#someone stop him before he gets food poisoning!!!!

[luveline]

hello lovely angel!! humbly requesting zombie!steve au, perhaps more of jealous steve? i love their dynamic so much💗 maybe someone is flirting with reader, and enter protective steve:)

thanks for requesting! fem, 2k

You tend to think of it in two weird halves. You love Steve, and you never would’ve known that without the end of the world, so things are okay. Sometimes you wonder if he ever could’ve loved you if he hadn’t been so close to you for so long, but he loves you in this insane capacity of softness that says otherwise. Like, soulmate style. 

It didn’t begin that way. Steve your reluctant guide, and you his unlikely saviour. You’d stopped him from dying at the very start of it all and he couldn’t leave you behind. And Steve, he’d been mean to you. He didn’t want to take care of you initially, but you’d grown to get along. You’d argue black and blue and he’d still rub your back at night. 

There are so many moments you’ve shared that make what you have all the more special. A hundred different memories from before you’d ever kissed. You think about it now, watching him across the firepit as he shows a young girl, Cassandra, how to braid her hair. 

The one that’s sticking today is when Steve got really bad food poisoning for the first time. When you’d known you were in love with him for a while, and when he’d stopped pretending he didn’t know. He’d been sick everywhere, on both your shoes, and you’d rubbed his back through everything.  

It was nice to take care of him. Nicer that night when you’d shared a bed and he’d hugged you half to death. 

He has no idea how much he means to you, or how much those moments with him kept you going when you were all alone. You’re lucky now to have found community, but those stolen hours in bed with him hugging him and getting to be his support, you wouldn’t have made it here without them. 

“Hey.” 

You look up as a man sits down. A boy, a man —what do you call twenty somethings? You don’t feel like a woman most of the time, but you are. 

“Hi,” you say. 

“I’m Jamison.” 

“You’re Eddie’s friend, right?” 

“Who, Munson?” Jamison makes a kidding face, a disgusted scrunch of his eyebrows that falls away to more friendly fondness. “Yeah, we go back. You’re Eddie’s friend too, right? I saw you guys taking out some laundry a few days ago.” 

Jamison is handsome. He has tan skin, short hair, and a crooked nose. His smile is disarming. If you hadn’t fallen in love with the handsomest guy around, you might feel nervous under his gaze. 

Time spent ugly under Steve’s reverent handling makes you confident. You genuinely feel prettier knowing Steve loves you, and it makes it easier to be yourself with strangers. 

“Eddie’s awesome,” you say easily. “I thought he was gonna kill me when we first met, but he’s too nice.” 

“Nice, really?” 

Jamison is casual, as people go. You wonder what his motivations are for talking to you at first, but as conversation stretches, littered with the cracking pops of the fireplace and brief pauses of surprisingly comfortable silence, you realise he’s just talking. Maybe he’s lonely. You know how that feels. 

He tells you that he and Eddie had been in a rock band together before the apocalypse. You’d known to some extent that Eddie was in a band, but Jamison tells you all the details you’d been missing. They were called Corroded Coffin, four members, Eddie played guitar and Jamison thought he was pretty fucking good at it, actually. 

“I don’t think we would’ve been, like, Metallica. But we could’ve been good. We were gonna make a record.” 

You smoke sympathetically. “I bet you could’ve been.” 

“What were you doing? Before all this?” 

“I honestly barely remember,” you say quietly. Your life before Steve is a blur, and it’s painful, too. “Things are harder now, I know that. I wish every day that we could go back to how things were, you know, I miss TV and grocery stores and my family.” You lick your lips. “I wish things were different, but somehow, I think I like my life now. I have stuff to do. Is that crazy?” 

“It’s not crazy. Everything fucking sucks,” —you both laugh— “but that’s not crazy. I’m lucky, I still have my dad, and my friends. There’s purpose in being here.” 

You nod emphatically, just once. “Exactly.” 

You have purpose, now. You get to be a friend, a girlfriend, a confidente. You take care of people. 

It all comes back to Steve, at the end of the day. Would you change the world if it meant never having met him? 

Nope. 

You glance across the fire for him, but he’s not there. 

You put your arm behind your back and bend, looking for him. 

“Looking for someone?” Jamison asks. 

You deflate with relief when you spot him standing near the gaggle of tents about fifty feet away. He’s looking at you from over Robin’s shoulder. You wave, and he waves back with a big smile. 

Something seems a little wrong. 

“Steve,” you explain. 

“He’s your boyfriend, yeah? Eddie told me you’ve been together since the start.” 

You don’t bother correcting him. He might not mean together as how you’re thinking it. “Yeah, that’s him. Have you met him?” 

“Kind of. We all thought he was a huge dick, back then.” 

“He sort of was,” you say. “I mean, we all had our own stuff going on. I get that I’m biased, but he’s my favourite person I’ve ever met. He’s so kind, I don’t think I could describe it to you or anyone just how much he cares about people. I wouldn’t be here without him, and… I don’t know, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but if you ever wanted to meet him again, he’s amazing. He’s a great friend. He’s so fucking funny, he makes me laugh every day.” 

“He’s sort of giving me the stink eye,” Jamison says. 

You wave your hand weakly. “He has raging jealousy issues.” 

“Shit, am I getting you in trouble?” 

“No, never!” you say, tempted to laugh. “He doesn’t get mad at me for stuff like that. He’s normal, I promise. Just sensitive.”

You tell Jamison that it was nice talking to him because it really was, but you’ve been missing Steve for hours already and you need to get back to him before you go totally bonkers. 

He’s sitting on the floor in the tent. The weather has been beautiful lately, you could sleep under the stars if you weren’t scared of being zombie charcuterie. Steve has stripped down to just his jeans and socks, no t-shirt or shoes to be seen. He has his sketchbook splayed open on his thigh, but he abandons it the moment you kneel down. 

“Hey,” you say. 

Steve folds his book closed, pencil between its pages. “Hi. Have I told you lately how beautiful you are?” 

You shuffle in to take his hand. Clumsy touches, his fingers warm and a tad clammy between yours. “You told me yesterday that I have a smile like an angel. I know you were kidding, but I still felt it.” 

“I wasn’t kidding,” he says, wrinkling his nose with a smile. “You think every compliment is a joke.” 

“Don’t make me laugh so much, then.” 

He squeezes your fingers gently. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself to Jamison. Just, I knew him already from school. And he did not like me.” 

“That’s okay. He seemed nice, I think you’d get along if you met now.” You kick your shoes off and crawl as close to him as you can get. He looks up at you, but you look down at his lap. “What are you drawing?” 

“I was just trying to touch up that landscape I did of the river,” he says, a sheepishness to him as he opens his sketchbook. 

You read it with affection, trace lines and hatchings in awe. “Steve, I really wish you had time and space to do this stuff properly. Not that you aren’t doing it properly, just, I know you could make something just as beautiful as this with paint.” You slide to be sitting properly, putting you both at the same height, so you can meet his eyes as you continue. “Did you know what you wanted to do, when you were finishing school? Did you ever think about art?” 

“I thought about it.” His lips quirk. “Mostly about how my dad would’ve kicked me out if I said something that stupid.” 

“It’s not stupid.” 

“I know.” 

That would’ve been a nice life. You and Steve living together, with a basement for his paintings, or a garage turned studio. You’d read books together every night like you do now, and you’d scrub paint smudges off of his cheek. 

You love him so much it must give you an aura. 

“I’ve got nothing to worry about, huh?” he asks softly. 

You drift in, tipping your head back for a kiss you don’t take. “I don’t know, Steve, Jamison used to be in a rock band.” 

He scoffs in disgust. You think it might be a mixture of anger at Jamison and himself. “Who wants to date a rockstar?” 

“I might’ve.” 

You’re teasing, of course, smiling as your kiss draws nearer, and nearer. 

“Well, I can be a rockstar,” he says quietly, warmth of his breath on your lips. “Just give me a chance to get there.” 

You brush the tip of your nose against his and hold your breath. “That’s okay,” you say, letting it rush out of you in a huff, your excitement to be kissed too much to bear, “I like my guys all mixed up. Preferably good at track, and swimming, but with a soft side. Kind of guy who fills a sketchbook up with my face.” 

Steve lists to the side. Your lips are so close, you can feel the phantom of them against yours as he moves in. “It’s not just your face… it’s your hands, your arms… your everything–”

He cuts his own explanation off with a soft kiss. That softness swiftly hardens, turns rough, ten long seconds of sweetness before his hands coming up behind your head and he’s pressing inward, deepening the kiss, and giving you little room to breathe. 

You have no intention of dating any rockstars, but his jealous streak has nothing but upsides for you. Steve knows that his jealousy over the innocuous is his own problem, his own insecurity that he’s working on, and while you sympathise with him (after all, haven’t you yourself worried he’d find someone else he liked more?), you have to confess to enjoying the edge to his kissing. 

You make a pleased, humoured sound as he breathes you in like you’re a drug he’s been waiting for. He gets sloppier, and you can’t help pulling away to laugh. 

“What?” he asks, thumbing at your cheek in a soft juxtaposition. “Sorry, am I being a dick?” 

“No, it’s fine. Kiss me how you want to.” 

Steve kisses your cheek softly. “He knows you have a boyfriend, right?” 

“He knows.” 

Steve hums like he’s smiling and nudges your nose with his, until you part your lips, and he wades in for another dose. 

[ohmyeyesmyeyes]

you never knew how much i really liked you - s. crosby

summary: 'In truth, it wasn’t nothing – it was never nothing with Sid. It was always something, and usually it hurt. The timings; what wasn’t said; the history. There was more to the two of you than what even Nate and Taylor knew of – not even when they seemed to stop breathing when you admitted what it could be.'

warnings: sid x f!reader (ex-hockey player), swearing, miscommunication trope, mentions of the consumption of alcohol, bonus point if you spot the unintentional olivia rodrigo lyric, mentions of food aversion (in relation to illness & hints at anxiety), passing mentions of someone potentially having alcohol poisoning, confrontation

< a/n: the ending is abrupt but i can't be arsed changing it! sorry! ALSO: IT'S PENS PRE-SEASON DAY!! >

word count: 13k

 There was a chair, this time. They’d never been a chair there before, ever. You’d been to this house and you’d sat on the end of the deck with your feet hanging over the edge countless times in the last decade or so, but there had never been a chair there before, at least not one that didn’t have to be dragged from inside and unfolded. 

It didn’t particularly strike you as odd or anything, but it did stop you in your tracks at the top of the deck, and you did try to see if you could see him through the windows of his house, but it was early so the sun only reflected against the glass panes, completely blocking your view. But you’d seen his car in the driveway, and you knew he’d be up – probably eating his breakfast or in the gym already.

You gripped your book a little tighter, making your way towards the end of the pontoon and assessing the chair with your own eyes. You almost laughed at the blanket draped across the back of it, but it didn’t stop you from picking it up and covering yourself with it after you got settled.

It was a lovely morning, it always was here, and it was partly why you loved arriving earlier: there was something about the crispness of the sun in the morning and the rawness of the view. It wasn’t one you could ever imagine getting tired of. The water was gorgeous, the trees were gorgeous, the sky was gorgeous, the birds were gorgeous. As usual, it took you a while to work yourself up to actually pick up your book and tear your attention away from the view.

It was a muffled bark that finally did it, your fingers absent-mindedly playing with the pages of the book, and you turned to peer around the side of the chair, a golden labrador bounding down the pontoon, tongue lolling out and ears flapping as she did. You grinned, sitting forward in the chair and anticipating Sam to stop right in front of you, her tail wagging ferociously as you scratched behind her ears.

“Good morning to you, too.” You muttered, clenching your jaw and stroking her fur as she collapsed to lay at your feet, her belly exposed for you to scratch, “Where’s Sid?” At the mention of his name, Sam’s ears perked up and she barked, her head turning to something behind you, “Is he walking down now?” You didn’t turn around, instead focusing your attention entirely on the pup in front of you – until the pair of footsteps echoing against the wood became too noticeable to ignore.

The sun was still blinding from reflecting off the patio doors, but the silhouette of Sid was nearly impossible to ignore, more so when he was effortlessly carrying another chair in one arm and a travel flask with two cups balanced on the lid in the other.

You shielded your eyes with your hand, about to get up to help him in some way, but he shook his head adamantly, “I got it. Here.” He passed you the mug with the cups, and you sat silently, watching him unfold the chair (it looked a lot less comfortable than the one he’d set out for you, though you didn’t comment on it) and settled himself in.

“Morning.” You greeted, passing him one cup before unscrewing the lid and sniffing.

“Morning.” He replied, grinning, “It’s decaf, by the way.”

You couldn’t help but smile at that, “Thank you.”

“‘Course.”

“Are you sure you wanna put this in your body this early?” You asked, taking his cup from him and pouring out the steaming coffee. It warmed your hands nicely through the plastic, and you snuck a look at him out of the corner of your eye. He was sitting comfortably, a little lower than you because of the height of his chair, and he was watching you carefully, completely unashamed at having been caught in the act. His grin did seem to melt into one more bashful, and he looked out across the water, blinking in the light.

“I feel like I’m gonna need it to get through today.” He answered, gently taking his cup from your hand, fingertips brushing delicately against yours.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be pretty hectic.” You agreed, placing the flask on the floor, giving Sam a quick pat before sipping on your own coffee, your book tucked under your chair. You had a feeling you weren’t going to get much reading done now anyway, not when Sid had decided to join you.

You both leaned back in your chairs, the blanket tucked around your waist, and nothing was said for around ten minutes. Nothing needed to be said. Even Sam seemed to get that message; she was curled up at both your feet, her head turned in the direction of the water. Every so often she’d perk up, maybe when a bird flew overhead or when she heard something in the woodland, but she’d always end up placing her head back down on the wooden beams, bathing in the sun.

“This is always my favourite week of the entire year.” You admitted a little shyly. It wasn’t something you were afraid of saying out loud, per se, but you’d known Sid for years. He was the one that started the week-long camp for the kids in Cole Harbour, and for some reason admitting that it was his creation that you always looked forward to the most was a little daunting.

He didn’t seem to think so, but he couldn’t quite keep the shock off his face when he registered what it was you’d said.

“It is?” 

You nodded, “Is that sad? I feel like it is.”

He shook his head, “Nah, it’s not sad at all.”

If it had been anyone else that had admitted that, Sid might have teased a little – or if you’d said something else altogether, but almost as soon as you’d thrown those words out there he felt a twinge of empathy for you. To have played hockey with each other most of your youth…you’d obviously stopped playing against and with boys at a certain age because of the regulations, but you’d managed to secure a spot on a local girl’s team and eventually you’d gone on to play at college. And by the time graduation came around, you had your degree, sure, but there was no women’s hockey league to play for, not one you could live comfortably off anyway.

Sid had often tried to put himself in your shoes…it killed him every time, like getting stabbed in the chest. Only, when you said that, the knife twisted and was pulled out, and he swore his heart broke a little. To have the skill and the talent to play professionally, but no league to play in was his worst nightmare.

To not have hockey, to him, was to not live and breathe. If he didn’t have hockey, he couldn’t even imagine what he’d be doing right now.

You just hummed, clearly not believing him, and he inhaled sharply, resisting the urge to give you a reassuring touch. He was about to say something, but you turned to look at him sharply, an odd expression on your face.

“What?” He found himself asking, taking a self-conscious sip of the coffee to hide his face.

Your eyes narrowed, and a small smile curled at your lips, “Aren’t you gonna make a comment about ‘wow, you must really miss me, huh?’, or–”

“I don’t sound like that.” He shook his head, managing a tight smile. You were trying to cover a wound that had scarred over the years by switching the subject, but Sid could only muster a forced laugh and a curious glance in your direction, “Did you miss me, though?”

There was a brief moment where he thought you’d play his question off and pretend you hadn’t heard him, and in that brief moment there were a few things that happened to him: his heart seemed to pound and drop to his feet at the same time; he realised that if you didn’t miss him he wasn’t quite sure what else to do, and regret. The regret was anticipatory, though, of you ignoring him.

And it also seemed to dissolve completely when you answered: “Yeah. Not as much as I used to, though.”

Sid swallowed, picking at his navy joggers. Instead of regret, it was guilt that ate away at him – for something he couldn’t even control.

“What do you mean?” His mouth felt dry, and his grip on the cup tightened.

You turned to look at him, shrugging hopelessly, “That first year without you was just a lot to adjust to, that’s all.”

“It was?”

Something on your face seemed to flicker; your brows twitched downwards and any trace of happiness that was previously written on your face was suddenly no longer visible. Your head tilted, and you stuttered, clearly not quite knowing what to say or where to start.

“I…” You trailed off, and Sid felt the beginnings of dread begin to creep up his stomach and settle there like a pebble, “Yeah. You didn’t know that?”

He shook his head, jaw clenching. You looked inexplicably sad at his reply, and turned to fix your eyes on the water in front of you, a sip of scalding coffee seemingly hinting at wanting to end the conversation.

But Sid wasn’t quite done, not yet. His first year in the NHL: he remembered it pretty clearly, and he also remembered that neither of you were that good at keeping in touch with each other. You were on the other side of the country in California for college, and he was mainly in Pittsburgh, but nearly everywhere. Moving out of Nova Scotia was a big thing for both of you, but having lived next door to each other for your entire childhood and having played on the same team as little kids? That first year was difficult.

“Did something happen?” He asked, voice a little frailer than he’d liked to have conveyed – so much so that even Sam’s ears seemed to prick at the slight twinge in pitch.

You shook your head, sighing deeply, “I just kind of had the sense that I was never gonna see you again those first few months, that’s all. I psyched myself out…it’s fine now, though.”

***

“Is Sid okay?” Taylor sidled up to you on the edge of the group of kids listening intently to the man in question, skates scratching to a stop as she murmured the question in your ear.

You felt your brows pinch, your gloved hands resting on the top of your stick hiding your mouth as you turned to her, “As far as I’m aware.”

He looked okay from where you were standing: the very picture of effortless leadership as he explained the next game to the group of kids all staring up at him intently, some with dropped jaws and some with frowns of concentration etched on their features. They were all wearing monochrome jerseys and the overhead lights were reflecting off their helmets. Not a single one wasn’t watching Sid talk.

His voice wasn’t wavering, and he was giving the kids his entire attention – devoted as usual to his sport…so?

“Why?” You raised a brow, looking at Taylor out of the corner of your eye.

Her mouth was pulled down at the corners, and she shrugged offhandedly, “I dunno, he just seems a bit off today.”

Yeah, okay. You turned your attention back to him, trying to commit every little motion of his hand to memory, intently keeping an eye out for any trembling or straying of his attention. It must have been another fifteen seconds before you sighed, turning back to Taylor, who was regarding you with an air of amusement, a sly smile hiding on her face.

“What?” You asked, feeling as though she was looking right through you.

“Nothing.” Then, after a pause, “Did he drive you over here?” 

