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rcksmith · 4 years

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You — Five Hargreeves

Request: “Could I get 37 and 63 from the smut prompts with older Five, if you are comfortable, if not then understandable”

Smut Prompts:

37. “I’m so sick of your voice. Why don’t you come over here and put your mouth to better use?”

63. “Could he make you feel as good as i do?”

A/ N: We not tolerate any pedophilia here!!

I write about Five with their 20s. I write the same about the characters of Harry Potter.

I hope it got close to what you wanted. ❤️

Guys, I really understand who doesn't feel comfortable reading or writing Five's smut. But I always say that I only write with him (any genre: romance, fluff or angst) with the notion that Five is 20 years old here. All of my fanfics mention swearing or sex, even if it is a memory or something shallow, but as I am writing with Five as an adult, it is consistent that the fic has aspects of an adult life.

English is not my first language, so I so sorry if have a mistake.

Requests are open. Love you ❤️

Couple: Five Hargreeves / Fem! Reader.

Warnings: Smut, bad words.

— — — — —

You had dated some guys before, because no one turned 22 without getting hurt a little for love, but no relationship proved as intense (and difficult) as dating Five Hargreeves. If you could describe the 1 year that you were together, you would use only two words: sex and coldness.

Sex because Five had an appetite you've never seen in your life and you loved it. It was strong, intense, hot. He always seemed to want to discount your internal problems by fucking you hard, and you couldn't deny that his raw footprints drove you crazy.

And coldness because Five Hargreeves, as well as being hot in sex, was the north pole in romance. He was dry, very reserved, without any appreciation for physical touch or cutest demonstrations. He did not like to talk to much or participate in frivolous conversations.

He always had a sarcastic or rude argument for his comments about thinking that the two of you should act more like a couple and not like nymphomaniacs. And as time went by, you got tired of feeling that you didn't have a partner but a sex disk.

That's when you finished it all. It ended because you liked affection and love and not just fucking. It ended because you thought you deserved more and you didn't want to build a life with someone so cold.

That was the purpose of a relationship, wasn't it? Wanting to build a future with someone. And when you didn't see yourself building a future with Five anymore, you just finished. It was difficult, obviously. It shattered your heart, because in the end you still loved him, but it hurt more to know that there was no way to fix it.

And that's why you found yourself here, in a crowded nightclub, at 2 am, dancing with your friends and kissing any man just to try to forget Five. It had been three months since you two broke up, and staying in your room crying and eating chocolate didn't seem to be helping you get over it. So when your friends asked you out, you went. You went because you wanted to get drunk, kiss some cat guy and forget that your heart was in pieces.

And that was why you were kissing that guy, squeezing the back of his neck while his hands went down around you waist and squeezed your ass. He didn't have the intensity and electricity of Five, but he was a handsome, so... it would have to do.

As soon as you separated from him and started dancing with your friends again, enjoying the deafening music and what the drink did to your head and body, you felt more numb from the pain.

“I need another drink.” You warned one of your friends, almost screaming to try to make yourself heard with all that deafening music.

As soon as she nodded and you started walking among all those huddled bodies, you arrived at the counter a few seconds later, sitting in the only vacant seat.

“Vodka, pure.” You didn't want anything sweet, too soft. You wanted something rough, strong, that would mess with your system.

You needed something stronger than the pain you were feeling.

After turning the first shot, swallowing and closing your eyes for a second, trying to hold the grimace and the strong taste, you were going to ask for another when a voice came up behind you:

“Nothing more for her, thanks.”

You froze. Your heart failed and then shot to alarming levels. You knew that voice, you knew it better than your own. Suddenly, whether by drinking or by the presence behind you, your body started to get hot, shaky and wobbly. If you tried to get up now, you would surely fall.

That bastard wouldn't dare ...

“Hello, stranger.”

Yes, he would dare.

You turned to Five, amazed. Suddenly, you have never felt so sober in life, rigid, with heightened senses. And that was what you were talking about too. Whenever Five was involved, you became someone you didn't like. You were much more attentive to any intonation or half words, searching for hidden meanings for him sentences.

You hated that. You hated having to look for clues when in fact the person should say with word what he felt. You hated having to analyze syllable by syllable to know the true feelings. When all a dating should bring was honesty, calm, peace and complicity.

“What are you doing here?!” You were not smooth, because any situation involving Five was already exasperating for you.

“Is it forbidden to go to a nightclub?” The same condescending tone, the hands in the pockets, the smug look, the smirk.

Five was beautiful as sin, it was the definition of superb, but outer beauty was not you its weakness. So, as much as he looked like a God under those flashing lights, you just rolled your eyes.

“As far as I can remember, you called places like ‘Waste of time’ or ‘Ridiculous places Klaus goes to’ or, ‘Am I better than these places’ ” You were acidic, turning back to the front and asking the waiter for a shot again.

Five wouldn't tell you how much to drink.

“How skittish are we?” But turning forward was a bad idea, because Five leaned in behind you, breathing in your ear, in your neck.

You held a gasp, pressing your thighs together and trying to focus on anything other than the intense presence behind you.

“You are so skittish” then the voice continued under your skin, and you felt some fingers from it take your hair off your neck. “You used to be so obedient...”

So you were transported to the millions of memories of the times he fucked you. The millions of times he made you scream and obey his every command. Yes, you were a good girl for Five. And that sucked.

“Five.” Your voice was a warning, and when the waiter served your shot, you turned without thinking twice or without Five daring to intrude. “Go away”

You got up from the chair, trying to dodge his touch. Because you knew that if he touched you, you would give in, and if you gave in, you would end up in his bed, and if you did, your heart would be even more broken the next day.

Five frowned, questioning, his gaze fixed on you. Then all that intense energy was replaced by an angry wave.

“Is it because of him?”

His?

Now you frowned, but in a confused expression and you were beginning to wonder if Five had gone mad.

“Who…”

“Don't be innocent, I saw you with him today, just now. Rubbing on him like... like... ”

So Five was close to you again. The height of him making you lift the chin to look at him, the smell of man invading your nose... God, his are a fucking handsome and...

Focus!

"Whose are you talking about?" Five was still looking at you angrily and now with a hint of irony.

And that's when you realized who he was talking about. The guy you just kissed.

“For God's sake, Five!” You answered, incredulous. “It’s not ‘how are you, Y / N?’ Or ‘how have you been, Y/N?’ No, this is always your possessiveness of not losing your toy to someone else! But you know, big boy, your train left a long time ago.” You looked at him as if Five were your biggest enemy, and turned your back on him.

You needed to get away, needed to keep as much distance between you as possible. You already felt the grip in your throat, your eyes burning. God, this guy had an overwhelming power over you. You still love him, much, holy fuck!

Then you crossed the nightclub again, past the sea of dancing bodies, hoping that, luckily, Five would lose sight of you in the crowd. But you no longer needed songs, dances or drinks, your mind was pounding so much that you just thought about being alone, at least for a second.

You continued to advance between the bodies, and when you reached the other end of the club, now far enough from the bar, you entered the ladies' room. The deafening sound of the music was drowned out when you closed the door, and only then did you manage to release the breath you were holding.

You was put both hands on the sink, taking a moment with your own thoughts before looking ahead and seeing your reflection. You weren't as bad as you felt, some mascara had out. The mirror said you should go home, but you didn't know if you could face those people outside with the possibility of seeing Five any second.

Lowering your head once more to turn on the tap and wet your hands to rub the back of your neck, you sighed deeply when the sensation of the cold water hit your hot skin. But all the sense of relief was gone when you looked in the mirror again and saw Five.

You gave a startled scream, turning to him in a burst and resting your hands on the sink behind you.

“What the fuck, Five!” Your heart was still pounding, but you were beginning to suspect it was because of his little smile.

Five was strode toward you, and he didn't stop until your body was trapped between his and the sink. It was hot. Five seethed like hell and smelled of sin, and you began to feel the pulse of it. It was unbearable how much power he had over you. But the truth was that you would always be a moldable dough in the hands of Five. Worse, he knew it.

He knew because you could see it in the way he looked at you, the way his hands went up from his your thigh to his neck, the way he leaned into your ear and murmured:

“You can't run from me, cute.”

And if you were a molding dough before, now you were clay on his fingers. You closed your eyes, taking a deep breath through and pressing your fingers into the sink behind you.

“You were never a good liar.” He continued, the velvet voice from hell seducing you "I can feel your excitement from here."

Now you were on fire. Your core pulsed for him, your body burned and the desire became so strong that you felt like crying.

“Five...” You wanted to tell him to walk away, to leave. But your body begged you to willingly accept what he was giving you. The truth was, you wanted more.

“My good girl” now his thin, white fingers were on your neck, running the tips over your heaving skin.

Five Hargreeves was the wrong way and you were going willingly. You wanted to leave, but your whole body was begging you to let him touch you some more. Just a little more…

“Look at you…” Five's voice was still hoarse and seductive, his right hand wandered from your neck to the side of your body, outlining all your curves as if it were a goddamn treasure “I barely touched you and you're already excited.”

You wanted to say that it was ridiculous, that he was very arrogant. But you would only dig your own grave, because the truth was that you were excited. Much. And lying to a fucking genius was almost always impossible.

"Could he make you feel as good as i do?" If he hadn't been a presumptuous arrogant before, now he was.

His hand sank between your legs, and you groaned loudly when you felt the cold finger touch the core of your burning panties. You tilted your head back, leaning against the mirror as you closed your eyes in a silent groan.

“I bet you don't” now kisses landed on the skin of your exposed neck, heading towards the neckline “But I want to hear you say it.”

You could not. Because his fingers were playing with you and his mouth was all over the pulp of your breasts. It was too much, too much stimulus for your poor body that would be satisfied with just one kiss.

That's when the thought of the kiss brought you back to Earth orbit. Kisses have always been very intimate and romantic, and you remember that Five almost never kissed you much. It hurt you. It hurt because it looked like you were good enough for him to fuck you, but not good enough for him to think about being more loving and fighting for your relationship.

“Five…” Five lifted the mouth of your breasts, looking at you intently. “ I can't.”

"Why not? We had fun a loot before. ”

“Because this... this is not healthy. We will regret it tomorrow. ”

Five frowned, his hand motionless between your legs.

“Is there someone else?” His voice was low.

“Oh my God, no!” It was absurd how he only cared about that “You don't care about me! Only if someone is fucking me! ”

“God, Y / N!” Five was amazed “ What do you think I'm doing here?!"

You looked at Five as if him were crazy, and looked down at the position of their bodies and looked back at him, signaling very well what was happening.

Five laughed, perplexed, and took his hands off you immediately. He took a few steps back, the shadow of bitter laughter still bordering his mouth.

“Do you think I came here just to eat you?” Five's vocabulary could always be very dirty when he wanted to, and that secretly always turned you on. “Holy God, Y / N!”

“You think this is what ?!”

Then he came to you. And long hands held your face with intensity. There was despair in that touch, passion... and a very overwhelming desire.

“I want you. Ardently.” His voice was not soft “I came here to meet you and try to talk, because I want you back so much. Because I love you. But when I saw you in that little dress... kissing another one... Ah, Y / N” Now he stoked you with the words, each syllable beating against your lips “ I wanted to fuck you in front of everyone for them to see to whom that bitch belongs.”

You sighed loudly. You didn't want to, but it was involuntary. You should want more. You should want him to apologize out about the things he did, ask you back. But the truth was, the desire rumbled through your veins and you didn't want to wait any longer. For now, that would do.

You kissed him. With intensity, despair and savagery. Five reciprocated like a hungry animal and put his hands on your thigh, propelling you up and sitting you in the sink. You were hungry animals that used each other as food.

You thought a sex of reconciliation would be loving and intense. But Five always showed you that sex with him would always be rude. He was didn't make love to you, he fucked you, hard.

Five clutched your body with all his fingers, marking yoyr skin with purple ten digits. He pulled you close as if he could merge with you, and the panties you wore were brutally torn when he went to take them off.

When Five touched you, where you wanted it most, and pushed two fingers brutally into you, you screamed loudly and whined afterwards like a kitten.

"Oh, I will destroy you.” It was not a promise, it was a warning, a reminder of what he would do to you seconds later.

“Five!” You clasped your hands on his shoulders, shifting your waist around he fingers “please... please...!”

“Please what?!” Now he was rough, the fingers coming in and out of you aggressively, hitting your aching walls “Please, Five, fuck me? Or, please, Five, make me come?”

You groaned loudly, the words matching his aggressive rhythm.

“Fuck me! Fuck me, now! ” You stirred up more “Fuck me hard, Five.”

Suddenly, his other hand clung to your face, pulling you by the chin to look at him.

“Command, no! Begging, yes, it's cute, now commanding is unacceptable!” It was a clear, fierce warning. And when you whimpered and agreed to submit, Five tightened your jaw “I’m so sick of your voice. Why don’t you come over here and put your mouth to better use?”

Then him hand that was on your chin went to the nape of your neck, holding your hair tightly and bringing you closer. He removed his fingers from you, and come close at your mouth. You obediently opened it and took his two fingers. He didn't have to tell you to start sucking, running your tongue over all the mess you had made on his fingers.

“My dear good girl.”

His approval was followed by a friendly pat on your face, removing his hand from the back of your neck and unfastening his own belt. Five didn’t give you time to think before entering you, sinking deep into your core.

You screamed, pressing his fingers to your mouth and closing your eyes with intensity. But Five didn't give you time to breathe, his rhythm was constant, raw, arrogant, he was pushing hard inside you and you couldn't help but let out loud moans.

Five used the hand that was not in your mouth to grab your left thigh, releasing a loud, cracking slap when you squeezed it inside. You tried to keep sucking his fingers, but the intensity he put in you was so strong that your head was spinning.

“Do you want to come, little girl? Do you want to come for me?” He withdrew his fingers from your mouth, dissatisfied.

"Yea! Yes, please!"

Now you were begging. Begged in a pure and submissive way, and Five loved it. His pace increased, the thrusts became strong and steady, and his limb beat so deeply that you lost your breath. You were close, so close. felt herself being pushed into a giant, endless chasm, held by a thread that would soon break.

“Come to me, little bitch!” And that was cutting the wire.

You came. Intensely. You squeezed him inside as if your life depended on it and was rewarded with the hot, strong liquid filling you to the brim. You two were both panting, sweaty and satisfied. And you whimpered when his member was gone and the cum dripped from its pulsing core.

Five stared at the scene, mesmerized, letting out a loud sigh of satisfaction and kiss you again, now soft and lovin

"Welcome back." and you laughed, pushing his shoulder at the stupid joke.

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retrievablememories · 3 years

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tokyo 2112 | baekhyun (m)

title: tokyo 2112 pairing: rich guy!baekhyun x reader genre: sci-fi/cyberpunk au, enemies to lovers, angst, non-explicit smut request: “hi, how are you? 💕 could i request some cyberpunk x baekhyun fic? i have in mind Tokyo, neon lights and explosive lovers. please feel free to choose the amount you want to write or you can. and thanks! ✨” word count: 12.8k warnings: body modifications/prosthetics, attempted robbery, physical violence (not between bh x reader, though reader does think about fighting him 💀), blood, non-graphic wounds, mentions of sex/one non-explicit sex scene, mentions of a car accident, frequent alcohol use/unhealthy reliance on alcohol, smoking, mentions of classism/poverty, mentions of experimentation, surgery is performed on the reader but not described, one mention of being weighed on a scale-like device a/n: this is my first real, lengthy attempt at enemies2lovers (or maybe just the genre “reader’s an a-hole who makes a lot of assumptions”) because i’m a clown and like to challenge myself for no reason...and this is why i don’t fool with this particular romance genre 💀 feedback is appreciated, this fic is just a whole lot of me experimentally punching above my weight and i’m a bit undecided on my feelings about it

also, i imagined the reader’s arm with a similar structure to the winter soldier’s, for reference

Tokyo, year 2112

You meet him in a Lower Tokyo club, the neon lights bleeding into each other and creating a deep, vivid landscape. It’s an unnaturally pretty scene—unnatural like everyone and everything else inside this club.

There’s a look of subdued wonder on his face, which makes you roll your eyes. He’s all made up and way too pretty to be in this dingy club with his gaudy piercings and expensive rings. Still, he enters the building in all his affluent glory, standing out against the crowd of gritty and cobbled-together androids and half-humans.

He’s a rich man’s son and an even richer man’s grandson. He’s known for being attractive, intelligent, and ridiculously rich—and that’s about all you know of the man himself. Him and his family have been excellent at keeping their personal lives air-tight, only ever letting the public know what they want everyone to know. But ultimately, they are only human. You know they cannot be as perfect as they try to maintain, and you can only imagine the unsavory things in their family history that go much deeper than anyone could ever think up.

“Do you think he wears all that to make up for the lack of enhancements?” Your friend Valor asks. He’s gesturing specifically to the man’s lip piercing and the chains hanging off of it, attached to the collar of his shirt. It’s a little strange, but it’s a signature look for him, and certainly not one of the weirder things in here.

“I’d like to rip it right out,” you reply in lieu of an actual answer to Valor’s question.

The man appears misplaced—like a researcher conducting a study of alien beings rather than a regular club goer—though he doesn’t seem to mind this. He just observes everything around him.

Valor chuckles and shakes his head at the display, throwing back another shot. “Weird.”

“Hm. Come on.” You steer Valor in the other direction, looking to get away from the man before he can get near your area of the club. Though this is your first time being in such close quarters with Byun Baekhyun despite his popularity across Tokyo, you’d like to cut things short if at all possible.

Another hour passes, and the drinks keep flowing. Your mind has gotten pleasantly hazy by now, almost enough to make you forget about the trespasser in your club scene. Almost.

You, Valor, and three other familiar faces sit at a small table near the back of the club. One of the guys is recounting some run-in he had the other week with the Droid Commission, though you can barely hear over the music that’s only getting louder, so you just nod and pretend to understand. However, he suddenly falters in his tale and his eyes dart up to a spot above your head. Turning back, you see that he is standing just over your shoulder. Without thinking, you recoil.

Baekhyun slides from behind you and comes to stand in front of you all now, a strangely convivial smile on his face. He acts like he’s merely visiting you all at brunch instead of standing in a club in the roughest part of the city.

“Exquisite work here,” he says, though his words drown in all the noise. None of you know what he’s saying, or who he’s saying it to. Noticing the acute confusion, Baekhyun lowers himself to your level, his scent passing across your nose as he does. Some robust and fancy cologne you don’t know the name of. Your eyebrows furrow at his proximity, and your blood rushes; maybe out of anger, or maybe just from being drunk. Then he touches your left shoulder, right where the metal of your arm connects to your living flesh.

Yeah, definitely anger.

“I said, this work is exquisite. Quite fascinating, really. Who made it?” Baekhyun has to get fairly close to your ear for you to hear him above the commotion, and you can feel the heat of his mouth next to your skin. His eyes travel the length of your arm, which is fully exposed in your tank top. His voice is irritatingly smooth, and the chains of his lip ring lightly brush your shoulder when he pulls back after he finishes speaking. Though your arm may be made of metal, it still has artificial sensory “nerves” running through it that connect it to the rest of your nervous system—and right now, they are screaming from that slight touch.

Maybe you really are just too damn drunk.

You look into Baekhyun’s dark eyes, which are imploring, coy, and playful all at once. The others at your table watch this interaction as if suspended in time, probably trying to process the sheer nerve of this dude.

“Fuck off,” you blurt out, and brush him off your shoulder with your flesh hand.

He remains unoffended; he even looks entertained by your blunt rejection.

The man who was previously telling his story speaks up. “You heard her. Fuck off, pretty boy.”

Baekhyun straightens up and nods, then reaches into his jacket. Two of the men leap to their feet, thinking he’s about to pull out a weapon—which would not be the first or last occurrence in this club—but he only brings out a business card, tucked between two of his fingers.

“Ever vigilant, aren’t you?” Baekhyun says, laying the card on the small tabletop. Then he directs his next sentence to you. “If you decide you feel like telling me more...get in touch.”

Then he disappears back into the mass of moving bodies just as quickly as he came. You flex the fingers on your metal hand, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

Both men at your table sit back down, although they’re still a bit disgruntled. Valor picks up the card to inspect it. “You gonna call that weirdo?”

“Please. You know me better than that by now.” You pluck the card from his hand and rip it up without a second thought. However, it takes a little longer to forget about the heated imprint of Baekhyun’s fingers on your shoulder, or his whispering voice fluttering against your eardrum.

Getting the arm was merely an act of survival, the way you saw it.

Money was low and jobs were scarce—ones that weren’t dangerous, straight-up unappealing, or low pay. There had been a scientific research trial for a new cybernetics program, and it paid much better than many other opportunities around—enough to live on for at least a year, give or take, especially with the cheaper cost of living in your area. You’d been terrified about giving up a part of your body, thinking your body might reject the foreign technology and kill you for the offense, but your desperation outweighed the fear.

Thankfully, it worked.

That was nearly two years ago, though, and the trial was long over. Even with you spending as frugally as you possibly could, the money was close to running out.

Odd jobs here and there help you out some, but they are few and far between and don’t pay nearly enough to make a living on.

You’re getting increasingly anxious about the lack of options and dwindling money, though you also spend half of your time getting drunk, hitting up the club, and simply trying not to acknowledge your crumbling life. If worst comes to worst, you can always think about finding another research trial and exchanging another body part. Maybe. These cybernetics programs often crop up more in Osaka, which would require you to leave the city, but maybe you could get another gig and scrape up enough money for travel...

For now, however, you are back at the club’s familiar bar and making small talk with the bartender, who’s an android without a real name or identity. Everyone just knows it as T-4000, though it appears to be fine with its little niche in the world. Sometimes it teases you about your arm and wonders when you will make a complete transformation into a “metalhead” like itself. Though you cringe, the company is better than nothing when the others aren’t around, so you allow the jokes.

Alone at the bar, you’re too preoccupied with staring into your drink to register the body sliding onto the bar stool next to yours until you hear The Voice flowing out again.

“One Blue Lagoon, please.”

Oh, fuck. You put your head in one hand and angle your body away from his in hopes that he doesn’t notice it’s you. But just as your fortune turns out, he happens to be facing your metal arm.

