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missgeniality · 4 years ago

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A Date With Destiny (m)

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves, alone - we find it with another.” - Thomas Merton

➺ Pairing: Jungkook x Female Reader

➺ Trope: Strangers to Lovers, Idol!AU

➺ Genre: Fluff, Smut, one comedian in the mix

➺ Rating: 18+

➺ Word Count: 11k

➺ Summary: You are a boss lady in the tech industry travelling to world for work. He is a chart-topping artist touring the globe to perform in front of millions of fans. In the cosmos of life, you are not likely to cross paths. Luckily, fate has a different plan for you two.

➺ Warnings: dom!jk, unprotected sex (sex is cleaner when you pack your weiner!), hickeys galore, lot of spit, oral (male and female receiving), balls receive attention, throat fucking, cum eating, edging, masturbation kinda?, cum play, pussy slapping, pussy sniffing, fingering, squirting, spanking, pain kink?, tit slapping, reader teases a bit but this man is a tease maestro, cum stuffing (is that a thing even?), Jungkook’s THIGHS need their own warning

➺ Author’s Note: @ppersonna is an angel among us peasants. Thank you so much for all your help with this! This is my first attempt at writing, and the tiniest feedback goes a long way! Hope you enjoy!

When you die, the first pit stop you make is to the coffee gods.

Without coffee, this whole month would have been a disaster. Back-to-back meetings, daily flights, countless documents being read, it’s a miracle your eyes are open and fully functioning.

Being the Chief Technical Officer of a well-established company at your age had been anything but a cakewalk. You had strived hard and crossed many boulders to come to where you are. But if reaching that point required huge amounts of effort, now your work is tenfold.

“Why can’t I just get longer flights so I can nap in them?” You mumble into your nth cup of coffee - not keeping count is for your own sanity.

“Because longer flights apparently have crying children. You, our resident baby-magnet hypothesized that shorter flights equal more time in hotel rooms ‘sleeping’. Guess who sleeps in said hotel rooms? Everyone but you.” Your personal assistant and part-time truth-spouter Jake offers helpfully.

“Past me was such an idiot.” You shoot back, wondering if you could inject the espresso right through your veins.

Jake pouts. “Woman, you take on jobs that an intern could do. If you weren’t such an unnecessary perfectionist I would be on the beaches of Thailand, getting sensual massages and eating some pretty pussy. But here we are, on our way to Seoul. So quit your whining because clearly, I have lost more.”

“What if I wanted to do that too?”

“Can I watch?”

“Right.” And that was the end of the conversation.

Passengers on flight KE654 from Bangkok to Seoul are requested to report for boarding at Gate 45A. First Class passengers will be boarded first, followed by Business class and lastly Economy. Please keep your boarding pass ready for checking.

Jake stands up, groaning. “This is where we say goodbye. Do you wanna pretend like we’re strangers and have a hot one-night stand when we land?”

“Sometimes I think it’s your natural response to flirt with a breathing being. Do you ever accidentally just, you know, flirt with a tree?” You try to sound sarcastic, but you’re genuinely curious.

“If a day comes when a hot specimen like me has to flirt with a tree, humanity is doomed. Catch ya later!” He blows you a kiss before leaving for the restroom. You shake your head in awe, a small smile finding your lips. He knew how to get your mind off things.

For all his flirting, Jake’s interest in you is perfunctory. He looks after you, keeps you from starving or gouging your eyeballs out, and calms you when things are too hard. He’s seen your worst. You’ve seen him drunk out of his mind, bailed him out when he “accidentally” smoked up, and heard every new pick-up line his ingenious brain churned out. Basically, you’ve seen his worst as well.

You take a look at your boarding pass. 3C. Jake would be in business class, and you in first. Not your choice, the company makes the rules. It's for the better, he says. Apparently, he can ‘prowl for his hunt better’, without your judgmental glare. You nearly vomit on him just for his choice of words.

Entering the flight, you stash away your hand baggage the first place you find the room and head to your seat and-

Holy. Shit.

Jeon Jungkook is sitting on your seat.

Jeon Jungkook is on your flight?

BTS is on your flight?

What are the odds?

Granted, you’re not a 16-year old obsessive fan, collecting photocards and waving light sticks through the screen, but even in your adulthood you’ve admired their music and shows, routinely keeping up with their discography.

Hell, you even learned Korean years ago to better understand their songs. Maybe you are an obsessive fan.

But you can’t approach them like that. They no doubt want some privacy and not be recognized. God forbid you approach Jungkook with crazy eyes, just to be escorted off the plane for stalking. While you liked their work, you had your own, and getting thrown off this flight does not help you there.

So, you’re just gonna have to speak to him like just another passenger.

BTS who?

Biggest boyband who?

You only listen to Frank Sinatra.

“Excuse me?” You call out, a shiver of a whisper leaving your lips. You immediately chastise yourself for being so star-struck.

Big, round eyes glitter under the bucket hat. The softest ‘huh’ throws a lasso over your heart, and holds it captive. He adjusts his hat, inked fingers making a brief yet lasting appearance. The epitome of tenderness, you muse as his eyes flit here and there to figure out the situation. After finding no one to help him out, he gently offers “Yes?”

You feel extremely guilty for marring his serene face with creases of trouble. “I think this is my seat. See, 3C.” you say, pointing to the seat and then to your ticket for good measure. Did he suspect you recognize them? No. Do you look like you’re over-gesticulating? Totally.

“Oh.” His brow distresses further, the sight has you ready to give the man your seat and hide in the bathroom for the rest of the flight. “But even I am 3C.”

His ticket shows the same characters as yours.

Huh?

With both your faces contorted in confusion, an air hostess comes forward to help.

“We both are booked on the same seat. How does that happen? Do I need to catch another flight?” You suddenly pour out, remembering the countless commitments you have in Seoul that would go down the drain if you don’t make it by tonight.

She's quick to reassure you. “Do not worry ma’am, I’m sure there must have been an error in the printing. I’ll be right back.” At the same time, Jungkook is approached by someone, probably one of their staff, to discuss the issue.

The air hostess returns smiling. “Ma’am, you both were booked on the same seat but this adjacent seat was left empty. We are extremely sorry for the error. You may take 3B.” She reiterates the same message to Jungkook in Korean, who then looks mighty relieved.

Goddamn, his eyes got bigger. How much bigger can they get?

“All okay then?” He glances sideways, smile irradiating your senses and waking you up better than all the coffee could.

“All good. Sorry for the trouble.” You add, even though it isn’t your mistake in any way.

“No no. No trouble” He beams back.

Aw, you are in trouble.

As the flight is about to take off, you can see the rest of BTS in the rows ahead of you, with some other staff members taking up other seats. There’s one old man with a scowl on his face, whom you can’t place with the BigHit group. Great, no crying kids. Unless the frowning grandpa snores to the heavens, you can actually catch a good four-hour snooze. Take that, Jake. Hope a kid blows snot in his face.

Looking at your neighbor, you find him busy searching for a good video game on the screen. The other members seem to be using this flight to catch a nap, except him. You always wondered whether their on-screen persona was real or not. Now you could say at least one of his characteristics is true.

Turning away, you bring your focus back to the document at hand. The schematics for a new product your company was launching. You had spearheaded its conception and looked over every single detail in its manufacturing. The Seoul branch is one of the main players in its production, and your last stop before heading back home. You must have every word in this file burnt in the back of your eyelids to make this deal smooth.

Reclining your seat, and putting your legs up, you got down to business.

An Angel was calling you.

You want to wake up, but you couldn’t, fearing the Angel would stop singing to you. Something is poking you, but the voice just drowns it all out.

Wait...

Fluttering your eyes open, you see Jeon Jungkook staring right at you.

“Hi... They, umm--Food? Want to eat?” the Angel utters. Jungkook utters. Tomato, to-mah-to.

“Oh!” you exclaim, wiping non-existent drool on your face. His palm on your shoulder quickly retracts at your exaggerated attempt to hide your embarrassment. “Thank you so much.”

Then, he does that thing. He smiles. Eye scrunch and all.

Fuck the coffee gods. When you die, you want to meet the Grand Master and ask him what crack he was on to hand over so much power to one man’s smile.

The food is placed on your table, and you thank the hostess graciously.

“Do you need anything to drink?” She asks, to which you only shake your head. There was enough caffeine in your system to shoot a horse to the moon and you were still drowsy. There was no need to catalyze this process with booze.

“Your Korean accent is pretty good.” Your next-seat resident comments. Ah, you had conversed with the hostess in Korean.

“Thank you very much.” You giggle, roleplaying an acne-prone teenager talking to her hunk of a crush.

“Have you been speaking for a long time?” He pops a huge morsel of food after asking. Well, that’s another on-screen quality found to be accurate.

“Six years now. Comes in handy for my work.”

“Oh! Did you have to learn it for work? That’s fascinating.” Another mouthful went in. You didn’t even know it was physically possible to hold that much rice using chopsticks.

“Uhh.. no..” You tussle your hair, trying to stop your cheeks from turning beet red, “I just listened to some music and consuming more content.. and subtitles are a bore, plus I needed a hobby at the time so..”

Your unnecessarily long explanation was cut short by Jungkook’s child-like laugh, enjoying the pickle you were putting yourself in.

“Hey! I just didn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable situation, that’s all.” you try to be cross, knowing it’s inconceivable since God himself seems to have given him whatever he wanted. If big ol’ Almighty can’t stand against his charms, you are but a mere pleb.

He looks at you kindly. “Thank you, that was very thoughtful. I’ve been speaking to so many foreigners trying to get across to them I got surprised when you spoke so fluently.”

He went back to chomping on his food like it was his last meal, completely unaware of your staring.

You both speak for a long time. He explains their latest shoot and fan meeting, and you listen to him pour out his love for his job and fans as much as he could articulate. The rest of the emotion is portrayed by his now widest eyeballs (they cannot get any wider, you confirm by asking him - a request he apparently gets a lot) and intense gesticulation. It is very gratifying to listen to his past schedules, and you slip in a quick prayer for not having a job where you had to maintain public appearances while having a schedule as persevering as theirs. Sure, you had a ton of commitments. But can you throw your hair in a bun and aggressively scowl at a monitor and still meet your target? Fuck yeah.

You went on to tell him about yourself - your job, your travels, the reason you were in Seoul. He listens to them with rapt attention throwing in appropriate questions without interrupting your flow. He gives the right amount of sympathy; just enough to show that he understands why you have three sets of nightwear and a futon in your office, but not too much where it seems like you should “take a break” and ��think about the joys of motherhood” - as you are often told.

During the conversation, you digress a little to take in his slight features. The apple of his cheeks, in full display, when he tells you about how he pranked his members. The light pout of his lips when he talks about the times their path seemed too far-fetched, when every single obstacle felt like the end of their career. The stars in his eyes when he speaks of how he feels during tours, meeting the endless number of fans, the drive that keeps him going. They all make an endearing package. Eager to please, you kept the conversation going with gusto. The meal is followed by a snack break, after which you had effectively exhausted all conversation topics that could be brought up with near-strangers.

A quick alcohol break later, (yes, you caved, the catalyst was welcome) you both doze off, seemingly exhausted from recollecting respective timetables. He wakes up soon after to play video games and talk to the other members. But you fall into a deep slumber, with an Angel’s chuckles in the background guiding you through the sleep.

Jungkook wakes up to see his character dead. The video game was forgotten after his conversation with you began.

He spent an inordinate amount of time talking to you. And now that you’re asleep, he is only thinking about how much he enjoyed the conversation. Jungkook is not a speaker. His introversion leaves much to be desired in that department. Most of the time, his members cover for him, play the role of dutiful wingmen, and introduce him to their friends. And still, it took him a long time to talk freely.

But something about you made him open up.

Maybe it was the way you listened to him, lips slightly parted when you were absorbing every single word he let out. Maybe it was the questions you asked, treading lightly and skirting any personal questions. Maybe it was the fact that you pretended to not know him at first, mindful of his privacy. The butterflies in him could be explained by this.

But.

It could also be how graceful you looked, even though you’re dressed in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. It could be how you carried yourself, with great elegance and poise, even though your work was taxing. It could also be your toe socks, and your glee when he showed you his.

Your personality is infectious. He already misses you, despite you being inches away, desperately wants to exhaust every second of this journey engrossed in you.

He wonders if you feel that way too.

Speaking of whom-

A snicker escapes his lips when he turns to face you.

In your sleepy haze, Jungkook sees that a) your mouth is wide open, b) your hands mindlessly fiddle with the reams of pages on your lap, and c) your eyes scrunch as sunlight pierces through the flight to bounce off your face. Cute, he muses, trying to locate the source of the criminal rays irking you.

The window letting the sunbeam in is beside an old man sitting on the other end. He is eyeing the magazine in his hands with abject disapproval, like the booklet had sullied him and his family.

Gathering up the courage, Jungkook calls out for the man.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you mind pulling the window shade?” He asks, in the sweetest voice that his hyungs would melt at first listen.

Puppy eyes are met with the geezer’s piercing glare, making Jungkook wonder if he accidentally said something strikingly offensive instead of what he thought he said. About to backtrack his words and try again, he gets interrupted by the man letting out a big grunt, after which he continues in his endeavor to telepathically set fire to the magazine. He does not forget to give a nasty side-eye but completely refuses to comply with Jungkook’s request.

“And my team thinks my glares are spooky.” You pique, having witnessed the whole interaction, “I ought to have him on board”. Jungkook snorts, and you take that to be his agreement.

Pausing, you throw caution in the wind and add, “Thank you though, that was very sweet of you.”

He eyes you demurely. “No problem, you looked like you needed the rest.”

“Listen, I-”

“So I was think-”

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been cleared to land at the Incheon International airport. Please ensure your backpacks and suitcases are stowed away in the overhead compartments or underneath the seats ahead of you. The flight attendants are currently passing around the cabin to make a final compliance check and pick up any remaining cups and glasses. Thank you.

High-quality curses almost make it to heaven (speakers). The announcement dissipates all the courage you had mustered, feeling a rush exit your body. You had almost asked for his contact - and by the looks of it, he had wanted it too. Or maybe your hair is a rat's nest and he was just going to point that out. Guess you will never know.

You shyly smile at each other before going about following the instructions. Your half-read document gets stuffed back into its bag, to be read once you have no distractions in the form of eye candy armed with saccharine speech. Well, you have Jake to distract you plenty, but you can shoo him away by threatening his paycheck.

As the flight descends, you look over to your neighbor - one last time, you guess - and surprisingly lock eyes with him. Anything that had exited you comes rushing back, veins in full alertness. A moment’s awkwardness later you both burst out laughing, each doing their best to hide their crimson cheeks. You find one more online fact to be true - Jungkook’s peak happiness laughter, eye crinkle and nose scrunch, can melt your whole entire heart.

“Hey mami, come here often?”

“For the last time Jake, I will not hesitate to donate your bones for science.”

“Well, I heard bone, it's already a win for me.”

You let out a sigh of exasperation. There is no reforming him.

“How was the flight?” Jake questions as you approach the baggage belt. Looking out for your somber black suitcase, you try to play it off like you did not spend the whole time in the company of a stranger who is on the fast track to your heart.

“The usual. Sleep, eat, read needlessly printed out documents that could have been shoved into on email, repeat. What about you?”

As Jake starts an account of his flight experience in exorbitant detail, you took the opportunity to try and find your ride. Once you locate it and get in, you catch the end of his sermon.

“-and the name of the book will be ‘How to manage a farm - ‘cause chicks gon’ be crazy!’. What do you think?”

“I think it was a good idea I chose to zone out.”

“Y/N come on! It’s a self-help book for poor souls born without my raw charisma. Men and women out there want me, but I can’t satisfy them all. I will just resort to making more of me! It will have pointers, DIY’s and pick-up lines crafted by yours truly - wanna hear one?”

You throw your bag in front and turn to him. “Do I have a choice? Go ahead.”

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, he starts. “Am I cute? Squish my cheeks. Am I hot? Clap my cheeks.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Points for creativity. You’ll still get wine splashed at you.”

Jake was not one to give up. “‘It’s good we don’t need eye condoms, or you’d be on your way to delivery.’”

“Just… don’t have kids, okay? This gene must be stopped, right here.”

“Okay, this one is my all-time favorite. ‘Rack so big, I don’t motorboat, I motorship.’”

That’s it. The guffaw itching you since the start of this conversation is out of its cages, populating the air in the car. Wiping stray tears from your face, you face Jake, seeming very pleased with himself. Undoubtedly, he is coming up with absurd scenarios to ease your nerves. No book is in the works (one could only hope).

“Thank you, I feel much better now. You can stop coming up with these.”

The goof has the gall to look appalled. “I was going to cut you ten percent of my book commission but I guess that’s out. Hmph.”

“I’m at the receiving end of all these pick-up lines. I should make twenty at least for all the nuisance I’ve put up with.”

“All right mami, we’ll shelve this for later. Here’s the schedule for today. You have a 10 a.m. breakfast meeting with Dr. Park Shin Young, Lead Research Scientist of the project. Then you have a bunch of seminars to attend, which will go on all afternoon. There’s a bar right beside this venue.”

“How is that pertinent?”

“So you know where to find me.” He continues, unperturbed. “After which there’s an evening meeting with the whole team to demonstrate the product and a marketing meeting right after.”

“Am I required for the marketing meeting?” Your expertise is limited to the technical field. PR work isn’t your cup of tea, but they stubbornly demand your presence.

Jake exhales. “We’ve been through this. You CAN doze off during the meeting, but you have to be there. Just pretend you’re a college student, sitting in one class, completing assignments for another.”

“But if I’m there I feel the need to pay attention.” you whine.

“Clearly you weren’t one of those college students,” Jake says, perusing through his diary, “Stop being a pedant and do one of those things people do. Loving their jobs and whatnot.”

Before you can retort a reply, the driver pulls up to your destination and you exit the car.

Eleven at night is when you finally check in to the hotel. The tedious day warrants your heels coming off before you even reach your floor. There’s an irritant drumming, from the balls of your feet right up to your temples, that beg for your attention. Setting your footwear on your bags, you massage your feet for temporary relief as the lift took you closer to a more permanent one.

Once your suitcase gets parked in the closet, you head to the bathroom to soak your day away with the bath bomb kit you were gifted in one of the seminars. The ball fizzles as soon as it hits the water, dispersing in tiny bubbles and a heady aroma of vanilla and lavender. The soft amber tones of the walls, the lambent gold lighting, and the ambrosial air put all your senses at ease. You sink in; the bathwater permeating warmth through your skin. Crackling bubbles with every move; the water teases your neck, soothing the laceration with every lick. Every pulse point on you is enhanced - you let yourself float wherever your mind takes you.

A familiar face makes its presence known. You allow yourself to think about him, after pushing his visage away all day. Something about him… felt like home. Soothing, comforting, always speaking in dulcet tones unless something humorous pulled out a loud laugh. Even that wasn’t jarring; it was the exact opposite. Felt like sunshine filled your lungs every time he cracked up. Made you want to keep talking to him, keep him amused and entertained. You can’t imagine he converses with every stranger like that.

But maybe he did; maybe this is some unspoken celebrity culture you were unaware of.

All you know is that this was a once in a lifetime experience. There’s no way you are encountering another personage ever again. There’s no way you’re encountering him again. Luck can only thrive so far.

So when you exit the bathroom, clad in a towel, remnant bathwater dripping from every end, the last thing you expect is Jungkook, spread out on the bed, casually flipping through his phone like it’s his own abode.

“J-Jungkook?”

Y/N. In his room. In a towel. Dripping wet hair. Emanating a delectable aroma.

Y/N. In person.

He is dreaming. He has to be. He's been thinking of you ever since the flight, so now he is delusional. Nothing else. There’s absolutely no chance that you’re in his room, let alone… like this.

Right?

“What are you… what are you doing in my room?”

Wrong.

Jungkook knows he should say something. He should not be gawking at you like he is doing now. But God. You look so pretty, eyebrows arched up in confusion, jaw about to be unhinged, hands fluttering around not knowing what to do.

He forces his body to action.

"Y/N!" He exclaims, finally averting his eyes to face the wall.

Pause.

"Wait, what do you mean MY room? This is my room!"

You’re baffled. "Huh? How is that possible? This was given to me!"

“I really don’t know, Y/N, there must have been some confusion! Please, you have to believe me!”

Jungkook wants to turn around and face you. He desperately wants to clear the air. He can see that this looks bad. He obviously looks like an enamored creep, waltzing into your space. You probably think he does this all the time. Many a time people have misunderstood him, his celebrity status not earning him many points. You must think the same.

And now you’re going to tell him to get out and never see you again, he hypothesizes. His brain is working overtime trying to remedy the situation, without noticing your now relaxing demeanor.

“Oh, okay.”

“I’ll fix this, I’ll go to the reception and fix this. You don’t worry, I didn’t see anything, you can trust me, I’ll go an-”

“Hey, hey,” your tone gentle, “it’s okay, trust me. Just, let me get dressed and I’ll come down with you.”

Your soothing response almost has Jungkook on his knees. Whoever orchestrated this meet, he is just thankful for this good turn. Anyone else would go berserk, and rightfully so.

But you’re not anyone else.

He isn’t just anyone.

Technically, he isn’t a stranger, you try to justify. You should have been more shocked, enraged, or at least doubtful of his intentions. But you weren’t. You had accepted his explanation, let him stay in your room while you changed in the bathroom, and now are en-route to the main desk to rectify this error.

The air around you two is strained; he won’t even look you in the eye. Any question you have is replied to concisely, leaving no room for a chat. Nothing to disperse the tension between you two.

Like now, in the elevator, Jungkook has done the math and maintains the maximum distance between you. Opposite ends of the diagonal of this lift, his peripheral vision probably barely picks you up. However, his evasion helps in a way--you are able to study his full form.

He is dressed casually, and any lesser man would have seemed casual enough. On him, it is a whole new game. Ripped jeans hugging his sturdy legs, the slashed fabric allowing you a peek of his dangerous thighs. A plain white t-shirt tucked in to show off his lean waistline. The only thing holding you back from having a full-blown wet dream, wide awake, is his chestnut overcoat, saving his modesty and yours.

Jake was right, eye condoms are the need of the century.

To be fair, Jungkook had the worse end. He saw you scantily clad, post-bath glow and everything. You wonder what is going through his mind.

Definitely nothing like the debauchery unfolding in yours.

He has probably seen his fair share of women, and one hot to trot lady isn’t anything new. If anything, him dodging you is a sign of his civility, something you are lacking apparently--ready to jump his bones.

Stop thinking about his thighs, you whore. Get back home and trusty old Vlad the Impaler will take care of you.

The employee’s jaw almost hits the desk as Jungkook explains the situation.

“Ma’am, Sir, we are extremely sorry about this confusion. We usually keep another key for family members, but somehow you got them both. We are deeply apologetic.”

“Yes, it’s okay, I’d just like my room key now and-”

“We will give you the best of our service to make up for this disorder. Not that we didn’t plan on giving you the best anyway, but now it will be top-notch! Please allow us to have your room cleaned again ma’am. Kyuyoung-ah! Get the people to prep 5338 and set 5337 again, and add more flowers!”

“Hey, that really won’t be necessary, we can just go back and forget about all thi-”

“And!” She continues, relentless, fully intent on doing her job, “Here are coupons for our round the clock pub! The ambiance is phenomenal, and our bartender makes a mean drink! You can use the facility for free during your stay. Hope this compensates for our gaffe. Once again, we are extremely sorry!”

She extends two passport-sized coupons that you hurriedly grab, wanting this quandary to end.

The walk back to the elevator is less tight-lipped, only because Jungkook starts his deluge of apologies. Even though you had felt the same way on the flight, he was going overboard. You quickly assuage him and deflect his concerns.

“It’s okay, Jungkook. It really is. I know it was a mistake.”

“I know, but I shouldn’t have just walked in like that. I should have checked.”

Your expression is the visual form of a question mark.

“Do you go around making sure your hotel room doesn’t have a surprise occupant?”

You’re taking this too lightly; it's obvious you are doing it for him. He can only laugh, broad delicious shoulders loosening in relief.

After a delay, you add, “You can’t help it if fate wants us crossing paths like this.”

The quip makes Jungkook lose a beat. He cocks a brow in surprise - at that juncture, his features lose all boyish charm and turn unquestionably irresistible.

Then, in a flash, the expression is replaced by his usual grin, back to his boy-next-door spirit. Are there world records for this speed? Jungkook needs to sign up to one.

Collecting the stars floating around your head, you return the favor, thankful that the barrier is now broken.

After a quick break of courage gathering, you turn to him. “How come you’re staying in this hotel? Thought you’d be home.”

A thought is building in your mind; that this is too personal a question. But before you can take it back, you hear a chime. Jungkook moves. And somehow, you are moving with him.

The elevator door opens, and people walk out.

But that’s not where your attention is.

You are focused on the sole patch of your body in contact with Jungkook’s arm.

The palm of his hand sitting at the small of your waist is what had guided you away from the elevator. Even through the fabric of your t-shirt, his hand is sending goosebumps all over your body. The air feels twenty degrees too hot for you.

Jungkook is simply being his chivalrous self, while you are ready to get arrested for public nudity.

Woman, you are a disgrace. Get laid.

Jungkook will high five himself once he gets to his pad.

Is it right to get so euphoric about the smallest act of intimacy? That too with a near stranger? He has no answer. You are special to him; that much he knows. And someone up there agrees with him as well, letting him run into you again (albeit under crude circumstances; he’ll take what he gets). In this proximity, he can hear the slight gasp that escapes you once you recognize his hold, feel your muscles tense, smell the flowery fragrance you still carry. The fragrance that takes his mind on a rewind routine; one he forces to a halt. He feels lewd for taking pleasure in that misfortune, but he can take pleasure in the present.

Entering the elevator, Jungkook has taken note of one thing: the roles have been reversed. On the downward voyage, it had been him avoiding you. Now, even with the closeness, you refuse to meet his eye. Something on the carpeted floor has your unrelenting attention. Letting his gaze dip to you, he bit back a smirk. Good to know you are as affected by him as he is by you.

“It’s a shoot.”

You relent, looking up to him. “Huh?”

“You asked me why I’m here, it’s a shoot. The site is close by, so we don’t waste time traveling. Once the shoot is done, we will get back home.”

“Ah, that makes sense.”

You beg your grey matter to find some topic of conversation to halt the blood rushing to your cheeks. The atmosphere is frozen again, but not like last time. Any unease earlier present has drifted. The tension that once kept you from closeness now keeps you from moving apart. His hand sits unmoved, continuing to rest on your hip. Jungkook can hear the loud thudding of a heartbeat, but he cannot discern whether they are from his heart or from yours.

Continuing after a pause, “I will be here for a few days now.” he adds, the suggestive hint of the words masked by his innocuous smile.

“Ah.” You lamely add. You ought to kick yourself - but at this closeness, you might hit him too.

The span of your separation is contracting, even though none of you move. Like the land underneath you is shifting, because even Mother Earth can’t handle the sexual tension in this confined space.

“Ma’am, Sir, you’re here!”

The booming voice of an employee disrupts the scene. You jump, wondering how you didn’t hear the door open, while Jungkook takes a graceful step back unscathed.

“Your rooms are ready, please follow me.”

The walk back is quiet, except for bashfully exchanged glances and racing pulses. When you finally reach your respective rooms, he speaks again.

“Want to accidentally cross paths with me at the bar?”

The heat reaches your ears. A moment of silence prompts you to look up, and you are held hostage by his eyes. His gaze flickers, intense and probing. Then, as if it never happened, his eyes narrow and his smile softens, harmless and easy. Again, this has to be witchcraft.

“Maybe we’ll let destiny decide. Hasn’t failed us so far.”

Now, alone in bed with nothing but your thoughts, you wonder when it will ever happen again.

Three days. Three days before it happens again.

Three days filled with conferences, a ton of files, and a lot of battery acid disguised as coffee. Apart from the success of your work, the highlight of your time is when Jake tried to fix his shoe heel at a meeting and ended up gluing his fingers together. In a quiet room filled with immersed employees, he had yelled, “Superglue, my ass!”.

The punctuation was not vocalized.

Tonight was your last night in Seoul. It was supposed to be a night to yourself, but an office party pulled you out of your cavern to get dressed. You put on an elegant dress, a black and silver number, only to find the ‘party’ was the most monotonous excuse of networking. High-end businessmen exchanging cards over non-alcoholic fizz was not your idea of a party, so you quickly excused yourself.

The coupon still weighed heavy in your purse, carrying memoirs of the last time you saw him. You had wanted to go earlier, but always held yourself back. What if he wasn’t there? What if you missed your chance? Why did you have to sashay away with a cool statement that night instead of clawing your way through the lust-filled air and settling things then and there?

You supposed a drink at the hotel bar on your last night couldn’t be a bad thing, even if Jungkook didn’t show up.

So here you are, sipping on your wine and trying to appear nonchalant as you look out the window overseeing the city’s skyline. One ear is trained to the door of the pub, the slightest peep from that corner alerting your antenna.

So far, no sign of him.

This won’t work, you tell yourself. Second time’s a charm, third time’s pushing it too far.

But as you wave the bartender to top up your drink, the corner of your eye catches movement; one, two, three heads appear through the door. Signature multichromatic mops of hair make their way in, forcing your pulse to marathon mode.

And then you hear it.

You hear his trademark cachinnate echoing through the structure. Multitudes of contrasting sentiments fill your gut. Are you sensing relief, that fate served its purpose without fail? Or is it the anticipation of how events will unfold? A sense of titillation, that a three-day old bond makes you feel more than year-old relationships you’ve had? You pry your eyes from that direction, trying to appear aloof when you are anything but.

When you think you’ve gathered your composure, you look up. Like a hare falling for its bait, you are trapped, because he is looking right back at you.

Jin and Jimin are laughing about something that happened on set today, but Jungkook only has eyes for you. He can’t believe his luck.

The past few days, his schedule had no give. After every shoot, the only thing he remembered was taking off his shoes and falling into a deep slumber.

So today when the shoot wrapped up earlier, Jungkook grabbed his trusty wingmen and open bar enthusiasts to utilize his coupon, and possibly test his kismet.

“Wasn’t she on our flight?” Jin observes, tracking Jungkook’s sight.

“Oh yeah! Dude, is she the one?” Jimin keenly notes. “How do you keep bumping into each other like this?”

Jungkook downs his whisky, the burn felt from the throat to his diaphragm. “I don’t know, hyung. I don’t know what to do.” Beckoning the bartender for a refill, he tears away from your sight.

“Okay, liquid fortification is all good but how about,” Jin stops briefly to pluck the coupon out of Jungkook’s hands, “we handle the drinks department while you attend to her?”

Jimin nods in assent. “The worst thing you could do is spend time with her slurring and garbling while she ditches your sorry ass.”

“Hey! I won’t do that. Just, ” Jungkook gulps, “I don’t know... We’ve met like, hardly a few times. It really doesn’t make sense. What if we’re not on the same page?”

Jimin frowns, and even Jin seems unhappy with his reasoning.

“Things don’t have to make sense. You’re two consenting adults. You like her. By the way she’s eyeing you right now, I’m sure the feeling is mutual. You said it’s easy to talk to her right?”

Jungkook pouts, but sees his point.

“Then go with that. Don’t chart out a plan, just go with your heart.” Jin adopts a soft smile of encouragement.

“Meanwhile we will grab the others and exploit this coupon to the full extent!” Jimin gleefully appends.

Jungkook’s eyes crinkle as he laughs with the other two. They are right. Carpe diem, right?

Finding you again, his breath hitches. You look beautiful. The sleek black dress with silver embellishments over the torso. It hugs you in the right places, accentuating your already alluring frame. Your shoulders bare, elegant collarbones waiting to be tasted. Hair tied up, exposing the delicious curve of your neck, a stretch Jungkook wants to pepper kisses onto, without missing a spot. You look exquisite against the backdrop of the night.

Carpe noctem it is.

“Did you really dress up to use the coupon?” The tongue-in-cheek query breaking your line of thought.

A breathy chuckle leaves your lips, hopefully masking the frenzy in your heart.

“I had a party. A very dull party. Figured I preferred my own company over that.”

“Do you prefer your own company over mine?”

He’s still standing, tall frame waiting for your permission to occupy the next seat. God, he looks amazing.

“Not at all.” The words leave huskier than you intend, but they convey the message.

He takes the seat, a mere step away, his cologne wafting over to your side. The alcohol buzz makes the scent feel stronger, every bone in you wanting to dive in nose-first.

Apparently you have been staring, because he nervously chuckles “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Should you go the modest route or fuck it?

Fuck it.

“You look... great today,” is all you get out. Stupid brain spewing half-baked goods.

Understatement of the year. He looks like sin incarnate. All black attire highlighting his golden skin, the dichotomy of his whole look has you understandably tongue-tied. Black jeans - no rips, sadly- with a dark grey high-neck t-shirt, tucked in of course, because pain is the only constant for you. A black trench coat is thrown on top to seal the look. The obsidian outfit sends desperate need through your body, an intense desire to rip it all off surging through you. Somehow, through all these layers you can sense his fit body, his rippled muscles, his sturdy pecs, like they have an aura of their own.

“Ah, thank you. You look amazing as well.” Halting a moment to sip his drink, he resumes. “Sucks that you dressed up for nothing.”

“Well, you liked it. So it's not for nothing.”

If looks were potent, Jungkook’s own could set you on fire. Gaze coolly raking over your figure, the tick in his jaw betrays his reaction. A chill passes through every part of your body under his intense scrutiny.

“Are there other things you would wear… if I liked it?” He carefully treads.

“There are certain things I’m wearing right now that I’m sure you would appreciate.”

If not for the shrinking distance between you two, you couldn’t have caught the low hiss. His animalistic need, usually kept well under control, is raging against its bonds, screaming to let go. Your exquisite gown, flowing down your curves, accentuating the swell of your ass - God save this dress from his feral hands. Against his will, he restrains himself. He would make this a lasting encounter.

“How many drinks have you had?” He needs you to remember every single moment.

“Two glasses of wine, don’t worry. You?”

“A shot of whisky, that’s all. Haven’t even finished my second drink.”

Gone were his cherubic appearance and dimpled smiles; the man in front of you is oozing pure sex appeal. His clenched jawline, furrowed brow, and perfectly placed tresses add to his raw masculinity. The cusp of your thighs is damp; if this is his effect here, what will it be behind locked doors? You wonder whether this is the same man that gushed about old-era video games in the flight.

“Well, if you are wearing them for me, I’d be a fool to miss them.” he brings you back to the present. Twinkling eyes match your eager ones as you give a small nod.

Every step you take shoots a thrilling tingle through your spine. Every inch of distance closed forces you to close the next with doubled speed. Every foot forward adds to the thick air, laced with hunger, desire, and an inordinate amount of trust placed in the hands of a stranger.

The first time you two walked back to the elevator, his move had caught you unaware.

Now, the arm wraps around your entire waist, body flush against his, yet you yearn to get closer.

Last time, you couldn’t match his gaze, skin burnt a crimson hue.

Now, your eyes are locked together, any movement in your surroundings be damned.

Michael Jackson rising from the dead and performing Thriller wouldn’t tear you away from your current view (sorry MJ, maybe next time).

When the doors close, he places a palm on your bare back, bringing you to his chest.

“I’ve wanted this so bad, ever since I met you. It’s insane.”

The hand caressing your back makes you sigh. “Not if I wanted the same.”

His grip tightens. “The things I want to do to you...” eyes searching yours, ”tell me you can handle it.”

“Oh baby,” you drawl, “I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever it is,” your lips hover on his, “I can take it.”

The elevator doors opened too soon for your liking, and Jungkook drags you through the corridor. You’re practically hanging on to him, feet barely responsive, the faint buzz of wine making you giddy. His hawkish gaze soaks in everything you do, memorizing every response to his touch.

You lean over to lay wet kisses on his neck. Pleasure searing through his veins, Jungkook’s knees almost buckle. He pushes you against a wall and locks you in with his form.

“Uh-uh-uh, honey,” he tsks, “you’re not making this easy on me?”

You pretend to ponder. “Well, I didn’t plan on making it easy.”

He smirks, all sex, and the wetness between your legs is making its presence known. Leaning into your ear, he whispers, “Unless you want me to have my way with you right here…” and all your brattiness dissipates.

Satisfied, he grins. “Your place or mine?”

“Hmmn, depends.”

He cocks a brow. “On?”

“Am I gonna be able to walk tomorrow?”

That damned smirk. “Your place it is.”

Jungkook’s lips are on yours the moment your door is locked. He cages you against its frame, teeth clashing and biting anything they find. You let your hands roam all over, searching for something to hold on to. A throaty sound leaves Jungkook when your digits card through his hair and tug on it, a sound you gladly swallow.

Time seems to have taken a break. Your thoughts are blank. You chase the kiss like it's the only thing you know, the only thing you’re born to do, your sole mission in life before you die. The bruising pace Jungkook set is eagerly matched by you. Gravity is slowly losing its meaning, and you’re nothing but a stray entity floating in space. And this kiss is your only source of air.

Jungkook pulls you towards him, closing the nonexistent distance between you. Heat rises from his chest, the feeling is hypnotic beyond reason. A taste of you has ruined every other flavor. He kept his eyes half-open, sneaking peeks at your flushed face whenever you come for air. His fingers explored your body, grabbing your ass and pulling you into him. Your clothed crevice jolts at the friction, hips hounding for more.

The moan that leaves you gets muted, because Jungkook takes this opportunity to take control. Tongue forcing its way in to explore every corner of your mouth, it melds with your own muscle. If this were a dance, it would be a fierce tango, oozing with sexual tension. Breathing is now trivial, this kiss is imperative.

Jungkook’s hands grab your hips and twirl you, both of you now facing a full-length mirror. You can witness your neckline being abused, mulberry blossoms left in place. The sight has your sex clenching, and lips liberated, you couldn’t stop yourself from mewling.

“Fuck, Y/N. I’m going to make you scream so loud, the hotel reception will hear you.”

With your head spinning in lust, you try to form your words right. “An- And what? Discuss how a second room for you was - oh god - was useless?”

Jungkook pauses to admire his craft; your neck, shoulders, and collar are now littered with bruises, like a garden of hyacinth at his disposal. The view is maddening, your lusty gaze locked on to him in the mirror. His mane is tousled, no doubt your handiwork, and his hand is tracing the outline of your dress.

“That cursed day,” He chokes out, “You were so fucking hard to resist you know?”

You turn back to face him, hand reaching back to undo your halter neck, “You have me now.” Stepping back, you let your gown fall.

He froze. You are standing in front of him, robed in only your black lace-embroidered strapless bra, and matching panties, each adorned with a white bow. The swell of your breasts barely caged in the cups, making Jungkook drool at sight. All the wind was knocked out of his lungs; you look like a prisoner’s last meal, waiting to be devoured.

“On your knees.” he commands.

Not a second is put to waste. You begin undressing him, unbuckling the pants and aggressively pulling them down. Next come the boxers, and you are faced with-

Wow.

You mean this in the nicest way, but, what a dick.

He is already hard, the mushroomed tip angry and red, leaking a drop of precum begging to be tasted. The girth exceeds your expectation, already visualizing the delicious visual of your cunt stretched thin. He is going to reach places even Vlad the Impaler couldn’t; you are already brimming with anticipation for the final act.

