#so you know... its been a hard week for me

[orangeblossomsintheair]

oh could you write something cute about the reader and Lando please, maybe something funny where the reader says "oh yeah I'll do this but for that you'll buy me a Porsche" and Lando actually buys her a car 💜

BRAND AMBASSADOR | LN4

wc : 3k

an : slowly working through my requests yippie! im not too sure about this but i hope its alr :'>

It was meant to be a joke. Really.

But Lando didn’t know how to take a joke.

For weeks, he’d been pestering you to do a photoshoot with him for Quadrant.

“Brand image, baby!” he insisted, arms flailing as if that explained everything. “Power couple vibes! You and me, absolutely dominating the internet. Imagine the engagement!”

“My manager would actually drop dead if I did a hoodie campaign.”

“Oh come on, baby, just one photoshoot,” he pleaded, leaning so far over the kitchen island that he looked like he might slide right off. “Just a few pics in Quadrant stuff! Hoodie, joggers, maybe the bucket hat if you're feeling spicy-"

You didn’t even look up from your phone. “Lando. I’m booked for the next eight months. Vogue is flying me to Paris next week, and Dior wants me in Milan by the weekend. I don’t have time to play influencer in your gamer merch.”

“It's not gamer merch!” Lando gasped, clutching his chest like you’d stabbed him. “It’s- it's… lifestyle! Culture! Gaming and racing fusion!”

“That’s cute,” you said flatly, scrolling.

Lando narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t even look at the new designs I sent you.”

“Because it’s just another hoodie, baby.”

He gasped again, louder this time. “Just another hoodie?”

“Oh, I’m sorry- hoodie, but make it Formula 1.”

“Wow.” He pointed at you. “I cannot believe this slander. From my own girlfriend.”

“Your supermodel girlfriend,” you corrected without missing a beat.

“And yet, I’m still here, humbly begging for crumbs of attention.”

You didn’t even blink.

And that’s when you heard it. The soft shuffle of socks against hardwood floors.

You looked up just in time to see Lando drop dramatically to his knees in front of you, arms sprawled over your thighs like some lovesick Victorian maiden.

His chin rested on your knee, staring up at you with those big, stupidly pretty eyes.

“Please.” His voice dropped to a pitiful whisper, like he was auditioning for a charity ad. “Do a Quadrant shoot with me.”

“Oh my God, Lando- get off the floor!”

“No. I live here now.” He clung tighter. “Photoshoot. Please, baby. You could be the face of the brand! Imagine it: you in my merch, absolutely carrying. We could finally replace Max’s ugly mug on the website-”

“Lando!” You laughed, swatting at him.

“It’s true! The customers deserve better!”

“You own the brand. You’re supposed to be the face.”

"But you’d look so good in my hoodies," he said, practically drooling at the thought. "God, you in joggers? Maybe one of those cropped sweaters? The internet would lose its mind.”

You stared at him. Long. Hard.

“…Fine.”

His eyes lit up, stars in aquamarine. “Wait, really?”

“But it’s gonna cost you.”

Lando blinked. Sat up straighter. “How much?”

You smirked, dragging your perfectly manicured nails through his curls, watching him melt like butter.

“A car.”

His entire posture changed. He sat up straighter, interest piqued. Now you were speaking his language. “Which one?”

You almost choked. “Excuse me?”

Lando leaned in, eyes sharp now. “Which. One.”

Oh, he was serious.

You blinked, regrouped, and leaned back like you were simply ordering off a menu.

“LaFerrari.”

Silence.

“The red one. Wine red. Matches my nails.” You admired the burgundy polish glinting under the light. “I’d look good in it.”

Lando didn’t even blink.

“Deal.”

Your head snapped toward him. “What?”

“Done.” He stood up, dusting off his sweatpants like you hadn’t just asked for a multi-million-dollar hypercar. “I’ll have the keys for you next week. Photoshoot’s on Friday.”

“Lando, that’s a LaFerrari-”

“And?”

“It’s like… a $3 million car!”

He tilted his head. “Do you want it in the garage or delivered to your place?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“…You’re insane.”

Lando leaned down, smirking, and kissed your forehead. “And now you’re stuck with me.”

“…I want full creative control over the shoot.”

“Baby, you can set the studio on fire if it makes you happy.”

“And you’re paying for my glam team.”

“Obviously.”

You stared at him, still trying to process how you had accidentally hustled a hypercar off your billionaire boyfriend in under five minutes.

“And I want full rights to veto any photo where I look bad.”

“Oh, baby, you never look bad.”

You squinted. “If I show up and it’s just me in some hoodie in front of a brick wall-”

Lando’s hands cupped your cheeks, deadly serious. “You will be in a hoodie… in front of a gaming PC.”

You slapped his hands away.

—

You were never supposed to take it this far.

The photoshoot was meant to be a joke.

A little bargaining chip to shut Lando up for five minutes. You didn’t think he’d actually pull it off.

Yet here you were.

In a studio. In a Quadrant hoodie. In sweatpants.

And to make it worse, Lando was treating this like he was shooting for Vogue.

“Okay, okay- pause! Can we fix the lighting on her left side? I need more contrast, more mood. She’s selling the hoodie but not the vibe.”

You slowly turned to glare at him. “Lando. I am wearing a hoodie. There is no ‘vibe.’”

“There’s always a vibe!” Lando spun around to the photographer. “Tell her there’s a vibe.”

The photographer, who was clearly riding the paycheck wave, gave you an awkward smile and a less than enthusiastic thumbs up. “Yeah. Big vibe.”

You groaned and adjusted the hoodie, tugging the hood up over your head. “Lando, I walked for Dior last month. Dior. And now I’m here, dressed like a Twitch streamer in front of a gaming PC.”

Lando gasped. “First of all, streamers WISH they looked this good. Second of all, don’t disrespect the setup. That’s a triple-monitor, RGB-lit, water-cooled rig worth more than my life.”

“Yeah, well, it better be. Because I’m dying inside.”

“Okay, can we get a shot of her sitting on the desk? Like, casual, but make it fashion. Maybe holding a controller? No- headset! Baby, put on the headset.”

You stared at him. “You want me to wear a gaming headset in a fashion shoot?”

“Yes. Gamer girlfriend aesthetic. Internet eats that up.”

“I haven’t touched a console since the Wii came out.”

“And that’s the fantasy!”

—

Lando couldn’t stop staring.

The moment you put on the damn headset, he knew he was in trouble.

He’d been so smug, so proud of himself for getting you to agree to this ridiculous photoshoot.

But now? Now he was fighting for his life.

Because there you were, sitting on the desk in a Quadrant hoodie, wearing his brand, looking so effortlessly good that it was like the universe was punishing him for ever thinking this was a good idea.

It wasn’t just the way the hoodie hung on you, oversized and perfect, or the way you pushed the headset into place like you were made to wear it.

It was the thought behind it.

You were wearing his stuff.

And that did things to him.

Very Dangerous things.

Lando dragged a hand over his face, trying to snap himself out of it, but it was no use.

His gaze betrayed him, sliding back to you as you leaned back on the desk, legs crossed, your smirk telling him you knew exactly what you were doing to him.

“Lando,” you said, your voice teasing and smooth, “you okay over there, baby?”

He tried to play it cool. “Yeah. All good.” His voice cracked halfway through, and he coughed to cover it up.

But he wasn’t fine.

Not even close.

His hands were clammy, his heart was pounding, and he was hyperaware of the fact that he was growing harder by the second.

Oh, this was bad.

You shifted on the desk, leaning forward slightly, the motion drawing his eyes to your legs before snapping them back to your face.

That cocky little smirk was still there, your stupidly pretty eyes glinting with amusement.

You were enjoying this. Brat.

“You sure?” you pressed, tilting your head.

His voice was higher this time, strained and barely holding it together. “Yep. Fine. Totally fine.”

You didn’t buy it for a second. “Lando…”

“That’s it,” Lando muttered, voice tight, cracking slightly with frustration. “Break! We’re taking a break.”

His words were sharp, a contrast to the usual smooth confidence he exuded.

Without waiting for any response, he grabbed your wrist, dragging you away from the set with a sense of urgency that didn’t match the cool composure he usually carried.

“Lando, what the-”

“Not now,” he interrupted, low and tense, as he pulled you into a nearby storage room.

The door clicked shut with an almost deliberate force, the sound of the lock turning echoing in the small space.

You barely had time to gather your thoughts before he was in your space, his breath coming fast, his chest rising and falling against yours.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?” His voice was low, strained, his hands finding your waist, gripping tight, enough to bruise.

A slow smile spread across your lips. “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah.”

Lando’s forehead pressed against yours, eyes squeezed shut for a moment as if trying to center himself.

His breath fanned across your lips, shaky and uneven, and you couldn’t help but notice the way his chest seemed to rise and fall faster with every breath.

“You’re a brat,” he muttered under his breath, voice raw, yet edged with something almost desperate.

“You’re the one who wanted me in your merch,” you teased, your fingers curling into his hair as you leaned into him, feeling the heat of his body.

“Yeah, well…” His hands slid lower, pulling you closer, his fingertips burning against your skin. “Now I’ve got more than I bargained for.”

The words barely left his lips before his mouth found yours.

The kiss was messy, urgent, his lips urgent against yours, like he couldn’t get enough.

You didn’t need to think. Your body responded immediately, hands moving to pull him closer, the heat building.

The press of his body against yours was relentless, hard and desperate, as he deepened the kiss.

His hand slid down your thigh, pulling it up to hook around his waist, while the other traced a slow, deliberate path along your jaw.

His breath fanned across your skin, shallow and uneven, each exhale carrying a heat that set your nerves ablaze.

“You don’t fight fair,” he murmured against your lips, his voice rough, edged with a hunger that made your stomach flip. His mouth moved to your neck, leaving a trail of fire in its wake as his teeth grazed your throat.

Your lips curled into a smirk, your nails raking across his back just enough to make him shudder. The sound of his sharp inhale sent a rush of power through you.

“Neither do you,” you whispered, leaning closer, your breath mingling with his as your fingers found the hem of his hoodie, tugging it higher, your touch skimming over his skin.

“God, you…” His voice broke, his words catching in his throat as he crashed his mouth back to yours.

The kiss was harder this time, almost frantic, as though he couldn’t get enough of you.

His hands moved with purpose now.

Demanding, claiming, leaving no part of you untouched.

Your nails scraped against his back again, dragging another groan from deep in his chest, a sound so raw and desperate it made your knees weak.

His hips rocked against you, slow and deliberate, each movement sending shockwaves through your body.

“Careful, Norris,” you teased, your voice breathless but still carrying a hint of mischief as you pulled back just enough to meet his gaze.

His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. A quiet intensity that you'd seen more than once.

“You’re starting to look a little… well, territorial.”

For a moment, he froze. His chest heaved with every ragged breath as if he was trying to regain control.

Then his lips twitched into a sly, almost dangerous smile, one that sent a thrill through you.

“Maybe I am,” he murmured, his voice low and rough, each word carrying weight. His hand slid to your waist, pulling you even closer, making any distance between you disappear.

The words sent a shiver through your spine. But it wasn’t fear. It was something else, something exciting, something that only made you want more.

His lips found your neck again, pressing soft, burning kisses against your skin.

His teeth grazed over your pulse, just enough to send a jolt through you, sharp and unexpected, making your breath catch in your throat.

You tilted your head to the side, giving him more access, fingers threading through his hair, pulling him closer as you whispered, “Everyone’s going to notice, you know. You weren’t exactly subtle when you dragged me off like that.”

The corner of his mouth curled into a grin, but it was dark now, and there was a sudden pressure in his hands as he adjusted his position against you. “Let them notice,” he said, his voice thick with something unspoken.

He kissed down your neck, his lips trailing lower, his breath hot against your skin. “I don’t care. They can see whatever they want.”

The words sent a wave of heat rushing through your body, and you couldn’t help but arch into him, your nails scraping lightly over his back.

—-

When it was over, you leaned back against the wall, your chest rising and falling as you tried to steady your breath.

Lando, however, was already standing in front of you, his hair tousled, his hoodie still hanging off his frame in a way that somehow made it look even better on him than it ever had before.

He bent down casually to scoop your underwear from the floor, dangling them in front of you with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

“Come on, love,” he said, his voice rough and teasing, still thick with exertion. “Don’t leave me hanging. Put these back on before we go out there.”

You shot him a glare, snatching the fabric from his hand and hurriedly slipping it on, feeling the heat rush to your face.

Lando leaned back against the wall, watching you with a cocky, self-satisfied grin. “Still dripping with me,” he murmured, but the rasp in his voice made your stomach flip. You felt your cheeks flush even more.

You rolled your eyes, tugging the hoodie down to hide your body and fix your composure. “You’re disgusting.”

“And yet, you love me,” he replied with a wink. “Guess that says something about you too.”

The studio lights were still dimmed as you walked back in, legs slightly unsteady. You caught yourself on the doorframe, trying to keep your cool, but the feeling between your legs was still fresh, raw.

Lando followed you, smirking like a cat that had just caught its prey. He leaned against the wall, eyes on you as his grin grew wider. “Fix your hair,” he said, voice dripping with amusement. “You look like you just got fucked.”

You barely suppressed a laugh, brushing your fingers through your hair and pulling it back into something that at least resembled “done.” “Gee, I wonder why,” you muttered under your breath.

Lando raised an eyebrow, clearly enjoying the way you were still trying to play it cool. “Hey, I didn’t hear you complaining.”

You narrowed your eyes, about to retort when Lando took a step forward, his smirk never fading, and pulled you close. He kissed you softly, lingering, the kind of kiss that made it hard to remember where you ended and he began.

“Come on,” he murmured against your lips as he pulled away, the mischief still dancing in his eyes. “We’ve got a photoshoot to finish.”

—-

Months passed.

The LaFerrari didn’t show up.

Not that you cared. Really.

Sure, it had been a fun little joke—“Pay me in a LaFerrari or I’m not doing this shoot”—but you never expected Lando to actually follow through.

He said he would but Lando also forgot to stock up on groceries some days so you didn’t take it to heart.

Besides, it wasn’t like you had time to think about it.

Your schedule was relentless: fashion weeks in Paris, Vogue shoots in Milan, fittings for Dior in New York.

You were barely home long enough to unpack, let alone pine after a car.

It wasn’t a big deal.

Until one night, after a particularly grueling flight back from London, you pulled into your driveway and-

You slammed the brakes.

Because there it was.

A LaFerrari.

Burgundy red. Like aged wine. Like sin and velvet had a baby and parked it outside your house.

It gleamed under the porch light, shameless and expensive.

For a full minute, you did nothing but stare, slack-jawed.

Then you slowly got out of the car, leaving your bags in the trunk.

“Lando,” you muttered, pulling out your phone.

You called.

He picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, baby- what’s up?”

“You left a LaFerrari on my driveway.”

“Oh! You got home?” He sounded way too casual.

“Lando. There is a multi-million-dollar car parked outside my house.”

“Yeah, about that. It’s yours. Obviously.”

“…You’re joking.”

“Would I joke about something this expensive?”

“Yes.”

“Fair. But not this time.”

You stared at the car again.

“Are you serious? After months?”

“It takes time to deliver a LaFerrari!” Lando said, his voice way too serious for a man who had just been exposed.

“I had to get it customized, too. Your name is literally engraved on the side. And then there was the whole issue with cargo. Did you know they’re super strict about how cars are transported? I had to make sure it wasn’t gonna get dented, and the shipping company I trust didn’t have any available slots until-”

“I thought you were joking, Lando!”

“Well, I wasn’t,” he replied confidently. “You said you wanted a LaFerrari. You said ‘make it red wine,’ so I made it red wine. I also got the seats customized with carbon fiber inserts and-”

You groaned in disbelief, interrupting him. “You literally bought the car, customized it, and shipped it to my house."

Lando blinked, unfazed. “Well, yeah. Obviously. Did you think I was kidding about that part?”

“Yes! It’s a LaFerrari! Who even does that?! It’s absurd!”

"Clearly me.” He paused. “Check the glove compartment.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

Suspicious, you approached the car, heels clicking on the pavement. You opened the door.

God, even the door sounded expensive- and popped the glove compartment.

Inside was a tiny Hot Wheels car. A red LaFerrari.

Taped to it was a sticky note.

“Just in case this one wasn’t enough. - Lando”

You stared at it.

You looked back at the LaFerrari, glinting under the sun like some ridiculous, over-the-top love letter.

“…I’m taking it to the Dior fitting tomorrow.”

“You better.”

“…Is this why you were ignoring my texts last week?”

“I wasn’t ignoring you! I was busy coordinating with Italy!”

“Oh my God.”

[personnage-neutre]

"Tintin, quel âge as-tu ?"

Today marks 96 years of The Adventures of Tintin, and readers have spent at least the last 78 of those years asking the same question: "How old is Tintin?"

The series is infamously coy about giving a definite answer, as was its creator, but I argue in the first part of this post that 1) there was indeed a specific intended age range for Tintin and 2) it is very much possible, using evidence from many different sources including the albums themselves, Tintin magazine, other BDs of the time, and interviews with Hergé, to say exactly what that age range was. Let me be very clear: I'm specifically making an argument about how old Hergé saw him as and how old Hergé wanted him to be seen as.

The second part is less concrete; it presents how a few scholars have interpreted the ambiguity of Tintin's age, plus some of my own thoughts about it that build on their claims. That part is less trying to find an answer to the age question and more trying to explain why his age is so much in question.

This is a long post.

I. Intent

Official sources

When asked about Tintin's age in a 1960 interview for Cinq colonnes à la une, Hergé judged that "il doit rester aux environs de quinze ans" ("he must still be around 15 years old," 0:33-0:44).

In 1962, he gave a very similar response on the Canadian program Premier Plan: "Une quinzaine d'années ? Quinze ans, seize ans, je ne sais pas, moi" ("About 15? 15, 16, I don't know"). "Donc c'est l'adolescent" ("So he's a teenager"), pursues the interviewer, and Hergé answers with a firm yes.

Nearly ten years later, in 1970, he added some nuance: "What age do I give him? I don't know... 17? In my mind, he was about 14 or 15 when I created him, a Boy Scout, and he practically hasn't budged. Let's say that he's picked up three or four years in forty years... All right, let's take the average: 15 plus 4, 19." (translation mine)

In 1979, his interviewer on Apostrophes preempted him on the age question, saying that "c'est un reporter de quinze ans" ("he's a 15-year-old reporter"). Hergé agreed: "C'est ça, à peu près" ("That's right, more or less").

Today, the official Tintin website run by Moulinsart declares him to be "Seize, dix-sept ans (dix-huit tout au plus !)," that is, "16, 17 years old (18 at most!)."

Responses to reader questions in the Journal Tintin

Early in the Journal Tintin's run, between 1946 and 1954, readers who wrote in with questions had a chance to see the responses to their letters published in the magazine each week. Supposedly it would be Tintin himself who was answering - questions addressed to him would be answered in first person, which probably only increased the urge to ask about personal details. So there were naturally many questions about his age, which provoked a range of responses.

Who was actually answering the letters? It's hard to say. But seeing as the responses were being published in the official Tintin Magazine as the voice of Tintin himself, Hergé would surely have been at least consulted on questions concerning his character, especially as the team running the magazine was still very small when it was regularly publishing responses.

The most common response was to dodge the question entirely. The stock phrases were "Qu'importe mon âge ?" and "Tintin n'a pas d'âge !" ("What does my age matter?" "Tintin has no age!").

In a small number of cases they related Tintin's age to that of his readers; an 11 1/2 year old was told that Tintin can be "l'âge que tu souhaites : entre dix et vingt ans !" ("whatever age you want: between 10 and 20!", 1953), and for a couple others, where the age of the writer wasn't listed, Tintin's age is "un peu plus que le tien" ("a little older than you," 1951) or "un peu moins que le double du tien" ("a little less than twice your age," 1950). The target audience of the Journal Tintin - as it was for the Petit Vingtième, and for comics magazines of the time generally - was 8-15 year olds.

The only definite answer that appeared with regularity put Tintin's age between 15 and 20:

(TIntin nos. 19, May 8, 1947; 26, June 26, 1947; 6, February 5, 1948; 2, January 12, 1950; 9, February 27, 1947. The second and third examples also have Tintin declare that "I've travelled so much that I no longer remember where I was born," a fine example of the de-Belgicanization he underwent after the early years.)

("As I've already told several of my friends, I'm older than 15 but younger than 20." (1947) "My age? Let's say 15… or a little older." (1947) "My age? Between 15 and 20 years old." (1948) "Tintin? He has no age! Seeing him move about, he seems to be about 15." (1950) "I'm not yet 20 but I'm older than 15." (1947))

Real-life incarnations of Tintin

When the end of Soviets was celebrated with "Tintin" arriving at the Gare du Nord in Brussels, the role was played by 15-year-old Lucien Pepermans. When the event was repeated for the end of Congo, two years later, Pepermans was replaced by Henri Dendoncker, age 14. About thirty years after that, Jean-Pierre Talbot was declared Tintin's spitting image at 16 ("Same age, same silhouette, same face, same hair," reads the announcement of his casting in the Journal Tintin). He was 20 at most when Blue Oranges (released 1964) was filmed. Hergé told Numa Sadoul that he unconsciously based Tintin in Soviets on his younger brother Paul, who was 16 when it started. Additionally, Palle Huld, often cited as an inspiration for Tintin, completed a tour of the world in 44 days in 1928 at age 15 (and in plus-fours).

(Lucien Pepermans, Henri Dendoncker, Jean-Pierre Talbot, Palle Huld)

In the play Tintin et le mystère du diamant bleu (1941), which Hergé was very involved in the writing and production of, the role of Tintin was played by Mlle. Jeanne Rubens, a woman - a common theater trick for portraying young boys. He was played by a woman again in Radio Luxembourg's 1950s audio adaptations: Claude Vincent, "qui interprétait à merveille les rôles d’enfants et d’adolescents" ("who played children's and adolescents' roles wonderfully"), was the voice of Tintin. Sadly those broadcasts appear to be lost, but she can still be heard in the likely similar role of Alix.

(Shared on forum-tintinophile.com, "Tintin aux Indes, ou le mystère du diamant bleu." Certainly the only adaptation that got his height difference with the Thompsons right.)

In 1959, the Journal Tintin invited readers who thought they looked like Tintin to send in their pictures; five candidates for "Tintin's lookalike" were chosen by the magazine and presented to the readers for them to vote on. The winner was a 15-year-old, and while the ages of the other contestants aren't listed, they appear to be the same age or younger.

(Tintin nos. 25, June 24, 1959 & 31, August 5, 1959)

Comparisons with contemporary characters

Mainstream BD in the first half of the 20th century was not particularly inventive, especially as it was contending with its relative youth as a medium, a focus on the children's market, and, especially after WWII, heavy scrutiny from both religious and secular moral watchdogs. In the specific case of the Journal Tintin, Hergé's iron-fisted artistic direction in the early years led to a high level of artistic homogeneity across the magazine, while restrictions on the types of stories that could be told (from both the threat of censors and expectations about reader interests) limited variety in plots, characters, and settings.

All that is to say that a lot of what was being published alongside Tintin in the 40s and 50s looked more or less like Tintin, and even was likely directly modeled on it, which makes it useful for comparison. The protagonists of the time can be generally divided by age into children, the "15-20" range, young men, and middle-aged men. Each category is visually distinct (comics are a visual medium!) and each results in a slightly different kind of story with different character dynamics.

Here's Tintin with a couple of the teenage protagonists that appeared alongside him in his magazine:

(L'Affaire Tournesol (1956), p. 51; La Griffe Noire, Tintin no. 6, February 5, 1958; Les Deux Visages de Kid Ordinn, Tintin no. 1, January 2, 1957)

Hergé's no. 2 collaborator Jacques Martin created Alix (center, 1948), a Roman Gaul confirmed to be 16 in the original albums. Chick Bill (right, 1955), who in looks and narrative role is effectively just Tintin as a cowboy, is identified (by none other than Franquin) with the 15-20 age range. Some shared visual markers of their youth are a short and slight build, rounded shoulders, a round head, and a soft jawline. While all very independent, they are all three semi-accompanied by a much older man and a child sidekick.

Now, here are some examples of characters from the next age range up:

L'énigmatique Monsieur Barelli, Tintin no. 44, November 2, 1950; L'ouragan de feu, Tintin (Kuifje) no. 37, September 15, 1960; Défi à Ric Hochet, Tintin (Kuifje) no. 8, February 25, 1964)

Hergé's no. 1 collaborator Bob de Moor had a humor-adventure series using the same style as Hergé, but his character, stage actor Georges Barelli (left, 1950), is a grown man. Martin's second series was required by publishers to somehow be a modern AU of Alix, but Alix's counterpart, reporter in the same way that Tintin is a reporter Guy Lefranc (center, 1952), is clearly older than him. So-called reporter, really amateur detective Ric Hochet (yes, that's his name, right, 1955) is kind of an odd case; he started out a child, then looked basically exactly like Chick Bill (they were both drawn by the same artist, Tibet), then finally settled into his final form as a young man in his mid-twenties - a 1969 album places him at age 26. All three own their own cars (admittedly a moot point for Alix and Chick), and, compared to their teenage counterparts, they're much more likely to have friends and colleagues their own age instead of being supervised by someone older.

It should be clear from these six pictures that Tintin was not drawn in a way meant to make readers think he was an adult. And besides, there's really no reason to believe that Hergé, who once declared that "my primary objective is to be legible. The rest follows," would have chosen to give his main and titular character an appearance that was somehow deceptive. I'm prepared to say with confidence that Tintin looks young because he's supposed to be seen as young.

Textual evidence

For this section, I first look at a few ways that the albums actively present Tintin as a non-adult character. However, most of what follows is about showing that what happens in the albums does not contradict the argument that Tintin is intended to be a teenager. The Adventures of Tintin may be deceptively timeless, but not only is the series nearly a century old, it also was written during a time of extremely rapid and intense social, cultural, and technological change. Consequently, I want to make sure that I'm not judging the past with the attitudes of the present; in order to put the series in its proper context, I try to identify viewpoints and conventions expressed in texts created at the same time (and, when possible, by the same author) to see if a teenaged Tintin fits in with them.

In looking over how other characters refer to him across the albums, one sees that Tintin's most distinctive feature to those around him is his youth. This is, I think, more visible in the original French, where other characters address or describe him with a whole array of words commonly used for children: jeune homme, (jeune) garçon, gamin, galopin, blanc-bec, enfant de choeur, fiston, freluquet, moussaillon, (mon) petit (used as a noun), and morveux, not to mention many, many instances of characters appending "jeune" or "petit" to another word ("reporter," for instance). In English, he's variously (a) young man, (young) boy, kid, boyo, whippersnapper, wonderboy, lad, brat, puppy, young fellow-me-lad, and cabin-boy, along with liberal use of the corresponding adjectives "young" and "little." (I've collected specific panel examples for reference in another post.)

As @professorcalculusstanaccount has pointed out, there's no question of Tintin being called up for the draft as Haddock is in Black Gold; that album also contains the only example of Tintin's competency being questioned because of his age, on page 7: "So you're the new radio officer... You look a bit young to me..." (There's one similar remark, in America, after Tintin is injured in a car accident on page 6: "The poor kid..." "He looks so young...") Him not being called to war is particularly striking because Belgium historically required young men to do compulsory military service at age 18 or 19, after which they would be enrolled in the reserve army (p. 274). Thanks to a hard-to-translate joke in the original French for Emerald (below), we know that military service exists in Tintin's world and that the Thompsons have done theirs; Hergé did his at age 19, and then was called up from the reserves in 1939, interrupting the magazine publication of, precisely, Black Gold. Given his longtime anti-war stance and the peace sign sticker he wears in Picaros, though, one can easily imagine Tintin becoming a conscientious objector after it was legalized in 1964 - but by 1964, most of the series was already over.

(Les Bijoux de la Castafiore, p. 37)

He also doesn't dress like an adult: the plus-fours look very childish after the 1930s, as @illegally-blind-and-deaf pointed out. He also never wears a proper hat, only a flat cap in a few early adventures, and from Temple on (that is, after 1948) he runs around in his shirt and sweater with no tie or jacket. Some of that can be put down to the importance Hergé placed on his characters being maximally recognizable, but it certainly doesn't make Tintin look any older - look at a few of Hergé's crowd scenes and compare how the background characters are dressed.