“Oh, it’s you again.” Baekhyun sounds pleased to see you, like this is some great unexpected coincidence, though you know that’s not likely true. You lift your drink to your mouth and pretend you don’t hear him, though that doesn’t deter him. “I never did hear back from you. How sad.”

“I have no desire to talk to you or anyone like you,” you say, still with your head turned.

“Anyone like me?” He chuckles.

“You don’t belong here, in case you didn't notice.”

“By whose definition?”

“Everyone’s,” you retort. T-4000 comes back with Baekhyun’s drink, and it gives you a look of bright amusement and curiosity with its digital-screen face as it rolls away to help another customer.

“I don’t concern myself with ‘everyone’s’ opinions,” Baekhyun replies, drinking from his glass. “Just the ones who matter.”

“Right, like your rich friends,” you scoff. “Why the hell are you even here?” You turn to him then, though looking at him feels like a mistake—like staring into a solar eclipse. He’s still wearing his chains, like always, and his eyes are smoked out with dark shades of eyeliner. The makeup makes him look eternally tired, but in some high-fashion model way.

“Because I don’t like being around my so-called ‘rich friends’ any more than you would.” Baekhyun smirks.

“So sorry.” You roll your eyes. “Maybe you should become a hermit, then.”

“You seem to be doing a good job of that right now. Where’s your friends from last time?” He looks around as if they’ll materialize.

“None of your business.”

Baekhyun leans on the bar counter, placing his arms on top of it, and his cologne hits you again. You try to hold your breath against the scent, though you can almost taste it in the back of your mouth. Shaking your head, you peer directly into his eyes now, which are as exceedingly curious as the last time. They’re still inky dark under this lighting, reminding you of black holes that absorb all light and life.

“Is it bad for me to want to know more about your arm?”

“Like I just said, it’s frankly none of your business.” You cast a forlorn glance at your drink, which has gotten dangerously low.

“Fair enough.” He sips again. “Now. What if I want to know about you?”

The back of your neck flares with heat, though you can’t fathom why. “You must be truly bored if that’s what you came here for. Unfortunately, you aren’t as interesting as you seem to think you are.”

“You injure me.” But you both know he’s not hurt at all by anything you can think of to say to him. “But this isn’t about me—it’s about you.”

“What about me? How you want to steal my arm and use it for scrap metal, maybe? Or to build yourself a body mod, even? You really stand out in here being the only one who’s not partway made of tin or some shit, and it makes people distrust you. You can figure that out, right?”

“You make a lot of assumptions.” Baekhyun swirls his drink around in his glass, the blue liquid swishing around the sides. “Let me make some, then. You seem like a mysterious, closed-off, and perpetually discontented person. And despite what you might think, it’s not my first time seeing you around. I guess I can’t interest you in entertaining my presence just for company’s sake?”

You pause, wondering where Baekhyun could have possibly spotted you. You don’t hang out in any of the places someone of his standing would usually be seen in. But then again, does he even frequent those areas of Upper Tokyo? He’s always spending his time mingling in Lower Tokyo’s notable haunts instead. “...Are you some kind of peeping tom or something equally pathetic?”

T-4000 perks up at that, even from its distance on the other side of the bar, and it scoots a little closer as if it’ll need to call the Droid Commission in another minute. Which, in actuality, is a terrible idea—calling on one of the city’s many vigilantes would have a more effective outcome, if need be, but sending them for Baekhyun of all people might land you all in prison.

“Tokyo is big,” Baekhyun deadpans, like it’s something even a baby would know. “You can see anyone anywhere.” Then his voice melts back into its normal suave tone. “I’ve noticed you in passing, once or twice. Your arm is something special, but it’s hard to forget a person like you.”

Despite yourself, you don’t totally hate the comment. That alone makes you want to leave the club and not look back for at least the next month or so, knowing he’s probably said this to dozens of other people before. You stay in your seat, though, trying to see what easy line this man is going to throw out next.

“I wonder why I’ve never noticed you, then.”

“You seem to be too consumed with your own problems half the time, even though I don’t know what those are. The stress is written all over your face, though.”

Can never miss a chance to be insufferable, it seems.

“Okay Mr. Psychoanalyst.” You knock back the tiny bit of drink left in your glass and push it away from you. You shake your head at the android when it gestures for a refill.

“Not a psychoanalyst, you’re just achingly easy to decipher.” His tone is casual, like this isn’t meant to be an insult, though you take offense anyway.

“You’re not very good at whatever this is,” you say.

“What do you think this is? Flirting? Maybe you wouldn’t be wrong there.” He laughs.

“Yeah, well. Get some more practice and then maybe you can convince some other poor sap to get to know you better and sign over the rights to their cybernetics, but I won’t be falling for it.”

“I guess that means I’ll just have to try harder, then.” And then he finishes his drink, too. “Not the stealing your arm bit, but the getting to know you part.” He pauses for another moment, and then says, “It’s easy to become enamored with this place.” He waves his hand around at the club’s surroundings. “Expect to see me around more often. I think I’ve already taken a liking to you.”

Baekhyun tips his empty glass to you and gets up from his stool. His cologne swirls around you as he leaves, not overpowering, but enough to make its mark on your olfactory memories. You don’t look back to see where he walks off to, too busy trying to ignore the small headache building behind your eyes and your elevated heart rate.

He’s already taken a liking to you. Why would a ridiculous comment like that even get to you?

God. You really need to get laid.

So, you do just that.

Not with Baekhyun, but with someone from the club whose name you don’t even remember before it’s even over. It was painfully uneventful sex, and it did nothing to banish the man from your mind, which makes you feel even more irritated.

Walking back to your tiny apartment afterwards feels like a certified Walk of Shame even though it’s late at night and no one really cares to notice you. You spit on the sidewalk as if that could properly convey your disgust. You think of Osaka again—and what the fuck are you going to do to even get the money to get there?—and of the business card that you’d ripped up without remorse.

You shake your head, sending that thought back to the depths of your mind. Nevermind. That doesn’t matter. What could he possibly have for you, and why would you want it? Tucking your hands tighter in your pockets, you keep your head down and remain inconspicuous until you get back to the not-so-welcome sight of your own place.

You, Valor, and a few others sit around a makeshift bonfire at Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge—or what remains of it, anyway, with weeds and tall grass sprouting up in the space that was once its parking lot. For the past hour, this impromptu hangout been nothing but smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap alcohol and shooting the breeze. The nights are always much colder than the days, the chill biting into your skin and seeping into your clothes, but you try to ignore it and huddle closer to the fire. Maybe there is something, anything else you could be doing other than this, but you are just a bit too weak—and a little too lonely—to say no to the companionship. Even if it means listening to the uninteresting conversations of men who you barely know outside of the club or without a bottle of whiskey in their hands.

Your hangout session remains sleepy and boring for a while until someone makes a suggestion. One of them keeps going on about some steady, reliable work he’s supposedly found from a trusted friend, though he refuses to elaborate on what kind of work it is when asked. You make a sound of disgust and tune him out. Useless suggestions are as bad as none at all.

“Maybe we oughta rob that Baekhyun dude.”

You look up from the flames, fixing your eyes on the one who said it—a man called Lockjaw—and someone else chuckles in disbelief.

“You serious?” Valor asks.

Lockjaw sits forward in his ratty lawn chair, and with the way the light hits his face, it’s easier to see how his bottom jaw and teeth are completely metal. It makes you wince internally every time you see him, though you always feel kinda bad afterwards. That must’ve hurt exponentially worse than your own procedure. “Why the fuck not? He struts around Lower Tokyo like he has it all...and the bastard does. We sit and grovel for scraps, yet there’s a walking goldmine right in front of us.”

The idea of taking Baekhyun’s riches had never quite appealed to you or fully manifested in your mind. You didn’t want anything belonging to him, mostly because of your own disdain towards the man. However, the suggestion appears in sharp relief now, so obvious that it’s hard to believe no one else proposed it until now. You don’t immediately respond to this concept being thrown around, but something uneasy settles in your chest.

Valor sits back with a mildly disinterested look. “And you think someone like him doesn’t have major security hanging around waiting to incinerate someone with a ray gun if they tried it?”

“Do you ever see anyone hanging around him?”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not there. Somewhere.”

“Then we’ll be strapped up,” Lockjaw says, throwing his hands in the air. “And any of his little ‘security team’ who tries it will be blown into the stratosphere. That’s how we take care of that.” You shake your head only slightly, a movement not noticeable enough to be picked up by the others. You rub your tongue against the inside of your cheek, picturing all the ways this plan could go belly-up. To your irritation, Valor decides to drag you into the fold despite your efforts to stay out of the conversation.

“What do ya think, Y/N? Baekhyun’s been on your tail lately, maybe you could help lure him in.” That stirs up several murmurs and targeted stares in your direction.

“Yeah?” Lockjaw leans forward even more, his ass nearly slipping off the edge of the chair. “Think you can get in good with him?”

You shift uncomfortably in your seat. “Uh...it’s not like I’m buddy-buddy with him—”

“You don’t need to be, just tell him to bring his ass here and we’ll do the rest.”

Your mouth tightens. With all eyes trained on you, some expressions less friendly than others, it feels impossible to refuse. “I guess.”

“It’ll provide the money you’ve been worrying over for the past year.” Valor offers, and you shoot him a side-eye. Not like you needed him to broadcast your business to the world.

“That’s how life around here works,” another man chimes in, putting his cigarette out on the dirt and getting off his makeshift stoop of an upturned bucket. He stretches his arms and legs, and though you can’t see them under his long pants, you can hear the soft whirring and clicking of his metal legs. “Eat or be eaten. I’ve made my choice.”

Lockjaw gives a wolfish smile. Your apprehension rises, though you say nothing. “Eat, we will.”

You try to act nonchalant the next time you see Baekhyun at the club. You only notice him as you’re leaving, having already waited most of the night to see if he’d show up this time. You slow to a stop as you spot him in the alleyway behind the club, speaking to another club-goer—you’ve seen the person around before. You can only imagine what they were talking about before you’d interrupted their little scene, and the person scurries off, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, once it’s clear they’ve lost Baekhyun’s attention. Maybe that was the poor sap he’d finally found who’d be misguided enough to give up their cybernetics.

Baekhyun approaches you with a smile, his chains catching in the light of the flashy neon sign above. The kohl is dark and smoky around his eyes, in perfect sameness with every other time you’ve seen him.

“Hello, one who’s name I still don’t know—”

“You should come see me,” you interrupt. You want this to be as quick as possible, not wanting to dwell on any fake niceties.

Baekhyun lifts an eyebrow. “See you? At...your place, or—”

“At the ruins of Rainbow Bridge. Thursday night, around 9. Unless you’re too busy doing rich people stuff.”

“Rainbow Bridge…” He draws the words slowly across his tongue. Probably thinking of what a ruin the bridge is now—and has been for the past few decades—and wondering why you’re asking him to meet there of all places.

“I have a friend who lives around there—no fucking place to stay, you know, just holes up wherever he can. But he can...let you see the inner workings of my arm. Pick him up, take him back to your place; I’m sure you have a lab.” And because you know what he’s really looking for, you throw in, “He’s studied the technology, knows it inside-out. He could help you build...whatever it is you want.”

Baekhyun’s eyes, which you normally perceive as two lightless voids, sparkle at that last part. You can practically see the light increase in them. “Oh really?”

You roll your own eyes. “Yes, really. I’m not going to let you walk off with my damn arm, but you can...take notes on the mechanisms and shit. It’s up to you. I just got tired of you fuckin’ asking, so don’t think this is going to turn into some weekly meetup or whatever.”

He nods, slowly at first, and then more assuredly. “Alright, then. I’ll come.”

“So...yeah.” A sudden wave of anxiety crashes over you now that the trap has been laid. You feel as if you make one wrong move now, it’ll blow everything. He’ll find out and hate you for it. But why should you care about him hating you? “Then...see ya Thursday. Bye.” You decide to make your exit, walking briskly past him in the alley.

“Leaving so soon?” Baekhyun asks, turning back to watch your figure retreat. You wave one hand behind you in a dismissive gesture.

“I’ve been here all fuckin’ night, Byun. I’m going home now—to get some sleep, if I’m lucky.”

He chuckles, the sound fading behind you as you walk away. “Sweet dreams.”

Your steps falter just slightly when those words leave his lips, and several emotions begin warring in your chest. You ignore them all and continue on your walk back to your place, though you almost wish you could turn back to the club and ask for another drink or three. Something to get your mind off that ridiculously simple phrase that’ll be spinning around in your mind all night.

The night of the plan, you begin having major second thoughts.

It’s not as if you didn’t already feel shitty about it, but your mind keeps racing with how ridiculous of an idea this really is. It’s far too late to talk anyone out of it, as they’ve already stocked up on contraband weapons and laid their gameplan, but you feel less and less “okay” about being a part of it.

Most of all, you feel increasingly guilty about using Baekhyun’s trust in you for this; he never seemed to assume you had any other motives behind your invitation. Even if it’s ridiculously, oddly naive of him to trust you—someone he knows nothing about—you don’t feel great about exploiting that for your own gains.

It takes him less time to show up than you’d hoped. He’s right there at the agreed time, annoyingly punctual, his sleek black luxury car pulling up in the dirt and patchy grass. It looks like it was cut out of a magazine and placed there—almost comically out of place. Just like him.

Baekhyun gets out of the car and walks out onto the grass to meet you, uncaring of the mud and dirt he’s stepping in. He smirks, his hands in his pockets and his chains dangling. “Would now be a good time to get your name, or are we in too deep at this point?”

There’s no one else but him. Definitely too trusting.

You nervously chew your lip as you mull that question over. If everything goes like the others intend it to, there won’t be a point in telling him your name. But if he’s still alive by the end of the night, you could be exposing yourself. Still...a name won’t matter either way if he can give a perfect description of you to the Droid Commission.

Suddenly, you decide not to give it any more thought. “It’s Y/N.”

“Y/N, Y/N...” He says your name like he’s tasting a charming new food. “I like it. It suits you.”

Baekhyun’s smile is too sincere, and it doesn’t make you feel any better. “Come on.” You turn your back to him as you lead him through the tall grass and toward a broken section of the bridge’s main road. It leans against the main structure of the bridge and sticks halfway out of the muddy ditch that was once Tokyo Bay, its jagged edge reaching toward the night sky.

It’s darker under here, with the broken bridge blocking out the moon and stars and lights from buildings nearby. Your stomach rolls.

“So, who is this friend of yours?”

You turn to Baekhyun then, and you don’t know if he can read the anxiety on your face. Maybe he can. He’d proudly bragged about his own abilities for figuring people out.

It happens all at once, somehow slow and fast at the same time.

One of the men—the one with two metal legs—slinks out from behind the broken bridge and sneaks up behind Baekhyun, a stun spear in his hands. Its two large metal prongs are lit up with electricity. Those metal prongs are aimed directly at Baekhyun’s back, ready to make contact, but that never happens.

“Look out!” you scream, and shove Baekhyun out of the way. He stumbles off to the side, falling against the concrete bridge, and you wildly grasp the long spear with both hands, blocking the man from reaching Baekhyun.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Metal Legs shouts. He drives the spear’s metal bar forward, knocking it into your upper chest and collarbone with a force that makes your teeth chatter, and the pain and shock take your breath away for a few moments.

You’re not a fighter. You usually try to stay out of any ridiculous brawls when they do happen, whether at your apartment building or the club, but you do your best to hold the dude off. So even though you stumble back, you keep your hold as tight around the spear as you can and shove it back, putting your weight behind the movement and cracking it against the man’s chin. He howls with pain and anger and his hands momentarily loosen on the weapon. You take that opportunity to snatch it completely from him.

Nearby, Baekhyun is busy fending off Lockjaw with a long knife, both of them fully engaged in a fierce clash of blades. You feel a burst of surprise. He was armed this entire time? Had he realized something was suspicious after all? Most of all, how does he know how to fight?

You don’t have much more time to think about that, though. Metal Legs is recovering from the hit, his hand reaching for his side like he’s about to pull out his own knife or gun. You leap forward and shove the prongs of the stun spear into his ribs. He quickly collapses to the dirt, motionless after a handful of frightening convulsions. You feel cold fear at the idea that you might’ve just killed him, but you can’t dwell on that when you see the others bursting out of the tall grass a few yards away from you and Baekhyun. The backup, in case something went wrong—which it most definitely has.

Lockjaw has Baekhyun up against the concrete of the bridge, his knife near Baekhyun’s neck and Baekhyun trying to block the blade. The sharp metal inches increasingly closer to its target. With your legs shaking, you run up behind Lockjaw and dig the electrified prongs into his side, sending more volts through his body than you can imagine.

Lockjaw’s weapon drops, and Baekhyun stumbles away. The man takes a little longer to be knocked unconscious than Metal Legs, but you are relieved when he’s out a few seconds later.

You look at Baekhyun, who appears dazed and winded; you belatedly realize he might’ve received some of the shock too, with both men’s arms locked together when you initially used the spear. “Get out of here! The rest are coming—go!” A shot from a ray gun zips through the air between you two and burns the concrete of the bridge.

Baekhyun looks at you wordlessly. Then he grabs your wrist as tight as a vise. You glance at him questioningly, and your confusion mounts when he drags you along with him as he takes off towards his car. The red smearing across your hand and wrist tells you he must be bleeding from somewhere, and shock blooms in your chest for a wild moment.

The car door opens without him even touching the handle or speaking a command, and he jostles you into the backseat, trying to avoid the spear’s prongs; you’re still holding it tight, as you expected you’d need it to face the others—however futile that would’ve been. You’re so frazzled once you get in the car that it takes you a moment to realize Baekhyun is in the backseat with you. “What are you doing?!”

“Get on the highway,” Baekhyun speaks, ignoring your frantic question, and the engine roars in your ears as the car peels out of the grassy lot. The vehicle narrowly escapes another round of angry shots fired by the others, and the grass sizzles where the shots land.

A self-driving car. Of course he’d have one of those. You stare at the steering wheel as it turns on its own, maneuvering you both away from the scene of the crime and back onto the paved roads.

“Your arm…” You look at the sleeve of Baekhyun’s jacket. It’s torn now, and you can see the skin of his forearm underneath, which displays a long cut. Lucky for him, it’s not deep enough to need stitches. He has similar, smaller ones on his hands.

Baekhyun examines the wound and makes a sound of disgust. “It’ll be fine,” he says decisively. “The bastard wasn’t as good with a knife as he wishes he was.”

You nod silently, though the movement feels mechanical. As the reality of the situation seeps in, a whirlpool of dread forms in your stomach.

“Fuck, I-I’m fucked.”

Baekhyun gives a humorless laugh. “You’re fucked?”

“I’ll...need to lay low for a while.” Then you glance at him. “Unless you’re driving me to the Commission. Then, well…at least they can’t get to me while I’m in prison.” Your laugh is equally humorless.

“You’re going into hiding?” Baekhyun asks, and the corner of his mouth lifts. You don’t expect this reaction. Not after him almost being jacked and led into the situation by none other than you.

His smirk exasperates you. You almost want to roll your eyes at him not realizing why you’d need to hide. Or maybe he’s just playing coy about it; but you give him a break for now. “I ruined the plan and helped you out, so yeah, my own place is not gonna be safe anymore. ‘Friends’ are fleeting out here. Especially if you fuck with someone else’s money.” Valor crosses your mind, the only one you could really call a friend out of all the others—and only because you knew more secrets of his than they did. Your chest tightens with a strange guilt. You should’ve just said no from the beginning.

The car is quiet for a few long moments. Then Baekhyun shatters the silence with, “Come home with me, then. You can stay there for a little while.”

You bark out a laugh. “You can’t be for real.”

He sits back against the leather seat. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t. It’s a waste of time otherwise.”

“After I just—could’ve gotten you killed?”

“I said it before—you’re like an open book. Your emotions are practically written on your face. It’s pretty damn obvious to me you were never truly up for this plan. Unfortunately, you aren’t the badass you think you are, but at least your efforts saved me.”

“But I still—”

“You certainly don’t have to take the offer if you don’t want it.”

You become quiet at that. Even if you don’t think you deserve this level of mercy, you don’t want to shun this offer of safety and be left to contend with the streets alone. Your voice is tense and quiet when you respond. “I’ll take it.”

Baekhyun’s home is a penthouse in the heart of Upper Tokyo, which doesn’t surprise you. The contrast in his neighborhood’s appearance with what you’re used to seeing in Lower Tokyo is stark and painful—spotlessly clean streets with sweepers continually traveling up and down them, bright holographic billboards, people walking around with personal androids accompanying them. You begin to feel resentful again, and you wish you could swallow those feelings after he’s been gracious enough to rescue you, but you can’t help it.

You two must make quite a sight once you pull into the apartment building’s parking garage—you holding a stun spear, wearing a slightly shabby outfit of a T-shirt, jeans, and jacket, and Baekhyun walking out with disheveled, torn clothes and bloody hands. Someone gets out of the parking garage elevator once the doors open, and they give a startled look when they see you two.

“Good to see you, Jongin,” Baekhyun greets the other man. His tone is friendly, but his expression dares the other man to ask any questions—which you both know he won’t.

“Good evening, Baekhyun.” The man gives a slight nod in your direction as he walks past you two, though there’s no hiding the distaste he thinks he’s disguising. His eyes linger on your metal hand, and you feel exposed; you try to convince yourself he’s just looking at the spear, which would also make sense.

You try to shake the feeling off as you and Baekhyun step into the elevator cabin, but confusion rushes over you to replace it. The floor of the elevator is more like a scale, sensing the weight of your bodies and sinking slightly further into the floor once you step onto it.

“What’s that all about?” you ask.

“Oh, yeah. That. This isn’t like your typical elevator, it’s a teleportation channel,” Baekhyun says this nonchalantly as he reaches for the touchscreen panel on the wall.

“Um, what? I don’t want to be teleported anywhere.” You jump right back out of the cabin before the doors can close, and Baekhyun gives you a weary look as he holds them open with one crimson hand.

“It’s safe, you don’t have to worry about anything. All it does is take the atoms in your body and replicate them elsewhere; the floor measures your mass. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

“You don’t say.” Sarcasm drips from your voice. “Yeah, no thanks. I’m not interested in turning into ground meat on the other side of that thing.”

“There are no stairs in this building, just teleportation channels. If you want to climb the side of the building to get to my place, be my guest.” Baekhyun starts pressing on the panel as if he’ll leave you behind, and panic spikes in your chest. You decide to get back on with him, much to your displeasure.