And his thighs. Nothing angelic about them. Taut. Muscular. Sinewy. Something uncivilized in you wants them to trap your frame between them, caging you, pinning you down. You press kisses on his inner thigh, letting your tongue poke out when you hear him exhale. A sharp bite shocks Jungkook, but you only smirk.

“Wanted to do that since I saw you.”

The stare that meets you is practically challenging you to try that again, and perhaps reap some delicious consequences.

You bring yourself back, giving his cock the full attention that it deserves. Looking up, you see his half-lidded eyes, assertive and arresting, compelling you to go on.

You bring your palm up to him. He raised a brow in question.

“Spit for me.”

Jungkook almost busts his load when he hears you. “Fuck, so dirty.” he garbles out. Rolling his neck in an attempt to divert his blood, he takes your hand and drops a thick glob at the center of your palm.

A throaty moan arises from you, and his dick is harder than ever.

“Go on baby, show me you can suck dick like a champ.”

You give him a confident look; you’re about to rock his world. Starting with small licks, you tease the slit and taste the pre-cum lodged in it. Meanwhile, you work the spit along the shaft; you spit on it again, the original amount insufficient to cover the length. You can feel his dick twitching against your attention, eager to be sheathed. Interspersing with some long drags on the underside, you zero in on the pinched skin under the head.

Jungkook is staring at your jerking him off. The sight of you, clad in lingerie is blowing his mind. If that was not enough, the mirror in front is providing a sumptuous secondary perspective. The smooth stretch of your back, the swell of your ass, the panty fabric barely able to cover the expanse, everything on you is making him short circuit. Seeing you on your knees, your deferential nature stirs something in him. If he doesn’t control himself, he will bend you in half and ride you to sunrise. He doesn’t want to scare you, but fuck, his depraved early man instincts are telling him otherwise.

“What are you- ohhh, holy shi-”

Instead of slipping his cock fully into your mouth, you hold it up, and pay careful attention to his balls. Jungkook’s hands come to rest on your head, a telltale sign of his unraveling. With a smile, you let your tongue swipe through every nook and corner till they are coated in saliva.

“You think you’re such a fucking tease, ” He grabs you by your now unraveled tresses and pulls you back, “Ease up baby, your throat is in for a treat.”

In one quick swoop, he lodges himself at the base of your throat, provoking your gag reflex, but you restrain the urge to pull back. Breathing through your nose, you suck and swallow whatever you can; his girth isn't giving you much to work with.

Jungkook growls. “Such a tight fit. Like you’re meant to be like this. Forever.”

The last word slips out unwittingly.

Alarmed, his eyes flit down to gauge your response, but all you are doing is looking back at him.

Fuck, your dovelike eyes are captivating. They look so angelic, a complete contrast to the perverse posture you are in. Not an ounce of displeasure in response to his words. Pure, unadulterated affection for him. Only for him.

“God, you’re going to be the death of me.” Jungkook husks. “You’ll do anything for me, you said?”

Muffled whimpers impart your compliance, and you bob your head up and down for good measure. The tip of his cock hits every ridge of your throat, the vibration releasing more fluid down.

“Pleasure yourself, baby. Touch yourself, but don’t you cum.”

Your brow distresses further, a disgruntled whine leaving you and reverberating around him. Already so turned on, the lightest friction would make you combust.

Jungkook’s teeth clench. “Edge yourself for me, sweetie.”

It's like your body is tuned to his command. Slipping two fingers under the band, you part and slide them on either side of your throbbing nub. Despite you avoiding any pressure point that might push you over the edge, the pleasure threatens to tip you over.

You look over for his approval. Swallowing, he nods. Your self-stimulation is making him dizzy. It's time to get serious.

“Such a good girl. Don’t stop, okay? I’m going to fuck your throat raw.” Starting with mellow jerks, “Hope you don’t have to speak anytime tomorrow.” he rasps.

The carpeted floor grazing your knees only adds to the revelry. You’re not in control of yourself anymore. The back of your gullet is aching as Jungkook shoves into you again and again. An amalgamation of his salty juices and your dribble lewdly coats your chin and neck; you must look ravished. Everything with Jungkook feels augmented; every single motion of his making your sex clench.

He is close - you can feel his grip on your hair tightening.

“Can I cum on you?” words slither through his clamped teeth. You frantically nod.

With a loud grunt, he pulls you off and releases all over your chest, a stray pump landing on your chin. Thick liquid, dripping from your jaw onto your collarbones and breasts, the whole scene is filthy good. Your unfilled cunt is aching to be replete with the cum.

Post-orgasmic glow is dazzling on him--hair drenched in sweat, tufts sticking to his forehead. His breathing is heavy and resonant as dilated pupils take in your soaked state. Bending down, he crooks a finger under your chin, anchoring his attention on your dewy stare. The onyx embers in his eyes bore into yours, studying for any hesitation in them. A microscopic moment of tenderness, unspoken words exchange between you.

Satisfied to find only searing hunger, his digits collect the beads of cum on your jaw, pushing them back into your mouth. Your eyes roll skyward, relishing the briny taste, nearly asking him to do it again. Leaning further, he grabs the wrist of your hand that is thoughtlessly rubbing your sex - you didn’t even realize you were still doing it. You feel drained, like you orgasmed vicariously through him.

“My turn.” He wears a devilish expression on his archangel eyes.

Lips connect once again as he pulls you up. If he tastes himself, he is relishing it, with his tongue exploring the deep cavern. With wobbly ankles, you let him guide you to your bed, dropping on your back. He follows you, pouncing on you, plunging into your mouth again like a beast hungered. Bodies melting together like an icicle under the summer blaze, your hands hunt to frisk his skin. Realizing he is yet to undress, you yank at this t-shirt, attempting to liberate him from the offending fabric.

“Tsk, greedy.” he bit your ear, soothing the sting with a kiss.

“Cruel is what it is.” You huff, like everything he’s doing is not a blissful affair.

How do men do that? Violently ripping their shirt off and leaving a messy mop of hair in its wake, nevertheless looking like they could walk a runway the next instant. Jungkook was no exception. The moment he pulls his shirt off, you are rendered speechless.

Chiseled chest like the work of an artisan. Droplets of sweat race down the paths traced by the sculpted abs, an intense desire to taste them forming in you. He is a mesomorphic dream who puts Greek gods to shame. Swallowing, you let your hand trace the outline of his pecks, feeling him shudder against your touch.

“Jungkook, please.”

Who was he to deny you?

Leaning up to you with a wicked smirk, Jungkook drops a thick line of spit right on your hardened nipple. The concoction of his cum and spit soaks through the lacy material. A lone finger circles, avoiding the spot that requires the most attention. You arch your back, begging him for more, just more of anything. The wet fabric amplifies the emptiness in your cunt.

“Aww,” he coos, clearly amused by your neediness, “undo this for me, sweetness. Let me see you.”

Moving at lightning speed, you unhook the bra, swinging it away to a corner of the room.

“Oh no.” He mock-frowns, veins bulging on his arm as he controls himself. “Look at these tits, fuck.” Mind reeling with ideas, filthy ideas, of all the things he wants to do to you. “You’ve ruined everything else for me.”

You tremble. “Good, so have you. Want you for myself. Want you,” pulling him close, “to do your worst.” you end with a whisper.

Jungkook’s jaw tightens. “Careful what you ask for,” he grits before diving headfirst into your bosom.

He licks and laves and bites and laps--your breasts are on fire. Continuing his marking spree, new blemishes make an appearance on your torso. Nibbling on one nipple, he pinches the other; pulling moan after moan from you.

Your hips barely touch the bed, bucking up in response to Jungkook’s sinking teeth into your ample bust. He has decided to not leave an inch without his saliva, and like a man on a mission, covers every part with rapt attention.

“Yo- You don’t have to--oh holy fuck--you don’t have to, cover me in marks you kno--ohh my go-” The sentence is spastic, piercing mewls breaking your flow of speech and thought.

“These fucking tits,” roughly clasping your pert breast in his large palm, “they look so much better like this.” The proud smile he shows has not the slightest hint of regret.

Catching a break, he twiddles your nipples, letting his other hand sit on your covered sex. He is teasing you; you recognize that. Just giving you opportunities to disobey, to take all the pain he has to offer.

It’s a good thing you like the pain.

You slowly roll your hips, trying to grind against his palm, taking whatever help you can get.

A sharp smack lands on your clit, shooting your eyes open - you don’t even know when they closed. Jungkook’s hand is soothing the site of the blow, the pain converting to pleasure under his touch.

“Patience, sweetness,” the gravely whisper sending tingles down your spine, “such a good girl for me.”

You give him a slight nod - he smacks you again, once, twice, thrice, without a break. Your entrance is smarting, but you want to give him everything. Biting your lips to stop the labored moans escaping, you clench your eyes and savor the burn.

Your show of obedience has Jungkook’s heart thronging. Fuck, he was enjoying toying with you. Playing you like a fiddle. You produce every tone he desires in the form of wanton melodies, he wants to play them over and over again like his favorite song.

“How are we doing?” he asks, a shit-eating grin plastered on him. Before you could answer, his fingers shallowly enter your soaked pussy, still hampered by the cloth.

“You- fuck, you said I was the tease here?” Your hands are at his wrist, begging to pull the scrap of cloth aside and have his way.

He comes to face your sopping mound, pausing only to speak “Never said I wasn’t,” and starts pressing soft, feathery kisses. “That day, seeing you dripping in that towel, I dreamt of having these legs around me.”

“I swear, at least take it off - oh Jungkoo-”

Without warning, he kneads your ass and pushes you into his face.

You feel like you’ve been on the edge for hours. The suckle on your engorged clit along with the abrasion of the lace gets you so close. So damn close. So, so clo-

The tightness in your belly finally snaps and you howl, gushing your vat of arousal onto his face. The high was more intense than you had imagined, so high that you wonder if you will ever find your way back to reality. You feel like a rock in space, aimlessly floating in the vast nothingness.

You dimly notice Jungkook toying with the lacy hem of your panties, pulling it back to snap it against your hip. The sting is soon forgotten, along with your panties flung across the bed, as he parks himself back between your legs.

“You smell incredible.” He approves, taking a long whiff of your honeyed center. “Look at you, so messy.” He licks a long stripe along your crease. “Messy girl, I should clean you up.”

“Wait Jungkook-” you oppose, lids heaving in pleasure. “I need you inside me, please. I can’t take -oof”

Gnawing at your sodden folds, he let his nose press against your clit. “You’re so fucking tight, you think you can take me?” He shakes his head. “Gotta stretch you out, gotta make me fit.” He presses his tongue against your nub, feeling it throb in anticipation. “And I think you can give me one more.” He ends, before invading your drenched channel with two fingers. You are putting up with his torments the best you can; walls fluttering against his lips, legs entwined behind Jungkook’s back trapping him between your thighs.

“Ah! God - I, I can’t-” Your eyes are screwed shut, hands bunching the sheets in your grasp.

His fingers fluctuate between scissoring motions, their lengths opening you up for him and curling inside, fingertips finding the rough patch inside. He adds a third finger, pussy straining to accommodate them all. Your thighs clench in the burn, and he groans into your pussy at the pressure. Increasing the pace, he pumps into you harder and faster, sucking your puffy lips in tandem.

“Please, please, harder - let me cum - please oh go-”

“Fuck yeah baby, your pussy is just sucking me in. You like that? You like me shoving into your cunt?”

“Uungh yes yes I love it!”

“Doesn’t it hurt? Or are you such a slut for pain? Tell me, tell me you’re a pain slut.”

“Fuck, Jungkook, don’t you stop- I am! I am a pain slut! Your pain slut!”

“Goood girrrll,” he husks out. Even though he is taking charge, your words are what control him. “Only mine. My pain slut will come for me now.”

A spray of cum ejects out of you, coating Jungkook’s chest and inundating your legs. The coherent part in you recognizes that you just squirted, but the neanderthal side shuts all recognition of anything that is not Jungkook’s cock. Even after two climaxes, you are hungry to get more. More of him.

If you don’t fuck him now, you will lose your capability to reason.

Limbs still heavy and reeling from the ravaging, you pick your pieces and drag Jungkook to the headboard.

“I’m going to ride you.” you declare and straddle him.

Jungkook is staring fixedly at your still-leaking cunt. Running his tongue over his lower lip, and licking the remnant syrup of your release. You position yourself, letting the drippage fall directly on his erection. He twitches, eyes still feasting on the mess you are making.

Finding purchase on his shoulders, you lower yourself. Jungkook’s breath staggers as you drag your inner lips along his hard shaft. You repeat this motion till your fluids drip to his balls.

“Y/N, I swear to God, if you don’t stop with this-”

“You’ll do what?” you challenge, an eyebrow raised in response to his threat.

He grabs you by your waist, jerking you up before bringing you down on his dick. Your cunt, creamy from his earlier ministrations, gives no resistance to his hardness. His cock twitches inside as you bottom out. Pulling you closer, he bites your lip and tugs at it.

“I’ll do this.”

A sharp spank makes you clench around him, the supple flesh of your ass ricocheting in response.

“Go on baby, ride me.”

The low-grained command sets you in motion. Slowly gyrating your hips, you feel every ridge of this length inside. Jungkook’s grip on your waist tightens, and you’re sure you will see evidence of it tomorrow. Your grasp on his shoulders isn’t faring any better.

“You’re so tight, fuck, and so wet. Who made you like this, huh?” A second spank punctuating his question.

“Oh God, you-”, you barely manage to recognize your own voice, “You, Jungkook! Only you!”

“That’s fucking right, only me.”

Hips snapping, he meets you halfway. Both of you are lost in each other, lewd sounds of your skin slapping and juices quelching barely muffled by your desperate whines and moans of passion. Eyes locked in like magnets, neither of you could look away.

Jungkook pulls back a little, slapping your jiggling tit. Your sex clenches, and the following slap has you lodging yourself in the crook of his neck, searching for a reprieve.

“Want some help?”

One swift move and you are on your stomach, face pushed into a pillow, and ass out. A final spank lands right in the middle, and you can feel it pulsate everywhere. He pushes back into your glistening core, taking control of your pleasure and pain. One hand carding through the nape of your neck, pushing you down, the other hand grabbing your waist and setting the pace. The new angle hits deeper, you feel so full.

“Jungkoo--unghh I need to cum! Need to- umph- cum so bad!” You are wailing at this point, shame lying somewhere near your flung clothes.

“Fuck, babe, me too. Go ahead and play with yourself, nice and slow.”

It takes a few swipes for the tightness in you to detonate. Tears flood your face as you unravel, your orgasm crashing into you like waves of a tsunami. You clench tight, wetness flows out of your hole as Jungkook pumps in and out, chasing his high.

He comes undone soon after, ropes of his ejaculate filling your insides. He stays in, plugging you as if to not allow any of it out. But as his member softens, he gives in, turning you on your back to meet his face.

Butterfly-soft kisses are exchanged after the blazing encounter. He asks you if you’re okay between breaths, a tender murmur you almost miss, as if you weren’t screaming your lungs out moments ago. Nuzzling into his neck, you confirm.

A snort disrupts the silence. Looking up, you see Jungkook chuckling.

In response to your cocked eyebrow, he says “Want to talk about what a freak you are?”

“Want to talk about what a hypocrite you are?”

“Hey, you asked me to spit on you!”

You mock-gasp, hand on chest for the extra effect. “My breasts need medical attention after your attention! Freak!”

Laughter echoes in the room as you two tumble in the blankets, and you feel his release seeping out of you. Turning to him, you pout, “Your mess is leaking out of me.”

Jungkook gets up to leave the bed, and you expect a wet towel coming your way.

What you don’t expect is him parting your legs, gunmetal eyes following the rivulets escaping your abused hole.

“Your cunt smells so good with my cum on it,” he purrs.

He gathers the escaping thick liquid and pushes it back into your quivering core.

Jolting with oversensitivity, you try to stall him but he is fingering you with a vengeance. The ache and soreness soon dispel, bringing forth a new wave of ecstasy. His unrelenting stare concentrates on the mix of fluids on his fingers. With a few strokes on your sensitive bundle of nerves and fingers stuffed inside, you come again, legs shivering and pussy overflowing, his juices intermingled with yours.

You are dazed; you’ve lost track of everything. The room is spinning in front of you and your body feels like lead. All you can manage is to arch your neck, and plead, “No more, you freak.”

Jungkook giggles, eyes crinkling in good humor. Ah, the duality of this man is a force to reckon with. You can’t believe this is the same man that fucked you into your bed like a primordial beast. There’s no way you can move anytime soon.

After a clean-up interval, you are wrapped in each other's arms, melting into the embrace. His musky fragrance putting you at ease, you tuck your in the nook of his neck, basking in the aroma. Hands pressed against his broad chest, exuding warmth for you. His hand cradles your head, snuggling in closer till there is no space to cover. Sweet nothings whispered into each other’s lips, tender kisses exchanged in place of the scorching ones that had passed. You drift in and out of your slumber, fearing the sun would ascend too soon and break you apart.

A dim glow from the other end of the bed wakes you up. On turning you find Jungkook, dressed in his now-wrinkled clothes, seated on the edge. His gaze, pensive. You lay a hand on his thigh.

“Oh, did the light wake you?”

The alarm on his face makes you smile. “No, your absence did.”

The corners of his mouth turned up, eyeing you with softness.

“I have an early schedule. I didn’t want to wake you, but, ” he lets his palm rest on yours, “I also didn’t want to leave without it.”

Neither of you know how to walk away from this. The silence is deafening, unuttered sentiments hanging in the still air. Jungkook’s chest is heavy.

This is insane. He wants to lay you against a bed of flowers, treat you like the delicate petal you bear resemblance to, worship your body till the sun succumbs to your blazing passion. How is he to explain that his heart is beating through his chest for someone he knows for mere days? He rifles through his memories for a similar instance.

He finds none.

Maybe you don’t feel the same way. Maybe, you are blissfully unaware of the tumultuous emotions lurching in the pit of his belly. He can’t assume you will echo his lovesick needs, but he can’t let go.

You inch closer.

Fervid feelings die hard. He probes your eyes searching for an intensity matching his.

You let your lips convey the answer.

Passionate as ever, you draw him into the kiss. His lashes flutter against your rosy cheeks. At the moment, there is no dominance in him. Almost like his tongue, dragging across your swollen lips, is healing the brutality of last night. If you pull back, he comes after you; an incessant tug of war no player wants to win.

“Please Jungkook,” you choke between kisses, “Please tell me this isn’t the last of us.”

He is hovering on top of you, the galaxy in his eyes twinkling at your words.

“Please, I don’t want this to end.” You continue against his lips. Head versus heart, you fought a losing battle; how were you to stall the inevitable? Fueled, you plunge your tongue into him, determined to make your ardor known. The void of ferocity is filled with slow sensuality; like he is the sole reservoir to quench your thirst.

“Y/N”, he breathes out, “I feel like I know everything about you and nothing about you at the same time.” Resting your foreheads against one another, he continues. “I’m not about to let fate decide when we cross paths again.”

A grin finds your lips. “Destiny really pulled its weight here, didn’t it?”

He wordlessly nods, not wanting to break the tranquility in place. However, it is short-lived; his phone’s ringer makes sure of it.

“Yeah, I’ll be right down.” Something the speaker says turns Jungkook scarlet red. “I said I’ll be right there!” he yells before ending the call.

“The members are asking why I wasn’t in my room.” he clarifies, waggling his brows. You join his laughter, happy to have just the simple moment with him.

After exchanging numbers (and a photo for keepsake), Jungkook presses one last kiss, lips promising to find each other again. Somehow, you don’t say goodbye. You just stare at his disappearing body, confident that the next encounter is not far.

Jake is babbling about his night, how he managed to ditch the god-awful party and hang out with some overenthusiastic college-goers who paid for his drinks with their trust fund dough. This is usually the time you ask him if he’s proud of mooching off of children, but today his exaggerated narrative is cracking you up.

His forehead creases. “What’s up with you today? You haven’t vowed to skin me alive even once.”

“You like it when I threaten bodily harm?”

“I’m kinky like that.”

You just shrug. Erotic images make a fleeting appearance in your mind, but they are interrupted by your flight announcement.

“Aren’t you glad this is over? You can go back to overworking yourself in your office instead of a hotel!” Jake remarks, throwing his bag over his shoulder. “At least your back won’t break in the travel.”

Thinking over your experience in the city, you confess “Actually, I look forward to returning here.”

A thought slips in, curving your mouth into a smile. You quietly add,

“And yeah, my back was broken all right.”

Thank you for making it to the end! Please do let me know what you think!

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seongsangi · 4 years ago

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can’t keep my hands to myself (2)

pairing: johnny x reader x jaehyun

summary: what happens after that phone call with jaehyun?

word count: 4.3k

warnings: drinking (pls drink responsibly!!), threesome, voyeurism, dacryphilia, somnophilia absolute filth read to find out!!

author’s note: read part 1

The three of you spend the rest of the night drinking Jaehyun’s sorrows away. He thought this girl was really into him, but when he waited for an hour and was ghosted by her when he tried to call or text her, he knew it was too good to be true. Now here he is, drowning himself in peach soju. You and Johnny share glances at each other, wondering if he should slow down or just let him have his night.

“Anything we can do to help you feel better?” Johnny slightly nudges you with his elbow and you shove him, knowing exactly what he means but not while the poor man is almost drunk. You glance over at Jaehyun, letting your eyes roam his figure across from you. His long legs are clad in black jeans, thighs spread and looking like an invitation. He looks so damn good in these all black outfits, you just want to climb in his lap and –

“Can you get me another one? That’ll be good enough for me.” He takes his last swig of the bottle in his hand, setting it down on the floor. You get up from the couch, heading to the fridge for another. Johnny and Jaehyun follow your figure with their eyes, the short skirt doing wonders to show off your legs. Johnny doesn’t feel jealous at all that his best friend is staring down his girl. He would be lying if he said he didn’t notice the way you both steal glances at each other when you all hang out.

You come back with a bottle in hand, standing over Jaehyun and taking a couple swigs before handing it to him. “I don’t think you should drink all of that, Jae.”

“Don’t worry about me, sweetheart.” Jaehyun is now testing the waters himself. A small smile forms on your lips at the name, but you quickly try to cover it. Johnny reaches for your hand, tugging you into his lap. As Jaehyun reaches for the remote to find something to watch, you feel Johnny’s hand glide across the back of your neck, turning your head in his direction. He gives you a warm smile, squeezing your thigh. You mouth “what?” but he just glances over your shoulder before pressing his lips to yours. You can taste the soju on him, smiling into the kiss. When you try to pull away, he holds your head still, lips steadily moving against yours. He sighs, kissing you more fervently and pressing your body closer to him.

“Johnny, what the –” his lips are now attached to your neck, letting out a soft moan at his warm breath on your skin. Your eyes dart to Jaehyun, who is glued to the scene and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. His mind races back to the phone call from earlier.

Jaehyun was about to hang up when he thought he heard Johnny say something. He listened for a few seconds and realized Johnny wasn’t talking to him at all. Jaehyun was confused, did Johnny forget to hang up? Does he know he’s still on the call? Jaehyun felt like he was invading your privacy, but he was too intrigued by the sound of your moans to say the least. He figured he could listen just this once and never say anything about it. There was this unspoken attraction he had for you, but he would always respect your relationship with Johnny. Of course, he would never do anything about to jeopardize it, but he will admit he’s thought about you in more ways than one. Was that wrong of him? Fuck, he doesn’t know any more.

You muster up the strength to pull Johnny’s head away from your neck, asking him seriously, “What are you doing?” Johnny looks over to Jaehyun, who is running a hand through his hair and blushing red, from the alcohol or from what just happened, it’s hard to tell. “I’m just giving him a show. It seems he likes to watch, don’t you think?” You swear your heart is going to beat out of your chest as you watch Jaehyun bite his lip, eyes following Johnny’s hand as it travels underneath your skirt, pushing it up to expose more of your thigh. Your body is on fire now, the audience making your head spin with every touch Johnny leaves. Okay, you did pull that stunt over the phone, but you didn’t think things would progress this fast!

Johnny leans in close to your ear, telling you you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You want it so bad, but you need to hear Jaehyun say it too.

“Do you want to watch, Jae?” You call out to him, the question sending blood rushing to his member. “Yeah, I do, is that okay?” His voice is quiet, hard to hear almost. You core tingles at his confirmation, letting Johnny do whatever he wants with you as Jaehyun watches.

Jaehyun takes another sip from the bottle, letting the alcohol cloud his mind and lower his inhibitions. He’s waiting for someone to say something, to snap him out of this dream he must be having. He’s letting the scene before him unfold, lost in Johnny’s hands roaming your body and the way you react so sweetly to his touch. His pants are getting a little too tight for him, bulge growing at the sight of Johnny repositioning you on the edge of the couch. Johnny gets on his knees on the floor, keeping your legs spread. Jaehyun sucks in a deep breath at the sight of your panties being pushed to the side.

“Show him your pretty little pussy,” Johnny’s words make your core clench. This is all so new to you, you feel slightly embarrassed and want to close your legs but you can’t with Johnny’s grip on them. Your hands hesitantly move to spread your lips for the man across from you. He’s straining against his pants at the sight of your wetness, so close yet so far. Johnny hums, you’re such a good girl for him. He glides two fingers across your juices, slipping them in and stretching you out. You throw your head back in a string of moans, his tongue lapping at your sensitive nub. Jaehyun closes his eyes for a second, listening to your sweet moans and rubbing himself lightly.

Johnny adds a third and you swear you’re going to cry, his tongue on your clit and fingers hitting your spot with every thrust are too much. You lock eyes with Jaehyun, giving him your best seductive look, making his pants twitch. Your hips buck on their own, unable to stay still with Johnny’s ministrations. He’s so good at working your body, he knows you so well and uses it to his advantage. He pulls his fingers out, spreading your lips and focusing kitten licks on your clit. Your moans increase in pitch, the undivided attention to your clit driving you close to the edge.

“Baby, I’m gonna cum,” you hold his hand as you climax, spilling into his mouth and making a mess on the floor. He laps everything he can up, drawing out your intense orgasm. His tongue doesn’t stop even as you tell him it’s too much and you’re definitely crying now. Jaehyun almost feels bad for the overstimulation, but something in him lights up when he sees the tears streaming down your face. You look so pretty like this and he wants to see you ruined even more.

Johnny finally pulls away from your core, giving you a chance to collect yourself. You can’t even open your eyes and your legs are sore as hell from being held up for so long. You just want to go to sleep right here. Johnny laughs at your tired state as he cleans up, clearly too fucked out. “And that’s it for tonight, boys.” Johnny carries you to the bedroom, turning on the shower and leaving a hot and bothered Jaehyun all by himself.

The next few days, you’re too busy working and studying for an exam that you don’t get the chance to go over to Johnny’s place. Which may or may not be a good thing, you think you still need time to recover from what happened that night. Goddamn, that really happened, didn’t it? You know it was all mutual but you still can’t get it out of your head that it may have been a little too fast. Well, no point in dwelling over it. You’re spending the night at his place tonight so maybe there will be a chance for all of you to talk about it.

“I just, I don’t know, is it gonna make things weird between you guys now?” You ask Johnny, worrying about their friendship.

“Well, I don’t think it’s been weird since then. Unless he’s just really good at hiding it.”

Jaehyun actually doesn’t come home until you and Johnny fall asleep, getting caught up at work. He knows you’re spending the night tonight and was sort of hoping he didn’t run into you. He didn’t want you to think he was some creep who just liked to watch. To be honest, he didn’t really understand it himself either. It was also new to him, and he felt like he could trust you and Johnny and found himself enjoying it more than he thought. Maybe there will be another chance for all of you to talk about it.

The time reads 4:17 am and you carefully get out of bed, not trying to wake Johnny as you head to the kitchen. You almost screamed when you saw Jaehyun standing at the counter in the dark. “Oh my god, you scared me!” You grab the pitcher of water in front of him, pouring yourself a glass. You’re trying not to stare at him, the white shirt and gray sweats making your mind wander. He’s avoiding eye contact with you, looking at his glass of water. Okay, this might be a little awkward.

“How have you been?” you decide to ask, not sure what else to say. He tells you he’s been okay, working a lot these past couple days. You nod, making small conversation. There’s another awkward silence after that, and you’re about to bid him goodnight until he says something.

“Um, about the other night…” he trails, putting his hands in his pocket and leaning against the counter. You hope this doesn’t ruin anything between all three of you. “We don’t have to do it again if you don’t want to, Jae.” He quickly backtracks, “No, no, it’s not that. I mean, I liked it I just–” he stumbles over his words, trying to figure out how to say it. “I just don’t want you to think I’m weird or anything for liking it.” You reach out to place your hand on his arm, prompting him to look at you.

“Look, it’s safe to say we all enjoyed it so it’s not weird at all. Don’t worry about it too much.” He lets out a sigh of relief. “If you liked it, maybe we can do it again. But we’d have to ask Johnny first of course.” You give him a soft smile, not wanting him to feel like he should be embarrassed about it.

“Plus, I liked having you watch,” you say with a wink before heading back to Johnny’s room. “Goodnight, Jae.”

The next time you stay at Johnny’s place, the semester is over and it’s finally winter break. After a night of watching Christmas movies, you tell Johnny you’re going to bed. He wants to stay up and play some games with Jaehyun but you don’t have it in you to stay awake. They both share a look with each other, watching you saunter off to bed for the night. What you don’t know is they’ve got quite the surprise for you.

When a few hours have passed and they’re sure you’re asleep, Johnny carefully opens the door to his room with Jaehyun close behind. They’ve been talking about it all day, waiting for the right moment to make their move. Johnny recalls you mentioning the idea of being woken up to him in between your legs, the thought of it turns you on immensely. How can he say no to that?

He finds you laying on your side, curled up underneath the blanket. Jaehyun sits at the edge of the bed as Johnny comes around to you, towering over you and peeling the covers back slowly. You shift in bed as the covers are peeled off, now lying on your back. Johnny drags his fingertips up your legs, sending tingles throughout your body. You furrow your brows, it feels like something is tickling you. Johnny pauses for a bit, gauging your reaction before sitting down. He pushes your legs apart as far as he can without disturbing you, just enough so he can rub circles over your clit. He appreciates your lack of panties tonight, quickly finding the sensitive nub.

Your dream starts off innocent, cuddling with Johnny in bed, your head on his chest. Next thing you know, you’re straddling his hips and sliding your tongue into his mouth, fighting for dominance. He quickly flips you over and you wrap your legs around him, rubbing your clothed sex on his bulge. “Baby girl, just what do you think you’re doing?” His low voice sends shivers down your back, smirking against his lips. “Just want you to fuck me,” you peck a kiss to his lips, “please?” Your flimsy shorts are a mess, sticking uncomfortably to your skin, eager for Johnny’s touch where you need him most.

He tosses your shirt up, kissing down your torso as he presses his fingers harder to your clit. He can feel the wetness through your shorts, picking up the pace of his fingers to hear you moan for him. “Mmm, babe, that feels good” you pant, in the dream and in real life. Johnny feels a surge of pride hearing you talk about him in your sleep. Jaehyun is watching closely, wanting to touch you but he holds himself back. Johnny attaches his mouth to your nipple, swirling it around gently. You slightly arch your back, pushing your nipple further into his mouth. He’s surprised you haven’t woken up yet and decides to see how far he can go.

Johnny slips his fingers into your shorts, gathering your juices on his slender digits. You moan softly, this dream feels so real. You spread your legs subconsciously, imagining Johnny’s fingers sliding in and out of you. He smirks at your movements, taking the opportunity to give you what you want. Jaehyun shifts on the bed to get a better look at you, watching your breathing get faster as Johnny picks up the pace. Johnny’s thumb presses to your clit as he scissors you, your moans picking up. Your hips are moving against the bed, stirring out of your sleep at the warm feeling in your center. You haven’t had a wet dream in a while and this one is getting a little heated.

“Are you waking up, baby?” Johnny’s voice sounds like it’s right in your ear, coaxing you out of your sleep. His fingers are still moving slowly in you as your eyes flutter open, feeling a presence in bed with you. As soon as he sees your eyes open, his hand starts moving ruthlessly, catching you off guard.

“Fuck, Johnny wait,” your hands are grabbing the pillow underneath your head, squeezing for dear life. You turn to your right and Jaehyun looks in awe, practically drooling over you. You did not expect this at all and you feel yourself gushing at the thought of them waking you up. “You like the surprise?” Johnny asks as he kisses your inner thigh, pulling his fingers out. You hum in agreement, reaching your hand out to Jaehyun who seems to be sitting so far away.

“Did you like it?” You ask as he takes your hand, letting you pull him closer. You sit up on your knees, looking back and forth between Johnny and Jaehyun. You don’t have to say anything and Johnny already knows what you’re thinking. He scoots further back, giving you and Jaehyun some room. You’re still holding hands, tracing circles on his hand with your thumb. “I don’t want you to watch tonight.” You rest his hand on your thigh, encouraging him to touch you. He gives you a look like he’s asking you if you’re sure about this. “Don’t you want to touch me, Jae?” You beckon in your best sultry voice, driving him crazy.

He looks at Johnny once more, a small nod egging him on. He takes in a deep breath, giving your thigh a squeeze before he pushes your shoulders down, your back hitting the mattress with such force. He grabs your wrists to pin them above your head, kicking your legs apart to kneel in between them. He leans down to whisper in your ear, “Johnny tells me you like it rough?” You whimper when he pushes his knee against your core and pinches your nipple at the same time. Oh god, you didn’t think it’d be like this. The switch up in his demeanor has you excited for what’s to come.

You turn your head to look at Johnny, who is paying close attention to his girlfriend and best friend together. Jaehyun watched you two last time, so he doesn’t mind sitting back during this one. You’re getting extremely aroused thinking about all the things you want Jaehyun to do to you as Johnny watches. You wiggle your hips, asking Jaehyun to take your shorts off.

“Ask him nicely,” Johnny perks up. Jaehyun rolls your nipple between his fingers, pinching harder. “Pretty please, Jae, want you to touch me,” you roll your hips against his knee, showing him how needy you are. “You’re so hot, can’t wait to fuck you,” he slaps your thigh hard, stopping your hips from moving. He sits on his heels, inching your shorts down as you lift your hips. He lets go of your hands, sliding down to face your core. His hands grip the back of your knees, pushing your legs towards your chest. He flattens his tongue against your slit, dragging it up and down making your toes curl.

“Ohhh my goddd,” you whine, feeling your juices leaking onto the bed.

“You’re so wet sweetheart,” Jaehyun teases you, focusing his attention on your clit. You feel the warmth building in your stomach, grabbing the sheets so hard you think they’ll rip. He wraps his lips around your clit, licking and sucking in a way that makes your eyes roll back. You don’t even know how long his head was in between your legs for, but you feel your high approaching quickly. “I’m cumming,” you yell, clamping your legs around his head. He pries them back open with ease, lapping at your core. You feel something land on the bed next to you, but you’re too focused on the feeling of Jaehyun’s tongue to pay attention.

You quite literally scream when you feel the vibrator pressing against your clit, thrashing around on the bed as Jaehyun tries to hold you down. “I can’t, I can’t –” you whine, feeling a second one coming so soon.

“Yeah, you gonna cum for us? You like it when he touches you?” Johnny’s voice is right above you, stroking your hair away to see your face contorted in pleasure. Jaehyun slips the vibrator in you as Johnny slides his hand down your front, replacing the vibrator with his fingers on your clit. You scream so loud Johnny has to slap his hand over your mouth, squirting all over their fingers and making a mess on the sheets. Tears are forming in your eyes from the intensity of the orgasm, and they threaten to spill as their hands don’t stop. You’re a crying mess by the time they pull back, both enjoying your fucked out state a little too much.

"Squirted all over us baby. Look at the mess you made," Johnny mocks you, shoving his fingers in your mouth and you lick them clean, palming him through his sweats. You look at Jaehyun in between your legs, using your foot to do the same to him. They’re both rock hard and you want them in your mouth. You sit up on your knees, asking if you can suck them both off. Jaehyun comes around to the edge where Johnny is standing, who’s already pulling his sweats down. You reach for him, pumping him a few times before taking him down your throat, getting his dick wet. Jaehyun stares at you incredulously, watching you gag on Johnny. He gives your ass a hard slap, earning a glare from you for the sting. Johnny pulls your head away from him, shoving your face toward Jaehyun’s sweats. You bat your lashes at him, pleading with your eyes for him to take them off so you can finally get a taste of him.

They both have impressive lengths, wetness gushing to your center thinking about how good they’ll ruin you. You let out a long moan as you take Jaehyun in your mouth, the vibrations making him throw his head back. Johnny still has a grip on your hair, guiding your head along Jaehyun’s dick. You’re drooling on his dick, the sound of spit along with Jaehyun’s low groans filling the room. Your jaw is getting tired but you just can’t get enough.

“How do you want it, sweetheart?” You swear you’ll never get tired of that name coming from him. You look at Johnny, a sly smile on your lips as you ask, “Is it okay if Jaehyun fucks me first?” Johnny doesn’t say anything, just grabs your chin and leans down to your face. He tells you to stick your tongue out, letting a trail of spit fall from his mouth to yours. “Oh, that’s nasty,” Jaehyun bites his lip. You’re a little too excited when Johnny manhandles you, throwing you on your stomach and lifting your hips in the air. He climbs up the bed as Jaehyun gets into position behind you. He lines himself up with your core, gathering your slick on his tip. Now it’s Jaehyun’s turn to pull your hair, arching your back as you brace yourself with your hands. Johnny is front of you now, pumping himself as he Jaehyun slides right in.

“Fuck, so good," Jaehyun groans, bottoming out and earning a whimper from you at the full feeling. “Shit, so deep,” eyes glossing over as he finds his pace, fucking you dumb. Johnny caresses your cheek, slipping his thumb into your mouth in which you eagerly suck on. You close your eyes, letting Jaehyun’s dick take control of your body. You can feel every inch of him, sliding out slowly but slamming right back in. He holds you close to him, giving it to you just the way you want it. He moves his hips more fervently, increasing the pace and force of his thrusts. Your breasts bounce with each stroke, mouth left open with pathetic whines. Johnny loves to see you all fucked out, waiting patiently for his turn with you. "My pretty baby loves to be fucked, isn't that right?"

“Ah yes, it feels so so good, don’t stop please Jae.” Jaehyun grabs your throat, pulling your back to his chest. “I won’t stop until you cum all over me. Can you do that, sweetheart?” He fucks into you so hard, all you can manage to say is yes over and over, getting lost in your headspace. Johnny skillfully attacks your clit again with his fingers, and before you know it you’re cumming again. Jaehyun pulls out, your tight walls becoming too much for him. Johnny helps you ride out your high, smoothing his hand over your thigh to help you calm down. He picks up the vibrator, the sound of it making your nerves tingle.

“No, wait, that’s too much,” you try to beg him not to use it because you cannot handle that. He only gives a light chuckle before grabbing your waist to lay you down on your back. He puts one leg over his shoulder, sliding in and pressing the toy to your abused clit. You slap a hand over your own mouth, the lewd sounds from you making you embarrassed. Jaehyun has a better way of shutting you up. He kneels by your head, moving your hand and telling you to open up. You welcome him into your mouth, sliding your tongue along his member. You can’t help moaning on his dick when Johnny is fucking you so well.

