#of hurt and angst and tragedy and grief. always so full of it and yet tries to live and love the world as fully as they can.

[h-doodles]

it was me btw. it was my birthday.

every Helene is celebrating the bday today :3 congrats to us <3

the ocs, btw. all girlkissers (except little eli. bc ace rights!):

[the far back left] twinsies for Dear Diary, We Created A Plot Hole! (by the wonderful @ddwcaph-game ), Eli (OC) & Lee Salazar (the SI!OC)

[far back middle] SI!OC for Wednesday aka MY Marilyn/Larissa lover, Helene Addams

[front left] SI!OC for Baldur's Gate 3, Storm Sorceror, Absolute Babygirl, Resident Mintharamancer & Bhaal's Favorite Daughter, Helene Haelfryn Xorrlarin

[middle with the party hat] My SI!MC for Resident Lover (by the genius and absolute big brain @team-avia ): Helene Salazar

[front right] SI!OC for HPHM, the first babygirl I actively developed all thanks to my obsession for a morally ambiguous bankrupt badass redhead archaeologist professor (Patricia Rakepick— I STILL LOVE YOUUUUUU), Helene Marie Adler

[front far right] SI!MC for Relics of the Lost Age series by the GREAT @jamesshawgames , which came after HPHM and got me actively obsessed with another morally ambiguous bankrupt badass redhead archaeologist (which would have net me 2 nickels. I love me my amoral, kickass redhead wifeys), Helene Spillane

[dayseternal-blog]

Bouncing off that anon ask from a year ago: what rensioe incomplete/abandonned fics that you wished vould have an ending?

In Memory, Katarinahime. Part 13.

This grief is Ongoing, so I’ll never call your work Incomplete.

Two years.

“Serenity Prayer” by katarinahime - Rated M for depictions of domestic violence, substance abuse, and smut, Modern AU, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. When their fairytale endings smash to ugly pieces, Hinata and Naruto help put each other back together.

“(common side effects)” (Naruto’s POV) by katarinahime & “Medicated” (Hinata’s POV) by szajnie - Rated E for smut, substance abuse, mental illness, and depictions of violence, self-harm, and attempted suicide, Crime/Modern AU, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. Naruto and Hinata, in a struggling relationship, must confront the pain inside before they can love each other.

Tragedy like this doesn’t heal. It’s a gaping wound that hardens up as is. It’ll always be there, like an impact crater.

I avoided answering for about 9 months. Wondering how to respond without reopening the scars on my hands. How frustrating and painful that a few of the first stories I think of are--

I made excuses: What is "rensioe?" Did they mean "recent?" Maybe I don't feel like answering. What a silly, unending question. There are a ton of unfinished work, including my own, I'd like to see finished. What if I just listed all my own incomplete work? As like a funny joke? What if someone sees their fic here and feels pressured in a bad way or feels called out? Well, I could word it in a way that won't sound bad. What if I just don't want to answer this? I'll work on another rec list instead.

What if I answer this seriously? (In the end, I must look; it's not nostalgia; the past is not a thing to shy from; it's grief and anger and love.)

Just know that I'll never call her work incomplete.

This grief is ongoing.

It's been two years.

I’m trying to tie them neatly beside the shared memories of mourners. A bouquet of love yous, miss yous, lunch on an afternoon, letters and letters lost, so how do I gather the consumed bits of her melded within me of four years, how do I add them to the vibrant, tragic whole?

For every post and prayer, I pushed out a mouth full of love, blooms pulled out from the roots that I traced along the words I consumed, hoping a story I could tell myself would finally make sense of my grief and love me back.

I walk around the impact, leaving notes notes notes notes

For every note, that's one who will remember, just like how I won't forget the memories others compassionately shared with me.

This is a circular staircase, a dark void at the end of the tunnel that used to echo the pieces we once traded, the Pacific Ocean carrying the waves of her earthquake to my shore, wounds-turned-scars that once stung in salt water, an impact crater,

I'll revisit and take care like it's a grave.

Tell me if it hurts. Tell me if you remember. Is she there if I keep writing, if I keep creating, will you see her, too?

I'm sorry anon, you meant nothing in sending this ask, other than well-meaning curiosity. I’ve asked questions with unintended consequences, unwanted at the start and yet here I am dwelling.

This is what I want, what a place of privilege and opportunity I have to share.

So keep me busy.

Especially for angst.

Especially for Modern AU.

Especially for my favorite writers.

If I keep recommending her fics, if I keep recommending her fics, (repeat), (repeat) eventually will everyone read them?

Eventually will everyone know her? If you read her fics, you knew her in a swallowing, you entered the door, flew off, and I hope you never came back, I hope you read her fics.

I hope you share my lists, I hope you read my fics.

I hope you know me in a swallowing and recognize how I consumed her and called our merging an unbearable addiction, I hope you trace the veins of her in my words, I hope the waves spill over you.

I hope you see that I had known her since we started writing.

“Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same” - Brit Bennett, from The Vanishing Half

Summarizing months of loss, it's a mess. For 5 stages of grief, let's add a sixth.

Desperation.

I see its undercurrent swelling up my words -

What's the point of all of this if no one's paying attention? Remember her!

You haven't heard of her? Look! Fanfiction can be more, it can be the color of the water.

What's the point if people won't read the ones who inspired me, taught me the value of my words, taught me how to be understood.

"Don't forget."

(A note to drive her character forward, the reason to not give up.)

A prayer for your peace. A prayer that all the lives you touched and all the lives you will continue to reach through your writing returns to you in love. A prayer that everything we couldn’t say and everything we wish we did say returns to you in love. A prayer that everything I’ve written and continue to write returns to you in love.

If I could keep your story going, I would. I'm trying to. At least a couple of people might see my posts or visit my page, and decide to read your fics. Feel moved by your writing and love you, too.

This is ongoing.

Two years without you.

I miss you.

I wish you were alive. I wish you would update. I wish you would come back, I wish you hadn't found your own ending, and I wish I didn't feel selfish for thinking so.

I love you.

[polar-equinoxx]

:3

Cross posted on ao3 <3

Angst, grief/mourning, arguing, resolved argument, emotional hurt/comfort

1.9k words

≻───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────≺

Even Ice Melts☁️

third person

“You’re dangerous, Mitchell,”

Maverick exhales, but doesn’t look around to Iceman.

“You may not like the guys flying with you, and they may not like you, but what kind of excuse is that for what you just pulled up there?”

“I knew I could take the shot,”

“And leave Hollywood struggling in your dust like that?”

“Why are you doing this?” Maverick turns around to face him.

“What?”

“Pinning the blame on me?”

“Pinning the blame-?! It was your doing,”

“So why are you defending Hollywood?”

Ice looks incredulously at him. “Because that could have gone so wrong up there,”

“You don’t think I know that?” Maverick steps into Ice’s personal space, closing the gap between them.

“Of course I do,” Ice lifts his head up.

“Then why are you making an argument about this if your so sure it’s my fault?”

“Because I know it’s your fault,” his voice was cold.

Maverick was glad it was just them both in the locker room when Ice says the next thing.

“You don’t know that you’re dangerous. You don’t know how much trouble that could mean for anyone else, and you don’t care about the consequences for any of your actions because you never had anyone to teach you about them,” he says.

Maverick’s frown deepens. “Don’t bring that up,”

“Being dangerous up there only leads to crashing and burning on the way down. You’d know that if your surname wasn’t so infected by tragedy,” Ice had hit a nerve, and he was so full with concern for Hollywood and Wolfman that he didn’t care that he was pressing down on it harder than he should.

“It is not infected by tragedy,”

“It is, that’s why nobody likes you,”

Maverick goes silent, the anger inside him making his blood boil, and he didn’t want to escalate the tension in the room more by rising to Ice’s bait.

“No one will be there to mourn you when you crash and burn,” Ice hisses slowly.

Oh how he hated Iceman.

“Then let us hope I crash and burn tomorrow,” he says harshly, still somehow maintaining eye-contact with him.

Ice’s gaze was cold, freezing in fact, as he watches Maverick turn around and leave without another word.

~~~

Then the next day does come. Hop 31, and it would cast a shadow on Maverick for the rest of his life.

It all happened so fast, almost too fast for Maverick to comprehend. But he’s all too aware of the blood on his hands.

The blood that stains his flightsuit.

The blood that felt so hot compared to the salt of the sea water.

The blood of Goose’s that was all his fault.

He was in the water, holding him up, he doesn’t know how long for, but it was cold. It was so cold it seeped into his bones and felt like it was tainting the edges of his soul. Goose was gone, and it was all his fault. It was exactly how Ice had said.

The day before he was stupid, doing some risky manoeuvre that almost pushed Hollywood and Wolfman into a spin, and even though it didn’t, it gave them all a scare. And then now, today, he was too impatient, like he always is, he went to get the shot but at the cost of a flat-spin and the sickening noise of Goose’s head meeting the canopy roof as it failed to come off.

Maverick called for him to pull the handle because he couldn’t reach it, the gravity that shouldn’t have been there pushing him forward, his hands trapped under him.

And now he really didn’t have anyone to mourn him, since he’d murdered the only person who was his family.

He didn’t know if he was still in the water or in the stuffy helicopter. It didn’t make a difference.

Maverick felt sick, so sick, so numb and cold yet so hyper-aware of everything. The whir of the rotors, the blood on his hands that was still there, despite having his hands cleaned of it, the way his feet were soaked in his boots, the way the cupboard attached to the wall was ever so slightly open. The way a paramedic was trying to talk to him. The way the door was closed between him and Goose’s body. The way he could see his cracked red and white striped helmet through the slit of glass in the door.

~~~

That night he was sat on the bed in the hospital, and he didn’t know what he felt. He was cold, colder than he’d ever been in his life, and he regrets taking those two cold showers in a row; the night before and in the morning. The t-shirt he had on was too thin to do anything to his shivers, which were escalating each minute as the temperature outside dropped and as rain lightly pattered on the window.

It was July, late July at that, why was he so cold?

But he knows. It’s because the sea seeped into him. It’s because he killed Goose. It’s because he was alone.

But soon, way too soon, his thoughts switch on to that blue-eyed blond-haired pilot who he had that argument with yesterday. Iceman Kazansky. But despite the argument, despite the hard stares he’d give him, despite his frozen personality, he was the only person Maverick wanted to see. He knew that was going to be impossible unless he left the hospital and went to his house. Which he didn’t really want to do. Just by looking at the drizzle outside the window, Maverick knew it would only cool him down more.

But then again, he felt like a slave to the heart-wrenching feeling inside of him. He knew it would come for him like it came for him after his mother’s death, but he didn’t realise it would hit him this badly.

The grief felt like chest-ache and heartburn and seasickness all at the same time. It felt like his chest had been crushed. It felt like he couldn’t breathe.

He wanted to go to Ice. He didn’t know why, or even what he’d do if he did go to see him, he just knew he needed somebody. Somebody to hold him, somebody to sit next to, and somebody was better than nobody.

He didn’t care if they were frozen.

He was colder.

Iceman stands at his door, staring at the handle of it.

Go. Don’t go. Go.

Don’t go, he hates you.

Go, he needs you.

Don’t go. Go.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Ice sighs heavily, frowning at the door, wishing for his mind to say one thought to him. Wishing he could make a decision on whether to go and see Maverick at the hospital or stay at his house. Maverick hated him, he knows that.

Ice wishes he didn’t say what he did to him. He wants to turn back the clock and never even start to talk to him, never even have had the thought that said ‘tell him what he’s done’.

But Maverick is in the hospital, in a room, all by himself. He can’t even begin to imagine what was going through his head, what he was thinking; but Ice wanted to go and see him. To at least try to mend his mistake, to try to alleviate some of the pain Maverick must be feeling.

But Maverick hated him. He’d made sure of that when he’d said he would have no one to mourn him. When he’d said he had no one to teach him how dangerously he was behaving. When he had said all of the things he had.

He just wanted to fix what he’d said.

And suddenly they were face to face, the orange light from a lamppost above them illuminating the rain coming down on them.

Iceman stands there in front of him, and Maverick can hardly see his facial expression in the dark and through the rain, but most of all he doesn’t know why he’s stood there.

“I know what you said,” Maverick says quietly, clenching his jaw, trying to forget about the void inside of him and the rain dripping off his chin.

Iceman just looks at him, the rain making his hair shiny and dull at the same time in the light from the streetlamp.

“And now its true but- I just don’t know what to do,” Maverick stops himself there, if he let the words he wanted to say flow there’d be no stopping them.

Then Ice does something he wouldn’t have ever expected him to do; he steps closer to him and slides his arms around him.

Maverick was suddenly encased in the taller pilot’s embrace, and he suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, or move, or do anything.

“Breathe,” Ice says quietly.

It wasn’t an order, but Maverick does so anyway, releasing the breath he’d been holding and sucking one in again, squeezing shut his eyes.

It’s only when his head meets Ice’s shoulder that the last lock on his barely-held-together floodgates breaks.

And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about his reputation as the fearless pilot. He doesn’t care about the tears streaming down his cheeks and his sobs that he tries to muffle in Ice’s shoulder.

“Mav I’m so sorry,” Ice whispers against his head. The grief was choking him, so all Ice can do is hold him as tight as he possibly can, and pretend he wasn’t crying himself. The rain helps with that. He didn’t feel at all like his callsign and the personality it came with. He felt like Tom, like the kid who was nerdy and studied too hard and felt too many things until he’d made up Iceman to hide behind.

“Pete, you’re freezing,” He says once Maverick had stopped crying so hard against him. The shorter pilot was shivering, clenching his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Lets go back,”

“D- don’t leave,” he stutters. He’d only sink back into the gaping hole in his chest if Ice left him now.

“I’m not going to, no way, not tonight,” Ice murmurs.

Maverick keeps himself as close as he can to him as they walk slowly back to the hospital and he leads Ice back to the room he was supposed to be in.

And he keeps himself there as Ice pulls a grey-blue, slightly scratchy woollen blanket around them both as he sits back on the bed with him. His shivers were diminishing the longer he pressed himself up against Ice, but he still felt cold inside.

“Maverick, I’m sorry,” he says after a few moments. “Yesterday, I.. I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t mean any of it,”

Maverick stares at his hand for a few seconds before he takes it. “I know,” his voice was gravelly as he pushes his fingers through Ice’s.

Ice looks at their hands, then at Maverick, leaning on his shoulder, looking so devoid of his normal aura of bright sunshine. “It’s not your fault,”

Maverick sniffs and keeps his eyes on their hands, half not knowing how to respond and half being too drained to do so.

Ice wasn’t expecting him to reply. He stays there with him the whole night, never once letting go, especially when the drizzle outside brings thunder and distant flashes of lightning. Or maybe Maverick was holding him at that point because he felt him tense up and flinch at the thunder.

Either way, maybe Iceman Kazansky wasn’t as cold as he seemed to be.

[athenodora-sulpicia-writer]

OMG! OMG! OMG!! I LOVE YOU VANESSA ANGST FIC!! It really stabs me in a good way! vanessa deserves better tho :( I have my ideas about it tho! so mind if i add more? OK! so here it is; After some time Vanessa Ives had passed away. Everything went back to normal except for the grief everyone has been suffering. You all did your best to cope and recover for all the loss after an unbearable tragedy. You are a witch. You had your duties in need of your attention. As often as you can, you visited her grave and even sometimes sleep next to it until morning comes. Other times you had company, other times you don't. Not that you don't mind. You talked about how everyone else is doing, your adventures, and anything and everything that comes to mind. It's as if you will receive a response from this one-sided but you always hoped that your beloved vanessa is listening. Other times, you just sat next to her grave in silence reminiscing every memory you had with her. Over the years, you have developed a very good memory. You were grateful to remember everything as clear as if it just happened yesterday. Everything about Vanessa Ives is forever imprinted in your mind. Like her face for example; the way she looks at you like it is the best thing that has ever happened to her, the cute dimples that showed every time she smiles, Her hair wrapped in a bun is dark as the night sky, her porcelain skin and lastly her eyes... so calm and serene yet capable of a intense stare that can make you freeze in place. My goodness she is so attractive it should be a crime. If looks could kill, you would love to be her first victim. Another example is her hands. You've memorized where every vein is located, where are the rough parts on her fingers due to a lot of writing, how they are slightly bigger compared to yours, how soft they were, how warmth they were, how gentle it is when she holds you, etc. You can almost feel her touched again. Almost. Every now and then, her last words seconds before final breath popped in your mouth. You remembered how her voice was barely audible. You remember how you can feel her life force slowly fades away. You remember how much it saddens her to say it. You remember every single detail that happened in that devastating day of your life. No doubt it will scar you for the rest of your life. 'You'll go on without me Y/n, I promise you'll find love and live a good life....we were always meant to say goodbye, now let me go Y/n.' you hear her voice echoing into your ears. Move on?! How can you move on when you only have one heart that only belongs to her and her alone? How can you give your hear to someone else when it's full of her? When she died, your heart died with her. You will never see another woman as beautiful, loving, and perfect as her. No one can replace her. You wouldn't dare even attempted to do so. "Vanessa I don't think you truly understand how I can only love once and never again. I'm yours forever more." You broke the silence. "I'm sure i can live a good life but it can never be as good as with you by my side." Tears began to shed. You stared at her grave and pretend it was her. Oh how you missed getting always lost in her ocean blues eyes. "You really shouldn't make promises you can't keep. It hurts y'know." You smiled bittersweetly and lay next to her with your hand caressing on the carved stone. Today's work was exhausting as always. Soon the strong need to rest overtakes you. "I love you forever, Van. My one and only love." You whispered before falling into slumber. Even in death, you still can't get enough of this woman. Absolutely nothing can stop you from loving her even more than ever. It's out of your control really. Not that you were complaining. You are well aware that witches live longer lives than humans which means you shall live what it felt like an eternity without the love of life. A life without her is the 9th layer of hell to you. sooo... what do you think?? :D Sorry to grammatical errors :(

Oh My Gosh, I’m in love with this, it’s so beautiful and perfect, thank you so much for writing it. It’s brilliant and sad and poetic, I just can’t get enough of it.

Right now I have a task for you, I want to write pregnant Vanessa x Fem witch reader but I need an idea and plot. Think you can help me out, it can be as crazy and bonkers as you want.

[terrakatten]

These were incredible songs, and for the most part they fit Johan perfectly like a glove. My favorites are Two Birds, Invincible Girl, Trouble is a Friend, and Hurts Like Hell.

Two Birds is relatively fitting for Johan and Mordecai, but I’d say it fits a bit more for Johan and Zib. Johan and Zib are doubtlessly affectionate of one another, but Zib doesn’t quite feel full-on romantic love, which is the thing that Johan craves yet Zib thusly can’t provide; in a sense he’s led Johan on for a while by keeping their relationship in an intimate limbo; “he’s a liar“

Invincible Girl does a fantastic job displaying how Johan has been able to put up a general demeanor as if he’s not a deeply bothered person. How he lost his innocence entirely as a child due to having had to kill to escape his familial abuse; how his life had been a pretty desperate struggle to survive along the uncaring streets- and how much he wishes he didn’t have to be so strong; he wants to cling on to his current situation as hard as he can with his resolve, but deep down, having to fight like this is causing him immeasurable pain.

Trouble Is A Friend is now one of my top angst songs; goddamn it’s good. It’s really allegorical for both his psychological flare-ups of pained memories, but also how he’s been constantly dealt a bad hand by fortune since birth; no matter what, things always seem to be one inch away from crumbling to dust due to bad luck constantly lurking in the dark. 

Hurts Like Hell is a beautiful and sad song that encapsulates Johan and Mordecai perfectly, especially in regards to chapter 4. Mordecai nearly lost Johan that night and it’s frankly a miracle that Johan survived to stave off tragedy. From how I’ve been referring to Johan as a poor/doomed/sad soul, it’s evident that he may be a moribund character. I’m not decided on it yet, but regardless, him wanting to remain an open homosexual in such a regressive time period- with the shelter that allowed him to be so on the brink of ruin- is likely going to end up causing immense grief and sorrow, regardless of if he lives or not. Even though losing Johan may be a fear that doesn’t get actualized, Mordecai is still extremely anxious about him and is likely to have nightmares about Johan dying- thusly, this song really nails this deep fear quite perfectly.

Thank you so much for these recs!!

Johan Song Recs

@terrakatten some songs that might fit Johan;

Two Birds by Regina Spektor (might fit him with Mordecai)

Invincible Girl by Bad Pollyanna

Trouble Is a Friend by Lenka (my favorite angst song of all time)

Angry Too by Lola Blanc

Wild Heart by Beth Crowley (might be a stretch but)

Hurts Like Hell by Fleurie, Tommee Profitt (reminds me of Johan and Mordecai in that one chapter)

[a-reader-and-a-writer-for-all]

I Thought I Lost You

Fandom: Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick, Robert "Bob" Floyd, f!reader

Word Count: 1326

TW: Angst, Presumed Dead, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Kissing

Top Gun Masterlist

You lay curled up on your cot, your eyes puffy and red from the countless hours of crying you have been doing over the past three days. Every time you think you have cried yourself out, that you couldn’t possibly have the energy or tears left to shed, you are hit by another wave of sobs. You know you should pull it together, to be as strong as all those around you, but you can’t. Working in the control room and monitoring things through a computer screen had always let you remain somewhat distanced from the loss and tragedies that could occur during missions. But this is different. You had never been this personally connected to one of the fighters before.

A light knock on your door stirs you from your grief. You mumble a soft, “Come in.” and see Phoenix slowly open the door.

“Hey, I thought you might want some company.” You nod as a single tear rolls down your cheek and she comes over to pull you into a hug. “It’s okay. There’s still a chance he could be okay.”

You sob into her chest, “It’s been three days. You guys ejected from your plane in the middle of a desert with no food, no water, no real kind of protective gear and no one has found any signs of Bob since. Even if he survived the crash, he almost definitely wouldn’t have made it this long on his own.” She just holds tighter to you, both of you knowing you are right and anything she says would just be wishful thinking.

Finally, you compose yourself somewhat and say, “I’m sorry. I know I should be stronger than this. I mean, we had only been going out for a few months. Plus, you guys have known him so much longer and you’re holding it together. I mean, he was your WSO and yet here you are comforting me! How pathetic can I be!”

Phoenix thinks for a moment, choosing her words wisely. “I haven’t been as strong as I am trying to seem. You’re right, Bob was my WSO and I was flying when we were forced to bail out. That’s not an easy thing to come to terms with but I’m trying.” She ran her hand soothingly across your back. “However, I think we both know that there was more to your and Bob’s relationship than you’re admitting.”

“Yeah…. Yeah, there was. But I never admitted it to him either…... Do-do you think he knew that I loved him before he….?” You squeeze your eyes shut, unable to actually say the word out loud, but Phoenix understands.

“I think he did. And I think he felt the same way about you. You were all he ever talked about. I had to even tell him to shut up a few times when he would go on and on and on about you.”

You let out a strangled laugh. “My roommate told me the same thing. That she didn’t ever want to hear the name ‘Bob’ ever again.” You stare down at your hands as they fidget with the sheets. “I guess she got her wish.”

Phoenix opens her mouth to say something, but before she has the chance, Rooster suddenly bursts into your room without even knocking. You and Phoenix both look at him in surprise, not understanding his intrusion or the wide grin spread across his face. That is until he breathlessly says, “They found him…. And he’s okay… Bob’s okay!”

Phoenix decides to stay behind to give you time alone with Bob, so Rooster leads you quickly down the hall. He fills you in with what he knows: a final rescue team had gone out looking for him and someone had managed to spot his parachute in a deep gorge they had missed before. They found Bob, dehydrated, severely sunburned, and banged up, but overall, he was going to make a full recovery.

As you approach the door to his room, Rooster gives your shoulder a tight squeeze then walks off so you can go in by yourself. Taking a deep breath, you open the door. Bob is laying on a bed, propped up with a few pillows. An IV is connected to his arm to replenish his fluids. All of his visible skin is painfully bright red and peeling from countless hours in the scorching sun. But even though his lips are chapped and cracked, he gives you a soft smile as you hesitantly approach. “Hi.”

His voice is so dry and scratchy it is almost impossible to make out what he said, but you smile back as tears once again spring to your eyes. “Hi. I thought….. I thought I had lost you.”

“Thought so too once or twice. But I had a reason to keep going.” Weakly, he reaches into his flight suit and pulls out a worn strip of paper. Handing it over to you, you instantly recognize it. For your third date, Bob had taken you to a carnival and the two of you had spent way too much money goofing off in the photo booth. While you had taken most of the photos home, you had noticed Bob slip one strip of them into his pocket. That is what you now hold in your hands.

The tears you have been holding back begin streaming down your face. You take his hand gently and whisper, “I love you, Bob. I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but I-I was afraid it was too soon. And then when I thought you were gone, and I’d never get the chance to tell you-” Your voice begins quivering too much to continue.

But then Bob reaches out and takes your hand in his as he rasps, “I love you too. I didn’t want to come on too strong but I’ve wanted to say it ever since that night.” He gestures to the pictures still in your hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner.”

Without thinking, you press your lips against his. The cracked, dry feeling immediately reminds you of his condition and you try to pull away, but he places his hand on the back of your neck, holding you in place. So, you carefully lean in, deepening the kiss as you run your fingers through his hair, ignoring the sand and sweat matted there.