You hummed, nodding, but your mind was stuck replaying and analysing what she’d previously said, “What did you mean by ‘off’?”

“What’s up with Sid?” 

Your heart thundered in shock, not having anticipated Nate to shuffle over to your other shoulder. His voice in your ear was jarring, but still as soft as yours and Taylor’s had been, not wanting to disrupt the talk at the front of the group.

“What do you mean?”

“Three guesses.” 

You and Taylor spoke up at the same time, and when you turned to look at her she was glaring at you rather pointedly, and Nate whistled lowly in your ear, a deep laugh shaking his ribs.

“No way, what did you say to him?” Nate asked, half-giggling, and you sighed, getting slightly infuriated by the lack of real answers and use of cryptic mutters that had you no closer to figuring out exactly just what they were on about.

A part of you was losing your cool a bit because you liked to think you knew Sid pretty well; in fact, you did know him pretty well. It was why you couldn’t possibly fathom another two minutes in the presence of these two without getting an answer, because he’d been like this since…

Oh.

Nate’s laughter immediately halted, and Taylor leaned forward, the two of them sharing a cautious look at the way you seemed to wince.

“What?” They chorused, the combination of their voices causing a few heads to turn in your direction, and you ducked your head, adjusting your skates as an excuse not to draw even more attention to yourself.

After a nudge in the elbow, you lifted your head up. 

There was no way that was what was causing him to be more distracted than usual. It wasn’t even a big deal or anything, and it certainly wasn’t a secret – you thought he knew, that wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t like he’d actually done anything all those years ago, either. That first year was almost radio silence on both ends, and you were honestly glad that wasn’t the case now.

But, still? No way.

“It’s not much, I don’t even think it could be what I’m thinking anyway.” You shook your head, watching him.

“What’re you thinking?” Taylor whispered, the lip of her cap catching you in the cheek with how close she’d shuffled.

You recoiled slightly, “It’s genuinely nothing. He just apparently didn’t know that I missed him the first year.” Your voice trailed off weakly, “Nothing.”

In truth, it wasn’t nothing – it was never nothing with Sid. It was always something, and usually it hurt. The timings; what wasn’t said; the history. There was more to the two of you than what even Nate and Taylor knew of – not even when they seemed to stop breathing when you admitted what it could be.

There were weeks and months and years where you didn’t talk much, mostly due to the distance and the clashing of schedules, but there was a lull that you’d both managed to keep from everyone else, and if you were being honest, now that you were thinking about it…that and with your earlier admission on top of it…

Maybe it was your fault.

“What did he say?” Taylor said, shaking you out of your own head. You blinked, apparently still looking at Sid.

There was something grave and more serious in her features that hadn’t been there earlier, and when you shot a look at Nate, he was wearing an almost identical expression: his brows were furrowed together and his mouth was pulled in a tight line, altogether looking uncharacteristically morbid.

You felt your pulse quicken in foreboding, “He asked if anything happened and then we got in the car.”

“Nothing else?” 

You inhaled, blinking twice, “Should there have been?”

***

The car ride back to your house was silent. Eerily so. Your body was exhausted and your brain was still playing the soundtrack of pucks smacking against posts, sticks and boards in your head, along with the joyous yells of the kids. That was why you loved it so much – not just the ice time and the familiarity of having a stick in your hands and a puck at your feet – but for the look on their faces when they looked up from the ice to see a grinning Sidney Crosby or Nathan MacKinnon singing them praises.

It made you wonder how many of them would eventually go on to play college hockey or even make it to the professional leagues.

You stifled a grin, your hand over your mouth as you turned to look out of the passenger window.

The only thing that broke through to you was the motion of the driver when his head turned to watch you briefly before returning back to the road. That simple movement had the smile melting off your face. 

You’d never been particularly nervous around Sid – and on the few occasions you had been, all it had taken was a fifteen minute conversation with him and it all dissipated – but this time was different. Not only was what Taylor had told you swirling around your mind, but the tension in the car was palpable, at least in your opinion.

Sid hadn’t said much, just kept his jaw clenched and his eyes focused on the road. Since this morning, it was probably the only glaringly obvious symptom that something wasn’t quite right, or something was playing on his mind.

It didn’t take much for you to box your own miseries and turn to him. You looked at him out of the corner of your eye first: the strong jaw, the full lips, the prominent nose, the dark eyes and darker hair. He really was quite breathtaking. The hands on the steering wheel, the rippling forearms each time he had to turn the wheel. It wasn’t something you were immune to at all: in fact, since the age of about fourteen you’d been hyper aware of the fact that Sid was stunning – and it wasn’t just in his looks, either. His work ethic, concentration, determination, kindness, generosity. He was the insurmountable sum of all of those qualities, and you were a damn fool if you didn’t recognise the fact that you’d been a tiny bit in love with him all your life.

And because of that, you knew him well. Not as well as some people might initially assume, but well enough.

“You okay?” You asked, earning nothing but a nod and a tight-lipped smile.

“Yeah, why?”

You shrugged, “You’re just quiet.”

“I’m tired, that’s all.”

You nodded, looking to your lap. He’d be tired the entire week, that was always how this went. But he’d get by and he’d manage and he’d recover like he wasn’t tired: he still kept smiling, still showed enthusiasm, and maybe he’d gotten used to it over the years, because you could have sworn each time he organised this he was less and less tired.

“You sleeping okay?” 

He nodded, running a hand from his wrist to scratch under his sleeve, and you followed the motion unconsciously with your eyes, “More than. You?”

You shrugged, pulling an unsure face, “The usual.”

He snuck another glance at you out of the corner of his eye before turning his attention back to the road ahead, “What about you, are you okay?” He echoed your own question back to you, and maybe if it wasn’t for the genuine thin film of concern to his voice, you’d have brushed it off with an answer and a huff of laughter. Instead, though, you parrotted his words back to him, nailing the equal part-suspicion and amusement.

“Yeah, why?” 

“You’re hilarious.” He shot back drily, shaking his head.

“Hey, can you drop me off at my parents’ house please, I need to collect something. I’ll literally be five minutes.”

It was Taylor’s voice in your head that kept bashing about, repeating words and flashing images – Nate was thrown in there too from that earlier conversation you’d all had when Sid was oblivious, and it didn’t let up, not even when you pushed the key into your childhood home and shut the door behind you.

The house was pretty quiet, the sound of the door shutting echoing down the hallway. The TV was flashing in the living room, and you could hear voices, from both the news anchors and your parents talking over it. Only then did Taylor’s words quieten. 

“Who is it?” A voice yelled out just as you’d scraped your shoes off your feet, and the smile that bloomed on your face was almost instantaneous.

“Your favourite child!”

There was a brief pause, and you stopped in the hallway, waiting until he replied.

“That doesn’t sound like Sid.”

You pulled a face, snatching a pair of socks from the staircase before entering the living room, pelting the ball at your Dad’s head, the soft cotton smacking him straight in the nose. He was sitting in his PJs: plaid bottoms and a crumpled top, with slippers and no socks on his feet. When the socks collided with his face, that smirk was still there, even as he lobbed them back at you with surprising force to say he didn’t have a lot of arm room.

“Nice to see you, too.” You rolled your eyes, smiling at your Mom, who’d since gotten up off the sofa to peer through the blinds.

“What’re you doing?” Your Dad asked, turning his attention to his wife, and before she’d even answered you knew what she was going to say.

“Sid’s outside in the car.” You said, shrugging when they both turned to you with equal appal written all over their faces.

“Get him in here.” Your Mom grinned, knocking on the window and motioning for the man himself to come inside.

You just rolled your eyes, “I’m just gonna go get something from upstairs.” Your words fell on deaf ears, however, because almost as soon as you’d taken initiative and left the room, the front door was shutting and Sid was standing, smiling, at the door, still decked out in camp kit and looking every bit as nervous as the first time he’d ever met your family. And then he seemed to spot you walking towards him, your parents in front of you, and he let out that telltale breath, his shoulders and face relaxing fractionally.

He’d explained it to you before, about how he still feels awkward meeting people’s parents, no matter how long he’s known them, and you never seem to remember that until you see it with your own eyes: I don’t know, it’s weird, but if I see, say you, someone I know, it kinda gets me out of my head a bit. I don’t know why.

“Come in, come in – oh, she’s just picking something up–”

You immediately turned on the stairs, one hand still clutching the bannister tightly, to look upon a pair of eyes that practically gleamed ‘don’t leave me here’. The rest of his face was pretty neutral, a polite smile as your parents chatted his ears off, the both of them making their way back into the house, and there was a split second where they weren’t looking at either of you.

For some reason, instead of laughing at his misfortune, you inhaled quickly, leaning over the bannister, “Wait, I need Sid’s help with something.” 

Everyone seemed to freeze. Even despite the mental pleading he’d been doing, Sid couldn’t help it when his lips parted in shock, kind of like he couldn’t help it when his brows knitted together. Your mom stopped talking about how nice it was to see Sid again, and looked up at you too. It looked as though she was about to say something, but with the guilty, rather hurried smile on your face she clamped her mouth shut, nodding. Your dad hadn’t stopped walking, but even from the other room the rather loud ‘mutter’ of, “Is that what we’re calling it, now?” 

Needless to say, both yours and Sid’s cheeks were still a little bit pink by the time you’d walked into your old bedroom.

“What’re you looking for?” He asked, desperate to get his mind out of that gutter, and flopped on your still-made bed, picking up the penguin teddy he’d brought home after his draft. He’d bought it in one of the stores in the airport in Toronto on his way back home, and you’d never had the heart to even move it out of this house: it belonged here.

“Do you remember that video camera I used to have?” You pulled open the first contender: the bedside table drawer. There were loose cables, hair ties, various joint support bands…but no sign of the camera.

“Yeah.” Came the reply from near your head, and you blinked, not expecting him to be so close. He’d rolled onto his front, his face smushed into your pillow, and he made no attempt to pretend as though he hadn’t been watching you rifle through your drawers – at least not if that cheeky grin didn’t automatically make its way onto his face.

You pushed his forehead back, stopping your mild attack when he screamed before dissolving into giggles severely reminiscent of when he was younger. It was so incredibly infectious, so incredibly nostalgic that all you could do was crouch, an unconscious open-mouthed smile on your face.

“Why are you laughing?” You slammed the drawer shut, heaving yourself off the floor and over to your old desk. There were still some notebooks scattered across the surface, pens in the stand. The cupboard and shelves were almost full, and it was only as you started to pull everything out, looking inside baskets and boxes that Sid could be bothered to speak again.

“Because I’m pretty sure we had this exact conversation when we were twenty.”

“We did?”

“Yeah.” He punctuated it with a sigh, a despondent one, and you looked at him over your shoulder. He was sitting up now, his hands clamped around his ankles, a thoughtful look on his face.

The ‘twenty’ year with Sid had been very weird, and you never really figured out why. The nineteenth was almost non-existent, the twenty-first good, but it was tinged by what happened at the end of his season (not the winning the Stanley Cup for the first time, but the other thing), which made your twenty-second awkward, and the twenty-third was almost like a reset. You never really realised how much you’d both changed until you got to relearn each other as adults. 

He was eyeing the corner of your room you tried to avoid looking at. 

“So why are you looking for the camera?” He asked, voice sounding far-away. He was still staring at the trophy corner, and you turned your attention back to rifling through old relics in the hunt, gladly looking anywhere but that shrine.

“If I told you Taylor would murder me in my sleep.”

He groaned, “I told her not to do anything for my birthday.” 

“It’s nothing big, I think she just wants photos from when we were younger.”

“We?”

You shrugged, missing the slight catch in his voice, “Well, you, but there’s loads of photos of you on my camera, I think she just wants a look. I always forget how young she was when we left.” You sighed, slamming the cupboard door on your desk shut, before standing in the middle of your room, hands on your hips, “I don’t know where else I could have put it.”

He didn’t say anything, but the creaky springs of your mattress groaned under his hands as he pushed himself up off your bed, before walking straight passed you and into the forbidden corner.

There was a clinking sound of metal, and you whirled on your heel, watching him carefully rifle through the trophies, photo frames, certificates and medals all hung and displayed neatly, before spinning around on his heel, holding the camera in his hand with a knowing look on his face.

***

Saying you were nervous was a bit of an understatement considering what it was you were about to do. The camera’s SD card was safely tucked into your laptop, but you’d been staring at the folder on the homescreen for ten minutes, and you were sure you hadn’t felt this nervous since your driving test. Your hands were clammy, your heart was racing and your brain was loud.

You’d lied to Sid earlier – well, partially. Taylor had wanted to look at some photos, and you had every intention on bringing the camera in to the rink tomorrow so you could giggle at the contents in your breaks, but there was something else she’d also said, something that got your brain working, and you hadn’t been able to think about anything else since. 

You inhaled shakily, before double-clicking the yellow folder, the seconds where the mouse loaded into a swirl of blue almost knocking your soul out of your body from the sheer anxiety of it all. You hoped you were wrong, but a small part of you hoped Taylor had been right. If she had, it’d make so much sense as to what happened when you were eighteen-nineteen, but if she was right? You weren’t entirely sure what you were going to do.

The screen flooded with images…school corridors, ice rinks, soccer fields, bedrooms, cars, bars, Rimouski, until–

Fuck.

You froze, eyes fixated on the one photo that had caught your eye. It was someone’s back garden, you couldn’t remember who exactly, but you remembered being there. It was dark, string lights and strobe lights hung across the verandah and neon streaks flickered from between plants. 

You’d drunk so much that night but you could still remember handing your camera off to some of your classmates – it must have been graduation – and everyone had been drinking, that much you could tell from the quality of the photos, and this one in particular wasn’t any different. It was a blurred photo of someone celebrating a beer pong game, their arms raised over their head and their mouth open in some kind of celebratory roar, but it wasn’t that that caught your attention.

It was the shadowy figures of two teenagers sitting on the stools towards one side of the garden, a makeshift table pressed against the wall. They were sitting close together, knees slotted between each other, and faces mere inches apart. Both were wearing grins, even despite being mid-kiss.

Shadowy, yet so unmistakably you and Sid.

***

“You okay?”

You blinked, the staff room coming back to you. The fluorescent lights glared along the surface of the table you’d picked, your lunch tray sitting untouched in front of you, and there was a general buzz about the place. It was lunchtime, and you’d opted out of kid-duty – partly because you were on the brink of giving yourself a headache and mostly just because you couldn’t really focus on much without immediately thinking about Sid – which meant sitting at a table in a quiet room by yourself just for a breather.

Only, a rather determined, hazel-eyed man seemed to have other ideas if the tray plopped down opposite you was anything to go by. He collapsed against the chair with a sigh, hands picking up his knife and fork with practised ease, and he hadn’t even given you a chance to answer his question before he was pausing, eyeing you with mild concern. His eyebrows knitted together and he ducked his head to try to get a closer read on you.

“Yeah.” You nodded, swallowing, almost nervous.

This thing had happened all those years ago and he’d never brought it up. Yet, that still didn’t explain why he’d then…he was confusing, in the present tense. 

His mouth turned downwards for a brief moment and he shook his head in disbelief, “You disappeared ten minutes ago and you haven’t touched your food.”

You just shrugged, managing a tight smile, “Not very hungry.”

It wasn’t a lie, per se, but it was the honest truth when your stomach rolled just as he put a forkful of food in his own mouth. It revolted you to such an extent you pushed your own tray further away and turned to sit sideways on your chair, all just so you wouldn’t have to look at him eat.

He froze, his fork stilling, “Are you…I can take the food away if you want?” 

You shook your head, closing your eyes, “No, it’s fine.”

There was a brief moment of silence, and your hand found its way into the pocket of your tracksuit bottoms, fingers finding the smooth plastic of the USB stick you’d copied the photos for Taylor on. You had a plan, see. You wanted to kind of broach the topic of the graduation party with Sid, mainly just to test him for a reaction without outrightly admitting anything, and you figured – despite your current situation – that now was…appropriate.

“Do you know where Taylor is?” You asked, keeping your eyes screwed shut.

“No, why?” His answer came all too quickly, a hint of nosiness creeping into his tone. You could imagine the slight raise of one eyebrow and the thinly veiled look of ‘why the heck are you wanting my sister?’ expression on his face. You’d seen it many times before, and it never ceased to amuse.

“I have that USB of photos to give her and I haven’t seen her all morning, I was just wondering if you knew where she was?”

He would, of course. If one thing was ever going to be guaranteed about Sidney Crosby, it was the protective ‘eye’ he kept on Taylor.

“She’s in the canteen. Did you find any good’ens on there?”

“Yeah, actually.” You peeled your eyes open, ensuring to keep them fixated on his face instead of the sickly pile of food on his plate, “Do you remember that graduation party?”

He chewed thoughtfully, his jaw slowing as he nodded his head cautiously, “Yeah.” He said, dragging the word out, and there was a prick of pink on his cheeks, as though he’d suddenly come under a severe amount of stress.

He was getting a little uncomfortable.

“There’s a photo of…Jack, I think it is? Is that right?” He nodded, “He clearly won a game of beer pong or something because there’s a couple of blurry photos of him celebrating and if you look really closely you can see us in the background. It must have been towards the end of the night or something because I looked like I was falling everywhere.”

He nodded, humming interestedly, “What were we doing?”

You felt your mouth part, almost shocked at the sudden ease rolling off his shoulders. It was as though he’d prepared himself to deny, deny, deny this for his entire life, and purely because you were feeling like shit and like a shit, you shrugged, “Couldn’t really…make it out, I don’t know. I can’t remember what happened that night anyway, I drank way too much.”

He nodded once more, shrugging, “Yeah, I remember having to hold your hair back and almost dialling for an ambulance because I was pretty sure you had alcohol poisoning.”

You nodded, staging a faux look of confusion, “Did anything happen that night? You were really weird for a couple of days after.”

There was a pause – a brief one, maybe a quarter of a second, and he looked straight at you, jaw frozen mid-chew and for a moment you thought he’d picked up on something and you were found out. Then he blinked, and with the way he was acting: sitting up straighter, almost hesitating saying something, you thought maybe he was about to tell the truth.

“No.” He pulled a face, “Nothing happened that I can remember.”

***

It turned out the aversion to food was part of a larger issue, a result most likely of possibly contracting a bug from one of the kids – or maybe you were just horrendously unlucky, because you spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, and were so unwell the next morning you had to cancel helping out at Sid’s camp.

He’d sent a string of texts and a few unanswered phone calls, but you didn’t really have the energy to answer them – not when you were feeling so weird around him. You’d thought, prior to finding out about the photos and what had actually happened (bless Taylor’s oblivious nosiness when Nate had asked about you guys before – Sid had actually admitted to the whole graduation thing to the blonde, and that was Taylor’s knowledge of the entire thing), that you and Sid had maintained a pretty honest friendship, but apparently not? You wouldn’t have been so put off by the whole thing if he hadn’t pulled that same stunt later down the line, either.