Next, he doesn't seem to ever need to shave. In fact, in the original French for Black Island, Tintin remarks that the bad guys have gotten away "à mon nez et à ma barbe," an expression equivalent in English to "right under my nose" but literally "at my nose and at my beard," to which Snowy incredulously responds "Your beard? What beard?"

(L'Île Noire, p. 29)

It's true that nearly everyone who meets Tintin, including his adult friends, addresses him respectfully with the formal pronoun "vous" instead of with the informal "tu," as you typically would for someone much younger than you. However, Pierre Assouline attributes this to a dislike of over-familiarity on Hergé's part, citing him as saying that "Le tutoiement est la fausse monnaie de l'amitié" ("Using 'tu' is the counterfeit money of friendship").

(There are a few moments where Haddock slips and uses tu with Tintin, but I won't go into them here. Suffice to say that the majority of them are indeed moments where he's treating Tintin more as a child.)

Much has been made of Tintin's nonchalance about drinking alcohol as proof of adulthood, but evidence from other BDs indicates that this perception is a result of a shift away from historically looser attitudes towards drinking. Early comics for children frequently carried moralizing messages, but there's no marked moralizing present around youths drinking like there is around them smoking.

Compare, for example, the difference in tone between these two Quick & Flupke pages, where the kids are sternly warned off from tobacco...

(Originally published in Le Petit Vingtième nos. 4, January 28, 1932 & 43, October 24, 1935)

...Versus this gag, where Flupke's own relatives getting him drunk on New Year's over his protests is played entirely for humor.

(Le Petit Vingtième no. 1, January 3, 1935. "Tu es un homme et tu dois boire!")

There was even a follow-up comic at the same time the year after, in which Flupke imagines the alcohol he'll be plied with on January 1st and attempts to move to the North Pole to avoid it.

If a kid as young as Flupke is being given alcohol, then Tintin really doesn't have to be much older to be drinking as well. In fact, one might even note an echo between Flupke's reluctance to drink here and Tintin's in Picaros, when he's pressured to take a swig of whisky by Arumbaya custom (p. 34). On the other hand, since Quick and Flupke are so young, the ban on smoking is stronger for them. Tintin is old enough to occasionally be offered a cigarette, but still young enough that he always must refuse: Hergé was adamant that Tintin remain a good model because of the children who identified with him, while Haddock smoking his pipe, for example, never raised the same issue.

Beyond that, for a non-Hergé example and a later one (from 1960), here's child tennis prodigy Jari, hero of an eponymous strip in the Journal Tintin. He's just bicycled from Belgium to the Netherlands and wants a refreshment, so he goes to a drink stand and orders a beer - and no one bats an eye. Similarly, the only alcohol that Tintin orders casually, in a cafe or pub, is beer (Golden Claws p. 2, Black Island p. 41).

(Jari et le Plan Z, Tintin (Kuifje) no. 40, October 6, 1960)

At the same time, this relaxed attitude has limits. Tintin won't share a friendly drink with Haddock, for example when returning to Marlinspike after an excursion (though Haddock pours two glasses anyway in Affair (p. 3)). Calculus scolds Haddock severely when he thinks that Haddock has given Tintin champagne at breakfast in Tibet (p. 4: "Vous avez bien tort de lui faire boire du champagne de grand matin, à ce garçon !…"). Later in that same album, Haddock drunkenly warns Tintin against alcohol, telling him it's "very bad for young people like you!" (p. 38).

Next, while Tintin is undeniably capable of driving a car, there's actually no indication outside of the earliest stories that he can legally drive. (A quick Google search also tells me that Belgium has historically been notoriously lax on road safety.) At no point after the first four albums - that is, after Hergé became interested in telling a story that makes logical sense, a development typically placed at Blue Lotus - does Tintin drive a car that was acquired legally, not commandeered or outright stolen. (In Soviets and Congo he buys a car; in Cigars he drives the two Rajaijah victims to the asylum, though I doubt anyone was worried about him getting pulled over in the jungle.) On the few occasions where there isn't an emergency, it's always Haddock who drives; see for example Crystal Balls or the few pages of Thérmozéro. When Tintin finally gets a vehicle of his own, in Picaros, it's... a motorbike, which one can get a license for at a younger age than for a car. And in Alph-Art, where the motorbike plays a much larger role, Haddock still drives Tintin into town (p. 25) - and then gets left in the car while Tintin investigates!

Hergé also apparently didn't think flying a plane was particularly difficult. In Jo et Zette, one of his other series, Hergé has little Jo be able to fly his father's "Stratonef" and even land it from a glide, despite only ever hearing his father talk about how to fly it. Over the course of the two-part story (Le Testament de M. Pump and Destination New-York), Jo manages multiple successful flights - more than Tintin ever does! - despite unambiguously being a child.

(Destination New-York, p. 41)

And as with the cars, every plane Tintin ever flies is stolen, so whether he has a legal license or not really doesn't matter.

The same goes for his guns. In all but the first albums and Ear where, surprised in his flat, he really does pull a revolver out of nowhere, Tintin's guns are explicitly either given to him or taken from a disarmed enemy. The series doesn't make a point of him owning and carrying his own gun - just the opposite. And while it seems to us now that Tintin has a lot of firearm use for a children's comic, proficiency with guns was honestly a genre expectation for all adventure heroes of the time (just don't put a gun on your cover). For example, Chang, who from his introduction on acts like a second Tintin, wields a pistol at the end of Lotus and is even implied to be the one who makes the shot that breaks Didi's sword despite appearing even younger than Tintin. (See also the previous section of this post; Chick Bill is carrying a gun in the picture I included.) What's more, the gunplay in Tintin is actually a step down from its predecessor Totor, where Hergé's titular Boy Scout kills a man with a rifle shot to the face.

In short, Tintin is able to do a lot of things he shouldn't legally be able to do by simply not doing them legally.

The fact that Tintin lives alone isn't necessarily a mark of maturity either. It's hardly uncommon for a young adventure protagonist to be unusually unsupervised; it's effectively a demand of the genre. Hergé learned why that is from experience when he created Jo et Zette for the editor of the French, ultra-Catholic children's magazine Coeurs Vaillants, who had raised concerns about how unrealistic Tintin was. In Hergé's own (translated) words:

(From Entretiens avec Hergé, reproduced & translated in The Comics Journal no. 250, p. 191)

Parents are a nuisance, one that Hergé was only too happy to dispense with in Tintin's case. And besides, Tintin isn't completely alone forever; with the introduction of the Marlinspike "family," not to mention Marlinspike Hall itself, during the war, he at least ends up with a home and some adult supervision, however dubious it may be at times.

As for his schooling, according to a report on the Belgian education system from 1932, education was only compulsory there (not to mention free) from ages 6 to 14. That same report records that in 1928, the number of students in the higher level of secondary education - corresponding to high school in American terms - was only 1% of the number of students enrolled in compulsory primary school. Even adjusting for the fact that primary education enrolls children for twice as long, the percentage is still a paltry 2.6%. And then the number of students in university that same year was only about three-quarters of the number of students in secondary education.

What that means is that at the time when Tintin was getting started, only very, very few people stayed in school beyond age 14. Hergé himself was one of those few, but to many of his readers in the early years, the idea that Tintin was already working at age 14 or 15 would have been not just reasonable but recognizable - especially as he has no apparent family to support him. (Not that Tintin isn't knowledgeable: judging from the number of books in his apartment, we can presume that he's quite the autodidact.) Of course public education was broadened after WWII, but by then the character was already firmly established.

As for how Tintin is already a reporter, well, Hergé freely admitted that he gave him the job just because that's what he thought was cool at the time. "Of course it was a pretext," he said on British radio in 1977. (The announcer for that interview describes Tintin as "a 16-year-old Belgian boy with a strange lick of hair, a pair of plus-fours, and a terrier." In it Hergé, questioned about the outsize success of his series, responds that for him "he [Tintin] keeps to be a little boy. Only that.") The tone of the series would be very different if Tintin were just an office clerk or a paperboy, after all - and besides, all but the youngest readers of Le Petit Vingtième would have understood that it's not a real newspaper, just a little children's magazine, so the idea of it having its own official reporter was not to be taken fully seriously.

It's important to remember that our current cultural idea of the teenager as a separate, unique stage between childhood and adulthood was largely a post-WWII American innovation - in fact, the word "teenager" only entered popular use in the 1940s. By contrast, fully half of the Adventures of Tintin (up to the first 2/3 of Crystal Balls) were written either before or during WWII. Hergé himself, born in 1907, began submitting illustrations to a magazine (Le Boy-Scout) at 14, was hired at the Vingtième Siècle at 18, created Totor and did his military service, reaching the rank of sergeant, at 19, and before turning 22 had been given full responsibility for creating and running the Petit Vingtième, gotten engaged to his first wife, Germaine Kieckens, and created Tintin. Being young looked different then.

To close this section I'll also note that, as far as I can tell, positioning Tintin as a teenager never seemed to pose much of a problem to anyone reading the series while it was actively running. Anecdotally, nearly every published source I've read takes for granted that he's an adolescent, and an exception like writer of multiple books on Tintin Renaud Nattiez saying on the air in 2016 that he thinks Tintin is at least 22 (~03:30-03:50) seems to be a uniquely 21st-century development.

TL;DR: Everything I can find indicates that Tintin was always intended to be around 15, and never older than 20, years old.

II. Interpretation

Finally, it's important to not overstate Hergé's commitment to realism. At the end of the day, Tintin can do whatever the story needs him to be able to do, because he's the protagonist of a very straightforward adventure serial. He's always been aspirational, even for Hergé himself: "Tintin is me the way I'd like to be: heroic, flawless." And yet Tintin, victim of its own success, has always been held to a higher standard of realism than its fellow comics, not to mention a higher level of scrutiny in general. Even if, as I've tried to demonstrate, Tintin's feats aren't entirely out of the range of possibility (or at least the norm for comics characters) for his time period, I'm not arguing that he's supposed to be a perfectly accurate representation of the average boy of any point in the mid-20th century. I also don't deny that he typically does act like an adult. So the guiding question here is: How can this dual nature of Tintin's - his adolescent status and adult aspects - be interpreted?

Jean-Marie Apostolidès writes that as "il unifie dans sa personne deux aspects opposés de l’existence, l’enfance et l’âge adulte" ("he brings together in his person two opposing aspects of existence, childhood and adulthood"), Tintin represents "un mythe réconciliatoire" ("a reconciliatory myth") of which the "fonction implicite est de ressouder entre deux générations une confiance brisée" ("implicit function is to mend a broken trust between two generations"). He names this type of child-adult character the "surenfant" ("superchild"), and argues that it is specific to the 20th century and the cultural shock of WWI.

For Pol Vandromme, who wrote the first book of analysis on Tintin (or on any BD), Tintin is simply a perfected version of the teenage boy, one that other teenage boys can aspire to. First, he cites as conventional wisdom that Tintin is around 15, and concludes that "c'est dans tous les cas un adolescent" ("in any case he's a teenager"). While Vandromme accepts that Tintin is presented as a teenager, he also points out that Tintin doesn't represent the experience of being a teenager; Tintin "ne présente [...] que les apparences de l'adolescence" ("only displays the appearance of adolescence") because he's so self-assured and stable, traits antithetical to "l'époque de la métamorphose" ("the time of metamorphosis") that is adolescence.

And yet "il [Tintin] demure malgré tout suffisamment proche pour que les garçons se disent qu'ils auront un jour la chance de lui ressembler, d'imiter son style de vie. [...] Ce que Tintin propose à ces garçons de quinze ans, c'est la figure achevée de leur âge. Il les venge de leurs insuffisances" ("he [Tintin] remains all the same close [i.e. similar] enough that these boys tell themselves that one day they'll have the chance to be like him, to imitate his way of life. [...] What Tintin offers to these 15-year-old boys is the perfected version of their age [group]. He makes up for their shortcomings"). Consequently, having put themselves in Tintin's place, these boys "ont l'illusion d'être déjà de la tribu des jeunes gens qui ont découvert dans leur sac de voyage les clefs qui ouvrent les portes de la fable du monde" ("have the illusion of already being part of the clan of young people who have discovered in their travel bag the keys that open the doors of the world's fable"). In plainer language, being able to identify with Tintin as an apparent peer lets teens imagine themselves as being more capable and powerful than their age allows in reality, an attractive illusion.

I'll add that the static quality of Tintin as a character that Vandromme identifies is dictated by the form of the series. When presented with a teenage protagonist in a work, the novelistic expectation is that what follows will be some kind of bildungsroman, where the events of the story will push the protagonist to change and mature into adulthood. However, I believe that it's a mistake to approach The Adventures of Tintin as a novel when it is fundamentally a serial - even late in his career, when he didn't need to do prepublication anymore, Hergé's approach to plot was still oriented around the page-a-week format. Serial characters, as a rule, change very little. Tintin gets compared to Sherlock Holmes more than once in the series, and it's also true on a meta level: Holmes has a few minor moments of character development, but he largely remains exactly the same over the course of Conan Doyle's stories, which were likewise published in a magazine. In a true serial, the status quo is god, because the main aim of the serial is to perpetuate itself - theoretically forever. And so Watson always finds a reason to return to Baker Street, and Tintin never gets old enough to think of settling down and getting a real job.

Like Holmes, Tintin does change and grow somewhat as a character over the course of the series, but also like Holmes, that growth is not a planned arc with an endpoint, as you would expect in a novel. Instead, it's just a result of Hergé himself maturing and changing. In his contribution to L'archipel Tintin, Benoît Peeters notes that "Grande est la tentation, pour beaucoup, de lire la série comme une totalité, un monument où tout signifierait" ("The temptation is great, for many, to read the series as a totality, a monument where everything has meaning"). And yet he declares that "si accomplies soient-elles... Les Aventures de Tintin se sont élaborées en l'absence de tout grand dessein" ("however polished they may be... The Adventures of Tintin were created in the absence of any grand design"), citing the testimonies of both Hergé and those who knew him at the beginning of the series. Hergé never really had a plan for Tintin as a character; he really did just put him in situations over and over again for a little more than fifty years. However, now that the series is only read in album format and serial publishing is less common, the "temptation" Peeters describes is even stronger. This mismatch in narrative expectations may be part of why modern readers might struggle to view Tintin as a teenaged character.

There's one more element to Tintin's strangeness: the world of the series was built around Tintin himself to facilitate his adventures. Vandromme recalls the fact, so obvious that it's easily forgetten, that "Tintin étant ce qu'il est et ne pouvant être un autre, infléchit l'intrigue d'une certaine manière. [...] Remplacez Tintin par le père Fenouillard et il vous faudra modifier l'album de fond en comble. Dans un roman les personnages déterminent les événements avant d'être déterminés par eux" (Tintin, being who he is and unable to be anyone else, influences the story in a certain way. [...] Replace Tintin with the father of the Fenouillards [character from a 19th-century comic about the misadventures of a French family abroad, n.b.] and you'll have to change the album from top to bottom. In a novel, the characters define the events before the events define them"). This point is especially relevant to Tintin given that the series' beginning was, to put it mildly, haphazard. Starting from Soviets, where Tintin is alone with his dog in a bizarre world where he can sneeze down a sewer grate, cut down a tree with a pocketknife, or fistfight a bear - whatever it takes to keep the plot moving - set a precedent for the character: that Tintin, and nobody else, will always triumph over whatever enemy or obstacle he is faced with.

Because it's founded on Tintin himself, there are no real adults in the Adventures, and in fact there can't be any. Preserving Tintin's Soviets-era boy hero status as the world of the series became steadily larger and more realistic created a kind of 'competency warp' where Tintin, along with his young "doubles," Chang and Zorrino, is effectively always the most capable, the master of the situation, while those closest to him who are much older (the Thompsons, Haddock, Calculus...) tend to act rather childishly. I think it's telling that the 1946 introduction of Blake & Mortimer is often hailed in terms like these: that "pour la première fois, les héros n'étaient pas des enfants, mais des adultes responsables dont la psychologie était en parfaite harmonie avec leurs fonctions" ("for the first time, the heroes were not children, but responsible adults whose psychology was in perfect harmony with their roles," emphasis mine). All the major adult characters in Tintin had been introduced at that point, but apparently none of them qualified as "responsible" or properly suited for their positions.

Apostolidès similarly notes a deforming effect: "Tintin est un adolescent qui, sans jamais entrer dans l’âge adulte, rajeunit le monde en se confrontant à lui. Au lieu que le personnage se soumette passivement au monde adulte, s’intègre dans une histoire, vieillisse et meure, c’est l’univers extérieur qui se fige dans le temps au contact du héros" ("Tintin is an adolescent who, without ever entering adulthood, makes the world younger by confronting it. Instead of the character submitting himself passively to the adult world, fitting in to a history, getting older and dying, it's the outside world that freezes in time at the hero's touch"). Not only does Tintin resist adulthood himself, he also protects others from its effects.

There are characters who escape the warp, but they must stay on the very edges of Tintin's orbit. One example is the efficient and no-nonsense Mr. Baxter from the Moon books. He has a real job: he's director of the atomic center, and every time we see him he's actually doing it. He also remains disengaged from the antics of the Marlinspike crew, often exasperated and confused by them. They don't belong in his serious space program, and he doesn't belong in their funny adventure series - hence the clash. Another (and very different) example is Jolyon Wagg. I wish I could remember where I read it, but I once saw it pointed out that Tintin and Wagg almost completely ignore each other; their only direct interaction in the whole series is saying hello to each other exactly once (Emerald p. 17). The unidentified author's point was that Wagg inhabits a world so intensely banal, so different from Tintin's - one with community organizations, salesman jobs, an old mother, an Uncle Anatole, a wife and (a lot of) children - that the two can't even come into contact. Wagg may be almost preternaturally obnoxious, but he's also a genuinely ordinary man in a way that the major characters really aren't.

Tintin must remain the sole and main driver of action, because if he isn't, the series would have to change fundamentally. That means no other character can threaten his role by being more competent and responsible than him - and so the adults become ridiculous and/or irrelevant, and Chang and Zorrino are only allowed to act for one album each. And yet Hergé created Tintin as a teenager, and suggested that a Tintin who progressed past teenagerhood would also grow out of adventure: "Il est difficile, pour un personnage comme ça, à le faire vieillir. Parce que s'il vieillit, il va avoir vingt ans, il va avoir vingt-deux ans, il va rencontrer une jolie fille, il va se marier, il va avoir des enfants..." ("It's hard to make a character like that get older. Because if he gets older, he'll be 20, he'll be 22, he'll meet a pretty girl, he'll get married, he'll have children..."). Tintin passing into adulthood, 'real' adulthood, symbolized here by settling down and starting a family, would make the series just as unsustainable as demoting him to a more technically age-appropriate role would; both sides of the tension between Tintin's youth and his maturity are required to make him a proper adventure hero for children.

And so he remained, as he remains today, the world's most competent teenager.

[captain-bubble-wrap]

Would you consider writing a story about quinnxreader. She faints in his apartment and he find her when he comes home after training or a game or something. Hes on the phone with his parents and freaks out?

I had to do some research on fainting! I hope this is okay! 🩷

"Yeah, I'm just now getting back home," Quinn answered his mother, trying to unlock his apartment's door without dropping his phone while he fumbled with his keys. "Yeah, me too. It's been a long few weeks. Feels good to be back."

Ellen continued to talk to her eldest son as he pushed his suitcase across the threshold. After such long trips, he was accustomed to seeing you first thing -- a guilty comfort you had spoiled him with -- so when he didn't, Quinn looked around hoping you just hadn't heard him come in. However, when he found you, it wasn't at all how he had expected. 

"Y|N!?" He said breathlessly, upon seeing you laying on your side, on the floor between the kitchen and living room. The suitcase rolled forward on its own, with Quinn having kicked it when he rushed over to you; his mother questioning him about what was going on. 

"I don't know! I just found her laying on the floor!" He brushed the hair from across your face and touched your cheek. You're warm to his touch but his heart was still racing. "Let me, um...I'll call you back. Ye--...yeah, I love you, too. I'll let you know. O-- Okay, love you. Bye."

Quinn's phone tumbled to the floor after ending the call with his mother. You weren't responsive to his touch or to his words, no matter what he tried.

"Honey, wake up! Please, please, wake up!" Gently, he'd give your shoulder a shake, but it didn't do anything either. "Shit! Baby, come on! Come on, come on, come on!"

His hands were trembling as he touched your face again. You were breathing which comforted him only slightly, seeing as he had no idea what was wrong with you. The seconds that ticked by felt like hours, but he never left your side -- almost like he was unable to do anything but wait. Quinn knew he should have called for an ambulance but he was frozen, looking down at you like you were just having a nap. 

Eventually, your eyes would flutter open and Quinn would breathe the heaviest sigh of relief. 

"Oh my god, sweetheart!" He exclaimed, leaning down to touch his forehead to yours. "What happened? Are you alright? Oh, you scared the shit out of me!"

You were happy to see him, but you found yourself confused by his shock and worry, then you were reminded of what had happened prior to the grey-out. 

"Hi, baby," you squeaked out, trying to sit up but he wouldn't let you. Your eyelids felt heavy; everything felt so heavy.

"Shh, shh, take your time. What happened? I came home and I couldn't wake you!"

It was hard, but you had to break eye contact with him for a moment. "It was just a fainting spell, Quinny. I'm alright."

"A fainting spell?" He questioned, deep worry painting his expression once again. "I don't remember you having those before."

Realizing that you were still laid out on the floor, Quinn pulled your body into his arms and cradled you against his chest. His concern was so intense as he held you, a slight rocking motion in his movements. This was a first for him and something he didn't know how to deal with which was why he found himself struggling so much. 

"They just started happening again," you confessed, leaning your head against him as you looked up into his eyes. "I'm okay, I promise."

"Are you sick?" He pressed, his hand holding your face, thumb rubbing your cheek gently. 

"No, baby, I'm okay."

"But you fainted."

"I know," You reassured, knowing you needed to tell him what was going on, but you feared his reaction -- he was already dealing with so much. "My blood sugar is probably just low."

Quinn's brows furrowed, "Low? Why is it low?"

You said nothing as you looked away again, knowing how guilty it made you appear. 

"Baby?" He pleaded, "Talk to me, please? I'm not upset with you. I just want to know what's going on. How long have you been dealing with this?"

"Since just after you left." 

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want to make you worry while you were away." When you looked back up at him afterwards, it pained you so much. His concern for you was as strong as his love and it was made evident with how he gazed at you, even during uncomfortable times such as these. 

"I'll always worry about you, sweetheart. It's because I love you!"

"I love you, too, baby. I promise I'm okay. I'm just...tired" You said, breathlessly. 

Upon saying that, Quinn put his arm under your bent legs and carried you to the sofa where he laid you down against the numerous awaiting pillows. He would kneel beside you, holding your hand in both of his. 

"Will you please tell me what's going on?"

You swallowed hard, knowing he wasn't going to let it go until you told him. "I just haven't been eating much."

"Why, baby?"

"It's a stupid reason."

He didn't say anything because he didn't have to. His expression had said enough. 

"I get sad when you're gone and I forget to eat," you finally confessed.

Quinn frowned, lifting your hand to his lips. "Oh, sweetheart. You've got to eat."

"I know..."

"How many times as this happened?" He asked, now putting your palm to his cheek and holding it there. 

"Probably a dozen or so. I can always tell when it's going to happen, so I have a second or two to brace for it." 

He was still looking at you with tense worry in his face, still holding your hand gently. Quinn wouldn't tell you, but his own stomach was twisting out of concern for you. He was so deeply troubled that his absence affected you so much, that he couldn't help feeling guilty about the whole thing. 

"I'm sorry, baby," you sighed, eyes stinging from welling tears. "The whole thing is so stupid."

Quinn shook his head, trying to give you a reassuring smile. "It's not stupid, sweetheart. I'll try and be more proactive in checking in with you when I'm gone, okay? Would you like me to give you little reminders, maybe?"

"You have enough to worry about, though," you said, shaking your head.

"And I worry about you the most. You're everything to me, Y|N."

"Quinny--," you whined, tears breaking through with the guilt. "I didn't mean for this to happen!"

"I know you didn't." With his free hand, Quinn wiped away the teardrops from your skin. "I'm okay so as long as you are. But, you have to promise me that you'll stop skipping meals, okay? I don't want something more serious to happen to you. You're all alone up here, you know?"

You gave him a nod, biting your bottom lip. 

"You promise me you're alright?"

You nod again, this time with a sniffle. "I am."

He pushed forward to ask a kiss from you which you obliged in giving. "Good. Now, you lay here and rest for a minute, okay? I need to call mom back then we'll see what we can do about dinner."

"Okay," you whimpered, realizing that he must have been on the phone when he found you. 

"Everything's okay, babe. I promise. I'm here now."

[yourownutopia]

Ultraviolent Heart

╰┈➤You know how it ends. From the very beginning, you carried that knowledge like an inescapable burden, a quiet ache that shaped your every choice. Yet you stayed—for him. Jin Woo—your confidant, your light in a world of darkness—could never walk with you to the very end. But you couldn't take it anymore. It was too much to bear. So, you leave - knowing your place by his side was never meant to last.

Left behind is Jin Woo, with questions no one will answer and a gaping void where your presence once was. You are gone, and yet the emptiness you leave lingers longer than any memory. ༊*·˚

Implied Jin Woo x Isekai'd!Player2!Fem!Reader | Songfic | Heartbreak | Goodbye | Angst | Jealousy | crying

Crywolf - ULTRAVIOLENT [adrenochrome] ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚--~

Your heart is torturing me.

Knock.

The dull sound of his fist striking hard stone echoed through the air.

Once—not too hard.

Twice—with more force.

Three times—before the rigid concrete wall could no longer withstand the immense power of the Shadow Monarch. Cracks spread across the structure, and where solid stone once stood, now a large, gaping hole remained, with Jin Woo’s hand at its center—much like the gaping hole in his heart.

The overwhelming anger he felt threatened to consume him entirely. Beru flinched violently, fear creeping up his limbs as his master’s eyes glowed dangerously. He had brought bad news—perhaps the worst Jin Woo had received in a long time.

"Search more thoroughly."

The black-haired man’s voice cut through the silence like his blades through flesh. Yet, despite his usual composed demeanor, his voice quivered with rage.

Beru wanted to point out that it was a pointless endeavor. If you were still there, he would have already found you. But his master would not accept that answer.

"Yes, my king," Beru replied reverently before retreating into the shadows, leaving Jin Woo alone in his fury.

This couldn’t be true. No one could simply vanish without a trace. And yet, it seemed that was exactly what had happened.

A thousand miles an hour again.

It had been a week, and none of his shadows could locate you. Even the Hunter’s Association had been unable to find any information about your current whereabouts. There wasn’t even a hint that you had left the country.

But giving up the search would mean it was over. It would mean that a part of him was gone forever and that the memories you shared were nothing more than illusions.

He clung to the last shred of hope he had because, no matter how furious he was with you, he desperately wanted answers.

And all that stays with me

How could you do this to him? He had trusted you so much, and you had abandoned him in the most cowardly way possible—without a word. No goodbye, no note, no message—as if you had never existed. And with that, you had torn a massive hole in his heart.

The anger began to ebb, only to be replaced with a suffocating fear—a fear that had gripped him time and time again in recent days.

Is the fear inside my gut.

It felt as though he was bleeding out, choking, drowning in place. As though his heart was overflowing with pain, longing for your warmth and softness, and all the things he had never been able to say—the things you had denied him. The fear that he would soon no longer remember you gnawed at his soul.

Memories were all he had left of you, yet even they were beginning to fade. What did your voice sound like again? Your beautiful face, once so vivid in his mind, was now blurring. Were you only a beautiful dream from which he had now awakened?

You're the fear inside my gut -‘๑’-

Two years had passed since you had been pulled into this world—the world you knew so well, almost like the back of your hand. The world that had accompanied you through so many sleepless nights as you eagerly read each chapter on your smartphone.

But just as you were about to finish the story, with the last chapter ahead of you, the universe intervened. You were pulled into the story yourself, long before Jin Woo set foot in the double dungeon.

You became Player 2. The system welcomed you like an old friend, and you quickly adapted. At first, you wanted to return home, but the system refused your departure with a single window:

[You can only leave the game when you truly want to.]

And, evidently, you didn’t truly want to leave. You wanted to stay, to experience firsthand the world you had come to know so well. And so, you stayed—with the goal of making life a little easier for Jin Woo, as though that was your purpose.

