#or you could pause it every few seconds and plot out your turn manually

[atalana]

i can't speak for every disabled person, but here's some things i know are important to consider:

-timed challenges, particularly involving dexterity. some people cannot have good reflexes for stuff, so by all means include these in the main game, but having an option to remove timers (or skip difficult fights if you can't take the timed feature out of the fight) is going to be very helpful. i always breathe a bit easier when combat in games is turn based rather than real time because i know i won't get penalised for not being able to hit buttons fast enough. if it's something like a timed puzzle, allowing an option to either remove the timer or set the rate (a slower timer for people struggling, a faster timer for people who want the challenge) benefits everyone. obviously this isn't going to work for mmos, but generally people who have problems with this prefer to stick to games where they're not going up against other people

-crucial parts of the game relying on fine motor control. if it's a side challenge, sure, we can skip that, but if it's cutting off our ability to proceed, and it's something that cannot be done with shaky hands or it needs all five of your fingers to be doing different jobs? that's gonna lock some people out of the rest of the game. widen your margin of error, find something that can be done just with one or two buttons if possible, or allow an option to skip it

-i'm not blind so i don't know what good audio descriptions sound like, but i know there are blind people who enjoy video games, so they exist out there, i'd encourage you to do your research and see what you can accomodate for

-caption everything. please. don't include vital information only in sound. some people can't hear it, some have audio processing issues, some have panic disorders, some people just wanna be able to play the game without having to listen to the sound, if you've got important dialogue, put it in text form somewhere. this goes for important sound effects, too, if you have a sound effect you don't want your players to miss, describe it in brackets in your captions. (for example, (footsteps) or (heavy breathing) or whatever)

-warnings for flashing lights and sudden sounds, you don't gotta put these right before it shows up and spoil everything, but give a warning at the start of the game that they are present, and give an option to turn them off (when it comes to selling the game, mentioning your accessibility settings on the steam page or equivalent will go a long way in getting people to love your game, as you can imagine it's hard to commit to buying a game if you don't know ahead of time that you'll be physically able to play it or not)

-keybinds. most games do involve some measure of letting you change the keybinds, but i'm encountering this problem in deltarune at the moment, where you can only keybind numbers and letters, you can't even set space as a control. just, don't do that, let people use whatever keys are available to them in whatever configuration they need. and let us use the space bar it's the biggest and easiest key to hit

generally i'd say you can put whatever in your game, but give us a menu setting to get around it, the more flexibility you offer the player the better. supergiant games are honestly a good example, they're not perfect yet, but they've provided some of the best accessibility mechanics i've seen so far, in that everything is variable. if you want a more challenging game, there are a huge amount of difficulty settings, but there's also things to make it easier, they have an auto aim system, keybinds can be changed to anything you like, and their most recent one (hades, the one that actually got popular) introduced god mode - basically it's a game that relies on a certain level of failure, so they can't make you immortal immediately or you'll lose the story, but every time you die makes you 2% more resistant to damage, so you know you'll get enough failure states, but eventually you'll get to the success as well, even if you're struggling immensely with fights

all video games should have a “I’m shit at video games but I’m curious about the story and I don’t want to watch a let’s play” mode

[keilemlucent]

lavender latte: vii

(M (for now!)

hawks | takami keigo x reader

ao3

chapter 1   ||   chapter 2  ||   chapter 3   ||  chapter 4   ||   chapter 5   ||  chapter 6   ||  chapter 8  ||

masterlist

word count: ~5.2k

the details

warnings: a little spice (see that M warning!), soft shit & emotional convos

beta’ed: @keiqos 

---

wow :’^) through thick and thin, this one got here! thank u to molb for beta reading!!! this is beginning of the second act/final half of the story, a little ~*plot*~ if u will. enjoy 💗

||||||||||||||||||||||

Being in Hawks’ arms was heaven, you were sure of it.

When he’d said that he’d ‘never done this before’, you, that first night, had confirmation that ‘this’ definitely did not refer to physical intimacy. It couldn’t, not with the way he had touched you. 

His warm, well-trained hands squeezing and pulling you apart perfectly. He read each of your breaths and sighs like they were an in-depth instruction manual that he was meant to study, memorizing the perfect ways to make you cry his name.

...

Hawks was a fast learner.

 “You’re gorgeous, you know that, right?” Hawks said with a kiss to your cheek, lips trailing to your jaw. “You’re fucking beautiful, angel.”

Your thighs hugged around his, your booted foot half-supported by the couch below. Straddling his lap had been a bold move, but neither of you complained, hardly. The shocked look that Hawks had first worn had melted into one of hot-blooded lust.

You drank it all in, him all in, greedily. 

“You’re not bad yourself, you know,” You giggled at the compliments. He’d been laying them on thick as the night wore on, not that you were complaining. “I wasn’t lying earlier, agreeing that you were hot and all. It’s a little distracting.”

“‘Distracting’?” You could hear the raise in Hawks’ brow. “Spill it, dove. How am I ‘distracting’?”

You opened your mouth, ready to give him an entire heap of ego-boosting praise about how fucking hot he was in civilian clothes (and in general), but the words died in your throat as his hands trailed along your hips, dipping just below the hem of your shirt. His touch brushed along your bare skin and the waistband of your bottoms.

You sucked in a shaking breath. 

“Angel,” Hawks’s sing-song voice washed over you as his nimble fingers stroked at your sides and quick teeth nipped at your jaw. “I’m waiting.”

His purposefully mind-snagging moves were all calculated, each brush and touch he gave you turning you gooey over him. 

“U-uh,” You stuttered, Hawks snickered against your skin. You really would’ve loved to give him some sort of lip, but the gentle bites to the fragile skin of your neck made your words turn to smoke in your skull. “I-I mean, right now, w-what you’re doing.”

Hawks being a tease was hardly surprising.

“I’m sorry,” Hawks paused, hot breath tickling your ear. “I couldn’t catch that, angel. How am I distracting you? What am I doing?”

The bastard.

“Y-You’re—” You cut yourself off with a yelp. Hawks had taken to sucking at a bite mark on your neck, laving the bruise with his tongue. Pain pricked deliciously across your skin, and you let your head fall away to bare more for him.

“I’m surprised, you’re usually so good with words.”

You normally were, the banter you and Hawks shared was a testament to that. But with his lips and searing hands grabbing and damn near worshipping whatever they could, you were at a loss for words. You were more than happy to, balling up the back of Keigo’s sweater in your clammy palms. 

 Keigo was in rapture, he was sure of it. 

The sweetness of the earlier moment of the night was still there in each peck and sweet caress. It radiated in each action. 

The tension had simply been allowed to break. 

The goodness was all foreign to him, something he’d never really known. 

Keigo had plenty of sex— good sex, by definition. He wasn’t a slouch in bed, he knew that much. He’d been given glowing reviews time and time again. But, that was all hookups or platonic flings, nothing even close to the stored up desires that were finally able to be expressed.

Your sweet body already trembling over him with just easy touches got him harder and hotter than he’d been in a long time, probably ever. 

It was you, as cliche as it was. The familiar scent of your perfume clouding over him, the little gasps and whines from the back of your throat, even the taste of your quickly salting skin drove Keigo wild. And it was all so intimately close. 

He was suffocating in you and he loved every moment of it.

Keigo had already learned you from his side of the teashop’s counter. He mentally prided himself on recognizing your mannerisms after so many months of conversation and coffee. The little quirks in your movements and words that told their own stories.

The pride, of course, came from being able to use his trained interpersonal skills for something good, something that he knew was good.

With that first kiss, that sweet, sweet first embrace (of many), Keigo could finally indulge in learning about you in a new way.

He wanted to learn what would make you melt. 

Keigo’s wings twitched, sensing how each nip to your jaw made your hips stutter like you were repressing the urge to roll them down onto his lap. 

With each press of his thumbs against your sides, he could feel your breath catch, soft sounds muffled in the back of your throat.

You were perfect.

 “H-Hawks!” His name cracked from your lips as he dragged down the collar of your sweater, sucking a bruise onto your collarbone. 

Hawks chuckled against your neck, hot breath making you hazy in the best way, “This alright?”

“Uh-huh,” You nodded, giving him all the permission in the world to go to town.

Hawks wasn’t too rough with you, just sparks of teeth and nails that made your chest arch into his own. Keigo seemed more than content to have you in his lap, undoing you slowly like it was his divine mission. 

It might as well have been, with his pretty scarlet wings unfurled. You’d never seen them so close, noticing all of the filaments and their depth and colors. 

Throughout you and Hawks’s long, handsy makeout session, his wings (had they always been so massive?) slowly stretched out and open with each gasp and grunt. You’d catch the feathers trembling, shuddering when you ran your hands over the lean muscle of Hawk’s chest, fingers tracing up his ribs. You watched the plumage dance from their roots to the largest feathers when you graced him with the rare grind down onto his straining bulge.

“Can I touch them?” You asked breathlessly, head tilted to allow Hawks all the room in the world to mark up your neck.

He paused, the feathers shuddering in a wave-like pattern. You were mesmerized.

“They’re sensitive, so you have to be gentle.”

You paused, but only for a moment. 

Hawks’ words from earlier echoed in your skull:

“I’ve never done any of this.”

Further questions rattled just behind it.

What does that even mean?

He certainly knew how to turn you into a puddle with confidence, so you could only assume the tabloids had been somewhat right in saying that he was... experienced. 

(You were confident that you were only seeing a glimmer of what he was capable of. The prospect made your breath leave your lips hotter and harder.)

You shoved the thought off in favor of reaching behind him, carefully placing a hand on a downy bone near the root. 

Hawks went rigid with your touch, freezing against your neck. The grip on your hips was nearing bruising, but you didn’t move your hand other than a few gentle strokes from the pads of your fingers.

It had Hawks shaking beneath you. 

“This okay?”

Hawks nodded, taking a big breath, pressing his face into your neck, “Yeah. You won’t break me, I promise.”

You trusted him.

You ran your thumb along the spindly bone. The texture was odd, but not unpleasant, firmness covered by petal-soft feathers. Even if it had been weird to touch, you wouldn’t have minded. 

You couldn’t have, not with the high, sinful moan that croaked from Hawks’s lips.

You smirked, “Does it feel good?”

Hawks’ breath grew more ragged as your grip drifted to the roots. 

It was more than enough of an answer. 

“That seems like a yes— Why don’t you tell me about it? How my hands feel right here...”

You could tease Hawks right back.

Your hold went the tiniest bit tighter, a few of your nails barely grazing him.

 Keigo hadn’t been expecting the touch.  

No one touched his wings. He plucked and preened them himself, using a bit of special oil for them on the rare occasion that he was in the mood for some pampering. His time training with the Commission drilled into his mind that his wings were him, beautiful weapons that required coveting.

So, he surprised himself when he so freely allowed you to touch them.

Then again, he trusted you an almost scary amount for the lack of definition your... relationship now had. 

When your nails went against the grain of the small, soft, feathers at the base of his wings, the moan that ripped from his throat was entirely involuntary. The way his hips bucked up was too.

The way he accidentally sent you tumbling to the ground was very unintentional.

If Keigo hadn’t been caught in the absolute euphoria of his wings being touched by someone good for the first time in his life, he probably would’ve been able to catch you.

But, he was distracted.

 Your back hit the carpet below, uninjured leg bracing your fall while the booted one shot up awkwardly, saving it from any impact. Your head spun despite not being hit, fully jarred from the sudden motion. 

Hawks immediately sat up, sputtering and helping you from the ground. His feathers aided where they could, re-propping your boot and settling you against him. 

“It’s okay, it totally happens, Hawks,” You tried to soothe him. 

“Are you sure? I can get you so ice if you need���”

“Hawks, I’m alright, really, love” The affection slipped out easily as you popped a kiss onto his jaw. “I’m totally okay. Besides, it’s worth it to know how sensitive those wings of yours are.”

“Be careful there, angel,” Hawks’s cheeks lit with blush, smothering face in your hair to hide it, “Using those against me has some... consequences.”

The thought made your insides burn in the best way. 

“Oh yeah?” You raised your eyebrows, thinking of the wonderful possibilities. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I.”

Any... tension in the room diffused, though not unpleasantly. 

You fell against Hawks, pressing your nose into his arm. Your earlier fears of getting ‘too used’ to him were now very much a reality, an unavoidable one. You had already come to crave the heat of his touch and the baritone of voice. 

You accepted the fact, squeezing him.

It was inevitable, really.

...

You knew it was late, very late, probably early morning. You and Hawks had been all over each other for hours, and as nice as it was, you could feel sleep beginning to pull at the back of your eyes. Despite the exhaustion and quiet aches of the marks across your skin, you didn’t want to stop, not at all.

Admitting you were tired meant that Hawks had to leave and that would mean facing reality. 

As lovely as the evening was, there was plenty swirling that was left unsaid. Things that needed to be addressed, though you both stalled. There were plenty of bits and pieces that wouldn’t be pleasant to talk about, details that could ruin the precious air of the night.

You leaned into him, eyelids sagging against your will. 

“Aww,” Hawks giggled, pulling you closer by the waist, as if you had spoken your insecurities, rather than just thinking about them. “You getting tired, dove?”

You nodded against him, tucking into his side the best you could like it could stop the inevitable. 

“Do you want me to stay?”

The question surprised you. Your guts fluttered at the prospect. 

God, was it an alluring idea.

With obvious implications.

You swallowed.

 It’s all going too fast.

The months of leadup and heat between your thighs didn’t assuage your fears. If anything, it made your fear the deep-end of a night together more. 

“Hey, you’re getting nervous, I can literally see it,” Hawks frowned, tipping up your head. Even the little, casual touches he got to give you made your hearts pound. “I don’t have to.”

“No, it’s like—” You ran a hand down your cheeks. “I want you too, that would be very nice, I’m just a little...”

You struggled to find the words, even feeling your quirk begin to stir. Anxiety prickled like jolts of sour berries across your tongue, burning your eyes and nose. You scrunched your face, shaking your head and willing yourself to relax.

“Overwhelmed?” 

Hawks was right, of course, with his observational skills being so unmatched. He probably even noticed your quirk activating with the widening of your pupils.

“Yeah, you could say that.” you sighed, finding his hand to squeeze it. “It all just feels really fast, you know? I really want to sleep next to you, with you, yet... I don’t even know your real name.”

Hawks went still and tense. 

 Keigo hadn’t really thought about that part. 

Of course, you’d want to know his name. It was only natural, every hero had a civilian name.

Except for him. 

He was Hawks, the hero of Fierce Wings and unrivaled speed. That was him. His name was Hawks.

Keigo had been Hawks for years. His identity was tied to the name, melded to it. They were inseparable. He hadn’t been called anything else in so long, not since he was a shiny new recruit. Any other name had been torn from him, snuffed out and suffocated long ago. 

Every news report and every article, all the calls from friends and colleagues, every scolding he received was always for Hawks.

Never Takami Keigo.

Yet, sitting there on your well-worn couch, surrounded by the warmth of your apartment and your own heat nestled into his side, his given name bobbed to the surface of his psyche.

It lay on the tip of his tongue, Keigo mulling over the personal consequences of telling you his birth name.

This was all different for him anyway, right?

Maybe it would be good to use his name for something good. 

Maybe using his name would be okay.

(Even if it was scary.) 

 “Uh, Hawks? Are you okay?” You asked, rubbing his knee. 

His eyes had gone blank, gazing far-off like you’d never seen before. Hawks even had a nervous bounce in his knee. His body was rigid against yours.

Concern bloomed in your gut. 

“Hey, Hawks,” You tried to get his attention again. “You’re okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

Hawks shook his head, biting his lips and mussing his already sexed-up hair. You bit your lip, refusing to move, not wanting to force any unwanted affections on him. 

A sigh shook from his chest. 

Carefully, he met your worried gaze. 

His eyes, all prettied and honeyed, looked a hell of a lot more-wide and fear-filled then you’d ever seen.

 “It’s Keigo. My name is Takami Keigo.”

You rolled the name around in your skull. Reaching for his hands, you brought them into your own lap.

It wasn’t hard to tell that it wasn’t easy for him to say. 

“That's a really pretty name. Thank you for telling me.” Gently, you rubbed the pads of your thumbs into his palms. The sensation shot up Keigo’s spine, making him sit up a few degrees straighter. “People tend to hold a lot of tension in their hands.”

 Keigo nodded, unusually silent (you got him that way a lot), unsure of what to say, genuinely and truly. His heart was pounding and he was sure you could feel the layer of sweat slicking his palms. 

“You can’t tell anyone my name, (Y/N). Can’t even joke about telling people, okay?”

You squeezed his hands, “Whatever I need to do, I’ve got you, okay, Keigo?”

It was the first time he’d heard his real name in years.

He was incredibly glad that it was from you, assuring him in the same breath. 

...

Vulnerability was terrifying. 

Keigo liked you, irrefutably. A lot. But, all of the nuts and bolts of actually having a relationship (would you two even have that?) seemed daunting. There was plenty to figure out that you had been electing to ignore. 

“There’s a lot I won’t ever be able to tell you,” Keigo forced himself to fess up. He had to lie strategically all the time, but it wasn’t the time to. “Even if I want to.” 

“That’s okay. We’ll both have to be flexible.” You replied quickly, probably not taking enough time to fully mull over the extent of what you’re saying. You slid your hand into his. “Can I be honest too?”