There was definitely a pattern, and he definitely had a pattern and it seemed to just be deny, deny, deny at all cost.

And you weren’t entirely sure when this had happened, but you’d come to the realisation that you were sick of pretending like the two of you hadn’t been dancing that line for years. What you’d thought was seven years of denial was actually ten. This thing had been going on since you were kids, and each time something had happened you’d get weird around each other and when you tried to talk about it he’d make some excuse.

If it wasn’t a big deal why did it always have such a big impact on the two of you?

That entire thought process was what you’d been unable to escape from nearly all day. No amount of episodes of TV shows or films could distract your brain from that little spiel, it was like having a grating voice go on and on in your ear and you weren’t quite sure how to proceed, what to do to distract yourself.

Your kettle clicked off, and you sniffed, reaching out to grab the handle, the steam from the boiling water offering some kind of relief from the pressure in your sinuses.

You really were ill, but not nearly as ill as you’d made out to be to Sid. In truth you just needed a break, mostly from him, which felt horrendous to admit considering your ‘break’ from that man consisted of an entire NHL season, and your days spent in each other’s company were severely limited anyway.

But there was something in you that knew if you saw his face you wouldn’t be able to hold back saying or doing something.

Taylor knew what was really going on, and if you knew Taylor like you thought you did that probably meant Nate knew, but you know Nate well enough now to guess he wouldn’t go blabbing to Sid about something that’s not his business. The blonde likes his gossip, but he knows when to stay out of certain situations.

You liked Nate.

You inhaled, the hot water turning a bright-yellow from the teabag you’d placed in the mug (a lemon and ginger one you’d managed to snag from a local store a few days ago), and it was just as you’d threaded your fingers through the mug handle that there was a knock at your door.

You froze, brain a little slow to understand you should be moving to answer it, when a voice could be heard through the frosted glass panes.

The mug seemed to slam against the countertop of its own going, not loud enough for the intruder to hear it but loud enough to satisfy your irritation at who it was.

Think of the devil and he shall indeed appear.

He quieted down for a few seconds and you ducked from where you were standing, knowing if he made his way around to the back of the house where your kitchen window was he wouldn’t be able to see you crouched behind the counter.

And then your phone started ringing. It didn’t exactly take a genius to know who it was and the eye roll came almost automatically.

He could be so dramatic sometimes.

It must have taken barely ten seconds for him to stop ringing, and you held your breath, desperately trying to figure out if he’d moved away and given up; your knees and hips were seizing, you could feel them begin to lock from not having moved nearly all day, and you winced, hand reaching up to grip the countertop.

If you were lucky he wouldn’t be looking—

“I can see your hand and your tea.” His muffled voice deadpanned and you sighed defeated, pulling yourself up.

He was standing in your backyard, his phone in his hand and a rather disappointed look on his face as he stared straight at you through the window. 

You had to give him credit where it was due: the man could certainly kick up a fuss and coax you out of hiding.

Granted, you weren’t allocated a set amount of time to even begin to make it look like you were really holed up in bed. If you had, the TV downstairs would be off, as would the lights, and there wouldn’t be an easily visible makeshift blanket bed on the couch. All he’d really had to do was walk along your drive to peer through the front window, and then walk straight down the side of your house to the back gate.

You’d kept it unlocked for the last couple of days because you hadn’t been in much to accept parcels, and you’d never gotten round to locking it again.

Of course you’d come to regret that immediately.

The back door lock clicked open as you twisted the key, and you didn’t spare him a glance, instead making a beeline for the half-made tea. For one, you knew watching him walk through the door with his current sulk on was only going to encourage him to start talking about it, and you absolutely weren’t about to give him that satisfaction. You also really wanted that tea, it was probably the only thing standing between you getting better for the camp and the weird sickness you’d managed to contract.

Your immune system was shit.

He cleared his throat, and you lifted your eyes lazily in his direction, taking out the tea bag and leaving it to drain, “Hi.”

Your voice was scratchy and rough, and the reaction it elicited from the man in front of you: brows raised, mouth dropping open, sprung a rather odd thought to the forefront of your mind: “Did you not believe me when I said I was sick?” You managed, laughing awkwardly and inhaling the vapour from your mug, watching him closely.

He shrugged, pulling off his jacket and hanging it up on the hooks. There was a spare hook, one not used for your own stuff: a plethora of raincoats, boots, kitchen aprons…and Sid’s jacket. 

“I did believe you. Kind of.” He admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the kitchen counter, “I thought you were maybe avoiding me, though.”

You blinked, keeping your face neutral, actively trying not to scoff at him or narrow your eyes in his direction, “I am avoiding you; I’m not about to give whatever this is to you, am I?” You asked softly, cradling the mug of tea under your chin, feeling the irritation begin to swirl under your skin already.

You shifted uncomfortably, and Sid watched your eyes dart to a chair pressed up against the wall with longing. He knew there was something up, something not linked to being sick – he’d felt it in the car earlier and you were practically drenched in tension yesterday. It was difficult to ignore, and judging from the way you’d been seeking out Taylor recently he had a feeling it might have been something to do with him.

What, though, he had no idea.

“Well,” he inhaled, mouth flattening into a straight line. His chest seemed to ache suddenly when you nodded, an almost sarcastic grin on your lips, purposefully avoiding looking in his direction, and he’d known you long enough by now to know when you wanted him out of the house. Now it was no different, “Thank you, I appreciate the thought.”

An uncomfortable silence.

He wanted to scream.

“I best be going.” He hurried out, the words almost getting tangled in his mouth, and before he could cause himself more harm by looking at you and the action not being reciprocated, he turned his back and reached automatically for the coat he’d literally just hung up.

Sid had never been a cryer – he didn’t class himself as an emotional guy, which was why he was so shocked at the sudden burning of his eyes and the tightness in his throat. Fuck, he couldn’t cry here. One, because it’s embarrassing, and two: he had no clue why he was upset to this extent.

He’d managed to put his arms through his sleeves, just about to start zipping it up after a quick glance at the sky outside when you suddenly spoke, voice somehow even rougher than before.

“What reason would I be avoiding you for?”

Sid froze, swallowing nervously. It didn’t take a genius, even in that exact moment, to dissect the words you’d chosen to come to the conclusion that you’d picked them carefully. Not ‘what made you think I was avoiding you?’ which would certainly have been easier for him to answer, but he had a feeling you knew that. 

It was pretty obvious from the avoidance at lunch yesterday and the weird behaviour in the car the day before that, and then the cold shoulder and lack of interest in conversation now, that something was wrong. The signs were pretty subtle, though, he had to give you that.

He turned slowly, fingers detaching from his zipper. You were now sitting at the chair against the wall, knees tucked up to your chin, the hot mug of tea still clasped in your hands. Your eyes were a little red, probably due to exhaustion, and your hair had been twisted to sit across one shoulder, attention faced solely and rather intensely on him.

“Uhm–” he cleared his throat, blinking quickly to rid of the shining moisture in his eyes. He could feel his heart racing against his sternum, and he wondered briefly if you could hear it from across the room, “I don’t know.” He muttered sadly, eyes flicking to his shoes.

Camp had been great today, as it usually was, but he always found himself scanning the ice for your familiar face. 

You nodded, sighing with disappointment, and Sid felt himself deflate. His fingers tapped against his thigh seven, eight times before he inhaled, throwing the words out in the open before he lost the courage to do so.

“What’s going on with you?” He was about three seconds away from stamping his foot; he was so desperate to know the answer. It was childish and it was stupid, but it meant something to him when you shrugged, eyes suddenly misty.

He knew what you were going to say before you even said it, but he kept quiet anyway.

“Nothing.” You sounded as wrecked as he felt, a hint of sheer resignation in your voice. It was so uncharacteristic of you: to Sid it was as if you’d not only given up on whatever it was that was bothering you but you’d given up on hiding that something was ever wrong in the first place.

It was a victory, no matter how small.

“Come on.” He took a step closer, quite literally on the verge of begging, “Really? That’s all you’ve got?”

Silence.

“I know you. Better than anyone–”

The expression on your face changed immediately, and it felt as though you’d socked him in the chest. You didn’t believe him.

You didn’t believe him.

“I want to know you better than anyone else does.” He sighed, hands pressing against his temples before he dropped them back to his sides, not quite registering what his words meant. They’d flown out of his mouth before he even heard them in his brain, and even when he’d spoken them out loud it felt surreal. He wasn’t sure what was what with all the blood rushing in his ears.

It was because of that, trapped inside himself and his own mind that he failed to register the look on your face.

“Even still,” he continued, plopping himself down on the chair on the other side of the table from you, hands knitted together on the tabletop. He was leaning right across the table but you haven't moved an inch, “This…This, you being quiet, withdrawn, skipping a day of camp – I know you’re sick and everything, but that’s never stopped you before, not when it comes to hockey.” He paused, taking a breath, “What’s going on?”

You took a sip of tea, ignoring the scalding sensation against your tongue in favour of stalling. If you didn’t say anything now, then you probably never would. In fact, if he hadn’t said what he’d just said, clearly without thinking about the meaning of the damn words, you knew you wouldn’t even be considering telling him at all. But where there was doubt…

“Why did you never mention what happened at the graduation party?”

You heard him stop breathing. There was no reason to look at him to see it when you could practically hear the hitch in his chest and the lack of air. When you did look at him his cheeks had paled and his mouth was opening and shutting, shoulders stuck in a shrug as though you’d genuinely caught him off-guard.

You could ask him that question without it meaning anything – it could just as easily be read as ‘huh, funny that you never mentioned it before’ than as ‘you kind of denied me the truth of why we’re so weird because everything that’s ever happened between us since that night has been a direct result of whatever fucked-up miscommunication gig we’ve got going on here’.

“How did you find out?” He breathed, a deep crease between his brows. Now that he’d had time to recover, he looked more concerned – angry, even – than sheepish.

You shrugged, “Those photos I got for Taylor? We’re in the background of ‘em.”

He nodded slowly, mouth pressed in a straight line. This time it was him that couldn’t look at you, probably just to gather his thoughts. You could tell his mind was racing, eyes zipping back and forth against the grain of the table.

You could feel your heart banging in your chest, the speed of it almost stinging. The anticipation was debilitating, and it took everything in you not to spit out question after question, because he was taking ages to say something and it was driving you crazy. Your fingers were tapping against your mug, a sharp exhale blowing the vapour around.

It was maybe that that had him looking up, head tilted backwards slightly, a thumb teasing at his lip. It was probably the first time you’d seen him lost for words.

“You really don’t remember it?” He muttered, brown eyes wide and clear, shiny in the last rays of sun poking through the back windows.

You shook your head, “I told you I didn’t remember.”

“I thought you were…I thought that was your way of letting me down gently.” 

You huffed a disbelieving laugh, staring at him, half-expecting him to take those words back and say he was kidding, but he never did. He just continued to look at you, that damn crease between his brows, eyes glassy and playing with his bottom lip like he didn’t know what to do with himself. He was still wearing his coat.

He never spoke.

“Why would I reject you?”

His hand fell from his mouth, landing with a soft thud on the table as he smiled, in such a self-deprecating fashion that you couldn’t help recoiling from him.

“Why wouldn’t you? I was moving to Pittsburgh, you were going to LA. We would have barely seen each other, and you deserved better than that. You still do. I mean, you know how much of a mess we were that year anyway, right?” He rambled, brows knitted together and mouth hung open. His elbows were resting on the edge of the table, hands palms-up towards the ceiling. He’d asked it like it was a rhetorical question but he was looking at you so intently you had to swallow your mouthful of tea and start talking.

Your mind had been running away with you, spitting counter-arguments for nearly everything he said, but it seemed to keep wanting to come back to the fact that he so clearly just assumed you’d reject him. 

“Did it not occur to you that maybe we were such a mess because of what happened?”

“I thought you didn't remember?”

“I didn’t, but it didn’t take a genius to know you weren’t bothered about keeping in contact with me. I wrote you emails and I got one-word answers – maybe even a full sentence if I was lucky; I called but you either didn’t answer or you cut it short because you had to go to practice. You never called back. On my birthday, the first one away from my family, you never called. I didn’t get anything from you when I got a card from your parents without your name signed because they’d just assumed you’d have written one yourself. For about nine months, the most I heard or saw of you was through the TV.” You inhaled sharply, a sudden burning sensation behind your eyes. That first year was honestly pretty awful for you when it came to Sid. What you’d told him on his decking a few days ago had been true, every single word of it. You’d agonised over every single possible thing that could have happened to change it, and for some reason the realisation of why he’d done what he’d done hit you rather emotionally, “You did all of that because you didn’t believe me when I said I never remembered what happened, didn’t you?”

His hands fell to the table, his expression softening into one of sheer guilt, “I’m sorry.” His voice cracked, “I really…I didn’t know, I thought it was what you wanted.”

You huffed a bitter laugh, suddenly cold, and right as though it had been scripted, rain began to splatter against the window panes, the sky now an overcast, stormy grey, “When have I ever pretended I wanted something if I really wanted the opposite?”

He swallowed, his throat bobbing up and down, “Never.”

You nodded, satisfied with his answer, and took a rather angry sip of tea, ignoring the uncomfortable burn. There was still so much you wanted to know, so many questions you wanted answers to, but at that moment: looking through the window of the back door to see nothing but dark skies and heavy sheets of rain battering your house, there was only one thing that you could really think of.

“While we’re here,” you started, voice lowering almost as though you were anticipating hearing something you weren’t going to like, “Can we talk about your first Cup win?”

Your fingers were back to tapping anxiously against the porcelain of your mug, and the heavy silence broken only by the rustle of his rain jacket was enough of an answer to let you know how this was going to go.

He inhaled, and you risked a glance at him across the table. His eyes were open, but barely, and it looked as though this conversation, or the last few minutes at least, had exhausted him. He suddenly had bags under his eyes, and his eyelids were heavy. He wasn’t smiling but he nodded anyway, face pale and hands beginning to tremble slightly. 

Sid wasn’t one to ever really get emotional about anything. You’d only seen him cry a few times in person, but nearly every single one of those occasions was for something good: a Cup win, a house-warming party in the pantry after he’d moved into his new-build, saying goodbye to his parents at the airport. 

This was entirely different, though. It wouldn’t entirely shock you if he walked back out of your door with a few grey hairs.

“Do you want something to drink or eat?” You eyed his pale cheeks and trembling hands wearily.

He seemed to think about it for a few seconds, before inhaling and casting a quick glance at your cupboards, “Yeah, I’ll get it though, you’re sick.” And then, almost as if something else had occurred to him when he went to push himself up off the chair, he turned back briefly, “You’d tell me when you want me to leave, right?”

The barest of smiles appeared on your face, and you nodded, “Yeah.”

“Good.”

You watched him manoeuvre through your kitchen, flicking the kettle on and reaching to take a mug out from one of your cupboards, as well as taking a tea bag out of the little box you kept them in and shaking the dust out of it, the bag landing in the mug with a soft plop. He turned back when the kettle was still boiling, hands crossed over his chest and standing against the countertop right in front of you.

There was something on his mind, you could tell. There was a high probability that it was something relating to this Cup Incident, but there was something almost impatient about the way he kept shooting an angry glance at the kettle, as though it wasn’t boiling fast enough for his liking, that had you perhaps thinking there was something else playing on his mind.

“What?” You asked, swallowed anxiously.

His head snapped in your direction, eyes wide with alarm and his mouth opened and closed a few times, thoroughly confused, “I didn’t say anything.”

“I know, but you want to.”

He closed his mouth just as the kettle clicked, and there was a brief moment where he turned his back to pour the water into his cup, but before you could even say ‘hockey’ he’d spun on his heel to face you again, “I just…We’re gonna be okay after this, right? I don’t want you to not be in my life, I don’t want to not be in your life.” He sighed, “I don’t want this to break us.”

Us. 

Us.

It echoed in your mind, and despite agreeing with almost everything he said, all you could offer by way of reassurance was a sad shrug, “I don’t want that either.”

He nodded, before finishing off his tea and grabbing a protein bar from one of your drawers and sitting back down at the table, shedding his coat and laying it neatly over the back of the chair.

Neither of you said anything for a good minute. It might have been because Sid was munching on that protein bar, but you really wanted to put the matter off for as long as possible just in case what he said did become true. Prolonging a possible heartbreak – an entire era, person and a piece of your identity – from ever occurring, even if it was only hindered a few more minutes.

It seemed, though, he took the liberty of deciding exactly when to start talking.

“So,” he cleared his throat, “this is about the second kiss, isn’t it? My Cup day.” His tone was firm, but there was a hint of sombreness hidden somewhere.

“Yeah.” You whispered, looking down at your mug. Your knees were still tucked to your chin, and technically Sid was sitting to your left, you still choosing to sit on the chair sideways and face the window instead. You were spending an awful lot of time staring at him though.

You spun, feet hitting the floor and mug clinking on the surface of the table. 

“I’m gonna ask a few questions and I just want you to answer honestly, okay?” You asked, inhaling a deep breath and choosing to ignore the thundering heart rate.

He nodded, leaning forwards in his chair in anticipation.

“We were both pretty drunk, yeah?”

“Correct.”

“Nobody saw, correct?”

“Correct.” He was starting to smile.

“I leant in first,” you started, voice shakier than you’d intended, and despite moving so you could see him without giving yourself a neck cramp, you found it almost impossible to be able to look at him. You’d kept some of this hidden from yourself, locked away in a bottle somewhere in the floorboards of your mind – completely inaccessible, even to yourself. To bare them aloud for the very person who shared the secret was nothing short of absolutely terrifying, “but then I stopped, right?”

You couldn’t tell if he was hesitating or if he was struggling to remember the event that had been burned in your mind for so many years, yet you still couldn’t look at him. Not even when his fingers slowly inched into your line of sight, seeking to touch your own hand still wrapped around your mug.

You didn’t move. It might dissuade him from touching you – you hoped it would because you weren’t entirely sure if you’d be able to admit all of this to him if he did.

“Yeah.” His voice was low, and his fingers dropped on top of the table, tapping silently.

“Then you…made the move.” You struggled not to cringe at your wording of it, eyes screwing shut before peeking open again, just in time to hear him answer. You hadn’t asked it as a question, but he took the hint anyway.

“I did.” 

You paused, thinking. There weren’t many times you’d had to ask for unadulterated honesty when it came to Sid: most of the time he gave it to you anyway, but when it came to this kind of topic – you, it seemed, especially in the more romantic sense than simply lifelong friendship – he always kept his cards to his chest, never really revealed anything too damning.

But you’d asked for his honesty, and the least you could do was reciprocate that. It wouldn’t hurt to also milk it a little.

“I wanted to kiss you.” Want to kiss him, “Did you want to kiss me?” Your voice was higher than you’d like it to be, still a little hesitant and unsure. It somehow all felt unnatural, like scaling a foreign terrain for the first time. You couldn’t quite find your feed, where you could or couldn’t stand that would be safe and efficient.