“You love this like the little slut you are. Can’t get enough of two dicks.” Johnny puts a hand on your abdomen, pushing down and sliding into you slowly. “Can you feel me right here? You can barely take me baby girl.” Johnny knows what he’s doing and he does it so well. Jaehyun begins to thrust into your mouth, chasing his high. Every fiber in your being is stimulated, you can feel an orgasm harder than the other ones coming. Johnny slamming his hips into yours and the vibrations on your bundle of nerves is so overwhelming, you come undone with a loud cry, legs shaking uncontrollably.

Johnny throws the vibrator down, leaning down and keeping your leg on his shoulder, your walls getting unbelievably tight with each thrust. Not too long after, he’s painting your walls white, filling you up with his warm cum. Jaehyun quickly grabs your face, shoving into your mouth as he cums down your throat, making you swallow it all. You feel so worn out and used, Johnny collapsing on top of you. Jaehyun runs a hand through his hair, all sweaty from tonight’s events.

“Oh my god,” you laugh once you collect yourself. “I can’t believe we did that.”

“What, having regrets already?” Johnny muffles into your chest.

You shove him off of you, getting out of bed to grab a towel from the closet.

“I’ll be in the shower if anyone wants to join,” you tease, knowing they can’t keep their hands to themselves.

#nct smut #nct 127 smut #johnny smut #jaehyun smut #johnny fic #jaehyun fic #nct fic #nct johnny smut #nct jaehyun smut

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oingo233 · 4 years ago

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Rapture is a Boy (6)

Summary: Remus and you have always had a playful, loving relationship but his behavior around the full moon leads you to assume the worst. A huge fight ends with the two of you heartbroken. Will Remus reveal the truth behind his behavior? And will you still love him afterwards or has he truly lost you forever?

Young Remus Lupin x Reader (Neutral)

Warings: cussing in this one (words such as whore -but not in a negative way really, just the boys “joking” with one another- and other potty mouth words), mentions of cheating(but we all know the truth), overall angst and if I missed any pls let me know

Authors Note: I think we only have ONE more part left! So lets both rejoice and cry hahaha. This series has had an overwhelming response and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you guys as friends on here and supporters, like you light up my day and I love you so much. We recently hit 100 followers!!!! So watch out for a celebration post and what would you like to see for a celebration? Let me know. I LOVE YOU ALL MORE THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW! ANyways, enjoy reading my dears....

Word Count: 2.2k

Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven - Part Eight

Part Six

****Take a Chance on Me****

I haven’t seen Remus at all, in roughly a day and a half since the morning we broke up. He missed 1st period yesterday, and I make sure to avoid him in the halls. I fear that if I caught even a glimpse of him, that my mind would silence itself and my body would fall into his, searching for some type of happiness we once had together. Hoping it would return. He hasn’t been to lunches or dinners, never in the common room. Lily said she saw him often in the library, but refused to tell me more when I pressed for answers.

“You’re just hurting yourself (y/n). I know it’s hard, but you have to at least try to ease your mind of him, not search for more ways to think of him,” She says, not looking up from her homework at the breakfast table. We just sat down together in the great hall for breakfast, and I asked once again about Remus.

“I just want to know...I just- was he with her?” I ask dead out, despite the beating and grieving of my heart. She looks up at me with a soft smile.

“No, he wasn’t. I haven’t seen them together since the break up actually. Marlene says she heard her crying yesterday, just round 1st period.” She watches me take in this information with a slow nod. Though she has seen Remus, she has yet to speak to him, holding her own grudge for the way he treated me.

“Guess he's an all around grade A heartbreaker and prick,” I say, she nods with me. The mood turned somber at the current topic of conversation. I make quick work to change it, sick of the pitying looks and silence. “But aye, how’s James doing?” I smile, knowing she at least enjoys talking about him. But my smile fades quickly as hers turns into a deep frown.

“aven’t spoken to him since... just can’t believe he’d let Remus do such a thing. Or not tell me or you! They’re both daft pricks if ya ask me.” She grumbled, scowling as the doors burst open and as if we summoned the whole lot of them...The Marauders walked in.

First it was Sirius. He strut in with his dark hair bouncing around his shoulder, his Gryffindor tie is like a headband around his forehead which he usually only sports in the common room, teachers tell him way too often to put it back in order. “More of a hassle than a fashion statement during classes, really...” He always says. A tired yet trademark smirk written across his face at the piles of food before him that would easily stir anyone's mood. The smell alone was fantastic, and he rushed to his seat quickly and wasted no time in setting up his plate.

Then, as if fate wanted me to suffer, Remus walked in slowly. His head held high and shoulders pulled back, he is wearing a button up shirt that seemed rather bulky and his robes cascade behind him like rolling waves as he runs a hand through his slightly messy hair. His wide doe eyes find mine and in them the truth is revealed.

He is not as relaxed as the ease in his walk may suggest, he was not as happy. Deep within his eyes I seemed to get sucked into a whirlpool of heartbreaking sadness, anger and what seems to be a plead. Look at me, he pleads, try and understand me once again. I break away from the eye contact and time resumes itself. We are no longer lovers stuck in resign, no, we are now just stuck in our own minds.

I was so caught up in thought that I didn’t see the next two marauders walk through the door. Was Remus wearing sparkly eye shadow? Looks nice, I think, ugh no you don’t like cheating pigs (y/n), I tell myself. I question to myself and analyze our first encounter in two days so much that I miss the way Lily cleared her throat as Peter and James sat down in front of us. Scooting the giggling girls out of the way with their wiggling bums, just to fit. But I did not miss the way Lily’s hard voice rang out.

“What do you want?” She said. Shuffling nervously in her seat as James gives her a desperate and sad face, a frown tugging at his lips until he forces it into a smile.

“Nice to see you too, Evans,” He says, he turns to me and now both him and Peter were staring up at me. “How are you (y/n)?” Peter asks, the whole table could feel how hard he was bouncing his leg. I grit my teeth trying not to get annoyed with them, Lily was right, maybe they knew about Remus and Lucy and kept it from me. I raise a brow at the pair and smile sweetly.

“You here as a friend of mine, or a friend of Remus’s?” I ask, my tone dropping to sounding almost blunt and cold, but I keep smiling so to mask my true emotions. Disappointment and betrayal, all of course stemming from my sadness.

“Uh...” Peter hesitates for just one second too long, James jumps in.

“Here for you of course!” He smiles, bouncing in his seat once with anxiety, smiling into his hand that cupped his chin. Lily narrowed her eyes at him, he was too suspicious, trying too hard. Peter nods quickly but over his right shoulder I glance at a peeking Remus, who quickly turns away and curses under his breath.

“Bullshit.” I say. Laughing to hide my feeling of hurt. They wince with the realization that they’re worse liars than they thought. “But if you’re going to report this all to Remus, tell him he should check up on Lucy and any other, other partners he may have, instead of wondering about the one that hates his guts.” I continue casually, picking up my toast and biting into it cheerily.

“Well, as Remus’s friend, (y/n), I know that he has only ever loved you.” James says, pushing himself off the counter looking rather upset at my words. James nods at me before walking away, leaving Peter to stare at me blankly, as if trying to figure me out, then looks off sadly to the ground and gets up himself.

James’s words echo in my head. Remus has only ever loved me. I felt dizzy. None of this makes sense. Instead of trying to think through things, I let my mouth and emotions take over, I go to say something but my voice cracks. I clear my throat softly and hastily, before trying again.

“And don’t bother talking to me again unless it is as my friend. I miss you guys and you’re just breaking my heart too...” My voice became thick despite my anger, I was devastated at the lost of the boys friendship, and above all Remus. It only hurt more for them to try and use our friendship as some sort of way to console and heal Remus. What about me? I was their friend, was I not?

3rd POV

James swallows thickly, cheeks blushing at the hard glare Lily gave him. Both Peter and him slump in posture, seeming to drag themselves shamefully back to their seats with the other two boys. Peter wanted to cry, he never meant to hurt you. James wanted to cut off his own tongue, could he do anything right? The two boys continue to think badly of themselves, not even noticing the way Remus was chewing on the skin of his thumb and staring them down for answers and details.

“Well?” Remus says, pulling his thumb back as it began to bleed, filling his mouth with a rather unpleasant taste. Sirius watched as Remus’s face contorted with anxiety and impatience. “What they say?” He asked again, this time lightly bumping his knee into Peter’s who sat closest to him.

Peter only slumps further, sinking his spoon into his bowl of cereal. James is the one to finally answer him, Sirius and Remus lean closer as James begins to speak.

“Well. To sum it up for ya mate, you’re an asshole and so are we.” Remus and Sirius sink back, Remus stares at James until Peter speaks up.

“They said you...” He shakes his head, not wanting to say further when Remus already looked on the verge of madness. But then the sly satisfaction of repeating the words to Remus sank in, if Remus was just honest and didn’t ignore you every goddamn second then they all wouldn’t be in this whole mess and you would be feeling a lot happier. But it was ultimately the look on Remus’s desperate face that broke him. “They said you should check up on Lucy instead-”

“Or your other girlfriends, or boyfriends or other partner. As in you’re a whore” James adds both dully and trying to pull a humorous smile from the sullen group, he wanted to quickly take it back with the angry faces of all the boys looking back at him.

Peter gives one last glare to James before continuing “-and to not ask them because they...they don’t currently like you.” Peter finishes. James snorts.

“And that’s putting it lightly.” He says. Sirius ribs him and tries to gauge Remus’s reaction from across the table. When silence falls over them and Remus looks like he might throw up and cry like yesterday, Sirius begins to speak.

“Except Moony isn’t a whore,” Remus looks up at him almost hopefully, and Sirius continues, praying his speech is as encouraging as it is in his head. “But you were always a whore for (y/n), and they have always, and I mean always, been a whore for you too.” Remus releases the breath he was holding with a roll of his eyes, wanting to just tear their plans for this morning into shreds. Sirius deflates upon realizing his speech, was infact not at all very inspiring.

But none of the boys had any time to dwell on how colossally bad the morning is already going, instead their was an anxiety welling up in their bellies. They were going to pull a prank. Well, not really a prank, but something just as drastic and silly and surely the whole school will see. But unlike their other pranks, everyone will no without a doubt, that it will be them to blame. Yet it was something they had to do nonetheless, because it was more than a prank, it was a plan.

A plan to win you back.

Remus had the idea some time early yesterday, and spent the rest of his hours planning it to perfection, getting components ready, and of course convincing the boys to help. By the end of the day his hand was cramped and sore from writing all day, his stomach and eyes protesting for both food and sleep, he spent all day in the library getting everything ready.

He also owes Peter any chocolate he wants every time they go down to Hogsmeade now and to play fetch with Pads whenever Sirius wanted to get “more exercise than you ever will get in a lifetime. None of you will understand the wonder that is a dog playing fetch, AND I look majestic as hell.”

But James agreed to do it free of charge. He missed Lily dearly and wanted her back just as much as Remus was hoping to win you back. Of course, none of the boys really cared what they got out of it. They just wished to see you and Remus happy once again.

The boys all glance back at your table. You were hunched and your toast was untouched since being with James and Peter, bags heavy and prominent under your eyes and Lily, though trying to be cheerful for you, looked just as gloomily. James, Sirius, Peter and especially Remus felt absolutely awful. They felt as if heavy rocks of guilt and sadness was being laid upon their chest and they would soon be crushed to death.

“This better work...” James grumbles, dipping his fingers into his pockets and pulling out sparkly blue eye shadow. Quickly, as if scared to get caught, he slips his fingers past his glasses and decorated his eyes with the color.

Sirius grabbed the makeup next and even went as far as smearing it messily across his lips.

Peter went after, applying it to his cheeks like blush, and if you looked hard enough you’d see actual pink under the blue. They looked gorgeous, though some of the boys felt embarrassed(they all secretly enjoyed it though, Sirius the most). Girls were giggling beside them, James wanted to crawl under the table and hide.

Remus grabbed gold makeup from his own pocket, already having it on his lids he now placed it on his lips so he looked like both the David Bowie and ABBA that you liked and spoke so highly of. Taking a deep breath he turns to James.

“It will” he says. They all pocket their makeup as music begins to play softly, getting louder until levitating speakers they charmed earlier bursts through the door and blasts the great hall with ABBA ‘Take a Chance on Me”. The whole of the great hall fell silent as the song shook their breakfast plates and suddenly a button hit one kid in the head and robe was strewn across another. Everyone stared as The Marauders climbed atop the Gryffindor table...

Taglist:

@crazylokonugget @beyondprincess @1975weasley @nicodoesntexist @goto-hi-this-is-my-brain @yoyoitsbella @ftwert @sognatrice-as-a-hobby @dontjudgemyobsessionpls @blackpinkdolan @holdenviolet @katie-lupin05 @acoustic-archie

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thran-duils · 4 years ago

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Am I On the Screen? (P.2)

Title: Am I On the Screen? (Part 2) Pairing: Ransom Drysdale x Fem!Reader Summary: Hugh is a prick and the reader gets herself into trouble with him with her attitude. Hugh has the perfect plan to keep her in line though. Words: 2,116 Warnings: S M U T, language, dub-con, blackmail, masturbation, online sex Author’s Note: This is a duology! It is complete.

Part One || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

Hugh sat you in his lap, driving up into you, finding a new angle to hit your g spot.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

His smile was wolfish, sweat beading on his forehead.

Tits bouncing as he thrust up into you, you bit your bottom lip. You hated seeing that smile on his face and wished he had wanted to fuck you from behind. But he wanted to see it… he wanted to see you come undone. He was fucking you right too, and you were so close. It almost made up for the fact of who was buried inside you.

Hugh’s fingers found your clit in between the two of you, and you whimpered, moaning for him.

“Mhm, you dirty slut,” he jeered, his voice rasping. “Who does this pussy belong to?”

“You,” you gasped, not wanting him to stop as you ground yourself harder against his fingers. Your breath hitched as you tumbled down, thighs quivering.

Hugh’s chortle was dark and deep. His lips crashed into yours, his finger slipping away from your clit and his fingers digging into your hips as he gave a few more shallow thrusts. You were thankful the asshole had at least remembered to put on a condom.

<><><>

You answered the knock at your door and felt yourself deflate. Hugh was looming on the doorstep and moved past you before you had a chance to ask what he was doing there. Although, you had a good idea what it was. You had been ignoring him at work, only giving him clipped responses and paying attention to him only when absolutely necessary the past week. You were sure it was waning on him you were not bowing under his prowess. You were still angry with yourself for not only bending to his will on camera but allowing him into your home to finish himself. No matter how great both of those orgasms had been, they were tied to this egotistical prick.

He was carrying a gift bag you noticed as you closed the door and locked it.

“Hey, what are you—” you started to say when he began ascending the stairs without a word.

“I think you know exactly what I’m doing. I’m already half chubbed up just at the sight of you. Even in those horrendous clothes,” Hugh called over his shoulder.

Horrendous? You thought to yourself annoyed. It was just a baggy sweater and some pajama bottoms.

You followed him quickly up the stairs, making sure he did not go into your bedroom. He did not. He remembered what room your filming went on in. When you walked in after him, he tossed the gift basket onto the bed – must not be anything breakable. He shrugged his coat off, tossing it over the back of your chair.

“Mhm, you’ll give me a cut of profits for tonight.”

Confused, you threw your arms out. “You don’t need any money,” you told him slowly.

“And?”

“I am not giving you money. And I’m certainly not having sex with you on camera if that’s what you’re suggesting. Are you out of your mind?”

He was in front of you in a flash, setting you on edge. Hugh grabbed your wrist tightly when you tried to lean back. “Oh, you will. Because I’m gonna help you make a lot tonight. People love seeing a camgirl favorite fuck a fan. It won’t have to be live… we can blur out my face. Easy enough.”

Heat came to your cheeks and you tried to yank your wrist away from him, but he held tight.

“Hugh, let me go,” you said.

“I think you playing the little victim will look nice,” his breath hot on your neck. “Actually, it’s what I had planned. It’s like you’re reading my mind.”

“I’m not going to do that. Get out of my house.” You sounded braver than you felt.

“House? You live in a glorified apartment. Just because it has two floors—” Hugh was chuckling cruelly, and you cut him off.

“Did you not just hear me, you egotistical prick?”

Amusement gone in a second, Hugh slammed you up against the wall and you gasped in shock. His nose was inches from yours as he snarled, “Did you forget I’ve got you wrapped around my fucking finger, you little slut? I’ll leave when I’m good and goddamn ready. And that is going to be after I cum all over your ass.” You stared back at him, unable to form words, frightened to do so.

Hugh visibly relaxed and his hands fell. “Now, stop being an argumentative little bitch and go open my gift like a good girl.”

Stiffly, you moved away from him trying to hide your shaking hands and picked up the bag. You were stuck in this house with him; he was far stronger than you and he was right. He did have you wrapped and bent to his whims. You would do well to listen to what he wanted as long as he did not hurt you. And what he said was not wrong… fan fucking videos were popular. You could try to spin this positively for yourself.

You found an under bust corset and high waisted fishnet tights inside the bag. And upon digging deeper, a set of adjustable restraints.

“I’ll leave you to getting dressed. Chop chop,” Hugh told you nonchalantly – his ability to switch moods so quickly was truly unnerving – when he saw you had pulled everything out. “I’m gonna go make myself a drink. Unless you drank all my scotch?” You shook your head and he smirked, patting your cheek. “Perfect. Also, I love that dark berry lipstick.”

He left the room and your stared at the bag for a moment, thinking of what you had gotten yourself into. It took you a few moments, but you forced yourself to begin undressing yourself and getting up into his ‘gifts’. At your desk, you did simple makeup, putting the lipstick shade on he asked for.

You were unsure of what he wanted to do with the restraints, so you sat on the bed, scrolling through your phone uncomfortably in the corset and fishnets. When he appeared again, he had a drink in his hand – of course he had not brought you one or even offered to do so. He swirled the scotch in his glass, taking the sight of you in.

His eyes fell on the restraints and your stomach twisted at his smirk.

“Wrists out, precious,” he ordered you, snapping his fingers before he took a gulp of the scotch. You did as he asked, and he placed the glass down as he approached you. He was still fully clothed, but you knew that would not last long. Your wrists were bound in front of you and they dropped back to your lap. Hugh looked beside himself and you felt even more nervous knowing his mean streak. Why had you given in that easily?

“You’re even cuter like this. Tied up… scared,” Hugh breathed, his fingers running down your clavicle and onto the top of your breasts. You hated he knew you were frightened at the uncertainty of how far he was going to go; you did not like him having that power of you. He inhaled deeply, palming himself through his slacks, his eyes raking over you. His voice rumbled low, “I wanna break you, so, so badly.” He locked eyes with you and his smile was cruel, “And I’m going to, precious.”

He carried your camera over, turning it on, facing away from him. He slowly showed you, the new lingerie, the bondage at your wrists. You avoided looking into the camera, focusing on him instead. He was getting hot, basking in what he saw in front of him.

Moving back to your desk, next to the bed, he adjusted the camera to point mostly at you.

“Ass up,” he ordered.

You hesitated too long, and he rolled his eyes. He advanced on you quickly and tossed you over onto your stomach and landed a hard smack across your ass that was facing directly into the camera with him standing off to the side of the bed. You clenched which was a mistake because when he hit the second time, it hurt far worse. His fingers ghosted along your skin before he swung back, landing another hard hit. You yelped this time, and he gave a low, salacious moan at the sound of you. Another hit and your toes curled.

“Look at that perfect ass rippling under my hand,” he husked, his fingers back again touching you gently. You whimpered at the contact much to his amusement. “Oh, precious, you beg for this with those fuck me eyes. You ride cock so well and I’m gonna make sure you have a good one buried in you tonight.”

You heard his pants unzip, and you knew he was getting undressed.

His fingers were back on you and you clenched when you felt him yank at the fishnets. He tore a hole, exposing your sex and ass to the camera. He hummed in approval, his fingers dipping down from your asshole to your pussy, delving in between your lips. His fingers slipped inside you, one caressing your nub. You tried to lose yourself in the feeling, closing your eyes and riding his hand. Maybe this would make it easier. You had to play this off.

Hugh almost had you come undone on his hand before the camera before his fingers disappeared abruptly.

“Don’t make me toss you again,” Hugh warned. “Show them your pretty face.”

You did as he asked, ass in the air away from the camera now which gave him room to get up behind you and slip inside. You bit your bottom lip feeling him bottom out. Gripping the edge of your bed awkwardly through your tied hands, you bit your lip, grimacing against the pounding he was giving you. Broken moans fell from your lips. If Hugh wanted you to give him some of your tips from this video, you needed to make sure it was a good show.

Hugh’s arm wrapped around you and his fingers rubbed at your mouth, smearing your lipstick. His fingers slipped into your mouth, pulling back as he continued thrusting.

“Dirty, fucking whore,” he growled from behind you as he continued thrusting in, jolting you on the mattress unceremoniously. “Gonna milk the fuck out of me, aren’t you?”

You moaned in response, encouraging him further. His pelvis was bouncing off your ass he was buried so deep. Your tongue swirled around his fingers and he let out a strangled laugh, sounding lascivious. He muttered something incoherent as he quickened his pace.

When Hugh pulled out, his breath short and raspy. You heard his grunts as he worked himself to finish. His cum was warm, spurting on your ass cheeks.