“Of course.” Keigo tugged, urging you back onto his lap. He liked you there the best so far. He could wrap you in his arms so well, satisfying that deep need to keep you safe. 

When you got situated on top of his thighs, you wrapped your arms tentatively around his chest, careful to avoid the base of his wings.

“I’m terrified.” You pressed your face into his chest. “That’s probably why I didn’t say anything for so long.”

 “Oh, dove,” Keigo hugged you tight to him. “You don’t need to be scared of anything. I keep people safe. It’s literally my job.”

“It’s different, though, this kind of stuff,” You replied, voice soft and low. “Aren’t you scared at all?”

Of course he was.

A lot. 

And he had to say so, didn’t he?

Honesty— real, cogent, emotionally mind-bending honesty, felt uncomfortably new on Keigo’s tongue. 

He would have to learn to reflect your own. 

“I’ve never been with anyone before, not like this anyways.” Keigo hated how weak his voice was, nothing like the silken charm he was used to exuding. “So, you could say I’m a little scared.”

“We can go slow,” You easily responded, tilting your face to meet Keigo’s. “I know it’s not normally your thing, but I think we have to.”

“I’ll manage,” Keigo cupped the side of your face, the remnants of tension bleeding from the muscles of his back as he let himself smile (hopefully). “So, you want to?”

“‘Want to’ what?” You asked, tilting your head in his hands. 

Keigo relished the way you leaned into him, letting him bear a bit of your body weight. He accepted the responsibility without hesitation, an idle hand stroking at your hips. 

“I know that functionally, we don’t know a ton about each other, but,” Keigo exhaled, noting how your eyes went soft and a bit glassy. “And I’ve never done this, but like, a relationship. Try it, anyway.”

 You only took a moment to answer, hardly pausing. 

It was a given, wasn’t it? 

With the big, intense feelings that had made their home in your insides long ago and had been given so much time to grow, it only made sense to at least try. Your feelings had roots that ran deeper than just those suited for fucking for sport.

You already cherished each other. 

“Of course, tailfeathers,” You stretched to kiss the stubble on his chin. “I like you a whole lot, you know.”

“I like you plenty too, but really?” Keigo falsely frowned. “‘Tailfeathers’? I thought we were passed that one?”

“I dunno,” You smirked to yourself, curling your free, uninjured leg over his own. “Maybe I could be persuaded to find another bird-adjacent nickname.” 

“Like?”

“Is lovebird too cliche?” You looped your arm around his neck. “Maybe just birdboy, the classic.”

“Hmmm,” Keigo’s squeezed your sides. “Not sure if I’m much of a lovebird, dove.”

“You sure about that?” You flickered your eyes to note that Keigo had you entirely wrapped up in his arms, wings shuddering in time with your own breaths. “I think you might be on your way.

“Maybe,” Keigo huffed, pressing his lips to yours. “Just for you, dove. Just for you.”

You melted into each other, starting the beloved dance all over again, not caring how late the night wore on. You were both certain, silently, that this would not be the last time you’d find yourselves like this. You both could only hope that there would be many more nights spent tangled up in each other, both sweet and spiced.

For now, you, together, settled for the blessed slowness of it all. 

 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

 Keigo did stay the night. 

You loaned Keigo an old shirt (that you didn’t mind cutting slits in for his wings)  and a pair of sweatpants, even loaning him a toothbrush. Deliberately, you placed it in its own cup, just in case he stayed over again.

(He would.) 

It was a little nerve-wracking, clambering into bed together. 

Your room was decorated and lit the same way the rest of your home was. The same soft, diffused lighting cast your room with a yellow glow. You had taken a brief moment to hastily (but carefully) tuck several plushies on top of a desk in the corner, chatting over your potential embarrassment.

(Truthfully, Keigo thought it was adorable that you had a myriad of stuffed animals that you slept with. It made your bed look a whole lot more... nestlike. It scratched an itch deep in his bird-adjacent brain that he didn’t know he had.)

You two slid beneath the sheets, though you stayed sitting up, fisting the sheets in clenched fingers.

You knew the implications of sleeping together, obviously. 

“H-hey, you know how we said we’d go slow?” You swallowed, glancing down at Keigo.

“Yeah, dove?” He flipped onto his side, peering up at you. 

You fidgeted.

It was a conversation that you hated having. It was always met with disappointment or confusion or both.

“I meant it.” You sighed, relenting and fluffing a hand through his messy hair. Remaining blunt about your reality was always the best option, you’d danced around it enough that night as it was. “The overstimulation part of my quirk makes sex really... hard? I guess.”

You wished there wasn’t so much damn internalized shame shoved into your brain about this particular facet of your quirk. You didn’t give Keigo much of a chance to respond, good or bad. 

“Like, I can, don’t get me wrong, it just gets to be too much really easily, and like, I just need a bit more time—?”

 Nervousness ticked and writhed in your voice as you scrunched the duvet in your hands.

“Hey, (Y/N), It’s alright, I promise.” Keigo shifted, tugging you down into the sheets, facing him.  “Come down here.”

You lowered yourself cautiously, a mix of expressions crossing your face, all of which felt unfamiliar to Keigo.

As much as he teased and embarrassed you at the teashop, you’d never looked genuinely upset. Even when you were struggling to tell him how you felt, just earlier that night, you’d never looked so...

Uncomfortable? 

Keigo saw the crinkle at the corners of your eyes and the scrunch of your nose and quickly corrected himself: 

Guilt.

“We can go slow, as slow as you need. I mean it.”

You laid facing each other, the duvet settling over the two of you. Carefully, Keigo took your hand by the wrist, laying a soft kiss at the joint.

The guarded look in your eyes wasn’t one Keigo was used to.

“Really? You don’t mind?” Your gaze was trained on the sheets below, picking at a loose thread.

“I really, really don’t mind at all. I want you to be comfortable.” Keigo assured you the best he could, heart aching with your nervous glances. “Slow, remember?”

“Slow.” You repeated, finally giving him a bit of eye contact. “You sure? I don’t want to force you to curb your hero’s libido because of my quirk’s bodily side effects.”

“Okay, one,” Keigo huffed, tugging you chest to chest and peppering your face with the kisses he’d always wanted to. “How often do you think I bang?”

You snorted and relaxed visibly, “I mean, I’ve seen the tabloids, so I’m assuming all the time. Like, rabbit-level.”

“God, no, please don’t believe that shit,” Keigo groaned as he threw an arm over your waist. “I am bird-adjacent, as you say, not bunny-adjacent. Then you’re talking about Mirko—”

“Keigo,” You stopped him with a finger on his lips. “I’m not sure if I can handle the details of any of the top-ten’s sex lives, sans yours. Which hopefully includes me.” 

He spoke besides, “You’re telling me you don’t want to know about Wash’s—”

“Keigo—”

“I’m just saying, I have pictures—”

You silenced him, thank god, with a firm kiss you dragged him into by the collar. You made a point to hold him in place even as his wings twitched, nipping at his bottom lip. He licked into your mouth, pulling you forward by your hips. 

You decided to make it a habit to kiss Keigo breathless more often.

...

Keigo traced nonsense shapes and phrases on your sides, you sucking a few bruises well below his collar.

(You both opted that, sex or otherwise, Keigo wearing a shirt was... unnecessary.)

You settled under the covers spooning, your back against his bare chest. 

After everything that had happened that night, all of it, you were exhausted. 

“I have patrol pretty early tomorrow,” Keigo pressed a kiss to the back of your neck. “I’ll let you sleep when I leave, okay?” 

“No, I’ll get up a little too,” You could hear the slur of sleep in your words. “I’ve got a shitty little espresso machine. I’ll make you a drink, to go.”

“You sure? You need all the rest you can get with that leg of yours healing,” Keigo tapped your booted calf with his foot.

“Of course, Kei’,” You can feel sleep tugging you down, Keigo’s heat lulling you. “I miss making you drinks.”

 You didn’t see it— you were already half-asleep by the end of your sentence. But, Keigo hid his biggest smile in your shoulder, wings fluttering in time with the butterflies in his tummy. 

It felt good to sleep next to someone else, especially when it was someone you loved. 

 —

 But, all good things must come to an end, or at least to a momentary pause. 

Keigo was out the door as dawn rose, kissing you hard and long with a travel mug of a coffee in his hand. 

“I threw together what I could, making one of those warm feelings drinks,” You’d said as you pressed the hot tumbler into his hands. “It’s cinnamon, caramel cappuccino, pretty simple compared to what I’d normally make you.”

It didn’t matter, truthfully, you making it meant the world.

Keigo flew from your balcony, flying high physically and mentally. He took the time to stop at home and change into his hero costume. 

It gave him ample time to mull over everything. 

Despite the months of (mutual) pining, a lot had happened in such a short amount of time. 

He was happy, overjoyed, that things were finally out in the open. Getting to be near you and feel you was a luxury he was ecstatic to be able to indulge in. His heart would leap and jump against his sternum if he thought about it too hard or for too long.

That wasn’t to say that there weren’t to be challenges or complications. 

There were, of course, many details that would have to be sorted and straightened.

Hawks was a hero after all.

 His patrol was fairly calm, sunrise didn’t tend to be a time of high crime. 

Though, his sharpened eyes caught the telltale plumes of smoke on the other side of the city not long after he’d launched from his apartment. 

He flew as fast as he could, dodging between buildings and sending his fast feathers in front of him. The closer he got, the more the smell of smoke stung his sinuses. 

When he arrived at the scene, he dove into action.

An apartment burning was burning, nothing new or surprising.

Except, this was a well-groomed highrise, a nicer building in a very nice part of town. 

 It took Keigo a moment or two to realize that he’d seen the building before. He recognized it from the brochures and pamphlets he was occasionally given at heroes sponsorship events. He’d gotten plenty of papers and pitches for buildings like it too. 

...

Jets of orange flames burst through the windows, shattering them down its many stories. The blaze was thick and hot, searing Keigo as he flew around the building.

For this reason, there wasn’t a ton he could do to help, not with how flame and fire. The feathers he managed to send in burned up after only a minute or two. Even if he dulled their sensitivity, the feeling of flame licking the sensitive plumes made him want to shudder and writhe. 

He eventually opted to just help with rescue operations on the ground. He felt somewhat more adept at doing so, following what had happened in the shopping district the tea shop was in. His feathers were far more useful running supplies from place to place than trying to outpace flames. 

There were plenty of heroes around. 

Plenty were local, lesser-known pros. He recognized a few from the charts, top thirties maybe. They were mostly in plainclothes, no costumes or regalia. Some still wore house slippers.

And very few of them appeared to be alone. 

Usually, they stood with at least one other person, maybe a child or two. 

It dawned on Keigo once he saw Edgeshot appear from the rubble, helping a young man walk with a hand around his waist. As Edgeshot walked past Keigo, regarding him with a firm but curt nod, he noticed their twin wedding bands glinting against the mixing light of flames and the early morning. 

Oh.

 Keigo took in the remnants of the burned-out building, recalling its splendor from the ads he had been sent so many times and dismissed.

It was Hero Affiliate housing. 

He’d been given the spiel so many times as a young bachelor, that’d he’d tuned them out long ago. 

It was a trend that had caught on a few years prior, specific luxury buildings made for the family and partners of heroes. Better security, better resistance to disaster and villain attacks(sure), and a community of people who all dealt with the same struggles of being closely attached to a hero.

They were supposed to be safer.

Yet, he was staring at the corpse of the building, burned out and soggy. Around him were soot-covered civilians that should have never been in harm's way. That’s what complexes like this were built for. That was the intent, anyway. 

Yet, there stood reality.

Keigo’s kept the calm, laid-back smile on his face, his veneer up and solid as limestone, unfractured like it too. 

As Keigo aided where he could, his mind was elsewhere.

It was on you, undoubtedly curled up and asleep, safe.

But, could he keep you that way? 

...

He’d have to. 

|||||||||||||||||||

ko-fi

|||||||||||||||||

taglist: 

@thepandapopo​ @hawksexual​ @sinclairsamess​ @darcia22​ @inhalingsoysauce​ @yee-fxcking-haw​ @aproperthottie​ @seasalttrioforever​ @msgrungie @mia—merc @a-monster-love @call-me-rhee @peach-buns-unicorns @amethyst-rose-17 @mega-bastard @an-untamed-rose @ravioliplease 

[obsessedwithbbandsuju]

Forever

*Dialogue Prompt #3 for @2ya2yao​‘s Super Junior Prompt Fic Challenge

Well. If someone asked him, he would insist that it wasn’t mischief. It was for science, and his girlfriend was the subject.

Pairing: Park Jungsoo/Son Taeyeon

jagi: a Korean word that can be used to refer to one’s significant other

___   

The name Leeteuk wasn’t really associated with mischief in the idol world. Leeteuk was supposed to be the responsible leader of Super Junior, the tired mother who did his very best to keep a merry gang of crazy men sufficiently under control. And in some ways, Jungsoo knew, that was who Leeteuk was. But Leeteuk could also be mischievous, and right now Jungsoo was up to some mischief.

Well. If someone asked him, he would insist that it wasn’t mischief. It was for science, and his girlfriend was the subject.

Taeyeon was notorious for being good at, well… everything. Not only musically – though certainly that too – but athletically, linguistically, academically, practically, socially – he didn’t have the time on his hands to name it all. Not once had he seen her fail, or even so much as rattled.

And Jungsoo loved how capable she was. He did. But she had to have some weakness, right? It just wasn’t plausible that a human being could be such a natural in every field. There had to be something, and he was determined to find out what it was.

~

“Come on, jagi,” he whined into the cell phone, throwing in the jagi, a word he rarely used, to let her know how desperate he was. “I have to go soon, and Shimkoong is absolutely refusing to go where I usually leave her when I’m away. I don’t know who else to count on. Please?”

“Okay, okay. You always know how to get what you want.” On the other end of the line, there was amusement in Taeyeon’s voice as she accepted his request. Jungsoo gave a mental shout of triumph. “Thanks, Taeyeon. I’ll have her over soon. I love you.”

“I love you too.” The sincerity that rang when she said those words warmed his heart, distracting him from his plotting, even for just that second.

Once she’d hung up, he scooped his dog into his arms and gotten into his manager’s car, asking him to head quickly to Taeyeon’s apartment before they arrived at the filming location. Usually they stayed together in his place, but with both of their schedules packed for most of the days of the current month, they’d decided it might be more convenient to stay apart from some time so the all the chaos didn’t clash in one apartment.

At his girlfriend’s place, Jungsoo watched Shimkoong intently as he handed her over to Taeyeon, who stroked the dog’s head and cooed. Shimkoong tended to get rather cranky in unfamiliar places, especially when he wasn’t around, and when she got cranky she could keep it up for several days at time, running around and barking and refusing to listen – which was what he was counting on. He thanked Taeyeon one more time with a kiss on the forehead, to which she laughed and swatted him away playfully. Before he left for the broadcast he was filming that day, though, she still sent him off with a kiss on the lips (since he insisted) and a “good luck”.

The filming took the better part of the day, and they paused in between only for a thirty-minute lunch break and forty-five-minute dinner break. By the time he was finished, Jungsoo was exhausted, but there was one thought that kept energy coursing through his body. He headed over to Taeyeon’s apartment, fully expecting to arrive to a relentless Shimkoong scampering around, barking up a storm, and an annoyed girlfriend. But when he walked in through the door, he saw his dog running up to him happily, wagging her tail. Trailing behind her came Taeyeon, looking calm and collected as ever. She shot him a smile, almost like she knew what his scheme was.

Jungsoo pouted.

~

Jungsoo stared at the instruction booklet in his hand and then back at the scattered parts of the new computer he had bought and was trying to assemble. He’d made some progress, but the pieces were still far from a working device, and he couldn’t help feeling that this was his limit; he had had yet another filming for another variety show earlier that day, he was tired and hungry, and the fact that the instruction manual’s font size was probably about five wasn’t helping matters. Huffing through his nose in frustration, he set the booklet down, glaring at the parts in front of him. And then an idea came.

“Taeyeon?” he called. He heard footsteps, and then she appeared from the hallway, her hair tied back messily in a ponytail.

“What is it?” she asked, kneeling next to him and rubbing his back soothingly. Jungsoo was silent for a second, melting into the sensation of her slim fingers against his skin through the thin T-shirt he wore.

Gathering himself, he turned to her with puppy eyes that he reserved only for her sight, probably because they wouldn’t have the slightest millimeter of an effect on the other members. “Do you think you could help me with this?”

Taeyeon glanced down at the mechanical parts strewn across the floor, then at the instruction manual that Jungsoo was still holding. To his surprise, she flashed him a small smile.

“Of course.”

A little restless with anticipation, Jungsoo handed her the manual. She squinted at its text, read one of the lines, stared down at the pieces for a moment, and then got to work.

About an hour later, the computer was put together nicely, its polished black plastic and metal practically glinting under the lights. Jungsoo held down on the power button, and the newly-assembled device turned on without a hitch.

He huffed.

~

When he’d suggested a walk to his girlfriend, this was not what he’d had in mind. He had just wanted a peaceful stroll in the moonlight with Taeyeon and Shimkoong, a chance to unwind after all the hecticness of the past two months. It didn’t seem like much of a request, but apparently the universe had deemed that it was.

