#shrieking at this idiot who is *losing weight* and still going 'if I eat too much i might get fat'

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

I just. I think I should probably snack more but a) that's Not What We Do In This House and b) I wouldn't dare so what's even the point of trying

[patt-writes-stuff]

Violetgrass (Xiao x f!reader)

Pairing: Yan!Xiao x f!reader

Word count: 6.7K+

Warnings: not the most canon complaint cuz the timeline for the archon War is a little blurry? Angst with no happy ending, major and repeated character death, semi-detailed descriptions of blood, injuries, and violence. Unhealthy and toxic relationships, yandere themes, mentions of stalking, controlling behavior, mentions of kid-napping, forced captivity. Unhealthy mindsets and generally xiao’s kinda slowly losing his sanity. Some delusions. Allusions of starvation/dehydration (it’s like one sentence). Pleas do not read this if any of the previously mentioned topics trigger you in any way.

Genre: Angst and Yandere

Tags/Aus: Mythology Au, Reincarnation Au

Summary: You and Xiao were lovers during the Archon War. You were his paradise, his bliss, and, unfortunately, a fragile mortal who was taken away far too soon. However Celestina was kind enough, or perhaps cruel enough, to bring you back to Xiao, only to rip you out of his loving embrace once more. This happens again and again, each time far more painfully than the last. Even an Adeptus such as Xiao can only take so much before he snaps though. This time, he’s gonna make sure that no one, not even you, can take his bliss away.

A/N: This is my piece for the Attack on Academia Mythology Au Collab!! Be sure to check the rest of them, they’re all super awesome and made by amazing writers!

You’ve heard the myth about the Vigilant Yaksha and the violetgrass maiden, haven’t you?

It’s said that the two are eternally intertwined, destined to love each other, only to be ripped apart by both her mortality and the cruelty of the gods. The tale itself goes like this…

The first time the Adeptus and his mortal lover met was back when the Archon War was still roaring. The smell of blood and misery filled the air and Rex Lapis had yet to claim his title as the Geo Archon. Despite this, some managed to find joy and serenity in these troubling periods.

The maiden was one of those people. She found joy in frolicking through the fields and climbing the highest mountains to collect qingxin flowers and, her personal favorite, violetgrass, whenever she had the time. Though climbing up the steep mountains and jagged peaks of Liyue was indeed dangerous, the damsel had become quite skilled at climbing, her hold rarely ever slipping, no falls or cuts of any sort.

Until one day, the maiden was climbing up a particular mountain. It was a troublesome one, for there were no proper footholds or protruding stones to grab on to. Still, the pretty violetgrass that was just a foot or two away from her, swaying gently with the wind, was far too tempting to not collect. It would look so lovely in a flower crown, or maybe a vase, perhaps she could flatten it out to make a bookmark or-

A piercing shriek escaped the mortal. Whilst her thoughts had been elsewhere, she’d stopped on a small ledge that was far too fragile to support her weight, the rock beneath the maiden gave away to nothing before she could react.

She shut their eyes tightly, bracing herself for an impact that would surely leave her battered and bruised, if not dead.

However, it never came.

Instead, she was caught mid-air by a pair of strong arms that secured their hold under the mortal woman’s knees and neck. She didn’t open her eyes right away, for fear that she would still fall, choosing instead to catch their breath. Once her savior landed safely on the ground, something she was able to detect due to the thud of shoes against the earth, she slowly opened her eyes.

Upon opening them, her eyes met with the piercing amber eyes of a young man with dark hair (the color of the ocean at night, she thought dreamily) with pretty teal bangs framing his even prettier face. His brows were furrowed slightly, thin lips twisted into what seemed to be a permanent frown. In her still dazed state, she couldn’t help but think that he was far too handsome to look so dreadfully serious.

After an intense moment of eye contact, perhaps too intense for two strangers that had met only seconds prior, he let her go in a rather unceremonious manner, causing her to squawk in surprise, knees buckling under the unexpected weight. She had not yet had a chance to gather her bearings after such a terrifying event.

Instead of asking if she was alright, the young man simply said, in a rather crude and callous manner, “You should be more careful, mortal. If I hadn’t been there to catch you, you would’ve surely broken your neck.”

She gawked at him. Mortal? Why would he refer to her in such an… odd way?

The maiden looked at him up and down, as if trying to understand just what was wrong with this poor man. Suddenly, it struck her. She’d been an absolute idiot to not have noticed sooner. From the tattoo that adorned his right arm to the way he held himself, it had been so obvious.

Her savior was an Adeptus.

He wasn’t just an Adeptus, no. He was much more than that. He was one of the Adepti who served under Rex Lapis. He was one of the five Yakshas who kept her and the people of Liyue safe if the mask tied to his belt was any indication. And instead of killing demons or evil gods, he’d taken the time to save her.

Before she could muster an adequate thank you, he, who she’d now realized was Adeptus Xiao, was already leaving, uttering a quick “Please be careful,” on his way.

Quickly, and without really thinking, she grabbed onto his wrist, blabbering out the words, “Wait, don’t go! You must allow me to repay you for your generous actions!”

The amber-eyed Adeptus opened his mouth, ready to declare that it was unnecessary, but before he could, the damsel spoke up, “I could cook you something in return. How about almond tofu?” with a small giggle she added, “I assure you it’s sweeter than those dreams you eat.”

To both of their surprises, Xiao uttered a quiet, almost shy, “Yes.”

The Adeptus didn’t know what had come over him. All he knew is that there was something about the way her eyes sparkled and her lips moved, her soothing, melodious voice. It made his heart pound in a way it never had before.

And so, she cooked him some almond tofu, and they- well, she- talked as he ate the mouthwatering sweet.

He came back the day after that one and the one after that, followed on by the one after that, and so on. Xiao hadn’t meant to, really he hadn’t. But there was something about the maiden that just brought him a peace he had never experienced before. Her warm embrace and soft, gentle words were all he needed to keep fighting, to keep living, even. She was his paradise, his bliss. It wasn’t long until they were mutually infatuated with one another, deeply in love.

Every time he would visit her home, he would always bring her the flowers she so adored. Glaze lilies, silk flowers, and of course, violetgrass. Xiao had even gifted her a small broach, one made of the finest noctilucous jade, shaped like the downturned purple flower.

Unfortunately, everything is temporary for those punished with immortality.

The first time Xiao lost his maiden was, as he remembers, a rainy day. Despite the dreary weather, she had decided to go violetgrass picking since they’re always best picked after the rain.

But, dear Archons, what a dreadful idea that had been.

While the purple flower is indeed best picked after it rains, it is also the time when rocks are most… slippery.

So, as the maiden was climbing up the steep mountains of Juyen Karst, her right hand’s hold on the rock slipped, causing her palm to be cut open by a particularly jagged piece of stone. She hissed in, watching as blood began to ooze out. Panic started to seep in, there was no ledge for her to tend to her wound, and the cut was far too big for her to continue to climb up or down.

Dread began to fill her to her very core, she felt burning hot with unchecked anxiety, fear begging to settle into her gut in the most uncomfortable of manners. She should have waited for Xiao as he had asked of her. Ever since they had first met, a year ago to the day, he’d been so adamant on wanting to go with her to ensure her safety. She’d only wanted to surprise him with some when he returned home. The maiden was so sure it would’ve been a romantic anniversary gift, seeing as they were the cause of their meeting…

She’d been such a fool.

The violetgrass maiden attempted to climb down but Celestia seemed to laugh at her feeble attempts. She stretched her leg, trying to find the foothold she had used previously. However, her foot slipped and before she knew it, she was falling, just as she had been a year ago.

Horror filled her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe, her life flashed before her eyes, and then suddenly she remembered some words her lover had uttered to her one night under the glow of the moonlight when it was but the two of them in each other’s arms:

“If you awake to a knife at your throat, if monsters dig their claws into you, if death comes knocking at your door, call out my name, Adeptus Xiao. I will be here when you call.”

And so she called, at the top of her lungs, as loud as she could muster. The seconds seemed to turn to hours as she shut her eyes and waited to feel the strong arms of her lover, to hear the safety of his heartbeat.

But it never came.

Or rather, it came too late.

By the time Xiao had finished up the demonic creatures that threatening Liyue, by the time he’d answered her call, he was already too late.

Upon manifesting in the air out of nothing, he was greeted by the side of his love’s pitiful, mortal body. Her garments were bloody, the basket she carried her flowers in laid a few feet away from her body,her neck bent in a painfully awkward way.

Xiao felt so helpless. He was so helpless.

He could do no more than hold back the tears stinging his eyes and attempting to shake her awake.

The second time Xiao met the maiden was no more than a century after the first time. The Archon War was not yet over and sickness plagued every nook and cranny, taking the lives of hundreds upon thousands.

The two star-crossed lovers were reunited one clear summer night when the maiden was wandering aimlessly through the fields of Lingju Pass. She knew it was dangerous during these times, especially with how ill she had been feeling as of late. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to care. She’d already spent hours tossing and turning in her bed. Sleep, however, refused to come. Instead, she felt the overwhelming urge to leave the safety of her bed and go there. It was as if someone had tied a rope around her waist and was tugging at it persistently, insisting she follows.

And so she followed.

Upon reaching a clearing, she froze. In front of her very eyes was a sitting Stonehide Lawachurl, the type even the fiercest warriors in your village struggled with. The maiden quickly started backing away, praying to the Lord of Geo that it wouldn’t sense her presence. Her prayers were in vain, however, for as soon as the thought escaped her, she stepped on a twig, making it snap and effectively alerting the fearsome monster of her presence.

She shook in terror as parts of the Lawachurl’s rocky exterior began to glow with geo elemental energy. She hadn’t expected anything of the sort to happen so she hadn’t brought her sword, meaning she couldn’t exactly fight it, definitely not without a vision at least. Running wasn’t much of an option considering her body’s weak and ill state. She could try to outrun it, sure, but it wouldn’t be long before she was driven to a coughing fit because of it.

Before life had a chance to flash before her eyes, a masked young man appeared. Distantly, she recognized him as one of the adepti and watched him easily defeat the Stonehide Lawachurl with a series of short, consecutive plunges. She couldn’t help but watch him, mouth agape in an expression of pure, unadulterated awe. The Adeptus didn’t even need a claymore to break through the creature’s thick, hard exterior. As bad as she felt for not assisting him, she knew she weren’t exactly in any position to lend a hand. Not that she needed to, though, for soon enough the monster crumbled into nothing but red and black smoke.

After a second of panting over the remains of what was left of the creature, polearm in hand, Xiao turned to her and felt his blood run cold.

It was her.

How could it be her? She had died long ago. He knew she had, he’d cradled her cold body as tears streamed down his face. He’d taken her lifeless body back to her family. He’d left flowers at her grave.

This had to be some sort of sick joke, he thought, perhaps the karmic debt was finally getting to him, just like it had his fellow Yakshas.

Suddenly, his amber eyes zeroed in on a broach she had pinned to her dress. A Violetgrass broach, to be exact. Made of noctilucous jade, just like the one he had given her. The one he’d made for her with his own hands. There was no denying it was the very one. Only, how could that be? He had ensured it had been buried with you…

But it was an indisputable fact. That broach was the one he had made for his love and the woman before him was her. It was her from her wide eyes, fixated on him with the same wonder they had always had when they looked at him. Her hair was the same color and texture, and it framed her face in the same way. It was her.

The beginnings of tears stung at his eyes. Perhaps Celestia had brought you back? Perhaps they’d finally realized, just as he had always known, that her death was cruel and unfair. That it wasn’t meant to be. That she was meant to be in his arms, happy and safe.

“Uhm- excuse me, Adeptus Xiao, are you alright?” She inquired worriedly, eyes solely on him, filled to the brim with concern.

‘Oh Archons’, he couldn’t help but think distantly, ‘I’ve missed her voice.’

Instead of running up to her and crushing him in his loving embrace, he stayed where he was, took off his mask, nodded briskly, swallowing as if to avoid the tightness in his throat. She didn’t seem to remember him yet, so there was no use in frightening her.

Before he could muster up the courage to speak to her, his love began to cough furiously, though she attempted to cover it up. She didn’t want to be rude to her savior, after all.

“Ha, pardon me, sir, I’ve just been feeling a bit under the weather is all,” she told him feebly.

He nodded brusquely, before uttering, “I shall return you home safely.”

“Oh no, I assure you, you’ve done more than enough for me. I can’t ask that of you,” she fumbled hurriedly, though his words were more of a statement than a question.

Xiao had never been one for unnecessary- or at least what he thought were unnecessary- words, so instead of saying anything, the Adeptus simply grabbed her by the waist and teleported you home, after asking where home was, of course.

The next day, the Yaksha visited the maiden’s home, a bushel of violetgrass flowers in hand. She’d been understandably surprised, yet thrilled that the dark-haired man was visiting her. She hadn’t expected someone as busy as him to make time for a regular person such as herself, especially not during these times.

“These are my favorite flowers, y’know? They’re just so beautiful,” the maiden exclaimed gleefully.

He did know. That had been one of the reasons he had brought them to her. The second reason was because of what happened last time, in her previous life, he supposed. Celestia had been kind enough to gift him a second chance with his love, and he was going to ensure that it did not go to waste.

And so, every day he would visit her. Some days he would bring silk flowers, or glaze lilies, while other days he would bring her loach pearls and core lapis. Not a day went by where he would not appear in front of the damsel’s house, a gift in hand, ready to hear her ramble about whatever that beautiful brain of hers desired to prattle on about.

“You’re simply too generous Xiao,” she’d told him playfully while she laid in her bed, as she was still unwell, the Adeptus seated in a plush chair next to it. “There has to be something I can give you in return for everything. I won’t take no for an answer.”

He thought for a moment, before asking, tentatively, “Do you know how to make almond tofu?”

He’d never forget her dazzling smile that day, as she shakily got out of her bed, latching onto the support he offered while she gathered her bearings, and marched to her kitchen, enthusiastically preparing the sweet treat as she talked about a book she’d been reading, one that’d been gifted to her by a friend, titled Moonlit Bamboo Forest.

The lovers did this every day for months. Xiao brought her some medicinal tea that Rex Lapis himself said could cure her ailments. They did indeed begin to see improvement in her health and Xiao couldn’t help but feel immense relief. This time, he wouldn’t lose her for certain.

Until the plagues reached her village.

She’d been one of the first to catch it since the village doctor came to check on her so often, he’d spread it to her. The plague, coupled with her previous illness, weakened her body in a manner of days. One day, Xiao went to get some medicine his fellow adepti had guaranteed would help the maiden feel better.

When he returned later that day, however, he found her body in the bed, cold and without a pulse, the stench of death and sickness thick in the air.

That was the second time he had lost her.

The third time the star-crossed lovers met was long after the archon war. Liyue was now its own nation with its own name, the great center of wealth and commerce. The Yakshas were now a thing of the past, having succumbed to their karmic debt. Eventually, they all fell in one way or another.

All but Xiao, who remained a constant throughout it all.

Over the past decade or so, Xiao had taken to staying at the Wangshu Inn when he wasn’t slaying monsters. The people were nice enough, though he had long given up on attempting to form emotional connections with others. It would only lead to grief, just like it had when he’d lost his love or his fellow Yakshas, and there was only so much grief anyone, mortal or not, could take before their thread of sanity snapped in half. And with his Karmic Debt being as bad as it was…

As Xiao sat at the edge of the balcony of the Wangshu Inn, legs dangling below, he couldn’t help but think of her, his maiden. He wondered if, perhaps, Celestia would give him a third chance and bring her back to him. Honestly, the Adeptus wasn’t sure he wanted a third chance with her. While he did miss the sound of her heartbeat and the sweet words she’d utter to him and only him, he doubted he could bear the pain of having her ripped away from him once again.

It’s as if Celestia was taunting Xiao. As if the Archons above were bored and found some sick amusement in his pain as if his emotions were nothing but a game to them. What other explanations were there for what happened next?

“Um- excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?” An angelic voice he knew far too well, missed far too much, spoke.

Xiao looked up and lo and behold, it was her. Same hair, same eyes, same violetgrass broach.

She stood behind him clutching a plate of something, though the angle wouldn’t allow him to make up what it was. Her face adorned that same anxious smile of hers and he could feel himself falling in love with the maiden all over again. He knew he should say no. He shouldn’t allow her back in, not when he’s already lost her so many times before, not when they’d both suffered so much just by being together.

He nodded before looking away.

He shouldn’t but he would.

“I hope you don’t mind me intruding on your quiet time,” she said softly once she had settled beside him. When he made no indication of answering, she continued, “To be honest, you just seemed so… sad, melancholic even. Something about it, even if I don’t really know you, doesn’t sit right with me. It makes my heart feel heavy.”

The violetgrass maiden received no response, except for a soft grunt of acknowledgment, so small she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. Still, it was all she needed to perk up and stretch her arms out, offering him the plate she’d been holding.

“Here, I got this for you,” she told him, “word around the streets is you’ve got quite an appetite for it! Though this is my first time staying at the Inn, so I’m not sure if it’s any good here.”

Xiao looked at her, amber eyes filled with love. He was glad to know that, despite living through many lives now, she was still the girl he’d met back then, as sweet as he’d remembered her, just as caring.

He shouldn’t have but he took the plate from her hands and began to eat.

Instead of saying anything, she simply watched him as he ate, a silly little smile making its way to her face. The look on his lady’s face had him growing hot and turning beet red

“So,” he coughed out, embarrassed, “where’d you get a broach like that?”

“Oh, this one?” She inquired, pointing at the shiny violetgrass broach, “I found it lying on the ground one day when I was out picking lotus heads for dinner. I asked just about everyone in Liyue Harbor if it was theirs, but no luck. I eventually decided to just keep it for myself. It is a shame though, whoever lost it must truly be upset over losing such a beautiful piece of jewelry. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

He nodded along, thinking that, well, the broach actually was with its owner.

“It’s as if it were fate though,” she prattled on happily, watching the stars as she talked, “Violeygrass is my very favorite, always has been really. Though, I’ve always been too scared to climb up for them myself. You see, ever since I was little, I’ve had this recurring nightmare where I fell to my death while collecting some.”

The Adeptus stilled for a second, tense. She hadn’t ever brought up dreams about her past life. Maybe this time was different, maybe she’d remember what he did!

“Oh my Archons,” she exclaimed, face warm with embarrassment, scratching the back of her head sheepishly, “I’ve been going on and on! I’m so sorry, something about you feels so familiar. It makes me feel like I can tell you just about everything. Is that weird?”

His heart was racing like it hadn’t in years, decades even.

“You can tell me whatever you want,” he answered shortly, “I don’t mind listening. You have a nice voice.”

The maiden covered her hands with her face, flustered, and Xiao let out a rare smile, soft and gentle. This time would be different. He’d make sure of it.

After that day, the maiden began to visit the Wangshu Inn often, whenever she could spare time away from her job. Unbeknownst to her, however, Xiao followed at a distance when she wasn’t visiting him, to ensure her safety. He knew it wasn’t right, truly, but he had no other choice. He had to, or else he’d risk losing her to an accident such as last time, fall ill again, attacked by monsters or, Celestia forbid, be kidnapped by a group of treasure hoarders.

He’d have to get rid of any and all threats.

So, Xiao continued to follow his maiden from a distance, he made sure she was in tip-top shape, and ruthlessly slaughtering all enemies that he deemed a threat to her, until he was certain nothing would take her away from him again.

Except for one threat. Himself.

The third time he’d lost her was on a beautiful night, not that Xiao could remember it well. His love had insisted on the two of them taking a walk. She’d reasoned that the cool night air would help him regain control. His karmic debt had been weighing on him an awful lot recently and she simply couldn’t bear to see him in such excruciating pain.

The walk had started off rather pleasantly, as far as Xiao could remember. He could remember nudging his hand against hers, wanting to hold it but being far too shy to do so. With a laugh and a teasing remark, the maiden interlaced their fingers, bringing up their hands to place a gentle kiss on his, making the tips of his ears redden in bashfulness. They’d walked a little further until they encountered a group of hilichurls accompanied by a pyro abyss mage. Without skipping a beat, Xiao stepped in front of his lover, polearm appearing in his hand.

And then…

Everything went dark. Xiao’s mind was nothing but a void, pain exploded in every inch of his body as his karmic debt returned in full force to punish him for the slaughtering he’d committed.

When he came to, his mind was hazy, unsure of what had occurred. The Yaksha sat up, ignoring the way his muscles protested against it, and looked around, trying to make sense of what had happened and where he was.

Xiao froze when his eyes locked onto her pitiful body laying a few feet ahead of him in the grass surrounded by arrowheads and broken hilichurl masks, blood turning ice-cold. If he ignored the gashes across her body, the ones that were unmistakably made by the bloody spear he was clutching and not some hilichurl club or bow and arrow, and the blood that stained her pretty garments, he could almost fool himself into thinking she was asleep.

This had been his doing.

After a few beats of stunned silence, the dark-haired Adeptus lurched forward grabbing onto her cold body and shaking ruthlessly, calling out her name frantically, as if it would make his love wake up, make her cradle his face lovingly and ask why he’d been crying.

Xiao looked up onto the sky scornfully, looking up at Celestia with nothing short of pure, unadulterated loathing. He was willing to bet they were all mocking him right now, laughing at how weak and pathetic he was, at how time after time, he’d failed to love her enough, to keep her alive. They did this on purpose he was sure of it, those bastards. Well, if they could play dirty like this, so could he. He’d get her back, he’d keep her alive by his side.

And just like that, Xiao’s thread of sanity snapped.

“You can’t take her away from me anymore,” he spoke to the sky nonsensically, “I won’t let you. I don’t care what I have to do, who I have to kill, you won’t take my bliss away from me again.”

“That story was quite depressing,” Chongyun stated, ceasing his footsteps to look to his friend, Xingqiu.

“Ah yes, it is indeed, my liege,” the navy blue-haired gentleman agreed, “However, I’m glad this book included the whole myth, instead of making me wait for the next volume like the last one.”

The light blue-haired boy rolled his eyes before saying, “As much as I appreciated you reading the book aloud, I don’t see how this aids us in our search for (Y/N).”

The reason the boys had been searching across all of Liyue, was because their aforementioned friend had mysteriously gone missing. Everything had been as it normally was until one day, (Y/N) didn’t show up at her job in the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, something that was incredibly unusual of her, especially without a warning to her boss or coworkers. This led Hu Tao, with the insistence of Zhongli, to ask Chongyun and Xingqiu, two of (Y/N)’s friends, for help in the search for her. They had also contacted the milelith, but they had told them that she’d not been missing for long enough to warrant a search party. The two had, of course, been quick to help, though Xingqiu had been rather enraptured in a book of Liyue Myths, simply insisting he’d have to take it with him so he could read while he searched for her.

“But my liege,” Xingqiu exclaimed playfully, golden eyes shining with mirth, “this story is of utmost importance in our search for our beloved friend. Why, for all we know, (Y/N) might’ve been kidnapped by the Vigilant Yaksha himself! She has always had a habit of climbing mountains to pick violetgrass like the maiden in the book”

“Do not be so ridiculous,” Chongyun said, rolling his eyes, “I doubt an Adeptus such as himself would ever commit such an atrocity of that degree against a citizen of Liyue. Besides, that myth is incredibly old and there’s very little evidence that proves its validity. It’s more likely that (Y/N) was taken by a demon. That is why I asked you to accompany me to Wuwang Hill.”

“I was simply joking Chongyun,” he said with a laugh before turning solemn, “However, regretfully I feel as though it is time for the two of us to return to Liyue Harbor for the day. You’ve just about run out of popsicles and with this heat, I have no doubt you’ll overheat if we keep going.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” The blue-eyed boy admitted. “I hope (Y/N) is alright wherever she is.”

“I do as well,” Xingqiu agreed, “Perhaps Hu Tao and Zhongli have had more luck.”

Chongyun nodded, “Xiangling also said she’d ask her customers if they’d seen her.”

With that, the two boys made their way back to Lihue Harbor, oblivious to just how true Xingqiu’s joke had been.

Xiao sighed as he climbed up the stairs of Wangshu Inn up to his room. Of course, he did not need sleep, it was a mortal need in and of itself, or a room for that matter but Verr Goldet had insisted that he should have his own space, somewhere he could rest after long days of slaughtering demons such as this one.

The Adeptus turned the door handle, opening the door of an empty, pristine room. While the room had all of the furniture the other Inn rooms had, it still felt unnervingly empty, without any clothes or trinkets laying around. The only personal object of Xiao’s in the room was an orange teapot that rested on the nightstand.

Quickly, Xiao opened the tea pot’s lid, and within seconds he was standing in front of a Liyue style mansion, surrounded by mountains that he crafted to look like the ones from when the two of you had met all those centuries ago. Eager to see you, Xiao ignored Tubby’s greetings and opened the front door, making quick work of taking off his shoes before climbing the stairs to the second floor, where your room was.

He opened the door to find you sat atop your bed, alert and glaring at him fiercely. The Adeptus rolled his amber eyes, it seemed you were still trying to act out and be defiant. Looking around your room, mostly to make sure you hadn’t tried to smash the windows with the desk chair like last time (you seemed to not comprehend the fact that there was no escaping the serenetea pot, since it was a world Xiao himself had created), his eyes settled on the plate of bamboo shoot soup he’d left for you this morning, along with a still filled to the brim cup of water. He narrowed his eyes at that. It simply wouldn’t do. You’d been here for about a week now and you still refused to eat or drink anything he brought you, except for a few nibbles and sips he’d managed to threaten coax out of you. Xiao, admittedly, didn’t know very much about humans, but he did know they needed to eat and drink to stay alive. He’d learned that the hard way on his last few tries.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Xiao inquired before adding, “If you don’t like this food you should come out and say it. I can ask Smiley Yanxiao for something that suits your taste more.”

You let out a poorly suppressed scoff. This nut-job didn’t seem to get that out of all the things wrong in this situation, the last thing you were concerned about was the food. Dear Archons, just what is wrong with this man? First, he had the gall of taking you captive one evening when you were going home from work and now he had the audacity to expect you to act like a complacent little toy and go along with this insanity?

And to think that when you’d first met him whilst accompanying the Traveler and Paimon, who had been commissioned by Director Hu Tao to gather some cor lapis for a client’s ceremony, you’d been absolutely smitten with the awkward and stoic Adeptus. Everything from his pretty black hair to his captivating bright eyes had your knees weak. So much so that you’d ignored all of the red flags, like how he’d stare at you in such an intense manner, with eyes fixated on you and only you, how he seemed to distrust Aether, a trusted friend of his, when it came to him accompanying you, or how as soon as you’d met you had the horrible sensation of being watched at all times of the day. Just thinking back to all the warning signs you’d missed made your skin crawl. Perhaps if you hadn’t been such a lovesick idiot you’d be at home right now or eating dinner with Chongyun and Xingqiu, trying out one of Xianglings crazy concoctions containing slime condensate or whopper flower nectar.

Instead, you were trapped in an artificial world, in a room that looked horrifyingly similar to your own back home.

You were snapped out of your reverie by Xiao moving closer to your bed.

“Let me go home,” you said, hating how your voice cracked at the end. You felt so pathetic, you always prided yourself on being a headstrong independent person, and here you were, cowering at his closeness and avoiding all eye contact, as if looking at his pain filled eyes would ruin you.

“You are home,” he retorted, his voice bordering on delusion, “This is your home. This is where you're safe. Where you stay alive and I get to keep you forever.”

Xiao stretched out his arm, as if to cradle your cheek in his hand but before he got to you flinched away, backing away from him as far as you could, back hitting the headboard. You looked away, trying to ignore how guilty the pain that flashed through his eyes made you feel. You shouldn’t be the one feeling guilty.  He should be. He’s the one that stole you away from your home. He’s the one that ruined your life.

You look down at the violetgrass broach clasped onto your blouse in nothing short of complete and utter loathing. You’d been so captivated by it when you’d first found it at the antique shop while window shopping with Mr. Zhongli.

It had been exactly six months since you’d moved away from your home in the sleepy Qingce Village in exchange for a job at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor and a quaint apparently in the bustling city of Liyue Harbor. To celebrate, your coworker (and the person you had been shadowing in order to learn the ropes of the funeral business) Mr. Zhongli had insisted on going to Third-Round Knockout for some dinner. You’d been a bit hesitant at first, mostly because you knew well of the elegant gentleman’s habit of forgetting his wallet, but you enjoyed hearing his stories far too much to say no. Something about his retellings of stories about the Adepti just enraptured you.

Afterward, the two of you had decided to walk around the city and look at the displays in shops, since you had decided that your hard work warranted splurging a little as a reward of sorts. You had of course asked Mr. Zhongli to join you since he had such exquisite taste and an eye for the authentic, you valued his opinion greatly.

That’s how the two of you ended up at Xigu Antiques, browsing the display case. All of a sudden, your eyes zeroed in on a broach that resembles a little violetgrass plant, its downturned leaves made up of what you could only guess was noctilucous jade. It was, for lack of a better word, stunning.

“Mr. Zhongli,” you exclaimed, tugging at his sleeve to call his attention away from a porcelain teapot with gold little geo symbols as decoration, “what do you think of this one? It’s quite beautiful isn’t it?”

The dark-haired man looked at the broach you were pointing at before going tense, a small gasp escaping him as his beautiful amber eyes widened slightly. You looked at him in concern, you’d never seen the man come this close to losing his composure.

“Oh,” he said, clearing his throat, “is this the one you’re thinking of purchasing? I’d advise against it. Even by just a mere glance, I can tell it is not made of real noctilucous jade.”

Strangely, you felt as though he wasn’t being truthful with you.

“Well, that’s alright. I don’t really care about the authenticity and it’s pretty cheap. If it is a fake, I don’t really have much to lose. Plus, I’ve always loved violetgrass. This broach could be like a little homage to that!” You answered, letting out a little giggle.

“You’ve heard of the Vigilant Yaksha and the violetgrass maiden, am I correct?” He asked.

“Oh, yes I have! My Gran used to tell it to me and the rest of the village children back when I was young. It always made me so sad, how they can never be together. It was pretty silly now that I think about it, but I would bawl my eyes out every time. The rest of the kids would tease me a bit but I just couldn’t control it,” you reminisced.

“I- well, yes in any case, they say that anyone who possesses that broach will be cursed to meet the same fate,” Zhongli added, trying his best to dissuade you from buying the old broach, dread creeping into his stomach as he thought of what might happen to you- to the both of you.

“Of course you’d believe old supersticiones, Mr. Zhongli,” you said, letting out a lighthearted laugh that could make any heart, even one of stone, melt, “it’s very on brand! However, I’m sure there’s no need to be worried, after all, it’s nothing but an old myth! And even if it is real, you yourself said that it’s not made of the real stuff.”

Before Zhongli could figure a way to change the unchangeable, you had already purchased the broach. As you kept on leading the funeral consultant around the streets of Liyue Harbor, bag in hand, prattling on about anything and everything, he couldn’t help but feel his heart sink. A single thought, the same one you would later have, crossed his mind.

If only you hadn’t bought that goddamned broach.

In a fit of anger and desperation, you ripped the detested broach off of your shirt, throwing it at Xiao. You hoped it would somehow break into millions of tiny pieces.

After a beat of silence, Xiao spoke, “Eat.”

“No,” you yelled, before breaking down into a fit of angry sob, “I hate you!”

As soon as the words left your mouth, Xiao lurched forward so close your noses were almost touching, and for a second you think he’s gonna hit you but instead, he simply rests his forehead on yours and closes his eyes. When he pulls away, your sobs have waned into hiccups. Without saying so much as a word Xiao clasps the violetgrass broach onto your shirt, where it belongs.

“Eat,” is all he says, placing the now lukewarm soup into your hands.

Scared, tired, and sad, you do as he said, taking small sips of the admittedly tasty dish. He does nothing more than stare at her with those intense amber eyes of his for a few minutes before turning around and heading towards the door.

Before he leaves he turns his head back to look at her and says, “I don’t care if you don’t like me. Hate me for all I care. As long as you stay alive I don’t care.”

[gukyi]

if i told you | jjk

summary: in order to pay for university, jeon jungkook decides to market his most valuable asset to the wealthy socialites of campus: himself. donning a suit and tie, tousled hair, and glasses (to look smarter), he becomes every rich daughter’s dream: the perfect boyfriend to bring to balls, dinners, and business gatherings. all while you watch from the sidelines, only able to dream of having that much money to buy yourself what you really want: him.

{friends to lovers!au, college!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, angst, we’ve got it all folks word count: 22k warnings: slightly underage alcohol consumption, mention of words that could be spoken on an crime documentary series but nothing graphic, ravioli-stealing, idiots to lovers, as per usual a/n: finally! here is the long awaited jungkook fic that i have literally been slaving over since the beginning of january. was this fic supposed to be 10k? yes. did i somehow end up writing 22k anyway? of course! in any case, please enjoy my absolute baby who i love and cherish!

check out the post-script drabble here!

Jeon Jungkook loses his job at the university call center on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year. 

You know this because on the seventeenth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 2:07PM, seven minutes after he normally starts his job at the university call center. 

He’s lucky that you’re the only one who doesn’t have class in the 2PM hour. 

“Y/N!” He shouts through the thin wooden door, his voice probably echoing down the thin hallway of your apartment complex. 

You open it before the second knock—you only rush to the door to get him to shut the fuck up, and not because you’re excited to see him, you swear—to see him standing on the other side, XXL university hoodie draped over his figure, down to his mid-thigh, baggy hood pulled over his head like a sad college-aged Star Wars character. He looks exactly like a jaded sophomore year college student would. He is beautiful. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the call center right now?” You ask in lieu of a normal “hello” or even a “what the fuck are you doing here, it’s 2PM”. Jungkook does not wait for you to invite him inside your apartment, immediately kicks off his shoes by the entrance and tugs on your apartment slippers that are a size-and-a-half too small for his feet, and marches over to your shared fridge to fish through the tupperware containers with your name written on Post-it notes for a mid-afternoon snack. 

Jungkook waits until he’s got an entire piece of frozen supersized ravioli shoved into his mouth before he responds. “I was fired,” he says over a mouthful of pasta and cheese.