“Oh, fuck yeah. Look at that… covered in my cum,” he rasped as the last of it dripped down. “Exactly how you should be. How I’m gonna make sure you stay.”

~~~

Tags: @coconutqueen21

#ransom drysdale x reader #dark!ransom drysdale #dark ransom drysdale #ransom drysdale fic #my shit

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rouiyan · 4 years ago

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𝘔𝘠 𝘗𝘜𝘊𝘒 𝘐𝘕 𝘠𝘖𝘜𝘙 𝘎𝘖𝘈𝘓 [ 𝘭.𝘥𝘩 ]

⧏ hyuck’s installment of the keep your cool collective ⧐

synopsis: you’ve decided that the boy in ‘66’ is yours.

✧ ice hockey player!hyuck x (fem.) reader x ice hockey player!jeno + best friend!renjun

✧ genres : fluff, minor angst ✧ word count : 2.3k ✧ disclaimer : swearing

✧ author’s note — finally my brain had the gall to pull through with this idea but i'm left with the realization that all my hyuck fics are just him simping for u.

hyuck internally sighs, his head ringing and ankles sore, as the buzzer goes off, signaling the end of the third round. he’s almost elated, even though he’s sure his team hasn’t won, by just the fact that the game is over. hyuck is by no means sick of ice hockey but lately, the mere idea of it drives him into exhaustion. as he turns to expect the disappointed stare of his coach, he’s surprised when he’s met with a halfhearted smirk. weird, the coach should know more than anyone how lazily this game had played out. but then, as an afterthought, he checks the scoreboard and realizes with an oh shit, that they were tied with the opposing team, somehow.

his line of vision is parting from the board when he makes unfortunate eye contact with the person entering the rink. your hair is pulled back with a pale pink scrunchie and your outfit is a certified mess of oversized hoodie and sweat shorts upon white sneakers. he can quite literally feel the heat that is quick to rush to his cheeks, unfailing to hide his flustered state. he knows he looks stupid but he still can't help but stare and ogle at new and blatant eye candy as she crosses the threshold into the cold space. half your figure is now covered by the wall that separates the stands with the rink though it doesn't matter because he's still equally enamoured by simply your presence.

"hyuck, why you staring at y/n?"

hyuck can only wince inwardly as he stutters out, "that's- that's y/n?" it seems unfair that renjun's been hoarding such a pretty specimen to himself. "like your best friend, y/n?"

"yeah, what about her?"

"br-bro, you never mentioned that she was pretty."

"hey, don't even think about it. you're the last possible person i'd set her up with. plus, she's with jeno, they went on a date after practice last time, remember?"

there's an underlying disappointment in donghyuck's tone when he's only able to produce a soft, "oh," because frankly he doesn't know why he's so worked up over someone who he's never even met and that's also dating one of his close teammates. amidst his confused trance, he almost fails to notice his coach call for a pre-game huddle.

he ends up tuning out most of it, now distracted by how jeno keeps glancing back at you and making funny faces, you returning them with the! cutest! little expressions he has ever had the pleasure to lay his eyes upon. the rest of the game is played out with enthusiasm on his part, even going so far as scoring in two more points. he's quick to doubt the truth but donghyuck knows that it's whoever that girl is in the front seats that's making him outdo himself.

the game ends and his team wins, claps and cheers at how the game had turned around in their favor, but donghyuck reverts into a sulky demeanor as soon as he's off the rink and into the locker rooms. he notices jeno, being quick and almost feisty with the other boys that are taking too long for his liking in hogging the showers. donghyuck assumes it has something to do with the (gorgeous, wtf) girl that's waiting on him for a date. hardly fair, he thinks, if only he'd met you earlier by chance, he knows he'd definitely have the ability to charm you out of your wits. after all, he's smart, his face is undeniably agreeable, his sense of humor is top notch, and well, what's not to like?

instead of getting closer to you as he so hoped he would, he ends up becoming more familiar with the routine disappointment, and yet delight, at seeing you show up after practices, games, and eventually, team gatherings outside the rink. he's okay with it, he thinks. but it becomes frequent, even, that you show up out of the blue, with the invitation from jeno, and he's starting to lose his cool when it comes to the simplest of interactions. being included in a conversation with you was no problem, as long as he wasn't talking. eye contact? bearable, but not for more than half a second. and the utmost unfortunate luck for the boy if you ever asked him to pass you a fork, or a spoon, or a goddamned napkin.

he's not so sure anymore, one sullen night, that he could ever make you his, even if he was gifted the chance. when you're not by jeno's side, you're by renjun's, and if that isn't telling enough about how uncomfy you feel around everyone else, he wouldn't know any better. but even laying within the deepest, darkest parts of night, the screen on his phone displaying your more recent instagram post of you on jeno's back, a sun setting beach painted behind the two of you, he finds his heart yearning to know more about you. he knows you're not one to reach out, to make friends unless in a situation that calls for it, so he supposes now is as good as a time as any to shoot his shot, at being friends.

he braves himself for this hefty task. his breaths are ragged and his heart is already hammering a deep crater inside his chest at just the thought of following through with his plan. his fingers are shaking and his pupils are twitting at about the same pace and it appears that none of his bodily functions seem to be within his control anymore. but before he can press the button, his door is thunked wide open with a hard force, the handle even going so far as to lodge itself neatly into the wall that's now been broken through. donghyuck's mouth is hanging ajar but he's barely surprised to see that the culprit of such heinous and costly action is jeno. lee jeno.

donghyuck makes swift and subtle actions to shove his phone underneath his pillow but when he takes a good look at the boy's face, he realizes that he didn't need to be so discrete in the first place. jeno's eyes are swollen, and not in the way that suggests he got into a big manly manly fight and came out the victor, but in the way that looks as if his three cats died, all at once, and he'd taken it upon himself to cry for each of their mothers respectively.

the same eyes rove about the room before settling on the bed, his body following suit but moving as if it were part of another entity entirely. the mattress sinks down low with his body weight and he repositions himself so that he's laying down comfortably, his legs still hung over and down the side. donghyuck can hear jeno's ragged breaths, not unlike his own a minute ago, and he wonders what hell of a day the boy had had to render him into this state of numbed consciousness. but before he can even form the question that sits at the edge of his mind, jeno's voice reverberates lowly in the silence of the room.

"she broke up with me," donghyuck blinks purposefully, "something 'bout how she thinks she might like someone else, fucking bastard."

"is she the bastard?" donghyuck tries to disassociate his feelings from his words and come across as...helpful in lifting his friend's mood.

jeno chuckles, "no, hyuck, she's not the bastard. bastard's the guy who has her heart. i'm glad she told me though, she's never been one to hide things."

"yeah, would've been worse if she dragged it on, huh."

"yeah, a lot worse."

donghyuck's voice almost gets caught within the confines of his rationality, "did she tell you who he- the bastard is?" he sighs inwardly, knowing that this was none of his business whatsoever, but the desire to know seeps into his thoughts.

jeno sighs as well, "no, not really. she said it was some boy on the team though, might even be you now that i think about it."

"oh," is, yet again, the only thing he is able to produce.

the new revelations seem to give life to donghyuck. the mere idea that there's a possibility of interest in his direction is something that he thrives off of. mundane tasks like washing the dishes are now enjoyable hobbies, no actual brain work, head empty, thoughts of you exclusively. when it comes to practice, you're no longer there, your presence reduced to hushed talk between the boys and renjun, asking him if you really are the reason jeno's been so out of it, letting easy pucks into the goal left and right. hyuck is relieved, though, that he gets a break, a step back to rethink his crazed emotions. maybe it really was just simple infatuation. maybe it was just because he hadn't gotten laid in awhile. or even just the fact that he's been hanging out with the boys too much and that the first girl he set his eyes on in days ultimately became the protagonist to his daydreams. hell, he is especially glad that you decided it wasn't worth showing your face at the rink for the time being for jeno would've been downright devastated.

that whole paragraph of feelings is bluntly disregarded and thrown off track as he enters the corner cafe a few blocks down from his house and is met with you waving your hand excitedly at him and motioning for him to sit with you. he doesn't hesitate, of course, but makes sure he takes slow and deliberate steps to the window booth you're sitting at just to make sure he at least gets in four deep breaths before he is inevitably subjected to not breathing in your presence.

"hyuck, it's been awhile, i hope this doesn't make you uncomfortable or anything," your face morphs into an expression of realization as it hits you that calling him over was entirely to satisfy your own hopes and dreams. the boy sitting across from you, smiling lightly, might as well be feigning a pleasant disposition, grossed out by the girl that dumped his friend just because she thought she was interested in someone else. by the end of this thought, your voice is reduced to a timid pitch, "you can leave if you want, it's all good."

"actually, i think that it'd be more uncomfortable for you if i left." he feels his heart constrict at the sight and the knowledge that his words enlightened your composure. you take it upon yourself to start some light conversation, not wanting to disclose the reason you'd called him over in the first place just yet. your heart picks up pace, rivaling hyuck's own, and you can't help but think of the sheer likeliness of the luck you'd just encountered. just as you decided to brave up for once and not take advantage of your best friend setting you up on one too many blind dates that were just, too artificial for you, the boy whom you had taken a liking for had shown up before your eyes, breezing through those glass doors as if it were a sign for you to just take charge.

"and i was telling him-"

"are you free friday?"

"what? oh, what?!"

"i'm asking if you're free friday."

"i- i mean yeah, i have practice at three, but i'm free afterwards."

"let's grab dinner together then."

"oh shoot, okay, like with the boys? 'cause i could ask them if they're down."

"no, i was hoping it could be just us. like a date."

"so, hold the fuck up, you're asking me out on a date?"

"yeah, why…? am i not allowed to do that? is going out on a date with me gonna break bro code or something?"

"n- no, nothing like that. it's just...you can't possibly be serious."

"oh, trust me, i'm dead serious."

"...holy shit, i'm in."

donghyuck fucks up big time at practice, his cheeks are way too hot and he's sweating gallons per second. his jaw is clenching and unclenching in hopes that the action might make him a little more attentive while on ice but instead, he finds his eyes roving over to your figure in the stands far more often than he'd like to admit. he thinks, no he hopes, that jeno is okay with the fact that you're not here for him but rather the 'boy on the team' he'd unknowingly referred to a few months back. hyuck knows, though, that renjun is definitely not okay with it, the aforementioned boy throwing just as many glares at hyuck as hyuck's many glances towards you.

practice is over long after he hoped it would be but you're patient and supportive nonetheless. his eyes crinkle and his smile widens as you sidle into him for warmth in the cool air of the ice rink. hyuck solves this by removing the hoodie from his own, accustomed body, and gently tugs it over your shivering one. he thinks he handles the wave of adoration that consumes him pretty well, even able to ease the corners of his lips down a tad bit. "you're cute," you pull at his cheeks and suddenly things are not so easy to handle.

donghyuck does eventually get used to all the sneaky shit you pull just to get his ears red and shy smile blossoming, but he knows he'll never get used to the sight of you in the stands, adorning his spare 66 jersey with everything else fading, and fading further away until it's just you and him, and him and you.

✧ end note — i hope you find someone that holds you in such high esteem as hyuck does in this fic, i'm sure you deserve it <3

#dreamwritersnet #neowritingsnet #nct-writers #nct haechan #haechanxreader #haechan fluff #haechan fics #nct scenarios #rouiyan fics #rouiyan writes

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problematicfavesareproblematic · 4 years ago

Text

Never Be Sorry, Not For This

It was just supposed to be two friends dancing. You should’ve known better: Eugene Roe + Dirty Jazz in a dark club on a hot Georgia night would be the death of you.

(i listened to Death Letter by Cassandra Wilson while writing this, in case you wanna feel the spice)

You giggle slightly when Gene’s hand presses hot on the middle of your back, the giggle graduating to an apologetic snicker when he shot you an impatient look.

“Really? Are you twelve?” Roe grumbles, holding your right hand up gently and keeping it close to their sides.

“And a half.” You wink, smirking as he rolls his eyes and shakes his head at you.

He looked stupidly handsome in the low light of the club, a light sheen of sweat on his skin catching the light and making him shine like some sort of angel.

Careful, a voice in your head whispers. Don’t read more into this than there is.

He had only brought you here because Bill fucking Guarnere was incapable on minding his own business and keeping his goddamn mouth shut for longer than two minutes and practically strong-armed Gene into inviting you.

During a night of Sobel-assigned kitchens inventory with Gene and Guarnere, Bill had asked you about your recent birthday- what you’d done, who you’d heard from, if you’d gotten anything.

“Paperwork, my dad and my sister and her family, and Sobel gave me an earful about controlling my facial expressions when he’s trying to establish his authority- Thanks for asking.”

Your answer was apparently incorrect, and Guarnere had turned to Gene and pointed at you with his thumb conspiratorial.

“That’s gotta be the saddest shit I’ve ever heard, eh Doc? Can’t let such an important day go to waste like that, can we, pal?”

Guarnere proceeded to bully Gene into inviting you to the jazz club the medic always flocked to on his weekend passes, the place he chose to escape to in lieu of the bar favored by most residents of Toccoa.

But before you’d had a chance to tell Bill to shut up and stop being weird, Gene had nodded and looked down at the inventory sheet in his hand.

“I mean, we could if you wanted to.”

You had a feeling that he was regretting extending the invitation now.

When the two of you had entered the club you’d suddenly realized that this wasn’t the traditional, big band jazz you’d been expecting.

Oh no, you were pretty sure Gene had accidentally taken you to a sex club of some kind- and you became even more sure the moment your eyes had adjusted to the darkness and you’d been able to make out your surroundings.

The singer on the stage was lit with a red light, voice smokey and seductive as she crooned a slow melody, eyes hazy as her hands trailed up and down the microphone’s stand in a clearly suggestive manner. There were two men with instruments behind her, the one with the drum looking at her silk-clad body like he meant to ravage it.

Maybe jazz means something different in the south?

Couples were writhing to the drums rhythm, bodies draped over each other like some kind of Rodinian menagerie.

Now, you were pretty confident in your capabilities as both a soldier and a human woman- you wouldn’t have gotten this far if you hadn’t been able to trust yourself and what you could handle.

And you knew for a fact that you were incapable of pulling this off.

Now, Gene was a patient man, but you could see in the set of his jaw he was starting to get frustrated.

I don’t blame him, I’m acting like I’ve never been alone with a boy before.

Clearing your throat, you bite the inside of your cheek to try and get your shit together.

He’s trying to do something nice for you and you’re ruining it….

”I’ll stop, I promise.” you plead, ducking your head to try and catch his gaze. “I’m just nervous, give me a break…”

“You’ve literally run out in front of a moving plane to get a piece of debris off a runway ” he interrupts you like you hadn’t been talking. “You stole Sobel’s car—”

“At least if those things went wrong I would’ve just been killed.”

Eugene snorts at that, and you hear him mutter something to himself in French.

“And now?” He asks, tilting his head towards the band on the stage and the other dancers around you . “You think this is worse?”

You fix him with a look of shock that you know will make him laugh again. “Death over humiliation, every time! Obviously. What sort of question is that? C’mon Genie—”

“I know you know how to dance. I’ve seen you and Nixon dance at Malarkey’s birthday dinner in last July—”

You cringed internally. You’d forgotten there had been witnesses to that.

“Ok, first off,” you tap one of your fingers against his shoulder for emphasis. “that only happened because I lost a bet with Lewis. And to be clear-I know how to ballroom dance, and that’s different because the whole point is to be rigid and straight and precise. This is….proving to be a challenge.”

You’d always been good at those sorts of things- order and rigidity and accuracy. You were used to knowing what was expected of you and how you measured up to those expectations. But you were going into this completely unprepared. You hated it.

“Just think of this as a basic waltz step, just slower.” Gene supplied, and when you started to fall into the familiar step he immediately made it clear that he was going to be dictating the pace, meeting your quirked brow with one of his own.

“Much slower. Glacial. Frozen molasses sliding down a flat hill—” You chide lightly, trying to disguise the waiver of apprehension in your voice.

“I don’t think that’s a phrase. But yes- that slow.”

You sigh, letting him lead you in an almost unbearably slow box step, letting him take you through five box-steps before huffing and hooking your chin over his shoulder and rest your head there, groaning melodramatically like you were in pain.

“This is impractically slow.” you lament. “It doesn’t look or feel right—”

With a quick move of his arm he presses you closer into his chest, knocking you slightly off balance before moving you so his thigh is wedged between your legs.

You flush at what you assumed was a mistake on his part, and when you go to step back down from his thigh he moves with you and holds you in place.

Eugene Roe, you saucy boy.

“Gotta let me have some of your weight. That’s why it feels like you’re doing it wrong….”

His voice is soft as stone, and you know he can feel your breath catch in your throat. “C’mon, mon cher- I got you.”

You’re suddenly very glad that he's pulled you so close because you don’t have to hide the scarlet blush on your cheeks at the imploring tone in his voice.

It made you want to trust him. It made you want him, period.

Full stop.

It’s dancing. People dance. Friends dance, it doesn’t mean anything unless you want it to.

Unless you let it.

You take a deep breath and let your knees bend slightly, allowing your hips to slot together and your heart thud against his.

Just as he promised, he keeps a hold on you, the arm around your waist like a belt holding the two of you together, and your ribs jump in a quick inhale as his fingers curl around your waist.

If he notices your reaction, he’s kind enough not to mention it.

“Good,” he says under his breath, and you feel him nodding against your hair. “That’s good.”

Good God, had his voice always been so low? Fuck he was good at this….

You hmm in reply, your self-consciousness put on the back burner in order to cope with the absolute burning electric currents seeming to run through your body, just beneath your skin.

You’ve never been so overwhelmed by another person, let alone some boy as you felt at this moment in Eugene Roe’s arms- you couldn’t so much as breathe without him knowing, each inhale bringing with it the sweet, clean smell of the aftershave you couldn’t quite identify and the salt of his skin.

The steps of the waltz have melted into a rhythmic sway of your bodies, shifting weight from the ball of one foot to the other in time with Gene’s lead.

It’s everything you can do not to shake as his thigh flexes between your legs, your sex rubbing agianst it deliciously every so often and making you feel stupid with longing.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, and you realize that you’ve been holding your breath the whole time, a distracted chuckle escaping your lips before your nod softly.

“Yeah, course.” You wrap an arm around his shoulder and sway with him, giving the hand holding yours a quick squeeze of reassurance. “You?”

You feel him nod. “Yeah, me too.”

You hum, letting your eyes drift closed as you try to think about keeping your breathing even and touch light.

Which was proving harder than you’d anticipated— the slow curling beat of the new song beginning and it’s rumbling melody settling over your heads like the foreboding clouds of a storm that neither of you seemed too interested in seeking shelter from.

This whole place could burn down and all I’d see is him

After a few more moments you feel the hand at your back begin to knead at the knots along your spine, strong fingers rolling like revered thunder against your tense muscles.

“Give me some more,” he quietly demands. “You need to lean on me more….you’re still too tense—” and you bend your knees a bit so you can feel the pressure of his thigh where you’re throbbing for him the most.

“Shhhhhhiiiiiit…” he hisses quietly, almost to himself.

“Eugene,” you breathe before you can stop yourself, titling your head so your temples press together. “ We, uh…..We said we wanted to go by eleven...”

Your reminder is purely for show, arousal hot in your chest and stomach.

When he hums in acknowledgement, you can hear the lack of intention behind it. The idea of separating from this man made you feel cold—a prospect you found unbearable despite the heat making your hair stick to the back of your neck.

Staying, we’re going to stay.

Part of this feels inevitable, like the two of you had always been destined to end in this sinfully filthy embrace with nearly every single part of your bodies touching, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to curse the humidity you so loathed.

A whimper escapes your throat when you catch your clothed clit on some bunched fabric from the leg of his pants, and his arms abandon their dancing position to wrap around your torso and smooth his hands up and down your back

“Like this, Doc?” you can’t help but whisper, sighing prettily when his grip digs into the meat of your shoulder blades.

You know you aren’t dancing anymore, haven’t been dancing for a while. You feel your hips jump against his, a low groan rumbling in his chest as one of his hands flashes down to squeeze at your ass.

“Fuck darlin’....”

You turn your head so your lips are at his ear, eyes nearly rolling back in your head at the sinful roll of his hips as he drops a bit lower, a growl in his chest at the breathy way you gasp his name.

“I’m sorry” he’s whispering. “I’m sorry—”

You know what he’s apologizing for.

He thinks he’s confirming Sobel’s horrible accusations— that you’re nothing more than a warm body in the eyes of the men of Easy Company.

Their CO had a special place in his heart for taking the time to remind you that you were a woman and insinuate that you were nothing more than a barrack whore who was a pretty good shot on a rifle.

“Even pious Winters seems to find you distracting, Miss Y/N. Maybe we should send you ahead of the pack to give the Krauts something to enjoy before we show up.”

“Don’t be sorry,” you shake your head and bring one hand up to lightly touch his cheek, voice thick in your throat. “Never be sorry. Not for this— Shit, Gene....”

One of Gene’s hands slid up your neck and into your hair, holding your head as he turned to look at you, pupils blown wide beneath heavily lidded eyes.

You look at his lips, bringing your thumb over to smooth the furrow in his brow.

“Never?” he asks, and with one final look into his eyes you shake your head.

“Never.” you hear yourself say,

You kiss the corner of his mouth first, not wanting to rush him, still worried that (somehow) you were misreading his intentions.

As if he wasn't gyrating his hips with you in a way so dirty that you were surprised you hadn’t been asked to leave. As if you couldn’t feel the ghost of his hard cock against your hip….

Apparently Gene thought you were now the one moving too slowly, because he uses his hand in your hair to turn your mouth to his and kiss the breath from your lungs.

His lips taste like whiskey and a tiny bit like the candied pecans you’d brought him as a thank you for taking you out.

You sighed against his mouth as you slid one of your hands down his chest, fisting his shirt as his tongue parts the seam of your lips and deepens the kiss.

“Embrasse-moi (kiss me),” he mumbles between the kisses he plucked from your lips. “Je pense toujours à toi, Je ne peux pas vivre sans toi….tu as besoin de savoir que (I always think about you, I can’t live without you. You need to know that.).”

You’re french is lackluster at best, but something in the way he’s saying the words that makes you feel as if he’s being unbearably sincere in whatever it is he’s telling you.

“I dont…” you begin, but then something wicked and heavy settles in your lower belly that has you pulling back enough that you can look him in the eye.

HIs lips are pink and swollen, and you nearly forget what you wanted to tell him.

Debauched, absolutely lewd and lustful.

Your hands find his and with a reassuring nodyou put his hands on your hip and thigh, another curse slipping past his lips as his fingers bunched the soft fabric of your skirt in his hands.

“Show me what you said.” You know you’ve said it like a command but you’ve never felt more less in control in your entire life. “Please, Eugene—”

He nods solemnly, and when he replies you get the feeling he’s making you a deeper promise than you are aware of.

“I will. I promise.”

and he does.

(*throws fic at you and runs away* than you for reading bYE (p2?))

#band of brothers x reader #band of brothers imagine #eugene roe x reader #it's vv bad but I'll just add it to the pile of already burning garbage pile that is my bibliography #idk if anyone wants to be tagged but if you so for some reason let a sister know

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biaswreckingfics · 4 years ago

Text

No Limits: Part 8

Author: biaswreckingfics

Genre: Mafia AU - Warnings? Everything that goes on in a mafia AU

Word Count: 4.2k

Previous Chapter

Sehun's POV

Sehun could feel it the moment somebody had started following him. He didn't know how, but he assumed it was because of his prior training. He was already on edge thanks to his suicidal mission to help EXO, and he definitely did not need another person following him. He barely managed to get rid of the Baem member that had been following him.

Was it a coincidence that just minutes after he drops off his note to EXO someone had started following him? Could it be a member of EXO? Or did the Baem send more than one person to watch him?

He glances behind him to see who it was that was setting off his alarms. He saw workers, families, kids... and a girl running full force toward him. It couldn't be her though, could it? Why would a girl be following him, and why would she make it that obvious?

Still, the closer you got to him, the more his hackles raised. Something wasn't right.

He ducks around the next corner, which thankfully leads him to a nearly empty street, and comes to a stop. He readies himself for you to come around the corner, and it wasn't long until you did.

You came around the corner so fast, if he hadn't been prepared, you would've both been on the ground. Instead, you run directly into him and then step back with wide eyes. You clearly hadn't been expecting him.

He takes advantage of your disorientation and quickly wraps his hand around your throat. Surprise swept through your face before confusion and fear followed. It took only a couple of seconds for you to reach for his hand and attempt to pull him off of you.

"Who are you?" Sehun growls out.

He could tell you were trying to answer him or maybe trying to breathe because you looked like a gaping fish. A part of him felt bad for doing this, but he needed to find out who you were and fast. There was no time for games.

You were stronger than you looked, and his hand on you started to loosen, so he quickly throws you up against the brick wall next to him and brings his other hand up to your throat.

"Why are you following me?"

The fear on your face grows as your hands claw desperately at his. Sehun pushed away the guilt and worry he was beginning to feel and focuses on your hand reaching for his. There was something... oddly familiar about them...

His hold loosens minutely, as he stares at them, almost mesmerized. That annoying alarm in his head begins going off, just like it did when he remembered those numbers and the P.O. box... Something wasn't right...

"Sehun..."

You gasp out his name and startle him for a second. He looks back at your eyes, and he can tell you're beginning to lose consciousness. The fight your hands held was dimming, and your actions were slowing. His eyes are unwillingly drawn back to your hands, and suddenly he's transported to a different time and space.

He was standing at a sink... terrified thoughts about losing someone ran through his head... His hands were covered in blood that wasn't his... Someone was gently washing that blood away from his hands... He was feeling whatever had happened was all his fault, and he was barely holding on to his cool.

The memory became even more vivid as he could hear the worried voices of his brothers behind him, murmuring about Jongin. He remembered staring at the hands that washed the blood from his, and with a jolt, he realizes that those exact hands were weakly grabbing at his right now.

He slams back into the present and looks up at your face wildly. It was you. You were the one washing the blood from his hands in that memory... He knew you.

He let's go of you in shock and then dazedly watches as you drop to the ground like a doll. You immediately begin drawing in deep breaths and coughing as the air passes through your slightly damaged throat but even as you struggle to catch your breath, you attempt to stand back up.

Sehun drops down to your level and pushes down on your shoulders gently. "Don't try to stand up yet. You need a minute to recuperate."

You slowly nod as your rub your hands along your sore neck. You cautiously meet his gaze and search his face in confusion. Sehun avoids your scrutiny and glances down at his hands on your shoulder. With a shiver, he removes his touch from you and stares at his hands. He had just tried to kill you with them. He shouldn't be touching you in an attempt to comfort you with them.

Once you're able to breathe normally, you attempt to say his name, but he quickly shakes his head. It sounded like your throat was full of rocks, and it sounded very painful.

A wave of sadness overcomes him at the sound. He did this to you. He caused someone, that clearly cared for him, pain.

"It's me..." You cough out, even though Sehun tries to get you to stop. "It's Y/N."

The name sounds vaguely familiar, and while everything in him told him he could trust you, he still couldn't remember who you were.

It all clicked a moment later when he recalled the memory he had just had. Something had happened to Jongin... a member of EXO... and in those thoughts, he referred to EXO as his brothers... A moment later, your name ran through his head, and it dawned on him that you were the leader's sister.

"Y/N..." He quietly says, testing the name out like it's a new word.

What did all this mean? Why was he with EXO? Why was the leader's sister washing blood from his hands? Why did he care about something happening to Jongin?

Unless...

No... It was too far-fetched, wasn't it? Then again, with everything he was beginning to remember and what he had overheard the Baem leaders talking about... Maybe it wasn't...

Had the Baem been lying to him all this time?

Was he actually a member of their rival group? Was he a member of EXO?

He's brought back to the present by your panicked voice as you speak his name over and over again. He looks down at you as you get into a kneeling position across from him, almost like you're about to plead with him.

"Where have you been, Sehun?"

He watches your reaction closely as he responds. "I've been with the Baem..."

You close your eyes as a look of pain crosses your face, but then you open them again and meet his gaze. "Have they hurt you? Are you okay?"

He meets your questions with a look of confusion. He wouldn't even know how to begin to describe his thoughts to you.

"But if the Baem have you, how are you outside and alone right now?" You ask him in clear confusion as you look over his body for what he would assume were marks or wounds.

"I'm not alone... There are others here."

Panic washes over your face as you look over your shoulder and at the surrounding area. You quickly get up to your feet, pulling Sehun up with you. "We've got to go."

"I can't," he says as he stops you from pulling him back around the corner.

You stop and turn around to face him with an incredulous look. "What do you mean you can't?"

You stare at him like he's lost his damn mind... and he has.

"What are you talking about? You have to come home! To EXO. To Chanyeol. He's a fucking wreck without you, Sehun. He needs you to come back. We all do."

He can hear the sincerity in your words, and he knows you're telling him the truth, but he was so goddamned confused by everything. He didn't know what way was up or down at this point.

"When was the last time you saw me?" He curiously asks.

You meet his stare, and he can see the denial in your eyes. You knew something was seriously wrong here, but you didn't want to believe what you're brain was telling you. That Sehun had forgotten all about you and EXO.

"At the warehouse, remember? You were saving me... The Baem had kidnapped me..." Acceptance begins growing on your features as you quietly finish. "But you don't remember, do you?"

Sehun slowly shakes his head, and you gradually look down at the ground in devastation. The want to comfort you rises, but he makes no moves. He feels like he should apologize for not remembering, but he wasn't sure it would do any good.

Before either of you can say another word, he hears it... the call signal.

The Baem were coming.

He quickly grabs your arm and pulls you further down the block. You almost drag behind him at the suddenness, but your feet quickly catch up.

"Where are we going?"

"You need to hide." He responds, pulling up short when he notices an alley to his right.

He spots a couple of metal dumpsters and pushes you toward them, but you spin back around and immediately question him.

"Why am I hiding?"

"The Baem are here. They're signaling for me right now. You need to hide." He quickly tells you as he points towards the dumpsters.

Thankfully, you immediately get the hint and sprint to hide behind one of the giant metal bins. Once Sehun makes sure he can't see you, he walks back out of the alley and heads toward the whistling that's grown exponentially louder.

He tries to calm his racing heart and puts a causal mask back over his face. His thoughts, on the other hand, were frantic. Not only did he hope and pray that you stayed hidden, but now he had to not freak out because of the two things he had just learned.

He was not a Baem member, and he sure as hell didn't belong with them.

Y/N's POV

You stayed hidden behind the giant garbage bin as your thoughts tripped over themselves. What in the actual fuck was going on?

You steady your breathing and try to listen for any sounds, but the alley was like a wind tunnel. Noise traveled in from both entrances, and cars masked the sounds the pedestrians made.

Your throat fucking hurt and your body wanted to slump against the brick wall behind you in exhaustion but the alley walls were coated in a multitude of substances, none of which you wanted to touch, and the garbage bin was no better.

You drop down into a crouch and run your fingers through your hair as your mind still tries to process the situation. Sehun had no freaking clue who you were. There was absolutely zero recollection toward you or any of the words you had said to him. On top of that, he tried to fucking kill you. Even more, he was working with the Baem?!

What were they telling him? How were they able to keep this charade up? ... How were you going to get him back?

But... he couldn't be all the way gone... He knew enough to hide you from the Baem and to send EXO important information on them... and there was a small spark behind his eyes when you mentioned EXO and Chanyeol but maybe that was an illusion due to the lightheadedness you felt after being fucking strangled.

There was a way to get him back. You just had to figure out how.

After a few more minutes, you stand back up and cautiously make your way back down the alley. Once you emerge back onto the sidewalk, you suddenly feel like you're in a liminal space, like you had just walked out of a movie theater after being transported to another world.

After getting to the end of the block, you can no longer keep up the slow, cautious pace, and the need to get back to Minseok was almost unbearable, so you break out in a run. The looks the other people walking on the sidewalk threw at you didn't phase you one bit.

As soon as the car was in sight, you spot Minseok pacing frantically next to it while shouting orders at two of his men who waited next to it. It's only a couple of seconds later when one of his men notices you coming up the block and points you out to him.

Minseok spins around to look at you, and his blazing eyes cause you to slow down your pace. Oh... he was pissed, and you were about to be in so much trouble for just abandoning the vehicle and taking off by yourself.

He immediately begins walking towards you, shouting, "What the fuck were you thinking?!"

People around you look over curiously, and Minseok snaps his head toward them.

"Can I help you?!"

You quickly reach him and grab his arm before he can draw more attention to the two of you.

"You can be pissed at me all you want, but we need to get back to the house. Now."

"Jesus Christ, what happened to your voice?" He immediately questions, concern taking over the anger he once felt.

He searches your face for an answer before his eyes make their way down to your neck. He pauses as he looks at it, and then his hand slowly goes up like he wants to touch it to get a better look, but decides against it. You close your eyes and figure out exactly what he was seeing. Sehun must've left marks...

"What the hell happened?" He lowly asks.

"I don't know if you'd believe me if I told you..."

"Your neck is turning fucking purple, so you better tell me something."

You sigh and bring your hand up to rub your sore neck. You could only imagine the reaction your brother was going to have.

"I saw Sehun."

Minseok's eyes widen into saucers, and he starts throwing a million questions at you. Where? With who? Why wasn't he with you? It was all too much.

You throw your hands up in front of you in a stop motion and snap Minseok's name to get him to stop talking. Once he quiets down, you fill him in on everything that happened and what you suspected was happening. Minseok looked like he wanted to interrupt you multiple times, but he managed to hold everything in.

One of his men steps up to the two of you and gestures toward the vehicle with his head. "I don't think you should be having this conversation on the street."

In the excitement and shock of what happened, both you and Minseok had forgotten all of the rules in place to keep EXO safe and you guiltily look around to take in your surroundings before the two of you head back to the vehicles with his men following closely behind.

As you get into the car, you can't help but ask the one question on your mind. "Do you believe me?"

Minseok sighs and crumples back into the driver seat, then reaches his hand into his pant pocket and pulls out a slip of paper. He hands it over to you and turns his head to see your reaction, while saying, "I do."

You unfold the slip of paper and take in the string of numbers before you. 1248-94.

"What is it?"

"That," Minseok says while turning the car on and shifting the gear into drive, "is Sehun's emergency code."

The two of you speed home as you discuss what all of this was supposed to mean. Sehun had no memory of you or apparently who he was, but he could remember random numbers? He was working with the Baem, but he also hid you from them? You pondered and theorized the entire ride home until Minseok killed the engine in the driveway of the compound.

The two of you get out and spot Jongin and Baekhyun a little farther up ahead. You ignore the pang you feel in your heart as you see Baekhyun. Those feelings would have to wait. There were more important things going on.

"I thought all you had to do was check a box?" Jongin jokes. "Did you guys get lost on the way home?"

Neither you nor Minseok laughs as you approach the duo, and Baekhyun shakes his head before looking away.

"You know, it doesn't hurt to laugh or smile. In fact, I hear it's quite good for you." The youngest continues on, much to your dismay.

"If you had said something funny, I'm sure you would've gotten a reaction." Minseok replies as the two of you come to a stop in front of them.

Jongin goes to reply, but before he can, Baekhyun takes a step toward you. Your eyes are immediately drawn to him, but his eyes were glued to your neck. The anger on his face was clear, but when he raises his eyes to yours, you actually let out a gasp.

You had never seen such a murderous expression on someone's face before, and it literally stole your breath. Baekhyun looked beyond terrifying like he was ready to set the entire world on fire just to watch whoever had hurt you burn with it.

He reaches his hand up to touch your neck while growling out, "Who did this to you?"

Even though he looked like he was ready to stab everyone, his touch on you was still feather-light like a caress. It was enough to make you temporarily forget everything bad that had happened between the two of you.

Jongin steps forward to see what Baekhyun was fussing about, and when he spots your neck, the anger finds his way to his face as well.

"What the fuck happened?" He demands as he looks between you and Minseok.

"I'll tell you guys inside." You say as you turn away to head into the house, but Baekhyun's strong grip stops you.

"Tell me now." He gets out through his barely checked anger.

You turn to face him and grab his hand from your arm, firmly but carefully breaking his hold on you. "It'll be easier to tell everyone at once. Trust me."

You start the walk toward the house, and the three men quickly follow suit. It was quiet at first, everyone processing their own thoughts, but it doesn't stay that way for long.

"You know Junmyeon is going to kill you, right?" Jongin asks Minseok.

The eldest shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"Is that optimism I hear?" Jongin jokes before pausing. "Actually, why does that scare me?"

You walk into the house and head straight for your favorite spot in the living room. The others could worry about grabbing the rest of the guys. You were going to take a minute to yourself before all hell broke loose.

As everyone begins filing into the living room, you make sure to hide your neck with your hair to the best of your abilities. Once everyone is there, your brother looks expectantly between you and Minseok.

"So, what'd you find?"

"You mean, besides the bruises all over your sister's neck?" Jongin chimes in when he notices your attempt to hide them.

Junmyeon looks at Jongin like he's trying to decide if the younger man is joking, but when he takes in the seriousness on Jongin's face, his gaze snaps to you. All of theirs do.

You let out a scoff as you shoot daggers at Jongin before gathering your hair and pulling it behind your head. Junmyeon's eyes bulge as he takes in the marks, and Yixing quickly gets up from the couch and comes over to examine your neck.

You cautiously look over at your brother while Yixing assesses the bruises, and you find the same murderous intent that was present on Baekhyun's face. Great. Now there were two of them.

"Are you having any trouble breathing or speaking?" You nod because you knew he was going to figure it out the second you started talking, and he looks at you in concern. "When this is over, come with me down to medical. You're going to want to ice that, and I want to make sure there's no real damage."

Once you tell him okay, he heads back to his seat, but his troubled gaze remains on you. Junmyeon, on the other hand, immediately turns on Minseok.

"How could you let this happen?! I literally just told you to keep her safe!" Before Minseok can respond, he turns to you. "Who did this to you?!"

You bite your lip. Seven expectant faces watch you, but your eyes fall on Minseok, who gives you a small nod.

"It was Sehun."

You could've heard a pin drop. An ant walking by would've made an actual sound. You almost began to wonder if someone paused the simulation with the way they all froze.

"What did you just say?" Chanyeol asks with a deadly calm.

"Are you seriously saying you not only saw Sehun but he strangled you?" Jongin quickly asks.

Jongdae gets his question in there before you can respond. "Are you sure it was Sehun? It wasn't someone who just looked like him?"

You give Jongdae a disgusted look as anger quickly rises in you, and in the most sarcastic voice you can muster, you say, "Yep. You're right. I forgot the person who literally had their hands around my neck as he tried to choke me to death. My bad."

"Okay. Everyone just hold the fuck on." Your brother shouts.

You run your hands through your hair in frustration. This wasn't going to be easy, and you knew that, but you didn't think that they would straight up dismiss the idea.

The sensation that someone was watching you sweeps over you, and you look over to see Chanyeol eyeing you intently. You meet his stare and wonder what thoughts were running through his head.

"I believe her because this," Minseok says to the group as he pulls out the note, "was put in the P.O. box around the same time."

Junmyeon takes the note Minseok held out to him and reads the numbers out loud. Once the last number comes out, the room explodes with questions, everyone talking over the other in confusion and excitement. It was chaotic enough to give you a headache.

You drop your head down into your hands to rub at the growing pain, like that would make it better, when a hard grip on your arm wrenches your hands away from your face. You look up in alarm and confusion to see Chanyeol's frantic face in front of you. His wild eyes searching yours as he demands to know what else happened with Sehun.

Before you can say anything in response, Chanyeol is ripped away from you and thrown up against the wall next to your chair. You watch with wide eyes as your brother squeezes the front of Chanyeol's throat, putting enough pressure on Chanyeol's vocal cords to cause the man to yell in pain.

"Don't you ever touch my sister like that again, Chanyeol, or I'll fucking kill you."

The parallels between what your brother was doing to Chanyeol and what Chanyeol's cousin had done to you were not lost on you, and you sat there with your mouth open in shock.

The rest of the guys quickly pull the two apart while you sit there frozen, and it takes a few moments for everyone to calm down.

"I'm sorry, Y/N..." Chanyeol sadly says in a weak voice.

"That's not good enough, Chanyeol." Junmyeon snaps at him.

Chanyeol, who had been dropped on the floor by the couch, nods his head and brings his knees up to his chest like he was trying to protect himself from the world. He looked so lost...

"I just don't get why Sehun would strangle you but then leave his help code... and where the hell has he been?" Jongdae asks.

"There's more to the story," Minseok says, giving you an opening to tell them what was going on.

One by one, the members all look over at you, even Chanyeol, who slowly raises his head to you with a wince as he sees the marks on your neck.

"Sehun..." You trail off, not knowing how to say it. "I think Sehun lost his memories..."

You're met with silence until your brother croaks out a "what?".

"He didn't remember me. When I brought up EXO and Chanyeol, he said nothing... He doesn't even remember the warehouse..."

The men slowly took in the information, each one of them silently trying to figure out how this happened. Your eyes find Chanyeol, who looks utterly devastated, and even though he was being a giant dick, your heart went out to him. Chanyeol did everything he could think of to try to find Sehun and bring him home, and when that failed, he lost himself. Now, he had just learned that Sehun didn't even remember him...

"That's not all... He's also working with the Baem."

Tagging: @knjkitten @kpopserene @multifandombxxch @tashaxvamp @kpop---scenarios @bhyunni @chanyeolismybaby @flaming-laboob @taetaeeyong @lilbitoflyssa @misstressporkchoppp @hoseok-wang @spiltkpop @isha454 @depuis2mille @marovekian1 @ladylynae @abby8451 @lynniev @insta1010 @sawadabegum @avxngxrrogxrs @equesasprokishi @imstuckinafictionaluniverse @layisanangel @mongryong-the-corgi @overthelamebowz @lizbether01 @thatanonymousgirl-as14 @nothingbutadeadesceane @kim-ji-hyeons-world @suhappysuho @futuremrspcy @lovebuginlove @skylions-den @precious-seungwooya @softysuho @kuppyjiminie @blushinyouth @bat-shark-repellant @vickylamore @heartshapedenchiladas @cardtak @tanithrea @wooya1224 @multifanstuff

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somethinginthethunder · 4 years ago

Text

walks in the rain [tsukishima kei x reader]

Author’s Note: Yes, it is me. I was formerly known as lookuptotheskiesandsee, but decided to have a do-over since I wasn’t really that into the classic rock fandom anymore. Anyway, here’s my very first Haikyuu fic. If I have anything wrong in here, whether it be with grammar or anything else, please tell me! I’m super new to this :’)