You close your eyes tight just as the inside of the cabin starts glowing with light, and you can only hope your last lived experience won’t be riding a teleporter with Baekhyun in the same night you tried to mug him.

Surprisingly, the transportation doesn't feel like anything. One minute you’re there on the parking garage ground floor, and the next minute you hear the whoosh of the doors opening again. It’s like you never moved an inch, but you obviously have when the doors reveal the lavish interior of Baekhyun’s home.

Grateful to be at your destination, you step out of the teleporter as quickly as possible. “How did we end up right inside your place?”

“Clever, right? It uses fingerprint recognition so no one else can get access but me, but you’d know that if you hadn’t slammed your eyes shut.”

For all your talk of Baekhyun being out of place in Lower Tokyo, you suddenly feel like the fish out of water inside his penthouse. There’s metal and glass and holographic materials everywhere, which is the same stuff you’d find in Lower Tokyo, but here it’s all much more sleek, shiny, and well-maintained. His living room alone looks bigger than your entire apartment.

“Come on, don’t just stand there.” He gestures for you to follow him further down the hall, and you hesitantly do.

“Um...I don’t really want to carry this all night,” you say, referring to the stun spear still in your hands.

Baekhyun turns back to you, blocking the path to the rest of the hallway. “Do you even know how to turn it off?” It’s still charged with energy. You look at it up and down, but it isn’t immediately obvious to you. You don’t want to admit that, though, and keep awkwardly looking for some sort of Off switch until Baekhyun can’t stand the silence anymore. “Look, just give it to me.”

Your mouth twists at that. It seems nonsensical considering he’s just given you a safe haven, but you’re wary he’ll try to turn the weapon on you. Maybe he was waiting to get you alone and dispose of you himself. He appears to understand your thought process, because he scoffs loudly and holds his hand out for the spear.

“If I really wanted you dead, I could’ve done it in the car—or better yet, let your friends take care of you. Just hand it over.”

“Mm, I think not. I don’t think you’d want to get blood on your pretty leather seats.” Still, you give him the spear, if a bit reluctantly. You don’t know what he does with it, but he takes it into another room and tells you to wait in the hall. When he returns, it’s gone.

Baekhyun leads you to a clean and unoccupied guest room. It’s large, with floor-to-ceiling windows that give an expansive view of the city below. It’s also nicely decorated, much like one of Upper Tokyo’s many upscale hotels, but it seems like it hasn’t seen a warm body in months. There’s a certain lack of warmth to it. “Don’t get many visitors?”

“Now is not the best time to make jokes about me filling my perpetual loneliness with frequent trips to your club, if that’s what you’re attempting to lead up to.” He steps through another door, which you find out leads to the bathroom. “Everything you need should already be here—except clothes. I’ll get those in a moment.”

“Right,” you mumble, your eyes carefully tracing over everything in the bathroom. You know your skeptical behavior is probably pissing him off at this point, but distrust has long become an inherent feature of yours. You’ll keep this act up if you know it’ll get under his skin.

The hot water in this shower doesn’t run out after five minutes like the one back home. You can’t shake the old habit, though, and you wash yourself as quickly as you can, body tensed with adrenaline as you expectantly wait for the warm flow to stop after the five minutes are up. When that doesn’t happen, your muscles relax a little. Though it feels good, you don’t know if you’ll get used to this any time soon.

The clothes he lays out for you on the bed are plain and black, but still better quality than what you’re used to seeing and wearing. Soft on your skin. Smell good. You wonder where he’s went off to—maybe to wash up and patch up his wounds, if he has any sense. You also wonder if you should try exploring his place, but you feel like that’ll be risky; he has too much advanced technology around here that would probably find a way to kick you out of the penthouse window at the first sign of nefarious activity.

...Which is how you end up merely sitting on the bed and waiting to see what will happen next. But not before checking the entire room for any signs of surveillance tech or something else foreboding. This is also when you make the joyous discovery that your phone is missing, and you reason it must’ve fallen out of your pocket in the earlier clash; you know you had it when you first met up with Baekhyun. That pisses you off, but there’s nothing you can do about it now. Though you feel disconcertingly cut off from the outside world without it, who would you even contact anymore? One of the others, who’d probably try to track you down and enact a cold, hard revenge for you blowing up the plan? Lockjaw’s face flashes into your mind, along with the other scalding looks you received the night of the planning, and you shudder slightly.

When Baekhyun comes back to your room—and you’re almost surprised that he does—he looks significantly smaller in presence without his all-black clothes, glittering face chains, and heavy makeup.

Indeed, the man standing in front of you with damp hair, baggy pajamas, and bandaged hands doesn’t seem like the same suave person from the club at all.

“So now what?” you say, raising an eyebrow at him.

He shrugs. “Well, if you’re going to be living here, you need a tour.”

Living with Baekhyun isn’t quite what you expected it to be. He’s home more often than you’d think, for one. You would’ve thought he’d always be in business meetings or off somewhere finding more luxury goods to buy or just doing whatever. You can’t really get mad at him for being in his own home, but you try to keep space between the two of you. With your own designated spaces, it’s not hard to do this, which you are at least marginally glad about.

Trying to deal with Baekhyun while completely sober isn’t your idea of a walk in the park. Despite yourself, you wish you could go back to the club even once; Baekhyun certainly won’t let you drink up all his liquor, nor will he tell you where he’s hidden it. For your own good, he claims. Sure.

To your surprise and slight relief, he doesn’t ply you for any more details about your arm, though you’ve definitely caught him running his eyes across it more than once—studying it like words on a page. Whatever’s spinning around in that mind of his, you can only guess. His lingering interest only makes you think he’s scheming for a way to take the arm off you when you’re sleeping or equally vulnerable, though, so you remain guarded around him.

“One day, you’ll have to understand that I’m not the evil villain you think I am,” he tells you. He regards your attempts to avoid him with a certain bored amusement, like how one might think of a particularly entertaining pet cat.

You let the steam of the food you’re cooking billow up across your face, making your eyes water from the slightly-too-warm heat before answering. Leave it to him to bother you during one of the times when you can get some undisturbed, Baekhyun-free peace. “Maybe you should stop dressing up as one whenever you go out, then.”

He chuckles. “It’s like you’ve made it your personal mission to throw verbal stabs at me whenever possible.”

You shrug. “I have to do something to pass the time here.”

Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “You could do that just by having a normal conversation with me.”

You cross your arms, looking at him from where he stands at the kitchen island. He’s in his dressed-down form now, sans eyeliner and jewelry.

His kitchen is not like any other you’ve encountered, fully equipped with the capabilities to make every single one of his meals by itself—and order more ingredients whenever necessary. It’s undoubtedly convenient. But you often still like to make food of your own, just so you don’t have to feel so...dependent on him for every little thing. “About what?”

“About who you are. What you like. What you dream about—I don’t know, something.”

“What I dream about.” You make a noise of disbelief. “How can you waste time on dreams when you live the life I do? I just focus on trying to survive. That’s it.”

Baekhyun opens his mouth automatically like he’ll say something, but he pauses as if he’s just absorbed the full weight of your words. Suddenly, there’s a certain sadness pooling in his eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth, and you hate it—intensely. You don’t want his pity or sympathy. And yet, he’s already given it to you by letting you live in his home.

“Before you say something pathetic, just don’t,” you blurt out, wanting to stop him before he can start. “You want to talk? My favorite color is green, and my favorite food—alcohol. I have an arm made of fucking titanium, the club was my main hangout spot, and I hate entitled people. Talk about that.”

Baekhyun’s sympathy evaporates into an unimpressed expression, lost just as quickly as a whisper on the wind. “Closing the door again, I see. Alright. Have it your way.” He leaves the room then, giving his back to you and shutting you out similar to how you just did to him.

This should be what you wanted. But it only makes you feel oddly unsatisfied.

“Here.” Baekhyun slides something across the table towards you after dinner one day—another dinner where you sit on opposite ends of the table and where you try to ignore his existence. You instantly recognize the small, glistening package as a cellphone, though it’s a model much more advanced than you could’ve afforded.

You look up at him as he stands in front of you, one of his hands shoved into the pocket of his black pants. “...What are you doing?”

“Giving you something to communicate with so you don’t feel like some princess stuck in a glass castle.” You roll your eyes at that. “I’m not sure who you’d talk to since all your friends do hate you, but the thought counts. And everyone needs a phone.”

You sit forward to look at the phone in its packaging, tracing your metal fingers against the surface. The sensation circling around in your stomach is an odd one. “Please don’t tell me that you hosting me in your penthouse was just an easy way to get a sugar baby.”

Baekhyun looks slightly flustered at that accusation, and you’re gleefully, childishly pleased about taking him off guard. His surprise is quickly replaced with a shit-eating grin, though. “It’s nothing like that; I could’ve already had that kind of arrangement 100 times over.” His tone suggests that he has, which sends a chill crawling up your spine. But maybe not 100 times over. “I did it to help you out. But if thinking of it that way gets you off, be my guest.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Byun,” you say, taking the phone out gingerly. It’s a lightweight thing, looking like it might dissolve if you look at it too hard. Its screen is clear raised glass—which you assume will project out the hologram technology this phone is inevitably equipped with—and has silver backing. It’s a piece of work. Though it appears fragile, you know it’s sturdier than that—or it wouldn’t be such a popular model as it is now. “It’s...nice, though.”

Baekhyun waves his hand noncommittally. “I wouldn’t settle for anything less—even if it’s for someone as eternally pissed-off as you.” You bite your lip against the rebuttal that wants to come rolling out, instead preoccupying yourself with figuring out the controls on this thing. Which takes an embarrassingly long moment. Baekhyun watches you for the duration of it, biting his own lip against the urge to laugh at the frustrated furrow between your brows and the crinkling of your nose. Really, the phone looks like a thin sheet of metal with a slice of glass over it; how are you supposed to operate this? Eventually, he says, “There’s a button on the bottom that activates it...you have to press that.”

“Right, clearly.” You try to rid yourself of your embarrassment as you turn the thing on, but even as Baekhyun leaves the room you can hear his chains clinking together as he laughs silently at your confusion.

As if your life could not get any more chaotic, your metal arm begins malfunctioning.

The metal is not as flexible as it was just a few days before, and it gives you a hard time whenever you try to do simple maneuvers. Your arm is overtaken by a sensation that feels like nerve damage with how the entire limb and shoulder tingle and burn from wires that no longer want to do as they’re told. You’re not entirely sure what’s wrong with it—a good oiling could usually fix any stiffness when necessary, but this nervy feeling is new.

For a while, you try to hide it from Baekhyun, which feels kind of ridiculous even to you. You’re only hurting yourself more, but you are a little too prideful to give him the pleasure of inspecting your arm like he’d always wanted to from the start. You don’t want to be his science experiment.

However, it comes to a point when you must ask for help when your arm stops working entirely.

You wake up to this terrible realization. After another morning of having gotten only a little sleep the night before, something immediately feels wrong. Your arm is dead weight beside you. When you try to sit up, it doesn’t respond to your movements. You can only feel the painful tug on the flesh part of your shoulder where the weight of the metal pulls at it, and you groan in pain and annoyance.

You support your arm with your other hand to prevent the tugging, which quickly gets exhausting and annoying as you try to go through the morning motions. You can’t keep this up while washing, so by the time you get out of the shower, your shoulder is killing you from where the arm dangles.

When you get to the common room, Baekhyun isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere else in his penthouse, either. You don’t even know how long he’s been gone. When you bring yourself to finally call his number, you bitterly remember that you still don’t have it saved in your phone. You want to scream in irritation. You can’t leave to go look for him—yeah, right—or get help from anyone else, either, because of the fingerprint recognition on his apartment entrance. Now that you think about it, you are like a princess in a glass castle here. That reawakens another bout of anger in you. Safe haven or cage?

Baekhyun appears an hour or two later—you’re not totally certain, having refused to expend the strength to move from your current spot to check the time—wearing his usual getup. You don’t know if you should be relieved, but an emotion similar to that sweeps through you despite your lingering apprehension and dislike.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His eyebrows crease when he sees you splayed across his couch, your metal arm propped up on the couch back.

Don’t be combative, you think to yourself. But it’s like an impulse; you can’t stop yourself. “Why do you immediately assume something’s wrong?”

“You’ve never been so casual,” he gestures to your posture, “around me or in my place before, so I’m trying to figure out if your brain has been infected by cyber bugs or something. Because if we need to quarantine, then—”

“Well, you’re not totally wrong for once.” You struggle to sit up, your movements stiff, and your arm slides off the couch back and slumps limply to your side. Baekhyun's eyebrows shoot towards his hairline at that, and he looks at you questioningly, stepping closer to you.

“What happened to your arm?”

“Don’t even fucking know…it’s been feeling weird for a week.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

You look up at him, cynicism coloring your expression. “I’m sure you can take a wild guess.”

He gives the familiar sigh-and-eye-roll combo, like he’s done probably a hundred times since he’s met you. “Yeah, I can.” He waves his hand. “No matter. I’m calling Yosuke.”

“Who’s Yosuke?” You turn to watch Baekhyun retreat—probably to his bedroom or office. He turns back to you momentarily.

“Someone who can fix your arm.”

—

Yosuke turns out to be a man around the same age as Baekhyun—a big contrast to the older, wizened cyberneticist you’d pictured in your mind. He and Baekhyun act overly familiar with each other, apparently being long-time friends since their younger years.

There is no difference in how he treats you and Baekhyun, which is another thing you didn’t quite expect. He is clearly wealthy like Baekhyun, coming in with a nice suit and expensive jewelry and a suitcase full of more tools than you’ve even seen before, but he doesn’t have the haughty rich man aura. That makes you feel a little more comfortable, and you are glad that Baekhyun let you have some privacy with this and left the lab for the actual procedure. Even if it meant he didn’t get his wish of poring over your arm’s wiring like some kind of cybernetics kinkster.

To your relief, the fix is simple enough. The implanted electrodes in your shoulder that help send signals between your brain’s neurons and the artificial nerves have failed, but those are relatively simple to replace.

“Shitty tech, I guess,” you mumble, casting a displeased look at your arm. You aren’t sure why, but you feel embarrassed about it failing on you. Maybe you just thought it’d be reliable forever. “I got it as part of an experimental research program, so it was probably never going to be the most dependable thing anyway…”

“Hm.” Yosuke smiles. “Maybe not, but it’s still an extraordinary piece of work—especially in this early form. Some of these mechanisms are new even to me. Was that the 2110 Tokyo trial, by chance?”

You nod, though you feel a tiny bit less relaxed with knowing that even Yosuke doesn’t recognize all the intricacies of your limb. Hopefully you’ll still walk out in one piece. “Yeah, the very one.”

“Excellent work,” he reiterates. “It was an early research trial, but still yielded some of the most functional and human-like large-scale cybernetics of the last few years. You could’ve done a lot worse. Maybe you already know that, though.”

“Maybe,” you repeat quietly, but you are mostly speaking to yourself now.

—

After the electrode replacement is done in Baekhyun’s home lab, you can finally feel your arm like normal again. Yosuke does a few sensory feedback and dexterity tests to make sure your arm can function as it should, and he promises to come back the next day for another round just to be sure.

You almost don’t want Yosuke to go when he finally does pack up to leave. It feels nice to be around someone who doesn’t inspire some wretched, nonsensical anger in you.

Baekhyun slips back into the lab after Yosuke leaves, and you glance up from your arm at his arrival. He looks at your bandaged shoulder and watches appreciatively as you flex your metal fingers. “All good now?”

“It’s fine,” you mumble. “Thanks.” Saying that word to him is not easy, but you relent, figuring you should at least give him that much. “You should be thanking the gods you don’t have to go through this kinda shit.”

“Really.” It’s not a question, the way he says it. It’s filled with sarcasm. Baekhyun reaches down and rolls up his left pant leg, his chains hanging as he does, and you recoil, confused. Why the fuck is he showing you his bare leg?

“It’s cybernetic,” he says, barely concealed pride in his voice. “You can’t even tell, the work is so good.” Something like jealousy and anger stirs in your chest. Even if you had wanted to tuck those emotions back in, they’ve escaped from the cage now and are intent on running rampant.

“So. Byun Baekhyun is part-metalhead, after all?” You slide off the surgical chair you were sitting in for Yosuke’s procedure, coming to stand a couple feet in front of Baekhyun. You look down at his leg—which, for all intents and purposes, looks like a completely flesh-and-blood limb. “You joker. Quit fuckin’ around.”

“It’s not a lie.” He knows you won’t believe him, so he taps a spot behind his ankle twice. A long, thin panel that stretches from just above his ankle to his upper thigh opens on his leg, exposing the wiring and metal within. You can’t school your expression in time, and your mouth drops. “Incredible, right? Custom-made. So, yes…I do have an idea what it’s like.”

“Custom-made, huh.” You bite your lip so hard you think it might bleed. “Unbelievable. You’re the kind of person who does these things because you want to, because you can, not because your survival hinges on it. You must truly think you’re special.” The words come hurtling past your lips like venom.

“I didn’t choose this on a whim,” Baekhyun argues, straightening up to face you and letting his pant leg back down. The look on his face says his patience has finally run out, presumably tired of you throwing insult after insult at him since you’ve been in his home. “You don’t know anything about me other than what you’ve seen and heard on screens and from others. I’ve tried to get familiar with you. You reject it at every turn.”

“I don’t want to ‘get familiar’ with someone who gets custom cybernetics that cost hundreds of thousands just because they fuckin’ felt like it, while the rest of us have to do it just to get enough money to live for maybe a year on.” You’re gritting your teeth so hard that your jaw feels like it might crack.

Baekhyun steps closer to you, diminishing the space between you further. His eyes burn with animosity. “I was in a car accident, Y/N. I was just a teenager. No one even knows this but the people closest to me, and I don’t want anyone else to know it. I lost my leg and nearly my life with it. Before you start preaching to me about choices versus survival, realize that you aren’t the only fucking person in the world who’s ever had to do what was needed to survive.”

Your breath catches. You feel like the wind has been knocked out of you. Suddenly, all the fight drains from your system, and you are left feeling deflated and cold. His blazing eyes feel like two bullets trained on you, and your gaze falters.

Baekhyun doesn’t wait to see if you’ll have another response lined up for him; he turns heel and stalks out of the room.

As promised, Yosuke returns the next day for your additional tests. Your conversation with him isn’t as enjoyable as it could be. You are still reeling from Baekhyun’s revelation and unsure how to approach him. Neither of you spoke to each other for the rest of that night, instead choosing to actively avoid each other. You know you can’t keep this game up forever, though.

“Baekhyun’s in a sour mood today,” Yosuke remarks. “Rare for him. Any idea why?”

You shake your head, worrying your lower lip with your teeth. “Mmm...no.”

The slight smile on Yosuke’s face tells you he doesn’t believe you. “Well...I’m sure you two will figure it out sooner or later. He seems to have an affinity for you.”

“What?”

“He was pretty concerned when he contacted me about your arm. He’s mentioned you before then, too. He seems fascinated by you.”

You purse your lips together. You remember his days of annoying flirting in the club, which feel so far away now, and how he’d come to you with a bunch of flowery words and told you he’d taken a liking to you. Perhaps he was really telling the truth about that. You wonder if he possibly mentioned the attempted mugging to Yosuke, and you cough nervously.

“Well, he’s…” you wave your flesh hand, “...a character.”

Yosuke chuckles. “You two seem kind of fitting, I don’t know why. Similar love for recklessness, maybe—from how he describes you, anyway. Like peas in a pod.”

Fitting? Peas in a damn pod? The next words come thoughtlessly rushing out of you in an effort to change his mind and slap away whatever outlandish idea he has of you and the other man. “I don’t want Baekhyun.”

Yosuke raises an eyebrow, though he keeps his gaze on your arm as he watches the movements of your metallic fingers for any irregularities. “I never said you did, Y/N.”

In your haste, it occurs to you that maybe Yosuke really was just referring to your similarities—which you’ll continue to vehemently deny—rather than suggesting any deeper connection. Though that’s what it sounded like to you. Fuck. You don’t know anymore.

Is this what they’d call a Freudian slip, then? How wonderful. You rub your temples with your free hand and shake your head. “Then let’s just forget the last few minutes of this conversation.”

Yosuke smiles. “Whatever you’d like to do.”

—

Yosuke leaves soon after he’s finished testing your arm, but he reassures you that you can see each other again if you feel like having the company—just have Baekhyun arrange things.

Speaking of Baekhyun. You should probably say something to him. You’re not enthusiastic about puttering around his home feeling even more awkward than you did when you first arrived there. So, you walk to his office and knock on the door, turning your ear to it to see if he’ll give a response. You don’t have to wait to hear one, though, because the door panel slides back on its own.

You’ve never been in his office before, though you knew where it was—it was one of the places he decided not to show you on his little house tour—but it’s just as obnoxiously streamlined and full of tech as every other part of his home. Baekhyun sits behind his desk, elbows propped on its surface and fingers crossed together.

“Y/N.” His voice holds none of the playfulness, casualness, or even cool sarcasm you’ve heard from him before.

You step a few feet forward into his office. You feel like you’re standing underneath a spotlight, lit up for the entirety of the world to see. In reality, it’s just you and him here—Byun Baekhyun, one of the richest men in Japan.

He stays silent, presumably waiting for you to speak first. That is what you came here for, so you do, even if it makes you feel like you’re going to peel out of your skin.

“I was a dick. I’m sorry.”

Baekhyun blinks. “An apology? From you? The world must be ending.”

“I’m trying to be serious here, Byun.” You sigh. “I was...wrong to assume what I did about you. I guess...I don’t really know anything about you...but. I felt like I had you all figured out already. So, I’m sorry.”

The tension in Baekhyun’s shoulders releases, if only a little. His expression shifts into something not quite as impenetrable as it was just a few moments ago, but not completely open, either. “Apology accepted, then.”

“Thanks.” You shove your hands into your pockets. “Well, I thought...if I’m not to make any more assumptions about you, I should probably get to know more about you?”

Baekhyun looks interested now, and he releases his hands from their formerly tense position. He leans forward slightly. “Then I should do the same with you.”

Your hackles raise, despite you trying to keep yourself more open-minded. “I...don’t want to. You know enough already.”

