#the fear of judgement hurts my heart :(

[merlinmylove]

Merlin leaves Camelot

“Speak treason against my uncle again, and I swear you can join yours in exile forever!” Arthurs voice thundered across the throneroom.

All Merlin had done was address his suspicions of Agravaines betrayal and for framing Gaius. He hadn’t even mention Morgana, or even Uthers death.

Everyone turned to look at him. The council was seated and the knights were in uniform. The lord and ladies of court are in attendance. As usual, Merlin is standing at the sideline, observing the council meeting. He had spoken out of turn.

He can see it in their faces that they’re just as afraid as he knows he should be.

While they had all experienced arguments between Arthur and Merlins before, it had never looked like this. Merlin had never accused a nobleman in such a public manner before, and Arthur had never truly threatened banishment either.

It was clear to everyone that time it was different, and they were all terrified. But Merlin was no longer afraid. Not of Arthur’s wrath his or judgement. He was just tired.

Tired of lying. Tired of being overwork and overlooked. Tired of never being believed.

He stood his ground. He’d come this far. He had been brave enough to voice his concerns, and had hoped that by doing so publicly would encourage Arthur to listen. But it had had the opposite effect.

“I had no idea,” He mumbled. The room had become eerily quiet. No one dared move or speak.

Gaius, who practically raised the king, and whom Arthur had admitted he loved more than any other father figure, had been exiled.

On the basis of one accusation of magic.

Just like old times. A whisper of the word, and your soul is doomed. No trial. No exemptions.

At least Arthur was happy to see the old man “flee,” for it meant he didn’t have to execute him. He was happy in his belief that Gaius had apparently run, rather than stay behind and risk the pyre.

No matter how nonsensical it all was, and no matter how much Merlin argued the old man had been kidnapped and framed, Arthur had made up his mind and the punishment was decided. And Merlin was done with it all.

“I had no idea my loyalty meant so little to you” Merlin spoke louder this time while he kept his eyes fixed on Arthur’s.

Arthur, who had frozen in shock, seemed more confused than hurt, though his anger was still present in his eyes. His mouth opened and closed with no sounds coming out. Merlin had truly rendered him speechless.

Merlin knew in his heart and soul that Arthur loved and trusted him. But his actions these last months had left him feeling bereft and broken.

“After all these years. After everything we’ve been through, after everything I have done for you. War, dragons, poisons, and heartbreak. After all of it, my loyalty clearly meant nothing to you.”

Arthur had never been heartless. He had always put others before himself, and would happily die to save anyone of his people. He had once drunk poison to save his kingdom.

But his father temperament and parenting had unfortunately had lasting effects, and he would occasionally act out in anger or frustration, before he’d had the chance to think things through.

This was one such occasion.

And Merlin was not about to let him do that again. Not to Gaius. Not like this.

It saddened him to think that Agravaine had his greasy fingers so deeply entrenched into Arthur’s heart. That his influence was so strong. The man in question is seated next to the king, on his right hand side, where Sir Leon should usually sit. While his face was portraying a perfectly false shocked expression, his eyes betrayed him. They were filled with glee.

Banishment had always been Merlin’s greatest fear. Death was of course a huge concern, but to be removed from Arthur’s side was unthinkable. He would rather die than be exiled.

And yet, the prat gave him no choice.

For once in his life, or at least the past seven years, Merlin did not choose Arthur’s side. He would leave. Maybe if he left, he would have a chance of saving Gaius’ life as he took Morganas’.

He walked towards his King with determined steps. His hand reaches inside his left pocket and picks up the Sigil Arthur gifted him a year ago. He holds it in his hands and feels the weight of the silver and his decision.

But at least the decision was his to make.

Merlin forcibly put the sigil back into Arthur’s hands. The man was so stunned by his action that he didn’t move or say anything. All eyes were on them and the sigil between their hands.

“Your uncle is having an affair with your sister. Lord Agravaine is a traitor to Camelot. It was he who killed King Uther by interfering with Dragoons healing magic, just like Gaius told you. It was he who told Morgana of your travel plans. It was he who kidnapped me alongside the bandits.”

Merlin spoke so calmly and gently it that the words cut like a knife. While his anger shone through the words he used, his tone was not angry — instead it was heartbreakingly honest.

“He was the one who goaded you into killing King Caerleon and starting a war. It was he who ended your courtship with Gwen, and it was he who betrayed you when the Dorocha attacked. Lord Agravaine is not your friend. He is the reason your father is dead.”

Arthur stumbled a little at this, and had Merlin not been so angry with him, he would’ve steadied him like he always had. But not right now, he needed Arthur to hear the truth of Agrvaine’s betrayal — even if the clotpole didn’t belive him.

“I have always been by your side, my Lord. I have never given you a reason to doubt my words. I have seen them together. I have seen the many times your uncle leaves the safety of the citadel late at night and does not return until the early morning.”

Merlin sighed.

“It is true that Gaius used to practice medicinal magic. Even Uther knew that and still he kept him alive and at court because he knew that Gaius’ knowledge was valuable to his kingdom. Did you never wonder how Gaius knew so much about magical curses and creatures? He told you many times he researched them — did it never cross your mind that he had books on the subject and your father had allowed it?”

From the look in Arthur’s eyes, he had not. Nor had anyone else in the room it seemed. Whispers and mumbling broke out, but Merlin drowned them out with his words.

“My uncle is not a traitor, but yours is. My uncle has been your steady guide and friend all these years. Yet in his hour of need Gaius, who have always supported you, was abandoned in favour of a man you met two years ago.”

He laughed at the irony and gave Arthur a sad smile. “Funny how your uncle never showed his face until King Uther, who never even trusted him, was dying and you were in a situation which was easily manipulated.”

He took a step back and let his words hover over him like an axe. He knew he had just doomed himself. And he had done so in view of everyone at court, all of whom had a higher standing than him and could demand him executed for his actions.

Each and every person sitting at the table he was never granted a place at, had witnessed his treasonous speech. Merlin looked into Arthur’s eyes as he said his final piece.

“There will not be any reason for banishment, sire. I leave Camelot willingly.”

Merlin didn’t bow. Nor did he look back as he walked out of the throneroom, leaving a heartbroken Arthur behind him. After the big wooden doors closed shut, he could hear shouts and disagreements.

Agravaine was in ruptures. Gwaine was shouting in anger. Leon was desperately trying to calm the situation. He could not hear Arthur’s voice.

In moments like these, Merlin was happy he was made of magic. He could momentarily pause time, and walk freely while the world around him stood in perfect silence. Waving a hand, he stopped time and watched at people stopped moving as if frozen.

He fell to the floor and let out an earth shattering scream. Grief and rage filled him as he clawed at his torso, nails digging into his skin drawing blood, as he felt the hopelessness of the situation bleed out of him.

Merlin allowed himself a few moments to mourn the friendship he had just lost in such a tragic way. Arthur could never forgive him for such a display of insubordination and insult.

He had ended their love and friendship in such a way that it could never be repaired. Merlin had finally truly fucked up by letting his emotions overrun. The emotions he had for years suppressed and ignored.

But as much as he regretted causing Arthur pain, he didn’t find himself regretting his actions. He loved Arthur more than anything in Albion, or even the world. He would let Camelot burn to the ground if it meant saving his life — but he could not stand by and watch as Arthur burn it to the ground himself.

After years of never being treated like a true friend should, of verbal and physical assaults, he had finally stood his ground. And in doing so, he lost his King.

Like always, Merlin had to push down his own emotions, and focus on the task ahead of him. Destiny must come before anything else. He could never help Arthur become the King he was destined to be if Morgana and Agrvaiane were still alive. And maybe by leaving Camelot he had a chance.

Despite his many chances of killing them before, Merlin could never find it in himself to kill Arthur’s only living family members. He would not wish to deprive Arthur of his uncle, but that was until his own was threatened.

First he had to get up and find Gaius, and then he would have a chance to stop Morgana and Agravaine before they completely overturned Camelot and killed Arthur.

Making his way quickly to the physician’s tower, he planned to pack and leave Camelot before anyone, like Gwaine or Lancelot, could try and stop him. But with time still stopped, he had no reason to stress.

He entered his home.

The room was in total chaos, broken glass had left potions seeping into on the floor, staining it. Books were scattered and thrown about from the guards’ search of magical items. In trying to find proof of his magical treason, they had destroyed Gaius’ lifework.

And his home.

Merlin carefully stepped over the bits of broken glass on the floor, navigating through overturned tables and bookshelves, and made way to his bedroom.

The world was completely quiet. A fly was frozen in air, hovering over the windowsill. Merlin realised he had forgotten to unfreeze time. He could do that now, but he wanted some more time to pack and plan.

For years he had put Arthur’s happiness before his own, before anyone else’s even. And he had tried to bite his tongue, to act from the shadows like he always had, but this time his emotions took over.

Merlin could only hope that by causing such a scene, Arthur was forced to face the reality and consequences of his own actions. Maybe by loosing Merlin, he would finally believe him.

Getting his book and Sidhe staff, he quickly threw all his clothes into his rucksack. He grabbed his bedroll and blanket, carefully wrapping his wooden dragon into it, and made sure his room was sufficiently empty, before he left.

Merlin allowed himself one last look at his Camelot home. The smell of herbs and spices filled his nose as he closed his eyes. At last he decided to unfreeze time, and he could hear the people in the castle come back to life.

Life continued in Camelot, as Merlin made his way down the spiral stairs. He knew the knights would be running around trying to find him, not knowing he was already leaving the castle grounds.

Once he had found Gaius and killed Morgana, he would return.

But not until he had fulfilled his destiny.

[bambieyedoll]

WHEN THE WOLF BOWS .・。.・゜✫・゜・

summary: she’s spent her whole life afraid of wolves. he’s spent his whole life waiting for her. when fate ties them together, love must fight to be louder than fear.

pairing: sam uley x fem!reader

word count: 2,8k

warnings/notes: short writing, angst and fluff, reader is afraid of wolves, mentions of trauma, desperate and begging sam, mix of headcanons and a detailed scene.

masterlist | check out my other work !

sam knew immediately the imprint was different the second he saw you —the pull was there, magnetic and undeniable— but when you flinched away from a dog walking past you on the beach, he understood something was deeply wrong.

his heart cracked a little, seeing the fear flash across your face.

he learned about your childhood trauma from embry, who overheard you mentioning it once in passing: a terrifying encounter with an aggressive wolf while you were camping as a kid. it left deep scars you never fully healed from.

“she’s scared of wolves, man. like, seriously scared.”

sam felt trapped for the first time since phasing —desperate to protect you, desperate to be close, but terrified of what you’d think if you knew the truth.

he swore he’d move slowly, no matter how much the imprint ached inside him.

at first, sam approached you like he was trying not to spook a deer. gentle smiles. careful distance. his voice always low, soothing.

“i’m not here to hurt you,” he’d murmur whenever you seemed overwhelmed, “i promise, sweetheart.”

the more you opened up to him, the more sam fell. you were kind, clever, so soft-hearted despite your fears —and every day, it killed him a little more that he couldn’t be honest about what he was.

sam refusing to phase anywhere near you. even if he needed to. even if it hurt.

he would not risk you seeing the wolf and losing the safe place he was trying so hard to build between you.

“i’ll tell her when she’s ready,” he promised himself, clenching his fists until his knuckles went white.

when you eventually admitted your fear to him —cheeks burning, voice trembling— sam just listened. no judgement. no pity. just silent, steady acceptance.

“i don’t think i could ever be near a wolf again,” you whispered, shame creeping up your spine.

sam touched your hand so gently you barely felt it. “then you won’t have to,” he promised.

the night he realized he had to tell you the truth nearly broke him. he sat awake for hours, fists tangled in his hair, replaying every way you might scream, cry, run.

but the imprint pulsed inside him—trust her. she’s stronger than her fear.

nothing could prepare him for the moment you finally found out. it didn’t happen the way he planned.

the storm hit earlier than anyone expected. one minute you were sitting on sam’s porch, laughing at the sound of thunder rumbling far away, and the next, the sky cracked open, heavy rain hammering down.

“stay here,” sam said, already standing, voice steady. “i’ll grab something to cover us.”

you nodded, hugging your arms to your chest against the sudden chill. you loved storms —normally— but something about the sudden drop in pressure made you uneasy, your skin prickling with a warning you couldn’t name.

you didn’t mean to follow him.

you just didn’t like being left alone in the sudden dark.

padding inside the house, calling softly for him, you heard something —a low, almost animalistic growl— from deeper in the hallway.

“sam?”

no answer.

the next few seconds were a blur.

you turned the corner toward the back door and froze—

sam was there, or —no— not sam —something huge, something black and hulking, crouched just beneath the porch light, the shape of it flickering like a nightmare against the rain.

a wolf.

a massive wolf.

your mind short-circuited, instincts screaming before your brain even caught up.

you didn’t see the way the wolf’s black eyes widened —how it stumbled back, trying to make itself smaller— because your body was already moving, heart slamming against your ribs, feet pounding the slick floor as you ran.

you didn’t hear the desperate, broken whine the wolf let out as you bolted into the woods.

you just ran.

branches slapped at your arms, the rain blinding you, but none of it mattered. you had to get away —from the house, from that thing— you had to move before it came after you, before it—

���Y/N!”

you choked on a breath as you heard sam’s voice behind you —not the growl, not the snarl you expected— but his voice. rough. frantic. human.

“please—wait—!”

you stumbled to a halt without meaning to, panting, turning back just enough to see him—

sam.

soaked to the bone, barefoot, standing in the mud, his hands raised like he was approaching something wild and wounded.

“it’s me,” he panted, voice cracking. “it’s still me, baby—”

he took a single step closer and you flinched so hard it was like you’d been struck.

the pain on sam’s face was worse than anything you’d ever seen.

he dropped to his knees in the mud without hesitation, as if lowering himself would make him less terrifying —as if it could undo the sheer panic clawing up your spine.

“i didn’t mean—” his voice broke, “—god, i would never hurt you. please, you have to believe me. you have to—”

you shook your head, backing another step away, still trembling, too many emotions strangling your throat.

sam’s face crumpled like he’d been punched.

the imprint —that golden, glowing thing tying him to you— howled inside his chest, raw and desperate, feeling you pulling away, feeling your fear—of him.

“i’m so sorry,” he whispered hoarsely, rain dripping from his hair into his eyes. “i should’ve told you. i should’ve told you, sweetheart. i swear to you, i’m still me. the wolf—it’s part of me, but it would never hurt you. i would never hurt you.”

the woods were so quiet around you both that you could hear his breathing —shaky, uneven, pleading.

you wanted to believe him. you did.

but the memory of the black wolf standing where sam had been —the fear still flooding your system— kept your feet rooted in place.

sam didn’t move. he stayed kneeling there, hands open, throat working around a thousand apologies he couldn’t force past the lump in his throat.

if you asked him to walk away—

if you asked him to leave you—

he would. even if it killed him.

because seeing you terrified of him —his imprint— was worse than any death he could imagine.

the rain kept falling. hard and cold, soaking through your clothes, chilling you to the bone. but you barely noticed.

all you could feel was the pounding of your heart —the twisting, wrenching confusion inside your chest— and sam’s voice, still raw and broken, repeating again and again:

“please, sweetheart. please.”