You risked a quick glance at him. And oddly found you couldn’t quite look away. He still had that one hand almost outstretched towards you on the table, but his other was wrapped safely around his mug, still billowing vapour. His cheeks had flushed since he’d had something to eat, but it was his eyes that you couldn’t peel yourself away from.

He was looking at you, right at you, with something you’d never seen before. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but it was soft without being too gentle, firm without being angry or aggressive. The corners of his mouth were downturned in a sort of sad, melancholic smile, too, and you’d never seen him look at anything else like that – anyone else – apart from when he’d be getting ready to serve a big milestone on the ice.

You’d seen it when he’d put on a gameday suit for his 500th game, you’d seen it when he’d clocked the family in the box at his 1000th game. It was appreciation, gratitude. There was a third answer lurking in the back of your mind, but you refused to acknowledge it for the sake of not getting ahead of yourself.

One question at a time, one answer at a time, only look at the facts.

“Yeah.” The answer flew out of his mouth barely even half a second after you’d looked at him, and he broke into a cheeky grin, quickly ducking his head to his chest to calm himself.

He inhaled, eyes closing briefly before turning back to you with a straight face, and this time it was you breathing an amused laugh.

“Yeah, I wanted to kiss you.” He repeated, nodding for you to continue.

There was one question left. The reminder of it was enough to melt any previous traces of a smile off your face, and instead your mouth twisted at the corner, pulse humming in your head with dread.

“Why did you blow me off the next day when I said we needed to talk?”

His eyes focused on something behind you, and his mouth flattened in a line, self-deprecating and devoid of any true emotion, “I saw it going two ways: you were gonna reject me, or we were gonna do something about it. The way I saw it, I thought you’d already rejected me way back when – I know now that’s not the case – so I wasn’t really scared of that. The thought of it stung but…”

You frowned, “You were scared of me not rejecting you?”

He nodded, “I could never have asked you to sacrifice your entire life just to make me happy. You had a career, a house you’d just bought, friends, you were close to your family. I wasn’t gonna make you choose between all of that and – and just me, was I?”

Your face seemed to crumple sympathetically before you could even control anything. Everything he’d just admitted was nothing short of a testament to his character and who he was, no matter how…you wanted to say he was selfish for choosing for you, and a small part of you believed that, but he was also right. You had everything he’d just listed, and it would have been upsetting to move away if things progressed further and ‘got serious’, but it wasn’t like you would have been completely isolated, either.

He spends a good portion of his time in Pittsburgh, that’s true, but he spends his entire off-season at home in Cole Harbour. An entire four to five months, almost half a year.

You shook your head, hands unclasping from your mug to rest at your temples, “Okay…I kind of get where you’re coming from, but did it ever occur to you how much you had to sacrifice to get to where you are?” 

He blinked.

“You’ve earned the right to be selfish, especially when it comes to me. I mean, sure, I have a life here, I love it, but I never wanted to stay here. That was never my plan. I wanted to play hockey as a career, I wanted to travel and experience things, but that wasn’t what happened. I’m constantly missing a life I never even got to taste and I guess…I guess I’m kind of miserable because of it? I’m grateful for what I’ve got, but it won’t ever equate to what I wanted for myself. I love hockey, I love this camp, but I love seeing you just as much, I always have. It meant something to me.” You hesitated, “You mean something to me.”

You searched his face for a reaction, and it might have taken a few seconds for what you were saying to sink in, because his eyes suddenly went glassy and his jaw clenched. He couldn’t look at you for a while, and he kept sniffing.

You hoped more than anything he wasn’t actively catching your cold whilst you waited for him to say something.

And then: “I mean, for what it’s worth, you mean everything to me–”

“It’s not a competition.”

***

You were lost.

Or, at least, from Sid’s perspective you were: he was standing near the boards on the ice, keeping a close eye on the kids playing the shooting drill he’d set up for them, and he truly was watching them…he just couldn’t exactly help it when his eyes would wander curiously and scour the rest of the ice, practically desperate to drink you in. Wherever you were. He couldn’t see you, and it was getting to that point in the day where he wasn’t sure if that meant you’d left the ice to supervise the locker rooms and talk to parents or if he just wasn’t looking properly (again: he had to watch a bunch of kids with knives screwed to their feet).

See, it had been three days since you’d both sat in your kitchen and mulled things over, uprooting what you both thought to have happened when you were younger and twisting everything into a more truthful, honest version (he admittedly spent the rest of the day in bed; he was so emotionally drained he actually forgot to feed Sam until she started barking relentlessly at him) of events. 

Did he know where you stood with each other now? Not entirely, but he knew you were both thinking about it. That was a shock and a half to have uncovered on a Wednesday evening.

Did he know what he planned to do within the next few weeks? Kind of.

Had you actually seen or spoken to each other since that day? Not apart from group settings: you’d taken another day off to recover from that little bug you’d caught – of which Sid had managed to avoid catching – and the past two days including this one were full of nothing but red cheeks and a peculiar affinity to wrestle a smile off both your faces if you even so much as looked at each other. 

It was a pretty big switch-around from last week, but he welcomed it with…well, he’d honestly never been happier or more excited to be on the edge of starting something with you. He’d thought about it often before, mostly as a weapon to torture himself with when he was already upset over something, remind him of another failure – only that one had been personal and about his life, not anything to do with hockey. It always used to sting more.

He sighed, “Hey, Ryan, try gripping the stick a bit lower, you’ll get more control on your shot next time, ‘kay? Yeah, just like that! Poppy stop poking people in the face with the stick please, I know you find it funny when it gets stuck but it could poke someone’s eye out.” The culprit in question sadly dropped her stick to the ice, and Sid didn’t even have to be near her to know her bottom lip was sticking out in a pout “Thank you.”

It was as Evie pushed forward on her skates with a puck at her feet that something whacked Sid softly on the bum with enough power to send him trailing forwards slightly, but he didn’t take his eyes off the girl in front of him, who sent a powerful slap shot towards the goalie, and the puck couldn’t even be seen until a ding! echoed in the back of the net. Sid huffed a laugh, “Wow, Evie, that was incredible! Keep it up.”

She flashed him an awkward thumbs up, the gloves interfering with the action, and Sid mirrored it before finally turning his attention to a rather beloved blonde. Nate’s brows were halfway up his forehead, mouth contorted like he’d also just breathed a quiet ‘woah’ under his breath, and when he registered Sid was even looking at him, his face melted into one that had become rather synonymous with another person in his life. Nate always smirked when he was about to bring you up to Sid. There were a few occasions where he’d read the room and approached the topic with a bit more consideration, but it appeared this time was no different to usual.

“Kind of reminds me of a certain someone when they were that age, huh?” 

Sid clenched his jaw, trying not to give away just how true that statement really was, before muttering a quick, “You’re too young to have known what she was like at that age.”

Nate made a sound that came from the back of his throat, a short huff of laughter passing his lips, “Dude, you’re so easy to read.”

Sid shook his head, “Next!” Another kid skated forward, and both professionals watched as the goalie caught the puck safely in their glove before chucking it across the ice in their general direction.

“Hey, if you want to skate around for a bit, I can watch this drill.” Nate said, intercepting the puck and adding it to the small pile that had slowly been accumulating next to the boards.

Sid frowned, a crease forming between his brows, “Why?” He drawled, rather suspicious of the sudden generosity.

He had a feeling he knew what it was about, but he wasn’t going to speak ahead of himself and make matters worse – Nate already had enough teasing material when it came to his silent pining.

“It’s pretty obvious you’re distracted and it’s been killing me and Taylor watching you. She’s over there,” Nate lifted his stick, pointing to the opposite side of the rink, where Sid could only just now make out the back of your head. He had no idea what had caught your attention so much as to have your back facing the ice– “There’s a little kid on the other side of the glass with a mini-stick. She’s been pulling faces for the past five minutes, and I just thought I’d warn you before you…y’know–”

“Nate, what the eff?” Sid hissed, watching wearily for any kids overhearing. 

“I’m just kidding. Kind of.” He grinned, “Go say what you need to say and then come back.”

Sid rolled his eyes, but still patted Nate gently as he skated by, “Thanks.”

Nate just shook his head, waving him off, and Sid took that as his signal to skate away, ignoring the undoubtedly humorous glance Taylor was giving him. It was bad enough that they’d noticed what he was doing at all, let alone to have it pointed out right to his face. 

He pushed loose pucks out of the way, skating right around several different drills before crashing into the boards right next to you, his face pressed against the glass to see…three different dribbling toddlers staring up at you both. One had an armful of teddies, the other was wearing a Pens PJ set and the final one was holding a mini stick, the ball left forgotten behind them.

You didn’t even need to turn your head from where you’d leant it against the glass to know who it was that had rather abruptly pulled up beside you. Not only was the side of his face in your peripheral vision enough, but the faces of the parents sitting in the seats were enough to go by. Everyone seemed to sit straighter, smiles a little bit wider at the sight of their local boy interacting with a small herd of toddlers who obviously had no idea who he was.

Except…the kid with the mini stick dropped his fingers from his mouth, stick lazily pointing in Sid’s direction, and even through the glass you could make out the vague words of "Siddie Cosby!” and the excited smile on his face.

Sid waved, spinning the cap on his head the other way around so he could also press his forehead to the glass, and you laughed softly, breath fogging up the panes for a brief moment. The sound had him tilting his head slightly so he could look at you.

He wasn’t sure if he was smiling before he’d turned – he had to have been, though, surely? – but he felt himself smile, if not more than he had been. It was unconscious, like a reflex made worse because you were just so infectious to him.

“Hi.” You muttered lowly, catching him out of the corner of your eye. You didn’t turn your face away from those kids, still pulling funny faces no matter how demanding of your attention he was. You could look at him all you liked later, but for these kids, their moment was this moment.

At least, that’s what you tried to tell yourself. Really, you just felt a little too shy looking at him with all those people watching from the stands.

“Hi.” He grinned, also turning his attention back to the kids. The one with the hockey stick suddenly banged on the screen right in front of him, and even despite his quick reflexes, he couldn’t help jumping at the sudden noise in such close proximity.

The kid just giggled, and when Sid cast his eyes to the seats, heart racing in his chest, some of the parents were trying to hide their own laughs behind their hands. 

He almost forgot he had an audience.

His tongue darted out nervously to wet his bottom lip, and he felt you look at him rather than saw you do it, “Are you coming to my birthday party tonight?”

There was a brief silence between you both, and you struggled to hold in a laugh as Sid registered what it was that he’d just said. His eyes closed and he leant his forehead against the glass, sighing hard enough to fog it up.

“Yes.” You answered, tone full of amusement. 

His eyes opened and he twisted his head, still resting against the glass, “Can I pick you up at five?”

You blinked.

His party starts at seven.

It was probably the easiest yes of your entire life.

[luckytiggertalia]

I'll homelander post again soon but right now my heart belongs to another piece of shit white cup man

human shake design belongs to @bestosunglass

[mellowwillowy]

"Stop the wedding!!"

So you get to see NRC food fighting RSA in the end lol Yan! NRC vs Yan! RSA x GN Isekai'd Player (Self-aware)

All the people inside the cafeteria turned their attention to you, an isekai'd player.

"(Name)!!" Idia beamed in tears, finally someone saving him! ... wait, someone? Oh no no no no! You are not just 'someone'!! Why did he even bother troubling you to this extent? He should have just kissed the bride!!!

"Make it right in time, you got me, Ace?" "Thank you for kicking me like a barrel toward the ghosts, pal," Ace replied dejectedly but posed no annoyance at all.

"Potato, since when do you have the funds to get yourself such a nice suit?" Vil questioned as he inspected your overall. The makeup and hairdo were not done to the utmost perfection but he can let it slide because anything on you equals absolute beauty.

"Oh, this? So you are smart enough to realize Crowley won't cover MY suit! I mean, he was trying teeth and nails to not let me join Ace and Co!"

"At least he does something right for the first time," Leona added. "White suits you though I thought you'd surely go with Black as usual?" Trey cocked his head to the side questioningly.

"Look, this is what Neige lent me. And all his attires are almost pristine white! I'm telling ya'!" At that statement, you saw Vil twitch despite not being able to move, he must have been very pissed at the mention of Neige's name alone.

"Originally I planned on taking Cheny'a's but I realized how eccentric his taste is so I decided to go with Neige. The RSA students are kind enough to assist Neige in tailoring it to my size too! Got them right in time before Crowley could shoo me!"

"Dude, even the RSA knows how to respect them, I don't know if I should be angry or nah but it certainly leaves a bad aftertaste seeing them wearing what RSA makes for them." Cater whispers something to the person next to him, inaudible to your ears.

"What do you say if we steal the suit and then burn it down in front of them after we are done here? I'd like to give them a nice thank you hug too while we are at it." "And we should leave them some of my... flowers collection too. This alone should be enough to show our gratitude right?"

"I'd say we should try giving them a proper form of token of gratitude too, how about Master Lilia's cooking?" Sebek added with a grin, he had his fair share of Lilia's cooking to the point he'd like to share it with the others.

"Oh? Then I'd have to make sure to add extra 'love' into it." He replied, this time intending to poison people so its horrifying taste was multiplied at natural without him realizing it.

"Wait, why would we even bother giving them a handmade cooki-" Jack was immediately silenced by Cater's eerie smile. He had his fair share and he knew they meant nothing well from it at all.

"Hey Ace, do something! Stop throwing all your work on prefect!" Deuce yelled by the sideline, ready to chew his ears off.

"I agree, you shouldn't let someone magic-less handle this handful situation alone, get a hold of yourself right now will you, Ace?" Azul scowled and started to usher Ace into work.

"Dude! Now all of you are cornering me?" "You haven't finished, Ace?!"

And Riddle's voice was all it took to make Ace cowered like a puppy. Rook shook his head in disappointment, this had taken way longer than the original gameplay.

"Hurry! We should wrap things up as though we are changing a dirty tablecloth into a new one!" Epel yelled out rather... unique lines. Was he trying to be as poetic as Rook? If anything, both Rook and Vil said nothing regarding this.

"Riiiiighhhhtttt, I'm kinda checked out now, to be honest." Idia's eyes immediately widened, not you too?!

Just before the other could chant another "Smooch the bride", you immediately lunged toward the bride. All those gym class training paid off! Basically, this and that until the ghost inflated.

And instead of Rook ordering you and Epel around, you took the steering wheel before anyone could. "Move yer' ass you glorified wood logs! Move move move!"

The lucky person is the person who gets to feel you dragging them. Absolute win!

--

"Urgh, I'm so gonna have phasmophobia now." Idia rolled his eyes as the ghosts departed but to be honest? He was happy to see you barging into the cafeteria like a knight in shining armor for him! (It was mostly the others fighting lol)

Idia was taken by surprise the moment your hand smacked his back. "Would you look at it, the star of the show, a handsome groom adorned in black! You look positively breathtaking, senior Idia."

"Eep-! Oh no, they have graced me with their words that are enough to deafen me! What should I do? How should I show them just how grateful I am to be even considered by them???"

"What did you say? I couldn't hear you really well." "Well, brother said that-" "N-n-no! Nothing! I uh... am thankful... for your assistance." He answered bashfully, his hair tip turned into a shade of pink.

"Now now potato, it's time to change, wearing that must have been uncomfortable right?" Vil immediately pulled you away from the pink introvert. "No...? Neige said that it's meant to be comfortable and it's true!" "Well, we have something even wayyyy more comfortable for you, shrimpy! Come on now, let's take it off and dress you up in something else!"

--

Lilia was leading everyone with a basket of something, a speaker in one hand and Neige's suit in the other hand, "Hey you RSA whippersnappers! Get down!"

The head mage was coincidentally away that day and it allowed the NRC students to lead a protest in front of the academy's gate.

Lilia threw the white suit onto the ground while Leona whistled, signaling Rook to shoot an arrow of fire toward it like an Olympic grand opening. (What a duo.)

"Yeah! Eat this you good for nothing!" Cater and Ruggie immediately took out the pie from Lilia's basket and threw it right onto the students' face. Kalim was generous enough to sponsor lots of baking materials for Lilia with Jamil assisting with the baking. It was badly burnt but still hard as a rock.

Cheny'a was careful enough to avoid Trey and Riddle while Vil was feeling rather generous in feeding Neige~ Oh, and Malleus is always bullseye in his shots, hitting everyone down in no time. He was pretty pissed (sulking) that he was not invited to join your fun. Silver was not being merciful too, he didn't fall asleep at all during this whole thing!.

Rollo was feeling rather grateful but also sad that you did not come to him to ask for his help :( And Crowley just watched everything from the sidelines while praying that nothing bad will be sent to him after this. Well, he's happy with how bright his students are.

[sakuravalelp]

Don't eat anything else - Part 2 - DP X DC

Previous part

Masterpost

This is the only chapter where I'll tag people. Please, if you want to follow the story from this point on, follow the master post :).

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

"You both should stop eating the food." Came Babs voice through the comms. "Danny asked Tim to not eat anything else. We suspect the food may content poison."

Bruce subtly shared a look with Cass before returning to nodding at Masters' proud rambling about his latest contract. They had both stopped eating long ago. The soup was good; Masters’ words about Danny being a good cook weren’t a lie. However, Bruce couldn’t identify the chunks of meat in the soup.

He initially thought it was pork, though the texture seemed somewhat similar to veal. By the fourth piece of meat he ate, he could confidently say he didn't recognize it. When he looked at Cass, he saw her using her spoon to play with one of the pieces of meat on the edge of the plate, a frown hidden behind her polite smile. He was sure then that the meat couldn't be one they had tasted before.

Bruce has tasted every kind of meat that should be available to Masters. He has even tasted exotic meats that Masters would probably never encounter, having represented humanity in intergalactic meetings as Batman. Not being able to identify the meat discouraged Bruce from eating more, and it seemed to have had the same effect on Cass. They had kept their food mostly untouched, using the excuse of waiting for Tim and Danny to return before eating. It was a good call; the meat being poisoned could be the reason it was unrecognizable.

"If any of you feel any symptoms, turn off your comm." None of them made a move to do so, and after a couple of minutes Babs continued, "I'll call Bruce in 10 minutes to create an excuse for you guys to leave."

Bruce would have liked to think that they had not yet consumed enough poison for it to affect them, but there's always the possibility of it being a delayed-effect poison. If Masters' plan with the poison was to kill them, then a delayed-effect poison would allow Masters to avoid being immediately connected to their deaths.

However, Masters shouldn’t have a reason to kill Bruce Wayne and his wards. Unless the man had discovered that they were investigating his contracts, which Bruce doubted. It was more likely that the poison was some sort of chemical restraint or chemical submissive, which would explain why Masters' contracts always seemed to end ridiculously in his favor. It would be easy to make such deals with someone who was drugged to be more agreeable with you.