You are interrupted by the sound of a throat clearing behind you. The heat rising in your face, you turn around to see a doctor with an amused look on her face standing there. She raises an eyebrow and says, “Sorry to interrupt, but Lieutenant Floyd needs his rest. So, if you don’t mind-”

“Can she please stay?” Bob asks.

The doctor sighs. “Are you actually going to try to get some sleep if she’s here?”

“Yes, ma’am. In fact, I’ll sleep better with her by my side.” Bob smiles softly at you and you bite your lip to suppress your own grin.

“Fine. But if I come back to check on you and I see anything I don’t approve of, she’ll have to leave.”

“Absolutely. Thank you, ma’am.”

The doctor shakes her head with a small smile and leaves. You turn back to Bob. “Are you sure? I can come back later. She’s right. You do need to rest and recover.”

“I can do both with you here….. If you want to stay.”

You squeeze his hand. “Of course, I do.”

Carefully, Bob slides over, making room next to him. You climb onto the bed, curling up against his side with your head resting on his shoulder. You take his glasses off his face and place them on the table next to you before he wraps his arm around you and pulls you in closer. And wrapped in each other’s arms, you both soon drift off to sleep comforted by the thought you are with the person you love once again.

Taglist: @valoraxx, @m3laniehearts, @autumnleaves1991-blog, @rule107, @vintageleather, @impossiblebagelcowboyfreak, @slutforadambanks, @americaarse, @reneki, @jamesbuckyburns, @a-sweet-little-fangirl, @ynbutbetter

[skaikruswan]

ok but imagine that calliope still has feelings for Morpheus (and maybe he still has feelings for her too) but she ends up witnessing Morpheus falling in love with y/n, a painful thing for her to see his beloved falling in love with another

A ballad of sorrow and heartache

WC: 471 AO3 (i love kudos)

Relationship: Morpheus x reader, slight Calliope x Morpheus (from Calliope)

Notes: as requested, Calliope POV, some reminiscing, a touch of hurt and angst.

Thanks anon for the request, I hope you enjoy it, I'm sorry for the smaller fic, but hey, quality not quantity :)

If you enjoyed this story, there are prompts: Cat!Morpheus,  Jealous!Reader Desire impersonating Morpheus, as well as an ongoing fic. 

Calliope, youngest of the nine sisters, muse of eloquence and epic poetry, has always hoped that freedom would taste as sweet as ambrosia, and as she breathes in the clean air, the starts twinkling above her, she realizes that her hope is fulfilled.  

She has dreamed about walking freely amongst mortals, to inspire those who deserve it. The call of Mount Helicon is strong, and how she wishes she could return to the blue skies of her homeland, but not yet. 

While this place only holds misery, it is also where she and Oneiros saw each other after so long. Over time, she has convinced herself and her heart that her feelings for him has waned, that all she has left is contempt, but that is not true. 

He had come for her. Eons may pass, but she will never forget that in her hour of need, he had helped her, wrathful in his desire to see her tormentor truly punished. 

Their last parting had been full of cruel words and regrets, and Calliope considers his silence and absence, although painful, still a mercy. After all, she knows what he did to Nada. Loneliness is better than hell.  

I do not hate you. The words twitch inside her chest. How she longs to truly reconnect with him, her ex-husband, the father of her son. She shall carry the grief and sorrow over his death until the day she becomes nothing more than dust and ash. She wishes he would share it with her. 

One day, she may visit Oneiros and the dream realm, and it fills her with hope and heartache. Although he had been soft and considerate, he still rejected her, and it hurts.        

But maybe all she and Oneiros need is time. 

The Greek had a talent for tragedy. She remembers Archilles’ heartbroken wails over his lover’s dead body, Odysseus’ desperate journey to return home, or Ariadne’s heavy grief as Perseus left her. It has inspired many songs and tales. 

As she watches Oneiros talk to the mortal, she too feels inspired, eager to grab a scroll and write down her pain. 

In a cruel twist of fate, the mortal is a writer, but nothing like Richard Madoc. Calliope has felt the sincere glee as the writer finishes chapter after chapter, has seen the deep exhaustion as the stubborn mortal spends hours upon hours in the library to research, and the kindness shown to everyone, be it friend or stranger. 

Oneiros deserves someone like that, someone who can remind him that humanity is good. Someone he might inspire with a dream. Someone unburdened by ancient memories. 

How Calliope wishes that she were that person. How Calliope wishes that she was the one Oneiros was smiling at. Her heart feels like a dead weight inside her chest. 

One day, perhaps. 

[mirahuyooo]

Can I request 010 with Jin 🤗🤗 thank you 😊

And happy four year anniversary to you 💕

010. “I saw you in my dreams again. It feels so real.” + kim seokjin

— Though time burdens Kim Seokjin with a curse, he’s glad to have met you in most of them.

word count: 1,039 contents: ANGST, bittersweet stuff, one-sided pining, a meet cute (??? does it count lmao), timey wimey things (stuck in a time loop), poor jinnie needs a god damn rest he just wants to save his friends and be with yn aww, based on the Bangtan Universe AU (lmaoo really takes me back ✋😩) pairing: kim seokjin x reader

[masterlist] | check out more of [Four Years with Mira]!    

A/N: thANKS SO MUCH ANON!! Ur very sweet, so I wanna apologize bc the only theme I could think of for this prompt is an ANGSTY one AWHHAHAHA i hope y’all like this one! 💗💕💖

Time is a curse for Kim Seokjin, damning him to repeat life from the same day every time a crack forms in reality. Exhaustion weighs down his bones, even if to the world around him, he’s only waking up from long hours of sleep. He hasn’t felt relief in a long time—doesn’t remember how it feels either.

Losing count of how many turns the clock has reset, alternate timelines bleed into one another in a disarray of bittersweet endeavors and immeasurable grief. Seokjin reminds himself yet again who he’s doing all of this for—would carve it into his skin if he could.

His friends, who were a gaggle of rambunctious boys that made his dull years in high school so full of life.

His friends, who he had to see hurt, die, or lose hope at nearly every turn, and fail to save.

His friends, who were trapped in perpetual tragedy, almost like he was. 

Fate is cruel, Seokjin knows that now very well, even as it gave him you—the other reason at the heart of his perseverance amidst the tantalizing journey he’s made numerous times. He doesn’t remember when, exactly, but during one turn, where he was left in despair and lost his footing on the meticulous course of events he had to enact for everyone’s sake, Kim Seokjin meets you in the bustling nightlife of Seoul. His car broke down while chasing Yoongi’s whereabouts, and the heavy rain soaks him to the bone, until you offer him your umbrella and help.

It had been a blissful life while it lasted, you helping him in his endeavors with what you could after seeing his desperation to save his friends. Even then, in other timelines you always managed to be there for him and the others in one way or another. (Seokjin fears sometimes if he had dragged you into this curse in some shape or form—if your life had been laced with the same poisonous tragedy that had sullied them all.)

He never did get to tell you he loves you, what with him only ever being the one with the knowledge of the times beyond whatever reality he spends with you. All he ever has left of you is in his memories—memories he miserably clings onto ever since it came to him how easily he can start to forget.   

His body imprints its shape on his bed as he stares at the ceiling, remnants of a moment long passed etching the image of you in his head. “I saw you in my dreams again,” his voice is airy, barely there, just like his mind, as a sigh leaves his lips. “It feels so real.”

Seokjin longs for the day he could finally—finally—set everything right and spend the rest of his life in a reality finally fulfilled, where all his friends are safe and sound, and they meet you as the love of his life after he properly pursues you as his. 

Until then, he and you are strangers crossing the streets of Seoul past one another.

Until then, he’ll work on finding the map of the soul and solve this once and for all.

Until then, he’ll keep you in his memor—

“Oh God, I’m so sorry!”

In spite of his tall build, Seokjin nearly topples over as he staggers forward at the force that crashes into him on his way to the burger joint. Turning around to see who did it, and lo and behold, the universe had summoned the one person he had spent most of his morning thinking of. 

Your hair’s gotten a bit longer this time around, tucked behind your reddening ears as you look up at him with wide eyes after picking up your umbrella from the pavement. In spite of being lost in your eyes himself, Seokjin curses that damn cosmic cat for bringing you two together when he’s trying to set his mind straight to the solution. 

Words elude the both of you for a moment, until the light droplets of the oncoming rain signaled you to put the umbrella over both your heads, something that reminds Seokjin a little bit too much of the first time you met.

Practically burying yourself behind the same, big black jacket he remembers seeing you first in, you sheepishly smile up at him—a bright sight amidst the otherwise gloomy weather. “This is going to sound awkward, but I swear this is genuine,” you purse your lips as you mull your words over. “Have I seen you anywhere before?”

For a moment, Seokjin buckles at the flicker of recognition amidst the curious confusion in your eyes, his heart thrumming wildly against his ribcage like it was about to get out of its constraints and scream Yes! Yes, you have, and you’ve taken my heart since then!

Yet, remembering heartache and the shatter of time, he reigns himself in to save both you and him the pain. “No, I don’t think we have,” he smiles, bittersweet as ever. (He wonders if a part of you—even the slightest bit—could tell.)

“Right, forget I asked,” you wave your embarrassing statement off with a forced chuckle, as you then give him a slight bow in apology. “I’m sorry again for bumping into you like that,” you say, as you look up at the murky clouds overhead promising rain. “Will you, uh, be alright in the rain?”

It hurt to simply shrug back and stay nonchalant when all he wanted was to stay under the umbrella with you and pry about what made you think he was familiar. He adjusts the cap on his head, while a part of him treacherously prays for the light rain to come down harder. “No worries. I’m almost where I needed to go, anyways,” he tells you, almost dying at the fact that this is where the conversation will end. 

“Alright, then,” you hum, almost as hesitant to go as he was. In the end, however, you bid him goodbye. “I’ll get going then.”

Seokjin is more resolved than ever as his heart breaks seeing you go. No matter how many dreams and memories come to haunt him, he’s going to put an end to this—for himself, for the boys, and for you. 

[cherryjuicegf]

death of a poet

for @whataboutthebard september 16 whump prompt: major character death || geraskier, T, 1.8k, angst, implied/referenced suicide (kind of)

ao3

The greatest act of love, they say, is to die for it.

Jaskier laughed, always laughed at this concept. There’s no doubt, of course, one’s whole life lost as a declaration of love, the highest sacrifice. But not the only one. And it amazed him, how people never seemed to acknowledge anything else, how fairytales of noble knights ended with them throwing their lives away, and for what? For love. Always for love. There was no doubt, and if there was, who was he to utter it?

Still. He wondered, the roots of the poet he was meant to be growing inside him, blooming since childhood. And he wondered, why, why die for love, why not live for it? Why waste this blooming of hearts in the eternal darkness, in grief and the wailing complaint of what could have been? Why, when there is so much beauty in the love of living things? He wondered, always wondered. And his mother smiled, with this faint bitterness of unexpected knowledge, and whispered, you can live for love if you want, sweet child, but one day you’ll understand.

Yet he didn’t understand. And he hated it, hated that he didn’t. Hated that he couldn’t find anything to try and understand in the first place. One day he would understand, yet people smiled at him, flowers bloomed in spring, birds sang on the branches, the wine tasted so sweet and the strings of the lute sounded so magical in the evening hush. And he wondered, always wondered, when would the day come, and what greater love there is, that you’re willing to die for it, even if you don’t lay eyes upon it ever again?

The fire in the hearth suddenly goes out.

A tragic fate, the mage had laughed. True love’s kiss. No one could ever love a monster.

I love him. He’s not a monster.

He’s not?

Geralt’s eyes are glowing in a light Jaskier hasn’t seen before, in a light he never wishes to see again. They’re glowing, and something unworldly glows with them, laughs with the evil memory of fairy tales, and evil sorceresses and true love’s kisses. As the blade glistens dangerously close to his eyes, as he walks backward in trembling steps, he thinks they’re so far away from what would make a beautiful fairytale to tell children before sleep. There will be no happy ending here. Somehow he knows.

There’s a tickle on his fingertips, burning.

The sword whips beside his ear and he stumbles back once more, panting, breath coming out strained. He raises his head, looks at Geralt. Or what he remembers was Geralt. Because now what he sees seems foreign, cold, and the amber in his eyes doesn’t warm him like the sun anymore, instead burns, like a fire which he willingly, inevitably steps into. There’s a lump caught in his throat, a sob screaming to get out. And, as though on instinct, with the strongest pang of guilt numbing his bones, he has to remind himself. He’s not a monster, he’s not a monster. He’s not Geralt. Geralt is not a monster.

For a moment, for the barest of seconds, he meets Geralt’s, no, the man’s eyes and, like the fool, like the poet he is, he hopes. “Geralt,” he says and his voice shakes weakly with the terrifying hint of denial, “Geralt, it’s me, please.” The air is ripped by the blade once again, he steps back, eyes still locked with amber. A whimper. “Come back to me, love, please. I love you, come back.”

For a moment, for the barest of seconds, the sun entering from the narrow, stained window reflects on Geralt’s eyes and something familiar glints behind them, a distant scream of a heart wailing to get out. But it’s only for a moment. Because Geralt growls and lowers his sword again with maniacal force and Jaskier screams, ducks and falls on his knees in an ironic parody of a plea for mercy. There’s a feeling of wetness on his bicep and he hisses as crimson blood stains the white sleeve. Not his fault, Jaskier reminds himself, not his fault.

It’s not his fault, yet he wants to cry as he stares into his eyes, cold like the blade that threatens to tear him to pieces, cold like the countless winter nights he’s spent without him, cold like his hand as he grasps it desperately, pushes him back in a failed attempt to trap him, in a foolish, hopeless hope of making him throw the sword away.

A true love’s kiss, he thinks, and almost laughs, because it sounds more like a death wish. And he’s starting to think it will be.

And then he sees Geralt raising his hand and before he has time to think about it, he’s being swept back with the most violent wind, and falls head first on the wall behind him. And slumps to fall on his knees. But there’s a sudden sting on his abdomen and he opens his eyes just in time to see the silver blade pointed on tender skin and jolts back with a gasp, stuck on the wall. “Fuck, Geralt,” he pants and looks at him and, for some reason, he expects his stare to be requited. It is. But it’s empty. It’s empty, and the sword on his stomach tickles painfully and the room is whirling. He blinks hard, gasps again. He can’t hold on, he knows.

And as he gazes at Geralt, he remembers. Warmth. Faint smiles, fingers down his back. Lips tasting of sweet wine, and flowers on his hair, and sleepy eyes staring at him before dropping, and love, and safety, and home . And finally, finally he understands.

He hates that he understands. But then again, the blade is cold like a hug full of regrets and Geralt’s eyes are empty and, oh, what he wouldn’t give to see those eyes, familiar and warm and looking at him again, even if it’s for the last time. He hasn’t much left to give, truth be told. Only his hope, and his life, and he feels them both competing for which is going to reach the end of the line.

“Geralt,” he whispers, again, and that spare root of hope he had starts to rot. “Geralt, please, don’t...” Are those tears? His eyes are burning. “Wake up, love, it’s me.”

What hope? He knows there is not. He knows, because it’s empty, forever empty, and the blade stings deeper and he pleads, Geralt, Geralt, Geralt, as if it means anything anymore, as if it’s Geralt.

He understands. And knows, if he’s to die, he has to die the way he lived, by love, as a poet. For love, then. As a poet, and for love.

So he straightens himself, eyes steady on Geralt. And takes a step forward against the blade.

It’s numbing, the pain. Another step. He gasps, chokes on his own blood. Another step, and Geralt stares, empty, blade steady in place as though on purpose, but there’s a familiar glint somewhere in there now, a familiar fear. Jaskier is close. His feet are giving in, his breath is shortening, and it’s a pity really, such a torturous death.. He’s close. So close that he can rest on Geralt’s shoulder, and he feels the blade ripping his flesh, his insides, his everything. He coughs up blood, chokes, eyes rolling to the back of his head. And he feels the blade dripping behind him. And he feels Geralt’s breath on his skin. So he cups his face in a shaking hand, and leans in.

It’s nothing. A brush of lips, tender in all its agony. It’s nothing. The world is blurring. It’s love.

It’s nothing.

The sword slips away as he falls, leaving behind nothing but a puddle of unending blood and slowly consuming darkness and he thinks, it’s supposed to be bright, it’s supposed to hurt less now.

He thinks, he’s supposed to spare himself from Geralt’s anguished look when he comes to, and realizes.

Instead.

“Jaskier!”

He doesn’t feel the pain. Only his body, lifted from the floor, and the scorching blood and the arms, those arms that hold him so tight he wants to scream all the apologies, all the regrets of the world. He doesn’t need to. They all echo in Geralt’s eyes.

It’s sweet, the pain. It’s melodic, the plea. Jaskier, please, stay with me, you fool, you’re alright, stay with me.

He wants to laugh. He’s long gone.

The greatest act, to die for love. A fitting ending, for a poet. He wishes someone will write it, this story, their story, and maybe give it a happier ending. Maybe they will go to the coast. Maybe they’ll end up closing their eyes together, holding each other tight, and maybe there’s no blood, only bitter tears of happiness.

It’s a fairytale. It can’t be tragic.

I love you, you’ll be alright, please, please don’t leave me alone.

A forehead pressed against his and he stares at Geralt and, oh, how he misses him already, and how bright he looks in his sorrow, how beautiful behind the veil that slowly falls between them. Jaskier parts his lips, chokes. “Geralt,” he croaks and it sounds like a sob uttered by every single wilting flower in the world. “Geralt, look at me.” He raises a trembling hand on his face, his fingertips leaving smudges of blood over the falling tears.

Geralt doesn’t look. Only stares at the wound, and back at Jaskier, unfocused, horrified, numb, as though it won’t happen if he doesn’t acknowledge.

It’s darker now, and there’s a last grip holding him back, and Jaskier knows it’s the warmth of Geralt’s hug, always is. “If I die for you, will you live for me, love?” he whispers and finally, finally Geralt turns at him, eyes wide, and Jaskier smiles, something close to a wince, as though it’ll hurt less like that, letting go.

Geralt shakes his head. “If I refuse will you stay alive?”

A huff. Painful. “No. No, I don’t think so.” It’s silent like the breeze now, his voice. Jaskier wipes the rivers of tears on Geralt’s cheek and smiles again, and this time it’s genuine, probably because it’s the last one. “It’s alright, hush. You’re not alone.” Shaking, he removes silver strands away from Geralt’s eyes, and slumps, leans on his shoulder as though finally resting. “Hush now, my love. Let me look into your eyes one last time.”

He does. He looks. It’s the same eyes, same as always, warm and loving, like a tender caress.

To die for love. How tragic. But what is a poet’s love, if not the most heart-wrenching tragedy?

The bloodied hand gently falls on the floor.

There’s a streak of red light coming through the stained window, and rests on blue eyes, mistaking them for the peaceful sea after a storm in their stillness.

They stare, forever open, and somehow forever warm.

They stare, and Geralt finally stares back. And slowly, agonizingly, like a sob echoing in eternity between the pages of every promised fairytale, he screams.

[ussgallifrey]

The Kids Aren't Alright || 1.3

✦ Summary: Nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy but, between the three of you, there’s enough lyrics to write an anthem. Bucky falls first for the blue-eyed artist with a fighter’s spirit, then for the girl made from stormclouds and spitfire. You’re doomed from the very start.

✦ Pairing: Steve x named!Female Reader x Bucky

✦ Warnings: Angst, descriptions of injuries, drinking, grief, hurt/comfort, mild violence, minor character death, non-explicit smut, pre-serum Steve; references to child abuse, consensual underage sex, murder, suicide; underage drinking and smoking, unhappy ending, unhealthy coping mechanisms, WWII.

✦ Word Count: 17.1k

✦ Playlist: Here

✦ Author’s Note: The reader is named for convenience (and it comes from a specific song in the playlist), though - as with all of my reader-centric stories - her looks are never described in detail nor is she white-coded.

[MasterList]

[ S W E E T H E A R T ]

No one pays Steve Rogers much mind.

He was a real spectacle when he showed up last year though. New faces were a rare sight around these parts, so him and his Mama were the talk of the town for at least two months straight. Not to mention, he had that strange city accent and a sickly lithe body that had kids wondering if a light breeze would knock him over.

But now, no one gives a damn about the scrawny boy.

He’s got an artist’s soul, but kids ‘round here don’t care much for that. Where the older boys tend to spend their free time throwing a ball around the barren field next to the school, Steve’s always sitting on the stoop with a book full of drawings - good ones too.

At least, Bucky thinks they are - having spotted a page covered in beautiful lines and strokes.

Sometimes, he longs to join the smaller boy on the steps of the school, with his charcoal smudged fingers. But he knows how that would look and he’s already got enough of a reputation surrounding him.

And I’d promise you anything for another shot at life.

It’s a small town and people talk.

And perfect boys with their perfect lives.

His Momma always tells him to keep his chin up, to not let the words and stares grind him down - it’s not his fault his Daddy went and did what he did. And he’s got his sisters to worry about so sitting on the sidelines, drawing fanciful pictures, isn’t a way to get himself up on the ladder - so to speak - in a place like this.

Nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy.

He can turn a blind, but still envious, eye to boys like Steve. It’s the other kids, the bigger kids, that don’t like it one bit.

On a day at the start of the school year, he finds the little blonde boy with a fresh shiner and blood dripping from his nose under the old willow tree next to the school’s woodshed. A sopping wet sketchbook at his feet and angry tears welling up in his eyes.

He doesn’t want Bucky to see him like that, quickly rubbing his snotty face with the back of his bloody hand.

He’s seven years old and he just spits out a glob onto the ground and says, “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

“Oh, I bet, pal.”

It’s no wonder the kid gets the ever-living shit kicked out of him at every turn.

He’s about thirty pounds lighter and a foot and a half shorter than even Bucky. Guys like Will Marsden and John Sicamore, who throw hay bales all day long, they’ve got enough strength to push back a grizzly if they wanted.

Doesn't matter that they're twelve, someone like Steve is an easy target.

With his quiet voice and soft blue eyes and heart of aching gold that likes to weave stories through charcoal sketches. Even at eight and a half, Bucky knows - deep down - that Steve is something special to him. Just doesn’t have the right words to name it yet.

Maybe that’s why he knocks John Sicamore flat on his backside and pummels him into the dirt with a raging fury of threats that sends even Steve running to pull him off the older boy.

“He’s not worth it! Bucky, he’s not worth it!”

The only reason Steve’s able to pull him off the other boy is because Bucky lets him - after taking one look at his pleading blue eyes - collapsing back on the ground with a grumble.

“Had him on the ropes.”

He gets a ruler to the hand and a letter home to his Ma for his troubles. But from that point on, everyone knows; if you mess with Steve, you’ll have Bucky hot on your tail.

So, the kids tend to leave them to themselves. Bucky likes it that way though: just him and Stevie.

Their own little world somewhere beyond the old country schoolhouse and miles of nothin’ but yellow wheat fields.

Steve’s got enough stories rolling around in his head to fill a lazy afternoon under the willow trees. With the passing clouds, Steve gives him tales of stuff he’s never heard before - a place called Tír na nÓg, fairie rings, battling gods - real mystical folklore stuff.

Bucky could listen to him talk for days.

And if he finds himself staring just a little too long at the other boy’s pink lips or sweet ocean-colored eyes, then that’s no one’s business but his own.

No one ever prepared him for you, however.

Little girl, you got me staring odd.

You show up on a too-hot day in late September, with scraggly pigtails and a dress so dirty no one can tell the original color from the grime. You’ve got a bloodied scrape on your cheek and a look in your dark eyes that says you don’t care who sees it.

Or was that just a telescopic camera nod?

Admittedly, it’s a little frightenin’.

The teacher makes you get up next to the desk and introduce yourself to everyone and Bucky goes a little red in the face when you inform the class of twenty-six other kids that your name is Winona Bennett and you can spit farther than anyone there.

It’s crude as hell and the boys break out into gasping laughter. Given it’s your first day, you’re not reprimanded for it but he can tell you’re already being placed on a list in Miss Perry’s mind with that stern, discontented look of hers.

In that first week, he never catches you tryin' to play with the other girls like his sisters. You had tried to join a game of ball with the rest of them but had gotten shoved out of the way before you could even make it to the makeshift home base to try.

Bucky watches you from the outfield, during lunch, as you sidle up next to Steve on his usual stoop, pointing and saying things over his shoulder in a real animated way.

The poor kid has his shoulders hunched up to almost his ears and Bucky just wants to laugh at the scene. Talkative little you’s not even aware of the effect you have on the other boy. But you’re on your knees and you’re touching the page now - just talk-talk-talking away.

Steve’s mama raised him right though, so he just lets you rub your dirty finger over his drawing - like a goddamn pushover. Every day plays out the same after that. You sit next to the blonde boy. Sometimes talking, sometimes drawing your own pictures with a stick in the dirt.

You scare off the older kids whenever they come stomping 'round - shouting out threats that Bucky somehow knows for a fact that you’re willing to act on. He’d pay good money to see Will get a handful of worms shoved where the sun don’t shine.

Between his fists, your tough demeanor, and Steve's sharp wit, no one so much as thinks about touching any of you.

Oh, I'm a loose bolt of a complete machine. What a match - I'm half doomed and you're semi-sweet.

You’re two years younger than him, a year younger than Stevie, but you’re reading about five levels ahead of either of them.

You can’t do arithmetic to save your life and history lessons always leave you struggling to keep your eyes open. But you have a knack for spelling though your way of talking is plain. It’s all just up there in your head during the end-of-term contest.