Starting as a C-rank mage with a few healing spells, you participated in every raid Jin Woo was involved in, which quickly made you friends. He had admired your strength from the beginning, just as you had admired his courage and determination.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t always lend him a helping hand. Every time something story-relevant occurred, no matter how you tried to intervene, it would inevitably happen anyway—only the timing or the path there would show minor deviations.

Whenever this happened, the system would display a message:

[The story will not change.]

The system made it painfully clear that you had no influence over key story elements. And though you had never had issues with the system before, these moments felt like mockery—a cruel reminder of your limitations.

No matter how heavy your heart felt or how deeply you wished you could change things, events unfolded as they were meant to. Ultimately, all you could do was make Jin Woo’s journey a little lighter, which he accepted with gratitude. The two of you were like light and shadow—one could not exist without the other.

You’ve been my reason to breathe

Not only were you an incredible team in battle, your abilities complementing one another seamlessly, but everyone who knew you—or even those who didn’t—could see that you belonged together. He trusted you; you were the light in his life. The lifeline that kept him from drowning in a sea of darkness. The one who reminded him he was still human whenever he no longer felt like one. The one who had held his trembling hands whenever he needed it—even after those hands had taken lives.

You were the one who stayed with him through so many nights, just to keep him from being alone with himself. The one his shadows respected and whom Beru grandly referred to as "his queen."

His shadows had known from the start how Jin Woo felt about you. But he feared telling you, terrified that it might drive you away. No heartbreak in the world could compare to the thought of you no longer by his side.

Of course, you had noticed, probably much sooner than anyone else. How his behavior changed—how his cheeks would flush whenever you complimented him. How he sought your company more often, how his voice would falter when you came close. Things that had always been intimate but normal between you suddenly left him flustered.

How deeply you wished you could give in to it, but you knew better. There was no happy ending for the two of you. You knew it, and the system knew it—perhaps that’s why it had never responded to his advances. Only Jin Woo remained blissfully unaware, while you locked your feelings away and buried them deep.

The gravity that pulls me in

Despite your efforts to keep him at arm’s length—to keep yourself at arm’s length—those moments grew more frequent. Moments when your gazes lingered a second too long or his hugs lasted just a little longer than necessary. Moments when his hand found yours, and your fingers intertwined. Moments when the two of you lay side by side, silently watching the stars, just to have an excuse to share the night.

It was almost impossible to push him away when he looked at you with such tenderness, smiling at you as though you were all he needed. The thought that the two of you didn’t have a chance began to fade into the background, and as long as the system didn’t intervene, everything felt fine.

I can't escape the weight of your ultraviolent heart

Until that day.

-‘๑’-

The Jeju Island raid had been about two weeks ago, and life had returned to normal. People mourned the fallen S-Rank hunters but celebrated the victory of reclaiming the island. You hadn’t participated in the raid yourself, only watched from a distance—at least until the moment when Hunter Cha was injured and Jin-Woo rushed to her aid.

The thought sent a pang straight to your gut.

What disgusting and pathetic thoughts to have. After all, Cha had nearly died—you knew that all too well. And yet, you struggled to ignore the stabbing pain in your chest, which worsened when she showed up at the guild's office building.

As usual, when there was nothing to do, you lay sprawled on the couch, your head resting lazily on Jin-Woo's lap while he scrolled through his phone.

At first, Jinho had been a little taken aback by the closeness between you two. But he’d quickly adjusted to the fact that his two best friends behaved like a couple—despite not being one.

Suddenly, a knock came at the door, and Jinho looked up from his computer.

You were momentarily confused before realization struck. You’d spent so many days here that you’d completely forgotten about when Hae-In was supposed to arrive. If it were up to you, you would’ve bolted; the less interaction with her, the better. But that would’ve raised too many questions.

You felt Jin-Woo shift, and you immediately sat up, unwilling to give the wrong impression. The black-haired man gave you a confused look as your warmth left his lap—though he made no move to get up himself.

“Who could that be?” Jinho asked, heading toward the door. You could already hear her soft voice as he opened it.

“Is this Mr. Sung’s office?” she asked quietly. When the door opened fully, all eyes fell on the blonde beauty in the doorway.

She wasn’t just pretty; she was immensely strong. Not stronger than you, but far more graceful in everything she did. She was perfect in every way, much to your dismay.

Her eyes widened briefly when she saw you, but she quickly masked her surprise with a polite cough.

Jin-Woo had now risen as well, his gaze cool and appraising as he looked at the young Hunter whose life he’d saved.

“What brings you here, Miss Cha?” he asked, his tone cold—devoid of the softness he reserved for you.

The blonde hesitated for a moment before stating that she wanted to join the guild.

Jin-Woo’s expression didn’t change, though Jinho looked like he’d just been hit with a bombshell.

This wasn’t a surprise to you, of course, but the words still felt like a blow to the stomach.

Less than five minutes later, you found yourself sitting across from Hae-In on the sofa. Jin-Woo sat beside you, once again asking why she was there. The blonde reiterated her desire to join the guild, causing Jin-Woo to frown in confusion as she sipped nervously on a cola. She dismissed his speculations, her cheeks growing redder with every passing moment as she avoided eye contact.

It was almost ironic how Jin-Woo, despite his overwhelming senses, had no clue that Hae-In was flustered. Of course, you knew better. She wanted to be near him because, unlike others, he smelled good and intrigued her. And you had to accept that.

When her face turned beet red and she began fanning herself nervously, Jin-Woo paused and asked again why she was going to such lengths to join the guild.

“I want to live a comfortable life. Is that so wrong?” she replied softly.

Jinho popped up behind you, whispering, “The Hunters Guild must’ve overworked her.”

Jin-Woo’s eyes darted to you, silently asking a question: What do you think?

Of course, you hated the idea. You didn’t want to lose him to her—but what could you do?

Your contemplative expression and brief hesitation were all Jin-Woo needed. He turned back to Hae-In and rejected her request.

Your eyes widened, staring in disbelief at the black-haired man. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go—the conversation wasn’t over yet.

Hae-In lowered her head, her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“I understand,” she murmured, looking utterly dejected.

Panic surged through you. What was happening? A deviation?

“W-wait!” you blurted out, drawing everyone’s attention. Hae-In’s gaze flickered with hope, while Jin-Woo raised an inquisitive brow.

“P-please give us five minutes, Miss Cha,” you said, quickly standing and grabbing Jin-Woo’s hand to drag him into the adjacent room.

Almost disappointed when you released his hand, Jin-Woo looked at you as the door closed behind you.

“Why are you doing this?” you asked, hands on your hips.

He seemed genuinely confused by your question.

“What?”

“Why are you rejecting her?!” you demanded.

Jin-Woo shrugged, his expression indifferent.

“I don’t want her in the guild,” he said flatly, his gray eyes avoiding yours.

He wanted to tell you that you were more than enough for him—that she was unnecessary. But saying so might’ve been too much in this situation.

“This is a one-time opportunity!” you argued, hoping he’d use his brain for once.

“I have you. We don’t need anyone else,” he countered, his cheeks tinged pink.

What the hell was he saying?

No, things couldn’t go this way—it would disrupt the entire timeline. Your thoughts spiraled.

“Then… have her fight Beru!” you blurted out. Jin-Woo stared at you, dumbfounded.

“And why would I do that? She’ll lose,” he said, still not understanding why this mattered so much to you.

“Then it’s a win-win. She doesn’t feel rejected, and you… get rid of her.”

He seemed to consider your words for a moment. From his shadow, the winged ant manifested.

“What do you think?” Jin-Woo asked.

The insect clicked its mandibles excitedly.

“Kekeke, that’s a wonderful idea, my queen,” it replied, clearly far too enthusiastic.

Why could you understand it? No clue. It was probably because you were also a Player, and Jin-Woo had drilled it into Beru from the start that he should listen to you as well. Besides, you liked him—and he liked you.

You looked expectantly at the Shadow Monarch, whose lips curved into a smile as he turned back to you.

“If it makes you happy,” he said, placing a hand on your head. A soft blush spread across your cheeks.

-‘๑’-

"Why the hell?!" you asked the moment your feet touched solid ground again.

You, Jin-Woo, and Hae-In now stood in the middle of the training arena. You hadn’t wanted to be part of this situation in the first place, and when the black-haired man had pulled the blonde closer, it had sent a sharp pain through your chest. You wanted to leave. But Jin-Woo had grabbed you by the wrist and brought you here, knowing that words alone wouldn’t convince you to stay. For once, he had chosen to be selfish.

Clearly irritated, you pulled yourself free from his grip and moved away from the two of them, seeking refuge at the edge of the arena. You trusted Beru to avoid accidentally hurting you, but the ant could be reckless in battle.

Jin-Woo watched you walk away, his mouth opening as if to stop you, but you were already storming off. This would have consequences later...

While Jin-Woo and Cha retreated to the armory, you were finally alone with your thoughts for the first time that day. Worry gnawed at you. Everything was unfolding differently than the story you remembered. Was it your fault? Had you interfered too much? If so, why hadn’t the system reacted? And if not... then what was the reason? Something was terribly wrong... but what?

Your mind drifted back to the manhwa, trying to recall the exact details of the events. Yet they eluded you. Meanwhile, the two hunters returned. Cha was now equipped with a weapon, and Jin-Woo stood several meters away. It wasn’t until Beru’s overwhelming aura enveloped your senses that realization struck.

This wasn’t right... She was supposed to face Igris first.

Before you could voice your concerns, the battle had already begun.

The fight went horribly wrong. Beru had lost control, and if Jin-Woo hadn’t stopped him, he would have torn Hae-In apart. The arena lay in ruins, and the black-haired man stood protectively in front of the blonde, while Beru fell to his knees, apologizing profusely.

Slowly, the conversation from the manhwa came back to you. She would tell him that she was interested in him.

I’ve been splintering apart

Badump.

Your heartbeat grew louder in your ears as the other sounds faded into the background.

Badump.

Your heart clenched as your eyes remained fixed on the two of them. They looked good together... too good.

Badump.

Panic slowly but surely crept up your limbs. You didn’t want to be here when she said it. You didn’t want to see it. You didn’t want to face the truth. You had known it all along, but you had willingly ignored it. They were meant to be together.

Badump.

Breaking open from the start

Your breaths became shallow, and your pounding heart grew louder as you watched Hae-In’s cheeks flush pink. Soon, you would see his eyes light up as he realized why Hae-In had taken on all these burdens. The pain in your chest made it hard to breathe, and you felt tears welling up in your eyes.

Badump.

You couldn’t take it anymore.

You didn’t even hear the black-haired man call your name as you bolted out of the arena. The cold air outside whipped against your face.

But you didn’t get far. A warm hand gently grabbed your wrist and pulled you back, forcing you to stop.

“Hey!” His voice was both frustrated and worried—clearly not understanding why you had left without a word.

“Let me go, please,” you said softly, tugging lightly to reinforce your words. But Jin-Woo didn’t loosen his grip. If anything, he held on tighter to keep you from walking away.

You bit your lower lip, holding back tears. You avoided looking at him, unable to face the concern in his eyes.

“Hey... it’s not your fault this happened. I shouldn’t have let her fight him in the first place,” he said, his voice quieter now. Was that it? Did he think you felt guilty?

The evening continued its quiet work, slowly but surely extinguishing all the colors. Deep blue blended with pale orange where the last warriors of the sun made their final stand.

Gates of heaven are closing

Much like your emotions, fighting against the encroaching darkness—the images of the two of them vivid in your mind.

“That’s not it,” you replied, your voice strained.

Jin-Woo’s concerned expression hardened further. Was it... because he had dragged you here against your will?

But that wasn’t it.

Your throat felt tight, and you swallowed hard.

“That wasn’t fair of me... I’m sorry, I—” Jin-Woo began, but when he saw your face, the words caught in his throat.

Your expression was equal parts hurt and angry. Your [E/C] eyes, usually so bright with joy, were brimming with tears.

Why was this idiot here and not with Hae-In? Had he left her standing there? Why was he making it so hard for you to do the right thing?

His eyes widened, and his heart sank into his stomach as he took in your pained expression. What was wrong? What had he done?

“Why aren’t you with her?” you managed to ask, your voice trembling. Jin-Woo reflexively released your wrist in shock. What? Who?

You seized the opportunity and ran, leaving Jin-Woo momentarily speechless as his mind raced.

Did you mean Hae-In? Why should he be with her? That made no sense to him at all.

Until suddenly, realization struck. Could it be that...? No. That couldn’t be it.

He quickly caught up to you, your gaze fixed stubbornly ahead.

“Stop,” his voice was calm, and his tone commanding, but you had no intention of listening.

When you ignored his second plea, he firmly grabbed your wrist once more.

The protest died in your throat as he pulled you into his chest, trapping you in a warm embrace.

What did you do in my head?

His scent filled your nose, and the warmth of his body spread through your limbs as hot tears streamed down your cheeks.

Why?

Jin-Woo held you tightly against him, one hand on your waist—the other buried in your hair.

“Wha—” you began, your voice trembling, but he silenced you with a soft sound.

“Because I want to be with you,” the black-haired man murmured into your hair, before gently pulling you away to look into your eyes.

The cool gray of his eyes softened, as it always did when he spoke to you, catching your [E/C]. But this time, there was nothing playful in his gaze. He was serious.

Jin-Woo noticed the confusion written on your face.

One of his hands found its way to your cheek, a warm tingling spreading across your skin as he cupped your face.

What are you doing?

“You asked me why I’m not with her,” he explained, gently wiping away a tear that had escaped from the corner of your eye. He had never seen you cry before, and he didn’t like the sight. Especially not if he was the reason.

Weren’t you laying in my bed

He had never intended to tell you, but he couldn’t keep it inside any longer. It had to come out. You needed to know how much you meant to him—that she didn’t matter and that you were everything he had ever wanted.

“I just want to be with you,” he repeated, his voice trembling ever so slightly. He leaned down slightly, as if even this close wasn’t close enough. His breathing quickened as the sun’s rays fought valiantly against the darkness creeping over the sky.

Your heart pounded wildly, and your thoughts raced. Your palms grew sweaty, and you felt as though you might faint at any moment. The tension between you was palpable, begging for resolution.

You wanted to bridge the remaining inches, to tell him how you felt—to throw all your plans out the window.

Jin-Woo took a deep breath.

“[Y/N], I lo—”

[The course of the story remains unchanged.]

The window that flickered behind the black-haired man for a fraction of a second was a knife in your heart, now riddled with cracks, as you reflexively pressed a finger to his lips, stopping his sentence.

He fell silent immediately, looking at you in confusion, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. Had he misread the signs after all?

Telling me I was chosen

“Don’t,” you whispered softly—your voice barely audible, but he heard it clearly.

If he said those three words, it would be over—there would be no turning back. If he said those words, you would break. If not now, then eventually—when fate ran its course. Because if you had learned one thing, it was that the system would find a way.

His throat tightened, and his chest constricted.

"I can’t—" you began haltingly, stumbling over your words. You couldn’t think of a single sentence that would make this situation any less painful for him.

You lowered your gaze, feeling Jin-Woo give up. His embrace loosened, and his arms fell limply to his sides.

You didn’t want to do this, but you had no choice. There simply wasn’t a happy ending for the two of you. Happiness together wasn’t meant to be.

Jin-Woo was hurt—he couldn’t believe how wrong he had been.

"I’m so sorry," you whispered before daring to look into his eyes one last time—eyes filled with anguish—before you turned and walked away.

-‘๑’-

The following weeks were quiet. Too quiet.

Jin-Woo and you hadn’t spoken since. Both of you were waiting for the other to take the first step, but neither of you dared to break the uncomfortable silence.

For Jin-Woo, the situation was clear: you didn’t return his feelings and wanted distance, just as much as he did. Yet it still felt wrong.

Your presence had taken over his life; he saw your shadow everywhere. Your absence had left a gaping hole, and the simplest things no longer brought him joy. Even Jinho was dejected. His shadows, too, felt the emptiness your absence had created in his heart—his inner turmoil and recklessness as he threw himself into battles reflected it.

Beru, in particular, wasn’t happy about your absence and kept asking after you until Jin-Woo firmly explained that you wouldn’t be coming back. The insect accepted it, albeit with a heavy heart.

Now I don’t even know you, and that’s the best part of it

Weeks turned into months, and Jin-Woo had regained much of his strength. He had grown more ruthless, focused solely on his goals. He had achieved so much, but none of it mattered if you weren’t there to cheer him on.

Neither the recognition from the Hunter’s Association nor the countless media articles praising him to the skies brought him any satisfaction. It wasn’t your recognition, so he didn’t need it.

He buried his heavy heart behind a wall of indifference, but he realized he was drifting further and further from any semblance of a normal life. He was rarely home, found himself in increasingly precarious situations during battles, and noticed how little he cared.

No matter what he did, nothing could fill the void.

It simply couldn’t go on like this, so he decided to do something he usually resisted.

He resolved to ask Hae-In on a date.

All I know, you’re the only thing that I see in color

While Jin-Woo threw himself into leveling up, you had shut yourself away at home for some time. Jin-Woo’s wounded face was burned into your mind; after all, it was the last thing you had seen of him.

Guilt gnawed at you, sapping your strength and will to move forward.

You had lost weight, only left your home for absolute necessities, and spent most of your time sleeping. You cried so much that you began to believe you had no tears left.

Every fiber of your being missed him.

His voice.

His scent.

His laughter.

Even his reprimanding tone when you and Beru got into trouble.

Everything about him. Your heart cried out for him, whether you were awake or asleep.

This heart is torturing me

A sigh escaped your lips as you stared at your phone screen—the numerous missed calls from Jinho had gradually become fewer, but he never gave up.

More guilt.

But what could you do to fix this? Calling Jin-Woo? Just tell him the truth? Maybe that would be the fairest way…

Countless times, you had typed his number into your phone, only to stop yourself at the last second. The fear that he wouldn’t believe you was too great. Or was it the fear that he would believe you?

You shook your head and stood up. This couldn’t go on. You had to talk to him, at least one last time—to come clean before you returned home.

You couldn’t bear the silence between you anymore.

The only pain I understand

Your eyes widened as you stared at the TV screen. A photo had just appeared on the display—your hands instantly dropped the paper cup you’d been holding, spilling the hot coffee it contained onto the ground.

With your mouth slightly open, you stared at the screen, which was displayed in the shop window of a store you had just been walking past.

You had stopped in your tracks as the image suddenly changed, revealing a paparazzi photo.

It showed Jin-Woo and Hae-In, with his arm around her shoulders.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything—maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding—but in your current state, you didn’t want to hear any of it.

Your heart had already cracked when you had to reject his feelings, but this time it felt as though it had shattered into a thousand pieces.

Your mouth went dry, and you couldn’t form a single coherent thought.

You stared at the picture as if hypnotized.

You half-expected a spiteful inner voice to appear, taunting you and telling you it had been right all along—but it stayed silent.

I can't escape the weight of your ultraviolent heart

You tore your gaze away from the screen, and your legs started moving on their own.

Faster.

Much faster.

As if you could somehow run away from it, as if these images wouldn’t follow you for the rest of your life.

Your body instinctively reacted to the pain in your soul, numbing it.

The pain ebbed away, leaving behind an emptiness that took over, shielding you from breaking down—at least for the moment.

When the door to your apartment finally closed behind you, shutting you away from the public’s eyes, every bullet hit you at once.

Your stomach churned, forcing you to vomit into the sink.

Your body doubled over, and you clung to the edge of the counter until the shaking subsided, until you rinsed your mouth and collapsed to your knees, clutching at your chest in anguish.

Your body trembled uncontrollably as you screamed out the pain you had been holding back for so long. You screamed until your voice grew hoarse, until no words could escape your throat anymore.

How had it come to this? Why had he entered your life if he was never meant to stay? Why was the universe so cruel? What had you done to deserve this?

It’s a poison in my gut

It took an eternity for your body to stop trembling and the sobs to subside. Your tears dried up, your body too exhausted to produce any more.

You sat on the floor, your back against the wall, drained of all strength. Your head throbbed, and every trace of willpower had left your body.

Weakly, you lifted your hand and swiped downward in the air.

[Do you really wish to leave the game?] [Yes] / [No] [Yes]

Jin-Woo woke with a silent scream from his nightmare, his hand outstretched, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps as he sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes darting frantically around the room.

A few seconds passed before he realized he was in his bedroom. The full moon shone through his window, bathing everything in silver light.

It was just a dream…a damn nightmare. But it had felt so incredibly real.

His hand clutched at his chest, which ached under the crushing weight of emotion. He had seen your tear-streaked face as you looked at him, whispering a faint, “Goodbye.” Relief washed over him as he realized it had only been a dream. He rubbed his eyes, only to notice the glimmer of tears on his hand under the moonlight.

But it still felt so real - he felt so hollow, as though a giant hole had opened in his chest. As if something was terribly wrong. His mind wandered to you once again, missing the warmth of your Presence once more. He was sure you had seen the News, the speculations and rumors about his relationship with the blonde S-Rank - but they were all false. He only wanted to shield her from the Spotlights, since it was him who dragged her along in the first place. The Date with Hae-In was a welcoming distraction from fighting in a Dungeon, but it felt all wrong. It just made him realize once more, that it was you he wanted by his side - as lovers or friends, he couldn't care less. He just wanted you.

His resolve hardened: tomorrow, he would visit you and ask for your forgiveness, hoping you would be willing to forgive him. Hoping the empty feeling would finally disappear, that he would be whole again.

With that thought in mind, he drifted back to sleep. But the emptiness remained.

You’re the only thing that I see in color.

[to be continued....] ღ ◌ ͙۪۪̥˚┊❛~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ❜┊˚ ͙۪۪̥◌ ღ

Wow, this story just came to me while I was on the bus, listening to music…what can I say—I had to write it down before it was too late!

English isn’t my first language! I hope everything was understandable and legible.

since y'all are just suckers for drama, there will be a part two~ But first, the first chapter of my other Jin Woo x Reader story [Shadowborn] will release next week! stay tuned! The Prologue is already out! Thanks for all reblogs, likes & comments.'*•.¸♡ I really appreciate it <3 ♡¸.•*' ~Utopia ༊*·˚

[jaggedamethyst]

circuit breaker 🔬🌌 (part four)

tutor!jayce talis x reader, ekko x reader college au

content: jayce ghosts you when you need him most...so you have no choice but to lean on your best friend, ekko

pining, mental health mentions, neurodivergence, lmk if i missed any!

notes: ekko pic...omg... (you may think this series is going slow but i hate a slow burn ass fic that has them fucking chapter three don't pmo...also this evolved way past just jayce and i need to do ekko justice...bc some of yall don't, clocked it)

word count: 2.9k

series masterlist

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“Do you know that girl Jayce is always with?” 

You arrived to class, ready to learn—but not about physics truthfully. You expected to cut corners, create friendly conversation about nothing, humor Viktor. When you got there, though, you had to ask him immediately. 

“Mel Medara?” Viktor looked to you with intrigue. “I know of her…but not much about her.” He leaned to his left, toward you, “Why?” 

“She’s just always…around? And we spoke to each other once but I was in a hurry…didn’t get much chance for a formal introduction.” 

“Are you certain that your intrigue is rooted purely in your inquisitive nature…or is there another reason you want to share?” 

“No-“ 

The sound of the door towards the front of the class opening interrupted you—it was perfect timing, actually. You would rather not have to unpack why Mel’s presence bothered you so much; truthfully it was an inexplicable feeling. Someone walked in, and you sat up straighter. 

“Hi, everyone! My name is Caitlyn, some of you may know me if you’ve ever been to the student resource center.” She smiled at you, exchanging a look of recognition. “I wanted to formally introduce myself… I will be joining as a TA. If you need anything and can’t get ahold of the professor, you can ask me your course related questions.” She moved to plug a laptop into the projector, “Here is my email for future reference.” She allowed some time for people to copy and take photos of her email down. “Unfortunately, today’s class will be canceled for an emergency…but I was instructed to relay to you that the quiz will still be held next week. It’ll be on vectors and calculating their angles. Be sure to refresh yourselves over the weekend and reach out to me should you have any questions.” People started to shuffle around her, getting up to leave class. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, guys. Feel free to use the space to get some other work done, or leave early.” 

“What the fuck, this was such a waste of my time.” You glanced back towards the board, making sure you got the email address right. “I have been so tired I could be sleeping right now.” 

“I’m sorry, I know you have a lot to deal with right now.” Viktor moved to the end of the aisle, grabbing his cane while slinging his bag over one shoulder. “At least you’ve been in tutoring. The quiz this week should be easier, right?” 

“That’s the thing,” you reached for your phone, “We’ve only just got to vectors so far. That was hard enough.” You hovered your finger over Jayce’s contact, never actually having messaged him. Before you could talk yourself out of it, you started texting him. 

hi jayce 

im sorry to bother you but i have my quiz next week and its gonna be on more stuff than we got to in our sessions

do you have any time to meet with me this weekend? if not thats ok, i can ask my friend

You paused, walking behind Viktor without looking up from the phone screen. 

i just need you

No, you shook your head, continuing the text. 

i just need your help

lmk

ty 

You grimaced at the text bubbles, hating how you split all of that up. You imagined his annoyed face, seeing all of these desperate messages. You wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t answer. You wouldn’t answer you. 

Viktor turned to you, “Are you alright?” 

“Yes, just frustrated and irritated and angry…thats all.” 

“That’s not a great combination.” 

You shook your head. Without trying, Viktor could always cheer you up. “Unrelated, but did Jayce ask you about what snacks I eat?” 

“He did,” he looked over at you, “It was odd. He said something about ‘reinforcements’ for your guys’ tutoring session.” 

“Oh...okay.” 

Viktor would call himself a lot of things, including perceptive. He didn’t say much, but he noticed the way your eyes lingered on one another when you first met. He was aware of the way you spoke about each other, especially when it was just Viktor around. He simply arched a brow at you, observing your concerned look at the phone screen. 

“Maybe you should take the weekend to rest and recuperate.” 

“I would…but the quiz-“ 

“Just for today. Wait for Jayce to get back to you. Then you can focus solely on next week.” He nodded reassuringly. 

He returned the nod, liking the sound of the plan. 

If only Jayce had bothered to answer. 

——————

“Hi.” 

“Come on in.” Ekko stepped back, letting you into his dorm. 

“I know it’s so last minute, but I know nothing about angles …figured you could help.” 

“I absolutely can help and would love to.” 

You sat your stuff down, getting comfortable as you’d done dozens of times before. You turned a corner, washing your hands at the sink before heading to grab a throw blanket from Ekko's bed. 

He knew your habits, calling from the living room area. “I have the heated blanket out here, too, if you wanna use that one. Know you get cold.” 

You exited his room, wearing the slippers you left under his bed. “Once again, you are the best…because I am, in fact, freezing my ass off right now.” 

“Want something to drink?” 

“Always.” 

The two of you were so in sync—it had to be that way after Powder. It became worse when Vi blamed you, suspecting one of you said something to her to make her disappear. Even though you know you did nothing wrong, there was still a self-hate there. That you couldn’t be there for a friend who needed you—so much so that she left entirely. You couldn’t do that to Ekko, he felt the same. 

“So,” you pulled out the folder Jayce had given you, a slight frown on your face at the thought of him completely ignoring you. “I have this paper, its like a cheat sheet for vectors…but besides what Jayce told me I don’t know what to do. The TA said we also have to calculate the angles…that makes no sense.” 

Ekko grabbed his notebook, flipping to a blank sheet of paper. He sketched a makeshift drawing—surprisingly good for how quick he’d done it. You were always in awe of his artistic talent. 

“Okay, so here…is a light pole.” He moved his finger to the other side of the paper, motioning toward a little drawing of you, smiling on the sidewalk. “This is you.” 

“Wait I’m so adorable here!”

Ekko chuckled, side eyeing you a bit, “Yeah…” 

You snatched the pencil—quickly drawing in a stick figure of him. “This is you!” 

“Is it really? Couldn’t tell.” 

“Hey-“ You swatted his arm, “You’re identical in my opinion.” 

“If having lines for a body is identical…then sure. But anyways…not the point of my sketch.” He grabbed the pencil back, “Thank you very much.” He flipped the pencil, using the eraser side to show you the details. “Okay…light pole…you.” He smirked, knowing you wanted to interject. Ekko raised his hand before you could, “This is the distance between you and the pole.” He made up and wrote a random number in feet under the bottom, the same for the pole. “This is the height of the pole. This is all you need to find every angle and distance measurement.” 

