monster, Buck." Steve started gently.

"I know you think that." Steve gave him a pointed glare. "I know, okay? But what does she think?"

"Maybe you should try talking to her. You might be surprised by what you learn." Steve clapped him on the shoulder, trying to reassure him, before leaving the room.

-

Everytime you tried to talk to Bucky, something got in the way. The first time, he was called in for an emergency mission before you even got the word hello out.

The second time, Tony walked into the common area, completely oblivious to the tension, and put on a movie.

The third time, Steve and Nat interrupted you. You were just about to apologize again after an awkward greeting when the elevator doors opened. The sounds of the cheerful laughter and stolen kisses didn't really set the mood for confessing your past with Hydra.

The fourth, and final time, was the most embarrassing.

You walked into the room on a mission. You were going to talk to him, no matter who decided to walk in.

"Bucky, I really need to-" and you tripped on a toy Morgan left out, causing you to tumble to the ground. That would have been embarrassing enough, but there's more.

In your effort to get up, you tripped again, hitting your head on the coffee table, causing you to bleed profusely.

"Shit." You cursed yourself, holding your hand up to your bleeding forehead.

"Are you okay?" Bucky rushed to you from the other side of the table, concerned with the amount of blood spewing from your head.

"Yeah, I'll be fine." Unfortunately, you chose that moment to jokingly reference your past.

Some of the people who tortured you had a sick sense of humor. Whenever they would hit you hard enough to make you bleed, they said something about only having one head. A play on words because of the greek serpent with multiple heads.

"Head wounds bleed a lot, I'm lucky I only have one." You froze instantly, unsure if he would have had a similar experience. Slowly, you looked up in an effort to make eye contact.

Bucky was also frozen in place. Clearly he understood the reference.

"Wh- where did you hear that?" Bucky struggled with his sentence, trying not to flashback to his time at Hydra.

"Oh my god. I'm so so sorry." You instantly started apologizing, trying to backtrack. "I really need to learn when to stop fucking talking." You said more to yourself than him.

"Where did you hear it?" He asked again, putting more power behind his words.

"Um, well, i've been trying to tell you for weeks now, but um, I also kind of, have, um, well, you see-"

"Just spit it out." There was the slightly miffed Bucky you were used to.

"I was taken. By Hydra. 9 years ago. Um, they forced me to learn how to fight. Tortured me if I did anything wrong. Forced me to do things..." You trailed off, realizing you didn't need to give him many details. He has first hand experience.

"Y/N, I-" You cut him off before he could say anything else.

"That's why I don't like using violence. I only know how to do that stuff because they made me learn it. I didn't want to use the skills they gave me." You took a deep, grounding breath.

"I don't blame you for anything you were forced to do. It wasn't your choice. You're not a violent person, and your past actions don't define who you are. You're here to help people. That's what you chose. That's who you are."

You made eye contact before you continued. "I've actually wanted to thank you for the longest time."

"For what?" He was incredulous, wildly caught off guard by everything you've said.

"The only reason I had an opportunity to escape was because 2 years ago, you escaped. If Hydra's resources hadn't been spread so thin trying to find you, I probably would've never got out. So thank you. For being strong enough to fight back."

You smiled at him, still unsure of how he was feeling.

"I... I'm so sorry." To say you were stunned was an understatement. What the hell could he have to be sorry about? Sure he was a little rude, but from your point of view he was completely justified in hating you.

"Bucky, you have no reason to be sorry. You didn't know, and I couldn't get out of my head enough to tell you. You just make me nervous." You clapped a hand over your mouth, shocked at having said what you just said.

You could see his face fall ever so slightly, causing you to jump back into your explanation.

"Not because I'm scared of you or anything! Hell, I could probably take you in a fight." You winked, trying to lighten the mood. It seemed to work, judging by the slight smirk on his face.

"I just, I've looked up to you for so long. Your determination to do good after everything you've been through is really inspiring. It's actually why I wanted to join the Avengers in the first place. I never would have-" You would have kept rambling if he hadn't stopped you.

"Y/N, I am sorry, and I do have reason to be. There's no excuse for what I said to you in the kitchen that day. Even if I didn't know, I threw everything you've been through back in your face. If someone had done that to me, I probably would have had a panic attack." He tried joking, but by the way you froze he could tell he struck a nerve.

"You had a panic attack? I'm so sorry! God, I just left you all alone and-"

It was your turn to cut him off. "Actually, I was kind of frozen in place until Steve touched me and I maybe threw him to the ground... Then I had a panic attack..." You smiled, trying to convey the joke. "So, I wasn't alone. Sam was actually also there. If anything, it made me better friends with both of them because I told them everything. So I have you to thank for that to." You playfully nudged his side.

He ran his hands through his hair, then down his face, clearly trying to deal with his own guilt.

"Hey, don't beat yourself up about it. You didn't know. It happened. We're good now, so we can move on." You smiled, trying to cheer him up.

"How are you so relaxed about all of this? You were tortured for years... I..." He was genuinely curious, trying to find a way to cope with his own pain.

"Well, even before that I always thought therapy could be helpful for me, so I really jumped in full force when I was free. Plus, if you can't joke about something, you haven't really moved on. Some days are harder than others, but I just try to appreciate the people I have now and the good experiences I've been lead to." You kept the tone light, trying not to get too emotional.

He just stared at you for a few minutes, making you questions everything.

"I mean, it's totally different for you though! I was only there for 7 years, you were forced into all that for like 10 times as long. I didn't mean to belittle-"

"I think you inspire me just as much as you say I've inspired you." He cut you off again, a small smile growing on your lips.

"Well, in the spirit of our newfound friendship, can I be totally honest?" You bit your lip, nervous about telling him the truth.

He looked nervous as well, but nodded anyway.

"I kind of, maybe, sort of have a crush on you." You watched his expression carefully, although there was really no need. His face easily gave away his surprise.

"You..." He stuttered, moving his fingers between the two of you. "Me? But, I was so mean!"

"What can I say, I saw through the facade... Well, really Wanda accidentally read your mind and told me why you were so upset around me when her and Nat teamed up to get me to tell you how I feel." You rambled again, realization dawning that you accidentally outed Wanda.

"But you can't tell her I told you that! She didn't mean to! She just said you think really loud sometimes and it's hard not to hear it! She did it to me too actually, I mean I told her she could look in my head so I wouldn't have to explain everything again, I know so lazy, and that's how she confirmed my crush on you." You said it all with wide eyes at a rapid speed, unable to control yourself around Bucky.

You slapped your hands over your mouth, forcing yourself to stop talking. Bucky looked on in amusement, slowly reaching to pull your hands away from your face.

"I won't tell her, if you get dinner with me tonight." He smiled cheekily, relishing in your blush.

"That's a deal I'm willing to make." You reached your arms around his neck, kissing his cheek before running to get ready.

***

Bonus:

Sam whined playfully as he looked at the high scores. "Whose username is 'God is a spoon' and how did they get so good at this game?"

He looked around the room, eying any suspicious candidates. Everyone denied it, throwing out accusations left and right.

It was another of Tony's team bonding nights and he chose VR games on the oculus. Obviously, Beat Saber was a top contender amongst the group.

You walked in with Bucky, unaware of the conversation going on, but immediately joining it.

"Peter! I bet it was him!" You playfully nudged the younger Avenger, having formed a close friendship in the early days. "What am I betting on?" Everyone laughed, happy to see you in a good mood after being so stressed for so long.

"Whose username is 'God is a spoon'." Sam chuckled after filling you in. You and Bucky settled on the couch, cuddling next to each other.

"Oh, that's me. Why?" You looked around curiously, trying to figure out what they wanted. "Is it a weird username? It was actually one of the catchphrase things in Just Dance on the switch, I didn't just think of it." You tried to justify yourself, causing more laughter.

"You?! How did you get all the highscores on this game? I thought you were the clumsy one."

You made an exaggerated face to show how offended you were, playfully swatting at Sam.

"I'll have you know, 7 years of Hydra 'training' and experimentation has its perks." You joked with the room. "One of them being I can beat your ass at pretty much any video game."

"Oh, you're so on." Sam smiled, glad he could joke around with you about it.

Meanwhile, Tony looked incredulously around the room, being the only one in the room who hadn't heard about your history, he was rightfully confused.

"I'm sorry, 7 years of WHAT?"

[technowoah]

Taunt

It only takes one time to realize you fucked up.

- ANON REQUESTED!

- WILBUR X FEM! READER BLURB

PROMPTS!

50) "Fuck off... I mean it"

24) "Get in the car" "..." "please get in the car"

⚠︎ angst to fluff, swearing, based on the song Taunt by Lovejoy ❤🐈 its short btw yall

[Updated 3 hours after upload I messed up the prompts sorry yall now it fixed]

She was always asking if he was alright. He always lied to her just to get her off his back for the night, but it was his fault that he wanted her to move in. He has to deal with that all of the time, it was her fault anyways. She made him upset, she made him not alright. She didn't know that. She constantly complained about things that didn't even concern her, she dodged their relationship making it more about her than them.

It was tiring to him. Constantly providing, trying to tie a broken knot, but he didnt let that get in the way of his career, or his friends. There's another issue, he never talked to his friends about her. She accused him of not being proud of their relationship and that became a problem that never got resolved.

Did anyone ever say "no" to her? Well if no one did, he would be the first one to do so. Fuck that.

He listened, and listened, but nothing kept this relationship together.

Wilbur talked to the three people chatting on his discord through his headphones as a soft LED lights flowed through the room. These nights were simple because she didnt have to see him when he decides to stream, he basically has his time set out for himself without trouble. He wasn't ecstatic, he felt horrible, but the facadè was there.

Her on the other hand wasnt happy either. She never got attention from him, and of course she could get moody from time to time like every other human being, but she always took it out on him. Who else was gonna be there for her? He acted like her cared, she knew he was lying. His "caring" consisted of humming and him responding like a default character in a video game. He didn't care, he acted like he never did. She needed that attention and he knew damn well she did.

She wasnt asking for much, at least to her it did feel like it. She knew when she was wrong, but she didn't want to admit it when they were both in the wrong too. They dont get each other, she didnt know why he asked her to move in when he didn't want anything to do with her. Ever since he moved her in he kept her in check like a child, she hated and loved that at the same time. Its true that she wanted her own way, she did what she wanted and gave her attention to whoever she wanted her attention to be. She thought that was fine, but apparently she dosent give any effort to the relationship.

Rolling her eyes at the thought she decided to leave the dishes in the sink dirty. She thought about leaving and finding someone who will get her, yes Wilbur listened to her, but there was no effort. When he's drunk and tries to "figure out what makes her brain tick" ends up in more distaster.

Lying in the couch her mind began to wonder, he always said that she could get away with anything. She always took it as a taunt. Everytime it was brought up. He called it "pretty privilege" and he always taunts her saying she abuses that power.

Her jaw clenched as she recalled those memories. Summoning the courage she brought herself up onto her feet and rushed to their shared bedroom. Taking a deep breath she opened their closet and started pulling her things off of hangers, not caring if she made a mess. She tossed her clothes onto the messy bed that they didn't bother to make this morning.

Bringing a small backpack out from underneath the bed she tried shoving most of her clothes into a bag for a night. In total frustration she emptied the bag and only backed necessities that she would need for the night.

She was tired of him and he was tired of her so she was doing both of them a favor. She made her way out of the door grabbing a coat and sliding on some simple shoes. Shooting a quick text to a close friend letting them know she's coming over. Her friend wasn't that close, but she decided to walk. As she locked the door to their shared apartment she debated texting Wilbur. She didnt want to, but she didnt want him to freak the fuck out because she wasnt home.

( Wilbur )

Me: Ill be back for the rest of my stuff tmrw.

[Read]

She closed her phone and started on her night time journey down the street trying to let everything from the past few weeks go with the cool wind.

Him on the other hand stayed silent. He had just finished his stream and had gotten a text saying that she'll be back for the rest of her things. This was inevitable, one of them had to leave, but to him it didnt seem right. He didn't want her to leave. Something in his heart was making him chase her back, the same thing in his heart that moved her into his apartment in the first place. Maybe it was love, maybe he wanted to persevere and have someone in his life. Something in his mind was telling him that he let go of something special.

Wilbue thought about it as he shut everything off and went to go grab his belongings, before rushing out the door to try and find her. Sadly to his discovery, she turned off her location. He finally made it to his car and started driving towards his house to see if she was around there.

He couldn't call a friend because she never introduced her friends to him. She did that on purpose because of him not doing the same. As he drove down the not so busy streets of Brighton he thought if he could get to know her, pull emotions and feelings out of her and see the real her. And if he cant do that? Who knows what will happen.

He remembers this face she always pulled when he always said "Im alright." She scrunched up her nose in annoyance and he always took it as a taunt because he couldn't figure out the real meaning. They were both going at this the wrong way, he dosent know anything about her and maybe thats the problem, but she needs to calm down as well. She needs to start paying attention to both of them instead of herself.

He was seated at a stoplight until he saw a figure on the sidewalk walking past him. The person looked shocked then kept walking, but even faster this time. He rolled down the window to see it was Y/n walking. Wilbur ran the red light and found a place to turn the car around to follow her. He drove a couple of feet in front of her before putting his hazard lights on and stepping out of the car to confront her.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" Wilbur said while getting our of his car.

"Im getting away from you. And what are you doing here?" She said.

"Well I could ask you the same thing. Its not safe out here alone." He calmed down a little. Wilbur's main goal was to get her back home so they can have a civilized talk. He didn't want to be out here.

"Oh? Ive been fine for the past fifteen minutes." She sasser back.

"That dosent mean its not safe!" He exclaimed.

She stayed quiet so that gave Wilbur an opportunity to speak.

"See, I want us to go home so we can have a civilized talk without feeling defensive. I want to get to know you, I know you're my girlfriend and yes, it was my mistake rushing things. Im not putting the blame all on myself either." He finished and she stayed quiet with her arms crossed infront of her chest.

"Are you cold-?"

"Fuck off...I mean it." She said while trying to pass hin on the street.

He stood in her way and he kept doing that every time she tried to get around him. Wilbur saw that she was getting annoyed at his actions. Wilbur held her by both of her biceps trying to hold her still so he could talk.

"You're being childish!"

"Fucking listen to me! You cant just keep walking away from us! From me! This is not healthy!" Wilbur yelled. He let go if her and surprisingly she stayed there.

"Get in the car." He ordered but she stayed silent. "Please get in the car."

She turns around gets in the passenger seat if Wilbur's car. He sighed a sigh if relief and followed her lead. They both got settled into the car and he didn't move. He wasn't going to drive unless she talked to him. After a minute if silence she spoke up.

"I know its- its both of our faults. And i have some things I need to work on. I cant just run away. Also your thoughts of me need to be rearranged, but I need to give you all of me. At leat 50 percent so we can start somewhere. But Im sorry." She said while she looked down at her lap maybe in embarrassment.

In the end they both wanted to fix themselves. In the end they wanted eachother. And they can both see that.

He leaned over the armrest and gave her a kiss on her cheek. She turned to him with a surprise look on her face, like this was the most affection he gave her, because it was true. She grabbed his hand that rested on the armrest too as he started to drive towards their home together.

As the nightly drive continues on and now shes drifting off in the passenger seat as In Love With An E-girl plays softly. She's left too tired to talk with Wilbur and be in touch with her emotions right now, but she'll do it for the both of them this time.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Time Apart

CW: Trauma survivor, referenced noncon and assault, heavy internalized victim-blaming and self-loathing/anti-asexuality (Chris has serious issues from his conditioning around this)

(references events from this small series)

I think you should spend time apart, not with me.

When Chris picks up his phone, it's not at all the message from Laken he expected to see. Not the kind of thing they've ever sent before.

He has to read it two times, then three. The letters swim and shake along with a dull pounding inside his head, but no matter how he tries to make them into other words - tell himself he must have misunderstood, must be missing something - they come back together the same in the end.

I think you should spend time apart, not with me.

Each letter is as crisp and clean as a sterilized blade between each rib, one by one by one by one.

The words are a body blow. They're a hundred blows, beating him into a barely recognizable shattered shell of himself. It wasn't supposed to happen this way - it's been a bad few days, yeah, a bad week really, but until yesterday's fight it had never occurred to him that Laken might give up on him.

The fight was his fault, anyway.

He meant to apologize last night, but then Nova had come into his room, and he'd lost the rest of the night to lying next to Jake, trying to remember how to stop living inside his head again, how to stop being still.

He'd woke up this morning with his stomach doing butterfly flips inside him, nervous, but he'd really wanted to say he was sorry, for the fight, for all the weirdness lately. He'd wanted to apologize for being difficult.

Instead... he'd woken up to find a missed text from the night before, sent after he'd shoved Nova away but before he could stand to look at anything again.

I think you should spend time apart, not with me.

There it sits.

He hasn't unlocked his phone yet. Instead, he keeps tapping the button to light up the screen, looking at the message preview that has all he needs to see. Lets it go dark again. As if one of these times he'll click and it'll say something else.

But it doesn't,

It just says the same damn thing.

I think you should spend time apart.

Not with me.

He's still staring at it when another one comes in. He feels the soft pulse of his phone in his hand, and the screen lights on its own.

LAKEN - NOW Did you see my message? 

He thinks maybe Kauri had it easier when he was the age Chris is now. Back when Kauri carried on entire conversations in emoji form, letting the nuance and ambiguity take over, the recipient working through the meaning on their own. With this, each letter is merciless, each word is unmistakable. He can’t misunderstand it. 

Can he?

He opens the phone with shaking fingers, types back yes, presses send, and turns his phone off.

Then he throws it at the wall.

He’s grateful for the heavy plastic case that makes it bounce off and drop to the floor without breaking. There's a strip on the back, textured and a soft purple, gray, white, and black. He rubs his fingers over it sometimes in class to keep himself from rocking and being distracting.

Now he just... stares at it.

Laken bought that for him. They bought the shirt he's wearing right now-

He yanks it off his head before he can think, balls up the soft fabric and throws it as well. It just sort of drifts pointlessly to the floor, a single eyeball from the print of a band he likes staring back at him.

Laken has ranted before about people who break up by text message, and Chris has to breathe through a physical ache in his chest that tightens every muscle at how awful he must be that they're not doing this face to face. How awful, how used-up, how shredded apart, how fucking pretty he is.

After all, he and Laken have been together for more than a year, and he still held perfectly still for Nova to touch him before he remembered how to move. After all, he’s a grown man who still cried and fell apart when Jake was hurt. After all, after all, after all...

He scrambles across the floor for his phone again, turns it back on. Part of him hopes he’ll see a new text saying they take it back, they didn’t mean it. Or just asking him to apologize for what he’d said that night before, for how he’d thrown their confusion over his reaction to something back at them, echoing out the way Kauri fights sometimes, talking about himself the way he thinks everyone else might be thinking about him, so he says the insult first and no one else gets to surprise him with it.

But there’s nothing new.

He manages to open the texts again, barely, and breathes in gasps, nearly pants, as he types out, you don’t want me at your place?

Not right now.

Is it because of what I can’t do?

It takes them a minute to answer. Every single second ticks by with a slowness Chris hasn’t felt since his days in the cold white room, tied down to stillness, forced to endure every minute that passed in perfect silence or to the soundtrack of his own tears and pleading for it to stop.

When they do respond, it’s just, it’s because of what you won’t do.

His breath catches in his throat. The ache in his head starts to pound harder, and he has to close his eyes against a sharp stab behind them. 

What he won’t do.

They’ve never cared before. How-... how could they suddenly care now? The fight had only a little bit been about that, it’d really been about something else. About his nightmares, how he’s not sleeping, not seeing his friends, skipping therapy. It hadn’t even been about... that. About what Chris can do and what he can’t, in bed. 

But that was the thing - the fight had started when Chris had flinched back from Laken’s touch to his back, and snapped at them, and accused them of wanting too much, and...

And now this.

It’s like they knew about Nova. Knew that he could be good just fine - better than fine, Handler Petrus said he was one of the best he’d ever worked with once - he just... wouldn’t. Won’t. Doesn’t want to. Never wanted to. 

Can’t do it without tearing himself to pieces all over again. 

It was always a scream inside his mind, but should he have pushed it down and tried harder to be more like everyone else? Is he losing Laken because of it? Did Nova pick up on something Chris himself doesn’t know?

Should he have... tried?

Even if it hurt?

He drops the phone again, then kicks it viciously under his bed, listening to the scrape of it sliding across the floor, the thump as it hits the wall. He hears it vibrate again, but this time he doesn’t care what Laken has to say.

They’ve said enough.

He understands.

Part of him expected this eventually.

He leaves the room, doesn’t bother to pull on his compression shirt, even. He lets his skin prickle bare and exposed to the air. He accepts the discomfort, the uneasy feeling of being too seen, too felt. 

The house is quiet, this early. 

He makes himself toast with butter, wincing at the scrape of the knife against the crisp bread, the sound boring into his ears. But eventually it’s done, and he slumps into a chair at the kitchen table, willing himself to cry. Somehow, the tears just... don’t happen.

He can hear Jake snoring softly from the living room. He’d been up with Chris until nearly 4 am, then Chris was awake again at 6:30, looking at that text, looking over and over and over again. Two hours of sleep leave him weirdly euphoric alongside his despair. Like he’s floating in some nightmare place that isn’t awake and isn’t sleeping, either.

He’s probably slept nine hours in three days at this point. He keeps seeing Jake with a knife sticking out of him every time he closes his eyes. Jake, screaming as Antoni pushed cloth into his wound to stop up the bleeding. Jake with a bullet wound, sitting up against the wall, staring at him with wide eyes whispering, It’s okay, Tristan, I love you, it’s okay as he dies. 

He can’t sleep. He can’t leave for long. He can’t breathe. He can’t think.

Him being what he is, it’s the reason Jake is hurt. If he hadn’t been his brother, he wouldn’t have decided to run a house for Romantics, and he wouldn’t have ended up dealing with all the dangerous bits about them.

Jake said it himself, didn’t he? It’s a mistake, running a house for Romantics. Not his best idea. A mistake.

Chris is a mistake.

Him being weak, and cowardly... it’s hurting Jake, making his life harder.

He makes everyone’s life harder.

There’s a soft sound of footsteps behind him, and he turns to find Nova in the doorway, staring back. She’s in a sleeveless gray dress and has her long dark hair pulled back from her temples, spilling in a waterfall down her back. Her eyes are dark and fathomless, and she gives him a faint, slight smile.

She had smiled like that with one hand down his pants.

Chris turns around, too fast, his head spinning a little, and hunches over his toast. “Good... good, um, good morning,” He mumbles. 

She clears her throat. “Morning. Chris, about-... about last night...”

“Don’t, um, don’t-... don’t don’t don’t worry about it.” He takes a breath. He doesn’t want his toast any longer. 

“I’m sorry,” She says, simply. “I spoke to Sarita about it, and... and she said this happens with us, and I should apologize, but, um. So I am. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-... I thought I was helping.”

“I... know you did.” His words are slowing down. Chris can’t hold on to his thoughts, they want to drift away somewhere else, somewhere safer. Somewhere darker. 

“When I was with-... with my Miss, she would always say, if you are sad the best way to fix it is to make your body forget that feeling, replace it with something else. And that was what we replaced my sadness with. So, you were sad and upset, and I thought I could fix it that way.” She pauses, flushing a little, looking down and to the side as she moves with effortless grace to get a glass and fill it with water, take a small sip. 

“Kauri used to... to do that,” Chris says after a pause, thinking about it. Kauri, who would show up in the small hours of the morning reeking of liquor and someone else’s cologne, or just didn’t show up at all. Kauri, who would laugh instead of crying, and laugh with someone’s arms around him, a guy whose name he didn’t know. 

Kauri, who ran and ran and ran and can do things and be things that Chris can’t.

Or... won’t.

What if he’s been hurting Laken this whole time and didn’t know it, because he was already hurt himself?

His foot starts to tap tap tap on the floor until he stops it. 

“Did he? Did it-... work for him?” Nova asks it with genuine curiosity, and her eyes are so pretty. He looks up at her, and then down again, pushing the plate of toast away from himself. 

“I don’t know,” Chris whispers. “I, I don’t know. He’s happy now, but...”

“Was he happy then?”

“No. But, but, but... maybe we aren’t supposed to be. At least... not with, with anyone... who isn’t like us.”

“Jake isn’t like us,” Nova points out. Her presence in the room feels heavy, like a weight pushing down on him. But what does it matter? He’s not with Laken anymore, anyway. If he wanted to, he could stand right up and kiss Nova right now, press her back into the counter, and learn what it’s like to be the one doing things and not just having them done to him.

But his body doesn’t stir at the thought. It never has.

“He is,” Chris answers. “A, a little bit. I’m, I’m, I’m sorry, too, Nova. Sorry that I-I can’t.”

“No, I know. You have a partner, and I shouldn’t have-”

“I don’t have... I, I, I I don’t have a partner anymore.” Chris stands up, leaving her there with his plate of untouched toast. The sky outside is bright as the sun rises, as if mocking the way he feels like a stormcloud inside. 

Nova watches him leave, and whispers to herself, “No partner?”

Chris goes outside, pulling a sweatshirt that hangs on the coatrack on over his head to protect his skin, curling up on the porch swing and watching cars pulling out of driveways as the neighborhood starts to head to work in ones and twos. 

He doesn’t cry.

He sits very, very still, and he is silent. 