Not that Bruce would be willing to take the risk to find out, especially with Cass having also ingested the tainted meat. He was glad he had brought the poison antidote kit with him. Despite this, Bruce wasn't sure about cutting the visit short, at least not for all of them. Tim had been gone with Danny for a while now, and if Danny had informed Tim about the food, they were probably exchanging information at the moment. Maybe Tim was in the process of offering Danny help, and Bruce didn't want to interrupt that.

"Renovations will be starting next week, and I'm sure the place will end up being quite popular," Masters finally finished his rambling.

"It sure sounds like it will. You certainly got yourself a great deal with Kensington, Mr. Masters. I'm curious, what is your negotiation method?" Bruce asked, hoping to gather more information.

Masters had been surprisingly adept at avoiding any conversation about the negotiations themselves, always sidetracking the discussion or giving half-answers. Drugs in the food was a good hypothesis and would be the best outcome for them, as such substances usually shouldn’t take too long to get out of their system.

Yet, it didn't explain how Masters' business partners seemed to stay committed to their contracts long after they were made. The furthest they had gotten from them was confusion about how they had reached the point where they accepted the contract's conditions. However, they all seemed convinced they had gotten the best outcome possible, despite obviously getting the short end of the stick.

It pointed to something besides drug usage. Maybe Masters got blackmail material from them while they were drugged? It would be easier to draw conclusions if Masters had even the smallest slip about it.

Masters smiled, taking a sip from his wine. "Ah, it takes years of practice, Wayne. It isn't something one can learn in a day, and only those with the capacity can master it," he said. Then, before Bruce could ask any follow-up questions, he continued, "Now, Daniel and young Mr. Drake sure seem to be taking their time."

"Oh, that doesn't surprise me," Bruce said, shaking his head with a fond smile, playing farther into his "Brucie" persona while lamenting the lost opportunities to get more leads on what Masters was doing. "They're around the same age. Surely they got distracted talking about whatever is of interest to kids their age these days."

"I would be glad if my godson got along so well with your son, Mr. Wayne," Masters said with a practiced smile, though a hint of calculation flickered in his eyes. He gestured vaguely with his wine glass, his tone deceptively sympathetic. "The loss of his family hasn't been easy for him, and building a connection with someone like Mr. Drake could be beneficial. However, it is quite rude to leave the guests waiting. As his guardian, I must address this. I’ll go search for them." Masters stated, standing up from his seat.

Luckily, Bruce didn't need to interject to stop Masters from interrupting his son's conversation with Danny, since the two boys appeared by the door as if summoned by Masters' comment. Danny visibly tensed the moment he spotted Masters standing in his place.

"Daniel, it's good you're finally back. I was about to go search for you," Masters said, throwing Danny a stern look.

Danny opened his mouth, probably about to apologize for the wait, but Tim beat him to it.

"So sorry, Mr. Masters. I had to take a shower before changing clothes."

"Oh, don't worry about it, Mr. Drake," Masters said as he looked Tim up and down, evaluating if what Tim was saying was true. His eyes lingered on Tim's wet hair for a moment, and the tension in his eyes relaxed a bit. "It is Daniel's fault for throwing the soup on you. Now, shall we continue with the dinner?" Masters sat once more on his chair.

"Should—" Danny started, slightly stuttering when Masters' eyes returned to him. "Should I serve new portions? Since the ones on the table are probably cold by now?" the intensity of Masters gaze increased with every word Danny said. In response, Danny lowered his gaze to the floor, and shifted nervously.

Danny's voice was way too small by the end of his sentence, but Bruce could sense some hidden urgency in his tone. Remembering that Danny was the one who had warned them about the food, Bruce could infer that he was trying to further prevent them from eating it. It gave Bruce the impression that Masters had also caught onto that fact, given how tense the man was.

He was grateful for the kid doing their best to protect them, but lamented putting them in a position where they had to risk confronting their abuser. Bruce really hoped Tim had convinced Danny to leave with them. It shouldn't be difficult to create a reasonable invitation for Danny after Masters' comment about how he was isolating himself.

"Good idea," Cass said with a gentle smile directed at Danny before Masters could make any move.

Masters' eyes narrowed slightly, but then he nodded. "Very well. Daniel, go ahead."

As Danny hurried to the kitchen, Bruce shared a subtle glance with Tim, who was retaking his seat beside Cass. Unfortunately, instead of the nod indicating that they could get Danny to leave with them if they created the opportunity, Tim just shrugged. It wasn't the sign for Danny refusing help, but the one for things being more complicated than they seemed. Bruce sighed, and before Danny returned from the kitchen, his phone rang. He excused himself to answer Babs' call, lamenting not being able to take Danny with them.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Bruce came back from his brief call with Babs with a worried face that Cass knew wasn't the one he made when actual "family emergencies" happened. It was exagerated and dramatic, it screamed "something terrible had happened," and was perfect for this kind of situations. Bruce quickly ushered Cass and Tim out, apologizing to Masters for the hasty departure. They barely had time to say goodbye to Danny, who had hurried back from the kitchen after Masters had shouted about seeing off the guests.

Cass noticed a subtle shift in Danny’s demeanor as they prepared to leave. His shoulders dropped slightly, and there was a fleeting look of relief in his eyes. However, that relief was overshadowed by the palpable fear that clung to him; his tense posture betrayed the anxiety he was trying to hide. It was hard to leave him behind, and Cass almost ran back when she caught sight of Vlad’s possessive hand on Danny’s shoulder and his venomous, angry eyes as she was walking out the door.

As soon as they were in the car, Tim immediately began checking the vehicle and himself for hidden microphones, with Bruce and Cass following his lead with little more than a raised eyebrow. Tim’s decision to search for bugs made sense once he explained that Danny’s room had been bugged,

"Honestly, Danny's so careful with his actions and words everywhere, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole property is bugged."

The drive back to the house they had rented was tense, the atmosphere in the car thick with unspoken concerns. Tim decided to use the ride home to update them on what he had seen. In turn, Bruce spoke about the dinner with Masters, detailing their regrettable failure to extract any additional information from the man. The evening ultimately boiled down to the suspicion that the food had been poisoned. Cass remained silent, not feeling up to talking.

She had her doubts about the food being poisoned; even if the poison hadn't shown any symptoms, her past training should have allowed her to identify it if she had consumed it. It seemed unlikely that Masters possessed a poison so sophisticated that she couldn’t detect it, and the thought only deepened her unease. She though back to how their hosts acted at the start of the dinner.

Danny looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. His eyes darted nervously between them and Masters, his hands trembling slightly as he served the food. The guilt and fear radiating from him were almost palpable, as if he believed he was committing an unforgivable sin by offering them the meal.

Masters, however, didn’t seem like he was planning to poison them. He behaved more like Damian’s classmates had when they once tried to trick him into eating non-vegan food at a gala. His smile was too easy, his gestures too casual, like someone who thought they were pulling off a harmless but cruel prank. It felt like he was purposely feeding them something he knew was outside their comfort zone and ethical beliefs, testing their reactions with a detached amusement.

From the very beginning, Cass had felt a deep discomfort about the food. The way Masters and Danny acted around it had set off her internal alarms. When she took the first bite of the meat, something immediately felt off. The texture was unfamiliar, and the taste was oddly unsettling—not in a way that clearly indicated poison, but in a manner that was subtly disturbing, she didn't know what she was eating. It made her skin crawl, and she couldn’t bring herself to take another bite.

The car coming to a stop in the house’s garage jolted Cass out of her thoughts. They all exited the vehicle, and Jason’s motorcycle was parked beside them as he opened the door. tightly clenched jaw. Like the rest of them, he was frustrated by their inability to take Danny with them, but he wasn’t vocalizing it because he was also worried about what they had eaten.

Once the door was opened, Bruce was ready to rush into his bedroom to get the poison antidote kit, but Jason stopped him,

"Hold on old man, I want to know what the note the kid gave Tim says. It may even say what poison was used; save us time."

"Mnn" Bruce said with a slight nod, and Tim started unfolding the paper in response.

The folded paper was as small as a pinky, but once unfolded, it revealed a full letter-sized sheet, and the text filled at least half of it. Tim skimmed the text as he usually did before reading aloud, but his face quickly drained of color. His eyes widened in horror and disgust. Instead of reading aloud, he kept running his eyes over the first line repeatedly, his gaze darting between Bruce and Cass. His jaw was clenched tightly, and he struggled to keep his composure, fighting against the bile rising in his throat. Cass couldn’t help but frown deeply, a growing sense of dread settling in as she wondered what the paper could possibly contain.

"Forgot how to read, replacement?" Jason said, his tone lacking its usual edge. He stood beside Tim, his expression a mix of uncertainty and concern, unsure whether to reach for the paper or not.

Tim takes a shudering breath, and Cass herself can't help but shift in her place, her anxiety growing, as they all wait for Tim to gain back his voice and finally read what Danny's note says.

"The meat on the food is human meat." Tim finally says with a strained voice.

There's a moment of silence in the room. Cass keeps her eyes on Tim, hoping, pleading, to find any signs that what she heard is wrong, but Tim only repeats the sentence. Her stomach churns violently as bile rises in her throat. Without effort, she sinks to the ground, her legs giving out as she begins to vomit. The pounding of her heart fills her ears, as black dots fill her sight and her hands tremble uncontrollably. She is dimly aware of Bruce doubling over beside her, and the sound of Jason hitting the wall.

She ate human meat. It may have just been a bite, but she ate human meat. The dinner had been made from human meat. Her mind recoiled at the abhorrent thought. The thought of the soup they were served makes her vomit once more. She gasps for air, her body shaking as she fights against the rising tide of revulsion, desperately trying to rid herself of the lingering taste and the horrifying realization of what they ingested. She feels Tims hand doing smalls circles in her back and realizes that tears had been falling from her face.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Danny's hands trembled as he injected himself with another dose of ectoplasm. The shaking made the syringe jab painfully as he withdrew it, causing drops of blood and ectoplasm to fall to the floor while the injury quickly healed. Ten minutes of continuous electrical shocks wasn’t the worst punishment he had received from Vlad, but it had the most severe drawbacks. His body had a harder time recovering from electrical damage than from any other kind of harm, and Vlad often exploited this weakness.

He took a deep breath as the last of the Lichenberg marks disappeared from his legs and arms, leaving only the ones he’d gotten from his death. He sat on the bathroom floor, staring at the ceiling, his legs and arms still trembling. He wasn’t sure if the tremors were from the electrical aftershocks or his own anxiety. Vlad had been furious about his little stunt with the soup and had once again reminded him that they weren't eating Danny’s friends because he was such a "compassionate guardian."

The reminder had thrown Danny into a couple of panic attacks once he was allowed to return to his room. He thanks he's advanced dissociative abilities for not having those panics attacks in front of Vlad. He doesn't wan't to know how the man would try to exploit that.

But even as his whole body trembles and aches, he doesn’t regret his decisions. This is his only chance for things to change. The Waynes are a powerful family with connections to the Justice League. While the League has not interfered with what has happened in Amity Park up till now, they might get involved if the Waynes reach out to them. It’s wishful thinking, and he’s risking a lot, but this gut-wrenching dinner has become the first glimmer of hope he’s had since his family’s death, and he’ll hold onto it with his half-life.

Once he's body stops trembling and he's head feels a bit clearer, he needs to text Sam and Tucker. He'll depend on them for this to not backfire on all denizens.

[pawnshopbleus]

On Top

Young!Coriolanus Snow x Fem!Plinth!Reader

Warnings - Smut, Penis in vagina sex, Cunnilingus, Squirting, Abortion is mentioned once, Angst with a happy ending. Not beta read :0

Authors Note - I think this is the first time I’ve written p in v sex so please bear with me.

Standing in front of the door to the Snow residence, you made sure you had everything. The basket you brought over for Coriolanus and his family was filled with food, gifts, and roses for Grandma’am. You wanted to celebrate Coriolanus’s historic win in this year's Hunger Games. Well, Lucy Grey won, but she wouldn’t have done without your Coriolanus. 

Your knuckles tapped the door three times and you patently waited until the door opened to reveal Grandma’am’s signature snow-white hair. She smiled at you and embraced you. She stepped aside and let you enter the home you had become so familiar with over the years. 

“Grandma’am, I wanted to bring this little gift for Coriolanus’s big win. The flowers are for you, by the way,” you winked and placed the basket on the table. “Speaking of, where might he be.” 

Grandma’am's eyes softened at your comment. “He’s with the dean,” she said, “He will be here any moment. You can wait for him in his room if you’d like.” Grandma’am rushed over to examine a particularly pretty white rose. 

You sat on Coriolanus’s bed tracing hearts on his pillow for what seemed like hours before his door opened. He looked frantic as if someone found out something they weren’t supposed to find.

“Come on, Coryo, you’re supposed to be smiling. Lucy Grey won. Aren’t you happy?” 

“I cheated,” he sighed. 

Your heart stopped. He what? Never in a million years did you think that he would do such a thing. With strong women like Tigris and Grandma’am raising him, you would have thought that he had the decency to break up with a woman before he did that.

Coriolanus shook his head as soon as he realized that you might have been taking his comment in the wrong way. “I cheated in the games. Not on you. I would never do that.” 

Your body relaxed and then it shot back up again. “Wait, what do you mean you cheated in the games? Is that even possible?”

Coriolanus explained what he did in order to get Lucy Grey to win. The compact mirror that used to belong to his mother had been packed with rat poison, poisonous to anyone who came in contact with it. He also put his father's handkerchief which was covered in Lucy Grey's scent in the snake's cage. If the snakes were familiar with her scent then they wouldn’t kill her. So it wasn’t her singing that saved her, it was Coriolanus. 

“What are they going to do to you?” Your eyebrows scrunched together with worry. You couldn’t lose Coriolanus for his stupid, yet chivalrous actions. 

“I don’t know yet. I don’t want to think about the future. Right now, I want to live in the moment with the prettiest girl in all of Panem.” Coriolanus smiled at how your face heated up so quickly, but deep down he was hurting. He knew what his punishment was. Twenty years of service as a peacekeeper in the Districts. He would leave the Capital and everything he’s known since he was a baby. That he could deal with, but losing you would be the hardest thing he would have to deal with. 

He knew that you would run to your father and beg him to get Coriolanus out of serving, but he didn’t want you over-exhausting your father's resources. He was a big boy and he needed to learn how to deal with his consequences. He would be fine. After all, Snow lands on top.  

He wanted to live in this moment with you. He wanted to memorize every inch of your body. He wanted to hold onto that memory and make it last. 

Your smile calmed him. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, eyes focused on your lips.

You nodded your head and smiled into the kiss. It was soft and sensual, vastly different from the kisses that the two of you usually share. Your lips brushed together as your bodies got closer to each other. By the time the two of you broke apart, you were under him, his forearms caging you underneath him. There was no need for him to do that. This is where you wanted to be, with Coriolanus. The toxic and tyrannical world that you lived in was long forgotten as she swooped in for another kiss. 

His lips traveled down to your cheek, then your jaw, and settled on your neck. He spent the majority of his time kissing and nibbling at the skin on your neck. There would be pretty little marks on your skin later, reminding people that you belonged to him. Coriolanus doesn’t remember when he got this territorial, but he sure loved the fact that Strabo Plinth’s beautiful daughter was his girlfriend. His girlfriend to mark and fuck and love whenever he wanted (with your consent of course.) 

You laughed as Coriolanus licked the sensitive patches of skin that he nibbled raw. “My parents are going to kill me when they see what you’ve done.” 

Coriolanus kissed your lips one more time in response to your comment. He then resumed his exploration of your body. His hands traveled down to the hem of your shirt, lifting it up to reveal the bra that he unclasped in less than five seconds. He threw it on the floor of his bedroom, letting it get hooked onto the pile of books in the corner. 

Coriolanus kissed in between the valley of your breasts. He flicked his tongue over your sensitive nipples. It was cold in the Capital of Panem and unfortunately, the Snow’s didn’t have indoor heating. Maybe it was because they didn’t want to melt. 

You sighed in pleasure as Coriolanus continued to explore your breasts. After five minutes of teasing, he began to travel south to the part where you needed him the most. He hooked his fingers into the belt loops of your pants, “may I?” 

You nodded, “Ever the gentleman.”

With your permission, he ripped your pants off of you and threw them on the floor. They were lost in the pile of clothing that had gathered on the floor. Coriolanus had shed some of his clothing as well. His ripped body was adorned in nothing but his white underwear. 

Coriolanus spread your legs apart, “Look at how wet my girl is.” He traced a finger down the cotton of your underwear and slowly slid it up your legs. He wanted to drag this on as much as possible. You let out a grumble of frustration, getting tired of his constant teasing. Coriolanus gave in and got rid of your underwear. 

The same finger that was used to skim the fabric of your underwear was now being used to gather your slick and spread it across your sensitive pussy. You took a deep breath of air into your lungs. The feeling was new, but not unwelcomed. Coriolanus flicked his tongue over your sensitive clit. Your clit was pulsing with need. You needed Coriolanus to drop the act and eat you out like he was a starving man.

“Coriol-” Your word was cut off by a moan as his mouth did exactly what you wanted it to do. Coriolanus delved into your pussy, tracing shapes onto your clit with his tongue. Your back arched off of the bed again. Coriolanus’s fingers teased your hole, trying to find the perfect time to ease into your channel. 

Coriolanus’s fingers weren’t thick, but they were long making it easier for him to tease your G-spot. He fucked his fingers in and out of you as he sucked your clit. You had to bite your lip in order to keep quiet. Your lips were sure to be chewed raw after this, but they would serve as a reminder that you had a man who was willing to do this for you. Many high-society women told stories about their husbands not pleasuring them when they had sex. It sounded like a horrible life to lead, but they were rich and beautiful so they needed to sacrifice something. 

Coriolanus curled his fingers up, letting them knock against your G-spot. He continued to kiss and lick at your clit. You were close. By the way you were clenching down on his fingers, he could tell that the waterworks were coming. Your naked chest rose and fell as you played with your nipples, increasing the pleasure that you felt. Your head fell even deeper into the pillow as a chill ran down your body. That chill eventually led to where Coriolanus was currently still working. He ate your pussy like a starved man, just the way you liked it. 

Without warning, your juices painted Coriolanus’s face. He wasn’t surprised that you came so fast. The last time you had sex was two months ago. You were burning for him and he was burning for you. 

Coriolanus wiped his face with the back of his hand and laughed. That was the first time he had actually made you squirt. It had always been a personal goal of his after Tirgis explained to Coriolanus how a woman's body works. At first, he was traumatized. He didn’t want to have the sex talk with his dear cousin, but when he laid eyes on you for the time, he wanted to do everything Tigris said and more. 