Also, this is totally going to flop anyway, but shares and feedback are appreciated! I know this isn’t a totally amazing fic or something that really gets the heart beating. It’s more lowkey and has a more slice-of-life feeling, but I promise this isn’t the best I have hfhihiwqhdowejd.

Word Count: 1,818

Summary: you’ve forgotten your umbrella, so tsukishima offers to walk with you with his own. along the way home, you reminisce about before.

Warnings?: my trash writing, but none other than that!

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The squeaking of shoes and hitting of volleyballs filled the court. You waited patiently beside Yachi and Kiyoko, with the former watching starry-eyed at the group of boys. Smiling fondly, you looked back into the court.

The team had just finished the last practice set, all of them who participated panting heavily as they celebrated their win (well, half of them, at least).

Ukai clapped his hands together, getting the attention of the players.

“Right! Next practice, same thing. Now,” he continued, “I’ll be taking my leave. I’ve got a shift to cover. Besides, it’s getting late. Clean up quick, yeah?”

“Yes, Coach!” some shouted in response, adrenaline still pumping through their veins.

With some last goodbyes, Ukai left the gym. And with that, the cleanup started.

It had started out normally, all as usual. That was, until the rainclouds pulled in. This wasn’t unusual or anything, but it was inconvenient, of course, since most students walked home from school, including the Kasasuno team. Two volleyballs were in your arms when you stopped to look outside. Turning your head to the rest of the gym, you looked to see just about everything finished up.

“Ah, I can finish up around here this time, guys. You can all get home before the rain starts pouring too hard,” you offered kindly. Sure, you don’t do this everytime, but every once in a while it would be nice to do something for them, since they already work so hard on playing.

Daichi stopped in his tracks for a moment, seemingly surprised at your offer.

“There’s not much more to do, you really don’t have to,” he said, offering a smile in response.

“I know, but it’ll start raining real soon, and it’s best if you guys get a head start, right?” you explained. “Besides, I know where everything goes, I’ll be fine.”

“Y/n-”

“It’s fine, Daichi-san. Really, all of you,” you reassured him.

You could see the hesitation in his eyes, but your sure look made him give in. Sighing, with a smile on his face. “Alright. Everyone finish what you’re doing and we’ll go.”

A few minutes later, it seemed everyone had gone home.

That was until you finished closing.

Once you locked the doors you turned your head only to see Tsukishima standing there, his headphones on and leaning against the wall.

“Tsukki, what are you doing? The rain’s already started,” you murmured, slinging your bag across your shoulder.

He took off his headphonse and tilted his head toward you. “You think I haven’t noticed? Knowing you, you probably forgot your umbrella today.”

“I-” your cheeks flushed at the statement. He was right, actually.

Of course he was.

At this he began to chuckle, with that goddamn smirk on his face. It was embarrassing, really, and Tsukishima knew that. Turning his gaze away from you, he opened his umbrella and started to walk off. For a moment, you stared after him, your cheeks hot and chest tightening.

When he realized you weren’t following, he looked back at you with an expectant look on his face.

“Well? Are you coming? Or would you rather walk in the rain to get home? ‘Cause I’ll leave you here,” he questioned teasingly.

You perked at his statement. “H-Hey! That wouldn’t be very nice, now would it?” you objected, running after him.

“And you take me as the nice guy?”

“Not the point!” you pouted, standing by his side as the rain hit the umbrella. The height difference was nice, especially since it was an excuse to have someone else hold the umbrella instead of you. Especially if it was Tsukki.

Besides Yamaguchi, you were probably the only one who he’d consider a close friend (though he’d never admit it). You were neighbors, but only became friends in middleschool. At first, you had thought of the blonde as just a mean kid, but as you got to know him, you realized that he was actually… really cool.

In fact, you even began to develop feelings for him.

Though, you had never said it out loud. That would’ve made it too real. You didn’t want that. He was your friend, nothing else. There was no way he could feel the same, right? He treated you just like everyone else.

Except he didn’t. And everyone but you seemed to see that. By this time, the whole team saw how you pined for each other (though it took Hinata and Kageyama a little longer to notice). And it was frustrating to the whole team.

“Oi, why’re you so quiet all of a sudden?”

His voice snapped you out of your trance. You blinked up at him.

“No reason. Why?” you questioned, stopping at the crosswalk to wait for the cars to finish passing.

“You usually talk too much for your own good. What, are you finally using that brain of yours to think?” he said, his gaze flickering to you for just a fraction of a second before he started walking across the street.

Considering he took long strides because of his taller stature, you had to jog to get back next to him while answering.

“Hey, maybe I’m not as smart as you, but at least I’m smarter than Hinata and Kageyama!” you whined.

He scoffed at your reasoning. “That’s not saying much. Even if they were combined.”

You paused for a moment before bursting into a laugh, patting his back. “You’re so mean, Tsukki! They’re just too enticed with volleyball, is all.”

Your words seemed to make him grimace a little. As your laughs died down you finally answered him properly.

“Just thinking about us when we were in middleschool,” you murmured, watching your breath show up in the air.

“Middleschool?” he questioned, shoving his other hand in his pocket at the mention of it.

“Mm!” you confirmed. “I used to think you were just this salty, mean guy. I mean, you still are,” you laughed. “But there’s way more to you now, I know.”

“Oh?” Tsukki said, trying to hide the real curiosity in his voice.

“Yeah,” you nodded. Looking up at what parts you could see of the sky, you continued. “When we were just neighbors and classmates, I found you really intimidating. Not just because of your height, but how you handled things. You were smart, yeah, a little snarky, but also a bit rude. I never thought I’d be friends with you, or that you’d want to… be friends with me.’

This didn’t change his pace or his face. The both of you kept walking.

“But when I saw you making fun of Yamaguchi’s bullies, it completely crushed the idea of you that I thought was right. And when we started hanging out, I finally saw you.”

You had missed it, but his face began to change.

“You’re real. You’re really intelligent, really nice, though I know you won’t believe, and really talented, too. I know you’re afraid to show passion for something that might crush you in the end, but I think you’ve got great potential. You’ve just changed so much from the first time I’ve seen you, but I know that’s only on the outside. I know, though, that the boy from before is still in there.” A pause. “But if I were to describe you with one word, it would be…”

You turned to face him, finally making eye contact with the tall blonde.

“Cool.”

His eyes widened at your words. You hadn’t expected him to react in any way, so his surprise made you think back on your words.

“Ah, sorry, sorry!” you apologized, bringing your hands up. “I know you don’t like that kind of thing, but… I just thought you should know.”

Again, the heat began to rise in your cheeks. Way to go, Y/n.

He didn’t respond, just staring you down with his cold eyes. Yet, they didn’t seem to hold the same emotion as they usually did. Perhaps you were just imagining it.

“Tch,” was all he said before he continued walking, facing forward once more.

There wasn’t any conversation after that. When you both arrived at your home, you turned and thanked him.

“Thanks for walking me, Tsukki. You didn’t have to,” you acknowledged gratefully.

“I know,” he nodded back.

There was a tense moment of silence before you turned, coughing awkwardly as you walked up the steps to your door.

“Oi, Y/n.”

Surprised, you turned your head to look at your friend.

His mouth was parted, as if he were hesitating.

“...yes?” you asked curiously, hand resting on the doorframe.

“Let’s go somewhere after school tomorrow,” he managed nonchalantly.

“Like- Like a hangout?” you murmured, wondering if this was what you hoped it would be.

“No,” he answered. “Like a date.”

It felt like your heart leaped out of your chest. All you could feel in that moment was shock. Him? Tsukishima Kei? Wanted to go on a date with you? Even after that whole awkward walk? And the past, like, five or four years you’ve known him?

“Are you sure?” you asked, dumbstruck.

“Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?” he said, supposedly annoyed. “I happen to like you, and you happen to like me. That is, unless I’ve been wrong this whole time?”

Oh.

OH.

OH?

He knew this entire time?!

Confusion passed through your mind momentarily before you hastily answered, “No, no! You’re right! I just-- I wasn’t expecting this, so,” you stopped yourself from saying anything that could ruin this moment. “Yeah. Let’s go somewhere.”

“Good. Wait for me when school ends. I already have a place picked out,” he stated. If you listened closely, you could hear how nervous he actually was and how fast his heart was beating. He hadn’t been this nervous before in a long time.

“O-Okay,” you stuttered, unsure of what to say.

It seemed as though he didn’t either, because he left soon after with just a nod as a goodbye. In reality, he probably would’ve talked to you more if he weren’t so nervous. Could you imagine that? Tsukishima nervous because of you?

Staring at his form walking away from your house, you stood there, stunned. A date. With him. Tomorrow. It seemed almost impossible that this was real.

Once he turned the corner and left your neighborhood, you rushed inside, suddenly remembering how cold it was out there.

“Oh, Y/n,” your mother called from the kitchen. “Can you pick up some groceries on your way back from school for me since it’s already on your way back?”

You were about to accept when you remembered what you had just agreed on.

“I can’t,” you answered.

“Huh?” she called. “And why is that?”

A grin broke out on your face, your fists clenching as the reality of the situation took hold. Honestly, you felt like screaming your excitement into a pillow.

“I have a date!”

#tsukishima kei x reader #tsukishima x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyu x reader #tsukishima imagine #tsukishima x you #tsukishima kei x you #tsukishima fic #haikyuu fanfic #haikyuu self insert #haikyuu fanfiction #lmao i'm sorry

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itmighthavebeenintentional · 4 years ago

Text

The Rose

Summary: “She’s fifty today, and in Dean’s opinion, there’s never been anyone more beautiful.” An alternate Dean reflects on the life he’s led.

Warnings: SEASON 15 SPOILERS, bit of angst.

Author’s Note: A follow-up to “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” which introduces this Alternate Dean. Beautiful header by @there-must-be-a-lock , editing and general flailing by @there-must-be-a-lock, @thoughtslikeaminefield , @fangirlxwritesx67, and @cracksinthewalls .

Word Count: 1573

ItMightHaveBeenIntentional’s Masterlist

The Rose

She’s fifty today, and in Dean’s opinion, there’s never been anyone more beautiful. The day is pleasantly warm for this far into autumn, and she basks on the flannel blanket he spread out in the (more or less) exact spot of their first date some thirty years earlier. Thirty of the best years, he believes to his bones, that he doesn’t and could never deserve, and yet here they still are.

And he just can’t keep his eyes off her.

“Any regrets?” she asks. She tilts her head back, eyes closed, soaking in the afternoon sun with a carefree abandon that never fails to steal his breath. She’s not talking about their afternoon off (he only closes the shop this one day a year, outside of Sundays and holidays).

She means everything.

He knows his answer already, but still, he stops to think it over before saying anything. He’s getting more thoughtful in his older age, but even so, she always deserves his full consideration.

The wind shifts, a breeze ruffling the dark tendrils of hair that have escaped her braid. She cracks an eye open, glancing over as she waits for him to speak. She’s always been so patient with him, giving him time to gather his thoughts, knowing when he needs a push and when he just needs room to think.

Dean doesn’t tend to regret, in general. Sure, there are some things he planned on turning out a little different. When he was a teenager, he always dreamed of traveling around, maybe taking Sam on a coast-to-coast road trip when the younger Winchester graduated high school.

But then Dean got it into his head he needed to learn bikes, John Winchester talked to his friend Danny Elkins, and Dean got started at Danny’s motorcycle shop. Four months later, she showed up with her dad’s forgotten lunch.

He wouldn’t call it a life-changing moment so much as finding the north for his internal compass.

Kids were always on Dean’s radar, a big raucous family to drive the two of them wild and leave them exhausted but content (at least, he always figured his mom and dad were content), but for whatever reason, offspring just wasn’t in the cards for them.

They’d spoken occasionally of adopting, but the shop needed more attention when Danny had his heart attack, and then Mary needed extra help around the house when John had his own. And though both men pulled through, Dean always felt obligated to stick around a little more, give a little more of his time and himself.

After all, Sam had his wife and kids and college classes to teach. And once a month, when they were still young enough, Dean got full custody of his twin nephews and their younger sister while Sam and his wife went off to whatever getaway they could find within driving distance.

Dean’s always suspected they simply holed up at the house, turned off their phones, and slept, but he could never find any hard evidence.

And now even Sam’s kids are more or less grown and working on their own lives. The twins diverged from their childhood inseparability, with one working for an environmental non-profit while the other makes more than a decent living as an electrician. And though Dean’s niece is still in high school, she works in the shop on weekends (as long as she keeps her grades up) and is showing a clear affinity for the family business.

So, yeah, once upon a time, he’d figured he’d wanted kids, but when it didn’t happen, they made the best of what was given, and neither of them was irrevocably torn up. She’s it for him, always has been, even when he didn’t know it. He’s never needed anything else.

“None big enough to mean anything,” he murmurs, turning and squinting towards the setting sun.

The breeze picks up again, sending a cold thrill down his spine. He can’t keep the crease from between his eyebrows, so maybe he can hide it for just a little while longer. He hears the rustle of grass, feels the blanket shift, and then she’s lifting his arm to drape it over her shoulder.

Yeah, there’s no hiding anything from her.

“Then what’s eatin’ at you, baby?”

He pulls her closer reflexively, tucking her against him in that spot that he swears was made to fit her. She smells of apples and nutmeg, and he knows that, even though it’s her birthday, there will be a hand-made pie waiting for him when they get home.

He can see her perfectly in his mind, slicing up apples or rolling out pastry while she sings whatever song is stuck in her head that day. Bette Middler has been big for her lately, and while he’s definitely had his fill of Beaches, he’s pretty damn fond of hearing “The Rose” in that particular, melancholy way she sings when she’s distracted.

“God, I love you.” The words just spill out sometimes, and Dean stopped feeling embarrassed long ago.

She takes his free hand, twining their fingers together, and waits.

“It’s the dreams again,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

He’s not scared (Dean Winchester doesn’t get scared by something as immaterial as a nightmare), but something akin to worry gnaws his gut too often recently.

Dark dreams, dreams of hunting and being hunted, but by nothing of this world; dreams of blood and loss and a cold, cruel creator with no thought for anyone’s wants except his own.

For as long as he can remember, Dean has dreamed of other lives, other hims, adventures and dangers, and life and death. Sam is always there, always by his side, sometimes for the good of them both, but sometimes for the detriment of... well, everything.

Time runs differently in those other lives: sometimes he’s a kid again, sometimes he’s middle-aged. He never dreams of older selves anymore, though, not since he hit his forties.

But in all those other lives, all those other worlds, all those other Sams and Deans, there’s never another her.

And that’s enough to have him thankful to wake with her in his arms every goddamn day of his mundane, adventureless, utterly perfect life.

In the last few years, the last few months especially, the dreams have changed. Some have gotten worse: the monsters are bigger, faster, more vicious. Sometimes the other Deans have lost too much, lost their Sam, lost their family, lost everything. Sometimes they’ve given in to the drink, to the despair, to the siren call of the darkness and become monsters themselves.

But the worst ones are the empty dreams. He’ll spend what feels like hours staring into starless voids, places he knows used to be teeming with life. Sometimes he’ll get an echo of which Dean, which dream used to exist there. A flash of a memory, a laugh, a scream, but mostly it’s just vast, empty stretches where everything is…

Gone.

Dean shivers again as the wind picks up, creeping through his denim jacket with the thrill of the inevitable. She rubs the knuckles of his right hand just as the usual ache begins, and his lips curl up slowly as he meets her eyes.

Dreams are exactly that, whether they’re the day or night kind: ephemeral ideas that mean nothing unless you let them.

And she’s the only dream he’s ever found that can stand up to the light of day.

“Same dreams. Just need to shake ‘em off, get my head back on my shoulders where it belongs.”

“Well, Mr. Winchester,” she says, turning in his embrace and trailing very real, very warm fingers over his cheeks, “I can think of another place you can put that pretty head of yours, if you like.”

He lingers in their kiss, takes the time to trace the fine lines next to her eyes, to soak in the sight of her, golden and radiant and absolutely his. His calloused fingers brush over her cheekbones, tuck a stray hair behind her ear, tilt her chin up just so.

He drinks her in slowly, savoring rather than submerging, no matter how the seed of desperation in his gut sprouts and grows.

He can feel the change in the wind, not just here in the meadow, but in his bones. Something is changing, has changed already, but hasn’t quite caught up to them, and it’s not going to be good. Dean knows it with the same certainty that he knows there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

But here, in this field, with the love of his existence in his arms, that dread seems too massive to comprehend, too immaterial to give consideration.

“I’m here, baby,” she murmurs.

She can’t hear what he’s thinking (god, he hopes not), but she knows him, knows when his mind isn’t all in, and she deserves better.

He shuts the door on his nightmares, one and all, stuffs the dread down deep in a place where it will stay until he falls asleep.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” he whispers gruffly against the crown of her head, his heart and throat tight.

He takes in a breath that only shakes once before forcing the last bit of shadow from his thoughts. This is her day, and she deserves so much more than half his attention. She deserves everything he’s got to give and more.

For however much time they have left.

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you-a-southpaw-doll · 4 years ago

Text

“...Step on a Fuckin’ LEGO!” ~ A Negan One-Shot

Summary: The reader is a soft-hearted, soft-spoken girl. Negan is...well...he’s Negan… That says it all right there. One day he pushes her too far, pissing her off. She yells the only threat she can think of at the Savior Leader.

Warning(s): Language. Negan tries to curb his language...kinda. Angst. Threats. Violence - by LEGOs. Negan being an ass. Sweet Negan. Caring Negan. Fluff. Happy ending. *No LEGO pieces were harmed in the making of this story (those damn things are damn near indestructible)...only Negan’s foot and maybe even his ego.*

Author’s Note(s): There is no worse, more insulting threat than telling someone to go step on a LEGO...especially barefoot. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to step on a LEGO, then you understand the pain that comes with it and the insult, which is most definitely a threat, is worse than telling someone to go fuck themselves. For the sake of this story, like always:

Y/N (Y/F/N) = Your Name (Your First Name)

Y/L/N = Your Last Name

Y/H/C = Your Hair Color

Y/E/C = Your Eye Color

Word Count: 3827 words!

Relationship(s): Negan x Reader. Melissa (OFC)/Ike (OMC) [Mother/Toddler Son]

Characters: Negan. Reader. Melissa (OFC). Ike (OMC). Saviors. Workers. Negan’s wives (Sherry, Amber, Tanya, and Frankie) but they aren’t really his wives in this story. Dwight. Mark.

Taglist: @negans-network @prettyboynegan @mychemicalimagines @spnnnxangelsx @rockinkel21 @misskittycat02 @band--psycho@ofxallxwexlost @iron-halt @thamberlinawrites @ravenwings73 @lettherebepink @stoneyggirl

_______________________________________________________________________

Story Time:

Reader’s P.O.V. ~ A Few Days Ago

“I HOPE YOU FUCKIN’ STEP ON A GODDAMN FUCKIN’ LEGO BAREFOOT, YOU FUCKIN’ ASSHOLE!!!”

The silence that immediately settled over the entirety of the Sanctuary at your words was deafening. You could feel all eyes on you and the man in front of you. Your body was trembling with anger and your hands were curling and uncurling into fists down by your sides as you stared, glaring up at the man not even a foot away.

Normally, you were calm, cool, and collected. You never raised your voice. Never hit anyone. Never hurt anything, unless you absolutely needed to and it was a life or death situation. Even then, you still didn’t like to cause harm. Despite this, you still made it as one of Negan’s best soldiers, a position you’d fought long and hard for.

Even though you were the way you were, everyone had a breaking point. And yours had come that day, just after you, Negan, and ‘bout 15 other men got back from a several day-long run. You snapped. You’d finally have enough. Enough of his shit. You didn’t care that he was the leader of the Sanctuary.

Didn’t care that you would probably be punished for yelling at the man, let alone threatening him. That didn’t matter anymore. Enough had been enough. Normally the tall man didn’t get on your nerves. You didn’t mind his sexual innuendos, his crass language, his cocky swagger. But, he’d taken it too far.

Negan’s eyes were wide and you could tell he was trying to figure out whether or not to be pissed off or just smirk and charm his way outta this. Finally, a smirk tugged on his lips, his beard not even bothering to hide it, as his tongue peeked out from between his lips. He raised an eyebrow as he just stared at you.

His muddy brown eyes swirled with amusement. You huffed and glared even more. You glanced around, briefly, looking at the folks who surrounded the both of you. A mixture of Saviors, some of Negan’s top men, and everyday workers. Everyone’s eyes were wide, breaths held as they all waited to see what would become of you.

The one who yelled and threatened the man in charge. The one who was always an angel, soft-spoken, caring, and gentle with everyone. You swore there were a few people, mostly those who’d had kids, or even been around young kids, at one point or another, before the world ended or now, who gasped at the words you hurled at Negan.

They knew what kinda pain you just threatened the boss man with. But...apparently not everyone did. Even though you had only threatened Negan by telling him you hoped he stepped on a LEGO...with no shoes on...it was the most painful thing you could come up with. You really didn’t want anyone harmed.

In any way what-so-ever. It didn’t matter if it was being stabbed, shot, bit by one of the dead, tortured, or anything else. Let alone a damn LEGO. You didn’t want to wish harm on anyone. The world was already shitty ‘nough as is. As your eyes met Negan’s once more, you could tell he was one of the ones who didn’t realize what you’d just wished upon him.

His deep laugh filled the silence as he tossed his head back, his body shaking with laughter. Several other Saviors, who didn’t realize the pain either, joined him in laughter. Negan’s tongue darted out and swiped along his bottom lip as his laughter died down and he looked back at you. That damn smirk still plastered on his stupid face...regardless of how handsome said face was.

“Awwww, look at that, Boss Man. Little girl can’t even come up with a decent threat!” One of the newest Saviors sneered before everyone started laughing again.

You watched as Negan’s eyes, briefly, flashed with anger and he waved a hand at the Savior, dismissing his comment, and everyone’s laughter, as his eyes stayed locked on yours.

“She’s too kind.” He responded, not once looking away. “I’m just proud she cussed with it.”

You huffed and stormed past him, slamming your shoulder into his arm as you did. He just chuckled and called after you.

“This ain’t fuckin’ over, sweetheart!”

It took everything in you not to pull one of his signature moves and flip him off as you left him. You just ignored him as you stormed to your room, slamming the door shut once you reached it. You stripped down outta what you were wearing and slipped on your favorite shirt, an old Rock n’ Roll tee from the early 2000s, that was three sizes too big and swallowed you whole, going down to your knees.

It was your husband’s and that was one reason why you loved it, on top of the fact that it was from your favorite band too.

***

Negan’s P.O.V. ~ Now

It’s been three days since you threatened me. Three days in which you haven’t even looked at me, talked to me, or even acknowledged my existence. I must’ve really pissed you off, and I didn’t mean to. I had just been joking ‘round with you, trying to make you smile. I sigh as I walk down to the little classroom on the bottom floor of the Sanctuary.

I needed a moment to relax and seeing the youngins that lived in the Sanctuary always helped with that. Slipping off my boots once I enter the room, as per the rules of the teacher, a young woman named Melissa, I tuck them by the wall and door. I drape my leather jacket over my boots, covering Lucille with it as I do.

No point in scaring the kids.

Looking ‘round the room, I notice that there are only two people in the classroom. Melissa and her little boy, Issac, or as he likes to be called, Ike. He’s only two years old, but he’s strong-willed and absolutely adorable. I guess I missed all the other kids since it is later in the afternoon. Mel must’ve already dismissed them right after dinner.

I shrug to myself and then smile when I hear Ike squeal.

“Neeeeeeeeeeeeeegs!”

I laugh at the little boy’s excitement. “Hi, bud. You having fun? Playing with your mommy and…” I look at what they’re playing with. “LEGOs?”

Ike giggles and nods. “Ea!!”

He pats the small, racetrack kid’s carpet he’s sitting on. Chuckling, I take the hint and walk over to him, my sock covered feet almost slipping on the smooth concrete floor. I make it over to him and Mel in one piece without falling on my ass. Ike giggles as I go to cross my ankles, so I can take a seat next to him.

However, I don’t look as I move my feet and within a few seconds, my entire foot erupts in the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. And that’s saying something considering I’ve been hit in the crotch a few too many times in my life. Hopping ‘round on one foot, I reach down, grabbing my injured one.

“Son of a fu-” My eyes meet Mel’s and the cuss word suddenly cuts off in my throat. “Fudge maker!”

I end up falling on my ass, landing on a few more pieces of the building toys. I bite my lip to keep from cussing up a storm like I want to. The pain fuckin’ hurts. My foot and my ass now hurt. Ike squeals with giggles as he shakes his head, clearly enjoying the show I’m putting on. Mel is trying not to giggle and I can tell, despite her covering her mouth with her hand.

I try to shift to the side a little to at least get the LEGO bricks outta my ass, knowing I’ll surely have little brick-shaped, indented bruises on my asscheeks. After a few moments of wiggling around, I finally get off the LEGOs and pant.

“That hurt!”

Ike and Mel both giggle and shake their heads. Ike climbs up in my lap, and pats my head, kissing my cheek. I’ve seen Mel do that a few times whenever Ike gets hurt, and I realize that it’s his way of ‘healing my boo-boos’. A smile lifts my lips and I shake my head, rubbing my foot with one hand as my other hand goes to Ike’s back to make sure he doesn’t fall off my lap.

“Thanks, little man.” I murmur.

Ike smiles proudly and nods fast. He kisses my cheek again and then turns ‘round in my lap, getting comfy before leaning down to play with the LEGOs some more. He’s obviously no longer interested in the fact that I got hurt. He’s off in his own little world, and that’s ok. I play with his hair, subconsciously, as I try to forget ‘bout the pain in my ass and foot, and look at Mel.

She’s smirking.

“What?” I ask.

Her smirk grows. “Guess Y/N’s threat came true.”

My eyes widen. “Fu-udge!”

She laughs. “Don’t make her mad, Negan.”

“I didn’t even think it was that serious! I mean...a LEGO? Really? She hoped I stepped on one, barefoot? I figured that wasn’t that painful. I mean, she’s so sweet. And it’s a da-ng kid’s toy!”

“Thanks for watching your language ‘round him. He’s already said the F word, trying to be like you.” Mel sighs, playfully.

“My bad, Mel.”

I have the grace to look a little embarrassed. She giggles and shakes her head.

“But, in all seriousness. Y/N is sweet...but even still...she’s got a breaking point...and after what you said to her...that was taking it too far. Even for you.” She explains.

I sigh as I fiddle with my sock. “Yea...I know...I was...I was just trying to cheer her up. You know I have a tendency to speak before I think.”

She nods and we continue talking for the next hour. During that time, Ike stops playing with his toys and curls up in my lap, even more, falling asleep. I just play with his hair and rub his back. I’ve always loved kids...even if I’ve never been able to have any of my own. And, Ike is kinda like my nephew in a way, even if I’m not related to him or Mel.

There’s still that bond there. Mel’s one of the few people I actually consider a friend. Twenty minutes after Ike’s fallen asleep and my ass is completely numb from sitting on the LEGOs and the concrete floor, Mel gently takes him, and I stand.

“You know what you need to do, Neegs. Go talk to her.” She says, giving me a pointed look.

I nod, knowing she’s right. She gives me a hug before leaving the classroom to go lay him down. I make my way over to my stuff by the door. My foot is still killing me, and it’s making me limp just a little. I decide to forgo putting my boots back on, taking a hold of them with my jacket and Lucille tucked under my arm.

I walk down the hallways and up to the door I know you’re behind. Taking a deep breath, I knock on it three times.

“Go away!” You holler from the other side.

Shaking my head, I gently open the door and step inside. “Sweetheart?”

My eyes search the room until I find you curled up in the bed. Your eyes meet mine and you turn over on your side, facing away from me, grunting in protest at seeing me. I close the door, set my boots, jacket, and Lucille down, and walk over to the side of the bed you’re facing, a limp still slightly present.

Fuckin’ LEGOs. Carefully kneeling down so I’m in front of you, I tuck a strand of (Y/H/C) hair behind your ear.

“Sweetheart...I’m sorry. I was an ass.” I start.

You sigh and roll your eyes, looking anywhere but at me.

“You know...outta all the times I’ve ever been threatened....yours was the only one that’s ever been followed through.”

This gets your attention and a smile spreads across your face as you try not to giggle and your eyes widen.

“Really?” You whisper.

I nod. “Mmhhmm...Fuckin’ LEGOs hurt when you step on them...and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have several LEGO shaped bruises on my right asscheek for the next couple weeks.”

You crack up laughing at that, your hand flying up to cover your mouth as you shake your head.

“I don’t believe you.”

I laugh. “You wanna see? I’ll show you my ass right here, right now. It’s true.”

I stand and start to unbuckle my belts and pants, keeping my eyes on yours. You sit up and watch. I shake my head, smirking. I should’ve known that you’d actually want to see. Turning ‘round so my ass is facing you, I drop my pants down to my thighs, not even worrying ‘bout boxers since I went to commando today.

Your laugh cuts through the room, and even though, hearing you laugh is worth it. I feel your hand reach out and smack my ass, right over the spot that has the LEGO impressions. I jump and let out a quiet squeak and turn ‘round, playfully glaring at you, tugging my pants back up and buckling them and my belts.

“Told you. And, that fuckin’ hurt.”

You giggle. “Sorry, not sorry. What you said to me a few days ago. That hurt. That smack was payback.”

I bite my lip. That’s fair, I suppose. I sit on the bed, well more like I lounge on it, keeping my ass off the bed, and look at you for a brief moment before dropping my gaze. My fingers play with the comforter, and I watch them before finally looking up at you.

“I’m sorry. I really fuckin’ am. I took it too far and I shouldn’t have. I just wanted to make you smile. I know you’ve been having a rough couple of weeks and you wouldn’t tell me ‘bout it. I shouldn’t have joked like that. And I’m sorry. I’ve been kicking my own ass for the last several days ‘cause of what I said.” I swallow deeply as the last word leaves my lips.

“That just hit too close to home...and I was working on something to surprise you and that...it...you ruined the surprise by saying what you did. I shouldn’t have threatened you or yelled at you in front of your men, and I’m sorry ‘bout that, but I was just so pissed off.” Your eyes meet mine. “You know I’d never actually want you to get hurt.”

I reach over and take your hand in mine, rubbing my thumb over your knuckles.

“I know, baby. I know. And, you know you’re the only one who can get away with yelling at me like that…’cept for maybe Ike. That kid could murder someone and I wouldn’t punish him.” I chuckle and bring your hand up to softly brush my lips across your knuckles. “I’m sorry, baby. Forgive me?”

You sigh and I smile as I hear the playfulness in it.

“I suppose I could...but only because I love the father of my child.”

My brow furrows. “What?”

You smirk and your eyes light up. “You heard me, Boss Man.”

“I know I heard you...but what? Father of your child? Baby, I’m the only one you love.”

“Mmmm...not anymore. I love someone else.”

My heart breaks despite my brain vaguely processing the teasing tone of your voice.

“S-s-someone else?” I whisper, my heart racing in my chest as it feels like an elephant just sat on top of me.

You grin and nod. “Mmhhmm.”

“Who the fuck is he? I’ll…”

My words die off in my throat. I could never harm anything or anyone that made you happy. I slowly lower your hand and go back to picking at the fuzz on the blanket.

“I don’t want you to leave me...but if...if he...if he makes you happy...then...I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.” I mumble, no longer confident, cocky, or any of my usual self. “Just...can I at least meet the guy who’s stealing my wife away?”

My voice threatens to crack as I ask that. I’ve loved you for years. Since Lucille passed away. You were always there for me after I lost her. After she died...you were there to pick up the shattered pieces of my heart. And while it took me a while to let you in...I eventually did. I fell. Hard and fast. For you. We ended our old life, our old world together and started our new one, in this new fucked up world, together.

Almost a year after Lucille passed, and the dead started walking, we ran across a dying priest who could tell we were in love and offered to marry us in exchange for us putting him outta his misery before he could die from the walker bite on his shoulder. We’d decided then and there, almost like a spur of the moment “Let’s go to Vegas and get married” decision, to take him up on his offer.

He wanted to do one last good thing before he died. With his last few breaths of life, he’d pronounced us man and wife. I’d slid my knife out and gently put the old man outta his misery and thanked him for what he’d done for us. You and I were married and we left to find somewhere safe. That was when we’d stumbled across the Sanctuary.

We turned it into our home, had our “honeymoon”, and started our married life together. I took over as leader and you were my Queen. Was and always will be. Yes, I had a “harem” of four women, but they were all women I’d taken in at your insistence. I never fucked them.

Never touched them unless it was a comforting hug when they were having a rough day.

Never looked at them more than the way an older, protective brother looks at his younger sisters, making sure they’re ok.

You were all I wanted and all I needed. I only did it to make you happy and because you’d explained that they wouldn’t survive on their own out there. I took them in, protected them, and gave them everything they wanted. I even allowed them to have a relationship with whoever they wanted, as long as they were discreet.

Sherry had Dwight, her husband from before. Amber had Mark, a boyfriend that I couldn’t remember if he was before or not. Tanya and Frankie ended up together which was good for them since they were both unable to be themselves and express who they wanted to be with before the world ended.

I just didn’t want them to get hurt. I came to care for them like the sisters I’d never had growing up. And you did too. As the years passed and the population of the Sanctuary grew, you stayed by my side, and we ruled together. You were the lightness to my darkness. The Yin to my Yang. Fuck all those cliches; they were true. You -

“Negan Alexander Morgan.”

Your voice cuts off my thoughts and I slowly lift my head and look at you, biting my lip, begging the tears in my eyes not to fall. You’re the only one who gets to see me like this. I swallow deeply and lean into your touch as you place your palm against my cheek. I close my eyes and try to savor the feeling of your hand against my skin.

“I’m not leaving you.”

My eyes fly open as I look at you, confused. “But…you said you love someone else…?”

You nod and softly stroke your thumb back and forth over my cheekbone, just under my eye.

“I do. And, I know you’ll love them too. As for meeting them...well..that’s gonna have to wait ‘bout another 7 months or so.” You smile.

“Why...why do I have to wait so long? How do you know I’ll love them?”

You reach your other hand forward, taking mine in yours and drag it over to your tummy. You place my fingers flat against your stomach over my old band t-shirt. I blink several times, still confused as fuck.

“Negan. I know you’re gonna love them…‘cause you love any kid and you always said you’d love your own.”

My eyes widen and I sit up quickly as I finally process what you’re saying. Keeping my hand on your tummy, my eyes meet yours.

“You...we...there’s...a baby?” I stumble over my words.

You giggle and nod. “Mmhhmm. Carson confirmed it last week. I haven’t been feeling well ‘cause mornin’ sickness has been kicking my ass. And I was gonna surprise you when we got home from the run...but you and your damn mouth ruined it.”

I swallow deeply. “I”m so, so fuckin’ sorry, baby.”

“I know. And, you can stop apologizing. You’re forgiven.”

I lean forward and kiss you softly, murmuring against your lips. “You’re too good for me, (Y/N).”

You giggle and shake your head. “No, Negan. You’re too good for me. And you’re gonna be a damn good father too.”

I smile and kiss you again before resting my forehead against yours. My fingers stroke your tummy gently.

“Well...as the father of your...our child...I have one stipulation for the kid. He can have whatever he fuckin’ wants and I’ll die trying to get it for him.”

You playfully swat my shoulder. “Shut up, old man. You ain’t dying till you’re good and ready. You wear a leather jacket, you have Lucille, and your nutsack is made of steel, so you ain’t dying for at least another 50 years. You’ll be over 100 before you do.”

I laugh and kiss your head. “My nutsack is strong!…’specially considering I finally knocked you up! And, I ain’t an old man! I’m only 52!”

You laugh and roll your eyes. “Shut up, babe. What’s your stipulation for our child?”

I smirk. “No fuckin’ LEGOs. He can have anything else in the world. But no fuckin’ LEGOs. My foot and ass are gonna hurt for days.”

You giggle. “Awwwww. Poor baby! Do I need to kiss it and make it feel better?”

I laugh. “You wanna kiss my ass, babygirl, you go right ahead. But our kid ain’t getting LEGOs. Those fuckers hurt. And remind me to never piss you off again. Your threats are violent.”

“You love me anyway!”

I grin. “Yea. I do love you. That much is abso-fuckin’-lutely true!”

#...Step on a Fuckin' LEGO!#Negan One-Shot #Negan Fluff #Negan Angst #Negan x Reader #Negan with a happy ending!#Negan being an ass #Sweet Negan #Gentle Negan #Caring Negan #Nice Negan #Jeffrey Dean Morgan Fluff #Jeffrey Dean Morgan Angst #JDM Fluff #JDM Angst #The Walking Dead Angst #The Walking Dead Fluff #TWD Fluff #TWD Angst

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aworldoffandoms · 5 years ago

Text

Lunchtime Confessions

Authors Note: This is my version of ‘the talk’ Ethan and MC will have after their kiss at the end of chapter 8. I hope this, somehow, helps with your withdrawal from OH. Enjoy! 💖

Here is the fic that you wanted @trappedinfandoms @cxld-play and @lifeof-liv! This is for all ya’ll too! Hope you like!

AO3 LINK

***

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x F!MC [Nicolette Valentine]

Word Count: 2, 565 +/-

Rating: G

Warnings: Fluff. No angst. Just fluff and some progress (finally)

Summary: Nicolette and Ethan sit down (with some chicken) to finally have a talk about where their relationship is going and what happens next.

I’m tagging my OH tag list but please let me know if you’d like to stay on it or would like to be removed.

Open Heart Tag: @senseofduties @polishchoicesfan @princess-geek @i-bloody-love-drake-walker @binny1985 @fanficnewbie @x-kyne-x @thefluffyphotographer @lilyofchoices @thecordoniandiaries @rainbowsinthestorm @cxld-play @jens-diamondchoices @hopelessly-shipper @my-heart-beats-for-ya @landofenchantedwonder @sabrinahoffersonsworld @flyawayboo @stanathanxoox @oofchoices @thequeenofcronuts @heauxplesslydevoted @bi-cookie @kingliamsbish @trappedinfandoms @supercoolperson0808 @perriewinklenerdie @riverrune @caseyvalentineramsey

***

LUNCHTIME CONFESSIONS

Nicolette scans the selection of food in Edenbrook’s cafeteria, the low hum of conversation a buzz in her ear as she concentrates on what’s in front of her. Nicolette’s nose scrunches in disgust at the questionable lasagna, soggy burgers and the very not-so-nice-looking stir-fry that reside under the heat lamps. Edenbrook was one of the best hospitals in the country but why did the cafeteria have the worst food ever? The only thing edible in what this hospital calls for food is a salad. It’s healthy but shouldn’t there be more of a selection?

Who has ingredients for salad and then decides to put sardines with it? Ugh.

Nicolette muses bitterly, her eyes flicking over the food with distaste. However, her gaze doesn’t pull away from the food even when her stomach growls with hunger.

“Sounds to me like you’re hungry, Valentine.”

Nicolette jumps, her gaze tearing away from the food to the tall man standing beside her, holding two Tupperware containers, his tall stature almost tense. His blue eyes regard her with amusement as flush pricks her cheeks at being caught staring at the food and her stomach growling.

The attending beside her gives her a small smile, the grin lifting his lips in a simple gesture that kicks her pulse up a notch or two. Her thoughts then go back to what happened the previous night and her knees threaten to buckle all over again at the heady, passionate embrace she had found herself in.

It’ll never cease to amaze her how much of a profound effect Ethan had on her and her body. He was like a magnet, always on the opposing force and she’ll always be drawn to him.

From the looks of Ethan’s expression and the way his eyes had changed to a darker shade from his baby blues, his thoughts had diverted to the same place as hers had. Her stomach does a flip flop, her skin alighting in flames as the ghost of the sensation of his hands on her waist, his kisses on her neck and her lips make themselves known…

Snap out of it, Nicolette!

It’s then that she realises what she’s doing and clears her throat, pushing her hands into her coat pockets to resist the urge to grab the diagnostician by the tie and mould his lips to hers and finish what they started without a care in the world to who’ll see them.

“Is there something you wanted, Doctor Ramsey?”

Ethan shakes his head as if to eliminate the cobwebs that have his mind thinking of nothing but the woman in front of him. How Nicolette had wound her way into his every thought continued to allude him but deep down inside, to a place he’s always tried to hide, he’s not surprised in the least. She’s the only one who’s gotten past his defences and stuck around. He’s not all that upset about that idea, in all honesty. Nicolette’s special and he’s quite happy about that fact. It’s better to have her here now than not ever.

Ethan brings his hand up to rub the back of his neck in a nervous tick, the Tupperware in his grasp feeling like lead as well as his tongue.

“Well, I was wondering if you’d like to, uh, have lunch with me considering all your help last night preparing it. I didn’t want to let it go to waste so I thought—”

Nicolette raises her hand to stop Ethan’s words, a laugh bubbling up in her throat. “Wait...wait. You actually saved me some?”

Ethan stares at her as if what she said wasn’t entirely obvious. Didn’t she realise that he listens to every word she says? Cares about her opinion? He kept his glasses and beard for her because she liked them. Isn’t that proof enough?

“Yes, I did.”

Nicolette’s eyebrows furrow as she takes a step back, her eyes trail down his frame until they spot two distinctive blue Tupperware filled with what definitely looked like the Georgian Stuffed Chicken from last night.

Nicolette’s stomach erupts in butterflies, and her heart swells with affection for the attending in front of her because it had become clear that he took her words quite seriously. Whether it’s dinner, his appearance or if he should keep his green jacket or go back to his old-grandpa cardigan.

“Why?”

Ethan’s next words confirm her suspicions. “Because you asked me to and I didn’t want to forget so I put some aside for you before I went to bed. My dad liked it so I’m sure you will too.”

A gentle smile graces her face and Nicolette has to resist the urge to grab Ethan by the cheeks and smoosh them together like he was a toddler because he was so goddamn cute.

“Hmm... I’ll believe you when I eat it.”

“You’ll never know unless you try some.”

Never did Ethan think he’d be nervous but alas, here he is, standing in a public place, where his colleagues can see him, asking his junior fellow to have lunch with him, whilst holding two Tupperware containers holding the meal that they made together.

Oh, boy. Naveen isn’t going to let him live this down.

Ethan’s nerves gave way to frustration when Nicolette hadn’t uttered a word for a full minute, her eyes sparkling in unabashed glee. He was aware that they only had an hour for lunch and that hour was quickly winding down. He huffs, pulling the containers closer to his chest.

“So?”

That single word held many connotations and Nicolette has to giggle a little at the implication of his tone. She read him loud and clear.

What’s your answer? Is that a yes? Will you have lunch with me? Hurry up and tell me so I don’t embarrass myself even more.

“Yes, Ethan. I’ll have lunch with you.”

Ethan’s shoulders relax at her confirmation and a grin lifts his mouth and he gives a nod before turning on his heel and heading to his office, Nicolette following behind him silently.

***

“Is it good? Do you believe me yet?”

Nicolette closes her eyes against the spice, the perfect mixture of both herb and spice exploding on her tongue and she has to suppress a moan from the taste.

“Mmm, this is wonderful, Ethan. Chef Ramsay would be proud.”

Ethan chuckles at her words. “I’m sure Gordon Ramsay is far better equipped in the kitchen than me but I suppose I should feel flattered at the compliment.”

Nicolette nods, smiling around the fork that’s lodged in her mouth. She swallows before saying her next words.

“You should. You both are two of the best ‘Ramsey’s’ in the medical and hospitality world. It’s a shame you two haven’t met.”

Ethan has to struggle not to choke on the chicken making its way down his throat but he laughs anyway, the food thankfully going down without any need of the Heimlich manoeuvre.

Ethan’s office is quiet as both he and Nicolette fall into a comfortable, companionable silence as they eat, both wrapped up in their own thoughts.

It’s then broken by Nicolette clearing her throat and it’s right there that Ethan can feel the air shift as if what she’ll say next will determine what happens for the rest of his life. He’s not going to pretend that the thought doesn’t scare him but, maybe, he’s a bit excited about the prospect? He’s lived too long in solitude.

His diagnosis is right with Nicolette’s next words. “Is it later yet?”

Ethan stops chewing, placing his fork down beside his container and squares his gaze on the redheaded woman beside him, a small chuckle of amusement escapes him. She’s definitely referring to last night.

“It’s been less than 24 hours, Rookie.”

Nicolette shrugs, her eyebrows raised and a mischievous smirk on her face. “Call me curious.”

Ethan regards her with bright eyes, the blue shade almost startling against his already handsome features. Nicolette has to remind herself not to stare too hard otherwise she’d burn a hole right into his face and she didn’t want that. She’s already made a fool of herself in front of him today, albeit, unintentionally.