“i would never hurt you.”

“i’m so sorry.”

you stared at him. at the man you trusted with every piece of you. at the man you loved without even realizing when it had happened. and yet…

there had been a wolf standing there. massive. terrifying. how could both things be true?

your legs shook. your body screamed at you to keep running. but your heart —the part of you that had always felt safe with sam— hesitated.

he wasn’t chasing you.

he wasn’t angry.

he wasn’t trying to force you closer.

he was kneeling in the mud. shivering. silent now. waiting like a man on the edge of a cliff, begging silently for a chance not to fall.

something inside you cracked.

“sam,” you whispered, barely audible over the rain.

his head snapped up instantly, eyes wide, desperate —but he still didn’t move, didn’t dare.

you swallowed hard, your throat burning. every part of you was screaming in confusion, in fear.

“i don’t understand,” you choked out, taking a stumbling half-step backward. “how— what—”

the words collapsed in your mouth, too huge to untangle.

sam stayed perfectly still, his bare hands open, palms facing you like he was trying to show he was harmless. his voice broke when he spoke:

“i never wanted you to find out this way,” he rasped. “i wanted to tell you. i swear to you, y/n. i was trying to find the right time. the right way.”

you flinched back a step without thinking, and sam’s face crumpled —but he still didn’t rise. still didn’t chase.

“i’m not…” he swallowed hard. “i’m not human. not fully. i’m—” his voice cracked. “i’m a shapeshifter. a wolf. part of an old tribe meant to protect this land. protect everyone.”

you shook your head, dizzy. “that thing—”

“me,” he said quickly, urgently. “that was me. i would never hurt you. i could never. even like that, y/n. especially like that.”

the ache in his voice —the desperation— made your chest tighten painfully.

you looked at him, this man who had only ever been gentle with you, whose touch had always steadied you, whose voice could chase nightmares away.

you thought of the way the wolf had folded into the ground, trying to look smaller, less frightening, even as it towered above you.

it didn’t make sense.

and yet… it did.

some part of you —the deepest, most instinctive part— had always known there was something bigger about sam. something ancient. something untouchable.

now you understood.

your hands trembled at your sides, heart hammering so hard it made you lightheaded.

sam lifted his gaze —slowly, pleadingly— but stayed kneeling, rainwater dripping from his hair, his clothes clinging to his body like a second skin.

“i understand if you can’t—” his voice broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut like he couldn’t bear to see the answer on your face. “if you can’t love me like this.”

“i’ll give you anything you need—space, time, anything— but please,” his voice broke, raw and pleading, “i’ll be yours however you need me.”

your heart twisted violently.

because sam uley —strong, steady sam— looked like he was the one about to fall apart now.

you stood there for a long moment, rain running down your face like tears, fists clenching and unclenching at your sides. fear and instinct gnawed at your ribs, but something softer pressed against it. something louder, deeper —the way your heart had always known sam even before your mind caught up.

the bond between you —the pull that had always felt like home— was still there.

strong. unbreakable. true.

tears blurred your vision as you stumbled a half-step closer, your hands shaking so badly you almost missed when you reached for him.

sam froze —a tiny, wounded sound escaping him, like he couldn’t believe you were touching him— but he didn’t dare move, didn’t even breathe.

“i’m scared,” you said honestly, voice trembling. “i’m still scared.”

you watched the light flicker in his eyes —the way his whole body seemed to wilt— but you didn’t stop.

“but i’m trying,” you whispered. “because it’s you.”

sam made a broken, desperate sound —half-sob, half-laugh— and dropped his forehead against your hands where they cupped his cheeks, like he couldn’t believe you were still there.

you threaded your fingers into his rain-wet hair, grounding yourself in the familiar feel of him, and choked on a sob of your own.

“i love you,” you managed, tears slipping down your face.

sam let out a low, shuddering breath —like he’d been drowning and you were the air he’d been clawing for— and without thinking, he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you into him with a gentleness that broke your heart all over again.

you buried your face in his shoulder, clutching him like a lifeline, feeling his heartbeat hammering wildly against your palms.

sam buried his face in your hair, his whole body shaking with the force of his emotions.

you felt his lips brush your temple —featherlight— and heard him murmur, over and over, like a prayer:

“i’m yours. i’m yours. i’m yours.”

and as the rain washed over you, cold and clean and endless, you held onto each other like you could outrun the whole world —like nothing else mattered but this.

because despite the fear, despite the shock still burning in your veins— you knew one thing with absolute certainty.

you would never leave him.

and sam —fierce, desperate, heart-on-his-sleeve sam— would never stop fighting for you.

sam doesn’t let go of you for a long time.

even when the rain soaks you both to the bone, even when you’re shivering, he just holds you tighter, one big hand cradling the back of your head like he’s afraid you’ll slip away if he loosens his grip even a little.

he speaks so softly to you afterward.

his voice is usually deep and commanding when he talks to the pack, but with you now? it’s a low, almost reverent murmur against your skin. “you’re safe. i’ve got you. i swear, sweetheart, i’ve got you.”

he wraps you in his jacket before taking you anywhere. the moment he realizes you’re cold, he immediately shrugs off his own jacket —not caring that he’s soaked— and gently wraps it around you, tucking it close like he’s shielding you from the entire world.

sam moves slower around you for days afterward. no sudden movements, no raised voice, no flashing irritation —he’s so aware of your lingering fear.

every time he steps close, he hesitates first, giving you the choice to meet him halfway.

he asks permission for everything.

before touching your hand. before sitting too close. before leaning in.

you can see the question in his eyes every time: is this okay? are you sure?

and the tiny, grateful smile that blooms when you say yes.

the pack teases him about being so soft around you, but no one says anything twice —the look sam gives them could kill.

cuddles are a big thing. sam always keeps you on the side of him that’s human and warm, holding you like you’re something fragile and precious.

“you’re safe with me,” he murmurs against your hair. “always.”

sam gets incredibly tense anytime someone in the pack even jokes about phasing near you.

like —deadly serious.

“not around her,” he growls lowly, “or you’ll answer to me.”

it’s not even a threat. it’s a promise.

when you start spending nights at his house, sam makes sure everything feels safe.

no wolf-related books. no forest-y paintings. no sudden noises.

it’s warm, quiet, gentle —like he built a world where nothing could touch you.

sam tries so hard not to fall apart when you tell him you trust him.

he’s very slow with physical affection at first —not because he doesn’t want to touch you (he aches to), but because he’s terrified of making you feel trapped or cornered.

every hug, every brush of his fingers, every kiss is offered like a gift you’re free to accept or turn away.

if you ever have nightmares, sam is up in seconds.

no hesitation. no grogginess. just pure instinct to protect.

“it’s okay,” he murmurs, pulling you into his lap. “you’re safe. nothing’s gonna get past me, alright?”

and he rocks you gently until you fall asleep again, refusing to let you go.

but you slowly start to notice how gentle sam is —even in his strength.

the way he’s careful not to slam doors. the way he makes himself smaller when you’re upset.

the way he’d rather break himself apart than ever scare you.

you are sam’s entire world.

he can’t stop looking at you.

there’s a new kind of softness in the way he watches you —like every time you glance at him, you catch him memorizing you.

she stayed. she stayed. it hums under his skin like a prayer.

sam smells different to you after that night.

there’s something about the bond between you that deepens after you faced your fear —now you can almost feel him in your chest. his scent is grounding: pine needles, rain, the worn cotton of his jacket. home.

little, wordless moments mean the most to him. you touching his hand first. you leaning into him without hesitation.

you falling asleep against him and sighing like you’re at peace.

those tiny moments? they destroy him in the best way.

if you tug on the hem of his shirt, or hide your face in his chest, or climb into his lap without a word —sam just melts. his whole body relaxes like this is it. this is all i need.

sam never pressures you to see his wolf form again.

if you ever want to —if you ever ask— he’ll do it. but until then, he makes it crystal clear: you are enough, just as you are, without bravery or proving anything.

the first time you ask him to shift again (weeks later), he almost cries.

not because you aren’t scared anymore —but because you trust him enough to try.

and when he shifts in front of you again, carefully, slowly—

this time, you don’t flinch.

you step right into him.

bury your hands in his fur.

feel the rumble of his heart under your palms.

and sam —the wolf, the man, your sam— whines low in his throat and nuzzles into your touch like you’re the only thing that matters in the whole world.

one day, you half-joke that he’s like your “guard dog,” and sam gives you this little crooked smile you’ve never seen before.

“guard wolf,” he corrects gently, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “but only for you.”

he swears —deep down— that he will never, ever let the world hurt you again.

no matter what it takes.

[hello-gloomy]

Heya! I love your Dr Stone fanfics so much, it’s kinda hard to find people who write for it. I was wondering if I could request a Senku x female reader oneshot?

Reader is one of senku’s childhood friend (part of his group with Taiju) and did gymnastics and various martial arts so she’s good fighter. She used to protect him and taiju from bullies and people who were rude and judgemental. In the stone world she acts as Senku’s unofficial bodyguard. Reader and senku both had feelings for each other since childhood but neither of them ever said anything out of fear of ruining their friendship and fears that their feelings were unrequited. During the North American arc when Stanley shoots senku, reader takes the bullet for him instead and gets injured badly. Senku is able to save her but she’s still unconscious so he’s really antsy and anxious waiting by her side. When she wakes up they confess both confess. Or something along those lines.

Thank you!!!

Fusing these Two requests. I hope u don't mind.

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Army Dreamers

Senkuu Ishigami x Fem!reader

Description: You've been with him since the beginning, every close call and false death. When he almost meets death again this time, you take his place.

Warnings: Angst, blood loss, anxiety, panic, mildly implied PTSD for Senku. Happy ending I promise.

A/N: I'm so close to having all my old asks cleared out istg.

Words: 717

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Maybe you should have let him take the bullet; he probably had a plan. But your heart couldn't take the thought of losing him. The shards of the bullet in your back felt like nothing compared to the idea of losing Senku. That ringing in your ears was getting loud, though your vision kept going in and out. You could make out Senku trying to stop the blood and handle your wounds; Francios was beside him, helping the best that they could. It hurt to breathe; you could see his lips moving, but you still couldn't hear him. You feel cold, and that wet feeling on your chest feels uncomfortable to sit in. You move to try and sit up to get off the wetness but feel some pressure on your front. It's Senku, his hands red. Why was it red again?

He felt like throwing up; the blood could seep through the deck with how much you were losing; he couldn't even move yet because he didn't even know if the sniper left. You stopped struggling against him, finally. A few more braver crew members moved to where he was and helped him with you. They had to move you quickly without drawing another round of fire from the enemy. This was a horrible set of circumstances to be in right now; your blood was leaving a trail on the deck. When they had arrived below deck, you looked pale as hell; you barely looked alive. He had to get the bullet shards out of your back.

"I can help." It was Luna, and she looked determined; he was about to brush her off, but she was able to prepare the medical supplies adequately enough that he let her stay in the room to assist him and Kaseki. The surgery was a lengthy task, but they were able to get everything out and keep you alive. The others lingered, trying to comfort him, but he coldly told them he was fine and wanted to be alone with you for a while. They hesitantly left him alone in the room with you. You were slowly gaining color back again. He does the mental math of how long it should take you to wake up; the thought of you not waking up makes his hands tremble. He holds his head in his hands while he thinks about your situation logically; you weren't weak; he's known that since you were kids, hell, you were stronger than Taju in many ways and could be more potent than Tsukasa. Those thoughts don't make his hands stop shaking, though. He returns to what he's good at; he grabs your hand, finds your weak but steady pulse, and counts.

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5

It was steady and comforting, grounding and reminding him that you were still fighting. He counted for a while, shutting everything out until he felt your wrist twitch in his hands. Senku's head snapped up at your slight motion and found you looking straight back at him. You gave him that same stupid smile from when you were kids; he couldn't help but crack his grin. His eyes felt misty with emotions he thought were illogical.

"You idiot. I had a plan, you know." He scolds you as he rubs your hand without thinking too much about it.

"Senku..?" He gave you a hum, letting you know to continue,

"I love you; I've loved you since you showed me how to build a rocket. Since we were children, I loved you with my entire being, and I couldn't stand the image of you dying in front of my eyes again." Tears spilled from your eyes as you watched his face; he took in your words and stayed quiet for a while before responding.

"Yeah, me too…" he told you with a little huff through his nose. He tried to play it off, but his hands were shaking again. You grabbed his hands and brought them to your mouth, pressing kisses to his palms. He let you continue for a while before abruptly grabbing your face and kissing you; the angle is awkward, and he's sloppy, but you wouldn't trade this for anything in the world right now.

"I'll always protect you, Senkuu, I swear."

"I'll keep you to that."

[cosmicflw3rr]

cash in.

dominik mysterio x fem! reader

summary: you cash in at wrestlemania.

A/N: this is inspired by damian’s cash in, just something to put out while I work on my other things! btw pls request stuff I need to unleash my creativity 😈😈

btw in this short fic, for the inst post at the end im using pics from liv’s cash in, and a pic of bianca and montez but you can imagine yourself however you want it’s just pics i chose for the post :)

your nerves were jumbled up as you watched bayley and iyo sky fight for the title. their feud had been going on for a while now and was finally going to be resolved at the grandest stage of them all.

what they didn’t know was that tonight you’d finally cash in the money in the bank contract you'd been clutching for months. you had never found the perfect moment to make your move. yet, something in the air felt different, electric. today was the day you'd cash it in; you could just feel it.

you had to look away from the screen at the amount of close calls the match had, you moved away from the monitor sitting down on the couch in the little spot the tv crew had for the judgement day. damian, finn, jd and rhea also watched the match intently.

you held your head with your hands, sighing. your leg bouncing up and down anxiously. dominik, your boyfriend sat down next to you placing his hand on your knee to stop it from bouncing.

as soon as dom's hand touched your knee, you paused and locked eyes with him. "hermosa, talk to me," he urged, understanding the weight of the evening on your shoulders, yet not wanting you to be overwhelmed by stress.

leaning back, you let out a groan, the frustration clear in your voice. "what if it doesn’t work? what if I can't cash in the contract?" you shared your fears, the pressure mounting. "I might not get a chance like this ever again." the uncertainty of it all was eating at you.

you were convinced this was a once-in-a-lifetime shot, but dom saw things differently. he knew just how incredible you were in the ring, how you owned every match you fought and put your heart into everything you did. so to hear you think you weren’t ever going to get an opportunity like that again hurt, because he knew you would.