His cock was hard. You could see the outline of it through his white underwear. You would tease him about his tighty whities later. Right now, you were laser-focused on the fact that Coriolanus hooked his thumbs under his waistband and lowered them, exposing his cock to the cold air. His hard cock slapped against his lower stomach. He jerked his cock off, spreading his precum all over his length. He wanted to make sure that it went in as smoothly as possible. The last thing he wanted was to hurt you. 

He lined himself up at your core. He slid his tip up and down your pussy, gathering your slick with his dick before he pushed into you. Your insides welcomed him with little to no problem. The stretch felt good. You were all slicked up and ready for him.

Contraceptives weren’t a problem for you. Coriolanus was always careful and made sure to come somewhere that wasn’t your vagina. You didn’t want to have a kid just yet. First, you wanted to study at the University and travel back to District Two if you were given the chance. Then you wanted to get married. Pereferabbly to Coriolanus, but you didn’t know if that was possible yet. With his fate still undecided, your plans to marry the love of your life dwindled. Besides, even if you were to get pregnant your father would have enough money to get you an abortion

Coriolanus’s head fell forward as he buried his cock in your tight pussy. Two months and he had forgotten how good you felt. Your insides fluttered around him as he bottomed out. 

Coriolanus began to thrust his cock in and out of you. He was methodical with everything he did. Coriolanus set a rhythm as he fucked into you. He fucked you hard and fast. The side of his bed slapped against the wall and his mattress cracked and groaned as he fucked into you. You prayed to the heavens that Grandma’am and Tigris were in a deep sleep. Or that the walls of the Snow residence were thicker than Coriolanus’s cock. 

Coriolanus peppered your mouth with kisses in order to muffle your moans. He kept his pace as he did this. Your breasts jiggled as he fucked into you. Your hands found their way down to your extra-sensitive clit. You circled it with your fingers and moaned in pleasure at the feeling. 

His balls slapped against your ass as his strokes became more deep and labored. He was going to come soon. He needed to come soon. He couldn’t hold on much longer. Two months with no sex had gotten to him. “Fuck,” he said under his breath as your pussy clenched around him. “Where do you want it?” He asked, his voice was strained from trying to keep his composure. 

“Inside me,” you said. You were close too, the feeling of your finger frantically rubbing your clit and the feeling of Coriolanus's cock buried deep inside of you spurred your orgasm to come out from the woodwork.  

You have come a second time, your pussy fluttering and squeezing Coriolanus cock that was still inside of you. A string of curses fell from Coriolanus’s lips as he came inside of you. His pulsing and throbbing cock pushed his come deep inside of you as he continued to fuck you as he came. His thrusts were slow but intentional. He would have lasted a few more seconds, but with the way that your pussy squeezed his sensitive cock, he came instantly. 

Coriolanus slowly eased his cock out of you. The both of you were breathing heavily as Coriolanus went to grab a towel from his closet. He eased your legs open one more time as he cleaned you up. He was slow and gentle with it. He knew that you were still sensitive after two orgasms.

His come eased out of you and onto the towel. The sight almost caused him to get hard, but he didn’t feel like tiring you out even more. 

Once he was done cleaning you up, he tucked you into his chest and covered the two of you with the blankets on his bed. He kissed your forehead and your cheek. Coriolanus’s love language was kissing. He loved kissing you. He loved doing anything with you, but kissing was his favorite. 

Your eyes closed, but you weren’t falling asleep. Not yet. Sex might have been a clever distraction, but now that you were coming off your high you needed to know what will happen to the future of your relationship. 

“Coryo, what is going to happen to you? I know that you know what your punishment is. I'm not stupid.” 

Coriolanus sighed as he tried to keep his voice from waving. He rarely cried, but in moments like these, he did. Just you and him shielded away from the rest of the Capital were his favorite. “Twenty years as a peacekeeper.” 

You let out a shuddering breath as you tried not to cry. Your body ran cold as you repeated those words in your mind. Twenty years as a peacekeeper. Twenty years without your Coriolanus. Your Coryo. 

“My dad can-” 

“No,” Coriolanus said. “I don’t want your dad to get me out of this one. I need to learn how to do things on my own.”

“What if I had a crazy elaborate plan to get you out of it?”

“Nothing could be crazier than this.” Coriolanus got this crazy idea. It has been sitting in the back of his mind ever since you agreed to be his girlfriend. “Marry me?” 

This isn’t how he wanted to propose to you. He had already gotten your father's approval months ago. You were perfect for him and you deserve a perfect proposal. He wanted to take you to a fancy restaurant, get down on one knee, and ask you that way. Traditional and expected of Capital people, but things never go as planned when you’re a Snow. 

“Seriously?” You were in disbelief. Of course, you wanted to marry him, but this all seemed a bit rushed. “I mean, yes, I’ll marry you, but Coryo. You’re about to leave.” Then, your brilliant mind comes up with the perfect plan. 

You’ll marry Coriolanus, making him one of the heirs to the Plinth fortune. Thus making him more valuable to the Capital. This way you get to marry the love of your life and keep him within arms reach. Were you being possessive? Maybe, but it was better than the dean having to deal with an angry Plinth. 

And your plan worked. You and Coriolanus got married a week after he proposed to you. It was a bit rushed, but the two of you were ready. He was going to be a loving husband, and you, a loving wife. Coriolanus’s punishment would be reduced to two months of training in District Two. He would then return to the Capital as a peacekeeper. He would keep the peace during the day and return to you at night. 

Turns out Snow does land on top.

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

Time to study up on straight people sex!

[celestie0]

I actually kinda like the accidental pregnancy trope idk just two characters learning to coparent and then eventually falling in love is kinda cute 🥹 I’d love to see what you write for gojo I feel like he’d be scared but end being such an amazing dad

gojo x reader | accidental pregnancy trope [drabble]

little miracle. a gojo x reader story

a/n. ok anon i basically started answering this ask very minimally but i couldn't stop myself from writing and it basically became an entire story so enjoy i guess?? LOL my bad <3 warnings/tags. domestic fluff, angst, mentions of sick parent, mentions of death, pregnancy symptoms. there is happy ending!! word count. 2.2k

gojo and you are in your mid twenties but you're both just barely getting by, you're a new writer living in a tiny apartment in a big city and gojo is the cute waiter at your favorite diner who's just saving up some money because he wants to go back to school and you're both kindaaa crushing on each other, flirting w one another. the restaurant gojo works at ends up starting meal delivery option, and you order some pizza to your apartment just so that you can see him on a weekday and he's soooo super cheeky with it leaning in the doorframe entryway of your apartment with the pizza in his hand like "it says here someone ordered a hot guy in some super sexy black jeans, well he's here now" and you're like "you're such a fuckin idiot" and you abandon said pizza to fuck him on your facebook marketplace couch.

fast forward the next day n you wake up, but he's not there anymore. he left you a little note that says he's going away for a month since his mom is sick and he needs to be w her. you're confused by the note, and you wish he left his phone number because you realize you have no way of contacting him. but that's ok, he'll be back soon, right?

in the couple weeks following the night you both hooked up, you're feeling like shit in the mornings, nauseous, you realize you've missed your period but you shrug it off because it was never really normal anyways. but one morning you throw up, confused as hell, wondering if you got food poisoning. but as you swing your legs back and forth in your paper gown, sitting high up on your primary care doctor's examination room bed, they tell you that you're pregnant and you act like you've never even heard the word before.

there's no doubt gojo is the father, you haven't slept w anyone except him in months. and a baby was just...you can barely afford to pay your bills, you're already living paycheck to paycheck since your book isn't even out yet and you're just surviving w the advance from your old job. what the hell were you going to do? and you can't even tell him that you're pregnant, because he's god knows where, stranding you with no phone number to contact him and you feel so left behind and alone.

the first person he comes to see when he gets back into the city is you. he looks tired, probably from his travels, or possibly from what he saw back home w his mom laying sick in bed. but he's still so happy to see you, and he kisses you and tells you he missed you and you stop him to tell him that you need to talk. for him, there was life before you told him you were pregnant, and then there was life after. and now he was living in the after. standing still in the tiny living room of your apartment when you tell him he's the father, and the words that leave your mouth afterwards are drowned out in his head because he can only focus on that one thought at once.

father. he's going to be a father? whatever heaviness he finds in his chest from the word is replaced with adoration when he looks at you.

keeping it, was what you had told him next.

it was tough at first, because of the morning sickness and the hormones and the yelling at him for not bringing you the kfc you craved so badly a minute before he did, and then the crying that follows suit when you realize you're being mean to him. but he does everything you want, everything he knows how, because he doesn't know how to be a dad, and he figures the least he can do right now is know what to do for you. and the thought scares him, to death every day. as he's driving you to your doctor's appointments, he's praying under his breath that you and baby are ok and healthy. while he's waiting tables at work, he puts on his best smile for an extra tip because it's extra money for the baby, because she isn't even here yet and he already wants to give her everything she's ever wanted.

yes, she. a baby girl. you were having a baby girl. you cried when your ob/gyn slipped and told you the gender, because you asked for it to be kept secret, but what hurt even more was that you told gojo he didn't need to come to this appointment. just a routine little check up, not a big deal. i'll just have my friend drop me off, you said. little did you know it was the one where you would find out you two were having a little girl.

oh, gojo knows nothing about girls. would it be different from raising a boy? can he play wrestle w her when she's a little older, or would he have to be gentle with her? would he learn how to make flower crowns for her with daisies from the field just to see a smile on her tiny face? how will he ever be able to deny her anything, especially if she looks just like you?

the second trimester, you two felt like a young married couple, and for once it felt like things were bright. like you two knew what you were doing. like it wasn't a mistake, but a blessing. you wanted him, desired him, and he'd never desired anything more than he desired you. it took you a while to come around to having sex again, it felt wrong, because that was what got you two into this mess in the first place. but those feelings melted away when you two moved into his little ranch together on the outskirts of town and you knew what it felt like to be hugged by him in the mornings, his sleepy voice drawling in your ear about how much more beautiful you look with every passing day. in those moments, all the regret melts away.

it all comes crashing down in third trimester. you're angry, he's tired, you're sad, he swears he's trying his best but he just can't seem to understand what you need from him. you say you wished this never happened, he says he didn't ask for any of this, and you're sobbing on the kitchen floor with your head in your hands because it all just feels like some cruel twisted joke. like a dream you should be waking up from any second from now. he sits down on the cold tile beside you, solemn in the face. he already looks so much older than the bright eyed boy he used to be, twirling a pizza box around on his finger in the doorframe of your apartment. his cheeks have sunk in, and you realize we all die someday. his hand reaches out to hold yours, and he kisses the back of it, and he says he'll never leave. not like how he left all those months ago, with nothing but a note. no matter what it comes to, one thing he can always promise you, is that he'll never leave like that ever again.

when your baby girl was born, nothing else mattered. it's like all the turmoil you faced in the past eight months was not even worth paying a moment's care towards when you cradle her in your arms. gojo had been fighting back tears the entire time, mostly provoked by how difficult childbirth had been for you as he watched feeling helpless, but the moment he held his little girl in his arms, he couldn't fight back the tears anymore. and he cried, and he cried, and he cried. few fathers could treasure their daughters as much as gojo did, and he knows it's a promise every parent makes to their child, but he vowed he'll never let anything hurt her. never let anyone upset her. for as long as he lives, he'll keep all the cruelty away from her, and keep her safe forever. you both named her yuki, for snow drifting outside of the hospital window when she opens her eyes for the first time.

you two make the tough decision that it's best for gojo to go back to school like he originally planned while you take care of the baby at home. it's hard having him away, and it's torture for him too, since he seems to breathe and live just to make yuki giggle and smile. but it's what made fiscal sense, since you knew what it was like to grow up in a household with little money to feed or fend, and the two of you wanted more than that for your daughter.

gojo's mother succumbed to the very illness that had been haunting her since he visited her for a month over a year ago, and he cried to sleep when he realized she only got to hold her granddaughter once before she passed away. and for the first time in his life, gojo learned what it really meant to be a parent, and it was only found in losing his own. there was no time to grieve in the capacity that he wanted to, because he needed to be there for you and his little girl. a year ago, he would've been broken, beaten, and bruised, but now he bleeds only in his dreams, then buries and braves the seasons for the sake of you two. as he slips his shoes off at the front door after a long day, then walks into the dark of the house, turning the corner into your shared room, he sees you humming peacefully while rocking his daughter to sleep. and he realizes his entire world is sitting in that chair.

gojo graduates from his two year engineering program, and lands a job in the city. the same city you left to go live with him when you were pregnant. it was tough to come back to the same city you fled, because all you remember of it now is morning sickness and fear of your career and falling in love with a boy that had a boyish charming smile you knew would ruin you one day. and now he's taken you back, moving the little family you've made together into a house. a house! he bought you a house. it was a little one, with no more than two bedrooms, but there was enough room in your hearts to raise your daughter with love, and that was all she'd ever need. she can walk now, mumble words. she said dada first, and gojo never stops teasing you about it. and when she finally says mama, you felt like your whole heart would burst.

he proposes to you on the waterline of the city's park, at the top of golden hour while the wind is subtle and tame but still ruffles the fabric of your dress. waiter boy, on one knee in front of you, years of waiting tables but he cannot even bare to wait one more second to hear your answer to the most important question he'll ever ask anyone in his entire life.

and you say yes. and he promises he'll love you for the rest of his life.

the wedding is small, because you two decided not to invite all of the family that had become estranged ever since you told them that you were pregnant with a man's child who you weren't even so much as dating. his family became yours after that, with his aunts and uncles congratulating you and yuki's cousins playing with her before she was to skip down the aisle as flower girl. it was sad to see your side of the church so empty, but you could never truly feel empty in this world anymore. not with what all that you've gained in the process.

there is fear in love, and in life. there was fear in gojo's heart when he learned he was going to be a father when he barely even knew right from wrong. there was fear in learning you were going to be a mother when you knew you cannot protect your child from the same hurt that has haunted you for a lifetime. but there was joy too. joy in seeing your baby bump for the first time, joy in holding your daughter in your arms for the first time, joy in seeing a sparkling stone in a tiny box presented to you on a sunday by the boy who still made your heart skip a beat just by looking at him, and there was so much joy in marrying him too.

but you find the real joy comes in the moments that you expect nothing from at all, but they happily surprise you with the feeling nonetheless. like now, as you sit on a picnic blanket at the park and you watch your husband running across fluttering grass in the wind, chasing after your daughter whose giggles and shrieks fill the summer air. he catches her, throwing her up into the air before spinning her around in his arms, and you tuck your hair behind your ear as you watch it happen. you expected nothing from anything life had given you in the past four years, and yet it gave you all the joy in the world. where you could've expected sorrow and sadness, it gave you something beautiful instead. you never would've thought that the boy you locked eyes with through a shy flutter of your lashes underneath warm restaurant lighting, the one that winked at you with no shame despite you being surrounded by all of your friends, you never could've imagined he'd be who he is to you today. but for certain, now, you believe in it. you believe in little miracles.

.

.

.

[the end]

a/n. what the flying fuck. i'm gonna go cry now lmfao.

[astaribun]

Camp moments I wish we had:

Someone gets stuck trying to take their armour off, maybe a great way to bond with a lower approval companion

Helping your companions and them helping each other do their hair after they find a place with showers/baths

That time they got food poisoning because people complained about the ingredients Tav provided and the lot of them didn't manage to make a safe meal

(Once Karlach can touch people) a battle for who's strongest with arm wrestling and lifting companions and all the hilarity that comes with it

Wyll gives a ballroom dance class

Gale reads to the group one of the books he's fully memorised

Karlach (and Wyll) give a class about killing hellspawn

Lae'zel gives a "class" about (slaying) illithids before the emperor reveal

Astarion gives everyone locks to pick after they keep complaining that he takes too long and Tav wouldn't let him give flirt lessons

Shadowheart subtly finds and evening to make everyone more resistant to the interrogation techniques she knows so well

Gale tries to teach every one of the companions to cook at one point, it goes as well as you'd expect

People asking Tav/Durge how they're doing

Birthday party? Surely someone has a birthday somewhere along the way and they can just celebrate all of theirs together because who knows how long this journey will last

Intervention for Tav to stop adopting children and pets

Cuddle pile!

Trying to scare Whithers

[mayvnwrites]

Fox demon sy au, except more demon and less uwu.

After dying due to expired food, SY wakes up as a fox demon with a natural affinity to poisons and poisoning. He is unamused at the irony, thanks, but at the same time... he IS kind of in some chaotic demon realm adjacent like place and needs all the help he can get, so ... thanks?

His transmigration even came with a subspace for drying and preserving herbs and ingredients, and an encyclopedic manual of all the possible tinctures, ingredients, and handling procedures installed into his brain.

Pretty adequate, although the subspace can only take medicinal ingredients and can't be used for growing/raising ingredients, and the manual is so massive SY feels like it will take decades to read. (Spoilers: it does take decades to read)

Cool, SY thinks, I can be a wandering apothecary and stuff - but of course things don't turn out like that, because why wouldn't this world be full of poisonous plants that require... um ... *alternative* methods of healing.

After the fifth time someone tries to force SY to cure someone with papapa, he says fk it and, unable to escape in more conventional ways, he poisons his way out of the demon lord's castle.

SY is also beginning to understand which world he's been transmigrated to and is cursing a "Master Airplane" under his breath nonstop as he stomps angrily away from rando demon lord's territory, almost no guilt in his heart because the dude and his vassals eat people and are *assholes*.

SY starts using the direct method (aka poison) in refusing persistent inquisitors that want help he's unwilling to give (whether it's papapa or just a matter of principle) and slowly becomes known more for poisoning than cures. Doesn't help that SY has evolved from death-poisons to poisons that would make you wish you were dead.

Soon SY is known as a fox who would rather kill you than speak to you.

At first SY feels upset about this, because after all that work curing people, killing people is what he's known for? But eventually he's like, whatever gets people to stop bothering me~.

After decades, SY has embraced getting his way with his pretty face and poisonings, becoming a bit of a naughty foxy, and is enjoying his life away from the plot and with much less harrassment by the demons.

He's gained the title of Poisonous Shoutao (longevity peach), and his reputation as a venomous fox demon who could cure whatever ails you but would rather poison you has grown far and wide (as well as his foxy bewitching ways as he gloats over poisoning you).

SY has a long list of admirers and haters alike, including those grateful for his healing and those who want revenge for his poisonings, but what good demon *doesn't* have an enemy or 20?

And then one of his haters sets him up to be the scapegoat of a rash of poisonings in some human communities, and suddenly SY is the target of some pony-tailed pretty boy head disciple from Cang Qiong with a mole, who hasn't realized that the Poisonous Shoutao is outside of his capabilities... after paralyzing the boy, SY thinks about just ending the kid but... well, SY has used his pretty face to sway others before, but this is the first time he's been swayed by a pretty face.

B-besides, it's probably better to avoid making enemies of Cang Qiong, no matter where in the plot they are right now! So SY just teases the kid until the kid's practically steaming (out of anger? or...), reveals he's NOT the culprit, and disappears into the night with a faint scent of nightshade lingering behind.