He smirks, the corner of his lips pulled up in an almost mischievous tenor, one that was almost uncharacteristic for someone as level-headed and cynical like Ethan.

“Oh, I know. That’s one of the reasons why you are such a good doctor. You’ve always been curious. Curious to understand your patients and to research that extra mile to help them. It’s what you did with the twins who needed help with their insurance and it’s what you did with Theresa Martinez. You are special.”

Nicolette beams at the compliment, her heart flying out of her chest at the praise. It doesn’t come often and especially from a renowned doctor like Ethan. She’s more ecstatic at the fact that there was a softness to the praise that Nicolette doesn’t hear often and it made her melt. This was coming from Ethan...not Doctor Ramsey and, if she was being honest, she fell for him a little bit more than she already had right then.

“I love this praise, Doctor Ramsey because we both know it’s all true,” Nicolette laughs at her little joke and Ethan joins in. “...but I know what you’re doing. Stop skirting around the question. Tell me.”

Ethan leans back against his chair, the leather squeaking in the silence of the room. “If you insist…”

Nicolette leans forward, her chair inches closer to Ethan’s, so much so that their knees are touching, the atmosphere around them almost heady with expectation and the unreleased tension that always floats around them crackles.

“So? About us…?”

Ethan gives her a searching look, the blue in his eyes almost sparkling, a soft smile lifting his lips.

“Yes. Well…”

Nicolette nearly jumps out of her seat in frustration, the restlessness settling into her nerves and making her antsy. She restrains from whining but she can’t help a little of it to seep into her exclamation.

“Ethan!”

Ethan chuckles, his eyes crinkle with his laughter and Nicolette notes that it makes him all the more handsome. “Alright, alright.”

He takes a breath and continues, the nerves clearly getting to him as the sigh comes out all shaky. Ethan then looks up at Nicolette, the intense focus of his eyes earnest, truthful, as if he didn’t want Nicolette to doubt him at all.

“I’ve had time to think about this thing between us...and I’ve realised that I don’t want to restrict my feelings anymore,”

Ethan stops to gather his thoughts before he continues, trying to form a coherent sentence. All Nicolette can do is try to remember how to breathe.

There’s a definitive nod of his head before Ethan continues, his voice void off all hesitation.

“All I know is that I don’t want to miss out on something that is so good. You are so good. A beautiful, caring, determined woman who’ll go to the ends of the earth for her patients. I don't think I’ll find anyone else like you,” He smiles. “I think it's time for me to finally get rid of these expectations and rules that have ruled my life for thirty-seven years and just jump. Take a dive into the deep end. Take a leap with you.”

The emotion behind Ethan’s words are enough to make Nicolette’s eyes burn, her nose tingles with the onset of tears that are yet to fall from her green eyes but she’s hard-pressed not to squeal or sob right in her seat.

Even with his beautiful words, a sliver of trepidation runs down her spine, that doubt taking place in her heart. He’s done this before. He left for two months to the Amazon to get away from her. He doesn’t inspire much confidence in the feelings department as much as she wishes he did.

“Are you serious, Ethan? You’re not going to backtrack and preach to me about how you're an attending and you don’t want to distract me from my learning and this won’t work in the long run—”

Ethan surprises her by grabbing her hand, his fingers easily slipping between hers. The pad of his thumb caresses the side of hers in soothing circles. His blue eyes are earnest and warm, the sight of him looking so vulnerable and open makes her feel light-headed, her chest swelling with affection for him.

Ethan’s voice holds conviction and truth and Nicolette’s soul soars.

“Nicolette. I’m serious. I’m tired of trying to fight this. It was inevitable from the start— and I don’t know why I fought so hard to begin with. I’m a stubborn man and I know I’m stupid for taking this long to realise what was right in front of me. You are too important to me to lose to some trivial rules and boundaries that I have set between us. You are the most important person in my life...I don’t know what I’d do without you. My life has been changed and I thank you for being the catalyst for that.”

Nicolette doesn’t hold back the tears that fall down her cheeks and Ethan frowns while swiping them away gently, his eyes flooding with care and concern.

“Nicolette? Are you alright?”

Nicolette has to gather herself before she responds, taking a deep breath as her hand's envelope Ethan’s that was resting against her cheeks.

“Ethan, I am perfectly happy right now. I have been waiting months for you to come around and it’s paid off. All I’ve wanted from you is, to be honest with yourself and you've done that all by yourself so I’m proud of you but I also want to thank you.”

Ethan winks, the weight of what was to be a thousand tonnes on his shoulders for the past few months lifting. It allows him to breathe again, his heart at ease, so much so that he takes a cleansing breath, a radiant smile brightens his face at the feeling.

Who would have thought being honest like this would make him feel this free?

Ethan brings his hands down from her face, her hands encased between his and squeezes them. “Thanks for being patient with me. We’re going to make this work. I promise.”

Nicolette winks, a smirk lifting those lush pink lips of hers to the side, a gleam in her eyes. She feels so happy. So light. This is actually real.

“You’re welcome, Doctor Ramsey. You bet your ass we’re gonna make this work. And I have an idea how.”

“Oh? Pray tell, then.”

“Considering I’ve been so patient...you can make it up to me with a date.”

Ethan leans back against his chair, his eyebrows raising, his interest piqued. “Oh? So soon?”

Nicolette nods, the utter confidence in the action making Ethan grin. “Of course. We need to make up for lost time.”

The smile that graces Ethan’s face threatens to make Nicolette drop to the floor in a while of goo from the warmth flooding from him. But the laugh that escapes him following his smile? That was her favourite sound. So bright and so carefree that it makes Nicolette want to fly away into heaven and she would have if Ethan didn’t have a tight grip on her hands, his fingers entwined with hers.

Ethan locks eyes with Nicolette, his heart picking up pace as he stares into the green emerald of her eyes, so disarming that he has to remember how to breathe. A surge of excitement pulses through him as he says the next words.

“Well...I suppose we’ll have to remedy that as soon as possible, Doctor Valentine. Are you free tonight?”

#open heart #open heart 2 #open heart second year #open heart fanfiction #open heart fanfic #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey x mc #ethan ramsey #choices fanfiction #choices fanfic #choices fandom #playchoices

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garyunwinimagines · 5 years ago

Text

Definition (Ransom Drysdale x Reader)

Pairing: Ransom Drysdale x Reader

Warnings: Language, Angst, Angst with a happy ending

Author: @garyunwinimagines (Cross posted on AO3 - Lady_avenger37)

Word Count: 1,758 words

Description: After a drunken hookup with your childhood best friend, you find yourself pregnant. What happens when Ransom tells his family and words are exchanged?

Note: It’s been awhile. This is just word vomit that came out of my depressed ass. I hope it’s alright. I’m kinda rusty with this.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Another blowout level fight with Ransom happened again today. One that was for the record books, and one that could guarantee the ending of your friendship. You just found out that you were pregnant, and you made the mistake of telling him right before you went to his Grandfather’s house for a family gathering. Like normal, Ransom was stoking the fire with his family and Walt remarked something about having dozens of kids without him knowing. Ransom then spilled the beans on your pregnancy. Congratulations were given and then the snide comments began.

The one that really set you off was “Well I’m not at fault here,”

“Jesus fuck Ransom! Who the fuck do you think knocked me up?” You said and stormed out. Grabbing the keys to his beamer in the process. You drove off before he or anyone in his family could say anything.

You didn’t even know where you were driving to, but you just drove. Drove to forget what happened. Drove to forget what was happening. All while ignoring the constant calls from Ransom and the rest of his family. After an hour or so your stomach growled. So, you decided to just go to a gas station and pick up some food before going back on the road. Now with a destination in mind.

Your parents’ old cabin. One which they rarely visited this time of the year, and lucky for you it wasn’t too far from your current location. It was someplace that you used to go to all the time during the summer. Now since it was mid fall it wasn’t on the top of their lists for places to go. They even said that you could go and use it whenever you wanted to have some peace and quiet. Which reminded you to turn off your phone to stop its constant ringing. Turning it off was a wonderful idea as you began to relax slightly as you made your way to the cabin. Your only thoughts being to get to the cabin and take a nice hot bath.

After another 45 minutes, you arrived at the cabin. You couldn’t get in there fast enough. Taking the trash and extra food inside. Throwing it on the counter as you made your way to the bathroom. Right in front of you stood a porcelain claw foot heavenly looking tub that you could just about drown in, and it was calling your name. You grabbed a towel after you turned on the hot water. Which to your dismay took a while to heat up. During that time, you looked around to see if there was any bath salts or oils that you could add to it. After opening drawer after drawer, you did find a bottle of lavender scented bubble bath. That would have to do.

Adding that was probably your smartest idea of the day. As the water was hot and the scent wafted around the room. Taking off your clothes, you finally stepped into the tub and it was so worth the wait. Not only did the heat help take away some of the stress, but the lavender helped soothe your frazzled nerves. Your body started to get so relaxed that you started to fall asleep. Before anything bad could happen, you got out of the tub.

Drying yourself off, you wrapped the towel tightly around you. Going over to where you left all your clothes to carry them to your room. Picking them up you walked across the cabin to where your room was. Praying that you had some clothes there so you didn’t have to put back on your dirty clothes.

Opening up the door, you can tell that it hasn’t changed since you last used it. You smiled. As on the dresser to the right of the door, there was a handful of pictures of you and your family and friends. A couple including Ransom.

You picked up the photo as it was one of your favorites of the two of you. You were both smiling and looking at you mom who was taking the picture. It was a couple summers ago when Ransom decided he needed a break from the world. Aka his family. So, you invited him to spend a few days with you and your family at the cabin. That picture was taken only a couple minutes after he arrived. Your mom joked that she had never seen either of you more relaxed or happy then when the two of you were out here together.

She was right. Out here was your happy place, and having your best friend/love of your life with you only made it better.

But right now it was your hiding place. A place to forget, and a place to be in peace.

And that’s what it was for the next week.

You relaxed and tried to figure out what you were going to do. You knew that unless if it would kill you, you were going to go through with the pregnancy. You thought about aborting it, but a part of you loved Ransom so much that you couldn’t kill any part of him.

Then you thought about how you were going to raise your child. Where would you be? Would you tell them about Ransom? About his family?

Most importantly, you thought would Ransom be involved?

If he was, would you be a family, or would he still sleep around? Would he get sick of you?

That night, you couldn’t sleep. Just like most nights in the past week. Except this time, you were awoken by someone’s arms wrapped around you. Turning your head, you were met with a familiar face.

“Ransom?” You said, and in the blink of an eye his eyes met yours.

His eyes were swollen and red, with the left one surrounded by a faint bruise. You felt a slight change in the pressure around you.

“You look like shit,” You said.

“I’m sorry,” He said and he buried his face into your neck.

With him here, you didn’t know what to say. Especially since he apologized. Turning around, you forced him to look into your eyes.

“I’m sorry. I let those fuckers get to me. I didn’t mean it-” He said.

“They always get to you Hugh. Every single time.” You said. He was about to talk again, but you put a finger to his lips. “You don’t think of the consequences of your words, or your actions.”

His grip loosened around you as he began to close off.

“I’m not just thinking about myself here. I’m thinking about OUR child. As whether you like it or not, you were the one to knock me up. If you want to take responsibility or not is your choice. As if you don’t, you might as well be dead to me,” You said meeting his blank stare, which seemed to aggravate you more than you thought it would. “Cause I probably was too damn foolish to think that you’d still be my best friend, even after a drunken mishap. But apparently I’m just one of your little playthings that you’ll just throw away-”

His eyes flashed with unbridled anger when he cut you off and got out of the bed.

“How could you EVER think that you’re disposable to me? After everything we’ve been through!” He said and you got out of the bed and stood right in front of him.

“How could I not! Not after you said it was MY fault that I’m pregnant! When that happens to also be the fault of the goddamn dumbass that knocked me up in the first place!” You yelled and jabbed your finger in his chest. He grabbed your wrist and pulled you as close as humanly possible.

“I maybe the dumbass for ever trusting you in the first place. To ever think that we were friends,” He damn near growled at you. “I’m more of a fool to ever think that you could love me the way I love you,” He said and pushed you away and towards the bed.

Your heart shattered. You have loved him for a long time, and figured that he only saw you as a friend. Tears began to sting in your eyes as you looked away from him.

It was silent for the next couple minutes while you kept yourself from sobbing. Once you felt that you would be able to confront him, you looked at him. You noticed that he was tenser than earlier but more nervous.

“Ransom,” Your voice broke. His head snapped right to you. “I’ve loved you for years, and have trusted you even longer.”

He took a step closer to you. You stuck your arm out, signaling for him to stop.

“At the same time, you’ve hurt me more than any one ever has. I understand that you don’t get along with your family. That you constantly stoke up drama and other shit with them. You’ve even brought me into it before. You went too damn far this time.” His jaw clenched at the statement.

“Did you even think about how terrified I was to tell you that I was pregnant? How worried I was? Wondering if we’d ever be friends after this? How we would raise a child? The worst one that is still constantly going through my head is, will he stay?” That’s the moment your resolve broke and you were visibly crying with tear tracks falling down your face at an increasing pace.

Ransom took the couple steps to get to you before you could say anything else. Before you knew it, he wrapped his arms around you and held you to his chest. Your tears wetting his shirt. His hot breath fanned across the top of your head, and you could tell that he was saying something but not what he was saying. All you could really focus on was the warmth and strength of his embrace, and the way his hand was rubbing up and down the length of your back as he was trying to soothe you.

“I’m scared too,” Ransom said once you stoped crying. You looked up at him.

“Then let’s be scared together,” You said reaching up to cup his cheek. His mouth curved up into a smile that melted your heart.

The two of you stayed like that for a few minutes, basking in the other’s presence. Silent promises exchanged between the two of you that helped ease the pain of the past week.

#Ransom Drysdale x Reader #Hugh Ransom Drysdale #Ransom Drysdale #Ransom Drysdale fanfiction #Knives Out Fanfiction #Knives Out

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princesssarcastia · 4 years ago

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the republic shatters, but it does not Fall. and its not Ahsoka’s goddamn job to pick up the pieces, actually.

GUESS WHO SPENT ALL OF THIS WEEK HAVING LOTS OF STAR WARS FEELINGS. GUESS WHO JUST WROTE AN 8K+ WORD FIC ABOUT THOSE FEELINGS.

definitely haven’t been subsumed by thoughts of the Fall Of The Republic as a proxy for all my anxiety about the election, no siree.

anyway. In which Ahsoka takes Maul’s hand, convinces Anakin to sit his ass down, and then has to learn how to hand the fate of the galaxy back over to he people who fucked it up in the first place. And in which the author acknowledges Barris Was Right, Even If Her Methods Were Radical and Flawed, And Ultimately Detracted From Her Message.

will probably call this, “had we but world enough and time,” on ao3. edit: here it is on ao3, if you prefer.

—

Maul smirks and the feeling of it lingers in the wider office, grating.

But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.

Her breath comes and goes in quick bursts, montrals shuddering lightly with exhaustion. The enormity of what they’ve done has started falling on her; the enormity of what she’s done, by the Force. But her hands are the kind of steady earned through a crucible of three years of constant battle.

Too much battle, Master Windu thinks, and Ahsoka narrows her eyes at him when she catches it and presses closer.

“You don’t lay a finger on him; none of you get to do that, not now.”

“Now that I’ve—” Maul starts to drawl, but Ahsoka cuts him off.

“Not helping, Maul,” she spits without taking her eyes off the threatthreathreat she can feel from Master Windu.

Ahsoka showed up out of nowhere with the enemy she was meant to capture as backup—or, she was his backup, they hadn’t quite straightened that out on the way. But it’s also that Anakin has—Anakin was—Anakin is—and Ahsoka was his apprentice for three years.

And whose fault is that? Ahsoka thinks desperately, and Windu catches it, and it’s getting harder and harder for them to keep their shields up, keep their minds from meeting in the Force; Master Fisto lies dead not ten feet from her, and she’s used to dead bodies, she is, but dead Jedi still feel anathema and the violence of it lingers in the Force here even though they’ve been dying in droves in the last stages of this pointless conflict all this pointless death she is a solider not a Jedi what was it all for?

“Come now, Lady Tano,” Maul says, an undercurrent of pleasure at the chaos he can sense from her—not that he’s any better, he likes chaos. It’s what he’s good at. But she’s not, and it dulls her keen edges.

She forces a slow, full breath in, and out, and her hands stay steady.

“This is not the Jedi way,” Master Windu says like it matters.

“No? Maybe not.” Ahsoka draws in another breath. “But I don’t think that means anything, anymore. There have been too many compromises in this war, Master Windu, for you to tell me here and now that Maul deserves to die for winning it.”

“Obi-Wan would agree with me.”

“Obi-wan isn’t here, master,” Ahsoka says like an accusation. “And can you honestly tell me you were going to do anything different? Why were you here in this office?”

“Arresting him, so he could be brought to justice,” Master Windu bites out, and Ahsoka knows she’s won, because it’s a lie.

That’s not what this was about.

This was about millions of dead clones and thousands of dead Jedi and hundreds of years of steady decay disguised as peace.

Another lie.

Master Windu sighs like the weight of the galaxy is pressing it out of him. And maybe it is; destiny fell hard on their shoulders today.

Now, they find out if they can bear it.

“Fine. We’ll do it your way, Lady Tano,” he capitulates, using Maul’s title for her to make a point. “For now.”

—

“How did you get away with being pregnant for so long?” Ahsoka asks hesitantly, as they wait together. “I mean, your gowns make a good effort, but…”

Padmé hums. “They weren’t meant to convince anyone I wasn’t pregnant; it’s,” she taps her armrest, “it’s a cultural thing. Padmé Naberrie is pregnant, but Senator Padmé Amidala isn’t. Our private lives are sacrosanct, on Naboo, and with Palpatine,” her voice breaks, and she clears her throat. “With Palpatine being the Chancellor for so long, Naboo culture was something most of the Senate understood.”

“Ah,” Ahsoka says, and it almost makes sense. “We never had a lot of privacy in the Order. Or in the GAR, but that was different,” she adds, shaking her head.

“How so?” Padmé asks, her eyes brightening the way Master Obi-Wan’s did, those rare moments in between battles when Anakin and Ahsoka could be lured into debating philosophy.

“I mean, we’re all Jedi, we all grow up together, learn together, live together. We’re Jedi,” she repeats, “and we—it’s—we blend together in the Force. There are things we just knew about one another, unless someone made an effort to hide, but then we knew that, too.” She makes a frustrated noise. “It’s not bad, though, it’s comforting. Usually we didn’t feel the need to hide anything from other Jedi, and it was comforting, to know that you could just be in the Temple, without any pretenses.

“Whereas the GAR,” Ahsoka twists her lips wryly, “the lack of privacy stems from the close quarters and the constant battle and movement. There’s no time for privacy when every second wasted means someone else dies. And a lot of the regulations meant there were things we had to report to our superiors. Everything, basically, because some senators who helped draw up regulations thought that our use of the Force meant our every thought and feeling was pertinent to the war effort.”

“I see,” Padmé says, and they sit with these things they’ve said, and all the things they haven’t.

Ahsoka can feel the question in the back of their throats, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from her or from Padmé, but Padmé is the one who gives it life. So kindly that it almost doesn’t feel like the dagger to her gut that it is.

“Is it still like that now?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka whispers, finally, because this isn’t something she can say loudly; not yet. “I don’t—not for me. It isn’t like that for me, anymore. But for everyone else?” She asks. “I can’t tell the difference between trauma and classified information and loss of faith in other Jedi, in the others.”

Or in herself.

—

When the find the chips—

Little gods and all the Force, too.

Anakin felt like he could have torn all of Coruscant asunder, and Ahsoka knew she wasn’t far behind him. A lot of the other Jedi weren’t far behind him; Aayla Secura and Plo Koon and Depa Billaba and the others who lived and died by thousands of brothers for three years.

But Rex isn’t surprised. That’s what finally breaks Ahsoka: the lack of surprise on Rex’s face and the grim way Cody asks if these chips really change anything.

She leaves the now-chaotic debriefing room and hurries blindly through the halls of the Senate, grasping at the Force for a safe place to land and fall to pieces.

She stumbles into a large set of offices, meant for a senator, maybe, but Ahsoka can’t quite grasp the lay of it with her montrals vibrating like they are; with her eyes so full of this last shattering betrayal, the final throw of earth in its burial.

“Master Jedi?” Someone calls sharply, but Ahsoka can’t answer them before she backs into a corner and sinks to the floor. Can’t correct them, say, I am no Jedi, because she doesn’t know truth from lie anymore.

“Master Jedi,” that same voice repeats more calmly, right in front of her and vaguely familiar. “Ahsoka, right?”

She desperately trills some affirmative, and it must be within their range of hearing because they say, “Okay,” and nothing else.

Slowly, in fits and starts, the physical creeps into her awareness. This is a senator’s office, and if she’s not mistaken, it’s the office of the man crouching in front of her. She recognizes him, vaguely, and might be able to name him with another minute of study.

“Do you know where you are?” He asks, radiating calm like a Jedi master without any of the awareness in the Force.

“Your offices,” Ahsoka bites out lowly, starting to feel a low burn of embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m—sorry. I’m sorry. I was just—”

“It’s fine, Master Jedi. There’s a lot of that going around,” he jokes lightly, except for how it isn’t a joke at all.

“The debriefing,” she says, the debriefing, because there’s only one, and if Ahsoka can recognize him then he’s definitely important enough to sit in on it. “You weren’t there,” she adds questioningly.

“Ah, yes,” he says mildly. “I’m afraid I’ll need to be briefed on the debriefing later by one of my colleagues; Senator Amidala, perhaps, her notes are usually impeccable. I was unavoidably detained by the Queen.”

“The queen,” Ahsoka repeats back to him, like Hondo’s stupid monkey-lizard.

“Queen Breha Organa,” he responds, and she’s grateful that still, all he radiates is calm, because her embarrassment now is strong enough to rival her desperate horror.

“Your wife,” she says like an idiot to Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan, one of the leaders of the delegation of 2000 and main architects of the Republic’s efforts to rebuild.

“Yes,” he says. “Do you drink tea?”

She takes a deep breath in, forcing her heartrate to slow. “I do,” she replies. You can’t spend any time in proximity with Master Obi-Wan without it.

“I would be honored if you would join me, then,” Senator Organa says, rising and extending a hand to her in one smooth motion that belies his heavy robes. “I think your perspective on these proceedings may be invaluable, if you’re willing to offer it.”

Ahsoka grasps it and pulls to her feet. “It’s the least I can do,” she says. “Seeing as I just had a panic attack in your office.”

“Wonderful,” he smiles at her, not denying it, and leads her away.

—

A galaxy cannot stumble up to the edge of oblivion and then step back gracefully, kindly, simply, easily, just because they notice it’s happened. An end is inevitable.

The Republic fell three years ago, thirteen years ago, seventeen years ago. Now the work is sorting shattered remains to see what is worth preserving, and what can be thrown out wholesale.

Saving isn’t on the agenda.

—

There are so few Jedi left, now, compared to what they were before. Perhaps half the Order has died, in three years of relentless violence, and those who remain feel brittle in the Force. The very young and the very old alone remain whole, and the disconnect is stifling.

Not all of those who remain stay. Entire lineages depart from the Temple, unable to contemplate trying to live as they had before.

Trying, and failing.

Tholme and T’ra Saa depart for parts unknown to the Order at large as soon as the last battle fades into armistice. Years of intelligence work and corralling those brave few Jedi who were willing to let the darkness swallow them whole have left them closer than the Code can abide. And Quinlan Vos follows soon after, to no one’s surprise.

Aayla…she stays. She stays, for now, but it’s a tenuous settling. As long as Bly is with her, she will endure.

But if she has to choose between the Order and Bly, or the Order and seeing her master again, the Order will lose.

—

Calling them Senate hearings would be a misnomer; the Senate doesn’t really…exist, anymore. With Palpatine gone, a crippling power vacuum sits at the heart of the Republic, leaving them, somehow, even more ineffective than they were before. No system trusts any other system well enough to vote someone else into the Chancellorship that, all of a sudden, seems too powerful for any one being.

But their bylaws are still legal.

If not for the Jedi’s efforts to negotiate armistices with the Confederacy, they would be completely unable to negotiate or sue for peace, left mired in a thousand little wars, shards of the larger conflict that shattered with Dooku and Grievous. The Jedi hold the peace of hundreds of worlds in their palms.

No one is particularly happy with this state of affairs. Not even the Jedi, though some of Bail’s colleagues doubt that to the point of insult.

This particular briefing is in one of the lesser chambers, with perhaps only two hundred key systems directly represented. A dozen Jedi and half that many clones have joined them to provide information and counsel on military matters, and all of their agitation is more palpable by the moment.

Master Windu, as Head of the Order, has spoken before the Senate many times; but today, he remains quiet and stone-faced, his hand pressed against his mouth as if to remind himself of his silence.

Master Kenobi, on the other hand, has exhaustedly pulled and pushed at conversational threads the entire time, lambasting falsehoods and correcting ignorance and on one very startling occasion baring his teeth at a senator who suggested—demanded—the Trade Federation be allowed a voice in these proceedings.

That motion died swiftly.

The famed negotiator is seemingly at the end of his rope when it comes to these proceedings, and Bail can’t blame him.

After the very first of these briefings, the one Bail missed, Master Skywalker was not allowed to attend, and the look on Ahsoka’s face when they learned of this made him think it’s for the best.

No Kaminoan representative has appeared after Halle Burtoni was swiftly recalled just before Master Shaak-Ti revealed what had been done to the clone troops, which Bail thinks is also for the best; if only because their safety could not be guaranteed.

—

Mace doesn’t understand it until he meets Padawan Vrosch.

Barely Padawan Vrosch; if not for the war, this little nautolan would still comfortably be an initiate, but needs must.

Padawan Vrosch is a padawan of the Temple. Masterless, and left that way too long because no master could take up their training after…after what always happens to Jedi in wars.

Padawan Vrosch’s master died very early on, after taking a padawan very young on both ends. They went to their master’s funeral, when they were still affording every Jedi lost in battle their own funeral, their own pyre and remembrance.

Most Padawans their age would have been at odd ends; but Vrosch quietly took up their own education, signing up for and attending classes as they came, joining initiates in their saber training, and patiently waiting for the day someone noticed them again.

They also found purpose in these intervening years, a much harder task: attending all the funerals held for fallen Jedi at the Temple.

“I was the only one there for my master,” Padawan Vrosch speaks solemnly up to him. “When he died.”

Mace settles down next to them in the gardens—still too quiet, too empty, too devoid of the sparks of brightness that made it easy to just be in—and waits, patiently, for what the Force is telling him he needs to hear.

Not just the Force. Mace has trained one Padawan to Knighthood already. A youngling alone shouldn’t stay that way.

“I know the war was important,” Vrosch continues. “The Jedi wouldn’t fight in it if it wasn’t.”

Their faith stirs some inkling of wonder and shame from Mace; he finds he isn’t so certain.

“But we’re Jedi,” they say insistently. “We’re all Jedi. We shouldn’t die alone, and we shouldn’t pass into the Force alone, and we shouldn’t be remembered alone.

“I can’t fight very well, Master Windu,” Vrosch whispers, their tentacles twitching listlessly, like this is a failure on their part. “But I could do this. We aren’t mean to be alone, Master Windu.”

Mace sighs and looks out over too-quiet gardens.

“No, we’re not, Padawan.”

—

“Where is he?”

Ahsoka has been avoiding Obi-Wan for this exact reason.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly, looking back at him steadily. Steady, steady, so, so steady; Ahsoka is steady because if she isn’t then it all falls apart. She’s certain and resolute because if she isn’t then she was wrong, and they Fall.

Obi-Wan runs a hand through his hair, pulling too-long strands out of his face. He’s eroded to the quick. They all are. But leaving on what should have been the last mission of the war, only to return to find the Republic and your padawan on the brink of collapse, your oldest enemy free and your former grandpadawan responsible for freeing him…

The one thing he could still be sure of had been Cody, and even that was taken from him. Now, he has only himself.

“He pulled us back from the Fall, master, and left without taking advantage of it. I don’t think we can ask more from him than that.”

Welcome to my world, Kenobi.

None of their shields are functioning anymore. Ahsoka gets Obi-Wan’s full impression of Maul, his sense of Maul’s whole self, and accepts it as another burden on her shoulders. She knew the second she took Maul’s hand that Master Obi-Wan would never forgive her, would never understand, and she did it anyway.

Before he can work through to quiet acceptance of another grievous wound from someone he didn’t expect—a burden that might finally break her—Ahsoka untangles them from each other in the Force and walks away.

Infinite sadness, the Force murmurs to her, but she doesn’t look back.

—

It’s like they hit the Republic and the Order and the Galaxy over and over and over and over and over again until cracks spread into their very foundations—and then each took the finishing blow inside themselves, in place of the things they all bled and died and Fell for.

And they all shattered instead.

—

When Ahsoka tells Rex what she wants, he drags her to Cody—who gives in with surprisingly little resistance, and then lets her watch his comm to Commander Fox and the face that he makes, because Cody outranks everyone, and Fox can’t say no. It almost makes up for stifling-fear-anger-betrayal from her time in Fox’s custody.

Sometimes, Ahsoka forgets that Anakin spent half a year serving with Cody the same way Ahsoka served with Rex.

They try to take her lightsabers at the last checkpoint, but she hands them off to Rex to safely hang from his belt. Not a single one of the men here can be trusted with them in her mind, even though that’s not fair.

The hard part of being self-aware is knowing you’re being irrational with no way to stop.

She waves the escort off, and to her surprise, they leave, though she can feel them linger just around the corner.

One beat, two beats, three beats of silence.

Fine.

Ahsoka settles onto the durasteel floor, lets the cold seep into legs and work its way up her lekku and down her montrals.

In, out, in, out, in…out…i n… . . o u t . .. . …….

Her-not-her-other expands and contracts in time with her lungs, and she becomes grassland; wind whips across the plains and she is the predator at the center, low to the ground, tasting the breeze and aware of every creature, every hidey-hole, every current. Daughter, the wind murmurs, and a convor’s cry echoes across the endless sky.

In the place between them, grassland and frigid desert meet, warm and cold winds mixing to create something more. Something terrible. They are not the same winds; the predator snarls, for it knows death rides on the cold.

Death and betrayal.

Barriss stiffens in her cell, and Ahsoka sighs. As it should be, she thinks, but also, that’s not why I’m here.

But also, Barriss, is that true? and justice is merely the construct of the current power base.

Barriss’ eyes fly open at that. “So, the rumors are true. You did help him,” she says dully.

“He helped me,” Ahsoka fires back. Sighs again. “But maybe it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh?” Barriss raises an eyebrow cooly.

With your help, the Jedi can stop Sidious before it’s too late!

Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it! There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it!

Energy crackles between them, and Ahsoka bites her lip.

“I think…” she hesitates. “I think he was right, Barriss,” she whispers. “I think you were right, too.”

Barriss’ breath catches in her throat, her eyes snagging Ahsoka’s until they’re caught in a deadlock and warm and cold winds rise, rise, rise together, and a squall erupts in the Force. At the edge of it, the clone troopers shift, discomforted.

“You can feel it, too?” Barriss asks desperately, and Ahsoka catches flashes of Master Luminara sitting where she sits now, beaten and drawn and blind.

In, out. Ahsoka expands the grasslands and points out the guiding winds to friend-not. These aren’t Master Windu’s shatterpoints, but they are everywhere: in the Senate, in the Temple, on the Star Destroyers, in the Jedi and the people and the clones. The Republic has shattered already. It just hasn’t fallen to pieces. The Republic is failing! The Republic is Falling.

Tears slip down Barriss’ face, relief-fear-sadness-righteous. Ahsoka trills, acknowledgement-soothing-fear-anger.

“What are we doing? What are we going to do?” Barriss throws out.

“What have we done?” Ahsoka counters. Blasters-energy-darkness-death-dying-agony-conflict-violence-pain-destruction-death-war-war-war-war.

In, war, out, war.

“It didn’t die with Sidious. I thought—but Maul was right, you were right. It’s all of us. And I don’t know how to fix it, Barriss, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.” She shifts, hugging her knees to her chest. The predator morphs, uncertain, into prey, akul-scented on the wind, nowhere to run; they can only face it.

“That’s because it’s not our job,” Barriss says, face darkening.

“Why not? We are j—” Ahsoka swallows the word. They aren’t. Barriss, expelled. Ahsoka, lost.

Barriss shakes her head sharply. “No, that’s not what I meant. We should never have—we—we’re peacekeepers!” She says indignantly. “And that doesn’t mean pacifist, but it also doesn’t mean warmonger. The jedi lost their honor the second they put us on the battlefield.”

Blasters-energy-darkness-death-dying-agony-conflict-violence-pain-destruction-death-war-war-war-war.

Death Watch surrounds her, too close, and it damns them; her lightsabers whirl out and catch all four of them in the neck at once. And on to the next before their heads roll to a stop. Bloodless, cauterized death-wounds, but the smell of it….

The grasslands are set ablaze, and the predator learns to run with the flames, instead of from them.

Barriss’ hands are never fully clean. Mud and viscera stain her skirts as she lashes out at the Umbarans to protect her men, and then drops to hold the men she couldn’t protect together in the Force, desperately failing to hold them all together, Master Luminara isn’t here no one is here it’s just Barriss and Death nipping at her heels.

Desert sands whirl and whip like glass shards, higher and higher and colder and colder until all that lasts is the storm.

And….and….

Anakin, only seven years older than Ahsoka is; Master Obi-Wan hadn’t even been knighted yet at his age. Ahsoka thinks about being thirteen and missing Temple classes for battles. Thinks about being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and feeling death emanate from her lightsabers in the unifying force, stronger than any other feeling.

Thinks about being knighted at seventeen. Thinks about Barriss alone on the battlefield. Thinks about Katooni, and wonders if she’s a Padawan yet.

Thinks about half of the Jedi Order, gone.

When the guards come back for her, Ahsoka stands and works the kinks out of her muscles ruthlessly fast, too used to her surroundings shifting on a credit to let that kind of weakness linger. Barriss stares after her with water and hope in her eyes, because they both know Ahsoka is coming back. More questions lie between them than answers, now.

—

The debriefings turn into hearings, public ones. Ahsoka’s shoulders tense every time she sets foot in the Senate, feeling the searching-grasping-angry-false atmosphere. As inaction continues to dominate their government, some senators have started making noise about someone to blame for all of this. Like Sidious isn’t to blame; like they all aren’t to blame.

Whenever the noise overwhelms her, the directionless anger prowling for an easy target, she finds her feet taking her back to Senator Organa’s offices, again and again. It’s the will of the Force that he’s always there when she does, always with tea already waiting for them. The unifying Force swirls lazily in the space around them in a way Ahsoka can’t interpret; like the future has its eyes on this moment in its past.

They talk about the proceedings. About the war. About the peace talks some Jedi are still presiding over without any authority to back them. Ahsoka discovers that she has opinions about these that are uniquely her own, ones Senator Organa finds fascinating in a purely kind way.

Senator Organa opens up about the troubles Alderaan’s relief missions face, without proper authority and with the Republic forces’ attention off some of the usual hyperspace lanes.

Frustration is a bonding emotion between them. But the time they spend together is the only peace Ahsoka’s life affords her.

—

When Ahsoka left the Jedi Order, she felt the weight of all the work she wasn’t doing press hard on her shoulders, guilt twining between her legs and tripping her up every time happiness or contentment seemed in reach. It made it so easy to take Bo Katan’s hand when she reached out; so easy to take on Mandalore’s battles as her own, because it felt like war and inaction were her only options.

Ahsoka was decisive. Her actions determined the course of so many lives. So many troopers under her command, so many citizens depending on their victory; and for those brief, too-long hours with Maul, the whole Republic balanced on their backs.

Now, inaction has descended again. The weight of roads not taken and guilt encircle her throat like a collar. With Master Obi-Wan and Commander Cody and Captain Rex in the Senate every day, with Padmé and Senator Organa, the future of the Republic doges her every step, but she’s nearly powerless to help.

And it doesn’t help that her future with the Order is still up in the air.

Master Windu seems to have set her brief partnership with Maul aside until they know whether the Republic will fix itself, but having the threat of his disapproval hang over her head is worse than any swift punishment he could have devised. Like, for instance, barring her from rejoining the Order.

The Temple is her home. The Jedi are her people. Ahsoka knows she doesn’t want to live without them anymore.

But the Order has ground to a halt, and Ahsoka doesn’t know how to be still, anymore; her waiting is purely predatory, a simple watching for the next moment to strike.

Meditating has never been her strong suit, but she takes it up again anyway. It’s supposed to afford her clarity, if not peace.

In, out. In, out.

In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out.

Ahsoka lets out a frustrated huff. It’s so easy when she slips into the grasslands and the desert with Barriss; the both of them searching for answers no one seems to have, answers to questions too many people aren’t asking.

But on her own? For herself?

Not a damn moment of clarity.

She lets out another frustrated huff and pushes to her feet. Fine. Moving meditation, it is. In, out. Rise. In, out.

In, out. Left foot back, right foot forward, arm across the body. Ahsoka automatically pulls her empty grip in front of her face, instead of at her side, and lets her other hand act as both counterbalance and guard behind her.

In, out. In, out.

Forward, back.

Parry, attack, defend.

Deflect. In, out.

In, out. In, out, In….. out…. …. ……….

She alternates slow and fast repetitions and allows the living Force to flow through her, abandoning all thought toward the future.

In out forward back parry attack defend deflect in out; In, out, forward, back, parry, attack, defend, deflect, in……out……..

“Always in motion, the future is,” Master Yoda says from where he’s settled into the grass across from her. “Always in motion, you are, Ahsoka.”

In, out. The grasslands recede, leaving only Ahsoka. She dashes the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and falls into slow, easy stretches, letting the moment extend between her and her oldest teacher.

When they’re both ready, she releases a last breath and lowers herself in front of him.

“Happy here, you are not.” His ears dip low. “Happy here, many are not. Leaving, many are, to find themselves outside the Jedi Order.”

Ahsoka says nothing, content to wait for him to ask, not sure she has an answer to offer.

He sighs. “Leaving, are you, Ahsoka Tano?”

“I don’t know, master. I don’t know…what I’m supposed to do now.”

Yoda offers no answers, either.

“Jedi, you are,” he says, but it feels like a question. He feels…uncertain, and it strikes Ahsoka like a blow. Yoda isn’t supposed to be uncertain; he’s supposed to be…Yoda!

We’re peacekeepers! Barriss’ voice says in her mind, and he and Ahsoka flinch as one.

But…

“Yes,” she mulls, “I am a Jedi.” In, out. “But I don’t know what that means anymore. What we stand for. What we’re supposed to do,” she repeats her earlier refrain.

Yoda hums. “Neither do I,” he says, full of mischief and sorrow for not having the answers younglings always expect from him.

“Jedi, you are; in the Temple, Jedi, you are. On Mandalore, Jedi, you are. And on Felucia, Alderaan, Naboo, Tatooine.

“Jedi, you are, always.”

It rings out in the Force. Daughter, it murmurs to her, and the cantor soars over the grasslands, free once again.

Her breath shudders out of her, leaving tears in its wake. She shudders, and cries, until it turns into great rolling sobs that wrack her whole body and seep into the Force around them, sinking into the grass and plants and trees.

Relief. It flows openly between her and Master Yoda. Relief-identity-purpose-forgiveness-Jedi.

“Searching, you are, for answers none have yet. Find them for ourselves, we must. Yes,” he hums again. “Find them for ourselves, we will, and then, know them together, we will.”

She wipes uselessly at her face, still crying. “But what about the Senate, the armistices, the clones—”

Yoda shakes his head. “Your job, this is not. Jedi, you are. Jedi Knight, I name you, Ahsoka Tano; now; always. But young, you still are. Heavy burdens, we have placed on the shoulders of all our younglings.”

“But you just said I was a Knight,” she protests, and he smiles at her.

“Younglings,” he grumbles playfully. “Younglings you all are, to me. Even Master Windu.”

A beat.

“Youngling you were, when sent into battle, you were. When send you into battle, the Council did.” He sighs heavily. “Great things, you have achieved, on the field of battle. Under Master Skywalker’s tutelage,” he emphasizes Anakin’s new title. “An exaggeration, it is not, to say that saved the Republic, you have, Ahsoka Tano; even if with the unlikeliest of allies, you did. But had to, you should not have.”

Half the Order, gone.

Fresh tears flood her eyes, and the beginnings of a dehydration headache start to throb.

“Many things, we will have to consider. What we have done, for the sake of this war. What we will do, for the sake of our future. Easier it is, for myself and other masters, to contemplate these things here, in the Temple. Easier it is not, for you.”

In, out. She breathes easier now than she has since the Temple was bombed months and months past. Now that Master Yoda…he…. Force, his approval still means so much to her.

“Need my approval, you did not,” Master Yoda chides gently.

“I wanted it, though,” Ahsoka realizes. In, out. With his approval, so much of her uncertainty is gone, the things that temper her will to act dissipating with the knowledge that she isn’t alone anymore.

Jedi aren’t meant to be alone.

A breeze winds through the physical world around them, and Ahsoka tilts her head up to feel it better.

“Here we will be, when ready you are to return.”

—

Unsurprisingly, she finds Skyguy at Padmé’s apartment. The two of them kind of abandoned any pretense when the war ended and he got to stay on Coruscant for more than a week. When his troops—and the Republic, nominally—didn’t need him on the field of battle anymore.

“I have something to tell you,” they say at the same time, awkwardly sitting across from each other at Padmé’s kitchen table; Padmé herself having retreated to her—her and Skyguy’s? —bedroom with her handmaidens to keep packing. Ahsoka doesn’t know everything about human reproductive cycles, but it doesn’t seem like Padmé can get much bigger without literally bursting, so she must be preparing for the end of it. She’ll be on Naboo for a few months.

Or at least, that’s what she says. Ahsoka suspects she may be back on Coruscant sooner, given the state of the galactic government.

They both gesture for the other to go first; they both pause awkwardly, waiting each other out, and Ahsoka rolls her eyes at them internally. Little gods, really? This is what they’re reduced to

And then they speak at the same time again:

“I’m rejoining the Order.”

“I’m leaving the Order.”

“What?” They yell, together, and Ahsoka growls at the both of them.

“You’re leaving the Order?” Ahsoka demands, finally speaking on her own.

“I,” Anakin blinks, and rubs the back of his neck like she’s blindsided him. “Yeah. I don’t think I can stay, Snips, not with the way things are.”

She raises her brow. “And how is that?”

He rolls his eyes at her, externally. “I’ve never exactly been a model Jedi, Ahsoka.”

“Banthashit. Everyone says you’re one of the best Jedi in the Order.”

“No,” he counters, “they say I’m one of the best Generals in the order. One of the best warriors. And now,” he turns to look in the direction Padmé went and his whole being softens in the Force, “I want to try and be one of the best husbands. One of the best fathers,” he grins, and it strikes Ahsoka that he’s so young. He’s so young, to have done the things he’s done. So young to be a father.

Holy kriff, Anakin Skywalker is gonna be a dad.

Visions of him jumping off of cliffs and being electrocuted run through her mind.

He catches the memories and grumbles at her. Sighs.

“I don’t think I want to try and be a better Jedi, is the thing. There is no try,” he says bitterly. “Only do or do not.”

“And you…do not,” Ahsoka says hesitantly.

“I love my wife,” he says. “I love my children. I love you, and Obi-Wan, and Rex and our men. But I don’t love the Jedi Order anymore, if I ever did.”

Ahsoka thinks she loves the Order as much as it’s possible to love something so integral to who she is and who she wants to be.

Were you not cast out of your Order?

I left voluntarily.

Yes, but you were motivated to leave by the hypocrisy of the Jedi Council.

Many things, we have to consider.