Exasperated, Baekhyun spreads his hands out in front of him. “Here we go again. What are you so afraid of? And why even ask me about myself if you don’t want to share anything about you?”

“You can think of it as gathering intel—not making friends. I’m not asking you about your life story so we can have picnics together and talk about our wildest dreams.”

Baekhyun scoffs in disbelief. “When are you ever going to be honest with yourself? Emotional constipation isn’t a good look for you.”

“Honest with myself about what?”

“You are attracted to me. You are interested in me beyond supposedly gathering intel. And for some reason I can’t conceive, it enrages you.” The words come off his lips with the trace of a smirk, and though they make your skin prickle with heat, his smirk makes you want to jump across the desk and land one good punch on him.

You snort. “You’re a piece of work. Attracted to you? Everyone doesn’t throw themselves at the first person with a whiff of money or notoriety.”

Baekhyun gets up from his desk to step closer to you, much like he did the other day. He’s close enough for you to count the moles on his face, barely noticeable except for when he’s at this proximity. His cologne wraps its scented arms around you and pulls you in. You didn’t notice it as acutely yesterday, too embroiled in the argument and trying to process what he revealed to you, but now it hits you full on. How is this not considered some kind of olfactory warfare?

“Then tell me you don’t want me.” He whispers it to you in that same stupid, silky voice he’d always used in the club. That voice, combined with his scent, transports you straight back to that environment—the pungent taste of alcohol, the blinding neon lights, the ear-splitting music. And the one man who you just can’t figure out.

You open your mouth only slightly, afraid to breathe in more of his fragrance and lose yourself to it like a fool. “Fuck you.”

“That’s not an answer.” Baekhyun’s voice remains in the same low whisper, and he grins like he already knows the truth. “But I can do that, if you’d like.”

It doesn’t take much effort for him to close the rest of the space between you. When he kisses you, you don’t slap him, stomp on his foot, or knee him in the balls like you might’ve thought you would. Instead, you kiss him back—gradually, tentatively, but your lips fall into a rhythm with each other’s.

His lip piercing is unyielding on your skin; the edges of it press into your lip. The kiss is not rough or even frantic. You think this all might’ve been easier if it was—easier to allow yourself to keep hating him so intensely and channel that energy into your actions. However, all your previous thoughts of knocking his head off or pulling his lip ring off fall away; you just allow yourself to exist solely in this moment and absorb the feeling of his lips on yours.

Maybe now you could allow yourself to admit—internally, at least—that yes...you did want this. You wanted it from the first ridiculous time you met him in the club, and when he put his insolent hand on your shoulder. Whispered into your ear like he knew exactly what effect it was going to have.

Baekhyun’s bedroom—the one other place he hadn’t shown you besides his office—is neatly arranged and smells entirely like him. Other than those base things, you don’t care what the rest of the room is like. When you both somehow make it there, Baekhyun backs you up onto the bed, his lips still attached to yours.

The weight of his body is solid on yours. His tongue nudging against your lips and asking for entrance makes your body flush with heat. Before you can get fully invested, you pull away. He looks at you questioningly.

“Take this off,” you mutter, pushing his face chains away from you. He laughs lowly, pulling away from you to take his piercing out and put the chains away.

Pulling your clothes off comes naturally; it doesn’t feel clumsy and stilted like it did the last time you slept with someone. Baekhyun’s hands flit over every inch of newly exposed skin he can access.

The way Baekhyun touches your metal arm is reverent, worshipful, and you hadn’t realized how much you needed this—this kind of unabashed admiration—until it happened. No one has ever touched your metal arm in a way that wasn’t clinical or otherwise similarly detached. His fingers glide across it like it’s still made of skin and blood and bone, and he kisses the length of it, up to your neck and all the way back down to your metallic fingers again.

Water beads at the corners of your eyes. You try to ignore it. You don’t even acknowledge the few tears that do slip out, sliding towards your ears from your supine position.

Baekhyun lifts himself to be level with your face again. You turn away from him, too afraid to see whatever emotion will be lying in his eyes—not wanting to reveal the full magnitude of your vulnerability to him—but you don’t say a word when he presses his lips against the tear tracks on your skin.

Funnily, ironically, every motion comes instinctively. Him rocking against you, his heavy, dark breaths echoing in your ears, his long and low moans—your lips searching for his, your teeth creating blooming bruises on his skin. Though you have pushed him away and dismissed his proffered company at every opportunity, this intimacy feels like a grand coming-together—something that was bound to happen at the end of every road.

—

The sheets are twisted, the sweat is cooling on your skin, and you are both tired but satisfied. Content in a way that neither of you have truly been in a long time. You rest your head on Baekhyun’s chest, closing your eyes and listening to him breathe underneath you, the metal of your arm still warm from the heat of his skin.

“I could give you an upgrade.”

Your mouth twitches. You think you might have imagined the words, so you stay silent for a while longer until Baekhyun nudges your arm, checking if you’ve already fallen asleep.

“Upgrade?”

“Your arm. I could...have a new arm built. One like my leg.”

You sit up to look at him, the sheets falling from your body. “Don’t say pretty things you think I want to hear just because you’re still in the post-orgasm haze.”

Baekhyun blows air out of his nose, too tired to properly argue or even scoff at you. “Like I said before, I don’t waste time saying things I don’t mean.” His voice quiets. “We both know you can’t get your limb back, but...I could...give you something to help, at least. It’s...easier to deal with the cybernetics when they actually look like they belong on your body.” You know he speaks from experience there, by the way his gaze falters and drops to his lap.

“To feel more like a human again, huh.” Some part of you—multiple parts of you, maybe—had still been grieving over the arm you’d given up almost two years ago. Maybe it was a silly thing to be hurt over compared to the many other problems in your world, but it was difficult to stop feeling like you’d sold away a portion of yourself for nothing. Nothing but fleeting money.

Baekhyun’s offer stirs something in you. You turn your body away from him, feeling the tingle in your nose and eyes again that could only signal one thing. “Stop doing this. Being so...I don’t know, forgiving. Not after all I’ve done and said to you.”

Baekhyun sits up then, resting his hands on your arms. “I want to do this for you. Stop acting like you don’t deserve anything good in the world.”

You turn back to face him after a long moment, though the tears still linger in your eyes. “I don’t want to be the only one who benefits.” You shake your head slowly. “If you really agree to give me a new arm...you have more than enough resources to help change the nightmare Lower Tokyo has become. Help them. Help us. I don’t want to be some one-off experiment or pet project you discard once you’ve gotten your fill—some broken bitch from Lower Tokyo you think you can fix and turn into one of your family’s many success stories.”

Baekhyun is breathless from your admission; this is the most transparent you’ve been with him since you’ve met. Though part of him wants to shrivel back from your words, he clings to your long-awaited honesty, even if it is only shared with him to rebuke him and his family’s selfishly opulent ways. He thinks of why you pushed so hard against him trying to make a personal domain of Lower Tokyo, leaving the comforts of his own place to absorb the shadows of yours, and a better understanding of your rejection begins to dawn in his mind. Tentatively, he brings one of his hands from your arm to your cheek, thinking you might still wince away from him, but you don’t move.

“You’re right.” His voice is tight with the knowledge of it. “I can help, Y/N. You, and everyone else. I mean—I will. If there is one thing you can trust me on…let it be this.”

You stare into his dark brown eyes, trying to hunt for any signs of dishonesty, though you find none. There is only the heat of his hand on your face, and his open, yielding expression. “I will hold you to that, Byun Baekhyun.”

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xreaderbooks · 4 years

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Hidden (2)

Pair: Draco Malfoy x reader, Sibling! Harry Potter x reader

Word count: 3.1k

Warnings: Language, (unedited asf)

Summary: Draco has to prove his love for her, while Y/N deals with the effects of the breakup.

A/N: I am so sorry this took so long, y’all have been waiting a while for this one. Anyway kinda rushed to finish. Send me any requests for Draco or any of the character you see on my master list, I hope you enjoy :)

Masterlist - Part 1

"Prove it." Those words you spoke ran through Dracos head every time he saw you in the hall laughing with your friends, every time he had a class with you, every time he passed by the room of requirements. He lied awake on his bed each night missing your touch. Normally that would be the case considering the secrecy of your relationship but at least before he had memories of whatever lingered from the hours prior to when he was alone. He at least had that to hold on to. Now, thanks to what he admits are his cowardice-- he has nothing. He's alone without the one thing, the one person that made his miserable life mean something; you.

You weren't getting along any better. You tried to put up a front, knowing that you'd concern your friends and your brother. They obviously didn't know what was going on and they would be confused why your mood suddenly changed from blissfully happy to down and depressed. So you go on with your life as it would have been before your breakup with Draco or even before you had even gotten together with him in the first place. Cedric has been a big help in keeping your mind off of the platinum blond-haired boy, a good buddy is what you liked to call him when Harry asks what goes on between you and Cedric. At times you wish you would've liked Cedric as he liked you. Unfortunately, dark, brooding, and emotionally unavailable is your type.

A hand on your shoulder brought you back into reality, you forgot you were with Cedric sitting by the black lake. "Thinking about him again?" He asked.

"No." You lied, even though you knew that he knew you by now and that you most likely were thinking about Draco. He doesn't know that guy you were thinking about was Draco, he never pried. It's not like you're like this all the time either but the rare times you were, you would zone out, replaying certain memories when they came up with what you would be doing at the time.

"It's okay if you were."

"I wasn't."

"Alright, Alright, Whatever you say." He puts his hands up in surrender. You playfully shoved him.

"We should go back anyway, I have potions in 30 and it's a long walk." You motioned your hand so that he would follow you.

"Have you ever thought that maybe if you put a little pep in your step, you'd get to class faster?"

You shot him a glare. "First of all it's freezing, Snape is lucky I'm even showing up to his class at all instead of cuddled up in my bed with my warm blankets. Second of all if I put a 'pep in my step' I'll be out of breath." He chuckled.

"A bit of exercise could help with shortness of breath when walking y'know."

"How dare you suggest such an activity around me!" You stopped in your tracks putting a hand to your chest. "The word exercise personally offends me, sir."

Cedric stutters out an apology while laughing. "I-I am sorry Y/N, I promise not to mention your lack of physical fitness."

"That would be greatly appreciated." You let out a 'hmph' sound as you turned your back on him, continuing your trek to class.

~~~

A full day of classes had you exhausted and prepared to drop on your bed. You fought your eyes from closing as you walked back to your dorm. You hadn't even noticed you were bumped into someone while walking until you heard them shout, "Watch where your-" He paused noticing it was you.

'Fuck' you groaned internally. In your tired state, you forgot to go the other, longer way back to your dorm. It was a new system you set for yourself, instead of going the way you and Draco would usually walk through to get a glimpse of each other throughout the days you were together, you now walked the halls you knew he never liked to go through because of how it would be packed by students rushing to get to class.

You rolled your eyes at his attitude, you knew it wasn't meant for you. He gave you a once-over. You stuttered a quick apology moving away from him. He grabbed your wrist, you glanced at where he held his grip and to his eyes.

"Sorry." He muttered. "Can we talk?"

As much as you wanted to talk to him, you weren't mentally or emotionally prepared for this conversation. Your mind was racing with the different things he would say. Did he find someone else? Does he want to get back together and actually try? Or revert back to your old ways of sneaking around?

"I-"

"It doesn't have to be right at this moment." He leaned in to whisper in your ear. "How 'bout our usual time and place?"

"Fine." You yanked your wrist back from his grip and walked away from him.

~~~

Several hours later, you found yourself in front of the room of requirements, shaking your head you stepped inside.

"Alright, I'm here now what do you want?"

"You."

"You know I'm not yours anymore."

"Y/N you were always mine, let's stop this ridiculousness and go back to how we were before." He took a step towards you, you stepped back. You wanted to keep your distance, you didn't know how much restraint you had to keep yourself away from him. You knew being too close would lead you into his trap. He'd kiss you and tell you sweet nothings and you would believe them.

"I don't want to go back to the ways it was before!" You yelled, there were tears burning in your eyes. "You know what I want and if you can't give me that then we can't be together!"

"Y/N I can't do this without you-"

"Do what, Draco?" You wiped the stray tears that fell out.

"Live, I don't know how to live without you. Eating is a chore, sleeping knowing you're not in my arms is unbearable, in fact, I haven't slept since we broke up." You could see his eyes line with water. You willed yourself to not give in. You deserved a person who isn't afraid to love you in the open.

"I haven't either..." You allowed yourself to admit to him, then straightened yourself, your moment of weakness gone. "But it doesn't matter we can get past this and learn to live without each other."

"I can't, I won't."