The look on your face was one of pure confusion. “How does that make any sense whatsoever, Ekko?” You moved to close the book. “Actually, lets just watch a movie instead. I’m prepared to fail at this point.” 

Ekko grabbed the book from you, reopening it. “Well, I’m not, so let’s get to work.” 

He continued, explaining as best he could. It was no use, though, it just wasn’t making sense to you. You nodded, trying to get him to move on to something else. 

“Does that make sense?” 

“Yeah.” You reached to hug Ekko, “You’re the best.” Pulling back, you plastered on a smile, hiding the discomfort. You didn’t feel ready whatsoever. Suddenly, Ekko grabbed your hands, pulling your attention to him. 

“You’re gonna do great.” He lingered on you for a while, “Promise.” 

The doubt you felt made you want to hole up and skip class altogether. Eventually, it developed into a disdain for Jayce. When you thought about it, he was the reason you were going to fail…again. 

——————

You decided against skipping class on Monday, but you were definitely opting out of that damn tutoring session. If Jayce can’t answer a simple few texts, how were you to know you even had a standing appointment anymore. It made you feel less than worthy of a proper notice. Above all, it just felt plain unprofessional…he’s an employee after all. 

Walking into class and into this quiz felt like a walk to your execution. Midterms were quickly approaching, which meant you only had so many quizzes you could fail before the majority of your final grade was tainted by bad ones. 

Viktor greeted you as normal, moving over to give you a seat. “Are you prepared?”

“As best as I can be.” 

The beauty of college was that you did assessments in class and got the results as soon as you submitted. Knowing you would get your score back in the next few minutes had your stomach churning. An image of Jayce, carefree and nonchalant, popped into your head. Nothing was making sense. Reluctantly, you started choosing random answers—disregarding the calculator altogether. Before you knew it, your grade, a 56%, reflected back to you. 

“Fuck,” you whispered to yourself. You closed your laptop, getting up to leave class early. “I’ll see you later, Viktor.” 

Before he could reply, you were gone. Pushing through the door. You grabbed your phone from your pocket, texting Ekko. 

im done early, wanna meet rn?

He replied a few seconds later.

omw 

You picked up the pace, not out of urgency, but in pure frustration. Everything you’d been working towards wasn’t paying off. The time you spent not being with Ekko—with Jayce—was a waste. 

When you arrived to the dining hall, Ekko wasn’t there yet. You took the time to grab both you and him something to eat for lunch. Within minutes, Ekko showed up, that warm smile on his face as usual. He leaned into you, giving you a side hug while simultaneously grabbing the food from you. 

“How was the quiz?” You didnt reply, simply giving him a side eye. “Damn…I’m sorry.” 

“Not your fault…but thanks for helping.” 

He’d seamlessly changed the subject—allowing the two of you to talk without the reminder of your failure that day. You didn’t acknowledge how fast the time had passed and truthfully, didn’t care. You hadn’t planned to show up to tutoring…much less give Jayce any notice. 

To your right, you suddenly heard a voice, interrupting you and Ekko. 

“Hey.” You looked over, seeing Jayce standing there. “I figured you’d be here.” He looks between you and Ekko, hands now on his hips. “You missed our session.” 

You raised a brow and crossed your arms over your chest. “Wow, really? Didn’t know we were still having those.” 

“Of course we are, you have those quizzes-“ 

“Had.” You interrupted, “There was one today. You’d know if you checked your phone.” 

He looked down, embarrassed at his phone sitting in his front pant pocket. 

“I’m sorry- I know this is important for you but something came up.” 

“What? What came up?” Ekko spoke up. 

Jayce turned to look at him, finally acknowledging his presence again. “Something personal,” he looked away, focusing back on you. “Can we talk alone?” 

Ekko spoke again, “Say what you need to say.” 

“I would, but I’m not talking to you.” 

A screech of Ekko’s chair resounded in the dining hall. You reached a hand out, gesturing toward them. “Ekko, please.” 

Ekko looked over to you and inhaled a deep breath. He was looking at Jayce again, but kept talking to you. “I’ll see you later, okay? Call if you need anything.” 

“Wait- Ekko-” 

Jayce gulped, sitting down across from you. You watched Ekko leave as Jayce took his seat, hands resting on the table. 

“What the hell is your problem? You ghost me then show up here with an attitude? I should be pissed…I am pissed! I failed because of you!” 

He nodded, knowing the weight of his being inaccessible. “I’m sorry.” 

“You said that.” 

“There was a personal thing, a family emergency-“

“And yet, your phone is still in working condition.”

You didn’t want to be insensitive, but it takes seconds to reply. A simple message would’ve sufficed. 

“My mom’s sick.” You froze—remembering that it’s just him and his mom. “She was in the hospital all weekend…it still hasn’t gotten better.” He paused, looking at you now, “I thought I owed you to at least show up today.” 

“Well…now I feel like shit.” 

“Don’t. Not your fault I didn’t tell you what was happening.” 

“Is there anything I can do?” 

“Hope she gets better?” 

You reached over, placing a comforting hand on his, “I can do that.” 

He let you linger there, before pulling back. “How about this week, since I messed up so bad with scheduling…we meet as much as you’d like just so you can be ready. Shit, it can be every day if you want.” He nodded, “We’re gonna make sure you pass this class if it’s the last thing I do.” 

“Are you sure? I can be pretty high maintenance…” 

He leaned back in his chair, a nonchalant yet playful look on his face, “Not worried about it.” 

“Okay.” You shrugged, “If you say so.” 

The pair of you exchanged smiles, not at all prepared for how tumultuous this week would be. 

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@juskonutoh @sseleniaa @aerina127 @sleepysoldier @angelicmisty @1800latenitecreep @venus-in-roses

[simpee9000]

Too Easily - K. Bakugo - 2 -

Based off this Blurb and here's Part One

It was too easy, every part of it. How you met him, how you interacted with him, how quickly he got used to you. Every part of it was too easy, too good to be true. But he asked you anyway, he wanted you anyway. You figured it was just another thing in life that came easily. He showed you another way of living, the thrill of romance. The increased heartbeat that came when next to a crush. The a flutter in your stomach when he called your name. The buzz of warmth that covered your entire being after just one kiss. CW: swearing and i think that's it? Word Count: 4k

---

"You know, bringing me dinner each night proves nothing," you murmured, only flashing your eyes away from the mountain of paperwork you had for a moment to eye him.

Bakugo brushed you off with a grunt, setting down a portion of food in front of you before moving to grab an extra chair to sit adjacent to you. You watched his forearm flex when he whipped the chair around so he could sit on it backwards.

You pushed away the stack of paperwork to give him your attention, you wanted to make this difficult for him, not impossible. "So what have you brought me tonight?" you picked up your utensils and peered over the bowl that he placed in front of you.

"Spicy curry, its my favorite," he shuffled his seat closer so he could reach to take the cover off your meal and his.

"Oh- how spicy?" you gave him an unsure look.

"Mine's spicy as fuck, yours?" he shrugged, "I made mild but you can add more if you want."

You nodded, silently acknowledging the fact that he got your serving entirely separate. The taste of the first bite had you humming, "Where did you get this? Is this from that new restaurant down the street? Kirishima said it's amazing."

He scrunched his face, "Ha? I made this. No restaurant can cook like I can."

"You cook?" you had to reevaluate your entire opinion now.

"I've been cooking each meal," he stared at you blankly.

Each meal was insane. He brought you a new dish every night for the past three weeks. You thought he was just spending a shit ton of money, but no, he was putting thought into each dish. He already went out of the way to meet you towards the end of your shift at work to feed you, but he cooked it all? "You're an amazing cook," you decided to say, humming with another bite of the food.

" 'course I am," he grumbled, but you saw his chest puff out in pride. He was easy to read with that, you could tell when his ego flared.

"Besides when you add too much spice," you mumbled.

"I like spicy food, deal with it," he huffed out, rolling his eyes when you added extra spicy to your dish, "I made it mild as hell for you."

"Thanks, wouldn't have a tongue if you had it your way," you joked, kicking at his shoe when he gave you a suggestive look.

You've been learning a lot about him recently. He made sure to learn your schedule so he could see you often. You were busy with university and then had to work at the company after class until 8pm, so he always came in around 7. It was sweet. He worked hard to make you aware of his feelings, but you were still iffy. Everything has been very public between the two of you, you'd know once it settled down.

But Bakugo still tried to whoo you regardless, it was interesting to see his public image verses how he treated you. Showed him in a new light. You know how similar he was to his dad, but the public and his classmate would say he is only like his mom. He was sharing the small quirks about him, like tonight with his favorite food and that he cooked. It was nice, you wanted to know more, you couldn''t help analyzing everything.

It's why you noticed him flipping his phone over when a call rang through. Eyeing his reaction, how he just moved on from it, only noticing your look when he finally looked away from his food. "What?"

"Who called?" you tried to ask as if you didn't care, scrapping the last of your food out of the bowl.

"A dumbass spark plug," he answered, pushing his bowl slightly away from him and crossing his arms onto the back of the chair in front of him. "Jealous?"

"No, just concerning that a pro hero is ditching calls," you shrugged off.

"He just wants me to go to this stupid hang out," he defends.

"You should go then," you push.

"We could go somewhere, you were talking about grabbing a new book from that shop off the near my patrol route, right?"

You looked at him weirdly, you mentioned that over a month ago. Blabbing on about a sale you wanted to catch they had each year, he seemed like he ignored it but apparently not.

"I meant for you to go with your friends- you hardly see them," you leaned back into your chair to relax and get your face further from the annoying paperwork on your desk.

"The sale is ending ain't it? I know your dumbass didn't grab it yet either," he pushed himself up to stand, grabbing his coat and nodding his head to the door, "Let's go."

You'd want to say you went out of him pushing you to go, but you were mesmerized at how much he picked up from what you said. So you scrambled to follow after him, helping pick up everything before walking down to his car to go to the bookstore. They were just about to close before you came in a bought the book you so heavily praised, well Bakugo bought it. He refused to let you.

"Happy?" he stuffed his hands in his pocket as he looked at you, walking back towards his car.

"You really didn't have to buy it, you already drove and everything," you huffed.

"I buy stuff to help my credit score, nothin' insane," he grumbled after you mentioned it for the millionth time.

"Sure," you laughed, "Then help me boost my credit score and let me buy you a coffee or something soon."

"Asking me out, books?" he smirked at you.

You rolled your eyes, "If that's what you want to call it sure."

His steps faltered for a moment as he fumbled for his car keys to unlock the door for you, opening it before you as well. "That offer work for tonight?"

"Isn't your bedtime at 8:30? It's already 9, old man," you joked, sitting back down in his car.

He response with a fake laugh and shut your door gently before getting into his. About to respond before his phone rang through, and he answered it, "What?" he barked out.

"Sorry- I know you had your phone off but Denki is-" you heard a loud cry cut Kirishima's voice off, "He's plastered. Sero left with someone and Mina is trying to leave with me."

"I don't know how that means an emergency," Bakugo grumbles, "I'm busy."

Kirishima sighed, "Dude please, Mina is actually trying to leave with me, you know how long I've been waiting for this."

Bakugo huffed, his shoulders slumping as he gave in, "What do you want me to do?"

"Thank god, just come to the bar and take Denki home, please, I owe you so much," Kirishima rushed in relief.

"Yeah," Bakugo ended the call without much less, cutting out the end of Kirishima's millionth thank you. "You want me to drop you off before?"

You shook your head, "Nah, the bar is close right? Don't need to waste time to do that."

He side-eyed you, "Yeah."

It was easy to tell he was annoyed. With how he hardly said a word during the drive, and just walked with you inside the bar. Making a beeline to the obnoxious group of his friends. You see why Kirishima called for help. Mina was obviously flirting with him but also noticeably annoyed at Kaminari, who was drunk as hell.

"Thank you so muc-" Kirishima started his rant again before he locked eyes with you, "I didn't know you guys were hanging out-" he looked back at Bakugo, "I'm sorry-"

"It's fine," Bakugo cut him off.

Kaminari wailed drunkenly, "Even Bakugo has his girlfriend here, what the fuck."

"What is dumbass on about?" Bakugo ignored his friend directly, even though he was face down in a drink.

"His recent girlfriend left him, again," Mina explained, "She said it was for real this time and blocked him."

Bakugo just rolled his eyes, "Just help me get this dumbass in my car."

"Oh nah, I don't wanna third wheel again," Kaminari kicked away, flopping in the booth to avoid Kirishima grabbing him.

He looked miserable, hair a mess, face just tired, and his energy was entirely different to how he always acted. You also took him as a playboy, but if this is how he acted with a breakup? You doubted it.

"Stop fucking flailing your arms-"

"I'm not getting in a car with you and your girlfriend," he kicked Bakugo's hand away, like a child, "Leave me to drown in my sorrows."

Bakugo grumbled, "She's not my fuking girlfriend, it's a PR relationship, now shut the fuck up and get to my car," he hissed.

You crossed your arms uncomfortably, his friends just looked at you unsurprised. Which is why you were rather glad that Kaminari stopped acting like a child to get into the car.

Mina and Kirishima gave you a polite hug after they finished shoving Kaminari in Bakugo's car, leaving with their hands interlocked.

The radio was constantly being turned up to ignore Kaminari's questions and random rants before he called out to you. You glared at Bakugo to make sure he didn't turn it back up, you felt bad for the guy.

He seemed happy you were giving him attention, "So it's all for PR, so why hang out with each other?"

"Just because it's for PR doesn't mean that's all I want, idiot," Bakugo spoke with a smaller bite than before, leaving Denki to just sit and think.

"Then why not actually date?" Kaminari asked you, to which you just shrugged.

"I thought we were, but then he sprung it on me that we weren't, so here we are," you had your head turned to watch him, and gave a bittersweet smile.

"So what was so great about Kacchan that made you say yes to him?" Kaminari lolled his head back as he looked at you.

You took in his question, he was drunk as hell but you knew how he felt, "He was the first guy that asked me out and looked like he meant it- but I have bad judgement so I'm not the best person to ask."

Bakugo was previously annoyed, but now he just looked sad after what you said, guilty.

"I mean it everytime I ask a girl out, should I care more? That's what he does," Kaminari groaned as he pulled himself up to lean on your car seat. "Or is it like a look thing- am I ugly?"

"You're not ugly," you laughed lightly, "You just need to show a lot more effort maybe, I don't know much but I can tell it seems like you are too scattered to care about a single person. So maybe focus up, on one girl, or better yet just focus on yourself. Doing that is often more attractive than chasing."

"Your saying, I just wait for them to come to me?"

"I'm saying to better yourself in the meantime, but sure," you shrugged, turning to face the road again.

You waited in the car as Bakugo brought Kaminari to his apartment, you sat there a full thirty minutes before Bakugo was back. Saying he had to drop you off at your car because he had to stay with Kaminari. Saying he kept trying to short circuit himself.

Bakugo's worry was sweet to see, because even though he acted annoyed, he was concerned.

It boosted your view on him by a lot, seeing that he cared so much for others was nice.

---

Work was no different than any other day. Heros sometimes coming in to get something worked out and then leaving. Business as usually. So you didn't bat an eye when Inasa Yoarashi came straight to your desk.

"Hello," you looked up from your papers, he often chatted with you whenever he had to stop by. He was loudspoken and super upbeat, you'd be intimidated otherwise. He was tall as hell.

"Hello," he nodded at you, loud but polite.

"What's brought you here?" you smiled before looking down to shift some papers.

"I was wondering your schedule. What time are you off work, if you don't mind me asking," he ask loudly, when you glanced up at him, he looked nervous. A slight flush to his face and a straight posture.

You looked at your calendar, "I'll be off at 8, why?"

"I was wanting to court you."

The terminology made your eyes bug out of your head, "What now?"

"Would you like to go on a date?"

Your mouth felt dry with how straight forward this conversation was. "I thought you- Haven't you seen about Bakugo and me?" you stuttered with how this could happen. You and Bakugo were everywhere on social media.

He gave you an odd look, a slight tilt to his head, "Why would I care that you had a PR relationship? That's none of my business. Though, now that it's over, I'd love to pursue a real relationship with you."

You just blinked at him, how in the world did he know. "I'll have to think on it-"

Before anymore words could leave your mouth, you saw your dad stomping into the room. The entire office went silent as your father stared at you. His presence alone was intimidating, but when he was mad it was worse. He just crossed his arms and stared at you, waiting. It was obvious he'd blow up if there wasn't a hero in the room, couldn't ruin his image.

"Sorry- We'll have to talk later," you brushed your slacks off as you stood, straightening the fabric.

"I'll stop by tomorrow," he nodded, fully of confidence as he left.

Leaving you to follow your father to his office.

The second the door clicked shut behind you, he turned around to glare at you.

"Can you tell me why your name is plastered all over social media? Over a PR relationship no one fucking asked for?" he snapped, "Your name, is our name. Do you even fucking think?"

"I didn't know he was going to go public about it- he hasn't messaged me at all-"

"I don't want to hear you ramble with excuses. Fix it," he hisssed, leaving with the unspoken threat.

"How-"

"Fix it," he cut you off, "I don't care how, but fix it."

You nodded before leaving. You didn't want to lose your job, and he'd cut you off fully if you didn't fix anything. He'd disown you publicly if this continued. He was all about his image, it was all you could think about as you walked back to your desk. The image of this family had to stick professional, so a dating scandal was pathetic to paste next to the perfect image.

Bakugo still hasn't messaged you, no warning, nothing. Just a public video of him being interviewed plastered all over socials.

"How's your girlfriend?"

He already looked annoyed but he just snapped, "She's not my fucking girlfriend, it's for PR and it's idiotic. Ruined so much and wasted my fucking time, I'm sick of it."

The clip ended there, but enough was said.

If that's how he felt, there was no need for him to message you again. It was clear he finally gave up trying to prove it wasn't for PR. Clearly it all was.

You held your face in your hands, the day couldn't get worse. Everything was piling.

There was no fixing this, which is the worst of it all. All you could do was move past it.

Part of you wished for Bakugo to show up for dinner as he always did, but he never did.

So you packed up and left, only to face countless interviewers.

"Why fake date?"

"Where you trying to climb the ranks in the office?"

"Was it to help his image or his?"

"Why you?"

You asked yourself the last one often, because truly, why did he have to come up and chose you?

While biting your tongue, you straighten your posture, "The relationship was for the public to calm down the dating rumors that surround Dynamight-"

Maybe you added too much, because even with media training, this is unpredictable.

"Is he dating someone else?

"What's the reason to hide?"

You winced at that countless questions being thrown at you. "He is still a true friend- no more questions please-" You were practically swarmed with cameras, looking into the office behind you with a panic, only being able to get away because several cop cars were racing down the street.

Sirens calling everyone's attention so you could escape, you could never be more thankful.

---

You didn't even make it out of the office until it was officially locked up by the security, walking with them to catch a breath.

The next day was filed with hero incidents and a mass flood caused by a villian taking up all posts on social media. Everyone was focused on that, even your father.

Everything was more normal than you would of liked. Incidents were common, so you didn't bat an eye.

The usual part of the day that you disliked was Inasa Yoarashi walking straight up to your desk at the time Bakugo normally would.

"About what I proposed yesterday?" he started, shoulders back in confidence, "Would you take me up on that offer to go on a date?"

Unfortunately you missed how Bakugo was the one that tried to get you to go on date. Thinking about how Bakugo always had his shoulders back in confidence. But it wasn't the same. Bakugo did it all with an attitude that could back it, not like Inasa would with being uptight.

He was handsome, but he didn't have that sharp look to his features. He was broad but didn't have that leaner build that Bakugo had. He was a complete different hero.

So you spoke your answer, "I'd like-"

"The fuck," you heard Bakugo's voice in shock ring from behind Inasa, who turned to look as well.

Bakugo had stealth training, but normally he had too loud of steps in the office. He was broad and tall but not as much as Inasa. That's all you could explain to yourself on how he was there.

He had no reason to be there.

He ended it publically.

Your mind blurred they're aggressive introductions.

"Did ya' tell him about us?" Bakugo glared at you.

"There's an us?" you asked back. Your mind was not catching up to what was happening.

Bakugo was here asking about you after saying you were a waste of time. Right when a perfectly normal guy was asking you out. With your brain telling you to chose the normal and easy option, while your heart was telling you to chose the complicated blonde.

"There isn't?" Bakugo hissed.

"I know about the PR-" Inasa tried to voice.

"I'm not fuckin' talking to you, or that," Bakugo pointed an aggressive finger at Inasa then turned to you again, "There isn't an us?"

"Is there?" you went back and forth, "You ended it publicly."

"Yeah, publicly," he glared at you, practically hissing out the words, "It's what you wanted."

"No it's not- you didn't even text me or show up yesterday to warn me," your eyes flashed to Inasa apologetically.

Bakugo blinked at you, "I don't talk to you for one day and you jump onto the next guy?" he pointed in Inasa's direction without looking, just glaring at you.

"You broke it off-" you defended, looking to Inasa, "I'm sorry you had to see this, Bakugo, could you give us a second?"

"What?" he looked apauled.

You got up and gestured for Inasa to follow you near the elevator, leaving Bakugo at your desk.

"Look, I appreciate the gesture, but I think it's best if we don't. I'm a public mess right now-" you winced throughout every part of rejecting Inasa, but you hardly knew him and what you did know, you only compared to Bakugo.

He nodded, "Understood, have a good day."

His calm rejection had you following his figure with your eyes until the elevator closed your view. Only then did you shake your head and walk to Bakugo.

"You made me wait while you agreed to a date with that dude?" Bakugo just had a blank look on his face.

Everyone was looking at you, so you pulled him into the closest empty conference room.

"You couldn't of warned me? You couldn't of texted? You couldn't of done anything differently? Said it less harsh? Think about my feelings?" you spat at him, running through of the questions you could think off.

"Can you slow the fuck down- why do you even care if your just gonna go date that tornado?"

"Can't you just tell me how you feel for once?" you crossed your arms.

"I feel," he mocked, "Like I don't want you to date that fuckass."

"Real mature Bakugo, go bad mouth me and avoid me just to prohibit me from moving on."

He ran his hand through his hair then down his face with a harsh sigh, "Really? I didn't warn you because my phone broke. That little press person caught me right after my phone died, then I lost it in the flood. I was annoyed and wanting to actually start something with you, so I tried to make it clear to them in a way you would understand."

"How would I understand what you said? All you did was call it idiotic."

"I also said it was wasting my time, our time. It ruined the start off anything we could of had."

"How was I supposed to get that? You set that up to fail," you threw your hands up in defeat.

He shrugged, "It was stupid, whatever, doesn't matter since you decided on the wind turbine."

"I told him no, I chose you, now you can swallow your feelings over that," you huffed, annoyed how he kept trailing back to that, "Why did you even think I didn't want a public relationship? The public part wasn't the issue."

Bakugo blinked at you, "It's all you fuckin talk about-"

"Yeah, because I didn't like how it started, but now we could never have a relationship that's known, it'd look weird and cause drama-"

"So we keep it to ourselves, we start as just us," he shrugs.

"That'll be so difficult, no too long looks, no touching, we wouldn't be able to get close to each other without rumors blowing up."

"That's where the tension is, Books. It'd be too easy if everyone just knew our business," he smirke, "Builds tension."

You rolled your eyes, "There's already enough tension."

"So you chose me? You actually want something?" the air of aggressiveness of the conversation fell away as he spoke now.

"I wanted something before you even started or ended it," you smiled, "You keep winning me over."

"I am a winner," he shrugged, his cocky energy back the second he actually could back it up. Stepping closer into your space after the distance was placed between you two.

You smiled, pushing your arm out to keep distance, looking out of the windows to the conference room and seeing the audience you had. "We agreed it'd be too easy if they knew."

He rolled his eyes but stepped back, "Everything comes too easily to me."

"Uh huh, sure," you joked, "So what's your plan?"

"Come over, I'll make ya favorite," his confidence made you smile and agree before leaving bashfully.

Seeing him next at his house. Sharing a real first date and a real kiss, planning the moves for the next.

---

I don't know how to feel about this but here you guys go! The much requested Part 2!! (I struggled heavily)

[llondonfog]

waltz right in

work really took it out of me this week. here’s some papa vanrouge. wc 1.3k who am i  you can waltz right in; i was made for you.

Lilia’s hearing was once legendary. 

Baul used to proudly remark to anyone hapless to the barrage of his booming voice how their own General Vanrouge had once determined the exact number of approaching troops, their accompanying horses, and the precise location of a squeaky cart wheel (rear, to the left) pulled by a three-legged donkey clinging to the foggy shroud of the Briar Valley forests blindfolded, tied to a tree trunk, and more than a little inebriated.

(That had been in the early days. The early days when Meleanor would roll her eyes with a smitten indulgence Lilia had not known she was capable of at Raverne’s earnest declarations of how to entreat the humans, how to enter into a new century of peace unlike any previously thought possible.

The early days, before any of them, with their brilliant youth and unlimited power, understood the true costs of war.)

His hearing is still quite keen, one of the few abilities left to him that has not begun to deteriorate so cruelly with time, only now he does not find himself attuned to the clanking of armor rattling the tranquil mountainside peace, the soft whisper of a sword unsheathing beneath the cover of darkness, or the curious and foreboding absence of animal chatter in the dense underbrush. 

Lilia wonders what the General would think, to know that his battle-hewed senses have so seamlessly shifted to listen for the quiet shuffle of socked feet over a wood floor and the stifled breaths haunted by the ghost of tears. 

He knows what, or rather who, he will find as he glances up from the half-finished letter he’d been writing to acknowledge the small figure lingering at the doorway to their living room, half-skulking in the shadows all the while gazing out at Lilia as if he might be the dawn itself.

“Another nightmare?”

Silver nods, eyes large and wet in the flickering light of the fire, and Lilia wonders again what the General might think, to hear how soft his voice has become, to know that the sight of a child, this one in particular, so in distress pains him worse than any iron-tipped spear driven deep into his heart. 

It startles him at odd times, frightens him even, how quickly he’s adjusted to this. 

The letter is easily forgotten, pen and parchment left aside on the table next to his current, lumpy armchair, as he wordlessly opens his arms to welcome the gangly bundle of tiny, sharp-edged limbs that wriggles its way into his lap, his own chin settling into a tufted cloud of hair that seems iridescent in the flame, catching the light as if Lilia held the sun itself in his embrace. 

(The sun or the moon, some days it is hard to decide which Silver takes after most. Either way, it’s blinding and Lilia has long made peace with the fact that he’s never cared much about his own health.)

Satisfied that the boy has made himself comfortable, Lilia coaxes a blanket from the sofa to float across the room and drape itself around them, swallowing a grin to himself at the rather adorable sight of only Silver’s eyes visible over his makeshift cloak. Their light and wonder has yet to return, and he nudges the boy gently until he can direct Silver’s gaze over to the shadows dancing together against the backdrop of the hearth. It’s easy magic, barely a drop in his dwindling reserves; a bunny hops carefree in a meadow of swaying flowers, a bird flutters its wings joyfully in an invisible breeze before soaring through the skies to return to its nest, a squirrel gaily scampering about the forest floor, collecting acorns— Lilia’s heart does an odd beat at that.

But it does the trick. Silver’s tense posture has begun to melt in his arms, and he’s even participating, calling out requests and giggling even when a shadowy butterfly breaks free of its scene to land on his nose, tickling his face with its intangible feelers before bursting into a soft shower of multi-colored sparkles. Lilia joins in his laughter, releasing the spell as they both sink back into the armchair, a tangled up bundle of smiles and limbs.

“It was so dark,” Silver whispers suddenly after their laughter has subsided and Lilia’s found himself absently stroking through that spider-silk hair with his claws, and the sheer ache of loneliness in his voice nearly takes Lilia’s breath away that he has to check to ensure he hasn’t accidentally pierced the boy’s arm. “And so quiet, Toto, there was— it was like I was the only person left in the whole world. I didn’t think anyone would ever find me again, I didn’t know how they even could.”

Lilia doesn’t know which is worse; the fact that Silver never dreams about that awful night when he was spelled into sleep for his own protection, or the fact that he dreams about the aftermath, about the long and lonely wait. 

But he knows a little something about darkness. And a little something about loneliness too.

“ . . . do you remember what you told me about the groundhog? What does he do each winter?” 