“What?” You ask, eyes widening as Jungkook shuffles through your kitchen drawers for a fork, which means that the first piece of ravioli that he ate he did so with his bare ass hands. Like a heathen. Like a ravioli-craving twenty-year-old heathen. 

“I was fired,” Jungkook repeats. He stares at the microwave resting on your kitchen counter for a good ten seconds before he continues to eat the cold, unheated pasta. Every time he’s in your apartment (which is frequently), he tells you how it’s a fire, water, and explosive hazard to have your microwave on the counter like that. As if there is any other place in your apartment for it to go. Maybe out on the tiny balcony you have that overlooks the busiest street on campus. 

“Care to offer an explanation as to why?” You ask, coming up next to him. Jungkook is nearly finished with your tupperware of ravioli, and normally you’d shout at him for it, but seeing as he was just fired from his only source of income as a money-starved college student, you’ll cut him some slack. Just a little. 

“You remember that old, angry alumnus that told me that asking for donations in order to benefit low-income-slash-first generation students was selfish and rude of me, and that I wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for what his generation accomplished?” Jungkook asks. 

You remember that vividly. Jungkook spent an approximate two hours and thirty-seven minutes on FaceTime with you ranting about this one “old man bitch” who he had to speak to during his day at work, all while you did your economics problem set to the sweet, mellifluous sound of Jungkook’s shrill shrieks. 

“The one you lost your temper at and shouted at for being ungrateful and elitist?” You ask pointedly. You have a feeling you already know where this conversation is going. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes. He finishes the ravioli (goddamnit, now you’re going to have to find something else to eat for dinner at 11PM tonight) and turns around to place it in the sink. For once, it is not piled high with dishes from up to a week ago, so Jungkook even squirts a bit of Dawn onto a sponge and washes the plastic container for you. “Well, as it turns out, telling an old racist elitist that he’s old, racist, and elitist does not go down well with my boss.”

“Why does that not surprise me,” you muse. Jungkook sighs, walking over to where you’re taking it easy on the couch. “Oh no,” you say, eyes widening as he grins, plotting something. “Do not, Jungkook. Jungkook, do not!”

He jumps, catapulting himself onto the couch and landing on top of you with a thud. You let out a groan as the weight of his body hits you, foreheads nearly knocking into each other. Jungkook is a good foot-and-a-half too long for this dinky leather couch that’s always sort of smelled, feet and ankles hanging off the opposing arm rest just so he can nuzzle his face into the crook of your shoulder like he always does. You hate when he does this. Hate when he jumps onto the couch while you’re casually reclining just so he can collapse on top of you. Hate the feeling of his body resting against yours, soft breathes against the skin of your neck. Hate how it always makes you want more, how it will never be enough. 

“Have you been working out?” You mumble against the fabric of his t-shirt. “You’re more muscle-y than usual.”

“I added weights to my routine,” Jungkook tells you mindlessly. If your roommates walked into your apartment right now and saw the both of you on the couch, you’d never hear the end of it. “Taehyung said it would make me more swole.”

“As if you need to be any more buff,” you say with a roll of your eyes. Jungkook’s the most athletic person you’ve ever met in your entire life. He could probably pick up your dinky couch with you sitting on it without batting an eyelash. Even Superman would tremble at the sight of him. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

“Thanks, Y/N,” Jungkook mutters into your skin. “God, what the fuck am I gonna do now? I need money to pay for everything in my life and my one source of income is now totally invalid because an old guy got what he deserved.”

“Are there any work-study positions still available?” You ask, hand reaching up to stroke at his hair, smoothing it down. Jungkook’s preferred cuddling position is big spoon, but he still demands that he be coddled as though he were the little spoon. 

“No,” Jungkook says with a huff, “they’ve all been snagged by try-hard freshmen who need money like me.”

“I distinctly recall you being a try-hard freshman who also needed money,” you tell him. “That’s why you applied to work at the call center, isn’t it?”

Jungkook sits up, the weight of his figure crushing your legs as he rests on top of them. If you stayed like this forever, you’d probably lose feeling in your lower body, but you’d also get to stay with Jungkook forever, which is a trade-off you would genuinely consider. “Yeah, but the call center hires everybody. You just need to be like… decent at communication. And I’m pretty decent at communication.”

“You never text me back,” you tell him pointedly. 

“That’s because I prefer showing up unannounced at your apartment or other places you frequent,” Jungkook reminds you excitedly. He’ll never let you forget about the time you were wrapping up a small seminar with your history professor and Jungkook burst through the doors with a whole thing of carrots and hummus because you had texted him that you were hungry. You could not look your history professor in the eye for the rest of the semester. “I’d say that’s pretty decent communication.”

“Well, you’re going to have to figure out another way to market your decent communication skills to get another job,” you tell him. “Have you considered the boba place on Oak? You could get me employee discounts.”

Jungkook leans over just to pinch at your cheek, fingers gripping onto your face and pulling like a grandmother. “You just want me for my money.”

“You’re my best friend, Jeon Jungkook,” you tell him. “Of course I do.”

This is what Jeon Jungkook’s obligatory university Facebook group introduction post read:

Hi, I’m Jungkook and I’m thinking of majoring in visual studies or computer science (really different lol I know)! I played soccer in high school but don’t think I’ll be continuing in college because I was pretty bad at it. I’m looking for a roommate and I’d really like to live in New East House, but anything works for me as long as it has a bed. Hit me up if you think we’d made a good match, but I like talking with everyone lol. 

I’m really into music and can play the guitar, drums, and piano. I like listening to all types of music (yes, even country which slaps kinda hard sometimes) but my favorites are The 1975, Frank Ocean, Troye Sivan, and Khalid. Will bop to Justin Bieber on occasion as well. 

I play Ultimate and am really interested in joining the club team here so hit me up and we can practice sometime because my skills are a little rusty. I also do a little skateboarding but I am definitely not a skater. 

Hit me up if you think we can be friends lol I’m excited to meet you all!

It was accompanied by several pictures, a couple of which are selfies at that anime girl angle, one of him with his friends at prom all doing that Frat Boy pose, and a couple of him with his family. To an outsider doing a very quick glance, it pretty much reads the same as a rather extensive dating profile. 

The truth of it all is, as you were scrolling through the hundreds of obligatory university Facebook group introduction posts in search of a freshman year roommate, you stumbled upon Jungkook’s intro post and you thought this: No. Way.

The moment you laid eyes on his first above-the-head angle selfie, you knew that it would be unlikely that you and Jeon Jungkook’s paths would ever cross. He played guitar and did Ultimate Frisbee, and you wanted to audition for your university’s symphony orchestra. He was beautiful but in that sort of college frat boy who can crush you at beer pong kind of way. Craziest of all, he was a computer science major, and you were walking in as an undecided humanities concentration. 

Impossible. There was no way the two of you would ever meet, and you accepted that right off that bat. At a school your size, you would go through these four years not knowing a majority of your class. Jeon Jungkook was just one of the casualties. 

On the very first day of orientation, Jeon Jungkook comes up to you on the sidewalk, wearing a white t-shirt, a backwards baseball cap, and shorts, and asks you if you’re here for orientation as well? He’s lost. 

Jeon Jungkook is the type of guy you imagine getting eaten up by any girl who meets him almost immediately. He’s charming and endearing the same way a baby deer is, but has no problem wearing clothes that remind you of how fit he is. He is, for lack of a better term, extremely good looking. 

“Yeah,” you had said on the sidewalk, squinting to look up at him since the sun was in your eyes. “I’m heading to the auditorium right now. Wanna walk with me?”

“Okay, sure,” Jungkook had replied, smiling with all of his teeth. Even in the sweaty summer heat, he looked even nicer in person. “Thanks, by the way. I’m Jungkook. What’s your name?”

You knew that already. How could you have forgotten?��

You had grinned up at him. The universe has always worked in mysterious ways. “I’m Y/N. Nice to meet you.”

When Jungkook doesn’t know what to do, he stress eats. Most often, you are the single witness to this action, which has literally no effect on his body mass whatsoever since he immediately burns off every calorie (and then some) at his next gym session. 

That is precisely why you are sitting in the second-best dining hall on campus eating a pretty measly salad and french fries, while Jungkook returns from the serve-yourself cafeteria with his sixth plate of food. Next to you is your mutual friend Chaewon, a filthy rich international student from Korea who is probably the nicest person you’ve ever met. 

“I think I’ve called every cafe, bubble tea shop, clothing store, and paid internship within a five-mile radius of this place and nothing,” Jungkook says with a sigh, keeping Chaewon updated with his job-search antics. It’s been several days since he was fired, and while being keenly cognizant of your bank account isn’t necessarily a bad thing, when it means that Jungkook refuses to leave campus because he is in hyper-saving mode, it sort of rustles your jimmies. 

“Have you tried babysitting?” Chaewon supplies helpfully. 

You laugh aloud at the mere thought of Jungkook stuck in some middle-aged parent’s house with their toddler for hours on a night where he could be living it up on campus. Jeon Jungkook? A babysitter?

“Wow, what the heck is wrong with me being a babysitter?” Jungkook questions, offended. 

“First of all, you don’t even let me beat you in Mario Kart on your Switch and I am your best friend. If you ended up gaming with a four-year-old boy, your over-competitiveness would take over you and you’d crush the poor kid and his spirit,” you remind him pointedly. Not to mention the fact that the man cannot cook to save his life, and you can’t even entrust him with microwave dinners because of his irrational fear of modern oven technology. 

Jungkook pouts. He knows you’re right. 

“It’s not like you were going to look into babysitting, anyway,” you say with a shove, nudging his shoulder with your own. 

Jungkook sighs, and despite all of the shit you give him on a daily basis (part of the responsibility of being his best friend), you do genuinely feel bad for him. Even if his job at the call center wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating nor morally rewarding, he didn’t absolutely hate it and he made a pretty decent earning off of it. He unzips his backpack and fumbles for his laptop, opening it up to reveal a Google Chrome window with approximately thirty-seven tabs open of places to work on and around campus. Meanwhile, Chaewon’s phone buzzes on the table, and she heaves out a great, exasperated exhale before picking up and immediately launching off into incredibly speedy Korean. 

“If only the bubble tea place was hiring,” you lament, kissing goodbye all of the free bubble tea you had been dreaming about if Jungkook got hired. 

“I’m glad I don’t work at the bubble tea place,” Jungkook tells you with his eyebrows raised, “otherwise I’d have to see you every day!” 

“You already see me every day!” You should back, but it’s not like Jungkook doesn’t know that already. He’s the one always barging into your apartment or sitting down next to you in the library when you’re trying to study. 

“But maybe you should try drinking less bubble tea, otherwise you’re gonna blow up like a tapioca pearl like that one girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” Jungkook warns, pinching your cheek as if to make your face round like a tapioca bubble. 

“I can think of nothing I’d want more than to be a tapioca pearl for the rest of my life,” you state simply. It would be much less stressful than to be a college student. 

“If you were a tapioca pearl, I’d eat you!” Jungkook says, and you, out of the security of both your head and your heart, choose not to think too much into it. 

As Jungkook teases you about your slight obsession with bubble tea, Chaewon finally puts the phone down after what very well was several minutes of angry Korean. She lets out this deep, long sigh, like all of the pent-up rage within her is exiting through her exhale. 

“You good, Chae?” You ask her, a little concerned. Even after knowing her since the beginning of your freshman year, you’ve never once seen her get mad, though she looks pretty close to it now. 

“Yeah,” she says, exasperated. “My mom is having this stupid company ball here and she really, really wants me to attend.” It is obvious that Chaewon does not, in fact, want to attend. You’ve seen Chaewon nearly every day for over a year, and you’ve never even seen her wear a pantsuit. You couldn’t imagine her joy at having to dress up in a ballgown. 

“But fancy free food,” you point out. Even if she does have to be trapped in a penthouse ballroom with her parents’ stuffy business friends, the catering company will probably be god-tier. 

Chaewon pretty much bangs her head on the dining hall table. 

“Wow, I didn’t know someone could hate catered food so much,” you say, a little alarmed. 

“It’s not that,” Chaewon says, rubbing her forehead. The pasta on the plate in front of her has remained untouched for nearly ten minutes now. You wonder if she’s even hungry anymore. “My mom wants me to bring a plus-one.”

Your eyes widen. An excuse to dress nice and eat good food? Hell yeah. 

“And it can’t be you, Y/N, it has to be a date,” Chaewon says. It’s pretty obvious she’s not interested in dating whatsoever, no matter the gender of the object of her affection. You pout. Damn. “My mom said, ‘he can be whoever you want!’ but that means that he has to be an attractive Korean guy who’s got a future job in finance.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jungkook says over a mouthful of broccoli. 

“You will?” Chaewon asks. Jungkook just single-handedly saved Chaewon from a night of unbearable business talk with a boy she doesn’t know and cannot relate to. 

You scoff. “You’re just a regular Korean dude, Jungkook,” you tell him. 

Jungkook pouts, bottom lip turned out. “You don’t think I’m attractive?”

You refuse to answer that question. You’re afraid of what you might say if you open your mouth. 

“Seriously, you’d do that for me?” Chaewon turns to Jungkook with platonic stars in her eyes. 

Jungkook shrugs. “Sure. I’ve got a suit. I’ll ask my friend Jimin for a crash course in finance before the thing. When is it?”

And just like that, you and Jungkook’s weekly Friday Mario Kart night gets a rain check. 

 Jeon Jungkook is the sole best decision of your life. 

And it’s funny and twisted and wonderful, because he is the one thing you had failed to account for in your life. He stands there on the sidewalk in the blazing sun, black baseball cap nestled safely onto his dark brown hair, and in the split second it takes for him to open his mouth and say hello, everything changes. 

But no longer is the image you conjure in your mind when you think of him a picture of him on that very first day of orientation, lost and excited all at once. It is of him barging into your apartment and eating all of your leftover ravioli. It’s him laying on your dinky couch like it belongs to him, surfing through all of the Netflix shows available and eventually just settling on old Gilmore Girls episodes like he always does. It’s him standing in your closet to judge your latest clothing purchases and take back any items that you’ve stolen from him over the years. 

It’s imagining him not as a guest but as a permanent fixture in your home, in the place that makes you feel safest. Because that’s who Jungkook is, now. He is that place. He stands in your apartment rattling off a list of why microwaves are a severely underestimated killer, and it takes every inch of your being not to ask him to stay. To spend night after night cuddling on the couch, or make a home-cooked meal together on a Sunday evening, or get lost underneath the sheets on your bed.

Jungkook stands in your apartment like he belongs there. And only in your wildest dreams could you ever imagine that coming true.

Such is the case of that Friday night, when he’s supposed to accompany Chaewon to her terrible, awful, brain-melting parents’ business gala. You haven’t seen him all day, too busy with your club meetings to make time for him after your classes are finished for the week. College is never-ending in that horrible, unstoppable way. 

It’s nearing two in the morning when you hear the knock on your door. Two of your roommates are at a rush event for their sorority, and the other sleeps through your smoke alarm on a regular basis, so you are tasked with the job of opening the door. 

On the other side is Jungkook, as he frequently is. 

Your heart practically freezes in place, like his eyes have shot right through it. Instead of his usual baggy outfit and a bucket hat, he’s standing outside of your apartment in a crisp navy suit (complete with a pocket square), rings lining his fingers and hair tousled in that effortlessly-styled kind of way. He looks like a goddamn celebrity, like a young, successful CEO. Like the love of your whole fucking life. 

Coughing to distract from the fact that you’re practically drooling, you say, “Wow, you clean up nicely.”

Jungkook looks down at himself, almost as if he had forgotten he’s wearing a full suit entirely. “The pocket square is Jimin’s,” he explains, “but yeah. I didn’t want to let Chaewon down by not dressing up to code.”

He’s got remnants of makeup left on his face, having faded and smudged throughout the night. There’s a bit of black underneath his eyes from the liner, a smoldering effect that makes the dark brown of his irises even deeper. “You look tired,” you comment. “Why are you here, why don’t you go home, Jungkook? Get some sleep.”

Jungkook shrugs, looking over your shoulder to see if his arrival has woken up any of your roommates. “Your place was closer,” he says like it’s nothing. 

Like it doesn’t make your breath catch in your throat, stop in its tracks. He spends an evening dressed up in a stuffy suit and tie surrounded by old businessmen and their preppy daughters with whom he has nothing in common, and when it’s nearly two in the morning and he can finally relax, he drives to your place instead of his own. Like it means nothing. As if it means anything at all. 

Jungkook runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, and even knotted and messy it still looks flawless. “If I’m bothering you, just let me know. I know it’s late.”

It’s so hard to say no to him. 

“Just come inside already before you wake up the neighbors,” you tell him, sighing to pretend like it’s a minor inconvenience. And even running on barely any sleep with makeup smudged underneath his eyes, Jungkook grins as you let him inside your apartment, caving in, just like you always do. 

The first thing he does when he’s inside is take off his fancy loafers and peel off his suit jacket, resting it against the back of the couch. You fumble around in the kitchen for the kettle, instinctively starting to make two cups of tea. Routine. 

Looking up, you watch as Jungkook loosens his tie and takes it off, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his white dress shirt. By the counter, you turn your back to him so he doesn’t see you mentally combust. It’s impossible that he doesn’t already know what he does to you. 

The kettle finishes boiling the moment Jungkook settles onto your couch. He keeps the television off so he doesn’t wake your roommates, and scrolls on his phone with his knees tucked underneath his chin. Thirty seconds later, you’re joining him, handing him the cup of tea before sitting down next to him, severely underdressed in comparison. 

“Did you at least have fun tonight?” You ask. 

“The food totally slapped,” Jungkook tells you. “Chaewon’s parents really pulled out all the stops.”

“So I’ve heard,” you muse. 

“We spent most of the time lounging by the catering table and distracting each other by making up stories about all of the rich people there.” Jungkook laughs. 

“Please tell me you didn’t embarrass yourself, though,” you say. Perhaps Jungkook could withstand a few blows to his ego, but Chaewon’s future pretty much depends on her impressing her parents and their comrades. 

“No!” Jungkook tells you defensively. “Jimin told me everything I needed to know, but all of Chaewon’s friends and their filthy rich CEO parents thought I was so handsome that I didn’t even need to speak.”

You roll your eyes. Of course Jungkook wouldn’t give up the chance to remind you of his hellishly good looks. 

“You just stood there, looking pretty?” You ask. Not as if he doesn’t do that already. 

“You think I’m pretty?” Jungkook teases, a greasy smile sent your way, like he doesn’t know the answer anyway. 

You huff. “Dressed up like this? Anyone would.”

“Chaewon said I was like her fake trophy husband,” Jungkook jokes. “She did all of the schmoozing. It’s not like I could have contributed anything anyway. Unless everyone wants to hear about C++.”

“Ooh, I love it when you talk all tech to me,” you tease, nudging him with your arm. “So sexy, keep talking.”

He laughs. “If we keep talking about Python I might get a little too excited.” He wiggles his eyebrows just for good measure and you giggle, holding onto this moment for dear life as you let it etch itself into your brain permanently. Times like these, you know you can’t forget, saving them for a rainy day thirty years down the line when you’re in love with someone that’s not Jungkook. When you look out the window and think about what might have been, if only things back in college had been a little bit different. 

Jungkook’s phone buzzes on the table. He’s got two notifications, one from Instagram of Chaewon tagging him in a post, and another from Venmo. 

“Fuckin’ damnit,” Jungkook swears, letting his phone drop on the couch cushion. 

“What?” You ask, turning to look at him. 

“Chaewon just Venmo’ed me a hundred dollars,” Jungkook says with a sigh. And it’s not one of those times when you see your bank account balance go up and get happy because yay, money!, it’s when your friend pays you anything over what they actually owe you out of the goodness of your heart, and you refuse to accept it. 

“She did?” You ask, eyes widening. A hundred dollars? That’s more than Jungkook would make in three shifts at the call center. 

“‘Thanks for bailing me out tonight. You definitely deserve more than 100 but then you’d be mad at me. But please don’t be mad at me!’” Jungkook reads off his phone. “I just stood there looking like eye candy. I didn’t do a thing to help her, what the heck?”

You pull out your own phone to check Chaewon’s latest post. 

It’s a picture of them together in the skyscraper penthouse the gala was held in, Jungkook looking dapper in his suit with a glass of champagne in his hand, and Chaewon in a dress worth more than a semester’s tuition throwing up a peace sign like the trendy Asian she is. They look like a K-drama couple. Like two celebrities basking in their fame and wealth. 

Shoutout to my one and only Jeon Jungkook for being my fake date tonight! Thanks to your good looks and charming personality for impressing all of my parents’ rich friends and their daughters. Love you 3000 💕

“Wow, whoever took this picture of the both of you knows their shit,” you say, impressed. You had always thought it impossible for Jungkook to look better in pictures than in real life, but this photo is coming rather close. If you were any more shameless, you’d ask Chaewon if she has any more photos of him. Just him, preferably. 

It’s not as if she doesn’t know about your gargantuan crush on him anyway. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever looked that good in a photo in my life,” Jungkook says with a laugh. Impossible. He yawns, placing his empty mug on the little end table next to the couch. 

“You should set it as your profile picture,” you suggest, leaning your head on him and pretending like this is normal. He yawns again, stretching out as he rests his body against yours. “Hey, we should go to sleep. Unless you want to go home?”

Jungkook groans, snuggling in closer. “No, your bed is big enough for the two of us.”

And who are you to resist?

You wake up to the sound of a phone buzzing furiously on your bedside table. You crack open one eye just a sliver to see who the culprit is and immediately eradicate it, when the sun filtering through your Venetian blinds hits your cornea. You groan, shutting your eyes once more as you smack your hand around to get it to shut off. 

The movement, however, causes the bedsheets to shift beside you, and when you turn, you find Jungkook nestled up tightly beneath your duvet, an arm stretched over your side as he hums in his sleep. 

You’re best friends. 

This is normal. 

(The feeling of your heart beating out of its chest has become rather normal, as well.)

He’s wearing a raggedy old t-shirt of yours that has always been too big on you but fits him just perfectly and a pair of joggers that he keeps at your place “just in case”. Just in case he stays the night. Just in case you ever need them. Selfishly, you will yourself to fall back asleep, shutting your eyes tightly and pretending that maybe, if you never wake up, this moment will freeze in time, locking the two of you together for eternity. 

He mumbles to himself in his sleep, a murmur of nothing as he shifts over slightly, hand dragging up your side. 

God. 

Next to you, the phone begins to buzz erratically again, and wide-awake, you look over to realize that it’s Jungkook’s, and that it’s Chaewon on the other end. 

This is at least the second time she’s called, which means that, despite how tempting it is, you probably shouldn’t silence his phone and go back to lying in bed with Jungkook and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

Sighing, you pick up. 

“Jungkook!” Chaewon shouts on the other side. For a brief moment you wonder why on earth she’s so energetic so early, but it’s less that and more the fact that you are overwhelmingly lethargic rather late in the day. “All of my friends said you looked really good in those photos I posted of us. Do you think you’re free next Wednesday night? Seunghee wants you to accompany her to a double date her parents are forcing her to go on!”

“Chaewon—”

“Oh, Y/N! How’s it going?”

“I just woke up,” you mumble quietly as Jungkook stirs beside you. 

“Of course you did,” Chaewon says, and you can see her rolling her eyes on the other side of the line. “Wait, why do you have Jungkook’s phone if you just woke up? Oh my God, don’t tell me—”

“Shh!” You hiss into the phone. Jungkook is slowly beginning to wake up, and you can only pray that he isn’t listening in to the conversation between you and Chaewon. “No, we did not. He got back after your thing and we promptly passed out in my bed, fully clothed,” you whisper loudly. 

“Jungkook went to your place last night? He was so tired, I thought he was going straight back to his. We even got dropped off outside my apartment.”

What? Chaewon and Jungkook live within a three-minute walk of each other. Your apartment is ten minutes away from both of them. 

“You did?” You ask, eyebrows furrowing. 

“Who’s that?” 

You turn around to see Jungkook lying on his back, head resting on a nearly-deflated pillow of yours as he looks up at you, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hair is mussed, some parts styled and stiff with hair gel, and some parts tangled and unkempt. He looks like he’s been lying in that position for a while, hand resting behind his head as he gazes up at you. 

“It’s Chaewon,” you tell him softly as she laughs on the other end. “She just called your phone. Are you free next Wednesday?”

“Hmm?” Jungkook, still half-asleep. “When?”

“Next Wednesday,” you repeat, a hand on the phone like it’s going to do anything to stop Chaewon from listening to you two. “Chaewon says she has a friend who wants you to accompany her to a double date she’s been set up to go on by her parents.”

“Mmmrph,” Jungkook mumbles. It’s clear he hasn’t even thought about his plans for the rest of the day, let alone next Wednesday. 

“He’s not available right now,” you say into the phone. Chaewon snorts. 

“Fine,” Chaewon says with a sigh. “Can you pass the message on when you guys are done pretending that you aren’t fucking behind my back?”

You suck in a breath. “Chaewon!” You hiss. “We are not—” you quickly turn back to Jungkook, who, by the looks of his hooded eyes and bewildered expression, isn’t listening in, “—fucking!” You whisper. “You know we’re not!”

Chaewon laughs. “Yeah, yeah. Call me later, Y/N, we should grab ice cream or something.” She hangs up. 

“Who was that?” Jungkook asks sleepily, eyes still half-lidded as he sits up in your bed, soft skin, brown hair, pouted lips amongst a sea of white, bundled up in your thick duvet as if sitting on a cloud. 

“Chaewon,” you tell him. 

“Oh, why was she calling?”

“She wanted to ask if you were free next Wednesday.”

“To do what?”

Maybe you were worried about Jungkook listening in to Chaewon grill you about your relationship (or serious lack thereof) for nothing. 

“She has a friend who wants you to go on a parent-mandated double date, trophy boyfriend style,” you explain. Jungkook groans. 

“Pretending to know business is mentally, physically, and morally draining. It feels like I’m selling my soul to capitalism,” he says with a sigh, collapsing back against the mattress. “I just wanna stay here forever. It’s so cozy.”

“Come on, Kook,” you say, tugging the duvet off of him to reveal the rest of his body. He curls into himself at the exposure, refusing to budge. “You’ve encroached on my apartment long enough.”

“Y/N,” Jungkook whines, drawing out your name for good measure. “Noooooooo.” He reaches out to cling onto your wrist, which means that if you want him out of your bed, you’ll have to drag him out.

“Jungkook, you’re swole, you know I can’t tug you out of my bed,” you say with a pout. He knows every trick in the book to use against you, and worst of all, he knows you’re weak to all of them. 

“Good,” Jungkook says with a loopy smile, pulling you back onto the bed like it’s nothing. You yelp as you come crashing on top of him, your body bumping into his as he wraps his arms around you and flops back onto your bed. You laugh and shout at the feeling as Jungkook cuddles up in the warmth of the sheets, pulling you in tightly to his body. “It’s so warm here, let’s stay like this forever.”

“What about food?”

“You keep a stash of Clif bars under your bed, we’ll eat those,” Jungkook suggests. 

You attempt to wriggle out of his grip, hoping to escape before he holds you long enough to get addicted, hooked on the feeling of his arms around you, his body against yours. But Jungkook is nothing if not persistent and clingy, and he wraps his arms tightly around your torso like a koala, warm and soft. “Come on, Jungkook. It’s nearly noon. Let’s be productive today.”

“Gross.”

“Let’s not sit in bed all day.”

“Grosser. Let’s just stay in your bed all day and pretend that we don’t have any real responsibilities.”

“Given that we’re in college, that may be slightly difficult.”

“Fuck that, your GPA doesn’t matter anyway. Unless you have plans on going to grad school?” He asks with an eyebrow raise, turning to look at you. 

“No way, I’m not paying for another four years of this shit,” you immediately declare. Let the capitalist system of higher education extort another two to four years worth of tuition out of you for the same degree? Absolutely not. 

“Then why move?” Jungkook says with a grin. 

“Because,” you say, stumbling for a real answer. 

“Not good enough.” He grins cheekily. “I vote to stay in bed.”

“I vote to do my readings, your CS homework, and get back to Chaewon about Wednesday.”

“God,” Jungkook says with a sigh. “What’s Wednesday?”

“Oh my God, you need to call Chaewon. Right now. Before you ask me what you have on Wednesday one more time after losing all of your brain cells lounging around in my personal bed and refusing to leave,” you say, eyes wide as you worm your way out of his grip, dusting yourself off and heading to your closet. 

“Noooooooo,” Jungkook says, reaching out a desperate hand. “Y/N, come back.”

“Call Chaewon. Call her!” You order, fishing around in your closet for some fresh clothes. You’ve been wearing the same one since Thursday night. You are disgusting. 

Jungkook groans but obeys, picking up his phone and pressing her contact. “Hey Chae, it’s Jungkook. Listen, I’m literally going to Venmo you back what you paid me because you? Literally didn’t need to pay me at all? And I’m actually mad at you for it? Wait, what do you mean am I up to getting paid on Wednesday—”

The phone call presents the perfect opportunity for you to dash out of your bedroom and into the bathroom, where you splash yourself with cold tap water like a model in a face wash commercial (who already has perfect skin, so why does she need this new face wash, seriously?) to clear your head. It’s been a weird twelve hours. Even weirder knowing that across the hall, Jungkook is sitting in your room, on your bed, in your clothes, under your bed sheets. Knowing that maybe, in another universe, on another timeline, you would be in the exact same positions, only everything would be different. 

You wash your face, hoping to wake yourself up. Convince your mind that the past twelve hours have been nothing but a dream, and that when you walk back into your room, Jungkook will have vanished. Or he would have never been there in the first place. 

You leave the bathroom and return to your bedroom to see Jungkook tugging on his suit jacket, wearing the same clothes he had on when he knocked on your door at 2AM last night. He’s still on the phone, wrapping up the conversation with Chaewon. 

“Yeah, yeah, tell her that I’m down. She can just text me, give her my number. I’m happy to do this for you and your friends, Chae. Plus, she’s gonna pay me and I feel less bad about it because it’s a service and she’s not a close friend like you are. Yeah, it’s all good,” he looks up to see you standing at the door, leaning against the frame. “Yeah, Y/N just got back so I’m gonna go. Maybe we can grab dinner or something tonight? Cool. Bye.”

“Dinner without me?” You ask with a pout. 

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. “You’re always invited.”

“Have you figured out what’s going on on Wednesday?” You tease him as you walk him to the door. 

“Chaewon has a friend, Soojin, who wants me to accompany her on a parent-mandated double date with a business partner’s daughter,” Jungkook explains. “Apparently all of Chaewon’s friends realized I make a pretty good fake trophy boyfriend.”

You rub his shoulder. He’d make a great real boyfriend too. Not that you think about that all of the time, or anything. “Gonna put that on your resume, big guy?”

“Of course.” Jungkook smiles. “Dinner tonight? We can go to the ramen place you really like.”

“Sure thing, is Chaewon coming?”

“If she wants to. Otherwise, it’ll just be us.”

“Sounds good,” you tell him. “See you then.”

“Hopefully before,” Jungkook says. “Thanks for letting me crash here last night, by the way.”

“Anytime,” you say. Maybe one day, it’ll be true. 

Next Wednesday, there’s a knock on your door at midnight. 

Who else could it be?

It was supposed to be a one-time thing. And then it was supposed to be just a two-time thing. And before you knew it, Jungkook’s number and his services were circling through the ring of wealthy international students, jumping from phone to phone as people crammed to get him to accompany them on their next double date, next business gala, next ballroom dance. 

You had always had a feeling that his charming, charismatic personality would eventually draw everybody towards him, so electric and magnetic that you couldn’t help but want to know him, make friends with him, be close to him. From the moment you saw his Facebook introduction post, you knew it was only a matter of time before everyone on campus knew his name.

[October 17th, 4:12PM] You: do u want to get dinner tonight

Jungkook: would love to but have to go to kim family business dinner with dahyun sorry :(

You: ok next time then!

[October 23rd, 1:03PM]

You: yo what r u doing You: i have so many readings to do rip You: do u wanna come to greene w me and study

Jungkook: heejin is taking me shopping for a fancy suit for her family’s event tomorrow i can’t :/ Jungkook: but i am going to get macaroons for u at the mall so we can see each other later!

You: yummm sure thing!

[October 30th, 9:58AM]

You: hey ik you’re asleep rn but we are still on for tomorrow right? 🎃 You: can’t let our one (1) year long halloween tradition of buying last-minute candy and watching the nightmare before christmas together die

[October 30th, 11:13PM]

Jungkook: omg i just saw this now im so sorry Jungkook: uh yeonjoo wants me to go to her sister’s halloween party tm so idk if i can make it this year

[October 31st, 2:02AM]

You: ok You: thanks for telling me

It’s no fun watching The Nightmare Before Christmas by yourself, you realize this Halloween. All of your roommates are out frequenting one of the hundreds of parties being thrown on campus tonight, and although you’d normally be up for getting drunk and dropping it low, you just aren’t in the Halloween spirit this year. Wonder why. 

Armed with the knowledge that your roommates probably won’t be back until three or four in the morning, you shut your laptop and decide to go to bed early. Early being midnight, but it’s early for you and that’s all that really matters. 

You don’t know why you’re being such a stick in the mud this Halloween. It’s always been one of your favorite holidays, never one to pass up free candy nor the option to dress up, but this one has been particularly lame. You don’t have a costume, your local drugstore is out of mini Skittles packets, and you don’t have someone to spend it with. 

Realistically, you have no reason to be sad that Jungkook isn’t available tonight. It’s not as if spending Halloween together is some ancient tradition from birth that binds the two of you together. You did it for the first time as freshmen, and you were foolishly hoping to do the same thing as sophomores. It’s not a tradition if it only happened once. 

You look in the bathroom mirror, stained with nail polish and dry shampoo and old skincare, and you sigh. Jungkook has every right to prioritize his current and only source of income over a night spent lounging on the couch doing nothing. It’s not as if you haven’t seen your best friend in over a month and this was the only night you both had free. Jungkook drops by after every single event he goes on. Every single one. He stands outside your door dressed in a fancy suit, or a silk button down, leather shoes and expensive jewelry bought for him by the girls he goes out with.