Because they’d run into three of the many juvenile delinquents that often roamed the streets of Seoul at night while under the impression that they were grown and could do whatever they wanted. (It was a phase everyone went through in their late teens, though thankfully the majority didn’t let it get so out of hand that they began committing borderline illegal acts.) The kids couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, maybe twenty tops, but they sure had strutted right up to Jungsoo and Taeyeon like they were professional criminals.

Jungsoo calculated in his head the risks. He didn’t really want to run; it would feel silly fleeing from practically children, but getting in a fight didn’t seem very appealing either. Both of them were wearing caps to partially conceal their faces, and the dark was helping, too, but still, the consequences of a celebrity getting in a fight… no, they weren’t worth it.

On her leash, Shimkoong was snarling and barking.

“Cute dog, mister,” the kid in the front, a tall but thin boy with ripped jeans and a black jacket, smirked as he eyed Shimkoong blatantly. Nerves flaring, Jungsoo fought the urge to glare. His eyes flicked sideways toward Taeyeon who had just been standing next to him a second ago, but now she wasn’t there anymore. She’d stepped forward in the path of the delinquents, posture unnervingly relaxed. If Jungsoo was just a passerby he would have thought she was someone who often picked fights on the street, too.

“We’re trying to take a walk, so it would be nice of you to go on your merry way,” she said calmly.

The atmosphere was full of uneasiness; Jungsoo’s muscles were tense, Shimkoong’s fur stood on end, and there was visible aggression in the delinquent’s stare as he looked down at Taeyeon.

Eventually, though, he spat sideways in an attempted show of dominance, saliva flying from his mouth and landing with a splat on the street. Jungsoo fought the urge to wrinkle his nose, and Shimkoong gave a very soft growl. Taeyeon didn’t move.

“Tsk. Whatever, slut.” The delinquent’s voice was somewhere between sullen and purposefully dismissive, like he was trying overly hard to sound though. “Come on, guys. Let’s not waste time on this cuck and his bitch.”

Without another word, the three kids stalked off, glancing back occasionally at Jungsoo and Taeyeon with slight unease as if they were afraid they were going to attack them from behind. Jungsoo couldn’t help feeling the slightest bit of pity; he knew that brash hotheadedness mixed with crippling insecurity and nearly animalistic desire to prove yourself of early adulthood, and it was a no pleasant feeling. But he couldn’t feel any kindlier towards them than that, on account of the slurs their leader had used to refer to Taeyeon. Only once the three of them had vanished from sight from several seconds did he relax.

The entire time, though, Taeyeon hadn’t blinked an eye once (figuratively speaking). Slightly awed at his girlfriend’s composure, Jungsoo threaded his fingers through hers, squeezing. She glanced at him, and it somehow wasn’t a surprise to see her instantly smiling again.

“Doesn’t anything scare you?” He was half-chiding, because he would feel better if she was more cautious, but half-asking, because she legitimately had not seemed fazed.

Taeyeon squeezed his hand back with a shrug. “Plenty of things do, but not a few delinquent kids.”

~

Hyukjae, Donghae, and Ryeowook were fighting. About what, Jungsoo didn’t know. All he knew, or cared to know, was that he, eyelids practically drooping from filming since seven A.M. that morning, was just trying to sleep early for once when he’d been interrupted in his preparations to crash by the sound of the three members’ raised voices.

All of them had moved temporarily back into the dorm recently because they had several group schedules coming up that required long hours of driving and decided it would be more convenient to just go at the same time, rather than every member setting off and arriving at different hours depending on the traffic in their area. On one hand, it was nice because it was nostalgic; it took him back to the time when they were young and vigorous and the burden of their fame hadn’t quite caught up to them yet. On the other hand, Jungsoo felt like he was fucking dying. He’d forgotten how uncontrollable it could get with all of them living in the same space.

A few hours ago, Taeyeon had come over and spent the night at the dorm, eating dinner with them while rolling her eyes several times at the teasing from the other members to keep things private in the bedroom. They did not, in fact, have any intention of doing anything that night, for the sake of being courteous of everyone else, and it would be more than nice enough to fall asleep next to her.

Jungsoo just wished he’d get to lay down in peace.

“What do you mean, me? You’re the one who’s at fault here!” Ryeowook’s shrill voice rang through the dorm. Jungsoo groaned, suppressing the urge to shriek into the pillow. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with this.

Taeyeon must have seen the will to live fading from his eyes, because she sympathetically patted his shoulder. “You okay?”

Jungsoo took another calming breath. “Yeah. I’m just tired.” That was one way to put it. A more accurate way would be “I’m just done with this bullshit” or something along those lines, but he restrained himself.

“That’s understandable. Go and sleep, I’ll sort everything out,” Taeyeon suggested, giving him a light push toward the bed. Jungsoo sat down on the mattress, pointedly ignoring another bout of loud arguing from outside. “Are you sure?” She should know better than anyone how difficult his members were to deal with.

“It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with how Super Junior works,” she reassured him, amusement in her voice. “I’m still hanging around you people, which means I’m picking up some of your insanity – since that’s the only way to survive around this group.” She wasn’t exactly wrong. Maybe none of them had been exactly normal since the beginning, but being around each other had only amplified the chaos over the years.

“Okay, I’m counting on you then,” Jungsoo said, laying down with a sigh of bliss. She patted his head and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before leaving the room, flicking the light switch off as she did and closing the door tightly. Jungsoo stared after her, wondering how well she would fare.

Miraculously, he drifted off, but the concern over what had become of the argument must have been eating at him more than he realized, because only two hours later, he found himself blinking up into the darkness. It was quiet outside, but a quick glance at the door showed him that the lights of the living room were still on, which meant at least some of the other members were still awake. Taeyeon wasn’t back, either.

Rubbing his eyes, he got up out of the bed and peeked out into the hallway. The way his door was positioned, he had a fairly good view of Hyukjae, Donghae, and Ryeowook sitting together on the sofa, talking quietly but cheerfully. Clearly, they had made up. Perched just a little distance away, watching the three with the expression of a satisfied mother, was Taeyeon.

She was even good at mediating arguments.

~

I give up. Jungsoo was about to admit that he’d lost. Apparently, his girlfriend was just perfect – good at everything on top of being funny and intelligent and beautiful. He was ready to just accept that he’d been lucky enough to somehow snag a superhuman for a partner.

He couldn’t even find anything bad to say about her cleaning, he noted, as he glanced over his shoulder at her, kneeling in a corner and wiping away dust. They had decided they’d spend the day today tidying up his apartment; something that Jungsoo was used to and liked doing, but there was a new kind of enjoyment in it when his girlfriend was there doing it with him.

He was engrossed in wiping down some of the drawers when Taeyeon shrieked – a terrified, shocked, shrill, and entirely alien noise. Alarmed, Jungsoo spun around in her direction to find her staring underneath one of the windowsills with horror in her eyes before she distanced herself from it at the speed of light. Bewildered, he abandoned what he was doing hurried over, wondering what it possibly could be that she’d seen. He had never heard her sound so frightened; she’d hardly even flinched when they were watching The Wailing together, so what could have scared her so badly now, especially in his apartment?

“What is it? Is there something there?”

Taeyeon looked over at him, disgust marring her greyish-hazel eyes. “There’s a spider!”

Jungsoo stopped in his tracks, dumfounded. A spider?

Approaching the windowsill and looking under it, he saw that she was right – there indeed was a tiny, light brown spider there, settled among its webs.

He glanced back at Taeyeon, whose gaze was still fixed under the windowsill like residing there the most monstrous abomination that had ever existed. “Jagi, it’s just a spider.”

“Just a spider?” She sounded practically furious that he’d dared use the word just in reference to a spider; in fact, this might be the most rattled he had ever seen her. “Kill it already!”

Jungsoo chuckled. He couldn’t help it. After all the ridiculous antics he’d done to try and pinpoint anything that might faze his girlfriend, this was it? A tiny spider? Sure, he might not be fond of arachnids, but her visceral reaction was on another level.

“Not funny,” Taeyeon muttered from behind him, flicking him on the back of the head as punishment for his amusement. Jungsoo turned around to face her, unable to stop smiling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just… I didn’t think a spider would be the thing to crack your composure.”

“Oh, shut up and get rid of it,” she hissed, furrowing her brows at him in displeasure. Obediently, Jungsoo knelt in front of the windowsill and disposed of the spider with a piece of toilet paper. As he stood, he noticed Taeyeon backing up, eyeing the crumpled paper in his hand warily.

“You know a tiny spider can’t hurt you. Especially if it’s dead,” he pointed out.

“It’s not about hurting me,” Taeyeon admitted, her nose wrinkled. “I just hate spiders. They’re… disgusting. Now will you please throw that away?” She had inched further away from him. Well, not him specifically; it was the toilet paper with the squashed spider that held all her animosity.

Ever the dutiful boyfriend, Jungsoo obeyed and made his way to the bathroom, where he flushed the arachnid. As he washed his hands, he glanced at Taeyeon, who had been peeking in to confirm with her own eyes that the spider was long gone. “Better?” he asked, amused.

“Better,” she huffed. “You think this is real amusing, don’t you?” The words were an accusation, but, now that the spider was completely gone, she seemed to have relaxed. There was playfulness in her tone, and she was smiling faintly.

Washing his hands as he formulated a response, Jungsoo decided there was no point in hiding it – she’d already caught on. “It’s just… you always seem to be a natural at everything. For a spider of all things to freak you out so much is funny.”

“Well. I never thought you’d have such a cleaning obsession when I first met you, either,” Taeyeon retorted, but her voice was mild.

“Ouch, low blow. What did you think I’d be like?” Jungsoo challenged as he wiped his hands with the towel. He was genuinely curious; by her own admission she’d been a Super Junior fan since their debut, which meant that she must have known something about him even before they met for the first time during a broadcast. He forgot which one – they’d seen each other several times for business over the years, although it was only in 2014 when she worked with Super Junior for their MAMACITA album that they’d become closer than just acquaintances.

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I thought you’d be more naturally witty. I thought you wouldn’t complain and nag as much as you actually do. I thought you wouldn’t be so awkward when you flirt. I thought you’d give me less cheesy pickup lines.”

“Jagi…” Jungsoo complained.

Smiling, Taeyeon closed the gap between them with a light hop and reached up to take his face in her hands, pressing her lips to his in a chaste kiss. When she pulled away, Jungsoo flushed, not having expected the sudden display of affection. There were times when his girlfriend could seem slightly detached, but other times, she was touchy-feely like this.

“I love you, Jungsoo,” Taeyeon said simply, dropping all honorifics from his real name in the way that made him shudder a little under her hands. “I love everything that you are. Cheesy pickup lines and all.”

She went to move away, but Jungsoo grasped her shoulders and pulled her to him so their foreheads were touching. She was significantly shorter than him, but the height difference was just suited so that he could look directly into her eyes like this. God, she was beautiful. Almost unconsciously, he brushed his thumb over the soft skin of her face.

“I love you too.” The words were barely a whisper.

With a smile, Taeyeon cupped his face in her hands. “I don’t say this often, but I want to right now,” she said. “I love you, and I’m going to protect you from anything.”

The rush that flooded him made Jungsoo heady and breathless, his veins burning like he was being scorched from the inside out with the heat of his emotion. “For how long?” he murmured, stroking his fingers across her cheek.

“Forever.” She kissed him.

[theangriestpea]

Crowned : two

Summary: Two blonde princesses, two dark-haired princes, and one plotting marquess. Lily is in love with a secret admirer. Shanna doesn’t want to ascend to the throne. Jughead wants to spend the day writing poetry. Sweet Pea would rather be out on his horse. And Reggie just wants to be king. <ao3> <masterlist>

Pairing: Sweet Pea x OC, Jughead Jones x OC

Word Count: 5.9k+

Warnings: smut (now with actual plot!), unprotected sex (wrap it up xoxo)

A/N: Lavender is Shanna’s nickname. I didn’t establish that very well.

Part Two: Second Chances

In the royal flower garden a young princess sat with her battered sketchbook, pencil moving across the page furiously. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, flicking up to look at the white daisies in front of her before going back down to the page. She quickly realized in frustration that she wasn’t outlining flowers but rather a handsome face. After a brief pause, she let out a small sigh and went back to her work. Tracing the lines from the memory of the ball two nights ago.

“Mind if I see?” A voice called out to her from the other side of the flower bed she was sitting in front of. She quickly recognized it as the subject of her drawing. In an instant the book was pressed against her chest to keep him from seeing it.

Jughead gave her a curious look as he moved through the path so he could stand in front of her. “You’re in my light.” She said passively and he took a step to the side so that he was no longer blocking the sun. Even without the obstruction, she still didn’t put her book down in fear that he’d see his own face on the white paper.

“Your sister said I had to make things up to you.” The prince said in a faraway voice. Lily’s green orbs dared to look at him. There was a dreamy look on his face as if he were imagining something sweet…or maybe not too sweet. Maybe it was sultry. Her pale cheeks flushed pink.

“For what?” Lily asked, playing dumb. She turned so she could continue to sketch away from his prying eyes. It was hard to resist looking up at him for reference. Instead she kept with her visual memory of their dance. Pencil working feverishly to fill in his dark hair.

Jughead watched her. His eyes softened at the sight of her doing something that put her at ease. “Confessing to you, I suppose.” He said. When he told Shanna he’d make it up to her, he meant that he’d find a way to apologize for pining after her sister. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by saying he had to make it up to Lily instead.

“How do you plan on doing that exactly?” Lily asked with an edge of frustration on her voice. Her eyes flicked up to his face for a brief moment before looking back down and adjusting the drawn image.

Jug ran a tongue across his lower lip in thought. He attempted to keep his thoughts pure, but he was a teenage boy after all. It was difficult and she was just too beautiful. “Writing you another poem.” He finally replied, pulling the neatly folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handing it to her.

Lily looked at him again, her eyes lingering this time in disbelief. He was seriously giving her another love note? Then again, her sister did tell her she could do what she wished in regards to her fiancé. The whole situation was so messed up.

She closed her sketch book and gingerly grabbed the paper, opening it up to read the neatly written lines inside. It was his usual brand of off-white parchment embossed with intricate swirls. She didn’t know it but he had it specially made for letters he only wrote to her. It was unique.

Her fingers swept over the delicate embellishments before beginning to read the first few lines. As always she quickly became engrossed into the fine lettering and detailed wording.

He likened her image to a virgin goddess: young, beautiful, and naïve. Her hair was the sun, her face the moon, and her eyes the stars. The biggest, brightest stars in the galaxy that he had hoped would only twinkle for him.

This poem wasn’t like his usual. It wasn’t as short and sweet and romantic. It was exhilarating the way he described the curve of her waist, the shape of her breasts, and the length of her legs. Now not only were the brush of her cheeks pink, but her entire face heated as he wrote about her body and soul with a clear and fiery passion.

It ended with how he wanted to protect this holy being he thought was her. How he wanted no harm to ever come to her. No darkness to ever touch her heart. No pain to creep into her veins. And especially no tears to wet her eyes as she mourned the loss of her freedom. Because in the end, she wasn’t the only one losing someone. He was losing her too.  

Lily looked up at him with eyes glazed with a fresh set of painful emotions. The sight sent a pang of anguish through his chest. He had a feeling it would be too much. Maybe he shouldn’t have written it at all. Maybe he should have avoided her and married Shanna and lived his life.

However, in the prince’s heart he knew that not to be true. He had to confess his feelings or they would fester inside of him, growing into blackened weeds of resentment. It may have been selfish and unkind to put her through this turmoil, but in the end he just wanted her to know that she was loved.

“Jug…” She mumbled, but before she could say anything else, the prince dipped down to place his lips upon hers. She imagined her first kiss would be Sweet Pea and no his brother. Panic flooded her mind as she tried to think of how people kissed in the movies she had seen.

It was soft, gentle, and slow. Jughead didn’t press her any further for the first few moments. He pulled away before kissing her again, unable to stop himself as the feeling of her lips against his gave him a rush that he’d never felt before.

Lily opened her mouth first, innocently trying to force air into her lungs but Jughead took it as an invitation. He prodded her lips with his tongue, not daring to venture inside of her mouth just yet. He could feel her hesitation before the tip of her tongue met his.

Their muscles entwined together, Jughead put a hand to the back of her head to steady her as one of her hands reached up to caress the side of his face. Lily couldn’t stop the small moan that came from her mouth at the feeling of light exploding inside of her mind. It was just as every cheesy romance novel she had secretly read described it.

After a few minutes the two finally separated for air, looking at one another with eyes hooded with lust. No words were said as they breathed deeply. Lily’s hand slid down his neck to rest on his shoulder. “We can’t do this.” She finally said, trying to make sense of her emotions. “It’s not right.”

“What is ever right about love?” Jughead asked eloquently, his eyes shining down on hers. Before he could say anything else she was kissing him again.

|\/\/|

Shanna finished out shoveling the last of the droppings from Hades’ stall. The Joneses were to be staying at the castle until the wedding preparations had been finalized. Though she had managed to ignore Sweet Pea since their midday race the day before, she had a feeling she’d run into him here where she was serving her sentence.