Silver scrunches up his face in confusion at the question, but instantly replies, hard-pressed to forget anything that involves his dear animal companions. “Hibernation?” His tongue trips over the word clumsily as he looks up for Lilia’s approving nod. 

“And as I recall, Malleus was out with you in the forest, so you asked him what that meant. Can you tell me what he said?”

Lilia watches with no small trace of fondness as the boy begins to parrot the words perfectly, amused by how completely Malleus’ words have been committed to memory.

“He said that groundhogs are a type of animal called a mammal, and that they burrow deep in the ground to keep themselves warm and safe during the winter,” Silver recites, a finger curling around a loose thread in the blanket while he thinks on the prince’s explanation. “They eat a lot of food before they do so that they can stay healthy, and then they sleep and sleep and sleep until the snow has all melted for good.”

Simplistic enough for his purposes. Lilia nods in confirmation as Silver settles back in his arms, the question remaining clear enough on his little face. “Don’t you think hibernation sounds a lot like your dream?” he murmurs, and the boy’s eyes widen now in wonder. “I imagine it’s pretty scary at first for your groundhog friend. He’s deep in a dark burrow, alone and away from all of his friends, and he knows it’ll be a long time before he wakes up.”

He lets Silver ruminate on that, and can see the awed appreciation in his gaze for the bravery of all the little creatures that know they must subject themselves to the order of nature for the chance to see a new spring.

“But there’s a difference you should be aware of,” he continues, and Silver’s head snaps up in confusion, mouth open— “You, my dear, are not a groundhog!” Lilia declares with a gentle tickle of his fingertips against the boy’s side and grins openly when full giggles erupt from the blanketed bundle in his lap, Silver squirming and laughing as he unsuccessfully tries to wriggle away from Lilia’s inescapable torment until the last of the worry pinched around his face vanishes for good.

“You are not a groundhog,” he repeats softly, and bends forward to press a kiss to the boy’s head. “And I will always find you when winter ends.”

“Always?” Silver asks him sleepily, fully spent from their conversation, and Lilia thinks about how much he used to hate the melting snow, the warmth of the sun in spring.

“Always.” 

[trickphotography2]

D-Day by TrickPhotography | Chapter 21

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x female!reader

Word count: 6.1k

Synopsis: After finding out his girlfriend is pregnant, Jake is ready to move in and get married. The last thing he expected was to be hit with a six-month deployment at sea and missing the birth of his first child.

18+, minors DNI

Chapter 20 | Series Master List | Ao3

---------------------------------------

Chapter 21

The Jeep was silent, except for the road noise. Javy adjusted his grip on the wheel, the muscles in his jaw ticking as he stared straight ahead.

Your eyes darted over to him, a smile teasing the corner of your lips as you rubbed your belly. “You alright, Javy?” 

His throat bobbed, eyes flitting to meet yours before returning to the road. “I can’t watch you shit on the table.”

A mortified laugh burst from your mouth as you blushed. “I don’t want you to see that either. I mean, hopefully, it doesn’t happen, but - ”

“Don’t say ‘butt,’” he groaned.

“However,” you corrected, “fingers crossed, Mom will tap you out by the time I get to the pushing stage.”

“Thank god. I love you, and I love baby Seresin-Machado” - he’d placed a hand on your belly during the parent introductions and enjoyed the appreciative looks from the other moms when you corrected them about him being the godfather - “but watching you give birth might put me off sex forever.”

Smiling, you shifted in your seat and shook your head. The first birthing class had been interesting. Most of the time had been spent watching a movie you hadn’t seen since 8th grade - The Miracle of Birth. While mildly traumatizing to watch as a middle schooler, it was worse seeing it now, knowing that you were a few short weeks away from experiencing it. 

But what was even more amusing was watching Javy squirm. He silently gagged, hand over his mouth as he white-knuckled watching the baby crown. “Didn’t you watch it in sex ed or something?”

“No!” he huffed. “We got a banana and condom, and how to make sure that didn’t happen.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh, taking out your phone and hitting record. “Hey Jake - you wanted an update on how the classes went. Just here to tell you that we’ve traumatized your best friend.”

“Hangman,” Javy’s voice was solemn, and you flipped the camera toward him. His eyes darted away from the road briefly. “You owe me. This was worse than some of the shi- stuff…” he corrected with a grimace “that we saw during second class Spring Break.”

“Oh god, do I even want to know?” you asked. His answering grin was teasing.

“Your husband was pretty much the worst when we were in the Academy. And flight school. And FRO… actually, he’s just the worst in general. Why’d you marry him again?” 

“He got me pregnant.” 

“Well, he clearly didn’t pay attention in sex ed,” Coyote laughed, and the camera panned back to you. Jake couldn’t help but smile at the sight. You were smiling - really smiling, the corners of your eyes and nose crinkling - as you rolled your eyes. 

“Your daughter demands a baked potato, so we’re heading to dinner. I’ll talk to you later. Love you!” You blew a kiss at the camera before the video stopped. The text had been waiting for him when he got off duty, and he wished it wasn’t too late to call. 

Jake anxiously counted the days until he got home. It felt like a race against time, especially when you hit 35 weeks pregnant in a few days. While you and Dr. Shearer had said that Sloane didn’t seem like she would arrive anytime soon, he could only hope that his daughter listened to him and held on for as long as possible. And instead of hurrying home to your side, he was stuck in Japan again, the carrier taking its slow route back to the US. 

But it wasn’t just a race against time to get home for the birth that was keeping him up at night - Jake felt the gut-wrenching need to get home to you. 

Guilt had eaten at him since seeing you cry on Christmas and worsened with the talk the day after. While he knew the deployment was hard, you’d done a good job hiding how much you struggled. Jake hated himself for not catching it. For not questioning when you were up late when he texted, only relishing the opportunity to talk to you. Not noticing that the smiles you sent him in pictures and videos didn’t seem genuine or asking about the tears he sometimes thought he saw. Allowing himself to be distracted when you changed the subject the few times he tried to get a straight answer out of you. 

“We didn’t even know each other when we got married.”

His ex-wife’s words, casually stated but sharp as knives, taunted him. And, as much as he tried to drown them out, doubt crept in whenever he thought about you hiding your feelings from him. 

Yes, the situation was different. You’d been together for over a year, not just three months, when you got married. And he’d thought about proposing for a while instead of it being a drunken decision. 

But you were pregnant when he finally did it. Jake couldn’t bring himself to regret Sloane - he loved his little girl more than he ever thought was possible for someone he hadn’t met yet - but… would you have said yes if she wasn’t a factor? 

“We’re not going to sweat the short deployments.”

You’d said that before he went to Vegas for two weeks. Right before calling him on his shit… trying to pull away when he realized he’d fallen hard for you. Bracing himself for another relationship ending because of his career. 

Jake never thought you’d cheat, even though that’s where you’d thought his mind went. No, he was thinking about the toll being apart would take on your relationship. The two weeks away seemed like a big deal back then, but now, at the tail end of five months apart, it was almost laughable that he’d worried back then.

Would you have married him if you knew this was your future - alone, pregnant, and halfway across the world from your husband? Hell, would you have let him stay with you in that grocery store parking lot or sent him packing? Talked to him when he approached you in the hangar, phone clutched in hand and taking a picture of the F-35 tail?

Was it what you still wanted? 

Was he what you wanted?

The email from Admiral Tritz hit his inbox sometime overnight, congratulating him on being approved by the selection board to promote to Lieutenant Commander. Just like he’d promised after dropping the bomb that Jake was deploying on short notice. The official list wasn’t released - there was no notice from NAVYADMIN, and that wouldn’t go out until May - but Tritz had said he would be merit-promoted for the next fiscal year. 

Accepting the promotion and pinning on those oak leaves would require reenlistment. After completing his initial service commitment, his current contract had only a year and a half left.

By the time the list was officially published, he would have just one year before never having to put you through another deployment. You wouldn’t have to worry about moving - they wouldn’t give him orders with so little time left - so you wouldn’t have to leave a job you liked. You could buy a house in Lemoore or any place of your choosing.

Sloane could grow up in one place instead of moving around every few years like the two of you had. 

Jake would be there to watch his little girl grow up, not missing months of her life when he deployed. 

Before, accepting the promotion wouldn’t have been a question - he’d always imagined himself serving his 20 years, if not more. The Navy was a way of life, and Jake Seresin felt the most alive sitting in the cockpit. 

But that was before you.

Before he fell in love and realized how hard being apart was. Before discovering he would be a father and only having a few days to be part of the pregnancy. Before realizing what it meant to be away from his wife and kid for long periods. 

In times like this, Jake wished he had someone to talk to about juggling family life and a military career. While a few people in his squadron had kids, he didn’t feel close enough to ask them how they managed, and none of his close friends had them. As much as Mav was a mentor as an aviator, he hadn’t been around to help raise his soon-to-be stepdaughter. The idea of asking his father was laughable and served more as a cautionary tale of what not to do. 

But as Jake changed into his PT gear for a workout after making plans to meet up with Rooster in the wardroom for dinner, it dawned on him that he did have someone he could talk to.

Sorry for the early text, but do you have time to talk this weekend?

Even though it was almost three in the morning in Florida, the message was read immediately, and a text bubble popped up.

Everything okay? 

Shit. He probably thought that something was wrong with you or the baby. Quickly, Jake responded - Yeah, everyone’s fine. I just wanted your input on something. 

I’m free now. I'm just enjoying my coffee before work.

After hesitating, he sat at his desk and called his father-in-law. The call was answered on the first ring.

“Hey, Jake. What’s on your mind?” 

Shifting on the couch, you shrugged, “I don’t know.” Helen didn't say anything. You hated the silence. To stall, you sipped your decaf coffee while thinking through her question. “I just…I had ideas for how our first big deployment would go.”

“Such as?" 

“Not being pregnant,” you smirked. “Sending sexy pictures in care packages, talking when we could… it wouldn’t be a big deal. I’d keep living my life, and he would live his.”

“Your husband doesn’t find you sexy?”

Snorting, you blushed. You recalled him bending you over the bathroom vanity, making you watch as he fucked you in that damn cowboy hat and told you how sexy you were. Jake stroking his cock in the shower when you visited, his gaze drinking you in. His words echoed in your ears - “Mama, I’ve dreamed about this.” 

“He’s…” you cleared your throat, “fine with how I look.” The corner of Helen’s mouth twitched as she raised an eyebrow. Your blush deepened, thinking of all the pictures and videos he’d taken in the hotel room, whispering how they would join his rotation. “My husband is stuck in a floating city in the middle of the ocean with most of the other people being men. Turning him on wasn’t exactly hard. I’m just lucky - ” you cut yourself off. 

“Lucky?” she prompted.

You took a deep breath and leaned forward, placing the coffee on the table. “Jake was married before, and his ex cheated on him when he was deployed. He worried a lot about that and her health stuff their whole marriage. And his dad cheated on his mom all the time - they’re a whole different set of problems,” you added with a roll of your eyes. “So he is huge on not cheating. Which, of course, I would never do. And he would never. But my husband is really attractive.” Pulling out your phone, you flipped through your pictures, smiling as you landed on one of him mowing the lawn shirtless. Helen’s eyes flicked toward it when you turned the phone around. “I see the looks he gets. I trust him, but…”

“You don’t feel attractive.” 

Nodding, tears welled in your eyes, and a spike of irritation shot through you. “I hate this. I’m not this girl - I don’t need male validation to feel good about myself. I don’t need a man for anything! And yet I find myself sitting here, fucking crying because Jake's gone, and I feel like shit, I’m not happy, and I’m really fucking lonely. And I just…” Hot tears fell as you bit your lower lip, trying to hold back a sob. Helen leaned forward and held out a tissue box. Taking one, you dabbed at your eyes and nose. “I thought it’d be easier. I thought I could handle being alone and doing all this because I saw my mom do it.”

“You’re not meeting the standard you set for yourself.” 

“I told Jake I could do this, and I’m... I’m failing at it.” Blowing out a breath, you shook your head. “I-I’m making this harder on him than it has to be. He’s got bigger things to worry about than me falling apart at home.”

“You’re not as important as his job.” 

“No. I mean, yes,” you quickly corrected, twisting the tissue into knots. “Maybe? In a different way.” Helen stayed silent, tilting her chin to invite you to continue. “His job is dangerous, and he loves it. But all it would take is a split second for something to go wrong. For him to get distracted and pull his focus away. A-and…”

“You’re a distraction.” Unable to speak around the lump in your throat, you nodded. “Have you spoken to your husband about how you’re feeling?” 

Sloane’s foot tapped your fingers, and you smiled faintly at the memory of his words on the trip she’d been conceived on. How he’d used your question about if the mission was dangerous as the opening to negotiations to get married. “He’s one of the best. He’d tell me not to worry.” 

“I’ll take that as you haven’t told him?” When you nodded, she set aside her notepad and pencil. “It’s easy for someone we love to tell us not to worry, but it doesn’t make it go away. Did you feel like this before you were pregnant?”

“Not as badly. I worried, but it wasn’t like this.” Helen nodded.

“Different things can contribute to increased anxiety. There are biological factors - hormone and neurochemical changes - that you can be experiencing. We can work with your doctor on medications for those or get you referred to a psychiatrist if you’d prefer specialist care. However, your environment and experiences can also be a contributing factor. Have you heard of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?” 

“No.”

She grabbed her notebook and flipped to a blank page, writing three words and drawing arrows between them. “CBT looks at the relationship between our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and how they influence each other. For example, let’s say I’m at work and have a thought that I’m not good at my job. What emotions might that bring up?”

“I don’t know… embarrassment.”

“That’s one. What about others?”

“Frustration, anger… resentment?”

“Maybe fear?” Helen offered, and you nodded. “So these emotions are brewing,” she pointed at ‘emotions’ on the page before moving her pencil to ‘behaviors.’ “How might those emotions show up in my work?”

“Not volunteering for stuff or calling out to avoid the problem.”

“Maybe isolating as well? Quitting?”

“That seems pretty extreme.”

“It does,” she agreed. “But if I continue to have this thought of ‘I’m not good enough’ and these emotions of embarrassment, frustration, anger, and resentment circling in my brain, that thought gets coded in there. It can create what we call a schema or a core belief. Core beliefs are our mental shortcuts in interpreting the world and spin off automatic thoughts. What comes to mind when I use that term?”

“Subconscious thoughts,” you said, putting your hands on your belly when Sloane kicked. “Intrusive ones, maybe?”

“Automatic thoughts are just our brain processing stimuli as we go about our day - they can be good, bad, or neutral depending on the situation. It all depends on how we interpret that thought by running it through our core beliefs. Going back to the example, let’s say I mess up at work. With that core belief of ‘I’m not good enough,’ what kind of automatic thoughts might shoot out?”

“It’s more proof I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

“Yup. And it loops in all of those negative emotions we talked about earlier. So what we want to do is challenge those thoughts - push back on them to change our emotions and behaviors. How might I challenge that thought of messing up as more proof that I don’t know what I’m doing?”

“Mistakes happen.”

“‘To err is human’ and all that,” Helen smiled. “I can give myself a break. By thinking of an alternative realistic thought, I’ve pushed back on a cognitive distortion - a mental bias or flawed thinking. Like perfectionism, or ignoring the positive things in favor of focusing on the negative.” Taking a breath, she set her notepad down and leveled you with a look. You tensed. “Would you be okay if I share some things I’ve picked up on in our last few sessions?”

“Sure,” you said hesitantly. 

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you see yourself as a very independent person.”

“Is that a bad thing?” 

“No,” Helen said quickly. “Independence is a good thing. However, it can cause some… friction… when your desire for autonomy and self-reliance butt up against situations where having a partner or someone to rely on might be beneficial. When you fixate on how you think things should be done, rather than how they are.” You just stared at her for a long moment.

“So you’re saying I’m stubborn.” The words fell from your lips, an accusation you’d heard many times. 

“You have high expectations for yourself. From what we’ve discussed, a lot of responsibility fell on you at a young age. When your dad deployed, it was just you and your mom, and you moved a lot. And that combination instilled a lot of independence in you. It made it easier for you to adapt to new situations and face challenges and made you stronger. And” - she tilted her head again - “you got a front-row seat to see how the military can influence a marriage. That up-close view contributes to your black-and-white thinking - you expect yourself to be that perfect spouse where you are independent and don’t need your husband because otherwise, you’re failing and letting him down by wanting and needing that extra support. You’re not allowing for the grey area, where you may succeed in some aspects but struggle in others. And, at the same time, you’re also measuring yourself against Jake’s ex-wife and allowing that to shape your belief about how to be the best partner for him - one who doesn’t place demands on him or cause additional stress.” 

You blinked at her, feeling a flush creep up your cheeks. “And here I thought I just had control issues,” you said, trying and failing to sound flippant. 

Helen leaned forward and offered you the tissue box. It took you a moment to realize your cheeks were damp again. “Control and perfectionism go hand in hand. Those cognitive distortions won’t be confined only to your marriage but will show up in other aspects of your life. Normally, I wouldn’t tell a client that all at once. But does any of that ring true?” 

Clearing your throat, you nodded. “M-my therapist in college said something kinda similar. But am I… are we,” your hand fell to your stomach again. “Am I setting my daughter up for the same problem? Raising Sloane, knowing that Jake will be gone at times?” 

Helen encouraged you to do something to take care of yourself after the session. Leaving her office, you cried in the car, overwhelmed and happy you’d taken the rest of the day off. The house was too quiet when you got home, and you quickly changed out of your work clothes for something more comfortable. Sitting before the television, you let your eyes blur, thinking what you could do for yourself. Reuben had swung by your office and invited you to the bar after work for drinks and games, but you didn’t want to deal with the bar scene. You always got dirty looks for being there, even when you were nursing a soda. 

The sound of waves shook you from your stupor, and you watched the cruise commercial before pushing off the couch. It had been too long since you’d been to the beach. You couldn’t help but think about the last time you’d stepped foot in the ocean, coral sand underfoot as Jake held you in Japan. In Florida, you’d made sure to go to the beach at least a few times a year, and always before New Year's Eve. It had been a nice way to wrap up the year, looking for small sand dollars in the surf and giving yourself time to reflect.  

Throwing an overnight bag together, you sent a message to the group chat saying you were passing on the night out. Evening traffic held you up as you headed out of town, directions for the nearest beach pulled up. It was a two-hour drive, and you had to stop frequently to use the bathroom, but it felt good to be doing something. Hotels in the area were slightly cheaper in the off-season, and you found a cute bed and breakfast with ocean views. 

When Jake responded to your text from the harbor when you’d grabbed dinner, you knew his question about the wisdom of being so far away from the hospital came from a place of love and concern, but it annoyed you. So when he asked if you were available for a call, you just texted back three words: I need this. Leaving the phone on the bed, you walked to the sliding glass doors, pushed them open, and collapsed into one of the patio chairs. Waves crashed in the bay across the street, and you let your eyes drift closed while listening to the noise from the nearby restaurant. When you went back inside, you had a few missed calls from him and two voice notes. 

“If goin’ to the beach is what you needed, I’m glad you’re there. I just… never mind. I’m gonna play basketball with the guys. I’ll try you again when I’m done.” You felt a pang of hurt and regret at his frustrated tone and the abrupt cut-off. Your thumb hovered over the second note for a long moment before closing your eyes and tapping the screen. Jake’s sigh greeted you, “I love you, darlin’. I miss you. Do whatever you need to to feel better, but don’t cut me out. Please.”

Sniffling, you brushed away the tears on your cheeks and held the phone up to record your voice note. “I’m sorry, babe. I love you, too. I had therapy earlier and feel a little… off. Gonna take a bath, so give me a call when you’re free.”

The hot water felt good as you sank into the tub, your belly exposed to the cool air. The parenting class had suggested a thermometer for the bathtub, and you’d tossed the little otter in to test it, along with some lavender-scented Epsom salts. Dr. Shearer’s nurse had given you the go-ahead for a hot bath - within reason - when you’d called earlier and asked if it was okay. Lowering yourself so the water covered your shoulders, you felt a smile tug at your lips. It felt so good to have a hot bath, even if you did have to promise to keep it short and a cold bottle of water within reach. Closing your eyes, you relaxed in the tub, smiling at the small waves that Sloane made when she shifted. 

When the timer sounded, you groaned and turned it off. The water drained around you, lapping against your breasts, and you hesitated before drying off your hands and reaching for the phone again. Using your toes to close the drain, you held the camera up and stared at yourself on the screen. Your cheeks were flushed, and your hair piled on top of your head, loose strands curling around your face with the heat. Feeling slightly foolish, you sank lower in the water, so it just covered your nipples and snapped a picture. Quickly locking the screen, you got out of the tub and dried off. The towel couldn’t wrap around your front when you tucked it around your chest, your belly-busting through the gap. Feeling ridiculous again, you took another picture before getting dressed.

After turning on the gas fireplace, you climbed into bed to ward off the January chill. The flames flickered across the room as you cuddled with your pregnancy pillow, wishing it was your husband. Grabbing your phone, you pulled up the pictures you’d just taken and studied them. They weren’t… horrible. As much as you felt like a beached whale, they weren’t the worst.

Groaning, you let the phone fall before lifting it again and flipping to your notes app. Helen told you to start tracking your negative thoughts about yourself and how you challenged them so you could talk about them in session. I feel like a beached whale you typed. The cursor blinked as you stared at the words and felt tears burning your eyes. 

I’m letting Jake and Sloane down quickly joined the list. And then they flowed out of you.

I’m weak

I’m going to be the reason Jake leaves the Navy

Jake will resent me for keeping him from doing something he loves

He’s going to get hurt because of me

I’m not going to be a good mom

I’m failing as a wife

Jake isn’t going to find me attractive

I’m not strong enough to do this

Jake is going to leave me

I’m just like his ex

I’m the reason Jake won’t talk to his mom and sister

The screen changed as you typed another thought, switching to a picture of Jake. Sending the call to voicemail, you sat up and swiped at your tear-stained cheeks. 

Another call came in, and you also sent that one to voicemail. Getting out of bed, you hurried to the bathroom to splash water on your face. The screen lit up with a text - Just tell me if you don’t want to talk.

A sob burst from your mouth as you picked up the phone with shaking hands. I just need a minute. Pressing a hand to your mouth, you met your gaze in the mirror and told yourself to stop. You couldn’t make Jake sit through another call when you were falling apart. 

Sixty seconds later, the phone lit up again. Knowing you couldn’t ignore another call, you turned on the sink and grabbed your electric toothbrush, hitting the on button before answering and putting it on speaker. “Darlin’?” 

Turning off the toothbrush, you spit into the sink and splashed more water on your face, making enough noise that Jake would hear you. But just the sound of his voice made your throat tight, and you buried your face in the handtowel, forcing yourself to take deep breaths. “Just a minute,” you said, using the cloth to muffle your voice. After clearing your throat and breathing, you said, “Hey.”

“Hey.” You heard him clear his throat. “Are you mad at me, sweetheart?”

“Fuck, Jake,” you snapped, tears starting to fall again. 

“What?” 

“I just stopped crying, damn it.” And then, to your horror, the phone rang again as he tried to video call you. You denied it. As you scrambled to call him, he video-called again. When you declined it and called him, he picked up and hissed your name.

“I wanna see your goddamn face.”

“No. C-can’t we just t-talk?” 

“No. You’re just gonna fuckin’ lie to me again and tell me that everything’s fine when it’s not. I can’t trust you to tell me the truth unless I’m lookin’ at you.” 

So when the video call came through, you snatched the phone up and glared at your husband sitting at the desk in his stateroom. “Happy?” you demanded.

“Thrilled,” he shot back. “Nothin’ I love more than seein’ my wife in tears again.” 

“You asked for it! We could have just talked on the phone and - ”

“Pretended everything was okay instead of you being honest with me?”

“I’m trying to make this easier for you!”

“Stop making it easy on me!” Jake yelled, green eyes flashing with anger. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ - just stop! Yell at me, make me feel like shit - tell me that I’m the reason you’re depressed and that I abandon you when I’m supposed to be with you. That I’m letting my wife and daughter down by not being there to take care of you when you need me, and you’re already talkin’ to a lawyer about getting a divorce because you can’t do this anymore, and - ”

“Jake - ”

“You’d have been better off not marrying me, and - ”

“Jake - ”

“Sloane is gonna hate me for being a deadbeat who - ”

“Jacob Michael!” You stared at him, wide-eyed with shock at his tirade. Jake’s face flushed, his chest heaving like he’d been running. As you watched, he dropped his head into his hands, fingers tugging on his hair so harshly you wished you were there to stop him. “Stop,” you said softly. 

“I can’t,” he mumbled. 

“Yes, you…” You trailed off when he lifted his head, and you saw his tearful eyes. “Honey, are - are you alright?”

That made him chuckle, and he scrubbed a hand down his face, his wedding band glinting. “You’re supposed to be yelling at me, darlin’.”

“I’m not gonna yell at you.” 

“You should. I deserve it.” 

“Why?” At that, he scoffed and started ticking the reasons off his fingers.

“I knocked you up and then got hit with a deployment a week later. And made you marry me before I left. Then - ”

“You didn’t ‘knock me up,’” you said, putting a protective hand over your belly. That phrasing felt… wrong. “We got pregnant. And then decided to get married a little faster than we initially planned.”

“I still left you.”

“You didn’t want to.” 

“Still makes me a shitty husband and father.” 

“I… I feel like I’m a shitty wife and mom,” you said softly.

“You’re not.”

“You’re not, either.” Taking the moment of silence as an opportunity to leave the bathroom, you settled in a chair by the fire. It threw just enough light to see your face but gave you cover to feel comfortable admitting, “I-I’m afraid you’re gonna leave the Navy because of me.” Jake’s jaw ticked, and he looked away from the camera. Your heart lept into your throat.

“I don’t know how long I can do this, darlin’. But if I separate, it’s gonna be my choice.”

Drawing in a shaky breath, you shook your head. “Jake, I know it’s been hard but - ”

“I got the promotion.” 

“You did? Congra - ”

“I have to sign on for three more years if I accept it.” You stared at him for a moment before nodding slowly. 

“Okay. We can do that.”

“Sweetheart. I don’t know if I can do that. This deployment has been the worst one I’ve been on, and I don’t know if I can do it again. Bein’ away from you was hard enough, but next time, I’ll be away from Sloane, too. Realistically, we’re lookin’ at another five years - minimum - if I do it. That’s five years of maybe missing birthdays, anniversaries, her firsts… I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

“B-but you love flying.”

“I do. But I love my girls more. And I can find different ways of doing it.” He sighed when he saw the flash of your teeth as you chewed your lip. “Say it. And turn on a light so I can see you.” 

Staying put, you closed your eyes, unable to see him when you forced the words out. “I’m afraid you’re gonna blame me if you’re unhappy if you separate. I’m afraid I’m making your life harder like your ex-wife.” 

There was silence for a long moment, then the sound of metal scraping. Opening one eye, you saw Jake pacing, hands back in his hair. You watched, wishing you were there to hold him. Finally, he turned back to the camera and growled, “I want to see you when I say this, darlin’, so turn on a damn light.” Reluctantly, you stood and moved to the bed, flicking on the lamp and pulling one of the arms of your pregnancy pillow over your lap. Leaning on the desk, he stared at you, his expression stern. “If and when I leave the Navy, it’s gonna because I want to. We’ll discuss it, but when I’m done, I’m done.”

“I can do this, Jake. I - ”

“When,” he spoke over you, “I am done, I’m done. I will not lose my family because of the military.”

“You won’t,” you muttered. He ignored you and continued. 

“You, Sloane, and any other kids we have will come before my job. And I will tell you every day until you get it through your thick, beautiful skull - you are my priority, darlin’. Nothin’ else matters but you and our family. Understood?” 

“Ja - ”

“Understood?” 

“Yes, Lieutenant Seresin, sir!” you snapped, giving him a mocking salute. 

“Pause.” 

“What?”

“Pause,” Jake repeated, disappearing from the screen as you resisted the urge to disconnect the call. When he returned, he held up a well-worn paper before reading from it. “Update four - ‘Parties agree not to walk out on arguments. Parties agree to request a ‘pause’ if necessary and will finish the discussion when cooler heads prevail.’ You wrote it, darlin’, so I’m calling a pause.” 

“Fine,” you huffed, blinking back tears at the reappearance of the contract. His having it with him made your heart skip a beat. You watched him read over it again before shaking his head.