Upstairs, under the bed, his phone vibrates, again and again, unnoticed.

Just go talk to Nat, Chris. That’s all I said. Just go see Nat and get a night or three away from the house. Being there all the time is overwhelming you. Are you even looking at these? Chris you can’t just ignore me every time I say something you don’t like Chris answer me ... ... Oh shit, Chris, my phone autocorrected earlier and I didn’t notice I meant “some time at Nat’s”, not apart Chris? Are you seeing my messages? Baby? Chris, please check your phone and answer me. Please.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @whumpfigure @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears

[bcdwhcre]

How about a little hurt/comfort request of Levi x reader where the reader used to be happy and bubbly but one day they lose everyone in their squad & they feels guilty for surviving so all they do is train to get better, barely eat and nearly push themselves near the brink of death and Levi tries to help them through it

“Comfort,” Levi x Reader

Summary: Levi trying his best to comfort you after you lose your whole squad and fall into a deep depression hole.

Warnings: none, I think.

.

.

.

Levi couldn’t help but lie awake in the bed you two shared. He would lie awake for hours most nights as the spot beside him always remained empty and cold, just like your empty heart as you stayed inside one of the training rooms on the base, working yourself past your limits to make you feel anything except guilt and pain.

At first he had given you space, let you grieve in peace because that’s what you said you wanted. You pushed him away and even yelled at him for coming too close to you, it pained him but he didn’t want to drive you away.

The guilt had you pinned down. It felt like you were trapped under water and couldn’t swim up to the surface, it was your fault your whole squad was dead. If you were only there in their last moments they would still be alive.

Your fists beat against the punching bag over and over again, the tears stinging your eyes as the flashbacks of their dead chewed up bodies laid out across the ground.

You had came across their remains, most were just arms and legs but at one point one of your cadets face was ripped in half, the picture implanted in your head permantely as you continue to blame yourself over and over again.

You wouldn’t eat for days at a time, you were never hungry, you were never feeling up to anything. You felt nothing inside of your dark soul, nothing.

Levi had grown worried as more days pass, the way you were grieving wasnt normal and it was pushing you to the brink of death at some points. He watched you turn into a complete stranger, someone who was once happy and full of life and love to now a dark person who was more cold than him.

As he stared up at the ceiling, thinking about everything and having everyday flash before his eyes, the reminder of you pushing yourself to death, the way you lost so much weight from not eating, from the bruises you gave yourself on your skin, it had made him reach his breaking point.

He had tried to avoid arguments for your sake but he was at a point where he didn’t give a shit anymore. He didn’t want to lose you, he loved you more than anything and if that meant he needed to either give you tough love or comfort you even when you said you didn’t want it- then that’s what he’ll do.

He walked down the hallway of the base, only wearing a simple white tee and a pair of sweatpants as his feet hit against the wooden floors towards the room he knew you were in- you were in there everyday for hours while everyone was asleep.

His hand pushed open the door, almost startling you and when you seen the look on his face, you grunted and turned back to the punching bag in front of you. The sweat dripped down your forehead and you continued punching it even though you were well past your limits.

“Y/N.” Levi said sternly, walking over and stopping you from punching the bag which annoyed you but he couldn’t care less.

The guilt and the grief that weighed on you had turned you into such a depressed angry person. You would easily take your anger out on Levi and even the other Scouts before you locked yourself in your room and let your depression send you into a deep sleep for hours at a time.

You hated to be so cold, especially towards Levi but the way depression had clouded your judgment- you honestly couldn’t care what happened. You didn’t care about the nasty words that left your mouth, it was better than sitting on the floor crying for hours.

“Can you move?” You simply said, your empty lifeless eyes met with his and he sighed.

It was nearly three in the morning, he was tired but he also was tired of not being able to sleep beside you or see your smile in the morning. He hated himself for letting you get this far into this, he hated not being of much comfort to you.

“No, we’re going to bed.” He had reached down to grab your arm but you were quick to rip it away from his grasp, making his eyebrows furrow.

“You can go, I’m staying here.”

“Y/N.”

“Levi, just leave me the fuck alone, okay?” You snapped, the sudden attitude you gave him had made him upset but more in a way where he was sad to see you like this.

He was also annoyed with the fact you acted like you could get away with such an attitude and at first he let you. He gave you so many passes because of your squad dying. He understood your grief and your pain but you had started to take advantage and be heartless to everyone around you- including your own boyfriend.

“No, this is not how you grieve.” He stared down at you, a pained expression on his face while yours was just emotionless.

“It’s been helping me grieve just fine.”

“Quit lying to yourself. Not sleeping, not eating, only working yourself to death is what you call grieving? Being a spiteful person isn’t the way to go about this.” Levi started to say, reaching over and grabbing both of your arms as he searched your eyes, trying to find any sign of life in you.

“I get it, I lost my entire squad too and at first it feels awful.. like you’re to blame for it but you’re not. The best we can do is just honor them and mourn and move on for their sake and ours.” He was never the type to give out some stupid inspiration speech but in this case, it was either yell at you or try to break down these walls you’ve built.

“I know you’re hurting, I can see it and I’ve given you so much space and time because that’s what you said you needed but you’re killing yourself and I can’t allow that... I can’t lose you too.” His words had stung like a snake bite full of venom, it had hurt you in ways you didn’t expect it to.

Then everything started to come to light, you started to realize everything and snap back into reality as you stared up at Levi, his eyes full of pain and hurt and it had made you rethink every decision you had made the last few weeks.

Your eyes started to burn with tears, a lump forming in your throat as you thought about how you were slowly killing yourself and hurting Levi in ways you didn’t mean to. Hurting him was something you never wanted to do and you didn’t realize you were doing it for weeks because you were being selfish.

Your shaky hands had reached over towards him, pulling him in a hug and buried your face into his shoulder as you silently cried. The tears continuously running down your cheeks as he tried to be of as much comfort as possible. His soft hands rubbing your back and holding onto you as tight as possible, not wanting to let you go.

“I’m so sorry..” You shook your head, clinging onto the back of his t-shirt and continued to repeat apologies.

“Don’t be, I know how much you’re hurting.” He mumbled, turning his head to plant a kiss on yours and gently pulled back.

He couldn’t help but sigh, brushing strands of your hair back from your face before wiping your tears off your cheeks with his thumbs. He cared about you more than he can explain and all he ever wanted was for you to be happy and seeing you in such a state where you were the opposite absolutely killed him.

“I just feel like I could’ve done more for them.” You said out loud, the first time actually talking about the deaths and how badly it hurt you.

“You did all you could, Y/N..” He tilted your chin up to look at him, his eyes burning into yours and you sniffled before nodding.

“Please, come back to bed with me.” He barely said over a whisper, his hand moving down to grab yours and slowly walk towards the door, praying you wouldn’t pull away again.

Instead you let him walk you back to your bedroom, the silence on the way back was deadly but everyone in the base was sleeping and you didn’t want to disturb anyone or wake anyone up. Once you both had stepped inside the bedroom, you were quick to step over to your shared bed and take off some pieces of clothing before settling under the blankets.

The bed was soft and cold, the blankets making you feel secured but when Levi laid down beside you and pulled you into his chest, it made you feel more safe and it made you feel better deep down.

You always pushed him away, always told him to leave and always ignored him, barely slept beside him and now as the reality of everything came rushing to your head, the guilt of pinning everything on Levi was lingering over you making your eyes water again and you sniffled, trying to hold back your tears.

You were surprised that he had stayed here and dealt with this, dealt with everything you put him through and he continued to do so. He continued to cuddle you, hold you tightly in his arms while rubbing soft circles on your back, making you calm down just a little.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to... be so angry towards you.” You spoke softly, making his head turn down to look at you.

“No matter how angry or upset you get, you’re not getting rid of me so take that out of your head.” He said, moving one hand up to caress your cheek and you nodded slowly.

You had leaned up, pressing your lips onto his in a short but soft kiss, almost forgetting just how soft his lips actually were. You have been so distant that you two have barely talked, kissed or hugged. You didn’t realize just how fucked up you were and you didn’t realize just how much you missed his touches.

After you pulled back, you planted a quick peck on his lips before laying your head back down on his chest, a sudden weight being lifted off of you but the guilt still remained and you knew you had to grieve properly and not continue to beat yourself up while dragging Levi down with you.

.

,

,

• Main Masterlist •

• AOT Masterlist •

Read bio before requesting AOT

[bqstqnbruin]

Priceless

Ok so here I am somehow with a second fic in a matter of, what, two ish days? Anyway, this is one that I wrote and posted last year but I reread it and it sucked so I took it down and rewrote it. Hope you like it!

Word count: 5.5k

Warnings: none? swearing? Typos for sure.

_______________

You loved him with your whole heart; there was nothing that you wouldn’t do for him, and you knew that he felt the same about you. At least, that’s what you used to believe.

Ever the one for dramatics, a three am alarm was what made you question not only your whole relationship but your whole existence. The witching hour was an ungodly time to be waking up and getting ready, no matter what the reason was. Even when it involved flying off to Europe for a destination wedding that involved Jake’s entire team.

“Babe?” you call to him, the shower just turning off. He pokes his head out, hair wet, droplets of water rolling down his face as he waited for you to answer, “We’re going to have time to stop at a Dunkin’, right?” you whine, doing everything in your power to not pass out then and there instead of finishing your packing.

“Maybe?” he says, ducking back into the bathroom before coming out with just a towel on, hanging on his waist. If you weren’t so exhausted, the things you could be doing right now, your mind wanders as he continues talking, “We have to get through TSA and I don’t think they would allow you to bring that through security, would they?”

“Fucking hell,” you mutter to yourself, throwing the last of what you needed into your suitcase, trying to find anything of Jake’s lying around that you knew he would forget. “What if I finish it in the car before we go through security?” you beg, hoping he’ll cave.

“Y/N,” he sings, “then you’re going to have to use the bathroom a million times and it’s going to be my fault.”

“Do I have to be pleasant before I get coffee in me?”

You hear him laugh from the bathroom as you lean back on the bed and close your eyes. “You wouldn’t be you if you were pleasant before your coffee, babe.” You do everything in your power to try to stay awake while he gets ready, him saying random things as he runs around getting dressed, you murmuring weak responses in return. “Hey, come on, sleepyhead,” he says, pulling you off the bed, “We’ve gotta get to Logan.”

You drive there in silence, praying for the moment you get coffee in you as you still struggle to stay awake while Jake keeps talking. The car stops, Jake pulling down the window when you finally open your eyes, seeing that you were sitting in the drive-thru line at Dunkin. “God, I love you,” you say, leaning over and kissing his cheek, a smile covering his face.

“Who’s paying, you or me?” he asks, not letting you answer due to the voice of the cashier inside coming through the speaker to take your order. Two small coffees, enough to hold you over for the drive to the airport before you get more coffee once you’re through the gate. He looks at you as you stare down at your phone, having to check your bank account to see if you even had the money to begin with. “I’ll pay for both,” he says, a calm tone covering her voice.

Money for you was tight. You had never really struggled to pay your bills and your share of the utilities, but you definitely didn’t have the amount of extra cash that Jake did because of the seemingly never-ending student loan payments you were making. “I’m sorry,” you say, taking the coffee from him so he can get to driving again. You hated having the money conversation; no matter who you talked to, they always seemed to bring up the fact that your NHL player boyfriend made more money in a single season than you had seen in your entire life. It always left things awkward, as the implication of you being a gold digger hung in the air between you and the person you were having a conversation with. “I can probably transfer some money from my savings for extra stuff, but I had really only planned on buying a few meals and a few other trinkets for my family,” you admit, staring at the low number that showed in your checking account.

“Hey,” he says, resting his hand on your thigh, not taking his eyes off the road, “It’s fine. Anything you want, I’ll pay for it.” You smile at him, hoping he couldn’t tell from the corner of his eye that it wasn’t sincere. That was another thing you hated: other people covering for you. You grew up being taught that if you didn’t have money for it, you either didn’t pay for it until you had the money yourself, or you forewent it entirely. Having to worry about paying someone back was unnecessary stress in your life. Or, if they were like Jake, then they would insist it was their treat, not taking the money you owed them no matter how much it was.

You look out the window, the empty, tree-lined highway lighting up as the sun rose over it, the sky turning from the dark purple night to a brilliant orange right in front of you. You had never been one to wake up for the sunrise, taking in the sight for what was probably the first time in your life. “It’s so beautiful,” you say, taking a sip of your coffee, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this calm and quiet before.”

“I’ve seen one thing more beautiful than this,” he says, a huge smile on his face.

“What?” you ask, bracing him for the cheesy comment you knew he was going to make.

“You,” he says, proudly, trying to find your hand without looking away from the road, bringing it to his lips before connecting his back to the wheel.

“God,” you moan, both of you laughing, “That was so corny.”

“Well, they call me Chef JD, gotta have some corn sometimes,” he says, resulting in you screaming.

“I will in fact leave you if you say something like that again,” you tell him.

“Yeah? Where would you live, then?” he teases, immediately regretting his words, “Fuck, sorry.”

“I’d figure something out,” you tell him, trying to match his teasing tone so that he doesn’t think you took it the way you did. The rest of the ride to the airport is in silence, you both finishing your coffee as you pull up, seeing some of the guys getting their stuff out of their car at the same time. “Hey, aren’t international flights normally at night?” you ask Jake, Charlie, and Matt coming over to help you guys get your bags.

“Bergy booked the flight for all of us and we don’t question him,” Charlie says, pulling Jake away from you, the two of them wandering into the airport with Kylie trying to keep up with her own boyfriend

“It should be more concerning to all of you that he has to act like your father,” you say to Matt, walking with him to security. Besides Jake, you were closest to Matt. He adopted you as a pseudo younger sister, the one who knew just as much, if not more about you than your boyfriend.

Matt shrugs, watching Charlie and Jake mess around with each other in line in front of you, “It just kind of happened that way. None of us ever questioned it, like Chuck said.” The two of you watch the boys, bickering about something as they seemingly all forget their girls were standing right around them. You and Matt fall into a mundane conversation, watching Jake and Charlie together as they pass through security. The five of you gather your things, trying to find which way your gate was so you could meet the rest of the guys before boarding the flight.

Matt figured out that you were supposed to head to the left, so naturally, Jake and Charlie veered right, leaving you and Kylie with all their stuff to lug to the gate. “Where are they going?” you ask Kylie, dumbfounded as you struggle to carry Jake’s bag along with your own stuff.

“Charlie mentioned he was hungry on the way here, so I’m just hoping that’s where they’re going,” she mutters, “Dealing with all of them together is like herding cats,” clearly as cranky as you were earlier that morning as you try to stifle your laughter. Just like you, Kylie was not a person to interact with before she had caffeine in her, one of the reasons the two of you got along so well.

You get to the gate, Jake and Charlie nowhere to be seen even though you were suddenly surrounded by the rest of the Bruins roster. From the looks of the waiting area, the flight was mostly the guys and their families, and thankfully so: you would hate to be on a plane with the Bruins organization if you were outside the organization itself. You loved the boys, but god, they were loud and annoying sometimes. Everyone else on the plane would definitely hate the group, but they didn’t care. The city was fueled by the hate of everyone who wasn’t them.

Jake and Charlie finally reappear, more coffee and now food in hand. Jake hands you what he got you as you reposition yourself so you’re sitting cross-legged on the seat, slightly uncomfortable due to how scrunched up you were so you could face him. You lean over, kissing his cheek before you start eating

He turns his head to smile at you as you catch him off guard and kiss him again. “What’s this for?”

“I don’t tell you enough that I appreciate you,” you say to him, taking a bite of the breakfast sandwich he got you.

Jake smiles at you, turning himself so he faces you. He wraps his hand around the back of your neck, gently pulling you towards him so he can kiss your forehead, mumbling something you can’t quite make out against your skin. Charlie starts chirping Jake over something, resulting in him leaving you to go argue with his teammates. You can’t help but smile as you watch Jake and his teammates. You knew he loved them, just like they loved him.

“You didn’t have coffee in you when I was talking to you before and you were actually pleasant?” Matt plops down next to you, taking your attention away from Jake.

You roll your eyes at him, even though you knew he was right, “Shut up, Gryz. Jake and I stopped for coffee on the way here. This is round two,” you say, raising the cup to him. The two of you watch some of the younger guys aggregate around Jake and Charlie, Jake telling them some story while they hang onto every word of his, laughing their heads off with every sentence. “God, he loves you guys.”

“Yeah, but you know he loves you more,” Matt says, nudging your shoulder.

“I think he loves Oreos more than he loves me sometimes,” you joke, knowing that it’s not true. Hoping that it’s not true, more like it.

“Trust me, JD loves three things in this order: you, hockey, then Oreos. He loves you more than he loves hockey. Nothing you can do will change that.”

You both laugh, the announcement for your flight to board interrupting the noise the rest of the guys were making. Jake rushes over to your side, picking up the bags both of you were planning on bringing onto the plan, practically pushing Matt out of the way. He kisses you on the cheek, a soft smile on his face.

“What?” you ask him, linking your arm in his.

“I love you,” he says, getting in line behind some of the guys.

“I love you, too,” you say, leaning your head against his arm.

“Ready for seven hours on a plane with these fools?” Jake asks, using his other arm to gesture to the rest of his teammates.

“I’m only ready because you’re with me,” you say to him in a sing-songy voice.

“Woah! So you can be corny, but I can’t?” he jokes, sending you two into a flirty bickering match as you board the plane with everyone. You get settled into your seats, resting your head on his shoulder to hopefully fall back to sleep despite the amount of caffeine coursing through your veins. You can hear the guys talking around you, probably annoying the rest of the passengers on the flight more than they intended.

You end up in that half awake-half asleep state while on his shoulder, the sounds of the rest of the guys fading in and out as you did. You could feel Jake occasionally kissing the top of your head, resting his on yours in an effort to go to sleep like you were. Both of you were woken up by the sound of the flight attendant coming through with food, the long flight warranting a hot meal, you and Jake being handed something different than the rest of the people around you.

“What is it?” you whisper to him once the flight attendant has passed by you.

“None of the free meals looked good so I got us something different,” he says, taking a bite of what looked like chicken covered in some sort of sauce.

“We could have just done the free meal so you wouldn’t be paying for me again,” you mumble, a little annoyed that he didn’t even ask when paying for food made things awkward earlier that morning.

You sit there in silence, eating the food that Jake bought you. Honestly, it was airplane food, not something that you had even wanted in the first place but you couldn’t let it go to waste now.

“I think I’m gonna go sit with Charlie,” Jake says, getting up without saying another word once the food is gone, leaving you to sit there by yourself with the other people in the row.

You try to find something to watch on the screen in front of you, only to be interrupted by Matt appearing and Jake’s seat, startling you as you rip out the headphones you had on while the first movie available was starting to play. “Your boy just kicked me out of my seat by sitting on top of me.”

You can’t help but laugh, picturing the other passengers' reactions around then as the grown men that were Jake and his teammates acted like absolute children. “I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that he did that or that fact that I’m not shocked that he did that.” You watch him with Charlie, your smile fading as his grows.

“Hey, what’s up?” Matt asks, pulling your attention away from Jake.

“Same argument that we haven’t really fought over yet.” Matt was the only one on the team that knew about the seemingly never-ending awkwardness that surrounded you and Jake when it came to money. “It’s not getting worse, but it’s more frequent. I’m just worried we’re gonna end up blowing up at each other and losing each other in the process,” you tell him, fixating on the screen in front of you.

You hear him exhale, looking over to see a sad look on his face. A single lock of hair falls down in front of his forehead, moving along with the rest of his head, “Couples fight. I don’t want to tell you that you should have this argument this weekend, but you have to talk about it. And I mean really talk about it, not just the vague undertones you two constantly have dancing around the subject.”

You stare at him, slightly confused at how something like that came out of him, “I don’t like how you said that so eloquently,” you laugh, Matt throwing his head back to join you.

“But you know I’m right,” he says.

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” you huff, waving him off.

Without another word, he hands you his other earbud, starting a movie on his screen that would hopefully last the rest of the flight. You rest your head on his shoulder to get a better view of the screen, picturing Jake in his place.

You didn’t remember falling asleep, but you must have at some point because the next thing you know, the movie is over, the plane is about to land, and Matt is trying to get you off his shoulder so he can get back to his seat. “Hey, Y/N,” he whispers, nudging his shoulder gently. “Jake’s coming back,” he says, acting as if he didn’t want to get caught with you asleep next to him.

“Hi,” you yawn, rubbing your eyes as he plops back down in his seat, him kissing your cheek as you now struggle to stay awake. “It’s like, the middle of the night now, isn’t it?” you ask him, having no idea the time difference between Boston and where you were.

“I think it’s like 10 pm. I didn’t realize I was dating an old woman,” he jokes, pulling a laugh from you.

“You wear me out, babe,” you say, everyone getting up from their seats, the boys making more noise than anyone on the plane as people anxiously waited to get off.

“And you keep me young,” he says, giving you a quick peck before handing you your bag.

You hear someone groan behind you, turning to see Matt standing there already waiting for the two of you to move out of his way. “I’m not going to hang out with you if you’re like this the entire trip” he teases.

You can’t help but scoff, playing into the teasing nature of his comment. “Sorry, bubs, you’re the only one who didn’t bring a date so that makes you our third wheel.”

“I could third wheel any of the guys here and you know that,” he tries to defend himself as Jake grabs your hand and starts to pull you off the plane.

“That’s a weird thing to brag about,” you tell him, the three of you walking in a line to go get your bags, you and Matt carrying a conversation while Jake stands off to the side, not paying attention to the movement of the unfamiliar airport around him.

Everyone waits outside for whatever transportation Patrice had arranged to the hotel, still unsure how he swung any of the details he did. The guys had way too much energy considering how many hours they spent cooped up on a plane. You were exhausted, the coffee practically gone from your system as you tried to convince Jake to just go back to the hotel room with you and spend the night in. “Please?” you beg him, draping yourself on his arm as he waited to get your room keys.

“But the guys want to explore the city,” he whines, jutting his lip out to you.

“I have no more coffee in me,” you whine back. He pouts at you, contemplating whether or not it’s worth it to try to convince you to stay in or go explore with the guys. “I will do anything you want.”

He raises his eyebrows, pulling you close to him, “Anything?” he asks, forgetting the guys surrounding you as he kisses you, his grip around your waist tightening as his teammates start teasing the two of you.

“Hey, JD! Save that for the bedroom!” Matt chirps, your face turning bright red at his words.

“Ah, fuck off and let me love her,” he says, his forehead against yours. “I think I like the sound of the bedroom.”

You ignore the chirps from the boys as he kisses you again, the heat in your cheeks not subsiding until the two of you get to your room. “Are you sure you don’t want to go out with the guys? Apparently, the nightlife is supposed to be awesome in the city,” Jake says, flopping down on the bed. You had been there all of two seconds, and he was already starfished on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

You sigh, sitting down next to him. “I told you I don’t want to go out,” you repeat, a little more annoyed than you intended to sound. “I’m tired, and when we go out, we’re going to end up spending more money and-” you stop, cutting yourself off as Jake sits up.

“Hey,” he says, taking your hands in his, “I told you I would pay for you. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is, though. To me it is. I don’t need you to keep paying for me for everything. I don’t want you to.”

“What’s the big deal?”

Were you really about to have the fight you and Matt talked about on the plane in your hotel room? “Don’t you get it? You have so much money while I’m constantly struggling to make ends meet because of fucking loans. Do you know what it’s like to be a grown adult and live off someone else's money, the constant looks from people when I talk about you that say they think I’m just dating you for your money? That unless you’re home and go grocery shopping for us, I have to choose between food and gas until you get back? All I am is a fucking burden.”

“What, you think I don’t know about all of that? Why do you think I pay for you? So you don’t have to worry about food and gas,” he says, getting up.

“And I hate that you do that!” you snap, “That you feel like you have to. It’s like a slap in the face that I can never pay for anything and you have to pay for everything.”

“So what do you want me to do? Stand by and watch you struggle when I have the means to help you?” The volume of his voice matched yours, hearing doors in the hallway opening and closing, praying that it wasn’t other guests trying to figure out what room the screaming match was coming from.

“I don’t mind if you help out once in a while when I really need it but it’s stuff like the second round of Dunkin’ when I could barely get the first, the meal on the airplane when they give out free ones, or when you keep asking to go out, knowing that we’re going to spend money after I told you no.” Jake rolls his eyes, pushing past you and out the door. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going out with the guys. You want something, you can get it yourself, see if I care,” he hisses, leaving you standing there with the door propped open by your foot, watching him walk away. Matt gets off the elevator when he tries to get on, saying something you can’t make out when the elevator door closes.

“What the hell happened?” Matt asks, looking between you and the elevator.

You shake your head, trying to hold back the tears that were forming, knowing that there were other people in the hallway that had just witnessed the end of whatever that was. “Remember the fight you said we would have? We just had it,” you tell him, flopping down on your bed with your hands over your face. You let out a long groan, feeling the weight of Matt’s body sink the corner of the mattress down. You knew he was giving you that sympathetic look that was going to make you more upset, feeding into your already upset nature just that much more.

“What happened?” Matt repeats.

“We just finally snapped. God, of all places to have a stupid fight like this, we have at the night before your teammate is supposed to get married. I mean, fuck, we’re in Barcelona, for god's sake and you and I are here watching me mope instead of exploring like we should be.”

“Well, who says we can’t?”