Miss Perry has to pull out the giant dictionary from her desk to find new words to go through just for you. Since Thomas Baddon - who’s sixteen - had gotten as far as solemn before flubbing it up at sincerely. Then there you were spelling things like mercurial and pulchritude like they were real words that Bucky definitely knew the meanings of.

Steve had shot him a dumb look from across the room as if to say: are you seeing this, pal? And Bucky wasn’t all too sure that he was. He was lost somewhere in that gap-toothed smile of yours.

No one’s all too sure when it happens, just that it does.

It’s definitely sometime after that weird week in late October when he’s getting dressed up in his Sunday best, despite it being Saturday, and escorting his Ma into town with their prettiest glass dish topped to the brim with a rhubarb pie.

Your house is on the outskirts of town, past the charred remains of the old flour mill near the county line marker. You’re standing behind your Daddy when he opens the door and his Ma gives him their deepest sympathies for your recent loss.

“If there's anything we can do - there's a line of fine cooks in this town just waiting for the chance to lend a hand, Carl.”

The man snorts a pitiful smile, nodding his appreciation with a misting of tears in those dark brooding eyes of his.

Bucky hadn’t seen you in school for a whole week up until then, but now it all made sense.

The funeral was on a Sunday but it didn’t have that large of a turnout, even with their close-knit town. There wasn't much of a body to even bury, or at least that's what the man standing next to him had muttered under his breath. Apparently, hogs don't leave much meat on the bones.

When he looked over at you, it was like you were a million miles away with that distant stare of yours. With your Pa's hand clutched down on your little shoulder like a bear trap's vice.

In all the time he's known you, Bucky's never seen you so small before now.

After that, it seemed like all the adults would say the last name Bennett like it was a dirty word, quickly ending the conversation whenever a curious kid came 'round.

“Well, I heard that he didn’t want her to go in the first place. Mrs. Johnson said she heard shouting from the barn that night and I wouldn't be surprised if - oh. Jimmy, you’re home. How was school, darlin'?”

He was used to that too, especially in the year after his Dad did… well… what he did. Barnes was tarnished every way this side of Chicago and it was only after several months that the community would look at his family with more than fleeting glances.

They had come all the way here, middle of nowhere Iowa, to start over. It only lasted a few months before a hail storm killed off most of their crops and the bills started racking up. Him and his Ma never could scrub all the blood off the barn wall.

When you do come back to school, you’re off more than ever. You pick fights with the girls and even some of the guys.

You cut off a lock of Dot’s pretty red hair just for mispronouncing the word regardless as irregardless and you smacked Evan McCormick with his own baseball bat when he said you couldn’t even hit a ball if it was right in front of your face.

He kind of loses sight of you after that - sporadically coming to school here and there. Steve mentions it, once or twice. But Bucky just brushes it off - what did he care, after all? You were just a kid in a sea of people.

Sometime in early December, when the rain’s pelting down on everyone, and the prevailing wind has a sly promise of snow in the distance, is when it happens.

Bucky lives about two miles away from the one-room schoolhouse, whereas Steve lives a little closer - more towards the center of town. He’s got Becca and Grace trudging alongside him, trying to keep themselves dry with their books over their heads when you come running up to them - in nothing more than a summer dress.

“What’re you doing?” he asks with a little too rough of a tone.

You were more Steve’s pal than anything. The closest Bucky ever got to talking to you was when morning roll was being called and your name came directly after his on the list. Or when he escorted his Ma to your house with another pot of stew or freshly baked bread.

But it had been almost two weeks since the last visit.

“ ‘m walking with you,” you state, as though it’s obvious.

Becca shoots him a look. The girls had wanted to wait back in the coatroom, see if the storm would pass. But when the weather refused to let up, they had to hightail it out of there, so now they were running late for their afternoon chores.

You had been the only other kid waiting around when they left.

He huffs, pushing his wet hair back from his forehead, “Why’s that?”

“Want to.”

Your hip bumps against his as you move into his side. He bites the inside of his cheek - not sure if he’s feeling more embarrassed or irritated by it.

The four of you wade through the mud puddles of the country road in complete silence.

You had been there before him when he came to school that day when, usually, you were the one running late. He hadn’t paid the back of your head much mind throughout the day. And hell, he didn’t even see Steve try to start a quiet conversation with you during lunch like he sometimes did.

So, Bucky’s not all too sure why you want to tag along with him in the middle of a rainstorm, but he figures you’re not planning on telling him anytime soon so what would be the point in asking?

Rebbecca and Grace run ahead to the house, screaming like chickens as the rain picks up - muddy footprints clinging to the white porch steps.

He’s stuck in that strange place next to the front gate and you’re sopping wet and looking at him like a stray when he loses the nerve to ask you in.

“See ya tomorrow?” he says instead.

“Not inviting me in, Buck?” your teeth are chattering.

He shrugs, taking in your dirty dress and mud-caked shoes - thinking of the pristine rug in the dining room, “My ma wouldn’t be all that keen.”

Your brow creases and your eyes, even in the downpour, seem to spit fire.

“Fine.”

You’re still standing next to the gate when he goes inside. Letting the water cascade around you in the middle of the open, hands locked on your bare arms when the chill wind picks up.

He’s on his knees, staring over the back of the couch at you, feeling that strange feeling turning in his stomach like whenever he’s skipped out on his chores and told his Ma otherwise.

“You’re not too bright, are ya?” Becca comments from next to the woodstove, patting her braids down with a towel.

He huffs an angry sigh, turning back around and plopping down on his bum.

“Momma! There’s a girl outside and Jamie won’t let her in!” he hears a second later as Gracie tattles on him.

Winifred Barnes comes storming out of the kitchen with a bewildered expression, wooden spoon in hand like she’s ready to tan his hide, a baby on her hip.

He’s quick to stand, moving towards the door, “She just followed me home, Ma. I don’t even know why she did it.”

She peers through the windowpane, “That’s that poor Bennett girl. She looks like a drowned rat out there - go get her, Jimmy. I’m not going to have that child freezing to death outside so long as I’m still breathing.”

Bucky never noticed the bruises on your arms before, not until you’re drying up in front of him in his living room. You're swimming in his Ma's dress, but she insisted on scrubbing your’s up and mending the back seam.

“Sending a child off to school in this, I swear.”

After that, he tends not to ask why sometimes you never want to go back to your house after school. And from the looks of it, his Ma doesn’t care too much if you’re trailing behind him when he comes home either.

Some nights, you stay 'round long after the sun goes down for the day. You end up wedged in bed next to his sisters because his Ma doesn't have the heart to send you back to your Daddy.

You must not like the arrangement much though because sometimes Bucky catches you sitting in the living room or in the kitchen. Just staring at nothing. Sometimes he sits with you, other times he doesn't.

He only ever broaches the subject once.

He had 'a run into town to wake up Steve's mama to get the bottled treatment for you - his Ma didn't have none and you didn't want to go bugging the Doc with your troubles, no matter how much his Ma insisted.

Bucky had sat there at the kitchen table, watching as she wrapped your palm up with a tannic acid compress. The burn had looked downright nasty - a big old blister bubbling up on your small hand.

“Your old man do that to you?”

You’re sitting on the couch now, with a blanket wrapped 'round your shoulders, staring at the embers of the wood stove that he had just put another log into.

You blink, face scouring up into something fierce as you try to keep your tears back. Bucky inches closer, arm on the back of the sofa - fingers nearly touching your shoulder.

“Pretty girls like you shouldn’t cry like that,” he says softly. He’s not sure why he says it, just that he thinks it sounds right.

Under all that hard stone-faced demeanor, you’re real pretty. And he doesn’t think it’s fair that someone like your dad should make you cry at all. He’s not worth crying over.

You make my head swim. I’ll keep you warm and not ask you where you’ve been.

You sniffle, leaning your head against his arm, voice little more than a whimper, “Hold me?”

Bucky’s not all that sure how to comfort you proper-like, but this seems like a start.

He’s ten years old and you fit perfectly against his chest, head nuzzled in under his chin as he keeps a steady eye on the fire. Fingers splayed over your back as your breathing slows to little warm puffs against his sternum.

Between you and Steve, Bucky’s surprised you make it as far as you do in school with all your combined absences.

You for your own reasons that he tries not to think about, and Steve for his constant illnesses.

If he’s not sitting on the school steps worrying about you back home, then he’s sitting in a chair next to Sarah Rogers at his best friend’s bedside - waiting to see if this fever will pass, if his breathing will settle, if the insulin will act in time.

Sometimes he reads to him. Stories out of that fairy tale book that Steve pretends he's too old to read from. He's not as good of a storyteller as the younger boy, and none of them are as wonderful as the stories Steve used to weave, but he does his best.

He'll try and change the names up - silly things like Peganormasus von Winklebottom, or he'll make the princesses gag at the thought of kissing the handsome prince or something.

“You better watch that coughing, pal, or I'm gonna make the prince kiss the woodcutter instead.”

Steve hacks into his elbow, forehead damp with sweat as he gives a delirious smile, “Now there's a real story.”

He coughs, feeling a sudden blush erupt across his cheeks, “Anyway…”

Either way, it usually gets the blonde boy laughing and smiling that nice smile of his, so Bucky counts it away as a win for himself.

He's woken up with rocks on his bedroom window more often than naught. Pushing up from his bed, rubbing the sleep outta his eyes as he opens the latch for you before plopping back down on the edge of his bed.

You've got it down to a sort of science now after one too many close calls with his Ma and sisters. Climbing up the old drain pipe next to the house to get on the roof over the porch before making it to the second-floor window.

He's already got his arms open, waiting, when you crawl through the window and land on the cold floor.

“Come 'ere, sweetheart,” he murmurs with a tired yawn.

It’s the first time he ever calls you that - he won’t remember that fact a few years down the line, but it’s definitely the first of many. Why he says it, much like with everything else when it comes to you, he's not all too sure. Just that it seems right in the moment.

This had been going on for the past five months now - ever since your Pa went and decided to get married to that young new shopkeeper.

It’s not every night, not even every week. But just often enough to have his Ma worryin' over getting authority figures involved when she’d find you, inevitably, on their living room couch. You never got caught sneaking out of his room each morning though.

The town talked 'bout it all the time in their quiet gossiping whispers, but hell if any of 'em wanted to get in the middle of that mess. Folks were weird like that - they’d turn a blind eye to the bruises but still scoff at your too-small shoes or uneven braids in the same breath.

You melt into his arms as he pulls you down onto the bed, kicking his legs to get the blankets back up and over you as you curl into his left side.

He doesn't know when you weaseled your way into his life like this, but he's not complaining much about it. There’s just something with it that feels right. Like some part of himself, way deep down, just knows that this is the way things are supposed to be.

Bucky's not sure what he believes in when it comes to the idea of fate. But he figures there's gotta be something to the concept when your arms feel so right wrapping 'round his middle.

Sometimes you stay up all night, letting his soft stories keep the two of you from drifting off. Other times, you draw lazy patterns on his arms and hands with your finger, humming an old song he doesn't recognize.

“ 's pretty,” he says one night, voice cracking from disuse.

You stop the gentle tune, licking your lips, hands clutching his shirt, “Thanks.”

“What is it?”

Your knee knocks against his thigh as you try and curl in further, mouth muffled by his chest, “Dunno. Mamma used 'a sing it.”

When he isn’t torn between you and Steve, he’s at home fixing things on the farm. Mending the fences, tinkering with the tractor, rushing to help his Ma with the late harvest. His grades are slipping fast, but the crops don’t plant themselves and he’s the only one strong enough to haul the water and split the wood.

He’s thirteen when he decides to leave school at the start of winter break.

He had heard his Ma talking to someone the other night - his Dad's spirit, apparently, from the sounds of it - contemplating selling off her good pearls to get them through till the spring. And that had been the nail in the coffin for him.

“Oh, George. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”

George Barnes left them hell to deal with when he blew his brains out and going to school all day wasn’t helping them out of that situation any time soon.

She doesn’t put up as much of a fight as he thought she would.

“I’ll take up odd jobs, work down at the mill or somethin’ - Winston’s had a for-hire sign in their window last week, I can deliver groceries and feed. I’m gonna make sure we’re fine, Ma. I promise.”

Steve, on the other hand, has a string of words for him when he returns to school for that last week of instruction.

“Don’t worry about me, pal. You got a bright future ahead of ya - ”

“So do you,” the younger boy snorts indignantly, slamming the sketchbook closed on his lap.

Bucky scuffs his boot on the ground, avoiding the other boy’s gaze as he shoves his hands into his coat pockets, “Steve - ”

“No, you got a chance to get out of this place, Buck. A real honest to God chance. Don’t throw it away like that.”

They had talked about it before, on one of those hazy summer nights. A few years out and he could go to trade school, maybe become a mechanic or somethin'.

If they studied their asses off, they could try and get into the university downstate. It had an art program there that had Steve nearly salivating at the idea of joining. Best in the state, he had said.

But now… now that just seemed like a young farm kid's dream. Visions of leaving the only thing you've ever known.

“I gotta do this, Steve. There’s five of us and my Ma can only do so much. Martha's never even had her own clothes before - she’s three and every dress she’s got looks like a quilt from all the patchwork. She needs help and I oughta be the one to do it.”

Steve sighs, long and low, “ ‘m gonna tell Winona.”

Bucky’s eyes flash towards the other boy’s in an instant, “Don’t you dare. I’ll whip your hide, pal.”

He gives him a contemplating look, slowly nodding, before taking off ‘round the schoolhouse in a sudden burst of energy, screaming your name.

“Shit - ” Bucky takes off after him, stumbling over the willow's snow-covered roots, but it’s already too late.

You’re stomping ‘round the corner with a storm brewing in your dark eyes as you level him with an unordinary sternness, “James Barnes, you better listen and you better listen to me good.”

There’s only one girl who could take him down with nothing more than a single scathing look. Sometimes, he’s afraid to admit he’s grown a bit of a soft spot for you.

He’s thirteen and his chest aches when you don’t follow him home on that last day at school. You don't come 'round at all. No more rocks on his window, no more gentle humming in his ear.

Bucky catches sight of you, three weeks later, when he’s helping out the widower in town with her leaky roof. He’s precariously balancing on a wooden ladder, trying to patch up the spot above the kitchen, when you come down the snow-covered street with Steve on your arm. The other boy’s cheeks are bitter red from the cold wind, but he’s smiling - laughing at something you said in his ear.

He doesn’t know why, but with his icy hands struggling to grip the hammer and nails just right, seeing the two of you sends a hot rush of anger coursing through him with such a sudden intensity, it makes him nearly vomit.

Steve spots him because of course he does. You, on the other hand, are very pointedly looking at everything but him.

“Hey, Buck.”

“Steve.”

The blonde boy shuffles his feet awkwardly, “How was your Christmas?”

“Fine,” he spits, slamming the hammer down too hard, bending the nail.

The younger boy had been absent from church for the past two weeks - probably held up in bed once again. And you weren’t there for Christmas mass either, but he was trying real hard not to think about why that might have been.

“You workin’?”

Bucky tosses the hammer down on the shingles, exacerbated, “That your first guess, pal?”

Steve’s eyes widen, bright blue against snow white. Bucky’s stomach lurches.

I’ve got troubled thoughts and self-esteem to match.

You step in, grabbing hold of your companion’s elbow, “Come on, Steve. Barnes is a big boy now. He doesn’t have the time of day for kids like us.”

The hammer goes skidding across the roof, sliding down until it lands in the snowdrift next to the house, words spitting out like venom from his twisted lips, “You think you know everything, don’t you, sweetheart?”

What a catch. What a catch.

You scowl, blowing him a raspberry before dragging Steve along by the arm.

Something deep inside of Bucky breaks as he watches the two of you trudge through the snow.

And all I can think of is the way I’m the one who charmed the one who gave up on you.

Part of him wants to take off down the ladder, go running after you both with a flurry of apologies. Instead, he digs the discarded hammer out of the foot of snow and climbs back up to the roof to finish the patching job.

Who gave up on you.

It’s Easter Sunday when he sees you walk into the church with Steve and his mother.

You’re never there for Sunday service - nor is your Pa and his young wife, but it is a holy day so he imagines Mrs. Rogers was able to convince you to come along with them.

Steve looks scrawny in his ill-fitting tie and too-greased hair. Whereas you are clearly wearing a new dress. And, Bucky suspects, it didn’t come from your own family. The fine lace collar looks like the handicraft of the fragile woman next to you.

The three of you come down the row where the Barnes’ are sat - because, of course, his Ma and Sarah Rogers were still the best of friends.

“That’s a lovely pattern, dear,” his mother says to you before the service starts. "Sarah, you did wonders with that lace."

You duck your head, hands fidgeting in your lap, “Thank you.”

Instead of shouting over the row of kids to speak to one another, Sarah moves down to sit between Bucky and his Ma - which makes his four sisters want to sit next to the women, so he ends up getting shoved to the end. Which forces him to sit next to you and Steve without any buffer.

He’s fourteen and he is all too aware of your body next to his. Of that small space where your dress is pressed up 'gainst his hand. The accidental nudge of your shiny shoe against his.

Bucky's also aware that three months for an apology is too little too late. But it’s Easter Sunday and they’re sitting in the house of the Lord, so he’s got to try.

Turning his head slightly towards you, keeping his voice low, “Winona?”

Your eyes flicker up to his, dark and full of simmering hope.

“I’m a real jerk and you don’t owe me nothin’ - ”

You nod, eyes level with the pew in front of you, “You’re right. I don’t.”

Taking a shaky breath, he continues, “Yeah. But I’m sorry. With everything I got, sweetheart - Steve - ” the other boy perks his head up, catching his gaze as well - “I’m real sorry. To both of you. The two of you didn’t deserve a lick of my frustrations.”

Steve’s eyes flicker from him to you, “ ‘s okay, Buck. You got a lot on your plate.”

“Doesn’t mean I should’ve been a jerk - ”

“Oh, you were a real punk,” you say with a sly grin, gently knocking your shoulder against his. “But, if you promise to come ‘round every now and then, I think we might be able to forgive you some.”

He nods, it’s a start.

That following Tuesday, he stops by the schoolyard - much to your surprise. Comin' 'round to walk you both home, just because he can. You fill him in on everything that he’s missed while he regales all the odd jobs he’s done in the time since.

He's got a comfortable arm around the other boy's shoulders while your hands seem to brush together whenever you have to shove yourself over into the two of them when a wagon or car goes by.

Steve bids his farewell, waving you both off when he starts hacking into his arm. Promising he’ll have his mama take a look when he gets home.

And then it’s just the two of you - walking side-by-side down the dirt road to your house on the outskirts of town, fingers occasionally brushing together. He wonders, briefly, why he’s never done this before.

“She cracked my knuckles something good,” you sigh, rubbing your hands together. Bucky can still see the bruising on them.

“Well,” he whistles low. “Maybe don’t go pickin’ fights with people like them and you won’t get yourself a permanent dunce cap.”

You come to a stop, eyes locked on a place far away from here as you gaze out at the empty fields - still muddy from last night’s rain.

“They said my Mamma was better off dead than livin’ with me as a daughter, Buck. Said my Daddy should'a finished the job.”

His brow creases, hands balling up into involuntary fists at his sides. A bunch of words come to mind as he looks down at the top of your head, but nothing comes out. He never seemed to know the right thing to say.

“Maybe they’re right. Didn’t care much either way when I slammed her head into the ground.”

He says the only thing he can, “ 'Nona...”

Your lips form a grimace, eyes briefly meeting his, “Thanks for the company, but I think I’ll go on from here alone, Buck.”

He flounders, unsure of what to do - only knowing that he wants to reach out and grab hold of you before you wander too far from him. But you’re already jumping over the ditch, shoes squelching through the wet wheat field.

Steve is where he finds some semblance of an answer.

The younger boy is wrapped up in bed again, shaking like a leaf every few minutes as the remnants of his latest fever run their course.

“It’s rough, Buck. Ever since you left, she’s been off more than she used to be. Don’t think we’ve gone a single day without something - always getting it from Miss Perry.”

She’s been scolded, sent to the corner, rapped on the knuckles, tanned on the backside, made to write lines and apology letters and promises of doing better. From the sounds of it, she’s a single fight away from being kicked out of the school entirely.

“I’ve tried, believe me. It’s like she doesn’t care if she stays or goes anymore.”

Bucky laces his fingers together, leaning forward on the wooden chair, “Why?”

“Dunno. 'S here more often than not,” Steve admits.

In this tiny one-bedroom apartment above the post office. Bucky takes a look around the room, wondering where exactly you sleep. Wonders if you’ve been finding comfort in Steve’s arms ever since he dropped outta school and stopped being around to help.

You come to Steve’s house, on his thirteenth birthday, with a blooming yellow and purple eyelid. No one says anything 'bout it, but Bucky sees red and he can tell that Steve feels the same flash of anger.

He’s gifted a set of charcoals, a new shirt from his mom, and a batch of over-baked gingersnaps from you. It’s a modest celebration, just the three of you there to partake in the simple raisin cake, but it feels right.

“Gonna have to draw up somethin��� pretty for me,” you say, picking up each little crumb from your plate, savoring the rare treat.

Steve blushes all the way to his ears before replying, “Can’t just draw pictures of you all day.”

Bucky blinks at the boldness of it, surprised to hear it come from his best friend’s lips. Maybe he had missed out on more than he'd originally realized.

You give a small smile, shyly hiding your eye with your hand before looking over at him, “I said pretty, Steve. Gotta sketch Bucky instead.”

That makes both the boys snort with laughter, though his cheeks flush with a surprising heat at the implication. He can feel Steve’s sudden gaze, burning with something still unsaid. It just doesn’t feel like the right time to pry into it though.

Later that night, when the sun’s gone down and the parade has given way to drunken partiers, you’re sat between them both - watching the fireworks going off in the distance. Head on his shoulder, hand on Steve’s knee. Dark eyes shimmering with the colorful explosions high up in the sky.

It’s the first time he ever thinks about kissing you.

He's sixteen when he pays your first bail posting. Four dollars right out of his own pocket to get you outta there. It’s not like your old man was gonna be coming to the rescue any time soon, nor did he probably give a damn.

It had been his kid sister who came running to the mill to tell him what happened - cause she saw it from across the street at the post office with her friend. He had thrown the last six sacks onto the truck and hightailed it into town.

Cut me off, I lost my track. It's not my fault, I'm a maniac. It's not funny anymore, no it's not.

“The hell were you thinking?” he mutters when you're a safe enough distance away from the police station, hand locked on your wrist, cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Dunno,” you reply numbly, allowing yourself to get dragged along - all the fight dissipated from your body.

They said you had stolen a handful of things from Winston’s store. Times were hard for everyone. But he never… never could have thought that you would go stealing things. And it wasn't just food - no, that he could understand.

It was the top-shelf stuff, the things worth an actual pretty penny.

“I need to get away from here, Buck. From this whole damn town.”

My heart is like a stallion, they love it more when it's broken.

You come to a stop at the edge of the main street, where the cobblestones turn to dirt road. He fixes you with a look. He thinks of you and your brilliant brain and you and your drunk of a father. He pictures your life, for a flash of a second, if you remain here in this place for another second.

Do you wanna feel beautiful, do you wanna? Yeah.

You look like you’re seconds away from crying all over your pretty cheeks. Hands balled up into angry fists at your sides.

Taking a drag from the cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a rush as he holds it between his fingers, he asks, “Where you wanna go, sweetheart?”

‘Cause I don't know where you're going, but do you got room for one more troubled soul?

It’s then, when you look up at him with wide wondering eyes, that everything shifts.

I don't know where I'm going, but I don't think I'm coming home.

He’s not sure just what he’s offering you in that moment, he’s only got a nickel in his pocket after all. But he’s looking into your dark, gorgeous eyes and he just wants to give you the world. Whatever it takes.

And I said I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead.

Bringing your hands to his cheeks before rising up on your toes, your eyes seem to assess his gaze for a moment.

And then you’re pressing your lips to his.

This is the road to ruin and we're starting at the end. Say, yeah.

A shocked gasp of air escapes his mouth until he comes to his senses and kisses you right. Pushing against your embrace as he tugs you towards his chest with a desperate hand grabbing hold of the collar of your dress.

It’s not his first kiss, but it doesn’t matter none. Nothing before this can even compare.

The cigarette falls to the ground, forgotten, as he grips your waist with his now free hand, dragging his tongue along your bottom lip like you’re not standing in the middle of main street - like he didn’t just bail you out of jail.

Let's be alone together. We could stay young forever.

“Take you wherever you want, ‘Nona,” he promises against your lips, unable to stop himself from pressing another soft kiss to them.

You nod, foreheads rubbing together, tears balling up in the corners of your eyes, “Take me somewhere safe, Buck. Please. Get me out of here.”

“Okay,” he murmurs, tucking your head in under his chin - holding you there, tight, with his hands.

Another kiss to your hair, a little more assured in his own voice, “Okay.”

Scream it from the top of your lungs, lungs, lungs.

When you turn fifteen, you spend the evening drinking stolen whiskey in the woods next to the watering hole outside of town.

It’s become your own space - hidden away in a grove of wispy willow trees and old cedars. With a really tipsy Steve by your side and Bucky staring down at you fondly with a protective arm around your waist.