“We never updated this. We need to.” 

“It’s stupid.” His eyes shot to yours, and he shook his head.

“It’s not. I take this as seriously as our vows, sweetheart. But we need to figure out what anniversary we’re gonna update it on.” 

“You only want one anniversary.”

“But you want two - a sentimental one and our wedding anniversary. So what’s it gonna be? When are we gonna update this instead of doing” - he paused to look at the paper again - “‘ad hoc meetings to discuss clauses and conditions as they arise’?” A smile tugged at your lips as you shook your head. 

“Pretty sure it says ‘annual dating contract’ at the top, Seresin. So that would put it up for review in a few months.” 

“Gonna have to rename it to ‘annual marriage contract,’ Seresin,” he shot back.

“Gonna add it to your list of updates you want?” 

“Yup. Right up there with you sending me more dirty pictures.” You flushed, looking away from the camera. “Mrs. Seresin,” Jake said, his tone teasing. “You have something to tell me?” 

Jake got you to send the two pictures you’d taken earlier in the night through cajoling and pleading. And when he’d started talking about how sexy you were in them, you tried to shut it down without success, which kicked off the fight again, your husband begging you to understand how attractive he found you. 

It was lucky that Rooster and Fritz were on liberty because the call lasted hours. You plugged in your phone when the battery almost died, set it down when it overheated, and your arm tired of holding it up. A few more pauses were called, and you couldn’t help but chuckle when Jake pointed out that you were both going all out for your third official fight of the relationship. 

And, as hard as it was to hear, it was good that you were fighting. Sure, your husband calling you a “creepy Stepford wife version of the woman I fell in love with” wasn’t exactly great. Still, he didn’t really appreciate being called “an arrogant asshole who would prefer to martyr yourself instead of listening to your fucking wife and letting her decide what she can and can’t take.” But for the first time since finding out he was deploying, it felt like you and Jake were being honest with one another about how you felt. About how hard navigating the pregnancy, deployment, and first months of your marriage had been for both of you. 

At some point, you fell asleep during a pause. When you woke the following day, you scrambled to grab your phone and was greeted with a message from Jake.

I love you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I can’t wait to get home and show you exactly how much I love you and our daughter. Only 6 more weeks, darling. 

----------------------------------------------

Author's Note: Did I have to write extensively about CBT? Probably not, but it's my favorite modality to use. It was kind of fun writing Jake and Darlin' fighting because they don't do it that often, but was definitely needed to clear the air. It was fun going back through some of their highlights from previous chapters. Not to mention Jake realizing that he has a whole other family that he can lean on now, and calling his father-in-law for advice.

And Javy continues to be the best godfather.

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[sallowedbethyname]

to be home, to be loved, ch.1

pairing: sebastian sallow x reader (hogwarts legacy)

rating: mature (eventual smut)

themes: found family, friends to lovers, slow burn

summary: Eleazar Fig and Solomon Sallow died. Anne Sallow had disappeared. You, Sebastian, and Ominis tried as best as you can to move on, learn, and heal from everything that had happened. In an effort to keep Sebastian company and gave Ominis a new refuge after your fifth year at Hogwarts ended, you proposed an idea: the three of you living together in the house Professor Fig left you.

notes: am i too late to write fics for the infamous, the illustrious, the genius sebastian sallow when hogwarts legacy came out almost 2 years ago? probably, but that never stopped me before, so here it is!

read the full chapter on AO3

It had been over a week since Spring arrived, melting white snow to make way for verdant green and vibrant colors. Hogwarts was lovely this time of the year, with blooming flowers and swirling butterflies softening the solemness of the castle. It was almost hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, you had been fighting for your life against Ranrok, shaking the very foundation of the castle. Yet Hogwarts still stood tall and majestic. Unshakeable. 

Everyone called you Hogwarts’ Hero, but you wondered if they knew that your sleep had been plagued with vivid dreams of bright flashes of red, the memories of the Keepers, and the light fading from your mentor’s eyes as he drew his last breath. Who would've expected that you'd have trauma by the end of your fifth year? Certainly not you.

The teachers, bless their hearts, seem to be paying more attention to you these days. Even more than before, when they used to give you tasks and extra lessons to make up for lost time. Among them, Professor Weasley was the one who often reached out to you to inquire about your O.W.L preparations. 

Curiously, though, the deputy headmistress didn't seem interested in your O.W.L or Field Guide today. Instead, she regarded you with a gentle, sympathetic expression as she handed you a thick envelope. 

“I know the grief of losing Professor Fig must be too fresh for you, but with the year ending and… in light of everything that has happened recently, I'm afraid this cannot wait.”

You stilled in your seat, immediately assuming the worst. Had the remaining goblin forces taken arms again? A new enemy entering the fray? Or perhaps you weren't meticulous enough when locking away Isidora’s repository and some of the magic had leaked away?

Professor Weasley cleared her throat. “This is Professor Fig’s will. He'd entrusted this to me the night you fought Ranrok. I assume you knew that Professor Fig and Miriam had no children?”

“Yes,” you slowly replied, thinking back to the months before Hogwarts where Fig patiently taught you everything you need to know about magic. 

What Professor Weasley said next made your eyes widen in surprise.

“Well… Professor Fig had decided to list you as his beneficiary. This means all his possessions now belong to you, including his house in London.”

“I— what?”

“It’s all stated in his will,” Professor Weasley nodded at the envelope before you, urging you to open it.

You hesitated. Eyebrows furrowing in confusion and disbelief. You wondered if this is a setup. Perhaps Professor Weasley decided to give you a surprise test before O.W.L to really gauge your readiness? But what purpose would it serve? The deputy headmistress has no reason to trick you and even if she did, she wouldn’t resort to using Fig, wouldn’t she? It would be too cruel.

Still, the deputy headmistress was silent while you mentally hyper-analyzed your current predicament. Nervously, you reached out for the envelope, pulling out its contents with trembling hands. Complicated words jumped out at you when you unfurled the parchment. You weren’t really well-versed in legal phrases and languages, but as you read through the pages and saw the stamps and signatures that belonged to Fig, you realized that everything Professor Weasly said was true.

Professor Fig left you everything.

“I… This is…”

You could feel your eyes getting wet with tears but blinked them all away, refusing to let out even the smallest sob or sniffle. Not in front of Professor Weasley, at least. Professor Fig never really expressed any sort of familial affection to you. Any praise and encouragement mostly only came because of your aptitude for magic and quick thinking. Because of that, you assumed he only saw you as his student. You two hadn’t known each other that long, after all.

You flipped the pages and began to reread everything from the beginning and, to nobody’s surprise, nothing’s changed. The content of his will stayed the same. 

But why, you found yourself thinking. A big wave of grief swept over you. A part of yourself secretly wishing Fig could’ve told you all this on his own. After all, despite everything, he had been the closest thing to a father that you’ve ever had. 

Not for the first time, your chest swelled with rage towards Ranrok, though you know it was futile.

“I had the pleasure to talk with Fig not long after he discovered you,” Professor Weasley finally spoke with a gentle voice. “He told me how gifted you are, how he had never seen someone learn magic so quickly. He was very proud of you, dear. And I’m sure that sentiment only grew bigger until the very end of his journey.”

“I… I don't know what to say, Professor, I…” you stammered. 

With a flick of her wand, a cup of warm tea appeared on the desk and Professor Weasley offered it to you. “Fig also told me that you were living in an orphanage. I suppose he hoped that, though he’s no longer with us, you can now have a home to return to aside from Hogwarts.”

You sobbed, unable to hold back the tears. Without wasting a beat, Professor Weasley was already at your side, rubbing soothing circles on your back. The warm gesture was appreciated, of course, but you tried your best to stop crying. 

“Your mentor is a good man,” she said. “He had made sure that you’ll never live in want.”

“Truthfully, Professor, I don’t know if I deserved this. I…” you paused, rubbing your eyes with the sleeve of your cloak. 

“Nonsense, you’ve done so much for the wizarding world. I know Fig, he wouldn’t have made this decision if he wasn’t sure,” Professor Weasley reassured her. “But… it's up to you, in the end, whatever you want to do with Professor Fig’s possessions. I advise you to sleep on it tonight before coming up with a decision.”

Your nose flared as you took a deep breath, blinking away the burn in your eyes. “Alright,” you said, suddenly feeling more exhausted than ever. “I'll give it a thought. Thank you, Professor.”

The deputy headmistress nodded. “Well, I shan't keep you any longer. You still have classes to attend, after all. But rest assured, I'll always offer you my assistance should you need it.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

*

Try as you might, you couldn't stop thinking about Fig’s will. You barely paid attention to whatever Professor Sharp was saying (you were pretty sure he was giving you disappointed looks the whole time) and, when class was finally over, you began walking aimlessly around Hogwarts, hoping the excursion could help you process everything that had just happened. 

Of course, you had been giving some thought as to how you were going to spend the term break before your sixth year began. Natty and Poppy had also invited you for a sleepover at their houses. But, ultimately, you thought you were going to spend most of your time back at the orphanage, though you absolutely did not look forward to it.

But now, things have changed drastically.

You weren't trying to be ungrateful or petulant but… how many fifteen-year-olds out there got entrusted a house and a certain amount of wealth all of a sudden? 

The details of Fig’s home trickled back into your brain as you recalled the few times you had been there. It was a simple two-story house with brick walls, cobblestone roofs, a garden filled with peculiar magical plants, and a chipper house-elf named Hobbs. The insides of the house were filled with books and knick-knacks from Fig and Miriam’s adventure. It was warm there. And quiet, detached from the hustle and bustle of London’s city center.

‘Wouldn't it be so empty if only Hobbs and I lived there? How can I even stay there when Professor Fig is already gone?’ you wondered, uncertain. 

You were so caught up in your thoughts that you didn't realize that one of the armors in the corridor had already broken down into pieces, its parts strewn messily across the floor, no doubt it was because of their usual fight. But this detail slipped your mind and, the next moment, you found yourself falling down to your knees after you tripped over what seemed to be an iron breastplate. 

“Ow!”

“...Is that the Hogwarts' Hero I hear stumbling down the corridor?”

Cheeks reddening, you looked up to see none other than Ominis Gaunt standing in the middle of the corridor with his wand stretched forward, glowing red.  

“Yup, it's me. And don't call me that,” you sighed before pushing yourself back up and casting Reparo to fix the armor. “Fancy seeing you all by yourself, Ominis, Sebastian's not with you?”

“He’s being held back by Professor Garlick.” 

“What, did he make a student faint with a mandrake?” you asked as you inspected the repaired armor, satisfied with your work. 

“Almost lost an arm from accidentally dropping his Chinese chomping cabbage.”

You winced. “That… didn't sound good.”

That did not quite sound like Sebastian as well. You may not have known him long enough, yet Sebastian was not exactly someone you'd call clumsy. No, he had always moved with certainty and confidence, with intentions behind each of his actions. Needless to say, he wouldn't have done something as foolish as accidentally dropping a magical cabbage that could tear one's limbs. 

You turned to look at Ominis, half-surprised that he was still there. 

“How is he doing?”

“He’s… managing, though I can sense that Anne's situation still bothers him greatly,” Ominis quietly answered, carefully picking his words. “But I believe that he has come to terms with it. Slowly making peace with everything.”

“That's good to hear,” you nodded. 

Of course, like Ominis, you had been witnessing Sebastian making good progress. He seemed to be fully committed to the promise he made to you in The Undercroft a few days ago, and for that, you couldn't have been more relieved.

“Speaking of Sebastian, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about,” the blond-haired boy spoke again and it piqued your interest. 

“Mm?”

“Not here, let’s go somewhere quieter.”

“...Alright, lead the way.”

You assumed he would lead you to The Undercroft, yet it seemed Ominis had a different plan in mind because the two of you had just made a turn that certainly did not lead to your secret base. 

“Where are we heading?”

“The Black Lake,” he answered and your eyebrows shot up. “I’m unsure if this is something Sebastian should hear. Not yet, at least.”

You tilted your head to the side. This was certainly unexpected. After all, a good portion of your fifth year was spent doing unsanctioned and dangerous things with Sebastian, away from Ominis’ disapproving gaze. Now it was you and Ominis who were scheming together while keeping Sebastian out of the loop.

“This… was certainly a surprising turn of events.”

“You’re the only one I can turn to. And as to why, I'm sure you don't need a reminder.”

That shut you up. “Fair enough.”

It didn't take long before you reached the Black Lake. You held back a shiver when a chilly spring wind blew, mussing up the strands of hair that escaped your braid. Still, the sight of a verdant meadow after four months of pure white was very much welcomed. When you squinted, you could see the silhouette of the giant squid that lingered in the murky depth of the lake. 

Ominis led you to a quieter, more secluded part of the lake and you followed, sitting next to him on the grass. 

“So, what is it?”

“I know I said that Sebastian seemed to be doing alright, but… with the term break approaching, I can't help but worry for him. Anne is keeping her distance, Solomon's gone. Sebastian will be all alone.” 

“Ah… that,” you hummed. “I've been wondering about that, too, actually. Of course, I don't know Sebastian as well as you do, but I wondered if he'd be okay going back to an empty home. I figured the grief would be too much.”

He let out a heavy sigh. “I will just say it as it is. Aside from the grief, I worry he would try to do something stupid. Something we've agreed we'd help him put a stop to.”

An uncomfortable sensation pricked your skin, trailing down your spine. The faintest echo of Crucio that Sebastian cast on you back at Salazar’s Scriptorium. It was consensual, yes, you had asked for him to do it, but the pain was unbearable. It was as if you were being burned from the inside. As if a thousand knives pierced your skin over and over again. Your throat constricting on its own and breathing had been impossible.

Still, some days you wondered what was worse, the consensual Unforgivable curse or the anger he lashed out at you whenever he got too frustrated about his quest to find a cure for Anne.

‘Water under the bridge,’ you thought to yourself.

“I suppose you couldn't take him with you?”

“With me,” Ominis repeated slowly. “You’re suggesting that we bring Sebastian to a house where children are not taught but also encouraged to use the Unforgivable curses.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Curses aside, you know how I preferred not to stay in that house. I used to visit Feldcroft in the past, but now…” 

There was an awkward silence for a moment as you realized it wasn’t just Sebastian who lost his family and home. Ominis also lost a shelter. You looked up towards the blue sky, wishing you could find someplace for your two friends. Perhaps the three of you could sneak and hide in the Room of Requirements for the entire term break. That wouldn’t be too much of a bad idea, would it? Wild, but… plausible? You certainly wouldn’t have any problems with it.

Absent-mindedly, you put your hand inside the pocket of your cloak. It was at that moment your fingers brushed against an envelope. 

Professor Fig’s will. 

Suddenly, another idea popped into your head. 

“Something happened to me earlier.”

“Yes…?” Ominis arched an eyebrow, unsure of what it had to do with your current predicament. 

“Professor Weasley gave me Professor Fig’s will. He had listed me as his beneficiary… which means all of his possessions, including his home, are entrusted to me. I’ve been to the house a few times before and… it was quite spacious. There were spare rooms available.”

Ominis immediately turned to face you. “Are you suggesting that Sebastian could live with you during our term break?”

“I— well…” 

Now that you had said it, you realized how ridiculous you may have sounded. 

“I know that you tend to come up with bizarre ideas, but would your family even be okay with this? Can’t imagine they’d be pleased if you suddenly came home with a boy.”

‘They probably wouldn’t… if they existed,’ you thought to yourself. 

“Um… I sort of don't have one…”

“What do you mean you don't— oh,” Ominis immediately fell silent when he understood what you implied. The blond shifted awkwardly. “I must admit I have heard some rumors regarding your… family, but I didn’t dare to ask I…” he faltered. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Don’t apologize. Really!”

An awkward silence stretched for a brief moment before he finally let out a sigh. “Well, that’s even more bizarre, then. A girl and a boy living together. Did it ever cross your mind that your idea is rather unconventional, if not, inappropriate?”

You could feel the heat rushing to your cheeks. Ominis did not have to make it seem more serious than it really was. The three of you were just friends and nothing more. You highly doubt that Sebastian would do anything weird. Besides, it’s not like any of you had a lot of options.

“I know… it was just—” you took a deep breath. “Look, I just thought we could all stay there. Yes, you included. There's enough room for everyone to have their own privacy and there’s also a house-elf, so it’s not like it’s going to be just us.”

Ominis still looked like he suddenly got his vision and saw that you actually have three heads instead of one. 

“I don’t know what to say, thank you for the invitation? But have you considered the fact that there’s a possibility that something unwanted could happen?”

“Sebastian wouldn’t do that! And neither would you!” you replied with wide eyes, perplexed. “And even if any of you somehow did, which I highly doubt, I'm perfectly capable of defending myself.”

You were quite certain that Ominis didn't doubt you. After all, you did have the ability to wield ancient magical power and have successfully thwarted a goblin rebellion.

“Besides,” you took a deep breath. “I really don't know if I'm going to be able to live there with only a house-elf to keep me company.”

He paused. “Why is that?”

A rueful smile bloomed on your lips. “The silence would be too much for me to bear.”

“Ah…”

“A- anyway, you don't have to agree to my idea if you're uncomfortable about it. I was just thinking out loud… we need a place where one or the two of us can keep Sebastian company and you need a place to escape your family. I thought the house could be a good option.”

Ominis finally let out another defeated sigh. “You’re not wrong.”

Biting your lower lip, you inched forward, not wanting to put more stress on him. “I suppose there is a possibility that Sebastian would be completely fine living in Feldcroft alone and things would be the same despite… what had happened. At any rate, we wouldn't know unless we talked to him about it, no?”

“Yes, I suppose you're right,” he muttered. “We should talk to him tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

The Slytherin boy arched an eyebrow. “We're going to Feldcroft with him tomorrow, remember?”

Right. You remembered Sebastian asking you to go with him and Ominis to his cottage in Feldcroft. This would be his second visit after Solomon’s death and Anne’s disappearance. The first happened just moments after he learned of his sister’s disappearance. Suddenly, your chest felt heavy.

“Alright. We'll talk to him tomorrow.”

Ominis nodded. “I have to go back, Sebastian is probably searching for me already. Talk to you soon.”

“Me, too. I promised Natty we’re going to Hogsmeade together. See you, Ominis.”

He stood up and dusted his robe. His expression was unreadable. 

“Despite everything that had happened,” he spoke again in a soft voice. “I’m grateful for all the help that you’ve done for Sebastian. I reckon it must’ve been hard for you, too, back then. I’m sorry, I realized there were times when I was being too harsh on you.”

The heaviness in your chest grew and though Ominis couldn’t see you, you still hid your face from him. A small part of you worried he could somehow sense the relief you were trying to suppress. Still, a treacherous part of you continued to wonder if Sebastian would still do what he did if you had made different choices. Had you, despite your best intention, unknowingly and foolishly led him into darkness?

You took a deep breath. 

“Thank you, Ominis.”

*

That night, you dreamt about Isidora’s final repository, tucked deep beneath Hogwarts. Yet instead of locking it away, you absorbed it. Unknown, unlimited power coursing through your veins, taking you to a greater height. 

You dreamt that you found Anne and, with that treacherous power, you broke her curse. 

*

Feldcroft was as humble and quiet as the first time you visited it. The evening sun bathed the little hamlet in a warm, golden hue, enhancing the colors of the daffodils that grew all over the grassy field. It seemed to be more alive, with villagers loitering around merchants and children running across the meadows. With the goblin forces gone, peace had returned to the hamlet.

Beside you, Sebastian was staring at the idyllic sight with a hollowness in his eyes. The price of freedom surely had never been so steep. Feldcroft was safe, but Solomon was gone, Anne did not want to speak to him, and some villagers were eyeing him warily. There were rumors that the young Sallow boy had cast one of the Unforgivable curses during the last goblin attack. Opinions were divided, some thinking he should be thoroughly investigated, while others thought “Well, good riddance! He saved his sister!”

“Sebastian…”

“Come on,” the brown-haired boy said. “All this walk is making me tired.”

You glanced at Ominis, who seemed to be holding back as many emotions and thoughts as you did. Sighing, you followed Sebastian as he made his way home. 

The Sallow cottage was in a slightly worse state, which wasn’t unreasonable, considering nobody lived there anymore. Sebastian hadn’t said anything about his desire to return, but the three of you came to the house anyway to keep it clean and well-maintained. 

Solomon Sallow was laid to rest in a simple graveyard in the back of the cottage. Anne had told everyone in the village that he died peacefully in his sleep. Silence stretched as Sebastian stood before the grave, while you and Ominis stood a few feet behind him, watching. The brown-haired boy was still as a statue and you wondered what went through his mind.

But then he sighed and turned to face you, his face calm and eyes clear without a hint of tears. 

“I'm done here. Let's get inside.”

With a flick of his wand, the door to the cottage opened easily. Inside, it was as if time was frozen. There was a glass on the table where Anne used to sit, the bed was unmade, an opened letter sitting on top of a nearby fireplace, and the windows were starting to collect dust.

“Well… let’s get to it, then. Nothing a few Scourgify can’t solve,” Sebastian said, trying to maintain a carefree attitude.

The three of you worked in silence, repeating the spell to clean any dust and dirt you laid your eyes on. You turned your attention towards the bookshelf by the window, noticing more opened letters were scattered on the shelves and the floor around it. You averted your gaze, not wanting to take a single peek at the content. One of them caught your eye anyway because it had your name written on it in handwriting you had grown familiar with. 

Unable to resist the urge, you carefully picked it up from the floor. As you suspected, it was Sebastian’s letter to Anne, and he was talking about you.

Dear Anne,

Do you remember the new fifth-year I brought with me during my last visit? I forgot to tell you this, but she’s very strong. She’s capable of magic beyond our comprehension and she agreed to help us find a cure. I couldn’t be more grateful that I met her. 

Wait for us, Anne. We will cure you, no matter what.

Sebastian

“You know, reading someone else’s letter is considered a breach of privacy,” Sebastian’s voice almost made you jump. You turned to find him already standing next to you, eyes fixated on the letter in your hand.

“I’m sorry. It had my name on it, I got curious,” you shook your head before tucking the letter back into the first empty envelope you could find and stuck it between the books.

“It’s fine. There wasn’t anything scandalous there anyway, thankfully. It was just me singing your praises,” he replied, a faint hint of playfulness lacing his tone.

You bit your lower lip as you looked up at him, uncertain. You never did manage to use your power on Anne. It wasn’t like you knew how to reverse or break a curse — the Keepers didn’t give you much knowledge beyond how crucial it was to use your power responsibly — but you wished you could’ve at least tried.

“I’ve been thinking about reaching out to the Keepers again, now that they’re all present in The Map Chamber,” you finally confessed, picking your words carefully. “These past few weeks I… I’ve been trying to practice the ancient magic on my own, but it proved to be a bit difficult without a mentor. I just…” 

You sighed. 

“I still wanted to try, if you’re alright with it. To cure Anne, I mean. We… I… didn’t manage to try it before.”

Sebastian's eyes widened as he stared at you in surprise. “If I’m al— of course, it is alright with me! Goodness, after everything I’ve done you still—” he stopped himself, taking a steadying breath before continuing. “Thank you. I… you don’t know how much this means to me.”

A soft smile curved on your lips. “I’ll start working hard, Sebastian. Of course, I have to remind you that there is no guarantee that it will work. Isidora tried to remove pain and ended up creating a destructive force that she could not control. But I promise I will try. Figure something out. Find a middle ground that Isidora couldn’t.”

“And that is enough for me. Really,” he says, half-laughing, averting his gaze because he just couldn’t look you in the eye. The gratefulness he felt was just too great and raw he feared that you could spot it with just a glance. “Though, I suppose… we can only do that if we know where Anne is, can’t we?”

Your smile faded ever so slightly. “Yes, you’re right…” you trailed off before shaking your head and giving him a bright grin. “I believe she’ll come around. You didn’t lose hope back then, so let’s not lose it now.”

The weight of the unspoken fact laid heavy between the two of you: there was a solid chance that Anne wouldn’t return. Yet you chose to gloss over it for Sebastian’s sake. You also would like to believe that the bond between the twins was stronger than any adversities thrown at them, including their current predicament. 

It seemed that Sebastian thought of the same thing because he smiled at you and nodded.

“I won’t.”

*

It took around three hours to clean the Sallow cottage until it was spick and span. By that time, the sun had set and the three of you decided to make use of the dining room to eat some desserts you had stolen earlier from Hogwarts’ kitchen. 

“I find it a sacrilege that you knew how to get into the kitchen and not tell us,” Sebastian said with a mouth full of bread. 

“Sebastian, for the sake of decorum, please swallow your food before you speak,” Ominis lamented, his face contorting in disgust. 

“With all due respect, you cannot see me, Ominis.”

“But I can hear you, Sebastian, I'm not deaf.”

You found yourself smiling at their bickering. At moments like these, it was so easy to slip back into your normal routine, so easy to believe that everything was alright. No dark arts. No curses. No forbidden artifacts. 

“I have to agree with Ominis on this one, Sebastian, it's gross.”

“See? She has spoken. Listen to her.”

The brown-haired boy rolled his eyes. Still, he finally swallowed his bread and you were grateful for that. 

“You're saying that as if I never listened to you.”

Ominis let out a sigh that sounded as if he was a 500-year-old vampire who had grown extremely tired and weary of life.

“Cases where you listened to me are, unfortunately, rare.” 

“Alright, alright. We can go to the kitchen tomorrow, I'll show you the way,” you interjected, worried that the discussion would lead to sore topics. “The house-elves were very friendly, I'm sure we won't have any trouble getting there.”

Sebastian grinned. “I know I can always count on you.”

Perhaps it was the playful glint in his eyes or the carefree smile on his lips, but his words made you smile. You tried to mask it by eating another mouthful of your cream puff. 

“Though I have to say, bit of a shame I knew about Hogwarts' kitchen so late… but there's always next year, I suppose,” he spoke again.

You glanced at Ominis, and, as if sensing your gaze, the blond boy spoke. 

“Speaking of Hogwarts, are you planning to stay here for this term break?”

There was a short silence. Sebastian leaned back on his chair and stared at the ceiling. 

“I dunno,” he answered. “I suppose I could… but without Anne this house just felt…”

A pause. He shook his head. 

“Well, if you're planning to stay here for the entire break like you used to, I guess it wouldn't be so bad,” he finished, nudging Ominis with his knee. 

“I can't. Not for the entire period. The last time I did that, my lovely mother and father had been even more unbearable than they used to be,” Ominis said in disdain. “I must spend a few days or weeks at home, unfortunately, to prevent them from going rabid.”

“Darn it. I'm so sorry, that sounds horrible, Ominis,” Sebastian sighed. 

“I agree, some people just… shouldn't be allowed to become parents,” you muttered. 

“It was nothing I couldn't handle, as unfortunate as it sounds. But if it does get worse, I won't hesitate to make my escape. You’ll probably find me on your doorstep, Sebastian.”

The brown-haired boy let out a hum. “Escape, huh? These days I've been thinking about that, too. Going somewhere far away from Feldcroft, leaving this place for good…” he said with a faraway look in his eyes, imagining his perfect paradise. “But I couldn't abandon this place when I still don't know where Anne is. Feldcroft is… Feldcroft is the last thread that connected me to my sister.”

“Are you going to stay, then?” Ominis quietly asked. 

“I dunno. Frankly, I don't like being here without Anne,” he replied before locking eyes with you. He smiled. “What about you, ace? I reckon you'd go somewhere fun after your heroic deeds this year?”

Your heart leaped ever so slightly at the nickname. ‘Ace’, Sebastian often called you, because you always bested him in a duel, because of your terrifying and extraordinary skills. He used it teasingly at first. A way of getting under your skin or initiating a friendly banter. Now, there was a softness to it.

Though, you probably only imagined it. 

“Oh, she's definitely going somewhere alright. Somewhere better than ours,” Ominis muttered. 

“Somewhere better? What do you mean?”

“It's a bit of a long story. To keep things brief, Professor Fig made me the beneficiary of his will, meaning, all his possessions are now mine,” you explained. “I now have my own house.”

Sebastian's eyebrows shoot up to his forehead, brown eyes widening in surprise. “Beneficiary?” he repeated, utterly bewildered. “Woah, who would've thought? But I suppose it's not too outlandish, you were quite close with him and you saved Hogwarts. Well deserved!”

“It's a bit strange though, isn't it? I thought he would've picked a relative.”