No matter the time, he knocks on your door and says hello, steals a cup of tea and a bit of your heart along with it, before bouncing out of your living room and off to his own apartment. He doesn’t stay the night anymore, doesn’t worm his way underneath your duvet and refuse to move until morning comes. It’s hard to tell if you’re grateful about it or not. 

Sluggishly, you peel off your clothes and wash your face, changing into some old sweatpants from the tenth grade and a t-shirt with an embarrassingly large hole in the armpit. This Halloween, you are dressing up as a lonely college student who is going to bed early on Halloween night because she has nothing better to do!

There’s a knock on your door. 

Your first instinct is to freeze up. When there’s another knock, your second instinct is to grab the closest object to you (which happens to be your water bottle) for self-defense. 

And then, you hear,

“You’re not watching The Nightmare before Christmas without me, are you?”

To spare yourself the shame, you won’t say that you practically leapt out of bed the moment you heard his voice. You calmly removed the covers, and casually walked to the front door. That is what you did. 

When you open it, Jungkook is standing behind it, grinning, wearing the greasiest police officer outfit you’ve ever seen in your entire life. This flew at a marketing company’s heir’s Halloween party? He’s even got what looks to be a fully-loaded water gun in his holster. 

“Don’t tell me this is what you wore to some fancy-shmancy Halloween party,” you say disapprovingly, eyebrows raised as you look him up and down and pretend that you aren’t just ogling his figure. 

“It was fine, Yeonjoo’s sister just graduated college. If anything, she was more okay with it than Yeonjoo was,” Jungkook says with a shrug. You don’t even need to let him in at this point, just watch as he tugs off his shoes and steps inside your apartment like it belongs to him. 

“What was Yeonjoo dressed as?”

“Princess Leia. We made for a very mismatched pair,” Jungkook says, chuckling to himself. “Ooh, did you guys get new tea?”

“You can have some if you want,” you tell him, shutting the door as he eagerly pulls out a box of teabags, turning on the electric kettle on the counter. “I think it’s Wild Berry Hibiscus.”

“Sounds good already,” Jungkook says, and he lets out a sigh that sounds so exhausted, so tired and aching, as he leans back against the countertop, head resting on the cupboards above it. 

“You could have gone home, you know,” you tell him. Even from the couch you can see the droop in his shoulders, the bags under his eyes. He’s been going out several times every week for the past month, and he still has a truckload of CS assignments on top. He spends precious hours schmoozing with wealthy businessmen and women, shaking people’s hands and posing for pictures in the fanciest clothes he owns and then some. The selfish part of you wants him to stay. The part that loves him knows it would be better if he went home. “You still can.”

“No,” Jungkook insists, shaking his head. “We have a tradition to uphold, don’t we?”

Even though The Nightmare Before Christmas is seventy-six minutes long, the night ends long before that. You haven’t even reached “This Is Halloween” before you feel a head hit your shoulder, and crane your neck to find Jungkook having fallen fast asleep beside you, half-full cup of Wild Berry Hibiscus next to the laptop in front of you. He’s still wearing his stupid police officer costume, the navy blue uniform tight against his body. His lips are parted ever so softly, eyelashes fluttering as little non-sounds exit his mouth, hints, whispers of snores. 

He hasn’t slept over since the first time. You’re not sure if you want the trend to continue, or if you just want to be a little bit selfish tonight, greedy, taking and taking and taking. He’s so beautiful like this, so innocent and gentle and soft. It would be such a shame if you had to wake him. 

And so, gingerly, you rest your head against his own, breathe in the quiet little sounds that leave his parted lips, memorize the feeling. It’s not the first time Jungkook’s accidentally fallen asleep on you, but there is something about this moment, sitting on your couch a few minutes past midnight, as the rest of the world celebrates around you, that is so intimate. Like here, in your apartment, you and Jungkook have your own little bubble, tucked away in a corner of the universe far from the noise of the rest of the world. And it’s here that you wish you could stay forever, for once never wanting the feeling to end. Wanting time to freeze in its very steps, the clocks stop and the orbit halts, and it is just you and Jungkook, forever. Like characters in a movie, on pause for eternity.

The moment ends when Jungkook shifts beside you before eventually coming to, slowly opening his eyes as he turns to look at you. You smile at him, dazed and tired, as he sits up properly, staring down at your half-opened laptop and the half-full cup of tea next to it. 

“Thought you’d end up sleeping here again tonight,” you joke, even though it isn’t really a joke. Maybe, somewhere deep down inside you, in the crevices between your bones and the dark corner of your heart, you had hoped that he would stay. 

“Oh, did I fall asleep?” Jungkook asks, blinking away the sleep in his eyes. It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning. 

“Just for a bit. I didn’t want to wake you, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to head back to your apartment or anything,” you tell him. 

Jungkook nearly jumps up off the couch at that, like he’s got springs in his shoes. Suddenly he’s wide awake, brown eyes blown open as he scrambles to gather his belongings, taking the cup of tea and quickly dumping it out in your sink. 

“Hey, don’t you want that?” You ask. 

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll come by some other time and have some, it was really good, I just fell asleep while drinking it,” Jungkook sputters, words moving a mile a minute as he tugs on his heavy black officer boots, scuffed at the tips from wear and tear. It’s as if he’s desperate to leave. Like your apartment has somehow offended him. Or worse, you. 

“If you want to stay, Jungkook, you can,” you tell him, standing up to run to the door before he pulls the damn thing off his hinges with how fast he’s moving. “I don’t mind. My bed is big enough for the both of us.”

“No, I should—I should get going. My… plants need watering. Right now. I totally forgot.”

It’s not a completely bullshit excuse. Jungkook has a fair few pothos amongst his other worldly apartment belongings, hanging from his ceiling or potted in old mugs and janky shoes. But it’s still a pretty bullshit excuse. It’s dark. Jungkook waters his plants every Sunday, and it’s Friday. It’s obvious he wants to get the hell out of your apartment for whatever reason. 

All you can do is hope and pray that it isn’t you who’s driving him away. 

“Oh—okay,” you tell him, opening the door as he furiously laces up his other boot. 

“Thanks for doing this. Next Halloween will be more fun, I swear. I won’t fall asleep on you. Or anything.”

“Okay, see you soon, then?” You ask, searching for a clue, a hint, anything that will tell you that it’s not you, that he hasn’t found you out yet. That you can still be friends, be best friends, because even if you want to kiss him, hold his hand, roll around in bed with him, loving him from afar is good enough. 

“Yes, yes, definitely. Dinner? Uh… sometime this week? I’ll text you. I have to go. Plants. See you!”

He dashes down the hallway. 

And you end your Halloween the same way you started it. Alone. 

Jungkook ran out of your apartment the other day like it was infested with cockroaches. Or the Black Plague. Or your microwave had just beeped. It was as if simply being inside it was going to scar him for life. 

Maybe your apartment is cursed. Jungkook does believe in ghosts. That’s another reason as to why he fears the microwave. Tiny ghosts could be living inside the microwave chamber and you’d never know. But Jungkook knows better. He knows that they’re there. 

“He just… ran out?” Chaewon asks, clearly bewildered. The two of you have been working on the first floor of the library all day, obviously doing everything in your power to not actually complete any of your assignments. 

“Yeah, something about his plants.” You sigh. 

Chaewon narrows her eyes, the same way she does when she’s plotting something. “Interesting.”

“What?” You ask, nudging her to see if you can worm a less mysterious response out of her. 

“Nothing,” Chaewon says with a nonchalant shrug. She clearly has something to say. 

“What?” You repeat forcefully. Chaewon doesn’t get to go all cryptic on you just because Jungkook ran out of your apartment like it had set fire. 

“I know I’ve only known you guys for, like, a year and a bit now, but you two have the strangest relationship I’ve ever seen,” Chaewon comments like it’s nobody’s business when it is, in fact, specifically two people’s business. 

You scowl. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” She pauses, thinking. In the silence, she begins to pack up her belongings, shoving her laptop into her bag and gathering up the small pile of candy wrappers slowly amassing in front of her. “I’ve never seen two best friends have a relationship quite like yours.”

“Thanks?”

“What are you doing for dinner? I’m eating with Yoonji, but you’re welcome to join if you want,” Chaewon offers. Even though you have no idea who Yoonji is, Chaewon would never exclude you from eating with them.

“I’m getting Korean food with Jungkook, but thanks for the offer,” you say, only to be greeted with Chaewon rolling her eyes. He said he’d meet us outside?”

Sure enough, when you head out of the glass doors at the front of the library, Jungkook is waiting dutifully on a bench close by, headphones in as he nods his head and taps his feet to the beat of the music, lost in his own world. He doesn’t even realize that you’ve left the library until you’re two feet in front of him, when he recognizes your beat-up white sneakers and looks up at you in glee, eyes crinkled into crescents. 

“Ready to go?” You ask happily. Your stomach has been rumbling ever since Jungkook suggested you go out to eat this morning. 

“Hell yeah I am,” Jungkook says, putting his earbuds away as he stands up. “You coming, Chae?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m eating with a friend.” There’s nudge against your shoulder, and when you turn to face her, she winks. “But you two enjoy yourselves! Don’t have too much fun without me!”

Before you can publicly berate her for being so goddamn obvious, she’s rotating 180 degrees on her heel and speed-walking in the opposite direction, zooming off so you don’t get the chance. 

“I feel like we haven’t seen each other in ages,” you comment mindlessly. Twenty-four hours away from Jungkook feels like a lifetime and a half. Forty-eight is a light year. 

“I’ve been busy,” Jungkook says vaguely, shrugging his shoulders. 

“Doing what, going out to fancy restaurants and galas?” You half-tease. It’s sad but true—Jungkook spends his nights living a life you could only dream of. And all of these rituals you share, from studying in the library until three in the morning to crashing at his place and taking naps on separate couches, get put on the backburner. 

“Hey, it’s hard work pretending to be rich,” Jungkook pouts. “Besides, the craziest thing about going to those things is that rich Korean people don’t serve Korean food at their fancy gatherings. They serve shit like caviar.”

“Is that why you’re so desperate to get Korean?” You ask pointedly. 

“Yes,” Jungkook emphasizes. “Man, I just want some tteokbokki.”

“Then we’ll go and eat all of the tteokbokki you can dream of,” you promise. You round the street corner and on the edge of the main road and an alleyway sits a tiny Korean restaurant the size of a bedroom, no more than six cramped tables inside. It’s run by a family who passes it down through each generation, dependent on the starving college students nearby to keep it alive. 

It’s Jungkook’s favorite place. The owner gives him a discount every time he sees him. 

(It’s impossible not to fall in love with Jungkook. Impossible to not be drawn to his presence, his personality. Like moths to a flame, you can’t help but come closer.)

“Ah, Jungkook!” The old man behind the counter greets as the bell above the entrance rings. “Sit! Sit!” He points to your favorite table, a round one in the far left corner that’s right next to the biggest window. “Usual?”

“Tteokbokki, too, please!” Jungkook shouts. The man gives you both a thumbs up and heads back into the kitchen. 

“It’s been a while since we came here,” Jungkook notices. You both usually eat lunch on campus and Jungkook has been largely unavailable for dinner. 

“Almost sounds like you missed it,” you poke fun. 

“God, I missed it so much,” Jungkook exclaims, tilting his head back in exasperation. “I didn’t realize that it would be so much work to get dressed up in a suit and look hot.”

“Don’t make it sound like such a drag.” You frown. Jungkook needs to put in literally zero effort to look hot. Sitting across from him in this tiny Korean restaurant as he wears nothing but a massive hoodie and black joggers, he looks hot. When he wakes up in your bed in a raggedy t-shirt, he looks hot. When you catch him at three in the morning in the library after eighteen straight hours of studying, he looks hot. 

Jungkook sits there and radiates light. Radiates warmth and joy and beauty. Laughter and hope. He’s the college version of a Disney prince. Perfectly imperfect and completely out of your reach. 

“I wish I could take you with me, you might enjoy it,” Jungkook sighs. “Plus, I have literally never seen you wear something fancier than business casual. Imagine you in a ballgown!”

“In your dreams, Jeon,” you rebuke. “Free catered food sounds nice but having to mingle with the 1% does not.”

“Touché,” Jungkook concedes. “I don’t know how Chaewon does it.”

“She’s a goddess.”

“Indeed.”

Jungkook pours you a cup of water from the pitcher that the old man dropped off, and then pours one for himself. “Chaewon said that I did well, though.”

Not surprising. Jungkook excels at everything he does. 

“Of course you did, you sexy beast,” you chide. 

“She said I’d make a good boyfriend.”

You choke on your water as the man’s son brings out your food, and you desperately attempt to avoid eye contact as you sputter and cough into a napkin, gaze pointed away from both a surprised waiter and a concerned Jungkook, who awkwardly thanks the man and leans over to pat your back. 

“You good?” He asks, brows furrowed. 

Coughing, you say, “I’m okay, I’m okay. It just—it went down the wrong pipe, that’s all.” Jungkook doesn’t buy it, and the little coughs escaping your throat don’t do much to corroborate your claim. “Seriously, Jungkook. I’m okay. It’s just water.”

“You looked like you were on the verge of death,” Jungkook frowns. 

“That’s just my face,” you fire back. “Just keep talking about what you were saying earlier. What was it?”

“Being a good boyfriend,” Jungkook says, and with no water near your lips to distract you this time, your mind bears the full force of his words, weighing down on your shoulders like a calculus textbook. 

It’s not as if you aren’t already aware that Jungkook would be the best boyfriend in the entire world, bar none. Not as if you don’t sit in bed and dream of a parallel universe, a life other than the one you’re living in right now, where Jungkook is lovely and wonderful and yours. He knocks on your door at a random hour in the afternoon with Chinese takeout from the local restaurant. He remembers your homework assignments when you forget them. He sits in bed with you and judges the Instagrams of the guys on the latest Bachelorette season. It’s as if he was already yours.

“Believe me,” you scoff. “The people know how great of a boyfriend you are.” 

“It’s fake, though,” Jungkook reminds you. “It’s only for a night. An evening, really.”

“Better than nothing,” you sigh. “If only I had enough money to rent myself a fake boyfriend for a night.”

“If only your parents were the CEOs of a multibillion dollar cooperation,” Jungkook adds on. 

“Truth,” you say, and you and Jungkook toast to that. Toast to knowing that some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Toast to knowing that some of those people can get for themselves something you can only imagine in your wildest dreams—a night with Jungkook. More than just a night. A night spent dressed up in your fanciest clothes, arms wrapped tightly around each other. A night spent as a couple, rather than you and Jungkook. 

Toast to knowing that even if you’ll never get to have him like that, you get to have him like this, and you’d rather it be like this than nothing at all. 

“You don’t need to rent a fake boyfriend for a night, Y/N,” Jungkook tells you once you’ve downed the water in your glasses (stay hydrated!). “You shouldn’t feel pressured to spend time with people you don’t want to spend time with.”

You don’t understand, you sigh. I’d give anything to spend time with you. 

Jungkook pays. He says that he’s made more money accompanying wealthy socialites—even ones that don’t go to your school, because word gets around—than he would in a month’s worth of shifts at the call center. He says he’s never looking back. He’s probably not going to give up the gig for a while, either. 

“Just because you have cash now doesn’t mean you get a free pass to pay for everything we do together,” you warn. You’ve always split the price of meals, split the price birthday cakes for your friends. In the beginning of freshman year, Jungkook ate a quarter of a bag of goldfish you had and paid you fifty-three cents to account for his consumption, which you immediately sent back to him. You still fight over it, finding surreptitious ways to incorporate it into the Venmo payments you make to each other. 

“I’m rich, I can do whatever I want with my money,” Jungkook proclaims. “And if that means treating my best friend to a meal, then that means I’m gonna treat her to a meal.”

“That’s very rude of you,” you tell him pointedly. “Zero out of ten, worst best friend in the entire world. Will not accept my Venmo payments.”

Walking down the sidewalk, side by side, Jungkook wraps an arm around you and pulls you in for a side hug as you come to a stop at a traffic light. “You always do so much for me and Chaewon. You deserve to be treated once in a while, Y/N.”

“Why, ‘cause I go out to CVS at ten at night to get you Nyquil after you catch the common cold from some sweaty guy at the gym?” 

“That,” Jungkook nods, conceding, “and also because you’re one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. The people who know you are lucky to get to say your name.”

If only Jungkook knew that he was the exact same. It’s an honor to know him. It’s a blessing to love him. 

“What fancy clothes do you own?” Chaewon’s lying on your bed, scrolling mindlessly on her phone. 

“I don’t know,” you respond, brows furrowing. You get up from your desk chair to start fishing through your closet,  “I have, like, some business casual stuff.”

“How about a dress?”

You whip around suspiciously, eyeing Chaewon as she lounges around in your room and acts like she isn’t plotting something nefarious. “Don’t you think you could tell me what you’re trying to convince me to do before you ask me if I have the appropriate clothing?” 

Even lying on her back, Chaewon still manages to roll her eyes, sitting up to meet your gaze. “There’s a gala tonight to celebrate some big business deal being closed and I want you to come with me,” she says like it’s a chore, exasperated. 

“Me?” You frown. “Why not Jungkook?”

“He said he had some thing to do for some other girl,” Chaewon says. The topic clearly is not at the forefront of her mind. It’s a little too obvious that it’s at the forefront of yours. “Besides, I was given no date restrictions and you deserve to have a little fun tonight. It’s a Friday!”

���I just want to stay in bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you tell her. 

“You’re already out of bed,” Chaewon points out unhelpfully. 

“Well, then I want to get into bed and play Legend of Zelda,” you rephrase. 

Chaewon pouts. “Noooo, please? It’ll be fun, I swear,” Chaewon pleads.  “It’s a huge party and hundreds of people are going to be there. Everybody gets to bring a plus one. You won’t be the only person who doesn’t know anything about business and has to cling onto their date in order to survive.”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me want to go so much,” you deadpan. 

“Seriously, Y/N. When was the last time you went out on a Friday?”

A while ago. You and Jungkook started having Mario Kart nights on Friday in the middle of your freshman year after you both came to the conclusion that every frat party smells, sounds, and tastes like the same fifty shades of college regret. You haven’t gone out since. 

“Not that long ago,” you lie. It’s been months.

“Yeah, right,” Chaewon scoffs. “Don’t think I don’t see your Bitmoji on the SnapMap sitting in your damn apartment on a Friday at 11PM,” she scolds.

“I’m gonna turn off my location,” you declare. You’ve had enough of Snapchat exposing you and your location. People can live in mystery about your whereabouts from now on. They don’t need to know. Chaewon certainly does not. 

“No excuses, you’re coming with me to the gala! You must have something to wear in that closet of yours, don’t you?” She slides off of your bed with a thud and joins you as you stand in front of your clothes. None of them scream fancy. None of them even whisper it. You stand back as she shuffles through your clothes, hangers squeaking as she shoves them along the rail. Chaewon tears through your clothing faster than you skim through your economics readings. “Aha! What do we have here?”

She whips out a dress from the very back of your closet, right behind the blazer you never wear because you’d rather be caught dead than in business attire. It’s old—you don’t think you’ve worn it since the beginning of your freshman year when you thought you actually had to dress up for parties. Needless to say, you dry-cleaned it the following Monday and never wore it again. You don’t even recall bringing it to college this year. 

“This is perfect!” Chaewon cries. “Really says ‘I can fucking dress myself’, don’t you think?”

“Are you implying that I can’t dress myself?” 

“You should definitely wear this,” Chaewon decides, dodging the question. “Gucci and Louis Vuitton are overrated, anyway.”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I.” Chaewon thrusts the dress towards you.

Chaewon shakes her head. “Of course you don’t.” 

Three hours later finds you one makeup and hair session later, standing in the lobby of a magnificent skyscraper wearing a dress that maybe could have done without the cup of frozen yogurt that you ate before you arrived. Now you remember why you haven’t really worn it since the beginning of last year. Has it shrunk?

“I feel like a loser, Chaewon,” you hiss as she bats her eyelashes and gets directed to the private elevator that will lead you both to the top floor. “A money-less, jobless loser.”

“At least you’re honest, Y/N,” Chaewon whispers back as you step into the elevator. Despite being nearly an hour and a half late (“Fashionably so!” Chaewon exclaims.) you are crowded into the back corner, several other couples stepping inside to join you, all of them wearing clothes that cost more than your tuition for all four years of college, combined. “That’s better than most of the people here.”

Nothing separates the rich from the poor like morality. 

When the elevator doors open, you and Chaewon are the last group to step out, milling about in the corner until the path is free. And when you turn your gaze away from her, you realize just why Jungkook’s so keen on going to events like these, why he never turns down an offer when it lights up his phone screen. 

In movies, rich people flaunt their wealth so extravagantly that it almost looks fake. From gigantic ice sculptures to ten-feet-tall chocolate fountains, entire orchestras and dresses worth thousands of dollars, it makes you wonder if rich people really do see those items as necessities when throwing a party. They rent out entire European castles and the press publicizes every one of their actions. To you, it looks contrived, unrealistic. Even if rich people have enough money to sustain the bottom 99% for hundreds of years, how could they spend their money on nonsense like this?

As it turns out, the ice sculptures and chocolate fountains are only half of the story.

At this gala, the hosts have spared no expense. The entire penthouse is made purely of glass, from the ceiling, to the floor, to the walls in between, giving you an absolutely breathtaking view of the city lights dozens of feet below you, of the stars millions of light years away. It’s as if you’re standing in a bubble, frozen in time, the world sparkling and twinkling and shimmering around you. You didn’t even know a place like this existed on Earth. The price to book it must be astronomical. The view, even more so. 

“Holy fuck,” you murmur, mouth dropping open at the sight. It’s a movie come to life. It’s a picture straight out of a fairytale. 

“Pretty sweet, right?” Chaewon says, clearly proud of herself for convincing you to join her. “The Parks and the Ohs really felt like celebrating.”

“No shit,” you say, dumbfounded. Chaewon wraps her arm around yours and leads you out of the elevator, her poise and grace akin to that of a princess. She’s been to this place before. She could do this in her sleep. 

“Pictures first, then we eat, and then we mingle,” Chaewon instructs, and you nod diligently. She’s the only way you’re going to make it out of this night unscathed. Without her, you don’t know what you’d do. 

On the average day of an average life of an average person, pictures means getting a stranger to take a single pic on your shitty iPhone at your worst angle, which you will begrudgingly post to your Instagram later after extensive editing. 

But this is not your average day, and these are not average lives of not average people. Pictures means professional photographers with entire setups, standing with their cameras held up to their eyes, poised and ready for the next shot. It means couples, one by one, stepping in front of a gorgeous backdrop and posing, over and over, as five photographers at once cram to get their best angle, the cleanest photo. 

You don’t know how to pose for photos. You barely remember what the proper formatting is for your essays, depending on the citation structure. And yet, Chaewon is ushering you over in front of the photographers, immediately striking one of her classic, perfect poses as you flail about, trying to figure out what to do with your hands. 

“Just relax,” Chaewon advises. Even standing beside you, she can see you panicking in her periphery. “And smile. You’re beautiful, so show them that.”

Eventually, as the photographers switch positions to get different angles, you stop worrying about your hands, stop worrying about your bag, your feet, your head tilt, and just grin. You may not have millions of dollars to your name, but it’s a Friday night and you’re living the life of a billionaire with no responsibilities. You deserve to live a little. 

When the next group comes up, Chaewon nudges you out of the way and whispers to one of the photographers, who nods dutifully in response. Wrapping her arm around yours once more, she guides you to the massive catering setup, tables and tables lined with delicacies from every country you could imagine. And of course, a gargantuan chocolate fountain in the middle of it all. 

Your stomach rumbles. Clearly, the frozen yogurt was not enough to hold you off. Or maybe it’s just because you’ve been eating college dining hall food for weeks now, and are probably going to throw up if you have to have dry beef one more time. 

“If you want to, you should try the caviar. It’s delicious. Avoid the eggplant, it tastes like foot, but the brussel sprouts are delicious. Kimchi’s good, too. Classic,” Chaewon instructs as you walk around the tables, placing servings the size of quarters onto your plate just so you can have a taste of everything. Chaewon sticks to some ribs, pan-seared salmon, and a vegetable so expensive you’ve never even heard of it before. 

“Im Chaewon, is that you?”

“Mrs. Kim!”

A strange older woman comes up to the two of you as you’re dishing up, and Chaewon’s face immediately lights up. The woman goes in for a hug, a barely-touching pat of the shoulders and hands. Over her shoulder, you watch as Chaewon rolls her eyes and pulls a face. 

“How are you, dear? You look so grown up,” Mrs. Kim says. You watch as the light slowly fades from Chaewon’s eyes with each second that passes. 

“I’m very well, Mrs. Kim. Did you get your hair done? It makes you look so youthful.” Chaewon’s a master. She glares at you when Mrs. Kim isn’t looking, raising her eyebrows as if to say learn, young padawan. This is how it’s done. They go on for a couple minutes, showering fake compliments on each other as you slowly begin to eat. You scrunch your nose up. Chaewon’s right. The eggplant does taste like foot. 

“And who is this?” Mrs. Kim asks, turning her focus onto you. You look up like a deer in headlights, a brussel sprout puffing your cheek. You were not meant to mingle and eat at the same time. 

“This is one of my closest friends, Y/N,” Chaewon introduces for you. You nod your hello, chewing the brussel sprout in the most nondescript manner possible in an effort to save whatever is left of your dignity. “She’s pre-law.”

You are not pre-law.

“Oh, how wonderful! You must have a lot you want to accomplish in life,” Mrs. Kim says. God, you couldn’t care less about how Mrs. Kim feels about you.

“Yes, definitely,” you say awkwardly. 

“We really must be going, Mrs. Kim. My parents will want me to make sure I do my rounds,” Chaewon says, a hand on your arm as she makes to get you both the fuck out of there. 

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Kim concedes, sending you and Chaewon one final goodbye before moving on to find her next victim. 

When she leaves, Chaewon seems to let out the biggest exhale of her life. “Holy fucking shit, I thought she’d never leave,” she exclaims, grabbing a flute of champagne and downing it in a single go. “She’s an associate of my father’s, so she’s always trying to kiss my damn ass. Like, sorry that you need to brown-nose your boss and his daughter just so you bribe your idiot son’s way into college.”

“You like mingling, I take?” You joke. 

“Just murder me.”

“Have any tips?”

“Flex as hard as possible without actually flexing. Try to speak to people your age because they are usually more bearable than people older than you. The best conversationalists are anybody under the age of ten,” Chaewon tells you. She picks up another glass of Prosecco. “Want some champagne?” 

“You have it,” you tell her. “I think you need it more than I do.”

Chaewon shrugs. Not as if they’re running out any time soon. She gulps it down and places it on the tray of one of the caterers as they whiz by her. 

The rest of the night passes by in the same way the beginning of it did. Chaewon drags you around the penthouse, talking with her father’s business partners and associates and their sons and daughters and husbands and wives for no more than two minutes each before moving on. She’s got her technique down pat. Greet, compliment, shade, flex, compliment, say goodbye. It’s foolproof, because you immediately notice that everyone else in the room has adopted the same approach. 

Business gatherings like these are just one big game of who can be the most-liked and the least-liked at the same time. And the answer: everybody, all at once. 

Halfway through the evening, Chaewon collapses against the back wall, totally unafraid of the possibility of the glass giving out behind her. She doesn’t care. If it breaks, it breaks. 

“Tired?”

“I just need a break,” Chaewon declares. “Because everyone in here is so fucking fake, and you’re the only one I can talk to without wanting to rip out my eardrums.”

“I’m honored,” you say sarcastically. 

“When I say you’re the only honest one here, I mean it,” Chaewon says. You lean back against the wall next to her, looking out into a sea of people in fancy clothes with fancy food and fancy friends. “Look at all these people, Y/N. All these fucking people, and you’re the only one who’s true.”

And then, you spot him. 

He’s far away, standing in a group of people you don’t recognize, a hand on the small of another girl’s back. He’s wearing a navy blue suit, tight-fitting and tailored, a silver watch sparkling on his wrist as he adjusts his sleeves. One of the other young men in the group says something funny, and he tilts his head back to laugh, chuckling as the girl beside him curls into his arms. 

You suppose it would have been ignorant of you to assume Jungkook was elsewhere on a night like this, at a gathering where everybody who knows anybody is here. 

Jungkook must not know you’re here. He mustn't, otherwise he would have come over to find you. You must have entered at different times, spent the night wandering around different parts of the penthouse. Clinging onto Chaewon’s arms, you must have avoided his gaze, and he, yours. 

Chaewon hasn’t spotted him either. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe it’s better, if you’re the only one stuck with the knowledge that he’s here tonight. Chaewon would pity you. Other people would ask you how you knew such a worldly, experienced man like him. And you would spend the night wallowing in sadness, wondering why it’s never you that gets to spend the night next to him. 

From this distance, you can see Jungkook perfectly. The light from the moon shines down on him like a goddamn spotlight, catching the sparkling on his wrist, leaving a silver gleam in his slicked back hair. You watch as he laughs, smiles, talks, grins and beams and socializes. Of course he’s here. Of course. He’s so good at this, so good at being real and genuine and happy. 

Chaewon says the only person in the room who is true is you, but how can that be? How can that be when Jungkook, the most honest, wonderful, real person you know, is standing in front of you? You aren’t honest. You aren’t true and real and whole. You stand on the sidelines, a wallflower in a room of daisies and roses, and pine from afar. Watch as he pretends to date a girl that’s not you, wraps his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek, and you act like everything is alright. 

It sucks, being trapped like this for fear of him seeing you. You know that would be worse—if he saw you standing alone and decided to take matters into his own hands. Seeing him up close in a penthouse like this, a movie set, shimmering and sparkling, it would be worse. Jungkook pulls the girl beside him in close to his side, smiling as he listens to someone else speak. She’s the perfect height in those heels, just tall enough to rest her head in the crook between his neck and his shoulder. You imagine them walking into the room together, hand in hand. Imagine them posing for the pictures like a real couple, a pair of celebrities. 

You suppose you have no reason to be jealous of her, of him, of what they have. Jealousy is when resenting someone for having something that you once had. You never had a life like that with Jungkook. You’ll never have a life like that with him. Never get dressed up to go out, never get to be his date to an event. Never get pictures taken of you as a couple, never feed each other candies and strawberries dipped in chocolate. You can’t be jealous of her. You were never in the running to begin with. 

“Ready to get back out there?” Chaewon asks, placing a firm hand on your shoulder. 

A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes, offering it to the both of you. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Chaewon tells you as she takes a glass for herself. 

You sigh, casting another glance over at Jungkook. He and his date are moving around now, joining another social circle on the opposite side of the penthouse. He looks so at ease, so comfortable. He belongs there, in the middle of it all, talking and laughing and grinning. And you? You belong back at home, underneath your duvet covers playing a game of Mario Kart. Not here. 

You shake your head. You could use a drink or two in this state. “I’d love one, actually. Thank you.”

That night, you stay at Chaewon’s place. 

“You’ve been acting weird.”

“Hello to you, as well,” you say with a scowl as Chaewon sits down across from you at the local ramen place. 

“Listen,” Chaewon begins, “I’ve been thinking. You need to confess to Jungkook.”

You nearly spit out the complimentary water you were served. “Excuse me?”

“You need to. You’ve been acting weird and that’s the only thing that’s going to fix it,” Chaewon declares. 

“What do you mean I’ve been ‘acting weird’? Care to explain?” You ask, offended. You haven’t been acting weird. Well, that weird. Maybe a little weird.

“Jungkook told me you haven’t seen each other for the last eight days,” Chaewon points out. Eight days? It’s more like seven and a half. Not that you’ve been counting, or anything. 

“So? We’re busy people,” you defend. It’s a good enough excuse. You’re sophomores in college. You have classes. Clubs. You have to meal prep. 

“So? You guys are best friends. You make time to see each other at three in the fucking morning if you haven’t seen each other yet that day. And you haven’t seen each other for eight whole days? What’s wrong with you?” Chaewon demands. 

“Nothing! What the heck, I invite you out to a best friend ramen date and you just blaspheme all over me like this?” You accuse. This is not how you imagined today to be going. This isn’t how you imagined this week to be going. “Besides, it’s only been seven and a half days. He’s over-exaggerating.”

“Seven and a—holy fuck, you are literally the worst. Can you just stop resisting? If you tell him, everything will be fine and go back to the way things were,” Chaewon says, blinking, flabbergasted. 

“No, they will not,” you hiss. “Everything will change if I tell him. We’re best friends, Chae. Imagine if I told you that I loved you. What would you do?”

“I’d love you back, that’s what!” Chaewon tells you. “You deserve to be loved back, Y/N. Nothing would change between us. I already love you. You’re one of my most favorite people ever. I would never regret something if it was with you.”

“It’s different with him, though,” you try to explain. You don’t know why—you just know that it is. The way you’re friends with Chaewon and the way you’re friends with Jungkook are entirely separate. You love Chaewon. You’re not in love with Chaewon. 

“Is it? How?” Chaewon says. 

“I don’t know, I just—it’s different with him.” There’s no way to describe it. Jungkook appeared in your life and it was as if everything just clicked into place. There isn’t a single thing in your life that makes more sense to you than Jungkook. “It’s always been different with him. With you, I—I knew that we would become really close friends once we started talking a lot more in the beginning of freshman year. But with him—I don’t know. From the moment I met him, I knew that I would fall in love with him. When he said hello to me, I was fucked. There’s never been any hope for me, Chae. I just have to live like this forever.”

Chaewon rolls her eyes. “No, you don’t. You don’t even see what the fuck is right in front of you.”

“You?”

“God, I’m friends with idiots. Literal idiots. How you guys have made it through nearly a year and a half of college is beyond me,” Chaewon says to nobody in particular. “Seriously, tell me, Y/N. What do you think will happen if you tell him? Just out of curiosity.”