Of course she could have just batted her eyelashes at Dilton and had him do it, since it was his job, but she decided to prove to the dark prince that she could do a bit of manual labor. She wiped the sweat off of her forehead before glancing at the few blisters starting to form on her soft fingers.

“Oh? You’re actually doing it?” Prince Sweet Pea asked, leaning against the frame of the door to the stall. “Here I thought you’d make your slave do it.”

“He’s not my slave.” Shanna hissed, turning to meet his gaze. She had dirt smeared across her face now from wiping it with the back of her hand. “And by the way, I touched your horse.”

“I told you not to touch him!” Sweet Pea snapped at her angrily, quickly finding Hades in the stall next to Persephone. The two horses were grooming one another, making soft noises of affection. A disgusted look crossed his face at the two horses. “You put them beside each other?!”

“Yes. They were calling to one another. Who am I to deny Persephone her first love?” Shanna said, joking towards the end as she grabbed a bale of straw to replace what she took out. She cut it with a knife before starting to spread it over the bare spots.

Sweet Pea snorted, trying not to watch her ass as she bent over. Why did she always have to wear such tight pants when she was in the stable? This was a crime against humanity, he thought. “They’re not in love. She’s probably just in season and wants his dick.”

Shanna glanced at him over her shoulder, noticing where his eyes were looking. She narrowed her gaze at him, “please. Persephone isn’t some hopeless mare in need of a good lay. She’s a classy lady.”

He wasn’t sure if they were still actually talking about their horses or if their conversation had transcended to metaphors about them instead. “Right. Well your classy lady still lost to my stallion.”

“Because she was distracted by how good he looked.” Shanna replied, finishing up laying the hay. “I propose a new race. I will ride one of my other horses. One of that won’t get distracted. A champion runner that is one of the most important horses in all of the kingdom.” There was a proud smile on her face and a determined look in her eyes. The prince was having trouble finding a reason to say no.

“What are the stakes?” Pea asked, giving her a serious look as she turned fully to face him, hand on her hip. The tank top she was wearing didn’t leave anything to the imagination either. He licked his bottom lip slowly.

Shanna watched him, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of his tongue. “Winner owes the loser a favor. They can ask for anything.” She replied as her eyes connected with his, “what do you say?”

“What could you possibly do for me if I won?” Sweet Pea asked with a snort.

“Oh, Pea. I could do so many things.” Shanna said suggestively as she walked by him, her arm brushing against his. “If you’re too chicken shit, then I understand. No one has ever beat Hermes in a race.”

Of course he couldn’t just let her go after that declaration. “Fine. Same trip as before. We’ll race to the river. Whoever wins owes the other a favor of any kind.”

She smirked at him before going over to the stall and the end of the row. “Hermes, you ready for a run today?” He poked his head over the door and nuzzled the side of her head, making her laugh. “That’s a yes.”

“Are you going to saddle up your own horse this time?” Sweet Pea asked as he started grabbing the tack he used for Hades.

Shanna rolled her eyes as she moved to grab equipment as well. “Yes. I don’t ride Hermes as often because he’s not exclusively mine. I just take care of him during peace time.”

Sweet Pea started getting Hades ready, noticing his stallion was more interested in the mare next to him. He shot his steed an annoyed look. “He’s a warhorse?”

“Are you a war horse?” She asked Hermes in a joking tone. Hermes just snorted a reply. “Hermes happens to be the best war horse in all of Riverdale. When information is too sensitive to be sent over radio or phone, it’s sent by horse. Hermes specifically. He has the fastest record in all of the kingdom. He doesn’t get distracted by anything. He listens to no one but his rider.”

“He’s a gelding.” Sweet Pea surmised. “Isn’t distracted by mares that are in season.”

Shanna smiled, petting the horse lovingly, “yes. It’s a shame, he’d father some great foals. But ultimately it made it easier for whoever was delivering the message to handle him. He didn’t lose an ounce of speed though, did you, boy?” She asked. Hermes shook his head in response.

“He won’t beat a stallion bred for war.” Sweet Pea said in a smug tone. “You’re on. And when I win, you better be ready.”

She turned her back to him with a smirk on her face. “We’ll see.”

They quietly readied their horses, getting to work to prepare them for the race. Each one was sure they were going to win. And they knew exactly what they wanted from the other. Whoever won would get a very nice prize.

Lav mounted her horse and took him to the invisible starting line. Sweet Pea was right behind her on Hades. Both dark horses lined up. Hades was clearly antsy compared to the collected Hermes. She wondered if it was because he didn’t want to be away from his new beau.

They counted down together and like last time, at one they two horses burst forward. In the first few moments, Hades had the lead. He was a full body length ahead of Hermes. Shanna did this on purpose, letting the stallion wear himself out sooner rather than later.

After they reached the midpoint, she dug her heels into Hermes’ sides. The thoroughbred sprung into a full gallop. He quickly caught up to Hades and took the lead. Sweet Pea looked at the princess as she rode by. He glared at the proud look on her face.

Shanna and Hermes were the first to make it to the edge of the river. He let out an excited whinny, trotting around in a circle in a kind of victory dance as the others joined him.

Sweet Pea was giving her a dirty look as Hades snorted in anger at his own defeat. “Looks like I win.” The princess said while smirking at him. She started to walk Hermes back to the stable in the same way that they had come. She petted his neck affectionately and murmured to him how good he was.

The prince walked his horse next to hers. “What do you want?” He asked, obviously frustrated that he had lost and now had to do something for her. He had always been a sore loser. It was so bad that his brother usually just let him win to avoid his temper. Shanna wasn’t about to baby him though. She could face his temper just fine.

“I’ll tell you when we get back.” She said cryptically. “You can’t do it from on top of your horse anyway.” The blonde looked thoroughly pleased with herself, her face not showing how hard her heart was thumping inside of her chest. She wanted to chalk it up to the exhilaration of the race but deep down she knew the truth. Despite their deal he could still tell her no. She handled rejection just as well as he handled losing.

Sweet Pea rolled his eyes. “You’re stalling.” He said snappishly, wanting to get whatever benign task it was she wanted him to do over with. He figured it’d be something humiliating or demeaning, perhaps something worse than just cleaning out a horse stall.

Shanna shrugged in response, staying quiet as she focused on controlling her breathing to calm herself down. “When you’re done brushing him down, meet me at the last stall on the end.” She finally instructed. “Then I’ll tell you what I want you to do.”

He quirked a brow at her, curious by how reserved she seemed to be acting all of a sudden. It seemed out of character for the usually lively princess.

No more words were exchanged the rest of the way. Lavender took Hermes to his usual stall while Sweet Pea opted to put Hades back next to Persephone just to pacify him. They made sure the horses had plenty of water to drink as they removed the tack and brushed them down. It was quiet in the stable besides the occasional animal snorting or nickering.

The princess finished first. She didn’t bother to look at Sweet Pea as she walked to the other end of the stable and into the stall at the end. He watched her, still curious as to why she was being so quiet but simultaneously being frustrated with his loss.

A few moments later he joined her. She moved to stand in front of him, looking up with a sheen in her eyes that he could have sworn was lust. “What do you want?” He asked again, trying to sound annoyed instead of worried.

“Fuck me.” Lav said, doing her best to sound confident. She was hoping he would say yes. She wanted this so bad, wanted to feel something besides the torment of knowing she’d been married off soon enough to someone her sister was in love with. Lily was getting cozy with Jughead, why couldn’t she get cozy with his brother?

He looked at her, completely confounded. “I’m not deflowering my brother’s fiancée!” He quickly replied, his neck turning an almost indiscernible shade of pink. He voice was hard and made it clear that he was aggravated by her request.

Shanna bit her lip nervously, her chest aching. “You wouldn’t be.” She said in a low voice. The prince’s eyes widened in surprise. She wasn’t a virgin? The king had assured them that both his daughters hadn’t been touched. Not that Sweet Pea or Jughead cared. It was just part of the deal. He wasn’t sure if he really believed her or not.

Honestly the only thing stopping Pea was the reason he just gave her. He wasn’t sure how to tell her no, especially by how hurt she looked just then. Now his chest was aching too. “Why do you want me to fuck you?”

“Because the servants say you’re good in bed and I want to see for myself.” She replied, telling only half the truth. “You have to do it, you lost.” She added sternly in an attempt to make him change his mind. She grabbed the hem of her tank top and pulled it up over her head just to show how determined she was to get him to have sex with her.

His eyes traveled to her breasts and the snake shaped scar over the right one. He wondered what it would feel like to kiss it. Run his tongue along the S shape and listen to the sounds that came out of her mouth from him doing it.

Lav reached around her back and unclasped her white bra, taking it off as well to fully expose her chest to him in an unabashed manner. Sweet Pea stared at her a moment longer before leaning down and kissing her hungrily, giving in to his inner desires that he had been keeping under lock and key for longer than he’d like to admit.

She grabbed either side of his face, opening her mouth to allow his tongue to enter it. He picked her up by her thighs and slammed her back against the side of the barn. They eagerly kissed in a mash of lips, tongue, and teeth. Sweet Pea broke away to leave a hot trail of wet, sloppy kisses down her jaw and neck. The marks that he left elicited a sweet moan from her moistened lips.

Since she was pinned against the wall and his body and her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, he was able to move a hand up to grope her breast. He brushed a thumb over her scar, feeling the ridges before pinching her nipple. Shanna let out a small gasp, clenching her thighs even tighter around him.

Pea’s lips were on her shoulder. He bit down aggressively to leave a mark there as well and she whined in response. Her hands threaded through his thick, dark hair.

Sweet Pea normally devoured any woman he was with fully. He went at them hard until they screamed his name repeatedly. Tortured them until they begged for relief. He didn’t think that would be the correct approach here. Not only did he have doubts about her having sex before but she was also the crown princess. He couldn’t treat her like a chambermaid or village commoner. Sure he’d show her a good time still but it had to be…different.

Of course, in that case he really shouldn’t be having sex with her inside of the royal stable but she didn’t give him much of a choice on location. While lost in thought, he felt her lift up his shirt. He pulled away from her momentarily to peel it off. Her hands were on him in an instant, running along his pectorals and down his toned stomach. He grabbed hold of her thighs against to change positions.

She frowned and let out a whine when he set her down. Sweet Pea grabbed a nearby horse blanket and laid it down. Shanna realized what he was doing and gave him a quizzical look. He was not acting like he did in the stories she had heard of him at all. Being a gentleman wasn’t really his thing.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” He asked, his tone a little more serious. He looked her over, the flush of her cheeks and puffiness of her kissed lips made her look like a porcelain doll that he could break if he wanted to. Of course, that would be a terrible idea.

Shanna rolled her eyes and unceremoniously took off her boots before sitting down on the blanket. She laid out for him, looking like a sinful angel. “Are you going to fuck me or what?” She asked, her annoyance with him evident in her tone.

The prince shot her a look before getting down on his knees between her legs. He leaned over her, planting his hands on either side of her torso. His lips roved over her breast where his fingers had been not long before. They found her scar again and he kissed it just as he imagined himself doing when she first took off her shirt.

She mewled in response. A delicate sound that made his pants feel tight from his growing erection. He dragged his tongue over the serpentine line before descending to her nipple that was already hard from his previous stimulation.

He enveloped the bud with his mouth, sucking lightly as his freed hands moved to her pants. He unbuttoned them before slowly dragging down the zipper. A whimper of anticipation vibrated in Shanna’s throat as she felt her core getting wetter from his actions.

“Pea,” She mumbled softly in an attempt to hurry him along. Sweet Pea’s response was to tug her pants down. Lav repositioned her legs so he could take them off. Once free of the tight fabric, she spread her legs for him once more.

He eyed her crisp white underwear as he pulled away from her. He wanted to ask if she was truly not a virgin then why was she wearing white, it didn’t seem to match up to him. Then again she did have to uphold the image that she was one or else her father would find out. That wouldn’t bode well for her or whoever supposedly took her innocence from her.

Sweet Pea suddenly wrestled with the consequences of what those might be if it was actually him doing it. Would his adoptive father disown him? His brother was pining after Lily so certainly he wouldn’t be upset. Then again she was promised to him. Thoughts of doubt ran through his head as his thumb brushed over the elastic band of her undergarments.

Shanna was giving him a frustrated look, noticing that he seemed lost in thought. She sat up slightly, reaching down to cup his growing hard-on through his pants. He let out a grunt in response, dark eyes shooting up to meet hers. “Stop stalling. You owe me.” Her voice was hard and demanding, something you’d expect from a princess who usually got her way.

She released him only to unbutton his pants and slide down his zipper. Sweet Pea gently pushed her back down so that she could no longer reach anything him. A pout formed on her pink lips. “You want to touch me that bad?” The prince asked her, his voice dipping low as he pulled off her underwear finally so that she was completely naked beneath him.

“Is it wrong that I do?” Lavender questioned as he ran a finger along her dampened lower lips. A whimper escaped her, anticipation rising at the thought of his fingers diving into her. He teased a slow circle around her clit, causing it to engorge even more than it already was. She clenched her teeth to keep from making another sound.

Sweet Pea contemplated her question. The obvious answer was yes. They were both betrothed to other people. However, he knew Jughead was still actively pursuing Lily. It wouldn't be fair if he got to deflower both girls while Sweet Pea was just stuck with one. It was an equal exchange, right? Maybe not to the king but between princes it was. So…was it really wrong?

“Yes.” He concluded, drawing another shape against her most sensitive bundle of nerves. It was wrong but that’s probably what made it so tantalizing. Despite his conclusion he couldn’t pull himself away. He was completely entranced be the idea that he was doing something he absolutely should not be doing.

The prince’s words didn’t match his actions as he was taking his pants off with his free hand, freeing his erect penis from the confines of his dark jeans. His boxers went with them, his face leaning down to be right in front of hers.

They kissed again, even more roughly this time. As their tongues danced and he showed his dominance, he slipped a finger into her core to test the waters. Shanna moaned into the kiss, her fingers entwining with his hair and pulling it in a show of desperation.

A growl rumbled in the base of Sweet Pea’s throat, his finger moving inside of her to find her inner cluster of nerves. He felt around, waiting until her moans went up an octave when he hit the spot he was looking for. Shanna couldn’t help but squirm against him as he continued to rub her g-spot while thrusting his finger in and out.

His fingers were slick from how wet she was. His kisses moved from her lips and to her jaw, nipping at it possessively. The princess was writhing beneath him, a knot of pressure building in the pit of her stomach.

Sweet Pea pulled his finger out, causing her to groan in disappointment. He couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. He used the natural lubricant now on his fingers to spread across his tip and shaft. He prepped himself, making sure he was ready before positioning himself at her entrance.

Shanna spread her legs more to accommodate him. Her eyes hazed with ardor and lust. He slowly pushed into her in case she was indeed a virgin. He didn’t want to hurt her on her first time. There was a moment of discomfort on her face as he went all the way in until his hips met hers. It passed briefly and Shanna was moaning again.

She had been telling the truth.

He put one hand next to her side to prop himself up. The other was on her thigh, guiding her leg to wrap around his waist. He gave as shallow thrust, listening intently to the hungry whine that came out of her.

His eyes met hers as he started at an easy pace. His strokes long and fluid, skin meeting skin with a definitive smack. Her hands were on his shoulders, grip tightening with every thrust. “More, Pea,” She moaned as her face flushed, “I need more.”

Sweet Pea’s hold on her thigh was probably going to leave a bruise as he used the touch to try and restrain himself. He kept reminding himself that this was a princess he was with and he couldn’t just pound her into the ground like he wanted to. Her begging him caused him to increase his pace, hitting her a little harder at the end of each movement.

He kept up his speedy thrusts, going a little harder time after time until he couldn’t hold back. He released her thigh to hold himself up with both hands to give him more leverage. She kept it wrapped around him loosely, her hips elevated enough to keep the same angle. Her moans were so heavenly to his ears. It was the most pleasing sound he’d ever heard. None of his previous partners could make a noise that egged him on as much as hers did. It was driving him wild.

Tension released in Shanna’s core, pleasure exploding from her abdomen and reaching to the end of ever fingertip. The horses were whinnying in response to the sounds they were making, causing her senses to overload completely. She lost her voice as her body pulsed. Her nails were dug so deeply into his flesh that he knew she’d be leaving her own mark on him too.

Sweet Pea’s once fluid movements became more ragged and frantic. Soon he was moaning with her too, his heated seed spilling deep inside of her and warming her up from the inside. Her mind was too clouded with ecstasy to even comprehend the possible consequences. Her head lulled to the side as she attempted to catch her breath.

He gently pulled out of her, rolling to lay beside her on the blanket. His arms moved to wrap around her, bringing her close so that she could lay her head on his chest. His body was acting on its own, his own mind cloudy from his orgasm.

They basked in the afterglow, holding one another in an almost sweet embrace. One of Shanna’s legs was draped over his thigh, her arm around his waist as she nuzzled his chest. She didn’t know what she was doing either. It was just happening.

As contentedness spread through Sweet Pea’s veins, his closed eyes suddenly flew open. He was not a cuddly person. He didn’t cuddle after sex. He didn’t hold his prospect and drift into slumber. He always slid out of their bed and went back to his own. What in the hell was he doing with her? He did what she asked, so why was he staying? He realized he was enjoying this too much for his own good.