"Then you know what you need to do," With that, you left.

~~~

The next day he approached your brother during lunch and asked to speak with him. You were nervous, this wasn't exactly how you thought the big reveal was going to go. But when Harry came back he didn't look angry but confused and suspicious.

"What was that about?" Hermione asked. You glanced back and forth between Draco over at the Slytherin table and Harry who was now, sitting back in his seat in front of you.

"He apologized for everything." Harry's brows furrowed.

"Shouldn't that be a good thing?" You questioned. Hermione shook her head 'no'

"He always has some other agenda." She wasn't entirely wrong. Maybe this was his way of trying, but he's mistaken if he thinks that just apologizing to Harry will have you running back. He would have to try harder, you would help him out a little bit by gaining Harry and the rest of the group's favor, as much as you could.

"Maybe he's trying to change."

Harry's eyebrows furrowed, "That's what he said, he told me that he wanted to change and do better and apologized for everything he's done since our first year. Malfoy even gave me the answers to the History of Magic exam next class."

"Where'd he get those?" Ron asked with a mouthful of food. Hermione rolled her eyes, "It doesn't matter cause he's not going to use them. Right, Harry?" He shrugged.

"I might, I'm not exactly passing that class 'mione." She gave him a disapproving look and snatched the piece of parchment from his hand. "I could've helped you study, besides how do you know this isn't some sort of joke?"

"Does it matter? Pass it over, I need to get an outstanding before McGonagall writes a letter to Mum about my notes. I am not doing well this year." Ron answered.

"How about this, you use the answers that he gave you and if you pass then he really is trying to get better and if you fail he's just being a prick, yeah?" You suggested, you were sure that this was his attempt (one of many, you hoped) to get you back with him. If it was, then he was playing smart. Getting on your brother's good side first was a good idea.

In the days that passed, You, Harry, and the others were waiting for the results Malfoy continued to do good deeds for your group which made everyone suspicious. Even sending you flowers during days where when the mail came in with love notes. It was nice but those were secret, just for you and him although everyone knew you were being courted nobody knew by who. And when Harry and Ron had gotten their results back from Professor Binns, they passed. Hermione wasn't too thrilled about being wrong, Ron wanted to celebrate at the next Hogsmeade trip which was tomorrow. You all decided that you'd get butterbeer at the three broomsticks and would talk over what to do with Malfoy now that he's no longer bullying them.

When everyone went to bed, you found yourself using your dad's invisibility cloak to sneak off to the room of requirements. You were surprised to find Draco laying on the couch that always appeared, with his eyes closed. He looked peaceful and beautiful, his platinum blond hair standing out in the darkness of the room. His perfectly sculpted face, and oh how you missed kissing him on his soft lips.

"Starings at a person while they're sleeping is a bit odd, don't you think?" He sat up, you were startled by his voice and jumped.

"You're not sleeping anymore." You sat on the empty spot next to him. "Thanks for the answers, by the way, they were thrilled."

"Stole them from a Ravenclaw, they didn't seem to have use for them." You snorted at his reply of course he would. "What'd you think about the flowers?"

"My room now looks like a florist's shop by they were beautiful, thank you."

"I have to start somewhere." He shrugged. You had a small smile on your face, these were the things that you missed, what you loved about him and yes it was the bare minimum of effort but it used to be a lot more when you were together. People don't see this side of him, how he could be improper and make jokes that aren't all snide remarks at people. He's kind and sweet and considerate of the people he cares about. Your smile turned into a frown when you remembered why you broke up in the first place. He was considerate and cared about you but not enough to be with you in public and not care about what others say.

"I fucked it up but I'm going to try Y/N, It'll be a new start for us, I promise." He slowly eased his hand into your own, as if questioning if it was alright. And for the moment, it was.

You didn't notice that you had fallen asleep on the couch with Draco when you woke up. His arm underneath supporting your head, one of your arms were tucked into you while the other was wrapped around his waist. You took note of the position you were in and scolded yourself mentally. This was definitely not keeping your distance. Gladly this was the only thing that happened last night. You sneakily removed yourself from to so you wouldn't wake him up, picking up the invisibility cloak that laid on the ground and ran back to the common room, praying absence wasn't noticed. It was about 10 o'clock in the morning, you could tell by the sun shining and the number of students who were buzzing about the halls.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron weren't in the common room when you entered through the portrait hole after a fellow Gryffindor. You let out a sigh of relief when you made it to your dorm, uncovering yourself from the cloak. You quickly got dressed in normal clothes for the day. By the time you went down, the others were sitting around chatting.

"Finally!" Ron exclaimed, "Now can we go?"

"Yes, Ronald." Hermione dragged Ron away. "So dramatic, we were only out here for 10 minutes."

Your trek to the small town of Hogsmeade was uneventful. You went to a couple of stores before finally sitting down at a table by the stairs at the three broomsticks. Ron and Harry went to go get drinks leaving you and Hermione at the table alone.

"Where were you last night?" She blurted out. You choked on your spit, you didn't expect that.

"What do you mean?" You asked after your coughing fit. She gave you a look that said 'seriously.

"I woke up in the middle of the night you were gone, when I woke up to wake the boys you still weren't there, and then all of a sudden you come down from girl's dorm as if you were there the entire time." She folded her arms across her chest, one eyebrow arched in the way she always did when she made a point. "I guess the question isn't where you were but who were you with?"

You knew your shock was giving you away and you tried to compose yourself, luckily the boys returned with the drinks. You took one out of Ron's hand and took a sip.

"That was mine but whatever I guess." He sat down next to Hermione. "Alright so when are we gonna talk about the new Malfoy?"

"We were having a good day without having to bring him up, Ron." Harry groaned.

"Well, your days gonna get a whole lot worse because he just walked in." Ron nodded his head toward the entrance. You sunk into your seat putting a hand over your face in hopes that he wouldn't see you.

Just as fate would have it he saw your brother and friends and came over to your table. "Good afternoon Weasley, Granger, Potters."

You all replied with awkward greetings, they were all obviously confused as to why he would come up to you guys and not immediately throw insults.

"I was wondering if I could have a word with Y/N?" He asked politely. Your eyes narrowed 'Oh fuck no'. You felt all their eyes shift to you, Hermiones especially a glint in her eye telling you that she knew the answer to her own question.

Just as you were about to answer, Harry interjected with a no, "Whatever you need to talk to her about you could say it in front of us. Your eyes widened, 'Merlin this day truly couldn't get worse'.

"Very well then, Potter would you allow me to take your sister out on a date?" You almost spit out your drink and slightly coughed when you swallowed. You looked between Harry's angry face and Dracos amused one. You assumed Harry was too shocked to respond, your nerves were all over the place waiting for him to say something.

"No." He said simply. Draco clenched his jaw while yours dropped at your brother's bluntness, Ron looked shocked and burst out laughing and Hermione was just sitting there watching this scene unfold. No seemed to be the answer of the day.

You shook your head. "So what I don't get a say?"

"I mean-" Draco attempted to respond but Harry cut him off.

"That's why you've been so nice recently, this was all some sort of plot to get to my sister, use her to get to me?" Harry stood up so he was face to face with Draco. "Listen here Malfoy, you can mess with me, try to humiliate me, get me into all sorts of trouble but the minute you bring my sister into this-"

"Harry calm down." You saw his wand peeking out through the sleeve of his hoodie.

"I can assure you this isn't some plot to get to you, I've fancied your sister for quite some time now." His eyes flickered between you and your brother. "I decided it was time I acted on it."

"Is he the guy that's been sending you flowers?" You pursed your lips debating on whether to answer or not, it seems like Draco was feeling bold today so he confessed that he was.

"I thought you were dating Cedric?" Ron interrupted, Draco rolled his eyes and Hermione smacked him over the head. "Of course not idiot!"

You chuckled, "No he's just a good friend."

"The timing just doesn't make sense." Harry tried to reason, "Malfoys never showed interest before and he's an arsehole." He spoke as if he wasn't standing right in front of him.

"He's a lot sweeter than you think!" you defended him.

"How would you know?"

"Because we were dating before!" Draco lost his patience. He was going to ask you out in front of Harry in hopes he'd say yes and ease him into the idea of being in a relationship with him. But at this point, with what happened last night he couldn't restrain himself from you anymore.

Hermione gasped. It appeared the whole Three broomsticks was quiet at the outburst. "I'm tired of hiding it. And I lost her because. I wanted to keep our relationship hidden so I've been trying to win back her affections. I can't deal with this anymore, Y/N you know this, You know how much I love you and you're right. Our love can't be hidden, not one like ours, so pure and powerful. It was wrong of me to hold us back because I was scared. I'm not anymore, clearly, please," He knelt down on one knee, something you never ever thought he would do in front of all these people. The most vulnerable part of him coming out. "tell me you still love me and you will take me back."

"Of course, I will." You brought him back up, grabbing his face and kissing him. Cheers were heard all around you. This was all you wanted.

Tags: @thescarletknight2014 - @with-my-soul-and-heart - @idkatee

#Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x y/n #harry x draco #draco fluff #draco x you #draco smut #harry potter imagine #Harry Potter #harry potter x sister reader #ron wealsey #Hermione Granger #cedric diggory #cedric diggory imagine #cedric diggory x reader #the goblet of fire #Slytherin x Gryffindor

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elisela · 3 years

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do you know how to do take-aways? (read on ao3) derek x stiles, g, 2.2k, au, meet cute, fluff, kid fic

prompt: call me for @tylerhunklin

"Hey Scott," Stiles says, jamming the phone receiver between his shoulder and ear so he can go back to typing with both his hands. "Desk duty is killing me, man, do you know how much of a backlog on paperwork there is in this place? Fucking ridiculous—"

"Stiles," Scott cuts in, “I have a call I need you to take."

Stiles sits up straighter and frowns. "We've got people out on patrol—"

Scott's laughter is warm and familiar in his ear. "No, it's not a patrol thing. I'm gonna transfer it over to you, okay? And I’m still coming to bring you dinner tonight."

"Roger," Stiles says, lazily snapping a salute despite Scott not being able to see him. There's a pause and a click, and he slips back into his professional mode—the one his dad definitely wishes he would use more often. "Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department, this is Deputy Stilinski, how can I help you?"

"Hi," a small voice says. "Do you know how to do take-aways?"

He frowns, glancing over at the display on the phone screen. He'd think it was a joke except he doubts Scott would patch that through, and there's a childish tone to the voice that's difficult to fake. "Like subtraction?" he asks.

"Yeah," the voice says. "We learned it today but I don't remember and I gotta do my homework."

He presses his lips together so he doesn't laugh and slouches, relaxing a little in his seat. "Sure do," he says. "What's your name?"

"Talia Marie Hale," she says promptly, and Stiles scribbles it down on a piece of paper. "How do I do five take away five?"

"Can you put up five fingers?" he asks, and she makes a noise of assent. "Okay, now put five of them down." He hears her counting in the background and he copies the number the shows on his display underneath her name, then clicks over to run it through the system. When she stops, he says, "okay, how many fingers do you still have up?"

"I don't have any," she says. "How do you write that?"

"Zero," he says. "Do you know how to make that? It's like a big o." He waits another moment before asking, "is anyone in the house with you, Talia?"

"Yeah, my auntie," she says. "But I can't ask her questions while she's writing unless it's an emergency."

He can't catch himself before he laughs. "What made you decide to call 9-1-1?"

"My teacher said if you ever need help you can call," Talia says. "And I really need help. What's seven take away three?"

The second call comes in three days later. He's peeling apart his turkey sandwich and layering Doritos on it, providing much-needed crunch, when his phone rings through from dispatch. "Sup, Scott," he says, because Scott's the only one who ever bothers to call him directly.

"Sorry, Stiles, just me," Kira says. "I have someone on the line for you. Given that she asked for you by name, maybe you could remind her that this line is for emergencies and talk to her guardian?"

He presses the top slice of bread back onto his sandwich and leans back in his chair. "Got it," he says, and waits for the click. "That you, Miss Hale?"

"Hi, Mr. Deputy Stilinski," she says, tiny voice chipper in his ear. "I'm really confused about this take away."

"Hit me," he says, and she giggles.

"Ten take away six," she says. "I put up all my fingers but I got confused."

He hums and glances around his desk. "Are you with your auntie again today?" he asks, and when she confirms he adds, "do you have any toys at her house?"

"I'm at my house," she says. "Auntie watches me while Daddy's away for work, but she's busy writing her thesis so I can't go in the office."

"What's your dad's name?" he asks.

"Derek Samuel Hale," she says. "And my auntie's name is Cora Elizabeth Hale, and my other auntie is Laura Margaret Hale, and my dog's name is Ruffio Hale. Like from Hook. Auntie Cora named him because she said Daddy was scared of Hook when he was my age and she likes to make fun of him. Daddy tried to rename him but he only wants to answer to Ruffio now."

He writes it all down with a grin—even the unasked for information—and flicks at his mouse to wake his computer. "Your aunt sounds pretty cool," he says. "Okay, go get ten small toys and we'll get your math done. Blocks, if you have them."

He runs Cora's name through the system as he waits, just to make sure Talia isn't being left with someone irresponsible, and finds nothing of consequence. He keeps the list, though; he'll tell Talia not to call 9-1-1 anymore unless it's an emergency, and if she does, he'll get in touch with her dad then.

"Little red h-hen makes s-sop," Talia reads, and pauses. "That doesn't sound right. What's ou?"

"Spell the whole thing for me," he says, and corrects, "soup," when she does, spearing a piece of microwaved chicken and popping it in his mouth. He's quiet while she reads, only interjecting when she needs help, trying to eat silently in the background. She mostly spells the comprehension questions for him and he reads them to her, and when she finally thanks him and hangs up, he looks up to see his dad standing over his shoulder.

"Hey, Pops, I finished the file on—"

"When did your desk turn in to the homework helpline?" Noah asks, frowning, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

"She only calls on my break, it's fine," he says, waving a hand to brush away the question before picking up the file. "Anyway—"

"Are her parents aware?"

"I left her aunt a voicemail on Monday," he says, and when his dad just looks at him, he sighs. "Fine, I left her a message last Monday and I haven't heard back, but she's not alone in the house, nothing bad is going on, she's just—lonely, I think." It's something he understands; after his mom passed away, he'd started calling Edith, who worked the front desk of the station when he was a kid, every night his dad wasn't home.

"Call again," Noah says, "and next time, make whoever is home with her aware of it. Once or twice is fine; every day for weeks is a problem."

"Here," he says, and Talia gives him the first letter promptly before pausing and spelling out the rest. "Good job. Um, said."

He might be extending their time on the phone, just a little. He likes talking to her; she reminds him of himself, her elementary drama always makes him laugh, and she likes asking him questions about being a deputy. So he’s not really looking forward to asking to speak to her aunt and put a stop to all this.

When she seems like she’s winding down, he sighs. “I know you’re not supposed to interrupt Auntie Cora,” he says, “but I was hoping to talk to her. Can you tell her Deputy Stiles is on the phone?”

“Oh, Auntie’s not here,” Talia says, and Stiles feels the beginning of a heart attack coming on before she adds, “Daddy’s home now. I’ll go get him.” He hears a thunk and then little feet running, her calling out for her Dad before there’s a muffled thump.

“Hello?”

“Uh, hi,” he says, “this is Deputy Stilinski from BHSD—is this Mr. Hale?”

“This is,” he says, and if it’s possible to fall in love with a voice, Stiles does so right then. Soft and gentle, just a bit of concern, and he has to stop himself from running Derek’s name through the system to get a photo. His dad is already irritated with him for encouraging Talia’s calls (and, you know, for the whole stopping a bank robbery in progress thing that led to the injury that landed him on desk duty), he doesn’t need to add misuse of resources to the list. “Is everything okay?”

He takes a breath and explains, starts from the beginning and includes how he gave Talia his desk number so she would stop calling 9-1-1, makes sure to add that he’d tried to get ahold of Cora—and leaves out the fact he hadn’t called Mr. Hale directly even though he could have easily done so—and when he’s finished talking, he adds, “I didn’t mind, honestly, she just told me today that you were back in town and I wanted to let you know.”

There’s a pause where he holds his breath and hopes that Mr. Hale doesn’t think he’s a creep, or doesn’t demand to speak to the Sheriff—but he just lets out a breath and says “I am so sorry, I’ll absolutely talk to her, it won’t happen again.”

“I really didn’t mind,” he says again, because he also doesn’t want to get Talia into trouble. “She must get home from school at the same time my break starts because she always called at the same time, I wasn’t busy. Just making you aware.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Hale says. “Deputy—” and isn’t Stiles going to have dreams where his name is said like that, low and grateful and—

“Sorry?” he asks, flushing when he realizes he’s lost track of the conversation. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I appreciate what you did,” Mr. Hale says. “I’ll talk to her.”

Talia doesn’t call the next day.

She shows up instead.

“Mr. Deputy Stiles!” he hears from the front, and his head snaps up to see a little girl with long dark hair looking around the room, envelope clutched in one hand, the holding onto the hottest man Stiles has ever seen and holy shit, he suddenly believes that karma is very real and he has clearly done something good in his life to earn this kind of reward.

He starts to stand, and her eyes catch his and light up as she tugs her dad towards him. “Miss Hale?”

“Hi!” she says, flinging her arms around his waist. He hugs her back and looks over at her dad, who gives him a sheepish look and shrugs. “I got a hundred percent on my sight words test and Daddy said we could go to ice cream to celebrate and then when we were at ice cream he said we should do something nice for you because you helped me so so so much and I really wanted to come here anyway because I want to see a real jail and Daddy said if I was really really nice and asked politely then maybe you could show me some handcuffs—”

If this is what he’s like, he’s starting to understand why it was difficult for him to make friends in school, because she just does not stop, and doesn’t leave an opportunity for him to get a word in. He crouches down so he’s eye-level with her and waits it out, accepting the envelope when she finally runs out of words and beams at him. “Thank you,” he says, and when he opens it up to find a drawing and a handful of gift cards, he looks up to Mr. Hale. “You really didn’t have to, Mr. Hale,” he says, wrapping one arm around Talia’s shoulders when she darts in to hug him again.

“Derek,” he says, and when he smiles, Stiles is pretty sure he’s found God. “We don’t want to take up your time, I just wanted to thank you.”

“But—” Talia starts, and falls quiet when Derek looks at her again. “I can’t even see the people in the jail?”

“It’s not really a jail,” Stiles says, shrugging, “just a holding cell. And there’s no one in it right now.”

“Boo,” Talia says. “Can I meet your Sheriff?”

“Lia,” Derek warns, and she sighs explosively. “Sorry about—all this. I talked to Cora and she knows to give Talia a little more attention during homework time, so she won’t—she shouldn’t—be calling you again. Talia, we need to get home. Say thank you and goodbye.”

“Bye, Mr. Deputy Stiles,” she says, and he knows—he knows—that her sticking out her bottom lip and pouting is nothing more than a manipulation tactic, but it hits him all the same. “Thank you.”

“Deputy Stilinski,” he says before he fully has the receiver to his ear, wadding up a piece of scrap paper and tossing it at Jordan’s head to get his attention. He motions to the pizza box laying on his desk—dinner for the station courtesy of Derek, who clearly didn’t know the going rate for tutors given the sheer amount he’d dropped on gift cards—and makes a grabbing motion. They’ll be having station dinners for weeks—so long as they cater to his busted foot and bring him what he wants. Otherwise, he’s spending it all on himself.

“Hi,” someone says, and “sorry, this is Derek Hale, Talia’s dad?”

“Hey,” he says, sitting up straighter. “How can I help you?”

“I—” there’s a pause and a muffled sound, a conversation happening just outside of what Stiles can hear. “Sorry, I—I wanted to ask if you would be interested in getting coffee on Saturday. With me,” he adds, and Stiles can hear it when he cups his hand over the microphone and says, “Talia, stop.”

It’s like a record scratch in his brain. “Coffee?” he repeats. He’d thanked karma for smiling down on him, but he’d figured the encounter with Derek was one and done. “You want—with me?”

“Yes,” Derek says, “although my daughter is also extremely interested and I believe is willing to fight me for you.”

Laughter bursts out of his mouth before he can stop it. “You know, I think Talia did call dibs first,” he says, grinning. “What if we all got coffee and then you and I went for lunch?”

“I can work with that,” Derek says. “It’s a date.”

#sterek #sterek fic #derek hale #stiles stilinski #eli writes #sterek au #deputy stiles #KID FIC #meet cute

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burberryharold · 4 years

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hey, lovies! i’ve been so excited to post this fic because i am in love with Harry and Jules and i hope you will be too (and excuse the lousy banner i just wanted to have something lol)! this is a part of @1dffchallenges’s valentine’s day challenge, so i hope you enjoy reading it and happy valentine’s day, it’s all about spreading love around so here is some love from me to all of you ❤️

a special thank you to @fireproofrry @bodejacketharry @strawberryystyles for beta reading and giving feedback, you are absolute angels <3

word count: 7.7k

warnings: none!

challenge prompt and dialogue: strangers alone on valentine’s day + “I’m allergic to chocolate. And roses.”

It’s official, valentine’s day is the worst.

At least that’s what Jules thought as she adjusted herself on the bar stool, trying to get into a comfortable position while she waited for her drink to be served.

It wasn’t in Jules’ agenda to spend what was supposed to be the most romantic day of the year alone at a bar ten minutes away from her apartment. If she was still with Leon, they would have been having a nice dinner somewhere, laughing over whatever funny story one of them had to share about their day at the company.

But alas, Leon was someone else’s now and Jules was only left with her own company.

Truth be told, though, Jules never minded being alone, in fact, she enjoyed being by herself because people were simply exhausting.

But being alone and being lonely were too completely different things, and Jules hated feeling lonely.

And valentine’s day only made that worse. Seeing loved up couples around her, flashes of red and pink everywhere she glanced, hearing cheesy love songs blasting through the speakers of the shops she passed by. Everything about valentine’s day just seemed to remind her of her lonely status.

Instead of staying at her apartment all night long doing nothing but watching rom coms and feeling sorry for herself, Jules thought of a better alternative, which was to get pissed drunk. So when she got up in the morning to go to work (because even on valentine’s day duty calls), she put on her favourite black dress, one that was sleeveless and had a deep v-neckline, and put on enough makeup to feel confident in the way she looked before pulling on her coat and venturing into the cold streets of London.

If she was going to get pathetically drunk by herself at a bar after work whilst everyone else was being all lovey dovey, then she would look hot doing it.

The sound of a glass coming in contact with the wooden surface broke her out of her reverie and she glanced up, finding that the bartender had placed her drink in front of her and he was beaming at her. “There you go, love, happy valentine’s day.”

After squinting at the name tag (she’s never seen him here before, he must be new), Jules forced herself to return his smile and lifted her glass. “Cheers, Jonah.”

Poor guy must have thought she was waiting for a date or something. Too bad, no one was going to be joining Jules on this fine evening. Just me, myself, and I.

Setting her glass back on the counter after taking a big gulp, Jules scowled as she was reminded of the items she had received earlier in the day. For some reason, Leon thought it was a good idea to give her a box of chocolates and a rose, even though they were no longer together and he had another woman by his side.

She appreciated the thought behind it, he probably just wanted to be nice or maybe he felt guilty, but his gift was staring at her, almost laughing at her misery and she wasn’t having it.

That is why she instantly asked Jonah for a fork, which caused him to send her a confused look but he complied nonetheless, and she proceeded to stab the pieces of chocolate placed perfectly in the box, taking out her frustration on the sweets.

Once satisfied, she dropped the fork with a clunk and heaved out a sigh, lazily resting her chin in her right hand before looking back at Jonah. He was staring at her with wide eyes as he dried off some shot glasses, surely thinking that she was a lunatic, but Jules just flashed him a sweet smile and shifted her eyes back to the chocolates she had just assaulted.

Poor chocolate, but oh well.

“Are you alright there?”

“What the fuc-“ The sudden voice caused her to jump in her seat and she almost fell off the bar stool if it weren’t for the hand that magically materialised behind her, holding her steady.

Before she had a chance to slap the hand off her back, the stranger retracted it and returned to his seat and she had the chance to take a proper look at him.

The man stared back at her with concerned eyes, a stool separating the two of them, but he was still not that far away from her. Jules wondered when he had gotten there because she certainly didn’t feel him arrive. Perhaps it was during her chocolate rampage.

What really surprised her though, more than his sudden appearance, was the fact that she knew who he was. In fact, she believed everyone knew the man sitting beside her because it was none other than Harry Styles.

Many questions ran through Jules’ head, the most important being what on earth was a guy like him doing at this bar on valentine’s day? Jules never believed in the image the media painted of him, but surely he has something better to do than be here, all by himself it seems?