“I don’t know—” you pause. A lot of things. He tells you he just wants to stay friends. He rejects you because he’s not interested that way and you can’t really be friends anymore because it’s weird now. He’s already interested in somebody else. He’s already dating somebody else and you never even knew. He’s not looking for a relationship right now. Things get awkward because you confessed to your best friend that you’re in love with him and he doesn’t feel the same. You end up never speaking to each other. You never see each other. You go through the rest of university seeing each other on the Green by chance and not knowing what to do. You graduate and move on with your lives. And suddenly, he’s just a past friend you used to have. No longer a part of your life. No longer given the chance to. “He rejects me. We never speak again and have to avoid each other at all costs. He lets me down easy and I feel like a total loser for having confessed in the first place. There’s a lot.”

“Jesus, Y/N. Aren’t you forgetting a possibility?” Chaewon says, eyebrows raised high. 

“I’m omitting a lot of them,” you tell her. Including the one where, in the next three years, you end up in a hellish dystopian wasteland and you have to band together to survive but it’s awkward and terrible because you love him still and he doesn’t feel the same, never has and never will, and now you have to fight off zombies and a corrupt autocratic government all while dealing with your own goddamn feelings. That may be the most unbearable one of them all. 

“How about the one where he actually feels the same?”

“Too unrealistic,” you tell Chaewon. It’s the truth. Why else would Jungkook be traipsing around with beautiful, rich, worldly girls on his nights off? He does it for the money, sure, but he likes it. He loves the experience, loves living that sort of life. You’d never be able to provide that for him. “You know that’s never going to happen, Chae. We’re just friends.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, he thinks that we’re just friends. And I’m not gonna fuck everything up by telling him that I’ve been madly in love with him for the past year and a half.” You can think of nothing worse. 

“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe he thinks that the two of you are just friends because you refuse to actually show him how you feel?” Chaewon asks pointedly, eyebrows raised in disapproval. She looks about ready to walk out of the restaurant. “You never do things to give him a reason to think otherwise.”

“Why would I?” 

When your ramen arrives, Chaewon takes a deep breath, downs the rest of her glass of water, and moves on. It’s clear that if she thinks about this any more, her head will explode. 

Nothing’s ever going to change between you and Jungkook. You knew, when you first met him, that it was always going to hurt like this. That loving him was something you had to sacrifice to stay close to him. He lights up every fucking room he walks into, and it’s all you can do not to sit there and bask in his warmth. You would rather catch a single one of his rays than be in the darkness. And if being friends with him means that friends is all you’ll ever be, then so be it. You’re lucky to have him like this. Why take the plunge? 

“Just—” Chaewon says as you begin to pull apart the noodles in your own bowl. “I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now. And you deserve to be happy, Y/N. You deprive yourself of all of these wonderful things, and I just want you to know that you deserve every single one of them. But telling him? That’s something that even I know would make you the happiest. You shouldn’t live like this, Y/N. You have no idea what you’re missing out on if you do.”

The streak of not seeing Jungkook ends the next day, when you come back from an evening grocery store run to find him standing outside your door, hand about to knock on the wood. He’s all dressed up again, button-down and slacks, hair styled and parted, and you watch as he takes a deep breath, almost as if he’s waiting for the best time to knock. 

“Jungkook?”

He practically jumps out of his skin at the sound of your voice, nearly tripping over his own feet as he lays his eyes on you. 

“Oh, Y/N!” He exclaims. “I was just about to see if you were home.”

“You could have just texted, you know,” you say jokingly, joining him at the front door as you fumble for your keys. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” Jungkook admits sheepishly. 

“Well, make it up to me by helping me unpack these,” you demand, kicking the door open as you reach down to grab your reusable canvas bags filled with groceries. Immediately, Jungkook is leaning down to grab all of them for you, hauling them inside like they weigh nothing. You stare as he heads over to your kitchen without breaking a sweat, biceps clenching as he lifts the groceries up onto the counter. 

“What’d you get?” Jungkook asks, slowly beginning to take out the groceries. He’s in your apartment so often that he’s memorized where all of your food goes, from the correct shelf in the fridge for produce to the proper cabinet for cereal. 

“Just like… groceries. I saw a box of peppermint chocolate bars that I thought you might like, they’re in there somewhere,” you say mindlessly, pointing to a random canvas bag. Immediately, Jungkook abandons his putting-away-groceries duty to fish through each of the bags, hunting for the box of goodies. “And I got some cheap Trader Joe’s wine. You know. Just for emergencies.”

“Trader Joe’s wine and peppermint chocolate bars,” Jungkook comments, nodding in approval. He finally finds the box and tears it open sideways. “Sounds like a perfect dessert if I’ve ever heard one.”

“What, did you eat already?” You ask, busting out the wine and a couple of mugs, because you don’t own any wine glasses. Nothing says cultured like drinking seven-dollar wine out of mugs with kitschy sayings like “don’t talk to me until this is empty” or “coffee is my first love” written on them. 

Jungkook shrugs. He grabs the box and heads over to your couch, already kicking back and relaxing. “Yeah, I went to some restaurant for another double date,” Jungkook says. “It was one of those places where everything is so expensive but the portions are the size of my fist. Of your fist.”

“You sound hungry,” you note, filling up the mugs and joining him. “And mad.”

“I’m getting reimbursed for the money I spent tonight, so I suppose I could be angrier. But I’m starving. Let’s finish this entire box of chocolates and do nothing else.”

“Your words, not mine,” you say, although his proposal sounds more than appealing to you. 

You turn the television on for some background noise, switching to a channel showing old reruns of unsolved serial killer cases, because nothing sets the mood better than the words “then, slowly, he took the knife with which he killed her and began to slice away at her body”. Jungkook doesn’t seem to pay the television any attention, though, instead focused entirely on the chocolate in front of him, calling his name. 

He takes an enormous bite out of one before moaning far too sexually for your liking, tossing his head back in bliss. “Oh my God.”

“Good?”

Jungkook moans again in response.

“Please don’t orgasm on this couch. Who knows what other bodily fluids were on here before we bought it,” you ask calmly. 

“I’d say that’s nasty, but you guys did cover this with one of those couch covers, so it’s not like my body is coming into contact with other people’s body stains,” Jungkook reasons. The couch cover is the single best purchase you’ve made this entire year. Possibly your entire life. “But they’re delicious. You made a good purchase.”

“I thought you would like them,” you say. “You’re the only person I know who actually likes the combination of mint and chocolate.”

“People who say that it tastes like toothpaste are brushing their teeth with the wrong kind of toothpaste,” he tells you pointedly. “I don’t understand. This is God’s combination. It’s perfect.”

“As long as you love it, that’s all that matters,” you tell him with a pat on his back, breaking off a square of the chocolate bar for yourself. It is pretty good, even if mint chocolate ice cream does sometimes taste like toothpaste. But you’d never tell Jungkook that, of course. 

Jungkook takes a swig of the wine, picking up the mug and gulping down about half of it, the wine bitter on his tongue. “Goes great with this wine, too,” he jokes. You take a sip yourself. It’s… not very good. Actually, rather sticky. No wonder it was only seven dollars. 

“You don’t have to lie to me, I know it tastes like ass,” you tell him honestly. To be fair, you and Jungkook have both had worse. Compared to the shit served at frat parties, this may as well be beautifully-aged Malbec. 

“It only tastes a little bit like ass,” Jungkook compromises. “But it doesn’t not taste like ass.”

“Let’s finish it now so we don’t have to have any more of it later,” you decide. “You’ve probably had some of the best alcohol in your life this semester.”

Jungkook thinks back, tilting his head to the side as he begins to recall all of the instances in the past few months when he’s had anything to drink. “Soju’s still my favorite. But yeah, I’d say I’ve had wine that probably costs more than my textbooks for this semester if I hadn’t pirated them all.”

“The beauty of being a CS student,” you muse. 

“You know it,” he says, holding his half-empty mug out as a toast to himself. “But seriously, even if this Trader Joe’s wine literally tasted like garbage, it would still be better than all of that other shit.”

You turn to him, skeptical. Even the single night you spent with Chaewon, in a penthouse amongst the stars, drinking champagne and eating strawberries dipped in chocolate, was more than you could ever dream of. You woke up the next day on an air mattress in her bedroom and wanted nothing more than to go back to basking in the luxury, desperate for another taste. It was addicting. How could Jungkook ever prefer what he has right now to what he had last night? 

“Really? Don’t say that just to make me feel better,” you tell him. You can take it. Jungkook has every reason to prefer the fancy meals, the penthouses, the suits and ties to your janky little apartment and old clothes from high school. The two aren’t at all on the same level. They’re not even in the same goddamn game. If you could drop everything to have what Chaewon has, what the other girls and boys who pay for Jungkook’s company have, you would. 

“I’m not,” Jungkook tells you seriously. “I mean it. I would rather sit in your room, hunched over your tiny Switch because you lost the HDMI cord to plug it into the television, playing Mario Kart than out there, pretending to be someone I’m not.”

“But it was fun in the beginning, wasn’t it? Getting to be rich without the moral ambiguity that comes along with being part of the upper class?” You ask. It must have been. Jungkook looked so happy when he first started doing these gigs, coming back to your apartment in a state of bliss, a little tipsy from the expensive champagne and steak. He’d knock on your door and tell you all about the night, from how older businessmen handed him their cards and offered him jobs, to the hundreds of ice cream flavors you could only ever dream of eating. Everything seemed so wonderful to him.

Jungkook shrugs, pouring himself more wine. “Yeah, I guess, but it gets so old after a while. Like, no wonder Chaewon was so desperate for me to go with her that first time. It sucks the damn life out of you. You walk around and mingle and pretend that you’re the greatest person on Earth, talking about yourself and kissing up to the other people for an entire night. Honestly, sometimes it’s worse than my CS homework. And I hate that shit.”

“Chaewon mentioned that the eggplant usually tastes like foot,” you add. Jungkook nods in agreement. 

“Yeah, it does. She warned me about it the first night and I, like a fool, tried it because I usually like eggplant. And it still tasted like foot. Never again,” Jungkook says, shivering at the mere thought of it. It’s funny, actually, because you did the exact same thing. “But the food is like, the one thing I pretty much don’t have the right to complain about. It’s delicious and usually free.”

“But I hope that you’re having fun,” you tell him honestly, because you do. When you’re sitting in your room, eating two different pints of Ben & Jerry’s, you hope that Jungkook, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, is enjoying himself more than you are. Because he deserves it. You never want there to be a time when he’s sad, when he’s unhappy or bored. Jungkook deserves to live the happiest version of life he possibly can. “I want you to enjoy yourself.”

“I do,” Jungkook says. There’s a second half to that sentence. “I do—it’s just that… It's so fake, you know? I feel like such a goddamn actor when I’m there. I get to live this extravagant lifestyle for a few hours but in return I don’t even know who I’m looking at when I look in the mirror.”

Oh?

“Like, I pretend to be this business student, when I’m not. I pretend to have millions of dollars to my name, when I don’t. I hold hands and pose for pictures with people Chaewon is vaguely familiar with and nothing, literally nothing, feels real. I don’t know.” Jungkook takes another swig from the mug. “Even the relationships I have when I’m there are fake.”

“Do you hate it that much, then?” You ask him. If it’s so awful and terrible, then why does he keep doing it? Keep dressing up and going out, holding hands with and wrapping his arm around them?

“No,” Jungkook says, sighing as he leans back into the couch. “I don’t hate it. I just—I wish I had something real afterwards to come back home to.”

Real? Like what? Like you? You aren’t real. You sit next to your best friend and pretend that everything is fine. That nothing hurts. You’ve had the biggest crush on him ever since you laid eyes on him, and you’re doing everything in your power to make sure that he’s the only one that doesn’t know. 

“That’s why I’m always coming back to your apartment afterwards,” Jungkook says. He chuckles, but it isn’t his usual laugh. It sounds forced, contrived and fake. Jaded. He opens his mouth to say something, but closes it almost immediately. Then, he breathes, long and slow. Thinks. The silence is almost unbearable. Waiting to hear what he has to say, even more so. “You’re the most genuine person I know. What we share—it’s real.”

Tonight is the least lonely you’ve felt in a long time. 

Even though Jungkook has something tonight, you aren’t aching to be by his side, desperate to spend more time with him. He told you that he was really looking forward to this one, that it wasn’t going to be some stuffy gala or blind double date. He said something about going to karaoke with the girl and her friends, singing Britney Spears songs and taking shots of soju for hours on end, screaming his voice hoarse. And even if you aren’t there with him, you’re happy because you know that he’s happy, that he’s genuinely enjoying himself. 

So, you aren’t that lonely. 

Content with the state of your life as it is, you take the night off, ready to prepare yourself for a weekend that will almost certainly consist entirely of just work. Chaewon’s voice echoes in your mind (“I know that you aren’t as happy as you could be right now,” she had told you), but it’s different now. Because you are happy. You are happy, because Jungkook’s happy. The two of you see each other just as frequently as you used to. He texts you about his terrible CS homework and the Shiba Inu he just saw being walked across campus. It’s all gone back to the way it used to be. That’s what you had wanted. 

You were prepared for this. You knew that it would eventually boil down to this, down to whether or not you could take Jungkook not knowing how you feel any longer. But right now, you don’t care. Jungkook not knowing has always been a part of your friendship. The love you hold for him, in the spaces between your bones and deep in the cracks of your heart, that has always been there. You see it, hear it, feel it, whenever you’re with him. Even when you’re not with him, it will remind you, appear in the silence, the emptiness. It will always make itself known, because it’s become a part of you. From the moment you met him, it had settled into your heart.

Staring out of the window by your living room, overlooking the ugliest parking garage on campus, you sigh. You can’t see the stars from here, not even in the dead of night, but that’s alright. There is something so peaceful about the navy blue sky. About how mysterious and unknown it is. It calms you. You put on a movie that you’ve genuinely been wanting to watch for a while, sit down in your bed, amongst your duvet and sheets, pillows and plushies, and enjoy yourself, for once. It’s a good night. 

And then, much like most aspects of your terribly convoluted, over-complicated and confusing life, it all comes crashing down. 

There’s a faint thud from outside, a soft little non-noise that you assume is coming from the street. Not wanting to interrupt your movie—she’s just about to confess, holy shit—you ignore it. It’ll go away eventually. 

Then another thud. You pause, leaning towards your window to see if you can figure out the source. Silence. You’re just about to press play, when you hear it again. And again. It gets louder and louder, making up in volume what it lacks in rhythm and order, until you realize it’s someone knocking on your door. And not just knocking casually. It’s as if someone is shoving their whole body into it, shoulders and chest and feet hitting the wood as they bang on it. 

“Y/N?”

Oh, God.

Pushing off your duvet, you tug on your slippers and wipe away the crust around your eyes as you rush towards the door. You know who’s on the other side. You’re not sure if answering it is the better or worse option. 

You’ve always had an uncanny ability to pick the latter. 

When you open the door, Jungkook, in a fancy sweater pulled over a white button down and black jeans that could almost pass for dressy slacks, is standing on the other side. 

Correction: he’s sort of standing on the other side. He nearly topples over when you pull open the door, having clearly been leaning on it, and you barely have time to reach your arms out to catch him. 

“Oh! Y/N!” Jungkook exclaims, as if he’s surprised to see you inside your own apartment. “I was hoping to see you.”

“I figured,” you tell him, laughing. You guide him inside, and even in his state he remembers to tug off his clean white sneakers, kicking them towards the shoe rack. “It’s so late, Jungkook, you should go home.” 

“No,” Jungkook whines. “I wanted to see you. I missed you.”

“We saw each other this morning, Jungkook. And this afternoon, right before you went out,” you remind him. The words go in one ear and out the other, and he pulls you in close to him, wrapping his arms around you as he presses his body against yours in a sweaty hug. His grip is tight around you as he rests his head on your shoulder, breathing you in as if you’d been gone for years. Slowly, after a few seconds, you pull away from him, a hand on his shoulder to get him to look at you through his too-long bangs, hanging over his eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong? I’m right here, don’t worry. I never left.”

“I had a lot to drink tonight,” Jungkook tells you, blinking rapidly. “Like, a lot. They just kept ordering soju and I just kept drinking it. It was really good. Have you had strawberry soju? It’s delicious.”

“I might have had it once or twice,” you fib, not able to recall having it one way or another. “Come on, sit down,” you point him towards the couch, but he refuses, clinging onto you even as you make your way towards the kitchen. “Jungkook, please, I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“But I missed you,” Jungkook repeats. “I missed you a lot. I thought about you the entire time I was there.”

You can’t say you didn’t do the same. 

“Next time we’ll do something together then, hey? Something really fun, like going to an arcade or bowling,” you promise him with a pat on his shoulder. “But you need to drink some water, JK. Can you please sit down?”

“No, I want to be with you,” Jungkook says like it’s nothing. Like the feeling of him wrapped around you like this, holding onto you and telling you that he misses you, that he thinks about you, doesn’t mean anything. You don’t think your heart has beaten since you opened the door to see him standing on the other side. 

(You don’t think it’s beaten since you met him. Since he came up to you on the pavement, asking you for directions. Since you told him your name, and he told you his.)

“Ah, fine, just be careful, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” you concede, because it’s so easy to let him have his way, so easy to say yes to him. You manage to grab an empty water bottle and fill it up with what’s left in your Brita, too lazy to refill it after it’s left bone dry. Slowly, you make your way to your bedroom, out of view of the central living space, where your roommates could burst through the door at any moment and see you taking care of your drunk best friend on the sofa. 

Slowly, you settle on your bed, sitting off of the edge of it as you cajole him into drinking some water, whispering soft nothings to make sure he finishes the whole thing. 

“Does your head hurt or anything?” You ask him, already looking around for the stash of Advil you usually keep on your nightstand.

“No, no, I’m fine, Y/N, seriously,” he promises, even if you can see the glazed-over look in his eyes, the way his sweaty bangs stick to his forehead. “You’re too nice, you know? Always treating me when I show up at your place. Even when you don’t invite me.”

“You know I never mind seeing you,” you tell him. “You can come over whenever you want. I’m always here.”

“No, you’re not,” Jungkook says with a pout, and it makes you furrow your brows. When have you not been? Jungkook’s been going out to events ever since the beginning of the semester, and without fail, you’ve always been waiting for him at home, knowing he’ll turn up one way or another. Except, there was— “That one time a couple of weeks ago, I went to this crazy big gala with Eunha, there were so many people there, and I came back home afterwards and knocked on your door, and your roommates said they hadn’t seen you all day. Where were you that day?”

He had come? You didn’t know if he would. 

(Or maybe, you did. You knew he would show up at your door once he got back from that night, and selfishly, not wanting to see him after the fact, the leftover version of him, the part he leaves behind when he goes out. You knew he would be there and you couldn’t bear the thought of being the second girl he spends the night with. The other option. Maybe, you’ve known all along that you’ll never quite stack up to the girls he goes out with, and that sometimes, when you see him all dressed up while you’re in your hoodie and sweats, it reminds you is nothing more than a casual friendship.)

“I must have been out late with Chaewon that day, I’m sorry,” you apologize, letting him rest his head on your shoulder. “I didn’t know you would come.”

“I always come after my events. You know that.”

“I didn’t know if you’d remember to,” you correct. 

“I’d never forget about you,” Jungkook says, the alcohol erasing his filter. Making him honest. “I really missed you, that day. I had been waiting the entire night to see you.”

“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” you promise, and this one is for real. 

“You know, today?” Jungkook says, pulling his head back so he can get a good look at you, your eyes meeting his own. “Today, I was so sad on my way here. It was so terrible, because I was drunk and sad and I missed you.”

“You were sad? What happened?” You ask, leaning in. Jungkook? Sad? Who would do such a thing to him? Who would erase the smile on his face, his crescent eyes, and replace them with tears? 

“This girl and I, she was a lot of fun. We sang a couple duets together and we were pretty good,” he hiccups, “kept winning. It was fun. She and I talked for a long time. I definitely liked her the most out of all of the girls I’ve gone out with. Besides Chaewon, of course.”

“What happened? Did she do something you didn’t want? You know you can tell me, Jungkook,” you ask, a hand on his arm. 

“No.” Jungkook shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was fun and I was drunk. We were on our way back in the Lyft when she leaned over and kissed me. And I kissed her back, and it was kind of nice. I haven’t really kissed someone like that in a while,” Jungkook tells you. And even though you’re hearing these words from him, hearing how he had all of this fun with a girl who isn’t you, how he kissed her in the backseat of a car, you rally, blinking away the tears you can feel forming in your eyes. It’s none of your business, you tell yourself. You and Jungkook aren’t together. You don’t get to feel bad about him kissing someone else. 

“Did you like it?” You ask, each word a pin in your chest. 

“It was pretty nice,” Jungkook admits. “We, uh, we made out a bit in the back of the car until we got to her place. And then we got out of the car and she asked me if I wanted to go back with her, to her room. And—and I almost said yes.” Jungkook looks about ready to combust. At his side, his fists are clenched so hard you’re worried he’ll pop a vein. 

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” you tell him, looking him in the eyes so he knows that you don’t mind, that he can tell you these things without worry. Jungkook may be the love of your life, but he’s your best friend, first. He’s always been, before anything else, your best friend. 

“But there is!” Jungkook cries, standing up in anguish. “There is, Y/N, you don’t understand! I almost had sex with her!”

“You’re allowed to, Jungkook!” You assure him, standing up to reach out to him. 

“No, Y/N, you don’t get it,” he tells you coldly, pulling his hand away. “Why aren’t you mad? Aren’t you angry that I nearly had sex with her?”

“No, what the fuck, Jungkook, why would I be mad?” You shout back at him. “You can do whatever you want with your body, it’s not my job to police it! I’m your friend, not your mom!”

“But don’t you want to be more, Y/N?” He rounds on you. “Don’t you want to be the one kissing me, fucking me? Why aren’t you jealous?”

“Were you trying to make me jealous, Jungkook? Is that what you were trying to do? You wanted to get a reaction out of me because my best friend nearly fucked someone else and then didn’t? What the fuck, Jungkook? What do you want from me?”

“I just want you to tell me you fucking love me back!”

“Jungkook, what—”

Jungkook, eyes dark and furious, pushes you against your closet door as your lips part, feeling the breath get knocked out of your lungs. He’s so close. He’s right there, you can see him, watch as he looms over you, hands clenched in your hoodie as he presses you against the wall. And then, wordlessly, he’s leaning down, crashing your mouths together. 

Suddenly, your heart starts. You gasp into the kiss, the feeling of his mouth on top of yours. It’s fervent, hot and angry and passionate, his body against your own as your hands reach out to press against his head. You seize up at the feeling, almost as if in shock, before melting into his touch, leaning into him, desperate. You can feel his breath mixing in with your own, feel the way his chapped lips meet your overly-moisturized ones, feel how his hands drift from where they’re bunched up in the front of your hoodie to your waist, your hips, your thighs. Jungkook kisses ruthlessly, kisses like he’s trying to prove a point. Holds onto you like he’s afraid to let go. 

When you part, gasping for air, Jungkook runs a hand through his hair, blinking. 

“Jungkook, you’re drunk—” you tell him firmly, refusing to let get your hopes up if what you have in front of you is really just an intoxicated best friend. Your heart is beating miles a minute, about ready to thump right out of you, chest heaving and mouth agape. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Jungkook argues back. “Even when I’m sober I love you. Don’t tell me I’m confused because I’m drunk.”

“You show up at my place at one in the morning, tell me about how you made out with some other girl and almost slept with her just to get me angry, kiss me, and tell me not to tell you you’re confused?” You demand. “Jungkook, I’ve never been more confused in my life than right now, can you please just—”

“I love you, Y/N,” Jungkook says, and even though he’s angry, red in the face and sweaty, when he says it, it’s soft. It’s a whisper, a murmur. He says it not to convince you, but so you know. “I’ve been in love with you for so goddamn long, ever since I fucking met you. And I thought you might like me back but you never did anything about it, and so neither did I.”

“You need to go home, Jungkook,” you tell him, hiccuping. When you blink, you feel the warm tears streaming down your face. You hadn’t even noticed them. “You can’t just come into my apartment and tell me shit like that. How do you think it makes me feel?”

“Do you feel the same, Y/N?” Jungkook asks, looking you in the eyes. He’s angry, that’s for sure, but even underneath, you can see the desperation, see how he’s just waiting for an answer. 

“Go home, Jungkook. Please. Let’s talk about this when you aren’t drunk, okay? I’m confused and I need to clear my head,” you plead, pushing him towards the door. “Please, okay? Be safe, too. I’ll call Chaewon to give you a ride,” you tell him, grabbing your phone. 

Jungkook puts a hand on your wrist. “I’ll be okay, Y/N. I just… Please, tell me. Did that kiss mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it did, but Jungkook, I can’t—”

“It meant something to me, too,” he tells you firmly, lets the words sink into the air around you.  He heads for the door, pulling on his shoes. He looks so sad. “Good night, Y/N.”

You place a hand on the doorknob. “Good night, Jungkook.”

It’s barely nine in the morning the next day when a knock wakes you up. It’s soft at first, one every couple of seconds, before it gets progressively louder. Slowly, you get out of bed, trying to tame your hair as you rub the sleep from your eyes. 

“Y/N’s in her room. Is that for her? That’s so cute. Yeah, she’s probably awake. You can just knock.” It’s your roommate. 

You scramble to make your bed, pouring some water from the water bottle by your nightstand into your hand and splashing your face, wiping it away with an old t-shirt as you run towards the door, pulling it open just in time. 

On the other side is a much more tired, much less drunk Jungkook, one hand raised and about to knock, the other holding a bouquet of daisies. 

“Hey,” he says shyly, mouth breaking into a smile the moment he sees you. 

“Hey,” you say back. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah, head hurts like hell, though,” Jungkook says. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, s-sure, of course,” you say, stepping aside to let him into your bedroom. 

“These are for you.” Jungkook holds out the bouquet towards you, wrapped up neatly in cellophane and tied at the stems with a bow. “So you don’t have to keep Febreze-ing your room all of the time.”

“They’re beautiful, Jungkook,” you tell him, grinning as you take them from his hands. Today feels different from yesterday. It feels lighter, fresher. New. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“I—” He pauses, taking a second to think, “I meant what I said, yesterday. Maybe not all of it, but. Most of it, yeah. I meant it.”

“Why did you try to make me jealous, Jungkook?” You ask him. “Why did you think that would work?”

“I don’t know,” Jungkook admits. “I shouldn’t have, and I fucked up. I just got so… so tired of waiting to see if you’d ever come around. I just wanted you to tell me. And then I guess I got so fed up that I told you instead.”

You place the bouquet on your dresser before walking towards him, reaching a hand out. “Yeah, that was a pretty big asshole move of you,” you chide, grinning to yourself. 

“I know, I’m sorry.” He sighs. 

“But I’m happy you’re here,” you tell him. “And happy that you meant what you said. Maybe it could have been said in a less angry way, but hearing it made me happy.”

“I’m happy that you’re happy.” Jungkook grins. “You’re my favorite person, Y/N.”

“When you asked me, yesterday, if that kiss meant anything to me? And I said it did?” You begin, Jungkook nodding in front of you. He’s positively beaming. “It still does. I want to do that every day, Jungkook. Every hour. Every single second for the rest of my goddamn life.”

“You do?” Jungkook asks. 

“I love you, Jeon Jungkook. From day one, it’s always been you.” You smile, and it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. Feels like you’re fucking flying. Like you’re weightless. 

“I love you, too, Y/N. I never want to be away from your side,” he declares, and like a cheesy, rom-com movie, like the shitty novels you used to read in eighth grade, he pulls you in close and presses a kiss against your lips. Wraps his arms around your waist as he holds you tight, kisses you in the middle of your bedroom, in your hoodie and sweatpants, a bouquet of daisies on your dresser. He kisses you because he can, because for every second of every day for the rest of your goddamn life, he can kiss you, over and over and over. 

“We owe Chaewon an apology,” you tell him when you’re parted, sitting on your bed, wrapped up in each other’s arms. 

“Hell yeah we do,” Jungkook agrees. “She’s been on my ass for ages about telling you.”

“Mine too.”

“She’s such a great best friend,” Jungkook comments. “Knew all this time that her two friends were madly in love with each other and didn’t say a damn word to either of us. That’s loyalty.”

“We should do something for her, to make up for it all,” you suggest. 

“You know,” Jungkook says, grinning, “I know this guy who made bank this semester by going on fake dates with a bunch of really rich girls. Maybe he could help.”

“I know him, too,” you joke. “He’s the love of my fucking life.”

Jeon Jungkook quits his job on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of his sophomore year.

You know this because on the ninety-eighth day of the fall semester of your sophomore year, he comes banging on the door of your apartment shared with three other girls at 7:18PM, eighteen minutes after he normally heads out on one of his many dates. 

“Y/N!” He shouts, banging wildly on your door. You rush over to open it, letting the pasta water on the stove boil over and sizzle on the heat. He’s barely gotten in a second knock when you turn the doorknob to reveal your smiling boyfriend in his oversized hoodie.

“Don’t tell me you’re blowing someone off for me,” you say, inviting him inside. He places a kiss on your cheek on the way in, taking off his shoes and coat as you rush over to take care of the pasta.

“Me? Blowing someone off? Never,” Jungkook says, mock offended. “I actually quit the dating thing, this afternoon. A girl asked if I was free and I said that I wasn’t, because I have to go home to my girlfriend making me a meal. Don’t you love the sound of that?” He asks, pleased with himself.

“You quit? I thought you liked doing that stuff,” you say, using the spaghetti fork to move around the linguine. “Hope you’re cool with boring old pasta for your meal tonight. You could have had caviar if you hadn’t quit.”

“I don’t care, it smells so good,” Jungkook tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist as he stands behind you, watching you cook from over your shoulder. “Look at you, being all domestic and shit. It’s very cute.”

“Stop rubbing in the fact that you’re the better cook, I get it. Pasta is all I got right now.” You pout, turning down the heat as you move to pour yourselves two cups of tea. Jungkook follows you the entire way to the kettle, grip on your waist never faltering. “You can keep going on those dates, you know. I don’t mind. I get to see you in a suit when you get back, and then I get to take it off of you. It’s a win-win.”

Jungkook pinches your waist in response. “If you have a thing for suits, you can just tell me, you know. I won’t be mad.”

You turn around to whack him with the spaghetti fork. “I do not!”

“Alright, Y/N, guess I won’t wear a suit next time you call me at two in the morning—”

“I never said you couldn’t,” you interrupt, making Jungkook laugh. 

“You’re so cute, Y/N,” Jungkook coos as you begin to dish up the pasta, making sure to add peas because Jungkook loves peas with his spaghetti. “But I quit because I have enough money to sustain me for the rest of the semester. I’ll work over break and get a new job next semester when the new work-study positions open. Don’t worry about me,” he assures you. 

“But didn’t you like going out and everything? Getting dressed up and drinking fancy champagne?” You ask, setting the plates down at your dinky kitchen table, a single scented candle lit in the center. 

Jungkook thinks about it for a split second, and then he shakes his head. “Nah. I like hanging out with my girlfriend more.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” you reason with a grin. 

Jungkook laughs, leaning over the table to plop a kiss on your lips. “I love you, Y/N.”

“Yeah, you pea-eating loser,” you chide, “I love you too.”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

↳ check out the post-script drabble here!

[redorich]

Soooo.... is there more of that Hermit!Tommy battle?

here’s the last part :)

Xisuma stalks through the rubble of the Dream SMP, armored boots crunching on gravel and broken glass. Fundy, as far as he knows, is still face-down in a river somewhere. As rain pours down his visor, seeps into the cracks, and sparks his electrocuted skin, Xisuma wonders what’s drawn him to water so much today; here he stands, watching the water below him churn underneath the docks and eat away at the shore. Xisuma himself stands high above it all, atop a small, jagged mountain.

He hears the tell-tale shing of a riptide trident. Thank every star in the void-- if Xisuma has to deal with a channelling trident right now, after his last fight, he thinks he may just sit down and quit. Even though he can already tell who’s behind him from their warped presence alone, Xisuma turns wearily to face his next opponent.

Dream stands before him, breathing oddly in a way that indicates at least one cracked rib. His mask is shattered, and more of his face is bloody than clean. From the looks of things, Techno must have scratched him on the thin skin above his eyebrows. Xisuma knows intimately how that wound bleeds profusely, how it gets into one’s eyes and makes it impossible to see. Dream’s obviously coming down from a potion high, and his netherite chestplate is in shambles.

"So much for 'Technoblade never dies', huh?" Dream says confidently. Xisuma can see right through him; despite Dream's easy smirk, he's barely able to stand.

Xisuma's long past the point of asking nicely for his opponent to surrender. He says nothing, and a purple glow oozes up from out of the ground; the stone beneath the men's feet is overlaid with a runic circle: a tell-tale sign of admin magic.

Dream's not as experienced in admin magic, but he's an excellent fighter. Instead of meeting Xisuma's magic with his own, Dream bursts forward in a bout of speed that causes his fractured ribs to shriek in protest, and knees Xisuma solidly in the solar plexus. The hermit wheezes and his runic circle falters, but he does not respond. While he pours all his being into this work of admin magic, Dream is free to ravage his physical form, already battered as it is by Fundy. Dream’s axe is long gone, as is his sword, but his fists are more than enough.

“So you’re just going to give up?!” Dream demands. “You won’t even bother to fight me head-on, you’ve got to waste all your energy on some magic attack that won’t even work? I’ll kill you before you can set it off. You’ll have died for nothing. All your people will have died for nothing.”

Again, Xisuma says nothing. Rage bubbles up from deep inside him. He allows Dream, the vile admin, to rain strike after strike upon him while Xisuma musters the power necessary for his magic attack. Fuck Dream. If Xisuma focuses enough, he can convince himself that the rain hurts worse than any pain Dream can inflict. Even as Dream claws at Xisuma’s throat, digs his fingers into already-bleeding wounds, even as Xisuma’s vision grows steadily darker, the electricity sparking through his veins keeps him wide awake. He will win this fight-- there is no “or die trying”. He will win. He will survive. He will persevere. He will...