You didn't put a name to it, even though it had been a year and a half, everyone just seemed to understand that wherever you went Bucky wouldn't be far behind. And that was enough for the two of you.

He doesn’t flinch, barely even registers it actually, when you lean over - laughing at something you had just said to them, a little slurred ‘round the edges - and kiss the other boy squarely on the lips.

Steve soon discovers that your mouth tastes like fresh-picked blackberries and whiskey.

It’s strange, or he should find it strange, that you’re soon tugging the other boy’s shirt free from his pants. Pulling at his suspenders and unbuttoning his overshirt. Bucky should find it strange that Steve is kissing your neck and looking at him for any sign of distaste or confirmation.

Hell or Glory. I don’t want anything in between.

He should really find it strange, but he doesn’t.

Because none of it is. It’s just always been the three of you, it seems.

So, Bucky rubs your bare calve as you lay on Steve’s chest and exchange lazy drunken kisses. Propping his chin up with his hand as he smiles, feeling a warmth spreading through his chest - igniting his heart like a direct ray of sunlight.

It's only after several more swigs of courage from the bottle that Bucky gets to discover what the other boy's lips taste like for himself.

It ain't like nothin' he's ever had before - can't even compare it to you, it's just that much different. But damn him, the whole thing just feels all that more right.

"I wanna get away from here," you tell him, some odd number of days later, with your fingers rubbing little circles on his bare chest, hooking under the hem of his open shirt.

Bucky's got a hand on your shoulder, drawing idle patterns as the radio croons in the corner. He’s got you all to himself for the next hour and he’s not plannin’ on wasting a second of it.

"Where you wanna go, sweetheart?"

Your expression is earnest when you meet his adoring heavy-lidded blue eyes, "Anywhere."

My words are my faith, to hell with our good name.

He's seventeen when he buys a 1927 Chrysler from a poor chump who was willing to sell it for almost nothing - desperate as hell after his company went under.

Bucky spends three days babying it before he drives into town and grabs the two of you from Steve's apartment. Because if you wanted to get out of town, there was no way you were leaving without the other boy at this point. It was the three of you or bust.

His Ma thinks he's got a job in the next town over. Steve's mama is working a shift at the hospital three hours away - there was another TB outbreak. And your Pa, well, if he wasn't in a drunken stupor he probably wouldn't even notice if you left or not.

At the first crossroad the three of you come across, you just close your eyes and point - no real destination in mind. And Bucky honors your choice, heading south through a never-ending sea of wheat fields.

They cross the Missouri border later that afternoon, with your hand clutching his inner thigh. Leaning against Steve as he strokes the base of your neck, while rows and rows of towering green trees pass by.

You're humming something sweet and lazy and Bucky's not sure if he's ever seen you so relaxed before. He wants to see it all the time now, addicted to the way your smile widens every time you catch his eye.

Stopping just off the roadside, when the daylight begins to wane and Bucky's squinting to see the road in front of him, you set up a makeshift camp. A little fire roars as you dole out the sandwiches you had packed for the trip.

You're resting in Steve's arms, offering him a warm smile from across the firelight.

Sometimes Bucky wonders how it all fell into place so natural-like. He knows this ain’t normal, doesn’t really care all that much about that fact. But it’s never been… hard. No hiccups, no bumps in the road so to speak.

"Play me something, Buck?"

He shakes his head fondly, "Not on your life, sweetheart."

Steve drops his chin onto your shoulder, joining your crusade, "Play something for the girl."

One look at him and the dancing embers reflected in his dark blue eyes has Bucky standing with a lazy stretch, a rush of warmth filling his belly as he grabs the guitar you had made him throw in the backseat. How the hell you had enough money to buy it for him on his birthday is still a mystery, but he’d never smiled so wide before when you handed it over.

He takes his time, fiddling with the tuners for a minute as you run your hand up and down Steve's arm. Giving it a practice strum before situating it the way he likes, Bucky gulps a nervous breath.

"Something sweet," you add, fighting back a yawn as Steve chuckles against your cheek, dropping a chaste kiss there.

"Alright, alright," he waves his hand at you before grabbing up the pick between his fingers.

His voice starts out off-pitch and scratchy, but a cautious glance at the two of you has him gaining a bit more confidence as he sings into the soft night air.

"Every kiss, every hug seems to act just like a drug. You're getting to be a habit with me."

Throwing a wink your way, you giggle against the other man's embrace.

"Let me stay in your arms, I'm addicted to your charms. You're getting to be a habit with me - you know you are, sweetheart!"

Steve whoops in agreement.

"I used to think your love was something that I could take or leave. But now I couldn't do without my supply."

He finishes off the rest of the song with some wild chords and overzealous strumming before carefully tossing the guitar to the side and plopping down on the blanket next to the two of you.

"Am I your habit, Buck?" you ask with a coy smile.

His hands find the smooth skin of your chest, fingers trailing down your sternum to the gentle curve of your perfect breasts.

" 'd say that's a fair assumption," he murmurs with a heavy gravel, eyes gone dark with desire as he leans up to capture your lips with his own.

A teenage vow in a parking lot. 'Til tonight do us part. I sing the blues and you swallow them too.

Bucky wakes up with you in his arms and Steve's hand gripping his bicep from the other side of your sleeping form - still lightly snoring into your hair as you twitch in your sleep.

Watching the two of you for a long quiet while. Lost in this strange new world, dewdrops on the edge of the blanket and soft morning fog still rollin' around, your body curled into the warmth of his chest - Steve not far behind.

He stares at your eyelashes, almost reaches out to touch them. The same with your kiss-bruised lips. When Steve’s eyelids flutter open and they meet each other’s cautious gaze from over your bare shoulder. A silent understanding passes between them as Bucky brings his lips to the other boy’s knuckles.

If they had a choice, if they didn’t have people waiting for them back home, Steve and him probably would’ve followed you to the ends of the Earth if you asked them to.

But you’re young, barely got enough between the three of you combined to afford gasoline and food at a hole-in-the-wall diner on the way. You definitely don’t have the funds to be in the middle of New Orleans, but here you are.

Car parked back on the side of the road amongst the billowing maiden grass, you standing up to your knees in the cool waters of the Gulf - pretty green dress rucked up around your thighs as you stare out at that crystal blue horizon.

Steve’s squinting against the radiant sunlight next to him, gently leaning into Bucky’s side without being too obvious in case anyone comes ‘round.

“She makes me want to do this forever. You too,” he adds after a soft moment.

Bucky affords him a glance, fingers rubbing over the edge of a sand dollar he had picked up from the shoreline, cigarette dangling from his chapped pink lips.

“That so?”

The blonde nods, tucking his hands in his pockets as he looks out at you - you’re bending over now, hands dipping down for something below the water’s surface.

“Place like that isn’t right for her - for us. Never seen her smile so much.”

He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke from his lips before sucking it back in with a sigh, “Gotta make a livin’ somehow, Stevie. Can't just live on corned beef sandwiches and pretty dreams.”

The other boy glances down at his bare feet in the warm sand, voice soft, “I know.”

Bucky hands him the sand dollar, letting his fingers graze across the smooth pads of Steve’s palm for longer than necessary. The seashell gets safely tucked away in his shirt pocket, right above his heart.

You come skipping back up to them then, holding a thing of little shells for the two of them to see. But it’s not shells, it’s a handful of water that you immediately throw into Bucky’s face.

You take off running as he chases you across the beach - swooping you up from behind as your infectious laugh echoes against the gentle tide rolling in.

We are wild - we are like young volcanoes.

Steve watches from the shaded spot next to the small sand dune, laughing as you come charging at him - tucking into his side and pulling him down on top of you with a breathless smile.

“Save me, darlin’!” you cry, smile as bright as the sunlight overhead.

We are wild. Americana exotica. Do you wanna feel a little beautiful baby? Yeah.

Bucky’s eyes flicker from the image of the two of you towards the seemingly perfect scene of the water lapping against the shore. He wonders, briefly, what a carefree life would even look like for the three of you. If it was even possible.

Biting at his lip, he flicks the smoldering bud onto the beach and wanders back over to you both - allowing himself to get dragged down. Sand in his hair, lips on his cheeks, laughter bubbling up from his chest.

There’s hell to pay when they come crawling back into town a week and a half later. The rumors were already flying, apparently, when the three of you up and disappeared. But now? It’s a miracle he can even walk into the church without burning up on the spot.

His Ma's got him banned from seeing either of you. Though you still manage to sneak 'round once or twice to keep his mind from worrying too hard.

Bucky can tell. Steve can tell. They see the way it all eats at you, slowly. While they only hear a fraction of what you get - your reputation, and your Pa’s preceding you, already gives you a target on your back.

When he hears one of the guys pondering if you snuck out of town to go see that kind of special doctor who helps get rid of certain… things, Bucky almost punches a damn hole in the side of the silo - the foreman has to restrain him from beating the guy’s face in when he calls you easy.

You’re fifteen and you don’t deserve an ounce of what’s being thrown at you.

You spend more time waiting ‘round outside the mill than you do at school - no matter how much he tells you off for it. Anytime you’re at the watering hole, you’re reluctant to let them leave for the night. More often than he’d like, he’s waking up to the cool morning breeze and a tree root under his back.

Shivering like a leaf when he draws you and Steve near.

If he just had a little more money, he could get out on his own - get his own place. Then it wouldn’t be late-night rendezvous and freezing cold sunrise wakeups. He just needed a little more.

Drumming his hands on the counter as Officer Pently completes your processing, Bucky fixes you with a stern expression that you choose to ignore completely. Steve’s impatiently bouncing on the balls of his feet next to him, just out of sight from the sheriff’s deputy.

Between the two of them, they have enough for your twenty-nine dollar bail posting.

You’re sixteen and you’ve just been arrested on your second arson charge. Hell, they had passed the blackened remains of the old barn on the way here. Bucky had wanted to stop and help the volunteer firemen lugging buckets, but Steve had pushed him forward.

“Yeah, ‘cause they’d want our help, Buck.”

Things had been getting worse. Sure, he had a steady job working at the mill and Steve had just graduated a few weeks back. But you? Hell, you still felt trapped in this place. Suffering under the weight of your father, of school that you didn’t feel was necessary anymore.

Bucky knew you heard the gossip that surrounded your every move. The whispers of troubled homes, lack of guiding maternal figures, hanging around with delinquent youths like him and Steve. And when exactly were you going to start acting like a proper young lady?

He’s not all too sure why the gossiping bats think you need to suddenly change into something you clearly aren’t. He likes you - they like you - just the way you are.

Rough edges and sly smiles and a perfect body that seems to sing under their touch.

“What was the reason this time?” Steve asks plainly as you step out onto the street, watching as another crew of men haul water from the stables across the street.

You shrug, taking Bucky’s hand in yours, gently rubbing a hand on the back of Steve’s arm for a moment.

“It was an eyesore. Bound to come down eventually.”

Bucky nods, pulling you in by the waist - dropping a kiss to the top of your head. There was no use arguing with you anymore, he learned that several arrests back.

“It was. But, sweetheart, you’re gonna run us dry if you keep this up.”

“Guess I just have to get better at hiding the evidence then, huh?”

Steve scoffs, falling into step next to the two of you, hands stuffed into his pockets, “Or you could just not do it.”

You laugh, giving his shoulder a gentle push, “Sounds dull.”

He cranes his neck behind you to lock eyes with Bucky, “She’s gonna burn this place to the ground, pal.”

For his benefit, Bucky does give you a wary look then - silently agreeing with the sentiment, “Probably, Steve. Probably.”

It’s a few months later, the day after a massive snowstorm rips through the state - covering the tiny town in looming frozen drifts.

Bucky spends the better part of the morning shoveling out a path to the barn, hauling in wood from the shed with Becca. He doesn’t make it into town until well after noon, and by then, Steve’s apartment has got a nice sprinkling of frost on the inside of the window panes.

“Jesus, pal,” he breathes out, watching his breath linger in the air of the kitchen.

“T-tell me 'bout it,” the younger boy mumbles, shivering under a pile of blankets before falling to another coughing fit.

His mama was out of town again - for a birth actually - but the storm had kept her from returning home last night. And Steve was in no fit state to be taking care of himself, bringing in wood, or boiling water.

Bucky, after getting the fire going again, settles in behind the other boy, letting the blankets drape over them both. He’s still got his gloves on when he wraps his hands around Steve’s small torso - resting his cold nose against his soft blonde hair.

He still shivers, even with the extra body heat there to warm him up. His chest seizes up with each painful hack and cough. He’s trying his best to hide the blood in the handkerchief, but Bucky’s not blind.

There’s nothing he can actually do - Steve refuses the aspirin 'cause it'll only make the stomach ulcers worse off. So, Bucky's stuck just holding the younger boy as tight as he can - willing it to pass once again.

He gets so wrapped up in Steve, that it’s nearing nightfall before he even has a second to think about you. Now that the sick boy is finally out, twitching in his sleep, wrapped up in Bucky’s arms. It shouldn’t bother him so much, but the idea of you not being here with them is really picking at his brain.

It doesn’t sit right with him, at all.

You should be here. Or they should be there. Whatever.

You needed a house - a proper house - all your own. He’s not sure if you even want that. You're not the apron-wearing homemaker his mother is. He can't picture you carrying around chubby-faced babes or darning socks for them. You can't cook or bake to save your life.

If he can find you a place though, with willow trees shading your lazy summer days. Somewhere with enough space for a little garden. A nook tucked against a window for you to read in while Steve draws or Bucky dozes.

He can picture the three of you - somewhere away from this godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere Iowa. In a bed big enough to hold you all. Steve’s sketches and drawings on the wall, his guitar in the corner. A cupboard for all the dresses he would buy you.

He wanted you to have the best - the prettiest things. He so wanted you - and Steve - to have more than what this world had afforded you both.

But living on a mill boy's wages wasn't going to get you very far.

Sarah’s back in town the next morning, there to take over on Steve’s usual round of medications, which gives Bucky the chance to head out your way to check in on you. He sneaks a kiss to Steve’s cheek on the way out while his mama prepares the doses, fingers lingering for just a second too long.

The house is nearly seven miles from the center of town and he’s finding himself very grateful for the fact that his Ma got talked into buying a horse last autumn to help with the plowing. Because it means he’s high off the deep snow-covered road, instead of suffering through it in his old boots - risking a nasty case of frostbite.

The ride itself is pretty quiet, passing only one other person out braving the cold on the entire stretch of path. And then, in the distance, he sees it.

The low curling plume of black smoke against the stark white landscape.

“No, no, no, goddamnit,” he’s muttering to himself, kicking the sides of the stallion - making him gallop through the snow as fast as he can.

The overwhelming smell of burning wood hits him like a train car within the next half-mile and by then he's frantic, clinging to the horn as he urges the horse on faster. Past the abandoned flour mill, crumbling into the earth now, the giant dogwood tree comes into view and he’s throwing himself from the saddle to take off running.

The entire house is engulfed in vicious orange flames.

He screams your name - raw and desperate as pure panic courses through his veins - sprinting towards the front of the house. The heat radiating off the building has him stumbling back, wiping his brow before he throws his weight against the door - trying to get it to budge.

The sudden rush of oxygen when the wooden door breaks free of its hinges sends a wave of fire right at him - barely able to dive out of the way in time. Within seconds, the entire porch is aflame and Bucky can do nothing but stumble back into the yard - watching in horror as the second floor begins to creak, support beams splitting in two.

As the top of the house buckles and crashes down onto the main floor, a burst of heat shoots out with a warning whip-like crack. And then he hears it over the roar of flames - howling sobs from around the back of the house.

He slips on the snow, desperate when his boots sink into the drift and his hands clutch the cold, as he goes running towards the back kitchen entrance.

There he finds you, splayed out on the ground, clutching the hem of your bloody dress. Screaming out snot-covered angry sobs.

“Winona,” he sighs, thanking the Lord above that you’re safe, as he takes three careful strides before sinking down on his knees next to you.

Your chest quakes with the torment of your pain. Bucky pulls you ‘round, tucking your face against his coat as your muffled screams continue to wrack your body. Two bloody handprints find their home on his front, bracketing your head.

He spares your Pa a brief glance over the top of your hair. The ghostly wide eyes and massive pool of crimson blood seeping out onto the fresh snow tell him enough.

“C’mon, sweetheart. I got you, come on,” he whispers against your ear, pulling you up into his arms, trudging back through the snow till he’s able to get you up on the horse - still waiting a ways down the road, a little spooked.

When he’s sure you’re settled on right - still crying out, but settled - he goes back to the side of the house.

Your hands instinctively reach out for him, mouth gaping as you try to say his name when he returns minutes later.

“Shhh, it’s fine, sweetheart. It’s all fine.”

You can only blame your problems on the world for so long before it all becomes the same old song. As soon as we hit the hospital I know we're gonna leave this town.

He wipes the blood from his hands out on the snow before dragging his boot through it to cover it all up. Hopping up behind you in the saddle, clicking his tongue and turning the creature away from the smoldering remnants of your home.

Bucky doesn’t take his hand off your middle, even when they arrive at Steve’s front door - to the gasping horror of Sarah Rogers.

It takes three days before the authorities are able to go out and investigate the structure - attributing it to a kitchen accident when they find your Pa’s charred body next to the woodstove.

It takes you almost a week to even utter a word to either him or Steve. But when you do, all you have to say is that the young shopkeep skipped town and that he didn’t take it well. Then you clamp your lips together and stare off out the little window in Steve’s room.

They never bring it up again.

You’re seventeen and your job prospects are nonexistent. They watch you go from place to place, looking for an opportunity only for none to be given out. Steve bites his tongue while Bucky glares at each and every business owner whose store you walk out of.

It ain’t right. ‘Specially when a job that supposedly didn’t exist gets filled by the end of the week by some other desperate sap.

You’re living with Steve and his mama now, but you’re barely around. Finding your balm with the bottom of a whiskey bottle. They don’t know where you keep gettin’ 'em, but there’s probably a good reason why Winston’s wasn’t willin’ to hire you.

Bucky works the long shifts at the mill every day before going home to help out his own family. He’s nineteen and it feels like his back’s already breaking under the weight of responsibility.

He tells his Ma over and over again that they should hire sparehands to tend the fields, but she's not ready to give up on his father's dream just yet. So, it falls to him to do it all.

The dream of several summers past - that impromptu road trip down to the ocean - ain’t nothing more than a distant idea now. Memory’s all clouded over with flour dust and calloused hands that split open and bleed out.

His car’s long since sold off, the horse too now. Steve’s mama is working all the long shifts at the hospital three hours away - sleeping in the waiting room instead of traveling back home each day. They’re struggling to pay for Steve’s new round of heart medication.

And you’re doing real odd jobs to help out - tailoring clothes for the blind widower, filling in for the diner’s chef even though you can’t cook to save your life.

None of it’s amounting to anything and it has Bucky wanting to walk out into a field and scream till someone up above gives him a damn answer.

“What’d that cabinet ever do to you?”

Your voice pulls him from his silent stupor, sitting on the edge of Steve’s bed with a curious look on your pretty features.

“Just thinkin’,” he murmurs, turning away from the wardrobe situated in the corner of the small room.

You hum, “Mhmm. Can see that a mile away, darling.”

With a sigh, he rounds the bed, taking a heavy seat next to you. Steve was picking up an order for his mama across the street.

“This isn’t what I want for us.”

Your soft hands creep ‘round till he’s being pulled into your embrace, fingers splayed out over his stomach, your lips on his neck. A ghost of a kiss to his sensitive skin.

“We’ll run away then,” you whisper, slowly pulling at the buttons of his shirt.

Bucky scoffs, voice catching in his throat as his aching blue eyes meet your gaze, “Can’t live on pennies and promises, sweetheart. I oughta be - shit!”

Your fingers dip down below the waist of his pants, lips quirking up into a pleased smile.

“You sound stressed, Buck.”

He gulps, hands flying back on the bed as his hips thrust up to meet your careful touch, “You’re tellin’ me - fuuuck, sweetheart. Oh, honey, just like that.”

You never give him a real solution to his all-consuming problem, but you certainly know how to distract him and Steve.

The three of you are all just living day-to-day, as much as you can. Saving every bit you’re able to for that all too distant dream lingering in your minds. He gets a minor raise when he takes on a supervisor position at the mill. You find work at the bar across town while Steve sends out a few submission pieces for the county paper.

It’s enough to keep you comfortable but stuck. For a whole year, it stays that way.

And then Steve’s mama collapses on the way to work and suddenly the world comes crashing down on the three of you as you watch her wither away before your very eyes. It’s slow, it’s stretched out, and it’s all too painfully real.

She passes on a Thursday in early spring, chickadees singing a song for her outside the window when she takes her last breath, rosary beads slipping from her frail fingers - landing in a clattering heap on the floorboards.

Steve walks down the back stairs and stalks over to the empty cornfield behind the apartment to stare at nothing for a long while. Bucky holds you by the shoulders as you sob into the bedcovers.

Sarah Rogers had been too damn kind for a town like this. She took you in when no one else would, fixed every god-awful injury you brought to her with teary eyes and a quivering lip. No one but his own mother could compare.

After getting things fixed away with the coroner and the church for the following Sunday, Bucky wanders out in search of you two. He finds you, a short distance away, with your arms wrapped around Steve - who’s shaking like a leaf on the ground as he sobs something awful into your chest.

It tugs at Bucky’s very soul as he trips over his own feet in a rush to get to the two of you.

“Shhh, darlin’,” you whisper, hands tucked into his soft blonde hair, rocking him back and forth.

Bucky kneels down, hesitant for only a second before he folds himself over the other man’s back, wrapping the two of you up as much as his arms can reach. Tears running down his cheeks as he meets your equally solemn eyes.

You had to get out of here, your gaze seems to say, or this town was gonna eat you all alive.

The tombstones were waiting, they were half-engraved. They knew it was over, they just didn't know the date.

It’s a warm night in early August. The crickets are croaking out their usual tune as Bucky leans back on the wooden staircase that leads up to Steve’s apartment above the post office.

The man in question is carefully folded into his side, hand on his chest. Moonlight shelters them from the rest of the world, far from the eyes of the town's inhabitants. The lightnin’ bugs flutter in and out of sight at the base of the steps.

“Should do it,” Steve mutters after a long stretch of silence.

Bucky pauses his hand in the other man’s hair, letting it come to a rest at the base of Steve’s neck instead. Wide dark eyes try to read his features - he hadn’t been expecting an answer so quickly.

“Y-yeah?”

He hums in reply, taking a careful drag of his asthma cigarette, flicking the ashes to the ground below them, forcing back a cough with his fist - pounding on his chest a few times to quell it.

“Can’t get a house together unless you tie the knot.”

Taking a moment to watch Steve’s carefully neutral expression, Bucky reaches out, entwining their fingers together. He inspects each knuckle with quiet contemplation.

“I’d put a ring on your finger if I could,” he muses, voice quiet as he rubs his thumb over Steve’s left ring finger.

That makes the blonde scoff, smiling behind the cigarette, “I’d look awful in a dress, pal.”

“Says you,” he laughs, grabbing at Steve’s waist, pressing a rough kiss to the sweet junction of neck just under his jawline. “Move out to Utah, get me two pretty little wives.”

Steve shakes his head, lightly kicking at Bucky’s leg, “Not on your life, Buck.”

With a quick jerk of his arms, he pulls the shorter man into his lap, giving a playful little thrust upwards. Lips quirking into a Cheshire-like grin, “Just need some convincing ‘s all.”

Steve gasps, chest shuddering as Bucky begins to gyrate his hips all slow-like. He keeps him locked there, hands clamped on Steve’s boney hips.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps down a moan - he’s never looked more beautiful.

“Oh! S-so wrong, you jerk.”

He watches Steve hobble across the room from the rather comfortable place in the younger man’s bed, lighting up a cigarette of his own in the afterglow.

The shadows and rays of moonlight illuminate Steve’s body in a real artistic way - he almost wishes he could sketch as well as the other man could. He’d fill up a whole book with nothing but this.

“Here,” the blonde says a moment later, tossing the ring over into Bucky’s waiting hands.

He catches it in his palm, fingers unfurling to inspect the delicate gold band.

“You sure?” he asks, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. It was his mama’s after all.

Steve nods, plopping back down in the bed, resting on his stomach, “Positive.”

Bucky tucks it back up into his fist, pulling the habit from his mouth so he can lean down and kiss the other man right on the lips, smoke blowing out of his nose and curling up into the quiet air of Steve’s bedroom.

He thinks about it for a full week straight. There are about a million and one opportunities for him to pop the question, but none of them ever feel right. And he’s beginning to wonder if the right moment will ever actually occur.

Thankfully, everything just kind of falls into place one summer morning.

He’s watching you from the small kitchen table in nothing but his pants and boots, suspenders resting at his sides, as you pull the bedsheets from the bed - claiming they needed a firm washin’ after the past week. Steve didn’t put up much of a fight about it, already digging around for the washboard and basin.

But Bucky, he just can’t stop staring at you. That gorgeous early morning glow on your cheeks, sunlight glimmering in your eyes.

Pressing his fist down on the table with determination, he takes two long strides over towards you, pulling the bedding from your hands - tossing it on the floor in a heap - as he rests his large palms over your hips.

“God, I love you.”

You laugh, pushing at his biceps as he nuzzles into your neck, stubble rubbing across your smooth skin.

“Steve! Come and get your hound!” you call out over your shoulder.