“listen amor.” when you wouldn't meet his gaze, he gently tilted your chin up, eyes meeting yours, and saw the worry glistening there. with a soft, reassuring smile, he whispered, "amor, don't worry. you've got this. you're one of the best wrestlers out there, and no matter what happens, there will be more chances. believe in yourself like I believe in you." his words were the comfort you didn't know you needed.

you eyes met dom’s as you nodded, understanding flickering between you. suddenly, the bell echoed, one, two, three times. your head whipped around to the screen, and there it was—bayley's victory. the members from your faction turned to you, their faces a mix of surprise and disbelief.

aithout a second thought, you grabbed your briefcase and bolted towards the gorilla, heart racing. "I'm cashing in! I'm cashing in!" you shouted at the top of your lungs. the production crew exchanged quick glances, barely able to process your words as you grabbed a referee by his shirt and charged onto the stage, adrenaline fueling your every step.

running down the ramp as your theme blared through the arena, the crowd erupted in cheers, instantly recognizing the moment unfolding. You reached the ring sliding into it with the referee on your heels. you turned thrusting the briefcase into his hands, “I’m cashing in!” you yelled.

he looked down at the briefcase his voice tinged with uncertainty, "are you sure?"

without hesitation, you shouted back, "yes, I'm cashing in, do it!" your hand came down hard on the briefcase, affirming your decision. the buzz from the crowd surged through you, adrenaline coursing wildly through your veins.

bayley staggered to her feet, unsteady. you bounced on the balls of your feet, ready, and as the bell chimed for the third time, you quickly delivered your finisher, the ripcord flatliner.

she hit the mat, motionless. yet, the roar of the crowd told you to keep going. you quickly pulled her to the ring's center, seizing her legs and cinching in a figure four lock, the cheers growing impossibly louder.

the excitement from the crowd was electric and the adrenaline in your body was hard to contain.

with the figure four perfectly locked in, bayley was trapped, dead center of the ring with no hope of grabbing the ropes. you yelled, teeth gritted, tightening the hold. then, the moment came—bayley tapped out, the bell sounding three times.

your music blared out as you released her, you scooted back, your spine meeting the ropes, shock written on your face. your hands flew to cover your eyes, tears leaving paths down your cheeks as you sobbed, the crowd's roar drowning your thoughts, the reality of the moment not quite sinking in.

wiping your tears, you turned to the referee, who held the championship title towards you. grabbing it from, you sat there dazed, just gazing at the title, a fresh wave of tears blurring in your eyes as pride swelled within you.

you got to your feet, lifting your arm, and the cheers from the crowd grew even wilder. you let out a smile, wiping away those involuntary tears. just then, at the top of the ramp, you noticed the judgement day coming out, cheering you on.

without missing a beat, you slipped out of the ring and bolted up the ramp. reaching the top, you found dominik first, waiting for you. the two of you collided into a tight embrace, him lifting and twirling you off the ground.

when your feet touched solid ground, you stepped back, locking eyes with him briefly, then sharing a tender kiss. after the kiss, you both melted into another warm hug, your arms around his neck and his on your waist.

“I’m so proud of you baby. I told you everything would work out.” he whispered, stirring fresh tears in your eyes. you nodded against his shoulder.

"I love you so much," you choked out, voice trembling, tears streaming down. breaking from the embrace, he tenderly held your face, wiping away the tears, then kissed you once more.

a smile broke through as he stepped aside, revealing the judgement day, all hyped up. In an instant, they swept you and dom up in a massive group hug.

you all erupted in cheers, bouncing around with excitement as each one expressed their pride in you, bringing a beam to your face. the group hug ended, and everyone turned towards the ring.

in a swift move, dom and damian hoisted you onto their shoulders, your hands clutching the title as you raised it high, pyro blazing in the background.

with a joyful shout, you took in the cheering crowd. after soaking in the moment, they carefully lowered you back down. you lifted your hand in triumph one last time before Dom draped his arm over your shoulder.

backstage, away from the roaring crowd, the intimacy of the moment enveloped you and dom as the judgment day trailed behind. you wrapped your arms around dom once more, this hug deeper, more personal.

tears freely flowed as the weight of your victory hit you, and dom was there, a comforting presence, rubbing your back gently. "I am so, so proud of you, amor. you've earned this and so much more," he whispered, his words a soothing balm to your overwhelmed emotions.

pulling back from the embrace, you brushed away the lingering tears, offering him a tender kiss. "thank you, babe. for everything," you murmured with heartfelt gratitude.

"this was all you," he replied, his pride in you evident.

"maybe, but your support has been my rock, the thing that's kept me pushing forward," you said, your voice laced with appreciation. his smile then met yours, and he leaned in to seal your shared moment with another kiss.

LIKED BY DOMINIK_35, RHEARIPLEY_WWE, ARCHEROFINFAMY, YAONLIVONCE & 5 MILLION OTHERS

y/n: and your new…

tagged: dominik_35

VIEW COMMENTS

dominik_35: so proud of you amor❤️

y/n: ❤️❤️❤️

rhearipley_wwe: all rise!!

y/n: judgement day is ALWAYS on top!!💜⚖️

yaonlylivonce: so happy for you! you deserve it!! 🥹❤️❤️

y/n: thank you so much liv! I love you so much!!🤍

archerofinfamy: proud of you chiquita💜

y/n: 💜

samanthairvinwwe: by far my fav name to call out tonight! congrats girl! you deserve it!! 👏💗

y/n: shhhh🤫 don’t let them know you have favorites😏

wwelover: was in sm shock watching! congratulations!!

y/n.vsp: the edits I alr have lined up for this😝

wrestlingstan: I KNEW SHED CASH IN! OMG!

WWE: your new women’s champion!

y/n: thank you to all of you who gave me the opportunity❤️.

[inej-ruination-ghafa]

KNOWN YOU FOREVER - L.C

Warnings: blood

Summary: the one where luke stumbles upon a girl who saves him and makes him feel like he has known her for his entire life

Wordcount: 3.1k

The day had started like any other, a cold wind blowing through New York City. It was like every other November, the icy chill falling on the city. You stepped outside, a big bag in hand and you threw it in the trash outside of your small inner city apartment.

You looked out through the alleyway as you heard a noise. Every sense told you that you should run, that you never know what could be lurking in the dark fog of the early morning, but something else inside of you told you to stay and watch; and you’d never been too good at self control so you waited there for a second, hearing the skidding of sneakers on the concrete.

Throughout your nearly 19 years of life, you had seen weird things that had landed you in psychiatrist offices and children’s help centres. Because no small child is seeing light green women in the Hudson River with scales and seaweed attatched to their hair.

What you saw at the end of that alleyway skidding towards you was shocking as well, but maybe not as much as the Neirads when you were eight. It was just a boy.

He didnt look like a boy actually, more like a man. He had short hair that seemed almost pitch black in the early morning light and the fear on his face as he ran towards you, not noticing you because he was so focused on looking over his shoulder.

you held your hands out just as he slammed into you. He grabbed onto your shoulders in shock with one hand, the other coming up to defend himself but then he realised you posed no threats.

“Woah, hold up there, that’s a dead end,” you exclaimed, not even worried which was silly considering what was going on here.

You shoud have been worried about the way that he held a sword in his right hand and it had gotten way too close to your jugular mere moments ago. Instead, your eyes were trained on his, and the way that they bore into yours like he had known you his entire life. You stared at the scar over his right eye, the skin almost glowing

You tilted your head to the side, confused, “Is that a sword? Dude, I’m sure that’s illegal,”

He was heaving like he was out of breath and that’s when he took a step back, realising how close he had gotten to you, ”A dead end?”

You rolled your eyes, “I just said that, yeah,” You could hear footsteps approaching, almost like an army marching on the pavement and that’s when you realised he was being followed or chased, “Go through that door,”

That was the second time in the last minute and a half that you had defied your better judgements and decided to help someone that you didnt even know.

”What?” He seemed just as shocked and confused as you did as he stood there for a second, frozen in place.

“That door, its my apartment,” you said, pushing him slightly towards the entrance. He winced and you noted that he might be hurt, “Idiot, get inside,”

The mysterious man didnt waste any time before he went into your apartment and closed the door behind him. You tried to act nonchalant as you stood there, pretending to throw something in the bin.

In the corner of your eye, you could see three tall men that looked like Cyclopes or something. You couldnt quite figure it out from there and if you would have looked closer, it would have blown your cover.

The monsters walked past the alleyway without any problem and you walked back into your apartment, adrenaline rushing through your body and your heart pounding so hard in your chest, you thought you could explode.

you stared at the man that was standing there. He dragged one of his hands through his hair, messing it up slightly. That’s when you really looked at him.

He had a ripped green shirt and a thin leather jacket on that must not have been keeping him warm in the winter months. He had blood splatter on his cheek and before you could worry about him being injured, you deduced that it must have come from someone else.

“What the hell are you involved in?” You exclaimed, voice high pitched and panicked.

He brushed a hand over his face, taking a moment to realise how strange this was, how you had just let him into your house without a second thought. “How can you see all this?” He questioned, brows furrowed as he tried to figure it all out, “You are a mortal, aren’t you?”

You scoffed, “Mortal? What are you, God?”

“There is no God, not that one with the capital G anyway,” he said, rolling his eyes at your idea. He paused for a second, almost like he was contemplating whether it would be a good idea to expose himself to you, “I’m a Demi-god,”

Your eyes went wide and you took a moment to think about it. This was surreal. There was some random guy in your apartment claiming he was some disney character, “Like Hercules,”

“Heracles,”

”Excuse me?” You questioned.

“Heracles,” he repeated, “Modern media is wrong,”

You opened your mouth, trying to think about your knowledge of all of this. Here was a boy who claimed that he was like some sort of character from a Greek myth. You thought of your history teacher rambling on about mythology.

Your head was spinning at the idea that all of those stories that had been told to you from a young age were true, that maybe you hadn’t been crazy and that all of the things you had seen were part of this other world.

“So which one? Zeus, Athena-“ you started to spill off all of the names you remembered and then he leaped forward, eyes wide as he clamped his hand over your mouth.

You stood there for a second, eyes equally as wide as you realised what you had gotten yourself into.

”Don't say their names,” he murmured, looking over his shoulder and then moving away. He narrowed his eyes at you and you just stood there. This was more than you had bargained for.

He leaned against your side table, one hand pressing against he rip in his shirt. He pulled his hand away, hand sticky with blood and then he looked up at you, hoping you hadn’t seen the state he was in. You had.

“How much trouble are you in?” You asked.

There was a voice in your head screaming that this was a bad idea, you should not be talking to some stranger who was bleeding in your apartment after he was on the run from the Gods. That in itself made your head spin, that there were actually Gods up there and they were angry.

He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, “A lot,”

“Any rational mortal would tell you to leave right now,” there was a sarcastic tone to your voice, emphasis on the word mortal.

“So why aren’t you?” He tilted his head to the side, looking at you. From what he knew of mortals, you seemed normal enough, living in a small one bedroom apartment, looking a little lonely. It didnt make sense to him why you would let him stay.

There was a silence as you thought about his question. You would have loved to answer him but in all honesty, you weren’t sure why you were still letting him stay, “I don't know,” you admitted, the two of you sharing a moment of eye contact like he understood why you were letting him stay, even if you didn’t, “You want something to eat-“

“Luke,”

you repeated his name back at him and he nodded his head. A chill went down his back at the sound of his name falling from your lips.

Names were powerful and he just gave it to you. Thats not something he normally does.

Luke could feel himself getting lightheaded so sat down on your leather armchair, his hand going back down to the spot where he had grabbed onto earlier. There was still blood there and he leaned his head back in annoyance.

You looked at him, his eyes squeezed shut and his hand pressed against his abdomen, “Are you hurt?”

He opened his eyes and shot you a look that suggested that you shouldn’t be getting involved in whatever his problem is, “It's not that big of a deal,” he promised, even though he was lying through his teeth.

You couldn't care less if he didn’t want you to look so you walked over to where he was, reaching down slowly like you were approaching a wounded animal. You grabbed his hand and pulled away to see it sticky with blood. You narrowed your eyes at the slash against his abdomen.

“Lucky for you, I’m training to be a doctor,” you said as you examined the cut, finger poking at the muscle of his abdomen.

He looked away from you, face flushed red at the interaction. He didnt know why he was like this, maybe it was the embarrassment of having to let someone look after him or maybe it was the way you touched him so softly, like a fragile doll that would splinter at the wrong touch. Nobody had touched him so gently in a very long time.

“You gonna let me fix you up?” You asked.

He looked down at you as you crouched between his legs and he nodded, watching as you walked off to the kitchen and rummaged through your drawers.

You looked over you shoulder to see that he was watching you with that intense stare that you felt like you had seen before. You grabbed the kit and walked back over.

He spread his legs and you knelt between them, lifting his shirt up as you looked at the wound.

There was silence as you brushed the antiseptic wipes across his stomach, hearing him wince every time it would get close to the gash. You looked up at Luke, his brows squeezed together as he tried to hide any pain that he felt.

Normally he wouldn’t be doing this but he had run out of ambrosia and wouldn’t be back at his base for another three days. He would probably have bled out by then if he wouldn’t have let you patch him up; or at least that’s what he was telling himself.

You started to sew up the cut and he gripped onto the arm of the chair to stop himself from getting too riled up. He took a deep breath and looked around the room, analysing it. You seemed like you were living by yourself but there were pictures of you and other people all around the room.

Some things stood out to him, the warm light that came from a candle, the dying flowers that sat in a vase on your side table, the smell of freshly baked cookies in the air. It felt like a home.

He winced again as you pulled at the final string, tongue sticking out from between your teeth as you finished the last tie and cut the string. You took a second to look at your handiwork before brushing another antiseptic wipe over the wound.

You stood up, “All done,”

He looked at you and for the first time, really took in what he was looking at, the slope of your nose, the lashes that brushed against the apples of your cheeks, that little glimmer in your eyes, the ways your lips pursed together as you looked at him.

Luke could feel his face warming up again at the intensity of your stare, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” You tilted your head to the side.

”Like you’ve known me my whole life,” it took him a second to get the words out but then they just tumbled out of his mouth.

You felt your own cheeks warming up at his words. It did feel like you had known him your entire life, like he had always been there in the back of your mind and now he was sitting in your arm chair.

You knew you had to walk away before you got yourself in trouble so you walked over to the oven, putting on your mitts before pulling out the cookies. Setting them on the side, the smell wafted over to Luke and he felt sick.

It was like he was a little kid again, his mother baking cookies every single day and forcing him to eat them. He remembered her chasing him around the house, yelling about how she couldn’t stop his fate. He remembered leaving that house, taking one last look before he slung the backpack over his shoulder and never looked back.

“You want one?” The words were blurry, like he was underwater.