Xisuma stumbles. The magic circle dims for a moment. How long can he keep this up?

“Just die already!” Dream growls out. “There’s nothing you can do--!”

From high in the sky, obscured by inclement weather, a red blur divebombs rapidly and throws all its weight into kicking Dream in the head. He falls like a stone, groaning. “What the fuck..?”

Grian stands proudly, elytra fluttering in the harsh wind. Behind him, Tommy launches up into the air with a riptide trident and lands at Grian’s side.

Dream’s mind is overheating. It’s firing on all cylinders and then some, trying to process and calculate everything. Tommy’s escaped from prison. He’s got a trident, but no armor-- Grian must not have had a spare set, and as it is Grian’s vulnerable because he’s wearing an elytra instead of a chestplate. Damn it, why didn’t he keep track of the sky? How many other enemies are hidden within the dark storm clouds? Can he kill Xisuma before Grian attacks? Does Grian have a weapon? He must have been the one to give Tommy the trident, but Tommy’s been away from where he belongs-- under Dream’s heel-- and Dream can’t predict whether or not Tommy will attack him.

“Hello, Dream,” Grian says mildly, breaking Dream out of his own head. It’s an almost friendly tone, but it still sounds ominous.

Dream is instantly proven right when Grian holds out his hand for Tommy to return the borrowed trident. The moment the weapon touches his fingers, he yanks Tommy in front of him, pins him in place from behind, and holds the deadly gleaming trident prongs to the teen’s neck.

“Grian, what--?!” Tommy yelps, then whimpers when Grian roughly jostles the trident.

“No,” Dream breathes. His heart drops into his stomach. “Don’t you dare.”

Grian smiles. “You were right, Dream-- I never cared about Tommy. None of us did. We hermits always want what we can’t have. Diamonds are too easy for us. Netherite means nothing. We saw Tommy, and we knew he was running from the man who owned him. Now we own him. And I’m the one who gets the privilege of killing him, so you can never have him!”

Dream’s face, bare as it is, is painted clear to see with fear. Horrified, he wheezes through his pain with wide eyes. He’s still on the ground.

“Do you have anything to say, Tommy?” Grian asks sweetly. “Any last words for Dream?”

Through teary eyes, Tommy looks down at Dream. He bites his lip, fists his hands in the spare fabric of his pants. “Dream...” he says hesitantly, then grins widely. “Get fucked, green boy!”

The purple runes at their feet flare brightly. Dream snaps his gaze to Xisuma, who has gone completely forgotten in the whirlwind of revelations. Tommy and Grian, who Dream now understands faked the whole hostage situation, both tackle him to keep him from exiting the magic circle.

Dream wakes up when he does not remember ever losing consciousness. He's still in the exact same position was was in last he remembers, so he can't have been out for long. There’s a beat-up guy in armor, a guy in a red sweater, and... Tommy. Oh Lord, Dream thinks, what has he done?

He looks down from the mountain and sees blood and bodies everywhere. He did this. This is his fault.

“Stand down!” he yells as loud as he can. It’s not like it’ll make much of a difference; there’s not many people left alive to stand down.

Grian edges closer to Dream, who still hasn’t gotten up. Dream doubts his legs will support him.

“Hey, shh, we can fix this,” Grian says.

Dream fists his hands in his hair, tears beading in the corners of his eyes. “There’s nothing left to fix! Why aren’t you killing me? Your people are dead, too!”

Xisuma flinches, but Grian’s face hardens slightly. “You’re the admin here,” Grian says, “all you have to do is bring them back.”

“But-- but they-- canon lives--”

Tommy interrupts Dream. “Canon lives?! Who was it that came up with the idea in the first place, huh? Was it you?”

Dream’s shoulders slump and he hangs his head in defeat. “...Yes.”

Grian slaps him upside the head. It’s not hard enough to do any damage, but Dream is already so wrecked that it sends his head spinning.

“Idiot,” Grian says. “It was the dreamon, not you. Nothing’s stopping you from reviving everyone.”

“They’ll just start fighting again,” Dream says, grasping at straws.

Xisuma shrugs, though it looks painful. “Then turn PvP off.”

“...They’ll kill me. I’d deserve it.”

Tommy puts his arm around Dream’s shoulder, helping him sit up all the way. This is so fucked, that the kid-- literal kid-- Dream tortured and manipulated is showing him pity.

“It wasn’t you, who did those things,” Tommy says, as though he can read Dream’s thoughts. Perhaps he can. Dream’s face is very expressive, he knows; it’s part of why he wears the mask in the first place.

“It was, Tommy. You of all people should understand this, you should hate me the most! I remember everything I did to you,” Dream cuts himself off, takes a ragged breath, and continues. “I remember planning out what I did, feeling satisfied with it, the blood was on my hands.”

Tommy frowns sharply, though his arm still hasn’t left Dream’s shoulders. “So that’s it, then? You’re too much of a pussy to even try? If it’s really your fault, then you should be the one to fix your mess.”

Now that, that Dream can understand. He nods shakily, calling up an admin console. “When I’m done, put me in the prison. I don’t want to hurt anyone like this ever again.”

The two hermits look at each other unhappily over Dream and Tommy’s heads, but say nothing. They watch as all across the server, mutilated corpses dissipate into fine white pixels, and people begin to respawn. The hermits and Dream SMP citizens alike raise their weapons, but find that PvP does no damage any longer.

Dream is crying.

“Come with us,” Grian offers on a whim. Xisuma startles, but sees where Grian is going.

“Yeah, why don’t you come to Hermitcraft? You can be alone there.”

“Why can’t I be alone here?” Dream asks sullenly.

Tommy grins. “Think of it like a therapy vacation.” When the two hermits laugh, he laughs with them. “Worked for me, didn’t it?”

Holding out a hand for Dream with deceptive casualness, he waits with bated breath for Dream to take it. Dream hesitates, wondering if he should, if he deserves it.

Fuck it. He may not deserve it, but he wants it. To Hermitcraft he goes.

[cloudy-leonhart]

Independent Together. (PART 1)

[Author’s Note: having a bad week, and I’m sick, so I’m trying to sweat all the sick out by doing things, I’m in literally pain as I write this ;-;]

[Summary: Reader’s been feeling sickly lately, so deciding to be independent, she avoids her lovers’ help, trying to do things herself, but after a scare on an expedition, they finally decide to confront Reader.]

Pairings: Poly!Hanji, Poly!Mike, Poly!Levi, Poly!Erwin, Poly!Nanaba x Reader.

Recommended Song: As The World Caves In - Matt Maltese.

Theme: Angst/Fluff

Type: Female Reader

TW: sickness, almost-death scenario, blood, injury, swearing.

part two here!

[gif rightfully belongs to owner]

A sneeze broke through the quiet meeting, you sniffled rubbing your slightly reddened nose, looking around to see Mike and Hanji looking at you.

“You okay, Reader?” Hanji asked, the whole room was quiet for a tiny bit, waiting for your response, You nodded, motioning your hand as if to say you were fine, “yeah, it might just be dusty in here.” You tried to find an excuse.

“That’s not right. I just cleaned in here.” Levi scoffed, glancing over to your sniffling figure. “Uh, let’s continue the meeting?” You shifted the attention back to the meeting, in which Hanji nodded, continuing where they left off on their plan for the next expedition.

The meeting soon ended, you trudged out of the room as the rest continued on with talking more about their upcoming expedition which was tomorrow, Nanaba ran up to you, her arms around your waist. “Hey, buttercup.” Nanaba greeted you with a kiss on the cheek.

You smiled tiredly as you gave a greeting back, Nanaba took note of your slouched figure, you looked extremely annoyed and you seemed like you were going to drop dead in a minute, Nanaba noticed the weight you seemed to unconsciously place on her. She held you up as she cradled your cheek with her hand. “You don’t look so well, Reader.” Nanaba’s voice was laced with concern as you shook your head, a headache starting to form. 

“Are you sure? I mean I can get Mike or Levi to carry you to your ro-” You placed your hand on Nanaba’s shoulder, “I’m fine, I probably just need a nap.” Nanaba wasn’t convinced all that much,”Okay, but we have an expedition tomorrow, are you sure you’ll be able to hold out till then?” You nodded your head while your hand did a ‘shooing’ motion, still trying to convince Nanaba that you were a-okay.

“I’ll be fine, now go, Levi and Hanji’s waiting for you.” You gave her a small smile before giving her a peck on her lips, in which she tried to make it last longer if it wasn’t for Mike and Erwin clearing their throat and pulling Nanaba with them. Nanaba smirked and blew them a raspberry, “Jealous?” She teased, in which Mike and Erwin gave her a warning glare.

---

“Let the expedition begin!” Erwin yelled out from atop his horse, you tapped your heel against your horse, who neighed and started to gallop, you held the reigns tightly as the wall opened, you glanced at Levi, who was conveniently your squad leader. He glanced back at you, before nudging his head over to the side, mentally reminding you to look forward, in which you obliged, almost hitting a tree.

“Captain! There’s a few ten meter titans ahead!” Eld yelled out, having his horse gallop faster to get near Levi who looked over to where Eld pointed. “Tch, pull the signal.” Oruo grabbed his flare gun and placed a red flare into the cartridge and pulled the trigger, a red smoke signal was shot into the sky. “Try not to get killed, will you?” Levi called out, as he pulled one of his blades out, You were surprisingly holding on, that’s what you thought at least, a throbbing pain had hit you like a rock.

Your hand lost grip of your blades and shot to your head, holding it as you sucked in a breath. “Reader!” Levi yelled out, he quickly pulled his horse near you, where you were leaning your horse towards a crawling titan while you held your head. A loud groan made you aware of your surroundings once again, you looked beside you, a titan’s hand was about to grab you, you shrieked and quickly pulled your horse away as the titan just watched as your horses galloped your squad away.

‘Hey, Idiot! Are you trying to kill yourself?!” Levi scolded bumping into your horse as you winced slightly at his loud voice, “No, sorry captain!” You tried to maintain your professional tone through your headache as your horse neighed and slowed down to be behind Levi, he grunted and tried to continue on with the plan they’ve had in tow for months. 

---

It wasn’t long until they needed to help other other squads to finish the job, as expected, they once under-calculated how many titans roamed the area, Levi and Mike helped with the left part of the squads while Erwin maintained his position in the middle. Soon enough, Erwin had the squad leaders pass his order around, which was to regroup the squads. 

You were apart of the squad who was responsible for making sure the rest of the cadets get to Erwin, you zipped through the limited trees as you sliced one titan’s nape after the other. You quickly landed on one of the cadets’ horses, yelling out, “Cadets! It’s time to regroup!” You called out, they all nodded in understanding, before a scream broke out of the group, you looked back, one of the cadets had been grabbed by a titan, you saw the cadets freak out as you scowled and hooked your gear onto the titan who was seconds in eating the female cadet.

You quickly grabbed her from the waist before propelling yourself to a tall tree, dropping her on her horse, “Get to Commander Erwin! Don’t look back, I’ll be right behind you!” You yelled out, slicing the nape of a few titans, keeping up with the squad who was panicking. 

“Commander Erwin! Reader’s still back there!” One of the squad leaders called out, the blonde looked behind him, he saw most of the cadets stopping to take a breather, far away from most of the titans, a few fields away he spotted Mike and Nanaba, their squad showed up, the same went for Hanji’s squad, who was already mounting off their horses, a sound of wires and blades was heard, Reader’s silhouette was on the grass as Erwin whipped his head back, You sliced the titan’s nape once again, not seeming to realize the other titan reaching for you. “Reader!” Erwin called out, running as he gripped the ODM gear’s triggers, finding the best tree to get to you quick enough. 

You looked over to Erwin’s running figure, still unaware, you titled your head, huffing and trying to catch your breath, before feeling a huge force on your back as you were flung far, the sudden impact had you black out, a gasp left your lips as you made contact with the grass, bouncing a good two times, your blades disconnected from your ODM gear as you rolled into a tree near the spot where the cadets regrouped. 

“Oh my god!” A cadet screamed, pointing to your body, who was laying under a tree, a dent from your body hitting against it. The rest of your lovers pushed their way through, trying to see what had happened. Erwin stood a few meters away, frozen. He felt his hands drop his blades as his aquamarine eyes filled with fear, he ran towards your body, afraid you weren’t taking breaths, his blades dangled beside him, cutting his cape from behind as the wind blew against him.

“Oh no, please no..” Hanji was the first to push through the crowd, running straight for your body, in which they cradled in their arms, “Reader, wake up!” They tapped your cheek as you remained unconscious, Erwin stopped right beside them, trying to see if you were breathing okay. The rest of your lovers got through the crowd running to you. 

Nanaba held your head onto her lap as Hanji yelled for medical assistance and stood behind Erwin who held your hands, seeming to be out of thought, too shocked at what’s going on, Mike comforted Hanji who seemed to break into tears, holding on tighty as the cadets checked around for any serious injuries.

Nanaba held your head, tears threatening to spill, she felt her hands trembling, a few cadets instructed for the wagon, she glanced down at your unconscious form, a shaking hand went to hold onto your cheek, swiping his thumb over your cheek, a translucent red followed her cheek, a scream erupted from her, your head slipping off from her lap, soaked with your blood. Mike quickly buried her head into his chest, muffling her screams and cries, her hands gripped his cloak tightly.  “Bandages! We need bandages, now!” Erwin commanded the cadets, watching your blood spill onto the green grass. “We’re losing her!” They tightened the bandages around your head as the rest of the cadets made sure there weren’t any titans near, Levi was fields away, chasing after the titan who slapped you away. He saw red as he sliced through multiple napes, he couldn’t tell if it was titan blood in his eyes or his anger taking over him. 

You opened your eyes slightly, seeing Erwin looking down at him, a few strands of his blonde hair carelessly losing their form from his slicked hair as you breathed gasping breaths. “Er...win?...” You mumbled painfully, “I’m right here, reader! It’ll be okay. Stay with us, alright?” Erwin cooed out sadly, as he held onto your hand even more tightly.

“I’m..so ti...red..” You coughed pathetic weak ones as you were being carried into the wagon quickly, “The mission was a fail! Head back to the walls! Quickly!” His hands trembled under you, he laid you down onto the wagon flood and pulled Hanji and helped Mike and Nanaba up onto the wagon. “You’ll be okay, just hold on, we’ll be at the walls soon, okay?” Erwin tried to be optimistic, he wasn’t even sure at this point if it was him he was trying to convince that everything was going to turn out okay.

You slipped in and out of consciousness, you heard the fading sound of wires and felt a pair of boots land into the wagon and walking towards you. “Tch, didn’t I tell you not to try and die, idiot?” A weak flick upon your forehead was felt, before you let the darkness welcome you into their arms, too tired to resist.

[rebellconquerer]

48, bucky/sarah

#48: “You make me want things I can’t have.”

“Boys, if one of you trips and dies I am not cleaning it up!” Sarah yells, glaring at her children as they chase James across the yard.

It had been a scorcher of a day, 103 degrees in the shade, and she had gotten tired of the pathetic little looks Cassie was giving her every time he complained about the heat, so she had brought out the swimsuits and the ancient slip and slide that lived in their attic. It had been a hit with her children.

If she is also appreciating the sight of James running around with them in swim trunks and a wet, now translucent, white t-shirt well… that’s between her and God.

With the summer sun finally about to set, Sarah looks back on a day well spent as she lounges in the shade. AJ lets out another whoop and she looks over to see her oldest hanging off James’s neck, probably halfway to strangling him.

“AJ! If you kill him, who will let you climb them?” she yells as James rather dramatically falls to his knees.

“Uncle Sam!” AJ responds as his legs swing around James’s hip and he tries to push himself almost up onto his shoulder. James is laughing rather loudly, a sound that she knows is rare enough, so she figures he’s probably okay with death by child.

“Try again, little urchin. You got bony everything.” Sam says from where he’s laying close enough to the spray of cool water, shades still on his face, as he holds the little battery-powered fan to his chest.

She rolls her eyes, letting her head drop back against the lawn chair, appreciating the sounds of her children happy and healthy and playful. She should probably get up and start packing up the toys and remnants of lunch before they lose the last bit of evening light, but she finds she’s a little too comfortable for that.

“How are they still going after a full day of running around?” Sam mutters bitterly.

“Super-serum, right? That’s how you explained it to me,” Sarah chuckles.

“Yeah, but what’s their excuse?” Sam says pointing at her children.

“Summer break has a way of making them power through everything.” She shrugs.

Sam huffs and is silent for a minute before she hears the rustle of his clothes as he stands and heads back to the porch.

“Where you going?”

“Evening calls for music. You know, it’s supposed to soothe the savage beast or something.” he winks at her, gesturing over his shoulder.

A moment later she hears the intro chords to an old Sam Cooke song. God, her brother could be so predictable sometimes.

“How about something from this decade?!” James calls out, light and cheeky. She can’t help opening her eyes to watch as he chases AJ through the sprinklers, holding Cass under his arm as he does.

The grin that splits her face is almost painful. She could not have imagined this scene a year ago, hell even six months ago. She tries not to let it get to her too much, how good James looks, happy and playful, wrapped around her babies. But it is hard. Her heart squeezes so hard in her chest it feels like it’s pushing the air from her lungs.

If you ever change your mind

About leaving me behind

“You really wanna be throwing stones in your ancient ass glass house?” Sam asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Uncle Sam said a bad word!” AJ shrieks as James finally manages to grab him, all of them falling down in a tangle of limbs and bony knees.

“Yes, he did!” James pants out, finally not moving.

Sam rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot Bucky. And you’re about to be eaten by mosquitoes. See what your damn super serum can do against Louisiana’s finest.” Sam grumbles good-naturedly, starting to pack up the pieces of bread, cheese and meats that did not make into the earlier sandwiches.

The mention of mosquitoes seems to finally kick start her children again.

I know I laughed when you left

But now I know I only hurt myself.

“Oh jeez. Mosquitoes suck. Race you back inside!” AJ yells at Cass as he takes off towards the back door.

“Alexander Simpson Jr. I know you must have lost your ever-loving mind to be running through my house.” She says sharply before they are even at the porch steps. That brings AJ to a slow trot, sheepish smile on his face.

“No, mom,” he mutters, moving past her. “I’m just going to go bathe,” he finishes demurely.

She hums unconvinced as they grab their towels and head inside to the sound of Sam failing to hide his snicker.

“I’ll go make sure they don’t drip too badly up the stairs,” he says lightly, rubbing his hand over AJ’s head.

I’ll give you jewellery and money too

That ain't all, all I’ll do for you.

She watches them go then looks out at her yard, where James is still lying where he fell, a small smile curling his lips. She finds herself going to him, unable to resist the picture he makes, like a moth to a flame. His eyes are closed when she gets to him and she can’t help the delicate smile she feels curving her own lips. She pokes his side with her barefoot.

“You alive soldier?”

“I think this is it for me Ms Sarah, tell ‘em I was brave at the end,” he mutters, old Brooklyn accent thick as he wraps a hand lightly around her ankle, preventing her from poking him again.

She laughs, rolling her eyes. “Up and at ‘em before we really do get eaten by the mosquitoes. As super as your serum may be, you are still a white boy at the end of Louisiana. They will eat you alive.” A smile splits his face a moment before his eyes pop open, the blue almost grey in the fading evening light.

He gets to his feet quickly, but as she turns to move away, he grabs her waist, spinning her into him and swaying them gently to the familiar rhythm. It startles a laugh from her, light and airy.

“You’re in a mood,” she whispers as he takes her hand, holding it to his chest as they move.

“You know I’ll always be your slave, till I’m buried, buried in my grave-” he sings along with the song.

She settles easily into his arms, trying to ignore how right and good it feels to be this close to him. They’ve only been doing this, whatever it is, for a few weeks and it already feels like she can’t remember a time before she could look over and see the soft curve of his mouth slide into a gentle smile as he stares back at her.

It’s dangerous how quickly the feelings she has for him have gotten heavy and comfortable, settling deep in her chest.

‘You make me want things I can’t have,’ is what she thinks as they continue to sway softly. The words are on the tip of her tongue and she can’t help but wonder what his response to them would be. She looks up at him, deciding to be brave. Deciding to say the words to him.

She takes a deep breath. “You ma-”

“God! I leave you out here for 2 minutes and you two are all over each other. Seriously, I’m gonna turn the hose on you.” Sam grumbles.

Sarah can feel the rumble of James’s laugh in her own chest with how close she is wrapped up in him.

“Don’t be jealous, Sam. You can dance with me too!” James says, stepping away from her and ending their moment.

“Ain’t no one want your pasty ass, Barnes,” Sam laughs.

“See this is your problem, Samuel. Always with the insults.” James responds.

She watches him walk towards Sam, the two of them trading insults like children and breathes through the weight of the emotion on her chest. She lets the moment pass as she follows them inside, Sam Cooke still crooning out the end of this song.

Bring your sweet loving

Bring it all home to me

[blushing-starker]

Having a boyfriend that's a natural rule breaker becomes even more tedious because now it's two people conspiring together, itching to shatter social norms. Sure, they won't pull the fire alarm stunt to get out of a quiz (that's more Rocket and Groot's style), place mirrors on front steps to confuse Fury and nearly give the principal a heart attack (Loki with an exasperated Thor and cackling Hela) or hire a mariachi band to follow hall monitor Alexander Pierce (Steve had joined Bucky and Sam in that one); they'd never sneak into the air vents, fill them with glitter so the haughty board of directors would be covered in pink sparkles when they cranked the ac (Clint and Nat).

Ok, they did help with that last one, buying the shimmering stuff from T'Challa's sister and slipping five jars into Clint's backpack, but they didn't actually go into the vents.

But that's not the point. The point is there are limits to their rule breaking; Tony's spot on the football team and Peter's participation in the art club too important to risk on something as silly as skipping a quiz. No, they thanked their best friends, unhooked the window lock and slithered out only after finishing and handing in the quiz. They weren't amateurs.

Still, Peter knows Tony literally couldn't have chosen a worse time for their impromptu lunch date. (Luckily, he'd expected this exact situation.)

"Tony, they don't even have bad food today. We could just wait until the bell rang to meet up and eat at the bleachers. Like we always do a day before a big game."

His boyfriend swivels around, hooks nimble fingers into his belt loops to pull Peter closer, never once stumbling even while walking backwards. The grin he shows is manic, just this side of wild to let Peter know this isn't about haunting nightmares and bouts of anxiety. This is normal, too high on a feeling Tony Stark. Which means he won't head back to school unless Peter pulls out all the stops...

He's too exhausted from last night's art project to use up energy on the puppy eyes. So he sighs, tugs on the blue varsity jacket Tony loves to show off, kisses a dimple before turning this untamed creature around.

"Come on, I found a new route to that shawarma place with MJ and Ned last week." It sounds exasperated, but Tony knows Peter will do anything to keep him happy. Well. Not anything. There's only so many times they can discuss Star Wars before simply agreeing to disagree on whether Han and Luke are pan or bi.

"What, and you tell me this now?", Tony squawks indignantly from Peter's left side, freezing nose nuzzling into Peter's neck as revenge.

Like a robber caught sneaking into a vault, he raises his hands instantly before shoving Tony away.

"Hey, you were focusing on practice! If I told you, you'd bring Rhodey, he'd bring T'Challa and then Shuri would pop up and who goes where she goes? Bucky, which means Steve and Sam, who'd already be there thanks to Rhodey and of course Clint would somehow appear with Nat. We'd be together so Ned and MJ are gonna be teasing with Betty and half the guys in our grade have a crush on Nat, or MJ or Shuri or Betty or you. So what's the end result? The entire football, soccer, basketball and swim team eating shawarma a week before the games. I am not hearing Coach Coulson scold me for you guys breaking diet again. I'm already on his list, another situation like that and I'll have to run fifteen laps around the field."

"Oh come on, you can do those in your sleep." He could, but again, not the point.

"With a weighted backpack, Tony."

"Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want that."

"Before cycling fifteen laps and then swimming fifteen laps."

"Jesus, why would he even do that?" Tony looks at him then, disgruntled at the thought of his boyfriend doing all that.

He shrugs, doesn't want to explain Peter had done it once when it all got too much and he'd needed to release the pent up energy. He hadn't noticed Coach watching him, ready to come help if he hurt himself. They'd talk afterwards, Coulson making him promise to never do that alone. Now it became a reward and a punishment. Peter won the art contest? Fifteen everything to focus his mind and not go jumping off walls in his excitement.

His students wolfing down a thousand calories before a game? Fifteen everything so Peter would at least "time it so it's not during the season, Jesus". To be fair to Peter, Tony participated in almost all the sports teams so scheduling was hard.

"Listen, just don't eat a whole animal, ok? We can split it, eat enough," he glares at Tony, pushing through even as the puppy eyes come out, "and then head to the movies. They're showing Aliens for a few days cuz of Halloween and I already texted the guys to come during lunch."

His boyfriend, smart and sharp and witty, just blinks at him. "But we have class after lunch."

"Technically, but I convinced Mr Pym to let the class out of lab so we could all hang out. It's the one class we share so now the whole group can see it together."

Tony stops, eyes wide and mouth open.

"You, what, planned this?"

"Yeah, something fun before tomorrow to take it off your mind for a while. Or, you know, not make it stand out as much. I know how focused you get, and it's really great, having that as a goal, strategizing and taking it seriously. But I also know it can be a lot, so I thought we should all hang out since each of us has something coming up and we aren't spending much time together. Which I get, responsibilities and family and school; I just missed it and I can't be the only one, right? So yeah, this was planned. Like, two weeks ago. When MJ found the new route, it was like a sign. And I really want you to relax and enjoy the whole, I have friends that care for me and a boyfriend that loves-"

He slaps a hand on his mouth, eyes impossibly wide and cheeks flaming. Tony and Peter stand immobile, the world reduced to beat up sneakers breaking the simplicity of yellow lines on black, a flickering neon sign telling them the shawarma place is open and two hearts slowly starting to beat again after that confession.

Ned would say it's romantic. MJ would bluntly remind them it's a bad idea to stand in the middle of the road even if they're saying I love you. And with good reason, since there's the telltale roar of a car bursting with teenagers, voices howling out the lyrics to an AC/DC song. And of course Peter notices the noise of rubber swerving against gravel, the screeching of old brakes and a few terrified shrieks harmonizing with a sharp wind blasting into him out of nowhere. Before he can react, Tony is there, wrapping his arms around Peter and shoving them both into the little patch of grass that grows from a crack in dirty pavement.

There's a moment where his whole world flips, tumbles until he screws his eyes shut and prepare himself for whatever the fuck caused that noise. But nothing comes. Only a sigh blowing a stray curl away from his forehead. But a sigh? Why would?

Tony.

He gasps, jolts upright and apologizes when that just serves to jostle his boyfriend further into the ground. His boyfriend who'd flip them so Peter wouldn't be hurt. Tony is peering at him through half shut eyes, discomfort clear on the grimace he tried to transform into a sheepish grin.

"So, you love me, huh?"

It's the stupidest thing Tony Stark has ever said.

"What the fuck were you thinking? You could have gotten hurt, you could have shattered a wrist, dislocated a shoulder, torn an ACL, bent a leg-"

"This is not what I expected. Also it was a three foot leap forward on grass, I'm fine, Peter."

"Or bashed your head, or busted an arm and then what would you do for the game tomorrow? Who the hell does that?"

"The guy you love, apparently."

"That's not the point, Tony, that's unimportant because you nearly got hurt. Christ, Coulson will slaughter me if there's a scratch on you, and then your mom would be sad and I'd be sad because, what would I do without you? And don't you ever do that again, I can't take it. I am not losing you, Tony. God, why would you do that, risk so much on-"

"On you? Babe, I'd do it again. Ok, not the right thing to say based on the whole face thing you got going on right now. But just hear me out. Don't, stop hitting me, ow, why are you hitting, how are you this strong, Jesus. Ow, stop it. Peter, for fuck's sakes, I love you, you animal. Now please let go of the jacket, it'll get wrinkles."

His hands unclasp the soft cotton, Tony falling back with a groan and Peter's unhinged jaw snapping shut after fifteen seconds of letting the flies in.

It's a wonderful thing, hearing the guy he's loved for so long say it back, say he loves Peter.

It's also fucking stupid since there's even more reason to not do stunts like that.

"You're an idiot. I'm in love with a guy that has one shared brain cell with Steve. You could have been hurt, Tony. And what would that have done, huh?"

His boyfriend sighs yet again, wraps an arm around Peter to push them from the ground and heads to the car where their friends are gawking. He waves them off, offers a "Yeah, I know I'm amazing, no, I didn't break anything, T'challa, yes, I can play, Jesus, Rogers, I can read you like a book. I appreciate the worry, Bruce; Nat, thanks for calming him down. Rhodes, excellent driving. No need to hog the seats, Sam, we need to settle in. Peter, you can keep cursing me out if you, yeah, see how it's nice being fun size when you fit in my lap in a car full of people. What, I'm not walking after that, I don't care if it's til we reach the parking. Let's go, Rhodes. Pepper, I'm fine. "

Clint offers a high five. Tony responds and that's that. Out of sight, Ned gives him a fist bump and MJ keeps on reading her book. It could just be his imagination, but Tony's sure she's smiling, approval clear on her face. He preens, glad to have her blessing, and settles his head on Peter's fluffy hair.

-----

When they're all laughing in a booth, smashed together and picking food off of everyone's plate, Peter nuzzles the crook of his neck, holds his hand and squeezes it. Tony smiles, lights up and shoves at Sam's face when the trio of best friends tease him for puffing his chest out when his boyfriend ever so softly says, "I love you."

"I love you, too." The table whoops and calls for another round of food and Coca-Cola, their family grinning at them and fondly teasing the new couple. Tony grins back, high on this feeling of warmth and happiness and safety and love.

And then Peter presses ice cold lips onto his neck and he lets out a shout, pain coursing through him when a knee slams into the table. His eyes water and through the haze of agony he sees their friends exchanging cash, some grumbling and others smirking. Rhodey and MJ, he notes, are the ones that win the most. They high five before pocketing the cash and ordering dessert.

Peter kisses his cheek, smile innocent and eyes wicked. It's his own fault Tony snatches an ice cube and slips it below his Nirvana shirt. He only has five seconds to lord his victory over Peter before there's ice cream being smeared on his cheek. They battle then, accidentally sending food into Wanda's lap, Clint's hair and Bucky's face.

In less than a minute they are all covered in shawarma and participating in the fight. Peter shrieks when Tony pulls him into his lap, gets chicken on the varsity jacket and tries to wriggle away. But Tony kisses him, tastes ice cream and joy, thanks whoever decided to give him a break and find this incredible person dozing on the roof of the school with Ned and MJ one spring afternoon. Peter kisses back and, at the same time, they say, confidently, honestly,

"I love you."

This is dedicated to @drarryismyshit07

[monaisme]

Day 26: recovery

*TRIGGER WARNING: Features major depressive episode, suicidal thoughts, and self neglect

Day 26: recovery

No one was quite sure what Peter was feeling, if Tony was being honest.

On the first day after—well, Tony guessed that it could be called the confrontation, no one had really approached him at all. He’d been in the med bay first for his own treatment, and then to wait on word about May. Once he’d heard the prognosis, he was out of there like a flash and in his own room in the tower. They’d figured that he needed that time to process.

None of the Avengers had heard of this Green Goblin character before, but he’d apparently been an old nemesis of the Spider-Kid and had a vendetta against Peter personally that hinged on psychotic.

Peter had thought he was gone; had assumed that the quiet had meant he’d curled up and died in a hole somewhere, but he’d been biding his time. He’d been waiting.

It broke Tony’s heart to do it, but being Tony Stark meant that he needed to take care of things that someone like Steve couldn’t manage. He had to go. SHIELD wasn’t asking.

But Pepper said she’d check on him.

Pepper had noted how sullen and withdrawn he’d been when she brought his breakfast to his room. She had knocked and then waited... and waited. When he didn’t answer, she’d asked FRIDAY to confirm that he was okay. The AI informed her that his stats were within normal parameters but that he was unmoving in his bed, and Pepper had freaked. Visions of Peter falling unconscious during the night flashed through her mind so she’d used her emergency override and stormed in, breakfast tray and all— but he was fine. He’d covered his head with his blanket and decided to hide away from the world.

After taking a minute to calm down from her scare, Pepper had been certain she heard him crying. She’d tried so hard to comfort him, of course, but he’d pulled the blankets tighter around himself. Pepper figured she’d respect his need for some time alone so she’d patted him on his good arm and left him to it.

After thinking about it, she wondered if Peter needed someone from the team to lean on—someone who understood what he had gone through. She spoke with Steve who swore he’d take over. She could put it out of her mind.

She thought of all the meetings she still had pending on her list and Steve was Captain America, so she did.

Yeah.

Steve had gotten a completely different reaction from the kid. It was a quick and clear rage. Steve was bringing dinner. He’d knocked and then entered carrying a tray of sandwiches and some bottles of juice. Peter needed to eat, and they’d left him alone for lunch at Pepper’s request so...

The lamp flying through the air and striking the doorframe only inches from Steve’s face had been unexpected. The shrieks of ‘Get out!’ over and over and over again had been unnerving. The hate-filled stare from the red-faced Peter was more than upsetting.

And Steve had no idea how to deal with it.

Steve put down the tray of food with an apology and backed out of the room.

Things hadn’t gone well, and in a fit of emotional constipation, Steve Rogers chose to delegate.

Tower staff were recruited to drop meals off at the door until further notice.

No one ensured that they were eaten.

It was the fourth day after when Tony finally had his chance to come. He’d been busy dealing with Damage Control, inventorying an evil goblin lair, and a gaggle of idiot politicians who were demanding answers that he didn’t have. He’d realized too late that having a debrief with Peter after the confrontation would have been a good idea, but that was neither here nor there.

This was a new day and it was going to be great. Tony knew that Pepper had some trouble with Peter that first day, but he was here now. Peter just needed someone he was comfortable with to bring him out of his funk. Tony was bringing news of his aunt that was tentatively promising and he’d managed to get a buttload of bacon croissanwiches from Burger King, the kid’s favourite. The medical staff had even mentioned that Peter could potentially get his cast off today, so it was going to be a good day.