He managed to pull her away from him and stood up. Shanna looked up at him with a confused expression as he quickly got dressed, sloppily throwing on his boxers and pants. He grabbed his shirt and was pulling it over his head before she said something. “What are you doing?” She asked, a twinge of pain in her strained voice. They were having a moment, weren’t they?

“This wasn’t part of the favor.” He replied, his voice much sharper than he intended. He was so irritated by the tightness in his chest that he couldn’t explain. The way his heart was thudding so loudly in his ears was a complete mystery. He needed to leave before she got the wrong idea. “I fucked you, so now I’m leaving.”

Shanna sat up, still not quite understanding what has happening. He wrapped his arms around her first, not the other way around. To be suddenly ripped from his warmth made her feel like she was being abandoned. Like she was just used.

He turned his back to her so he didn’t have to see the look on her face. She was speechless, unable to say anything to him as he quickly left. For a moment she sat there in complete shock before her eyes began to water.

Tears spilled down her cheeks as she quickly gathered her clothes and clumsily put them on. She stood up, legs shaking still from the intensity of the orgasm he’d given her. Christ, why did he have to be so good to her and then so horrible? She didn’t understand. What had she done to deserve this kind of treatment?

Once dressed she walked out of the stall, not even bothering to pick up the blanket. Hades and Persephone were looking over their stall doors at her curiously. Another pang of pain rattled her chest as she saw the two together. She quickly turned away from them and rushed out of the stable to find her sister.

Unbeknownst to the royals, there had been a third person down at the other end of the stable tending to one of the horses. He couldn’t stop the cruel smile from spreading across his lips. What a perfect turn of events.

|\/\/|

Lavender quickly found Lily in her room, humming happily to herself. “Lils…” She mumbled sadly. Hearing the tone of the familiar voice, Lily turned around to see the broken expression on her sister’s face.

“Lavie? What happened?” She asked, quickly taking the few steps needed to meet her. Shanna dissolved into her arms, head on her shoulder as she softly cried. Lily put her arms around her, rubbing her back in and attempt to soothe her sadness.

Shanna knew if she told Lily what happened, then she risked her sister thinking differently of her. Would she care that she wasn’t a virgin? Probably not but there was always a chance. She felt so incredibly lost in her emotions.

In the end she decided to just let it out, “I slept with Sweet Pea.” She stuttered, hiccuping back more sobs. She felt Lily stiffen against her, trying to process the information that she just received.

“Wait, what? You slept with…what?” Lily asked, thinking that surely she had misheard her sibling. There was no way that she could have slept with her fiancé. Despite all the times she dreamily stated how good he was supposedly in bed. It clicked that maybe that should have been a sign that her sister wasn’t as innocent as she thought her to be.

“He just left.” Lav said, “At first he started to hold me but then he just shoved me away and left. I don’t- I don’t know what I did. What did I do, Lily?” Her words were cut off by more tears. She had to bite her tongue to keep from crying loud enough for anyone else to hear.

Lily was silent as she continued to rub her back. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Sweet Pea is a pig.” She said, deciding not to address the fact that her sister wasn’t a virgin like she was. That was a conversation for another time.

Shanna suddenly went quiet, “he’s right. Jughead is never going to care about me the way he cares about you. No one is ever going to care about me.” She whispered, baring her fears to her best friend.

Anger surged through Lily. A fire lit in her heart at the thought of someone causing her sister this much pain. Sweet Pea was not going to get away with this. He was going to pay.

Tags: @the-gargoyle-queen, @southside-vixen, @redhairdontcare732, @lilhemmo, @iamaunicorn4704 (lmk if you want to be added!)

[jstonedd]

Otonokizaka Private Academy

Final Chapter

Note: I’m really sorry I never got around to finish it, so I’m finally posting the rest of what I’ve written. It would have been the first part of the next chapter, which coincidentally would have also been the last chapter plot-wise. I might have thrown in some other twist if I wanted to go longer, but I think it’s also nice to conclude on a calmer note. With that being said, I hope you enjoy the last bit of this AU. It’s been an honor to write for you guys because you gave me so much back, not just kind asks but also fanart and funny headcanons. 

Summary: Nozomi thinks she can finally get used to her new school.

Words: ~4300

 “Have you seen Honoka?” Kotori asked after taking her seat at the lunch table, looking around for her missing friends. “She stormed out of the classroom the second the bell rang.”

“Some bakery nearby is selling some limited edition bread,” Nico answered distractedly as she struggled to eat her lobster without using her fingers. Nozomi watched her in suspense, ducking in time when a severed lobster leg came flying her way. “Whoops, sorry.”  

Kotori carefully scooted her chair away from Nico. “Will she be back in time for class?”

“Who cares,” Nico grumbled, immersed in her task of eating her seafood without dirtying herself, “I’d take any reason to miss class. Like Hanayo. Calling in sick because she’s traveling halfway across the world just to see a concert, can you believe that? And she asked Rin to tag along instead of me even though Rin doesn’t even know the band!”

“Well, did you give Hanayo any hints that you would be interested in going with her?”

Nico paused in her movements. “No.”

Nozomi and Kotori shared an amused look. “Maybe you need to communicate your feelings to get them across as most people are not mind readers.”

“Blergh,” Nico let out in disgust, sticking out a tongue. “I communicate just fine.”

“I beg to differ,” a voice behind her spoke up.

Kotori, Nozomi and Nico turned their heads to the person who sat down at their table without waiting for an invite. “What? Don’t you agree?”

“Maki,” Kotori greeted with a nod, the first one to recover from her surprise. “I do think that Nico could sometimes express herself better. But are you really in a position to point that out? Something about throwing rocks within a glasshouse?”

Maki ran a hand through her hair to mask her tension, giving Kotori a stiff smile. “Ah you know me, never minded a little self-destruction.”

“That I already knew. But hey, self-awareness is the first healing step,” Nico said with a snort. She eyed Maki with a mixed expression. “Not that I want you gone or anything, but why are you sitting here?”

“Hm?” Maki stole a calamari ring off Nico’s plate and dipped it in a sauce that was on Nozomi’s plate. “What, am I not allowed to sit wherever I want? Besides, Eli and Umi were talking about boring business stuff.”

When Maki reached for another calamari, Nico slapped her hand away. “First of all, mine. Second of all, what’s the real reason?”

“Saw you wrestling with that lobster. And while you’re getting beat by dead seafood, your perfectly fine calamari rings are getting cold and I really can’t stand for that.”

As if on cue, Maki lifted her left hand and snapped with her fingers in front of Nico’s face to distract her long enough to extract a few more calamari rings with her right hand. Bevor Nico could let out an indignant shout, Maki’s mouth was already filled with her stolen food.

“Oh my god, you’re so disgusting,” Nico groaned.

“Thank you, I’m trying to fit in with you,” Maki said, her full mouth still chewing.  

“Wow, aren’t we charming today,” Nico sighed, rolling her eyes. “Just spill it already. Why are you here?”

“Is it so hard to believe that sometimes I feel like socializing?” Maki asked after forcefully swallowing her food down.

She was met with silence and blank looks.

“Yeah, I also wonder how I managed to say that without choking,” Maki muttered with a grimace. “Fine. I’m here because I want to be here. Happy?”

“Not until I earn my first music award, but that’s another question for that matter.” Nico turned to Kotori and Nozomi. “Question: Why is she here? Please discuss.”

“Really?” Maki raised an eyebrow. “You’re making a talk show out of this now?”

“The audience is not permitted to participate,” Nico cut her off. “Nozomi, your opinion?”

Maki waved her hand in front of Nico’s face. “Hello, I’m right here?”

“Nozomi,” Nico repeated in a louder voice, ignoring Maki entirely.

“Um,” Nozomi wanted to laugh over Nico’s and Maki’s serious and incredulous expression, respectively. “Well, if she’s feeling excluded from the business talks, then it’s understandable she would search for attention from somewhere else...”

“Hm, does sound reasonable…we’ll keep that in mind.”

“Reasonable your ass!”

“Kotori, your opinion?”

“Kotori, come on, I know you’re better than this,” Maki said in an almost pleading voice.

Kotori let out a thoughtful hum before a grin appeared on her face. “Isn’t it obvious? She’s here for one reason only.” And she directed her growing smile at Nico, who blinked cluelessly for a few times before slowly turning to Maki with a wide opened mouth.

Maki uncomfortably avoided Nico’s questioning gaze. “Like I said, calamari rings were getting cold.”

“Are you sure?” Nico asked in a half-serious, half-teasing manner. “Only here for the food on my plate?”

Clearing her throat and still avoiding knowing glances from three smug people, Maki added curtly, “And perhaps unfortunately also for the person incapable of finishing the food on the plate.”

“Wow. That’s the most roundabout way someone’s ever talked about me.” Nico tilted her head. “I’m not sure if I should be pleased or annoyed…it feels like I always have to make that decision every two seconds when I’m with you.”

“Well, I would have suggested a coin toss if you’re so obsessed with it, but I’m too rich to carry any loose change on me.”                                                             

“And now I’m annoyed.”

“See, decision made. Always a pleasure to help.” And Maki mockingly imitated a polite bow.

“So,” Kotori decided to interfere when she saw Nico’s hand grabbing her knife a little too tightly, “I’m so glad Maki decided to join us. Makes everything livelier.”  

“Are you certain? Because I’m pretty sure someone’s going to die…” Nico growled.

“Well, seeing that my next class is math, I sure hope it’s me,” Maki said, rubbing her eyes.

“I can help you with that-“

“Stop it!”

Startled, everyone at the table looked to Kotori, who looked just as surprised about her own outburst. But as seconds passed by, she remembered what had made her exclaim in frustration in the first place.

“Nico, put the knife down. Nozomi, take all cutlery out of her vicinity. And Maki…” Kotori’s voice softened. “When were you going to tell me that you’ve taken a sudden liking to seafood?”

Maki stiffened. Her eyes were fixated on a point in front of her. Finally, after seconds of no reaction at all, she threw up her hands. “Fine. Yes, I sat down here because of Nico. She thought I didn’t want to be seen with her in public and I should feel pissed that she thinks that I care about that at all, but I get it. I’m not easy to read and if someone ever figures me out, I’d like the first copy of that manual, please and thank you.”

She released a long sigh and tiredly gazed at Nico. “So here I am. Trying to do…well, something. I’m not sure exactly what but it’s better than nothing, right?”

Maki helplessly shrugged, keeping her eyes focused on the table to avoid Nico’s softening gaze.

“Now was that so hard to admit?” Kotori gently asked.

“Terrifyingly so.” Maki’s fingers nervously tapped on the table. “How do you guys do this scary crap? Sharing feelings and stuff. What a suicide mission.”

“It’s called trust,” Kotori answered quietly. She gave Maki a soft smile. “You trust the other person not to use your feelings against you.”

Upon seeing Maki’s skeptical grimace, Nico added, “Or in your case, you trust the other person not to use your secrets against you.”

Leaning back, Maki observed the other three sitting at the table. “And how do I know when to trust someone?”

She looked into a round of solemn faces until Kotori softly replied, “You don’t. You’ll just have to take their word for it and hope they meant it.”

Maki scoffed through her teeth. “Tch. And that’s how you get hurt.” By Umi, she almost added but bit her own tongue. She was blunt, not cruel. She knew that Kotori had been talking about her own situation when she had answered.

“Maybe,” Kotori admitted with a weak smile, “but isn’t it lonely when you never share anything with anyone?”

“How does that make me lonely?” Maki asked, incredulous.  

“Because no one will know a thing about you,” Nico answered instead, sober eyes searching for Maki’s. “You’ll just be that one rich brat with trust issues, but guess what, this school’s full of them, so you’ll be quickly forgotten. If it weren’t for your last name, you’d blend right in with no personality of your own. Because you never share anything about you. So no one will ever know anything about you.”

Maki’s expression contorted into a scowl. “And shouting all my secrets out to the world will make it better? Have you ever thought that maybe not knowing a damn thing about me is better than knowing all the garbage about me?”    

“I know all your garbage and I’m still here,” Nico countered without hesitation. “So are Nozomi and Kotori.”

Falling silent, Maki lowered her gaze. She leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms.

“Do you think we don’t have any baggage of our own? We have loads of them and we’d be crushed by them if we had to shoulder that alone.” Nico turned to Nozomi and Kotori with a smile. “That’s why we need friends.” She looked at Maki again with a more serious expression. “That’s why you need to accept that we’re your friends. The kind that doesn’t care about your money or your name. The kind that you can trust.”

Maki uncrossed her arms, running a hand through her hair. She sighed. “I guess I could’ve ended up with worse.” She mustered up a lop-sided smile. “But then again, the only friendships I can compare this to is with Eli and Umi, and they’re not really setting high standards.”

“They don’t even trust themselves.” Nico chuckled without humor. “You can’t help them until they figure out who they want to be.”

“Well,” Maki’s smirk faded, “to their defense, that’s not exactly an easy thing to figure out on your own. I would know.”

“And how did you figure it out?”

Maki closed her mouth, eyes flickering to Nico, Nozomi and Kotori before they settled back on Nozomi. “When Tojo said she wanted to be my friend.”

Nozomi’s eyes widened and her cheeks turned red when she felt all eyes on her. “Why?”

“Because you said it so naturally,” Maki said with a frown. “You said it like being my friend was something you honestly wanted. Like I was someone that people would want to be friends with. And at first I thought you were crazy. Like, it really made me want to laugh that someone would suggest that.”

Before hurt could sneak onto Nozomi’s expression, Maki quickly continued, “But it wasn’t that. I think I was just…” A grimace appeared on her face as if saying the next few words gave her physical pain. “I guess I was happy. And that’s how I figured it out. I wanted to be someone that people would actually want to be around with. For more than just the money and name.”

Nozomi shared a quick glance with Kotori and Nico, and the latter one smiled gratefully.

“I’m glad I could help you.”

“Yeah,” Maki breathed out, one corner of her mouth curling up. “You proved to me that there are actually people who help because they care about the person. I really didn’t believe it before.”

Nozomi’s smile was tinged with sadness. She wanted to reply with ‘I’m sorry no one helped you believe it earlier’, but she swallowed her words.  

“You’ve got to share some of that special power of yours with us, Nozomi,” Nico said jokingly. “We’d be unstoppable.”

Kotori smiled at Nozomi. “Something tells me she already is an unstoppable force all on her own.”

And Nozomi ducked her head with an embarrassed smile. How she wished that this was true.

   Nozomi didn’t understand why she was nervous. It was just a door she had to open, just a door that she had frequently opened in the past month and even back then, when she had been afraid of the person waiting on the other side of the door, hadn’t she been as nervous as now.

“Ah, Miss Tojo,” and Nozomi flinched in shock. She turned around and stumbled a step back when she found herself staring up at Principal Minami’s kind face.

“Director!” Nozomi stuttered, her nervousness rising.

“I was wondering when you were going to open that door,” the principal said with a chuckle, nodding to the door to the student council room. “Judging from your hesitation to enter, I assume you don’t want to continue being in the student council –  but I could be wrong of course.”

“Actually,” Nozomi began quietly, “I do want to keep my position as the vice president.”

To Nozomi’s slight annoyance, the older woman didn’t look surprised at all at her answer, merely smiling back with a knowing grin. “Then I’m glad I assumed wrong. I believe Miss Ayase is already informed of that decision?”

Nozomi nodded.

“Then what are you waiting for? Let’s head inside,” the principal said and opened the door, entering the room first. Nozomi followed her, seeing Eli quickly stand up and bow in respect for Principal Minami.

“Excuse me for intruding,” Minami said with a nod, “as you know, Miss Ayase, our latest vice president has been with us for a month now. I only came to ask if that is an arrangement you both want to keep.”

Eli briefly glanced at Nozomi, who mustered up a nervous smile. Then she turned to the principal. “I’m sorry, Director, but I can’t accept this arrangement. Tojo is not suited to be the vice president.”

Both Nozomi and the principal were silenced in shock. Nozomi felt her heart constricting as she stared with wide eyes at Eli, wondering what was going on inside of that head. How could she reject her in front of Director Minami when they had already talked about keeping the arrangement? Why did Eli try to shut her out again when Eli had been the one to ask Nozomi if she would come back?

“Oh,” Minami slowly said, scanning Eli’s hard expression. “Are you sure? Maybe if you give Miss Tojo an explanation on what she could have done better, she could work on improving them.”

Eli’s jaw tensed. “It’s not her fault. I simply don’t think she should be in the student council.”

“Why?” Nozomi blurted out in anger, not caring if she seemed inelegant or emotional in front of the principal. “You wanted me to come back, didn’t you? Why are you doing this now, why are you pushing me away again?”

“Tojo,” Eli muttered through gritted teeth, glancing at the principal, “not now.”

“I do believe that there is no better time than now,” Minami said, walking towards the door. “I will leave you two to talk it out. By the end of the week, I want a definite answer.” Before she pulled the door shut, she concluded with a smile, “And I won’t accept an answer that is not a hundred percent genuine.”

The door was shut and left the two third years in silence.

“Why…” Nozomi weakly muttered. She was tired, so tired of always being the only one who made an effort to get through to the other person. And each time she thought she had gotten somewhere, Eli would move further out of reach.

Eli’s hard mask crumbled. Her features softened, showing the strained look in her eyes. “When I asked you to come back, I was only thinking of myself. Only thinking about what I wanted.”