The blonde watches from the doorway with an amused smile gracing his lips, arms crossed over his small chest, “Told you to stop lettin’ strays in here, honey.”

And maybe it ain’t romantic like in the stories you love to read, but he drops down onto one knee and grabs your hands together in his, “Think I wanna spend the rest of this life with the two of you.”

He digs out Sarah Roger’s wedding band from his back pocket and flashes it at you, smiling in anticipation as you glance between him and Steve with wide eyes. The other man, for his part, shrugs - biting down his own amusement as you snatch the ring from between Bucky’s fingers - inspecting it with a squint.

Voice a little distant as you say, “I’m not wife material, Buck.”

He nods, standing back up, dusting off his pants as takes the ring from you, just to slide it onto your left hand instead.

“Nah, you’re not,” he agrees with a mischievous expression. “But we love you all the same, sweetheart. And if I wanna buy that farm out on the county line, I can’t have you livin’ with me in sin forever.”

With a shake of your head, you place your hand on his cheek - eyes tearin’ up with what he hopes is joy, “Like we ever cared about that before.”

You plant a kiss to his lips, fast and hard, before bounding over to Steve to kiss him squarely on the mouth - dropping quick pecks to his cheeks as you coo over the ring. Bucky feels the elation bubble up into his chest as he watches the two of you. Grinning at the sudden realization that he was gonna marry you.

The church isn’t the right fit for the three of you, so you end up getting hitched at the county courthouse with Steve and his Ma as witnesses in mid-September - when you finally hit eighteen. His sisters get all dolled up for the occasion, but he can’t stop beaming at you.

“No use in wearing somethin’ that’ll only see the light of day once,” you had told him.

Opting for one of your nicer blue dresses instead - saying it brought out his and Steve’s eyes. You broke out a bottle of perfume for the occasion too, dabbing it just behind your ears so he could become fully intoxicated by your scent when he leaned down to kiss your neck. Hungry, ravenous eyes meeting your knowing expression.

You and Steve were able to find a ring at the consignment shop in town that morning without having to spend too much on it. So, at least he gets to wear one to match yours. It feels strange on his hand for a long while. But soon, it feels like it's always been there - like a second skin.

He spins you ‘round on the front steps of the courthouse, bubbling laughter clear as the sky above as you lean down to kiss him. Steve’s envious eyes from across the way bring promise of what the night will bring you all.

“Could always hop the train over to the next county and get hitched,” you tell the blonde man on the way back home. “They’d never even know I went and got married twice over.”

That makes Steve laugh quietly, shaking his head with a smirk - fingers stretched out just far enough to graze against your own, “Maybe another day, honey.”

For the sake of his family, you play the sweet couple part real well. A peaceful little luncheon put on back at the farm with Evelyn and Grace fawning over your ring.

His Ma quietly asking how far out till she’ll be expecting to hear the pitter-patter of little feet around her house. Bucky gulps down his drink and quickly reminds Steve about his plans to go see the farmhouse later that week - ignoring the question entirely.

The three of you had counted out your savings the other night, you would have just enough to put down a decent payment on the property. No one needed to know why a newlywed couple had their best friend living with them - no one ever seemed to question the closeness of the three of you actually.

“You’re a sight, sweetheart,” he murmurs into your ear, hands wrapping ‘round your waist when he catches you alone in the kitchen.

“Must be that married glow about me,” you retort, swatting at his hand that dares to dip lower on your backside, head craning to look out of the kitchen door where his family is still pestering Steve at the dining table.

With a laugh, he spins you in his arms, eyes flicking down towards your very kissable lips, “And what a glow it is, Mrs. Barnes.”

Shaking your head, you sigh, batting your lashes up at him, “Gonna take a while to get used to that.”

Bucky shrugs, tugging you a little closer, “Got our whole lives.”

The house is well-kept when him and Steve go to inspect it the following Thursday. The old man is vying to move back east to be with his son after the recent passing of his own wife, and at the mention of Bucky’s newly married life, he seems all the more eager to sell it. Clearly, their reputation hadn’t reached his ears.

They end up shelling out almost the entirety of their funds for it, but it’s definitely worth the expense when you see the house for the first time - face lighting up with joy as you plant a kiss to his cheek and then to Steve’s before you take off running for the front door.

He carries you over the threshold before grabbing Steve and dragging him over the front as well, much to the other man’s annoyance.

It’s a nice enough home for a young couple such as yourselves. On the outskirts of town, situated on nearly five acres. The house itself is up a ways on a small hill, with the kitchen overlooking the fields below.

“Good spot for a garden,” Steve muses as you look around the yard.

You’ve got your hands draped over his chest, resting your head on his shoulder, “Wanna plant geraniums up here by the door.”

“Sure, honey. Make it look real nice.”

Bucky watches the two of you from afar, lighting up a cigarette and smiling a wicked grin.

It finally felt like everything was falling into place.

And in the end, I'd do it all again.

You carve out a quiet little existence for yourselves there at the farmhouse. Maybe a younger version of himself would have been eager to break out of the small town - go off in search of something bigger than himself. But now, watching you from the back porch as you rock back and forth in the swing, book in your hand, he doesn’t mind it one bit.

They never have to worry about strangers coming ‘round since the house is far enough away from the main road to keep the rare passerby from spying on them. It lets them feel a little more free from how carefully guarded they’ve been in the past. They don't gotta hide.

Steve’s got his pad of paper out on his lap, chiding him with a stern look for moving his head again.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, trying to get the angle right - chin in his hand, elbow on his knee, looking relaxed while being forced into statue-like stillness.

“Better be,” the other man says with a soft snort, hungry blue eyes flashing up from the page to roam over Bucky’s bare chest. The tip of his pencil circles his lips absentmindedly as he seems unsure if he should be looking at his current sketch or at Bucky.

He blinks, “Keep staring, sweetheart and you might just knock me over.”

That makes him chuckle, apparently giving up on the endeavor as he tosses the book and pencil off to the side just so he can come striding over, “Plan on doin’ more than that, Buck.”

Steve always tastes like sugar when he kisses him.

I think you're my best friend.

It’s honest work that he does at the mill. Earning enough there and from doing the odd tinkering job on the side to keep the three of you afloat. You seem content, for the most part, working at the bar in town.

Maybe he catches that sort of wild look in your eyes every now and then - that thrumming sensation in your chest that seems to say I need to get out of here. You weren’t made for the idle homemaker life - and they don’t expect none of it from you. Steve handles the cookin’ while you keep the garden from being ruined by their ignorant hands.

But when those moments hit, those sudden angry frustrations, you take to the yard - venting your thoughts on the woodpile more often than naught. They turn a blind eye when you reach for one of the bottles in the highest cabinet though.

It wasn't worth arguing over. Him and Steve just pass a cigarette back and forth on the front stoop, smoke billowing up into the softness of night until the moment passes and then they come back to pick up your shattered pieces from the bedroom floor.

You never talk about things before this little existence. Bucky doesn't feel like it would do you any good anyway. Steve doesn't know what to think, but he's always got that sad look on his face when you start hollering at the night clouds.

They've picked up enough broken bottles and wrapped enough bloody fingers for a lifetime. But it's better than handing you over the shotgun and letting you go buck wild on the stray critters that come ‘round to steal things from your precious garden.

"Maybe my head's not screwed on right," you tell him one night, hands wrapped 'round your knees as you shiver on the kitchen floor.

Steve’s already swept the length of it, using a wet rag to pick up the stray pieces of glass. He can’t even remember what set you off - just something or another about his day at work and a new guy - Carl. No, that was it. That was definitely the tipping point. He should've known better.

Bucky settles down next to you, hand on your knee, "Is anyone's, sweetheart? You're my girl and we love you and that's enough for us."

Sighing a deep, lonesome thing, you drop your head on his shoulder.

"Deserve someone better than me, Buck."

He wraps his arm around you, pulling you in, "See, that's the trouble, Winona. Don't want no one else but you."

Steve shows him his sketch later that night, rough dark lines making up your solemn shape next to Bucky's softer figure on the page. It's raw and open and he loves it.

The good moments, the good days, and weeks always outnumber the bad. The fragile mornings, before the world awakens and pulls them out kicking and screaming, are his favorite. Just wrapped up in a pile of warmth and love, someone’s hand in his hair, another over his heart.

You get four years of it before everything goes to hell.

“Buck. Bucky! James!”

He looks up from the tractor’s engine, hands covered in grease and oil, brows rising at the urgent tone in your voice that has him running from the workshed to the house.

“Winona? Sweetheart?” he calls, trying to rub his hands clean on the work rag.

Mind already racing. Steve had just come out of a bad state three days ago - between the arrhythmia and the ulcers, you had wanted to call in the doctor, but the reckless bastard was insistent that he was fine.

He’s tracked in mud and snow through the kitchen and living room, half expecting to see Steve strewn out on the floor, but your demeanor makes him freeze when he finds you sitting in the chair next to the radio - eyes real distant as the announcer’s static-cutting voice fills the room.

“ - The President made a brief statement which was read to reporters by his secretary. A Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, naturally, would mean war. Such an attack would naturally bring a counterattack and hostilities of this kind would naturally mean that the President would ask Congress for a Declaration of War. There is no doubt, that from the temper of Congress, such a declaration would be granted - ”

His body slumps against the wall as Steve’s nervous eyes meet his from across the room, hand gripping yours as you continue to stare at the radio.

Don't you know that the kids aren't all, kids aren't alright?

He gets his draft notice a month later.

You don’t say anything then, standing from the kitchen table - as he gazes over the yellow paper - and storming out the back door.

“I’m gonna register,” Steve announces, eyes flickering to the screen door still flapping open in the winter wind.

Bucky’s eyes flash with a sudden rush of anger, “Like hell you are.”

They wouldn’t take him anyway. Despite Steve’s best efforts to try at every recruiting point within a fifteen-mile radius. His anger over it almost rivals your own.

It just makes Bucky’s heart ache.

At night, you cry into his arms. Real angry sobs that make your chest heave no matter how many reassurances he kisses into your skin, no matter how many times Steve smooths his hands over your body.

“Could run away,” you propose one cold January morning, wrapped up in the quilt next to him, Steve snoring softly on the other side of you.

Bucky shakes his head, voice soft, “Not from the government, sweetheart. Not from this.”

On the morning of the twentieth, he spends his time covering your skin with deep lingering kisses. Devoting each part of your bodies with all the attention he can afford to give. He kisses Steve, long and desperate, hands never straying far from his waistband - afraid to let go.

“I love you,” he murmurs, over and over again.

There’s a handful of men at the train station outside of town, a few he recognizes. Most joined up on their own accord, unlike him.

His bag is resting at his feet, eyes scanning the crowd. You’ve got your arm looped through his, face downturned into his shoulder. Steve’s silent on the other side of him, keeping his face as neutral as possible. Hands jammed into his pockets to keep himself from reaching out.

You tense up the second the train whistles down the tracks, fingers digging into his arm like a vice - unwilling to let go.

I'll be yours.

“Hey,” he coos, turning to pull you into his arms - hands moving up to your face, forcing your eyes to look at him.

“Sweetheart, you’re gonna be just fine. You got Steve to keep in line while I’m gone and I’ll be making some decent pay that I can send back to you guys - ”

You shake your head, tears welling up in your pretty eyes, the same old assurances didn’t mean nothing to you.

“It’s not fair, Bucky. It’s not.”

When it rains it pours.

He pulls you in close, savoring that final whiff of your perfume as he rests his chin on your shoulder.

“It ain’t, sweetheart. But I don’t got a choice about it. So - ” he pulls back, settling you with a look, “You gotta keep that chin up for me, all right? ‘M gonna need those letters of yours to get me by. Maybe a picture to get me through a lonely night.”

That makes you give a pitiful laugh, wiping at your tears before pulling him back into a tight embrace.

Around them, similar farewells are taking place as the men slowly file onto the waiting transport train.

He presses one final kiss to your forehead, eyes fluttering shut as he savors it. Reluctantly, pulling away when the engineer starts to call out - clamping his hand down onto Steve’s shoulder, unable to do anything more than that.

“Gotta keep each other steady for me. Few weeks and I’ll get some leave, come back down here for a day or two, all right?”

Steve, uncharacteristically, pulls him into a tight fast hug. A blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing. It just makes it that much harder to leave.

Stay thirsty like before.

From the compartment’s open door, he watches as you slip your fingers between Steve’s, holding onto each other like an anchor. Bucky keeps his eyes on the two of you, rooted there on the platform until your figures disappear along the horizon line and the tight sob threatening to bubble out of his throat finally quells.

Don't you know that the kids aren't all, kids aren't alright?

He comes back to town in late March with a shorter haircut and a hardened look in his steel eyes. The reports that were comin’ in from command weren’t lookin’ all that promising. But when he sees you there in the yard, on your hands and knees digging through the freshly-made flowerbed, all thoughts about the future seem to fade from mind.

“Bucky?” Steve calls, pulling off from the back stoop, eyes squinting in confusion.

You look up, mouth falling open in shock as you go tripping over your own damn feet to come running at him, jumping up into his arms as you screech with delight.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he croons, dipping his lips down to your neck, beaming from ear to ear.

Nothin’ much has changed about the house which makes him feel like he never really left. That night, you two spoil him twice over. Fillin’ his belly with warm food, followed by an even sweeter dessert in the comfort of the bedroom.

“Gonna miss this,” he comments, voice ragged, as he smooths his palm over your backside. His other hand rucks up the damp sweat-coated curls threatening to spill onto his forehead.

Steve’s sprawled out next to you, drawing idle patterns on your arm. Features easy, body warm and sated.

“Miss you more than anything,” you say, voice muffled by the pillow.

Bucky ducks his head down, pressing a kiss to your shoulder blade, “Need something to remember me by, sweetheart?”

“Depends,” you turn your face towards him, a coy smile on your disheveled features, “ - what’re you offering?”

You squeal as he flips you over onto your back, a blind hand reaching out for Steve as you head into the third round of the evening.

He has enough time to visit his Ma and sisters before he has to go back. Another, more difficult goodbye from the train platform this time.

“Gotta write us every now and then, you know,” your voice is walking a thin line between fine and breakdown, as you sniffle - looking away from his face because it’ll only get you cryin’ again.

“Just don’t go runnin’ off with my best friend while I’m gone, all right?”

Steve snorts, jabbing his fist into Bucky’s arm.

“Stay safe, Buck.”

“For us,” you add.

He nods, pulling you in for a final kiss, “Always, sweetheart.”

It doesn’t hurt any less the second time around, watching the two of you fade from sight.

The next day, they’ve got him and the rest of the division on a train for New Jersey. He tries to write something down for you on the ride, but the boisterous energy running rampant through the compartment keeps him from it.

From Jersey, they’ve got them headed to the docks in Brooklyn. The tight-spaced buildings and flocks of people are eye-opening for a country kid like him. Almost wishes he had a camera to take a picture for the two of you.

The ship is god awful. He’s running for the bucket every few minutes, guts rockin’ back and forth, sloshing the empty contents of his stomach around. They’ve got the entire 34th Division pressed together in hammocks, five-high. He sketches out a quick picture of it, on the side of one of his letters. It’s not as good as what Steve could do, but it’s enough.

It takes a whole damn week before they land in Belfast and by then, the mood of the men has shifted to something a little more solemn. At least he has two letters to send out by then. Addressed back to Iowa with a prayer.

From there, it's two more months of training then he’s on another ship - down to North Africa. His unit’s in Algeria for nine days before he receives your letter. He reads it by the light emitting from his cigarette, dug into the side of an abandoned village’s wall.

You tell him about the books you’ve picked up from the store. Promises of Steve’s health and well-wishes from his Ma and sisters. He can still smell the hint of your floral perfume on the page, tucking it into his breast pocket - close to his heart.

He’s able to survive off your infrequent correspondence, holding on to the hope that jumps off the page between the curves of your rushed penmanship. Sometimes, Steve’s scrawling writing joins in on the letter.

She’s found a cat, Bucky. I can’t convince her to get rid of the damn thing. It’s leaving its fur just about everywhere. Doesn't even chase off the barn mice - damn next to useless.

Don’t believe a word that punk says. Snowball is perfect - not as good of a replacement for you, but she’ll do all right.

I'm sorry, but Snowball’s a real god awful name, sweetheart, he writes back. A smile cresting his face as he unfurls the sketch Steve’s included of the small white kitten curled up on your lap.

Bucky’s dreamin’ of the day he gets to walk back down the drive leading up to the house. When he sleeps, sometimes he’ll get a quick flash of a memory of the three of you together. It’s enough to keep him going, those presses of normal life against the backdrop of wartime horrors.

That pretty little picture of the two of you resting in his pocket helps ease his troubled mind sometimes too. You and Steve are always on his mind. Even when the remnants of his division get sent up to Sicily for the next invasion wave.

Just seems like a never-ending nightmare.

It's October 1943 and he’s just gotten your letter wishing him a happy anniversary a whole month and a half late.

His heart aches, thinkin’ of the two of you alone, him a thousand miles away. Not the way he thought he’d be spending his fifth wedding anniversary with his beautiful wife. But, he supposes, nothing in life could have prepared him for any of this.

They’re working with the 442nd and 1st Infantry Divisions, as well as a group from the 92nd. This spot is strategic for a number of reasons that don’t much matter to a sergeant like him. All he knows is that he’s been instructed to hold it down for as long as possible until they can get naval assistance in the pushback of troops or evacuation of their own forces.

Something changed in him, about a year back when he made his first kill.

Head like a steel trap. Wish I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't.

He never writes home about it, doesn’t even know what he’d say if he could put the words together to explain it. But there’s something hardened, something dark growing there in his roots. Bucky just hopes he can cut the damage before he comes home to you.

He bore witness to what happened to his own father. The madness that seemed to clutch at his mind. He doesn't want that for himself, doesn't want you to see that same monster in him.

Bucky can only hope and pray it'll disappear when this whole damn war ends. He has to believe it will, for his own sanity.

I don't just wanna be the footnote in someone else's happiness.

They're able to advance their position far enough to make the smallest of dents in the German line. But it never seems to be enough - like a perpetual stalemate.

It's Christmas of that same year when he gets his first real bit of leave - finding himself wandering the streets of an Allied-controlled town twenty miles from the Front. Steve would be creamin' himself if he could see this place - the landscapes here, somehow untouched by the war, would give him weeks worth of drawings.

As of late, Bucky's been seeming to find your faces just about everywhere he looks.

The short blonde-haired fresh-outta-school young-faced private in the newly deployed artillery battalion, who's drinkin' his first beer in the shell of an Italian cafe, has him doing a second take - nearly calling out someone else's name.

Does your husband know the way that the sunshine gleams off your wedding band?

The woman with dark familiar eyes that invites him back to her place with a flash of a smile has him thinking of a much prettier face a few thousand miles away. Even as a man of needs, he can't accept the offer.

Does he know the way? Does he know the way?

Instead, he writes to you and Steve - thanking you for the new portrait you had gone out and taken together. And a more proper thank you for that sultry drawing of you stretched out in bed that Steve had included.

Of the crickets that would convince me to call it a night?

And then it's back to his unit, trudging through blown-out towns, pushing against a strong defensive line that never seems to break.

But I will never end up like him.

It's July, the following year. They're in Anzio and the entire thing is a god damn shitshow. Sometimes, Bucky wonders if there's any point to all this if it never feels like they can dig their damn nails in far enough to make a lick of difference.

Behind my back I already am.

“We got a sniper up there on our three!” the private next to him shouts over the sharp sound of gunfire. “Can’t get a lock on him!”

Keep a calendar, this way you will always know.

He hums, gritting his teeth as he spits out the bud of his cigarette. Shouldering his rifle, eyes peering through the scope, “Where are you, you son of a bitch?”

Slowly tracking across the rocky landscape, he’s able to distinguish the position by the quick flash of sunlight reflecting off a metal cartridge.

“Bingo.”

He’s lining up his shot, waiting for the bastard to pop his head up for even a second.

The last time you came through. Oh, darling, I know what you're going through.

The breeze rustles against his mud-caked cheeks - makes him think of easy summer days under the wispy branches of an old willow tree. A pretty head resting on his thighs, another hand gripping his own.

The last time you came through. Oh, darling, I know what you're going through.

And then he’s being thrown backward - skull rocking with shockwave pain as the sky appears overhead when he lands on the ground. Voices shouting out commands sound all muffled and far away from the darkness that quickly surrounds him.

Oh, darling -

For a strange moment, as the sky and sun seem to shrink down to a darkened tunnel up above him, he wonders - for the briefest of seconds - if the last of your pink geraniums survived the sudden cold spell.

You had written him about it two weeks ago, fretting over the state of your garden - with Steve playfully teasing those worries in the margins.

Oh, darling -

He knew how devastated you would be once the final petals fell. Even if it was just another inevitable part of life.

But then again, Bucky never could stand to see that pretty smile of yours fall from your beautiful face.

Oh, darling.

Next Chapter >>

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[thealexchen]

You write so beautifully!! I wanted to send a response to the character study you wrote on Alex under that ask but my brain is struggling atm bc there’s so much great material to unpack and you discussed everything with so much care!

One of the things that I’ve always loved about the Life is Strange series, that I’ve carried with me for years, is that the games don’t shy away from hurting- from raw rage, crippling grief, blistering frustration, incredibly relatable and realistic depictions of trauma responses, especially coming from teenagers (and younger children in Daniel’s case) with maladaptive coping mechanisms faced with incredible obstacles and emotional hardship (and even that feels like an understatement) in the previous 3 games. That’s rare to find, at least for me. And True Colors is no different, specifically in the sense that it too fully embraces the full spectrum of raw emotion, if arguably in a more nuanced, complete way, as, not only is Alex older than our previous protagonists, the series as a whole is growing up, too. Each game has its flaws, but I’m so, so grateful for all of them, and especially True Colors. I have yet to find another series that feels as honest and visceral as this one does, even after all this time. I’m sorry that this got so long!

Hey, thank you so much! Dw at all about long asks; I'm the wrong who writes accidental essays about fictional characters, so 😅 And sorry it took a day to answer this!

That's a really excellent point you brought up about how LiS really explores the full breadth of emotion, and I think in that way, it seeks to tell stories about the human experience. For me, LiS isn’t about small towns or mystery or romance or even the supernatural. At its core, Life is Strange is about human connection. Love in all its forms, as well as how far we’d go for our loved ones— how Chloe was willing to sacrifice herself for a town she hated for Max; how Max can refuse to let Chloe die; how Sean faced homelessness, racist violence, and near-fatal encounters to keep him and Daniel together; and how Alex faced legal threats, death threats, and survived a 300-foot fall down a mineshaft all in her pursuit of justice for her brother.

LiS has become so synonymous with emotionally gutting stories that people joke "Can't wait to get depressed again!" But what I thought made True Colors different was that it dug deeply into the full range of human emotion. It didn’t forget about joy, and love, and hope. That for me was another way that the series showed it was maturing— even though LiS2 was set far away from the high school, the ultimate tragedy of that story was that Sean and Daniel were just kids thrown into horribly adult situations. True Colors’ determination to stay more tonally balanced also felt like a deliberate move away from the teen angst and abject misery that characterized the earlier games. It explores more complex emotions in the wake of immediate grief— the shaky sense of joy from recalling a happy memory of a loved one now gone, the excitement of new friendships, and the enduring hope that things will get better. When life deals you a bad hand, how do you learn to pick yourself up and carry on? It just overall feels like a much more adult perspective on life (even though adults were always writing these games, lol).

I also agree that the LiS series feels truly one-of-a-kind, to the point where it feels like its own genre. The first game was marketed as a sort of “playable indie movie,” and I think that’s endured despite True Colors’ AAA polish because these games have always been about everyday people and their lives. These characters feel believable not because of hyperrealistic graphics or immersive gameplay but because you can read their text message histories, cover letters (seriously, who else other than DN would bother to do that??), and journal entries. There are comparable games like TWDG or TLOU, but the LiS series manages to tell emotional stories without the need for a zombie apocalypse or other huge stakes. It has always prioritized protagonists from marginalized backgrounds but makes them relatable for everyone. Even with the supernatural elements, that’s why LiS has always felt so real to me and why I’ve connected with it so much.

[need-a-fugue]

Trustworthy (Chapter One)

Summary: You’ve spent the last three years teaming up with Santiago Garcia on every mission you had a hand in coordinating... and the past several months plotting with him to take down the biggest bad to hit your radar. But even all your time at the DEA and all your experience in the field couldn’t have prepared you for this. 

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales x Fem!Reader (slowburn)

Warnings: Character death, many naughty words, and soooo much angst

A/N: It would seem that my newfound Pedro Pascal obsession isn’t going to let up any time soon, so I decided to just dive headfirst into some Frankie-heavy Triple Frontier fic. It doesn’t help that @tweedlydumbtweedlydoo​ planted a seed (quite a while ago) by asking for a story where reader breaks down on that fateful mission only to be comforted by our favorite Fish. I um... may have taken that a little far and now there’s this whole multi-chapter thing happening...

Here’s the thing… you’ve been in shit before. You’ve been shot at, even took a bullet yourself not too long ago. You’ve seen people die – some bad, some good, some deserving, some not. You held your own partner in your arms, desperately trying to stanch the flow of blood from his shorn neck before finally letting him go after he expelled one final, wet breath. You’ve killed people – a sicario outside of Bogota, two – possibly three – gang members in a shootout in Albuquerque, some dumb kid who’d been given a little bit of cash to stand guard outside a lab in Juarez.