He stood up, pulling his shirt down as he felt the bile rising up his throat, ”I should go,”

You scoffed, “You always leave this fast,”

He looked at you in silence and then looked over his shoulder at the door that he had walked through earlier. Here he had a choice: to turn around and leave someone that he wanted to get to know better, or stay.

Luke pursed his lips together before walking over, leaning against the counter.

“Where are you from?” You asked.

“Connecticut,” sure, that’s where he was born, but normally he would say Camp Half Blood. That is where he comes from, the place that raised him and one day he would be able to go back and free them all, “You?”

”New York, my whole life,”

He nodded, “I live here now,”

“I’m not gonna ask about the whole sword business,” you said, a teasing smile pulling at your lips.

He chuckled, ”Thanks,”

There was silence as neither of you knew what to say. You would expect it to be an awkward silence seeing as the two of you had just met but it was the most comfortable silence you had ever experienced.

“You local?”

“I travel,” he replied, thinking about how much detail to go into, “I've got a mission, I have to complete it,” you nodded your head like you understood. Luke cursed himself for what he said next, for exposing himself to you so much, “I’m trying to bring my sister over, there’s a war,”

“A war,” your eyes went wide at the idea. How did nobody notice that there was a war going on right in front of them?

“Between the Gods and those that oppose their bureaucracy,” he explained.

You hummed in response, thinking back to what he had said, “And your sister. She’s not on the same side?”

He shook his head, “They poison children’s minds, make them think they’re right and we should do their bidding,” there was a venom in his words, like he had been harbouring his anger for these people for too long.

Your conversation was interrupted by the sounds of people yelling outside. Both of your heads whipped to the window to see if this was the people that were after Luke. The sound died down and you both calmed.

“You can stay the night if they’re still chasing you,” you suggested out of the blue.

“You dont know me,”

You sighed. There was no way to explain the feeling in your chest, like you had seen him before, in a dream. Or a dream of a dream, “Somethings familiar about you,”

”I get it,” he wanted to say that he understood how you felt but he couldn’t get the words out, “But I cant stay, I’m putting you in danger,”

“Luke,” the way you said his name made his heart skip a beat.

He watched as you took a step towards him, grabbing onto his arm and then digging through your pocket for a pen, “If you come back to the city and need a friend, call me,” you scribbled your phone number onto his arm, your hand lingering there for a second before letting go.

“Demi-gods cant have phones,” he explained.

You scrunched up your nose in disgust at the idea. He froze, it was almost like he had seen that expression before, “Thats stupid,”

“Monsters can track you through it,” he explained with a shrug, “I'll send you a letter though,”

“How will I send one back? If you move around so much,” you questioned.

He thought for a second, “Burn it. Throw it in a fire and think of me,”

You laughed at the idea, ”How ominous,”

He could feel his heart warming at the sight of her sitting on the kitchen counter, a smile on her face at a joke she had made.

”I should get going,” he said, breaking the silence.

“I know,” you pursed your lips together. A part of you knew he would have to leave soon, that you couldn’t keep him safe in the apartment forever but at the same time, you wanted him to stay.

He leaned off of the counter and started to walk towards the door, a hesitance in every step like he was wondering if this was the right decision anymore.

“Luke,” you called his name and he froze, like he had been waiting for you to call him back.

You jumped off of the counter as he turned around. He looked at you like he was specking something and your heart was pounding in your chest as he repeated your name back at you.

There were so many things that you wanted to say and your mouth hung open as you thought of what was the best way to leave this on. ”Ill be waiting for your letter,” was all you could get out.

He nodded, a hand on the handle, “See ya later, mortal,”

You watched as the door closed behind him and you rushed over, watching as he run into the alleyway without even looking back to see if you were still there.

Your heart was pounding in your chest and you leaned against the door that he had just walked out of, eyes squeezed shut as you tried to figure out what you had just gotten yourself involved with.

[aradassbadass]

cellular sentiment | ceedee lamb ꨄ iv

‘& shii took everything not to give yo lil ass exactly what you wanted. now call me and lemme see hear it forreal’

you stared at the message stomach in knots. part of you wanted to be excited knowing that it was something in him that yearned for you just as you did him, but the nervousness overpowered that feeling entirely.

you throw your phone on the bed in frustration.

he wants me- or at least it sounds like he does. what if its just a joke. no he’s grown and this isnt high school anymore guys dont just flirt with you as a dare anymore. but guys like him, guys that can have anybody they want, usually tend not to go for somebody whose status isnt similar to their own.

falling back onto the pillows your towel falls off of you leaving your bare body exposed to the air. nipples going frigid and you glance down at yourself- something you often try to avoid. you grab at the pudge of your stomach and sigh.

these moments tended to happen where youd find yourself being overly cautious about your body. usually itd be when you were shopping for clothes seeing as to how you didnt find yourself in a lot of situations that pertained men. you didnt seek out relationships, you never had, and whether it was due to your intense schedule or your subconscious fear of rejection you didnt take much time pondering on it. this for some reason really bothered you.

your phone began to vibrate throwing your train of thought out of the window. you stare at it as it rings body stiff and unmoving.

i cant do this right now.

declining the phone you turn on do not disturb.

you know ignoring the situation wont make it go away entirely but hopefully this will deter it for now.

ꨄ

it had been 5 days since you had last talked to cedarian and you would be lying if you said this little escapade didnt hurt. a sea of emotion still clouded your better judgement but you knew you couldnt keep it up much longer.

the calls & messages from him did not cease after that night. he felt bad that much you could tell and it made you feel ten times worse.

im sorry i shouldnt have said that

can u please answer

i shouldnt have said that

fuck please answer i js wanna talk

answer me please

im sorry goodnight

hey js got out of practice i hope you have a good day at work im sorry again for ts

please answer me

hello

goodnight im so sorry

every single message from monday on was akin to one another. you wanted to respond but you felt bad for all the time you didnt so you continued till ignore him or that was until now.

you sat in your car outside of your house as the phone rang on carplay. you groaned and hit the wheel in frustration- not at cee but at your childish antics. you sighed and clicked the green button on the screen heart thumping as you did.

the other end of the line was silent at first then came the rasp of the voice you missed so much.

“hey.” a word so simple yet it felt so loaded with emotion.

“hi.” you say in response, internally kicking yourself.

“i-i um i dont know where to begin- im sorry for what i said. it was inappropriate- really inappropriate for our friendship and i-i dont know why i even sent that. fuck im sorry these few days have been hell without talking to you.” he says voice laced with emotions- sadness and regret being the most prominent.

it tugs at your heart strings and you feel worse than you did before seeing how you made him feel. “cee, you dont have to apologize. none of this is your fault. i freaked out when i read the message and started over analyzing shit because i couldnt process my own feelings towards the situation. fuck, im sorry none of this is your fault thought.”

the other side of the line is quiet and if not for the screen still displaying his contact you would have thought he hung up.

“over analyzing what?” he quizzes and you could all but picture him somewhere eyes wondering as he chews on his bottom lip.

“the fact that you could feel even remotely attracted to me. you are you and well im just me. i-i dont know cedarian i just kept thinking someone like him- someone who has the world at their disposal could even feel something as meaningful as desire or anything towards someone like me. it just made me relive all the times i was asked out as a dare or some stupid joke. i really do like you cedarian, you are one of the only people i still have with me and i-it all felt too good too be true to think that you actually liked me too.” you say the last part quietly.

the line is quiet again and you suddenly feel stupid. “see, i knew it was too good to be real.“ you say voice shaky as tears spill from your eyes.

“what, no, no. stop crying please god stop crying i feel the same way about you. no cruel jokes or anything. you dont see yourself like i do- you are beyond beautiful.” he says words beginning to soothe the ache of your heart.

“ you dont understand how your voice is my favorite thing to hear after a game- win or loss. you dont see how when im on long flights home i go through the album of screenshots i have of just of you. you dont even know how good it felt to finally hold you in my arms after wanting to do that for so fucking long. when i say it took every ounce of self restraint i had to just hold you and nothing more when i heard you call out for me i meant that. i dont ever want you to have to want for anything as long as there is breathe in me because you deserve everything.”

hearing this your heart skips a beat. you feel an immense sense of relief at the words and a new found yearning for him, something just short of primal.

“cee,” you say voice barely above a whisper.

“just say the words baby.”

“i need you.”

[vyainide]

ㅤㅤㅤgratefulness (i'm sorry, can this be over now?)ㅤ౨ৎㅤ12.9k

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oneㅤ/ㅤtwo synopsis. luffy loves you— you know this with how abundantly clear love is in every ministration of his outstretched hand and a grin— yet your traitorous heart demands more, even though you're in no place to give him your loyalty. you know this so you do not demand his love nor to be saved, even when met with a relentlessly stretched hand.

warning(s). gn! reader, hanahaki disease, but some creatively liberated variation of it, angst, hurt/some comfort, slow burn, but does it really count if nothing happens?, unrequited love, pining and the works, background character death, blood, violent imagery, vague allusion to an unspecified mental disorder that involves eating habits (pls be careful!!!), luffy tries his best to be kind but it's cruel, reader spirals 🙏; minimal editing and proofreading (these are basically my thoughts raw and unadulterated)

from vyon. the card game they play is a vietnamese one also known as smth like thirteen in english and has too many rules to explain but it doesn't really matter :3 i was a beast at that game though i fear; this fanfic has been in my drafts for so long, it also grew into too big of a project than it was meant to be. i also had to split this up into two parts, it was getting too long, i'm sorry ＞︿＜

do not repost / copy / translate.

Once you know Monkey D. Luffy, you'll know his heart not a few minutes after. He's welded the unmoving, burning ingot to his bicep, always on display due to his amassing collection of armless vests; rubber skin melted around the golden gem, oozing past the lines of his beating heart to staple it there, an anomaly on the expanse of skin not otherwise susceptible to bullets or cannons. Your captain is a man that lives with his heart on his tongue, always ready to dictate the lay of your next move with an irregular beat that drums against the skinned men of war and an impulsivity that makes his crew scramble after him exasperatedly; oxygen taken from his cerebral arteries to his brain are stained in the grease and oil that stick to the meat he handles so carelessly. In the same endearing way, he's careless with his heart, allows for the small stuff to momentarily prick his heart, for judgement to cloud into anger before it picks up on the bitter taste of agony.

It's always easy to get a frown onto Luffy's face. Feign disinterest in his stories; make yourself too busy to help him look for strange insects; force him to shower, scold him after he does something he wasn't meant to; keep him away from something he seems interested in; starve him for more than five minutes— he makes it all exceptionally too easy. You're not audacious enough to claim to know Luffy any more than the Strawhats, especially not those that he had met in East Blue; you try not to let it bother you that they managed to meet a younger Luffy who had so many holes in his defence, whose smile threatened through skin more, who had yet to find scars in his palm from how hard he had to clench his fists.

To you, it seems unfair that Luffy had managed to uncover so many of your firsts. His unwavering presence by your side as you learnt how hard it was to live on sea, the intonations of your screaming when a marine canon was pointed at you, to live so freely away from the confines of restrictive justice, how it felt to have a hand in yours to promise forever and then some. Luffy has no preferential treatment when it comes to people he loves; he treats them all the same, no hierarchy could dream to disrupt that.

With the same sandals he uses to stomp on the faces of Marine's, he could demand food from Sanji, money from Nami, Zoro to play with him— instead, you watch him whine Sanji, food and dissolve into a puddle when his cook orders him to wait, he allows Nami's fists to fall onto his head when he makes any financially impulsive decision (or even thinks them), and he idles himself with drawing on Zoro's face with Usopp and Chopper, with the previous two of them taking the psychical brunt of their consequences. (Chopper is let off with a mere promise that he won't join in with their shenanigans again when it involves making Zoro into a fool and a growing bump underneath his hat.)

Luffy, from second to fourth gear, is tender aggression when it is love.

His form is bizarrely respectful when the door opens and light dawns upon your face; you see him through the gaps of Nami and Sanji's legs and towering forms over him, his hands on his thighs and feet tucked underneath his bottom. He slurs out an I'm sorry that lets you know that his face is definitely messed up and then follows up with an I was hungry though!

Then Nami messes him up some more for his shitty justification.

She leaves him— some caricature of her anger— on the floor with her hands on her hips and Sanji trailing after her with hearts in his eyes at her dominant display of power. As she passes Brook, he asks for the colour of her underwear and earns himself the same treatment. It's then that you laugh. Luffy snapped his head up, following after the trembling air of your laughter and then calls out your name, the syllables are all messy around his swollen cheeks and a missing tooth that will come back after a few minutes but you cannot rid yourself of the thought that it's sticky with love that you only remember hearing when you were just a babe, screaming and crying in the arms of a tired and ill mother in a hospital. You were introduced to a group of midwives with same love you hear now, their idle finger catching into both your small hands; Luffy's hand dances across the air, breaking apart your laugh with urgency and catching onto your wrist.

You're not sure if it's you who had been pulled to him or if he'd managed to catapult himself into you but you both end up a mess on the floor regardless. Limbs tangled around each other in a wave as you both fall to the deck, Luffy does not correct the length of his arm and takes to wrapping the limb around you like a vine snaked around the trunk of a tree. You don't know a start nor an end as Luffy nuzzles his beat–up face on your shoulder. "Hey captain," you raise your head to look down on him, trying to wrench a hand through the tight spirals he's coiled around you.

"I'm hungry," he whines in lieu of a response, "and I'm bored, Usopp kicked me out after I ate one of his ketchup stars." He doesn't relent with his hold on you, simply loosening the coil that you're trying to work your hand through before tightening again once your arm makes it past to trap it against your side. You don't question the fact that Usopp's ketchup stars may be laced with gunpowder or what the small dose of gunpowder may have done to Luffy's internal organs.

You guess even Usopp has his limits when it comes to his childish captain. "I can't do a lot about either of those things if you're keeping me hostage here." He looks up at you, his exaggeratedly large lips in a pout that matches the swelling of his cheeks and then says your name again, like you’ve done him wrong. It's a disordered collection of the letters again but you find you can't really do anything to fight against it. Instead, green tendrils sprout from your trapped arm, each vine wrapped in a light of leaves and strain against his extended limb before he gives in and, instead, laughs as he wraps his rubber arm around the spindly, twisted branches splitting open layers of skin on your bicep. His skin coloured against the green runner keeps the bine from wilting down to meet gravity.

You let Luffy do whatever he wants, with an expression that you're not sure you're too familiar with etched out on the lines of your face. Thinking back on it, you could've simply done as Nami had or Usopp, ignore or scold him enough into submission but his fingers catch one of the fronds and it curls between the meat of his fingertips, reaching out to tickle his palm and something soft blooms inside you. You know it must be you, not the work of your devil fruit, because as much as you've tried in your lacklustre pursuit of beauty, you've never been able to sprout any kind of flowers.