As big of a fan as she was, the fact that he was right before her didn’t faze Jules all that much, her mind was more preoccupied by other matters. So, she ended up doing what she would’ve done if it was any other person: she glared at him and wordlessly turned back in her seat, pretending as if he wasn’t there.

He didn’t seem to take the hint.

“You were quite aggressive with the chocolate there.” His deep voice floated in the empty bar as he pointed at the box in front of her.

Jules inhaled deeply before responding in a flat tone. “I’m allergic to chocolate.” Glaring at the single rose lying beside the box, she grabbed it and tossed it on the floor beneath her, silently cursing Leon once more. “And roses.”

She felt guilty for littering, but she’d pick it up when she leaves. Eventually.

“Are you really?” The man beside her questioned, leaning forward in his seat, his body completely turned towards her at this point. She could tell from her tone that he was skeptical of her supposed allergies and she honestly couldn’t blame him.

“No,” she found herself shaking her head, signalling for Jonah to get her another drink, still keeping her body facing forward and only glancing at him from her peripheral vision, “I’m just fucking with you.”

To her surprise, he let out a small laugh, not seeming to be upset. Jules couldn’t help but turn her head a bit to look at him, finding a dimpled smile on his and she wondered what was wrong with this guy.

“May I ask why you were stabbing the poor sweets then?”

Figuring she should just put him out of his misery and answer his question, Jules huffed and crossed her legs, not missing the way his gaze flickered down for a split second before returning to her face. She ignored it and sighed, “Well if you must know, my ex gave them to me this morning.”

“Trying to get you to take him back?”

“Oh god no,” Jules laughed at the notion, her hand waving off his wrong assumption, “he’s as happy as can be with his new girlfriend.”

The blatant confusion on his face prompted her to provide more explanation.

“We broke up a couple of months ago, he left me for someone else. So he probably just felt guilty.”

“He left you for someone else? And before the holidays?” When she nodded in confirmation, he shook his head with a frown. “Bastard.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Valentine’s day just sucks, it’s just a reminder of how lonely you are,” she muttered with bitterness, “Of how lonely I am.”

“Well if it’s any consolation,” Harry said, pausing to ask the bartender for another drink, “I’m lonely tonight too.”

“Well, obviously, otherwise you wouldn’t be here getting drunk on your own.” With a few drinks already in her system, Jules practically had no filter whatsoever (not that she really had one in the first place).

“Touché,” he clicked his tongue, then leaned back to chug down the rest of his glass. Jules was almost concerned by how quickly he downed his drink, but she’s not in a position to talk, after all, she’d been doing the same. “But I’m not getting drunk on my own now, am I? You’re right here.”

She scoffed, eyebrows raising at his words. “Who said I’m keeping you company? Or that I’m not leaving any second now?”

“I don’t think you are.” He responded with much conviction that it almost threw Jules off.

“You think too confidently about a stranger you just met.”

“Let’s fix the strangers part then, shall we? I’m Harry.” He extended his ring-clad hand and Jules noticed a coat of red nail polish on his fingers. How ironic.

She sighed before deciding to entertain him, grabbing a firm hold of his surprisingly warm hand. Maybe she’ll allow him to keep her company tonight. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to leave her alone anyway.

“Jules.” She simply responded before turning back to her drink, swirling the pink straw around. She made a mental note to thank Jonah later for the cute straw.

“Jules” Harry repeated, as if testing the name on his lips and Jules would be lying if she said that she didn’t like the way it rolled off his tongue. “Is that a nickname for Julie? Julia? Short for Juliann-“

“Juliet. It’s Juliet.” She interrupted his ridiculous ramble. He surely was inquisitive. And did she really look like a Julianne?

“Huh,” he hummed, gliding a finger over the rim of his glass, staying silent for a few seconds and Jules thought he was maybe done for the night.

She thought wrong, it seems.

“Oh, Juliet, oh, Juliet, where art thou, Juliet?” He dramatically recited, voice going deeper as he stared upwards at a spot over the bar. Simply put, Jules thought he looked ridiculous.

She could hear Jonah snickering in the background.

“It’s where art thou, Romeo, but nice try.” She rolled her eyes in response to his theatrics. Almost everyone she’s ever encountered has commented on her name and made a reference to the infamous Shakespearean tragedy that she’s never been too fond of. It’s why she mostly went by Jules.

No one’s ever recited that line though, however wrong it was. That was a first.

“I knew that,” the curly-haired man mumbled beside her, swirling his glass and watching the ice cubes swim around, “was just joking, geez, tough crowd.”

Jules couldn’t help but roll her eyes again in response. That joke got old a long time ago.

She’s beginning to regret coming to this bar tonight. Maybe she should’ve just headed straight home and cuddled into her blankets.

“It’s pretty, though,” he added a few moments later, “beautiful name for a beautiful woman”

No way. She huffed, spinning in her seat to face him once again. “That’s your line? Tell me, Mr. Rockstar, has that really worked on anyone before?”

She could tell he was a bit surprised but tried to hide it; unluckily for him, Jules was a very observant person, hardly anything passed her.

“I-I didn’t mean it like that-“

She interrupted him again and leaned in closer, resting her elbow on the countertop and raised an eyebrow. His eyes flickered for a fleeting second to the charm bracelet adorning her wrist. “So you don’t think my name’s beautiful? Or that I’m beautiful? Sheesh, Harry, you’re not looking good here.”

Harry spluttered, staring at her with eyes blown wide in panic and Jules almost felt bad for messing with him; it was just hard not to, she was lonely and he was right there annoying her with his lousy jokes, so he has the unfortunate fate of being her victim tonight (and truthfully, he brought it on himself). And if she was being honest, messing with Harry Styles was just too entertaining of an opportunity for her to pass on.

To be fair, she was a little annoyed by his presence in the beginning, having originally planned to wallow in her misery all by herself, but now she’s having fun. She might just enjoy her time with him.

“No- no of course I think you’re beautiful, y-your name too,” he responded in clear panic, seemingly trying to figure out how he can redeem himself. Jules’ attention was momentarily caught by the way his rings glimmered under the light as he flexed his fingers, still fumbling for a response. “I was just-“

“Styles,” she interrupted him, yet again, with a light-hearted laugh and shook her head, hair falling forward on her shoulders, “Relax, was just messing with you.”

His shoulders visibly relaxed and he heaved out a sigh of relief; his eyes then narrowed and he lifted his hand, pointer finger wagging in her direction. “You really like messing with people, huh? Not very nice of you.”

“Made you sweat, no? Was just having fun. I can now say that I’ve made the infamous Harry Styles stumble over his words. How much do you think they’ll pay me for that hot gossip? Reckon it would be a lot.” She said as she turned back in her seat, now facing the bar once again, but she knew he caught the smirk on her face and the teasing lilt in her tone.

Coming to the bar was definitely a good decision.

Harry felt like a proper idiot.

Here he was, sitting at a pub with a lovely woman that clearly didn’t want to be bothered, yet he had to fuck things up and be a git.

And the Juliet bit? Harry had never been more embarrassed, he didn’t know what he was thinking, or if he was thinking at all. He made sure to remind himself that he wasn’t that funny and should just stop trying to be. You’re making a fucking fool of yourself.

In spite of his rather embarrassing advances, Harry found himself enjoying Jules’ company immensely, even if she had barely looked his way when he had arrived at his spot.

She might’ve looked irritated by his insistent attempts to start a conversation with her in the beginning, but from the way her body has been facing him for the past half an hour and the smile or two she’d thrown his way, Harry had a feeling she was warming up to him.

He discovered that she was an accountant, which thoroughly surprised him because she didn’t seem like one. Harry doesn’t like to judge a book by its cover, but Jules definitely didn’t scream accountant, more like a Greek goddess or something. Her black dress hugged her body in a way that almost made Harry dizzy; he had noticed her the second he walked into the nearly empty pub – and before he could even think about it, he found his legs carrying him in her direction (he was already headed to the bar anyway, or so he told himself).

Admittedly, the way she was stabbing the chocolates had him fearing for his life for a split second, but Harry brushed it off and figured she just wasn’t a fan of valentine’s day, if her apparent disdain for the sweets and the rose before her was any indication.

He was also surprised to learn that she’d moved here from America about five years ago and this pub was one she often frequented, yet Harry had never run into her somehow despite coming here a lot and living not too far himself.

He’s glad their paths have finally crossed tonight, though.

That being said, Jules was definitely keeping him on his toes. He never knew what she was going to say next, and she certainly did not hold back from saying exactly what was on her mind.

Harry found himself liking that about her, even if her forwardness came at his expense sometimes (he couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it). Oftentimes, people acted cautious around him and treated him differently just because of his status. Not Jules, though.

But now he could tell that she had something on her mind, from the way she looked at him then shifted her eyes elsewhere a second later.

“What is it?” He questioned, deciding to put her out of her fidgety state. He wasn’t sure what was holding her back, she certainly had no problem handing his ass to him earlier.

“It’s just,” she started, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, the movement catching Harry attention for a second before he reminded himself to be respectful, “what are you doing here by yourself tonight? I find it hard to believe that someone like you doesn’t have anyone to hang around on a day like this.”

Someone like him? Harry furrowed his eyebrows, not sure what she was implying with her words but he didn’t believe she meant it in a negative manner necessarily.

“That came out wrong, I didn’t mean anything like that,” she quickly defended, face becoming redder by the second and Harry was a little endeared by the sight. The woman before him was confident all throughout their conversation, having no fear in expressing her thoughts, yet now she was the flustered one. And Harry couldn’t help but enjoy it.

Time to give her a taste of her own medicine.

“What, thought someone like me had a flock of women at their beck and call and that I’d be off with one or some of them tonight?”

He gave her a blank look afterwards, pretending that he found offence in her words and he almost blew his cover at the way her face visibly fell.

“N-no!” she exclaimed, voice rising a few octaves and Harry could see the bartender, Jonah, suddenly flinch behind her from the sound. He pressed his lips together to silence the chuckle that threatened to escape and continued to stare Jules down.

“Of course I didn’t mean it like that,” she added in a much calmer tone, though Harry could detect that panic lacing her voice and he was starting to feel guilty. “I never believed that you were like that, I just,” she paused, averting her gaze away and staring at the lights above them instead, “never mind, just ignore me.”

Harry figured that she already knew of who he was and his status, and despite having just met her, the fact that she just said she doesn’t believe the rumours about him filled him with inexplicable warmth and he had to remind himself again that he’d only just met this woman. He shouldn’t feel anything of the sort towards her.

He could tell by the way her eyebrows were furrowed that she felt bad about what she’d said, so Harry called out her name and waited for her to look at him again.

When she did, her face holding an apprehensive look, he smiled at her and leaned a bit closer, which made little difference because there was still some space separating them.

“I was just messing with you, Jules,” he reached forward and flicked her nose, causing her to instinctively scrunch her face in a cute manner that had Harry’s stomach fluttering. “Doesn’t feel that nice now, does it?”

Jules chuckled in disbelief, wide eyes staring back at him and a smile was slowly stretching on her lips. “Touché. I see how it is then.”

Harry just shrugged, his own lips twitching as another smile threatened to appear. “Just having some fun, eh?”

Jules was now beaming at him and if Harry was standing, he was certain that his knees would’ve buckled at the sight. He already knew that Jules was gorgeous, and he was sure anyone would agree with him, but when as she smiled at him like that, eyes shining bright under the warm orange lights, brown hair cascading loosely yet somehow perfectly on her shoulders, there was no doubt in Harry’s mind that there was an angel sitting before him.

“Truce then?”

Her voice brought him back to earth and Harry chuckled before he shook her outstretched hand, marvelling for a moment at the way it felt enveloped in his. “Truce.”

“But to answer your question,” Harry said after a few beats of silence, glancing at her to find her eyes already set on him. “I didn’t have anything planned, haven’t been on many dates recently to be honest, so I just figured I’d come here and spend time with my good friend,” he lifted his drink with a wide grin on his face, “alcohol, the one thing that never let me down.”

Jules threw her head back in a laugh, the sound being music to Harry’s ears and he wished he could record it just to hear it again and again. “Amen to that.”

The two clinked their glasses together, laughing stupidly for no reason, before they threw their heads back to drink.

“Another round, then?”

Jonah suddenly appeared in front of them, startling Harry a bit. Sometimes he forgot that the man was lingering around behind the bar.

Jules took the liberty to respond for the both of them, exclaiming a “hell yeah, buddy!” that had the two men laughing, and soon enough their glasses were refilled.

After taking a sip, Harry leaned his head on the palm of his hand and set his eyes on Jules again, “So, are you a fan? Of me or of the band?”

He had to ask, he couldn’t help but wonder. If she was indeed a fan, she certainly didn’t show it.

Jules shrugged, playing nonchalant it seemed, but it didn’t escape him the way her cheeks seemed to redden. “Eh, I dabble. You’re alright.”

Her response made him chuckle. “Good to know.” Call him a narcissist, but he really wanted to know whether or not she liked his music. Perhaps he’ll inquire further later.

Because Harry knows that there’s no way he’s letting Jules go anytime soon.

Getting to know Harry was fun.

Sometime during the night, Harry had migrated from his seat onto the bar stool beside her, their thighs brushing against each other every now and then.

Tapping his fingers around his glass, Harry’s rings clinked against it and Jules couldn’t help but be slightly captivated by the action. She wasn’t one to stare at anyone’s hands, but she had to admit that Harry’s were fascinating to look at; his long and slender fingers, adorned by a number of his infamous rings, were truly a sight to see.

She took the chance to also admire his outfit, something she was too busy to do earlier on. His coat was long discarded on the stool beside him, which allowed her eyes to run over his figure. His upper body was covered by a plain white t-shirt with the word “Sex” displayed on his chest, a pair of pair of wide-legged black pants covering his long limbs; it was a simple fit yet it made it difficult for Jules to take her eyes off him. And his hair just looked so soft that her fingers were begging her to touch the fallen strands on his forehead.

Hearing Harry clear his throat broke her out of her trance and Jules realised from the smirk that stretched on his lips that she’d been caught in the act.

She tried playing it off, as if she hadn’t been shamelessly checking him out for the last couple of minutes and smoothed her hands down her dress, adjusting in her seat because honestly, her butt was starting to ache.

But she didn’t want to leave just yet.

Seeming to notice her discomfort, however, Harry downed the last bit of his drink before setting his glass down with a smack, causing Jonah, who was still lingering around them, to shoot Harry a warning glance and a low “careful!”, to which Harry smiled sheepishly before turning to face her again.

“Want to get out of here?”

Jules’ eyebrows shot upwards in surprise, having not expected him to want to continue spending the night with her.

“Sure there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing?” She couldn’t help but question, still struggling to grasp the fact that he still wanted to be around her. Her hands were fidgeting with the hem of her dress, eyes staring into his emerald ones as she waited to hear his response.

Truth be told, she was enjoying his company far much more than she had anticipated and she didn’t want to part from him just yet.

To her relief, a dimpled smile adorned Harry’s face as he took in her words before he shook his head, “Trust me, Jules, there’s no one else I’d rather be with tonight.”

She’d be lying if she said her heart didn’t skip a beat at that.

The two got up from their seats after thanking Jonah and fighting over who’s paying because Harry insisted on paying for her drinks. As she was gathering her things, she felt Harry’s presence behind her and she realised, after looking at him over her shoulders, that he was holding her coat up for her.

Heat rushed into her cheeks at the gesture, finding it sweet that he was helping her when he didn’t really have to. “Thank you,” she whispered, turning to him with a smile after feeling him adjust her hair.

His only response was a faint “No need” and he quickly turned to shrug on his own coat, the bashful smile on his lips not going unnoticed by her.

Flashing Jonah another smile, Harry extended his arm towards her and nodded his head towards the exit. “Shall we?”

“We shall.”

The two stepped into the night, the biting London air hitting Jules’ cheeks immediately and she was positive her nose was already red from the cold.

Jules reached into her pocket to grab her phone, realising that she hasn’t checked the device since she walked into the bar. There weren’t any notifications that she missed, which wasn’t surprising since her friends (all four of them) were out on dates or staying at home with their partners, so she was sure no one was thinking of her at the moment.

Noticing that it was already 8 in the evening and they were aimlessly walking down the street, Jules turned to Harry with a questioning gaze. “Where are we going?”

Leaning his head down to look at her (or perhaps to be closer, Jules wasn’t sure), he paused, seeming to think, before shrugging his shoulders. “Dunno if I’m quite honest.”

Jules found herself chuckling at him. How did her day end with her walking around with no purpose with a man she’d just met?

She looked at the sign closest to them before she turned to him and did something she rarely ever did. She found herself inviting him to her apartment because they were quite close.

A smirk found its way onto Harry’s lips and she started to regret her decision. “Already trying to get me into your bed, Juliet?”

She mentally cursed at the way her heart leaped upon hearing her name roll off his tongue. Almost no one called her Juliet anymore, except for her parents when they were being serious, but she found herself wanting to hear him say her name over and over again.

Shaking her head at the thought, Jules reached her arm out and lightly slapped his shoulder. “Oh come off it, you idiot. You can just go ahead and cry alone in your mansion if you want.”

Harry raised his hands in surrender and muttered an apology, although the smile lingered on his lips and Jules tried to ignore the fluttering feeling in her chest.

“Lead the way, then.”

“Make yourself at home, I’ll get us something to drink.”

The walk to her apartment was full of smiles and laughter. She’s come to the conclusion that Harry loves making people laugh, even if his jokes were actually awful, but she found it endearing; he was like a ray of sunshine bringing joy to those around him.

She was glad that she had cleaned up the place a couple of days ago, it would’ve been embarrassing to have someone over to see pyjamas and junk strewn over her furniture. Suffice to say, Jules was a bit of a mess around the house.

After hanging up her coat and Harry’s, she made her way into her kitchen and looked for the good wine she reserved for special occasions. She easily grabbed it, along with two glasses, but then Jules found herself lingering by the kitchen island.

It dawned on her that there was a man in her living room, and he wasn’t just anyone. This was Harry Styles, someone she’d long admired and holy shit was this really happening?

And as sad as it may sound, she’s never felt this connection with anyone before, never felt like the person before her got her and could keep up with her. Yet with Harry, it felt different, and that scared her because she’d only just met him a couple of hours ago.

And he was bound to forget all about her after tonight. He’s just looking for some company, and Jules didn’t think she was that special. Eventually, he’s going to leave. Just like everyone else.

Feeling like the black marble of the island was starting to swirl in her vision, Jules snapped out of her thoughts and sucked in a deep breath before moving back towards the living room.

Harry had his hands interlocked behind his back, perusing through her record collection and it made her inadvertently smile. She was proud of her vast collection of vinyl records, a good portion of them handed down to her by her father; they both had a deep appreciation for records that her mum often made fun of them for.

“Found anything you like?” He jolted at her voice, not having noticed her presence behind him, but then his shoulders immediately relaxed.

Turning towards her with a wide grin, Harry gestured to the shelf behind him. Jules liked the way he seemed to glow underneath the dim lights and she wished she could take a picture of this moment as a keepsake. “This is amazing, there are records here that I couldn’t even find.”

“You can thank my dad for that,” she told him, making herself comfortable on the couch but not breaking eye contact once, “he’s been collecting them for decades and I’m so glad he let me have some, like you should see his collection back home, it’s even more impressive.”

“Hope I’ll get to someday.”

His response caught her off-guard. Before Jules could react, Harry’s teasing voice carried through the room.

“You dabble, you said?” He smirked, turning the Fine Line record in hand to show her and also nodding to the space that held One Direction records. Jules groaned out loud and flopped against the back of the couch.

“A little yeah. Sue me.”

She blushed under his amused gaze, a little embarrassed that he’d found her collection of the band’s records and his own solo music.

“It’s okay,” he assured her, dimples adorning his cheeks, “think it’s cute that you’re a big fan.”

“Don’t know why that makes me cute but okay if you say so.” She mumbled under her breath, realising that he heard her when he chuckled.

“Mind if I put on something then?”

Jules shook her head, signalling for him to go ahead while she poured their drinks. Soon afterwards Stevie Nicks’ voice filled the silence and her lips tugged up at the choice.

The couch dipped beside her when Harry sat down, the scent of his cologne invading her senses. Jules doesn’t think anyone has ever smelled as good as him, but she chose to keep that thought to herself and instead handed him his drink.

A few moments of silence passed after he quietly thanked her, Stevie’s voice the only thing that can be heard.

“So,” he started, throwing an arm on the back of the couch, a shit-eating grin on his handsome face, “would I find any 1D posters if I went into your room?”

“Oh fuck you.” She threw one of the cushions at him, smiling at the way he threw his head back in laughter.

Jules did not mind his company at all.

“Hold on a minute,” Harry straightened up from his previously relaxed position on the couch, “you all work together and you see him and his new girlfriend every day?”

“Yup, you can imagine how fun that is.” She loved her job as an accountant, having always been fascinated with numbers, but she hated having to see him every day in the office across from hers.

It’s not like she hated him, they actually ended on good terms, all things considered. Leon wasn’t bad, he never cheated on her, but the feelings between them just died out, a flicker of something that dwindled into nothing. So, they were friendly with each other and that’s probably the reason why he brought her a box of chocolate and a rose.

But Juliet just didn’t like the daily reminder that she was in fact much lonelier than he was; it’s like rubbing salt in the wound.

“Shit, Jules, that must be hard,” he frowns, leaning forward to pat her hand, “I’m sorry you have to go through that.”

“It’s not that serious,” she mumbles, feeling heat rushing to her cheeks at the simple touch and she mentally cursed herself. She had sworn off men for the unforeseeable future. “I’m over him. You know, I actually think I was never really in love with him to begin with.”

“Why’d you think that?” He questions, his thumb still softly caressing her hand; Jules wasn’t sure if he was aware of that or was absentmindedly doing it. Either way, the touch warmed her.

“I think,” she started, setting her glass of wine on the coffee table so she could sink in further into the couch, the move unintentionally bringing her body closer to Harry’s. “I think I was just happy to have someone around, someone to spend time with. I’ve spent a lot of my life alone and I think I just clung onto him because he kept me company.”

A few beats of silence passed before she continued. “That makes me sound horrible, no, it’s not like I used him, I did enjoy his company and we had a lot of fun together, but I think I was just in love with the idea of him, not him.”

Harry nodded his head, leaning back and mirroring her position, “I understand. That’s how I felt in most of my relationships actually. I longed to have someone around so I wouldn’t be lonely, but I’ve learned over the years that having company doesn’t mean that you won’t feel lonely.”

“You sounded pretty heartbroken on your last record though.” If she wasn’t as inebriated as she was, Jules would have probably had some filter and wouldn’t have said that.

Luckily, Harry chuckled in response and relaxed further into the couch, retracting his hand from hers (she instantly missed the warmth), but he didn’t seem upset. “I was. I would say that I was actually falling in love with her, so I was a bit of a mess when she left me.”

His words made her frown. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t know how anyone could leave you.” She muttered under her breath, forgetting that she was usually louder than normal after she’s had a few drinks.

“Could say the same thing about you.”

With her cheeks flushed, Jules forced herself to look him in the eye again. “You don’t even know me.”

“But I’d like to get to know you.” He almost instantly shot back, resting his chin on his hand and his dimples made an appearance, “I think you’re very interesting.”

“Pfft, me? Interesting?” She laughed, waving him off with her hand. “I am anything but.”

“That’s not true!” Harry vehemently denied, sounding almost offended at the thought, which admittedly made Jules’ heart skip a beat. Just a little.

“I’ve spent a few hours with you now and I can already confidently say that you’re one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met,” his eyes shone bright as she stared into them and she could somehow tell he was being sincere, “and trust me, I’ve met a lot of people.”

Dramatically placing a hand over her heart, Jules flashed him her biggest smile. “Oh how special that makes me feel, I can just die happily now.”

Even though she was being melodramatic, his words did cause Jules’ heart to flutter. In the past, some people told her she was annoying, or brash, and some others would make her feel invisible and undeserving of attention.