You’ve seen tragedy, felt it, lived it, dreamed about it on an endless loop, even in your waking hours. You’ve caused it – or so you’d been told by the weeping mother of the boy in Mexico. You’ve denied it, denied that what had happened was actually tragic at all. Denied it to survive.

But you can’t deny what you’re in right now, the tragedy of having a plan go to shit in too many ways to count. The tragedy of nearly succumbing to your absolute worst fear in the world and going down in a sputtering damn helicopter. The tragedy of more lives being taken, even those of fucking Lorea and his men causing a reluctant burn at the back of your throat. Because you can’t stop seeing his children arriving home to find their worst nightmare laid out in blood and smoke, flames licking round all they’ve ever known and loved.

Children. Tom has children too. Had. Tom, who’s now being carried down the side of a mountain in a makeshift body bag, haphazardly descending with his men by his side… just ahead of you, just in your line of sight. Still leading the way, even in death.

Maybe that’s why this feels so different. This particular tragedy. Because you’re still in it. You can’t walk away and deny, shower the telling grime from your skin, bury the reality of death and failure and fear beneath a six pack of beer and a shitty TV dinner alone in your dark apartment.

And, oh, your apartment… or any apartment really, as you’re not exactly likely to return to your post in Colombia after all this. To go anywhere right now with heat and running water… and a bed. Your mind reels just thinking about it.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s just because you haven’t slept in days… many days. Haven’t eaten much either, each and every MRE and stale protein bar sitting heavy in your throat, choking, suffocating, blocking your breaths and words alike.

“You gotta eat,” Frankie had said to you just this morning, whispered in your ear as you carefully picked your way over and around the sharp, loose rocks in your path. “We gotta keep moving,” he muttered, the deep hum of his voice sounding less like the balm you’d come to know and more like just another resonance caught up in the icy, bitter wind. He had pressed a bar to your palm, his hand warm despite the surrounding cold, and a forced lightness filled his tone as he declared, “Need your strength or we won’t make it to the coast.”

You hadn’t even looked up to meet his gaze, instead continuing forward, glare directed down at the treacherous ground beneath your feet. “I don't really see that happening anyway,” you said as you shoved the bar deep into your pocket.

His stride halted then, leaving him standing tall and motionless as you swept idly past. But his pause was enough to make you falter, to make you turn and glance back up at him. You hadn’t even realized what you said – not really, not fully – until you took in the look on his face. That was enough – the sadness, the grief, the guilt that clouded his eyes and pinched his lips – to make you retrieve the bar from your pocket and choke down the whole damn thing in two monstrous bites.

Maybe it’s that. That look Frankie had given you just as the sun began to rise. The same look that sits on the faces of the other men even now, hangs heavily on them as they soldier on, carrying not only the load of money, but the body of their friend.

Maybe it’s being here with them as they move with purpose and the kind of fluidity that comes from too many years of practice. Practice at navigating dangerous situations. Practice at steering away from the fear and pain, sorrow and guilt that stare them right in the face, all to ensure they might survive the day.

Maybe it’s watching them move through that horrid fog that – you know – anyone else would so easily get lost in. All while reluctantly admitting, if only to yourself, that it’s the same fog you’ve been unable to effectively cut through for days.

Maybe that’s what has you feeling like you’re walking a tightrope balanced precariously between an understandable sort of disappointment and dread… and a overwhelming, blinding despair. Maybe this feels different because it isn’t just yourself you’d need escape to gain distance from this tragedy. It’s all of them as well. And you can’t very well escape the very men you need to help you through.

They climb the mountainside, traversing rocks and heaps of remaining snow that never fail to send you slipping and careening. They catch you as you slide, helping you along as they hoist bag after bag – your own contribution of carrying just your pack and one duffel seeming paltry in comparison – up and then down the stony inclines. They hand you off with care, always keeping you close, making sure that if one of them moves ahead, another is still left by your side. They carry you almost as much as they carry the money. As much as they carry Tom.

Tom. You’d only known him a handful of days… weeks? How long ago was it that you followed Santiago back to the States to meet his reinforcements? At this point, you no longer have a clue when this whole fucking mess began. A lifetime ago at least. It seems as though you’ve known these men for an entire lifetime on top of that.

Tom. Well, he’s arguably the one you got to know least. And not just because he’s been dead for… however long it’s been now. No. He was just… quiet. Reserved. Distrustful, truth be told. But, hell, you could hardly blame him for that. After all, he was considered the leader of these men. The one tasked – above all others – with getting them in and out safely. The one who would wear the most blood on his hands should any of them fall.

And from the loyalty the others showed – and the stories they shared in both forced low tones and laughter-pocked croons – you could tell that he was a good leader. A trusted leader. A loved leader. And nothing he did on this mission was ever going to change that in the eyes of anyone here.

No, you hadn’t gotten to know him well. But damn if it didn’t still hurt to see him go. To peer over Ben’s shoulder – bent and broken and wracked with sobs – and into Tom’s empty, lifeless eyes all those days ago. So damn many days ago. To watch the brothers fight over the top of his body, sidestepping his corpse to throttle each other and throw blame to lessen the grief. To sit with Benny for the hour or so after – after helping him wrap up his friend with care – as his uncharacteristic silence slinked about you both in a smothering cloud of despair.

Ben, who had been the most jovial and talkative and… bright of all. He had quite literally welcomed you into the fold with open arms, a bit drunk and a bit concussed from a fight he insisted he won just hours before meeting you. He refused your handshake when Garcia introduced you, leaning in to envelope you in a tight hug instead, and then demanding to buy you a drink, despite the fact that you’d been nursing one while waiting for them to arrive. “Pretty lady like you shouldn’t ever have to shell out her own money for a drink,” he’d said with a grin and a wink.

You might’ve rolled your eyes, might’ve told him, pass amid a chiding glare. But before you could say a word, his brother smacked him upside the head, giving a disappointed eyeroll that would’ve outdone yours tenfold, and held out a hand to shake, a deep-tenor, “Don’t mind him, and nice to meet you,” putting you immediately at ease and making it utterly clear who the Miller brothers were. Will was the politic adult, professional and well-mannered. And Benny was simply a ball full of harmless fun.

Until now, that is. Now – you can see even as his slumped body fades away into the tree line below – Ben has become little more than sorrow and sinew.

A crunching tumble of pebbles sounds suddenly in your periphery, tearing you from your spiraling thoughts. You look up to see Santiago looming to your right, effectively blocking the sliver of sunlight that remains peeking through the dusk-hued sky. “You okay, bonita?” he asks, the tone of his voice and wrinkle to his brow as he looks down at you serving to snap you back to the here and now. Here. Now. Shivering in the cold as the four of you settle in on the side of some damn mountain, having just bid farewell to yet another member of your party.

Your gaze falls from his face almost as quickly as it had jerked up to meet it just a breath of a moment ago. You shake your head and let out a sigh. “I should’ve gone with him,” you utter simply. “I thought you’d been joking about how bad his Spanish was, but…”

He snorts out a laugh, and the corner of your mouth raises in a slight, crooked smile. “Yeah, well,” he starts, dropping down to take a seat on the hard earth beside you. “With how well you’ve been hiking through these hills, he’d probably have ended up carrying you like a backpack.” He gives you a shit-eating grin, teasing brow raised high. “We’re hoping to get out of here sometime this decade. Don’t need your ass slowing us down any more.”

“Asshole,” you mutter, the taunting cadence just barely cutting through the deep rumble of his laugh.

His hand falls to your knee, palm sliding side to side in a comforting stroke before he tightens his fingers over your patella and gives you a bit of a shake. “I’m only kidding,” he states, as though you didn’t already know. “You’ve been doing great. Really.”

You issue out a quick snort, a thick, incredulous breath kicking a puff of steam up into the frigid air.

“I mean it,” he tells you, turning a serious glance your way. “I know this isn’t what you signed up for.”

“It’s not what any of us signed up for,” you interrupt pointedly.

“Yeah. But… DEA doesn’t exactly train people the same as us,” he intones, giving a nod towards the other men. “I know you’ve never been… exposed to this kind of shit.”

You wrinkle your nose and squint as you turn to look up at the mountain you’d just somehow managed to traverse. “Yeah. This has been some shit.”

He lets out another small laugh – short and fleeting – before pulling his hand from your knee and settling into the silence surrounding you. Ahead, Frankie and Will build up a rock barrier around Tom’s body, a protective cocoon for the night lest any animals come by. You’d all noticed – especially today as the sun came out in the afternoon and beat heavily down on your backs – that he’d begun to rot. To smell. And as much as everyone wanted to still hold him close, no one really wanted his steadily decaying body stinking at their sides as they attempted to sleep tonight.

Once they’re done with their makeshift mausoleum, the two men move across the way and begin digging through their packs for food. “Frankie mentioned that you hadn’t been eating,” Santi mutters from your right as both of your eyes remain trained on the men working before you.

You shrug. “I’ve eaten as much as anyone else.”

A tiny chuckle ripples through him, drawing a confused glare from you. And his smile only widens when he sees the uncertainty painted across your face. “He likes you, bonita,” he singsongs, giving your shoulder a little shove. Then, grin swiftly fading away to nothing, he rather distractedly declares, “He’s worried about you.”

Your brow furrows a bit, stare honing in on the broad-shouldered man now falling into shadow. The man you’d only just begun to know and yet somehow felt eerily connected to. Another sigh escapes your lips, shoulders slumping as you avert your eyes, looking instead to the dark tree line far below. “I’m worried about all of us.”

“Yeah,” he breathes out with a solemn nod. “Yeah. Me too.”

It hits you then… as you feel Santi slouch heavily beside you, a heady silence permeating the miniscule space between you. And as you turn back in time to see Will grimace and clutch his side, giving into the pain of a days-old gunshot wound for just a breath of a moment, all that he’ll allow himself to take. And as you watch Frankie remove his hat and wipe the sweat from his brow – despite the temperature already plummeting around you thanks to the nearly set sun – all while he stares solemnly over at the rotting, rock-covered corpse of one of his oldest friends.

You know why this feels different from any other tragedy you’d suffered in the past, any other bad op or mission gone wrong you’d ever endured. It feels different because this… this is all your fault.

[midnightswithdearkatytspb]

Forever & Always: Stage 1 - Denial | Pt. 1

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Witch!Reader; Platonic Avengers x Reader

Words: A little less than 2.2k words

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Grief (Loss of Parent), Depression, Anxiety, Angst, & Fluff (more to be added) If you see something that I missed don't be afraid to tell me.

Synopsis: Y/N “Birdy” (nicknamed by her family), comes from a long line of witches and warlocks, living her days at the New Avengers Compound, alongside her friends. The Avengers are part of her family and her family is always welcome to the compound. Things for once seemed to be going well now that all was right from the attack on Thanos, everyone was alive, all was forgiven, friendships were thriving, that all ended when Birdy’s brother came calling with sad news, their mother had suddenly passed. These are the stages of grief Birdy faces, through the loss of her best friend, her protector, her mother.

Info: The Sebastian edit in the moodboard is done by @nix-akimbo and the dividers are done by @firefly-graphics. A big thank you too @sllooney for beta editing this, all mistakes are mine. I've had this finished for over a week I just hadn't had the heart to post, but I had my laptop out so here it is! I do not give permission for this to be translated or to be posted on other sites without my written permission.

Forever & Always Masterlist | My Masterlist

Baby wails rang through the kitchen as Birdy sat on the floor with her back against the cabinet. She felt exhausted as she tried to calm her speeding heart, her husband was gone on a mission, and she has been left to take care of the 6 month old twins on her own.

Lyra and Grant had been crying since they had woken up this morning at the crack of dawn and it was now noon. Birdy had tried feeding them, rocking them, tummy time, nothing was working. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Getting up from the floor after making sure the twins were still safe in their playpen in the corner, they both just looked at her red faced, breaking her heart. Birdy made her way to the chalkboard picking up a piece of chalk, writing; Mama HELP! I need you please, I’m having a crisis and I don’t know what to do.

Dramatic? Yes. Effective? Apparently so, because the words 'on my way' appeared immediately under her message. Letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding, Birdy grabbed the pitcher of Orange Blood tea out of the fridge and the shortbread cookies from the jar where she had been hiding them from her husband.

The back door to the kitchen opened and the older Lyra walked in, met by the sounds of her grandbabies wailing their little hearts out. Birdy’s mother looked at her with a soft smile, taking in her daughter's exhausted frame. Her hair was pulled off her face in a ponytail, oversized yoga pants hung loosely on her hips, with a tank and cardigan to match. Birdy looked just about done, but still so beautiful in her mother’s eyes.

“My little Birdy, sit down, I got this.” The mother moved behind her daughter and gently steered her to the breakfast nook, while she went in the direction of the playpen.

“Oh my little cherubs, what seems to be the matter?” Speaking to the babies in a soft voice, the grandmother grabbed Grant and brought him over to his mother, who quickly cradled the bundle of joy in her arms, while she returned for her namesake, cradling her closely, shushing her softly. It didn’t do much but as Lyra sat at the breakfast nook across from her daughter she began to rock the baby in her arms, Birdy copying her mother’s actions, brushing her finger down Grant’s sweet button nose.

“Let’s see… your belly's full, you are clean, warm, nothing seems to be off, I think your Mumma has just forgotten the most important thing, a lullaby!” Birdy looked at her mother with wide eyes, while she simply just smiled at her. “When you were a baby you could be quite fussy as well and the only way to get you to settle down was for me to sing a little lullaby. So I think what these two need is a little diddy and they’ll be right as rain.” Birdy’s mother began to hum one of the ever so familiar songs from her childhood. A song to ease her worries as her mother held her.

“I'm rocking you to sleep, the water's dark and deep inside this ancient heart. You'll always be a part of me.” both babies had stopped crying and were now yawning, holding onto the fingers of the women holding them.

“Goodnight, my angel, now it's time to dream. And dream how wonderful your life will be. Someday your child may cry and if you sing this lullaby, then in your heart, there will always be a part of me.” Little Lyra had drifted off into slumberland, while Grant had gone quiet, his eyes fighting hard to stay open but as Birdy continued to brush her pointer finger down his nose, it was becoming a losing battle.

“Someday we'll all be gone, but lullabies go on and on. They never die, that’s how you and I will be.” Both babies asleep, Birdy looked up at her mother in relief but stopped when she saw the sad look in her familiar eyes.

“Birdy since you were just a Babe in my arms I dreamed this moment over and over again, it never varied until now. I need you to know that I love you so much and I’m so very proud of you, proud of the woman you have become. You are a superhero, not many mothers out there can say their child is a superhero.” it felt as if her heart had dropped to the pit of Birdy’s stomach as she watched her mother put Little Lyra back in the playpen with a kiss to her forehead.

“I’m sharing this moment with you now because I know it’s going to come true for you, but I need you to remember something for me...” Lyra placed her hand on her daughter's cheek, brushing the single tear away. “Remember you were loved by me. That you made my life a happy one, and there is no tragedy in that.” Kissing Birdy on the forehead? Lyra moved towards the back door, her daughter getting up as carefully as possible, hoping not to wake the babies.

“Don’t go please, I love you!”

With a smile on her face Lyra blew a kiss to her daughter and then was out the door.

Birdy gasped sitting up. Wanda, falling off of her, being forced from the comfortable place where she had laid her head on Birdy’s stomach to watch the Breakfast Club in the blanket fort that Peter and Morgan had assembled earlier in the day. The fort took up over half of the New Avengers main living room and sat in front of the television. It's where the duo, Peter and Morgan had hung out and watched cartoons together, waiting for budget meetings and debriefings for the week to be over.

Wanda and Birdy had quickly fallen in love with the fort, and with Peter and Morgan for inviting them inside to help keep the little girl company until her parents were done working for the day. When Morgan had left they had decided to leave it up for a John Hughes movie marathon. Bucky and Steve had come to join the youngest Avengers in watching the films.

All eyes had moved from Breakfast Club to a gasping Birdy. Wanda’s hand was quick to grab hers and give it a reassuring squeeze, trying to pull her from her frantic daze. Birdy’s eyes started to scan the cozy space, seeing that the popcorn was all gone and Peter had stopped mid way to the Jelly Beans, now peering at her in worry. Bucky was on his side looking from her to Steve, as he put his hand on her shoulder, trying to give comfort.

“I’ll go get Mr. Barton and Miss Natasha!” Peter’s quick reflexes had him out of the fort in seconds, without knocking anything down, before anyone could say anything.

Birdy was trying so hard to figure out what was going on. She knew where she was, at the compound. She knew it was Friday, movie nights with Peter and Wanda, and that she had fallen asleep at the end of Weird Science, her least favorite John Hughes movie.

She had been dreaming, yet it felt so real. But she wasn’t carrying a child and she wasn’t even dating anyone, so it made no sense. Also her mother just leaving like that? Strange. The more Birdy thought on the dream the more her head started to hurt. Someone calling her name pulled her from her thoughts and looking up Clint stood crouched above her.

“Hey Kiddo, are you back with us?” Clint held out his hand to Birdy, which she gladly took, letting go of Wanda’s, and allowing the archer to pull her up off the blanketed floor. Natasha stood at the entrance of the fort in her pajamas, looking in, watching as Clint hugged the younger woman. Right away Natasha knew something was off.

“Yeah, I’m sorry you guys, I had the strangest dream and it-” Birdy’s face was scrunched up in almost confusion, as she stared off behind Clint’s shoulder. “-It felt so real.” Her voice died off as Clint hugged her close to him.

“It wasn’t a vision was it?” Natasha moved inside the blanket fort, her question was more of one of concern. Every time that Birdy had a vision, something bad was about to happen or come their way, like the time she had envisioned the meeting with General Ross, the next day the team was torn in two, because of the Sokovia Accords. Birdy just shook her head, it wasn’t a vision that she knew of.

“Well if it was just a dream, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Wanda and Peter, why don’t you go make chamomile tea. Steve go adjust the temperature? I think it’s a little warm. Bucky do whatever it is you want to do.” Natasha waved the former assassin off, “Clint and I are going to just sit in here with you until you feel better.” Sitting on the loveseat, Natasha patted the empty cushion next to her as Clint guided Birdy to sit next to her.

Before anyone could do what the Black Widow demanded, a gust of wind blew through knocking many of the blankets to the ground. Bucky was up on his feet in flash as none of the windows were open. This gust of wind was not ordinary. Steve moved to the opening of the fort with a pillow in front of him, peeking out into the living room.

In front of the windows facing the vast forestry surrounding the compound, stood Pietro Maximoff and Jasper Valentine, the pair of them holding on to Birdy’s older brother Rory. The trio looked disheveled, eyes bloodshot, and their hair all over the place. Steve felt his body relax when he recognized them, dropping the pillow to the ground. Scoffing, Jasper let go of the warlock first, and made his way forward, hugging Steve.

“Rory Sellar, what have I told you about just portaling unannounced into the compound?” Steve let go of Jasper before he made his way to Pietro, hugging the twin of his teammate, then to Rory, who just cleared his throat and looked to the ground. Pietro shook his head, getting Steve’s attention, immediately the scolding died in Steve’s throat.

“Steve, is Birdy awake?” Rory’s voice cracked as Natasha and Bucky looked out. Bucky gave a slight wave of his hand at the newcomers, while Natasha tilted her head in the direction of the fort. The group made their way inside the massive fort following behind Natasha. Birdy, jumping up from the couch at the sight of her older brother, rushed to give him a hug. Rory took his little sister in his arms, hugging her tightly, as he kissed her on the crown of her forehead.

“I just had the weirdest dream…” Birdy pulled away as she heard Rory sniffle, looking up at him in concern.

“Birdy I’m so sorry, she wouldn’t let me portal to come get you, she said she didn’t want you to see her that way.” Birdy’s face scrunched up in confusion. “I begged her to let me come get you, but she said no, and Dad agreed.” Rory started to let the tears fall.

“Rory, you aren’t making any sense, what is going on?” Pietro was by the warlock's side in an instant, his hand on his shoulder, looking at Wanda, who gasped after reading her twin brother's mind. Wanda looked away with tears in her eyes, hand covering her mouth in shock and sadness.

“What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?” Thousands of questions swam through her head, as her brother grabbed her hand, holding it as Natasha made her way to the younger girl's side.

“It’s mom Birdy, she’s gone.” tears started to build up behind the girl's eyes at her brother's words. Shaking her head, Birdy felt as if the room dropped ten degrees in that moment. “She has gone to be with souls in the great beyond.”

Before anyone knew it Birdy was falling to knees, a cry erupted from her mouth, “No!”

Birdy screamed while the power in the building started to flicker as the walls started to shake. Natasha, at Birdy’s side, pulled her to her side. Steve looked around realizing they needed to get the young witch calmed down or they were going to be in trouble.

“Rory you need to get her out of here, the building isn’t going to be able to handle this sort of shaking.” As he spoke part of the stucco from the ceiling fell on his shoulder.

Rory reached down holding onto his little sister's shoulder and looked back at Clint, “I’ll be right back for you.” In a flash, through a portal, the trio were gone. As fast the shaking and flickering lights had started they had stopped. The rest of the group stood there staring at the empty spot that once was Natasha, Rory and Birdy, feeling a sudden emptiness with the news they had heard. Things were about to change and it was out of their control.

[alluringjae]

[ 23:45 ] ⮕ END   

part of my collection of cookie cuts from all i do is wait

in order to understand, read the main story first here.

pairing: ghost!doyoung x female!reader

genre: angst, sum fluff if you really squint

warnings: death, grief

author’s note: someone asked me how i would interpret this scene, so here it is. this hurt A LOT. have fun though!

leave me some feedback, constructive criticism or hellos!

Mid-1953

At long last, the Korean War has ended after 3 years.

Over 5 million people dead, and to be one of the lucky survivors was a miracle.

The remaining soldiers who’ve fought through it all could return home, whilst civilians can properly rebuild all that was devastatingly destroyed in their cities. Their own normal lives included.

The fiercest 3 years of your life must you say, too engaged with self-studying your history books saved pre-war while dealing with the bargaining stage of your grief towards Doyoung. Every day, you couldn’t go on without overthinking the what-ifs. On top of that, your toddler Areum was at the stage where she loved creating a mess on the walls with her crayons. No matter how many times you’ve corrected her because it wasn’t your house, she continued anyway.

Now, she’s full-blown crying after you confiscated them and you’re on the verge of it. Thankfully, your mother stepped in to take her out for a walk in the neighborhood so you could unwind for a bit.

Since news broke out that the war ended, everyone from every street cheered and danced on the streets. You hailed with praise along with them, positive that things were going to get better. Yet deep down, you’ve selfishly wished that he was one of the lucky few to come home.

If only you didn’t chicken out so easily after he told you he was enlisting so you had a few more seconds with him.

If only you compromised him to join another field.

If only you told him about Areum earlier so he could go home.

These thoughts revolved your mind the most, instantly getting you to break down wherever you were. Even photos of him and you together were enough to tear down your walls. So, they remained hidden until the day you’re in a much better state of mind.

Dear god, you longed for him. Everything that consists of him.

In hopes to forget this tremendous loss in your life, you poured hot tea in a cup and started on this new book from this ongoing series, The Chronicles of Narnia. Getting it during this harsh period was tough, bartering it with old books you’ve owned in the market.

Fully preoccupied in the fantastical universe, flipping the pages quickly, you almost missed the continuous knocking on your door. You let out a tiny gasp and made your way to the entrance. As delusional to think it was Doyoung, you knew it wasn’t your mother and Areum either because they would’ve simply walked in. Opening it anyways, you were met by two young tall men. One had a bandage on his cheek while the other had a cast on his right arm. Noting their growing hair, they must’ve fought in the war.

Oh, if Doyoung was one of them.

“Hello, may I know who you two are?”

The one with the bandage spoke up, bowing first. “Hello, I am Lee Taeyong and this is my friend, Kim Jungwoo. We were good friends of your late lover, Kim Doyoung.”

Late lover.

Haven’t heard that since people in the neighborhood gossiped about your taboo pregnancy, but it’s not like they knew anyways. But from the letters exchanged with Doyoung before, he talked about these two highly. Whenever there were times of ease while serving, Doyoung was always up to mischievous things with these two. In a situation where they had to man up, they brought out his inner child.

“Oh, yes! Doyoung used to talk about you two in his letters, but I had no clue how you guys looked.”

By instinct, you invited them inside for tea by the patio. You’ve always wanted to meet them despite the circumstances. Bringing in a tray with a teapot and treats, mostly you were inquiring about their lives. Aside from knowing their positions in the team, you learned of their new plans moving forward.

“I want to return to university to finish my studies in mechanical engineering, maybe travel the world too.” Jungwoo stated, blowing on his cup before sipping it. He’s said to be an organized man according to Doyoung, always cautious of his surroundings. It balanced out his liveliness.

“Me too! I want to complete my major in finance, then marry my childhood sweetheart after a few years.” Taeyong expounded, his round eyes glowed in wonder. He must’ve been looking forward to this day, and you were content for him. Meanwhile, it processed to Taeyong what he said, realizing that it may have been insensitive.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” He burst out instantly. “I got stuck in my feelings there.”

“It’s okay, nothing to worry about. You shouldn’t apologize for how you feel.”

“I do think we should feel worried about you though.” Jungwoo interrupted, sighing heavily. “What happened with Doyoung-hyung all those years ago, we’re really concerned for you especially.”