When Luffy finally lets you go, you find your way into the kitchen and give Sanji a smile. You apologise for interrupting him and tell him that you know that lunch had been served only an hour ago but, if he wasn't too busy, you were still a little peckish. Sanji shoots up immediately and asks you what you've got a taste for— you assure him any leftovers from lunch will do and he tells you, though this doesn't come as any surprise, that Luffy had worked his way through any grain of leftovers with a laugh. You laugh along with him and well, you seemed to be craving meat right now.

The plate he prepares seem to be more about quality rather than quantity, with sauce underneath the red meat drizzled across the white ceramic, a slab of meat already cut into bite sized pieces for you and a decorative herb stuck between the fatty slices but when the light oozes down into the stretch of meat, you don't think Luffy will complain too much.

You, of course, were right about that.

The shattering grin he greets you (the plate of meat, however small it seemed) with gives you the faint smell of sticky rain drenched in the light of the sun, and you almost give him your hand when he reaches out for the plate. Brook's guitar strums in the background and your heart shakes in time with his strings and Luffy's incessant chewing.

You've really no problems with Usopp asking you to help him with target practice, it's fairly common for you to help the crew with their unique fighting style— save Nami and Franky for fear of losing your life with their less than particular aimed area of damage— it's easy enough really. You don't even have to be mentally present for it; shaking through layers of flesh, vines grow across the deck of the Sunny and rise up straight to tower over Usopp as he fixes his goggles over his eyes. You keep a quarter of your mind instilled in every chloroplast that shivers across the skies so you can keep them moving but the other three quarters are focused on the card game you play with Robin, Chopper, and Franky.

You hear the snapping of elastic and your finger twitches against the back of playing cards as the particular vine shot to the left, glancing curiously at Chopper's hand across from you when he turned to Franky and accuses him of looking at his cards.

"It's not my fault!" Franky frowned, fixing his comedically small glasses to perch on his metal nose. "Your cards just happen to be in my view when I'm looking at the pile 'cause you're tiny!"

Chopper takes to this horribly (you reshape a vine that has fallen to one of Usopp's stones and keep it relentless across the wave of air) and he grows into the much less cute and broader, more human version of himself to hold his hand out of Franky's view. (Two vines snap together and they take the path to slice through air to where Usopp stands, you hear the cracking of wood as Usopp shouts at you, saying he only wanted to focus on offence. An apology is drawn out with the green arm in the air.)

"Ivy," your eyes flicker to Robin and she gestures to the pile of discarded where the two of spades had been placed on top. "It's your turn." You glance down at your hand, eyes flickering over the collection of 7's in your hand. 

"Bomb." (You feel a vine break apart into pieces, think about the fact that it's lucky you've no nerves attached to the tendrils, and keep the one down to give Usopp a little win.) Franky curses your name as Robin chuckles.

Chopper glances at the four 7's with a sense of wonderment that you're sure is too dramatic for the moment. "No wonder I had no sevens!" You give him a sly grin and watch Robin pass her turn, ignoring Franky's levelled glare behind his glasses.

In the end, Robin wins anyways, ridding herself of her hand with her final card being the two of hearts. The loss is taken bitterly by both you and Franky though you think Franky definitely takes it worse than you do as when he stands to sulk away, cards fall out of his speedos, and they leave a trail after him. Robin, in all her morbidity, laughs behind a hand as you and Chopper drop your jaws in disgust.

Chopper collects the cards, hesitating with the ones that had been on Franky until Robin points out that you've all played many rounds and there's a chance that all of them had shared the same fate. (Another vine shutters down to the floor, broken apart and particles flown across the deck.) The cards slowly fall to the floor as Chopper cries out in disgust. Shaking your head with some colourful amusement, you use the two vines fallen to pick up the cards and start shuffling them.

Responding to Chopper's call, Luffy shoots his way from Sunny's figurehead. "What're you guys doin'?" He falls graciously to where Franky had previously been sitting; his eyes are ever so impatient to glance over the cards being shuffled. "Oh," he says with great interest, "are you guys playing 'go fish'?" He leaned towards you— the cards in your possession, actually— and blinks at the shuffling. "Lemme in!"

"We weren't playing 'go fish', Luffy." The little doctor has since calmed down, taking a seat between Luffy and Robin and shaking his head. "We were playing—" he turns his head up to Robin, to which she supplies 'bài tiến lên' with the intricate accents and all, "that!"

A flash of thinking places itself on Luffy's face, crossing his arm and tapping the side of his sandals on the deck, then it's gone. "Let's just play 'go fish' then."

Chopper whines, saying that 'go fish' is boring and that Luffy always snatches more than one card from other people's hands, which is cheating, and that he doesn't want to play.

Luffy turns to you with a pout, eyebrows furrowed at the dip where his nose bridge starts and then straightened out towards the end. The two vines that had been expertly dodging all of Usopp's shots and taunting him by doing silly dances and twisting into words in the air both crumple down to the floor at the same time, they follow the curve of your spine as you double over, a breath stuttering in your throat. You hear Usopp call your name and the deck of cards slip out from the vines that had been shuffling this entire time, your hand wraps around your throat and you hack out a cough you've managed to choke on.

"Are you dying?" Chopper shoots up, frantic as you keep coughing and choking— both violent in temperament, and scampers around, shouting for a doctor.

Footsteps tap closer as a shadow forms over you, Usopp's hand patting your back ferociously comes after the sound of shoes stop.

The blur that came with tears invading your eyes gives you the confidence to look at Luffy again before you're calling Chopper to a stop. "I'm fine, just choked on air."

You don't mention how it felt like you were breathing through a cheesecloth, how your lungs feel so restricted with every inhale as you all compromise on 'chase the ace' and how easier it feels when Usopp pushes his way between you and Luffy, too intimidated to pick from Robin's hand; when you all finish up for dinner, Robin is looking at you in a way that makes you think she's caught onto how you've been struggling.

Dinner is a strange ordeal. It's characterised with its usual events: Luffy sneaking his hands into people's plates though his stands full, Usopp trying to hold his plate out of his way, Zoro tending to his glass bottle of beer, Sanji making some quip about Zoro's show of alcoholism, Nami getting increasingly annoyed by the noise around her, Brook's laughter, Zoro escalating the situation with Sanji, Chopper screaming when Luffy clears Usopp's plate and then goes for the doctor's, Robin watching the scene with the patience of a saint, Franky pretending he was better than the rest, Usopp exacting revenge on Luffy by swapping their plates. It all ends with Nami telling them all to shut up and Luffy taking one final chicken leg from Zoro's plate. You stare down at your plate and count the missing bits, Luffy hasn't really touched any of the potatoes or asparagus, so you finish them up.

Two chicken thighs sit in stark contrast to the plate, thinking about having them anywhere near your mouth makes you a little sick for some reason, the weight of them in your stomach, the taste of caramelised skins, crisped with wells of juice sat next to a tinge of burnt flesh; you push the plate over to Luffy and detest the way he can take the colour of well–done oranges between his teeth and not care about the juice dribbling down his chin.

Luffy says thanks with his mouth full of chicken; Nami glares at him and turns a more concerned face to you (that also makes you sick) and inquires about you not eating. You mumble out some excuse about not being hungry, not feeling well, having a little bit of a headache, feeling tired— something along those faux lines, you don't remember but you remember that you don't tell them the truth exactly. "Sorry Sanji," you fix into your shitty excuse after, running a hand through your hair, to make yourself feel better about the entire ordeal.

He offers to make you a more palatable porridge or soup instead.

You take a cigarette and a red apple, going to bed hungry and angry at some unknown thing that brews on the tip of your tongue.

The next island is of great interest to Luffy.

The entire crew knows that its history nor culture was not either reason behind his excitement, only the mere prospect of digging his sandals into new, uncharted land is why he's running around the deck, filling up the empty spaces with bubbling laughter. Sanji finishes up bentos for those that are leaving, taking unnecessary extra care with Nami’s, and wishing he had it in him to starve Zoro whilst Nami is giving everyone an allowance. You take two bentos, yours and Chopper's, and head out onto the deck. Luffy only seemed momentarily sad that you were going with the doctor but bounced back immediately after when the trees come closer enough to intimidate so you push down the offer to join him instead. Franky joins up with Usopp, Luffy'll run off alone regardless of who he ends up going with, Nami ends up going with Zoro (to Sanji's displeasure), and you and Chopper make plans to find a pharmacy and a library for Robin.

Being around Chopper is easy enough with this unsettling prick of poison that's forced minimal responses, curt words, a flurry of tiredness, a sickening chill through your days recently. The little doctor is a lot more mindful of changes in mood, it's not any imminent injury either so he doesn't press to know why. Out of guilt (for being a brooding asshole lately), you ask him about his rumble balls and all his different forms. He answers cheerily and you can only pick out every other word with a persistent headache as the smell in the air changes from salty skies and bloody fish to sweetened foods and something unfamiliarly clean.

It's a bright island. You hear a faint bell in the distance that is traced over with the sound of children and stall owners; Chopper's hooves rhythmically sound beside you on the pavement and you find yourself counting them in groups of four. "Ah, there." You pick up your head and turn to follow the direction of Chopper's eyes. A sign is hung on the side of the building, the library. "Robin wanted a book of North Blue diseases for some reason," Chopper mumbles to himself as you two push open the door.

It's a small bookstore, walls lined with books and the paths carved with more standalone bookcases. "North Blue diseases?" You repeat, confused, "do they have North Blue exclusive illnesses?"

Your question goes unanswered, though it looks like it opens a vault of new questions for Chopper. Books aren't of great interests to you, so you follow behind Chopper as he walks through each section and grab whichever book he tells you to bring down for him. On the way back, you tell Chopper to keep going and change your course in search of something you're not too sure of.

You stray away from the town centre and head deeper through the small alleys of the town, there's no destination in mind; without the urgency of a fights and with the domesticity of a small knit community, you wander adrift. There's a dampness in the air to the walk around a shadowed hide of the place that loosens up the tension below your ribs, many different eyes follow after your form as the heel of your shoes click against a null path; shadows ooze around the soles of your shoe and lacquer up between the carved maze of black rubber of your soles until you find your way into a dead end.

It's a little bit of a cliché to be met with a ragtag group of delinquents when you turn to go back. Your eyes trace over them. In the hand of the one closest to you sits your wanted poster.

Something blooms inside you again— it's a much more pleasant feeling than the unmoving sap of ire that's been invading lately. Each man before you is physically bigger, towering over you ominously and shadows eating you but they all have swords and guns in their hands and that's why they lose. You, to the detriment of all life around you, are a weapon in and of itself; you choke out the vitality from others and steal their nutrients. They strained against their confines as their skin blossoms through shades of blooms, you are not the merciful rubber of a human, so your constraints don't relent, they squeeze and squeeze until the bark splits apart, until blood is cut off at the source, until they wither, until you are full.

On the way back, you buy a gift for everyone with the money you hadn't used and when they take to it, all in their varying degrees of joy, you feel less bad about the dead end alley full of brothers and sons. You tell yourself, handing Zoro a gift of alcohol, if not them, then it'd have been you.

You end up staying anchored to the island for a week to your displeasure. The longer you're stuck there, the closer you are to exploding; you always keep an eye out on the log pose strapped to Nami's wrist like you could quicken the process if you stare enough. Usopp starts avoiding you out of fear you'll blow like a poorly constructed cannon, Zoro makes you train with him to see if it'll help blow off some steam, Sanji brings you iced drinks at a rate that keeps you dizzy but you always feed it to Luffy or redirect it to Chopper's or Usopp's office with a little note.

On the third day, you follow in Zoro's example and sprawl out on the deck to rest your tireless mind. You've always wondered how sleep was ever a possible option for him when the feet thundering across the deck came with obstructive vibrations, no doubt slapping any chance of sleep away from his mind, but you find that it's almost pleasant. Beats all from familiar loves translates through the groves of wooden planks and etch through the back of your spine, you feel a bone fall back into place after Nami's heels against the floor and the thunderous kick that lands where Zoro was standing manages to work its way up your head to ease a headache.

The sun burns cries into your eyes and the skies move fluidly, they don't ripple as clouds shrivel against a light blue you're unfamiliar with; even as you close your eyes, you continue to feel the burn of the sun. The slapping of weaved straw against a sticky, sweaty sole then the deck comes as you slip into sleep.

Dreams have never been so amicable enough to become a recurrent in your life; more often than not, you're shown memories all blended together into a mess that leaves you sick, the abhorrent now and the nostalgic then bleeding past their confines until you see your mother stood next to that deceitful Marine admiral, both with that same look in their face. You wake up with a start when a loud bang scours its way through a flurry images you're unfamiliar with and then your body escapes you. Your head weighs with the heaviness of the bodies dropped to the floor, arms cold as if dipped into the river Styx, bones locked in place with a restrictive pain, muscles burning, aware of every breath that shivers through your suddenly odd body.

"Owww," three Luffys blur around each other as you pushed a hand to the floor to straighten up, you try blinking away the other two, but they're glued to the captain reflecting in your eyes; he looks down at what he's tripped on and follows it back to you. Your hand is met with something curved in shape when you go to push yourself up and when you look down, you see vines underneath you. You realise then that a burst of them had grown beneath you, splitting through the lawn deck and uplifting some of the planks underneath the greenery and inching upwards towards the guard rails of the ship. They take the form of something you think you met in your most recent sleep.

Luffy has managed to crawl his way towards you in the time you spend wondering why your devil fruit had been acting up— in your sleep no less and he wraps a hand around your ankle to get your attention. "Hey, you're really cold." He pointed out, eyes flickering down to the flesh between his fingers and then trailing his fingers up your thigh as he shifts closer to you on his knees.

The touch makes you violent and tender. "Really?" You managed to puff out, giving too much air back to the world with how much you're panting, "I feel a little warm though."

Luffy hums, clapping his hand over your cheeks with gentleness he only shows to those he loves, and it feels wrong. You get an itch underneath your skin that urges you to move, move, move but you can only push Luffy away with a ferocity he'd never shown you as you tremble under the bursting of violent air hacking up your throat, your shoulders strain as you wrapped your arms around your stomach, trying to heave out something that wasn't there.

Luffy scrambles back immediately, not caring for you shoving him away, and soothes away the rattling of your core with his clammy hands on your arm. "Are you sick?"

No, you think as a retch comes up your mouth; maybe, you correct as the path is marked by drool slipping down your chin and tears streaking across your cheeks. You shake away Luffy again. He's less submissive this time, his legs open over yours to plant his knees by your thighs. You hear him call for Chopper and it's obvious he has something of a frown marked on his face; you keep burning beneath your skin, but Luffy keeps rubbing his palms over your arms like you're cold.

You realise what your vines had drawn underneath you when Chopper comes out, fretting over you as he takes Luffy's place close to you. A grave. The image makes you laugh as the reindeer instructs his captain to haul you up after you'd ignored his inquires on if you could walk; your arm bends around the shape of Luffy's shoulder and your laughter erratically convulses into a collection of coughs from the skin on skin high.