Expecting it all to be done and dusted after that, SY is surprised to find out that the pretty boy now has a vendetta against him and has sworn to take him down.

Cue cat-and-mouse interactions all over the two realms with a poisonous (and slightly flirty) fox demon chased by a serious (but easily flustered - at least when it comes to a certain fox) young cultivator.

[wonijinjin]

in sickness and in health

author’s note: please take care of yourselves everyone! being sick is not fun. dedicating this to my dear @babyleostuff <3

synopsis: when you get food poisoning cheol is ready to sacrifice his night to take care of you.

word count: 1.0k | genre: fluff, comfort | pairing: cheol x gn! reader | warnings: mentions of throwing up, being sick, fever, exhaustion, bad mental health

it was around 12am when you realised something was wrong; you never really got sick, but you could feel it coming before it even happened; head pounding and shivers crawling up and down your spine, making you anxious. after a bit of panicking about why you felt this bad you calmed yourself down and went back to scrolling through social media on your phone, scared of waking and troubling the man next to you. seungcheol was already asleep by that time, being extremely tired from working since 3am, having been to several music show recordings and dance practices. you found him so peaceful as he slept and you were so glad to see him rest after many days of hard work. however as the minutes went by while looking at your phone you could sense an increasing nauseating feeling in your stomach, not being able to focus on the blogpost you were reading anymore, being too occupied with trying to make it stop and squirming under the blankets of your cozy king sized bed to make it more bearable. as if on cue to the peak of your struggles cheol stirred in his sleep next to your helpessly thrashing form, turning to you, his sleepy frame trying to process the cause of your distress. “what’s wrong, my love?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. “don’t worry, nothing. go back to sleep.” you tried to sound as convincing as you could. he didn’t buy it. “love, i know something is up. tell me, please?” he begged, more alert when he saw how your protests were interrupted by a weak sob. “i think i am gonna throw up cheol.” you mumbled with a terrified look on your face, trying to stay perfectly still so your upset stomach could get some relief. seungcheol first thought that you were trying to pull a prank on him since you never got sick, but when he looked at your features closer he realised how pale you looked, and how sweat was glistening on your skin. “you sure? like right now?” he sat up in no time as the question left his mouth, ready to take you to the bathroom to let out whatever was making you feel so miserable. you didn’t have time to answer him whatsoever as you bolted towards the mentioned room, getting to the toilet just in time for the agonising pain and suffering of the next few hours to begin. in your hurry you had a hopeless attempt to lock the door in order to shut cheol out; you hated if he saw you in any other state than your most perfect one, if he saw your imperfections, how you felt unwell sometimes or how you struggled with life from time to time. he always scolded you for thinking this way, but you couldn’t stop it; you wanted to be his strong partner, someone who he could rely on whenever he needed to. “i am coming in.” you heard him say and suddenly you felt a warm hand on your back and another one taking your hair out of your sweaty face, snapping you out of your feverish daze. “i am here, you are okay, love. breathe for me please. that’s it, good. let it all out. don’t worry i am here.” you could hear cheol’s voice through your eardums, blood pumping in your veins with much more speed than ever. seungcheol held you close to him as you spat in the bowl one last time, making sure you were really done before placing you on his lap, your knees no longer hitting the cold tiles of the bathroom, only feeling his warmth surrounding you. “my poor baby.” his voice was low and hurt while he kissed your forehead, frowning upon sensing how your skin burned under his touch. “you are burning up. you definitely have a fever my dear.“ he announced, but you could barely register his voice and words; you were utterly drained, barely able to keep your head up straight.

cheol of course took note of this, gently guiding you to lean into him even more while he got comfortable on the floor, cradling you into his chest. “i know you don’t feel good my love. do you know how did this happen?” he wondered with concern laced in his words. you slightly shifted in his arms, looking up at him. “i think i might have food poisoning, cheol.” he cooed at you, kissing the top of your head, rocking you from side to side as you whimpered in pain. “it’s okay love. it will be over soon i promise.” he chanted softly in an attempt to calm you down as exhaustion took over you, the high temperature making you shake with chills no matter how close seungcheol kept your body to his. “love, you with me?” he questioned after a few minutes of silence, but didn’t get a reply; you fell asleep fast, totally knocked out from the sudden wave of late night sickness. he was relieved to see that your immune system was trying to get that much needed sleep to heal, although he was concerned about the effects of not taking medication before your slumber; he didn’t have the heart to wake you so he let you rest anyways.

he never stopped holding you through the night, not even when he moved you to the bedroom and got a cold towel to put on your head, moving a trash can beside your bed just in case, or when he stayed up all night to watch over your distressed form, wishing that you would get better by the morning, kissing your cheek from time to time to let you know that he was there, that he was gonna take care of you no matter what.

[yandere-daydreams]

Sphinx!Xiao, who finds you stranded in the desert after your research group gets separated. A pack of wild coyote hybrids thought to be amicable, if not friendly towards humans attacked your camp in the middle of the night and sent you running aimlessly into the sand plains without time to gather food or water, let alone distress flares. By the time you stumble onto a wind-beaten temple, you're freezing, dehydrated, and exhausted. You barely have the strength to drag yourself up the meager steps and through the degraded doorway before you collapse on the sandstone floor, only able to hope that, by some miracle, a search party would be able to find you before you died of exposure. A search party doesn't find you, obviously, but Xiao does.

Sphinx!Xiao, who refuses to show himself for days. You only know he's there by the gifts he leaves you - cactus pears, palm dates, flasks of water and bitter wine that burns your throat as it goes down. It's not much, but it's enough to keep you alive, and you're too desperate to turn down anything he gives you. He's generous, too, giving you more than enough to get by while you're still in that state of bleary half-consciousness. You think he can tell that survival's not your area of expertise, that if you were left to your own devices, it'd only be a matter of time before you ate something poisonous or wandered into a bobcat den. That, or you're just pathetic enough to earn a few sand-covered blankets on top of the bare necessities.

Sphinx!Xiao, who lets you fawn over him with a purse-lipped scowl when you do finally manage to corner your elusive savior. You honestly just want to thank him, but once he's in front of you, you can't help grinning as you rake your fingers through the ivory feathers of his massive wings and scratch at the bases of his rounded ears. You've never so much as heard of a creature with both the wings and eyes of a bird-based hybrid and the legs, tail, and fangs of a cat-based hybrid, so you can't stop yourself from treating him like the eighth wonder of the world (unintended affection a touch-starved Xiao secretly basks in, not that you notice the pale blush painted across his skin while you're performing a remarkably thorough investigation on the color of his paw-pads).

Sphinx!Xiao, who stand-offish at best, reclusive at worst. He's clearly not used to having someone to talk to, his voice rough and his dialogue usually limited to one-word phrases or barked orders, but you can usually manage to string along your brief conversations on your own, either wondering aloud when you might be rescued or telling him about all the things you're going to do when you make it back to civilization. For every hour you spend fantasizing about baths and take-out and air conditioning, he spares a few words about himself. From what you can gather, he's a guardian of-sorts, meant to protect people like you from a threat he claims you couldn't begin to understand. You're not really in a place to question him, considering you didn't even know a hybrid like him could exist a few weeks ago.

Sphinx!Xiao, who also claims he's not allowed to 'meddle in human matters', meaning he can't help you beyond making sure you don't starve to death. You've asked him if he's seen anyone looking for you while hunting, but he's never given you a straight answer, and when you suggest that he just, say, put that twenty-foot wingspan to use and drop you off on the edge of the nearest town or village, he just scowls, rolls his eyes, refuses to say anything at all. You want to press the subject, sometimes, but you really can't afford to annoy him, to make yourself even more of an irritation to him than you already are. You wouldn't survive a day out here, on your own. You wouldn't survive without Xiao.

Sphinx!Xiao, whose gifts have been getting more... modern, recently. Luxuries are still few and far between, but you have a small store of canned food, now, a couple fleece blankets that don't seem at least a decade old, bits of scrap metal and glass that must've caught Xiao's eye. You try not to pry, not to turn down anything he gives you, but his most recent gift - a half-crushed, silver wedding band with an odd, scarlet stain you can't seem to polish away - hasn't seen the light of day since he dropped it into your hand.

Sphinx!Xiao, who keeps his wings wrapped around you as you sob into his shoulder and beat your fists against his chest. You're not in the temple anymore, dilapidated and open, but his den - a hellish, lightless cave filled to bursting with golden jewelry and century-old artifacts and scraps of metal and clothing that couldn't have come from anything but human travelers, from dozens upon dozens of people who could've saved you if he hadn't gotten in the way.

Sphinx!Xiao, who hums and coos and purrs as he rubs circles into your back, as he promises that he's not going to hurt you, that he's not going to let anything hurt you ever again.

Sphinx!Xiao, who's always been a guardian, first and foremost. It's just that now, he's decided it's his responsibility to guard you.

[ggukalaxy]

just finished my rewatch of all five seasons of bbc's merlin, and my sister and i decided it would be fun to keep count of how many times merlin saved arthur's life throughout the show, so here is an accumulated list:

(disclaimer: it is absolutey possible that we weren't always watching attentively and that we might have missed a case or two, but i like to believe that it is kinda accurate)

times arthur would have died if merlin hadn't saved him

• 1x01: dagger thrown at arthur ⟶ merlin slowed down time to pull arthur out of the way

• 1x02: snakes supposed to poison arthur ⟶ merlin exposes the snakes and arthur kills them

• 1x04: poisoned cup ⟶ merlin drinks from it instead

• 1x05: a griffin attacks them ⟶ lancelot fights it, and merlin enchants his sword/spear so that it’ll work

• 1x07: arthur is to be sacrificed to the sidhe ⟶ merlin saves him

• 1x10: ealdor gets attacked, including arthur, and they’re doomed ⟶ merlin creates a huge wind gust to save everyone

• 1x13: questing beast attacks arthur ⟶ merlin kills it

• 1x13: questing beast bites arthur, the poison is fatal ⟶ merlin gets water from the cup of life to save him

• 2x01: arthur gets attacked by a huge boar (?) ⟶ merlin uses magic on a crossbow to save him 

• 2x01: camelot gets attack by living stone statues ⟶ merlin destroys them

• 2x02: assassin tries to kill arthur during a tournament on horses ⟶ merlin uses magic to make the assassin fall off his horse

• 2x12: dead stone statue thingies attack arthur and his knights ⟶ merlin uses magic to make the ceiling cave in and pulls arthur to his side, separating them from the statue thingies

• 2x13: arthur's wounds are getting worse ⟶ merlin finds balinor in time and has him help him (HONORARY MENTION)

• 3x04: arthur gets attacked (again) ⟶ merlin uses magic to save him (again)

• 3x07: morgause tries to kill arthur with a fire beam ⟶ merlin uses magic to make the fire beam explode before it reaches arthur

• 3x08: arthur gets attacked by wyverns ⟶ merlin uses his dragonlordness to stop them

• 3x08: arthur wears the eye of the phoenix bracelet (sucking life-force out of someone) ⟶ merlin takes it off him

• 3x12: arthur gets shot by a poisoned arrow ⟶ merlin uses magic to help him, then brings him to gaius

• 3x13: an army of immortal deads attacks camelot ⟶ merlin empties the cup of life of their blood to “kill” them all

• 4x01: dorochas attack arthur ⟶ merlin pushes arthur out of the way to get attacked instead

• 4x04: their food gets poisoned ⟶ merlin uses magic to save them

• 4x05: arthur fights in a duel and is about to be striked down ⟶ merlin makes the opponent’s sword fall out of his hands with magic

• 5x01: arthur and their men get attacked by morgana’s men ⟶ merlin saves arthur and gets them away from the battle

• 5x04: arthur almost got beheaded by odin ⟶ merlin created an earthquake with magic to stop that

• 5x06: dark tower traps ⟶ merlin parries an arrow with magic

• 5x07: arthur gets poisoned ⟶ merlin saves him with magic

• 5x08: someone wants to shoot an arrow at arthur ⟶ merlin attacks the shooter and saves arthur

• 5x11: kara tried to stab arthur ⟶ merlin uses magic to save him

and the one time he fails: 5x13, mordred stabs arthur with a sword forged on a dragon’s breath — merlin doesn’t get him to avalon in time

which brings us to a total of 27.5 times that merlin has saved arthur's life throughout the show

we also kept track of all the times arthur saved merlin's life, so here is that list:

• 1x03: merlin tells uther he is a sorcerer to save gwen (which would’ve gotten him a death sentence) ⟶ arthur convinces his father that merlin is lying out of love for gwen

• 1x04: merlin drank from a poisoned cup ⟶ arthur gets the antidote for him

• 1x11: arthur drinks poison so that merlin won’t have to ⟶ it was actually a sleeping draft though (HONORARY MENTION)

• 1x13: questing beast attacks ⟶ arthur pulled merlin out of the way

• 2x12: dead stone statue thingy attacks merlin ⟶ arthur strikes it down

• 4x01: a dorocha flies towards merlin ⟶ arthur pushes him out of the way

• 4x08: the lamia was about to kill merlin ⟶ arthur comes in at just the right time

which brings us to a total of 6.5 times that arthur saved merlin's life

it's kind of crazy to me to compare it like this, because on the one hand 27 near-death experiences across 65 episodes doesn't really sound like a lot. but at the same time i can't believe that arthur would have died 27 times if it hadn't been for merlin. and to think that arthur only saved merlin's life 6 times though?? oof

on my next rewatch, my sister and i want to make a list of all the moments that contributed to arthur's death (a so-called "doom list" with moments like merlin poisoning morgana in 2x13 etc), but that one is definitely going to be more subjective, since it'll be based on things that we think could've prevented arthur's death if they had gone any different

very excited to debate all the things that could go on that one!

[pomefioredove]

Hi hi! I have a request

Could I ask for romantic headcanons of dorm leaders(expect melleus) with a so whos melleus's younger sibling and when their on a date all they see is the disamona gang is spying on their date

AHHH help this is such a fun request!! diasomnia stakeout that lasts 5 minutes because sebek starts yelling the second he sees you holding hands with someone

summary: malleus' younger sibling type of post: headcanons characters: riddle, leona, azul, kalim, vil, idia additional info: romantic, reader is gender neutral, reader is not yuu

𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬

so we all agree that Riddle is probably the best choice? right?

as in, the least likely to get in trouble with the Diasomnia fam

Riddle, as a partner, is a perfect gentleman. won't even hold hands with you until a certain point in the relationship

(I mean, we're talking about Victorian England-level courting here)

out of everyone, he's the least likely to raise concern

...and yet.

it's probably Lilia that gets everyone worried

Riddle is a little... uptight for his tastes, after all, and Lils doesn't want you squandering your youth on rules and expectations

and so, he leads the great date stake-out

...for a completely inconspicuous mid-afternoon walk through the Heartslabyul rose gardens

you, of course, find all of them peeking at you from over a hedge almost right away

and just barely manage to shoo them off before Riddle sees and dies of embarrassment

𝐋𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐚 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫

GOOD LUCK

it's honestly a miracle that there even is a Leona Kingcholar left to date, rather than a pile of ashes on the ground

(Malleus is a terribly overprotective older brother)

...and he's quite convinced that Leona is dragging you around just to annoy him, specifically

so, what's he gonna do? not spy on you with the whole entourage?

he just needs to make sure you're okay, that's all

you, of course, knew that he didn't like the arrangement from the start, so you've already got an eye out on your dates

by the second or third, both you and Leona can tell you're being followed

...much to his annoyance

it takes a lot of "family meetings" with Lilia mediating before Malleus makes his peace with it

for now, anyway

so help him, if that oversized house cat hurts you...

𝐀𝐳𝐮𝐥 𝐀𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐨

everyone is... a little concerned that this is some kind of power play on Azul's behalf

Silver is probably the most worried, being in the same grade as him and knowing how tricky he can be

the original plan was to sit you down and express his concerns to you, and somehow that got turned into Lilia convincing everyone to wear fake mustaches and fedoras and spy on one of your dates in the lounge

(Malleus agrees because he thinks it's funny. Sebek agrees because Malleus does. poor Silver is powerless to stop it)

of course, you notice them right away

that's like... a given

besides the terrible disguises, Lilia and Malleus keep laughing and Sebek is white-knuckling the menu while trying to stay quiet

after that, you have a nice sit-down with everyone to discuss your personal boundaries

Silver gets his talk, after all :)

𝐊𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐦 𝐚𝐥-𝐀𝐬𝐢𝐦

Lilia's failed attempts at convincing everyone that Kalim is a totally great boyfriend (wingman of the year, everyone) obviously don't work well

listen, Kalim is great. it could be a lot worse!

but also, uh...

his life tends to be a little hectic

the last thing the Diasomnia fam needs is for you to get poisoned

...or assassinated in some other grotesque fashion

so, of course, they tag along to a few parties, some dinners here and there...

they get caught pretty quickly, but lucky for them, Kalim is a great host, and so he invites them to just. join the dates

(much to your horror)

Sebek and Silver argue about who's going to taste your food for poison first

which Lilia ends up doing, anyway

(even if it is poisoned, it won't have any effect on him. he might even like it more)

𝐕𝐢𝐥 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐧𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐭

Vil is probably the second safest option on this list

...and, of course, he gets scoped out for the same reason number one does

Lilia considers him just... too strict. I mean, he's young! you're young! you shouldn't be acting like grown-ups, you should be frolicking

or whatever it is kids these days are doing

when the four follow you on one of your way-too-nice dates, Vil is the first to notice

he's definitely annoyed at first, but comes to find the situation really funny

it's like paparazzi, but if the paparazzi were your extremely strange found-family, who are also wearing fake mustaches and pretending to be tourists at the table behind you

he'll let it slide, just this once

...but maybe you'll have more indoors dates for a while

𝐈𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐒𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐝

Idia has already taken the necessary preventative measures

i.e., never actually going out for dates

if you want to eat something together, you can just come to his room for ramen and anime. what's so great about cafes and restaurants, anyway?

if you need some new scenery, he'll design a VR room for the two of you

it's pretty hard to spy on Idia- he's got a hell of a custom-coded security system on all of his devices

and besides that, Lilia was the one who set you two up in the first place. why would he be worried?

...okay, maybe the rest of the Diasomnia fam is a little concerned that you're dating someone who hasn't seen the sun in years

but you can handle yourself!

(he may still be receiving hundreds of very strongly worded and untitled emails from Sebek, though)

[jae-bummer]

The Stranger in 43B

Prompt: You move in next door and he tries his hardest to be a good neighbor while you try your hardest to be left alone.

Pairing: Ateez Park Seonghwa x Reader

Genre: Fluff

Song rec while you're reading: Close - Han

.

Putting your hands on your hips, you let out a sigh as you assessed the sight in front of you. Boxes upon boxes in leaning and teetering stacks were balanced haphazardly around the living area, all of them threatening to come down in an expensive game of dominoes at any moment.