“Maybe he doesn't have one and that's why he chose you. Could be anything, really,” he shrugged. His gaze momentarily shifts from you to Ominis. “Hold on, I didn't expect you'd tell Ominis before me. You wound me, ace.”

“This isn't a competition, Sebastian,” Ominis replied coolly, though you could sense a bit of amusement seeping into his tone. 

“You were still caught up in Herbology class yesterday,” you explained with a shake of your head. “Didn't realize you're quite possessive.”

“I mean, I saw you first,” he said with a low chuckle, the simple action successfully made your treacherous heart race. “And I was the one who dragged you into this circle, so… without me, you wouldn't have been friends with Ominis.”

You let out a laugh and you could hear the other Slytherin boy let out a bored sigh. “It doesn't work like that.”

“Ominis is right. Besides, I remember you made him mad at me for a few days because you told me about The Undercroft. So, the way I see it, you sort of ruined Ominis’ first impression of me.”

“It was a betrayal of our pact,” Ominis nodded dramatically.

“The end justifies the means!” Sebastian retorted, raising both of his hands, a cheeky grin curving on his lips. “Anyway, Fig’s will. What are you planning to do with them?”

Holding his gaze, you sat up straighter, somehow feeling nervous about what you were about to say. 

“This is just a thought. A random idea that came into my mind,” you started, greatly intimidated by the innocent way he tilted his head. “Fig’s house is rather spacious and… I don’t know if I could live there alone. Well, I suppose I won’t be alone, there’s a house-elf there, too. But I figure it would still be very, very quiet, with Fig already gone and all… I don’t know, the quiet just… unnerves me lately. So I thought… I’d like to invite the two of you to stay there, with me.”

“You’re asking us what?” Sebastian blurted. 

Had this been another one of your mindless, silly discussions, you would’ve laughed at his dumbfounded expression. But unfortunately, it wasn’t. 

“But we’re…” he took a panicked look at Ominis. “We’re boys!”

You let out a groan. “You’re saying that as if we hadn’t explored Salazar’s Scriptorium and spent who knows how long exploring goblin camps together!”

“That’s different!” he spluttered, absolutely flabbergasted. “This is… this is living together! Do you not have other friends?”

“I do, but they all have a loving and functional family, so I can’t exactly ask them!”

“I—” he was ready to retort, but you knew he knew there was no arguing that fact. Still, he shook his head. “And what about your family, huh?”

This time, Ominis spoke. “She’s an orphan.”

“She’s a— hang on. Again, how could you know this but I don’t?!” 

“You never asked!” you quickly replied, almost impatiently. “But that’s beside the point. You asked me what I wanted to do with the house, well, that’s my idea, but it doesn’t mean I’m forcing any of you to do it. It’s just… a wild, random thought.”

Sebastian was still staring at you as if you had just encouraged everyone to learn Avada Kedavra and insisted that it was actually an ethical spell.

“I mean, I think you'd benefit from being a bit more cautious and careful,” he carefully said. 

“Sebastian, I have the ability to turn you into a chicken. No offense, you're a great duelist, but I don't think you can harm me even if you wanted to. And I trust you wouldn't.”

“Of course I wouldn't!” 

An awkward silence fell. You couldn't help but glare at Ominis for being awfully silent and unhelpful, before realizing he couldn't see you. Mentally cursing yourself, you began to speak.

“Anyway, it was just an idea,” you waved your hand flippantly, now eager to return to Hogwarts. 

Yet Sebastian seemed to have a different opinion. “But you said you couldn't stand the silence and you're still grieving over Fig's passing.”

Your eyes met his and, for a moment, you feared he could look into your soul. He couldn't have possibly found a spell that gave him Dementor’s ability, could he? 

“Yes,” you admitted anyway. 

You and silence never really went hand in hand. The orphanage had been noisy most of the time. Bustling with a cacophony of children's screams, cries, and chatters. Silence used to be a respite you had often chased yet eluded you. 

But things had changed. When the noises receded and the room grew quiet, your mind became unbearably loud. There were so many sounds and thoughts echoing in the back of your head. The sound of Avada Kedavra cutting through the air, the deafening crack as the stone ceiling collapsed above you, burying Fig’s body under its colossal size, the roaring of a dragon. Each night a different memory.

Before you, Sebastian shifted on his seat, his eyes carefully searching yours. “Well, it can't be helped, can it, ace? We'll go with you. Though, Ominis would probably tap out every once in a while because he has such a pleasant family.”

“I'll try to make my family visit as brief as possible,” Ominis murmured. “Anywhere is better than home.”

You stilled, not at all expecting them to agree. A part of yourself wanted to laugh at the turn of events. You and Ominis should've been the one giving support to Sebastian, yet the tables turned and now you were the one being cared for. Perhaps Ominis had orchestrated the flow of the conversation to keep Sebastian in the dark. You found yourself not minding it, though. 

For now, you let yourself revel in the rare feeling of your friends coming to your rescue. 

“Alright. It's a deal. No going back on your promises.”

“Of course,” Ominis replied, his voice soft, a gentle smile curving on his lips. 

Sebastian locked eyes with you again and he grinned. “Wouldn't even dream about it.”

*

Time went by in a terrifying sleep. Somehow, you finished your O.W.L exams and your last day at Hogwarts had arrived. The Gryffindor table erupted in a loud, booming cheer when Phineas Nigellus Black, without masking his disdain, announced that they had won the house cup. You couldn't help but revel in your fellow housemates’ euphoria. 

“Imelda Reyes was talking about how Slytherin would win the house cup,” Nellie Oggspire said conspiratorially. “I told her if Gryffindor didn't win, then the system is rigged and Hogwarts’ integrity should be questioned! You have saved this school and the wizarding world! I say that should warrant a permanent house cup victory for Gryffindor until the next seven years!”

It was a wild idea, but you found yourself not minding it. Besides, you agreed with Nellie.

“What's important is that we won,” Natty said, a satisfied smile blooming on her lips as she sat straighter than usual. She started picking up pastries from the table and placed them on your plate. “Now, I believe our hero should have her own feast!”

“Hear, hear!” Garreth whistled. 

You let out a hearty laugh, happy at the absurd amount of pastries and desserts filling your plate. However, when your eyes caught the empty seat where Fig usually sat, an emptiness crept its way into your heart. Grief had been woken up from its slumber. You tore your gaze away and, somehow, it landed on the Slytherin table. Meeting with Sebastian's. He gave you a knowing smile and raised his glass. A silent acknowledgment, which you returned. 

Still, the emptiness clung to your figure as you dragged your feet back to your room, where your neatly packed trunks had been waiting. For a moment, you stood there, casting your gaze around the room, determined to memorize every detail even though you would return in a few months. 

“Hey, don't look too sad.”

You turned around to find Natty leaning against the doorframe, a sympathetic smile curling on her lips. 

“We'll all see each other again in a few months.”

A sigh. You let out a low chuckle. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I’m being sappy, aren’t I?” 

Natty’s dark eyes crinkled in delight. “You’re not, this school tends to have that effect on people. And don't worry. I'll make sure to write you lots of letters. That way, you won't feel too lonely.”

The smile on your lips grew. 

“Thank you, Natty.”

The journey to Hogsmeade train station was loud, as the students' chatter filled the air like the humming of a thousand bees. You managed to claim an empty thestral carriage for Garreth, Natty, Poppy, and yourself. As other students began to fill the remaining carriages, you spotted Sebastian and Ominis in the crowd. Quickly, you raised your hands, calling out to them.

Soon enough, your carriage was filled with familiar faces. The faces of your first friends in Hogwarts. Some roped you into trouble, some helped you achieve the unimaginable. All of them you cherished.

“Huh, I think this is my first time seeing you joining the train ride to London, Sallow,” Garreth was the first to speak, eyeing the brown-haired boy curiously. 

Sebastian's eyes locked with yours for a fleeting second before he cleared his throat. “I'm moving somewhere closer to London this year.”

Garreth hummed in acknowledgment. Silence blanketed the carriage for a moment, only broken by the huffing of the thestral and the sound of the wheel grounding against wet soil.

“I'm sorry about your uncle,” Poppy finally spoke with a gentleness akin to the caution one might show when approaching a wounded puppy. “First Anne and now your uncle… you've been through a lot.”

This time, Sebastian avoided your eyes, but you could somewhat feel the tension in his body. Feldcroft was not at all far from Hogwarts and words traveled far. Condolences had been given, as everyone, just like the villagers in that little hamlet, believed that Solomon Sallow died of natural causes. The gruesome truth was only known by you, Sebastian, Ominis, and Anne, and all of you guarded it close to your chests. 

“Thank you, Poppy, I appreciate it,” Sebastian replied with a hollow smile that did not quite reach his eyes, an expression that could be easily mistaken as grief. 

“How's Anne? Is she coming with you to London?” Natty asked. 

You opened your mouth, wanting to interject, worried that the innocent question would only rub more salt into Sebastian's wound. But to your surprise, the boy was smiling earnestly. His eyes reflected just the right amount of sadness. Enough to make everything believable.

“Anne is in France with one of our great aunts. She moved there after Uncle Solomon passed away. It was a tough decision, but… we agreed it was for the best.”

“I see…” Natty replied, completely none the wiser. “Well, I wish only the best for you, Sebastian. I know how much you care for your sister. I hope that one day, you'll be able to find a cure for her.”

This time, Sebastian faltered. From his side, Ominis inched forward, opening his mouth, no doubt eager to change the topic, worried about how it would affect Sebastian. 

Yet before he could say a word, Garreth spoke.

“I believe you will find that cure, Sallow,” he said plainly, simply, as if stating that anyone with a brain can brew an Edurus potion. “What? This world is a big place and magic is a boundless thing. I'm pretty sure it's out there somewhere. If not now, perhaps sometime in the future.”

“I think this is my first time hearing you saying something so wise, Garreth,” Natty said in amazement. “I did not know you had it in you.”

“Rude!” Garreth retorted, feigning a hurt expression. “I'll have you know that this brain of mine contains a multitude of new potion recipes ready to be tested! You think I am incapable of weaving pretty words?”

“It's a bit hard to imagine that when you regularly blow up your cauldron, to be honest,” Poppy said, grimacing. 

“And stealing from Professor Sharp's ingredients vault,” Ominis spoke for the first time, half-amused, half-relieved to fuel a new topic that did not concern Sebastian, Solomon, or Anne. 

Garreth protested, yet his voice was drowned by Natty and Poppy’s laughter. As your friends recounted more of his shenanigans, you locked eyes with Sebastian once again. His expression was soft, akin to relief. You tilted your head to one side, pink lips curling into a lopsided smile, which widened when he mirrored your actions.

No words were spoken, but you knew he found comfort in Garreth's words, and for that, you couldn't have been more relieved. 

*

It was almost sunset when the train arrived at King’s Cross Station in London. Students flooded out of the train, ready to be reunited with their families, ready to go home. Poppy found her grandmother in the crowd and you could hear her delighted squeal as she wrapped the older woman in a big hug. Garreth went his separate way not long after. You noticed him being welcomed by a group of people, all having almost identical red hair and the same kindhearted look. Must be the Weasleys. 

“Well, here we are, London,” from your side, Sebastian hummed. “Where to now?”

“The house is on the outskirts of the city. I think it's best if we take a carriage there. What do you think, Ominis?” you asked, turning to the blond-haired boy who had been rather quiet throughout the entire ride home. 

To your surprise, Ominis looked exhausted. You looked down to find him nervously fiddling with his wand.

“My mother’s helpers are here. I can sense them,” he quietly said, dipping his head low. “I suppose this means I have to go see my parents first.”

“Oh…” you stilled, unsure of what to do. 

If it were up to you, you'd waste no time whisking him away and maybe transfigure this helper into a chicken. The rest of his family, too. Good riddance. Yet you knew it wasn't what Ominis wanted. You probably couldn't do it either. Plus, you'd rather not get involved with the authorities, lousy as they were. 

“We understand, have a safe trip, Ominis,” Sebastian said, patting the boy's back. “Let us know if you need us to kidnap you from that hell hole.”

Ominis tried to smile, but it came out strained. 

“Thank you, but I'd rather you not go anywhere near my family. I don't want them to taint any of you,” he turned towards your direction. “Especially you, since we know nothing of your blood status.”

“...I understand. Please, be careful, Ominis.”

He nodded. You couldn't help but find how drastically Ominis changed in a matter of seconds. The sweet, gentle Ominis always seemed to glow when he was in Hogwarts. His smile was relaxed and his voice soft. A serene look on his face whenever he dozed off in class. Yet now, his light had been dimmed out. Eyebrows furrowed, hands couldn't stop picking on his fingernails. He looked terrified. 

“I will,” he said anyway. “Be on the lookout. I honestly do not know how long I must stay at that torture house… but I'll try to join you as soon as I can.”

Sebastian patted Ominis' shoulder once again, this time giving it a firm squeeze. “Stay safe, and I mean it, call us if you need some help to escape.”

“I will. Don't worry. I have my ways,” the blond-haired boy said, relenting. He took a deep breath and placed both hands on his trolley. “See you again. And don't do anything weird when I'm gone.”

“We won't. Not too much, at least,” Sebastian replied, amusement lacing his tone. 

“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear the last sentence,” Ominis huffed. He stood there for a moment, still facing the two of you. “Well, I better get going.”

“See you, Ominis.”

The Gaunt boy nodded. His expression was grim. But he adjusted his bag handles and pushed his trunk towards one of the exits. True to his words, you could see about three wizards waiting there, all dressed in black. They crowded around Ominis as soon as he was close enough, taking his belongings away from his hands to carry them on their own. No doubt it was how the heir of an important, old-money family should be treated. Yet you couldn't help but think your friend looked like a caged dove. There was a weight on his shoulders that wasn't really there before.

“He'll be alright. We've done this a couple of times before. Don't worry,” Sebastian said, nudging you with his elbow. 

“Right,” you sighed and looked around the still-crowded station. “Let's go, then, but make sure nobody sees us. I'd rather them not ask any questions or worse, spread gossip.”

He let out a low chuckle. “Bit too late to consider that detail, don't you think?”

“Oh, shut it.”

Quietly, away from everyone's eyes, you and Sebastian slipped away, but not before casting one last glance at the view behind you. At the train, at Natty, Poppy, and Garreth, laughing as their families welcomed them home, hands laced together. At Ominis’ disappearing figure. 

“You coming? I don’t mind leading but I kind of don’t know the way.”

You turned to find Sebastian leaning on his trolley, looking at you with an arched eyebrow, a playful smile tugging on his lips.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Follow me, country boy.”

“Lead the way, city girl.”

[percywinchester27]

The new Mrs. Winchester (19)

Word count: 4.5K

Pairing: Sam X Reader AU

Chapter warnings: Implications of sexual abuse, mentions of torture, PTSD, angst, flesh trade, language, mention of violence; reader discretion is strongly advised.

Series Summary: After spending over two years in captivity, and enduring assault, torture, and degradation of every kind, Y/N is finally sold off to the highest bidder. But when the deal is masked as a hushed marriage to a wealthy and powerful man, Y/N knows it means a few more nights of brutal torment ending in certain death. After all, why else would a man like him, want someone like her, except to fulfill desires so depraved that they would require owning a person. However, the Winchester mansion has mysteries of its own, woven in lies, betrayal, and death. Smack in the middle of it, she finds both hope and a home, in the person she least expected to find it with. But when it comes down to it, will she be able to save the thing that matters the most?

A/N: A huge shoutout to all my wonderful readers! Your support and love keeps me going! <3

Beta: My darling, @deanssweetheart23

“You can’t kick 'em in the nuts and make a run for it?” The girl in the next cell asked.

“Not if you want to avoid getting beaten into a pulp,” you told her through a mouthful of bread and tomato. “There’s always a guard outside the door.”

“Kick 'em in the nuts, too.”

You snorted so hard, bits of tomato landed on the floor.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “There are fancy rooms upstairs with wardrobes full of fancy clothes that you have to wear and then they take you to other fancy places for men–”

“Sometimes it’s just the fancy rooms overhead. Men come here, too.”

“But they take you out, don’t they?” She argued. “Just go to a reception and tell the hostess, a waitress, anyone. I know you managed to run away once… so why not try again? If they let you out, it can’t be that hard!”

You swallowed the bite in your mouth and sighed. What did it matter if you told her the truth? Neither of you would make it out anyway. 

“They’ve kidnapped my half-brother and half-sister. Little kids, barely six… have them at gunpoint somewhere. I make one wrong move and they are dead.”

“Shit.”

You could picture her dumbstruck expression. After spending a week next to her, seeing her face while going in and out, you were starting to get a hang of her. You still didn’t know why you did it, take her turn every night. Eventually, they would drag her out, but for a week, the boss wasn’t in the building and no one seemed to push the inevitable and drag that girl’s stubborn ass out. 

And boy was she stubborn. She bit and clawed like a wild cat at the guards who tried to drag her. She got plenty beat up in the process, but everyone seemed to wait for the boss to get her in line when he came. 

“Don’t you worry,” she said. “My fiance is going to get us out.”

“Fiance?”

“Yeah. I bet he’s worried out of his mind right now. But there’s police. They’ll find us.”

“The police are in on this,” you said. “They get serviced for their quiet.”

She spat, then screamed in frustration.

Footsteps echoed off the walls, and blood froze in your veins. You recognised the hard tap and unforgiving rhythm of his steps. The boss.

“Go to your bed and pretend to sleep,” you hissed, discarding the sandwich in your hand and doing the same. 

“W-what?”

“Just do it.”

Covering yourself entirely with the blanket, you rolled into a ball, as if that would make you invisible, teleport you out of the horror story you were about witness. Since staring at the glass wall in his cabin for the first time, you had prayed for yourself. The pastor in the church your aunt dragged you to every Sunday preached that one should only pray for the world and not for oneself… because praying for oneself was selfish. If you prayed only for the world, that made you a good person, and God helped good people without having to ask for it.

You had never been particularly religious, but that one thing had stuck around. Subconsciously, all your life, you had never asked for yourself, not from God, the universe or even as a favour from people. If you wanted something, you had worked hard to earn it, and achieve it by sheer will and not divine intervention.

But that first night with the boss had made you pray for yourself over and over.

And you prayed now, in whispers that only remained in your breath, never making a sound. 

God, let him forget that I exist… Not tonight. Please please please.

The footsteps came to a halt, and the door next to yours opened.

You closed your eyes tighter. Oh, that poor girl. He had come for her at last.

“I hear you’ve been difficult.”

A spit.

“Michael,” he said in his cold, raspy voice. “Hand me my cane, now.”

“Yes, Boss,” said Michael, gleefully.

A slash in the air and a piercing scream sliced the air.

You shut your ears tightly as the scuffling began… but then it ended as suddenly as it had started when a loud, sickening crunch which sounded so close to the shared wall that you were certain it had happened against it.

A minute passed.

“Oh, what a terrible waste,” the boss sighed at last, almost delicately. “Remove it.”

The taps receded and then soon they carried her body by your cell, blood trailing behind her.

You sat up bolt in your bed, unable to keep the bile down as you emptied your stomach on the carpet next to the bed. Sam’s side of the carpet.

You plopped back on the bed, breathing heavily. 

“Just a dream,” you told yourself. “Just a dream.” Then, the reality came crashing down on you and you wanted to throw up all over again.

Abby’s quiet knock from the main door wrenched you out of bed and through the seating area. She didn’t have to see the vomit. Her face was pinched when you opened the door for her. She entered trepidly and placed the breakfast tray on the table. 

“Who’s in the house?” You asked

“Just us,” she said. “Mr Dean Winchester left last night itself.”

“And S-Sam? He’s out for his run?”

“Mr Winchester left for work.”

“It’s only 7.”

She gave you an apprehensive look, as if she wanted to say something but was scared of how you would perceive it.

“What is it, Abby?”

“Miss, he’s in a right state, that man. Before you came, he used to be so dry and detached… but this past month, since you first locked yourself in your room, he’s gone from pillar to post for you. Sleep, food, everything be damned. The only thing he has done is worry.” Her hand fluttered nervously to her side. “He stumbled down the steps this morning from exhaustion and still went for his run anyway. I think he needs to see a doctor.”

Abby didn’t know what had conspired last night.

“I don’t know the deal with his brother being back now,” she said, wrangling the corner of her apron. “But everyone knows they don’t get along. It can’t be good for him.”

Sam had looked exhausted last evening. The dark circles under his eyes, the once-fitted shirt that hung loose on his shoulders, and the ever-present frown on his forehead had become more and more etched now. 

“Abby, tell me when Sam is back, will you?”

You sent her away and cleaned up your mess in the bedroom. A hot shower further cleared your head. Taking stock of your time in the Winchester Mansion made you recount the number of times you had run out on Sam, locked yourself in the room, the number of secrets you had kept. So, he’d had his own secrets. You knew that. 

Then there was the fact that Sam had never explicitly said he hated his brother. In fact, he’d never spoken of him without pain mingled with love. His exact words- “We had a fight and I couldn’t see his face after that.” Couldn’t…. Not ‘Didn’t want.’ Nowhere had his words implied that Sam’s consent was considered.

The day appeared stormy, with an overcast sky. Maybe the light of the lantern would carry, perhaps it wouldn’t. You set it on the sill anyway.

Dean found you at the pier an hour later, when you had nearly given up hope. He stood at his usual spot but did not sit beside you and you noticed he was dressed differently; no jacket today, just a black T-shirt and jeans.

Slowly, you tilted your face upwards to meet his sharp green eyes. How often had you wondered what Dean Winchester would be like? Bitter? Angry? But Han wasn’t any of those things.

“Get up!” He ordered, without an ounce of remorse. You got to your feet.

“This way,” he pointed and began to walk towards the jungle without a preamble.

A frisson of annoyance ran through you. Where was his abashedness?

“Sam didn’t know,” he said briskly. “That you knew me. That we knew each other. That poor bastard had no damn clue.”

“You want me to believe you’ve been hiding out in these woods without Sam knowing?”

“Yes.” He came to an abrupt stop and you realised Dean was dead serious. “That kid’s as straight-jacketed as they come. Keeping up the charade nearly did a number on his head, and then you came into the picture. Sam’s nearly lost his goddamned mind over you.”

“He told you that?”

Dean sighed in exasperation. “Haven’t you been listening to a single word? I haven’t seen Sam in months, not since the fight. But he’s my only family left. I had to keep an eye on the kid.”

The trees were too damn thick for any sunlight to trickle down. Dean started walking again and you followed.

“What was the fight about, then?” You pressed, refusing to believe.

“You,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Two years before I came into the picture? Yeah, right.”

Dean tilted his head, weighing his words. “About the idea of you, I guess.”

“Wow, that clears it all up, doesn’t it?” You laughed sarcastically.

He stayed quiet for so long that you actually paid attention to your surroundings, finding the trail vaguely familiar in the thick trees.

“We were to be married in eight weeks,” he said, voice deep and achingly sad. “She’d come to drop off pie for me. Sam says he insisted on dropping her back, but I knew my Jo. She was stubborn that one. If she wanted to drive herself, nothing Sam said would’ve changed her mind. Nothing. Ellen called three hours later asking for her. We searched all night long, all through the woods, all the way two towns over. Nothing. Sniffer dogs couldn’t catch a trail. The police found her car two days later in New Mexico… and her body two weeks later face down in the lake.”

You wanted to reach out, say something… anything, but words failed.

“She hadn’t drowned, Y/N. She’d already been dead when they threw her in there. Post-mortem said haemorrhage… blunt force trauma to the back of her head, ligature marks, bruises…” He closed his eyes unable to continue. 

You knew bits and parts of what followed– Dean’s self-destructive tendency and Sam’s unwavering support. The latter won.

“Sam still thinks he’s to blame. That he should have somehow foreseen it. I know Ellen doesn’t disagree with him or shy away from throwing it in his face.” A mirthless scoff.

“I think the bigger part of her anger is because of what Sam did to you… and me.” You said. “Or rather, what she thinks he did to you and me.”

Dean sighed. “I owe Sam a lot more than my life, a sorry and a thank you. This whole plan hinges on his resilience.”

“What plan?”

He ran a hand through his hair, but his pace slowed down. “The detective working this case, Jody Mills… she’s suspected a human trafficking ring here for years. Every few years someone goes missing or a body mysteriously appears. But this thing has its claws in so deep that we can’t trust the entire PD.”

A shiver ran down your spine.

He glanced at you briefly, and you saw the ever-present kindness there. “You’re smart. I’m sure you’ve figured out a bunch of this yourself.”

Nodding to yourself, you thought out loud. “Sam wasn’t keeping me around for sex, didn’t want to hang me as bait for kidnapping, so obviously he wants information about where I was but…” You vividly remembered the night when he’d held your bloody hand and then all but shushed your barrage when you had tried to spill it all in a haze. “He stopped me from telling him… He didn’t want to hear any of it.”

Dean chuckled. A sudden light sound in the pressing quiet. “And I just called you smart.”

“What?”

“For all your God-forsaken angst over loving Sam… Have you not considered him liking you back?” Dean narrowed his eyes as if he was judging your intelligence. “Obviously it’s hard for him to listen to what you’ve been through. Hell, I’ve choked back on what little you’ve told me. Why are you being so thick?”

Tears sprang in your eyes. 

He placed a gentle hand against your cheek. 

“Give yourself some credit, Y/N. As stupid as you’re being right now, how can you question your own judgement of Sam so easily? You took your time forming your opinion, didn’t you? So consider all proof objectively. He was on board with the plan from day one knowing it would wreck his reputation if I disappeared after transferring my inheritance to him, knowing he’d have to make himself a villain… all for Jo. The kid didn’t bat an eye before agreeing. What led to the fight was the very last step of the plan. After infiltrating the system, he’d have to be one of them and well…”

“Buy a girl,” you finished.

“Yes,” said Dean. The word hung heavy in the air. “Sam refused to do it at first, but it was the only way. It’s killed him since day one, Y/N. And yesterday when you said he’s no better than any of those men who hurt you…”

The tears now freely flowed down your cheek and right into Dean’s palm. He slowly directed your face into his chest, tightly wrapping his arms around you.

“Oh, what have I done?” You whispered into his jacket. 

Sam had banged hard on your door last night and you never gave him a chance to explain. Not a single word. If you truly loved him, how come the trust was broken this easily? And when you refused to speak, he’d respected your consent then, too.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” you said. “I should’ve trusted him, trusted you. After all, you never coaxed anything from me. I–”

A thousand memories ran through your mind: Sam’s fingers holding up your corset, touching his hand for the first time in the entrance hall before, his laugh after the false escape from dinner. Sam handing you a portfolio, Sam showing you around the old guesthouse, his fingers slipping on your wet shirt in the barn, laughing with him on the floor of your bedroom, his voice as he read out poetry… and his lips when they met yours.

“Sam took to playing chess in high school,” said Dean as you moved back. “I don’t think he ever got too good at it, but he used to come back rambling about all these moves, the King's Gambit, the Scandanavian, the Sicilian. He didn’t have anyone to play against, so I learned the basics to humour him and we played every night before bed.”

He’d started walking again and you kept pace this time.

“So there we are one night, recreating some classic game from half a century ago and I played a different piece and well, what do you know, my king ended up in a position from where he couldn’t move. Thought I’d lost because that was the only square my King was safe in. But then Sam said that’s not what it was. I couldn’t be forced to move my King to a checked square, but it wasn’t currently checked. A stalemate is what it was. That’s where we are at, Y/N.”

“A stalemate?”

“Yes. We know pieces of information, but not the ones that actually matter. It’s our move next, but every square is checked, Y/N. We need to know.”

The dim lights of the dungeon came back to you and oddly the crack of the skull. “The operation is not local, definitely crosses state lines. The building where they kept me is somewhere along New Mexico's border. It’s a huge glass building, seven stories high. I don’t know exactly where but from the se…” you gulped. “From the seventh floor, I could see a tall red tower with blinking lights. They blinked all the time… like passing seconds… but slower than s- seconds. The boss sits on the seventh floor.”

“The boss?”

“I-I don’t know his name. No one does. They only call him ‘the boss.”

“This is good, Y/N,” Dean said eagerly. “What does he look like? How does he find these girls? How does he keep them?”