You forced into bed rest after Chopper does a preliminary round of tests on you and declares you've simply gone down with a cold. You take to the diagnosis apprehensively, though in Chopper's defence, how was he meant to accurately diagnose you if you don't tell him all your symptoms? Instead, you sit in his office and spend the minutes, all alone, trying to retch out the feeling of having a piece of hair down your throat; you claw at the blanket and keep hacking until you've got a blanket full of tears and spit. The feeling does not pass.

At lunch, you get a visit from Franky who comes by to complain that you've made unnecessary work for him. "—seriously, how did you manage that in your sleep? Were you having a nightmare?" He ranted, legs crossed and leaned back in the visitor chair in a way that pushes his skinny, hairy legs close to your face.

Scrunching up your face, you sit up. "It was the future." You rebut, in between all his fantastical stories of his nightmares and talking about how he'd never attack Sunny even if Chopper grew a mechanical, giant arm and overthrew Luffy to become their captain. "A future," you correct yourself before turning to Franky with eyes judgemental, "are you scared of Chopper?"

"You weren't there at Enies Lobby," he tells you, which serves as a cruel reminder of sorts. You think about all the scars you've seen littered on the crew's skin and wonder which ones they've collected while they were with Luffy and who knows of which. The faint, protruding marks underneath Nami's tattoo, the stitches around Zoro's ankles, the ones pulled across his chest; you wonder if Sanji's got one hidden underneath his bangs. "The future?" Franky repeats after a moment, "are you a prophet?"

"It's a working theory," you brush off instead. "Though I can see in my mind's eye that Luffy is currently eating all the food and you’ll be left to starve if you don't go back."

Franky scrambled up from the seat not a second after your words.

With him gone, you settle back onto the bed and wonder about too many things to recall.

Between the hours after lunch and before dinner, Luffy comes by. He settles himself on the bed and forces you up as well, the shifting causes another cough to burgeon in your throat and you turn your head the other way to spit it out in an uncontrolled group of four. "You're not feeling better?" He frowns.

You see now that he's holding two pieces of barbequed meat in his hand, he's got the bone in his palm as he holds it upright like a sword, juices from the flesh dripping down to his hand and the smell gives you a headache. "Do you want this?" You move your eyes to Luffy, he's got his eyebrows furrowed together and his lips straightened out in a line when you don't answer. "Both?" He looks over at you, then the meat, and then you. "You," he swallows, "you can have them," his knuckles turn red around the bone, "since you need energy and you're sick." You think he's trying to convince himself to give them up.

You reached out and watch Luffy's face turn sour as his expression squeezes altogether around a midpoint trapped in his nose; you retract your hand and watch his face relax and his body unwind, you think he's moved his hand back a little. You repeat it again a few more times until laughter comes up and dislodges the uncomfortable feel of hair set deep in your throat. "It's fine, Luffy, you can have 'em."

"Really?"

"Mhm, go for it."

He moans around a bite of meat, crying your name as he chews and says thank you. The feeling is back as soon as it left.

No one comes to visit after that. Chopper comes by before he heads off to bed to make sure you're all set for the night and tells you that he expects to be woken up if you feel any symptoms get worse. You agree to his conditions, though can barely make yourself seem like you were taking him seriously with his cute face scolding you, but it seemed to work well enough as he's gone after he leaves a cup of water by your side. Sleep lingers around the corner, shirking away from your twitching fingertips and restless eyes; you give up after a few minutes, thinking about Robin who'd been thrown on watch tonight.

After going back and forth on the details, you bundle up yourself in the blanket (not wanting to have to mimic any semblance of serious guilt to get through Chopper's less than intimidating scolding if you get any sicker in the morning) and wander to the deck. The darkness of the sea would be safe for you, twisting around every limb extended to grope your way through your chosen path and oozing out from strands of hair to empty at your feet if not for the lamp of the moon ahead of you. Its light a forecast of tragedy, reflecting off a blade that would drive through the blood of a man who faced an unlikely love with only disgust and betrayal. "Robin?" The light hangs onto your word with a vehemence to uncover your unjustifiable deeds.

"Ivy," a shudder of surprise rattles your head to duck to your shoulders as you turn around. "Sorry, did I scare you?"

You give Robin a frown, tugging your lips down. "Yeah, my weakened bones nearly fell to the floor." She huffs a laugh. "Please announce yourself before you appear." Robin traces over your palish face and your features soften into a smile when your eyes meet.

"Can't sleep?" She asks once you two settle at the side of the Sunny where you'd napped earlier today, some of your vines still wedged between planks and parts of the floor haphazardly missing. You lean your back against the side of the ship and lower your eyes to the floor.

It's a total void, welcoming you back home. "No," you answer, a little breathless. The moon doesn't shuttle into the hole of the deck and something reaches a hand out for you between the atoms of a black hole. Roots twist out, easing close to your feet and sinking beneath the soles of your shoes. "I napped a little earlier." It's safe.

Robin hummed— I know rattles through her hum— and her elbow falls onto the guard rail of the ship. For the next few moments, you regret coming out. Robin's always been more receptive to the details and fine lines; it's not surprising that she can nitpick through a flurry of fronts and covers to the feelings you want to hide. They beckon out to her, wanting to fill that hole that's grown smaller with every day she wakes up to the open seas and the lively sound of her crew. "Chopper said you were sick?"

"A cold," you sniffle, bringing the blanket closer to you. Finding some semblance of confidence inside you, your eyes flicker over to Robin but she isn't looking at you— only turns when she feels your gaze levelled on her. You hesitate, searching for something to say and land on extending an arm and opening the blanket to invite her into your bundle. "You cold?"

She laughs, "it's fine, you should go back in if you've got a cold though." Her head tilted with a smile, "it'll be bad if the night air makes you worse."

Not wanting to find yourself softened in moonlight nor her eyes, you nod and bid her a goodnight before shivering your way back into your room. The door opens and light from Sunny's hallway is swallowed into the darkness of your room before it's banished out with the slam of your door, you shuffle around odd things thrown on the floor and slip into bed.

Your sleep is broken through with intervals with coughing, curling into yourself, shivering still though you burn in the night like a sibling of a star. When you wake up, sometime in the afternoon, you're heaving and reaching out your arms all around your duvet to haul together the skin that feels like it's melted down. Your palms prick against the leaves of vines that have overtaken your room, they fluoresce around your body and branch outwards to all corners of your room. The mess all blur together as your brain thrashes in your head with every splutter, you shake and twitch, trying to make sense of anything. Skin burned raw as you attempt to kick away the shrubbery that's keeping the blanket contorted around your body.

Your throat skinned and crude with its imminent thoughts of water.

A hand reached back blindly to grope at your bedside table for the cup that Chopper left for you last night. What you find instead is the burning touch of the sun, it seeps through the micro wounds stabbed through lines of your fortune and inflames every nerve straight to your heart. Your hand snaps back towards your body, the bones shivering from the imminent heat. Your entire body twitches at different paces, an invasive and hungry need drowns your senses. You need water, you need not for this to happen, water, you need for your sleep to be calm, you need to stop burning, you want to stop losing control, water first. You want water. Water— you turn your head to find the water, you need— Luffy?

Luffy is sat on a chair that you don't remember being there and when you look a little closer, you see that your vines had granted him a throne to comfortably lay on, other than that, they avoid him like the near plague. His body is leaned forward, his chest laid against the side of your mattress and arms crossed on your bed to sleep on like a pillow. You retch up some acid and, like the bowed head of a priest, a gentle petal disrupts the stream, flowing against the tide. It's a beautiful purple colour that's light against the transition to white towards the middle and an eye-catching yellow streaking against the white; lines of a deeper hue stretch through the petal and it's oddly reminiscent of veins.

The petal sits on the puddle of stomach acid that warms your thighs, your head bowed down to stare at it; you feel your soul unfurl at the sight of it, branches stretched outwards over a riverside, the heavy head of buds pulling weighted branches down to drink from the stream. Everything else blurs with a ripple, the petal is withstanding no matter no much you try blinking away an oncoming headache. The river near dries up in your attempt to wash down this unnerving disgust; you hunger for more.

Little changes when you find out what this 'cold' truly was. The lighting in Sunny's library is several shades warmer than the light of the sun, it draws upon the hunched shoulders down to your back as you tilt your head to hear the bones crack under your ear. Four syllables, that's all your death is. A lot of words are four syllables. Anonymous; unfortunate; hilarious; adventurous; hanahaki. It doesn't mean a lot by itself, so you try giving it some context. You pretend to tell Chopper that you're dying, you have hanahaki and that it's something he can't cure in a way you'll accept and you still feel nothing. You think about Chopper's face. He adamantly tells you that he'll cure you, he'll do it. The you in your imagination tells him no. Faced with your refusal, Chopper cannot do anything. In the end, it is a grave that cures you.

Death, as it stands, was something you had accepted when you stepped onto a pirate ship. Even someone with as stubborn a character as Zoro could be welcomed in by death, even Luffy. For a while, you wonder about death. The air in the room pauses as if to grace you with the silence to ponder on it, all you hear is the sound of your own breathing.

The closest thing to death comes searching for you a few minutes later.

You've always been interested in Brook. A skeleton with nothing but a sword; he has no lungs yet still sings, no heart and still smiles, dead but human in all his actions and behaviours. "There you are." He sneaks up behind you, bones falling onto your shoulder as you think, he smiles down at you. "Luffy asked if I’d seen you earlier.” He looms over you for a moment before he's straightening back up and calling out loudly, "but I'm a skeleton so it's not like I have eyes to see anyone anyways!"

It's the two syllables 'Lu–ffy' that shakes you the most. You stifle a cough in your chest and feel it tear through your ribs instead, searching for a path out. "For what?" The breaths rattle in your chest and shudder through your words.

"He wanted to show you a beetle." He takes the seat next to you, peering down at the picture book that you have open. You wait for him to make a comment about seeing what you were reading before disregarding it all with a lack of eyeballs so he wasn't seeing it really but he doesn't say anything, so you're forced to talk instead.

"Brook."

"Yes?"

It takes a single breath to prepare you to say this, it's warm and evident that you've not yet truly succumbed to your illness. "Do you see yourself as dead?"

Death is the art of those who do not live. It's something that keeps people tethered to the moment; it's the one thing that keeps humans humane. It's evidence you've lived, no matter how full nor how long. She's beautiful in her own right.

"I cannot see myself as anything because I am a skeleton with no eyes!"

Brook does not get to elaborate because Luffy shuttles in moments later, whispering loudly. (He'd learned somewhere that you're meant to be quiet in a library when he was younger but his whispers still manage to shake the room somehow.) "You're here! I found a beetle to show you!" He tip–toes to your side, "what're you reading— oh, hi Brook! The flowers here are pretty!" He points a finger down to a sunflower; his index covers an entire petal and he strokes it upwards to the middle. "Do you think they're edible?"

He turns to you with a smile.

You meet him with the same, "their seeds are." He gasps and picks up the book to scour through the letters in search of a name of these seeds. You take in a shuddering breath and when you feel another urge to cough, you cannot stop it.

When vines splatter around the room, they uproot the place; they've always been disruptive in this way. A wave of them washes various bouts of furniture to the floor, through the pounding of your ears, you hear the sound of books thudding as green appendages snake through bookcases and rattle them at the base; Brook's chair collapses as a vine chokes out one of its legs into splinters, the world blurs into a hue of greens and purples. A hand reaches from down in your throat, you heave around gaps of allowance for air and gag, cough, retch up more acid and some tea that Sanji brewed earlier this morning in lieu of breakfast. It's unpleasant. It's ugly in a way death should not be, though you guess the dead don't get to choose how to live in the same way the living cannot choose their death.

You're hauled off to Chopper again.

Chopper's voice comes as the hollow sounds of keys on an old piano. He does another round of tests on you— this set lasts a little longer than the previous and he takes extra caution with some. He finds that your heart is a little faster than it should be, he nitpicks at the bluish tint around your fingers and notes the concerning amount of weight you've lost in the past few weeks. When he asks you, what's wrong, you tell him that that's what he should be telling you.

Hypoxia; another four syllables for your cause of death. "Some of the symptoms are there," Chopper frowns, mumbling to himself. "It's when your tissues aren't getting enough oxygen, do you have difficulty breathing?"

You placed your cheek into your palm, elbow on Chopper's desk. "You're a pretty good doctor, Chopper."

The effect is immediate, he starts blushing and kicking his legs in his seat, a hoof goes to rub at the back of his head and nervous laughter comes from him. "That isn't distracting me at all, you bastard." You smiled and watched the compliment break any semblance of professionalism in him.

He gets back on track a little while later, placing a stethoscope on your chest and asking you to cough. You're not sure exactly what he's looking for but you give a soft cough into your elbow and you can say for certain— just based off the way he jumps back and looks at you a little quietly for a second, it's nothing good. Chopper spends a few minutes looking at your fingertips, then your lips, then some other parts of skin already exposed and humming to himself, troubled.

For now, he says, he wants you to try not to exert yourself— maybe leave fighting to everyone else and focus on resting until he can figure out a better way to confidently diagnose you. His lips are pulled into a frown, hands in his lap and trying his best to be professional and keep his emotions at bay. Before you know it, your hand is on top of his pink hat and fondly rubbing over the material softly. "Thanks Chopper, I'll keep that in mind."

He nods. You hesitate for a second before you're getting up to leave so that everyone else can see that you're not dying— or maybe you should tell them you are, you're not sure you could take another session of Franky accusing you of destroying the Sunny to create more work for him.

Your hand wraps around the doorknob and twists, stopping when Chopper speaks again. "You're not hiding something from me," he accuses gently, "are you?"

Your hand tightens around the doorknob. A flash of that imaginary Chopper comes back to you— heartbroken and confused at your refusal to be cured— you steal an unnecessarily large breath from the world. "I get sudden cravings for sweet things if that means anything."

Chopper, unbeknownst to you, takes those words and carves them true and raw into himself. His eyes are unwilling to leave you for more than necessary during the times you eat together, he watches you push aside the food on your plate, tearing small bits of meat off the bone to chew on it for a couple minutes too long before swallowing. He makes note of the way you have no problems finishing up everything but any sort of meat, sliding them over to Luffy, or one of his victims.

You're met with another blossom soon after lunch. You've made a bad habit of leaving the table early to escape the smell and resign yourself to the open deck, sprawling out on the grass like Zoro usually does. You're certain you're about to fall asleep shivering but the slap, slap, slapping of your captain's sandals are nearing closer so your brain kicks awake with a start; your eyes twitch, eyelashes shuddering in the wind. The darkness over your eyes morphs into a shadow of Luffy hovering over you, head tilting with a hand on his hat— your mind supplies you with the frown— and then you hear him taking a step back and sitting down next to you.