“My bank account.”

Matt pries your hands off your face, forcing you to sit up despite you clearly not wanting to. “There’s so much to do in Barcelona at night that doesn’t involve spending money. We can find the guys no problem, probably doing something free.”

“And how do you expect we do that?” you ask him as he tries to drag you off the bed, grabbing the room key on the way out the door.

Matt waves his phone in the air, a smug look on his face. “I have the location of everyone on the team, past and present, on Find My Friends.”

You hesitate for a minute, your wallet and bag sitting right there by the door for you to grab to go join your boyfriend and his teammates and try to enjoy the night despite the fight you just had. “Matt,” you try to protest, your eyes darting back and forth between him and your bag. You didn’t want to worry about Jake on the night out, but you knew you couldn’t be spending a lot of money. You had been out with the guys too many times before when Jake promised they wouldn’t be big spenders, only to go home and have to worry about how you were going to survive to the next paycheck.

“If you want anything then I’ll pay for it and you pay me back with food or something. Y/N, Jake is wandering Barcelona with Charlie right now, probably just as upset as you are,” he tries to reason with you. “There’s no point in sitting here alone in your hotel room when you’re in a city that you’ve been talking about visiting for as long as I’ve known you.”

You let out a groan, knowing that he was right. “I can’t stand you,” you mumble, grabbing your bag and heading out the door with him.

Matt had his phone pulled out, trying to navigate the city based on a little dot that showed your boyfriend’s location. You had no idea where you were going, and, to be honest, you weren’t sure that Matt had any idea either. You had never been in a situation where the two of you had to wander through unfamiliar territory before, but something told you it was going to be a while before he figured out how to get to the rest of the guys.

“Matt, this is useless. We’ve been walking around for over an hour already,” you tell him, sitting down on the bench that was just off the path you had been taking.

“It hasn’t been an hour, you’re being dramatic.”

Matt sits down next to you as you pull out your phone. “We left the room at 10 pm. It’s 11. That’s an hour,” you snap at him, clearly hating that you can’t find them. “I just want to see Jake,” you mutter.

“Have either of you calmed down enough to have an actual conversation with each other? You know, not a screaming match?” Matt asks you, watching the small dots that represented his teammates move around his phone screen. “If you want to try to figure out your way around here, when neither of us speaks the language to ask for directions, we can. If not, we go back to the hotel.”

You stare at his phone, seeing JD, CM, TF, two JS’s, and a DP altogether, somewhere off the road where neither of you were able to figure out how to get to them. You shake your head, thinking about Matt’s words: you weren’t sure you were cooled off enough to talk to Jake rationally, and you had a feeling he was still the same. “Let’s just find our way back to the hotel,” you tell him, getting up off the bench.

You look at Matt, the look of sympathy covering his face as he follows you back the way you came. You probably could have easily found Jake and the rest of the guys, working out whatever the hell you needed to before the wedding tomorrow. If you couldn’t work it out, what did that mean for your future, though? If you didn’t live with Jake, you would be struggling way more than you were now, probably living paycheck to paycheck without the luxury of everything Jake did for you.

Were you wrong to be mad that he was trying to help?

The two of you get back to the hotel, the empty lobby eerily echoing with your footsteps on the marble floor. You hadn’t even noticed it before, the hotel you were staying at was probably the nicest one you had ever set foot in. You were tempted to sit on one of the chairs in the lobby, wait there for Jake and the rest of the guys to come back despite the fact that they would probably be drunk off their asses when you saw them.

Matt puts his hand on your arm, snapping you out of your thoughts. “Do you want to stay down here and wait?” he asks you, reading your mind, “Or, do you want to go back to either your room or mine?”

“I don’t want to impose,” you try to protest.

“So, you’d rather go back to an empty room and wallow alone instead of sitting on my bed, eating ice cream, and watching a movie,” he tempts you, raising his eyebrows with his offer.

“I don’t want ice cream.”

Matt scrunches his nose, letting out a laugh. “I never said the ice cream was for you. It’s summer, I can cheat on the nutrition plans a little more right now.”

He manages to pull a laugh from you, the two of you heading up to his room. You plopped yourself on his bed, your hands behind your head while you couldn’t take your mind off Jake. You really didn’t want him to be as miserable as you felt, but part of you also did want that. Was that bad?

You knew you had to set boundaries. You knew you couldn’t live without him, both financially and in life in general.

“You know,” Matt says, pulling you out of your thoughts yet again, “The guys are back here at the hotel. If you wanted to go back to your room, I’m sure you could talk to him now.”

You roll over, your back facing Matt. “I don’t think he would want to talk to me.”

Matt sighs, lying down next to you and staring up at the ceiling. “Like I told you in Boston, Jake loves you more than anything. If I know anything about him, he’s just as miserable as you are, probably back in your room panicking about where you are.”

You turn to him, narrowing your eyes. “This is your way of trying to get me out of here before the ice cream comes and you feel like you have to share with me, isn’t it?”

You both laugh, sitting up to get ready to go. “Oh, of course.”

You head out, opening the door, caught off guard by who was standing there. “Jake?”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet. “I thought you would be here.” You nod, both of you standing there in an awkward silence as you held the door to Matt’s room open. You didn’t know if you should speak first or wait for Jake to do it, and apparently, he felt the same.

“As much as I love just staring at you two,” Matt breaks the silence. “Would you be able to do this with my door closed? You can be in here, but,” his voice trails off. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear whatever it was you were about to talk about even though he already knew.

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” you tell him, letting his room door close behind you as Jake took your hand in his, leading you down the hall to your room.

You don’t say anything until you get into your room, both of you sitting at the foot of the bed.

“I’m sorry I got mad,” he says, his hand still in yours but unable to look at you.

“I’m sorry I got mad,” you repeat, for lack of better words to say. “We need boundaries. I get that you want to pay for things, but I need you to ask me before you do, especially if it’s something we don’t necessarily need.”

“Ok,” he draws out, trying to figure out how to frame his words. “Would you be ok with asking me for help when you need it? You know I can help you, and it kills me seeing you struggle when I have the means to make this stop.”

“I just want you to ask.”

He smiles at you, raising his hand to cup your face. “I will,” he says, his lips finding yours for a soft, sweet kiss. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

You spend the rest of the night together, trying to figure out boundaries of what and when Jake can lend you money, what should be paid back, what he doesn’t want back, everything. It was the conversation you should have had years ago, yet never did.

The next morning, you get ready for his teammate's wedding, slipping on the dress, your back towards Jake while he put on his suit. “Can you zip me up?” you ask him while he adjusted his sleeves.

He comes up behind you, his fingers holding the small zipper and slowly pulling it up your back. Jake wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you in front of the mirror hung on the wall of the room, his head nestled on your shoulder. “I can’t wait until we get married.”

You laugh, craning your neck to kiss the side of his head. “That’ll be an expensive day, won’t it,” you joke.

“Yeah, maybe. But spending the rest of my life with the girl I love? That’s priceless.”

[marshmallow-phd]

Book of the Dead

Genre: The Mummy AU

Pairing: Junmyeon x Reader

Summary: After traveling to the fabled city of Hamunaptra, you read from the Book of the Dead and accidentally resurrect an ancient mummy with extraordinary powers and quest for revenge. The only thing to do now is try and convince your less-than-traditional guide to help you save the world. 

Part 1 I Part 2

**

“I just said a few sentences!”

“What did you do that for!”

“Well, I didn’t know that that would happen!”

You stared at the aggravating, self-absorbed, cocky Korean soldier and wondered why on earth you had decided to negotiate for this man’s life. 

Alright, you did know why. You needed him to show you to Hamunuptra - the fabled City of the Dead. 

Too many times you had stood in front of the museum curator with pages and pages of references and evidence that the place existed and just needed a small team of archeologists in order to track it down. He’d shot you down every time. And each time he took the liberty of reminding you that while your father was an exceptional explorer who had many successes under his belt, you were a woman whose life had been spent between the shelves, cataloging. Your adventures consisted of the fictional kind, devouring any novel you could when you weren’t archiving the latest crate of artifacts and texts. 

Then your cousin showed up. Your normally useless, hare-brained, erratic, drunkard cousin showed up at your apartment with a “fun new artifact” he found on his latest trip. And suddenly your luck had completely turned around. 

Or so you thought. 

Now you were standing in the middle of Hamunaptra, feet sinking into the unstable sand, with an empty sarcophagus and everyone blaming you because you did what you did best - read.

It was only a book. Albeit, a very heavy, possibly-made-of-painted-solid-gold book that was written in the dead language of ancient Egypt, but still. What harm had ever come from reading a book?

Kim Junmyeon stared at you as if you were the one who had risen from the dead. You were still stunned at how different he looked from when you had first met him in that smelly prison, minutes away from being hanged. His hair had been long and stringy, clumps of dirt clinging to the dark brown strands that brushed his shoulders. Now it was shorter, cut above his ears and gelled back in the current style that almost made him look like a gentleman. The several days’ stubble was long gone to reveal smooth skin and a sharp jawline. He was actually very handsome - when he was cleaned up. 

Stupid, you hissed at yourself. Now was not the time for this. Because right now there seemed to be a reanimated mummy running around here. And by the looks of Barney’s husk of a body lying deep within the temple underground, it was hungry. 

As it should be, given the three thousand years it spent locked up under piles of sand. 

“Really, you should have been more careful!” your cousin, Baekhyun, scolded. 

You scoffed. “You’re one to talk. You were the one who snatched the key off of Mr. Kim here at one of your seedy bars and then proceeded to lie to me and say that you found it on a dig in Thebes which in turn brought us here!”

Baekhyun opened and closed his mouth as he searched for a possible retort. 

“I think this is more your fault,” Kim Junmyeon’s own cousin and traveling partner, Oh Sehun, said. “You told us to go down a level and dig under the statue, which in turn,” he mocked your tone almost precisely, “caused the mummy to be able to get out of his sarcophagus. If we had dug somewhere else entirely, then he’d still be trapped under the statue of Anubis.”

“Despite the fact that it was two layers deep, nothing would have been able to hold a victim of the Hom-Dai.”

“Would have given poor Barney a chance,” Kim Junmyeon muttered under his breath. You shot him a glare that he hardly noticed. 

“I say that we get out of here and to the safety of the city before the mummy finds us.” Oh Sehun swallowed thickly. “Or worse. The beetles find us.” The supposedly brave soldier who had two pistols hanging under each arm was more terrified of the flesh eating bugs than he was the living mummy that was bringing about the ten plagues of Egypt. You’d already lived through the locust infestation, but that was always the most minor of the plagues. In your opinion. 

“We told you to leave,” Ardeth said in that low, monotone voice that made him seem centuries old. You had only known him for a few hours, but you already feared and respected him. Despite the fact that he had attacked your campsite the night before. “Now you have condemned the whole world to the very monster that we have spent three thousand years keeping hidden.”

Kim Junmyeon finally tore his face away from yours. “I told you. I shot him. He went down.”

“Mortal weapons are useless against this creature. None can kill him.” Stepping up, he stood toe to toe with the soldier who led you here. “A gun is nothing more than a fly to him. He will never eat. He will never sleep. And he will never stop. Not until this world is only sand.”

Though still not completely backing down, Kim Junmyeon took hold of your arm. “Come on. We’re going back to Cairo.”

**

The camel ride back to the city was long, tiring, and a bit painful, if you were honest. The inside of your thighs were sore from keeping you up right on the animal’s back for hours on end under the blazing heat. You were used to the comfortable back seat of a car, even if the roads here tended to be on the bumpier side. Kim Junmyeon stayed at your side the entire time, up until you were back in your hotel room. All your things were still in there. That was nice, even if it was to be expected. The desk clerk had sworn he would keep the room reserved for you until you made it back. And now that you had, you were on to the next fight. 

“We’re not going anywhere!” 

Kim Junmyeon pretended not to hear you as he started emptying the dresser drawers of your clothes and stuffing them in your suitcases lying open on the bed.

“Excuse me! I said we’re not going anywhere!” As soon as he stepped away again, you slammed the suitcase shut. A stray white cat that you didn’t have the heart to remove from your room took advantage of the newly available space and laid down on the surface of the luggage. Unbothered by the argument taking place in its presences, it purred as it curled into a ball and closed its eyes. 

“You keep using the word ‘we’ and I’m not sure why,” he said. “I believe you were the one who woke him up in the first place.”

“Yes, I get it!” you shouted. “Everyone can blame me because I read the damn book, but that is why we need to stop him.”

He closed the empty drawer and turned back around to face you. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that? You heard Ardeth. No mortal weapon can kill this guy.”

“That’s why we’re going to find some immortal ones.”

He pulled a pair of rounded glasses from his pocket, wiped the lenses with his shirt, and stuck them on the bridge of his nose. “There goes that ‘we’ business again.”

You huffed, trying not to focus on the newest version of the soldier now being presented in front of you. “Yes, we. Because this curse will continue to get worse until the whole world is destroyed.”

“And that’s my problem?”

“It is everybody’s problem! You live here, too!”

Kim Junmyeon stepped up until he was mere inches away. “Listen. I appreciate you saving my life and all, but when I agreed to this idiotic mission my objective was to show you the way and then bring you back here. I have done that. End of job. End of story. Contract terminated.”

You tried not to show how his last few words affected you. Though you had been a little intoxicated two nights ago, you still very much remembered how sweet he had been, how he had listened to you go on and on about your parents and how much you wanted to be a famous adventurer like your father. And how you almost kissed him. And how he was going to kiss you back. Stupidly, you had thought that there was something growing between you. Apparently, you had been wrong. 

“Is that all I am to you?” you whispered. “A contract?”

Kim Junmyeon blew out haughtily from his nose. His Adam’s Apple bobbed as he swallowed. He opened his mouth and then closed it. You waited in hopes that he would contradict you. That he would say, no that was not all you were to him. And it really seemed like he would be saying something along those lines. But other words came out instead. 

“Look. You can either come with me or you can try and stay here and save the world. So. What’s it going to be?”

You didn’t even hesitate. “I’m staying.”

“Fine.” He headed for the door. 

“Fine,” you bit back, following him. 

“Fine,” he threw at you again as he barely glanced over his shoulder.

“Fine!”

“Fine!” 

He got the last word in before slamming the door to your room shut. 

You huffed as you crossed your arms. Yet, as angry as you were, you still hoped that he would come back. That he wouldn’t let you take this on alone. But the footsteps on the other faded away and you were alone.

Looking around your room, you didn’t think there was much you could do. So, you did what you were best at. You grabbed all the books you thought could help you and got to reading. 

While sitting in the wicker chair in the corner, you skipped around the books and pages, clinging on to any small word that you thought could lead you to a possible solution. There wasn’t much to be found, unfortunately. Most works spoke of how to perform the Hom-Dai and how it should never be performed due to the curse that awaits should the victim ever be awakened. You already knew that. You needed specifics on what to do after the victim came back. 

“(Y/n)!”

Kim Junmyeon came bursting back into your room. You slammed the book in your hands closed, feeling very high and mighty indeed.

“Ah. Mr. Kim. Have you changed your mind?”

“Doesn’t matter now, he’s here!”

“What!”

He didn’t clarify as he hoisted you up out of the chair and pulled you out of the room, and into the hall. Through the windows, you watched in horror as fire fell from the heavens. The balls of flame engulfed anything it touched when it landed, whether it be plant or human life. Turning a corner, Kim Junmyeon ran into a room you knew was occupied by another one of the Americans that you had ran into on your way to Hamunaptra. You gasped. 

In the chair, now nothing more than dried, husky skin and hollow bones was… oh, dear you couldn’t remember his name. You hadn’t bothered to learn them. You and Baekhyun had simply referred to them as the “Bloody Americans”. You were feeling a bit awful about that at the moment. 

But you didn’t have much time to dwell on that. Standing in front of the fireplace was a new version of the mummy. His skin was starting to come together, though patches were still missing, allowing you to see the gray bone and lack of organs underneath. Kim Junmyeon pulled out both of his guns as the mummy stalked forward. 

“We are in deep trouble,” he murmured before opening fire. The loud pops banged on your poor eardrums. You stumbled back a few steps to try and soften their blows. It didn’t work. 

The bullets passed through the mummy as if they didn’t exist at all. Even when Oh Sehun and the other Americans came running into the room and firing off their own guns, the mummy still kept going. He shoved Kim Junmyeon back into the others as if he were nothing more than old wrappings. Then he turned on you. 

Completely unarmed, you stumbled back until you were betrayed by the bookshelf behind you. There was nowhere to run. Instead of sucking out your liver, however, he spoke. 

“You were the one who saved me from the afterlife.” His words were haunting, echoing as if he was speaking in a cavern. And the language he spoke… ancient Egyptian. You weren’t sure why you expected to speak anything else. Coming in closer, he lowered his voice. “I thank you.” 

He leaned in his head, those very human eyes lowering to your lips. You turned your head away to try and avoid the kiss, confused as to why he was trying to seduce you. 

Sharp, unpleasing notes from the piano pierced through the air. The mummy turned and gasped when he saw the white cat from your room walking across the keys. In a whirl of sand, he fled from the room. 

“Oh, thank god,” you said with a heavy breath.

“No kidding,” Kim Junmyeon groaned as he sat up. 

You ran to his side, fearful that he might have been injured. “Are you alright, Mr. Kim?”

“Yes,” he huffed. With a very odd expression, he added, “And I told you to call me Junmyeon.”

To be honest, after your fight, you didn’t think you would be allowed to anymore. A strange silence settled between you. He was trying to say something with his gaze, but you couldn’t interpret it. So, instead, you helped him to his feet. “Come on. I know who we need to talk to about all of this.”

It took a while to get back to the museum that had employed you for the past year or so. Every street was full of panicking people. Flames no longer fell from the heavens, but little fires still raged on homes and carts. The Americans had declared that they were coming along, so your group was slower in moving. Although you didn’t really want the mummy bait to be anywhere near you, Junmyeon and Sehun decided that it would be better to keep an eye on them and - hopefully - keep them out of the mummy’s grasp. 

“Dr. Bey!” You ran into the museum’s main storage room, happy when you saw the curator. But then you skidded to a stop at the sight that he wasn’t alone. 

Ardeth was talking with him in hushed tones that stopped the second you appeared. Both men turned towards you, the curator wearing a very readable expression. It was one that stunk of “I told you so”. The others were only a few steps behind. As soon they, too, saw the unexpected visitor, Junmyeon, Sehun, and the Americans pulled out their guns while Baekhyun simply squeaked in surprise. 

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Bey greeted as if this were any old meeting on a Tuesday. 

“What is he doing here?” Junmyeon demanded. Even with the black tattoos etched under Ardeth’s eyes, you could tell that he was tired, dark circles from lack of sleep bruising his skin. 

Dr. Bey raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to know? Or perhaps you would prefer to just shoot us?”

“Either sounds good.” Junmyeon cocked back the hammer of one of his guns for emphasis. 

“Stop it,” you hissed. “Bullets won’t do any good here. Besides, you might damage some of the artifacts.”

Junmyeon failed to suppress a laugh over your concern. Despite the present danger, you still didn’t want to see the carriages or sacred jars damaged because someone got trigger happy. So, Junmyeon holstered his guns and the others soon followed suit. “All right. I’ll give a little faith.”

Dr. Bey motioned for the group to follow him in deeper. “We’re part of a secret society-”

“Aren’t they all?” Baekhyun muttered. Both you and Dr. Bey shot him glares that made him snap his mouth shut. 

“For over three thousand years, we have guarded the City of the Dead. Once we reach manhood, we swear an oath to do anything and everything in our power to stop the high priest Imhotep from rising from the grave.”

“And now we have failed. Thanks to you.” Ardeth gave you a particularly pointed look. 

By now, you were getting very irritated with the constant finger pointing. What was done was done. You were not going to show him any cowardice. “And that justifies the murder of innocent people?” 

“Hm. To stop this creature?” Dr. Bey pretended to think for a moment. “Yes.”

Junmyeon, untroubled by that, raised his hand from the golden seat of a dead royal that he had taken over. “I have a question. Why doesn’t he seem to like cats?”

“Cats are the guardians of the underworld. He will fear them until he reaches full regeneration.”

“Then there will be nothing that he fears.” Worry was very much apparent in the soldier’s voice.

“And you know how he gets regenerated?” one of the Americans asked rhetorically. 

The other one finished. “By tracking those of us down who opened the chest and sucking us dry like a nomad in the desert, that’s how!”

It was completely pointless to go over the things that were already known. Now was the time to try and piece the unused parts together. Two particular moments were sticking out in your head. 

“Back in Hamunaptra, the priest - Imhotep - he called me Ack-Su-Namun. And then just now at the hotel, he….” You cringed at the memory, thankful that you didn’t have to feel the decomposed skin against your own. “He tried to kiss me.”

“It’s because of Anck-Su-Namun and his love for her that he was cursed,” Dr. Bey explained, exchanging a look with Ardeth. “Even after all this time….”

“He’s still in love with her?” Sehun finished with a scoff. 

You appreciated the backstory, however - “As romantic as that is, what does that have to do with me?”

“Perhaps he will try to raise her from the dead once again?” Ardeth guessed. 

“Yes,” Dr. Bey agreed solemnly. “And it would seem that he has already chosen his human sacrifice.”

All eyes in the room turned to you. Wonderful. 

Not only were you the one who read from the book and raised him, but you would also be responsible for the return of his beloved, who was the reason he was cursed in the first place. Absolutely beautiful. 

Baekhuyn came up behind you and patted your shoulder. “That is some rotten luck, dear cousin.”

“Actually, this could work in our favor,” Dr. Bey countered. “It could give us time that we desperately need to kill the creature.”

“We’ll need every second, I think,” Sehun said. He pointed towards the ceiling. “I think he’s getting stronger.”

Through the large window high up on the wall, the sun was in clear view. You all watched in horror as the moon moved too quickly across the sky and blocked the light from reaching Earth. 

“I’m guessing this is the plague of darkness?” Baekhyun said ominously. You nodded slowly. 

“Let’s go,” Junmyeon said softly beside you, his hand coming up protectively behind your back. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel and come up with a plan.”

**

“I’m just saying, it seems very stupid to comdem someone to a curse when the result of that would be for them to come back a supernatural creature who is practically unkillable.”

“The ancient Egyptians believed in balance,” you explained to Baekhyun for the hundredth time in your life. “To curse someone so badly in both this life and the next, there has to be a consequence to balance out the scales. If not, then the whole world could still fall apart, in even worse ways!”

“All of this is kind of pointless now, isn’t it?” Sehun sighed from the small table in the antechamber to your room. His feet were up on the polished surface as he leaned back in his seat. A look of irritation was etched on his face as he stared at your cousin. “What’s done is done. Right now, we need to focus on our next step.”

“Well, I know you two,” you pointed to the Americans, “opened the chest. As well as Barney. Was there anyone else?”

“The Egyptologist that was with us,” the shaggier one answered. “Professor Chamberlain. He has a temporary residence a few blocks over.”

“What about my best friend Beni?” Junmyeon asked. You nearly snorted. You knew the two of them were anything but friends.

“No. He ran out before we took the lid off. Ended up saving his own skin.”

“Sounds like Beni,” Junmyeon said dryly. “Okay. We’re going to go get the Professor. You four,” he pointed to all the men, “come with me. You, stay here.”

Oh, no you weren’t. “Excuse me! I am just as capable as any of them are. I will not- What do you think you’re doing!”

Junmyeon marched over to you, picked you up, and carried you over his shoulder until you were in your room. Then he dropped you on the floor, closed the door, and locked it tight. “This door doesn’t open.”

You didn’t know who he said it to, who he left in charge of watching you like an infant. It didn’t matter. You pounded your fist against the solid wood door. “Baekhyun! Junmyeon! Let me out! Baekhyun, you coward! Help me out here!”

“Sorry, cousin!” Baekhyun yelled on the other side of the door. “But… he’s got a gun.”

“Smart choice,” you heard Junmyeon say. Oh, you were going to kill him. Which “him” was yet to be decided. Perhaps both would be most satisfactory. 

Well, now you were stuck here. 

Crossing your arms, you sat on the edge of the bed and contemplated your choices. Not that you had many. 

A yawn forced its way out. You were tired. Over the past few days, you had hardly been able to get any real sleep. And, well, now seemed to be a time. So, you changed into your nightgown and slipped under the covers. The mattress was soft, like a cloud. The pillows were stuffed into freshly cleaned cotton cases. It was barely a few minutes before you drifted off…

And then abruptly woke up to something moving against your mouth. It started out soft but quickly turned ashen and tough. Your eyes flew open and you screamed, the sound muffled by the kiss of Imhotep!

You tried to shove him off, but he didn’t budge. Your touch meant nothing to him as he continued the unwanted kiss. 

The door to your room burst open, finally taking his attention and allowing your scream to be heard at full volume. Imhotep’s face was half rotten away, his lips completely gone, the cheeks held together by thin strips of jerky-like skin. You scrambled out of reach, to try and get as far away as the tiny room would allow. The movement caused you to fall out of the bed and land hard on the wood floor.

Standing up, Imhotep said something in ancient Egyptian, but your jumbled, still half-asleep brain couldn’t translate it. 

“Oh, really?” Junmyeon mocked. “Here’s my answer.” He held up the poor cat who had saved you earlier, the animal hissing threateningly at the mummy. Just like last time, Imhotep fled in a tornado of sand out the window, terrified of the innocent creature. 