At the mention of the painful memory, this wasn’t the right time to crumble. You weren’t capable to show your vulnerability to anyone but yourself. Plastering a wrenching pretend smile, “I appreciate the concern, truly. But I’ll be okay again. I’m planning to return to university too, then proceed to law school. A shared dream of mine and his.”

Taeyong and Jungwoo transparently viewed you like glass, coping with the grief of it. They were on the same page as you, and unaware to you, they knew his final words. With their interpretation, it only felt right to reach out to you. Befriend you, aid you in any possible way.

At the end of the day, three of you equally shared the suffering over the death of a loved one.

Sitting in peaceful silence, the front door creaked open followed by a tiny, high-pitched voice squealing.

“We’re home!” Your mother shouted.

“I’m at the patio, we have guests over!” You replied, pouring more tea for the two quiet boys.

From such a low-spirited atmosphere only did it liven up when an energetic Areum came into your setting. She had pigtails this time, satisfying herself with fresh bungeo-ppang from the neighborhood. No matter what you’re feeling, it took a single glance of her with her small moon-like eyes to recharge you.

“Mom, who are your friends here?” She pondered cluelessly.

The two boys exchanged looks at each other first, then to you in one breath. Their expressions of perplexity by how one’s hand was on their mouth and the other boy couldn’t stop staring at Areum, you identified exactly what they were thinking of.

“Areum, these are your dad’s friends in the army.” You animatedly confirmed. “The one with that tiny bandage on his face is uncle Taeyong, and the one with the white cast is uncle Jungwoo.”

Doyoung’s death was already so heavy to take in, but upon discovering this hidden surprise, Jungwoo wiped his tears on his sleeve. But you were fast to hand him some tissue. He was younger than you, so your older sister instincts kicked in.

“This is unjust, (Y/N).” He murmured across you so Areum won’t pick up his words. Your lips pressed against each other, maintaining a straight face at him. He was right.

With Taeyong, his arms spread out wide for the small girl who willingly walked to him. He loved children, having a nephew back home. He caressed her smooth hair down to her jaw. The first thing he distinguished was her pretty eyes followed by her squishy cheeks, resembling so much of his late friend.

“You’re so pretty, Areum. Did your mom tell you that you mirror so much of your dad?”

“Yes, she does! But I’ve never met him and I don’t when I will, uncle Taeyong.”

A tragedy how the splitting image of his best friend doesn’t see what everyone sees. But again, she’s only 3 and she can only process so much. She doesn’t know the real truth behind her father’s location, except that he was working far, far away. There are days she’d ask if he’d come back soon, yet your only response is not now. This isn’t the right time for her purity about life to stain.

“Well Areum,” Jungwoo gathered his senses again, crouching down to her level. “As his friends, we know that you look just like him! Prettier even.”

“Really? Tell me more about him, uncle Jungwoo!”

It’s about time someone else shared stories about your late lover because yours was short-lived. It’s even more intriguing to listen to what other people have to say about Doyoung that weren’t his parents. Some stories told by Taeyong and Jungwoo were new to you too, giggling along to their ridiculousness when they’re not training or fighting. Loving their presence, you invited them to stay for dinner with your family, which they couldn’t reject.

What started as a tense conversation transformed into a heartwarming experience. These two boys earned a spot in your life, aspiring for longtime friendships with them. The tender way they cherished for Areum like they’re own after meeting for the first time, it’ll fill in bits of her void. In exchange, they insisted to chip in for you and her lives so it wouldn’t be just you and your family. Struggling already with the consequences of the war, it only felt proper to do so.

“Doyoung has always been there for us, now let us return the favor and be there for you and Areum.”

Your protests were deemed useless, so you allowed them to do so. Once you finished law school and take the exams, you could pay them back. It’s phenomenal how Doyoung’s good influence towards others multiplied even after his passing. Maybe if you began to view things this way, you’d recover sooner. Although he’ll always be in your thoughts, it wouldn’t be as sensitive as it is now.

For now, you’re just going to enjoy the bliss Taeyong and Jungwoo brought, retelling old tales of a drunk Doyoung on the dining table.

From behind your garden fence in secret, Doyoung secretly observed as his treasured companions interacted at last with positivity. His only daughter mirroring his adored smile, he lived in that moment vicariously through her.

What a good time to visit today, truly.

[spencers-renaissance]

Don’t Be Scared, I Love You

Summary: JJ is shot and Emily's world stops spinning

Tags: whump, hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, fluff, protective emily, NO mcd

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x Jennifer Jareau 

Word Count: 1.7k

Masterlist // Read on AO3

Emily has always been skeptical of ‘slow motion’ disaster moments. She’s been an active government agent working in the field for over a decade — that’s to say, she’s witnessed her fair share of tragedy — and it’s never quite that dramatic. But when a bullet from an unsub’s gun embeds itself in JJ’s shoulder, for a split second, Emily is powerless to react.

She’s stuck in time: JJ falls slowly to the ground, her hair spreading behind her in a golden halo, and she barely registers the gunshot coming from Derek’s direction, the kill shot that takes down the man she hates the most in the entire world at this exact moment. Blood pounds in her ears as a sinking feeling of dread pools in her stomach, a cold kind of fear spreading through her body and freezing her joints, her muscles, her mind. There is only a singular thought circling through her head:

I can’t lose her.

It’s only when she hears JJ whimper in pain that she snaps back into action, protective instincts clicking into motion as she throws herself down at her fiance’s side, barely registering the impact the cold concrete has on her knees, only focusing on the beautiful woman fading in front of her eyes. Immediately, she lays her palm on the gunshot wound, applying deep pressure in an attempt to quell the bleeding. It’s the right thing to do, she knows it will save JJ’s life, but continuing feels almost impossible when JJ cries out in pain, her face crumpling.

“Jayje, Jayje, baby,” she says desperately, at a loss for words for a moment, “hold on for me, okay? Hold on. You’re doing so well. Oh, God, I love you so much. Hold on for me.” Vaguely, she hears Derek calling for a medic, but every iota of her attention is on JJ.

Deep blue, disney princess eyes meet hers. This is half a relief — JJ is still conscious, she can hear her, she hasn’t lost too much blood yet — and half a curse — JJ’s eyes have always been expressive. Right now they are conveying the pain of the worst agony one can inflict on another, and they are completely coloured with terror. Terror Emily has no way to diminish, no way to ease. How does one refute possibly the most rational fear there ever was?

She can feel herself crying. She vaguely hears the rest of her team around them, but right now her entire world has shrunk down to this moment, to the woman she’s going to marry next year, to the woman she longs to have children with. This is not altogether uncommon. Emily’s world frequently shrinks down to comprise only JJ: when they’re in bed together, small moments when they catch one another’s eyes across the bullpen or in a meeting, evening walks down the brightly lit streets of the city they love so dearly. It’s never as painful as this.

Derek has taken off his top and is moving Emily’s hand to place the balled material over the wound. He takes over applying pressure; Emily only notices this because it means she can focus the entirety of her attention on JJ’s face and not the profusely bleeding hole in her shoulder. The crimson blood dripping from her palm only serves as a reminder of how close she is to losing the love of her life. To being single again, a widow, a hopelessly miserable, never-to-recover, bereaved shell of a human being.

“Emily,” JJ whispers, and she’s crying, too. Her face is not hiding a single emotion raging through her, and while Emily usually finds JJ’s wobbly chin endearing, right now it’s purely agonising. “Emily, I’m scared.”

Emily has to bow her head for a moment and heave a single, shoulder-wracking sob that seems to tear though her throat with the same violence of the bullet that tore through JJ’s shoulder. She blinks the tears away and sniffs once before looking back up at JJ and offering her a watery smile, the absolute best one she can muster, and uses her clean hand to gently comb her fingers through her blonde hair, leaning down to press a lingering kiss to her forehead.

“Don’t be scared,” she whispers tearfully, brushing her thumb over JJ’s damp cheekbone, “I love you.”

“Don’t leave me,” JJ whispers back, tears still spilling down her cheeks, as they hear the sirens of the ambulance and a medic rushing into the warehouse, the floor of which will forever bear the stain of her fiance’s blood.

“I won’t,” Emily says through sobs she can no longer contain, “I won’t, darling, I’m here.”

“Promise?” JJ asks, visibly fading just as the paramedics arrive and ask Emily and Derek to make room.

“I promise, baby,” Emily cries earnestly, moving away just enough for the EMTs to do their job, just in time for JJ to completely lose consciousness.

⭐️

The hospital waiting room is warm, but Emily feels cold.

She stares blankly at the wall in front of her, a merciful sort of numbness taking over her body, leaving her far less frantic than the emotional wreck she was in the warehouse. It’s a kind of quiet far from peaceful, but she doesn’t have the energy to care. Her hands are so cold covered in JJ’s warm blood.

Spencer desperately tries to get her to come to the bathrooms and wash it off, but Emily refuses, just in case this is the last thing she has to remember JJ by. In which case, she has revolved to forever have a stained right hand as a permanent mark of her crippling grief. She will be branded by her devotion to JJ, and by the end that devotion came to.

Her only thought is of W. H. Auden’s poem Funeral Blues. It was read at her uncle’s funeral a few years ago. What a funny thing grief is: she could grasp the concept of such emptiness and utter misery filling your life after the death of a loved one, of course she could, but she’s never tangibly understood that kind of grief. She does now, and JJ — as far as she knows — is still alive. If she does lose JJ, though, she knows for an absolute fact that her life will forever lack meaning, lack purpose, lack joy.

Pour away the ocean, indeed, she thinks. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.

Emily knows, academically, theoretically, the damage a bullet can do. The shoulder is a complex weave of nerves, muscles, bones, tendons, and arteries; really, it’s one of the most complicated pieces of human anatomy, so, naturally, a gunshot wound in that particular area is far from desirable.

Spencer tells her as they’re waiting that the amount of blood JJ lost indicates that instead of the bullet hitting the incredibly delicate network of blood vessels, which would have led her to bleed out in minutes, it instead shattered the joint. This is good news and bad news. JJ is still alive. But she will need reconstructive surgery. She may never regain full range of motion. She will need months, maybe years of physio. Emily doesn’t know if this is what she wants to hear or not, but she vaguely appreciates that Spencer is falling back on his academic knowledge of an incredibly emotional situation as a coping mechanism.

Not that anyone really doubted it, but Spencer is proved right by the doctor that comes to greet the family of Jennifer Jareau six and a half hours after they arrived.

“Ms Jareau’s humerus was shattered, and her clavicle and scapula did not get off scot free, either. Luckily, the bullet missed her large axillary vessels, which is the most consolation I can offer you at this stage,” the doctor explains kindly. “We’ve stabilised her condition through surgery in which we did our best to tidy her shoulder, but she will be needing a total shoulder replacement in the very near future. Though, I understand she resides in DC and is in well-enough condition to be transferred there for the major operation and ensuing recovery.

“I understand… Emily Prentiss is her next of kin?” she asks, consulting her clipboard.

Emily nods blankly, the reassurance that JJ is alive beginning to settle in, weaving its way into her heart.

The doctor smiles empathetically. “I can take you to see Ms Jareau now. Her sedation will be wearing off any minute.”

The world gradually stirs back into colour as Emily lays eyes on JJ, very much alive, blinking sleepily in her hospital bed. Her gown is carefully tucked around the bandage on her shoulder and the fabric sling her arm has made its home. She’s ever so pale, sweat beading on her brow from the pain, but she’s alive. Emily will not have to recite Auden in a Church built for a God she doesn’t believe in while the only person that made her believe in anything lies in a coffin. Alright, she thinks as she walks into the room and sits down next to JJ’s bed, the moon can be unpacked. The sun reassembled.

As JJ manages a smile, though, reaching her good arm out for her fiance, craving physical comfort and affection, Emily thinks that the stars don’t need to be relit. The one in front of her, broken as she might be, long as her journey to recovery is certain to take, is bright enough to put all of them to shame.

Emily can’t help but break down in tears of gasping relief as she clasps the hand JJ’s outstretched for her, gripping it tightly and bringing it to her face, kissing it gently before pressing it to her cheek as her crumpled eyes leak pitifully.

“Hey, don’t be scared,” JJ murmurs in her croaky, post-surgery voice as she echoes Emily’s words some seven hours earlier, “I love you.”

Emily can’t help but laugh happily through her relieved, messy emotion at that, leaning forward to press a warm kiss to JJ’s slightly chapped, pale lips.

“God, I love you so much,” she promises, so much sincerity behind her words that JJ tears up in response. “I’m gonna be here through every step of the journey ahead, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know that,” JJ whispers, as her face contorts, emotion twisting her throat in knots. “I never doubted it for a second.”

And, well. Doesn’t that just say everything Emily needs to hear.

Clasp me close in your warm young arms, While the pale stars shine above, And we’ll live our whole young lives away In the joys of a living love.

- I Love You, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

@strippersenseii @criminalmindsvibez

[ephemerlskies]

in the stars tonight | pjm

⇢ pairing: jimin x reader

[other members - seokjin, taehyung, namjoon]

⇢ genre: series, ANGST, enemies to lovers au, actor!jimin, actor!oc, (eventual) fluff if you squint

⇢ word count: 8.4

⇢ genre: Landing a role that might launch your entire career as an actor had come with the most unpredictable and daunting circumstances: grappling with the tragic loss of your boyfriend, Namjoon, and co-starring in a film with the vexing yet enchanting (and famous), Park Jimin.

⇢ warnings: explicit language, themes of grief/loss, themes of depression, (many) mentions of death, mentions of driving under the influence (please stay safe!!), themes of alcoholism, themes of escapism, mentions of alcohol, mentions of marijuana, unhealthy coping mechanisms, lots of internal dialogue with one deceased boyfriend, arguing/bickering, seokjin being seokjin, eventual love triangle (ish) feud

♪ playlist: dynamite - bts, move! - niki, saint nobody - jessie reyez, through the night - iu, ilomilo - billie eilish, the truth untold - bts, slow dancing in the dark - joji ♪

╰ series index: 01 | 02 (coming soon)

a/n: i, and i cannot emphasize this enough, can't believe this came out of me.... it was just a lil idea in my head, but then it expanded into this entire story that was way too long to fit into a one shot. so, here's me serving up a hot plate of enemies to lovers with a generous side of angst and longing!!! i hope y'all enjoy (and hate) arrogant jimin as much as i did hehe <3 ps i have no idea how long i want this series to be i'm lowkey winging it

The world does not slow down for anything. Not for catastrophes or miracles or even something as devastatingly common as death.

When your boyfriend of three years, Namjoon, lost his life due to another's drunken mistake, you realized this. The world revolves on a scheduled orbit, and not even your tragedy wedged a wrench big enough to halt life just a moment. Just to let you breathe and grieve without feeling left behind. However, you were left behind, both by the world and him.

Every sun and moon, every skipped meal, every unfulfilled rain-check, every isolated Saturday night, and every cancelled audition that came as quickly as they left paid tribute to this merciless phenomenon. It seemed you now existed just to watch the days pass, just to balefully relive the moments before Namjoon's passing. And that seemed to have been the only way you could have survived. To make a recluse of yourself because if the world was careless enough to let someone as amazing as him go, then what held it back from spilling even more wreckage into your life? For the past six months, you stuck to the cold, dead past. It was all you had to hold onto; letting go meant plummeting into a depth far too unknown and inescapable.

You and Namjoon were steadfast. You were still steadfast, or more appropriately, stuck now that you had no one to be loyal to anymore.

You and him were one of those couples other people saw and wished they could replicate into their own lives, but when it came down to it, rooted for your happy ending with him. The type similar to that of highschool sweethearts who beat the odds, or the type whose encounter fell along the silver lines of fate. Something beautiful that automatically made all the love poems authenticated by you and him. And when he held you, the idea of worry or evil seemed like concepts that did not exist past fictional tales. So warm, so loving, now gone.

The way in which you and Namjoon grew over the three years you were able to love him was in a convergent manner.

Your branches and vines were woven into his, and his into yours. Even your roots, the elements of your past, began to entangle beneath the soil. To root between each other meant there had been a foundation from which you grew, a stability that was once neat. There was no boundary of which would discern your life from his. And at one, more favorable, point in time, your life did belong to him. Namjoon was someone you only knew for a mere fraction of your life, however the moment he wandered into it, you had unlearned how to continue without him.

You didn't think you would have to relearn.

But then one decision forced you to do so. One person, who decided paying fifteen bucks for an Uber was not a wise enough investment, ripped out the plant of his body from your shared soil by means of inebriated judgment and a missed red light. You had no choice but to absorb the cruel sustenance of the sun completely alone. Most of your branches of life were left barren, with torn twigs where your body once borne fruit and leaves and beauty. But the roots were where most of the pain inhabited. A stubborn, sharp ache resided in your chest, deep enough that you might have had to be cut open and searched through to find the source.

It had been six months of 'Sorry for your loss' and 'Gone too soon' and your personal least favorite 'He's in a better place now'. It made you angry, because was there a place better for him that didn't have you in it? How could anyone know what was better for him when they didn't experience something as tender and gentle and loving as your relationship?

But none of the sympathetic smiles or half-hearted condolences made you quite as angry as the monster who was too selfish to call someone to drive them and consequently punctuating the eternity you were meant to spend with Namjoon. You always followed the virtue that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Forgiveness was a sweeter release than anything else, but if you could, you would take that drunk driver's life in a heartbeat. You would have gauged out your own eyes if the chance fell into your reach.

Though, no matter how hard you screamed at the universe for hurting you, despite the countless pleas to somehow retrospectively tell Namjoon not to go out for something as trivial as toothpaste so he might be alive today, holding your hand in this waiting room, telling you that you're going to do great, you knew the world wouldn't stop for you or your sorrow.

It revolves, waits for no one, and you had to pace yourself to jump back into the turning carousel of life.

"___. We're ready for you!" His voice was ten notches above a volume that wouldn't irritate you. The only hint you let slip that his tone made you want to throw this script at his crotch was the muted sigh.

You knew this audition was going to play out like the rest. They would ask you to read, stop you in the middle of your monologue, then say something like 'Thank you for your time, we'll get back to you soon' which was show business code for 'We are not giving you the role'. The only reason you were here was because you had been out of work for too long, the piles of overdue bills on your kitchen table a cruel reminder of that. Plus, you knew Namjoon would have told you to go.

He would have said something like, 'Get your lazy ass out of bed and go to that audition! You don't want Hollywood to miss out on a star just because you want to sleep in fifteen more minutes'. And it would have worked. It always had. Now, the only motivation that came to your aid was the echo of his voice, and even that had begun its slow descent into forget. Other than that, guidance of your own volition was as fleeting and disarrayed as a violent wind.

"Hi, my name is ___, and I will be auditioning for the lead. Jordan." Your hand must have been fielding its way through a nervous tick. The person you assumed was the director was eyeing the way it had been contorting at your side, and you hated showing that you were nervous.

"Perfect! We've already casted the other lead role. This audition will mostly be based on whether we think you'll have good chemistry with him." Him. So your possible running mate was a man. Before a list of names engraved on rows of stars cemented into the Hollywood walk of fame ran through your head, you lifted the script and collected all the air your lungs would allow.

Maybe, you thought, my courage and passion might come with it.

And when you opened your mouth, something magical that you credited to talent claimed sovereignty over your body. Now, you were Jordan. Jordan didn't have a dead boyfriend, now ex boyfriend, or luggage enough grief to sink a depression into the crust of the Earth. Jordan was a kind, low-energy, and sentimental artist coming into an age of overwhelming success and fortune —and love.

That's what alluded you in acting. For a moment, you could escape your life, leave your pain on the back burner while you emerged into someone who was unacquainted with the pain of losing the love of your life. It was akin to a drug, administering an intoxicating fill of temporary serotonin. Instant relief, and if you got this job you would have your fix of this twisted sort of high that tempered the Namjoon-sized void in your life. And Jordan's life definitely seemed to have, quite literally, all the things yours lacked.

"Wow, ___, was it? That was absolutely incredible!" The hand-covered whisper that followed this appraisal gave you time to begrudgingly peel of the Jordan mask. Within a half second, all the pain seemed to compound into your body. If you hadn't already shaped your entire life around that weight, you would have fallen over. Though you had done this, and even worse, you had been shouldering it for so long, you would have felt naked without such a burden. "Okay, well, we have a few more auditions but I think we have our Jordan! We'll send your manager the full script along with the schedule for the first week of shooting in about two weeks."

"Uh-" If you had not said something quick, the opportunity might have slipped away all too fast, the way Namjoon had. You vowed to grab hold of anything remotely good that arose into your life, giving you more than late nights of choked sobs and transfixed gazes out of half-curtained windows. This offer was clutched tightly in your fist. "Oh... Th- thank you! Thank you! Fuck, thank you so much. This means so much to me, thank you!"

Before you proliferated the meaning of the words thank you and the director's smile turned into rolled eyes, you stumbled your way out of the door. Waiting on the other side was a world that might strike against you with partially docile cruelty. The wind pressed against your skin, almost blowing away all your grief with the help of this successful audition.

That feeling, as always, was as comforting as it was fleeting. Because the scars of your past would not have budged for any brash current. Because your next thought disrupted the scant flourish of joy. It was the thing that came easier and sooner to you than eating and blinking; telling Namjoon any news of both good and bad ranks, sharing your life to celebrate or stress over. One of the many things that remained by an undissolvable adhesive along your mind. You tried to soak it away with liquor or smoke it out with weed, but there was no breaking of habits you loved almost as much as Namjoon.

I did it, Joon. I landed my first role. You thought, because that was the closest you could have gotten to relaying the news.

Your heart began to physically hurt. Heartaches were literal in your case. Literal and grim. You felt the grip of loss pierce its sharp thorns into your flesh. It had nearly been as painful as all the times your words were met to deceased ears, speaking to someone that had not belonged to you anymore. Six months had passed and pain cannot tell time in the way people can. So, you knew the marathon of your grief was one that followed its own metaphorical clock. You just had to keep running in hopes you could make it out alive.

Though, being Jordan for the next six months would help momentarily satiate your grief. If there were a remote for your emotions, this role would be the mute button. Your pain would still move as it usually would, but now it would be silent. You wouldn't have to listen to its unforgiving taunts and crippling obscenities. It was only just that you were paid reparations for six months of utter misery with six more months of narcotic, soundless distractions.

Two Weeks Later

If the universe had given you one good thing, it was skill and dedication to your craft. The script was memorized in just short of four days, and even a sizable amount of lines of the other characters had been stacked atop your memory. Doing an acceptable job at this role wasn't something that was worried you. In fact, the idea of wearing another's life on your body and on your heart was something you looked forward to. 

It was a bit difficult to convince yourself how good this natural born gift was when the universe took something that felt a thousand times more crucial to your existence. Acting, or anything else that planted joy in you, was a consolation prize for merely participating in life. Namjoon was the reward you were meant to win in the end.

And you had no idea what the hell to do when the prize becomes in all of the sense of the word unattainable.

You hadn't driven in six months, despite the run-down Honda parked in front of your street, desperate to be given some sort of purpose. It was too much. Ever since the accident, the idea of manning a wheel that could take away more than it could ever offer was a responsibility you felt entirely too daunted to assume. Even though seat hogs, missed busses, and overcrowded walkways had been inconveniences of an indescribable level, it wasn't enough to put your body into the same vehicle that derailed your life.

Luckily, the bus stop was only three blocks away from the studio. It gave you plenty of time to get into character, however it also nestled in a span of time for Namjoon's voice to filter in and out through running your lines.

He talked to you a lot. As much as it made you want to cry, you held onto it, feeling as though it might be the last of his voice you'd be able to recall. If Namjoon's internal commentary were to suddenly disperse, you might forget his voice entirely. And you wouldn't admit this to anyone else, but you would always answer back. Sometimes out loud, and sometimes, when company forced you into sanity, you responded mentally. It kept you separate from life and any form of interaction with actual people, but it felt better than living in a world without him. Additionally, it helped keep his voice alive, which when you thought about it, was such sick irony. His voice, alive, his heart and mine and soul, dead.

And that was the only downside to acting. When there was another mind you had to engage in, Namjoon couldn't have broken the barrier and his voice wouldn't even register as an echo. Perhaps that was why you waited so long to dive back into your job. It felt synonymous with betrayal to do anything that would sever your connection already hanging by a single, fragile thread.

"___? Hello?" You were immune to every condescending gesture or vernacular weaponized in Hollywood by now. Your makeup artist's snaps fell into the base of annoyance you had grown used to. "Did you hear me? You're all ready."

Her voice wasn't too abrasive. If anything, you should be the one apologizing for dazing in and out of consciousness. Though, Namjoon's sweet compliments about how beautiful you looked with your stage makeup should have been the one to acquire this remorse.

"Sorry. I'm, uh, tired. Not used to waking up at six in the morning quite yet."

"Well, get used to it, or you'll have a rough few months ahead of you." Her laugh had shed whatever shell of pretentiousness once veiled her previous impression. "I'm Nayeon, by the way. I've heard many great things about you, ___. Let's hope you live up to the hype."

Nayeon's nudge was friendly, and it comforted you that within the first day you hadn't pissed off the person who could easily turn your face clown-like with a few heavy strokes of her brush. She was beautiful, too. If she hadn't been dressed in a black T-shirt strewn with foundation and powder stains, then you would have mistaken her for an actress.