“He… He looks like any other white man, in his 50’s, maybe early 60’s but his eyes, he has the coldest gray eyes and his laugh...” You stopped, collecting your thoughts. “You already know how he gets the girls. Men as scouts, pretending to be friends or lovers, finding vulnerable girls with little in the way of family. Me… Rosalie. About keeping them, there are two ways. One is standard, get them hooked to heroin. Once you have that, they’ll do anything to get the next fix. But those girls don’t make much money, yeah? They aren’t polished. I was the second kind, for the richer clientele that don’t like the smell of drugs and want the girls alive and kicking. For them, guess, it’s easier to blackmail by holding a loved one hostage. Rosalie only had a mother and I only had Jamie and Danny.”

You told him about how your siblings were held hostage somewhere, and how you stayed in line just to protect them.

“There’s very little we wouldn’t do to protect them, wouldn’t we?”

Dean nodded, then came to a halt and you noticed with some surprise that you were standing in front of the wishing well. 

His fingers grazed the parapet's tally marks, and you voiced a long-lost curiosity. “Why do you have one extra?”

“That dumbass brought you here, didn’t he?” Dean snorted. “So much for our secret place.” But he didn’t seem to hold any grudge over it. “Dad brought me here right before Sam was born. Told me this was a magic well, so I needed to make a wish about what I wanted… a sister or a brother.”

“What did you ask for?”

“You see the extra mark there, don’t you?” He winked. “After the fire, I used to run out a lot, trying to find the well again. Wish my dead parents back, you know? Finally found it when I was twelve and Sam was eight. ”

“Seems like you’ve kept pace since with the tallys.”

Dean winked as if there was a secret to it, but didn’t share it with you.

“Come on, make a wish then,” he said.

“One is already due. I don’t want to burden the well.” You sighed. “Look, Dean. I’ll help you with whatever you want. I can draw plans of the building, and the street layout I could see from the seventh floor. Tell you the number of guards, the shifts, even the names of some of the clients, but I need you to promise me that nothing will happen to my brother and sister.”

“I promise.” 

The walk back should have seemed like an interrogation, except Dean held your hand as you described more of the place, the people, the process… the boss.

“I told you already, I don’t know his name,” you burst out when he questioned a third time. 

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Did he… Did he hurt you? This boss?”

You laughed. One short, shaky laugh. “He had a wall full of these instruments… silver, gleaming and so cold.” Then there was the glass wall.

“Oh, that son of a bitch.”

“I wonder why you think Jo was involved in this,” you said, more to change the subject that anything else. “I mean she didn’t exactly fit the pattern.” Full family, doting boyfriend, well-to-do. Blitz kidnapping didn’t seem likely. The boss had to have had something on her.

“No, she didn’t fit the pattern and for a long time, we didn’t suspect her to have been in this.”

“How come?”

Dean’s voice reduced to barely above a whisper. “No obvious signs of… sexual assault in the postmortem report.” And despite the tragedy of it, Dean almost sounded relieved. He pulled out an old wallet from his back pocket and gazed at a picture inside lovingly. “I don’t know, Y/N, it makes me feel like an asshole but knowing that maybe she might have escaped the worst of it… God, I think it kept me from throwing myself off a damn cliff.”

“Oh, Dean!” You closed the distance in-between to hug him. “I bet she–” you gasped. The wallet hung loosely in his grasp and you glimpsed the picture behind the plastic. 

You grabbed the wallet and held it up. “That… That’s Jo? Your Jo?”

He took you by your shoulders. “You knew her?”

“Oh my God!” All the hurt and anger and fear came crashing down on you as you collapsed to the green earth of the side lawn. Over the years she had gone from being the girl in the next cell, to the girl with brown eyes, to the girl in your nightmares and eventually… the only thing you were proud of.

“She’s… she used to be the girl in the next cell. I knew her.”

“Who did this to her?” Dean asked, voice so sharp, it didn’t even sound his.

“The Boss did,” you whispered. “I think it might have been an accident. I only heard the scuffle and then the crack of her skull. It was quick. She didn’t suffer much.”

There was a sharp intake of breath over you and you didn’t dare look up.

“Dean, you should know, the girls there… eventually choose to stay there. I know I did. Once you stop with the kicking and screaming, it gets a little easier. The bad days are lesser and most clients don’t treat you like complete trash. There’s food on your plate at night and poor orphan girls have a bed to sleep in when they comply… they…. we stop fighting. Because there is no relief to fight for, no home to go to and no one who could protect us. But your Jo, she never stopped. I bet she took a few teeth out of that one guard, too.”

“Did they… did anyone ever…?” He could not spit the entire sentence out and you saw the courage it took to finally confront that question.

You looked straight in his tear-stained tortured eyes. “No one hurt her that way. I… I took her turns for the week she was there. I still don’t know why I did it. I’m not a charitable person, and it was hell that week, but something about her faith in her fiance reminded me of, well, me… before I found out how I got there. I wanted to protect her faith just a little longer. So, no Dean, no one touched her that way. And you should also know, she died like she lived, fighting and believing in your love for her.”

Dean hugged you and broke down. “Thank you��� Thank you for doing that for my Jo,” he blubbered. “You’re… You’re like an angel. Sam said that you know… yesterday he said that he thought you were some kind of an angel when he first saw you dressed in white. Wasn’t wrong.”

And you broke down with Dean. The night had descended upon you, as you both held each other in the darkness and just cried. 

Much later, locked in the dining room, you drew the floor plans of the building from your memory, a map of the road and the way to the bus stop that you could remember, the names of the guards, physical descriptions, names of the girls, anything and everything you could think of. The maids all gave you curious looks. Getting along with a brother-in-law would be normal for most families, but an estranged brother-in-law who you had never supposedly met? Knowing the history they knew, that had to look shady.

As it turned out, Dean had been alternating between living in the Guest house in Sam’s room and a cabin further north that not many people knew of in the estate. He knew ways to sneak in and out better than almost anyone. Hired security was never too big a problem for him. He was to set out first thing tomorrow morning to see how he could use your intel.

“You know my roommate Carmen,” you said at the door when he was about to leave. “She might have been the only one to care for me back then. I fought with her the night before. If you can do one thing for me, find her and tell her she was right and I am so very sorry.”

“Of course.” Dean stepped up and kissed your forehead. “And Y/N, I’m going to get that bastard. Not just for what he did to Jo, but also for what he did to you. You said you didn’t fight after a while because you didn’t have a home, a family. Now you do. Remember that.”

You watched Dean head out. He would be gone before you woke up tomorrow, but you felt lighter than you had in years, like the weight of the world had been lifted off your shoulders. Upstairs, you found Abby in her room.

She stood up the moment she saw you. “Miss, is everything alright?”

“Yes, Abby. I was wondering if you knew when Sam would be back?”

“He was home earlier this evening but didn’t stay long. I believe he left for Colorado.”

Hurt. “Did he say anything about when he would return?”

“No, Miss.”

“Did he ask about me?”

“No, Miss.”

“Did he say anything at all?”

The pitying shake of her head was enough for you to turn around and return to your room. What if you had hurt Sam beyond fixing this time? Abby had been correct, he looked fragile, not just physically, but something about the fragmented look in his eyes, as if one blow could shatter him. What if your hurtful words and vitriolic accusation finally pushed him to the edge? How much bullshit could one man take after all?

You had stepped into this house thinking you would be used, and it was the most horrid feeling in the world. What if Sam thought the same now? That you had used him… used his home, his wealth, and his empathy. Hell, you had used his body, too! 

No, you didn’t pray for yourself much. But in that moment you did- God, please give me one chance to apologise. Please.

*****************************

A/N 2: So turns out I was tagging all wrong :/ Ana is feeling sad about that. Hopefully, it will work this time.

Please do let me know what you think of this part. Reblogs and comments are what keep me going!

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[mcrololo]

Bechloe fic recs

(in no particular order)

You Make Me Believe In Magic by @shikariix

In the opening stood a woman with a tiny frame, bending forward slightly and breathing heavily. The light pouring in from behind her made it hard to see just how dirty and scratched up her clothing was. “Hey, uh,” she started loudly, still panting, “not to freak anyone out or whatever, but there's kind of a dragon on the loose. You all gotta evacuate.”

What can I say? It's got magic, it's got dragons, it's got gay flirting AND a kick-ass moodboard that inspired the whole shebang. Exactly up my alley, and if you said 'hell yeah Rolo, me too!' then what are you waiting for!! (nudges the author to write the soft epilogue i so truly desire) (in the meantime also read this new years one-shot & also this incredible piece of writing by my love and heart)

All is fair in Love and War by @pulledpurplecurtains

It's not about having feelings. It's about what you do with them. There's never a choice where the heart is concerned. The mind, however…the mind always comes up with choices. And sometimes life tends to happen as well.

Honestly I'm due for a reread of this but I remember immensely enjoying this fic. I certainly had a blast getting the go ahead to analyze it, almost as much as Ana probably had writing it! They're in high school, they're in gay love & also they are idiots. What else would you need?

"Something angsty, Rolo," you might say. And boy do I have the fic for you by the same author! (read the tags, be mindful of the warnings)

it takes two (to be santa claus) by @becasbelt

With their marriage on the brink of divorce, Beca and Chloe vow to do whatever it takes to give their daughter one last perfect Christmas- even if it means tracking down a rare American Girl doll two weeks before Christmas.

I know I already recommended this the other day but I just... It's so fucking good. I don't have words. Actually I do, go read it y'all (and when you're done then also read the cream in my coffee by the same author because I'm also still thinking about that one.

i think (s)he knows by @pinkpastels113

The Starbucks espresso machine broke again and Chloe is supposed to be taking care of everything, but the mechanic who showed up to fix it is making her job more difficult than it already was.

I forgot how much I love me a coffeeshop AU until I read this one. I don't often see flustered Chloe Beale in fic but here it's so blatant and I adore it so much!! I need more flustered Chloe Beale in my life pls (also go read this one too it's so fun!)

All I Ask of You by @kailoraurelius

From day one, Beca has always been there for her. If Chloe can count on anything, it's Beca. So now, pacing her kitchen anxiously, she waits for Beca to show up. Chloe has something very important to tell her…

Listen, Stained Glass will always have a special place in my heart, but I think AIAOY actually knocked it off its place because the found family characterization in this one just HITS. It's off the charts!! It's got everything; love, humor, and me on the floor crying (positive!) tears because the writing is so so beautifully descriptive.

naked in manhattan by @afh48

"Hi, it's Chloe! I know you just landed, and I know you're probably busy. But I would love to see you! So call me when you can!"

From the first chapter onwards I was HOOKED. I love experimental works and what is a first ever fic if not finding your writers voice? I enjoyed the journey of unlearning internalized homophobia; of characters clearly making decisions that were bad for them because of fear. But the fluff is the sweet, sweet cherry on top!

those days turned into nights by hedaswolf (the baddestwolf)

Beca kisses Chloe in the heat of the moment after winning Worlds. Of course, she proceeds to avoid the topic altogether. You can imagine Chloe’s surprise when Beca suggests they change their flights so they can drive to Stockholm in search of Swedish Princess Cake. But how long can Chloe go without bringing up the kiss? or, the Denmark to Sweden roadtrip fic that no one asked for

I swooned reading this. It's romantic, it's funny, it's angsty because they're pining idiots.... On top of that it's in 2nd pov and I LOVE 2nd pov <3

Life on Shuffle by @yelena-belover

“I know you don’t know me, Beca. But I’ve basically known you my whole life.” Bechloe // The Time Traveler's Wife AU -- Beca Mitchell suffers from Chrono-Impairment, a rare genetic disorder that causes her to spontaneously and uncontrollably time travel. Living life out of order isn't easy for Beca, and it's just as hard for Chloe, who struggles to cope with her frequent, often dangerous absences.

Chapter 8 and 11 shattered me in all possible ways. The way this fic weaves the timeline together so seamlessly... Time fuckery is hard to write, and it needs to be done right in order to feel satisfying; though still an ongoing fic, this one does it so masterfully that it scratched all of my itches as is.

Forgive Me These November Days by @obstinate-questionings

Why Chloe Beale didn’t graduate—and why she finally did—as told through yearly celebrations of Thanksgiving.

This fic made me take the first step into loving myself. imho it's one of the best Chloe Beale character studies out there and I genuinely can not stop thinking about it. If you're having a rainy day and need a pick-me-up, I definitely recommend reading this!

[glitterguts13]

NATLAN SPOILERS PLS DON'T READ UNTIL YOU FINISH THE 5TH ACT

Here me out on Ororon finding out he's pregnant after Capitano passes and having to give birth with out telling anyone who the father is

pretty please mpreg angst feeds my soul

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this...I'm never going to forgive them for taking Capitano from us.

TW: general angst of dealing with grief

The distant sound of celebration causes Ororon's head to pound. The music had been ringing out for days at this point, warriors and their families shouting thanks and praises, misty-eyed with relief, the war was finally over.

Ororon knows he should be with them, joining in on the cheer and celebrating the end of their long, weary battle. Part of him wants to stand beside the others, partake in a drink or two, and lose himself to the overstimulation of a hard-won victory celebration.

Instead, all he can bring himself to do is huddle further under his blankets, tears soaking his pillow as grief chewed through every fiber of his being.

A knock at his bedroom door,

"Young ones like you shouldn't be wasting their time in bed." Citlali chastises, "Everyone is asking where you are."

He swallows hard, emotion thick in his throat,

"Maybe....tomorrow."

~~~

He ignores it.

As his hands dig into the warm soil, the roiling nausea in his gut grows stronger. It had been weeks since it started, but Ororon stubbornly refused to acknowledge it as anything other than a lingering side effect of his grief.

Chasca hadn't faired much better once the adrenaline of battle had worn off, and the weight of her loss finally began to drag her under. Granny had spoken about how she'd vanished from everyone's sight for weeks before finally turning back up, red-eyed and much thinner than when she'd disappeared.

Its no different for him, except, his battle was private, and no one knew just how deep the cut had run.

Tossing his soiled clothing aside, and letting the water run down his aching body, Ororon closes his eyes.

Perhaps he was going mad.

The phantom feeling of Capitano's large hands trailing down his chest, over his thighs and belly, the weight of his body pressed against his back...

Ororon stumbles forward, barely able to grab hold of the sink before his stomach turns and the measly breakfast he'd managed splatters against the porcelain.

He shutters, feeling too cold for the Nataln heat, and stands up, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth.

His eyes lock onto his reflection, and that chill grows stronger as one hand slides up slowly from his side before his fingertips graze over the gentle swell starting to form under his navel.

Granny wouldn't be by that day, and Ororon is grateful for that, or else the scream he lets out would have shattered her peaceful view of her odd, but quiet grandson.

~~~

Everyone knows, but no one says a word aside from Citlali.

The months ticked by, and his belly continued to grow until it sat round and heavy against his slender frame. People stare, and he knows there's rumors being whispered when he's out of earshot, everyone quietly assuming the father must have died in the war, but how had no one known there was someone?

The midwife doesn't seem to care, offhandily remarking that the father must have been a large warrior, as Ororon's middle was already pushing full term at only seven months in.

Granny was furious, raging about how irresponsible he'd been, how foolish it was to risk a pregnancy during a war, how could he not have said something? Why hadn't he told her? Why wasn't he telling her more? Was the father so shameful, Ororon didn't want to claim their heritage?

A crib and a barrage of other newborn items had shown up on his doorstep days later, though she insists they weren't from her.

~~~

The stars are glittering in the sky, a peaceful calm settled over the land, while Ororon sobbed inside the side of his bed. A mess of blankets are thrown haphazardly over the floor, his nude frame glistening with sweat as his belly tightens like a drum.

Labor had started nearly a full day before, and Ororon is left cursing Capitano for putting such a stubborn child into his womb and having the gall to leave him.

It wasn't fair.

Why him?

Why was he left alone, carrying a child that would never be able to know just how wonderful a man their father was?

Ororon sobs, gripping the sheets as he deepens his squat, his waters bursting as the baby gives a particularly harsh kick.

Would Capitano even have wanted this?

Would he have hated him?

Would he have been happy?

Would they have been a family?

His belly quivers, another contraction finally forcing his stubborn child into crowning. The burn is instant, unlike anything he'd ever felt before, and he screams.

One hand reaches down, gasping for air as their head begins to bulge. He can't see them over the crest of his heaving middle, but his fingers gently trace the shape of their eyes, nose and finally, he feels their head pop free.

Blood and fluid trickle onto the blankets, one last desperate push sending his child tumbling into his waiting hands.

The midwife was right, the child is large, all chubby cheeks and hearty squawls as Ororon brings them to his chest. They flail for a moment before settling, snuffling and whimpering as Ororon all but falls to the ground, careful to keep them safe.

"My baby...my son." Ororon can hardly see them in the dark and through his tears, but his little boy has a mess of dark hair, and a delicate pair of ears matching his own.

"My baby boy..." he cuddles them tight, breaking down.

[megumismyhusband]

haii, can i request oliver aiku angst/comfort fic? i need this man😖

i hate aiku with my entire life so im not the best at writing him but here u go! ive also never written angst before sooo...i hope its not terrible

It started small, like most arguments do.

“I don’t understand why you can’t even text back,” you said, crossing your arms as you stood in the middle of Oliver’s apartment. “It’s not like I’m asking for hours of your time—just a text. Something.”

He sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. He looked tired, the dark circles under his eyes telling the story of too many late nights and early mornings. “I told you, I’ve been busy,” he muttered, avoiding your gaze.

“Busy?” you repeated, your voice rising slightly. “You always say that, Oliver. But I’m starting to wonder if you’re too busy for this—for us.”

At that, his jaw tightened, and he finally looked at you. His dark eyes, usually so warm, were hard, unreadable. “Maybe I am.”

The words hit you like a punch to the gut. “What?”

He exhaled sharply, his hands falling to his sides. “I don’t have the time, alright? Between practice, games, traveling, interviews… I barely have time to sleep, let alone keep up with everything you expect from me.”

You took a step back, his words cutting deeper than you’d anticipated. “Everything I expect from you? All I’ve ever wanted is for you to show me that I matter. That we matter.”

“I’m trying!” he snapped, his voice louder than you’d ever heard it. “But it’s not enough, is it? Nothing I do is ever enough for you!”

You flinched, his anger leaving you momentarily speechless.

He ran a hand over his face, frustration etched into every line. “Look, I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he said, his voice quieter now but no less sharp. “And maybe… maybe this isn’t working. Maybe we aren’t working.”

Your heart dropped. “You’re seriously saying that right now?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t keep pretending I can balance everything when I can’t. I don’t have the time, and it’s not fair to you.”

“Not fair to me?” you echoed, your voice trembling. “So, what? Your solution is to just… give up?”

His silence was answer enough.

You stared at him, waiting—hoping—for him to take it back, to say something that would make this all make sense. But he didn’t. He just stood there, his arms limp at his sides, his face an unreadable mask.

“Fine,” you said, your voice cracking. “If that’s how you feel, then I won’t waste any more of your precious time.”

You grabbed your bag and walked out before he could see the tears spilling down your cheeks.

Weeks passed, each one heavier than the last. You told yourself you were moving on, but the ghost of Oliver lingered in everything you did. The empty side of the bed, the late-night silence that replaced his voice, the way your heart ached whenever you heard his name.

But what you didn’t know was that Oliver was struggling too.

At first, he thought he’d made the right decision. Breaking things off would give him the space to focus on his career, to get his life in order. But the silence of his apartment quickly became unbearable. The things he once found comfort in—soccer, his teammates, the rush of a goal—felt hollow without you to share them with.

He missed the way you smiled when he walked through the door, the way you teased him after a game, the way you made his chaotic life feel just a little more grounded.

One night, he sat alone on the couch, staring at the empty spot where you used to curl up beside him. The realization hit him like a freight train: he’d pushed away the best thing in his life because he was scared of failing you.

And now, he was failing himself.

The next day, he showed up at your door.

You opened it hesitantly, your heart pounding at the sight of him. He looked different—his hair disheveled, his usual confidence replaced by something raw, almost vulnerable.

“Oliver?” you said, your voice cautious.

“Hey,” he said softly, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. His dark eyes searched yours, and for a moment, he just stood there, as if he didn’t know where to start. “I… I messed up.”

You raised an eyebrow, crossing your arms defensively. “Yeah, I think we established that.”

He winced but nodded. “I know. And I’ve been thinking about it every day since you walked out that door.” He hesitated, his throat working as he swallowed hard. “I was wrong, alright? About everything. I thought letting you go would make things easier, but it didn’t. It just made me realize how much I need you.”

“Oliver…”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted, his voice trembling. “I’m so sorry for what I said, for how I made you feel. You deserve better than that. And I don’t care how busy I am—I’ll make time for you. For us. Just… please, give me another chance.”

You stared at him, your heart warring with your head. Part of you wanted to slam the door, to make him feel the same hurt you’d felt. But the other part—the part that still loved him—could see the sincerity in his eyes.

“You really hurt me, Oliver,” you said quietly, your voice cracking.

“I know,” he whispered. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you if you let me.”

Silence stretched between you, heavy with unspoken words. Finally, you sighed, your shoulders sagging. “You can come in. We can talk.”

Relief washed over his face, and for the first time in weeks, you saw a glimmer of the man you’d fallen in love with.

[scissorr-luvv]

Your husband, Nanami, has been busy all week, neglecting his sweet wife. You're feeling pent up, especially since it's ovulation week. Waking up in the morning, you see Kento in his private office on an 'important' Zoom meeting, which sets you off. You forcefully open his office doors to find him sitting at his desk, listening to Higuruma open the meeting with a morning greeting. Kento quickly turned off the camera and gave a concerned look. “Princess, what's the matter?” You furry your eyebrows and give him the best doe-eyed and pout combo before saying, “Kennn come back to bed please.”

“I’ll be finished in about an hour baby, go wait in bed for me, okay?” You rolled your eyes before leaving the office slamming the door behind you making sure he could feel your anger. Going back to bed like instructed you scrolled on social media waiting for time to pass. Quickly an hour turned into four and now it was time to take matters into your own hands. You knew Kento would find you playing with your pussy, you would be punished but you didn't care.

Going into the closet and pulling out the vibrator that you hid in a shoe box for rainy days. And this was a perfect opportunity to use it. A small part of you hoped Kento would catch you and another part was scared. Scared of what Kento was going to do to you, it's one thing to play with your pussy without permission, it's another thing to have a secret toy that he doesn't know anything about.

Before you started doing anything you peeked into Kento’s office (trying to be unseen) to see him on a phone call, looking annoyed as he spoke to whoever was on the phone. You quickly and quietly shut the door and ran back into bed face down ass up. Just how Kento would have you. You didn't know when Kento would be done so you had to be quick. Pulling your already damp panties to the side you cut the vibrator on the lowest setting feeling the pulse around your clit. Making circles around your clit while you palm your breast mimicking Kentos touch.

Closing your eyes, imagining Ken’s skilled tongue around your pussy sucking your clit while his long fingers make its way to your tight hole. Gaping to be filled up already, you got your ring finger and middle finger wet with your saliva before pushing then into your needy cunt. Letting out a whine into a pillow. Fingers curl up, hitting your g spot before cutting the vibrator up to a higher setting. The pleasure was good, yeah, but not better than Kento.

Fucking your fingers hard, basically riding them at this point, and with the vibrations on your swollen clit you felt your orgasm start to creep up. Trying to keep your whiny moan down by biting your lip. Desperate to cum you started to pick up your pace grinding on your fingers and vibrator you could basically taste your orgasm at this point, you were too lost in pleasure to even hear the room door open.

“You naughty girl” Kento sneered

AN: This been in my drafts for about a while now, if you'll like it i will finish it.

[friendlylocalwhumper]

He’s so small. Bigger than he used to be, his shoulders broader with muscle, but he’s still so small when he curls up on the floor. Shivering, all those old scars on display… the Hunter crouches, groaning in complaint at his sore knees taking his weight, and lays a hand on the back that trembles with every sobbing exhale.

“You’re so different, these days,” Praises the torturer. His palm runs warmly down the spine that was once so knobbly, but now is mostly shielded by muscle. “Your name almost doesn’t suit you anymore, little light.”

Those words pull a shudder from under goosebump-riddled skin. Lux draws his knees up closer to his stomach, buries his head better under folded arms.

“Remember back in the first week, when you cursed at me? Pulled against the chains, kicked at my legs…” The Hunter wraps a hand around Lux’s arm to unfold it and pull it behind him. Inspecting the shape of it, he finds more meat there than there used to be. He remembers a boy who was skin and bones. Beneath purple splotches, muscles twitch with the aborted need to pull away. “You dared me to break this arm. So I did.”

“S-sometimes… I wonder, what… wha-, what I would’ve been like. If you didn’t change me.”

The words with actual meaning behind them surprise a laugh out of the killer. He rubs that heavily scarred back fondly. The sensory input of tall, ridged whip scars under his calloused palms feels deeply sentimental. “You would’ve been dead by now, sweet boy.”

The prone man tenses up, then tries to relax, aware that pulling away is almost never the right move here. “You were someone’s sweet boy, too.”

The roar of rage above and behind him is enough of a warning before his arm is lifted at an uncomfortable angle, gripped tight, and then wrenched unnaturally beyond its breaking point. It’s happened a hundred times. Lux convulses, a scream tearing from his throat hard enough that he imagines it draws blood. His legs twist for purchase, his chest heaves for air, his back arches to try to escape the pressure that is bearing down to force the snapped arm to bend farther than it should be able to.

It’s never bearable, but Lux gasps into relative silence soon. Shivers wrack his frame as his mind catches up to familiar agony. He blinks beads of sweat from his eyes and sucks down air greedily. The whimpers that fall from his lips haven’t made him feel truly ashamed in so many years.

“It’s been a while,” Seethes the Hunter, “but I know you remember how to be good.”

Fingers at his temple. Lux whines, panicked, twisting enough to make his arm crunch further out of place, just to try to get away. In the end the Hunter’s hand easily follows, and presses to that temple, and magic is thrust into his mind.

Lux has walls up, good solid walls, but they crack under the punishing barrage of the Hunter’s furious magic. He, too, has practiced over the years, and it’s so much easier to attack with mind magic than to defend with it. You don’t have to spend energy protecting memories and fighting through pain, when you’re attacking.

“No, you know what?” Thinks the Hunter, in Lux’s mind, and then he’s back out before he even makes his way past those defenses. Lux gasps, blinking rapidly, startled sobbing gasps lurching out of him as the pressure in his skull lessens and leaves a throbbing, unbearable headache in its wake.

And then there’s pressure around his neck. Familiar, too warm - weight on his hip to turn him until he’s flat on his back, teary blue eyes blinking in shock up at the Hunter. The sight of graying hair, a slightly longer beard, teeth bared in rage blurs as fresh tears well up and spill into his hair. Those hands wrap across his throat like he was created for this. To be punished. Lux tries to twist, to look anywhere else, to drag himself free of the weight atop him… but it’s too late, it’s always too late by the point that his lungs start to burn with the need for oxygen.

The Hunter’s hungry eyes flit from his crushed throat, to his own hands flexing and bearing down, to the spilling tears, to Lux’s lips pulled taut to bare his teeth. “I can make you good, you’ll be good again when I’m done,” He promises with renewed fervor. “Why did you have to push it, my light? Why are you making me do this again?”

The threat earns a new depth of terror from the pinned warlock. His freshly broken arm even tries to move, twitching toward the Hunter’s leg.

“You could’ve gotten out with just a beating, just a reminder. But I have to break you again, don’t I? So you learn your lesson. You will never, never say something like that to me again.”

Lux tries to shake his head, heels kicking frantically across the concrete floor. His less broken arm is lifted, nails digging into the Hunter’s wrist, but that is being ignored entirely. His face is going purple, feels like it is radiating heat, and it starts to feel like the hard floor beneath him is turning into clouds. His control, his consciousness is slipping. And as he falls, falls, with lungs full of fire, his skull feels like it’s being broken open. The two hands crushing around his throat have changed to one hand, shifting to the center and shoving up under his jaw, making sure not even the weakest gasp is possible - and the Hunter’s other hand has come up to Lux’s temple, slamming magic in against defenses that have gone transparent and wobbly. The magic slices straight through.

In the split second before he gives a last, feeble jutter and falls limp, vision fading to black and his own muffled choking drowning out under the sound of blood rushing in his ears, Lux sees precious memories flashing in his mind and scrambling. Confusing - visions of his love and his daughter and old, dear friends flashing in random order. A deep sense of hopeless dread comes before the fall into an abyss of feeling absolutely nothing, his body going numb and merciful darkness claiming him.

[crescentfool]

orpheus and thanatos 💚