“Are you alright?” Junmyeon asked as he let the cat fall from his hands. The cat landed gracefully on its feet and walked over to the bed with more dignity than you’d ever seen a human radiate. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Baekhyun answered. After a glare from Junmyeon, he cleared his throat. “Oh. You weren’t- that’s fine. Go… check on her.” Junmyeon did just that. 

Kneeling in front of you, he pushed away a few stray hairs that had fallen in your face. Warm, soft brown eyes searched for any sign of harm. The tips of his fingers brushed against your cheek, setting the skin on fire. Or perhaps that was just the blood rushing up to your face in slight embarrassment. This man made you… nervous in a way. He could be dastardly at times, but… also very sweet. 

Clearing your throat, you pushed yourself up to your feet. “I’m fine. A little disgusted, but I’m fine.”

A smirk and knowing gleam flashed on Junmyeon’s face as he rose. “I’m sure mine was better.”

He was referring to the lip-smash he desperately pulled before he was to be dragged to the hangman’s noose. Not exactly the best first impression. 

You snorted. “No. I wouldn’t say that.” His jaw went slack. Sehun and Baekhyun snickered behind him. “Did you find the professor?” you asked in order to change the subject. 

“Yeah. He stayed out in the sun for a little long by the time we found him.”

“What are you-” Oh. Oh. That was why Imhotep was so far along in his regeneration. He’d found another victim to suck dry. 

“And he has the Book of the Dead,” Sehun added. “According to Beni, that’s what he’s going to use to raise Anacsunmum.”

“Anck-Su-Namun,” you corrected. 

“Yeah, her.”

You rolled your eyes. Why did you even bother?

You started pacing the room, trying to figure out what would be the best next move. You couldn’t keep playing hide and seek with the cat for all eternity. There needed to be a way to end this. Before he read from the book and raised-

The book… 

The book! 

You whirled back to the others. “I have an idea!”

“Care to share?”

“The Black book has always been rumored among scholars to be able to bring people back from the dead. Something I had always thought was nonsense,” you added to yourself. “But since that part is true, that means other rumors must be as well. Such as the Gold Book being able to send a soul back to the afterlife.”

“A balance.” Baekhyun looked awfully proud of himself. At least something finally stuck. 

“Exactly. Now all we have to do is find out where it's hidden.”

Junmyeon frowned. “But I thought it was supposed to be hidden with Anubis?”

“Exactly,” you agreed. “It comes from a translation of an ancient text. A stone that’s at the museum here, actually. It also says where the Black book was supposed to be hidden. I think they got their translations mixed up. So, where the scholars who originally translated it said that the golden Book of Amun-Ra was in the statue of Anubis, it's actually wherever they said the black Book of the Dead was supposed to be.”

“And where is that?”

You swallowed. “I don’t remember. We’ll have to go to the museum so I can read it again.”

Letting out a heavy sigh, Junmyeon checked the barrels of his guns, reloaded the revolvers with bullets from his belt. “Then I guess we’re headed back to the museum. Hopefully we don’t run into Ugly Face before we get to the rock.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” you said with the utmost confidence. 

Sehun, who did not share that sentiment, looked up towards the ceiling. “Oh joy. Another book hunt.”

[sunsetcurvecuddles]

10. Is something wrong?" And 11. “Is there anything I can do to help?” For boggie or rebuke

hey you know how i just sent you the mystery rebuke fic? yeah it turns out it was your ask that prompted it. anyway here you go apparently all i can write is rebuke cuddles on the studio couch.

you're the swimmer with pockets of stones | rebuke | G | 2.3k

ao3 link in reblogs!

--

Bobby doesn't mean to let it show during practice. Usually, he's pretty good at keeping all this stuff under the surface, smoothed and hidden, layered over with a mixture of standoffishness and charm that tends to turn people in the other direction than whatever's going on for him internally.

Concerningly, he might be getting close enough to the boys that they can start to tell. This wasn't his intention, initially — the music thing has always been about gaining a reputation, some sort of following, maybe getting famous one day, and he really does believe in the music Luke Patterson writes, thinks it could really get them somewhere. But he didn't necessarily intend to get to know the members of the band like he has. Didn't expect for one of them to move into his studio, for sure,

It's not like he wasn't intending on getting to know them at all . It's just that he didn't anticipate how quickly Reggie would tilt his head, narrow his eyes, and ask, "Is something wrong?" when Bobby misses his entry spot for the fourth time in a row.

"No," Bobby barks, and it's a little sharp. Alex and Luke both give him equally sharp glares back. They all know they don't talk to Reggie like that. Immediately, Bobby amends, "Sorry, Reg. Just scattered today. Not your fault."

Not your fault . The mantra of apologising to Reggie. Swallowing and trying to take it on board (Bobby can see it, can see Reggie telling himself that it's okay, that Bobby didn't mean it, that not everything is his fault, that's why they always remind him, that everything's okay, over and over, because all these things show very easily on Reggie's face when you know where to look for them and how to read them) Reggie says lightly, "Yeah, no worries."

"We can try something else?" Alex suggests carefully, tone still crystal in a way that lets Bobby know he’s fucked up but Alex is choosing to let it slide. "Luke said he wanted to go over Long Weekend again before the gig on Friday."

"That's a good idea," Luke agrees. "We're more familiar with that one and besides, I just sorta wanted to see how this new song sounds out loud. We won't have it ready for Friday."

They totally could have it ready for Friday. Bobby knows he's being the weak link here.

So he tries extra hard for Long Weekend . Really does his best to nail all the timing, all the pitch, throws in a few improvisational notes just to make Luke grin over at him, delighted and surprised, because Luke might seem like a control freak but he actually loves to collaborate more than anything else in the world.

It just sucks that the rest of the rehearsal can't go as well as that does. Bobby fades in and out, his eyes scramble the music on the page, and before he knows it, Luke is calling things off, saying they can catch up tomorrow, that this isn't going to work itself out tonight, clearly .

It stings a little, but Luke's not wrong. Bobby, master of keeping his face neutral, can barely keep his eyes open even though he knows they're lying to him, even though he knows that he's going to be stuck wide awake the moment he lays his head back against anything and tries to sleep, because that's how it's been for weeks now.

The Mercers never let Alex stay over any more, not since he came out (and it sucks, and Bobby kinda hates them even though he and Alex aren’t all that close), so he packs up his sticks and the homework books he'd left scattered in the corner ready to head home. Alex says his goodbyes mostly like normal, though his eyes linger on Bobby, narrow and a little too insightful for Bobby’s liking.

Bobby replies, and to his own ears he sounds pretty normal, which is why he doesn't understand when Reggie and Luke exchange glances over the top of Bobby's head as soon as Alex is gone.

“What’s gotten into you, man?” Luke asks, ditching his guitar in favour of sitting cross-legged on top of the table in the centre of the room, across from where Bobby sits on the couch. “You’ve been acting kinda weird for a while, but this is a new level of weird.”

“I’m fine,” Bobby grits out. He feels cornered, the way that Luke is sitting there, and Reggie’s hovering awkwardly between Bobby and the door, hands behind his head, probably stretching out his fingers if Bobby knows him well enough, which he does.

How did he end up knowing them so well? And why are they pushing so hard to find out what’s going on with him? He hates this conversation. He wants it to be over.

He wants to sleep.

“Dude,” says Reggie quietly, “you weren’t acting like yourself at all today. Like, yourself is always a little weird,” he says, like a joke, but he looks a little scared, like he might be stepping over the line. But it’s Reggie, so Bobby allows it.

“There’s nothing wrong with talking to us about it,” adds Luke hopefully. “We’re your friends.”

“Right,” Bobby says, rubbing his eyes, “because you’re so honest with us about everything, is that it?”

“Well – hey, that doesn’t seem fair,” Reggie interrupts, tone a little protective. “We’re not talking about Luke right now. If we want to stage a Luke-tervention later, we can, but—”

“A what?” Luke says, baffled.

“Like an intervention,” Reggie explains, in an exasperated tone, like this really should be obvious, “but for you.”

“Oh,” says Luke, nodding like that actually did clear it up.

They’re idiots. Bobby wishes they weren’t making him smile. Maybe he’s just delirious. He listens to them banter for a few more minutes and feels himself slipping, feels the way the room is spinning a bit around him. Knows he won’t be able to sleep, feels it in the ache in his body, but it hurts anyway, how bad he wants it. How much he wants to be able to reach behind the veil and pull the sleep to him, pull it over him like a blanket.

His bandmates are suddenly on either side of him, like they’re ready to catch him if he falls, Reggie’s voice cautious as he says, “Bobby? You good, man? You looked woozy for a sec.”

"Tired," is all Bobby manages. His voice comes out a little strangled.

"Yeah," says Luke, in a sort of punched-out voice that makes Bobby think Luke understood more than Bobby meant him to. “We know.”

How do they know? Bobby hasn’t told them. He hasn’t told anyone. It’s just been him and his empty room and the ceiling staring back down at him for hours, until he gives up, gets up and switches the lights on and tries to read, tries to write music, tries to do anything. Though honestly, lately he’s been too tired even for that. Too exhausted and frantic to do anything but stare at the roof and wish it would fall on him and knock him out, send him down into the black lake of sleep where he so desperately wants to drown. But he hasn’t told Luke or Reggie about any of that.

"We want to help, man," Reggie continues, almost painfully earnest and sweet, "Is there anything we can do?"

Bobby shakes his head no before he's even let himself process Reggie's words, because help and Bobby are only things that go together when Bobby's doing the helping, not the other way around.

Without even opening his eyes, Bobby feels Luke push Bobby's arm up so Luke can snuggle up against his side, resting his cheek on Bobby's shoulder, stubborn and warm and soft. Seemingly following his initiative, Reggie loops himself around Bobby's other side, a little gangly but just as safe, tucking Bobby's head under his chin instead.

"Does this make it better?" Luke asks, in a small voice. Bobby feels his throat move, the vibrations of his voice. "Or, uh, or worse?"

Bobby goes to say neither, to say, it doesn't matter, to say, you guys will sleep better without me here taking up all this space . To say, I should go to my own room . But he doesn't say any of those things, because having them so close and warm around him is sorta making him want to cry, in a really weird, horrible, overflowing way, like he's a bathtub filling up with tears and they're reaching his throat, not too far from reaching his eyes.

"Better," Reggie decides for him. Takes the weight off his shoulders. "C'mon, Luke, let's go to bed. Bobby can just lie here until he feels better."

Luke makes an affirmative sound, pulls the blanket back up over the three of them, and Bobby feels like he's sinking deep in his own achy, exhausted body, like he's finally letting it overcome him, like suddenly instead of being the bathtub, he's just in one, and he's letting his head slip under the water, letting it engulf him. Reggie runs a hand through Bobby's hair, light and gentle, and Bobby sinks deeper. Luke wraps an arm around Bobby's stomach, fingers squeezing at Bobby's waist, and Bobby sinks deeper.

Instead of lying awake for hours until his eyes burn and his teeth ache, he's asleep without being sure when it happens.

—

When he wakes, Reggie and Luke pushed in on either side of him still, wrapped even more tightly than he remembers them being the night before, he feels unbelievably light, even with their weight pressing in all over him. He feels like his eyelids weigh ten pounds less than they did the day before, even as his body succumbs to being part of the couch cushions, even as a yawn pulls at the edge of his mouth and suggests to him that maybe, they try to sleep for just a few more minutes.

—

Bobby wakes again when the sun starts to spill in properly through the garage window at the back, illuminating the studio and casting their instruments into bright colours and dark shadowy relief across the floor. This time, he's only being restrained by all four of Luke's limbs, somehow, like their genius songwriter has decided to abandon his pursuit of music for the better pursuit of fully transforming into a koala bear. For a few moments, blinking and looking around, Bobby can't see Reggie anywhere.

It doesn't really alarm him, though. It's not like there's anyone else around, and Reggie's always been an earlier riser than him or Luke, more spritely than the rest of them. Luke’s still snoring, has drooled a tiny bit on Bobby’s t-shirt. Bobby should probably be more grossed-out by it than he is.

Before he can start to theorise about where, exactly, Reggie might have gone, he’s already returning, nudging the door open with his hip because his arms are full. He gives Bobby a big grin, as usual far too awake for the hour (Bobby doesn’t think he’s been that awake at any hour, recently).

“Aw, man. I was hoping you’d sleep a little longer, but… I brought us breakfast?”

Reggie must have gone up to the house, which means he probably would have had to talk to Bobby’s parents, at least his mom. Bobby’s stomach twists in embarrassment at the thought, not of Reggie, but of his mom, her scattered workaholic brain probably so far from being able to handle a conversation with a sweet kid like Reggie first thing in the morning. But still, Reggie’s carrying plates that have toast and jam, and he’s got a big bottle of orange juice, and he looks so proud of himself, like a little kid with a picture they want you to put on the fridge.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Bobby says, his voice still hoarse from sleep, but sounding better than it did at any point yesterday. He must have gotten more sleep just last night than he did in the five nights beforehand.

“I know,” says Reggie brightly, setting the plates and bottle down on the table across from the pullout, “but that’s what friends are for, right?”

Huh. Friends. That’s one way to put it, Bobby guesses. In his head they’ve just been – bandmates, always, but – he guesses if Luke and Reggie are snuggling up to him overnight, hanging out at his place on days when they’re not doing music, if Reggie’s casually chatting to his mom –

Maybe they are friends.

He looks down at the toast. Reggie’s spread the jam almost neurotically evenly, but on one piece he’s drawn a wonky smiley face, with two circle eyes and a big stripe of jam in a curve that mirrors their band logo for the smile. It looks vaguely demented, but Reggie grins and points and says, “That one’s for you. So you’ll be in a better mood today.”

Luke yawns, stretches and wriggles, squishing Bobby a little bit in the process with his warm limbs. Bobby looks from one to the other, from Reggie’s face to Luke’s body curled up against him, and suddenly his stomach is full of something that’s a little more concerning than just the sense of being friends unexpectedly. Something different.

Bobby sighs a breath out quietly to try and shake off the feeling, and Reggie grins, like he gets something, which is nerve wracking until he says, “You don’t wanna move, right? I can feed you so you don’t have to get up!”

Honestly, Bobby would really rather Reggie didn’t, after the possibly concerning revelation he had moments ago, so he shoves Luke maybe a little harder than he needed to, ignores Luke’s startled yelp, even though it makes him want to laugh and the want to laugh makes the fluttery feeling come back to his stomach. Rather than laughing, or showing any of his feelings, Bobby just mutters, getoffme , and sits up to grab a piece of toast. He'll deal with everything else after breakfast.

(He takes the smiley face piece. He’s not a monster).

[ray-ray-writings]

Ayyyyy 💫 anon here w more c!Punz potential content

Consider,,,,reader being on Wilbur's/Tommy's side during the election and they get exiled with them, and everyone turns on them including Punz right? Well Punz has had a crush on them so while he's shooting, he's intentionally missing the reader, but when he turns to shoot at Wilbur, the reader sees and shoves Wilbur aside, taking the arrow instead. It's not deadly, but it is pretty serious, serious enough to where Tommy and Wilbur have to double back to help them. And afterward, I can just see Punz feeling horrible about it until he stumbles across them one day, outside of Pogtopia, and they're sitting by a pond, with bandages around the area they got shot at and he rushes over and starts frantically apologizing to them and fluff :D

💫 I am sending you all of the virtual hugs and kisses I can muster. I have really been in Punz feels lately and this just hits the spot. Thank you so much <3. 

So you would be sitting next to your brothers, really really upset at how the election results had turned out. You had put so much time and effort into helping the two get elected and just hearing that Schlatt had won by 1% just broke your heart. So you would be sitting there, head resting on Wilbur’s shoulder, your hand holding one of Tommy’s, as you half heartedly listen to Schlatt’s speech. But then the tone shifts, the mood gets darker and Schaltt begins yelling. Your head slowly rises off of Wilbur’s shoulder and your eyes widen as Schlatt begins his decree, “Is to REVOKE the citizenship of Wilbur Soot, Tommyinnit, and Y/N.” And everyone’s heads turn to you and eyes snap to stare at you three. “Guys, we gotta go,” Wilbur mutters to the two of you. Schaltt is still talking and you watch as Ponk pulls out a bow. Movement beside him draws your attention and your eyes meet Punz’s eyes. His eyes soften ever so slightly but harden as he looks to your friend and he also draws his bow. “Now!” Wilbur demands, shoving your shoulder causing you to move into action and begin running away from your home. 

Arrows began flying around you as the people that were chasing you attempted to take a life. As these arrows fly by you, you begin to notice that none of them are even close to hitting you. You take the chance and slow down, looking over your shoulder to see what was happening. There was nothing out of the ordinary, only that Ponk was the one shooting at Wilbur and Tommy and Punz was the one shooting at you. Again your eyes lock and Punz lowers his weapon ever so slightly. You don’t know this, but Punz had been in love with you since the moment he saw you. He had just never had the courage to actually do anything about it. What he didn’t know is that you felt the same way about him. So you two would dance around each other all the time. Always making nervous eye contact and blushing when it happened. Giving slight waves when you passed each other around the SMP, never fighting each other in wars and stuff. Although neither of you really knew about the other’s crush, you knew about your own and that definitely wormed its way into your decisions. So Punz is the one that breaks eye contact and it’s because Ponk yells something at him. You notice Punz’s gaze shift to Wilbur and he raises his crossbow once again and aims for your best friend. And although you’ve been running for so long, it’s now that your heart begins to pound. You pick your pace back up and run as fast as you can at Wilbur. Once you reach him, you just shove him as hard as you can forward and right. Wilbur is super confused at what just happened but continues running, until he hears your scream. Your scream causes both him and Tommy to stop in their tracks. They whip around and find you now on your knees, an arrow sticking out of the back of your thigh. Immediately Wilbur and Tommy run for you and carefully help you up, putting your arms over their shoulders and helping you continue running away. (Okay I know this is serious time but like these boys are so tall and if you’re short enough, when they put your arms around their shoulders I just picture you dangling between the two… We’re going to ignore that though and pretend that you’re tall enough to do that comfortably lol)

You three get away from the two that were shooting at you but you can’t stop even though your injured, you have to find a safe place. It takes a while, especially cause you’re moving so slow due to the arrow sticking out of your leg, but you get there. The boys sit you down on some wood and begin setting up a small camp so that they could have a clean place to take care of your leg. “I’m so sorry about this” Wilbur whispers later that night, his hand on the arrow about to pull it out. You grit your teeth and squeeze Tommy’s hand harder, “It has to be done. Just do it. You probably screamed the loudest you’ve ever screamed that night. 

On the other side of the server, Punz was lying in his bed at his home, beating himself up. How could he do that? Especially to you, the one he was so obviously in love with. He should have known that you would attempt to protect Wilbur before you protected yourself and now you’re hurt and it’s all his fault. Maybe he’ll try and find you to make sure you're alright. Either way, Punz has a really hard time falling asleep that night. 

It isn’t until a solid week later does he find you. He didn’t even really mean to. Punz for the whole week would go back to the place where he shot you, but this day he just kept walking. He walked for many hours just to clear his head. It isn’t until he hears running water does he realize that he has gotten so far away from home that he no longer knows where he is. So he just keeps walking to the water, hoping it would give him some sort of direction back home. He breaks through the tree line and finds the most beautiful scene. It’s a small pond that is so clear and blue that he can see all of the little fish swimming around. Lily Pads float pretty on the surface and flowers littered the ground around it. It’s beautiful and peaceful, just what Punz needed. He takes a step forward and a stick under his feet snaps and a voice startles him, “Tommy I told you to leave me alo--Oh!” Punz’s eyes snap to the voice and his breath catches at the sight before him. It’s you. You’re actually there. You are sitting by the pond with pants rolled up to your knees, feet dipping in the pound. “Hi,” He breathes out, looking at you up and down, his heart clenching at the sight of your still bandaged thigh. (You have a bandage under your pants and then one for more support on the outside as well). “Hi,” You breath back, really stunned to see him here, “What are you doing here?” You ask, your eyes not leaving his. “I… I went for a walk to clear my head and found you… How’s your thigh?” He asks, guilt filling his entire system. “Oh, uhhh. It’s alright. Better than it was, but alright…. Do you want to sit?” you ask, patting the ground next to you. Punz slowly made his way over, watching your expression for any form of discomfort as he carefully lowered himself beside you, being sure not to get his feet wet. 

It’s silent between the two of you for a few moments, both of you trying to find something, anything to say. “I’m really sorry,” spills past Punz’s lips before he can stop himself, “For everything. For your exile, for shooting you… For not telling you how I felt before you left,” And you freeze. Because you never blamed him for your exile or shooting you. He did what he had to and besides, he was purposefully missing you when he was aiming for you. But as for how he felt? You never knew about that. “What are you talking about?” you would ask softly. Punz would let out a sigh and a small laugh, “I cannot believe this is what it’s going to take to confess… Y/N, I’ve been in love with you since the moment I met you. And I know you probably don’t feel the same, I mean I shot you, but I walked all the way out here because I couldn't stop thinking about you and now… Now I’m here, confessing to you…” Punz explained, very nervous. And you can’t help but let out a laugh, because this? This is what it took for your crush to tell you he likes you? Of course it would be! Punz wouldn’t be looking at you, too nervous to see your reaction, so you would have to reach up and physically turn his head to face you. “Punz,” you whisper, “I’ve been in love with you since the moment I met you too. I just never pictured that you could actually like me back… I don’t blame you for shooting me or exiling me, you did what you had to… Can I kiss you?” And Punz can only nod before you lean forward and kiss him. The kiss is filled with so much feeling. Filled with passion, a hint of disbelief, joy and just pure love. It’s perfect. 

The two of you spend the rest of the day sitting there at the pond, talking and kissing. You’re there until sundown, and then Punz helps you back to Pogtopia. Tommy is really upset at the sight of ‘the enemy’ in your base, but Wilbur keeps him calm and tells him to shut up. Punz and you fall asleep cuddling in your bed and he’s still there the next morning. He has to leave the next morning, but he’ll be back soon. Now that he knows that you feel the same way, there is nothing that could keep Punz from you.

[krreader]

BTS scenario → you, an angel, being in love with them, a demon.

pairing: demon!bts x angel!reader fandom: bts warnings: non idol!au ; demon/angel!au ; mentions of murder ; language genre: angst ; fluff  word count: 1.6k+

a/n: hello my love! I really hope you like it!!!!! I had a blast writing it!

kim seokjin

“Well, well, well,” the three of you looked up from the dead body when a group of demons approached, your body tensing when you saw Seokjin being one of them, “You found our little gift for you.”

“Away with you, demons!”

“Now, now, that's rather rude of you, my dear,” he laughed, then turned his head to Seokjin, “What do you think, Seokjin? Should we get into a little fight today? Or should we just leave them with the corpse of their angel friend?”

You gulped down hard at those words. That meant he took part in the killing.

He must have sensed your disappointment, because his shoulders started slumping, “Let's just leave. We did enough already.”

“Shame, I would have liked a fight with this one,” when he wanted to boop the nose of your friend, she instantly pulled out her knife, making him stumble back, “Okay, okay.. we're off. Calm down.”

Seokjin stood there for a moment longer, opened his mouth as he looked at you like he wanted to apologize, but all you did was shake your head.

There was nothing left to say.

The man that tried so hard to convince you that he wasn't like the rest of them turned out to be just as bad. You fell in love with him and you hated yourself for it now. 

Because how could a demon ever change?

min yoongi

If anyone could see him right now, they'd throw him straight out of hell.

A demon, one that was so feared and respected, lying next to an angel in bed and he was.. giggling.

“It's ridiculous.”

“No, it's not,” you pushed yourself up on your elbow to properly look at him, “Hybrids exist!”

“But not demon and angel hybrids.”

“How would you know? You don't even have any demon friends who could tell you,” you snorted and laid back down.

“Why would I need friends when I have you?” he nuzzled his nose into your neck, making you squirm and then laugh.

“I'm your girlfriend, not your friend.”

At girlfriend, Yoongi looked up with so much love in his eyes and began to smile, “Yes. My girlfriend.”

And he was.. so proud of it.

jung hoseok

Demons had powers that you angels feared. For example, they could rip out your heart and make you suffer like never before if they wanted to.

And even though Hoseok didn't do that in a physical sense, he did it in a metaphorical one.

“Go.”

“Why are you doing this?” your eyes were full of tears as you stared at the man you've come to love, despite of who he was, “We can find a solution, Hoseok, we always have!”

And that was the issue. He knew that your love for him was so strong that you'd never leave him on your own, but he was a demon and he had already screwed you up too much. You were once the perfect model for your people.. but then they had found out what you were doing.. with him.. and ever since then, you were shunned.

To you, that didn't matter anymore, because you had him, but it mattered to him.

He hated that it was his fault that you were now an outcast, especially because your duties had once meant so much to you.

So in a way.. he was doing this for your own good.

“It's over, (Y/N). Go back to where you came from. I don't want you anymore,” he sneered and then turned around to walk away.

He thought you might follow him, but your legs weren't moving.

All you could do was stare after him in shock, anger, confusion and sadness, while the first tears finally escaped your eyes and then all you could do was press your hands against your face and cry.

kim namjoon

“Stop it, Namjoon!” you yelled angrily, turning around to look at the man that was following you, “I told you why I’m ending this!”

“No, your reasoning was stupid and you know it,” he grabbed your wrists, “This isn't what you want.”