You never realized just how much crap you owned until you moved.

"Hello?" a gentle voice called from your entryway.

Nearly tumbling into the stack of boxes closest to you, you spun in surprise. With your hands full as you came in, you forgot to kick the door closed behind you as you had done most of the morning.

"Uh..." you trailed, looking down the hall and into the face of someone you had never met.

Admittedly, he was handsome...but still, stranger danger.

"Neighbor," he smiled in explanation. Moving to take a step in, he stopped himself. His cheeks instantly began to blush pink. "May I?"

Anywhere you had lived, you had made a point to make yourself as small and insignificant as possible. You didn't want to rely on any of your neighbors for anything, and more importantly, you didn't want to be relied on. It was easier to be a lone wolf. Having to care for yourself and yourself alone was difficult enough in this modern hellscape.

You stared at him, unblinking. "Sure?"

So much for your survival instincts.

Smiling to himself, he gave a short nod before stepping just inside of your entryway. He lifted a plate into the air. "I heard we had a new neighbor moving in down the hall, so I made muffins."

"I'm allergic to blueberries," you blurted, trying not to wince at how loud the declaration came out.

He narrowed his eyes. "Good thing they're chocolate chip."

"Right," you laughed nervously, still making no move to come closer. "You really didn't have to go to the trouble."

"It was no trouble at all," he insisted. Was it just your imagination or did you see his smile become tighter? "I have housemates, so they're always eager for me to bake something and-"

"Oh, if you have roommates, you don't have to waste any food on me," you nodded. "Thank you though!"

"I'm Seonghwa," the stranger said, you assumed trying a different tactic for conversation. Honestly, you never really understood people who insisted on being friendly.

"Y/N," you nodded shortly, letting the conversation lapse into something awkward. Maybe if he felt uncomfortable he would leave.

No such luck.

"Do you need any help with boxes?" he asked, looking around the room with wide eyes. "No one should have to move by themselves."

"I work best alone," you said cheerfully, hoping he'd pick up on the hint.

"Oh," he hummed, pursing his lips. Sweeping one last gaze across your apartment, he let out a sigh. "I'll just set these on the counter then?"

"Really, you don't-"

"Please," he snapped before catching himself and letting his face fall into a serene smile again. "I insist."

"Counter is fine," you chirped, trying not to feel as if you were just chastised by a parent. "Thank you."

"No thanks needed," he affirmed, stepping gingerly between boxes and packing materials to get to the kitchen. Placing the plate on the counter, he turned back to face you. "Just return the plate whenever you have the chance."

As you were opening your mouth to tell him he could take the plate before he left, he was already giving a small wave and backtracking out of your apartment. "It was nice meeting you, Y/N. If you need anything, I'm just down the hall! Apartment 43B."

"Right," you croaked, watching him disappear around the corner into the hallway.

And that was how your relationship with Park Seonghwa of Apartment 43B began; awkwardly and against your will.

The day after he had broken into your apartment (been invited in) to poison you (give you muffins that were admittedly delicious), you waited until it was 2 AM the following day to covertly stalk down the hall and abandon the plate. You placed it in a shopping bag (you weren't going to leave someone else's dinnerware on the ground) and tiptoed toward his door.

Looking down at his welcome mat, you hissed out a laugh. Decorated in floral patterns, it noted in sprawling script "Bless Our Nest." You didn't even know him and somehow that was so on brand.

Depositing the bag in front of his door, you must have looked like a fool as you attempted to run quietly back toward your apartment. No one looked cool when they were trying to be sneaky, no matter how the spy movies made it seem.

"Y/N?"

Your shoulders scrunched up to your ears as you spun slowly toward the sound of Seonghwa's voice. "Why are you awake?"

He lifted his brows in amusement at your curt response. Waving his hand in the air, you saw he was holding a Nintendo Switch. "New Animal Crossing expansion dropped at midnight."

"How did you hear me?"

Crossing his arms, he leaned against the door frame. He eyed you up and down carefully. "I have a camera doorbell."

Glancing directly to the left of his elbow, you tried not to swear. He sure as shit did. You crossed your arms as well, trying to hide yourself from his appraising gaze.

"Why'd you come to the door then?" you managed, unsure of where to take this conversation.

"And miss this exciting game of twenty questions?" he grinned. "I'm not going to leave a Williams Sonoma plate for someone to steal."

You sighed, of course he owned expensive flatware.

"I didn't kno-"

"Of course you didn't," he grinned, lifting the bag from the ground. "I'm teasing you, Y/N."

You opened your mouth, unsure of what to say. It had been quite awhile since someone had bothered to banter with you.

"Why are you awake?" he countered, cocking a brow.

"Unpacking," you said quietly. You weren't going to admit that you had also been waiting for the Animal Crossing expansion.

"Thanks for bringing back my plate," he managed, biting his lip as he held your gaze a little too long. "I'm going to get back to it though."

"Right," you nodded. "Sorry for-"

"Goodnight, Y/N," he smiled genuinely, cutting off any apology.

Shutting the door softly between the two of you, you shook your head.

"Goodnight."

.

Of course that wouldn't be the last time you saw him. Against your best efforts, he became one of the constants in your routine. Whether it was fate or organized by his own design, you were constantly bumping into each other around your apartment building. Trash drop off? Seonghwa. Going to grab your mail? Seonghwa. Hopping in the elevator? Seonghwa.

Needless to say, you shouldn't have been surprised when a few weeks later, you heard a light knock on your door.

"Do you need any candles?" he asked, appearing in the doorway.

You furrowed your brows as you took him in. Already wearing pajamas at 8 PM (albeit a very expensive looking silk set) his arms were full to the brim with what appeared to be Yankee Candles. By all accounts, he was adorable, and you hated it.

"They're all the same scent," he attested. "So if you have more than one going at once, you won't get a headache."

"Seonghwa-" you began, completely confused by his appearance until another roll of thunder shook the complex and the lights above you began to flicker.

"I probably should have led with this," he chuckled. "But the power likes to go out at the smallest weather event."

Looking toward the ceiling, you grimaced. While you didn't mind bad weather, you did mind the power going out. Sure, you were an independent adult who could navigate the world alone, but as soon as the lights went out, you were on edge. It wasn't necessarily the dark that scared you, but the things in it that you couldn't see.

"I have lanterns somewhere..." you muttered, walking further into your apartment. You racked your brain, trying to remember which box you had packed them in. While you had most of your day to day items unpacked, there were still quite a few boxes waiting to be opened.

"I brought my lighter too in case you didn't have one," Seonghwa insisted, following you into the living area. He began to set the candles down on the makeshift coffee table you had created out of cardboard. "Let's get these lit before the-"

As if summoning it with his words, all noise halted around you as the power shuttered off.

"Lights go out."

"Shit," you whispered, standing as still as possible in the blackness that threatened to suffocate you.

With a light pop, the space was illuminated in a dull glow as Seonghwa's lighter flared to life.

"Thank god," you nearly cried as you watched him lean down to light the candles. For once, you could confidently say that you were thankful for your overly helpful neighbor.

"Hwa to the rescue!" he chimed, attempting to light the first candle, but the wick refused to catch. "Now why..."

You watched in horror as the lighter flickered out. As Seonghwa pressed the button again, it only clicked. "Oh, come on."

"Shit," you whispered into the darkness again. "Shit, shit, shit."

"No worry," he said confidently. "I'm sure it won't be out for long."

Feeling as if you were a piece of ice that had begun to melt, you slid toward the floor with a plop. "Shit."

You closed your eyes tightly, convinced that the blackness that hid behind your lids was safer than anything this apartment could provide.

"Y/N?" Seonghwa's gentle voice filled the silence, noting the obvious shift in atmosphere.

"Yep," you hissed. Your eyes were screwed shut, only cognizant of his movements by the noise of him shuffling around you. "I'm good."

"Are you sure?" he asked, this time much closer. You couldn't confirm, but it felt like he was crouched down in front of you. "You don't sound okay."

"I'm fine," you gritted out. "You can head back over to your place."

Even though the idea of being alone right now was terrifying, you didn't know if you were prepared for the level of vulnerability it took to show Seonghwa this part of you. That's why it was easier to push people away.

The pace of your breathing sped up, your body completely ignoring every therapist you had ever worked with. How could the room spin when your eyes weren't open?

"Hey, hey, hey, hey," Seonghwa cooed, pulling you into his arms without a second thought. "It's going to be okay."

Panicked breaths shuttered out of you as you allowed him to tuck you tightly into his chest.

"Crap, is this alright? I didn't ask permission to touch you, but also-"

You quickly nodded your head. "F-f-fine."

"Okay," he said, voice still calm. He began to run his hands over your hair, his fingers smoothing through the strands methodically. "Just breathe, Y/N. You're safe. I won't let anything happen to you."

You knew he wouldn't. While you had forced yourself to be annoyed at his mere presence, Seonghwa had done nothing but be there for you from the beginning.

"Let's breathe together, okay? Can you do that with me?"

You remained silent, already trying to focus on his breathing cadence.

"Good, you're doing so good," he hummed. "Are your eyes open, Y/N?"

"No," you choked out.

"Open your eyes," he whispered. "I've got you. Let them adjust to the dark. It's not so scary once you can kind of see what's going on."

You thought about arguing, but he hadn't steered you wrong yet. Your eyes fluttered open and you instantly began to breath easier. He was right. There was a slight glow coming from under the door, no doubt the apartment's emergency lights flared to life in the hallway. The windows also provided a bit of light on their own, the moon bright despite the clouds passing by.

"See," he cooed. "This isn't so bad."

You hadn't realized that you were white knuckling the fabric of his top and slowly released the smooth material. Setting your palm against his chest instead, it was more obvious when his own heartbeat sped up.

You thought back to every time you had bumped into your neighbor, every kindness he showed you just for you to push him away. What were you afraid of?

Leaning slightly away from Seonghwa, you tried to make out the outline of his face. it was easy to see his features this close, even cloaked in night.

It might have been the oxygen you had been depriving your brain, but it seemed like a great idea to kiss him.

"Hwa," you managed, your voice barely above a whisper.

His tongue skirted across his bottom lip, almost like an invitation.

Before you could talk yourself out of it, you pressed your lips lightly against his, barely a ghost of a kiss. Just as you began to pull away, you felt his mouth chase after yours. Another kiss, this one soft and sweet before he broke contact.

Maybe your fear was confusing itself for sexy feelings, but either way, mortification flooded in where butterflies had once been.

"Y/N?" he said quietly, his eyes searching your face. Even in the dark, they were so big and bright. His own expression was one of wonder.

"Sorry...was that...I didn't-" you stumbled over your words. He had been so conscious of asking for your permission to touch you earlier, and here you were, just thrusting your lips into his.

A small smile fought it's way onto his mouth. "I just wanted to make sure it was something you wanted...I don't want to take advantage-"

"No, I thought I was the one taking advantage-"

"No!" he laughed. "I'm not the one coming down from a panic attack."

"I thought...maybe I mistook your kindness and..."

"I think we're both fine then," he hummed, snuggling you in closer. "You know...you...you could do that again...maybe."

"Oh...I could?" you whispered, letting the amusement take place of the fear.

"Mhm," he hummed, his face coming even closer to yours. "It'll keep your mind busy until the power comes back on."

"You're such a thoughtful neighbor," you whispered.

"Dare you say...your favorite neighbor?"

"I dunno," you hummed. "Mrs. Huang in 41B is pretty high on my list."

"I bake waaaay better than Mrs. Huang," he grumbled, his lips still painfully close but still not on yours.

You pretended to think. "I suppose you're my favorite neighbor, but only by a little bit."

Lifting his hand to cup your cheek, he grinned. "Let me close the gap then."

[gremlingottoosilly]

could u do a kidnapper!konig with a tsundere!yn plz

Now, he could deal with you hating him. He could deal with you loving him. He can't deal with your nasty attitude while you cook him dinner wearing nothing but a tiny apron and swat at his hands while also propping your ass to be grabbed. Spare this poor man, he is a genius at guns, not social interactions - your mixed signals already made him believe you were madly in love with him and want him to take you home. You're slapping his face for bring you flowers because he is a dumb asshole who kidnapped you, but you also make him sit with you and eat that obviously non-poisoned dinner because you already made it and you won't let him waste his food. It's not that you're not scared of him - you know that if he wants to be forceful, he will be. If he wants to hurt you, he obviously can, and there would be nothing you could do about it...so you just put on a brave face and press your pointy fingers into his chest every time he makes a mistake, making sure he will get into his loser mindset and stop arguing or being aggressive. It's not ideal, you know he is going to snap one day...but he is such a sweetheart on his good days, it breaks your heart to be mean to him. It's a good thing he kidnapped you, actually, you can always remember this fact and crush every bit of sympathy you had for this man. He brings you your favorite desserts from the bakery you used to love before he took you home, and you crush the first cupcake against his face, clearly indicating that he can go to hell and stop pestering you. You'll get the cupcakes after this, eating all of them in a single sitting and then deny that you did when he smiles and asks if you want more. He can kiss you and get some cream from your lips if he is a good boy - and, perhaps, you will allow him to fuck you for just one round. You always start kicking him right after he cums, before he could gain some energy for a second round...you don't want to be even more sore, after all. Even one round is too good for someone like him, you say. He is going to snap on day, eventually, and you know this - but you still hope that you could somehow tame him. Maybe getting him on his knees before he could put you on yours.

[luna0713hunter]

I'd die for you

Zoro Roronoa x reader

Summary : when Zoro is injured by Hawk Eyes,you cant help but to worry about him.

Warnings : none really, basically hurt/comfort,mentions of injuries and fear of losing the person you love aka Zoro, bickering couple

*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘˚˳°*.✧∘

"Wow," Sanji breaths, "Just,wow..."

You let out a whine and hide your face in your hands.

"Sanjiiii," you take hold of the cook's sleeve and shake him as hard as you can (which isnt much), "what should i do?! there's no way Zoro would actually like this!!!"

"I dont know," the blonde takes a spoonful of the soup you've made,which was oddly....black, "that blockhead should be thrilled that you put so much effort in making this for him!!"

You sniff,watching as Sanji swallows and school his expression,but not before his face paling slightly, "it just...has a little too much salt. And pepper...and.." when his eyes land on your defeated expression,Sanji smiles brightly again but it seems a little forced "and its absolutely delicious!!!i cant see how he cant possibly love this!"

"you're just saying that to make me feel better. You dont have to pretend,Sanji."

The cook gives you a charming smile and starts cleaning the kitchen, "if a man can't appreciate his woman cooking for him,then he doesn't deserve to taste it. So,y/n," he turns around from washing the dishes and smiles warmly at you, "don't be nervous. And remember you can always learn from your mistakes."

You smile back,and take hold of the bowl and walk our of the kitchen;a small skip to your steps.

"I'm going!!"

"Good luck with him!"

You giggle as you try to rush to where Zoro is; resting in his bedroom after you specifically asked him to rest.

It hasn't been long since he got injured by Hawk Eyes, and as much as he didnt want to admit those scars needed time to fully heal. And with him running around and fighting everyone in sight,it wasnt easy to actually make him rest. So after a small argument with him and some help from Sanji,you managed to cook something for him. The cook had mentioned that the herbs in the soup would heal him faster,but judging from how dark the food looked like,you may or may have not overcooked it. Only a little.

As you reach his room, you take a steady breath to calm yourself before knocking gently on the door.

"If its about your damn cooking or personal space again,i couldn't care less Sanji."

"Zoro,its me."

When the other side goes silent,you cant help but to roll your eyes playfully and grin. Sanji and Zoro couldn't get along for the life them and it never ceases to amuse you.

"...come in."

You take another breath as you finally open the door.

Zoro is,to your delight, actually resting on his hammock. His arms are folded behind his head as he stares at you when you walk through the door. The room is mostly dark,since he has a habit of drawing the curtains whenever Sanji is not around to nag at him. Your eyes momentarily traces the shape of the bandages under his shirt,before clearing your throat and moving to his side.

"i hope you're hungry. Sanji helped me cook this for you."

Zoro eyes the bowl in your hands,but doesn't move from where he's laying

"its not poisoned,is it?"

"i was cooking,what do you think?"

Zoro purse his lips and doesn't reply. You visibly gape at him and stump your foot angrily

"I'm not that bad at cooking!!"

"i didnt even say anything."

"your face says all i need to know!!" You huff and turn around, "maybe i should just give this to Luffy! I'm sure he would appreciate it,unlike someone."

You dont even have time to take another step before there are arms around your waist,not hard that you spill the soup,but enough to stop you from leaving.

"...give it here."

You dont turn around,but your lips twitch; Zoro could never say no to you.

"And why would i?"

"...cause I'm hungry and it smells...really good."

And when you finally turn around,you lift an eyebrow unamused.

"was that pause really necessary?"

"just give me the damn bowl."

You try really hard to hide your teasing grin,but judging from the scowl Zoro's wearing, you're not very successful at it.

You wait impatiently as Zoro blows the soup (which is totally unnecessary since its already lukewarm) and swallows a spoonful. You fidget with your fingers, tilting your head to side and looking at the man in front of you nervously.

"so?how is it?"

Zoro takes a moment before looking up at you.

"it's the best soup I've ever had."

There's a moment of silence where you just stare at the man in front you. He looks serious;no sign of his teasing grin or eye rolls. And when he sees you not responding,he just goes back to eating your black, burned soup.

Your eyes water and you try to muffle your sob.

At the sound, Zoro's head immediately snaps up,his eyes widening when they land on your crumbled form. He jumps to his feet and takes hold of your shoulders,caresses your cheek and wipes the tears away so gently that it has you crying harder.

"hey,hey. why are you crying?"

You shake your head and hide your face in his chest.

"i almost lost you Zoro..."

"but I'm-"

"you're not fine!!" You sob,and raise your face so you can watch his own twist into a frown as he watches your tears increase, "you almost died!! If it weren't for Zeff's help,you would've bled to death!i cant get the image of that sword slashing your chest out of my head!heck,i cant sleep without thinking of you dying in front of me Zoro!"

When you finally finish your little rant,your face is flushed and your breathing is uneven. Your mind wonders off to that cursed moment again,when a hand on your cheek pulls you back to your senses.

"breath," Zoro murmurs, "breath,babe. Its alright. Im fine;more than fine."

He rests his forehead against yours and puts your hand on his chest. Where you could feel his heart beating.

Alive and safe

"see?" He presses his lips to your heated skin and his hold on you tightens, "and, I'm getting so much better already with your magical soup."

At that,you let out a wet giggle and look up at him, sniffing, "really?"

"really."

And when he slowly steps back until he's laying on his hammock again,with your ear pressed against his beating heart,and the empty bowl of the soup on the floor;you feel your eyes slowly flutter shut.

"Sleep,love. I'll be right here when you wake up."