“But I agreed, don’t you remember? Because I wanted to come back too,” Nozomi replied in exasperation. “Please, don’t lie to me anymore, Eli. I need the truth.”  

Eli clenched her fists. “As…as you probably know by now, I’m not the most popular person around here. I used to blame it on my last name but the truth is, I’ve made a lot of enemies myself. And the predecessors of your position belong to that group.”

Nozomi swallowed nervously when she was reminded of the unpleasant group of former vice presidents. But she still didn’t understand what Eli could be worried of, she was untouchable, wasn’t she?

“None of the previous vice presidents lasted long because I personally made sure of that. How well do you think they’re going to take the news if I let you stay? You, who came to this school just months ago, who has had no connection to anyone in our world before. A nobody to them.”

It stung, being called a nobody. Nozomi swallowed to get rid of the lump in her throat.

“Pride can be a very ugly thing, especially if you grew up privileged. And I know the lengths some people will go to restore it,” Eli said lowly, grinding her teeth. “I know because I am one of those people.”

Nozomi took one hesitant step towards Eli. “You…is that why you changed your mind about me staying in the student council?”

Eli didn’t look up. “I shouldn’t have agreed in the first place. It was arrogant of me to assume that I could live on without bearing any consequences of the things I’ve done.”

“Eli,” Nozomi whispered, getting a flinch as a reaction, “are you – are you afraid?”

“Of them? They wish,” Eli hissed, starting to recklessly pace around, “I know they can’t do anything to me. And they know that it will backfire if I can trace it back to them. Why do you think did the badminton club just accept the budget cut without complaining directly to us?”

“If they can’t do anything to you, then what are you afraid -,” Nozomi didn’t finish her sentence when she suddenly realized what it was really about. She put a hand on her forehead, wondering how she could be blind. “You think they’re going to target me.”

Eli stopped pacing, staring at the ground. “I can’t always be around you.”

“And I don’t need you to be,” Nozomi replied heatedly, walking over to Eli. “I’m not afraid of them.”

Eli slowly looked up, her eyes finding Nozomi’s. “I know you aren’t,” she whispered, her voice weak, “but I made your life hard enough. I don’t…I just don’t want to be responsible anymore for any pain you feel…” She stared at her trembling right hand, closing and opening her fingers. “I don’t want to be that kind of person anymore. The kind of person who hurts people because they themselves can’t feel anything.”

“Eli,” Nozomi breathed, taking Eli’s trembling hand and holding it close to her chest. “It’s not your fault if they choose to target me, they are the ones responsible for their own actions.”

“You don’t understand, the only reason they would target you is because of me,” Eli tried pulling her hand out of Nozomi’s grasp, but the other girl didn’t let go.

“Then let them come,” Nozomi said firmly, “I’m not scared.”

“But I am!” Eli burst out shouting, managing to step away from Nozomi. Her loose bangs fell into her eyes, her gaze wild as she stared at Nozomi like an animal trapped in a corner. “I – I can’t take it, I can’t stand the thought of you starting to regret everything, of you starting to hate me because of them. To them, you might be a nobody, but to me, you’re –“ Eli clenched her teeth shut.

Nozomi closed the distance between them again and before Eli could react, Nozomi threw her arms around her shoulder and hugged her, pulling her in until there was no space left between their bodies. “Eli,” she whispered into the blonde’s ear, “don’t you know that I’m just a fool who cares too much?”

END.

AN: It hasn’t been an easy ride and I thank everyone who participated at some point or another. I’m sorry if I’ve let you down with this ending, which isn’t really an ending just a point where I stopped writing because I didn’t know what to type anymore. I used to be a chronic ‘not finishing a story’ type of author and I’m still amazed that I managed to write Buy Your Love or Soldier Wars, so it really kills me that I couldn’t give OPA the ending it deserves. 

Long story short, the love live fandom has been really kind to me and it was really the best platform for my stories so far, so thank you for everything. Hope I’ll see some of you in another fandom or whereever it takes me

[slapegg]

Quick Critique: Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Before I even get to the meat of this: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, IT IS VERY BROKEN. Again, even if you loved the comic and love turn-based RPGS: DO NOT GIVE THIS COMPANY MONEY, THEY RELEASED A BROKEN GAME.

Joe Mad is one of my favorite artists and I read the Battle Chasers comic pretty much just to see him draw pretty things. I only just read it a year or two ago, so I thankfully avoided the whole incident of him bailing on the series and leaving it unfinished after a main plot twist. The actual story (and most of the writing) is kind of just Dungeons and Dragons meets generic anime stuff, but it had enough moments and unique ideas here and there to make the comic series worth it, even this many years after its initial release. So Battle Chasers the comic is pretty good. Battle Chasers the video game, however, is a steaming pile of garbage.

This game is so unfinished and slapped together that I'm just going to list out a stream of the constant issues it has: It crashes. A LOT. It's not just one thing going wrong, it crashes all over the place and multiple times at different spots (inventory screen, leaving a dungeon, changing screens, and so on) I actually had a crash during the ending credits It locks up every time I try to enter the Arena forcing me to force close the game I finally managed to enter the Arena (apparently some of the difficulties work and others don't), it's a series of battles with a 20 minute time limit, I'm doing the hardest difficulty to get the final prizes, get through multiple rounds where I'm one turn away from the entire party dying or I lucked out and a character dodged an instant kill move, I'm at the last boss with 2 minutes left on the clock, deliver the killing blow with 23 seconds left on the clock, I get the Playstation level trophy for completing the Arena, the game showers me with prizes, I leave the Arena, I open the menu, the game crashes and upon relaunching sets me back at the beginning of the Arena having made no progress at all and with none of the prizes. I think I just instantly skipped over anger, sunk back in my chair, and whispered "mother fuckers" to myself for a few minutes After a battle, I lost the ability to interact with any objects. Seeing as how the dungeon required me to flip a switch to advance, I had to quit the game. This happened multiple times Frequent hitches and freezing for a second on the map, exploring, and in battle Menus aren't responsive for a few seconds after opening them I had a story scene fail to load and the game just displayed a screen full of that "missing image" pink I had a different story scene fail to load but I still got the subtitles. This one was a major story sequence so it wasn't repeatable the next time I played the dungeon so I would have liked to have seen that The voice acting is Sega Saturn levels of bad. They're horrible choices for the characters but then poorly acted on top of that. And they apply random odd filters over the readings. There's a scene in the open air in a town where your characters talk to each other but Gully sounds like her lines were recorded in a particularly echo-y bathroom. The only character I cared for was The Collector, a sinister but gleeful little monster that is likely eating the remains of dead bosses that you bring it. The Collector deserves to be in a better game than this one The text size is WAY too small The walking speed is slow. If you doubled the walking speed, it would still be too slow Battles are slow both in animation and action speed and how many hits it takes to kill a grunt enemy The core combat system is tedious and relies far too much on crits and applying status effects. Most end game fights devolve into who can apply the most debuffs to the other team and then spamming special moves that gain extra traits if the enemy has specific debuffs The music is so laid back that it (rightfully) just seems uninterested in being a part of this game, even during battles. The soundtrack is so forgettable and uninteresting that I usually turned the game audio almost off and listened to the BBC while I played. The Shipping Report pretty much matches the pace and excitement of this game Totally unnecessary crafting mechanics By the time you get enough crafting materials to build a weapon, it's worse than what you get from dungeon crawling You can't sort your crafting materials alphabetically, so when you're looking up how many of a quest item you need, have fun sorting through that mess Totally unnecessary fishing mini-game Every time you enter battle, the UI flashes a move description. I think it's loading the last thing you used in the previous battle Occasional multiple second pauses at the start of a battle before the UI will display or you can interact with it in any way Clunky menu UI Loot-based drops that do nothing to make the game more interesting Loot that isn't even interesting or exciting because most of the equipment is very similar and the vast majority of what you find is just crafting materials you won't use Major side-quests and items that are gated by random loot drops. You have to hope the characters show up on the map and then hope they drop the item you need (usually multiple times) or else start a dungeon from scratch and do it all over again Semi-randomized dungeons where the actual rooms barely change but their order does, so combined with the need to grind, the dungeons get really boring and just have you looking for the exits rather than rewarding you for exploring. Later dungeons even repeat pieces of earlier dungeons Items in shops are stupidly expensive for how little they change your stats and for the piddly amount enemies actually pay out or what items sell for. While spending a night at the inn cost me 40 coins, selling a purple rank weapon only got me 17 coins. It's actually faster to play through the whole first dungeon and get the health and mana refill before the boss than it is to grind out the money to stay a night at the inn for a large chunk of the game Just about every item you find in the wild will raise one stat but then lower multiple other ones so you kind of just have to pick one stat for a character to use and min/max the hell out of it Items in your inventory will mark themselves as new even though you've seen them before Items in the world will still sparkle as if they're unchecked even though you already have them If you have to close and restart a dungeon (say because the game crashed or locked up), it will acknowledge that you've been through the rooms but respawn the enemies past a seemingly random point. I had one dungeon where the objective was to kill two mini-bosses, I did so, saved the game in case it crashed at the boss, and upon reloading it, the mini-bosses respawned even though I had the objective that said they were dead checked off Every time the game crashes, it resets your super meter. So you can go through a dungeon, build up your meter, save it for the boss fight, the game crashes, you reload at the boss, and now you have no meter and you're at a serious disadvantage Perks and equipment will unequip themselves (this may be related to all the crashes) I met an enemy without warning that was vastly stronger than anything I'd seen in the game before, I could only do 80 damage to it per turn, and every turn it could heal itself for 84 health. And for some reason I wasn't allowed to run away from the fight so I had to sit there for 10 minutes turn by turn hitting the enemy, watching it heal, and letting it whittle down my party's health. Dying then made me lose a chunk of my money Apparently those are special enemies that offer a special reward if beaten, but it wasn't until I was at the final dungeon that I ever saw them again. I don't know if the game was broken and would no longer spawn them or what Another dungeon had a bunch of enemies that I tore through with no problem, and then I got to the boss and it killed each member of my party in 1 hit. Dying, again, made me lose a chunk of my money. So the lesson is to never sell anything until you can fully afford the thing you're trying to buy because you never know when the game is going to throw balancing out the window and punish YOU for it I don't think you can manually save without quitting the game. But quitting the game dumps everything it loaded into memory or something because when you load the game back up, it can take 40 seconds to load into your first battle. Given all the crashes, you have to save and quit often, so get used to watching the first 15 seconds or so of the opening cutscene because you can't skip to the title screen until that plays out The trophies aren't properly proofread and sometimes won't award when you earn them and instead pop the next time you load the game If a character dies from a status effect at the start of their turn, the UI is not graceful I would love to hear some kind of justification on the game's balancing because the way it's set up is that you beat a dungeon, unlock the next story dungeon, but you're not actually strong enough to progress the story yet, so you have to go back and grind the dungeon a you've already finished to level up a bit. You pretty much have to beat each level on each difficulty before you can move ahead, so by the time you're ready to move the story along, you're really, really sick of the previous dungeon Characters not in your party don't gain any experience from battle, so the game actively discourages you from trying new characters. I was level 10 when I unlocked Knolan, but he was only level 9 and the more I use my normal team, the further Knolan falls behind, so I have no reason to ever add him to my party. Changing team members just means you have to redo all the grinding you've done to level them up and hope you get some loot drops for them. Maybe it's just how I play the game, but there's really only one viable team. You HAVE to have Calibretto on your team because he's the only decent healer. Garrison is the only one that can do any decent damage. Gully is slow and focuses on defense, while Monika has high evasion, good damage, and can bog enemies down with stat debuffs so Monika is way more useful Doing end game clean up, I used my weaker teammates because my main team stopped earning experience from the early dungeons, I met those special pirate enemies with this team, was happy to have a chance to fight them, but the pirates scale to your strongest team not the team you're actually using so my level 9, 12, and 17 characters got destroooyed by the level 30 enemies The team couldn't even do New Game + properly. Starting NG+ causes you to lose all your items, so all that time you spent on random drops to get the ultimate weapons and armor was totally wasted. It's completely unnecessary to do this because all the weapons are level gated. So if you reset the character levels, you stop them from having access to the top gear from the start, but once they level up, they get their hard earned weapons back. That would have been the competent way to handle NG+ here New Game + starts you off with the whole team, but it doesn't properly handle that you've unlocked characters before their normal unlocking event, so the shops won't sell you their perk bonus or costume items. Even if you come back at the end of the game when you'd normally have those characters, the game still treats them like they haven't been unlocked yet

Even with its many, MANY glaring flaws, they have the audacity to not actually finish the game's story. You slog through all of this, beat the final boss, and the ending is barely more than "hey, buy some DLC or a sequel".

So, yeah, don't spend money on this game. The perk system is kind of neat though. You get points when you level up and you can cash them in on an attack path or a defense path. As you buy perks on each path, every 20 points you spend unlocks a bonus perk that can offer some substantial stat boosts. You can respec for free, so you can mess around with different choices as you slooowly grind out levels or boss fight currency to get more points.

Battle Chasers is bad but not in the way that most low budget games are bad. The art's great so the game looks fantastic and draws you in. It's the quality design sensibilities and usability in the game that are godawful, the gameplay is as dry as it comes, and it's an unfinished mess. Everything about this screams that the team got a slew of crowdfunding money but then nobody on the team actually knew how to make a good video game so this got rushed out the door without proper testing or fixes to hit a deadline. Battle Chasers makes me question whether Playstation cert matters. If this game, with its constant crashes and 100% reproducible lock-ups, can be released for sale, then clearly nobody is checking the actual game or doing anything remotely resembling quality control.

[rxbxlcaptain]

Once Upon A Disaster

I wrote this for @therebelcaptainnetwork​‘s secret Valentine exchange. They originally required these stories be at least 1,000 words, but, as always, I got carried away with these two, so my story is six times that. The prompt “modern AU or a school/college AU” was given to me by @mamushkababuska​. Needless to say, that gave me plenty of room to improvise and take this plot where I wanted it to go. As they say, write what you know, and what I know is the struggles of a pre-med major in college, so I forced poor Cassian to suffer in similar ways to myself.

That being said, I’ve worked plenty of science terms, including CRISPR technology. Like I don’t own Star Wars or any of these characters (or even e.e. cummings), I do not own the ideas behind CRISPR, nor did Galen Erso discover that amazing science. I encourage you all to look up the fascinating topic that is CRISPR and marvel at the truly talented scientists that are changing the way we approach medicine.

Without further ado, here’s the story… Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Words: 6129

FF.Net / AO3 / Below the Cut!

Cassian Andor didn’t do love or relationships or even one-night stands. Flirting, drawing up romantic dinner plans, enticing a girl to come back to his apartment: the romance process took up way too much money and time. If there was one thing Cassian Andor didn’t have enough of, it was time.

No, he needed to fit the course load of a biochemistry/anthropology double major into his semester. He needed to take a couple more shifts washing dishes at the diner this weekend so that the rent could get paid. (He flatly refused for Kay to insist on covering him again.) He needed to type up the meeting minutes from his pre-med club. He needed to decide on his spring break plans: building homes in an impoverished town outside of New Orleans with Habitat for Humanity or vaccinating children in the Dominican Republic with Doctors Without Borders? He needed to keep up his 4.0 GPA so he could get a coveted summer internship at the cancer hospital in the city. He needed to land that internship so that Johns Hopkins medical school would look at his application.

The number one thing Cassian Andor did not need was a distraction.

And if Cassian had to describe Jyn Erso in two words, that’s what it would be. A Distraction.

She began by distracting their lab supervisor for organic chemistry. Ten minutes after the lab’s scheduled beginning, long after the introductory video for the lab had been shown, Jyn walked into the class.

No, “walked” was far too anticlimactic of a word. Jyn shoved her way into the lab, banging the door against the nearest wall and forcing the instructor to stop his lecture on safety.

The students stared, stunned past the point of mobility, at the latecomer. She wore, not the mandatory white lab coats and safety goggles like the other twenty-four students already sitting at their desks, but a Beatles tank top and flip flops. A half-hearted bun contained most of her hair, but much of it rebelled against its prison, falling into her eyes instead. She at least seemed to recognized that the cup of coffee in her hand violated some form of protocol, if her quiet “oops” and subsequent chugging of the liquid was any indication.

“You must be Miss Erso,” the instructor sighed, sounding resigned to the girl’s rule breaking rather than irritated, as Cassian expected. Longed for any other seat in the room, because next to his was the only unoccupied spot in the entire room.

Jyn gave a sloppy salute before heading towards Cassian, giving him a nod as she sat down.

At the front of the room, the instructor continued his lecture. “If you turn to your left,” Cassian flatly refused to look at the girl, “you’ll see your lab partner for the semester. Spend the next few minutes introducing yourself.”

In lieu of an introduction, Jyn asked, “Do you have a pen I could borrow? I forgot to bring one.” Without waiting for a response, she reached into his bag to find one, emerging with Cassian’s favorite pen, which she promptly dropped on the floor. “Oops.”

Cassian resisted the urge to groan.

 As if her entrance to class wasn’t bad enough, she managed to take Cassian’s pen—who doesn’t bring a pen to the first day of class? —and leave her syllabus behind in her exit. Luckily, her flip flops made enough noise down the hallway that Cassian could follow her.

“Hey! Jyn!”