“It never mattered what either of us wants,” you laughed humorlessly, “We're just chess pieces, don't you get that? We have no right to think for ourselves, we do what we're told to do!”

“You're your own person, stop thinking you're not!”

“And they say angels are the naive ones,” you shook your head and ripped your hand away, before you now started running from him.

Namjoon couldn't understand you.

Things had been going well between you two. Maybe even too well.

That's probably why you got scared and wanted to end this before you couldn't anymore.

But he wouldn't let you go so easily, not when he still thought there was a chance that he could convince you that this relationship was worth fighting for.

park jimin

“You're staring,” you stated as you got dressed again, your back facing him, but you could tell that his eyes were watching your every move.

“Can you blame me? You're beautiful.”

These words made your heart beat faster and a smile spread on your face, but then you reminded yourself that these feelings were not right. That, if he were anyone else, it would be okay, but he wasn't anyone else.

He was a demon and you were an angel and what you were doing with him.. that wasn't acceptable.

Jimin must have realized that you were thinking about this once again when you didn't answer and didn't continue getting dressed either, instead you just fiddled with the shirt in your hand. His arms sneaked around your middle and pulled you close, so close that you could feel his lips against your throat and then his hot breathing against your ear.

“Stop thinking so much, love.”

“Easy for you to say. You're not the perfect angel in this situation.”

“No, but if you think that my boss would be thrilled to hear what I'm doing here, you're wrong,” he turned you around and cupped your face in his hands, “Hey.. I know this makes you worry. But we'll figure it out together, okay? We just have to be careful.”

“I wish my people could see you right now. If they knew that you weren't like what they always told us you guys were.. maybe they'd change their mind.”

“Well, most of us are assholes,” he made you chuckle, but then became serious again, “I just found a reason not to be anymore.”

You smiled a little and closed your eyes when he placed a soft kiss against your forehead.

kim taehyung

It's been too long. He should have been back hours ago and at this point 'worried' wasn't the right word anymore, not when he went down to hell to.. well.. resign. Something that wasn't exactly common under demons.

“This isn't the place for you, angel,” one of the guards said when you wanted to go down.. way down.

“I need to. There is someone I need to find.”

“You go down there, you never come back up again. Not that we'd mind,” the other guard chuckled, “We could use some new, fresh meat down there if you ask me.”

“Enough,” Taehyung's voice made both of them straighten up, “You two disgust me,” he spit on the ground before them, then grabbed your hand and pulled you away from them, “Are you insane?! You can't just go into hell!” he sneered.

“You were gone for too long! I got worried!”

“That doesn't..-” Taehyung let out a sigh and once you were out of eye and earshot, his posture softening, “I'm fine and I can take care of myself.”

“Then.. things went.. well?”

“As well as can be expected,” he shrugged, “I got threats from every single person that got word of it, but.. it's a start.”

Swearing off of being a demon and an angel wasn't a decision that you had made lightly. But you were.. expecting, unexpectedly so. And you both knew that raising a child in this environment wasn't right. You needed to get away from all this, even if it wouldn't be easy. Taehyung's demon friends would probably always be a threat and your angel friends wouldn't even lift a finger to help you anymore.

You were on your own here.. but at least you had each other.

jeon jeongguk

“Are you.. blushing?” you wanted to be sexy, but now you couldn't help the laugh that escaped you when you saw Jeongguk sitting on the edge of the bed, his entire face now flushing red.

If anyone should blush, it's you. You were the angel in this situation that wasn't experienced with sex, he was the demon that was supposed to be insatiable and already has had countless of affairs in his lifetime.

But that wasn't Jeongguk.

And maybe that's why you liked him so much.

“You know I've not done this many times before,” he got up, his steps a little unsure, but when he grabbed your hands, his grip was firm, “But I'm glad I get to do it with you.”

This was not a situation that you ever saw yourself in.

Sleeping with a demon, losing your precious virginity to a demon.. but then again, he wasn't just a demon to you. He was more than that. His name was Jeon Jeongguk and he was a kind and loving man. The fact that his eyes were black didn't change anything for you.

He was still the same guy that you fell in love with and that you wanted to share this with.

“Me too,” you smiled happily, then wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him deeply.

[gohyuck]

note: this is a repost because tumblr is a BITCH

pairing: lee donghyuck (haechan) x reader

genre: ANGST, really, it is a lot of Sadness

word count: 3.9k

warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, portrayal of what seems to be a toxic relationship, puking, alcohol consumption and drunkenness

a/n: this is written … backwards like it goes from 30 days after an event backwards to the actual event but then it flies forward at the end so be prepared for that

part of a series?: yes, 37.5% viewer ratings, my hyuck bday celebration

🎵 bodyache - purity ring

☀️ not everyone gets a happy ending

30 days after, 11:52 p.m.

“you’re really leaving?”

mark’s voice is soft, softer than usual as he leans against the doorframe. he’s reluctant to come into your studio, but you find that you can’t blame him. after all, donghyuck really is his best friend, even through all of this. even if mark can’t look said best friend in the eyes right now.

their relationship will heal. you can’t say the same for yours.

“i accepted a position in america after saying no to them for, like, 3 times,” you say, forcing down the flaps of the cardboard box underneath you so you can tape them together. “and it’s for 88rising, so i can’t really say no, can i, now that my biggest reason for staying has diminished to nothing?”

mark nods in understanding, pushing himself off of the frame only to stand, hands stuffed into his jeans’ pockets, in your doorway. his expression is unreadable, though you can see the slightest hint of a downturn in his lips. you feel sorry - mark lee is a good man. he’s been an even better friend to you.

“i didn’t say no to my dream job either.” he says eventually, and mark allows you a small, genuine smile before his face returns to resting, a half-worried, half-confused look he sports consistently. you’ll miss teasing him about it face-to-face: texts won’t have the impact your lighthearted disses are meant to have. you find that your heart is suddenly in your throat.

still, you force down the new, overwhelming urge to cry. you should’ve run out of tears by now, you tell yourself. if you’re going to cry, it won’t be in front of mark. not when he’s been so good to you this whole time.

“my flight leaves tomorrow at 2,” you tell him, forcing your emotions down into whatever depths they rose from. “i’ll email and text you all my details in the morning, if that’s cool with you.”

“already got the american airlines app,” mark fishes his phone out of his pocket and raises it, lockscreen of yuta’s zoomed-in face staring back at you, as if to prove to you that he’s downloaded what he says he has. a corner of your mouth lifts up on impulse, and that’s all it takes for mark’s shoulders to relax before his own smile reappears. he finally steps into your room, crossing it easily to pull you into his arms. you fall into his hold, arms snaking over his broad shoulders to bring him closer.

you’ll miss all of your friends, but you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t miss mark the most. if you’re the earth, he’s your moon, always there for you and at your side.

you try your damnedest not to think of the sun.

“call me before you board and after you land, okay?” mark mutters against your hairline, and you nod as best you can in the position you’re in. he steps back, and you do the same, to look up into his eyes for the last time before you leave.

“get a good night’s sleep, lee,” you say, grinning up at him even as tears prick at the corners of your eyes. “or else you’ll look even more confused with all the drowsiness weighing your gigantic head down.”

mark furrows his brow at this, faux indignance crossing his features as you snicker gently at his expense. “damn,” he says, gently flicking your arm. “maybe i should ship you off myself.”

you laugh at this, and he spares you a quick chuckle before sobering up. mark grabs both of your elbows in uncharacteristic seriousness, and you’re forced to look into his eyes as he speaks next.

“i’m really going to miss you, you know.”

you sigh, resting your hands against your close friend’s chest.

“i’m going to miss you, too.”

23 days after, at 2:17 a.m.

“you’re drunk,” jeno says matter-of-factly, wrenching the almost-empty bottle of soju from donghyuck’s tight grip. “and i don’t want to deal with your hangover tomorrow. why are you here again? you don’t even live here.”

“be nice, jeno,” jaemin reprimands from the kitchen table, picking at his dinner with his chopsticks. “he’s heartbroken.”

“he did this to himself.” jeno remarks with ease, and donghyuck wants to smack him upside the head for it. he’s a little far gone for that, though, and resorts to groaning instead, loudly. jeno, in turn, flicks him in the forehead for his noisiness, forcing yet another, longer, groan to spring forth from between the drunk man’s lips.

“what are you doing here?” jeno asks again, tone kinder than donghyuck expects. “your bed is at the 127 dorm, or do you not remember this?”

“i’m drunk.” is all hyuck can say, though he means to say a lot more. i’m drunk, the voice inside his head echoes. drunk and sad and lonely and my bed is empty even though it shouldn’t be on a saturday morning and it’s kind of my fault because i said some really stupid and awful shit and all the 127 hyungs are pissed off at me and i can’t spend another night alone in a cold bed getting the cold shoulder. everything’s too fucking cold. that, and the alcohol is better here.    

“i’m drunk.” donghyuck says again, more insistently this time. he leans forward to try and get the bottle of soju - it must be his third or fourth, though he sure as hell isn’t counting - but jeno, who hasn’t had even a drop tonight, avoids him easily.

“you’re drunk,” renjun acquiesces from the couch, a magazine opened and forgotten in his lap. “and you’re here, for whatever reason. i love you, and all, but you’re getting pathetic… unless, of course, you want to talk about it. we can do that.”

“talking doesn’t fix everything,” jeno interjects before hyuck can respond, though he doesn’t dare to say anything else under the withering glare renjun sends him. typically, jeno would use this to start a fight. hyuck makes a pass for the liquor one more time, though, and he decides that he has other hills to die on right now. that, and renjun, for whatever reason, really does have a soft spot for donghyuck. jeno equates hyuck to renjun’s jaemin, and he decides that maybe renjun does know what’s best here.

“nothing to talk about. it’s -” donghyuck hiccups, falling backwards onto his chair once he realizes that he won’t be getting his soju back. “-it’s for the best. we’re bad for each other.” his words come out as only mildly coherent babbles, slurred with his jeju accent slipping in, but renjun, jeno, and jaemin have known him long enough that they’re able to understand everything he’s saying with little deciphering.

“(name) and you are perfect, you idiot,” jaemin says, materializing out of thin air beside hyuck. it seems he’s given up on finishing the rest of his noodles. “i’ve never seen anyone else look at anyone the way you two look at each other. you fucked up big time, yes, but it’s fixable. with you two, it has to be.”

“looked.” donghyuck corrects as if on auto-pilot.

“what?” jeno asks, and hyuck looks at him through tired, hooded eyes.

“looked. the way us two looked at each other. not look. not fucking look.”

the other three men share glances between each other. the heartbroken idol says nothing more, only slides into his leather jacket, pulling his bucket hat over his eyes. before anyone can press him further, he makes a soft snuffling noise, and the other three simultaneously realize that he’s fallen asleep.

“he’s going to feel like hell when he wakes up,” jeno finally says, and renjun lets out a disappointed sigh before speaking.

“i’ll get the puke bucket. someone get his hat and jacket off. if we really try, we can put him on someone’s bed. jisung’s probably - hopefully - asleep already, and we shouldn’t wake him up.”

“you think they’ll get back together?” jaemin questions, slowly pulling the denim bucket hat off of donghyuck’s head as he does. the sleeping man in question shifts slightly, but doesn’t wake back up. he’s always hated sleep, but he’s always been a quick sleeper when drunk.

“with the shit he said to (name)?” jeno asks, getting the aforementioned bucket from the linen closet in the hallway. both jaemin and renjun nod, regardless of the fact that it’s a rhetorical question. jeno heaves a heavy sigh and shakes his head as he sets the bucket down beside the chair.

“not fucking likely.”

14 days after, at 5:03 p.m.

“i’ve been here for, like, three hours, and you’ve barely said a word.” johnny’s tone isn’t unkind, but you can’t help but bristle at what he says. he’s lounging on the loveseat you have in the back of your studio, feet kicked up on your coffee table, while you’re hunched over your electronic keyboard, practically hemorrhaging over melodies. something is flat, so very flat, about the progression you keep trying.

usually you’d have donghyuck sing it out loud for you to see what you’re missing, but that isn’t an option.

“i have work.” is the dry response you offer up, and you can practically feel johnny roll his eyes into the back of his head in exasperation. he sets the can of coke that’s been dangling between his thumb and middle finger down - mindful of your coasters, thankfully - before pushing himself off of your couch to come and stand over your shoulder.

“you guys will have to talk it over eventually-” he starts, and you shake your head vehemently, hard enough to force johnny’s words to die in his throat.

“there’s no talking it out. he said he doesn’t love me, that he wished he’d never met me, and that i detract from his life,” you say, incredulous, and you see the last hints of johnny’s smile die out in front of your eyes. his jaw drops open slightly, and you realize that donghyuck hasn’t actually told the members what had happened.

“he - what?”

“yep,” you say, popping the p as if you’re responding to someone asking you if you’re okay with their movie choice. you turn your head away from johnny, moving your focus back to your music. this isn’t something you want to re-live.

he teeters between choosing whether or not to say something for what feels like eons. you can feel johnny’s anger engulf him, and even though it’s not at you but for you, it makes you feel small. you wish desperately that johnny wasn’t mad, that his reason for being so horrified and disgusted and enraged didn’t exist. you wish you were still happy and in a relationship with your one true love.

but you’ve come to find that wishes are not reliable.

johnny, for his part, settles on saying nothing. you think that he’ll sit down again, seething to himself, but you’re surprised when he wraps his arms around your shoulders from behind you in a backhug over your chair. he’s always been good at knowing what you need - you think it’s his ingrained older brother instinct.

it’s been a bit too long since you’ve been held so tenderly. you use this as your excuse to yourself when you realize that you’re crying. the excuse no longer stands when you double over into yourself, sobs wracking your body, but by that point you aren’t thinking of it.

johnny, for his part, pulls you closer to his chest.

you thank him in your mind. you know he gets it.

5 days after, at 7:47 p.m.

“you fucked up a record-breaking amount of times today,” mark remarks playfully as he wipes the sweat off his face with a short towel. donghyuck gives him no scathing response, and that’s when mark knows that something is wrong. it can’t be that he’s upset - hyuck is a great dancer, and he picks things up quick, so it’s okay if he messes up too much during a dance practice. he definitely knows mark means nothing by his teasing.

still, mark realizes that hyuck hasn’t really done much today - no fake kissing pranks, no loud screaming - and he suddenly feels awful.

“you okay?” mark asks, voice gentler this time. donghyuck looks up from his phone, finally making eye contact with his friend, before nodding shortly.

“yeah, i’m-”

“he’s fine, dude,” jaehyun says, smirk evident across his features. “i’m sure he’s just antsy to go get laid. the dorm auntie said (name)’s over there right now.”

before mark can say that, no, he’s sure it’s something else, donghyuck speaks up, voice hard as steel and cold as ice.

“we broke up. (name)’s just getting stuff.”

the room stills immediately, as if everyone stops breathing at once. after a beat, two, and then three, doyoung finally speaks up.

“what - and i cannot stress this enough - the fuck?”

it’s as if a dam breaks - suddenly, all 8 members other than donghyuck are rushing to ask questions, to give their opinions, to find somewhere to sit down and internally process this new information. mark’s grip on his towel tightens without him realizing, though his mind is elsewhere: no wonder you haven’t responded to his texts for the past week.

he’d assumed you were busy with work. after all, you are helping put the finishing touches on 127′s upcoming album’s b-sides.

“we just… we didn’t work out.” donghyuck says, and the way he speaks implies that that’s the end of the conversation. when the youngest accidentally makes eye contact with mark, the latter searches his eyes desperately for something, anything.

he comes up empty. donghyuck, for the first time ever, is unreadable.

mark realizes that, for the first time ever, donghyuck wants it to be that way.

the end of it all, 2:22 a.m.

“what did you just say to me?”

your eyes are narrowed, your fists clenched so tightly that your nails are digging into your palms. your boyfriend glares back at you with equal venom, though while you’re standing while facing off with him, he’s manspreading on the couch, his body relaxed while his face is angry.

“i said that i wish i’d never met you.” his voice is even, and this makes yours waver even more. he’s never - never, not ever - been this cruel, and you’re almost taken aback by it. sure, your relationship has been slowing down greatly in the past month, with both of you unable to make time for the other, but you’d assumed it was due to album preparations. with you in the studio days and nights working on producing tracks and donghyuck perfecting his performances, there’s been almost no overlap between your schedules.

you thought everything would be fine. evidently, you’d thought wrong.

“what the hell is that supposed to mean?” you throw back at him, voice rising, getting higher-pitched in disbelief and exasperation as you continue speaking.

“it means that i haven’t seen you all fucking month and it’s been the best month of my whole year. you’ve been actively - fuck, i don’t know - keeping me down, keeping my mood down. i can’t live like this, knowing that you’re - you’re adjacent to me. i can’t do it anymore.” donghyuck responds, both bark and bite, pushing his shoulders off of the couch and pulling his legs in slightly. his brow is furrowed and his stance is hostile as he yells at you, but there’s no hint of remorse in his eyes, and you realize that he must really, really mean what he’s saying. it feels sudden to you, of course it does, but this must be something he’s sat on for days.

your heart shatters. suddenly, your throat is dry, but your water bottle in the kitchen seems too far out of your reach for you to get. without meaning to, the ending of your first fight with hyuck, ages ago, comes to mind.

“it’s difficult to articulate yourself during an argument, isn’t it?” donghyuck sighs against your hairline, and you nod, not trusting yourself to speak through your tears. your fight had ended with both of you unable to explain yourselves, and you’d burst promptly into tears because of this, causing donghyuck to drop his anger in favor of comforting you. as he runs his hands up and down your back and allows you to cry onto his shirt, he has an epiphany.

“we’re both musical people, right?” he asks, and you pull away from his grasp to look up at him, confused, through your tear-heavy lashes. “i mean that you’re a producer and i’m a musical artist. we’re music people, right? we get music?”

“i - i guess.” you sniffle, unsure of where your boyfriend is going with this. he smiles down at you before pressing a soft kiss to your forehead.

“whenever you think you can’t explain yourself to me, give me a song or songs that says what you want to. i’ll do the same if it’s vice versa. that way, we’ll always understand each other, yeah?”

you nod against his chest, and he wraps his arms tighter around you.

“yeah.”

the overwhelming urge to get the hell out of the situation you’re in consumes you, suddenly, and you take a long, shuddering breath before snatching your car keys off the coffee table from where they are by donghyuck’s boot-clad feet. his expression defaults to bored, and he barely looks at you through hooded, pissed off eyes as you shrug your coat back on. you don’t even know how this argument had started, but you have a feeling that it’s over, just as your relationship is. the kind of seriousness donghyuck has shows you that there’s no going back to him. never.

you swing open the door, but right before you leave, you look back at him one last time. the words come out of your mouth on their own accord.

“bodyache by purity ring.”

donghyuck doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even show that he’s heard you, but you know him. you know he’s heard you, and that he’s seen you. with that knowledge, you shut the door of the 127 dorm and turn away, turning your back on lee donghyuck forever.

31 days after, 6:06 p.m.

the dorm is only almost silent whenever donghyuck is there. nobody’s told him this, but he’s sure of it - after all, all of his members had loved you. you’d been a close friend, a confidant, and he’d taken that from them. he isn’t sure how to feel about this - about you, about himself. did he make the right call? now, as he faces a stillness he’s unused to, he’s not quite sure.

he’s pouring milk onto cereal as an afternoon snack when jungwoo breaks the silence by turning on the news. there’s something frantic about the way he grabs the remote, the way he presses the on button, that forces everyone’s eyes onto him. jungwoo’s phone, which had been in his hand and was likely the source of his rush, drops from his hand and onto the couch beneath him.

“mark,” jungwoo calls, voice shaking. the man in question looks up, his gaze landing on his hyung before it can land on the tv. “mark, you- (name)’s flight info.” jungwoo manages to get out, his own eyes trained on the news channel. slowly but surely, mark’s gaze - and everyone else’s, donghyuck sets the milk down and twists the cap on - turns to follow jungwoo’s.

none of them could have expected the headline they see.

FLIGHT AA1116 ICN TO LAX CRASH; OFFICIALLY NO SURVIVORS

donghyuck’s world stops.

he watches as mark pulls out his own phone, almost dropping it in his haste to see if your flight number is the same one that’s flashing across the screen. he watches as mark, upon seeing what’s on his phonescreen, lets out an ungodly groan, stumbling into jungwoo as his own knees give out. yuta grabs mark’s phone out of his hand, and donghyuck can only observe as yuta’s shoulders tense up completely before they start to shake. before he can process what’s happening, everyone around him is in hysterics - some members are holding each other, wailing loudly, others are staring, steely-eyed, at the reporter on the tv as if doing so will change the past.

donghyuck watches, and watches, and watches. it feels as if he’s frozen in time.

it’s only when mark, overcome with grief, composes himself enough to push donghyuck against their fridge, that time unsticks itself. it’s while mark berates him, blames him wholly for the fact that you’re gone, that the feeling returns to donghyuck’s body.

he’s barely able to push mark off of him and rush to the bathroom before he’s doubling over, emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. you’re dead. he heaves again, more bile coming up. you’re dead because you left for america. you left for america because he left you. donghyuck sputters out more foul-tasting liquid, barely able to weakly pull the handle and flush everything down. you’re dead. he dry-heaves.

he dry-heaves once more before he manages to pull himself up using the corners of the sink. donghyuck washes his mouth out as carefully as he can afford. it’s when he catches sight of his reflection that he has to grasp onto the sink for fear of collapsing against it.

you’re dead.

you’re dead, and it’s his fault.

as he forces himself to look into his reflection’s eyes, donghyuck feels sick beyond the physical realm. he’d broken up with you over nothing - it was a split-second decision backed by hollow but harsh words following a grueling, grueling month of work. he’d broken up with you and been too stubborn to try and get you back, and now you’re dead because you’d chosen to move on and take the leap to the next phase of your life. he’ll never feel your hand in his again, your lips against his. he won’t hear your laughter or hear from mark about your endeavors. you’re dead, and he’s alive, and he knows that he’s being punished by the cosmos for his sins.

donghyuck searches back to your last words to him, reaching for some semblance of a relationship with you where there is none. his memories fall on a song, and he remembers your recommendation. he fishes his phone out of his pocket - the news app sends him a notification of the plane crash that has his heart feeling as if it’ll stop beating immediately - and opens his music player, typing bodyache into the search bar.  

he places his phone on the counter and heaves a shuddering sigh, and as the music washes over him, so do the years he’d spent with you, the years he’s now lost. as the lyrics wash over him, so do his tears.

You said, you said "Turn the lights down, I wanna be alone” I ran your head away I couldn’t stand how it pleaded I needed to take Take a break, take me down, take me down there I wanna stare at the tears, how they water your years Take a break, take me down, take me down there I wanna stare at your tears, how they I, I, I lied, now I’m lying awake I, I, I cried ‘til my body ache I, I, I lied, now I’m lying awake I, I, I cried 'til my body ache

[stufftippywrote]

good dream

@hellokyochan​ requested:

The bed had at least been big, which was a consolation to Wei Wuxian when he realized there was only the one. Lan Zhan of course offered to sleep on the floor, but that was a waste of a perfectly good mattress. It's only a couple of nights for a dumb professional conference, and when your company won't pay for your hotel (seriously, screw Wen Enterprises), you make do with a roommate. And Lan Zhan's an easy roommate: he's neat, he doesn't get drunk, he doesn't hit on women and then drag them back to the hotel room and leave a condescending note on the door. He's really the ideal partner for situations like this.

What Wei Wuxian hadn't counted on, though he really thought he had exhausted every possibility, was the way Lan Zhan looks when he's asleep.

It's morning, rays of sunlight drifting over the bed, and Wei Wuxian is lying on his side, utterly fascinated. They've drifted closer in their sleep, Lan Zhan all of a sudden so near to him, and Wei Wuxian is marveling at the shape of his lips, the way his eyebrows have relaxed from their usual scowl. The soft noises he makes, half-asleep, a puff of breath and a murmur.

He's gorgeous.

He's handsome awake -- anyone with working eyes can see that -- but asleep, with his guard down, he's the most beautiful thing Wei Wuxian has seen in years. His hair is a waterfall of shining black, illuminated with the sun's rays, and his eyelashes are delicate splashes of the same dark water. His skin is pale with only a hint of rose. He's like a painting. But he's real, and he's here and oh so defenseless. Wei Wuxian is overwhelmed by the desire to touch.

He lifts his hand and inches, slow, toward Lan Zhan's chin. The heat radiates into his fingers. So close -- two fingers just shy of the line of his jaw --

-- and Lan Zhan stirs. Wei Wuxian snatches his hand back, clamps it tightly at his side. He should probably look away, too, but he can't quite tear his eyes from Lan Zhan's lips as they purse, then part -- just barely part, as though dreaming of a kiss.

Bleary golden eyes open, then blink. His pupils grow, then shrink, trying to find focus.

"Wei... Ying?" he says. His brows narrow into a frown.

Damn, he's been caught looking. Wei Wuxian gives his most innocent smile. "Hi."

"Am I ... dreaming?" Lan Zhan's voice is hesitant and hoarse. It almost doesn't sound like him. He still can't quite focus on Wei Wuxian's face. His confusion is almost pitiful-looking, and Wei Wuxian wants to laugh.

He almost says no, but a wicked idea flashes through him. "Yes," he says, "this is a dream."