Tony arrived at Peter’s room clutching the brown paper bag, knocked out a ‘shave-and-a-hair-cut,’ and waited for Peter to open the door.

No answer. That was weird.

Tony knocked again. “Peter? It’s Tony. Open the door!” He waited a few seconds. “Peter, I brought breakfast sandwiches!”

Still nothing.

Tony thought for a second and wondered, “FRIDAY, Peter’s still in his room, right?”

“Yes, Boss. Peter Parker is in his room.”

“Perfect. Tell the Spider-baby to let me in. The sandwiches are getting cold.”

The AI responded in an unexpected way. “I’m sorry, Boss. Peter seems to be unable to respond.”

“Excuse me? Did you say ‘unable to respond?’”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Dammit, FRIDAY! Emergency override Alpha-1-1-9-Charlie. Open the damn door!”

The lock on Peter’s door unlatched and Tony rushed into the dark room, adding his bag of breakfast to a pile of uneaten and rotting food.  Tony half-registered what that could mean before rushing to the barely conscious boy.

Tony knelt on the floor next to the bed. “Pete? Hey, kiddo?” Tony tapped his gaunt cheek. “Can you hear me?” He ran his calloused fingers through Peter’s unwashed hair. “Kid?”

Peter blinked. “Tony?” he whispered.

Tony smiled. “Hey, Pete. It’s me.” He noticed the smell in the room. When was the last time someone had checked on him? “Are you sick, bud? Do you need me to call the med bay?”

Peter barely shook his head ‘no.’

That was when Tony saw the profound sadness in his eyes, “What’s goin’ on then?”

Peter shook his head again and closed his eyes. “No more.”

Not know what the boy was talking about, Tony pushed, “What do you mean ‘no more,’ Peter? I’ve been away, kid. You’ve got to give me more.”

He opened his eyes again, struggled to focus. “Can’ hurt ‘em an’more.”

At that, Tony scanned the room, wondered who ‘them’ was, and really took in what he was seeing. The food in the corner—Pepper had tried to bring him breakfast that first full day. She’d mentioned leaving the tray that he recognized. It was untouched. Tony assumed that the fact that there was no plastic wrap anywhere that the sandwiches had been left, too. This didn’t make sense. “Peter, when did you eat last, bud?”

Peter pulled the blanket over his head with his good hand, just like he’d done with Pepper, but Tony couldn’t allow it. He pulled the blanket from Peter’s weak grasp and took his hand in his. “Peter?” Tony felt the weight loss before he saw it, but then saw how bony and frail Peter’s wrist looked. “Peter, I’m gonna take a look at you, kiddo.” He pulled the blanket back and gasped.

“FRIDAY, contact Bruce, tell him to get here now!” Tony barked, “Let him know we need an IV and nutrients, ASAP.”

It had been at least three full days and the weight loss was already visible and disturbing, even through the sweat soaked pyjamas. “Pete? What’s goin’ on? Why aren’t you eating?”

He must’ve been delirious because he started babbling. “I can’t anymore, Ms’r Stark. They all die... ‘Cuz I‘m Spid’man.”

Tony thought he’d understood what he was saying, but why would Peter think...? Who died? Because he’s Spider-Man?

“Pete?” Tony leaned in closer. “Peter, I don’t understand, sweetheart. Please tell me.”

He looked like he was trying to cry, but was too weak or too dehydrated. “I can’t keep hurtin’ ‘em, Mis’r Stark...” Peter became more agitated as he listed the names, “Cap’in Stacey... Gw-Gwen... Ben...“

“Peter. Those aren’t your fault. I promise.”

Peter didn’t hear him, “Mis’r Stark, I killed Gwen! An’ I hurt ‘em... Co’nel Rhodes, Liz... an’ May’s gonna hate me. I know i’s true.” Then he looked Tony is the eyes, need Tony to believe him. “’S true, ‘cuz I hate me, too.”

A knock on the door interrupted Peter’s confessional. Tony looked up at Bruce as he let himself in. “Thank goodness! Bruce. He hasn’t had anything since before the Goblin. Can you fix him up?”

Peter whined at the additional intruder in the room and then closed his eyes.

Concerned, Bruce rushed over and took Tony’s place by the bed. “What do you mean by anything?” Bruce took a quick glance around him and then focussed on the boy. He started pulling supplies from his large duffle bag. “Has he been sick? With his enhanced metabolism, going that long without eating could be--”

Tony knew exactly what it could be, and that was why he couldn’t bear the burden alone. “Bruce, I think he’s suicidal.”

And Peter started hyperventilating.

Tony realized what he’d done right away. “Shit. Peter, I’m so sorry. That was a real dumbass thing to say and I shouldn’t have, huh?” He didn’t want to move Bruce, but Peter needed him, too. “Here, I’m gonna just...” Tony rushed around to the other side of the bed and climbed on and over to Peter. He rested against the headboard, nudged up right next to Peter and started running his hand through Peter’s hair again. “I’m here, Pete. I just don’t quite get what happening, but I need you to be okay, and Bruce here is the best so...” Peter wasn’t focussed on much of anything, but Tony kept trying. “Did you know that Brucie here has seven PhDs and not one of them gives him permission to do stitches? Pretty incredible, right?” Tony hoped distraction would work.

It didn’t.

Peter tried to grasp at the covers he’d hidden under before, but his strength was leaving him.

“It’s okay, Peter, we’ve got you,” Bruce caught on to Tony’s train of thought. “And I promise no stitches.” He thought he understood what Peter was trying for and reached over the boy to pull the blanket over his legs. “You must be kind of chilly, hey?”

Peter tried to reach for the blanket again, but he was losing his battle with his panic attack.

“Hey, hey, Peter. You’re safe here.” Tony soothed from beside him. “I know you’re feeling pretty bad right now, but we’re gonna help you, okay?”

Peter shook his head ‘no.’ “I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—“ Peter’s eyelids fluttered shut and his head lolled to the side.

“Bruce?!” Tony called out.

But Bruce was already on it. He grabbed Peter’s wrist to check his pulse. “It’s there, but fast. Let me just...” Bruce was off and doing his ‘not a doctor’ doctor thing and that was all that mattered to Tony. Blood pressure, lungs and heart were checked. “He’s weak, Tony, and definitely needs medical intervention.”

Bruce dug through his bag again, pulling out an IV bag and assorted wipes and tape. He reached up behind the bed to place the bag on the hook all Avengers Tower superhero quarters had for exactly this reason and got to work.

“He’s really dehydrated, Tony,” he said after his third attempt at finding a vein. “If I can’t get this one then...” Bruce held his breath, checked the line, and then checked it again. “Oh, thank goodess! I’m gathering that the kid would prefer to be here in his quarters right now so...”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, and I’m not so sure I want SHIELD involved in something like this anyways, at least not yet. A broken bone is one thing, a shrink is something else...”

Both of the men thought of their “mental health assessments” and the stigmas they still fought back against. Hell, even Steve has shirked the whole assessment thing. Those SHIELD folks were hacks.

Bruce had to ask, though, “Tony, can you tell me how the hell this got so bad?” He was so confused. “I mean, we dealt with that other green guy a few days ago, and everything was fine.” Then Bruce thought of Peter’s aunt, still in the med bay while the doctors figured out how best to help her with her arm... “Okay, not fine, but still? How did we get from there to this?”

Tony seethed at the question. “I don’t know, Bruce. I thought I’d left people in place, but I guess I was wrong...” He wasn’t looking forward to those conversations. “When I find out, though, I’ll let you know.”

Bruce pressed a tender hand to Peter’s forehead to check for warmth, then kept it there for a beat longer. “We probably have a bit of time before he wakes up, but I’d like to monitor him for a while and maybe come up with a plan before then.”

Tony agreed. “Grab a chair, Brucie. I need to figure some things out, too, so you may as well be comfortable.”

“What do you mean?”

Tony sighed, “Before you got here, he was upset. I mean, he’s upset about his aunt, but he started listing other people that he’s hurt... and he said he’s killed—which we all know is total bullshit, but there’s something in this kid’s head that isn’t telling him the truth and it’s killing him.”

Bruce looked at Tony, “Well, then I guess we have some questions to find answers for so we can heal the kid.”

“I guess we do, Tony replied, “FRIDAY, who the hell is Gwen, and how is she connected to our Peter?”

FRIDAY responded almost immediately. “Sir, one match has been found for a Gwendolyne Maxine Stacey; born September 6, 2001 in Manhattan, New York. She died on August 14, 2015. Cause of death was reported as blunt force trauma to the head. Would you like me to continue, Sir?”

Bruce and Tony shared a glance. “Hit me, Girl.”

“While there were no witnesses to the incident, the autopsy report details evidence that the fatal injury occurred as a result of a fall from an estimated 170 feet in a campus clock tower.”

“Damn.” Tony ran his hand down his face in frustration.

“Sir, there is more.”

He almost said no. Almost. “Keep going then.”

“Yes, Sir. There is a note in the report that was not released to the public. The cause of death may have been a broken neck as both injuries would have been fatal and appeared to have happened simultaneously. Police reports indicate that a single strand of webbing was found on the victim’s torso. This, in conjunction with injures found on the body indicate that Spider-Man was on scene and had attempted to prevent a negative outcome. With the estimated velocity of the fall, the sudden stop from Spider-Man’s effort resulted in extreme cervical recoil, resulting in a broken neck and severing of the spinal column.”

Both men blanched.

“The Green Goblin was found on scene and confessed to being responsible for the death of Ms. Stacey, Sir. Would you like me to continue?”

“No thank you, FRI. That’s enough.”

They stood there, lost in their thoughts and staring at the boy who tried so damned hard all the damned time.

“2015 was just after Ben died and just before May sold their house to move to the apartment in Queens. He started going to Midtown around then, too.” Tony was recalling the basic information he’d looked at when he’d been searching for the kid for Germany.

Bruce was upset. “And neither of them ever mentioned this?”

Tony shook his head. “May has only just stopped spitting every time she says my name,” he joked weakly. “And the other is a teenage boy with abandonment issues. What do you think?”

Bruce smiled a little, “Got it.”

Tony paled further, “Oh, no. May.”

Bruce turned green, in a safely nauseous way. “He must have been trying to catch her in a way that would keep that from happening again. When Goblin tossed May off the building, he must have panicked.” Bruce was visualizing the confrontation, “And then with the greater height, plus Peter dealing with blood loss and a concussion—Oh, Tony! He did the best he could!” Bruce felt his pulse start racing, stopped speaking, took a calming breath, and resumed. “May should have been dead.”

Tony sighed, “We know that, but does he? ‘Cause he’s ended up with a broken arm and his aunt may never fully use her own arm again... Shit.” Tony rolled off the bed and paced. “This kid never gets a break, does he?”

“It doesn’t seem like it, but we’re gonna change that,” Bruce promised. “I know someone, he helps me with my, uh...” Bruce caught himself, and blushed as though embarrassed. “He helps me with my stress and is just a really nice guy. I bet he could help out with Peter.”

Thinking back on all that Peter said, Tony added, “I bet he could help May, too.”

They were quiet again, then Bruce had a thought. “I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’m guessing this is major depressive disorder. I’ve done some research for my own...” Bruce stopped himself again, then rephrased. “Okay. I’ve researched it some, and I’m concerned about the whole not eating thing. I believe you when you say he’s suicidal, but starvation is not a common method for teenage boys. It may be a separate symptom. What do we do about that?”

Tony was already feeling overwhelmed by the situation as a whole. Find a solution to it was beginning to feel insurmountable. How could they do this?—Fix this boy while keeping prying eyes from discovering? And who could they trust? And how could they explain away so many people coming in and out of the tower? And...

“The cabin.”

“Sorry, Tony, you’ll have to explain that one to me. I’m lost.”

Tony stopped pacing and grinned big at Bruce. “I just bought a cabin! It’s supposed to be another engagement present for Pepper but, well...” Tony wondered again where she’d been these last days. “Well, maybe we can use it as a home base. The kid needs a break—hell! I think you and I will conveniently need a break, too. We can all head out, relax, enjoy the fresh air—and Peter can just rest. We’ll be close by. It’s only 45 minutes from the city if you drive like a grandma. We can have people come to us and no one will be the wiser!” The thoughts were flying. “I can get FRIDAY prepped for integration before too long and between the three of us, we’d have a busy work project and could have the cabin inhabitable in no time.”

Bruce just stared at Tony.

“Was that too much?” Tony seemed unsure.

Bruce’s mouth opened... and then closed, and then finally, “I think that’s perfect. And after she’s better, his aunt can come out for a bit. How would that work, space wise?” If they were talking logistics, he was going all in.

“Oh, there’s room. She’ll need to take some time off of work, and her boss is a real—“ And there, reality kicked Tony in the teeth. “Shit. Wait. We’re going to have to make some arrangement for the two of them. Get rent paid up for a few months, utilities, and so on.”

“Tony?”

“May is a nurse... was a nurse. We’re gonna have to work from the ground up on this—and we’ll have to tread lightly. May is as stubborn as they come, but she’s a mama bear if ever there was one, so she’ll do anything to help Peter.” Tony felt tired. “It’ll be a balance, but we’ll get them help, whatever they need.”

Peter stirred so Bruce took the time to recheck his blood pressure.

“It’s better. The fluids are helping... and between the two of us, we’ll figure out the rest. I promise. Okay, Tony?”

Tony thought of all the things this boy... his boy had already been through, and how he’d been alone against the world. He maybe thought of Bruce and himself, but only a little and how they’d been alone, too. There was no way Tony would allow that to happen for any of them again, and so he replied with an emphatic nod, “Okay.”

 @febuwhump

[wilwywaylan]

In only seven days (or the life and times of a sullen convenience shop employee) - part 3

Fandom : les Misérables

Modern!AU, Montparnasse x Jehan Prouvaire, 3883 words

Part 1 - Part 2

For @kujaku-myoo, @jesvisfarovche and @aux-barricades ♥

Also on AO3 !

- 

On Saturday, it's raining when Montparnasse wakes up. And not raining a little. The sky has opened, and water is pouring down the street, beating on the glass panes. He crawls out of bed just enough to look through the windows. Everything is grey and black and dripping wet. Exactly the kind of weather he hates. Usually, he spends those kinds of days buried far under the covers, or sprawled on the couch, eating ice cream (the one tub that escaped his roommates' clutches) and watching reruns of Say Yes to the Dress (his secret pleasure) while polishing his nails.  

But as much as he just wants to forget the day, he can't. Not when his freedom is hanging in the balance. So he gets out of bed, growling all the way. There's no one else in the flat. Good, because he wouldn't have been able to endure another round of goose-related stupidities. Bad, because they all left, and they took all the umbrellas they had (two). And of course his  clothes don't have hoods, because hoods will never, ever fit with a dandy aesthetic like his.

Which means that he has to go to work without any cover or shelter. And of course, to add insult to injury, the wind starts blowing the minute he goes out. He crosses the streets as fast as he can, taking shelter behind trees and bus stops and everything that can help. But it doesn't. The wind keeps blowing the rain in his face, shaking his clothes and trying to push him back where he comes from. When he finally reaches the store, he's soaking wet. The other clerk looks at him, then at the puddle already forming at his feet. He expects her to scream at him, but she just gives out a very, very long sigh, and gestures to him to follow her to the back. Normally, Montparnasse wouldn't even dream of obeying any command given to him by anyone, especially someone he doesn't know. But the rain is dripping down his back, sticking his clothes to his body, and sucking all the warmth out of his body.

She leads him in the back room, and without a word, hands him a handful of fabric. He looks at her, then at the clothes she's holding, then at her again. When he doesn't move, she puts them on the table, and just says :

- Get changed, you dork. You're gonna catch your death.

Montparnasse eyes the clothes, then her again.

- Why do you have clothes on hand ?

- Because of problems like that. We keep them there because having an 8-hour shift in damp clothes is hell, especially here. So you put them on, and you'll bring them back tomorrow.

Before Montparnasse can run away, she exits the room, leaving him on his own in the back room. A glance around teaches him that, at least, there's no camera here. It's good. If he wanted to undress, of course, and put that.... thing on him. On the other hand, he's starting to be really, really cold. And as she said, the heating is barely on here. He's going to freeze to death.

One more glance, assuring him that no one is looking at him, not in the shop nor from a camera, and he quickly disrobes. His skin when the fabric peels off is cold and wet, and he dries himself as much as he can with a corner of his shirt that escaped the storm. He can't stay like that, so he grabs the clothes and put them on, trying not to think about what he's wearing. The pants stop above his ankles, and are already worn, with a hole around one knee. On the contrary, the sweater is large enough to put two of him inside. On the chest is written the name of a sports team he doesn't care about, and it's a horrid light blue that doesn't fit him at all. But it's warm and dry, so he doesn't rip it off.

The girl is still here when he comes back. She observes him, gives him a nod (of approbation or mockery, he doesn't know) and leaves without another word. Montparnasse takes a seat behind the counter, trying to ignore the water still dripping from his hair and the shivers that run down his back.

The door flies open and hits the stand behind it, hard enough to give a shriek of tortured metal and glass. Montparnasse jumps down his seat, cursing the wind who can't even leave him alone in the shop, but it's not the wind, rather two people who come in running and immediately disappear down an aisle, leaving Montparnasse to close behind them to stop the rain from entering. He's ready to yell at him, but his words get caught in his throat when he sees the handprint on the glass. It's red.

There's a bloody handprint on the door, still fresh, and two people running inside the shop. Montparnasse can think of a thousand horror movies that start exactly like this. And more pressing, of a shit-ton of troubles coming his way.

He follows the voices coming from the depths of the shop. One of them is steady, hard to hear, but the other.... he knows it from somewhere. It's shriller than he remembers, but... He turns the corner, and here he is, the small guy with the very long scarf and the very fast tongue. The other guy is currently sitting on the floor, holding his head. His hair is shaved, which gives Montparnasse a very, very nice view of the large cut above his eyebrow. It's at least five centimetres long, seems deep, and droplets of blood are seeping out of it, rolling on his face and falling to the floor, so many that there's already a small puddle at his feet.

Scarf Guy still babbling, probably trying to reassure his friend, but the words are so muddled the other probably doesn't understand. All while talking, he's ripping open packages, pulling bandages and gauze out in what can only be described as "a fine mess". Montparnasse wants really much to scream at him to stop messing with products and breaking everything. Not that he cares, but he'll probably be in trouble. But just one look at the friend who's face is now half-covered in blood is enough. The small guy starts applying some kind of disinfectant to the wound, delaying the blood which now drips clearer.

- He'll need stitches on this.

The small guy almost jumps to the ceiling when he hears Montparnasse's voice, but still keeps dabbing at the wound with small, professional gestures. It can be commanded that he didn't hurt the other guy, didn't even touch him a little harder. The other guy, who didn't even flinch, just looks up and.... smiles. What. The guy is half covered in blood, probably in pain, and he just smiles at him.

- I probably will, he says in a noticeably even tone, but Joly really wanted to stop the bleeding first. He's afraid I'm going to lose all the blood in my body during...

- Of course you do ! Scarf Guy - Joly - cuts him. Have you seen how much you're bleeding ? Remember that you'll pass out if you lose more than two liters of blood ! And if you pass out....

Montparnasse glances at the puddle on the ground. Granted, it's very impressive to think it just came out of someone's head. But he's still far away from losing two whole litres. Joly doesn't seem to think so, however.

- And more, he goes on as he keeps cleaning the cut, what about infections ? They happen way faster than you think, and seeing as it wasn't very clean....

- I know, I know....

The other guy tries to stop the rambling, but Joly seems on a roll.

- And what about tetanus ? Did you even get your booster shot ? I bet you didn't ! It was probably rusted, and dirty, and it got into the wound, and you'll get tetanus and die !

Joly looks ready to run and check the other's guy's vaccination sheet right this instant, but the other manages to grab his arm, and he goes back to the task at work. Other Guy looks at Montparnasse with an apologetic smile.

- Sorry for that. Joly can overreact sometimes...

- I do not !

- ... but I'll be alright as soon as he can stop this...

- And take you to the hospital for a booster shot !

- And take me to the hospital, but I swear I got a booster shot.... one day.

He looks up at Montparnasse, who still hasn't moved from his spot. To be fair, he doesn't really know what he's supposed to do in that kind of situations. Should he call an ambulance ? Get him the bill ? Kick them out ? Maybe not, they aren't really breaking rules. So he just stares at the wound and Joly's hands working on it.

- You see, Other Guy starts explaining, mistaking his stare for curiosity. We were running late, but I wanted to grab something to eat. So we go to Subway, and I keep checking my watch to be sure we're not too late. The guy making my sub must have mistaken this for a mark of impatience, and maybe he was afraid of me yelling at him... which I would never do, of course, I'm not an animal. Anyway, the guy is rushing to meet my impossible and non-existent deadline, and it's there that it becomes funny...

- Of course it's not funny ! Joly screeches.

- Come on. It's funny. Anyway, he tries too fast to cut the bread, the knife slips from his hand, hits the cutting board, and I don't know how, stabs me in the head.

There's a silence that follows that declaration. A long silence. A long, heavy silence. Montparnasse stares at the head, wondering if the guy takes him for an idiot. It looks like a knife cut, okay. But still, that sounds pretty unlikely. And stupid. But Joly didn't deny it, and why would they lie anyway ? To rob a few healing supplies ?

- You got stabbed.... by a Subway employee ?

- You can see it like that. But it was an accident, I swear ! So Joly brought me here because it's just on the other side of the road, and... well, there we are !

He gives him a bright smile that's a bit tarnished by the blood still on his lip. But Joly is working fast on taking care the wound, and at least it doesn't spill everywhere anymore.

Soon, everything is properly bandaged and taken care of. Joly helps his friend on his feet, trying to support him, which is hilarious because Other Guy is one foot taller and twice his weight. If he falls, Joly will be crushed like a building under Godzilla's foot. It becomes even more unbalanced when Joly picks up a cane and leans on it. Other Guy's arm around his shoulder, he starts walking towards the exit, Other Guy following, just a little wobbly on his feet. Leaving behind blood and opened boxes. As if reading in Montparnasse's mind, Joly turns to him and says :

- Can you gather the boxes for me ? I'll come back and pay as soon as I can get him treated.

Before he can answer, they are gone, quite fast for two people in this state. Montparnasse has no other option than take care of the mess. He puts the boxes behind the counters, hoping that no one will accuse him of stealing them or something. He'll need to find Joly and make him pay for them, or else he'll be in trouble. He may ask Feuilly, or maybe Prouvaire. All those students certainly know each other.

There's still the blood to clean, and he's certainly not going to use some paper towels. If he puts some on the clothes, it'll never totally go away. Also he doesn't want to touch a stranger's blood. He goes in the back room, looks around for something to wipe the floor. There's a mop broom and a bucket in the corner. He fills it with water as warm as he can and a bit of soap still left in a bottle, and brings the whole thing back in the shop.

To find, in front of the puddles and observing them, none other than Javert. He's back to him, and Montparnasse is very tempted to run. But cops must have a sixth sense that makes them detect people-who-aren't-thieves-at-all. Javert spins on himself like he was made of one slab of stone, and his eyes fall on Montparnasse, nailing him in place.

- There you are, he growls.

Montparnasse doesn't know what to answer that's not an insult, so he just steps forwards, broom in hand. But Javert raises a hand, and Montparnasse stops before he touches him.

- I need to clean, he says, raising the broom to show him.

- Not before you explain yourself.

- What do I have to explain ?

- Why there is blood on the floor.

- Because someone bled on the floor, Montparnasse deadpans.

It doesn't seem very funny to Javert. He frowns (more), and steps forwards.

- Don't make me ask twice.

His tone is threatening, and Montparnasse remembers that he's supposed to be on his best behaviour as long as he's here, or he'll end in jail for a long time. So he sighs, and gestures to the puddle.

- A student just came here. With a friend. Who had a cut on his head. Said he had an accident. Bled on the floor. Student treated him. They're gone. Good ?

- Who was the student ?

Montparnasse doesn't answer right away. He doesn't owe anything to Joly, but does this mean he wants to throw the dogs at him ? No. No one deserves that. Then again, they didn't really do anything wrong. Just got a stupid accident. But still, there's a part of him that resists the idea.

- Why ? he asks to win some time.

He steps forwards again, but Javert stops him again.

- Do not touch that blood until I'm sure there's no crime happening here.

- "Crime" ? Do you think I stabbed someone and hid his body in the back ? You wanna check, inspector ?

- Do not mock me.

His tone hardens in a way Montparnasse didn't think possible. Maybe he shouldn't play that game too much. And, now that he remembers, Javert can request to see the monitoring footage. Playing around will help no one. Still, a last shred of prudence keeps him from spilling everything.

- Don't know the name, he says finally. He wears a scarf and walks with a cane. His friend doesn't. That's all I know.

He expects Javert to either jump on the information, or call him a liar. But to his greatest surprise, his stances... relaxes. Well, at least a little. He doesn't look ready to jump at his throat anymore.

- And what happened with those students ?

Montparnasse gives him the rundown on his encounter with Joly and his friends. Javert takes out a small notepad and writes down a few things. He closes it with a noisy clap, stuffs it in his pocket. And, sadly for Montparnasse, doesn't go away.

- What can I do for you, inspector ? he asks, not even bothering hiding the venom in his voice.

- Funny you ask me. Where were you, last morning, around seven o'clock ?

- Around seven ? Sleeping, Mr Officer.

- Do you have any witness ?

- No, sir, as surprising as it may look for someone as beautiful as me, I was sadly alone.

- Do not mock me.

- Oh, I wouldn't dare.

Javert stares him down for a moment.

- So, you're telling me you weren't around the jewellery store on Lamarque Street, yesterday  at seven ?

- Why would I have been there ?

- I'm he one asking the questions here.

Montparnasse is very tempted to send him to Hell, but he can't. So he just shakes his head.

- No, sir. I wasn't. Then again, diamonds don't really go with my natural glow.

He shouldn't joke, he knows it, but he can't help it. Besides, he's feeling way too cold to care about anything else than how he's going to get his feet warm. Javert glares at him, and for a second, he thinks that his life is really over. But finally, he turns away without a word of goodbye and leaves. Montparnasse falls on the stool and sighs. This time, it was really, really close. Like, he could have been arrested, just because Javert can't stand him. That jewellery must have been robbed, and he's zeroed on the nearest thief he knows. Who's stuck in place because he can't leave for two days more. He's lucky Javert has taken his excuse at face value, because he doesn't have any alibi, unless a bag of salt can act as an alibi. At least he's not in jail. For now.

He finally moves from his seat, because there's still the matter of that puddle of blood to clean. He's not a cleaning person at all, that's not his chore in the group, so it takes him a moment to find the most efficient way to get rid of that puddle of blood. The handprint on the window gives him the hardest time, and he has to rub and wipe for a few good minutes until the glass is pristine clean. Having to work outside doesn't make his mood better, and when he finally comes inside, he's shivering and sneezing. It doesn't bode well for the rest of the night.

Actually, no, it doesn't. During the next hour, Montparnasse feels more and more shivers climbing up his back. His feet gives him the impression they are caught in ice, and he can barely feel his fingers. And there's that weird itch in his throat. Maybe it's just an allergy, he keeps telling himself. It's dusty here, the cold air is blowing on his face and he hates air-conditioning with a passion. It's probably only this and nothing more.

Around midnight, as he's thinking really hard about calling Claquesous to his help, or wrapping himself in a pile of newspapers, the owner comes in. Montparnasse can feel his hair stand on end as he walks closer. He can't stand the guy. Not because he put him to work, even if it plays a part, but because, plainly put, the guy is creepy. Montparnasse can't stand the way he looks at him, always leering, checking him out. That's exactly what he's doing right now, his eyes diving in the hoodie's collar gaping on his collarbones. Montparnasse is tempted to close it, but his hands seem to weight tons, and he's too tired to care or move.

- So, the guy asks after an uncomfortable silence, I've seen Javert come out of here. Did something happen ? Did you have any trouble ?

Montparnasse swallows his bile and contempt together.

- Nothing, he says flatly.

- Nothing ? Are you sure ? Because judging by his face, it didn't look like nothing.

- Some guys came in. One was bleeding. They... bought some bandages and left. He wanted to know what happened. That's all.

He's not going to say that Joly hasn't paid yet for the bandages. He's not a snitch. Also, there's still a chance that he's going to be accused of the fact, and it wouldn't be good for him.

- He was bleeding ? What happened ?

- Some kind of accident. Don't know much.

- They didn't bother you, now, did they ?

The man reaches and *pats him on the arm*. Montparnasse has to restrain himself not to punch him in the face, and takes his arm away.

- No, they didn't. I'm fine.

- Very well. But don't hesitate, come to me if you need anything, okay ? Don't let Javert bother you.

Montparnasse very much wants to tell him that it's his fault that Javert is on his case, and if he really wants to help him, he can drop dead or let him go. But he doesn't, just keeps the iciest glare he can muster on the guy. Said guy seems to understand that there's no opening to be found here, because with a last pat on Montparnasse's arm, stretching over the counter to better reach him, he's gone.

As soon as he's out the door, Montparnasse rolls his sleeve up and frantically rubs the skin where the man touched him. He could really do with some soap, but the only one he can find is some kind of goo he wouldn't use to polish his shoes. His skin is way too delicate to get that kind of treatment.

At last, six o'clock comes, and with it the next shift. Montparnasse gathers his still drenched clothes in a ball, not even caring about wrinkling them anymore. The last hour has been spent in some kind of daze, watching pretty lights dancing before his eyes, and feeling like he's constantly falling. Or maybe the world is sliding around him, he doesn't know. Clothes are not his first priority right now. He grabs a can of soup on the shelf, shows it to the other clerk who writes it down, and leaves.

He barely remembers the walk home. He's more or less sure that it doesn't rain, because the clothes stay dry, but that's all he can say. The flat is dark and silent when he comes home. Which is good because he wouldn't have been able to handle his arsehole flat-mates. He pours the soup in a bowl, puts it in the microwave. While it's heating, he goes to change. He'd keep the hoodie on ; it may be gaudy and not his colour, but it's comfy and warm. But he has to give it back, so he drops it in the laundry basket. The cold air makes him shiver immediately, and he runs to his room to find something warmer. Luckily, he still owns some lounge clothes, even if he doesn't admit it, and soon, he's wrapped in a huge, all black, sweater .

When he's started the washing machine, the soup is hot, and he brings him with him in the room. It feels good, to have something hot to hold, it helps fight the icy feeling creeping up his legs. It's horrible, and he buries himself under the blankets to keep himself warm. He's shivering, and his throat burns, and his head hurts too, but he keeps telling himself that it's just the cold, and the soup he swallowed too fast, and the brutal lightning of the shop. Maybe he's tired, too. A good night of sleep, that's what he needs. He lays down, wraps himself snuggly, and closes his eyes. He'll probably feel better tomorrow.

[2ugars]

ੈ♡˳ high school senior!hyuck + soccer player!hyuck all in one!!!!

ps - the high school that i’m basing off their high school is mine, which is an international american curriculum high school that has like . a very small hs population.

a lovable and troublemaker senior who interacts quite a lot w his underclassmen — a bit too much than what’s probably considered necessary

he’s always been loud n friendly even before senior year but for some reason it? sky-rocketed?

like

u would expect seniors to stop tryin to make friends n stuff because they’ll have to leave for college at the end of the year nyways……

but NOPE

donghyuck’s a whole other species so he. .

makes friends .

A Lot of them

some of them r accidental on the other person’s part

there was this one time where hyuck forgot his pencil case and he was asking around

and some guy in junior year was like Here u go!!!!give it back to me after school or smth :)

as promised,, donghyuck Forgot to give it to him after school but he DID give it back the morning after w a bunch of teabags

donghyuck: some tea 2 relieve ur stress! also !!!!!!!      U r invited to my bday party :)

donghyuck: and my future wedding

donghyuck :D

junior: Whjat

hyuck’s that one senior who somehow knows everyone’s names?

he’s crazy

the type to say people’s names whenever he converses w them

he does it to seem closer nd to put them at ease? in a way?

has a unique handshake w 75% of the high school population

how does he remember all of that

muscle memory???????? who knows at this point

someone raised their hand during class and he flinched in his seat because he Really Wanted To Do The Handshake w them

he wouldn’t call it popularity, how a lot of people know him

“they’re just . familiar w me,” he would tell jeno

“that’s called popularity u idiot”

“n .   No”

it takes him a while to let it sink in that he IS popular but he still doesnt like to call himself that since he thinks it’s awkward nd a lil off-puttinng

so he just calls himself annoying in the end lmao

“i realized,” he rells renjun one day, “that i’m most likely the most annoying senior ever. more than mark was, even, and that’s saying a lot!”

renjun hums to show that he’s listening when, really, he’s not

“it’s the perfect plan,” donghyuck continues. “i get all of them to love me this year, and when i leave, the entire secondary school will have no choice but to mourn my absence—“

“was that your plan all along?” jaemin interjects with a laugh

“of course not. the kids love me without me having to try much. but it’s a pretty good plan! i could pass it down to chenle, or something.”

renjun later tells chenle to continue to never listen to hyuck

chenle, although puzzled, agrees

hyuck’s in varsity boys’ soccer as midfield

what u would call a hidden leader

was originally appointed captain by the coach but turned it down almost immediately

Hates disappointing people

especially people who are depending and relying on him

he isn’t sure he’s ready for that much weight, being an official leader

however when the ream found out he turned down the position of captain, they made him vice-captain next to sunwoo

donghyuck: “i won but at what cost”

mood maker of the team

screams a lot on the bench in the times when he’s pulled from the field to take a break

“U GO FELIX”

“LOOK AT MY BOYS GO!?!??!?!?!”