She paused, looking up from her smartphone.

Cassian shoved the syllabus at her. “You forgot this.” He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice when he added, “And you took my pen.”

“I knew I was forgetting something.”

For Christ’s sake, was everything about this woman so apathetic? Surely, surely, Cassian thought, she has some kind of drive, some kind of motivation.

“Listen,” Cassian stopped her before she could walk away again, “This class is extremely important to me.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “So you need me to be a good little lab partner for you? So as to not screw you over?”

“Basically.”

She gave him a calculating look. “You’re trying to get into med school, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.”

She snorted.

“What?” Cassian growled, suddenly defensive. “Why are you taking organic chemistry then?”

She shrugged. “Thought it looked interesting.”

Cassian watched her walk away for a few seconds, his mouth hanging open in confusion. She was two blocks down the street before Cassian realized he hadn’t gotten his pen back from her.

“She’s taking organic chemistry for the hell of it, Kay. What kind of person does that?”

“That increases her chances of being a psychopath by at least thirty-two percent.”

Cassian had first met Kaden Sage Ogden the Second his first night in the dorm. Kay—as he insisted on being called, rather than actually using the “horrid name” his father insisted on passing onto him—had a tremendously high IQ and a tendency to say whatever he wanted around people, especially, it seemed, if the comment was better left unsaid. Cassian hadn’t managed to shed his awkward skin from youth, his impoverished background insisting that he did not belong among the preppy eighteen year olds who came to college equipped with shiny smartphones and daddy’s credit card. Both boys were labeled as “social outcasts” within their life day. Cassian had begun resigning himself to social isolation until Kay approached him and, as was his style, began saying whatever he wanted, starting with, “Bets on how many of these idiots need to get their stomachs pumped tonight?”

Add in that they had the same career plans—turns out Kay wanted to go to med school, as well—and there began the longest, and best, friendship Cassian Andor ever had.

Two years later and the pair now lived together. Where Cassian declared biochemistry as his major, Kay had decided on psychology. Unfortunately, rather than helping him understand how people worked, it only helped Kay prove what was wrong with them. Hence deducing Jyn Erso’s probability of being a psychopath.

“Remind me why you’re attracted to her?” Kay turned the page of his neuroscience book, the question casually curious.

“I’m—what?! Kay, I’m not attracted to her. Christ, why would you even say that?”

Kay stared over the top of his book, one eyebrow cocked high. “Something to do with how approximately sixty-five percent of our conversations now include mentions of Jyn Erso.”

Cassian bristled, defensive. “Because she happens to be my partner in organic chemistry, a class I need an A in to get into med school someday. This is my future she’s fucking with. Of course I’m always thinking about her.”

“You managed to connect a ketchup bottle to Jyn Erso.”

Cassian didn’t have an excuse for that one.

“Personally, I suggest you just sleep with her and get it over with. Then our lives can go back to normal.”

“I’m not attracted to her.” But he sounded petulant, even to his own ears.

“And here I thought of denial as a stage of grief, not of love.”

“Move that beaker farther away from the flame,” Jyn ordered.

Cassian tossed the lab manual at her. “Temperature should be at ninety-five degrees Celsius. That’s what the thermometer says it is, so I think I’m leaving it there.”

“You’ll speed up the metabolic rate too much and we’ll never be able to see the reaction properly.” Her words were confident in the face of the contradictory instructions.

He gave her a long stare. “Are you honestly attempting to tell me that you know better than the Ph.Ds. who wrote this?”

She seemed offended that he would ask. Without waiting for his opinion, Jyn adjusted the height of the beaker and continued with the experiment. Cassian would never admit it out loud, but the change in temperature, less than three degrees Celsius, led to what the lab instructor praised as the best example of hydroboration in the lab.  

“Captain,” Jyn announced as they cleaned their station. “I think that’s what I’ll call you, since you’ve got such a hard on for the rules.”

A week later, Jyn marched into lab with what she deemed a compromise. Cassian had never been so suspicious of anything in his life.

“Since you’re such a fan of following the rules, I edited the lab manual.” Indeed, her copy of the book had edits made throughout the text, white out covering the original text and new temperatures and mass amounts written over it in black ink. “This way, I know it’ll work and you’ll feel like you’re following instructions, rather than going rogue with me.”

“I don’t think this counts as following instructions.”

Jyn inclined her head, clearly saying Maybe, maybe not.

Glancing over his shoulder to ensure the lab instructor wouldn’t see their insubordination, Cassian followed her instructions. When, just like last week, their results were better than the rest of the lab, Jyn gave Cassian a significant look, as if expecting praise for her superior ways, which Cassian blatantly ignored.

Labs continued this way: Jyn providing superior instructions, Cassian following reluctantly. Every week, the question of how she always knew a better method danced on his tongue, but he never asked and Jyn never offered the information.

Of their three lectures a week, Jyn always skipped one and attended another. Cassian surmised that she must toss a coin in the air to decide if she the third lecture was worth her attention. Heads I go bother Cassian for an hour. Tails I give him a reprieve.

At the beginning of the semester, Cassian had worried this would mean she would demand his notes on a regular basis. She never once asked, though she must have been getting the information somewhere because she never seemed behind in the next lecture she graced with her presence. If anything, Cassian was forced to admit several weeks into the course, she remained ahead of even the most diligent students. It wasn’t enough for her to know that dienes could be formed from halides under basic conditions and alcohol under acidic conditions; she wanted to debate with the professor about the ideal conditions for the transition.

More times than Cassian cared to admit, she ended up winning those debates.

What he hated to admit even more was how often he turned to her for help in studying for the midterm. If his notes needed clarification, if he just couldn’t understand the difference between enantiomers and diastereomers, Jyn knew the answer. Asking her for help was just as useful as attending the professor’s office hours. The only thing Cassian could never figure out was how she knew all the information so easily. Maybe she had taken the class before and was repeating it; maybe she was secretly a TA infiltrating the class, like on Undercover Boss. Unfortunately for Cassian’s curiosity, Jyn tended to be just as tight lipped about her past as he was with his, so his questions remained unanswered.

The day of the exam, Jyn beat Cassian to class. She gave him half a smile as he sat down, though he barely noticed. Half his mind screamed in a panic while the other half desperately attempted to remember that panic did nothing for his ability to focus. The battle was turning to all out civil war, and Cassian worried that the only loser would be his exam grade.

“I lost at least three nights of sleep for this exam,” Cassian grumbled, unsure if he was talking to Jyn or if he was just lamenting his loss.

“That’s… dedicated,” Jyn said slowly. Somehow, Cassian got the feeling that wasn’t the word she wanted to use.

“How long did you spend studying then, Miss Know-it-all?”

She shrugged, nonchalant. “I flipped through my notes a few times.”

Cassian choked on his coffee. “You what?! Jyn, this exam is worth a third our grade.”

She merely hummed in response, flipping the page in her notebook with one hand. Taking advantage of his shock, she reached out to steal the coffee out of Cassian’s hand. Her face contorted upon tasting it. “Would you like a little coffee to go with your sugar there, Captain?”

“No one said you had to drink it,” Cassian said sullenly, moving the cup further from Jyn.

“Won’t make that mistake again.”

Rather than last second reviewing, as the exams were passed out, Cassian’s brain wondered just how strong Jyn Erso must take her coffee if a singular pack of sugar and a splash of milk counted as more sugar than coffee.

Eighty-five percent. Cassian scored an eighty-five percent on his midterm. Assuming this was before the curve—the main god that pre-med students worshipped—Cassian could finally exhale, letting out a little of his stress.

Until, of course, he saw the blue exam booklet sitting on his lab partner’s desk.

“A ninety-two?” Cassian exclaimed, grabbing the exam away from Jyn’s uninterested face. “You said you barely studied!”

“I didn’t.”

Cassian stared at her, an obvious What the fuck? expression on his face. “I call bull. No one gets a ninety-two on an o-chem exam without studying.”

“Surely you’ve taken a microbiology course, right?”

“Obviously.” What did this have to do with her acing an o-chem exam without studying?

She stared at him for a second, and spoke slowly, how one would speak to a toddler. “My father is Galen Erso.”

A few moments passed before the name clicked into place.

“Galen Erso? As in, the man who invented CRISPR, Galen Erso?”

“That would be the one.”

Only this girl, Cassian thought, would calmly proclaim her father as a world renounced scientist with that air of flippancy. CRISPR could change everything about the world of science, completely rework medical research, by giving people the ability to edit entire genomes.

“That’s amazing,” Cassian breathed, trying to remember more details of her father’s work. “I read one of his papers from a few years ago, the improvements— “

“Listen,” Jyn cut him off, “I’ve heard the whole speech before, okay? Jyn, your father is amazing! Jyn, you must be so proud! I don’t need to hear it again. Just take it as an explanation for the grade.”

Jyn stared him down for a moment as if challenging Cassian to continue his praise of her father’s work. Luckily—or maybe it was unluckily, Cassian wasn’t sure—the instructor called them to attention after a moment and Jyn took the chance to look away. Cassian, however, continued to stare at her, slack-jawed. He began to believe that, no matter what he did, he would never understand Jyn Erso.

A quick Google search that afternoon pulled up more information on Galen Erso for Cassian. As he remembered, Dr. Erso had been the original microbiologist to discover CRISPR’s ability to cut through double stranded DNA. His work had since been taken over by a Dr. Orson Krennic two years previous. The next page told him the reason.

Galen Erso had died of pancreatic cancer.

All at once, Jyn’s harsh reaction to discussing her father made sense.

Cassian Andor had a table in the library. He was there from the time his data analysis lecture let out at 2:30 until his shift at the diner began at 6, every weekday.

Cassian wouldn’t call himself superstitious. He didn’t need to sit at this table, per se, but it was his favorite table. He wanted to sit there. Far enough from the café that the incessant chatter and strong coffee smell were present but kept to a minimum, right by a window so he could see the outside world when his nose stayed in a book for hours: if they gave Academy Awards in the library, “Best Table” would be presented to his table every year.

Luckily, Cassian had only said this out loud once. Kay had been the only one listening, and he thankfully let the whole conversation bury itself and never resurface.

If there was anyone in the universe Cassian did not want to explain his love of this table to, it was Jyn Erso. The woman currently using his favorite seat at his favorite table.

“You are sitting at my table.”

She snorted without looking up from her books. “Are there assigned seats in the library I wasn’t aware of? A signup sheet I missed?”

“I always sit here.”

“Bully for you. I’m sitting here now.”

“Not anymore you’re not. Move.”

“Captain,” she sighed, finally looking up at him. “There are three more seats at this table. For Pete’s sake, sit in one.”

Huffing, Cassian took a seat and pulled out his physics textbook. For the first few minutes of work, Cassian firmly ignored Jyn’s presence at the table, forcing all his energy into three-dimensional vectors. Jyn, however, was not as dedicated to Cassian’s ideal of silence. He knew from lab that Jyn was an external processor: she would repeat measurements to herself or mutter under her breath almost constantly while they wrote observations. If she wasn’t talking, she fidgeted in some way, clicking her pen or doodling in the margins of her notes. What Cassian wasn’t accustomed to was seeing Jyn frustrated, which she definitely was now. She made several angry sounding exhales before Cassian raised his head to question what could possibly frustrate the great Jyn Erso this badly.

Jyn didn’t seem to notice him at all. Her left hand fisted the hair that traditionally fell in her face while her right hand held a pen—was that his pen? —so tightly her knuckles had turned white. In front of her sat a book of poetry and a notebook whose only notes had been harshly scribbled out. Her pen jabbed at the poem a few times, as if Jyn could stab the words away.

Cassian cleared his throat. “Having difficulties?”

Jyn glared at him with the same acidity she gave her book. “This isn’t in English,” she complained, her voice a strange mix between a growl and a whine.

Cassian pulled the book to him. E.E. Cumming’s “a connotation of infinity” stared back at him; no wonder she didn’t understand a lick of what it said. No capitalization, strange punctuation, illogical sentence structure: poetry didn’t have a clear answer like science did. It spoke to the soul, to raw emotions Cassian guessed that Jyn had shoved away years ago.  

“I can assure you it’s not in Spanish,” Cassian offered. “Poetry has a language all to itself.”

“It’s a stupid language.” Jyn’s head landed on the table, her arms forming a protective cage around it.

Cassian read the poem she was struggling with:

connotation of infinity

sharpens the temporal splendor of this night

               when souls which have forgot frivolity

in lowliness, noting the fatal flight

of world whereto this earth’s a hurled dream

 down eager avenues of lifelessness

“Souls which have forgot frivolity…” Cassian murmured, running his fingers along the words. His stomach clenched, an involuntary reflection of his childhood days without food. Visions of his parents, gone when he was just a child, flowed through his mind. These past traumas were etched deep into his soul and, traditionally, Cassian believed them to be indescribable. Apparently his brain and not the English language limited him, because E. E. Cummings understood.

Jyn, Cassian knew, had not spent her life away from tragedy. She knew the deep pain E.E. Cummings described, if only she would let herself feel it.

“Read it out loud,” Cassian urged her. “Maybe it’ll help.”

Jyn glared, but complied.

…When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought…

“None of this is logical,” Jyn concluded at the end.

“It’s not about logic. It’s about feeling. He’s found a way to bring emotions into words.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were a biochemistry major, not a lit major,” Jyn quipped.

Cassian shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t have emotions.”

She stared at him slowly for a moment, her eyes softening. “Me neither, I suppose.”

Jyn pulled the book back to her half of the table, picking up her pen with more confidence than before. Cassian tried to turn his attention back to his physics textbook, but his eyes wandered to her movements frequently. Notes remained in her notebook without being scratched out and the tension drained out of her face.

Cassian had been in awe of her during organic; the way she floated through one of the most difficult courses at the university gave even the professors, not to mention Cassian, pause. But, in a moment of sheer surprise, Cassian found himself more taken by Jyn Erso in her moment of struggle, watching her fight beyond the difficulty and emerge victorious. As Jyn put her finishing touches on her annotations and smiled, proud of her work, Cassian knew he was in trouble.

like a woman amorous to be known;

and man, whose here is always worse than naught,

feels the tremendous yonder for his own—

Of all the people Cassian expected knocking on his door at 10 o’clock on a Friday night—not that many people frequented his and Kay’s place—Jyn Erso definitely wasn’t one of them.

“I come bearing a peace offering,” she stated when Cassian opened the door, holding a bottle of vodka in her left hand and a Chinese takeout bag in her right.

“There better be orange chicken in there,” Cassian threatened in a way of greeting, leaving the door open as an invitation.

“Kay,” Cassian addressed his lounging roommate, “this is Jyn.”

This piqued Kay’s interest enough to glance away from the crime show on the television. “Ah, the infamous lab partner.”

“Glad to know my reputation precedes me,” Jyn called from the door where she kicked off her shoes.

“Trust me,” Kay snorted, “Cassian has mentioned you.”

“Only bad things I hope.”

God forbid, but she smiled, and Cassian wanted to laugh. He wanted to throw his arm around her shoulder and pull her close, maybe even press his lips to her hairline. She looked at him, her eyes still glowing with the smile, and Cassian thought she might have been the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

He moved himself away from those thoughts quickly, offering to grab glasses and plates instead. Small as the apartment was, he could easily hear Kay’s insensitive “Cassian doesn’t trust you, which means neither do I.”

“Charming,” Jyn replied, apparently unfazed.

Cassian hurried to Jyn’s side before Kay had the chance to throw any other backhanded comments.

Kay didn’t seem too interested in continuing to insult Jyn, however. Instead, he glanced between the Jyn and Cassian quickly, no doubt analyzing their body language and movements. “Think I’ll retire early, kids,” he concluded, getting up from the couch. “Don’t drink that entire bottle tonight, or there’s a good chance you won’t be awake for work in the morning, Cassian.”

Jyn snorted as he walked away. “So is he your roommate or your house mother?”

Cassian shrugged, reaching for the food as a distraction.

Ignoring Kay’s advice, the bottle of vodka neared empty by the time the fried rice was gone and they had finished fighting over the last piece of orange chicken. Turns out the casual drinking, the characters on TV providing background noises, was the key to unlocking the story of how Jyn grew into the laziest, smartest, most standoffish pain in the ass Cassian had ever met.  

“The science, well, it was my father’s whole life. He practically lived at the lab, only coming home to sleep and shower and maybe eat. It drove my mother insane for years before she left. But,” Jyn paused, giving a small snort. “She wasn’t much the parenting type herself, so I was shoved off onto my father in the custody hearings. Nothing was important enough to stop his work, though, so I joined him in the lab. I grew up playing with centrifuges and memorizing Hess’s Law. For a fifteenth birthday present, I became a full member of his lab.” Another swig of vodka. “I could have gotten my bachelor’s degree years ago, maybe even my master’s.”

Cassian shook his head. “See, that’s what I don’t understand. You’re wasting your time around us peasants and our poorly calibrated machines. Why? Is this some form of rebellion for you?”

Jyn stayed quiet for a second. “He died. He died and I couldn’t stand to look at the lab. Everything I knew about science, everything I loved about it… All of it was tainted. With memories of him. So I took off, ran away from everything I knew. But, without all of it, I didn’t know who I was.” She turned, smiling at Cassian again. “So I’m here until I figure out.”