He expects Lan Zhan to maybe say "oh," and fall back asleep, or scowl and tell him he knows he's awake, but that's not what happens.

Instead, the corners of Lan Zhan's mouth turn up, and he reaches out.

"Good dream," he says, and pulls Wei Wuxian into his arms.

All of a sudden Wei Wuxian's face is pressed into Lan Zhan's shoulder and his heart is drumming wildly. He can't even struggle. What is happening? Lan Zhan is ... holding him?

Lan Zhan is holding him. In strong arms, warm arms, and Wei Wuxian's brain is humming with so many possibilities all at once. Is Lan Zhan thinking he's someone else? Does he just get hug-happy in his dreams? Does he think he's having one of those weird dreams where you're with someone you don't like in real life?  Is he still really asleep?

Or does he really dream about Wei Wuxian?

"Lan Zhan," he starts to say, but can Lan Zhan even hear him? His head is buried in Lan Zhan's shoulder, and he's being held too tightly to pull away. He really needs to struggle. He should struggle. He should find some damn willpower and pull himself out of Lan Zhan's arms and pretend the whole thing was just a joke.

Then he feels the press of lips against his hair. "Wei Ying," Lan Zhan murmurs. The low sound rumbles right into Wei Wuxian's bones. God, even his bones are warm right now, all of him is warm and wanting, and his hands still itch to touch Lan Zhan's skin.

"Lan Zhan," he tries again, "Lan Zhan, wake up, this isn't a dream..."

"My Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says, a louder voice now, like he's protecting Wei Wuxian against a horde of admirers, like he's claiming his territory. His lips touch Wei Wuxian's hairline. Now his temple. Now the patch of skin next to his ear. Lan Zhan's hands are tight on his back, unyielding.

Lan Zhan whispers next to his ear. "Don't wake me up."

His breaths are glancing against Wei Wuxian's face now, soft and warm, and Wei Wuxian has never in his life wanted to be kissed the way he wants Lan Zhan to kiss him now. His hands ball into fists, clutching the folds of Lan Zhan's T-shirt, and he lifts his head, yearning.

"This is a dream?" Lan Zhan asks again, in a voice that says he's coming to. He lowers his head so their foreheads touch, eyes only half-open. Wei Wuxian looks at him, looks at the inscrutable emotion in those half-lidded eyes, and all of his control melts into nothingness.

"Yes," he whispers halfway to Lan Zhan's lips, "you're dreaming."

Lan Zhan's lips are achingly soft against his.

Lan Zhan is trembling, shoulders wracked with shudders, and Wei Wuxian can't believe it. This is Lan Zhan? This is the man whose very existence is all about control? He's shaking against Wei Wuxian's hands, breathing short, and -- and -- and kissing him back, oh so slow and sweet, kisses like honey and champagne that make Wei Wuxian dizzy.

They kiss, and they stop and breathe, and they kiss again. Heat is curling in Wei Wuxian's core, but it's lazy heat, and he's content to just feel it. One of Lan Zhan's hands rises to touch his face, a gentle palm, and it's grounding. The sureness of it. The steadiness of Lan Zhan that keeps them both in the dream.

And then, all at once, it's over.

Lan Zhan pulls away, blinks twice. His eyes widen. He pulls backward on the bed, then bolts up to sit, one hand clapped over his mouth.

Wei Wuxian props himself up on one elbow. He's still getting his bearings after being kissed half to death. "Ah, Lan Zhan," he complains, wanting that warmth back.

Lan Zhan takes in the sight of him, lifts his eyes to where the sunlight is streaming in the window, looks away. He forces his hand down to his side. "I'm sorry," he says, the words short and clipped.

"No, no, it was my fault," Wei Wuxian says. "I told you you were dreaming."

Lan Zhan is unmoving and unspeaking. There's a rose tint at his ear, but his face is deathly pale.

Wei Wuxian sits up to meet him face-to-face. "Lan Zhan," he says, suddenly gripped by shame for what he's done, "please don't worry about it. I was just having some fun. I won't tell anyone."

His answer is a shake of the head and a deeper flush on the shell of Lan Zhan's ear. He's really upset, and Wei Wuxian's spitballing now, just trying to find the right words that will lift the anchor of awkwardness that's holding them both down. "Look," he says, "look, we'll just pretend nothing happened. Like it never happened."

More stony silence.

"Ummm.... help me out here, Lan Zhan, I'm running out of ideas." Wei Wuxian throws up his hands. "Would it help if I said I liked it?"

Lan Zhan turns, abruptly, and stares at him with wide eyes.

A reaction, thank goodness! Wei Wuxian smiles, but it's a shaky smile, and he can't keep it steady. "You either like that idea or you really hate it. Lan Zhan, please say something, because I'm not sure if you're going to kiss me again or challenge me to a duel."

"You..." When Lan Zhan speaks, it's always poetry -- straightforward, unwavering, truth. But he's tripping over his own words now, like his tongue's made of lead. Seeing him like this makes Wei Wuxian's heart flutter in his throat. "You liked it?"

"Well, of course," Wei Wuxian says. He knows he sounds carefree and light, but he feels the weight of the words as they come out. "I'm bi as hell, and you're hot as hell, in what universe would I not enjoy kissing you?"

Lan Zhan keeps looking at him with that incredulous stare that might equally be horror and excitement. "You'd enjoy...?"

"Okay, Lan Zhan, I get that you're still groggy or whatever, but get with the program here," Wei Wuxian chides him. "Number one: you're hot. Number two: I liked kissing you. You get to tell me what number three is."

They're sitting up in bed side by side and Lan Zhan is staring at him and Wei Wuxian is grinning because that's his go-to expression when he has no idea what's going on (which is right now), and Wei Wuxian is a little afraid they're going to be frozen like this for a solid half-hour before either of them can think of anything else coherent to say.

Frozen, and then without a single breath of warning Lan Zhan's hands are on his face and Lan Zhan's lips are on his again.

This time it's hot, and it's possessive, and Wei Wuxian's gasping against Lan Zhan's mouth, breathless and wrecked. How long has Lan Zhan felt this way about him? The question flickers in his mind, then sputters out and all he can do is hang on for dear life as Lan Zhan kisses him deep and rough, like he's been dying for it. Lan Zhan's tongue strokes his and it's all Wei Wuxian can do not to go up in flames right there.

Lan Zhan tries to shift, to push him down onto the bed, but Wei Wuxian breaks free, laughing, and resists. "Please, Lan Zhan. Let's at least go on a date first. Okay?"

Lan Zhan tries to slow his breathing. "Okay."  

Wei Wuxian smiles and darts in to peck him on the lips. "Let's start with breakfast?" he says.

"Breakfast," Lan Zhan echoes. He seems to be slowly pulling himself together. "Yes."

They dress and head down the hall side by side toward the elevators. As they descend to the lobby, Lan Zhan slips his hand into Wei Wuxian's. When Wei Wuxian looks at him, he sees soft eyes and the barest hint of a smile. His heart stutters.

Maybe he's the one who's dreaming.

[oceanera12]

Linked Tri-Force (Part 1)

More Linked Universe because I’m addicted to these boys! Help.

Hyrule knew the others had secrets. That was the one secret no one bothered to hide. It was for that reason no one pressed, thank Hylia. 

Of course, that didn’t stop questions.

“Nope, not telling!” Legend made the motion of sealing his lips shut.

Wind hopped from one foot to another, clearly annoyed, “Come on! No one else has been sailing!”

“Well-” Wild started, but was quickly cut off by Wind.

“A raft plus a korok leaf does not count as sailing,” Wind glared at Wild, who just shrugged in response.

“Worth a shot.”

“It really wasn’t,” Wind shook his head. “But back to Legend--”

“Still not telling Mr. ‘Pirate’.” Legend rolled his eyes. “Honestly, not a lot happened to me at sea. Just water, then land, then water.”

Wind didn’t look like he believed him but also had enough sense to leave it alone. Legend had been in a lot higher spirits since their run in with Marin a few weeks back, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t snappy.

“Alright, alright,” Warriors called, “Other then ‘sailing stories’ what other stories do you have?”

It had been a long day of walking across the current Hyrule (Hyrule’s Hyrule, which wasn’t confusing at all) and if anyone had been disturbed by the absence of people, they hadn’t said anything. The sun had long set and instead of doing the sensible thing and sleeping, someone (Wind) had persuaded Time to allow a ‘story time’ of sorts.

There had been a total of three “scary” stories, four tall-tales, and a few clips from their various adventures (”I’m sorry, your Zelda shoved you off a floating island?” “She thought I was lying about not hearing my loftwing. It wasn’t her fault.” “She shoved you off a floating island???”).

Legend shrugged at the question. “Nothing to brag about.”

Hyrule bit his tongue to prevent the multiple questions about the various stories he had grown up with about the hero of Legend. If even a tenth of them were true, then Legend was either modest or just didn’t want to talk about it. And no way in Hyrule was he going to tattle on the hero of legend.

“I’m sure our pirate has some fun pirate stories though, right?” Legend raised an eyebrow in a silent challenge.

Wind cocked his head to the side in confusion. “Uh... like what?”

“Ever go pillaging?” Warriors asked.

“What?!” Wind shot to his feet, clearly affronted. “No! Why would you even say that?”

“Clearly the word ‘pirate’ means something different in your world,” Time pressed his hands to his mouth in thought. “Do you look for buried treasure?”

Wind wasn’t as angry at that question. “Well, I got some charts that lead me to rubies, joy pendants and tri-force shards.”

Hyrule had picked that moment to take a sip of soup, which was immediately inhaled and then spat back up in shock. “Tri-force shards?” He managed to gasp between coughs. The back of his hand suddenly felt very warm and Hyrule resisted the urge to run in the opposite direction.

Thankfully, Hyrule wasn’t the only one concerned about the sudden Tri-Force talk. Time had paled, Twilight and Legend were shifting in their seats clearly uncomfortable, Warriors and Four had leaned forward curious, and Wild looked very confused.

Which he decided to voice. “What’s the tri-force?”

Hyrule wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry at that question. Nor was he even sure where to start on that answer.

Twilight let out a heavy sigh, resigned to his role of mentor. His hand dropped onto his gloves and gauntlets, fiddling with the straps. “The tri-force is a gift from the gods. It’s made of three pieces: The tri-force of wisdom, which is usually held by the royal family, the tri-force of power, which in my world was possessed by Ganondorf for a very, very long time,” Twi paused for a moment, closing his eyes. He pulled his glove free and held up his hand to face everyone. After a moment, the very faint, very familiar gold glow appeared.

Hyrule instinctively covered his own hand and prayed it didn’t start glowing in reaction.

You’re a coward.

“And the tri-force of courage, usually held by the hero of the time,” Twilight opened his eyes and lowered his hand, the glow fading. He looked over at Wild, “I’m surprised you don’t know this.”

Wild had his face scrunched up. It was a familiar look for him. “I think... I remember hearing that story as a kid. Maybe.” He shook his head, “I mean, I see that symbol everywhere in ruin architecture and I knew it was on the Master Sword but... I guess I never questioned what it was?” The scrunched look disappeared. “I do remember that’s what Zelda used to seal the Calamity away with so... maybe she has the whole thing?”

Wind let out a low whistle, “Well, in my world, if you bring all three pieces together then the gods will grant you a wish.”

“Well,” Legend sighed, “at least that’s one thing that’s consistent.” He leaned back against the log he was sitting against, “That thing is nothing but trouble.”

“Agreed,” Warriors had this far away look in his eyes. “Wars have been fought for control of the Tri-force. Millions have died in the attempt to wield it.” He pulled off his own gauntlets and gloves to reveal his own tri-force of courage. “All that death... for what?”

“Geez,” Sky said, “I was expecting something like that out of the Old Man, not you.”

“He’s called Warriors for a reason,” Four pointed out.

“That’s fair.”

Time was looking torn, his eyes flicking between Twilight and Wind. He almost looked... confused.

Hyrule filed that back into his mind for a future conversation, but for now... he had to tread carefully. “So... why was your tri-force in pieces?”

Wind shrugged, “Don’t know. Maybe it was a way to see if I was worthy for it? Most were hidden behind trials of courage, like the ghost ship or just mini-dungeons.” He pointed at Warriors and Twilight. “Although, my tri-force is now at the bottom of the Great Sea. How’d you get yours and why do you still have it?”

Warriors smirked, “It just kind of appeared during a particularly nasty fight. General Impa was in trouble so I just... jumped in.” He frowned, “As for the second thing... heck if I know?”

“Similar situation,” Twilight nodded at Warriors, “Some jerks kidnapped some friends of mine and I tried to fight them. Adventure ended and...” he pointed at his hand. “Still here. Ganondorf lost his though so that’s good.”

“Why isn’t it sealed away in the Sacred Realm?” Time suddenly asked.

Legend snorted, “Well, I don’t know about all of your worlds but my Sacred Realm got corrupted by Ganon. It’s called the Dark World now. Not really a good place to keep the Tri-Force.” Legend nodded at Hyrule, “Right, Rule?”

Hyrule forced a smile and kept his hands as still as he could.

You’re a coward.

“I think we can all just agree the Tri-Force is trouble and it would be best if we didn’t have to deal with it on this already weird adventure,” Warriors was pulling his glove and gauntlet back on. A chorus of agreements echoed from all the heroes and the topic was officially dropped in favor the weirdest modes of transportation they had come across on their adventures.

Hyrule only listened half-way, the back of his hand uncomfortably warm. His stomach twisted and turned in knots, the guilt screaming from within. The tri-force was already in their adventure. The others just didn’t know.

And Hyrule really didn’t want to tell them.

You’re a coward.

He had never asked for the Tri-Force, nor had he ever wanted to wield the entire thing. Actually, he had wanted to give part of it to the Royals when his adventure was over or just break it apart and leave the pieces in safe, secret locations but... It had felt wrong. Like, really wrong.

Like Hylia haunting your dreams and practically yelling, “NO!” whenever he started to think about it too much.

At this point, Hyrule had just accepted the fact that he was the guardian of the Tri-Force. He would never say he was at peace with the situation (there was only so much a person could take of monsters screaming for your blood and of people trying to kill you for it... including supposed friends), but he had gotten a hold on his life.

He didn’t hate the Tri-Force like they did (then again, the thing had saved him more times then he could count-- but it was also the reason he was alone all the time). Yes, it was powerful and yes, it was not to be taken lightly. In fact, Hyrule only used it’s magic in emergencies. His own magic was sufficient for most situations.

If anything, the Tri-Force was more like a travel companion. A very silent, strong companion that only jumped in when there was an emergency. Sometimes Hyrule even forgot he had it (only for an hour at the most, but he would take what he could get). But he could see why people wouldn’t want it around. It’s the same reason he avoided everyone in his own world:

Too much power.

Hyrule was snapped out of his thoughts at Time’s call for sleep. Hyrule made his way to his spot, his mind much to far away to acknowledge the calls of “good nights,” and “Wild, if there are frogs in my blankets again then so help me--”

He had fifth watch tonight. His watch would be followed by Time. Maybe he should talk to him about the situation. It would be good for at least one person to know about the power up his sleeve-- just in case. The heroes had been clear that they hadn’t wanted anything to do with the tri-force so Hyrule wasn’t too worried about them “trying to kill him for the golden power”.

Hyrule determined to do just that later in the evening.

Which was why he was very disappointed in himself for waking Time, wishing him a good watch, then climbing back into bed without a word about the tri-force.

You’re a coward.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I don’t think Wild knows what the Tri-Force is. I think he would have known before the Calamity, but I don’t think he remembers the legends and things like that. He knows the symbol and thinks it’s a culture thing.

Also, I don’t think most of the Links would have a positive opinion on the Tri-Force because while we know Time does not like the Master Sword or Hylia, the Tri-Force does not have an actual spirit. It’s an object. Therefore, it’s a lot easier to be annoyed at because everyone is after the “all powerful Tri-Force” and these boys are just DONE.

Poor Hyrule: he thinks he’s inadvertently been told to leave the group, the poor baby. I may make a part two that would be Hyrule “telling” everyone about that little thing on the back of his hand. Aka: ANGST/FLUFF. Let me know if you want to see it.

AND HERE IT IS

[tundrainafrica]

Title: A Tale of Two Slaves (2/17)

Summary:  “Soulmates don’t exist. Fate doesn’t exist. Everything is a choice. At that moment, Levi could only watch as she made the choice for him.“

Reincarnation AU. Levi remembers everything from their past life. Hange doesn’t.

Note: As always, feedback is very much appreciated. 

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

"Hey! Are you alive?"

Levi's body was on fire. Another type of pain, added to the list that only grew longer and longer the more mornings he woke up to.

It was new. In the grand scheme of things though, it was routine. When Levi woke up, the pain was already fading into a distant memory. He knew it could be easily soothed with a Tylenol and a few more minutes in bed. He had to press his face harder into the pillow, focusing on the feeling of cloth and cotton on his face to get a grip on his reality. He wanted to hear that voice again but at the same time he wanted to escape that pain.

That voice was familiar. Levi was sure when he showed up for training she would be there, and he could listen to her again. He ended up adding salt to the wounds though as he remembered the last few things he had said to her the night before.

It could have been from the stress of the whole ordeal or the embarrassment of having blurted out a bunch of nonsense.

Who the hell are we escaping from? Levi had scrambled for an answer then. What came out were a string of words he wished he had never said.

“Nothing.”

“Hey, I’ve spent a lot of time talking, I wanna learn something about you too.”

“My life is none of your business.”

She had kept quiet soon after. As Levi recalled how she had offered to take him home, he only buried his face further into the pillow. A part of him thought that maybe if he deprived himself of oxygen enough, he could forget the conversation between them.

“How far is your house from here? I’ll take you home. It’s my fault you got injured anyway.”

“It’s fine.”

“You sure you’ll get home safe?”

“Why do you care? We just met. I couldn’t care less either if you got home safe or not.”

We just met. Obviously I wouldn’t care too much about her. His meager justification did nothing to placate the guilt that had taken over him, leaving him unable to move.

He remembered the face she had made before he turned away and limped home. He had thought to himself then that maybe she just wore her heart on her sleeve. Most people probably would have thought the same thing as they saw the way she bit her lip and looked away. She could have been about to cry. Levi could not help but think though that she wouldn’t. Her mental resilience is stronger than that. Levi just knew.

Either way, Levi still regretted his actions that night. He spent the next few minutes in bed gathering himself up mentally for his morning training. As he pushed himself into a sitting position and planted his feet on the floor next to his bed, he felt his knees protest at the weight. At that moment, the dull pain on his palms also made themselves known.

Of course it wouldn’t heal. How long has it been 12 hours? When injured, most of his teammates could easily skip training with little to no consequences, as long as they sent a text. Most of his teammates still showed up anyway to watch. Feeling a little guilty for having skipped training just yesterday, Levi decided to show up anyway.

It was a force of habit more than anything for Levi to throw his jacket and shorts on, grab his gym bag and hurry to the track as soon as he saw the first signs of the sun about to rise. In fact, he only realized how completely useless it was to be thirty minutes early when he was already sitting alone in the empty clubroom, entertaining himself by looking for patterns in the stains and discolored blots on the ceiling.

He considered going back to the dorm and just informing his coach on his recent injury. He had already exited the clubroom when he decided otherwise.

The track stretched out in front of him, illuminated by the dim light from the sunrise. The morning was notably cooler and Levi remembered that summer was ending soon, if it hadn’t ended yet. The days would only get colder and classes were starting next week. How long would he be able to enjoy a morning walk without having to wear an extra layer or without considering how he could fit in a shower before his next class?

Levi ignored resistance of the stitches on his knees and the stinging pain of sweat and bandages rubbing against his palms, allowing himself a slow jog around the oval. He promised himself instead to sit out the rest of the training. His coach would probably stop him anyway when he sees the state of Levi’s hands and knees.

“Levi!”

It turned out Levi was right. Time had gone faster as Levi focused on the rhythm of his breathing, the cool wind that brushed past him and the scenery that blurred past him. Also, his coach had stopped him as soon as he arrived.

“What happened to you?” Greg gave Levi a onceover before shaking his head.

“I fell while jumping on the hurdles.”

“Get that checked. I’m not allowing you to join training until you see a doctor.”

Levi looked down to see blood seeping from the white of the bandages. His stitches split open. He could barely give his coach a nod, too disappointed by being forced out of training, a little angry at Hange for indirectly causing that energy, too conflicted by his own feelings. He grabbed his phone which he had left on the table next to the track and walked away from the track.

He had to grab the gym bag he left in the club room. He made sure to take the long way back, the scenic route with more trees than people. Having just been told off by his coach, having been barred from training, Levi felt like he was taking a walk of shame and he preferred not to run into anyone else.

He checked his phone. It was six in the morning. The university clinic opened at eight. He could kill those two hours quickly in the empty clubroom while everyone was training. By the time they finished morning training, he would be on his way to the clinic.

He had plans of just lying on the bench for the next two hours, exhausting all the content in all of his social media timelines and maybe getting into some other Wikipedia or article black hole. On his way to the clubroom, he set his alarm for 7:45 that morning.

As he arrived in the clubroom though, he found himself occupied by something else.

Everyone in the club always put their stuff away in the cubbyholes to the side. There was more than enough space for everyone. Yet somehow, even with three cubby holes open, someone had decided to leave their bag half open on the floor with what looked like half its contents spilling out.

Levi gathered what had spilled out. He had the option of just dropping it into the bag leaving the problem of organizing it to the owner. His fastidiousness took over though and Levi found himself spreading out the contents of the bag and putting it into the bag in a way that would have made it take the least space in the cubby.

“Sorry. I forgot my phone in my bag.”

Levi heard footsteps and voices just outside the clubroom and it was only then was he become aware of the fact that he had invaded someone’s privacy. He hurriedly pushed the contents of the bag into the nearest cubbyhole.

His hands though were not at their strongest, still sore from the accident last night. It was at the moment the door opened did the bag fall again on the floor, its contents spilling out, more haphazardly and messily than he had found it.

He looked up at the door to see Hange and behind her, another student.

"Levi…" Hange’s mouth was turned up in a smile but her eyes were expressing otherwise.

Levi wondered what he looked like crouched down next to her bag, with its contents spread out all over the room. From the way Hange was staring at him, he guessed he could have even looked like a criminal. "I made a rule here. All bags go in the cubbyhole," Levi tried to keep an authoritative tone as he said it, maybe it could make up for the compromising position they had found him in, somehow.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry." Hange rushed beside him, carelessly gathering things into one bundle.

Levi noticed she kept herself a polite distance from him, purposefully pushing her bag into one of the cubbyholes farther away from where her bag had fallen.

"Just don't mess up the clubroom again."

Levi lay back on the bench as soon as the door closed behind him and propped his phone on his face. He could not even bring himself to even turn it on and lazily scroll through some timeline.  As he listened to the footsteps get further away, Levi closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  The rush of incomprehensible emotions had left him cold as he lost one of the few opportunities he did have to talk to her.

Why? Why couldn't I chase after her?

A part of him wanted to run after her, apologize then maybe thank her for last night.

A part of him was also just as pissed off with the chain of events. He was injured. He couldn't train. The club room was a mess. Hange had something to do with all of it.

His four years living in his own tiny island with only training and studies keeping him company had left him unable to process the strong emotions that came with human interaction.

Why does she make me so angry?

He was aware that he was abrasive and sometimes too frank. It had never bothered him then. He had always believed that it was also the other party's responsibility to handle their emotions well.  Hange had handled it better than many other people in similar positions yet...

Why do I care that it hurt her? How the hell did I say something so offensive so wrong?  In fact despite his inability to express a lot of feelings, Levi did care enough about people to check on injured teammates and help grandmas cross the street.  

He turned his phone on, deciding to occupy himself with Twitter for the next two hours. Watching people fight online was oddly calming.

                                A Tale of Two Slaves

By the time Levi made it to the university clinic, the bandages on his knees were bloody. The red buds had bloomed into adult flowers. Underneath, the stitches had to be redone, and Levi was prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection.

One of the nurses offered to go out of campus to buy it for him. Levi hid under the covers of one of the vacant beds in the nurse's office while waiting. The clinic was empty save for one nurse and one doctor with not many students living on campus just yet.

Levi found himself going through his timeline first, then articles on dreams.

By the time the doctor had checked on him, to ask him if he had plans to at least take a late lunch, Levi was in a black hole with 50 tabs open. They weren't about dreams or were they from random links he had found on his timeline.

They were all about Hange Zoe, pages worth of articles with pictures of her at varying ages. The awards varied, some were in the form of certificates, others as trophies. The girl behind them all was the same chestnut haired girl with that same overenthusiastic glint in her eyes.

Kid whiz Hange Zoe bags gold in the city wide

Governor congratulates the representative to the national Science symposium.

7 year old genius has big plans for the future.

Hange Zoe talks about future plans. "I want to test the physical limitations of the human body."

I wanna see how far we can throw, how fast we can run, how high we can jump, how high we can fly.

"Fucking stupid. Humans can't fly." Levi muttered to himself. He sat up in bed and checked the time at the corner of his phone.

3:00pm.

Afternoon training would generally start at five. He had time for a late lunch. Or dinner.

Nothing in the university was open though and the raw stitches on his knees continued to ache. Levi found himself staying in the club room two hours before training was to start, having Mcdonalds delivered instead at the doorway of the clubroom.