A troubled melody hums through his lips and when you open an eye to peek at him, you see his hands wrapped around his ankles, legs loosely crossed; he turned back to you and you quickly close your eyes. Here is where you finally learn that when Luffy touches, he's never placated with a simple tap, a light knocking between skin— no, he must stroke, he drags his fingers up the side of your thigh, he shivers from the coldness of your flesh and, even then, crawls closer. Then he's silent for a worrying amount of time and for a moment, curiosity takes you over. You find yourself wanting to draw light upon the disgusted features when he's met with someone he thinks close to him is growing closer and closer to a grave amongst the roots.

He leans his forehead against yours whilst you shuffle through the despicable crawl of your heart through your bones, something shifts in you and when you reach to itch at your side, it dislodges. It takes no more than a simple flip for your entire world to shift; you think you saw Luffy hovering over you momentarily before you had snapped to the side.

A fragment of the world greets its end.

Something strangles you, a hand of a giant pressing two fingers against the sides of your neck until everything in you bursts and splatters against parts that have gone unknown until now. There's nothing new to the tremor of vine that erupts through your skin, bubbling through the surface of flesh like a geyser; the tentacles claw their way your throat until you're choking around them, searching for an allowance for air. Your knees shuffle up to find some balance, head ducked to meet the lawn across the deck and elbows digging deep into the dirt. Your spluttering comes in time with the sound of Luffy calling your name, shouting for Chopper; there's a knot tied inside your mouth, you shake away tremors and tears all the same. You erupt yet there's nothing to be burnt, it's only ash that leaves your mouth— only the colourful petals of the wisteria plant that wash over the green of the open deck, burnt in hues with blood.

The next island is a spring island, known for their sweet peaches and sweeter music.

You watched Luffy devour two peaches in his hands, the ripe skin melting underneath his teeth— pale with a dusted blush until it snapped into a bloody red, melted at the pit. Then he's gone with a rustle of mikan trees as you held out a basket for Nami to delicately place her mikans in; apparently, she'd managed to catch the attention of some peach vendor with her sweet tangerines and swindled the poor man out of his money for a basket.

The streets are lined with lively hums and a strumming of odd instruments, music escapes through every crevice of a worn-down building as Luffy jumps from stall to stall, drooling over the goods before you're beckoning him back with his lunchbox and a promise of meat after you finish this errand for Nami. On your way to the stall, you hear faint chattering that doesn't interest you but Luffy straightened up beside you and turns to stare at the people as they argue on who had managed to grow the biggest peach this year.

You sigh, grabbing hold of Luffy's collar when he stops to stare at them and drag him off to the stall vendor who had fallen victim to Nami's schemes. The exchange is easy enough— give him the basket (ignore the fact that Nami had managed to make it look like it was overflowing by artfully bunching up a cloth on the bottom and filled gaps between the fruits with flowers) and make sure you've got the correct amount of money. It's when Luffy asks the stall vendor who has the biggest peach this year that things begin to go downhill.

Rather than answering Luffy's question, the man goes on a tangent about some kind of festival for a God and how the biggest peach will be the offering to said God this year— apparently, Shumi (the woman who owns the fabrics shops) had managed to get her hands on this, that, or the other to help her husband grow a peach large enough to bring doubt to the fact that Gyupuri had managed to grow the largest peach (again) this year.

Luffy insists on tracking them both down to help the people come to a decision as he wiped away the drool on his chin. Resigned, you managed to find Shumi first with her shop being the only one in town that sold fabrics and she denies you both permission to see the peach; Gyupuri, on the other hand, is more than happy to show you to the peach he grows. He takes you straight out of town, into the forest, and then up the mountain to where there's a clearing full of nothing but flesh coloured peaches.

As you listen to Gyupuri's story on how he was merely taking after his father to grow these strangely sized peaches, you have to keep Luffy in your hold so he doesn't go running to the giant peach and take a bite out of what could be for a God. Somehow though, he manages to get a handful of flat peaches when you weren't looking and when you attempt to apologise to Gyupuri, he doesn't seem to be fazed, shoving a few more peaches into your hand and telling you it's fine.

"So, who is this God anyway?" Luffy asks, his legs wrapped around your waist and chin hooked on your shoulder as he leaned back, satisfied with cheeks full of the peach you were holding in your hand. You turn to give him a look, but he merely stares at you back.

The people here must have made a unanimous decision to answer questions from the left side of the field because Gyupuri only tells you the name of this God when he drags you and Luffy up a hill to stare at a statue of this God carved out of generic stone.

To be polite, you call the statue pretty; Luffy feels no need to be polite, so he says it's not really. When you look at him to furrow your eyebrows at him, he's already looking at you.

When you're back on the ship, money handed to Nami, you think about that moment so much that it grows moss in your mind and vines burst through the crevices of the worn–down artifact you've made out his gaze to be. You throw up everything you manage to eat and feel hollow and worthy when you meet Luffy's eyes in Chopper's office again.

There's a chill that follows your days after that.

It's persistent and stubborn in a way that cruelly reminds you of Luffy. On a brighter side, you've got an excuse to be lazy in bed though it irks your bones not to have the weight of you walking thrumming up your body. You get visits from the Strawhats, get your food delivered to you, some of the crew shuffling into your room to keep you entertained with some card games and the likes— you get Luffy consistently making his way into your room and treating it as any other room on his Sunny. He comes in, always makes himself home on the bed, and talks about what he did today. At some point, it becomes less endearing and more annoying to be treated as though you were actually dying. (You hadn't told them for a reason.)

Four days after Chopper had resolutely punished you with bed rest, Luffy decides that he was going to start sleeping in your room. Apparently, your face had translated over what your head was thinking too quickly because he starts whining, saying that he wouldn't get to see you enough if he doesn't do this and, well, since you've always had a tender, raw, skinned soft spot for the boy, you end up saying yes.

He spends his first night telling you what he was going to spend tomorrow doing and you come to the realisation that every other sentence contains you. (Going to find more beetles to show you... Chopper told Sanji it'd be good to get more meat into your diet... Zoro accidentally cut snakes and ladders in half so Nami is giving me money to see if we can find one for you so we can play... Robin said there's a really pretty flower on this next island… For you… For you...) It’s all there laid bare and you cannot face it. You hide your face into the crook of your elbow and wretch out a cough. Luffy frowns but doesn't mention it. He talks himself into sleep and you lay awake to him, trying to keep yourself from blooming throughout the night so he doesn't wake up, cold and still.

When you're startled awake with misty embrace in a dream, you see that Luffy has gone.

What he has left is his straw hat and a mouthpiece of his greatness. The straw is rough against your fingers, resembling the thorns that grows along roses and you stare at it in your lap until you can feel the roughness in your throat— just when you think you need to get water, Sanji shows up with breakfast. You eye the cigarette in his lips and ignore the settling of the tray on your bedside table, watch the smoke fight the smell of scrambled eggs and bits of bacon to take over your room.

"We're at an island?"

Sanji walks around your bed, finding himself comfortable on the couch across the foot of your bed. "We docked early this morning," you watched his smoke rise, ash falling to the wooden floor of your room, waving and grasping hands up to God. Sanji keeps himself entertained by looking around your room, his foot pushing around odd leaves and petals on the floor before he nods over to the plate. "Eat." Then he's gone.

You stare at the tray, settling Luffy's straw hat aside, you shuffle to the end of your bed and take the fork in your hands— you look at the plate until you swear you can taste the eggs in your mouth and the slight bursts of saltiness that'll come from the bacon and you have to wash it down with the glass of water he's given you. You push it aside and opt to go back to sleep.

You dream of a still life on top of a hill, overlooking a dock as the Sunny pulls back out into the sea; you thrash but find every part of you rooted down to one spot, the wind picks up and you feel tangles of what could be hair or leaves hitting against a part of your body. You're still rooted despairingly in a garden of silks and duvets when you wake, Luffy had found himself unable to keep away from your breakfast but when you sit up and look a little closer, you see a pile of the diced bacon bits shoved off to the side as he shovelled eggs into his mouth.

Shattering free from the earth with a faltering cough broken into four, you shuffled yourself up and spit out a cluster of wisteria. At this point, you do not need to look at Luffy to know what his face looks like; he turned to face you, cheeks full and quickly finishing the eggs to shuffle closer to you on the bed with a book in his hands. "You left your book under the plate."

It's a hardback children's book, pulled out of Sunny's library and coloured a light blue that resembled the sky and broken apart by a sunflower in the middle and petals around it, the title curled around the sunflower. You know that the book was left in the library when you were having your episode. The cover is smooth to the touch as Luffy gives it to you and ends up knocking his shoulders against yours in his attempt to get closer; your eyes moved over to the tray of food and you think of Sanji, who'd grown up in the North Blue where this children's story was more popular amongst the romantic commonwealth. 

He knows, you think, and it fills you with a dread that the wisteria blossoms feast upon delightfully; he knows, and he could tell everyone, the vines throb over your heart as Luffy opens the book over your lap and looks up, expectantly at you.

Myrsa was a pretty girl, enough so that praises sang for her ended up calling upon the scorn of love's Goddess. The depiction of her getting cursed is almost comical, stricken by lightning as she returns from a forest with a basket full of flowers and mushrooms. "What happens next? What happens next?" Luffy pushes his face closer to the book, tangling a rubbery leg with yours as he moves impossibly closer. "How does Myrsa beat up the God?"

It's the certainty he holds that Myrsa will beat up God that makes you laugh, it's the fact that she does not beat anything that makes you tremble, shaking coughs and petals out your throat. Luffy seems to think that the book is too excitable, trying to pry it away from you and saying that he can ask Robin to read it to him later so you should just rest. "Don't you want to know if Myrsa will beat up the God now?" You ask instead, knowing the answer will be yes.

Perhaps they were the wrong words to convince Luffy because when you're on the last page, Myrsa buried in a forgotten land and her love used as fertiliser for a field of sunflowers, he's threatening to beat up a God made up to exact revenge for Myrsa. It's a lot more cheerful than you had expected— all the characters drawn with round faces, small bodies, and black dots as eyes. It makes death seem redeemable. 

After Luffy hauls himself out of your room, in search of the God had turned Myrsa into sunflowers, you force the bacon down your mouth and bring the tray out to Sanji. You linger in the kitchen, eyes watching him as he scrubbed the dishes and danced around the kitchen, no doubt knowing why you were there. He doesn't seem to want to be the one to approach the topic just based on the way he refused to stop even for a moment for the past fifteen minutes you've been there.

You know nothing about Sanji past the fact that he's blond, he's a cook, and he used to be a prince from North Blue's Germa Kingdom.

"You know Myrsa didn't die because she had hanahaki." Your hip meets the edge of an island, arms crossed over your chest as you watched Sanji finally slow to a halt, throwing a glance over at you. He takes his cigarette between two fingers, breathing in for a moment and then takes it out, holding it out to you. "What she was cursed with, wasn't ever meant to be able to kill her."

"I know."

Sanji takes the cigarette back after you shake your head, shrugging a little as he continued. "Myrsa died."

You laugh a little, "I read the book."

There's a point he's trying to make that's as foreign to you as the notion of a love that doesn't hurt but he turns a glance to you that almost reads like he's disappointed in you and it settles nicely against the vines choking you through. You straighten up, uncrossing your arms and his visible eye wanders back over the pots he has boiling on the stove. "You liked the ending?" The ending of the North Blue story was a two–page spread of a sunflower field, a planet of bright yellows and a dull light blue, clouds breaking apart overwhelming tones of sunny golds and drowning diamonds.

A tree split awkwardly in half due to the spine of the book, curved in shape and pinched in the middle until you held the pages at the edges and pulled to straighten in down. "It was pretty," a gentle breeze running through the leaves shedding from the tree, a shiver to the wooden flesh that split apart if looked at the right way by the right man. Myrsa was beautiful, even in a death she didn't pick treated her well.

How could you hope to live when she did not?

You find a lot of things pretty now; you wonder if that's the dead crawling in you that is beginning to appreciate the life around. Robin sat on the deck with a cup of cooling coffee on a table in front of her and a book in her hand, Nami stood between her rows of mikan trees, Zoro straining under the weights of his responsibilities, Brook with a violin to his shoulder. The sky drowned over the ocean as Luffy leaned his head against you on Sunny's figurehead, his voice a soft beat over the water rushing against the hull of the ship. He's talking about Shanks and his dream and your heart aches selfishly; his skin gulps down the orange light of the dawning sun and you resigned yourself to a death loving him.

You wonder if Luffy still thinks of his dead brother, your tongue slips against the bark of your gums, and you open your mouth without thinking. "Luffy," you hear spoken into the wind, "will you tell me about your brother?"

"Sabo?" He's clapping his feet together excitedly, turning from the sky to you with a large grin on his face, "he's a part of the Revelation Army— no, wait revocation? Revenge Army? Renovation Army! Wait— that's not right."

"No, the other one." A whisper haunts the wind, 'the dead one' written in its movement.

There's a certain hesitation to his words that brings you to the realisation that being loved by Luffy is a wonderful thing. He's never been one to be articulate with words, picking the simple ones that come to mind first without a moment's hesitation but strangely the simple–minded way served him well when it came to love. Love is not articulate either— it's one of the simplest things in the world— so when it's met with someone like Luffy, it blossoms into an art form of all things beautiful.

You regret have not meeting Luffy when Ace was around. Dancing around his features is a tender skip of tightness; his shoulders pulled up to his ears, head ducked down, lips awkward and tongue thick as he told you the story of being accepted to be Ace's brother. Hues of embers fluoresce, dripping down on Sunny's figurehead as you reached an arm around him; his words are stained in blood and adoration, strained and slow but Luffy persists, his love persists.

"You should've met him!" He finishes, turning to you with a light chuckle. "You would've loved him."

Your hand falls onto his shoulder, pulling him closer despite the crawl of vomit up your throat and you leaned your head against his straw hat. "Maybe I will."

Death is another thing you think is simple. It's as easy as slipping into Chopper's office to find him hunched over his desk, his hooves holding onto a pestle as he circled the butt around in a mortar. "Ah, you're here?" He glanced over his shoulder as you walked around him and settled onto one of the beds he has in his room. "Give me a second! I nearly have your medicine ready."

"Chopper," you think you've played this out in your head before, "I have hanahaki."

His arms slow down to a halt, his face dropping by several degrees; the previous petals that made up his hopeful and cheerful expression flutter to the floor, guided by the winds you'd altered with those four words.

"Hanahaki?" Chopper's words are slow as he settled the pestle down, "I thought— but it doesn't exist?"

"Funnily enough, it died off." You tell him with a little laugh. "As more people took to the seas and chased after the one piece, less people fell victim to hanahaki." The Chopper you've told this to before in your mind was definitely less devastated and surprised to be greeted by the fact that you have hanahaki.