“OOF them THIGHS”

“JEEOOONNGGGIIIIINNNN that’s my little boy. Wow. i think im tearing up”

does this not only in games but in practices !

hes quite a chatterbox

please shut him up

i’m kidding please don’t

“look alive guys!!!!!! last one to run ladders buys sushi!!!!!!”

usually ends upbeing the last one

he says he does it on purpose

he’s lying he hates running ladders

“SPREAD OUT I NEED YALL LIKE A SMOOTH LAYER OF BUTTER ON TOAST! THAT MEANS NOT CLUMPED!”

he joked that if it weren’t for soccer, he’d be on the cheer squad

won mvp in junior year and the sportsmanship award for three years running

NOT ONLY DID HE WIN SOME SPORTS AWARDS.......

HHE ALSO WO N!!!!!!!!the hearts of the middle school boys’ soccer team

it’s because he’s the coach assistant during the ms soccer season

he started coaching in his freshman year

surprisingly gets shy when the boys, in all their wide-eyed awe n wonder, call him Coach Donghyuck

“nnnnnnnNNNNNOOOO O OO O  Dont say that call me hyuck instead omg plwase.  NO SIAN DONT CALL ME COACJ NO”

to hyuck’s confusion and jaemin’s pure delight, hyuck’s managed to steal the hearts of the middle school girls’ soccer team as well??

he took some chopsticks from the school cafeteria because he forgot his own at home

when he finished eating lunch, he didn’t want to go all the way to the tray drop-off since it was so far from where he and the dreamies sat

and renjun’s being more annoying than usual that day and is purposely making hyuck to hurry the HECK up so that they could do some modern language homework

of course, hyuck is lazy and doesn’t want to walk that far, renjun, gosh dan g it

so he goes to a middle school girl he’s had a few random, short convos with in his bus and... .. .

“hi louise! is it okay if i place my chopsticks here for you to take it to the tray drop-off?”

the young girl startles but at the sight of donghyuck, she smiles brightly. “oh, hi, coach!”

her greeting sparks up excited hi’s and hello’s from the other girls that donghyuck acknowledges with a smile of his own

(he doesn’t bother correcting them about the title)

(he knows that no matter how many times he’ll gently scold them into not calling him coach, they’ll still persist without fail)

(so he takes it in, albeit reluctantly and with his ears turning red every time)

“that’s totally fine!” louise says.

“thaaank you!” he sings, placing it neatly beside her plate. “you’re the best. see you in practice!”

and honestly

the reason why the middle school girls love him is because he stayed after school to study one day

and when he was done, he watched one of their games that was on the home field

he was on the sidelines shouting encouragements and generally just . Screaming his lungs out

you could probably imagine how the opponent team wa s thoroughly confused as to who the boy was and why exactly he was shrieking bloody murder

after the team won, he walked over to their team huddle and, after asking permission of their coach, gave them high fives and praised them and gave them light-hearted pointers before giving them a huge HUGE smile

yeah

apparently that’s enough to have a whole armada of boys and girls willingly take your chopsticks to the tray drop-off after lunch

he likes to brag about it every once in a while

anyways hyuck is just

a really good and nice senior

who the underclassmen respect and appreciate lots

when the seniors graduate, hyuck hides his tears by laughing so much

like it’s kind of concerning how much he’s laughing renjun thinks the boy’s going to choke on his spit at this point hyuck please sto p laughign

NOTHING FUNNY IS EVEN HAPPENING HYUKC PELAS E

like hyuck started laughing when the closing speech of the graduation ceremony begun

the boys thought it was because he probably farted or heard someone else fart since he was trying so hard not to make a sound

liek all you could hear coming from hyuck was wheezing and little hiccups

and jaemin, who was sitting next to him, had to pinch hyuck’s thigh constantly with how violently he’s shaking with silent laughter

hyuck was covering his face the entire time and jaemin, widely grinning, finally pried his hands away

only his grin slowly wavered when he saw the other boy’s face

jaemin: “oh”

renjun: “what do you mean oh? the teachers are looking at us, we might not even be able to graduate if he keeps laughing, shut him u—”

there wwere tears staining hyuck’s cheeks and snot was basically running down his nose and he was laughing like a maniac and oh no, he’s losing it, renjun get tissues, what the actual HEK

the closing speech ended with a new tissue box emptied and a tissue rolled up into hyuck’s left nostril

the others were crying, too, but they were smiling

jisung approached them with wet eyes and the same awkward stance where he keeps his hands clasped in front of him and hyuck tearfully joked that he looked like That Meme and made jisung cry instead of laugh and chenle started laughing because of it but ended up crying too

HAHAHAH THE SE BBOYS BEIN CRYBABIES (imcrygin too at the thought of this i love ht em. s o mmmcuhhchl)

hyuck couldn’t help but pull the dreamies into a hug before he gets swallowed by their arms, affections, and surprisingly, their smooches

“ABOUT TIME Y’ALL PUNKS RETURNED MY LOVE”

[ceiaofsilence]

Astral, Ch. 1

Katsuki has a constant companion.

He’s not very happy about it, but it’s not like he has the right to complain. It’s all his fault, anyway.

„Yo, Bakugou, you seen that new game at the arcade? ‘s pretty good, wanna-“

“Fuck off,” Katsuki growls. “Fucking side-character.”

“Kacchan, that’s not very nice.”

Katsuki ignores the chastising voice. Tries to, anyway. He always does, in school at least.

“Look, he’s leaving now, Kacchan,” the voice continues. “And I know you don’t like it when they do that.”

He takes out his History notes and leafs through them. They’ve got a test coming up and Katsuki’s gonna fucking ace it. He’s number one in this shitty school. He’s gonna stay that way. Yuuei’s Entrance Exam isn’t too far off, either. Just a few months.

“Hey, I’m going back to Mom now. We’re doing my hero notes together. Come by later, I’ll show you!”

Despite his intentions, Katsuki looks up. The oddly translucent apparition of ten year-old Deku smiles happily at being acknowledged. “Fine,” Katsuki grunts. Stupid Deku’s smile widens. Then he disappears, and Katsuki is alone with his history notes.

There’s new All Might merchandise in the store. Katsuki walks past it on the way home, hands stuffed in his pockets for warmth. He fucking hates winter.

Then he turns and walks back. Just the fucking poster, he tells himself. The action figures look fucking shitty, and the videos on the DVD are gonna be all over the internet in the coming months anyway.

He walks out of the store, the poster a heavy weight in his bag.

“Katsuki-kun!” Midoriya Inko greets him as he enters. Katsuki’s Mom had given him a key to the Midoriya appartment. He doesn’t really wanna know how the old hag got it. Probably used some shitty emotional blackmail on Auntie. She would’ve folded like wet paper under that shit. Spineless weak fuckers, the entire family.

He makes a noncommittal noise and kicks off his shoes. Auntie smiles at him anyway. She looks tired, he notes. Drained. He’s gonna have to talk to his stupid Mom about that.

“Have you eaten yet, Katsuki-kun?” she asks. He nods. It’s a lie, but he doesn’t feel like eating. He never does when he’s in this damn place. “Then do go on. Izukkun has been looking forward to your visit all day.” She smiles briefly, then disappears into the kitchen. Probably to cry her eyes out, those stupid eyes that look so much like her son’s. That’s what she usually does when someone comes to see fucking Deku - and that’s usually only Katsuki and his parents. The rest of the fucking world is all too happy to forget that Midoriya Izuku ever existed. Still exists.

Katsuki’s steps seem to echo as he walks down the corridor. There’s the stupid door with the dumb-as-fuck All Might-themed name sign on it, which Katsuki wants to blow up every time he sees, just like he wants to kick the door down and scream whenever he stands before it. But as always, he only reaches out and opens it like a normal person.

The smell is always the first thing he notices. Not the hospital bed and the monitors hooked up to the gaunt boy on it. Always the smell. Too sweet, like decay. Added to that the scent of the flowery soap stuff that Auntie uses to give Deku sponge baths and shit. He hates it. It makes Katsuki wanna throw up. He’d breathe through his mouth, but then he’d imagine tasting that shit on his tongue and vomit for real.

“Kacchan! You’re here!” Deku sits on the window sill, stupid bright-ass smile on his face.

There’s a picture on the wall next to him. It shows Auntie and Deku together, four-five years ago. Deku on the window sill looks exactly the same as he does in the picture, except his skin is translucent, and his hair and eyes were never so intensely green in real life.

He’s still more real than the empty shell on the bed, which is gaunt and chalky pale. The only movement is the slight rise and fall of the chest. The freckles, so prominent on the other Deku’s face, are all but faded. Auntie has dressed him in All Might pajamas, which was a terrible choice. The bright colours make him look even more washed-out.

That’s not Deku who’s lying there in a coma. Just some shitty failed broken wax thing that some fuckface imagines a fifteen-year old Midoriya Izuku might look like.

Katsuki pointedly stalks past the fake, refusing to look at it. The real Deku’s eyes are huge and happy as they look at him, all but bouncing in excitement at his visit. “Mom wrote my notes for Mt. Lady down with me!” he chatters. “She even did the drawings and stuff. Wanna see, Kacchan?” He points to Hero Analysis No. 11, left open on the table. “I bet you can figure out even more stuff than me. Hey Kacchan, d’you think she can only switch between normal and giant size with no in-between? Because that’s gonna put some serious restrictions on her hero work, I think. And she’s gotta be really careful not to accidentally destroy-“

“Got you a new All Might poster,” Katsuki interrupts the rambling. Deku squeals, obnoxiously high and loud. His eyes sparkle.

“Really? There’s a new one out? Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re the best, Kacchan!”

“Of course I fucking am,” Katsuki growls. “And don’t you forget, you hear me, Deku?”

Deku nods rapidly. “Can I see the poster, Kacchan?”

Katsuki pulls it out of his bag and unrolls it. Deku, like the dumbass nerd he is, gasps in elation and floats up and down. “Can we put it up right now? In this room? I think there’s some free wall space…” he frowns. The walls of the room are already plastered in All Might pictures, with a lonely few other heroes he fawns over in between. There’s no way in hell the huge-ass poster will fit.

Deku shoots a contemplating look at the ceiling. “Right over the bed,” he decides then, nodding once. Then he gives Katsuki a hopeful look. “Can we put it there?”

“What-fucking-ever,” Katsuki mutters.

Stupid Deku. Always a fucking bother.

They found out that Deku had a Quirk all along when they were ten years old. Katsuki still has nightmares about it years later, not that he’d ever tell anyone.

It happens in school, on a day like any other. Deku’s been trailing after Katsuki and his group like a moron, like always. Then a group of upperclassmen walks past, saying some stupid-ass slur against quirkless people and shove Deku. Like it happens so often before, and Katsuki had never cared about it, never bothered to stop it. If Deku’s gonna follow him around like some pathetic puppy, then he better watch out for himself.

Except this time, Deku loses his balance, trips over his own damn feet, and falls down the stairs with a series of sickening cracks that to this day Katsuki hasn’t been able to get out of his head. For weeks when Katsuki so much as closes his eyes he sees either Deku’s fearful look as he falls or his crumpled, broken form at the foot of the stairs. Both sights are imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

A week after the so-called accident, Deku appears out of thin air in front of Katsuki and scares the ever-loving shit of him. “Kacchan, Mom is sad, can you help her?”

Astral Projection Quirk, the doctors say later, after Katsuki’s run all the way to the hospital to see if fucking Deku had actually croaked and turned into a ghost.

The fall from the stairs had just knocked Deku right out of his body. In five years since then, he’d never figured out how to get back in. The doctors had said that there could be multiple reasons for that. It might be because Deku’s brain had been damaged, or it could be a subconscious unwillingness to get back into a body that was unlikely to walk again even if he woke up. Or maybe Deku was just too stupid to do it. Who the fuck knew.

Deku’s been floating around as a ghost for five years now. Still goes to school, though the only one he makes himself visible to is Katsuki for whatever dumbass reason. Still trails after Katsuki, still chatters on about heroes and Quirks.

He seems fucking happier now than he ever did when he was just a quirkless loser. That’s the second-worst thing about this shitty situation.

The absolute worst is that for all that Katsuki is going to be a hero, for all that he’s powerful and amazing, for all that he was right there - he’d never bothered to protect Deku, and that makes the entire thing his fault.

“Two Three-Pointers down that alley, Kacchan,” Deku reports cheerfully. “You’ve got forty-two points so far, oh wow, you’re really amazing!”

Katsuki doesn’t bother replying and launches himself down the alley Deku indicated. He’d have gone down there anyway, he tells himself. Deku’s just being a fucking annoyance, like always. Besides, if the idiot invites himself to witnessing the Yuuei Academy Entrance Exam fist-hand, he better make himself useful.

“Forty-eight points and it’s only been four minutes!” Deku gushes. “You’re gonna get into Yuuei for sure, Kacchan!”

Katsuki blasts himself up to a higher vantage point. He’s gotten a bit of a headstart because unlike the rest of the idiot extras he hadn’t fucked around after the start signal came. But now the side-characters are catching up, all but tackling each other fighting over who gets to take down robots. Katsuki sneers when he sees two girls pulling each other’s hair and shrieking like harpies.

Pathetic.

He blasts himself off the rooftop, right in the middle of a cluster of two and one-pointers, reducing them to scrap in a matter of seconds, much to the irritation of the Four-Eyes idiot who’d asked dumbass questions during the info session with Present Mic. What-fucking-ever, this is a competition and Katsuki is gonna fucking win this whole thing, screw everyone else.

If Deku is good for one thing, it’s counting points, because Katsuki’s in too much of a battle-rage to bother. If he sees a robot move, he’ll explode it, fuck the point number written on it.

“Sixty-seven points, I bet you’ll place first, Kacchan!” Deku chirps. “Huh, is there an earthquake?”

It’s the arena trap. There’s still two minutes left, he can crack the hundred point mark, he bets. Just to make clear how far above he really is above these fuckers. No need to fight that huge-ass thing that gives no points at all. Except it’s goddamn huge and it pisses Katsuki the fuck off, and he bets he could explode it in one hit.

Still - Zero points. He’ll probably get to fight shitty giant robots at some time in training, when he’ll actually get rewarded for it. Katsuki turns away.

“Ahh, oww…” He freezes and turns. Huge-ass robot above, little girl on the ground, trying to crawl away.

(A terrified shriek, hand reached out towards him, green eyes terrified.)

(Crumpled form on the ground, a puddle of red spreading under the head, screams, sirens.)

(Limp, lifeless form on the bed. Translucent ghost following him around everywhere and chattering about heroes as if he could ever be one when he’s as good as dead.)

“Kacchan!” Deku cries out. He’s hovering above the girl, as if he can shield her with his stupid intangible body.

“Fuck!” Katsuki blasts himself forward, upward, right in front of the robots ugly-ass face. “DIIIEEE!” he screams, smashes both palms into the robot’s face and blasts it into smithereens. The recoil of the explosion numbs his arms completely, and he can imagine the burns already. He’s blasted himself back by, like, fucking acres it feels like, and his head is ringing. He’s gotta get some explosions going to break his fall before he breaks every bone on the ground, but he’s nauseous and his hands are completely dry and useless.

Fuck. This is it, then, he’s gonna die in some stupid Entrance Exam and Deku’s gonna be fucking alone.

Something slaps his cheek and his fall breaks for just a moment, then he tumbles to the ground. Yeah, fucking painful, but he’s not dead. He forces himself to his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists. They still work. Even if his Quirk is fried for the moment, he can still kill off some robots, all he needs is a weapon.

“Kacchan, are you okay?” Deku shouts frantically, hovering around him and trying to examine his arms. They’ve  got burns all over and some blisters, too. Fucking shit.

“U-urgh,” a weak voice groans out, followed by the sound of violent throwing up. It’s the girl whose ass he saved. Gravity Quirk or some shit, Deku had gushed a whole fucking litany about it when he saw her smashing some robots to bits.

Explains how the hell Katsuki’s fall was broken. She must’ve done that.

“We’re fucking even,” he snarls at her. “So don’t fucking bother me.” Last thing he needs is some teary bitch trying to thank him or some shit.

She continues throwing up. He grunts and looks around for some more robots. Wasteland everywhere.

“I think you should sit down, Kacchan,” Deku says timidly, just as the end of the test is called out. Sitting is actually not a fucking terrible idea, but the hell Katsuki is going to listen to it.

Shit, two minutes wasted to save some wimpy girl. He stomps away, ignoring the way his head is fucking spinning until he’s ducked into an alley and can throw up in peace.

“Leave me the fuck alone, Deku,” he growls at the fretting ghost.

“…is it okay if I just go invisible, Kacchan?” the moron asks hesitantly. “I promise I won’t say anything!”

“I don’t fucking care!” Katsuki screams and thrusts out his hand. No explosions forthcoming. Fuck.

“Okay,” Deku mumbles and vanishes. Moments later he’s back to inform him that medical personnel has arrived and the Four-Eyes extra just ratted Katsuki out to them.

Fuck them all to hell.

Katsuki breezes through the written test. He knows all the shit. The only thing that’s something of a challenge - and challenges are made to be fucking destroyed - are the questions that ask for strategy shit. What would you do in this shitty scenario? Here’s another dumbass situation for you to judge! Look at this stupid picture, which civilian are you gonna save and explain your choices because we’re too damn stupid to follow your thought progress. And so on and so forth. It takes fucking forever, and his hands hurt, even after the healing he’d been subjected to.

Deku’s invisible the rest of the exam, but as soon as Katsuki is on the train back home, he pops back into existence and starts chattering about the exam, Quirks he saw - “Kacchan, can we extend the notebook to include some of them? Even if they weren’t heroes? Oh, I know, let’s make an extra notebook!” - and the questions on the written exam.

He’s fucking exhausted when he gets home. His parents seem to get it, even the old hag. They leave him alone, and plus they draw Deku into a conversation so Katsuki finally gets some damn peace of mind.

Can’t fall asleep, though.

The fucking nightmares are waiting, he just knows it. After the stunt with that girl who almost died - yeah, no way he’s closing his damn eyes tonight.

“Kacchan?” Fucking Deku pops in at around midnight. “Are you all right?”

Katsuki can never get over how young Deku looks in his astral form. Tiny, with huge eyes, clothes always a little too wide because Auntie believes in buying things Deku can grow into.

Deku is a fucking kid and five years ago Katsuki considered them grown up and all, but looking at him now makes him want to throw up. Deku’s a kid and he’s in a fucking coma because Katsuki couldn’t protect him. Doesn’t matter that thanks to that damn Quirk, Deku’s still around. It’s still Katsuki’s fault he got hurt.

“What do you want, Deku?” Katsuki growls. Deku gives him a wide-eyed stare and bites his lip.

“Can we watch All Might videos together?” he whispers. “It makes Mom sad when I ask her, and nights get so boring when everybody’s asleep.”

“You’re a fucking bother,” Katsuki snaps. “Fine. Don’t you fucking start to ramble, if you do, I’ll turn the video off, you got that?”

Deku nods hastily. “I’ll keep my mouth shut all night!”

All night. Deku’s so fucking transparent with his intention to help, all but asking Katsuki to stay awake until morning. Who does the little shit think he’s fooling? Not Katsuki, that’s for fucking sure.

“You better,” he warns.

They watch videos on the internet the rest of the night, and when Katsuki nods off it is to the sound of Deku’s chattering. The nightmares stay far away.

Katsuki makes it into Yuuei, obviously.

He breaks a fucking record with the number of points he got. Sixty-eight villain points. Plus fifty-five rescue points for saving that girl. In total, a hundred and twenty-three points. All Might himself congratulates him on the fucking holo disk. Deku freaks out over it, predictably, and makes Katsuki play the message again and again.

The principal of his miserable middle school congratulates him for being the first student to continue on to Yuuei.

Five years ago, Katsuki would have been proud. Back then, he’d have taken getting this far for granted, would have seen it as being handed his rightful reward for being the amazing Bakugou fucking Katsuki.

Now? It feels like a fucking joke that he doesn’t know the punchline of.

Next Chapter >>

[fluffandlove]

🤐 -Silent Laughter + Ritsu x Takano? :3 ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Ahhh, Ginny Trash Binny thank you so much for the prompt! Haven’t written these two in aaaages and I’ve missed them

Summary: Takano had invited himself over for the umpteenth time and Ritsu decided to block the door to keep him from trespassing, but unfortunately his not-boyfriend plays dirty. 

Word count: 1,5k OOPS

~ [Symbol drabbles] ~ 

“Let me in.”

“No.”

“Let me in.”

“No.”

This had been going on for a good few minutes and Ritsu was scared to death one of their neighbors would come out to ask what all the fuss was about. It was pretty late already and their hissed conversation felt like a couple of loud trumpets playing the national anthem in their quiet hallway. 

They literally just got back from work after a long-ass day and Ritsu was seriously too fucking tired to deal with his boss right now. Sure, he did have a point that Ritsu wasn’t taking good care of himself and yes, maybe he had been living off cup noodles for the past three weeks or so, but that did not give him the right to just barge in like this. 

When they got off the train and started walking home, Takano casually announced that he was going to come over, cook him dinner (even though it was, like, 11pm) and sleep over. Of course, Ritsu being Ritsu, screeched in response and fastened his pace, huffing that that would be highly unnecessary. 

“Tell me, when’s the last time you cooked?” Takano asked, barely having to step up his game to keep up with him. 

“None of your business.”

“Hate to burst your bubble, but you work for me. If you end up in the hospital again because you’re under eating it’ll be on me, so it is my fucking business.”

Ritsu halted, looked over his shoulder and glared daggers at him. “That’s your reason? You’re not even worried about me, you’re just worried about your reputation!” 

Apparently that was exactly what Takano wanted to hear because he took a step closer so they were only inches apart and his lips curled into a small grin. “You’re offended. So you want me to be worried about you.”

Fuck. Ritsu snorted and started walking again, glad it was dark so Takano would not be able to see his reddened cheeks and nose. “I don’t. You were being very rude, that’s all.” 

Their useless bickering continued until they reached their hallway where Ritsu mumbled a “Goodnight”, reached for his keys and unlocked the door. Takano invaded his personal space and Ritsu groaned, shoving him away with his shoulder, somewhat flustered from their proximity and pushed his door open. It was just like that one night after the party where Takano simply followed him into his home, but this time Ritsu was prepared. 

He spun around and tried to close the door, but, of course, Takano was as stubborn as him had managed to stand in the doorway, holding onto the door and the wall. 

“I thought I said goodnight!” Ritsu whisper-yelled and threw in his body weight. 

“And I thought I said that I’d come over,” Takano replied oh so calmly and didn’t seem at all fazed by his attempt to get rid of him. “You need to eat, Onodera. Stop acting like a baby.”

“I’ll eat some damn fruit. I’ll be fine!” he said through gritted teeth as he put his other hand on the wall so he could divide his weight better. “Please-stop-pushing!” 

Takano was barely pushing, though, he merely kept Ritsu from closing the door by standing there like the stupid asswipe that he was because he was just that strong. Ritsu, on the other hand, was already panting and red in the face from the constant pushing and started using his shoulder to push. 

He was so focused on trying to get rid of him that he actually shrieked when a few sneaky fingers wiggled under his outstretched arm. Said arm instantly shot down out of reflex and Takano used this opportunity to push the door wide open so he could peacefully enter, but Ritsu was not about to give up and held out both arms defiantly, now standing in the middle of the doorway. 

“You are not coming in!” he breathed, his senses still tingling from the aftershock. “Go to your own place!” 

They looked at each other for a good ten seconds or so, trying to stare the other down in a silent war, until Takano cupped his waist with both hands. “You realize you won’t stand a chance if I tickle you, right?” 

Twitch. 

Poor Ritsu felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up when Takano gently tapped his fingers on the fabric of his shirt. That was so very low and childish that he could barely believe that this was actually happening. He was standing in his doorway, arms out, trying to act tough while his boss was threatening to tickle him to get his way. 

This was not happening. 

Absolutely not. 

Squeeze. 

Oh, shit, this was happening. 

Ritsu’s spine snapped straight, his shoulders stiffened and he bit his lower lip when those large hands started kneading his waist, loosening his shirt in the process. His body twitched in response, doing some sort of awkward dance as those stupid fingers kept brushing over his sensitive spots.

Odd noises filled the playful yet annoying atmosphere because Ritsu was not about to give in and laugh like an idiot, even though his brain was practically begging him to. Bubbly giggles were threatening to escape, especially when his shirt was no longer tucked in and Takano could slip his hand under it, his fingers having access to his bare skin now. 

“Nnh!” Ritsu squeezed his eyes shut, feeling so very hot that he might’ve been standing in a fucking sauna and protected every single shred of dignity he had left by standing there and taking it. “…Takano-san! S-stop that!”

“Well, it’s working. Your knees are about to give in, I think,” Takano said dryly as if he was talking about the fucking weather or some shit and it fueled Ritsu’s embarrassment and ticklishness even more. 

It was true that his knees were trembling both from holding in his laughter and the jolts that were coursing through his entire body. Things only got worse because Takano’s hands crawled up higher, lightly brushing over his ribs and Ritsu couldn’t contain himself as he let out another girly shriek. “Takano-san…!”

His hands started slipping down the walls, but he remained upright, forever stubborn. It would probably be so much easier if he just gave in, because the chances of someone opening their door to check if a cat was being strangled or something were very high and he didn’t want to have to explain this situation. His dignity was already gone, anyway. 

Even the tips of his ears felt like they were on fire, along with his face, his neck and the rest of his body. His brain was on red alert, responding to every little stroke and squeeze, and Ritsu could only writhe on the spot and press his chin to his chest. 

Bad idea. That left his neck wide open for his son of a bitch not boyfriend who scribbled his fingers all over his ears and jaw. Ritsu almost choked then, scrunching up his shoulders, shaking with silent laughter. The large fingers skillfully avoided his shoulders, simply switching sides every time they almost got stuck and moved down to his underarms, which was definitely a good spot because Ritsu jerked back, almost losing his balance. 

His lips parted to let out a very quiet whine, awkward puffs of air slipping out as he fought for his pride. 

“Any second now,” Takano breathed, the smirk evident in his voice and Ritsu died a million deaths as the dam finally broke. 

His jaw dropped, laughter spilled like a waterfall and he hugged himself, stumbling backwards, trying to get as far away from Takano as he could get. But alas, he got out of the way, so Takano didn’t waste any time as he calmly walked in, taking his bag with him and taking off his shoes. 

Ritsu had his arms crossed over his torso, completely breathless, body still spasming, but still pissed enough to hiss, “I hate you so mu-”

Lips were covering his own, silencing him effectively. An arm slipped around his shaky body to keep him in place, the other free hand cupping his jaw. Ritsu wanted to protest, he really did, but he was so tired that he let it go and decided to give in. The hand slipped down his waist, towards his hip and a couple of nifty fingers started massaging the skin there, making him snicker into the kiss. 

“It’s too bad that I didn’t get to hear your cute laugh more,” Takano whispered against his lips. “Let me hear it.” 

That night Ritsu thought he would die from lack of air because Takano didn’t hesitate to tickle the absolute hell out of him after those words and if he was going to be completely honest with himself, he was very happy to hear that Takano wanted to hear his laugh. 

Not that he was going to say that out loud. 

[illuminating-dragons]

Recreation

Summary:  After the Wizarding War, Dudley has a choice to make. He can go back home, back to where he knows who he is, or go out into the world, and try to become something more. He chooses the braver option.

Word Count: 3,497

Notes: Requested by @harryjamesheadcanons

           The Wizarding War was the first time in his life Dudley felt powerless.

           As a child, he could send his parents scurrying with a few screams. His teachers were afraid of his mother’s shrieks, the neighbours were afraid of Vernon Dursley’s influence, and the kids were afraid of his fists.

           The kids, of course, including his cousin.

           But after the Dementors, Dudley realized that his power wasn’t enough to make people like him. And it wasn’t enough now to drown out the voices he’d heard, the voices he could hear so much more clearly now—the ones that said he was slow and clumsy and cruel and stupid, and wouldn’t be worth much once he was alone in the world.

           Dudley was lucky during the war. He wasn’t alone; his mother and father were there, and Hestia and Dedalus were there too. They got some snippets of news, terrible as it was, but they were far away from it in that little cabin in Wales.

           They were too far away.

           Dudley hated the terrible wizard (couldn’t say his name, couldn’t say his name even though he knew it, heard his cousin screaming it in his sleep), hated that he used his power on defenceless Muggles. It wasn’t fair; just like the giant giving him a tail as a child hadn’t been fair. The Muggles had no chance; they didn’t even know what they were facing. They didn’t know what to be scared of.

           And Dudley knew then the depth of his own hypocrisy.

           He’d bullied and cheated and lied his way through life, letting his parents spoil him, letting himself indulge in whatever he wanted. And now he was being hidden by his cousin’s friends because You-Know-Who might come after them.

           Might. They were his blood relatives, the people he’d lived with for so many years, and no one was quite certain that the Death Eaters would think to use them as leverage.

           That was terrible. And it was partly Dudley’s fault.

           He tried to talk to his parents about it, but his father spent most of those months drinking and staring at the telly mindlessly. When Dudley tried to bring up his fears, his worries, his father would shake his head.

           “You’re a fine lad, Dudders,” he slurred. “Better’n any of these freaks.”

           Once Dudley would have believed him. Now the words felt like a well-executed series of punches to the gut.

           His mother wasn’t much help either. She was thinner now, nearly skeletal, and spent her day wandering the house, trying to clean things again and again, no matter how many times Hestia offered to do it by magic.  “Dudley, this isn’t our world. This isn’t our fight. Your cousin had no right to get us involved.”

           “We’re his family!” Dudley shouted back one day. “We should be involved.”

           He recoiled a second later from his mother’s scream. “We are not his family! My sister made that choice long ago, and now we are suffering because of him!”

           Stunned, Dudley went upstairs and locked his bedroom door. That wasn’t right, a voice inside him insisted. Something was wrong.

           Dudley stopped bringing up his questions with his parents, but he worked it out on his own as best he could. He even asked Hestia if she could help him. Dudley felt horrible as he choked out what he was, what he’d done, but she listened.

           “You need some serious help,” was what she said. “You poor, poor child.”

           Hestia had been studying to be a mind Healer—Dudley thought it must be like being a psychologist—and even though she wasn’t fully trained she helped him through some of his problems. They stole moments together late at night and early morning, talking about the problems indulgence causes, the identity crisis that can happen once someone realizes their behaviour has been wrong, and the difficulty of pulling away from toxic behaviour when it is endorsed at home.

           Then the war was over—Hestia cried and told him about all the people who were now dead, but not Harry, not Harry, and Dudley was so grateful he almost cried—and they could go home. But Dudley didn’t go with them.

           “I’m finished with school,” he told them. “I want to go away for a while.”

           His parents let him, still too hurt themselves to really notice his struggles. Dudley moved to Manchester alone. They gave him a small allowance, and that was enough for a small flat. Dudley got a job as a janitor at the news building, and cleaned without complaint. He’d never done it before, but to his surprise it turned out to be interesting and even easy. It brought him a lot of pride to see the clean rooms, and soon he started making friends in the building. Well, friends was perhaps a strong word; he was friendly with some of the people who worked in the newsroom, because he always came and cleaned, no matter what the mess was.

           One lady was always nice to him. Her name was Iris. She was a film critic, and she was frightened of him at first. He could see the fear in her face and shoulders. He used to enjoy those signs. Now it made him sad.

           That was fixed his second week, when he went to get more supplies from the closet and found Iris struggling with Paula Murt, her boss.

           His boxing training got the older woman away from Iris long enough for her to call the police. Iris was Paula’s latest victim, and her other office mates rallied around her, giving testimony to years of sexual and physical abuse. Dudley wished he could have helped sooner, or that he’d hit the woman harder.

           From that point on, everyone in that office was kind to Dudley. They chatted with him when he came in, started being more careful about messes, and they told him all about their lives. Pretty soon Dudley knew almost everything about everyone. “You’re good at keeping secrets,” Iris explained, now the head writer in that division. “That’s why we trust you.”

           Of course he was good at keeping secrets. He didn’t have anyone to talk to outside of work.

           Besides Iris, his favourite person in the office was Beth. Beth was the food critic, she had three sons and a cheerful husband, and she wasn’t scared of Dudley. She was a boxer too, and they’d done a few training sessions together. Afterwards, they would go out to eat. Beth would ask him how he liked the food, and Dudley (who’d kept losing weight and now tried to eat only good food) would give her his opinion. Apparently he was funny, because Beth would laugh.

           “You should try writing for the paper,” Beth urged him.

           Dudley shook his head. “I’m no good.”

           “Oh, go on.”

           “I mean it. I’m not good at writing.”

           Beth didn’t believe him, but that didn’t matter in the end. The next week all three of her children fell ill, and she had to stay home from work. When she called in, Iris waved Dudley over.

           “Beth says you’d be a good replacement. What do you think?”

           “I think I don’t write very well.”

           “Are you dyslexic?”

           “No, I can read.” Dudley bowed his head. “I’ve just always had a hard time writing. It’s not my hands.”

           “Show me, please.”

           Dudley couldn’t refuse.

           Iris looked at his scrawled gibberish. “I think you might have dysgraphia. It’s a problem with writing.”

           “What do I do about it?”

           “I’m not sure about what you would do as an adult; that probably should have been caught when you were young. I’ll make some calls, alright? See what I can do. In the meantime, can you read your writing?”

           “Yes.”

           “Why don’t you go out then and take notes. When you get back, I may have a solution.”

           Dudley returned from the new seafood restaurant having just barely escaped food poisoning. “I want to write about those idiots.” He showed Iris the dozen or so pages of scribbles.

           “You can,” Iris replied. She indicated a short man. “This is Leo. He’s an editor, he can transcribe what you’re saying.”

           Leo was new to the building, dressed all in blue, and he had the biggest brown eyes Dudley had ever seen. They spent an afternoon going through Dudley’s impressions: “décor like an old antique shop”—“fish on the wrong side of raw”—“my server was the only bright spot; she noticed the mold on the sauce before I did”. Dudley wanted to publish under Beth’s byline, but Leo insisted they make their own. They finally agreed on Lee Durley.

           When Beth returned to work, she was delighted to see that Dudley had been hired as a food critic. From then on, Lee Durley appeared every other day, usually covering the extreme restaurants; the cheap, the expensive, the awful, the exquisite (not always at the same time). Leo and Dudley would go out together and eat. They only ate at places once, hence the column name ‘One Time Review’. Beth went to the restaurants a few times to compare, and that created a playful dialogue between the columns that people loved.