A few times he had heard footsteps by the door, he stood up the first two times, just to check who it had been. The clubrooms were lined up near the athletics area. All the sports teams hung around that area, he should not have been too surprised to realize that none of the foot traffic in that hour were from anyone in his team. In fact, he should not have expected that any of them would have been Hange.

Why the hell am I looking for her anyway?

Levi shifted to his side. The bench did not give him much room to roll completely and Levi found himself having to grasp at the sides to stay on the bench and avoid falling painfully on the ground and further aggravating his stitches.

With his two hands occupied, it became a choice. Either his knees or his phone was to take the impact of the ground beneath him. He chose to sacrifice his phone.

As Levi reached out to grab his phone from under the bench a few seconds later, he came across a small trinket on the floor. It was a ring was covered with purple cloth, the middle of the ring covered with some sort of web. The borders were lined with feathers, soft to his touch. Levi wondered whether the feathers were real or not.

Levi sat back on the bench and brought the keychain closer to his eyes. It turned out the ring was not covered in cloth. It was covered in threads so pressed closely to each other, from afar it had looked like one surface. He carefully traced the dark green strings that were interwoven so tightly around the purple cloth, no pattern was the same, no hole was of the same size or shape. It could have been homemade.

Who the hell left this here? Levi took a picture with his phone and sent it to the team chat.

Lost and Found.

Most had denied owning it. For a while Levi suspected that they could have been scared he would get mad. He knew he had a reputation when it came to cleaning and clutter. He was considering adding that he wasn’t angry eventually deciding against it. Would they believe him anyway?

One of the med students probs.

So it’s Hange’s?  It was an excuse to message her at least. Before Levi could even process what he did, he had searched Hange’s name on Facebook.

No account. He would have at least expected to find a profile with one or two mutual friends. They went to the same school after all. He checked the school supergroup to find that no one there was named Hange Zoe.

So she doesn’t have an account?

He looked through other groups built for their team. He looked for a medical students group, looking one by one at the profiles for a familiar face. One of the profiles had the face of the blond man who was behind Hange when they had found him that morning.

Levi had a habit of forgetting faces. The awkwardness and the embarrassment he had gone through had only made that memory more vivid in his mind. That vividness at least was the reason why he had found a lead to Hange.

Moblit Berner.

He clicked add friend and sent a picture of the keychain through chat.

Found this in the clubroom. Might be one of your friends?

It’s Hange’s.

Probably fell when her stuff got scattered on the floor.

Okay, will give it to you when you get here.

As Levi soon found out, the students were all out of campus and had no plans to visit training that afternoon at all. The main reason why they had showed up in the morning instead.

Levi scolded himself for not even bothering to learn their schedule. Maybe it could have alleviated his disappointment even a bit. Seeing no reason to be there in the clubroom anymore. Levi dropped a message in the chat, mentioning something about injuries and rest.

He wasn’t lying. His stitches were fresh. His palms hurt. More importantly. He was recovering from a painful bout of disappointment.

We’ll be there tomorrow morning though.

Ok see you there.

Levi had plans of making it up to his coach the next morning by being extra early anyway.

                              A Tale of Two Slaves

I wonder what types of titans we'll get to meet today...

It was a beautiful morning. Or possibly, it was just a relatively beautiful morning when compared to all the others where Levi had to lie in bed for an hour or so just to forget the pain and the shock of dreams he could not even remember to function.

That morning he had awoken with a burst of energy and a motivation that followed suit.

I wanna talk to Hange.

The only stopping him then was the awareness of how stupid and rash it would be to make friends just because he had such a vivid dream about them.

Section Leader Hange Zoe.

Special Squad Captain Levi .

They worked too closely in his dreams. She was constantly happy, constantly annoying. She was comfortable. She had made him feel excited, calm, annoyed, an incomprehensible and tumultuous storm of emotions. The dreams were too lifelike, realistic and vivid to have just been dreams.

Was she the reason for the painful mornings? Was she the reason Levi found himself so particularly confused around her? So abrasive? So conflicted?

Levi quickly changed into his clothes, grabbed his gym bag and rushed to the track. He did not bother to check his phone for the time anyway. The sun was rising and Moblit had said the night before. They’ll be there.

He used the walk to the track to process further the emotions that had been running through him since he remembered the dreams.

His name was Levi Ackerman. He was a soldier. They fought these giant zombie creatures. Hange managed another team but they were stationed close and that was how they had gotten close in the first place.

It felt like some sort of roleplay Levi could just easily put into words and post online. He wondered if that’s what it felt like to be a writer. Do stories come to writers and artists in dreams just like that? Levi had considered writing it all out, completely disowning that thought after he remembered he was shitty with words.

He probably would never channel those emotions into words or to art. Regardless, the determination to make sense of it was unwavering. Despite his awareness of the amount of stress he had caused her the past few days, the nagging self consciousness of having exposed that many facets of personality to someone, Levi was sure he wanted to talk to her. It was too strong. She must have felt it too. Maybe that’s why she was too friendly? Too touchy?

As Levi soon found out, she was touchy with a lot of other people. If Levi had checked his phone that morning, he would have seen that training was starting soon. With autumn coming, the nights were long and the sun was rising later.

Hange was there, by the side of the track, her arms around Elijah, one of his other teammates and fellow seniors. From where he stood, Levi could not tell if she was joking or not, but he could not help but note, he had never been the object of that playful smile she gave Moblit who stood next to her with a clipboard in hand.

“Hey Four Eyes.” Levi did not need to muster up any courage to approach her. The irritation he felt at seeing her arm around someone else, that playful smile directed at Moblit provoked him enough.

Hange’s face quickly fell as she made eye contact with him. Levi’s stomach followed suit, suddenly painfully aware of the shit he had put her through the past few days.

“Oh yeah, Levi found your dream catcher in the clubroom.”

The keychain! Levi had completely forgotten to bring it with him.

“Sorry about leaving it there. I shouldn’t have been too careless.” Hange’s smile was careful and rehearsed, a far cry from the one she gave Moblit only a while ago.

“I don’t have it with me now though since I had to rush here.” Levi was sure the excuse was understandable. A lot of his teammates were already warming up in the middle of track. “I could bring it later this afternoon?”

“Actually, we probably won’t be going back here for a while. We gotta prepare with classes starting soon and we got all the information we need anyway.” Moblit explained. “So we’re gonna invite some athletes out for an interview then work closely with them.”

“About the keychain...” Yes, the keychain. I need to meet Hange again and give it to her.

“You can give it to Elijah here.” Hange suggested. “Or maybe...Moblit? If you’re okay working with him.”

Why Moblit? My teammate, Elijah? “Wait why?” Levi’s mind was racing with questions. The shock and confusion had left him a little disconnected from his surroundings. He almost did not notice the way Hange had pulled him to the side of the track. Suddenly, it was just the two of them, on the corner, out of earshot from everyone else.

“This is probably the last time we’re gonna meet so I’ll be honest with you.” Hange took a deep breath. “I really wanted to work with you for my thesis but yeah I guess… with what happened the past few days I kinda realize maybe we just aren’t compatible and we might just end up driving each other crazy.” Hange added a small laugh to that cold and rehearsed smile she was giving him. It only added salt to the wounds she was already opening up with her speech.  “And I guess I should have noticed this before but you really don’t like me do you? I’m sorry if I couldn’t give the best first impression.”

No… I really like you. You gave a great first impression. Like always, even when Levi had wanted to say it, the words had gotten lost somewhere in its journey from mind to mouth.  

[euphoria-vmin7]

tiger flower | jjk

pairing: jeon jungkook x reader 

genre/warnings: angst, hanahaki! au, non-idol! au, heartbreak, unrequited love, swearing, a n g s t

word count: 1,830

summary: tiger flower. it’s his birth flower. it’s the flower that you can’t have. 

rating: pg-15 (swearing) 

-- a/n: so this is my first submission for the BGW BINGO BASH! i was listening to crystal snow and then i got really inspired and so this was born at 2 am :) it’s for the “hanahaki!au” square. i hope you all like this! 

.

ஓ๑♡๑ஓ 

.

“Dammit (Name)!��� Jungkook groaned, throwing his hands up in the air with utter disbelief. “Why the fuck did you kill me?!” 

You winced and shot him a glare. “I’ve never played this before!” 

“Well I wouldn’t have let you play if I’d known you’d suck this bad,” Jungkook tossed his controller to the side as you struggled to keep fighting on your own. Sadly, your character died pretty quickly without the help of the expert gamer next to you. You turned fully to grin at his angry scowl and punched his shoulder, which of course didn’t faze him at all. Stupid muscles. 

“Oh quit being such a baby, Kook,”  you teased, leaning back to lounge against his worn out couch. “It’s just a game,” 

“A game you suck at,” he muttered, standing up and heading into his kitchen. You chuckled at his salty tone. You had probably just broken his spotless winning streak or lost him his spot on the leaderboard or something trivial like that. Well, it was trivial to you, but obviously not to him. Jungkook lumbered back into the living room, shooting you a pointed glare before plopping down next to you. He tossed you a bag of chips and grabbed the remote to fiddle with the channels on his television. You raised your legs and draped them over Jungkook’s lap, an excessive show of making yourself comfortable that earned you another glare. 

“I don’t need your sweaty feet in my face while I’m eating my precious chips, (Name),” he snapped irritably. 

“Well there are a lot of things you don't need but you get them anyway,” 

“Fuck you,”  

Despite all his complaining, Jungkook didn’t make any move to get your feet off his lap, an action that made you grin when you realized it. You watched with a sweet concealed smile as he lazily shoved chips into his mouth, not minding how much he was spilling on his old grey hoodie. You chuckled quietly. What a slob. 

Technically speaking, it had only been about three weeks since you had last seen Jungkook. You both had headed to your hometowns for break to spend the winter holidays with your families, which was basically the only time you were apart. It had only been three weeks, and yet somehow it felt like lifetimes. Maybe it was because he was so deeply ingrained into your daily life. Maybe it was the play fights that normally ended with you holding an ice pack to your shoulder. Or maybe it was the spontaneous knocks on his apartment door at two in the morning with nothing but the pajamas on your back. Or maybe it was the hushed whispers of childish secrets under fortresses made of blankets and pillows. 

Or maybe, it was just him. 

Maybe it was because you just missed seeing that annoying yet frustratingly pretty face that told you he was up to no good. Maybe it was the disarmingly handsome and boyish smile that fueled the competitive rage within you. Maybe it was how despite all his tricky smirks and winks, he still looked like he was hand carved by angels when he slept, like they had put utmost care in crafting the most perfect human in the universe. 

Maybe. 

You should’ve known better than to let these thoughts fill your head once again. You could daydream about how much you hated and loved Jeon Jungkook for hours. If only he’d actually let you do it in peace. 

His fingers twisted mercilessly into the skin of your thigh and you yelped at the sting. It was partly your fault seeing as you had made it easy for him by putting your feet right in front of him. But still how dare he?

“Are you even listening to me?” he asked, letting his fingers rest after the sharp pinch. It was your turn to glare at him and you reeled your foot back to kick his knee, not too hard but not gently either. 

“No. I don’t listen to stupid things,” 

You knew what he was thinking: That’s such an eight year old thing to say.

Well joke’s on him. If you were eight years old then so was he. 

“I was asking you...” he rolled his eyes, leaning back to stare at the TV again. “...how your break was?” 

“It was good,” you smiled a bit. “Spent time with my family. Had my dad’s food after dealing with your horrible cooking for so long,” 

Instead of the same glare you had been on the receiving end of for the better portion of the night, Jungkook rewarded your statement with a good-natured chuckle. At least he knew his cooking was subpar. You grinned. 

“How about you?” 

“Ah y’know? Same thing as you. Spent time with the family blah blah. We went on a road trip,” 

“Nice,” you sighed, still smiling as you leaned back into the couch and closed your eyes. “You came back a week earlier than I did though,” 

“Yeah that’s because you and your family took that fancy trip to Europe,” he mocked and you smirked. 

“You could at least try to pretend you aren’t jealous,” 

Jungkook scoffed out a chuckle and began surfing his channels again, letting a comfortable silence overtake the both of you. Well, of course it was comfortable. Awkwardness was not a thing when it came to you and your best friend. Keeping your eyes closed for too long almost always led you to falling asleep, and you would have gotten there this time too, if it wasn’t for the sudden yell from the boy next to you. 

“Oh fuck, wait! I forgot to tell you!” he screeched, his eyes going wide. You jumped, eyes peeling open before scowling at him and punching his bicep. 

“What the fuck, Jeon? What is it!?” 

“So while you were gone...I did it,” he grinned, sitting up straight. Immediately, you knew what it meant. As much as you wanted to pretend like you didn’t get it, you knew. The way his cheeks began to slowly bloom with color was another huge giveaway. That only happened for one thing. 

“Shut up,” your jaw dropped, lips twitching upward. “You didn’t!” 

“I did,” he said proudly. His smile was so genuine, so real, and it made you so indescribably happy. And yet it didn’t. 

“And?” you pressed, moving to sit on your knees and grabbing his arm. 

“And…” he drew out with a concealed smile. “And she said yes!” 

You cheered loudly and he laughed, his arms naturally coming to wrap around you and give you a squeeze. You giggled at the feeling, the feeling of comfort that came from being next to him, with him. 

“Aw I’m so happy for you, Kookie,” you mumbled, smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. His laugh shook his whole body as you buried your face into his sweatshirt. 

“Thanks Peanut,” he chuckled. “I was so fucking nervous you should’ve seen me,” 

The thought of your normally confident and suave best friend being all flustered brought a smile to your face. Oh, how you wished you could’ve been the one to see it. 

“Yeah that’s because you’re scared of girls,” you teased. It was a running joke amongst Jungkook’s closest friends. A joke that obviously wasn’t very true. 

“And what about you?” he laughed. “Are you not a girl?” 

“I’m not that type of girl to you,” you smiled ruefully. 

“Nah,” he grinned, his eyes shining in blissful ignorance. “You’re my special girl,” 

But not that type of special. 

Other than the smile you gave him, you didn’t respond to that. You don’t know what to say to it anymore. You stayed there for a few more minutes, shamefully enjoying Jungkook’s arms around you. You hid your weak smile from him because he’d immediately be able to catch how upset it was. How selfish could you be to take advantage of his love for you? He loves you. You’re his special girl. He said it himself. He’s not lying. 

But you’re lying to yourself when you say that it means something. It means something. But not what you want it to.

How many times had you shakily typed into the search bar: How to confess to your best friend?

How many more times would you need to type before you realized what you already knew?

Jungkook gently pushed you off of him, not in a way that was intentionally cruel and yet somehow it felt that way. He stood up and stretched, a tired groan leaving his lips as he popped a few joints. 

“I’m going to bed. Are you coming?” 

“In a few,” you smiled, the facade taking over you easily. Of course, after all this time, the practice had made you a master at hiding. He grinned at you, the boyish grin that masked the tiredness in his eyes. Tired eyes that lit up when they looked at you. But sparkled and softened when they looked at her. 

You sat there on the couch for a while, a few measly minutes that felt as though they were stretched into long hours. Thinking like this, alone, was dangerous for you. No matter how many times you’d tried to clear it, Jungkook remained, his hold on you becoming stronger as every second passed. It wouldn’t get any easier in the future. You knew this and you knew it well. 

The pain in your chest came fast and familiar. You brought your hand up to your lips to muffle the sound of your harsh cough. Pulling it away, you looked down at the petals in your palm. 

Tiger Flower. 

Poetic isn’t it? His birth flower. You smiled at your palm. With your other hand, you reached into the small bag at your feet, the bag reserved for overnight stays at Jungkook’s house. The pamphlet you pulled out was curled at the edges and crumpled in certain areas due to how much time you had spent looking through it. 

Your mom had told you about the surgery as soon as the petals started coming. Everyone was worried, because they knew what would happen if you let it go. Everyone except him of course. Poor thing, he didn’t even know. 

You stood up and walked into the bathroom to dust the petals into the trash. 

You couldn’t bring yourself to let Jungkook go. There was no pain that would be greater to you. Jungkook was real and he was the only real thing that mattered to you. You were his special girl. How could you even think of letting him go? 

Chuckling to yourself, you made the decision and felt your heart tear. 

You grasped the pamphlet in both hands and tore it in half, then quarters, then eighths, until it was nothing more than uneven shreds in your palms. With a bittersweet smile, you dusted the shreds into Jungkook’s trash can, before following him into his room, ready to build another fortress of blankets.

.

.

.

[artificialqueens]

Me and You Together, 3/10 (Taywhora) - Ortega

fic summary: The cardinal rule of having flatmates is that you Do Not Catch Feelings For Your Flatmates, because everything inevitably goes to shit and gets made horrifically awkward. A’whora and Tayce both know this, but being in first year of uni and making good decisions have never really gone hand in hand.

a/n: again, fucking bowled over by the love and support this has had so far. i cannot thank any of u enough, ur all absolute wee diamonds in the sky. hope u enjoy this one- we’re in January for this one, where the girls have to deal with the consequences of December…and Tayce is tasked with keeping a secret for Lawrence.

last chapter: September- On a damp, bright Saturday in September, six flatmates move into their student flat and meet for the first time.

this chapter: January- Tayce and A’whora still have unfinished business from a night out and a hungover morning in December. But it’s only awkward if they make it awkward…right?

***

Tayce is pretty sure she’s going to combust if something doesn’t happen soon.

It’s been a month and a week since A’whora kissed her, and twenty-four hours shorter than that since Tayce kissed her in return. Or thereabouts, it’s not like she’s counting. It’s not like it’s been consuming her every thought every waking moment of the day or anything.

In all fairness, Tayce seems like it’s an achievement to think about a kiss for that length of time. Especially through her first semester essay deadlines, Ellie’s raucous eighteenth, her first Christmas back home, her first New Year seeing all her old school friends after uni and updating Cheryl and Cara on everything. She’d drunkenly come out to Cheryl too after being gently encouraged and supported by Cara, and they’d both cried as Cheryl held her and confessed that since uni had started she’d also begun seeing a girl she really liked too.

It’s funny how at uni everybody seems so much more free. Away from a stifling hometown, Tayce and her friends can properly spread their wings and be who they’ve always been but have either not realised it or been afraid to show it. Tayce is the happiest she’s ever been when she’s at the flat with the others in her little bubble of a home away from home, with Bimini’s intelligent insights and Tia’s funny quips, Lawrence’s chaos and Ellie’s kindness and A’whora being…well, her best friend.

Except she’s not really sure that best friends kiss each other like that.

But maybe they do, because since they’ve all come back from home after Christmas A’whora hasn’t mentioned the kisses, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened between them. Hasn’t even joked about it with her or in front of the others (which is fair enough, as if Lawrence knew she’d probably tease them about it until they graduated). Tayce is pretty sure that none of the others even know, or at least if they do they’ve not spoken about it.

And the worst part is that A’whora has been absolutely…normal. Fine.

See, Tayce could’ve dealt with any awkwardness- she’d be upfront, bluntly ask A’whora if she wants to forget about it or what she wants the plan for them to be. Even better would’ve been if A’whora had rugby-tackled her the moment she’d got back from Wales and smothered her with kisses, told her how much she’d been thinking about her while they’d both been away. Tayce supposes it’s kind of her fault they never properly talked about it since she’d practically bolted out of A’whora’s room when she’d kissed her that morning, but she’d been nervous in case she’d made everything too weird. A’whora hadn’t seemed to be complaining at the time, though.

In fact that night, A’whora had been up for plenty more than just a drunk kiss. If Tayce thinks about everything she’d said when they were walking home her face still gets hot and she has to squeeze her thighs together. She’s definitely glad they never crossed any of those particular lines when they’d both been drinking, but sometimes when she’s lying in bed at night Tayce lets her hands drift between her legs as she thinks about A’whora telling her how much and for how long she’d wanted her.

Best friends definitely don’t do that.

So Tayce feels guilty spending time with just A’whora these days, the fact that things haven’t been awkward between them somehow being worse than if they were. She’s not been avoiding her per sé, she’s just been finding ways to make sure it’s very rarely the two of them alone together: hanging out in the kitchen with everyone instead of in her room, going to bed when the others do instead of staying up with A’whora, inviting the others to anything A’whora suggests the two of them do together. It’s silly, and Tayce does miss spending time alone with her, but A’whora acting like nothing’s happened while conversely Tayce wants everything to happen hurts her embarrassingly more than she’d care to admit.

Such a time is a lazy Sunday afternoon halfway through the shittiest month of the year, when the weather outside is full of misty rain that’s a recipe for frizzy hair, puddles, and misery. Just to add to the rubbish day Tayce is holed up in her room, watching the grey clouds drift and overlap over each other to create a paint colour chart in the sky as she begins an essay that’s due in a mere five days. It’s been hard to focus on anything when her head is full of her best friend and imaginary scenarios but the prospect of an all-nighter isn’t one that’s particularly desirable either, so she and the ninety-five words she’s written so far are engaged in a stand-off as Tayce waits for the essay to write itself and the word document waits for her brain cells to conjure up any more opinions on “Is art a conveyor of emotion?” (4000 words).  

And then there’s a knock on the door that doesn’t wait for permission to enter and A’whora bounces in. She’s in a pair of grey joggers and a baggy navy pyjama top that she’s tucked in at the waist and rolled up the sleeves of, and her hair is up in a bun that’s had approximately 5% effort put into it apart from the little diamante hair clasp she’s slid through it at the top.

In spite of herself, Tayce can’t help but snort when she sees her. “Only you could make your shitty potato loungewear fashion.”

“Shut up! This is haute couture. This is actually my final project for the semester,” A’whora jokes in return, moves to sit at the foot of her bed and pout at her. “Tayyyce. I’m boreddd.”

Tayce raises an eyebrow at A’whora’s whining from over her laptop screen. “And I’m doing this essay. Find someone else to bug.”

“Don’t be such a hound,” A’whora frowns, falling sideways and landing onto the bed so she’s hugging Tayce’s legs through the duvet, her head resting on her shins. “I’d annoy Ellie but she’s in town with one of her friends from home. C’mon, let’s do a movie day. We’ve not had one in ages. I feel like we’ve barely had any time together since you got back.”

“Just been trying to catch up on all my coursework. It’s not personal,” she lies, her heart sinking only the tiniest bit at the realisation that her attempts at staying out of A’whora’s way have obviously been louder than they’ve been subtle.

“Please?” A’whora bats her lashes, and if it was impossible to say no to her before it’s surely illegal to do so now.

Tayce sighs and closes her laptop, eliciting a smile from the other girl. “Fine. Fine! But you better ask the others, I don’t want them feeling left out.”

It’s a good spur-of-the-moment excuse to make sure Tayce doesn’t have to spend two hours cuddled up next to A’whora while her heart hurts, but she’s confused by the way a small look of something passes over A’whora’s expression. She can’t put her finger on what it is, but A’whora’s agreeing and bounding down to the living room before Tayce can figure it out.

Tayce throws on her dressing gown over her clothes before leaving her room to join her, the blue fluffy one with the narwhal hood that’s complete with a horn on the top. She doesn’t own many embarrassing items of clothing, but this is definitely one of them. It doesn’t matter too much, though. A’whora’s seen her in it before, when she’s been hungover or sad or hangry and on her period.

It’s so funny how she can only have known her five months and still feel closer to her than half of the friends she spent six years with at high school.

In the kitchen, A’whora’s already cheerfully getting organised as Bimini and Lawrence lounge on the sofa lazily. Tia’s not in either- it emerges she’s gone round to Veronica’s, which nobody’s surprised about.

“Main question is, what’re we watching?” Bimini asks. “It’s a lazy Sunday so it can’t be anything that’s too good. I want something I can rip the piss out of while I watch it, y’know?”

There’s some squabbling about film choices as A’whora makes popcorn in the microwave, burns it, then subsequently has to make another packet. It’s eventually decided that they’re going to watch Love Actually despite the fact it’s January, because they all either hate it or like it because of how bad it is and the film will simply be a vehicle for them to yell jokes over.

“Have we got anything to drink? We could make this into like…a day drinking situation,” Lawrence suggests casually.

“You’re not helping the stereotype that all Scottish people are alcoholics at all,” A’whora quips, causing Tayce to let out a too-loud laugh.

“Listen, if you’ve not figured out that I’m a walking talking stereotype by now, A’whora, are we even friends?” Lawrence shoots back, and A’whora shrugs in an unspoken fair enough.

Tayce tilts her head then remembers something. “I actually still have loads of canned cocktails in my suitcase that my Mum got me for Christmas. Haven’t unpacked them yet. Think there’s about…twelve?”

“Ooh, three each? That’s alright!” Bimini smiles, clearly buoyed by the prospect of being slightly tipsy in the middle of the afternoon.

“Right, that’s settled then. I’ll go get them,” Tayce decides. A’whora’s crossing the kitchen before she knows it.

“I’ll help you with them.”

Before Tayce can speak, Bimini gives a snort. “ ‘Ow much do you think canned cocktails weigh, exactly?”

As Lawrence bursts into peals of laughter, Tayce watches as A’whora rolls her eyes at them, then turns on her heel to follow her to her room. Tayce can’t help but be a little wary, though. It does kind of seem like A’whora’s trying to get her on her own, which Tayce wouldn’t mind if she knew where she was coming from. But she doesn’t.