“So, what are you going to do now? If you’re not a Jedi.” Ahsoka asks.

Anakin leans back in his seat, crosses his arms.

What do you want with Anakin Skywalker?

He is the key to everything. To destroy. He has long been groomed as my master’s new apprentice.

The Force roils as he sees what she has seen, hears what Maul said to her; it’s always so responsive for him. Anger. Hate. Disbelief.

Yeah. Ahsoka didn’t believe it either, until Maul told her who Sidious really was. Until they got to Coruscant and Ahsoka could feel Anakin, his rage and fear and uncertainty. They barely got there in time, and the galaxy hung in the balance between Anakin and Ahsoka. He pulls the memory of that from her too, and visibly brings himself back under control.

“I’m going to Naboo with Padmé. And maybe,” he hesitates. “I think I’ll help Rex and the other troops out, too. With whatever their plans are. Some other Jedi are helping, too. Aayla, for one,” he adds when he sees her twitch in curiosity. “Padmé’s been helping them fight the Senate for citizenship rights, and they’re just starting a search for places to settle down.

“It’ll calm a lot of anxieties in the Senate when they find it,” Ahsoka says, mulling it over. “Having a standing army makes everyone nervous.”

Anakin snorts. “Sure. But it’s less that and more that they deserve it. They always deserved it,” he says lowly, the seeds of a greater anger taking root. “And if we tried to frame it like that, then some senators would say the troopers shouldn’t be able to leave until the Separatists decommission their droids.”

Something doesn’t quite make sense about that. Ahsoka thinks about what she’s caught of the recent debriefings, and can’t remember any of the senators talking about this as anything more than a distant possibility.

“Hang on,” she says, the pieces coming together. “What exactly are you planning, Skyguy?”

He grins, sharply this time. “Yeah, don’t go spreading it around. We, uh, requisitioned some medical droids and started removing their chips weeks ago. There’s nothing stopping them for doing whatever they want, now.”

“Holy kriff,” Ahsoka breathes, eyes wide. “How is this even going to—they’re still members of the GAR, can’t they get court martialed?”

“Not if all of them leave,” he smirks. “There’s no law or force in the galaxy that could tell them all what to do, anymore.”

She thinks about Anakin and Rex, Master Obi-Wan and Commander Cody, Master Windu and Commander Ponds. “Not even the Jedi.”

“Which you’re going back to.”

“I am a Jedi,” she says, and the Force winds around her like a satisfied lothcat. Anakin senses it and purses his lips. “A Jedi Knight,” she adds, and his shoulders sag in defeat.

“It suits you,” he admits, and leans back toward her over the table.

“Just because I’m a Jedi doesn’t mean I’m staying here, though. I’m not just gonna sit around, anymore, even if the Order isn’t assigning missions.”

He hesitantly reaches for her hand. “So, you’ll come to Naboo to meet the twins, when they’re born? It won’t be long now,” he says, not meeting her eyes.

She reaches back, leaning closer to snag his prosthetic hand, too. “I wouldn’t miss it, Skyguy.”

A beat.

“Hang on, twins? Two of them?”

He bursts out laughing, and the whole apartment brightens with his delight. “That’s exactly what Obi-Wan said!”

—

Ahsoka walks into Senator Organa’s offices on purpose, for once, and he looks up at her in surprise.

“I see I’ve finally caught you off guard,” she grins. “I was starting to think you had foresight, the way you’re always ready for me.”

“Well,” he smiles warmly and gestures for her to sit, “perhaps you’ve finally done something unpredictable, Master Jedi.”

He’s called her that this whole time, oddly enough, from the first moment she burst into his space in a panic. Always certain of who she was. It’s pretty telling in retrospect that she never corrected him.

“What brings you to me today?” He asks.

“You’re still having trouble with your relief missions,” Ahsoka states. “I want to help.”

Senator Organa’s brow furrows. “I was unaware the Jedi Order has started assigning missions again. Or the Senate, for that matter.”

“They haven’t,” Ahsoka grins. “But as a fully-fledged Jedi Knight, I’m allowed to offer my services as I see fit, even outside officially sanctioned missions.”

“That’s a very generous offer.”

“I want to help.” She repeats plainly, but it means something different this time. “And I know you want to help, too. I trust your judgment; and,” she shrugs, “Alderaan’s judgment, too.”

“And what kind of help is that, exactly?”

“Whatever kind of help is needed. Diplomacy, piloting, negotiating.” She grins again. “Aggressive negotiations.”

Senator Organa studies her, his hand coming up to his chin in a contemplative gesture. “I trust your judgement as well, Master Jedi.”

Ahsoka sighs in relief. “Well, that’s good.” Her backup plans if this didn’t work were pretty, uh, nebulous.

“You’ve been very occupied by the Senate hearings and the armistices; I suppose,” he says slowly, meeting her eyes directly, “I’m surprised at this decision. I thought you would remain on Coruscant until matters were settled.”

She tilts her head to the side and considers it. “Maybe, in another life. But I think I’m ready to let other people decide the fate of the galaxy again,” she says like it’s a joke, but feels relieved when Senator Organa doesn’t take it like one. “I think,” she continues tentatively, “I can finally trust that everything will still be here when I return. And in the meantime, there are people who need my help, and I need to help them.”

“You’re in luck,” Senator Organa says, pulling one datapad of many off his desk and thumbing it open. “Queen Breha just finalized the details of a joint relief mission with Chandrilla to Ryloth. They only accept aid now when it isn’t the military delivering it, but the hyperspace lanes between there and Alderaan are still tumultuous. And to be honest,” he admits, “we could use some help smoothing the transfers over with local officials, too.”

Ahsoka breathes out, and feels this mission sink onto her shoulders, displacing the greater weights that took up that space before. Greater, but not more important.

“I’ll put you in contact with the mission lead, they can give you details about departure times and what exactly they’ll want you to do.”

“Thank you, Senator Organa,” Ahsoka says as she pushes to her feet.

“I think you can call me Bail,” he says, extending a hand.

“Then I think you should call me Ahsoka,” she replies, taking it.

—

Anakin drags Rex and Kix and Jesse and Cody to Naboo with him, when it’s time, and Padmé thanks them quietly for bringing him back to her, more whole than he’s been since they rode into an arena chained together.

Time away from the politics of rebuilding a government and the Jedi Order—and the relationship between the two and the larger galaxy—has been so good for him that she can’t begrudge personal opportunities lost.

At least now, she knows he’s safe in more ways than one, working for something he really believes in.

—

Ahsoka meets Luke and Leia ten days local standard after they’re born at Varykino on Naboo, and loves them instantly.

A Feeling strikes her as she stares down at the pair of them, utterly enchanting and more powerful than anything she’s ever seen before. “Oh, they’re going to be trouble.”

“You think?” Anakin grins at her.

—

Barriss can feel it, somehow, when Ahsoka finally leaves Coruscant again. Like their increasingly frequent joint meditations have bound them together.

Her strength in the unifying Force has only ever brought her pain; foresight in the middle of a war is nothing but death and darkness. But as Ahsoka leaves, more settled than she’s been since Barriss utterly destroyed the trust between them, and between them and the Order and the Republic, the Force seeps into her vision once again.

Desert winds swirl, sweeping aside too-familiar sands to reveal what potential lies underneath.

Growth. New beginnings. Life.

Barriss sees:

Her hands sweeping over the head of an anxious youngling, murmuring sweet nothings as she applies bacta patches to the saber burns the little Twi’leck who slipped during their first training class, completely accidental.

“It’s going to be alright,” Barriss says with a smile, and she believes it. And the youngling believes her.

Barriss s e e s:

It is not so easy for the scars of war to fade.

We are not soldiers; but we used to be; but we shouldn’t have been.

When the Jedi Order shouldered the burden of galactic war for the Senate, their lauded foresight didn’t reveal the perils of the aftermath. What the real cost of war is for the soldiers who fight it: the ones who die for it, and the ones who have to live with it. Live with what they did in the name of something that was truly corrupted.

Too late for what? The Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it! There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it!

The temple of the New Republic is not a sanctuary suffused with the warmth of a thousand years of brotherhood that they once lived in. It reflects its inhabitants in more ways than one.

It is an alert place, the tension of a thousand survivors of Civil War trained to be on their guard, always. At once a more insular place, disillusioned with the government they’re re-learning how to serve, even now, years after the fact, and a more connected place, with the Jedi more aware of the people themselves by necessity. There are some who will always be more comfortable in a battle than out of it, no matter how long it’s been, because they came of age in battle after battle after battle. But there are others who are finally growing up without a war nipping at their heels, corrupting them.

Jedi come and go more frequently than they used to. There are more Rangers and Watchman than there have been in hundreds of years.

But they are. And they will be.

Barriss sees:

Ahsoka climbs the steps to the Temple, her home, completely at ease, the echoes of her descending them in anguish and uncertainty long faded. Returning from a long, satisfying journey.

Barriss is waiting for her just inside the Temple walls and falls in step next to her. They make their way through the Temple together.

Younglings and Padawans and younger knights and older masters alike whisper in Ahsoka’s wake, as they always do; things they once whispered about her Master, and his Master before him: one of the greatest Jedi of the era. Sith-slayer. Negotiator. Warrior. Her adventures are easy stories to tell in creches, ones where the Jedi triumphs over many different types of evil.

The reality of them is more complicated, of course, but that is something saved for people who can bear it and learn from in; not fear it.

“She’s waiting for you,” Barriss says calmly.

Ahsoka groans. “Barriss, I haven’t even been home five minutes, can’t this wait?”

“You’re ready. She’s more than ready; she’s been waiting for you.”

“Am I? Ready, I mean,” Ahsoka says uncertainly.

They pause in the hallway, passersby parting around them without protest because it’s clear to everyone that the pair of them must stop here.

“Are you?”

She heaves a long, heavy sigh that slides into another groan. “To train a padawan?” Ahsoka hesitates. “Or to stay in the Temple again?”

Barriss says nothing, projecting the serenity she feels every day in the Temple; the serenity she feels when she’s with Ahsoka; the serenity that emanates from their current topic through the unifying Force.

“Because I won’t train a Padawan the way we were trained,” Ahsoka says harshly. “Always on the move. No solid ground to fall back on, no peace. That’s not who we are.”

“Not anymore,” Barriss replies, with that same hint of bitterness. In, out. She releases it as quickly as it appeared.

“I want her to know peace, Barriss. And love,” she adds petulantly, still stinging from her last debate with some of their elders over the Skywalker Clan, the one Barriss suspects played no small part in sending her back out of the Temple again. “Safety.”

“Well, you have your answer, then.”

Ahsoka looks at her blankly.

“Who better to provide those things than you? It’s not like you’d trust anyone else with her, at this point. Still ready to take the fate of the whole galaxy onto your shoulders, Knight Tano,” Barriss teases, gently, because that weight still aches for her friend even now.

“And you’re still ready to take its wounds onto yours, Healer Offee,” Ahsoka returns.

“It’s not like you’ll be alone,” Barriss says with exasperation, starting through the Temple again. Ahsoka keeps to her side automatically, her ‘sabers swinging at her hips. “You’ll have me, and Master Kenobi, and Knight Katooni, and even—Skywalker,” she settles on delicately. “Even if he should never be allowed near our younglings.”

“Maybe we can share her,” Ahsoka muses lightly, still protesting Barriss’ decision not to take an apprentice. Barriss lets it go for now, because she just won the argument.

They slow to a halt outside the Bear Clan’s quarters, and Ahsoka curses. “C’mon, I haven’t even showered yet!”

“You’re no good to anyone putting things off. Always on the move, that Ahsoka Tano. Always looking forward.”

Ahsoka sighs again, with a touch of finality, and relents. She turns to Barriss and tilts her forehead to bump into her friend’s. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Barriss says, and presses into Ahsoka’s touch for a moment, before giving her friend one final push.

“Hey!” Ahsoka exclaims as she stumbles through the Clan’s doorway, but Barriss is already halfway down the hallway, her lingering amusement in the Force the only sign she was ever there.

—

Barriss sits in her cell and weeps unabashedly, full of relief for this gift the Force has given her: a future.

For her people.

For herself.

—

fin.

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iam-kenough · 4 years ago

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Will you ever notice me? (Arthur Morgan x Original Female Character)

Summary: Dutch and his boys found a girl hidden inside wrecked shack near their camp. She introduces herself as Iris and starts leading outlaw life with Van der Linde gang, quickly developing feelings towards one, special cowboy. However there is big year gap between them and Arthur sees Iris just as a kid...And girl won’t take that!

Authors notes: I updated two chapters today and I hope few of those who read this story will be happy! It’s just another chapter and you can find the rest of them following masterlist on my blog if you want to read more of my fanfiction. Hope you gonna enjoy it! Words count:2921 Chapter 13 Arthur Morgan wasn't leading the best life. It was full of danger, stress and runaways. Man did many things wrong, not looking after Eliza and Isaac to start with, not learning a lesson to not fuck with young girls as it will ruin their life. And there was Arthur, clinging onto memory of his last fallout with Iris. It was something horrible, something that dragged him down for couple days now. Arthur really wanted to talk with Iris but every time he saw her alone, he couldn't. He had lump in his throat just by looking at girl and when was just sure about what he's gonna say, he forgot all the words. But maybe there were none? Maybe he fucked up another thing that was important to him and he had to cope with it? And finally, maybe it will be easier to shut her out?

She was sitting on the grass and washing up clothes, her hair falling onto her beauitful face. Arthur was worried that broken nose is gonna change her appearance but it was the same, it healed well and quickly as she had vigor in herself. Arthur started sketching Iris, hiding away from her gaze so he could memorize every of her feautures without being noticed.

She's leaving, he overheard, now for sure. The night after John's wedding she's gonna be long gone, moving to some big city. She's leaving even if only to became a waitress instead of robbing people and to live on her own.

All ideas he had were terrible. Arthur was thinking about stealing her money so Iris won't be able to leave so soon but he wanted her to stay and love him, not just make her life more miserable. He noticed piece of his own face reflecting in the mirror that he usually used for shaving and he felt disgusted with himself, putting object face down. Arthur overheard her sobbing in a tent one night and that was it. Do or die - Arthur said to himself, because if he's gonna leave her like that in this very moment, he's gonna become even worse cold motherfucker.

Cowboy peeked inside between two flaps and found Iris lying on the bed, makeup running down her cheeks, visibly drunk. She haven't notice him at first. She was holding a letter and one of he's shirts, cuddling with it.

- Can I come in? - he felt like an idiot even for asking that, knowing the answer. But there was still a blink of hope, right? Iris looked stuttered and embarassed when she noticed his presence but then her features softened. She was drinking again, but it was different. Iris got sentimental today rather than furious or playful and Arthur knew the feeling, he was getting like this too whe he had too much.

Arthur rested on the cot, near to her feet. Without any thinking he started carresing Iris's leg. - I'm okay, not need to pity me - she murmured after a while, wiping tears away, turning face into opposite direction from Arthur's gaze.

- You don't look like ''okay''. I feel like I can help even to pay for small piece of my faults...?

She was starving for his touch, that's why she straightened her legs so he would be more comfortable to reach them. They remained like this in another moment of silence, Arthurs fingers tickling girl's skin.

- Is that my shirt? - he asked, not getting the point of having it.

- Yes, I stole it from your tent last week. Yes, it might be creepy. But...I don't care what you think about me anymore - Iris mumbled.

- I ain't gettin' it, girl, it's just dirty shirt of mine - Arthur shaked his head, eyes widening.

- It's the closest thing to hugging you when I am drunk enough to fool myself it's you lying next to me. Helps me sleepin' too. Arthur rarely felt like falling apart to cry, but this was this moment. After all of that he was still in her heart and she associated him with safety. He decided he's gonna take a bit of luck and he aproached her slowly, takin' her into bear hug. Iris's hands curled around his chest in no time. Arthur was rocking her a little, stroking her hair and small of her back. Iris couldn't fight anymore, even she didn't have enough pride to push Arthur away and shut him out. Cpwboy was needed right now.

- What did I do to deserve it? - she whispered, her voice sad - I will do that again just to have you over even one more time in the future if you'd share this secret...

- You don't have to to do anythin'. I am the problem here, honey, not you - Arthur's voice was soothing as he planted kiss ontop of Iris's head.

- Arthur, I became homeless today - Iris suddenty changed topic, passing him a piece of paper. It was a poster with her face on it. "Iris Rhiannon/ from Van Der Linde Gang/ Wanted dead or alive/ 2000$".

- That means I have to take all money I saved and probably sell everything I own - girl said as noticed Arthur familiarised himself with poster - That thing I pulled out with the train couldn't work out without slapping me back. I should've know better.

- Iris, listen - Arthur cut in suddenly, maybe it wasn't the nicest but he didn't care, it was intentions that mattered now - I can help you.

- I'm not pregnant with your child anymore so there's no reason for you looking after me, Arthur. I'm gonna be fine... somehow - Iris hesistated like she tried to convince himself, not Morgan.

- You gonna be fine? Ah, goddamn, woman, don't try to be proud when you obviously need me! You can't even leave the camp now! - Arthur shaked his head, speaking impatiently but she backed off, visibly scared.

- Why did you come here yelling at me, I don't need you! - she pushed him away

- Jesus, I'm sorry - man lowered his tone right away - I just ain't gonna let it happen, money means nothin' to me now, okay? Let me save you - he demanded, cupping Iris's small hand with his bigger one.

Iris suddenly gave in and nodded, blushing briefly. Even if she wasn't thinking about accepting offer for real it was heartwarming and flattering that he tried to fight. Arthur decided he's gonna drink with her tonight, unless none of these words will come out. Man wasn't used to showing weakness, he'd rather be dominant asshole. So he took big gulp from the bottle, preparing for being more tender.

- If the bounty hunters are gonna come for you they won't simply kill you, they gonna take you to town and I'm gonna watch you hang, you know that? That's why I will help you and that's it. - he was giving her this fatherly speech, with low, demanding voice.

- Only if it'll make you feel better - Iris shrugged, tucking strand of hair behind her ear.

- It's not about me, Darlin' - he caressed girl's head, playing with one of locks - I will probably never gonna pay you back for my deeds so that's good start for me to be a better man, for you.

Iris took a place with her back against tent's wall and started looking at her nails with embarrassment. Her fantasies weren't going so far when she expected to see him, so now it was akward to sit next to him as all of those words didn't seem honest or true.

- Don't overthink it, even if it's gonna be only for now, 'kay?

- I guess you're right. If you are here, we could use this time better. They drank together that night and cuddled like they had no worries. Arthur was telling Iris stories about the craziest things he did with the gang so far, and she giggled, admiring he's composed face when he tried to collect thoughts to describe everything in best way. It seemed almost like they never argued, like man never hurt Iris so badly...like they were a real couple.

- That's why I don't like to see you risking your life. I was to close to dying stupid death many times in my life - Arthur said finally, eyes softing at sight of Iris's face.

- I kind of like it - Iris exclaimed and then she noticed how close to each other they were, their noses millimeters apart - I mean, the adrenaline rush - she finished slowly, looking at Arthur's lips.

Suddenly Arthur realized that if they would kiss he wouldn't mind. He smiled with charming manner and caressed Iris's arm, inhaling her scent floating in the air. She always smelled like honey and flowers.

Then their lips met, both surprised with reaction of opposite side. Arthur and Iris was kissing like they were starving and this act were supposed to feed them. Arthur started to purr like a cat, parting girls lips with his tongue, tangling fingers into her hair. Iris climbed on his lap right away, Arthur's hips between her tights as she was facing him and she deepened the kiss. They both started to sweat and their hands were running all around each other's bodies. Iris was trembling, melting away Arthur's body, playing with buttons of his shirt and with his suspenders. She moaned against his lips. It was hot, too hot and Arthur decided it has to stop or someone is gonna feel guilty in the morning.

- Iris, baby, we can't do that - he catched breath and tried to calm himself, ignoring her proximity and the fact he was horny as hell.

- Why? - girl asked, her face going sad and in pain in not time - I want you now...

- You just think you want me and I have one rule, I don't have sex when one of the sides is too drunk to decide about it properly - he explained, trying to look away from her cleavage right in front his eyes.

- What a gentelman you are - Iris said, backing off and resting on the edge of bed. Her back was facing Arthur right now. Girl was trying to collect her thoughts, surprised with an outcome of their actions but in very bad way. Like she was opening a present and there was nothing inside the box.

- I just don't want to use you, and-

- Just cut it. You don't want me and that's it - she shrugged, eyes pierced into the floor - but of course you don't.

- Oh - Arthur murmured to her ear, his warm breath ticklish- I want you more than ever, you can clearly see what you can do to me...

- If it was true you wouldn't stop. But it's all calculated, eh? Your feelings even don't behave like ones. You are... the coldest person I know.

- I would never turn you down, you know that - he started caressing her back with his lips, it gave Iris this weird sensation in her stomach.

- At morning when I saw my poster I thought I hit my rock bottom, but no. I did it right now - she giggled but there was nothing happy to it- I'm not even good enough for one night stand. I never expected being this low that man I consider as handsome doesn't even want to use me, hiding behind explanations. Guess life is full of surprises for me.

- How can you be like this? You want me to use you?! - Arthur was shoked and maybe even offened by the was Iris was thinking.

- I just thought for a moment it's somehow normal again. It felt normal, being like this with you. Don't bother yourself with any more explanations, please - Iris quickly wiped away her tears so he wouldn't see them - Goodnight, Arthur.

- Let me stay with you, please? - Arthur said with hope in the last word.

- If that's what you need - sgirl shaked her head with disappointment. Normally she would just chug on the bottle and fall asleep drunk but she just simply rested on the bed and curled up with his shirt. Arthur was unbelievable.

- I think that's what you need, eh, girl?

- I don't know anymore - she shrugged - But yea, stay. You are more than welcome.

Iris looked at him as he undressed to his union suit and she saw his chest peeking from between the buttons. She blushed and looked away. Arthur's skin was nicely tanned, soft and peppered with hair. Arthur run fingers through his hair and yawned. He looked incredible adorable when he was sleepy, 'cause it was one of those moments he fully let down his guard. She started feeling guilt, she had no right to have him and he was right turning her down. Iris suddenly appreciated the fact he lost enough time to figure out something smart and nice to tell her instead of that he's simply not interested in her anymore. Girl wouldn't sure if she would keep herself together if it were the words he would use. Real gentelman like Arthur wasn't meant for insufferable brat like her.

- What're you thinking about? - Arthur rested behind her back and closed the distance between them, Iris felt like wave of warmth is going through her body.

- Nothin' - she lied briefly - I guess... I'm too drunk to think. That's why I do that in the first place, I mean, drinking.

He hummed with aproval, burrying his face in crook of Iris's neck

- Wanna sleep already? This was a really long day for you.

It wasn't only guilt now, this feeling quickly mixed up with shame and realisation. They were lying in her bed, wearing only their undergarments and even in this very moment, he just cuddled her instead of tearing her apart like lover would do. Iris was no woman for him. Few minutes passed before brunette interrupted this tense silence.

- How are you feeling, Arthur? I mean, any coughing lately?

-...no. Surprisingly - he opened his eyes with realisation. He wasn't in pain anymore but lately so many things happened he couldn't even think about being sick. Untill now.

- Guess I did good. Feeding you with all those weird herbs back then - she stopped and collected her thoughts - I know you got TB. Or had it, as I see now, thanks to book you bought me for birthday.

Arthur got up quickly, his eyes full of questions. Like she just dropped the bomb.

- When you got back from being O'Driscolls hostage and I was taking care of you I noticed that you spit blood while you cough. I had to do something - she was playing with buttons of Arthur's shirt, the one she still cuddled instead of turning around to face him - Just wasn't sure it would work, so I observed you without letting you false hopes. But today I lie next to you and listen to your breath knowing I did good.

- You cured my tuberculosis?! H-how? I've been told I'm gonna die soon, so-

- And even with this thought you wouldn't have me tonight to be real gentelman, how sweet of you - she smirked and got up, grabbing bottle of booze from the floor - Goodnight, Arthur. Hope it's last time we see each other like this.

- Where are you going, eh? - Arthur got up and catched her arm, squeezing it. She hissed.

- Away from you, that's where. Everything you do is pushing me away and pulling me back when you have no one else to go, but...- she looked up into his eyes, those eyes devil would be proud to have and smiled sadly - I guess I can't do that anymore. Even if it means breaking up forever with you.

- What are you talking about, you can't just do that, you need my help! - Arthur spreaded his arms in gesture of disbelief.

- So give me it if it's really meaningless for you to pay two thousand dollars for my head. And then fuck off. But you wouldn't do that, will ya? You don't want to help me, you want to buy me so I'll keep meeting with you on those pathetic terms like nothing ever happened.

- What did I do now to deserve this? I am no saint but I came here today to help and all I get is this angry face of yours - Arthur's tone was showing visible irritation. Iris was the only person who could put him from peace to boiling anger in few seconds.

- Guess people don't work like that, Mr Morgan - Iris looked aside with unsure expression, like she was afraid to look at his face and see something in there - I still remember everything, despite fact loving you and... there will be a time for me I will have to run and don't look back. Not even after you.

- You still want to move? Even now? You are crazy, probably half of people around are waiting to catch you! - he gestured towards tent's entrace.

- So let them try, there is nothing much left of me anyway. You say I'm crazy pulling out stunts like I was a cat with 7 lifes behind my belt but no, I am doing that because I have only one and it's shitty as hell. Drink to that, Mr Morgan!

And with those words she left Arthur speechless, as he was looking after her silhuette fading away into the warm night.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x original female character #arthur morgan x oc #arthur morgan x reader #rdr2 arthur #red dead redemption arthur #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #arthur morgan romance #arthur morgan fanficton #arthur morgan angst #arthur morgan smut #arthur morgan fluff

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alarawriting · 4 years ago

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The Cold At The Heart of the Light: Chapter One

I’ve decided I’ll post probably the first three chapters of this as I work on it. There’s currently six chapters written and the seventh is started; I have been planning about twelve of them.

This is gonna have to be edited a lot when I finish the whole thing -- it’s too goddamn long, for one thing -- but I can’t spend too much time editing the first draft when I’m not done with it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as the maid led me to the living room and I got my first look at the little girl, I could tell the child was dying. She was sitting on an overstuffed, white suede couch with brown fringy pillows all around her, at the back of a living room that looked like something out of House Beautiful, all tall wide windows and understated elegance in brown and beige and gold and white. She was maybe about seven, if her disease hadn’t undersized her, feet dangling off the couch and not moving. When children whose feet are dangling are not kicking those feet, and there is neither a book nor a TV nearby to explain the discrepancy, I can generally tell something is wrong. Her blonde curly wig was as expensive as the décor of her parents’ living room, but I’m an expert in these matters – I could tell the chemo had taken her hair. And her skin was dull and dry looking, her eyes vague and unfocused, her expression indrawn and blank, her small limbs painfully skinny. She showed all the signs of either being abused, drugged, or severely ill, and given that her father had called me in, I knew that at least it was the last. Probably the second as well. The pharmaceutical industry has never solved the problem of stopping children’s pain to my satisfaction (or, for that matter, the children’s.)

Her mother would have been an elegantly plastic politician’s wife if she hadn’t been sitting tensely at the edge of the sofa, arm around her daughter, clutching the child. Fear and anxiety make even women with $500 haircuts and botoxed foreheads seem human. I’d already forgotten the woman’s name; after checking over the daughter with a quick glance, I turned to focus on her father. Senator John Lightman, one of those politicians who manages to look “boyish” simply by being a thin dark-haired man in his prime when everyone else in the Senate is somewhere between 60 and dead, was walking toward me, reaching out a hand as if to shake it. I saw the look of puzzlement cross his face as he got a good look at me. “Are you…”

“Dr. Mystery?” I filled in the blank. “Yes, of course, I apologize. You couldn’t possibly recognize me like this.” I had arrived in a stock form, a middle-aged woman of average height, weight and appearance with blonde graying hair in a short fluffy do. I couldn’t very well drive around town in my working form, but now that I was here, it was time to shock and awe the mundanes. With a thought, I transformed.

When I first adopted this as my working form, it used to take me ten or twenty minutes in front of a mirror to get it just right, because it doesn’t look human enough for me to use DNA as a model anywhere – I have to brute-force it. But by this time I’d been doing it for so many years, it took only a few seconds. Changing doesn’t hurt – it feels like having a really good stretch, actually.

In a moment, I was six feet tall, simultaneously busty and thin, with the golden skin of an Academy award, iris-less purple eyes with cat pupils, and flame-red hair down to the small of my back. I wore a skin-tight black leather catsuit with no shoes, and modified pelvis and leg muscles so I looked like I was wearing high heels even though I was barefoot – an anatomic impossibility for other women, but there’s no point in having total control over your own flesh if you can’t use it to show off a little. To complete the costume I grew a white cotton labcoat over the catsuit; not exactly a cape, but the name is Doctor Mystery, not Ms. Mystery or Lady Mystery or Sexy Chick I’d Like To Do Mystery.

Being a supervillain’s all about the power and the respect. Back when my working form wasn’t quite so do-me hot, I actually used to get less respect as a villain, as if a woman couldn’t possibly really be all that mad, bad and dangerous to know if she doesn’t look like a supermodel. But when I do the catsuit without the lab coat, I get respect as a badass with dangerous powers and incredible fighting skills, not as a biomedical genius. Not that I’m not a badass with dangerous powers and incredible fighting skills, but I’m not a teen thug for hire anymore, I’m a bona fide mad scientist and I want people to remember that, dammit.

Mrs. Lightman’s eyes went wide, and she made a tiny little yelping noise and clutched her little girl… who rather than looking frightened, actually looked mildly interested for the first time since I’d arrived. Her dad was trying to hide it, but his lips had compressed as if he were trying not to bite them and there was just the tiniest tremor in his hands. I expected Mrs. Lightman’s reaction, but the Senator could have gone one of two ways – men usually react to me with fear or lust, or a combination. I didn’t think I saw lust in Senator Lightman, and when I took his hand and shook it, I confirmed it. He was on the verge of peeing his pants. I might have believed he wasn’t reacting with any lust because he really had eyes only for his wife, if he weren’t a politician. But I’ve known very few male politicians to be faithful, and even they couldn’t avoid being lustful. Senator Lightman was terrified of me because I was a Proxima and he was a Sapien-centric bigot. Also, probably, because I was a supervillain and a killer and I could drop him dead in a second, turn him inside out, make the skin melt off his flesh or give him cancer, just from the touch of his hand in mine. But I suspected I’d have gotten the same reaction if I’d been a member of the Peace Force, or even a Girl Scout with purple eyes and gold skin trying to sell him cookies. He hated my kind, but he needed me today.

And I intended to use his need to my people’s advantage.

“Introduce me to your family, Senator,” I said.

I felt his adrenaline spike through the skin connection of our clasped hands, but he managed not to show it. He let go of me. “This is my wife, Dot, and our daughter Mindy. She’s eight.”

I walked over to Mindy and knelt down in front of her, prompting more tension and white knuckles from her mother clasping her. “Hello, Mindy,” I said.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Do you know who I am?”

“My daddy says you’re some kind of super doctor.”

Super doctor. I liked that. “He’s right. I’m here to help you. I imagine you’ve gotten real tired of being sick.”

She smiled wanly. “Yeah.”

“Let me have your hands.”

“Will it hurt?” Her tone was tired and apathetic, as if it didn’t really matter if it was going to hurt or not. I suspected it was more resignation than apathy.

“Not at all.” I smiled at her. “I’m a super doctor, remember? It doesn’t hurt if I don’t want it to.”

She gave me her small hands and I clasped them in mine. I can’t entirely describe what I feel when I examine a living creature, not in terms that refer to the senses everyone else has. It’s like feeling a symphony or hearing a tapestry. Everything is very complex and interrelated, and I get signals from thousands of processes in the body, but it all melds together into a single big picture. The big picture here was that Mindy’s body was attacking itself. Her bone marrow was busily churning out cancerous white blood cells that didn’t work, filling her bloodstream with useless cells that crowded out and starved the working, useful ones. The pain signals were overwhelming even with the drugs trying to mask them, and the drugs themselves were dulling her mind as much as the fatigue and weakness from the disease.

Like many terminally ill children, she was quiet and accepting, which is constantly mistaken in glurgy human interest stories about terminally ill children for bravery. Children who go out with scarves on their bald heads and run lemonade stands to raise money to research and cure their own illnesses are brave. Children who are too tired to feel fear and have been living with a disease too long to cry about it are just normal human beings. Mindy was a normal human being, and her leukemia was also perfectly normal, something I’d dealt with a hundred times before.

I closed my eyes so I could focus better on Mindy’s internal world. First I triggered the release of endorphins into her bloodstream to mask any pain caused by what I was about to do. The human body rebels against my power, seeing my authority as a violation of its autonomy, and frequently reacts by tattling to the brain about it in a way that the mind perceives as agonizing, but unspecific, pain. As I told Mindy, though, no one feels pain in my hands unless I allow it. As soon as her body was saturated with endorphins and I’d shut down most of the internal sensory trunk lines to the brain, making her internally numb while leaving her ability to sense anything touching her skin, I swept my concentration through her body and killed every immature white blood cell she had. I then targeted the surviving mature white cells and forced them to rapidly replicate and mature, until she had almost a normal white blood cell count and they all worked correctly.

To finish off, I blocked the drugs that hadn’t been working so well anyway, turned the internal nerves back on, and filled Mindy with a combination of endorphin and oxytocin, and other hormones designed to make people feel good. This particular cocktail wouldn’t have sexual effects – Mindy’s brain lacked some of the structures needed to process that, yet, and I always took great care with children not to do anything inappropriate to their age. After what my own father did to me… well, I may be a supervillain, but I am not a child molester, and that makes me better than he was. What I was going for – what I always gave the children I treated – can be best described, if you remember being a kid, as the excitement from knowing you’re about to go to an amusement park, coupled with the pleasure you get from eating ice cream, and all that combined with the warm snuggly feeling you get when you’re cuddled with your parents. Mindy wouldn’t know why, in the future, she looked forward to my visits and felt very warm and positive emotions toward me. She would just know that seeing Dr. Mystery would be the coolest thing ever, and just my presence would be more fun than any doctor’s office lollipop ever was.

Combine such warm and pleasant emotions with the freakish physical appearance of an obvious Proxima, and Mindy would not grow up to share her dad’s bigotry, even if he tried to teach it to her.

“Mindy?” Dot Lightman asked, her voice trembling slightly. “Are you all right?”

Mindy lifted her head. Her skin didn’t look any better, of course – I hadn’t done any cosmetic work – but her eyes were refocusing, turning bright and engaged. “Mommy? I feel good, Mommy. I think the doctor fixed me!”

With my endorphin cocktail chasing away her fatigue temporarily, she leapt to her feet. “Thank you, Super Doctor Mystery! I feel all better!” She twirled around, perhaps to prove to all of us that she was fully healed… and stumbled. “Whoa, dizzy!”

“Slow up there, kiddo,” I said. “You’re not cured. You feel a lot better and you’re going to be a lot better, but you’ve spent a couple of years being sick and you’re not going to be back to your full strength overnight. Take it easy.”

“Is she—is she going to be cured?” her mother asked, looking at me, her lower lip trembling.

“She’s much healthier, right now. But no, as I said, I haven’t cured her yet. I triggered a temporary remission and bolstered her immune system to compensate for what the disease did to it, so she needn’t suffer while she’s waiting for a full cure.” I turned to Senator Lightman. “To cure her, I’ll need to perform three treatments, about two months apart. The cost will be $8,000 per treatment. When we’re done, not only won’t she have leukemia, but the genetic potential for cancer will be purged from her system, so it will be very, very unlikely that she ever get any cancer-like disease again. Short of living on top of a radioactive landfill, of course, but you understand what I mean.”

“Oh, God….” Mrs. Lightman started to cry. “Oh, God, thank you…”

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Mindy said, and gave her mom a hug. “It’s good news. Don’t cry.”

“I’m crying because I’m so happy,” Mrs. Lightman said.

“I—I don’t know what to say, Doctor. You have a deal. I’d pay anything to save Mindy’s life, and your prices… well, they’re much more reasonable than I was led to assume. I’d pay more than that for hospital treatments, even with the insurance.” I was pretty sure this was a fib – Senators get damn good health insurance. But of course Lightman belonged to the party that thought that health insurance was a privilege, not a right, and downplaying the high quality of his own state-sponsored insurance was probably a reflex by this point.

I smiled at him. “That’s because most of my payment is non-monetary.”

“Non-monetary?”

“Let’s go have a discussion, Senator. I imagine you must have a private office in this house somewhere?”

His wife gave me a hard-eyed look. I returned her look with an “oh, please” expression, just the slightest of eye rolls and sardonic smile. “There’s nothing you can say to me that you can’t say in front of my wife,” Lightman said, his voice hardening.

“Yes, there is,” I said, pleasantly. “You want to tell her all about it when we’re done talking, that’s your prerogative. But I am here to negotiate with a United States Senator, not a husband or a father.”

He stiffened. “All right,” he said slowly. “We can go downstairs to the den.”

“Is it—is it going to be all right?” Dot Lightman asked her husband.

“I don’t see that I have much choice, Dot,” he said. “She’s the only hope Mindy has. You know that.”

“Mommy? Can I play outside?”

“Sure. Sure thing,” Dot said, her voice breaking again. “I’ll play with you.”

“Don’t let her overexert herself,” I said. “As I said, she’s better, not cured, and even if she were cured she’d still need time to recover her energy. She wants to run around and play now because she’s not in pain, but she actually still does need to save her strength.”

“We’ll go for a walk,” Dot said. “How’s that sound, Mindy?”

“Sure, Mommy. We can do that.”

“The den is this way,” Senator Lightman said.

It was a typical suburban finished basement, not nearly as fancy looking as the living room, if you didn’t count the huge projection television. I perched on the still-nice-but-obviously-worn couch, sitting on the back of it. “Let’s get down to it, Senator,” I said. “You’re a member of the Committee to Analyze Parahuman Activity. You’re aware as well as I am that the United States government has been investigating or implementing various techniques to control or eliminate the Proxima population, including laws to create a registry for us as if we’re sex offenders, black ops soldiers with power suits to hunt us down, attempting to find cures for us like we’re a disease, secret databases being maintained in an attempt to identify us in the absence of a registry law… so on and so forth.” I didn’t mention the biowarfare; people who didn’t live through being imprisoned in a government research facility and watching others being injected with various tailored viruses have a tendency to assume that government biowarfare is the stuff of paranoid conspiracy theories, and I doubted anyone had actually let Congress know what was going on there. The others, I was pretty sure he’d been briefed on, if not actively involved with. “And you’re an active supporter of the Human Definition Amendment, which would deprive us of any human rights whatsoever on the basis of junk science.”

The faintest beading of sweat broke out on his forehead. “The United States government hasn’t taken any illegal actions to ‘control’ the Proxima population, as you put it, and certainly not to eliminate you. You must understand, however, that we do have the right and the duty to protect normal humans from people like…”

He hesitated just a moment too long. “Me?”

“I was going to say, people like Caesar Primus or Optometron. But if the rumors about your activities are true, then yes, you. Weren’t you some sort of assassin? An enforcer for a drug lord?”

While technically the description was almost true, the idea of describing David as a “drug lord” almost made me laugh. Almost. I don’t actually have a lot of a sense of humor when it comes to David. “And I was rehabilitated by the Peace Force and today I’m a fine, upstanding citizen who cures little girls of leukemia,” I said.

“That isn’t a lot of comfort to the families of the people you killed.”

“Maybe not. But if I’d been killed by American soldiers in power suits then, your daughter would be out of luck now, wouldn’t she?” I slid off the back of the couch and paced around him. “And this isn’t about me. How many people were saved when the Irregulars stopped that second plane from crashing into the Trade Towers? When they held up the collapsing building so the firefighters could get out? When the Peace Force shored up the levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so the city didn’t flood, or when Maui’s volcano went active and they shut it down again?” The Senator didn’t actually need to know that was a plot of Professor Octohedron’s, if he didn’t already. The Peace Force hadn’t actually broadcast the fact that the disaster had been caused by a Proxima in the first place; I only knew about it because Octohedron continued to believe that he could get into my pants if only he could impress me enough, and he hadn’t actually ever managed to figure out that I wasn’t impressed by grandiose plots to take over the world by threatening to activate volcanoes. “You might owe your life to a Proxima. You are about to owe your daughter’s life. So I want your support for our basic human rights. Oppose the Parahuman Registry, oppose the research to kill us or break us of our powers, and oppose the Human Definition Amendment.”

“The Human Definition Amendment isn’t designed to take away your human rights,” he said. “It’s designed to clarify the rights you do have. I mean, there have to be different ways to handle you people vs. the rest of us. Remember when the ACLU sued on behalf of the Heat Miser? They said that it was cruel and unusual punishment to keep him continuously drugged in prison. And as soon as they won and the drugs were withdrawn, his powers came back and he burned the prison down. 700 people were killed, over 100 guards and the rest of them human inmates, who’d been sentenced to serve time in jail for their crimes, not to burn to death.”

“Then you redefine cruel and unusual punishment to state that methods intended to block Proximas from using superhuman powers to escape from prison are not cruel and are perfectly usual. Passing an amendment to the Constitution that declares that Proximas aren’t human is overkill.”

“It actually declares that humans belong to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, and that the law should not be automatically extended to grant human rights to people who can destroy our entire planet with a thought just because some bleeding heart doesn’t think they deserve to go to jail for killing hundreds of people.”

“Yes, and by declaring that Homo sapiens promixus does not automatically count as human, it effectively says that we’re not, and we can be shot on sight with no one but the ASPCA to worry about our murders, let alone suffer discrimination in every part of our lives. You do not live with the reality of what being defined as non-human means, Senator. I do.”

“And you, Doctor, don’t live with the reality of inhabiting a world filled with creatures who can kill you with a thought, steal everything you own, destroy your home without even touching it, or make you believe that up is down and black is white.”

I could argue that last point, if I wanted to be a smartass – I lived in the world where there was conservative talk radio, and it had convinced any number of people that up was down and black was white. But that would be sidetracking. “True. But you’re so focused on perceiving yourself as a victim of the existence of Proximas that you’ve given no thought to what it would be like to be one of us. And you really should. Because you have a child, Senator, and she is too young to be confirmed as Sapien or Proxima. You don’t know what she is, and you’re just assuming she’s Sapien. What if she’s Proxima?”

He blinked. “Well, of course I—but she doesn’t have anything in her background – I mean neither her mother nor I have anything unusual, genetically—“