Their faces, Cassian’s alcohol fogged brain belatedly noticed, were much closer than he realized. His hand had snaked its way behind her shoulder and hers rested on his knee. His eyes stared into hers, though he tried to ignore quick glances she kept giving his lips.

“You don’t drink much, do you?” Jyn asked, her voice softer than he had ever heard it. Her fingers moved, just as softly, to his lips, lightly outlining them, following as he shook his head.

“I don’t have time to waste on drinking and a hangover.”

“It’s not always a waste, you know.”

“Oh really? What’s the benefit?”

“This.”

And she kissed him.

Her lips were gentle, barely brushing his. She pulled back after a second, but Cassian followed, matching the sweet kiss she had given him. The gesture was too romantic for the setting, the cops on the TV still attempting to solve some bloody murder, empty take out containers littering the coffee table, the lights around them harsh, designed for studying, not romantic trysts on the couch.

But, god, she tasted good. Cassian couldn’t resist meeting her lips with more force, winding his hand into her hair and grabbing hold. He didn’t mind in the slightest when Jyn took charge, the way she did with everything in her life, by swinging one of her legs over his. Cassian bit her bottom lip and, if her answering moan was any indication, she enjoyed it just as much as he did.

After a few minutes of messing up hair and battling tongues, Jyn reached down to the hem of his shirt, toying with the muscles of his abs; her cold fingers snapped Cassian back to the room. He groaned pulling away from her lips, and glanced at the clock. 2:04 AM.

“Jyn?”

She didn’t respond, her lips and teeth occupied against Cassian’s throat.

“Jyn, I have to be at work in six hours. I need to sleep.”

With a sigh, she pulled away, moving off his lap and standing up. With her lips swollen and her hair beautifully disarrayed thanks to Cassian’s wandering hands, the last thing he wanted to do was let her go. As if sensing this, she reached back for him, placing a hand on his face and one last kiss on his lips.

“I’ll see you in lab,” Cassian whispered.

“Not if I see you first.”

She calmly gathered her shoes at his door and left without looking back. Cassian exhaled, a weird mixture of a groan and a sigh. What had he just done?

Two weeks later, Jyn appeared at his door again, armed again with vodka and take out bags.

“Indian this time. Variety is the spice of life and all that.” She didn’t even wait for Cassian to respond before forcing her way through his front door.

“Jyn Erso and the revolting smell of curry? Spare me, please,” Kay called from the kitchen.

“Ah, Kay, too kind for words, as usual.” Considering most people’s reaction to Kay, Jyn’s sarcastic response was nothing.

“No need to worry,” Kay shot back, “I won’t be staying long. In the words of that little wizard boy, ‘I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I don’t exist.’” With that, he closed the door to his room.

Jyn sent a questioning glance towards Cassian.

“He tends to say the first thing that crosses his brain and there was a Harry Potter marathon on this weekend.”

Jyn still looked bewildered, not that Cassian could blame her, but seemed to accept Kay’s behavior. She moved to their spot on the couch—when had it become their spot?—to sit down. Cassian went to the kitchen, returning with two glasses of coke, which he poured a generous portion of vodka into. They ate and drank in silence for a few minutes, their attention on the TV, before Cassian turned to her.

“Did you have more life secrets to share?”

“No,” Jyn answered, fiddling with the various take out boxes out on the coffee table. “I figured we could do you this week. After all, you could fill out an entire dossier on my life.”

He could, he supposed. He could fill out where she was born, her skills and her weaknesses, the labs she had worked in and what experiments she knew best. However, what Cassian wanted to know wouldn’t fit into the cold, hard facts of a dossier. Cassian wanted to know what he looked like before her coffee in the morning, her favorite food to grab when she was still studying at two in the morning, what she remembers of her mother, if she picked up her constant muttering from her father.

He wanted to know her in a way he had never wanted to know anyone before, and that scared him.

Jyn misinterpreted his silence as reluctance to speak about himself, because when she spoke again, it was in a smooth and reassuring tone, her eyes innocent and inviting. “You don’t have to, of course, it’s just… Trust goes both ways, Captain.”

“I trust you.” And he did. Idly, he wondered when that happened. “I just wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Where’s home?”

“Here, I guess,” Cassian shrugged. Naturally she would start with the most complicated question. “First place I ever felt wanted.”

“You didn’t when you were growing up?”

Cassian snorted. “My parents died when I was six, so a cousin took in my older brother and I. We were told to keep out of the way, most of the time.” The place he called home for a little over a decade was deep in the inner city, surrounded by gangs and violence. Memories of all the strange men and women, his cousin’s drug suppliers and dealers, Cassian would learn later in life, that would come and go in their tiny apartment filled his mind. He and his brother would be shoved into a backroom and told to keep quiet.

“The only place I enjoyed was school,” Cassian continued quietly, refusing to look at Jyn even though he could feel her gaze heavy on his face. “I was good at it, you know? Things made sense to me.

“But, I was small, couldn’t pack a very good punch, and the other kids knew it.” How many times had Cassian come home with a black eye or a bloody nose? “My brother would always fix me up, tell me it would be okay, that the other kids were just jealous. A few years later, he got caught in a gang fight. Ended up dead in the middle of the street about a block from home.”

Jyn gave no reaction, but her gaze slid away from his face. He wondered if he had gone too far with the story—he had only ever entrusted Kay with the story of his childhood before—and what her reaction would be. He wouldn’t blame her if she walked away now, deemed him too damaged to deal with, helpless beyond repair. She didn’t get up to leave, as Cassian half expected. She only gently probed further.

“Then how did you get here?”

“Hope.”

“Hope?” She echoed back, clear disbelief in her tone.

“My life’s been built on hope. And time management skills.”

She gave half a laugh, but obviously that explanation was not enough.

“One summer, some idiot from my neighborhood broke my nose and gave me this.” Cassian lifted his shirt to show a three-inch scar running across his abs. Memories of blood and pain broke through long standing barriers in Cassian’s mind. He fought against the onslaught of gruesome recollections, knowing they had the power to drown him. He fished, instead, for the shining beacon of hope that emerge from the wreckage of his childhood. “The doctor who stitched me up understood, said he came from a gang-infected area too. He told me I didn’t have to stay there, that if I worked hard I could get away and live the life I wanted.

“So I did what he said. I worked my ass off to get here.” Two jobs during the school year, three during the summer. Locking himself in his room for hours to study until he fell asleep on his textbooks. Avoiding others at school to prevent bloody noses and a police record. “The only other option was to rot in that hellhole like my cousin. Probably die bloody like my brother. My parents, my brother… they wanted better for me than that. I didn’t want to disappoint them. So I made something of myself.”

“Going to get your name on a Nobel Prize for medicine someday, Captain Andor?”

He shook his head. “I just want to help people.”

“Like that doctor helped you?”

He finally met Jyn’s gaze. “Exactly.”

She sighed and shifted closer to him on the couch. Silence overtook them for a few minutes. Jyn, with tentative fingers, reached out to rub a hand through Cassian’s hair. He relaxed into her touch, allowing her to comfort him in a way no one had ever offered before.

“You must have thought my story was so shallow. No wonder you hated me.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Cassian quickly disagreed, “Nor do I think you’re shallow.”

Their eyes met, both of them vulnerable and open in ways they weren’t accustomed to. Jyn’s hand shifted from his hair to his cheek and he leaned into it. He, in turn, reached forward to brush her hair away from her face as he’d been longing to do for so long. Slowly, he leaned forward to press his lips against hers. Like their last kiss on this couch, it was gentle, filled with emotion that made Cassian’s heart ache. They held each other close as their lips brushed over and over.

Cassian pushed her onto her back, his body hovering over her. He planted his arms on either side of her head, careful to keep his weight off her, until she wrapped her legs around his waist. Their hips met and Cassian groaned. His lips drifted from her lips, down to the column of her neck.

“Cassian,” Jyn breathed as he bit the skin lightly. Her hands roamed his back, reaching under his shirt. She traced around to his abs, reaching for the scar Cassian had showed her earlier. She mapped the skin there, memorizing the physical marks of his life story he had just shared. Looking back into her dark eyes, Cassian left a sense of intimacy he had been missing his whole life.

“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered.

She nodded, pulling his head back to hers for a kiss. After a moment, they shifted around, Cassian spooning behind her, his arms pulling her close to his chest. Their limbs tangled awkwardly in the transition before finally settling comfortably. Cassian reached for her hand, holding it tight.

“Good night, Captain.” The quiet words drifted along with Cassian as he fell asleep.

“Oh, good, she’s still here.”

Surprised by Kay’s booming voice, Cassian jumped up, nearly knocking Jyn off the couch in the process.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I startle you?”

Cassian glared at his roommate through tired eyes. Kay only sighed before throwing up his hands in surrender and walking into the kitchen. Jyn rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, yawning loudly.

“I either need another two hours of sleep or two cups of coffee,” she complained.

“There’s a great breakfast place about two blocks from here,” Cassian offered. “They serve an excellent cup of coffee.”

“Are you asking me on a date, Cassian Andor?”

He couldn’t resist returning the smile she gave him. “Only if you want it to be one, Jyn Erso.”

“I’ll grab my shoes then.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “It’s about time you decided to buy me a meal. I’ve already brought you takeout twice.”

About halfway to the diner, Cassian’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out to reveal a text from Kay.

She’s going to be around a lot, isn’t she?

Yes, Cassian decided, beaming down at their intertwined hands, Jyn Erso was going to be around a lot.

[wrebeccawrites]

The Missing Six Months

Here’s a quick one-shot about Grizz and Sam getting closer during the six months when we don’t see them:

Sam’s afternoon was going perfectly fine until someone whapped the back of his head with a CPR manual. He turned his body around in the old floral print Lay-Z Boy he currently occupied to flip off his assailant. 

“Come to the hospital with me,” Grizz signed as he spoke, dropping the manual onto the floor. Over the past few weeks, he had picked up enough ASL to impress Sam. The two of them dedicated a few hours a day after work to sit in the living room and go over phrases. Most of the time they ended up traveling way off course talking about their favorite movies and acting them out. Both of the boys were deeply disappointed that they would never see the newest Avengers film. However, Sam was convinced Grizz’s rendition of the plot was better than anything the Russo Brothers could produce. Watching him improvise entire fight sequences while attempting to sign the dialogue made for a glorious mess. Any phrase he didn’t know, he tried to spell out. 

Now he looked very eager to get out of the house. Both of his hands were stuffed into his front pockets as he rocked on the balls of his feet. It made the little bun on top of his head bounce. 

Sam smiled, “Why are you going to the hospital?”

Grizz held his hand out, pulling him up, as he replied, “It’s an adventure.”

Sam rolled his eyes as got off the chair.  It would take them at least 30 minutes to walk to there. Allie had taken the car that morning. But he did need some fresh air and it looked like Grizz needed to blow of some steam. They made their way to the hall closet and Grizz grabbed both of their coats. He shrugged on his own then held out Sam’s.

“I can put my own coat on, dumb ass,” Sam told him as his stuffed both his arms into it. Grizz let go of the jacket and patted him on the back, “Don’t shit on my kind gestures. Let’s go!” 

 As they walked into the fresh fall day, Sam pulled out his phone and texted Becca going on some errands, be home soon. Need anything while I’m out? She texted back, Thank God you’re out of the house, I can finally masturbate. Which made him chuckle at his phone. 

Grizz bumped his arm, “What are you laughing at?” 

“Becca is happy I’m out of the house,” he looked at Grizz’s questioning eyes and continued, “She can finally masturbate.” 

“Oh, um, that’s kind of private, right?” 

“Everyone has needs. And you have to admit it’s been pretty difficult to,” then Sam signed flicking the bean and continued, “While everyone is living together.” 

Grizz scrunched up his nose and agreed. Sharing a room with Gordie and Eric had been fine, at first. They spent most of their time out of the room, really only using it for sleep. Grizz missed his bed. He used to keep his favorite books tucked under the pillows so he could read before he fell asleep. Now, he has to roll out his back every morning from sleeping on the floor with no space to stretch out. His books remained on the living room shelves where he could pull them out at the end of the day and read them to anyone who would listen. And by anyone, he meant Sam. Sam was always there, cuddled under a blanket, listening to whichever play or novel he chose for the night. Occasionally Bean would join. Allie pretended to hate it, but she came every night with a mug of tea for everyone. 

It became a really wholesome nighttime ritual. He thought about a few nights previously, when he was reading August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. At first, the girls protested the blatant misogyny. Then Grizz started reading the scene when Jean is whispering his secret desire to Julie. Everyone quieted down as he said those lines, leaning in and growing hot. Grizz got lost in it. He knew how to deliver like Jean’s words were the only thing keeping him breathing. When he was done with the scene and Jean successfully brings Julie into his bed, he paused and looked around. Allie was looking down at her socked feet, blushing. Gordie had his eyebrow raised at him while Bean smushed her lips together. And Sam looked him right in the eye, lips slightly parted, waiting for him to go on. 

“You’re right. There are definitely moments when I wish I had my own room,” Grizz told him. They looked at each other before Sam huffed in agreement. It drove Grizz a little crazy when he did that. Like he could read his thoughts somehow. They spent the rest of the walk chit chatting about the weather growing colder and how hard the various job postings were. When they arrived at the hospital, Grizz was shocked to find the doors unlocked. 

“What, did you think they would have maximum security to keep sick people out?” Sam poked fun at him. 

“No, no. But there’s, like, super expensive equipment in here. And drugs and stuff,” he said this earnestly, which only made Sam laugh harder. They went inside. Grizz went straight to the counter and started sifting through lists. He skimmed every page, trying to find what he was looking for. Sam stood nearby, clueless to the boy’s quest. After a couple minutes, he became utterly bored. 

“What is the point of this adventure, Grizz?” Sam asked. Grizz loved when Sam said his name. It took him a moment to refocus on the task at hand. 

“I am trying to figure out where they keep the CPR dummies,” he answered. 

“You could have told me that. Let me help you look,” Sam came behind the counter. The two of them barely fit. As they looked, their hands would stumble over each other. Sam let their arms press together, after a while. Grizz didn’t pull away. Together, they found a hospital map and guessed, “training bay” was their best bet. The hospital was a little creepy. It still smelled like a sterile and sickly place without any humanity to soften the edges. They flicked on lights as they walked down the mint green halls. Their florescent glow made the boys skin look grey and unhealthy. Their boots stuck to the ground enough to create a sticky suction noise with every step. Neither of them said anything until they got to the training bay. 

They looked in horror at the room full of humanoid dummies. At least ten were scattered about the room, hooked up to IVs or resting next to scalpels. Before Grizz could take another step, Sam grabbed his arm and asked, “Is it just me, or are we about to get murdered by evil doctor right now?”  

“I’m definitely getting that vibe,” Grizz said, “I’m afraid I’ll get possessed if I touch one of these things.”

His gaze trailed over every body and asked, “What’s the sign for ‘heebie jeebies.’” 

Their chuckles broke the tension. 

“Why do you need one?” Sam asked. Grizz knit his eyebrows together and rubbed the back of his neck before he answered. 

“I’m trying to learn CPR.” 

“Really? I’m surprised you don’t know how to do it. I thought you were some type of boy scout,” Sam signed as he spoke. Grizz didn’t smile at his joke. 

“I don’t know how to do it.  I know I present as this big survivalist guy but I really don’t know everything. I know a lot, but not everything. It was people assuming that from me that got Emily killed. I didn’t know how to do CPR or get venom out of a snake bite or anything else that would have fucking helped.  If I did, she would have been fine,” he had tears in his eyes by the time he was done talking. Sam didn’t know what to say. He never realized how much pressure Grizz was putting on himself to keep their society safe. He could feel the guilt radiating off of him like a poison. He reached and grabbed his upper arms and tilted his head to look him in the eyes. 

“Hey, what happened to Emily was not your fault. You can’t carry that around with you, it’s not your burden.”

Grizz wiped his eyes and signed, “I know. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be better prepared for next time.” 

Sam nodded and pulled Grizz into a hug. For a few seconds, they stood in each other’s embrace. Sam’s head laid on his chest. He could hear his breath ease as his need to cry passed. Even though Grizz was a few inches taller than him, he felt like his was holding something very small and fragile. He took a deep breath and released him. 

“You know, I could teach you CPR, I got recertified every year so I could charge more when I babysit,” Sam said, breaking the tender moment. 

“Yeah right. If I tried those chest compressions on you, I’d break your sternum,” he took a couple steps back from Sam. 

“So you think you’re strong enough to break me?” 

“I think we both are,” Grizz said as he walked backward toward the dummies. Sam didn’t know what to say. Grizz turned away from him and paroozed his options. He picked up the one sitting lopsided on a chair, “I think this is our guy.” 

Sam nodded, “Yeah he looks like a good victim to save.” 

Grizz heaved the dummy onto his shoulder and fireman carried him out of the room. 

“Let’s get the fuck out of this creepy hospital,” he said. 

The boys left and started walking back home. They got halfway there before Allie pulled up next to them. She rolled down the window. 

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” 

Sam and Grizz exchanged looks before Grizz said, “We are just out here trying to make some new friends, you know?” 

“Just get in, I’ll give you a ride home,” she said. Grizz heard the car doors unlock and he piled in the backseat after Sam, tossing the dummy into the truck. 

The dummy was christened Ralph and embraced by their household.