Tayce kneels down onto the floor as she rolls her suitcase out from under the bed, chatting mindlessly as she does so because if she’s talking it means A’whora doesn’t have a chance to bring up whatever she clearly wants to bring up. “I think there’s actually eleven here, you know. Because, uh…I think I drank one of them while I was at home, so we’re gonna need to fight over who gets one less. I don’t fancy my chances in a fight against Lawrence, she’d probably give me…what’s that expression? A Glasgow kiss? She’d give me one of those. Although Bimini, what do you think they’d be like in a fight? You know I think they’ve secretly got a set of knuckledusters, they seem the type. Although when I think about it-”

“Tayce,” A’whora cuts in, forcing her to snap her head up. Her expression is troubled, and a little frown dips on her forehead as she looks at her. “What’s wrong? Why are you being so…I don’t know, weird? Like you want to get rid of me?”

Tayce feels ashamed for being called out on her behaviour, and she can feel her stomach drop as she looks back at the cans in her otherwise empty suitcase. She wants to tell her there’s a reason for the way she’s been acting but A’whora beats her to the punch, murmuring with her head down and not meeting Tayce’s eyes.

“Is this because we kissed?”

“A’whora…” Tayce immediately groans in exasperation, the heat rushing to her cheeks as if she’s been slapped. She’s embarrassed, because she knows she’s got the capacity to talk about this like a grown-up but there’s a part of her that’s cringing, because if A’whora’s about to tell her she regrets it then she’s not sure she’ll ever live it down.

There’s a small silence where neither of them seem to move, let alone speak. A’whora is yet again the one to break it. “I just feel like you hate me all of a sudden.”

Fuck. If there was one thing Tayce had wanted to avoid, it’s this. Even though she herself is hurting she can’t bear the thought of having hurt A’whora’s feelings too, so she frowns, reaches up and squeezes A’whora’s hand which prompts her to look at Tayce. “I don’t hate you, Rory, of course I don’t hate you. I just…”

Tayce looks up to the ceiling as she searches for the right words, even though she’s not really sure what they are. She wants to tell A’whora she’s yearning for something to happen again between them and that even the fact she’s holding her hand is setting her pulse off all too quickly, but now’s not the right time. Besides, she doesn’t even know if A’whora feels the same way. Either way, Tayce can hear A’whora holding her breath, can feel the way her body’s tense beside her, so Tayce finally formulates something that doesn’t sound too hot or too cold.

“…I just don’t know where we go from here, that’s all.”

A’whora visibly relaxes, then shrugs. Her voice is quiet as she speaks. “Well, it’s only awkward if we make it awkward. And I feel like I���ve been okay at not making it awkward?”

Tayce narrows her eyes at her, laughs. “So what you’re saying is it’s all my fault.”

“Yes.”

The pair of the giggle softly and things already seem to have shifted back into comfortable territory. The green of a spring bulb popping up through the snow.

Tayce swallows her not-inconsiderable pride and smiles up at A’whora. She supposes going back to being friends and not ever talking about the fact that they kissed again is better than existing in a tense purgatory for the rest of their time in the flat together, even if it does make her feel a little sinking feeling of disappointment and a sense of mourning what could’ve been. “I’m sorry for being such a…mingebag.”

A’whora cracks up, repeats “mingebag!” incredulously, before her laughter dies down and she gives Tayce’s hand a squeeze in return. “That’s okay. Just good to know you still like me.”

They share a soft smile before piling the cocktails high in their arms, cradling them as if they’re babies as they rush back through to the living room where Bimini and Lawrence are hanging up a huge white sheet on the wall opposite the sofa for the projector. The projector had been Tia’s addition to the flat, an AliExpress purchase that had turned out to not be broken, or unusable, or made for a doll’s house.

“Tia won’t mind us borrowing that, will she?” A’whora asks with concern. Lawrence scoffs, bats a hand in her direction dismissively.

“She’ll be too mouth-deep in Veronica to care when she realises we’ve used it, let’s not lie!”

There’s a cry of disgust at Lawrence’s turn of phrase from the others, and as Tayce sets up the cocktails on the little coffee table A’whora brings the bowl of popcorn through.

“It’s fun to be able to make jokes about Tia and her girl, in’t it?” Bimini chuckles good-naturedly. “Always feel like we can’t properly tease her when Ellie’s there ‘cause she always looks like she’s about to jump out the window any time we mention Veronica’s name.”

The revelation that Ellie has feelings for Tia had come via a drunken, tearful confession to the others the night of her eighteenth birthday, when Tia had left the party with Veronica instead of staying overnight at the flat. Poor Ellie had been so devastatingly upset that the others had seemed to forge an unspoken agreement that the situation wasn’t going to be fodder for flat jokes. Instead they make sure to ask Tia how her budding relationship is going when Ellie isn’t around.

As she and A’whora laugh in agreement at Bimini’s joke, Tayce doesn’t miss the way Lawrence grows uncharacteristically quiet.

“When d’you think Ellie will get over Tia? I mean it’s a shame she doesn’t like her back, but she’ll ‘ave to at some point.”

“She won’t. She’ll just pine after her every day until we graduate,” Lawrence says. It’s meant to be a joke but her delivery is somewhat flat, and Tayce wonders if she’s the only one that picks up on it. From the way A’whora and Bimini are laughing, it appears she has been.  

Bimini and Lawrence step back from the sheet, satisfied with the job they’ve done. A’whora’s busy plugging in the fairy lights Ellie strung up where the wall meets the ceiling a few months ago, and Tayce can’t help but think to herself that sacking off her essay was a good idea as she glances at their setup. Never let it be said that their flat does things by halves.

“Oh! We should bring duvets through. And blankets,” A’whora suggests, and Tayce’s heart is both warmed and hurt by how adorably enthusiastic she is about the whole endeavour. She wishes she could shake the lingering feeling of disappointment she’s got in her gut at the knowledge that they’ll probably never talk about their kiss again; they’ve moved on from it, it was a one-time thing, and it’s only awkward if they make it awkward so Tayce bringing it up would be awkward, right?

So she settles on the sofa with Lawrence while Bimini helps A’whora gather up all their pillows, cushions, blankets and duvets from their respective rooms. Tayce is about to become lost in her own head when Lawrence turns to her with a look in her eyes that Tayce has never seen before. It’s almost conspiratorial and definitely suspicious, and for one horrific moment Tayce is convinced that Lawrence knows everything that happened in December.

“What is it?” Tayce asks her, before her flatmate can even open her mouth. Lawrence sighs, tips her head back to the head of the sofa and squeezes her eyes shut.

“I need to tell you a secret.”

Tayce’s heart drops as if she’s on a rollercoaster. Her mind immediately jumps to A’whora. What’s she told her? What does Lawrence know? It would make sense to wait until A’whora was out of the room before telling her anything. Tayce tries to keep her face impassive as she turns to Lawrence, nods quietly. “Okay, spill.”

“You can’t tell anyone, Tayce,” Lawrence insists, looking at her pleadingly. Tayce promises she won’t, although in retrospect she probably should’ve asked what it was first. The way Lawrence is acting is intriguing, though. It makes Tayce think it’s something about herself if it’s something she doesn’t want the others to know so badly.

“Christ, this is so cringe,” Lawrence groans, dropping her head forward and resting it in her hands. Tayce can still see the pink flush that’s started to dust her face, and by now she’s convinced that this has nothing to do with A’whora and everything to do with Lawrence herself.

Lawrence mutters out something incoherent into her hands. Tayce frowns, humoured. “What?”

A huge huff comes from the girl on the sofa beside her, and as she removes her hands from the front of her face she sticks them to the side of it like blinkers on a horse. It’s the quietest Tayce has ever heard Lawrence speak as she says the secret again. “I’ve got a crush on Ellie.”

Tayce’s face lights up at her friend’s confession. “Do you actually?”

“Christ, don’t make me say it twice. I’ll get struck down.”

Tayce leans into Lawrence, uses both her hands to lightly poke her in the arm. “Look at you! Being cute and having feelings!”

“It’s not, though! It’s not cute at all! It’s just sad!” Lawrence rolls her eyes, shaking her head at the same time. “Because she doesn’t…she’ll never see me like that, and she’s too busy making cow-eyes at Tia all the time anyway, so. It’s pointless, I don’t even know why I’m even hoping for something to happen.”

“Hey, listen! How long do you think Ellie’s gonna be able to keep moaning about Tia when she’s still seeing Veronica? I mean there’s only one way that relationship is going, the only ‘end’ there is in ‘girlfriend’. So Ellie’s gonna have to get over it eventually!” Tayce says supportively, shaking Lawrence’s arm to gee her up. Lawrence bats her away, though, giving another sigh.

“Tayce, it’s not exactly like she’s gonnae suddenly realise that I’ve been here all along! Like some fuckin’ chick flick. I’ve fancied her for years,” Lawrence explains. The information knocks Tayce for six, but when she thinks about it it makes sense- the way Lawrence gently bullies her so much, the way she gravitates towards her all the time, the way she gets quiet if Ellie starts moping about Tia. Tayce had never thought about it in that light before.

Lawrence hugs her knees to her chest as she continues. “Realised I liked her the last time we were at the caravan. And obviously we were at opposite sides of the country but like…I’d still meet up with her in Summer, get the train to Dundee and have sleepovers and all that shite. And when she came into the kitchen on that first day I was so happy she was gonnae be living with us, and I am still happy, because obviously she’s my friend? But like…it’s just shite to know that she’ll never like me back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Ellie’s type is obviously tall, dark and skinny. Which…” Lawrence gestures at herself with a deprecative laugh. “…how can I be any of that?”

“Right, for a start! Stop thinking about what you’re not and start thinking about what you are,” Tayce says firmly, gripping her hand tightly.

Lawrence rolls her eyes and fixes her with a pointed stare. “Oh, like what? I’m beautiful on the inside! I know I’m the fat funny friend, Tayce, you can spare me the bullshit.”

“Well…you’re fat, and so fucking what of it? Doesn’t mean you aren’t drop-dead-fuckin’ gorgeous. Being fat and being beautiful aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Very easy for you to say, sat there wearing size eights. Tell that to literally any piece of media we consume. Or any of my brain cells. Even if there are only about ten of them,” Lawrence sighs, then pauses. “I do like the way I look, and I don’t want to change anything about myself. It’s just…several things make that very hard almost all of the time, and it’s tiring to feel like you’re constantly fighting a losing battle. And it’s not like I’m pinning all my self-worth on a girl liking me back, but just…it would be nice to be the one that someone has a crush on for a change, if that makes sense?”

Before Tayce can say anything to affirm how Lawrence is feeling, a movement from down the hall makes her flinch and point at Tayce accusingly. “Not a fucking word, right? Least of all to A’whora, if she knows then I might as well just tell Ellie myself and like fuck is that happening.”

Tayce nods rapidly in a promise as A’whora and Bimini emerge from the hall comedically draped in materials, like a child’s attempt at a dress made out of knitting and featherdown quilts. They all set about arranging everything to make their setup as comfy as possible, and as the film gets loaded up they get comfortable in their respective positions. Lawrence is at one end of the sofa, with Tayce in the middle and A’whora at her side, while Bimini sits on the floor with their back to the sofa because they’re quite happy sitting there with enough cushions and pillows. The big lights are turned off, the film begins, and the room is filled with the soft glow of the fairy lights and the hazy light from the movie and all Tayce can think about is A’whora, warm and soft and squashed up beside her sharing the blanket.  

Tayce feels silly for being so disappointed. This was what she’d wanted- they’d talked about it. They’d addressed the fact that the kiss had happened, and now they were just…moving forward. Not making things awkward. Because obviously to A’whora, the fact it’s happened has made things awkward.

And that shouldn’t hurt Tayce as much as it does.

It’s hard to dwell on things for long, though, when she has block four flat ten’s very own Ant and Dec in her living room. Lawrence and Bimini keep her and A’whora giggling pretty much from the film’s first scene, and they all fall about screech-laughing when Bimini forces them to pause it on a shot of Liam Neeson’s hall in which there’s a horrific blob of a child’s painting on the wall that looks so cursed they just had to point it out.

It’s probably because Lawrence and Bimini are distracting her that Tayce doesn’t initially notice A’whora leaning into her at first until she’s pressed up against Tayce’s side. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary. They’ve always sat close before, but this time things feel different. This time it feels as if there’s little sparks of electricity between them, metaphorical manifestations of the anticipation Tayce feels of something she’s yearning to happen.    

So when A’whora bumps her knuckles against Tayce’s, brings her hand over hers and laces their fingers together, Tayce feels as if she’s suddenly evolved into some ridiculous cartoon character; she can practically feel her eyes bulge out of their sockets in shock and she has to stop her jaw from dropping onto the floor. If her heart could comedically fly out of its chest it would. Tayce keeps her gaze steady and focused on the film, blocking out her peripheral vision and not even turning to see if A’whora’s looking at her too. Because if she is it would make everything ten times worse (better?) than it currently is, and Tayce’s head is already in a spin. They’ve held hands before. It’s not like this is different.

But it is. Before they hadn’t kissed. Before A’whora hadn’t told Tayce she wanted to sleep with her. Before all of Tayce’s feelings for her friend were cooped up into neat little boxes in her mind that were so full they were close to bursting, but now they have and now it’s After and so holding A’whora’s hand has gone from usual to extraordinary, routine to electric.  

Tayce hopes A’whora can’t feel the way her pulse is racing because that’ll definitely let her know something is up.

She’s suddenly startled out of her overthinking by a tut of disapproval from Lawrence. “How many fuckin’ couples are in this film and there’s not one single lesbian?”  

“Lesbians didn’t exist in 2003, remember?” Bimini deadpans, causing A’whora to giggle.

“Yeah, lesbians were invented in 2013 when Orange is the New Black aired.”

“Nah! When did Sugar Rush come out? Mind that programme on Channel 4? I remember watching that through a crack in the living room door when my parents thought I’d gone to bed,” Lawrence recounds excitedly, her enthusiasm at remembering her lesbian awakening making Tayce laugh and relate at the same time.

“For me it was Sophie and Sian. Remember on Coronation Street? They were my first lesbians.”

“At least you all got representation at some stage. If I wanted to see another pan I’d have to watch fuckin’…Kitchen Nightmares,” Bimini rolls their eyes, their joke making the girls howl with laughter and let out cries of consolation.

And then A’whora squeezes Tayce’s hand under the blanket.

Tayce thinks only for a second before squeezing it back, and subsequently doesn’t think before turning and looking at her friend beside her. A’whora shoots her a little smile that if Tayce didn’t know better she’d say was innocent, but the twinkle in her eye and the way she shuffles herself to lean closer against her and tuck her other hand into the crook of Tayce’s elbow makes her heart give a judder like she’s been crashed into from behind.

She supposes it’s only awkward if she makes things awkward, just like A’whora said. So when Tayce gently strokes A’whora’s hand with her thumb, it’s only to illustrate to A’whora that things aren’t weird between them. It’s not to see how the other girl is going to react to that at all. It’s not because being affectionate with A’whora just feels correct and perfect, the easiest thing in the world.

Tayce is holding her breath waiting for A’whora to do something else. Something to raise her hopes, something to show her that maybe she does want something to happen between them again. She wants the film to go on forever and give them infinite time in this no-man’s-land of comfortable tension, because when it ends she knows A’whora will probably just get up from under the blanket and slip away as if everything is back to normal.

When A’whora lets go of her hand, Tayce feels her hopes drop into the pit of her stomach, a rollercoaster coming to a dead stop. The ride is over.

But a second later she wraps her arm around Tayce’s waist, squeezes her close in a hug, and the ride begins all over again. Tayce’s heart rate spikes as she shifts a little, getting comfortable before bringing her arm around A’whora’s middle too and holding her right back.

It’s then that Lawrence’s voice makes Tayce snap her head away from the film, her glazed-over eyes having to focus on her friend who’s regarding her with a raised eyebrow. “Fuck’s going on under that blanket? You two fingering each other?”  

Bimini snaps their head up and yells as Tayce tries to conceal the wave of panic that hits her, rolls her eyes and shakes her head and tells Lawrence that she needs to get her mind out the gutter. She’s sure that being called out will make A’whora flinch away, a woodland animal startled by a twig breaking, but she just giggles and buries her face into Tayce’s side all bashful.

God, Tayce wants to kiss her so much.

The film reaches the scene where Emma Thompson cries in her bedroom to Joni Mitchell, and the sniffing from the floor indicates she’s not the only one.

“Bimini! You said you hated this film!” Tayce laughs, nudging her friend with her foot.

“Yeah, but anyone who doesn’t cry at this scene is a hard-hearted bastard,” they reply, voice thick with emotion.

“Aww, BonBon. It’s okay, I’ve got a little tear as well,” A’whora murmurs from Tayce’s side. She huffs a sigh. “I can’t even believe anyone would fall for that pencil-skirt-wearing cow. I mean, she fucking manspreads and that’s supposed to be some sort of sexy come-on?”

“Aw, and like you could do any better?! We’ve all seen you trying to flirt, it’s embarrassing!” Lawrence cries in outrage.

Tayce is reminded of nights out earlier in the year when A’whora would talk to girls at bars and Tayce would always feel this inexplicable burn in her chest in response. She remembers the unfounded relief when A’whora would come back home to the flat with the rest of them, one-night-stand missions failed, and the churn in her stomach the times when she’d leave with a girl she didn’t know and sneak back into the flat at nine in the morning, ready to tell the others about her exploits from the night before which Tayce never wanted to hear.

She’s really fancied A’whora for a long time, now she thinks about it.

“I could so do better!” A’whora complains, and Tayce isn’t looking at her but she just knows she’s pouting.

Lawrence chuckles, tilting her head in amusement. “Go on then! What would your plan of action be, Miss fuckin’ Womaniser?”

There’s a pause before A’whora says, “Well I’d probably wait until we were both drunk on a night out, do tequila shots with them, drape myself over them, kiss them, then get them to take me back home.”

Tayce thinks she deserves an Oscar for the way she refuses to outwardly react to the way A’whora has essentially just described their kiss from that night out. Inside, however, it’s a different story. She’s not sure it’s possible for her heart to go any faster, and every cell of her body seems to buzz. She can barely hear Lawrence and Bimini laughing in response to A’whora’s comment for the way her blood’s roaring in her ears. Once the others stop paying attention and go back to watching the film, it’s only then that Tayce turns her head, raises one unimpressed eyebrow at A’whora who’s looking up at her with a scheming smirk on her face and a glint in her eye.

And right as she’s looking at her, A’whora closes her eyes and plants a kiss against Tayce’s arm then goes back to watching the movie as if nothing ever happened.

It’s at that point that Tayce feels her mouth dry up, feels something coil tight inside her and a throb between her legs. Something is going to happen the moment the pair of them are alone, she can feel it. There’s no way it can’t. In stark contrast to earlier, Tayce now wills the film to end sooner rather than later.

And it does. Finally. The credits roll, the Beach Boys are playing, and Lawrence slaps her thighs. “Well, that was a heap of shite!”

“I’ve still not forgiven Alan Rickman. God love the dead old bastard,” Bimini shrugs, heaves themself up off the floor and slides their phone out of their back pocket, scrolling busily. “Oh, Ellie’s asking if we wanna come join her an’ Anne for drinks. Apparently they’re in some boujie cocktail bar in town spending all their student loan and need responsible adults to stop them.”

“Why the hell are they asking us then?” Tayce quips, the giggle it elicits from A’whora sending a shockwave down her spine.

“I’m down to go meet them both. I’m already tipsy, might as well go the whole hog and get rat-arsed,” Lawrence says decisively, leaping up from the sofa and fixing Tayce and A’whora with an inquisitive glance. “You two coming?”

Tayce lets go of A’whora’s waist and stretches to make a point. “Nah, babe, I can’t. Got this essay due on Wednesday I’ve not started.”

Bimini snorts. “Yeah, I forgot. You’re dead on it and organised, in’t ya?”

Tayce pulls a face at them while Lawrence asks A’whora.

“Mmph. Think I need a nap before I even think about drinking any more, hun.”

Lawrence eyes them both suspiciously and appears to be about to say something else before Bimini tugs on her arm and distracts her. “C’mon then, let’s leave these two to be boring. Have fun, losers!”

Goodbyes are exchanged between them and Lawrence and Bimini finally leave, the fire door to the kitchen swinging shut and leaving the warm glow of the fairy lights, the blanket, the sofa, and A’whora gazing at her with that shit-eating smirk on her face again.

So Tayce wastes no time in bringing a hand up to her jaw, leaning down and kissing her, and judging by the way that A’whora melts into her and lets out a little happy sigh of satisfaction she’s been waiting for it just as much as Tayce has. They fall together like it’s easy, as if both of the times they’ve done this before have been all the practise they need. A’whora brings her hand to rest against Tayce’s cheek as if she’s trying to somehow pull her closer than she already is, and her neediness makes Tayce giggle against her lips. In turn it sets A’whora off, and when she pulls away their faces are still close and there’s little smiles on each of them.

“What’s so funny, you little bitch?” A’whora smirks, her barbed words cushioned by the way she’s wriggling onto Tayce’s lap and bringing her arms up to circle around her neck just like she did the first time in the club.

“Just you’re kind of giving me mixed signals here, baby. Saying you don’t want things to be awkward and then moving to me the entire film,” Tayce mutters, keeping a playful smile on her face despite the fact her words hold entirely too much truth.

It clearly takes the wind out of A’whora’s sails because she casts her gaze down, pauses before speaking and looking at Tayce from under her lashes. “I didn’t mean that, I just meant…I want us to be able to do stuff and not have it be awkward afterwards.”

Oh.

This is a game changer. So A’whora doesn’t regret anything. She doesn’t want them to go back to the way things were- well no, she does, just with an extra little bit of something more added in. She wants the friendship they have but she also clearly wants Tayce like she wants her back, and the realisation makes Tayce squeeze her thighs together, anticipation now so high she feels scared for her blood pressure.

Tayce tries not to let her realisation show on her face. Instead she looks at A’whora with interest, raises an eyebrow at her in amusement. “What’s ‘stuff’, then?”

“Well, just like…if we’re both horny and in the same flat then it saves us having to swipe Tinder for hours on end only to find a girl with a boyfriend who’s looking to ‘experiment’ and never found another girl’s clit in her life, doesn’t it?” A’whora shrugs blithely despite the blush that’s hit her cheeks, her turn of phrase making Tayce bite back a smile. “Whereas I’ve been told I’m quite good at that.”

The twinkle is back in A’whora’s eye again and the combination of that, her smirk and her words make Tayce’s stomach do a somersault. She can’t let it show, though, can’t let A’whora see her crack so she blinks to maintain her composure, tilts her head with mock-curiosity. “Have you now.”

“Yeah. Could show you if you wanted,” A’whora grins brazenly back at her, shifting a little in Tayce’s lap and sending her into orbit. “Plus I can’t remember if I put on matching underwear this morning, so…you should come help me check.”

Tayce breaks the stalemate to throw her head back in a laugh. “Jesus Christ, Lawrence was right. You actually can’t flirt to save yourself.”

She watches A’whora’s face drop into a pout and instantly feels as if she’s kicked a puppy, so Tayce brings one of her hands up to rest on top of her thigh and gives it a squeeze. “Says a lot for how fit you are that it’s still working though, doesn’t it?”

The pout cracks into a scheming smile, and Tayce matches it before A’whora leans in and kisses it off her face. It’s more heated this time, that little undercurrent of intensity as Tayce runs her tongue over A’whora’s and hears her whimper against her lips. As A’whora pushes her fingers into Tayce’s hair Tayce lets her hands drift around to the small of her back, and the way A’whora keeps shifting needily in her lap only makes Tayce want her more, which she didn’t think was even possible.

“We’ve got a free flat, you know,” A’whora mutters in between little kisses, her voice low as she whispers against her lips.

“Probably a good thing. You couldn’t be quiet if your life depended on it,” Tayce teases, running her fingers over the waistband of A’whora’s sweatpants in an attempt to try and convey how much she needs her.

“Oh, you have no idea, babe,” A’whora smirks before pulling away, ripping her top out from where it’s tucked into her waistband and tugging it off, barely even giving Tayce a chance to react. She’s left in a little black bralet with Playboy logos along a white band at the hem, and Tayce feels her mouth go dry.

She’s really, really hoping A’whora put on matching underwear this morning.

But she’s still taken aback because after all- they’re in the middle of their living room, and any of the others could walk in at any given moment- so she can’t help the way her mouth drops open and the way she lets out a little shocked giggle. “A’whora!”

“What?!” A’whora smiles smugly back at her, clearly glad she’s got the reaction she wanted.

“We’re not shagging on this couch, are you insane?! It’s rotten! Kim Woodburn would have a fit if she saw it!”

“Oh, so we are going to shag?” A’whora regards her with one cocked eyebrow, and Tayce can’t help but mirror it. There’s a pause before she gives a small huff of mock-resignation, sealing their fate.

“God. We’re really doing the whole friends with benefits cliché, then?”

A’whora smirks affectionately at her. “Only awkward if we make it awkward.”

She holds out her pinkie between them and Tayce takes it with a resigned laugh, the childish nature of their promise contrasting deeply with the whole situation.

“C’mon then, bestie, lead the way.”

And as A’whora scrambles excitedly off her lap and Tayce takes the opportunity to smack her ass playfully, she feels her heart soar and her head grow light at the thought of being able to do everything she’s been thinking about doing for over a month with one of her best friends in the world.

She wonders why everyone seems to say that a friends with benefits situation isn’t a good idea. This is already the best decision she’s made in years.