Harry, though, was unlike anyone she had ever known. From the moment they met, Harry made her feel like the centre of his attention, never once ignored her or brushed her off, even when she was taking the piss; his emerald eyes were always set on her, giving her his undivided attention as he listened to every word that came out of her mouth.

Jules was definitely not used to that.

Harry threw his head back in laughter, a sound that Jules found to be a beautiful melody, and gazed at her with those bright eyes. “Oh you’re insufferable, I take it back.”

She gasped in feigned shock, crossing her arms with force. “No backsies.”

Another melodic laugh left Harry’s mouth and she couldn’t stop the smile forming on her lips; right then and there, Jules decided that his laugh was one of her favourite sounds.

“Backsies?” He echoed, his tone still laced with laughter, “what are you, five?”

“Shut your pretty mouth.”

“Oh so you think I have a pretty mouth?” His smirk caused his skin to flush and she cursed herself for saying those words. She really needed to think before she spoke, something her parents always reminded her of.

She recovered quickly, bringing her glass closer to her mouth. “I mean, it’s fine, your lips are a little on the thin side but-“

“Heyyy now,” he protested, pink lips forming a pout and Jules definitely thought about kissing them at that moment. “That’s not nice.”

“Never claimed I was nice now, did I?” Jules smirked, feeling a sudden surge of confidence as she took another sip from her drink.

Jules did not miss the way Harry’s eyes seemed to darken just a little, his jaw tensing as she continued to stare him down. Harry leaned forward, mouth opening to respond when suddenly a shrill tone burst their bubble.

Patting the couch cushions, Jules was trying her hardest to forget the look on Harry’s face as she searched for her phone. Stop it, Jules, he’s an international rockstar and he won’t even remember you after tonight.

She sighed in relief when her hand made contact with the device, but that quickly turned into a groan upon seeing who the caller was. Looking back at Harry, who was leaning against the armrest simply staring at her, she shot him an apologetic look before she answered the call.

“Hey, mama” she closed her eyes, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. Not that she was expecting anything to happen between her and Harry, but the mood was definitely ruined now.

“Hello, honey, how are you? Are you home yet?” Her mother’s calming voice sounded from the other side of the line, making her smile a bit despite the interruption. Ever since the breakup, her mom made sure to call her frequently to check up on her, even though Jules insisted that she didn’t have to.

“I am home, mom, yes,” she responded, shifting her gaze back to Harry who was now leaning his head against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed.

“Good, good. Just checking on you, cariña, how was your night then?”

“It was fine,” she paused for a second, not sure if she should mention meeting Harry now, but she decided it was best not to, “had a few drinks then went straight home. Think I’m gonna go to bed in a few actually.”

She could tell by the way Harry’s lips twitched that he was awake and listening.

“I won’t keep you up then,” some noise was in the background and she heard her mother whisper to someone, “okay, honey, good night! And your dad says good night too.”

“Good night, mama,” Jules smiled, finding herself suddenly missing her family that she hasn’t seen since the holiday season. “Tell dad I said good night too, and that he better spoil you today.”

Her mother’s laugh ringed loud on the other side, “We’re going to dinner tonight, cariña, and he even got me a large bouquet of my favourite roses! Joseph shh- Alright then, bye bye, sweets, love you!”

“Bye, mama, love you too.”

A few seconds passed after she ended the call before Harry spoke up, head tilted to the side. “That sounded sweet. Does she check up on you often?”

Jules hummed in response, resting her head sideways on the sofa so was mirroring his position. “Especially after the breakup. She just worries too much about me.”

“I don’t think she needs to,” he shot her a gentle smile, one that made her want to wrap her arms around him and bask in his warmth, “her daughter’s a very strong woman.”

Not finding any words to say in response, Jules continued tracing Harry’s features, lazily admiring the slope of his nose, the curve of his brows, the sharpness of his jawline; everything about the man before her was mesmerising.

Turning her gaze back to his eyes, Harry flashed her another smile before sitting up straight, the smile slowly dropping. “I should probably go now, it’s getting late.”

Jules immediately wanted to shout “no!” and ask him to stay, but the rational part of her mind told her that she shouldn’t, that she would only set herself up for heartbreak when he finally leaves her.

So the only thing she could say was a faint “Okay.”

As they stood up, it seemed like Harry was holding back from saying something, but she didn’t know if she was just reading too much into things. It was probably just her hazy mind (though she’d argue her head has never been clearer)

They silently made their way to her door, Jules feeling deflated at the prospect of his departure. Would they keep in touch? Would she just become a distant memory, a miserable woman he spent a lonely valentine’s day with?

“Can I-“ Harry abruptly stopped in his tracks, causing Jules to almost run into his back because she was trailing behind him. His demeanour was suddenly all shy when he turned to face her, cheeks flushed crimson.

Jules waited with bated breath and wide eyes for him to continue, heart beating loudly in her chest.

“Can I have your number?”

Relief washed over Jules and Harry visibly relaxed at the bashful smile on her lips. Jules didn’t know why he was so nervous, but the sight was so endearing to her.

She added her number after he handed her the device, secretly smiling at her contact name Juliet x. She already earned herself an x after her name after a few hours? Jules’ heart was beating so loudly she feared Harry would hear its calls for him.

Jules watched him put his shoes on, wishing the night wouldn’t end so soon and wondering if it would be too forward to ask him to stay longer.

Deep in her thoughts, Jules didn’t register that Harry was standing in front of her, bodies close enough that the scent of his cologne engulfed her senses once more.

“I should go now.” Harry whispered, leaning down and wrapping his arms around her and Jules had never felt so whole. She’s heard about Harry’s incredible hugs and now that she’s experiencing it, she never wanted to let go of his warmth.

Harry broke their embrace much too soon for her liking, but not before peppering a gentle kiss on the side of her head. “Good night, Juliet.”

Say something. Don’t let him leave. “Good night, H.”

And then he was gone and Jules was left on her own once more.

After staring longingly at the closed door, as if he would suddenly appear behind it, Jules sighed and made her way back to the living room, slumping against the couch cushions and wishing Harry’s arms were around her again.

Her phone dinged on the coffee table, signalling the arrival of a text. A simple “Hey. I really enjoyed tonight. H” was staring back at her.

Jules contemplated for a few seconds, heartbeats picking up their speed again, before she whispered “fuck it” and clicked on his number.

“Juliet?”

Deciding to go after what her heart wants for once, Jules didn’t hesitate to respond, “Do you want to-“

But an insistent knock interrupted her and Jules wanted to scream at the intrusion. Who on earth would be knocking at her door at this hour?

“Harry, hold on just-“

She takes frustrated strides to the door, ready to yell, but the sight behind it made her anger immediately evaporate.

“H-Harry? What are you doin-“

“What were you going to ask me?” He interrupted, sounding a little out of breath and she wondered if he ran all the way back to her apartment.

Feeling emboldened by his return, Jules took a few steps towards him and wrapped her arms around his neck, his hands immediately grabbing her face and pulling her closer, their lips joining together in a gentle yet eager kiss.

Jules felt her body melt in his hold. Their kiss only lasted for a few seconds before they pulled apart, still lingering so close that she could taste his wine-stained lips.

“Stay?” Jules asked, rubbing her nose against his, her heart thudding in her chest as she waited for his answer. Her words carried more weight than she had intended them to and she hoped they wouldn’t scare him off. But her worries vanished when she felt him smile widely against her lips.

“For as long as you’ll have me.”

Maybe valentine’s day isn’t so bad after all.

thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed it and please come talk to me about Harry and Jules and tell me your thoughts!

#1dffvalentine #harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #harry styles writing #harry styles fluff #harry styles x ofc #harry styles imagines #harry styles fanfic

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voiceless-terror · 4 years

Note

I’m bad at prompts so I have an aesthetic vibe for a fic: dusty library, silver glasses, warm blanket, hot tea, cold voices.

Jon wants to get Martin’s attention. Daisy and Melanie have an unusual plan.

“I think he’s made it quite clear that he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“I need...I need to make sure he’s okay. Daisy’s already tried and well, you-”

“Absolutely not.”

“Exactly.”

Jon sighed. He needed to trust Martin, he knew this. But how could he, when he faded more and more each day? When Jon couldn’t reach him, couldn’t know he was safe? He needed to touch him, make sure he was still solid, still there. That Jon still cared. And if Jon could just break through-

“He won’t let me talk to him. And I don’t know what to do.” The words came out more plaintively than he would’ve liked. Melanie gave him an unimpressed look, Daisy leaned back on the couch. He didn’t know why he’d suddenly decided to confess his feelings to these two, perhaps it was the leftover alcohol in his system from their afternoon drink. Basira was off on another lead and Daisy needed the distraction. They all did. And now they were back at the office, bored and lethargic, Jon dodging the paper balls Melanie lazily tossed his way.

“You’ve got to do something,” Daisy drawled, idly picking at her nails. “To get his attention. You’ve got to make him come to you.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Jon groaned in frustration. “If I did, I would’ve done it already.”

“Wait.” Melanie sat up straighter, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “I know exactly what to do.” Daisy and Jon shared a glance as she broke into a smirk.

“And Martin won’t be able to resist you.”

____________

“Is this really necessary?” Jon asked, flinching back as Melanie applied the pink-coated brush to his cheek. “It seems a bit excessive.”

“Stop moving. And yes, if you want to look the part.” Melanie wielded the makeup brush like a weapon as Daisy followed with a critical eye. “Does he look pathetic enough?”

“Hmm.” Daisy leaned forward, uncomfortably close to Jon’s face. “I think he needs a bit more. Just a pinch.”

“Agreed.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jon snarked, leaning away from Melanie’s hands. “I don’t know why I agreed to this. It’s not going to work.”

“You agreed to this because you know it’s going to work,” Melanie insisted, dipping the brush in the compact. “Trust me, Martin won’t be able to resist doting on you if you look properly ill. When I came here the second time ‘round, he hovered outside the door the entire time. “Do you need anything, Jon? Can I get you some tea? Are you feeling alright?”

“That’s not what he sounds like-”

“That’s exactly what he sounds like,” Daisy smirked, settling back into the couch. “If you don’t like the makeup, we can always go with option two-”

“I am not letting Melanie punch me, thank you very much.” She still harbored a lot of residual (and rightful, in his opinion) anger from the surgery incident, and he wasn’t willing to be the outlet for it. “How do we know he’ll even see me?”

“He goes down to the library every Wednesday, sneaks in and out real quiet-like,” Daisy repeated for the third time. “Trust me, I know his patterns.” There was still some Hunt in her yet, no matter how much she starved it. Listen to the quiet. He didn’t say it aloud, but from the look in Daisy’s eyes he didn’t need to. “We’ll set you up there. Don’t worry, he won’t be able to miss you.”

“Whatever you say,” he grumbled, batting away Melanie’s hand. “Are you done yet?” She evaluated him with a scowl.

“That should do it.” She shut the compact with a definitive snap. “I was going to add a bit of purple eyeshadow under the eyes, but that might be overdoing it. You already look like a zombie.”

Daisy nodded appreciatively. “Powder did the job. God, Melanie. You’re a pro.”

“Thank you,” she preened as Jon rolled his eyes. “Now, for the finishing touch!” She leaned forward, yanking the scrunchie out of his hair and ignoring his yelp with an air of satisfaction. “Perfect!”

“I fail to see why that was necessary!” His head ached from the sudden pull on his hair, which was now falling down his shoulders in a tangled, ruffled mess. God, I must look insane. He lifted a hand to put it in some semblance of order when Melanie grabbed at it, stopping him in his tracks.

“No, you’ll ruin it!” she snapped. “Martin likes it when it’s down.”

“How do you know that?”

“God, he really is oblivious,” Daisy said with a disbelieving chuckle. “I may have only visited a few times, but even I saw the way he stared at you whenever you so much as touched your hair. It was sickening to watch.”

“C’mon, we’ve got to get you settled. We have to time this perfectly.” Melanie gestured impatiently for him to get up. “Daisy’ll take you up. I’ve got to grab something.” Jon didn’t trust her but in all honesty, what did he have to lose? The things we get up to when Basira’s gone...though I suppose this is significantly better than the Coffin Incident.

Daisy took his arm, leaning on him for a bit of support as they made their way up to the library. To anyone else it would look the opposite, that he was the one relying on her- Daisy was good at hiding her weakness. “There’s a couch by the front desk,” she murmured as they rounded the corner. “It’ll be right in his line of vision.”

“What if he isn’t paying attention?” Jon worried, watching as the other staff studiously avoided their gaze, side-stepping them in the hallway. The Archives were truly toxic, and no one wanted to anger the heavily-scarred, scowling Archivist and his rabid ex-cop friend. For the first time in his life, Jon was intimidating. He didn’t like it.

“He always pays attention to you,” Daisy insisted. “He just doesn’t want you to see it.” The words put a lump in his throat. He wondered if they were true. He opened his mouth to reply when Melanie scurried up behind them, her arms full of-

“No.”

“Yes.” Melanie pushed into him, impatiently urging them forward. “Trust me, it’ll work.”

“I am not-” He was cut off by a surprisingly strong push from Daisy, landing him on the couch with an ‘oof.’ Melanie threw the offending object around his shoulders- a fluffy pink blanket Jon recognized from its place on Basira’s cot. He tried to worm his way out of it but Melanie gave him a sharp slap on the arm, ignoring his hiss of pain. He looked around, wildly embarrassed by the entire situation to find that the room was strangely empty, which was surprising for the time of day. I suppose everyone’s trying to avoid us these days.

Daisy froze, her eyes narrowing and posture straightening. “He’s coming.”

Melanie swore, running around the corner and coming back with an old, heavy tome she'd snatched off the nearest shelf. She grinned, an almost manic thing that Jon instinctively leaned back from. “The final touch,” she said proudly, not waiting for his answer as she opened the book with a flourish, flipping the pages in front of his face like a fan. He flinched back, utterly confused.

“Melanie, what on earth are you-”

_______

Martin heard him before he saw him.

The scurrying of feet across the hardwood was strange enough, but Jonathan Sims sitting on the library’s best couch, sneezing into a fluffy blanket and looking bleary-eyed and very exhausted was even stranger. Well, not the exhausted part. That was Jon’s normal state of being.

But there he sat, wrapped in Basira’s fluffy pink blanket with a flushed face, messy hair, and an ashen pallor that could only come from sickness. Martin had seen it before, back when he lived in Document Storage and Jon was working himself into the ground, much like he was doing nowadays. He felt that pang of worry that accompanied those long nights in the Archives, something he was trying desperately to tamp down.

Working for Peter was infuriating and isolating, just as it was supposed to be. He was constantly reminding himself that it was for the greater good, that he was doing something important, protecting his friends. Protecting Jon. But how could he protect him when he kept finding Martin, even though he promised to trust him? How could he protect him when he kept throwing himself headlong into any danger he could find? How could he protect him, when his biggest enemy was himself?

Another sneeze. Jon looked almost confused by it, maybe even offended that it happened. It made him want to smile, an urge he fought down as he tried to remember Peter’s promise to keep them safe if he kept his distance. He hazarded one last glance, sure that he wasn’t in Jon’s line of sight that he noticed one last detail- Jon’s sweater. Incredibly baggy, worn, light blue knit- a color he’d never seen on him before.

Martin’s sweater. And with that, he found himself walking over to Jon almost involuntarily, steps loud and purposeful as they startled Jon from his perch on the couch. And when Jon noticed him he smiled, so bright and happy and obviously extremely out of it if he was having this reaction to Martin. His face really did look flushed up close- he must have a fever, especially if he wandered up here in this state. Martin successfully resisted the urge to feel his forehead.

“M-Martin!” God, how could he not talk to Jon, when he said his name with such happiness? He fought to keep his voice level and cool as he responded.

“Jon. What are you doing up here?” Jon’s smile dimmed slightly, and Martin tried not to feel guilty. He did not succeed.

“I, um-” Jon stuttered, his usual sign of nervousness as he ran a hand through his hair. His hair, that was mused and tangled and falling in his face. Fuck. “I w-was reading.” He struggled to pick up a particularly heavy-looking book from where it sat on the couch next to him, its title obscured from Martin’s view. “It was getting, er, a bit stuffy down in the Archives.”

A red flag if Martin ever saw one. They rarely left the Archives these days, unless it was for a quick lunch and even then, Jon had to be dragged out bodily. He sighed, trying not to meet Jon’s pleading eyes. And still, he couldn’t help but ask. “Are you...okay?”

Jon looked down to his lap, the blanket half slipping off his shoulders as he fidgeted with his hands. Martin looked pointedly away. “Not feeling very well,” Jon murmured to the ground, looking strangely nervous, maybe even guilty. That didn’t make sense. He must be really ill, if he’s actually admitting to it. Martin hesitated, fighting between what he should do and what he really, really wanted to do. The cold evaporated just a little and Martin had never felt so seen.

He missed that.

And so, less reluctantly than he would have liked, he extended a hand down to Jon, who looked at it in shock. “C’mon. Let’s get you back downstairs, I’ll make tea.” Make tea. His solution for everything, he remembered Tim deriding. But Jon looked at him like he’d offered much, much more than that. Maybe he had. The hope in his eyes was too much to bear. So when Jon put a thin, scarred hand in his, he looked away, even as he helped him to his feet.

To his disdain and delight, Jon immediately leaned into his side, as if trying to leech warmth that Martin couldn’t provide. In fact it was now Jon who was the warmer of the two- the Eye would not accept the chill of the Lonely, and the fever probably didn’t help. He was like a touch-starved cat looking for a crumb of affection, and god did he want to give it to him. If it were the Martin of a year ago he would have blushed, stammered, maybe even squeezed him back. Now he can only offer him the shoulder, nothing more.

Jon didn’t say anything more than a muttered thanks as they made their way down to the Archives, as if he were afraid of spooking him. More than one staff member they saw stared; Martin had been AWOL except for a few official emails, and was now suddenly the assistant to the head of the institute. To see him with the dreaded Head Archivist must have been even more of a shock. He felt pity- what a pair we make.

By the time they arrived at the archives, Jon had leant almost all of his weight against Martin’s side, making it difficult to maneuver them both down the stairs. No one was there, and he wanted to scold the other three, wherever they were, for leaving Jon to wander in his condition. I’ll fix him tea, get him on the cot and then I’ll go, he promised himself.

Easier said than done.

He barely managed to pry Jon off of him, and only with the promise to return with a cup of tea did he let go. Never in his wildest daydreams did he imagine Jon to be this clingy, hanging off him like a limpet. As he made his way to the break room he drew the Lonely back to him like a security blanket, albeit a cold one. You can’t stay. You have to go. He looked blankly around the room he used to think of as a safe haven; it was no longer familiar, different mugs on the table, different food in the cupboards, a bag of makeup on the counter. He no longer had a place.

Jon was sitting up on the cot when he arrived back, cup of tea in hand. He pointedly didn’t meet his eyes as he handed it over, staring at his feet and ignoring Jon’s thanks as he turned to leave. Go go go-

“Wait!”

Damn it.

He turned. “What is it, Jon? I have to-”

“Will you stay?” His face was so open, so vulnerable it made Martin ache with longing. “Just- just for a bit.”

Martin sighed, trying to maintain his stoic façade. “You know I can’t.”

“I miss you.”

“Jon-”

“I know, I know,” Jon replied, voice going quiet. He thought dying would harden the man, but it only seemed to soften his sharp edges. “I’m sorry.” He held the mug between his hands, staring down like it was something precious.

“It’s fine,” Martin replied, though they both knew it wasn’t.

“Will you stay if I don’t talk?” Jon leveled that hopeful gaze at him again and Martin looked up to the ceiling for divine intervention that wouldn’t come.

“Jon-”

“Please.” He was begging. His eyes were bright, whether from tears or the fever Martin couldn’t discern. But what was he to do, say no? Not when he was like this, not when he was sick. Martin made excuses, none of them particularly convincing even to himself and they certainly wouldn’t be to Peter, but it didn’t matter. He’d already made his choice as soon as Jon said the word.

“Okay. For a bit.” That smile again. Jon said nothing as Martin tentatively sat beside him on that small, rickety cot. He would only stay for a bit, until Jon fell asleep. He had no one to look after him, after all. He would go back up and face Peter later.

For now, he let Jon rest his head against his shoulder. He let his fingers rise of their own accord and brush the hair from Jon’s face, eliciting a shiver. When he fell asleep, Martin didn’t move. He needs the rest. So he sat, reveling in the warm, heavy weight of everything he’d given up, everything he stood to lose, and knew he made the right decision.

Much later, when he’s faced Peter’s disappointed gaze and a mountain of extra work, he notices the strange, powdery cast on his sleeve from where Jon had laid his head. When he rubs at it, his fingers come back with hints of pink and white. It takes him a moment to put the pieces together- the footsteps in the library, the absence of Daisy and Melanie, the makeup on the counter. He wants to roll his eyes, wants to be angry.

Instead, for the first time in months, he laughs.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28581141

#my writing #prompt fill #tma #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #daisy tonner #melanie king #season four #lil bit of fluff lil bit of angst #i apologize if this wasn't what you were looking for but the idea grabbed me and i couldnt let go lmao #balanced-to-a-tea

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hotdogct · 3 years

Text

as dreamers do ||| n.jm

pairing: na jaemin x reader genre: fluff words: 2.2k a/n: hello!!! this is my first piece of writing in a very long time, so apologies if its all over the place/makes no sense!!! obviously this is all a work of fiction, disclaimer, blablabla, idk what i’m doing i just wanted to write drabbles about nct lmao, so with that being said!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Do you trust me?”

You roll your eyes in the direction of your coworker, Jaemin, who was sitting across from you in the fluorescent lit break room located just behind Splash Mountain’s gift shop and exit. The two of you were part of the massive workforce of college aged youth that Disney recruited every year to staff their theme parks and resorts. While you weren’t initially thrilled with your role as a custodian, you learned to appreciate its quirks - and that included the unique cast of characters otherwise known as your coworkers. From the full-timers that did their best to ignore your presence, knowing another semester would just bring a fresh wave of new faces, to your fellow program cohorts - Jaemin being one of them.

Assuming he was just quoting Aladdin at you, you offer no response to Jaemin’s initial query and continue scrolling through your phone, shoveling the few remaining cheese crackers from the nearby vending machine down your throat, intending on savoring the remaining minutes of your last break for the evening.

Your thoughts wandered back to your fellow cast members. There was Daehwi, sheltered and away from home for the first time, affectionately nicknamed ‘baby’ by everyone he befriended. Wendy, with her melodic voice and cheerful disposition, eager to break into song at a moments notice. Lucas, who might’ve come to Florida to party first, but worked equally hard. Hani, who arrived a few weeks after you, always the first to come help when you radio that your restroom has overflowed, again. Even Jinho, who had initially fooled you with his youthful looks before revealing this was his third time through the program, had somehow wormed his way into your heart. But nobody had been as captivating as Jaemin. When you first met him in passing in the cramped break room, you were convinced casting had made a mistake, that he was lost on his way to costuming for entertainment. He certainly looked like a prince - perfectly straight teeth, boyishly handsome good looks. A few days later he was assigned to clean the same bathrooms as you - “bathroom buddies” as everyone affectionately would call the practice. There, in the shared stockrooms, you learned who Jaemin was beyond his beautiful face - how his friends back home called him Nana, that he was studying photography in college, that he was an only child, a helluva flirt. Even your music tastes were similar, a fact you discovered on one of the many cramped, late night bus rides back to program housing where the two of you stood packed shoulder to shoulder, like sardines in a can. Jaemin interacted with guests both young and young at heart with an effortless charm and grace. Your managers loved him immediately, and before you knew it, you found yourself incredibly enamored with him too.

It wasn’t until his hand suddenly broke through your field of vision, blocking sight of your phone, that you realized Jaemin had stood up and was now standing directly in front of you. His head covered the harshest of the overhead lights, casting a soft halo glow around his black, messy hair and broad shoulders. He smiles down at you, innocently, and you feel your heartbeat accelerate when your eyes meet his own.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, again. This time, without thought, you place your hand firmly in his.

******

Jaemin leads you out of the blinding light of the break room silently, into the dark of the early winter evening. Eyes still adjusting, you follow behind him, thankful that your corner of the park was mostly deserted - Splash Mountain still closed for the season, only a few stragglers were coming and going to use the restroom in the area. You vaguely remember that Jaemin had been assigned a nearby zone to clean that evening - which was it again…?

He leads you up a flight up stairs, then, and that’s when it hits you. Train Zone. The Frontierland Railroad Station. It was an easy zone to clean, as the railroad shut down early each night before the fireworks display. Gathering the trash in an empty zone like this was a godsend, especially when compared to the other ride queues you had to clean, oftentimes fighting constant guest traffic like a fish swimming upstream.