           It wasn’t long before Dudley and Leo were going out on nights when they had no column to write, just to spend time together. Other nights they would go to Leo’s (much nicer) apartment and Leo would encourage Dudley through writing exercises. After four months of this Dudley managed to write a review entirely on his own by hand, and he’d learn proper shorthand. Ecstatic, Leo kissed him.

           And for the first time in years—maybe the first time ever—Dudley was happy.

           He was trembling as he tried to decide whether or not to call his parents. He remembered another time that had set him trembling this badly.

           “Who’s Cedric, your boyfriend?”

           And he’d prayed in the split second before Harry answered that he wasn’t, because Harry was a freak and Harry was wrong and if he liked boys, that meant it was a freak thing to do. And Dudley might have done many things but he’d never hurt someone for being queer. He wasn’t sure what his parents would do. Particularly since it turned out he wasn’t gay at all, because before Leo there’d been a brief fling with Jessica from the finance column. Leo had just gotten top surgery the year before, and he’d told Dudley that he was still willing to bear children. So he was…poly? Pan? He wasn’t sure how to say it right, to say that he understood that there were more than two genders and he liked more than two genders. He just loved Leo.  

           But his parents surprised him. “Bring him down to meet us,” his mother squealed, and his father said only, “I’m glad you’ve found someone.”        

           The next few years were cheerful ones. Dudley and Leo got hired full-time to write their column, and apart from occasional experiences with food poisoning (and one memorable day when a restaurant caught fire), it was a pleasant experience. Dudley and Leo moved into a flat together, and they had a decent life.

           And then Leo had to make a decision.

           “I want to have your baby,” he told Dudley. “And I better do it now, before I start too many hormone treatments.”

           Dudley was terrified. A child? Could he do that? The way he’d been raised, he knew next to nothing about parenting. It wasn’t about giving kids what they wanted at all times, it was about raising them, teaching them to be good, all of those things.

           But Leo had his heart set on it, and Iris encouraged them, and Dudley agreed. They would try for a child.

           Leo became pregnant almost immediately, and the next nine months were hard on both of them. Dudley was frantic, trying to find every book he could and read them as quick as possible, ad he was trying to protect his partner from being attacked.

           “I don’t mind them misgendering me,” Leo said through tears one night, a hand on his pregnant belly. “God knows it’s weird to see a pregnant man. But I just…I just want my baby, why do I have to go back to being Rachel to do that?”

           Dudley held his hands and took care of him and wrote most of their columns on his own. Leo learned to make concessions; he let his hair grow out again (and after the baby was born, he  kept it almost to his shoulders) and wore more ‘feminine clothes’, though he drew the line at dresses. After the first few miserable months of morning sickness, he joined Dudley for some of their reviews. They were actually in a restaurant when Leo’s water broke.

           He laboured for twelve hours, and he had to check in as Rachel and Dudley was told to ‘support your girlfriend’. But neither of them minded, because at the end of twelve hours they were together as partners, Leo and Dudley, as they held their baby daughter.

           She was named for her godmothers, Iris Elizabeth Dursley. Her grandparents squealed over her, but Dudley took them aside and said something quietly.

           “I don’t know if she’s magic. She might be. If she is, you better not turn your backs on her, or you will lose contact with all of us.��

           Shaken, his parents nodded. Dudley wasn’t sure if they would actually behave, but he intended to stick to his guns no matter what.

           A few days later, Dudley and Leo had their first picture taken of them above their column, with Iris in Leo’s arms. They’d never revealed their real names, and it was a big step for Leo to come out that way, but he insisted he was okay with it. “The more visibility, the better for young kids who don’t feel right in their own skin.”

           The photo brought in loads of mail, a lot of it pleasant, some of it so nasty that Iris (the Elder, which is what Leo called her) got the police after the senders, and one letter Dudley had never thought he would see.

           It was the last letter of the day, and Dudley was sitting with Iris in a sling, and he read it with utter shock.

           Dear Big D,

           Congratulations on your partner and your baby! She looks very sweet, she really takes after her fathers. I’m happy to see that you’ve made a life for yourself, outside of our old house. That must have taken a lot of effort, and I hope you feel satisfied.

           I’ve wondered where you were for a while now; I didn’t want to contact your parents, and I couldn’t find any record of you in Surrey. I’d be happy to come to Manchester; I don’t to make you travel with an infant, I know how hard that is. If you don’t want to see me, that’s fine, but I thought I’d better take this chance to write.

                                                                                                         Your Cousin,

                                                                                                          Harry Potter

           The return address on the letter was a postal box in London. Dudley waited until Leo woke up the next morning, and they talked about what they should do. Leo didn’t know about the magical world, but he knew the rest of the story.

           “It doesn’t sound like your cousin is really asking for anything,” Leo said carefully. “I think he just wants to see you. But hasn’t he heard of Facebook?”

           “I don’t think he’s the type for that,” Dudley said carefully. He really wasn’t quite sure how much to say. “I would like to see him. We have unfinished business.”

           Leo caught his wrist as he tried to rise. “Dudley, just remember that this is your life now. You’ve done a hard job of reinventing yourself. I don’t want your cousin to trigger you into going back.”

           “I’d rather die than be what I once was,” Dudley said. “Because I wouldn’t be worthy of you or Iris.” And he meant it. He hated the person he’d once been, and though he knew parts of it were because of his parents, a lot of it fell on his shoulders.

           Dear Harry,

           I think it would be nice to reconnect. Do you have access to a phone? My number is on the back of this, and you can call and arrange a time. If you can’t phone, write me back straight away.  

                                                                                                       Your Cousin,

                                                                                                               Dudley

           Harry called two days later. “Hello, Dudley.”

           “Harry.” Dudley fumbled for words; what should he say? What do you say when you have history like theirs?

           He heard a baby’s cry from the other end. “You have a child?”

           “I have three.” Harry sounded tired, but very proud. “Lily’s my baby, and I have two sons, James and Al.”

           “That’s nice. Leo and I are just going to have Iris.”

           “How is she?”

           “She’s…incredible. Babies are so small.” Dudley blushed. Obviously babies are small.

           But Harry just said, “I know. You’d think after having almost a dozen nieces and nephews and three kids of my own I’d get used to it, but…they’re so small.”

           Dudley wasn’t quite sure what to say next.

           “Would it be okay if we had a visit?” Harry asked. “I’ve rather gotten out of the habit of using a phone.”

           “Sure. I still have some time off, I could come down…do you live in London?”

           “Yes, but I can come up. It’s free for me to travel, right?”

           Dudley lowered his voice. “You mean the…the Disapparating thing?”

           “Yes, exactly. When are you free?”

           “I can take Iris to the park tomorrow afternoon. We could meet there.”

           And with some directions and a final, awkward goodbye, Dudley ended the first conversation with his cousin in eleven years.

           He showed up a couple of minutes late the next day, pushing Iris in her pram. Harry was sitting on a bench. He was wearing a Tshirt and jeans, ones that actually fit him, and he had a few lines around his eyes but nothing major. Dudley couldn’t think what the major difference was, until he realized that Harry looked happy. He’d never seen his cousin look that way.

           They shook hands and Dudley joined him on the bench, lifting Iris out of her pram. Harry cooed at the baby. “She’s even more lovely in person.”

           “What do your family look like?”

           “That’s right, you’ve never met Ginny. I forgot.” Harry pulled a picture from his pocket of a red haired woman with a small redhead boy and a dark haired boy on her lap. Harry sat next to her in the picture, cuddling a baby with masses of red hair. The picture moved, and Dudley watched fascinated as the little family played together.

           “They’re beautiful, Harry,” he muttered.

           “I know they are.” Harry smiled at his family before he put the picture away. “So…food critic? What’s that like?”

           “It’s nice. Better when the food isn’t terrible, but in some ways that makes the writing more fun.”    

           Harry laughed. “I know. I went and dug up the rest of the columns once I realized it was you and your partner. You write well.”

           “Leo taught me. Apparently I actually have a condition that makes it hard to write.”

           “That’s terrible.”

           “Should have caught it ages ago.” People would have, if his dad’s money and mum’s voice hadn’t kept forcing the teachers to move him along, if they hadn’t insisted nothing was wrong with him…

           “They fucked us up, didn’t they?”

           Harry’s bluntness startled Dudley into honesty. “Yes, they did. I love them, though. They thought they were doing what’s best.”

           “No,” Harry corrected him gently. “They knew what they were doing what’s best. They wouldn’t listen to anyone, because you were theirs, and they knew best.”

           Dudley couldn’t bring himself to defend his parents to the cousin who’d lived under his stairs, who’d worn his castoffs. “I had their love, at least. I think you had it worse.”

           “I don’t think so,” Harry said. “Looking back now, I really don’t. But that’s coming from my end.”

           Dudley just nodded. He stood up. “I can’t stay long,” he blurted, and really, he couldn’t. “Leo and I need to work on a quick column. But if you want, we could walk back together, it’s not far.”

           Harry smiled. “I’d like that.”

           And so began an awkward relationship. Dudley never quite lost his suspicion of wizards and magic, and the looks he got from some of Harry’s family made him suspect he was right to be cautious. Besides, he and his cousin had built separate lives, and with everything in their past it was probably for the best that they kept it that way.

           But every Christmas Harry sent cards of cash for him and Leo and toys for Iris, and Dudley sent the same. They kept in touch on the phone once a month, and finally grew comfortable when those calls ended in silence as they tried to bridge a gap that twenty-eight years had dug.

           That gap had a helping hand once Iris had grown up brilliant and Muggle, and met Lucy Weasley at university.

Note: This has been edited after some comments about Dudley speculating about being poly or pan. I realize now that I edited out a line that implied him having previous attraction to women, which would prompt that speculation. That's been fixed now, and I apologize for the confusion. If Dudley was attracted to men only, he would be gay and still attracted to Leo. Trans men are men.

[glitchfan0002]

Feathers and Blood

It took a long bit of the day at the Kuronekos for Humra’s mission to hug every one of her siblings involved in this successful escape. She hugged, cried, and let her dear family speak to her. The endeavor was tiresome enough, but now only one victim remained; herself. 

..And no, not her present self, but rather the self that was holding on and sulking in the closet. 

Humra reached the room, took a deep breathe, and approached the closet, “..Hello..?” She asked the other. 

No answer. 

Huh. 

“Helloo..?” Humra knocked on the door, “Hana..? Are you in the-”

“Go away! I know you won’t fill your end of the deal. So go and let me rot!” 

Sighing, the teen pressed her ear against the door, exclaiming, “You won’t rot, though! We won’t let you, Hana! A-and besides..I’ve thought about it and..a-and..” 

“And what?” The closet monster snapped.

“...I’m a girl of my word. Come on out, and I’ll...slay you..”

Silence. Hana was extremely shocked to hear about something like that. Humra? Slay her? This sweet little girl, raised by birds, family, and love..slay her own self? 

“You’re lying....” The spacial self growled, holding her knees up to her chest, and starting to cry more, “You won’t do it. You can’t. You’re too soft..” The woman started to feel the effects of them being so close together. “...Although if you keep talking-”

“I know.” Humra on the other side was holding her head, but kept her determined smile to stay conscious, “-And I’m not lying. I need you to come out, so I can fulfill my promise. Please? I really don’t want to do this, but if you want it..” Inside, the bird had a plan that would hopefully work well! 

Another pause, a cackle, some weeping, until finally a defeated sigh of, “..Okay.” 

“Okay?”

“O..kay...” Hana growled in nausea and sick, and got up towards the door. 

The more close they came towards each other, Humra felt her world to spin faster and faster, sicker and nauseous. She found herself stepping back against the bed as the closet door click opened. Holding her head, she steadied her breathing, and when Hana slowly limped out, Humra felt like she was looking at a mirror. Of course the other looked more weakened, pale, mystic, and younger looking but..

The aura, specifically. It was very creepy. The sweat formed over her head, when Humra just sat on the bed, staring at awe, “H-Hana..?”

Meanwhile, the other-while looking paled and sickly as well, still sat up straight and seemed to be enjoying the feeling regardless of a lack of smile. Hana didn’t stop moving forward, “Get right to the point. Now come on, kill me. Get on with it.” She moved a hand towards the others’ face, “Get on--”

“Okay! Okay-! Just-step back, please-!” Humra breathed, putting out her hands and wincing, “J-just. Let..me-!” She stepped back, away from her. While she tripped, the bird caught herself, wary, and glancing up at the other, “I just..need a breather..” 

That stares from Hana were unnerving enough! But..Humra had to do this. “..Um..” Humra grew nervous, “Okay..so how do you-I mean..before I just..” She stuttered until finally, “I...here..” With that, the teen took a deep breathe, stepped forward, and tightly embraced the other, shutting her eyes, “..Please..is there anything I can-”

“No!” The other gasped, trying to shove Humra away, “No! No hugging! This is-! No, Humra-!!” She tried wiggling, but the more she did, the more weakened she was. This was the same for the other. However, the bird wasn’t letting go. 

“I won’t. I don’t know you..” Humra the hugged breathed shallowly, refusing to close her eyes from unconscious, “But I want you to know you’re loved..! I love you..! You don’t need to be alone-!” 

“Humra! If you do this-!!!!!”

“I know...” Humra smiled, stepping forward, and feeling the both of them fading into one, “Y-you don’t.....have to be...alone.....” She wheezed, feeling the pain in her body shouting at her to stop. “Hana...the other told........me....this feels...right...”

Hearing this, the struggling white-haired space girl finally stopped, and felt tears in her eyes. She felt what love felt like. A heart, Humra’s memories..! Humra, meanwhile, felt the pain from Hana; the loneliness....the power!

Everything was overwhelming. Space, time, and eternity! 

Holding so tightly, Humra finally collapsed in a burst of light, clutching herself, shaking, and feeling the both of them become one. It was similar to how her Time-Self gave apart of herself..but not all of it. On her knees, Humra slumped over, holding her mouth and feeling herself ache. It was way too much! Her insides were on fire, and the moment that she closed and opened back her eyes, her skin was melting into the floor. Her bones felt frail, and if she hadn’t uncovered her mouth, Humra felt she’d be losing something vital. 

This was bad..this was very bad! The Hana side was scolding herself saying this was beyond idiotic. Not only had they merged together, but now they were sharing vast information that could not be held by a mortal mind. Hana was shouting at her. Oooh that shouts were almost shrieking inside of her how the both of them are going to be doomed. 

Yet, in their hearts, they knew. Humra knew from the very first time they were going to be doomed. She was merely determined to at least give love to someone who lacked any form of it. Even if it meant risking her own life. 

Humra wanted so much to have merged with all three to show them how happy their lives could be, but now that everything was fading, the white-haired guessed that at least she fulfilled her promise to Hana. Both of them would be slayed. 

Accepting her fate was always easy in the face of death. She felt like Death was such a familiar entity to her. Her throat was closing up for good, her lungs clenching for air, and her heart beating vigorously, Humra looked to her arm. Why? She wasn’t sure, but the arm with her mark. Upon looking at it, it wasn’t just a mark anymore, but hope. Two wishes could be granted to her, and ones that-she realized-what her other selves dearly wanted; a safe timeline to be with Yoshiya without danger and restarting this one...or the wish to live forever with him, and be able to protect. 

Right..there was hope, right? Hope..! 

Bowing her head, and looking away, Humra bit her tongue, and tried to willfully wish for hope. She needed it. Everyone needed it! Only hope could bring people forward in this life and go on living this beautiful life! 

Her arm shone red, and the tattoo seemed to have come to life. The Honedge emerged, but it was red, dark purple, and beamed with such an unknown but familiar aura. 

...No. This was her imagination right? 

Humra wished more and more within her thoughts. That was the last place she could chant for herself to keep hope alive. Nothing was happening after moment of repeating. Looking back up as much as she can, feeling her vision fading and her face melting to the ground, she spotted lights ahead. They were familiar as well-in fact those were her parents! No-she couldn’t yet, though. 

Despite wanting to reach out, the moment the teen denied the vision to close her eyes. A loud pierce through her chest was felt through her. Humra looked down, and spotted that the sword Pokemon had stabbed through her. It only added to the pain, and yet it seemed to have removed a tremendous weight from her. Humra felt like she could feel the pressure from her heart fade away.

At the end, Humra was most transfixed on the shadowy aura. It was her’s. She knew that..was it in her body..? 

Before questioning, however, the teen finally shut her eyes. The wish was still on her mind. Hoping..pleading for this to happen. Her wish..

The ghost sword quivered when the melting and ruined body of Humra was shining in a beam of light. They were coming back together in a new form. From her bones and the body leftover, feathers started to form, talons, teeth, and a beak bloomed within that light. It was reminiscent of when a Pokemon evolves; it becomes enveloped in light and after a pause, and a quick change, they were different. 

The light and the Honedge disappeared and in the new clean space-as if nothing had occurred-a body softly fell to the floor. There, laid a young bird. White-silver feathers, talons, wings, a tail, some scales, and a pink underbelly. She was not large, and was the same size as her old self. 

There, the new bird lay not in her blood, but in feathers that were shed in the evolution. 

What remained of Humra’s body were her glasses, pokeballs, and trinkets from her hair. 

After the situation had passed, and the Kuroneko home was filled with familiar sounds once more from the downstairs, a Garchomp nudged her way into the room. Terra was worried for Humra at first, but now overjoyed by what she found on the ground! A bird! A small Lugia for her to eat and play with! 

Grinning, Terra rushed over, scooped the bird in her teeth like a dog-pokemon with a new toy, and decided to show everyone the prize she received! 

Her trainer would be found, the Garchomp reasoned among the excitement.

[fanficimagery]

Anonymous said: A jeffxreader where she sits with the jocks at their lunch table bc she recently broke her arm and they are rlly protective of her especially jeff bc he likes her and just include silly banter amongst all of them and maybe later jeff finally gets the courage to ask her out and she happily agrees and fluff thnx <3

Author’s Note: Dear requester, I had to switch arm to ankle because I royally screwed up. Sorry!

JEFF X READER

"Seriously, Jeff, you don't have to keep driving me to school," you chuckle. "I’m plenty capable of doing things on my own still.”

Shaking his head in refusal, Jeff parks in the student parking lot of the high school before turning towards you. "If it wasn't for me goading you, you wouldn't have been playing flag football with us, Y/N. I sometimes forget just how rowdy those idiots can get."

"It's not your fault."

"It kind of is."

As you grin at him, your mind takes you back to the previous weekend when Jeff goaded you into playing flag football with him and the other jocks. It was meant to be fun and it was, but then they divided up the teams into shirts vs. skins and while you were ogling Jeff who'd been on the skins team.. Monty and Justin got a little too rough, and pulled you down into their playful scuffle. Only it wasn't so playful and you're the one who ended up being injured.

You wrinkle your nose at Jeff. "I take it back. It's totally your fault," you mumble.

He laughs, oblivious to the real reasoning you were distracted that day on the field. "I'm glad we agree. Now come on, lets head to class."

For some reason, however, today is just not your day. You've managed before to go from class to class without any problems, but it's like someone jinxed you. Your ankle is suddenly bothering you, you keep losing your balance, and every single person who comes up to you with pity in their expressions just grates on your nerves.

But it's Tyler who really pushes you over the edge. Tyler who, if he doesn't have his camera in your face, is waiting around the corner and shooting candids after you’ve told him numerous of times to leave you alone.

And then by some miraculous decision the following day, you find people backing off as the jocks take point. First it's Jeff walking you and carrying your book bag the first two class periods, then Zach shoots that puppy smile at you to distract you so he could steal your belongings and carry them for the next class period, Justin somehow figures that taking notes for you fourth and fifth period will help you out, and Monty just scowls at anyone who tries talking to you in sixth. Bryce chats you up in seventh and even offers to drive you home after school, but Walker's always given you a weird vibe that you politely decline and mention you'll just wait for Jeff.

They keep it up for a whole two weeks and apparently aren't going to let up anytime soon.

"Seriously, man, just ask her out," Monty grunts, lifting weights at Jeff's side. "Since you've appointed us her body guards, everyone tends to steer clear. You have no competition."

Jeff shakes his head. "It's not that simple. We have a good thing right now and I don't want to ruin it by putting her on the spot. I'm not even sure she likes me," he grunts. "If she doesn't like me, I make things weird and I lose my friend."

The weights drop from Monty's hands with a loud thump! "You're joking, right?" He comes to stand in front of Jeff, a look of disbelief in his features. Jeff shrugs and gently places his own set of weights down. "Dude. The reason Y/N ended up with a broken ankle is because she was too busy staring at you prancing around half naked to see the scuffle heading straight for her."

"What?"

This time, Monty laughs. "Atkins. Bro," he shakes his head in amused disbelief. "I just- I can't with you right now."

As Monty turns to head out of the lifting room, Jeff jogs after him. "Wait! What do you mean? Come on, Cruz, don't be an asshole!"

Jeff's stacking food onto one lunch tray for the both of you when you feel someone yank your crutches from your hands. You mutter curses at the idiot who dare take away the only thing helping you walk, but as you try to hop around and tell off whoever's taken them you feel an arm at your back and the person bends just low enough for their other arm to cradle the back of your knees.

Scooped up in a bridal carry, you soon come face to face with a beaming Zach. "Dammit, Gigantor! Put me down."

"No can do, Y/L/N. We're eating outside today and you take forever to hobble down a few steps."

You want to argue back with him, but you know he's right. You still haven't mastered taking the stairs with crutches, but being carried draws attention and that's the last thing you want. So instead of arguing a pointless argument with Zach, you look to Jeff. "Jeffrey, tell the Giant to let me go. I'm plenty capable of walking. Or hopping."

"Sorry, babe. He does have a point."

Babe? You blink in surprise and your mind blanks.

Not a single word leaves your mouth, what little processing your brain is capable of still stuck on the word babe and how it effortlessly fell from Jeff's lips. Zach, too, seems rather amused, but more by the blush slowly staining your cheeks as opposed to Jeff's sudden realization of what he's just said. Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out and Jeff sheepishly smiles at you before busying him by putting your favorite foods on the tray. Zach snorts and as you wrap your arms around his neck to help stabilize yourself, you pinch one of his earlobes. 

"You know, you do complain an awful lot for being carried by one of the sweetest guys in school." You turn towards the voice and Jessica smiles impishly at you, she being the one to carry your crutches as Justin loads up a lunch tray for himself and her. It's awfully cute how Justin tends to his girlfriend and you try not to think too much on how Jeff's doing the same for you. His friend.

But you put that on the back burner for now and shrug at Jessica. "I know he means well, but I don't like being so high up. I'm afraid of heights."

Jess giggles and Zach rolls his eyes. "We can't all be fun-sized like you, Y/N."

You glare halfheartedly as he starts walking, easily maneuvering around the cafeteria and out the side doors. Jeff follows behind him, winking at you when you pout at him in defeat, and behind him follows Justin and Jessica. Monty brings up the rear, a tray loaded with enough food for three people and you guess that that's why Zach didn't seem too upset about carrying you. Monty was getting his food for him.

You have lunch with the jocks outside as you’ve recently been doing, Jeff nearly sitting thigh to thigh with you. Zach and Monty bicker in front you and to your left sits Justin and Jessica who seem in their own little world. 

Halfway through lunch, Monty and Zach start to get a little loud for their friendly banter, and you throw a half eaten french fry at them. "Cool it, Twilight!" You direct at Monty. "The last thing I need is you to start a fight and break something else on me. Again."

Monty scowls. "Twilight?"

"Yeah." You shrug as Jessica snickers, she and Justin now tuned in to what you're saying. "You remind me of that werewolf guy with the anger issues. Always quick to be offended and just itching for a fight."

Zach starts laughing now and Monty quickly punches his arm. Then he turns his attention back on you. "I don't know whether to laugh at the fact you actually watched those movies or be offended you compared me to a mutt."

"He is a hot mutt," Jessica muses and then shrieks when Justin tickles her in retaliation.

You, however, you just smirk and shrug. "We all had our phases. I'm not ashamed to admit I watched the movies."

"Uh huh." His eyes narrow on you and he looks seconds away from retorting with some stupid remark, but his gaze darts to Jeff instead. "Atkins, get your girl under control. She's being a dick."

You laugh at his assessment, but your heart's pounding and you're praying your laugh doesn't sound as nervous as you feel. 

Your girl. Monty called you Jeff's girl and so far, Jeff's not denying it and no one at your table looks like it's a big deal when it should be a big deal! You and Jeff are friends, nothing more. Nothing less. Although you wouldn't mind if it was something more.

A few more seconds pass and all Jeff does is laugh, and you figure that if Jeff's going to play it cool, then so can you.

So you scoff. "His girl?" You muse, raising an eyebrow at Monty while casually leaning your head on Jeff's shoulder. "Do you see me wearing his Letterman? I'm no one's girl, Montgomery."

"Is that all it takes, Y/L/N?" Monty grins. "You're easier than I thought you'd be."

Despite the double meaning behind his words, you let it slide. "That and a peanut butter cookie. You boys don't realize that us girls like to be fed, too. Food makes all the difference. You should takes some notes."

A cookie lands in front of you before Monty can retort and your teasing smirk falls. Your head swivels to face Jeff on your right, the same direction the cookie came from, and you gape at his sheepish smile and studded ears glinting in the afternoon sun. 

"So a cookie and my Letterman, huh? I'm pretty sure that can be arranged," Jeff says, already shrugging out of his jacket. 

"Wait, what?"

"Finally," Monty groans as he pushes up from  his seat.

"Finally? What do you mean by finally?" You ask him, but Monty's gathering his trash and walking away. Zach laughs and you look at him. "Dempsey?"

He holds his hands up in mock surrender. "This is between you and Atkins. Have fun." He's quick to follow after Monty and as you look for Jessica, she and Justin are long gone.

What. The. Hell.

"So a little birdy told me," Jeff starts off nervously, then gaining some confidence as he goes on when you hesitantly give him your attention, "that you were ogling me that day we were playing flag football and that’s why you ended up with a broken ankle. That true?"

Your mouth opens and then clicks shut. Your shoulders slump in defeat. Fuck you, little birdy.

"It is," he chuckles in realization. You blush, but he's quick to turn and straddle the bench so he's facing you. "Funny thing is, I don't mind. Not at all." Leaning in to make sure you make eye contact with him, he says, "I'm being serious with that cookie throw-down. And my Letterman. I've liked you for a while now, but didn't know if you liked me more than a friend until Monty pointed it out. I had to work up some courage and then you gave me the perfect opening."

"You're being serious," you finally realize. Holy shit! "You really want this."

"Yeah. I do. So what do you say, Y/N? Wanna be my girl?"

Your lips twitch into an infectious smile. "Yes, Jeffrey, I'll be your girl."

[fanatic-writers]

Sticks and Stones

A/N: I am so sorry this took so long to put up I was just so nervous to post it not to mention half way through I got busy with school and things. I’m still really worried that I didn’t show enough of the abuse or that I glorified it so if you feel that way I am sorry and please let me know and give me a few tips to fix that if you would like to. I wanted to go a different route than physical abuse because I see that touched on a lot and I hardly ever see emotional abuse at least in what I read. I hope you enjoy this was requested by @the-blue-haired-boy (Thank you for the request and for the nice things you had to say) -G

Request: Hi! I just discovered your blog and I LOVE your work! I was wondering if I could request a fic where the reader is in an abusive relationship and Bruce who has secretly loved her discovers it and helps her out of it? Thank you!

Warnings: Emotional Abuse, maybe swearing 

It was a beautiful evening. You and your boyfriend Adam were walking on the beach, joking with each other. You were laughing and having fun, Adam may have said a few rude things to you, but you reminded yourself he was always like this, so you allowed yourself to brush his comments off.

“10 bucks says you won't go into the ocean to get your hat,” Adam said as he swiped your favorite beanie off your head.

“Hey give it back” you protested trying to grab your hat. Adam held it high above your head as he laughed. You continued to jump to reach the navy cloth but it was too late, Adam tossed it into the water.

“You did not just do that,” you said as you stared in shock at the beanie floating in the water just out of your reach “Adam, my grandmother made that for me.”  

“Why don't you just go get it,” Adam said a smug look on his face 

“Because I'm in a dress that cost me more than your paycheck” you practically shrieked, Adam just laughed. As you were walking home, you got a text from Tony inviting you to dinner with the Avengers. You joined the Avengers just after the events of New York and had grown close to the team especially Bruce. “Wanna go out to dinner with the Avengers?” you asked Adam 

“You and your so-called friends?” he mocked

“Yup” you answered trying not to let his comment get under your skin

Adam shrugged “why not” he replied as you lead him to the tower. 

You met briefly with the Avengers making sure to introduce them to Adam before leaving for the restaurant. Once you were seated, you began to look over the menu. Adam looked over your shoulder “what we're you going to get” he asked 

“Uhm… chicken marsala sounds good” you replied. 

“doesn't that have a lot of calories? I thought you were trying to lose weight not gain it?” Adam asked. 

“I wasn't trying to lose weight” you looked at Adam confused.

“that explains a lot,” Adam said “maybe you should start” 

The Avengers stared at the two of you surprised by your interaction. They expected a snarky comeback or something about how you looked fine, but instead, they watched you nod.

“I think chicken sounds great Y/n,” Bruce commented 

“I dunno, Adam is right it's not that healthy” you responded 

“treat yo self,” Tony said to you as a waitress came by to take your orders. Again the Avengers were surprised to hear Adam order a salad for you and you didn’t even bat an eye. You hardly ever ate just a salad for dinner and you hardly ever let someone else dictate what you should eat. They overlooked it, thinking you might not be hungry, but as the night progressed, they each grew less and less fond of Adam. The perfect man you had described to them was replaced with a complete ass. He told you were ugly, that you weren't good enough. Of course He never directly said these things, but they were present in his tone and how he treated you. The Avengers drove Adam to his apartment per your request and took you back to the tower with them.  

“Y/n” Bruce called as you were walking to your room “can I talk to you?”

“Sure” you chirped

“Are you and Adam fighting? He said some rude things at dinner” Bruce asked hesitantly.

You shrugged “He’s always like that it’s fine, really, don’t worry about it.”

You could tell Bruce wanted to say more probably tell you this wasn't fine and it wasn't ok for Adam to say the things he did about you, but instead, he kept his mouth shut and invited you to lunch   

“I’ll have to ask Adam, but if he says it’s fine I’ll be there,” you replied entering your room. 

The next day Bruce waited hours for you to show up for lunch but you never came. On his way back to the lab he saw you walking out of your room.

“Hey I thought we were going to get lunch?” he asked. You hardly ever ditched without a reason

“Sorry Adam said he wanted to take me somewhere,” you said 

“You didn’t think to tell me?” Bruce asked trying to mask his annoyance

“Actually” You hesitated “Adam doesn’t want me to talk to you.” 

Bruce was stunned. How had you let this man come into your life and control you? Before he could talk to you, you were out the door and walking down the street with your so-called boyfriend.

“You’re late” Adam chastised 

“Sorry I ran into Bruce” you commented

“I thought I told you I didn’t want you talking to him” He reminded you

“He started talking to me. He’s a friend I can’t stop him from talking to me. I did tell him what you said about us hanging out, there is nothing for you to worry about.” you told him 

“You were probably really nice about it huh?” Adam asked  

“Well yeah,” you said

“You act like that, and he won't take you seriously” he mentioned, “You’re never strong you’re always so weak and nice.”

“Sorry” You muttered. Adam continued to walk down the street and grabbed some food for himself but nothing for you. You didn’t even think to ask him for something. He’d done this before when you forgot your purse at home. He walked you back to the tower calling you an idiot and saying if you wanted something to eat you should’ve brought your money. You went straight to your room. You felt like shit, and you wanted to wallow in your worthlessness. A soft knock interrupted your sobs, and you heard Bruce call your name before opening your door.

“Hey,” he murmured “are you ok?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” you said like a child to a stranger as you tried to calm your breathing 

“Y/n, you don’t mean that,” the scientist said as he moved next to you and pulled you close to him “we both know I’m not leaving till you tell me what's wrong.” 

Your mind was racing, did Bruce really care? Why would he care you were a pathetic mess? No one should care about you, and if they did it was because they wanted something “What do you want?” you finally asked 

“For you to be ok,” Bruce said 

“And after that?” Bruce looked confused “I’m a worthless piece of shit no one wants to make sure I’m ok unless I can do something for them.” 

“Who told you that?” he asked  trying to look at your face which was tucked between your knees 

“Adam” you muttered 

“Y/n, if Adam is saying these things he doesn’t love you. He’s using you. He’s not good enough for you” Bruce spoke softly.

“And who else is there?” you asked “You really think I could get a nice guy to like me? I’m a mess, nice guys like you want someone stable. They want someone who doesn’t mess everything up; they want someone strong.”

“I can guarantee that a nice guy like me loves you” Bruce blushed “You’re not a mess, and you’re definitely not worthless. You may not be 100% stable but who is in this world? And you’re the strongest girl I’ve ever met”

“You’re just saying that,” you said 

“I’m dead serious” Bruce replied

“No you aren’t” you argued

“Y/n,” Bruce paused “you can do so much better than him you deserve better than him.”

“You keep saying that” you sighed 

“It’s true,” Bruce said as he grabbed your phone from your bedside table and handed it to you “end it.” 

“And if I don’t want to?” you asked

“I’m not in control of you, in the end, it is your decision, but I’d think you were lying if you told me you wanted to stay with Adam,” Bruce observed 

“And how do you suggest I end it,” you asked 

Bruce shrugged “You could text him or call him, whatever you feel comfortable doing.” 

You sighed and called your soon to be ex, Bruce sitting beside you the entire time for support and reassurance that you were doing the right thing. Tears were shed, and eventually, you hung up on Adam as he continued to tell you no one in their right mind would love you. Little did you know you had already found someone who did love you and would love you if you let him.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading this fic if you want a part 2 let me know. I was thinking about writing one anyways. The next part of Operation: Save the Fairy should be coming out soon you can read the latest part here! If you have any requests, send them in! Love you all! -G

tags:  @ws-lover-245