"Let's hope so... I guess the director was selling me better than myself." Your eyes scanned the area, though no one seemed a fitting candidate to be your lead. "So, who's the other lead?"

"Park Jimin. I'm surprised they didn't tell you yet. I guess it's some obscure, artistic director decision to keep you in the dark. I’m lowkey fangirling right now… But, don't tell anyone that." Before you could respond, let alone react, Nayeon had collected all the products she needed for her next subject and was about a yard away from you. "Good luck, rookie!"

Park Jimin. You've definitely heard of him, but it surprised you that someone like him accepted a role in a romantic, indie, coming of age film that had not the budget to pay half of what he usually made in his repertoire of previous movies. He was certainly what one would consider an 'A-list' celebrity. The type paparazzi actually cared to stalk, and fans recognized in public, but were too shy to approach due to his sheer intimidation. It hadn't eased your nerves that he was notoriously withdrawn when it came to the behind the scenes portion of shooting a movie.

And, like any decent person, you did your very best to refrain from placing judgments without the opportunity for them to fill in their own narrative. Most of what you ‘knew’ of Jimin had been hearsay. However, you had some hunch Jimin wouldn't qualify as one who labored tirelessly for the roles he had landed or authenticated any sort of compassion with his rising fame.

See, acting and snagging a big role in a movie was characterized as a tall building for you. If one reached the top floor, then they would assume a wealth of opportunities and Oscar nominations and acclimation. Of course, this film industrial structure had various modes of climbing to the top. Some had stairs which called for more excretion and effort but still, all you needed were persistent legs, then each step would eventually get you where you wanted to be.

You had more of a ladder. Each wrung was slanted at an angle of which only deepened your brawl with success and had not been sanded down enough to save you from a generous supply of splinters. After a while, your hands began to ache and the fear that some high-society type would kick the base of your ladder always stalked the forefront of your worries. It certainly had not been a choice means of arrival to whatever awaited you on that top floor, however it was the only one available.

And while you had a ladder to overcome, Jimin had an elevator. The most he'd ever expend to reach that coveted floor was a few presses of a button. And perhaps his only sacrifice would be sharing the elevator with one or two others. Things just worked out for people like him. And an elevator’s delivery was always in a manner that was quicker than the likes of a staircase or a ladder.

When he arrived on set, dragging himself like his own body was a weight he shouldn't have to carry himself, you fought that instinct of yours to assume everything you needed to know from him.

Just because he's wearing sunglasses inside doesn't mean he's some arrogant asshole, even if that is the most cliché character trait of one. This internal lecture was certainly of Namjoon's doing, since he was always one to never run out of allotting the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, I guess. But, come on, he looks like a fucking idiot. You replied as if he were really there before walking up to the callous man with your gauntlet thrown down by default. No need getting on Jimin's bad side, because you were sure it's complement was being blacklisted from the film industry. Instead of sharp edges you offered him a non-threatening smile and handshake.

Play nice. Namjoon reminded you before you had the chance to decide what you wanted to say.

"Hi! It's such an honor to be working with you. I'm ___." Jimin looked at your hand like you had filled it with mud and were intending on smearing his Gucci jacket, which you assumed was worth more than your monthly apartment rent. "Um, wanna touch base before we start shooting or..."

If his admonished glare at your hand wasn't encouragement enough to retract it back into yourself, then what he said, or more fittingly, what he didn't say next was.

The way his sigh infused a scoff within it made you feel small. It felt like fire, how thoroughly it burned you into a pile of ash, but then it felt like a gust of prickled wind that would scatter your remains completely. If it had not been for the way his head shifted from your head to your toe, you wouldn't have known that his shielded eyes were trailing the length of your body. Such a glare seemed like a calculation of your worth; it must have totaled out to that of a fly he had to swat away because the second you stood on the outside of his peripheries you stopped existing in his world altogether.

His back made a longer impression on you than his eyes, and that was your que to huddle yourself in the corner and stick to the two things you were best at.

Imaginary conversations with Namjoon and rerunning through your already memorized lines.

Before you say anything, I already think he's a prick. It might be pathetic to have instigated theoretical conversations with your dead boyfriend, but the world wouldn't know he would have scolded you first for already constructing an agenda to avoid Park Jimin whenever you could. You just felt an itch to lay down the first word.

You never know, maybe he had a bad day.

Yeah, well people like him don't need to be professional unlike the rest of us. I mean, I'm on the verge of openly conversing with you and I'm the one that has to turn the other cheek? Your script was decorated with a number of wrinkles. Proof that your anger was sleeping from your insides in the form of tightly gripped hands that were pretending to pinch Jimin's skin instead of the script. For once, you felt some grain-sized semblance of luck for having a grasp of acting to pull off pretending to love Jimin.

"Hey." You weren't quite thrilled to meet the person you had imagined pushing down a staircase standing over you. Without his glasses, it was difficult to remember why you had been so angry with him and you hated that. His eyes consisted of more than just irises and pupils, though you would not have been able to place what exactly accompanied these features. They were just eyes, after all, parts of a body. Functional. Mechanical facets of being. And yet, his seemed more than that. More than just sense mechanics. Perhaps beauty. 

But for him to have been beautiful, it would have tainted the very idea of beauty.

"We're about to start shooting. Don't make this difficult, I'm trying to leave on time." 

"Okay... Sure." Those were the two words you substituted for the 'fuck you' itching to crawl from your throat.

"I'm Jimin, but you know that already." The way he spoke was punctuated as though it was a waste of his time to spend any attention on you. If you weren't already drained of your strength from that tube of toothpaste that was some sort of paraphernalia of the night Namjoon became an article of your past, then you would have rolled your eyes or retorted with something that would knock him down a peg.

"I do." Your own weak will bothered you more than Jimin. "Um, I-"

"Let's not." Though he had no idea what you were about to say, a part of you agreed to not even indulge in small talk with him. It would be too forced and uncomfortable and that might leak into your performance on camera. Still, he had an abrasive way of going about it that made you want to disagree with him just to be able to lie contrary to him.

"Fine." It rolled off your tongue easily, like silk. His lingering eyes had you wondering if you somehow impressed him with your passive agreement or insulted him for not groveling for his approval. Either one would have satisfied you.

"Alright! Looks like you two got acquainted. We're jumping right in." The director, Kim Seokjin, was chirpy. Even if this project wasn't necessarily mainstream or highly anticipated, he was the type to salvage all his passion and pour it into anything he created. It comforted you knowing someone other than you found this to be somewhat life changing. "Please, Jimin, ___, on your marks. This is the scene where you two meet, so we're hoping you two can infuse that feeling of being slightly awkward but nevertheless enthralled in each other's presence. Got it?"

"Yessir." You said, and Jimin only produced a nod which seemed generous for him. Fighting the urge to snarl or squeeze your brows together came as a difficulty you had to practice at.

"Slate! Quiet on set..." Seokjin’s voice filled the empty space of the entire studio.

"Scene one, take one." Just as the snap of the slate reverberated through the room, your eyes changed just as abruptly. Your gaze upon the set transformed it into your reality. You looked at Jimin and now saw Laurie, a young soul filled with enough dreams and kindness one could have mistaken him for a cloud; the kind that spoke in loving whispers and gentle caresses. He reminded you a lot of someone else you knew.

You tucked Namjoon's voice away with the rest of your grief and became Jordan.

Amazing things seemed to happen when you least expected them too. You guessed that was the nature of amazing things, for if you expected them then they probably wouldn’t feel so amazing. About halfway through the scene, after a number of cuts, re-shoots, directorial notes, you noticed something. Or more so, this something willed you to notice.

Once you fell into stride with your character, it became easier to pick up on the person acting opposite of you. Maybe you hadn't given Jimin enough credit before. You knew maybe was an understatement, though you felt a sting admitting talent had fallen into his hands just as all his accomplishments had.

Jimin's acting rested on the side most polar to your own. You replicated, he revolutionized. You became your character, shrinking yourself enough so that one wouldn't have been able to tell who you were beyond who you were playing. Jimin, however, made the character his own. There was no minimizing his own body to fit into the mold of the character. Jimin was the mold, and he sculpted the character to fit along himself. He forged his movements, voice, and confidence into whichever role he played and brought life to someone strewn with a signature of his own soul polishing said character. All the while, he was inventive with each intention and emotion that were strung into his lines.

It was difficult to pull this off, being that you could easily begin to just play yourself in a movie and neglect any character mannerisms that you were supposed to portray, however Jimin seems to slip in and out of his role with ease. And with each take, he peppered in more dimensions to a character. He gave meaning and depth to a person constructed onto a paper script until you couldn't believe this person didn't exist in real life.

That was the amazing thing that kept your well-rehearsed lines behind an impermeable wall of reluctant admiration.

What hadn't helped, though seemed to have been timed to a tee to unwind your sensibility, and timing had always worked against you like you had done wrong to it, was the part when Laurie was written to sneak his hand along your waist after Jordan stepped backwards into his body.

His palm felt so warm. So warm that the entire world felt too cold for you to be anywhere but apart from his touch. Then, all your lines spilled from your recollection. He was standing close behind you, the plush of his cheek tickling your ear and sending the entire world away so you and he could reserve this moment just for yourselves.

"Your line." His whisper wouldn't be picked up by the mic, though it had no trouble debilitating the rest of your senses. Did he intend for it to blur any sort of attraction his character felt for you into the life beyond the camera?

The director called cut to the scene, and it felt like a lifetime before you were released from the entrapping heat of Jimin's body. When you spun around, hoping you could at least dig through your throat to pull out a deflated apology, the smirk laced along his lips illustrated every bit of his arrogance and once again shut you up.

From the way his eyebrow was arched, you assumed he must have read your mind. He knew what he did to you, and it reminded you of everything you disliked about Jimin. Presumptuous, prideful in his taunts. It also reminded you that he stood many floors above you in this architectural competition of acting. You were grabbing hold of each wrung as you went, unprepared for something as disarming as Jimin. All he had to do was peer down at the sight of you to make you feel a hundred times lower than him. 

“___? What’s wrong?” You looked over to find Seokjin’s half worried, half irritated expression. 

“No, nothing. Sorry, I just blanked for a second.” Jimin’s snide chuckle at your confession to a faulty performance didn’t help simmer the burn of embarrassment.

"It’s okay, I get it.” The director offered a smile as a peace offering, and since he looked not seven years older than you, it had you assuming he was the laid-back type. “Let's take five. We'll block a few of the scenes and finish the rest of this and we'll call it a day."

You made your nest over at the snack bar. Shoving half of a donut into your mouth had almost resurged your energy. Nayeon made a swift return to pat your face with more powder.

"Hey, you're pretty damn good." You were stuck with a mouthful of donut to null any chance of responding. "Except for when you kinda just shut down at that last scene."

You would have felt embarrassed, or rather more embarrassed than you currently did, if it weren't for the light laugh that followed. All you had to reply with was a shrug.

"I mean, I don't blame you. Jimin's pretty hot and if I were cozying up to him during a scene I'm sure I would also fuck up my lines." Nayeon finished applying whatever touch ups she felt necessary, not without a suggestive eye arch. This either meant she was going to shuffle over to another actor in need of visual repair or she would stay and talk. Her continued monologue advocating for Jimin's talents and good looks proved the latter was what you had in store. "I mean, damn. Also, I'm pretty sure he's got abs under that shirt. So, are you into him? Is that it?”

"It's not like that." The harsh delivery gave an impression contrary to what you said. "I mean, I just... He's just really good at this. I guess I got kinda intimidated."

Normally, you would have sought Namjoon's voice ringing in your head about how you could do this, reminding you how he believed in you. It would have gotten you through the scene however, Jordan didn't know Joon.

"Well, he won an Oscar for a reason, babe." You finished the rest of your donut and begun a prowl for another savory comfort food. "I mean, damn, twenty-five and already winning Oscars and getting nominations. It ain't for nothing."

"Yes, this is helping so much, thank you." You twisted in sarcasm as if that would make you seem any less intimidated. Again, Nayeon laughed off any shroud of roughness coating your words.

"What, do you want me to lie? Is that how you want to start this friendship, with lies?" Her elbow nudged you, and that alone communicated more than the brief exchanges you two shared. Now, you had a friend. Someone else to talk with that wasn't a figment of your own imagination.

Look at you, already making friends. Your smile was not as hidden as you attempted for it to be. Namjoon's little encouragements had that effect on you.

"What's that smile for?"

"Oh, nothing." You scarfed down the mini muffin, turning towards Nayeon. "Just happy my makeup artist goes easy on the blush."

She winked, and you felt ready to be sent back into the throes of this film. You weren't keen on Jimin feeling closer to a competitor than a partner in this project, however if that is how he wanted it to be, you were never one to submit so easily. You were determined to level this playing field, and your communion with victory felt like a well-deserved birthright.

"Thought I told you I wanted to go home on time, rookie." You watched his lips shape such venomous words, since his eyes, the unnamed, nearly beautiful presence, might have sunk you back into that state of speechlessness.

"I take it you're not a method actor, since Laurie is so sweet and you're a fucking ass." It felt good for all of one second before a series of reprimands fueled by none other than Namjoon now had you on the brink of apologizing.

"Feisty, huh?" Again, his lips eased out sharp words as if they would not nick the plump skin as it went.

You hoped Joon had nothing to say about how you were now tracing the lush of Jimin's lips. And yes, it had been six months, though you knew your love-ridden heart had yet to free its hands from grabbing hold of Namjoon, still, the feeling of attraction, no matter how brisk it might have been, felt like you were committing adultery. Adultery, over someone who was dead. You weren't the one who left him behind, and at the same time, you never got that shiny patent of closure. There was no break-up, so perhaps that was an explanation as to why your heart was foolishly stuck in love, never realizing its oath to loyalty was graced upon the deceased. 

You thought of love now, while you were supposed to be getting into character. You thought of the one thing you once had held worn so easily, and now you had been chasing it knowing your legs weren’t enough to catch up.

There was a well in your eyes, supplied by the same source which fossilized a ragged lump in your throat. And you must have blinked twice as many times as you normally would since Jimin's eyebrows met halfway between his forehead as he watched you. Or, more disappointingly, he might have noticed your tendency to grow red in more places than just the whites of your eyes when you were about to cry. Holding those tears in hadn't helped with keeping your skin less flushed.

It frustrated you that he might have noticed, which only twisted you tighter into the verge of crying. You knew it was unlikely that his watchfulness of your pre-breakdown expression was due to a lapse of genuine concern. For all you knew, he was subtracting even more value from your worth, plummeting you into negative integers.

And if you weren't so dedicated to your craft, then you wouldn't have the ardor nor the ability to pull off acting like you loved him.

Nayeon is a good makeup artist, I think you have a thick enough cover of foundation and powder to hide it. That of course, along with any sliver of light in this dark tunnel, had always been attributed to Namjoon. He was the reason you kept going, the reason you had been able to get out of bed to drink a glass of water once in a while, the reason you did not completely break down every time a tube of toothpaste fell into your line of vision. Him and the memorialized voice was what chipped the lump free from your throat and dried your tears before they had the chance to spill.

"What-" Whatever motivated Jimin to ask you something had been gone almost immediately after it sprouted.

"Quiet on set!" There was no way you'd figure out what he was going to say if the director had mandated pre-shooting silence.

The rest of your day went accordingly. Nothing too devastating happened that cleared away the momentum of excitement of this being your first big role. Though, not that you weren't beyond grateful for this chance, you made a chore of reminding yourself to be aware of your good fortune.

And, with the help of a few well-placed improvisations that made you seem somewhat of a visionary in your craft, your previous mistake had been washed with water under the bridge in the director's eyes. It escalated your ego and confidence to watch Jimin scavenge for an unpracticed reaction to go along with the slight details or lines you infused into the scene. At a certain point, you could almost describe him as impressed with your acting. Maybe enough to bump your worth up a few decimals, not that that should be occupying your worries.

"Wow, ___! Look's like we hired the right thespian. Great work! By the looks of it, things will flow easier from here." The director, who you finally felt on a first name basis with, approached with a hug. Though, usually this would have sent red alerts, you could tell Seokjin had no ill intentions of the predatory type. "Also, you two have chemistry, but it's not quite there yet. I want this to be believable. There has to be some real life element of camaraderie if this story is going to be genuine."

"So, what exactly are you asking of us?" Jimin, of course, sounded all but thrilled with whatever Seokjin was suggesting even when it hadn't been specified yet. And though you hadn't expressed it outwardly, this aversion for what Seokjin has been suggesting was shared.

"I don't know, get to know each other? Method acting works usually. I mean, Jared Leto did it for that movie and he seemed pretty crazy." The attention was never yours to claim once Jimin had already pressed his phone to his ear and Seokjin was off reevaluating the shots taken today.

You were alone again. Surrounded by an entire crew and cast, but alone nonetheless. Your version of escapism was never as consistent as you needed it to be. All it took was a moment of stillness for you to drift into some place much darker than your current reality. Jordan was sealed away for now, and you were trapped in your own body. It felt horrible. Being you without the man who loved and cared for such a kindred soul felt no different than writhing in pain. Being you without him was empty. Before long, you might have fallen faint in front of your coworkers.

The only target you could acquire as of now was Jimin, taken away from the world for reasons much less burdensome than your own. Where you had a plight of grief to sift through, Jimin had a phone and most likely a supply of friends to text and busy himself with. Seokjin wanted you to get to know him, try your hand at method acting so to speak, and that was the excuse which allowed you to walk over and try to kindle some sort of conversation.

"Hey, so, uh..." The pause came to no avail, since it seemed as though you could have said nothing at all judging from his reaction. "Hey."

It took a fictitious clearing of your throat and three more seconds of unwavering silence to lure his eyes from his phone.

"What?"

As it had been for this entire day, everything involving Jimin was made to be some sort of challenge. A feat you had to overcome without an ounce of reprieve, just to remain standing.

"Seokjin said we should, like, get to know each other. Or, at least get along. I think that's a good idea." His eyes gave absolutely no clues to anything below the exterior of an expressionless face.

"Why are you trying so hard?" You waited for him to laugh, or even for a laugh of your own to slip and loosen the tension. A laugh to make what he just said a joke, victimless banter, because it would have been wildly insulting if that were the most genuine thing he had said to you all day.

"What the hell does that mean?" Your arms were crossed as if that would keep your heart safe from his cruel tactlessness.

"I'm not taking this shit seriously." He laughed, but it wasn't the one that you wanted previously. It sunk wounds deeper, with such a dull edge too. "It's just a side job so people think I'm humble, or whatever my manager said."

The puzzle began to piece together, it took this admittance from Jimin for the picture to emerge from ambiguity. This movie was some form of damage control for his reputation, and that might be because your accurately placed criticisms of his lackluster humbleness did not stand solitarily. Your big break had been reduced to a convenient plot of image reconstruction. You were familiar with anger, it was one of your trickier stages of grief to surmount, but it still affected you to the same degree as before.

He didn't expect a response. You could gather that much from the way he instantly turned back to his phone, rendering you nonexistent once again. Namjoon would have told you to remain civil. But Namjoon was gone. It hurt to think that way, but if his voice hadn't emerged to mitigate this situation now, then Jimin was yours for the taking.

"You're a fucking ass." It seems brash was the only approach to seize immediate attention from Jimin. His eyes widened as if you had grown twice as large and the vision of you wouldn't fit in his narrowed, judgmental glare. "This may be a joke or a throw away gig for you, but this means a lot to me."

"Wanna back off, Jesus. I only-"

"No, I don't wanna back off. I haven't had the best year, and having a co-star that treats me like shit isn't really helping either. And, I get it, you're some sort of elitist who thinks they earned their success." You scoffed, tethering his eyes with yours as though there were a string tying them together. And with each step closer you took, the knot only secured tighter. "But people like you, men like you, don't do shit to earn where they are. But it's so cute the way you think you did! Truly, it's embarrassing watching you flaunt your ego around like you actually have something to be proud of."

"So it's like that, huh? You know, I was almost starting to respect you." The fact that his delivery suggested this was some sort of badge of honor made him all the more pathetic. You should not have put it past Jimin to boast over paying a fundamental level of respect where it's due.

"Wow," You doused a generous layer of sarcasm over your throat so the words came out so. "Basic human decency? From you? How can I ever repay you for such kindness?”

"I said almost."

"You're pathetic."

"Like you're one to talk."

"Yeah, well at least I don't pretend I'm hot shit." The tip of your shoes finally closed the gap between his. Again, you were snared in his warmth, however it didn't feel as tranquil as before. Now, it was closer to a pot of boiling water, evaporating flesh and bone until you were steam floating along the air, bendable and displayed out thinly.

"You don't pretend because you're just that bad of an actor, huh?"

It suffocated you, being this close with him; the blurry details of his face became sharp this way. His eyes were hypnotically watchful of your lips, preparing for your next gambit. You surrendered only a smirk, hoping it would antagonize him. And you could have sworn standing at the furthest point of the Earth from Jimin wouldn't appease this invasive thronging. The universe had yet to expand wide enough to provide an acceptable distance away from him. Until then, you were left with shallow bouts of breath tasting of metallic hatred, hoping those would alchemize into words that would make you seem more intimidating that you really were.

"Please, I could act circles around you. Your performance is transparent. Anyone with a scope of the basics of acting could see through you."

"Is that so?" You hated how quick you had been to notice his tongue slip along his lower lip. He must have found this delicious, patronizing someone who only had 'friend number five' or 'cashier' as proof of their employment. Jimin was greedy, devouring all the blood spilled from his wounding retorts.

In some perverse way, being the focus of his attention had you feeling fulfilled. Jimin, the man commonly sought after among the demographic of teenagers and middle-aged women. Not only were you proving your merits of qualification to act alongside him, but you had something to prove to yourself. You weren't going to let Jimin push you around without pushing him right back. You were strong enough to fight. It seemed to have come natural to you to enjoy provoking anger in him. It felt as if you were finally accomplishing something that was unattainable to anyone else. 

And even if you wanted to retreat, his gaze guaranteed your obedience. It was a battle, along with every other exchange you have had with him. Even when silence was the only parcel between you two, when the only semblance of noise was heavy, jaded inhales, it felt as though you and he were at wits to gather more air than the other. To see who would fall breathless first.

"You're pathetic." His words hit like physical blows, and you might have had to check for bruises along your ribs and torso from the churning sensation in your stomach.

"If I'm pathetic, I don't know what that makes you." You wanted your rebuttal to feel like fire. You wanted to scorch and sear blisters along his flawless skin for proof of any successful hit. “A privileged boy with enough of daddy’s money to get him any job he wants. But, I’m the pathetic one?”

He appeared unscathed, with one end of his lips rugged upwards, mocking you without needing any of the words to do so. Perhaps he'd gotten the best of you, as you were searching through your arsenal of refutes only to find it overspent. It would not have surprised you to discover his supply of acidic insults piling without a visible dent. 

His eyes looked fully employed in studying you, and you felt disrobed to be under such scrutiny from a stranger. Jimin seemed to have been reading you like words on a page, armed with a twisted smile that was unnervingly addictive, but you tried your hardest to keep your book closed. You didn’t want him to know how weak you really were.

"God, you're so-"

"Oh, great! Both of you are still here." Seokjin's voice reminded you that there was a world of events beyond you and Jimin. For a moment, you had felt secluded into a universe constructed especially for any collateral destruction that might have come of whatever war was about to be waged. "I have some notes for you two. Go home, read, digest, and come prepared tomorrow! I have full confidence in the two of you."

"Thanks." Succinct yet not lacking any tonal sentiment, Jimin got the first word in with the director, leaving you scrambling to find yours.

"Thank you." You were frustrated in how recycled your responses felt after Jimin handled them. Actors like you always fed on scraps of the higher-ups, and they were never as appetizing or filling as you would hope.

"See ya, ___." Your name sounded awful on his tongue, like his voice had filtered out the good parts of it and the waste remained spilling from his lips. Like dirt or decayed flesh, or both, and saying your name was akin to saying a slur.

"Fuck you." Those words couldn't sift through your screwed jaw or muffled throat, but it gave you satisfaction that it had been said in the slightest.

It wasn't until you were halfway to the bus stop that the realization pummeled you down a hole you hadn’t recollected being dredged. That whole time, what might have been the product of a mere ten minutes, was the longest segment you had gone without thinking of him.

It was the most intimately you had ever engaged in a conversation with someone other than the late, imagined voice in your head. And it was the most you've gone without consulting with said voice before speaking. You simply spoke, and listened, and responded; like you were normal. You couldn't tell whether that was good, because maybe you would finally be able to move forward with the world, perhaps catch up with the life you were supposed to be living. But, at the same time, the guilt festering something acrid in the pit of your stomach had you convinced this wasn't entirely sunny skies and bright futures.

"I'm sorry." What frightened you, besides your mental slip to keep the words meant for Namjoon in your head, was the unreturned sound of his ringing through. It took the longest ten seconds of your life for the mental silence to be furtively trimmed by your own train of thoughts.

Jimin had done this to you, that you were entirely sure of. Jimin and his carnivorous tongue and greedy glare had drained your head of its second conscious. The one it had adopted when Namjoon's body could no longer harbor it. And that's how he lived on, through you.

Jimin took that away, somehow. You could almost kill him for it, but you had not favored a life in prison nor tabloids that headlined the Park Jimin being murdered or 'Crazy, Jealous Co-star On Murderous Rampage Targets Jimin'. So, for the time being, all that was accessible was quiet hatred.

And you took that over nothing. You hated Park Jimin.