“No one knows what’s causing the sudden explosion in powered humans, Senator, but we do know that it’s some type of mutation. 90% of Proximas have parents who were Sapien. And the number is that low only because some of us have started having kids. If your daughter was a Proxima with two fully Sapien parents, she’d be in the same boat as most Proximas. Including me. So you really need to think about it.”

“Well, I – I certainly wouldn’t treat Mindy any differently if she were – but if she were, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t check for it. But I could, yes.”

“Well, if she turned out to be, you could just fix it, right? As part of the treatment?”

I stared at him as if I’d just found him on my shoe. “Of course I could. And if she was black, I could make her white and blonde and blue-eyed. And I could change her into a boy if you decided you really wanted a son. Have you any idea how offensive what you just said is?”

“I – I didn’t mean to give offense. I just want Mindy to have a normal life.”

“Most Proximas do. I don't look like this all the time, Senator. When I'm not treating hopeless cases, I live in a nice little townhouse, with two cats and a cockatiel. I go dancing with men friends on weekends, I buy groceries, I do my laundry. I choose to look like this when I'm treating people like your daughter, because I have no desire to be kidnapped and pressed into the service of crime lords or the government."

"Why would the government kidnap you? Proximas have rights. If you’ve served your time for your previous crimes, and committed no new ones--"

"--I would still have the power to make old men young, cure impotence and infertility, heal disease and scarring, change people's appearances... come on now, Senator, don't be naive. If you had a way to make me heal your daughter without paying my price, you'd do it. And I think you're basically a good man, who’s concerned for the child he loves. Can you say none of your colleagues would want me to heal them? To restore lost youth, or whatever they had lost?" I thought of the white room then, the snipers with guns outside ready to blow my head off if the important old men screaming under my hands didn’t get up and walk free completely healed when I was done. Never again.

"I... suppose power corrupts. There are some bad elements in any system, but that doesn't mean the system is evil."

"I didn’t say the system was evil. I said it’s not designed to protect people like me. And if you and your fellows have their way, it’ll be even harder for me to live a normal, safe life.” I shook my head. "We're sidetracking. If Mindy turns out to be a Proxima, she could still have an entirely normal and happy life, so long as you didn't reject her for it and the government didn't kill her for it."

"I would never reject Mindy. No matter what. If-- if she was a parahuman--"

"Then your opinions on appropriate treatment of Proximas would be rather different, wouldn't they?"

He sighed. “Look, I have a constituency, Doctor Mystery. They elected me into office to protect them and serve them, and they have ideas as to what constitutes doing that. If I do something that they don’t approve of, I won’t have the power they’ve given me for very long.”

I flopped down on his couch again. “Oh, baloney. You mean that if you can’t fearmonger about hidden Proximas living among us and the draconian measures the Daddy State will take under your watch to protect the poor scared soccer moms and NASCAR dads, you can’t get elected.” I sat up and leaned forward. “It’s all bullshit. The tide of history always favors greater human rights, greater freedoms, greater protections for minorities vs. mobs. And it always works out better in the end that way. I understand that you have to protect yourself from lunatics who shoot death rays out of their elbows, but you know, you also have to protect yourself from lunatics who break into the McDonalds’ with a gun and start shooting people, and somehow it was your party who decided it was an unacceptable infringement on your freedom to hunt, shoot intruders, and generally feel like manly men to make people undergo background checks to get assault weapons.”

“The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.”

“The Constitution wouldn’t say that if you passed an amendment redefining a ‘well-regulated militia’ as the National Guard. Which I’m not saying you should. I’m in favor of your right to protect yourself with a gun. I’m in favor of your right to shoot animals for fun if you feel like it; I’m a Darwinist and you’re a predator. It’s in your genes. Go shoot deer if you want. But the Constitution currently states that I am a human being, because it doesn’t say that I’m not, and I was born in the United States to two human beings, share 99.9% of my DNA with you, speak your language, look like you, and have sex with you. Well, not you personally, but Sapiens men. So if it’s so vitally important to preserve the right to bear arms, because it’s in the Constitution, that it’s okay to let sociopaths get guns and shoot up college campuses, then it is vastly more important to make sure that every child born in this country to human parents is defined as human.

“If you pass this Definition of Humanity amendment in order to protect your constituency, and Mindy turns out to be a Proxima, then she can be raped and her rapist could be charged with bestiality at best, because she wouldn’t be legally a child who can be molested, she’d be legally an animal. She could be killed, and the most her killer could be charged with is animal cruelty. No school would have to take her, no hospital would have to treat her diseases, no restaurant would have to let her in to eat with you. You would have to fight a battle to get her treated in a way that you humans take for granted, every time. Want her to die in a car accident because the paramedics didn’t want to treat a Proxima? Want her to die in a fire because the firefighters didn’t want to risk themselves going into a burning building for someone who isn’t even human? There are better ways to defend Sapiens than making it legally open season on us.”

“But you’re against those too. The Parahuman Registry would allow us to track dangerous people without having to deprive any of you of basic civil rights.”

“Except I’ve never heard of a version of it suggesting that only parahuman criminals be added to the registry.”

“Well, dangerous parahumans haven’t necessarily committed crimes yet. But for instance, if your next door neighbor turns up dead of a heart attack and everyone knows you were fighting with him, isn’t it important that the police know you have the power to stop people’s hearts by touching them?”

“If your next door neighbor has a gun, isn’t it important that you know about it so you can keep your daughter from playing in his yard?”

“Most gun owners are law abiding citizens, and if someone is killed with a gun we already have laws on the books to help the police track down the killer. If someone is killed with a superpower, we wouldn’t even necessarily know to look for a superpower.”

“So educate the cops better on superpowers. Most Proximas are law abiding citizens. If you kill your neighbor by hitting him over the head with a frying pan, does that mean you needed to be on some sort of registry of frying pan owners?” I started pacing again. “It’s irrelevant in any case. I don’t care what your personal beliefs are. I care that you love your daughter and want her to be healthy.”

“So you’re blackmailing me.”

“Blackmail? I’m demanding payment. When your campaign contributors give you money for re-election, they’re not blackmailing you to expect that you’re going to show them some quid pro quo. I’m offering you something far, far more valuable than a few dollars in your re-election coffers; I’m offering you your daughter’s life and health. I think expecting a little quid pro quo is not unreasonable.”

“And what if I refused? Would you let her die?”

At one point that would have been a tough one; in this line of work you have to appear to be compassionate, but you also have to be tough or the patients will walk all over you. I had had plenty of experience dealing with this particular conundrum, though. “Do you know what I did for Mindy today? Do you understand her disease at all?”

“I don’t know what you did, no. You keep saying you made her better but you didn’t cure her. But I do know something about her disease. The doctors tell me that she’s making too many white blood cells, and it’s crowding out and killing the rest of her blood.”

“Close. They’re immature, cancerous blood cells, so they don’t work to protect her from disease the way mature white blood cells would. This lowers her general immunity, and yes, it clogs up her bloodstream and takes resource away from working cells. What I did today was to kill all the immature cells and regenerate some of the mature ones. She still has leukemia; she’s still making too many immature cells. Without a full treatment that will never stop. What I’ve done is to ease her symptoms. Until she builds up too many immature cells again, she’ll feel better.” I leaned on the wall, arms folded. “I’m perfectly capable of doing this every six months and never actually curing her. She’ll feel better, and she’ll have a happy, normal life, as long as she gets her treatments on time. The one time she misses a treatment, though – maybe because the government kidnapped me, arrested me, killed me or took my powers away – she’ll have full-blown leukemia again, and within a year or two she’ll die.” I pushed off the wall. “So you can support me up front because it’s the right thing to do for the person who gave you back your daughter’s life, or you can hedge and haw and refuse to get with my program, and if so your daughter will be well for exactly as long as I am able to continue treating her. The very laws you want to pass that will harm me, will block my ability to heal her sooner or later, and then she’ll die, and it’ll be your fault.”

“And how do I know that if I promise to do as you ask, you really will heal Mindy and you won’t just do what you just said?”

“How do I know that if I really heal Mindy, you won’t go back on your word and start pushing for the Human Definition Amendment again? It’s a matter of trust, Senator. You trust me, I trust you. Or you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you. Tit for tat. What’s it going to be?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m not going to just rubber stamp your suggestions. Even if that was the right thing to do for my constituency, and it’s not. I’m going to study the situation and try to do the best thing to protect my people and yours. You can accept that or not.”

“All right, I’ll accept that, with one caveat. The Human Definition Amendment is totally off-limits. You can switch your support to the Inclusive Humanity Amendment, or just drop your support of Human Definition, but if you don’t publicly do one or the other within the month Mindy does not get fully cured. The other stuff, do the studies you want to do, but I think you’ll find that when you look at Proximas as if we are people and not weird animal things with superpowers, you’ll find it a lot easier to come up with ways to help protect your kind without harming mine.”

Lightman nodded. “All right, Doctor. Then we have a deal. When do you want to perform the first treatment?”

“If you’ve got $8,000 lying around in a checking account, we can do it today.”

“I do. Who do I make the check out to? I don’t imagine you can cash a check made out to Doctor Mystery.”

“Make it out to Miracle of Life, LLC.” I had about twenty-seven of these shell companies I used to funnel my various payments through, since even Senators typically had a hard time coming up with $8,000 in small unmarked bills on short notice, and a girl’s gotta eat. Playing politics is all well and good, but I needed to cover the mortgage and the gas money for my various trips to clients, plus the funds for my various Activities of Mad Science. Just because you can manipulate any organic tissue with a touch, doesn’t mean you get your beakers and retorts and Petri dishes for free. “Let’s go upstairs. I’m sure Mindy is eager to begin freeing herself from this disease.”

“Of course.”

At the top of the stairs, I reached out for his hand. Too afraid of giving offense to refuse me, he took it, and I shook with him. “Pleasure doing business with you, Senator. Go call your daughter in, give me a check and we’ll do this thing.”

“Thank you, Dr. Mystery. I may not entirely approve of your politics, but thank you for giving my daughter back her life.”

He wouldn’t be thanking me so much if he had known I’d just planted a tiny clump of slow-growing cancerous cells deep in his brain. It’d be a year from now before he started feeling any symptoms, and that would land in the middle of his re-election campaign. If he did what I wanted after I finished healing his daughter and we were on good terms, I’d find some excuse to come by and heal him or prune it down again. If not… there was a reason I was a feared supervillain even though most people knew me, if they knew me at all, as some kind of uber-doctor. You didn’t double-cross Dr. Mystery and survive it. Ever.

Well, unless you were Dr. Suryabati Chandrasekhar. Then you got any number of free passes.

***

The truth was, I was being something of a hypocrite.

I was offended at Lightman’s suggestion that I make his daughter a Sapiens if she turned out to be a Proxima, but not for the reason I told him. The difference between a Proxima becoming a Sapien and a Sapien becoming Proxima isn’t the difference between black changing to white or male changing to female. The difference was described by Plato as a man raised in the darkness leaving the cave to see the light of the sun, vs. a man raised in the sunlight doomed to spend the rest of his life in a cave. Making a Proxima a Sapiens is like giving someone a lobotomy, or a clitoridectomy, or binding her feet until she can’t walk. It’s an obscenity, a Harrison Bergeron nightmare of breaking the best down to the level of the mediocre, taking away a birthright one was born with.

Making a Sapien a Proxima is, on the other hand, one of my great callings in life.

Mindy Lightman wasn’t a Proxima before I touched her. But she would be, before I was done. I did a preliminary assessment of her DNA while I was performing the first treatment, and I stored a small amount of her cellular matter in a pocket under the skin of my hand, to study at length later. I’d determine how much energy her mitochondria could supply her and which latent powers-complex genes she had, and which powers they were likely to ignite into. If she had something distressing, like death touch or world-shattering TK or the gene for turning blue, I’d edit the complex over the next two sessions into something more palatable for the child of a public figure, something frilly and unthreatening. Maybe the ability to make pretty light shows, or fly. Most flyers loved it, and it didn’t seem to frighten Sapiens as much as some other powers did.

When I left the Lightmans’, now back in my middle-aged lady persona, I headed first to the bank to deposit the check. Senators whose daughter’s lives are on the line don’t give me checks that bounce, but they do take time to clear, so the sooner I got it in, the better. And then I dumped the rental car at the airport, changed form in the bathroom, and got on the Metro to head back home.

****

Science fact: There is only one gene that determines the difference between a Sapiens and a Proxima.

To most people this seems insane. Proximas come in an entire extra range of colors besides the human norm, have powers ordinary humans can only dream of, and get energy to fuel these powers from a source that is frankly incomprehensible. We just have to be a separate species, in most people’s minds. When Proximas were first discovered, there was a huge push to label us a fully separate species – Homo superior (thankfully, that one got shot down real fast) or Homo proximus, “the man who comes next.” Scientists – not me at the time, since I was too young, but reputable geneticists and biologists – had to constantly point out that the definition of a species is that they cannot viably interbreed. The children of superpowered and ordinary humans were themselves perfectly fertile. Ergo, we cannot be a separate species.

But we hadn’t mapped the genome then, and we didn’t know exactly why Proximas had powers. So scientists made, in my opinion, a mistake. They agreed to classify us as a separate sub-species.

You’ve grown up being told that you are Homo sapiens. What you might not know is that technically, if you’re not a parahuman, you are actually Homo sapiens sapiens. There were several other subspecies of humans, all extinct, such as Homo sapiens idaltu (elderly wise man). It is still scientific nonsense to call us a subspecies, when we’re only different by one gene – to put this in perspective, parents and children differ by many, many more than one gene – and in fact the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature keeps debating changing it to Homo sapiens sapiens proximus or dropping the designate proximus entirely. But the scientific evidence that we aren’t even a separate subspecies gets even less play in the media than studies that show that men and women are alike, if such a thing is possible. And at least the Homo sapiens proximus nomenclature reinforces that we are of the human species.

The trouble is, most people don’t know that the true name of Homo sapiens is actually Homo sapiens sapiens. So when they hear the short designators – Sapiens vs. Proxima – they assume that our species is Homo proximus. We’re widely believed to be an entirely separate species, and it doesn’t help that high-profile supervillains like Caesar Primus (who is 2,000 years old and knows as much as any Roman gladiator about science, which is to say, diddly jack), or Professor Octohedron (a brilliant physicist and inventor, but he knows about as much biology as I know about fixing my car, and let me put it this way, the last time I ended up dead on the side of the road I needed a friendly dude passing by to tell me I’d run out of oil) are constantly spouting off about how we are a new, superior species. Informed laypeople and doctors usually know better, but the truth – that we are different by only one gene – is so appallingly counterintuitive that you almost need to be a geneticist or an evolutionary biologist to get it.

But here’s the truth.

The human genome is packed with genes that don’t do anything. Most come from our evolutionary history. You may have heard that we are less than 1% genetically different from chimpanzees. That 1% consists mostly of control genes, which govern when, how and if the other genes turn on.

It turns out that some of those genes generate superpowers, under the right conditions. One of them turns melanin, the brown pigment of humans, blue in the presence of a hormone called catalysine. Others use catalysine to activate superhuman abilities. All humans carry some of these genes. But only a very, very tiny number – about 1 in 10,000 – have the gene that codes for the creation of catalysine.

Like testosterone, catalysine has two surges in a person’s life cycle. One is pre-natally. The amount generated is small and doesn’t pass the placental barrier, so no, pregnant women do not manifest superpowers when carrying a Proxima baby. That’s an urban myth. The surge pre-natally does little, usually, except to prepare the brain to control superpowers someday, creating a brain nucleus and appropriate wiring. In cases where the child has two Proxima genes – for example, the child of two Proxima parents-- the amount of catalysine created pre-natally might be enough to distort the child’s appearance, begin converting melanin into azurin, or awaken a low level of superpower.

When the child hits puberty, the same genes that turn on sex hormones turn on catalysine production. The superpowers appear, and wire up to the brain structures created in utero. If the child has the gene for azurin conversion, their pigment changes from brown to blue – so pale red-haired and blonde white children suddenly develop purple, green or blue hair, while brown-skinned children turn blue all over. (Azurin is also rare. Only about 5% of all people carry the gene for azurin production, and only Proximas ever display it. Non-Proximas with the azurin mutation never express it, and end up creating perfectly normal melanin, because they are never exposed to catalysine.)

The “power mitochondria” are another pan-human phenomenon that only expresses itself in Proximas. All living cells on Earth contain tiny organelles called mitochondria – practically separate living things, with their own DNA, they use oxygen and sugar to generate the chemical that powers all life, ATP. Power mitochondria vastly overproduce ATP, and no one knows where they get the energy to do it – it’s like they suck potential energy out of the universe and convert it to life force. But they do this only when activated by catalysine within the cell. About 1/3rd of humans have power mitochondria. In the presence of the Proxima gene, these people generate energy above and beyond what they take in from food and air, which is then consumed by their superpowers. Without power mitochondria, a Proxima must draw from their own life force to fuel their superpower, which makes their powers pretty weak. The exact same genes for telekinesis can code for a person that can lift 70 lbs with their mind with effort vs. a person who can lift an aircraft carrier out of the water and break it in half, depending on the presence and output of the power mitochondria. Since mitochondria are passed by the mother, Proximas who inherit their power from a powerful mother will always be very powerful themselves, whereas Proximas who inherit from a powerful Proxima father depend entirely on the hidden status of their mother for their own strength.

(Funny fact, here: when Proximas were first discovered, male Proximas freely dated, married and fathered children on human women, because our entire society says it’s okay for men to have wives who are weaker than they are. Proxima women, on the other hand, mostly stuck to their own kind. In the seven years since we discovered the role of the power mitochondria, we have seen a dramatic reversal in which powerful Proxima men will not marry or get serious with human women unless they consider themselves “childfree” or have had the human woman’s mitochondria analyzed for power status, and more and more Proxima women are dating Sapiens men.)

So most of what goes into making a Proxima is actually in a vast percentage of the human population – 30% have power mitochondria, pretty much all of them have powers-complex. It’s the presence of the single gene that codes for catalysine production that makes a person Proxima as opposed to Sapiens. My belief was that Proximas would not be safe from the fear and envy of Sapiens unless we were normalized. The more Proximas there were, the more the law would adapt to and accommodate us and our needs and the less we’d need to fear the mob of Sapiens out to kill or control us. So my primary work, since I became Dr. Mystery, had been to increase the number of Proximas by giving as many Sapiens the Proxima gene as I can.

In my early experiments, when I used uncontrolled methods like retroviruses to mutate people, there were high casualty rates. Sapiens adults whose brains have not been exposed to catalysine in utero can’t control whatever superpowers they develop if they suddenly start making catalysine. So I started working primarily with children, usually terminally or chronically ill children that I could get direct access to. My power can create new brain pathways, and in a child or teen, with a developing brain, I can do it transparently, with no one noticing. Adults cannot experience sudden brain growth and change without noticing that something’s wrong – memories suddenly becoming lost, well-developed skills becoming weaker, mood swings, etc—so I only alter adults into Proximas if they request it. I often modify women of child-bearing age so that all their eggs carry the Proxima gene, ensuring that they’ll give birth to Proximas if they ever have kids. It’s harder with men, because men are generating new sperm all the time – I’d have to alter the spermatogonia, and since they’re part of the body, the body’s immune system might notice that they are genetically different from the other cells and attack them, making the man infertile. So I only make men into Proxima-fathers if I have plenty of time to work with them and tweak their immune systems, if necessary – and if they’re likely to have kids. Gay men coming to me to save them from AIDS and 70-year-olds who don’t want to get Alzheimer’s are usually not worth modifying reproductively.

The Peace Force were aware of my work, and opposed it. They believed it was wrong of me to change people’s genes without their consent. Technically, maybe they were right, but come on, what sane person would object to having superpowers? The only reason anyone would not want to be a Proxima is the prejudice against us, and I was working on that too. So I had to maintain a low profile because every so often the Peace Force would take it into their heads to try to capture me. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t fully legal – I was pardoned for my activities as Megamorph by Bill Clinton (did you know that Hillary Clinton once had breast cancer? No? Well, neither does anyone else), and nothing illegal I’d done as Dr. Mystery could be proven in a court of law. But the law hadn’t caught up with Proxima abilities, so the Peace Force never overly concerned themselves with whether they could prove wrongdoing or not. Their mentor and leader, Dr. Suryabati Chandrasekhar, aka Doctor Sun, was a telepath, and if she said, “Bad guy! Go fetch!” they would jump like puppydogs after a thrown stick.

So I lived in Baltimore, in a townhome in the Woodberry neighborhood, on Television Hill, because living directly under the broadcast tower generated enough interference that Suri couldn’t find me telepathically. I’d have preferred Little Italy, or better yet, a real city like New York or Philly (and I’d come way down in the world, admitting that Philly is a real city), but New York was far too close to Suri, whose base of operations was in Manhattan, and a lot of my work was done with politicians, making Baltimore or DC more convenient than Philly. And DC had the Special Service, human police in power suits who patrolled to protect the Capitol from parahuman attack. I never felt safe in DC. My Woodberry home had civilians living on both sides and a children’s day care across the street, ensuring that the Peace Force couldn’t attack me in force – they’d know the threat to civilians from a power battle would be too great to risk it politically for my sake (and to be fair, most of them are goody-two-shoes hero types who wouldn’t risk civilians, especially preschool children, even if they had perfect political cover for the operation.) So I figured that if Suri ever found me, she’d still think twice about siccing her dogs on me.

Also, the Light Rail, Baltimore’s sad and pathetic substitute for a subway, had a stop near my home. I didn’t learn to drive until I was 28, and I still hated it with a passion. I was a Brooklyn girl – give me a city with buses and subways and railways, so I wouldn’t have to dodge hurtling chunks of death metal just to get where I was going. From DC’s Metro, after I dropped my rental car at the airport, I changed at Union Station to the Camden line, took it to the baseball stadium in Baltimore, and changed there for the Light Rail. This took far longer than a car would have, but didn’t involve me being isolated in a tiny box with no source of living organic matter other than my own flesh and facing careening metal boxes coming right for me. It also didn’t involve traffic jams, which are brutal on the DC Beltway. A short walk from my stop later, and I was home.

As I unlocked my front door, Brian the cockatiel chirped at me wildly, flapping his wings in his cage. I’m really proud of Brian – in some ways he’s my greatest work. He used to be a man, or the head of a man, who attempted to rape me once. The truly pathetic thing was that Brian had been a good-looking guy, wiry and blond, the way I like them, and if he’d been willing to wait half an hour I would happily have had sex with him. But he hadn’t wanted sex, he’d wanted rape – the only reason he dated women and went back to their houses with them, rather than jumping out of the bushes with a knife, was that he was a lawyer and knew that a handsome man with money who date rapes a woman will basically never, ever be convicted. People think rapists have to be hard up for sex, or have to somehow look evil – the idea that a handsome, charming guy who could get any woman he wanted would actually prefer to hold screaming women down and force them when he could get consensual sex with the exact same woman instead breaks people’s brains. They assume the woman must be lying, because what man who could get mutual fun would prefer to commit rape? No one wants to admit how common misogynistic sadists actually are or how normal they look.

I found out from Brian that he’d date-raped ten women before me, that only two had tried to press charges, and the cops had refused to take the charges in one case and upset the other one so badly with their disbelief that she’d dropped the charges. I found this out while I had him paralyzed but still able to feel sensation, his voice made too hoarse to do more than whisper no matter how much he suffered, on a cot in the basement. Over the course of the two weeks that I used him in experiments, he told me his entire life story, amidst lots of self-justifications, begging, pleading and promising to change his ways. Then I started turning his body parts into animals, bit by bit. The rats and mice I made of his arms and legs didn’t come out right, and they died. The cockroaches who used to be his testicles were actually very robust, but after the cat knocked over the terrarium I was keeping them in, I had to get an exterminator to kill them because who wants cockroaches in their house? I was actually quite sad when the puppy I made out of his guts wouldn’t wake up and live – sometimes they just won’t come alive no matter what I do. Living things are very complex, and it’s more an art than a science to do things like make life into different life.

Since at that point, Brian had no way to digest food or ingest water, and he was therefore only a day or two away from death, I finally put him out of his misery by turning his head into a cockatiel and his torso into an iguana, a gecko, and a handful of tropical fish. Nothing lived longer than a week except the cockatiel, which so far had lasted three years. I often wondered, since I’d used some of the original brain tissue in making Brian’s new cockatiel brain, if he had any dim sense that he used to be human.

I fed Brian a cracker, re-absorbed my shoes into my flesh, and took back my original human form before plopping down on the couch to relax and await my cats. My actual body was permanently frozen at about age 22 or so; I changed it so often, I’d never really had the opportunity to let it naturally age. I could have forced it up to 36, where I really was, if I had to, but why bother? No one was going to see me and think less of me for looking too childish. My natural form is about 5’4” and built like a gymnast – tiny breasts, thickly muscled legs and arms, a rounded and balanced body with a low center of gravity and nothing sticking way out of line with the rest of it. For gymnastics – my childhood passion – and for combat, it was a fantastic body, and I used it for years as Megamorph before it occurred to me that maybe I should hide my true face if I was going to be a criminal. For instantly commanding respect, making men drool and women envy, or sending the signal “I AM A SERIOUS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND”, it wasn’t so good. It was short, the face looked too young and soft (and too much like a young, soft Gillian Anderson – people in med school actually used to call me “Scully”), and a body perfectly proportioned for gymnastics or martial arts isn’t all that attractive by the psycho standards of our culture. But it was my body, and in my home, with the shades drawn and the security system on, I went back to it because it was me.

As I wiggled my toes on my shag carpet and then propped my feet up on my coffee table, I wondered where my cats were. They were well-fed cats, but their heightened metabolisms made them constantly hungry, and they knew I was a sucker for giving them treats when I’d first come home. Normally, they’d be leaping on me minutes after my arrival. This worried me. If I had accidentally shut them in the bedroom, Angelkitty would probably pee on my ceiling to express her displeasure and Pikachu might have destroyed my furniture with a few good lightning blasts by now.

My cats were also experiments. I’d been curious to see if the genetic structures I’d observed in other mammals that seemed related to the human powers-complex were in fact superpowers, so I got myself a pair of abandoned newborn kittens and in between the droppers of kitten formula (I really drew the line at making cat milk in my own breasts; those little things have teeth very early), I modified them to generate catalysine. The female promptly grew bird wings (which didn’t attach to the right spot on her back and were too small; she’d never have flown if I hadn’t heavily modified them for her), and the male developed the ability to shoot lightning out of his paws, so I named them Angelkitty and Pikachu. (Technically, if you have seen the Pokemon cartoon, which I admit I have, Pikachu is a mouse that shoots electricity, or something rodentlike anyway, but come on, there aren’t exactly any mythological figures of cats that shoot electricity.) Angelkitty’s a Siamese and Pikachu is mostly white with some orange. They don’t have power mitochondria – that does appear to be a human thing – so they eat like pigs. I could feed six ordinary cats off what my two eat, but they remain extraordinarily svelte, almost feral in their slimness. And so if they weren’t here to pester me for fish treats, something was wrong.

I got up and went out to the kitchen. To my relief, my cats were still noshing on their tuna fish, which amazingly it looked like they had barely touched before I came home. (I always fed them human food. Why not? I had the money to keep them in canned tuna rather than cat food, and they loved the stuff.) Pikachu looked up at me, gave me a meow that I interpreted as “Oh, you’re home, good,” and then went back to his meal.

Wait a minute. There was more food in the bowl than there had been when I said good-bye to them this morning. And it was beyond the realm of possibility that they’d left so much food untouched for so long, anyway. And the tuna looked fresh out of the can. So how—

“I was wondering when you were going to get home,” a woman’s voice said behind me. I was already spinning to face her, preparing to leap at her, but as soon as I saw her I realized it was hopeless. “Don’t you ever feed these cats? They look like they’re starving.”

Ciana Kim, aka Sapphire, my once-classmate and current dire nemesis, was standing – well, floating—above my stairs in her traditional blue bubble, her features slightly obscured by the blue distortion and concealed behind her mask. The combat leader of the Peace Force was in my house.

I backed up. I couldn’t take Sapphire directly. Her power was to generate spherical or toroid magnetic fields, which glowed blue due to the way they bent light, hence her name. I needed organic channels to send my power through—behind her force field, Sapphire was totally safe from me, because I couldn’t touch her. I wasn’t safe from her, though. She could generate a force field around me, trapping me, any time she wanted.

There was a switch by the door to my basement, labeled “FURNACE – DO NOT TOUCH,” that would actually activate an EMP. All the computer and electronic equipment I had in my house outside the Faraday cage of the basement would fry, but Sapphire’s power would fail as well, and I could leap on her before she could reset her power. Or, if I didn’t really want to replace my MP3 player, phones, and the laptop in the bedroom, perhaps I could grab Pikachu and throw him at her. He’d be startled enough to discharge a bolt, and the electrical surge should pop her field like a soap bubble. I knew I had a faster reaction time than Sapphire – after years of modifying and tuning up my nervous system, I’m faster than anyone who doesn’t have super-speed as a specific power – so I should be able to grab her and neutralize her power or knock her out before she could get a force field back up again. I was reluctant to do that because Pikachu was my kitty and throwing him at superheroes seemed kind of mean, even though I knew he wouldn’t be hurt, but the EMP generator could theoretically blow out TV Hill, and then I’d have to dodge swarms of reporters trying to find out why they suddenly couldn’t get on the air anymore.

I stalled for time. “They’ve got very fast metabolisms. I feed them all the time, but they’ll pester anyone they meet for more.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “Oh, stand down, Meg. If I was here to capture you or beat you up, I’d have done it before you knew I was here.”

She had a point. Sapphire wasn’t stupid, and she had completely gotten the drop on me, to the point that I was actually really embarrassed about it. “So what do you want? Cooking advice? I always prefer to replace the generic vegetable oil with olive or canola, it’s easier on the heart.” The last time I’d been in the same household as her, Ciana Kim had refused to learn to cook, for very similar reasons to her refusal to learn hand-to-hand combat.

She ignored my jab. “Doctor Sun sent me. She needs your help and she asked me to ask you.”

I blinked. Doctor Sun wanted my help? Cold day in hell. But it’d have to get a lot colder before I’d say yes. “She wants my help? And she actually thinks I might agree? Excuse me, but the last time I interacted with any of you people you wrecked my lab, ruined four years of work and set me back half a million dollars.”

“You were infecting children’s vaccines with a retrovirus. Did you seriously think we’d let you just get away with it?”

“All it would have done was make them into Proximas. What do you think I am?”

“Someone who mutates people against their will. And how do you know that’s all it would have done? Retroviruses mutate. Besides, it’s still wrong to change people without their consent. How do you know those kids would even have wanted superpowers?”

“Oh, be real. Who wouldn’t want superpowers?”

“If I wasn’t a Proxima, I might have been an Olympic gold medalist.”

She was telling the truth. One of the things that annoyed me so much about Ciana was how close her life had been to mine, minus the dysfunctional family. I, too, had had Olympic dreams once, and my coach had told me when I was 11 that I might seriously make it as a contender. But no matter how good I’d been, I’d never really had a chance; if my parents hadn’t died when I was 13, some other aspect of my family’s screwed-up-ness would have ruined it for me.

Ciana Kim, however, had had a good and loving family who’d pushed her hard in the belief that she could achieve anything. She was a third-generation Korean American from California and her parents were doctors or something like that, and they’d stood behind her every step of the way. Even after everything had fallen apart in my life and I’d basically become a thug for hire, I had followed the Olympic gymnastic news, so I’d known all about this as it was happening.

Ciana was originally to be the USA’s representative to the Olympics in Seoul for women’s artistic gymnastics. Much was made in the media of a Korean American going to Seoul to represent America, but Ciana had been very photogenic and full of great soundbites about how she was as American as apple pie and she was honored to represent our great country and she was so looking forward to bringing a medal home for the US and she was following in Mary Lou Retton’s footsteps and blah blah blah. And then, a week before the Olympics, it had come out that she was a Proxima. They’d finally figured out that doing a blood test for catalysine would find any Proxima with an active power.

The truth is that even now, twenty years later, as an experienced superhero who uses her powers all the time, Ciana still can’t use her powers invisibly. There’s always a shiny blue blob there. And she had no training with her powers when she was 16, so it would have been even more implausible that she could have somehow used her powers to secretly cheat. I would be disqualified from a Sapiens competition in gymnastics in any sane world because of what my powers actually are, but Ciana was disqualified solely from anti-Proxima prejudice (and, to be fair, probably some anti-Asian prejudice from the Americans whose job it would have been to advocate for her). The Americans paid for their prejudices when Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union took home all the women’s gymnastics medals (I don’t like Ciana, but I’m pretty sure she would have won at least a silver in something, if not a gold.) Ciana was recruited by Dr. Chandrasekhar to learn how to use her powers and eventually join the Peace Force, Dr. Chandrasekhar’s UN-supported superhero team.

So it wasn’t that I had no respect for Ciana’s loss, but it irritated me that she saw the problem as being that she was a Proxima rather than that the Olympic committee was scared of Proximas. And also, that being an Olympic medalist was better than being a superhero. “Yeah yeah, you could have had your moment of glory, and nowadays you’d be selling sneakers and breakfast cereal to pay the bills, assuming anyone even remembered you at all. What’s Mary Lou Retton doing with her life?”

“She’s been an Olympics commentator, and she’s a motivational speaker who supports physical fitness.”

Trust Ciana to actually know this. “And that’s better than being a superhero how? You save lives, you have an action figure, millions of little girls look up to you—“

“—I wear a mask when I save lives because otherwise supervillains or stalkers might hunt me down, no one knows my real name, my family aren’t allowed to tell anyone what I do for a living, I’ll probably never have a normal life with a husband and kids—“

“--You could marry some guy and quit the superhero business any time you wanted to, it’s just your overblown sense of responsibility that says you can’t quit your job to have babies until your powers give out on you, because you think the world needs you, and if that’s the case where would they have been if you hadn’t been a Proxima?”

“Someone else would have taken my place if I hadn’t been a Proxima. And all of this is besides the point; no matter how great you or even I might think it is to have superpowers, the fact is that you were planning to infect helpless babies with a retrovirus that would have mutated them. Some of them might have died of it. Some might have been killed by their families for being Proximas once they manifested. You don’t have the right to play God that way.”

“Nobody would have died of my virus,” I retorted. “I tested it thoroughly ahead of time. But you also notice, I haven’t done it again.”

“Because you know we’ll stop you.”

“Because I listened to your arguments that retroviruses are unstable and highly prone to mutation, and I decided that maybe you have a point.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

“You didn’t even try to just persuade me. You just blew up my lab! Do you know how many vials of vaccine I hadn’t modified yet you destroyed?”

“All of this is pointless,” Sapphire snapped. “I’m wasting time arguing with you when Doctor Sun is dying. Are you coming or not?”

Wait, what? Dying?

I had been a half-crazed killer with no self-esteem, no sense of myself being able to be or do anything good, no belief that anyone could ever care about me – at least not without dying for it – after David died. Dr. Chandrasekhar had taken me in and taught me that I could have a better destiny than being a tool for monsters to use to kill each other with; that I didn’t have to be a monster myself. I could use my powers for good. I could help people. I could be a decent person.

Viewed from her perspective, I suppose, it didn’t last – I freely admit I am a supervillain and I do highly unethical things, up to and including killing people. But I do it for a cause I believe in. I do it to save my people from the bio-engineered diseases I was forced to participate in creating at Sonnebend. I do it so girls with superpowers who are going to medical school to learn how to save lives will not be kidnapped, stripped of their powers except when convenient for their captors, raped, tortured and forced to use their powers to heal enemies and kill their own kind, by agents of their own government. I do it so my people can enjoy the same rights and privileges as every other human on this planet. And the fact that I can fight for a cause, that I can see myself as a person with a noble goal of my own… I owe that entirely to Doctor Sun.

No matter what she does to me, no matter what she orders her Peace Force to do, I can’t ever get away from that.

“Dying of what?”

“She was kidnapped and raped by Caesar Primus. When she escaped, she was two months’ pregnant, but the doctors say it seems more like six months. The child is growing too rapidly for her to handle it, and it’ll kill her.”

Oh, God.

My heart started pounding, my throat went dry. I could feel the adrenaline surging, my sympathetic nervous system revving up for a totally inappropriate fight-or-flight response. I couldn’t stop imagining the reality behind Sapphire’s words. It didn’t help that I’d once had sex with Primus myself – consensual, sort of, but I could entirely too easily imagine what it’d be like to be raped by him, without powers to protect you. And Primus was immune to telepathy, so effectively Suri would have been helpless. God, no. I didn’t want to think about that.

So I was flippant, and cold. “Doctor Sun’s a woman of the world. You’re telling me she’s never heard of an abortion?”

“She doesn’t want an abortion. She says she won’t compound Primus’ act by taking an innocent life.”

“When did Doctor Sun turn into a pro-lifer?”

“She says the baby has a mind and she won’t kill it.” Sapphire floated herself down onto my dining room floor, still surrounded by a protective bubble but no longer on my stairs. “Are you going to help, or not?”

“I’m a feminist Darwinist. I’m morally opposed to letting a fetus conceived in rape live. It lets dangerous genes persist in the population. Suri knows that.”

Sapphire sighed explosively. “Fine. I knew you weren’t going to be any help, but Doctor Sun believed in you. I’ll just go tell her I was right and she was wrong.”

“What is this supposed to be, reverse psychology?”

“Nothing reverse about it. I knew before I got here that I would be wasting my time. You’re a killer with no conscience; why Doctor Sun ever thought you might help, I have no idea.”

“Because she knows me better than you.” I stepped forward. “If this is reverse psychology bullshit, it isn’t necessary. I’ve known I was going to agree to help you since you told me she was dying. And if you really believe what you’re saying, then nyaah nyaah nyaah. I’m a doctor; everything I do, I do to save lives. And at least I have to try to persuade Doctor Sun to abort the thing. Besides, if she was raped by Primus she might have injuries she could need my help with.” Primus had hammered at me like he was trying to break my pelvis, and without my powers he might actually have done so. And I’d voluntarily gone to bed with him. What he’d do to a woman he was raping, I really really didn’t want to imagine.

I didn’t mention to Sapphire that this was partly my fault anyway. When I’d met her, Suri (Dr. Suri to me in those days, but I feel I have the right to call her by her first name now) had been dying slowly of multiple sclerosis. She had met me on a good day; she’d only needed crutches and braces to move. On bad days she’d been confined to a wheelchair, and on really bad days she’d had to stay in bed. I’d healed her, and in the process I’d turned her from a forty-something woman approaching menopause back to a woman in her prime, young and healthy, physically in her 20’s. It had been almost 20 years since I’d done that; Suri would be approaching menopause again, but obviously wasn’t there yet. By now she’d be well past childbearing if I hadn’t de-aged her when I’d healed her disease.

I didn’t know whether Primus had raped her to torture her, to express domination over her, to really make the Peace Force mad at him, or to impregnate her, but I knew he had enough control over his body that if he hadn’t wanted to impregnate her, it wouldn’t have happened. It was entirely possible that the goal of the whole thing had been to force her to carry his child; Suri was an enormously powerful Proxima with high output power mitochondria, and most women with such energy-full mitochondria would have had a power they could use to fight back against Primus. Blocking a Proxima woman’s powers while she was pregnant carried high risk to the fetus if it too was a Proxima; it could prevent the fetus from developing the ability to control its powers as an adult. Suri was rare in that she was incredibly powerful but only telepathic, with no telekinetic abilities, and with Primus’ immunity to telepathy, she’d have had no way to fight back against him even at her full power. If Primus had wanted a powerful woman to pass her mitochondria to his child, and he hadn’t cared about her consent, there were few Proximas who’d make a better target for him. And if that was the case, then the whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made her younger, sixteen years ago.

Sapphire blinked. “Wait. You are coming?”

“I just said so. But we have to bring my cats. They need to eat more than the average cat – they’d starve if I left them without food for three or four days, and obviously I can’t ask the neighbors to come feed them.”

“Fine. Sedate them; I don’t need a cat flying all over my car, or meowing and moaning in his carrier the whole time. We’ll put them in one of the suites and make sure they get fed.”

I took my cell phone – it had all of my appointments and contacts in it, and I’d have to call them all to reschedule once I knew how long this was going to take. If I could talk Suri into aborting the fetus, this could probably go very quickly, but I knew how stubborn she was. If I had to save the baby too, I could possibly have to take a few weeks.

Damn Suri. Why the hell was I taking time off my work and spending four hours in a car with one of the people who most annoyed me in the entire world to go save my greatest opponent anyway? From a problem she could just fix herself if she wasn’t so damn stubborn?

But I already knew. I couldn’t let Suryabati Chandrasekhar die; not under any circumstances, and most especially not if she’d asked for me specifically. Our differences were ideological; what she’d done for me went beyond ideology. I would fight her and her people when I had to, but if she was dying and she needed me, I had to go.

#nanowrimo #cold light #wip #supervillains #tw: csa #tw: rape #the trigger warnings are for things being talked about not things we see

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