Lost in your thoughts, you follow behind Jaemin as he completes his task diligently, making sure each trash can within the train station is empty and re-bagged for the next morning. It had been a few days since the two of you had worked in neighboring areas, and you often found yourself tongue tied when around him. The background music loop of Frontierland was noticeably absent, the speakers within the station shut off for the night. This led to Jaemin singing nonsense songs while tying up trash bags and wiping down surfaces, dancing lightly on his feet.

Turkey leg-g-g

At the train

D-d-d-driving me insane~

All you could do was laugh at his antics, and before you knew it, the nearby banana boat parked at the exit ramp was full of trash bags. Satisfied with the results of your hard work, you were about to begin the walk to backstage, where the dumpsters were located, when Jaemin turned about face, walking instead towards the train station.

“What are you doing?!” you hiss, not wanting to shout but needing to stress your confusion at his actions. Jaemin stops at the gate, unlatches it, before turning around, beckoning you over with a smile.

“I asked you if you trusted me, didn’t I?” his voice low in your ear upon your arrival at his side, banana boat now parked safely out of any guest traffic. Jaemin unlocks the gate for you, both of you falling silent on your walk back up into the depths of the train station - no more cute, silly songs spilling from his lips.

“Are you sure we aren’t going to get caught?” your voice carries louder than intended across the empty room as you go through the turnstile, and you wince.

Jaemin’s boisterous laugh took you by surprise, followed a moment later by his hand ruffling the top of your head, messing up your hair. As if to say, foolish.

“Getting the trash from up here is technically our responsibility. So what if it took us a little long?”

He was right - the best part of your job was the agency it provided. Sure, you were cleaning up garbage and bathrooms and vomit, but you could walk around freely. Explore hidden corners and crevices of the park. You knew all too well the allures of the shared hallway between the Frontierland restrooms, the stock closet next to the Veranda breezeway, the dumpster behind the Haunted Mansion - places the rest of your desperately horny coworkers had used to hook up in weeks prior. As you follow Jaemin around a corner towards the front of the station, through an open passageway, you wonder if that’s what he has in mind. That is, until you see the view in front of you.

Jaemin had led you to a small balcony that overlooked the whole expanse of Frontierland. From above you could spot guests walking about the park to and fro, the Rivers of America flowing gently behind them in the distance. Bits and pieces of Cinderella’s Castle were visible through the tree line, shining bright in multicolor as the nightly projection show proceeded to play.

“Jaem, it’s….”

“Nice, isn’t it?” He finishes your thought for you, his hand brushing over the staged decorations of fake barrels and crates against the wall of the balcony that seemed perfect to sit upon. Moments later, Jaemin plops down with a satisfied smile on his face and pats the space beside him, silently asking you to join him.

“Nice is an understatement” you offer in reply. A small laugh leaves his lips, a breeze rolls through. For just a moment, it is quiet and still.

“I’ve been wanting to show you this place for a while, but the stars just never aligned right until tonight.”

“You mean, the computer system that automates scheduling and staffing didn’t randomly place us in neighboring areas of the park until to-” Jaemin’s stiff elbow into your side lets you know to drop the wit. That you could do, but a question lingered in your mind, still, and you did have to voice your sole concern.

“How do you not get caught up here?”

Jaemin turns around, points to the solitary light on the balcony, and it’s then that you notice the bulb is off. You might feel exposed looking down upon everyone, but quickly realize that nobody is looking up at the closed train station - let alone looking for two cast members in white uniforms in the dark, goofing off on a weeknight.

Fooling around…

You were thankful for the cover of darkness in that moment, as you felt your cheeks turn crimson at the thought. Being alone, with Jaemin, this close, in the dark...This all seemed very sudden, despite everyone knowing about your big crush on Nana - he had to know too?

“So,” Jaemin’s voice cuts through your ever-racing thoughts, and your chest goes cold. “A little birdie told me there’s something you really, really like…”

If jumping off the balcony was a safe option, in that moment, you would’ve taken it. A confirmation of your worst fears - that Jaemin was aware of your ridiculous, schoolgirl like crush on him. You are speechless, sunken, pulse racing, and terrified.

Without the usual cue of area music, caught up in the last hour, you had missed your usual clues. A loud boom caused you to jump in your seat, out of your brain, head immediately turning towards Jaemin - only to make eye contact with him, bright lights reflecting off the surface, who smiles and motions for you to turn around. Of course.

If you were known for one thing amongst your cohorts, it was that you loved fireworks. Even on the most hectic of nights you found a way to make sure you were outside during the nightly display, never taking for granted that you were being paid to watch the sky light up in time to music. You had your favorite spots to watch from, but had never once considered the train station. From the corner of Frontierland, it felt like the fireworks were almost on top of you - cascading down upon Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the expanse of empty night sky providing the perfect canvas. As the speakers above you were silent, there was no accompanying soundtrack, but it didn’t matter - you knew the whole show by heart. You were unaware of how long your mouth had been hanging open in blissful, childlike wonder, only noticing when Jaemin gently pressed his finger up against your chin, closing the space between your upper and lower lip through simple momentum. Moments later, his hand brushed over yours, testing the waters, and finding no complaint, interlocked his fingers with yours, and gravity pulls your head to his shoulder. A soft, steady hum leaves his lips, as you settle into this newfound bliss.

The rest of the fireworks show plays out in front of the two of you - two white ghosts in a dark shadow, illuminated by glowing streaks and bursts of color from the night sky. You’re working at the most magical place on earth, sure, but this felt like the most magical moment of your life.

Before you know it, the sky calms again, signaling the end of the show. You remain frozen for a moment, not wanting to leave. When you finally stand back up, awkwardly untangling yourself from Jaemin’s frame in a rushed manner, you can almost feel yourself floating back down to the ground, back to reality. Jaemin, your co-worker, Jaemin the flirt. He brought you up here just to watch the fireworks after all. Had you been a bit more outgoing, a bit less awkward, maybe...

Taking a few steps towards the entryway, a sudden hand on your wrist pulls you against the wall - thankfully, out of sight of any guests, but now engulfing your entire body in shadow. And it’s here in the darkness that Jaemin’s hand releases itself from your wrist, finds its way up to your cheek. Here, he leans in and kisses you - pressing his chapped lips against yours gently, but with enough intent and purpose that you swear you were seeing stars after a few moments. It doesn’t last long, as all fairytales would tell you. When you part, Jaemin rests his forehead against yours, both slightly damp from the Florida humidity, and you can feel him smile against you, somehow breathless, letting out a low chuckle, before asking,

“Did you think I was talking about the fireworks?”

#na jaemin #nct fanfic #nct dream fanfic #nct dream #nct fluff #jaemin #nct scenarios #na jaemin fluff #na jaemin fic #jaemin fic #jaemin fluff #nct x reader #jaemin x reader #nct dream fluff

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staticscreenwriting · 3 years

Text

LOVE LIKE THE MOVIES // BUCKY BARNES // 4

Four - Casablanca

Masterlist

Summary: This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Bucky Barnes, finds himself thrown into a world that seems so different from everything he’s ever known. The girl, (Y/N) knows entirely too much about rom-coms and is quite particular about the way she eats her popcorn. Bucky meets (Y/N) a few months after returning to NYC. He knows almost immediately that becoming her friend is inevitable. This is a story of boy meets girl. This is a story about love. (Bucky Barnes x female!Reader // a few spoilers for TFATWS)

“ You dressed up! “

God damnit. He should’ve known. He really should’ve. Sam stands by his side, shit-eating grin splitting his face in two. He should’ve just worn a plain sweater and no one would’ve commented on it.

But then would she look at him with that joyful sparkle in her eyes and that gorgeous smile? Maybe the little dressing up that he did do, and all the teasing comments from Sam, are worth it if means she’ll look at him like that.

“I didn’t dress up.” Doesn’t mean he has to admit it. No now, not ever.

“ Uh, your jeans are cuffed. You’ve never done that!” (Y/N) points out to which Sam chimes in with a loud “that’s what I said!” words dripping with amusement.

“ It’s just my jeans, it’s not a big deal.”

“ And you quiffed your hair!”

Bucky glances towards Sam who stands beside him with the biggest smile any person has ever displayed in all the times humans have walked this earth. His joy at Bucky’s obvious discomfort knowing no boundaries and, if it weren’t at his own expense, Bucky would even find Sam’s amusement quite contagious.

“ You totally did! He totally did! I didn’t even notice. Hi,” he says and shakes (Y/N)’s hand “ I’m Sam.”

“ So nice to meet you, Sam. And you dressed up too! As a sexy Ghostbuster!”

Bucky can basically feel Sam’s ego inflate at those words and he knows, for a fact, he’ll never hear the end of it.

“ That’s right! I am a sexy Ghostbuster. Not a regular one. That’s exactly what I was going for, thank you. Man, I love her already.” Sam says, directed at both, (Y/N) but mostly at Bucky.

“ You look lovely too, by the way,” Sam points out and for the first time since they arrived, Bucky gives himself a moment to take her in entirely. Not just the little things, the twinkle in her eyes, the warm radiance of her smile. Her. All of her.

The blue and white checkered pinafore dress she’s wearing reaches down to her knees, her legs are covered by white knee-high socks and at her feet, a pair of ruby red heels sparkle as the light reflects against them.

She looks beautiful but what really makes Bucky’s heart skip just a tiny fraction of a beat is the fact that he knows who she’s supposed to be and, whether she did it purposefully or not doesn’t matter, he feels included for the first time in so long.

“ You’re Dorothy.” his lips produce words that his brain didn’t sign off on. They just slip out. They hold so much weight that even if he’d acted fast enough, he doesn’t think he would’ve been able to hold them back. They’re so seemingly insignificant but they hold a meaning that Bucky isn’t sure anyone will ever fully comprehend. Steve would’ve but Steve is — not here.

He hopes (Y/N) understands even a small fraction of what it means to him. And when she smiles, he thinks she might.

“ I am. Do you like it?”

“ You look beautiful. “ And she does. She really does.

Sam is grinning away like he’s just heard the best news and Bucky isn’t sure if he prefers this to his outright laughter at his discomfort or not. This smirk seems like some inside joke Bucky doesn’t get. Like Sam knows something he doesn’t.

“ Can I get you guys something to drink? Beers? “

“ That would be great “ Sam replies.

“ Grumpy? “

“ Sure.”

He can’t get drunk, that’s one of the little things the Serum changed about him. It’s not like he’s here to get drunk anyway but to feel the enthusiastic buzz that alcohol can wash through your system, would be nice. He hardly remembers what that felt like.

He’s gonna drink some beer either way though. It gives him the feeling of fitting in, of belonging with the crowd. Even if he knows that’s one big lie. Sometimes you have to lie to yourself to keep your heart from breaking.

Kim isn’t a friend. Not really. She’s a friend of a friend who somehow always tags along whenever (Y/N)’s friend group gets together. She’s never actually invited but she’s always there anyway. Tonight is no exception.

She’s dressed in some kind of last-minute DIY deer costume, one of those that have been popular a few years back on Youtube, and the way she smirks at (Y/N) as she enters the kitchen already makes the metaphorical alarm bells go off in (Y/N)’s head.

“ So, I didn’t know you know celebrities. “

“ What are you talking about, Kim? “

“ Oh, you know! “ Kim announces and slides up next to (Y/N), casually leaning against the kitchen counter. “ Do you think he can do some cool tricks with his metal arm? “

“ Who are you talking about? “

Obviously (Y/N) is well aware of who Kim is talking about. There’s only so many people with metal arms and only one of them finds himself at this very party. Still, she doesn’t give Kim the satisfaction of reacting to her ridiculous comment. Maybe, (Y/N) naively hopes, repeating her question will make Kim realize just how rude and offensive her words really are.

“The winter soldier! Who else. That’s him, isn’t it? “

“ No.”

“ You sure? I’m pretty certain that’s him.”

“ His name is Bucky!” (Y/N) clarifies, fixing Kim with a stare that conveys just how serious this is to her. “ And he is not some kind of circus freak or entertainer or something. He is my friend. “

Kim shrugs her shoulders so casually that it sends shivers of red hot rage through (Y/N)’s body. The audacity of this woman. “ Okay sure but he is the Winter Soldier, right? I don’t know why you’re acting so sensitive right now. Chill, girl.”

“ Fuck you, Kim. You are so disrespectful towards my friend. He’s so sweet and genuine and wonderful and he deserves to be seen for all that he is. He is not here for you to stare at like a caged animal and he sure as hell ain’t here to be reminded of his painful past. If you can’t treat him like a normal person, please leave. “

There’s a look on Kim’s face that (Y/N) hasn’t seen on her before. One of utter disbelief. One that lets her know that this was the last thing Kim was expecting. And for a little moment, a huge wave of triumphant enthusiasm crashes over her.

“ Whatever.” is all Kim replies once the shock has settled. With a pout on her lips, she shuffles out of the kitchen and back into the crowd. (Y/N) can’t tell for sure if she’s leaving but there’s no doubt in her mind that at least she won’t be harassing Bucky anytime soon.

A bitter taste settles on (Y/N) tongue, as she thinks about Kim’s words again. About the sick and twisted thoughts that reduce Bucky to little more than a human animatronic. It’s disgusting and so so sad and she just hopes Bucky hasn’t heard her say those things.

As she steps out of the kitchen and rounds the corner though, her hopes are squashed. There’s the usual pain on his face, the one that’s perpetually etched into his features as Bucky leans against the wall. But mixed in between, there’s something else. A confusing mess of emotions she can’t quite place. She knows though. He’s heard every last word.

“ Robin came over, started talking to Sam about some band I don’t know. Thought I’d come see if you need some help. “

“ Bucky, I — “

“ It’s fine.” He interrupts her. (Y/N) doesn’t think it’s really fine. Sometimes people just get so used to saying they feel fine, they actually start believing it. Only fine is not something you want to feel forever, is it? Fine shouldn’t be a permanent state. Fine should be temporary. A path to good. To great. To happy.

“ You sure? “

“ Yeah. I uh — I appreciate what you said.”

“ Oh sure. And I meant it. You’re my friend and you deserve all the good things life has to offer.”

He doesn’t know if he agrees with that sentiment. No, in fact, he’s sure that he doesn’t agree. While he is free of the pain that bound him to Hydra, he will never be entirely free of the guilt his past has put on him. One, he thinks, makes him undeserving of so many things. Like friends. Like happiness. Like love.

And yet it’s nice to know that other people see in him what he may never see in himself.

“ Now let’s go rescue Sam before Robin ropes him into some kind of wedding preparations.”

She says, hands Bucky a bottle, and then grabs his free hand to pull him towards the other side of the room where Robin, dressed as Jessica Rabbit, gestures around wildly as she talks to Sam.

At first, (Y/N) doesn’t even realize it but then she notices that the hand holding hers feels different. It’s not as soft to the touch as a hand usually is. The glove is warm and smooth under her skin but she wishes she could touch the metal. It’s not some kind of weird, misplaced fetishization or some sensationalism. It’s the fact that the arm is a part of Bucky as much as his eyes or his smile or his perpetual grumpiness. And she wants to know every part of him for they make him who he is, and who he is is wonderful.

3 hours.

It’s been 3 hours since they arrived at the party. 3 hours of music he doesn’t get from artists he doesn’t know. 3 hours of staying painfully sober while everyone around him gets exponentially more drunk. 3 hours of pretending not to notice the looks he’s getting.

3 hours and then it got too much. He’s well aware that this isn’t his time. By all means, he shouldn’t be here. Not like this. Stuck in a body that doesn’t match his actual age. Forever reminded of the fact that he’s not meant to be here. Usually, he tries to ignore that. Tries to learn about new things, tries to understand.

This party puts a mirror right in front of his face though. Makes it painfully obvious that this is not where he belongs.

What a party pooper he is. He’d hate himself. If his old self could see him now, standing alone on a balcony because he didn’t like the music inside. His old self would think of him as a coward. His old self is probably right.

“ Grumpy, what are you doing out here, all by yourself?”

For a second the music from the inside spills through the doors and into the serene night, only to be cut off a second later when (Y/N) steps onto the balcony and closes the door behind her.

“ Are you not having fun? “

“ It’s not that. It’s just —”

Just what? Bucky has no idea how to put it into words. It’s moments like this one where having Steve around would be so helpful. He’d understand and he’d know what to say. Steve always knew what to say. Steve just didn’t know when to shut up.

“ You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Ever.” (Y/N) says and bumps him with her shoulder as she leans against him looking out at the New York skyline.

“ I appreciate it.”

“ I was hoping you’d like my costume,” (Y/N) confesses after a moment. “ I feel like I tell you so much about all these movies you missed out on and I don’t know, maybe it’s silly, but I wanted you to feel in the know for once. Does that make sense? “

Bucky bites his lip for everything he wants to say is not something you tell someone you’ve only just befriended a few weeks ago. Never has he felt the need to spill his heart, with all his sorrows and fears and dreams, to anyone. Not until tonight. But it’s too much to burden her with. He can hardly carry the weight himself. To put it on her would be an awfully selfish thing to do.

So he just nods his head and smiles and he says “thank you” like it doesn’t mean anything when really it means the world.

“ Okay well, since I can’t bring you to the party — “ (Y/N) says and fumbles her phone from her dress pocket “ — I’ll just have to bring the party to you.”

For a moment she just types away on the screen before a familiar tune sounds from the speakers of her phone. A familiar tune, to Bucky. One he remembers dancing to when he was a whole other man.

Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Cocktail fills the air and Bucky’s lips unwillingly lift into a smile.

“ If I remember correctly,” (Y/N) says and reaches out her hand to him “ you owe me a dance.”

Bucky laughs and shakes his head, but grabs a hold of her hand anyway “That’s not how it works. You can’t just say someone owes you something simply because you want it.”

She’s so close now. He can see the lights reflecting in her eyes, can feel her chest lift with every breath she takes.

Here’s the thing about loneliness. After a while, you get used to it. It becomes a part of your life, of yourself, like breathing and sleep. You don’t even realize that you’re missing something. Until one day you’re chest to chest with a beautiful girl who thinks you’re wonderful and worthy of her friendship. And it’s then that you realize how lonely you were and how much it hurts and how much you’ve been missing the touch of another.

“ I’ve always wanted to dance through the night. Ever since I’ve first seen Moulin Rouge in the cinema.” (Y/N) says and they start to slowly but surely sway to the music. It’s tentative steps at first, shy and unsure. Barely there moves but there after all.

Sometimes it’s enough for things to be small. The big moments, the important ones don’t need to be big at all. Some of the most important ones don’t demand a lot of space and yet they take up all the space in your heart.

“ Do you remember your first time seeing a movie at the cinema? “ she asks, looking up at him with her starlight eyes.

It’s not a memory he can recall. It’s one of those that have been lost in the shuffle. Like a sweater you love that’s been lost in the laundry or a picture frame gone missing during a move.

“ I don’t. I do remember my last trip to the cinema though.”

“Yeah? What was it?”

This memory is so vivid, it could’ve happened yesterday. He remembers the old dusty velvet seats. He remembers the propaganda spot shown before the movie, the one that put a feeling in his gut as if he’d just swallowed a sack of bricks, now knowing what was to happen but expecting it. He remembers Ruth Dillinger and her gorgeous blond hair and the way it smelled like soap and flowers. And he remembers the movie.

“ Casablanca. Saw it on a date with a girl.”

“ Aw, you took her on a movie date? Lucky girl. “

“ I don’t know if I’d go that far. I wasn’t half as respectable of a guy back then. Was more interested in sneaking a kiss in the dark than taking her to see a good movie. “

“ Did you do the whole, yawning-arm-around-the-shoulder thing?”

“ Obviously.”

“ Oh, you were just a regular casanova, Mr. Barnes? “

“ For sure. “

New York feels alive with the power of possibility. Of a night being more than a night. Of small moments being big and big moments being so tiny and intimate and small. New York feels alive with emotions. Ones Bucky doesn't understand and couldn’t understand. But either way, he feels happier in that tiny insignificant moment than he had in a long time.

“ I’ve never seen Casablanca.”

At that confession, Bucky pushes away from her a little so he can properly look at her, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“ What? It’s a classic. I have good reasons for not having seen most of your movie recommendations, what’s your excuse? “

She smiles bashfully and shrugs her shoulders “ I really don’t know. I just never got around to it. I feel like it’s such an important movie, it asks for a special occasion. Like seeing it at some fancy cinema or in concert or something. You know? “

Bucky only chuckles before pulling her close for another soft sway around the balcony.

Only the serenity doesn’t last very long as the aggressive drumming of some EDM song penetrates the quiet and Sam steps out onto the balcony.

“ Hi guys, uh — am I interrupting something ?”

“ No, no. That’s alright” (Y/N) exclaims, sounding a little flustered as she pulls away from Bucky and presses pause on her phone, plunging them all in silence.

“ I’m gonna get going in a moment. Need to catch an early flight tomorrow morning. “

“ Aw, so soon? Well okay but it was so nice to meet you Sam. You’re welcome at any future party or just drop in at the diner whenever you’re around.” (Y/N) says and pulls him into a hug.

“ I will don’t worry. Told you, I like you already.”

They share another quick hug before (Y/N) excuses herself to get Sam’s jacket from another room, leaving Sam and Bucky alone on the balcony.

“ Do not say a word!” Bucky orders as he notices yet another grin forming on Sam’s face.

“ I didn’t say anything.”

“ But you want to. I can see it.”

“ What would I possibly say, Buck? That you’ve got it bad? You know that yourself. “

“ It’s not like that.”

“ Okay, if you say so. “ Sam complies and lets another silence fall over them.

That’s until he speaks up yet again “ You dance. Man, I can’t believe it. Hey, can you waltz?”

“ Shut up! “

The party is slowly but surely winding down. A lot of people have left by now.

Some are asleep on the couch. On the floor. Against the wall.

A few are still lingering around, talking in low voices. Slurred words, tired eyes, light hearts.

Bucky tries not to step on anyone as he maneuvers his way around the apartment, trying to find the room where (Y/N) put all the jackets. It’s time for him to go, no matter how much he wants to hold onto the moment. He’s tired and the party is as good as over. And anyway, he hasn’t seen (Y/N) in a while.

“ Psst, Grumpy“

(Y/N) peeks out from behind a door, beckoning him closer. As he steps into the room he’s embraced by a warm amber glow coming from a string of fairy lights that frame one wall.

On her bed, (Y/N) sits and leans against the headboard, balancing a laptop on her legs. The wall behind her is covered in photographs. Some of her, some of people he doesn’t know. There are pictures taken at concerts, theme parks, the beach. She’s smiling in most of them. Happy. Memories of a lifetime forever caught on film.

This, Bucky realizes then, is something he wants. Not right now but eventually. To make memories. Ones that last. Ones that don’t get taken away from him. And someone to make those memories with him.

“ Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you,” Bucky asks as she pats the blanket and he sits down on the bed next to her.

“ I’ve been looking for this movie and I finally found a decent copy we can watch.”

“ Now? “

“ Yes now. It’s supposed to be a really good one. I think you’ll like it. “

Bucky’s tired. He honestly just wants to go home and try to find at least a few hours of sleep. But she does it again, that thing where she smiles and his heart does the weird fluttery thing. And he can’t say no to that. Why would he ever want to say no to that?

So he scoots backward to rest against the headboard as well and his eyes take in the swirly white font on the screen spelling out Casablanca over the black and white image of a map of Africa.

His smile won’t be suppressed anymore. It takes over his face like it belongs right there.

"Thought you were waiting for a special occasion?"

“ I was and I found it. Now, what’s the romantic lesson I can learn from this one? “ (Y/N) asks as her head comes to rest on his right shoulder.

Bucky considers it for a moment, tries to recall exactly what happens. Some details are fuzzy, some lost altogether. But he remembers the core of it all. The love shared between two people.

“ It is about sacrificing the thing you want most in life to make sure the people you love are safe and happy. It’s about putting the one you love above yourself and breaking your own heart in order to keep theirs from breaking. Love is selfless, never selfish. And love is worth it. I think that’s what it’s about. “

“ That’s a lovely sentiment. But so sad too.”

Bucky only nods in agreement and as the title credits roll he wonders if he’ll ever get the chance to really figure out love. To fall for someone and love them so much he’d give up everything to see them happy. Even himself.

Though they call it the city that never sleeps, New York seems to grow tired. It grows calm and quiet and maybe for a second it falls into a slumber in the same way that both Bucky and (Y/N) fall asleep, cuddled up on her bed, while Ingrid Bergman flies away on a plane and Humphry Bogard walks into the black of night.

Bucky hasn’t slept in a bed in months in fear of nightmares and terrors lurking in the dark corner of his mind.

That night he doesn’t have nightmares. In fact that night he dreams. Of slow dancing on a balcony with only the stars bearing witness to the moment. He dreams of red slippers and fairy lights and black and white movies.

That night he doesn’t have nightmares. Only sweet dreams.

Taglist // if you want to be added or taken off just message me :) //:

@zaynzierulez // @je-like-you // @dracoxxyoflam // @jackiehollanderr // @majo240820 // @kay-gilles // @booksb4looksstuff // @jckie94 // @charmed-asylum // @shawnie--jo // @yllwtaxi // @tailsoflightning //@giuliarogers

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x female reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x f!reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky imagine #avengers imagine #avengers imagines #marvel imagine #marvel imagines #james barnes x reader #james barnes x female reader #winter soldier x reader #he has too many names idk what else to tag

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