He's stumbling over his words, trying to pick something to focus on first as his face was scrunched up, eyebrows furrowed, and lips open into disbelief. "How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me? You'll have the surgery, right? You can trust me; I'll definitely save you. When did it first start?" Your head is pounding with the incessant questions he spits at you, unable to answer any of them as any allowance for a response was filled in by another inquiry. Suddenly, he's pulling his mind to a stop as he turned back to you, solemn and sad and asks, "who is it?" 

It's easy to tell how Luffy has touched people, Chopper makes note of the way your head tilts and you smile and it's obvious that there was no one else capable of calling upon your love.

"And the surgery?"

The look on your face, although foreign to you, tells him all he needs to know.

That doesn't stop him though, he keeps himself by your side and urges (pleads) you to have the surgery; his constant presence becomes a problem when he makes a point of forcing Luffy away from you. It's small at first, trying to distract Luffy with other things, claiming to want to be the one to watch over Luffy when you all dock so you're not given the chance, clinging onto your arms and demanding your attention when Luffy threatens to take it away from him. Then, when Luffy notices that he's been holding onto this flower for hours, fingers pinched around a sunflower stem to ask you how you get seeds from the flower to eat, and every time he's seen a speck of your colour from corners, Chopper shows up to drag you away or points a finger somewhere to shout about a meat mountain, he has a problem.

You notice it's about the meat mountain at first though.

He's slamming the door to Chopper's office after the fourth time, shouting, "Chopper! Where's the meat mountain you keep talking about?" He doesn't seem to care about the fact that Chopper is checking up on you as he stomps into the room, plopping himself down right next to you. Chopper pushes him away when your shoulders brush against each other and you're coughing out bloodied petals. His attention diverts when he hears the shaking of your cough, how you knock into him uncontrollably as your torso leans to meet your thighs, hands deep into the foam edge of the mattress. Petals splatter onto your shoes, clinging to the leather with saliva and re–painting the laces in a sickly red. Luffy’s touch is intrusive, a hand tightened on your thigh that burns your skin to ash and forces vines to splutter out your skin. They attack him, you reel yourself away from Luffy in hopes that they don’t reach him but in some disgusting way, they force themselves to new lengths to coil around his limbs. Spindling up and up and up and you can’t see his face anymore as a thick rope of vines in the shape of his hand reaches out for you, they keep moving up until you only see his hat— your back knocks against the wall. You sternly tell yourself this death is acceptable; the vines grow limp.

When you’ve calmed down enough, the first thing Luffy asks you is, “why aren’t you better yet?” And you feel as though you’re being scolded for some reason; your eyes flicker over to Chopper, fingers tangled together in front of your thighs from the corner of the room you’ve forced yourself into. When Luffy catches the wandering glances— as if you’re trying to keep him out of something— he treats you exactly how you’re acting. Like a criminal.

“Chopper?” It’s unnerving how his eyes are still on you, no trace of expression on his face, “out.”

“But—”

“Out.” Chopper throws you an unhelpful glance as he passes you to get to the door.

You’ve always had the wrong impression of Luffy— everyone that doesn’t know him has the same image; he’s a pirate that has taken down warlord after warlord, who has brought horrifying change and shifts the balance of authority wherever his feet take him. Hearing hushed whispers of him and his close affiliates in the lightened haze of booze, to distract from a tooth getting knocked out of place never does much for his image either. Though it wouldn’t be right to say that Luffy is wholly good either— he’s selfish. Selfish and impossibly kind and downright disgusting with the handling of his own needs; the sound of your name fizzing between his teeth has you startled, nodding your head back to him on the bed you’d left him at.

“You’re hiding something.” It’s not a question nor is it an accusation of any kind. It’s an observation. Luffy slides himself off the bed, his sandals comically slap against the floor of Chopper’s office, “tell me.” His hands fall onto your shoulders, one stays there and the other slides down. He treats your skin like an amusement park for his pleasure; his nails drag across the goosebumps of your bicep, pressing down on raised scars and then splashes into the palm of your hand, dragging ripples in the centre.

You hesitate, twisting your fingers together and pulling as if to attempt to dislodge the odd feeling that follows his fingertips. “Are you asking as a captain?” Despite how general expectations of Luffy remain pretty low to those who do know him, it’s also known that Luffy has a nerve in him that’s impossibly receptive to hurt. There’s a certain way to activate it and when it’s on, it doesn't quieten down until its idiot owner is pleased. Luffy scrunches his face up in an odd way, displeasured at your question as if he couldn’t believe you’d ask him something that hurtful, and his head tilts.

“Tell me.” You’re met with an unwavering stare, the hand on your shoulder tightens and there’s a hardness to it that you’ve never associated with your rubber captain— you can feel the bone in his fingers, stern and undeniable. Your eyes trace over the exposed, tanned skin of his bicep and you wish that you could force your vines through his skin to crawl into his chest and listen to the tremors that’ll run up your devil fruit from his beating heart for some kind of answer. There’s a sudden breath that’s available to you that isn’t tainted and clogged, trapped before it even meets your lungs, but it burns in a new way as you stare at Luffy, scared and terrified of a new life that’ll be forced upon you if you tell him what’s wrong with you.

You open your mouth with an excuse, but Luffy huffs and the words shrivel in your mouth, collapsing to a grain on your tongue and when you close your mouth, you taste dirt. “Luffy,” you beg, “I can’t— just, I’ll be fine.”

There’s a hint of some anger in his gaze before it turns into a haunting realisation, “Chopper knows, doesn’t he?” He pushes you aside, “I’ll just ask Chopper.”

There’s a ringing distant in your ears that chimes like the bell of the church from that place two islands ago, maybe three— you haven’t been too good with time recently. Sunny shakes like the earth as a body hits the pavement, you feel disgusting and heavy and an itch claws through your palms where Luffy’s hand has just been. You’re sure it’s Chopper he’s shaking an answer from but you hear Robin’s voice, calling for him to calm down and when that doesn’t work, Sanji cuts in. It all gets further and further away, you think about the planks of Sunny opening to welcome you back into that darkness from nights ago, you think about being choked by one of your vines, you think about the wisteria blooming whole in your lungs— you think and you think and think and suddenly, it’s all nothing. You’re dying, you think, that’s a fact, what else? Luffy is the reason. Or maybe you’re the reason.

“Luffy,” were you the one talking? “Luffy.” The voice comes again, stern and your eyebrows furrow with the same tension that the voice is carrying. “Thank you for being my captain.”

Not that it surprises you, Luffy punches you.

[hxlxnaaa]

𝐱𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐫 ─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─ 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬

★ 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: you're not just friends, but you're not more than that either. he's the epitome of unreadable and unavailable, leaving you confused, hurt, and lost.

★ 𝐜𝐰/𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: first person pov, really angsty, like REALLY angsty (i chose violence my bad), college au, situationship plot

★ 𝐰𝐜: 4.3k

★ 𝐚/𝐧: before i say anything im so sorry. like i was not expecting it to be this angsty but then it was and...well i couldn't stop it. i think xavier would be a situationship final boss cause bro cannot manage his feelings. also can you tell i really like college au's... anyways, enjoy!!

His hands rest on the curve of my waist, firm and possessive, as if his fingers might weave through my ribs and anchor themselves there. His touch lingers with a quiet desperation, a reminder of everything we’ve shared. Once you’ve seen so much of someone, their fears, their desires, the way their eyes light up in the smallest moments—walking away feels like tearing apart something sacred, like committing a sin against the universe itself.

I stare at his sleeping face. I could protect him, my heart a sanctuary warm enough for him to find peace. He’d never have to wander again, never ever need to leave. The softness of his skin could soothe the ache buried deep within me, erasing the sickness with a quiet, tender touch.

He has my heart trapped like a bird.

Part of me wonders if he knows how he’s holding me, if he finds comfort within his slumber and dreams with my body pressed against his. Or if he’ll stir and realize, turning away and leaving me to stare at the muscles in his back that flex as he sleeps.

I trace circles onto his bicep, like the circles he runs around us.

I had met Xavier a little over a year ago, he was a friend of a friend, and we met at a small house party that a few mutuals of ours had thrown. He was like a star, shining so brightly in the room it drowned out everyone else. He was standing in a corner talking to Jeremiah, a good friend of mine that I shared some classes with. The way Xavier shyly smiled at me when Jeremiah introduced us made my heart feel like King Arthur’s sword, and someone had finally managed to capture it.

We talked the rest of the night, never leaving that spot in the corner. I paid no mind to anyone else I knew in that house, all that mattered was the beautiful cosmic boy I was encountering.

He found me again in the library a few weeks later, lightly tapping my shoulder and asking if he could study with me. Xavier was an astronomy major, ever so fitting for the star-boy who sparkled like constellations no matter where he went. The way his face lit up when asked about space was a vision I wanted to replay behind my eyelids every time I slept.

Xavier quickly became one of my best friends, and every second I spent with him was a second closer to my demise.

With him, I had tunnel vision. It didn’t matter how many guys my friends tried to set me up with, none of them were Xavier.

He was all I ever wanted.

I had never wanted anything as bad as I wanted Xavier. In my eyes he hung the moon and the stars. My love for him was an insatiable hunger that only he could cure; if he was Hades I would’ve taken that pomegranate from his tree, sacrificing my life to spend the rest of my time in hell just so I could spend eternity with him. I’d put myself on display for him so he can play God on judgement day, I’d let him carve his name into me so I’d remember what to say, I’d do anything he asked.

He’s the serpent and I’m Eve.

Xavier was hard to read, it was like trying to understand the plot of a book in pig latin. One moment he’s sitting so close to me I can smell his shampoo, looking me in my eyes and smiling so widely I thought his cheeks would hurt, as he twirls a strand of my hair around his finger. He’ll cut me off mid sentence and tell me I look beautiful, and watch me as if I’m a movie he’s been waiting years to see.

The next moment? I don’t see him for days; I don’t get texts, no photos and complaints about his astronomy homework, no little alien gifs, no hellos or goodbyes. He disappears without a trace, and the only proof I have that he ever existed is the ache in my heart when I realize he’s pulling away again.

I’ve never gotten anything I’ve ever wanted, but once, I got close. Xavier had showed up at my dorm on a storming Saturday night at 1 AM like a sopping wet dog in the hallway, his first appearance in a week. Slurring his speech, blubbering about how Jeremiah and their friends dragged him out to the bars.

“M’sorry I just showed up, I wanted to see you…Just see you…”

Drunk off his ass, the pity for him overcame my anger. I gave him a change of his own clothes, hoodies and sweatpants I had borrowed and never gave back, the only pieces I had of him when he would turn into a ghost again.

Xavier watched me as I maneuvered around the room, grabbing him a glass of water, his eyes bleary and lips mumbling breathless words I couldn’t catch.

“Hey.”

I turned to look at him, his cheeks and ears red from the alcohol. He was sprawled out on my bed shirtless after refusing the hoodie, declaring the room was too hot. Xavier gestured for me to come closer, and as I approached the bed, he yanked my wrist down causing me to collapse onto his bare chest. His half-lidded eyes scanned my face, hand snaking up my waist.

“Is this okay?” He said through breathless kisses on my shoulder. Holding my body very still, I thought if I moved I may wake up.

“Xavier, you’re drunk.” I whispered, my words betraying my thoughts. He stilled, and I internally punched myself. Pulling back far enough I could see his eyes again, he smiled and placed a kiss on my palm. I couldn’t help but smile back, as my heart lurched out of my chest and into his hands for good. Xavier slowly and awkwardly flipped me onto my back, stumbling a bit through his inebriation. He mumbled words of adoration, planting kisses that burned like the fire of a star all over my face and skin.

“Perfect… So perfect… You’re like Venus, so full of love… Beautiful girl…”

Xavier kissed me like I was broken and he was thread, trying to sew me back together. The moment was holy, his heart singing to mine like a psalm. I memorized the movement of his lips against mine, cherishing the taste of cheap beer on his tongue.

“I love you.”

He fell asleep next to me, as I stayed awake staring at the ceiling, wondering what this meant for us.

Nothing, I suppose.

Xavier never mentioned it, and I never felt the courage to bring it up. It was only a fleeting moment, but it stuck with me like a plague, hanging over my head. It left the soft moments with him more confusing, the compliments more intimate, the feelings more frustrating.

I stare at him asleep holding me, face gentle through dreams, and I want to cry. Falling asleep next to me was nothing new, crashing in my dorm after movie nights or study dates. ‘No it’s okay, don’t sleep on the floor. We can just share the bed.’

I am a ticking time bomb, and I’m going to explode.

My heart is trapped like a bird.

-

“Honestly, I really think you should just confront him,” Tara flips through the pages of her textbook, “it’s not getting you anywhere not knowing what he thinks.”

I throw my face in my hands, letting out a groan and tangling my fingers in my hair, “It’s not that easy. What am I gonna say? ‘Hey, we kissed once so what are we?’ Do you know how crazy that sounds!”

“You forgot the part, ‘you also spend the night in my bed a lot’ or, ‘you told me you loved me’.”

“Friends do and say stuff like that all the time!” Shuddering at the thought of rejection, I hold up a finger to silence Tara, “Plus I’m not sure I even want to know. I think staying in the dark is better for everyone.”

She rolls her eyes, slamming the textbook closed, “Right. Okay, fine, that’s fine. Just quit complaining, I’m gonna tear my hair out.” Walking over, she places a kiss to the top of my head, “You know I love you, but I’m gonna kill both of you if I have to hear about it one more time.”

Tara leaves for class, and I’m left alone in the library with my thoughts and an exam to study for. I feel the pads of Xavier’s fingertips against my skin leftover from last night, and the feeling of emptiness when I woke up and he was gone. No text saying he had left for class, just radio silence and his body imprinted in my sheets. It’s moments like this, when I’m convinced I’ve got him right outside my grasp, he’d fall back out of reach.

I’m about to put on my headphones and tune the world out, when I hear a man's voice.

“Are you studying for the exam?”

I look up, and I see the boy who sits next to me in my stats class, Rafayel. His hair is a mess, and his black sweater has a few paint stains on them. I assume he’s just come from the studio, as his satchel is hanging loosely over his shoulder, his portfolio book sticking out. Rafayel’s an art major and never fails to complain the whole time about how the class is required for him, but he’s ‘never even gonna use this stuff’.

I huff, staring at my laptop screen, “Yeah, trying to at least.”

Rafayel slips into the seat Tara was just in, throwing his satchel on the floor beside him, “Oh good, you can help me then!”

I'm grateful for the distraction, as Rafayel is a sweet guy and a good break from the chronic thoughts of Xavier. His glances at me in class while I try to work on a concept with him don’t go unnoticed, or the way he doodles me on the corner of his paper, flashing me a grin when I point to the drawings. He would be so perfect, the artsy goof who showers me in attention, clingy, comedic and kind;

But he’s not Xavier.

“How am I supposed to help you with this if you’re busy drawing?” I tap his sketchbook with my pen. Rafayel looks up from his work with a frown, “I’m getting bored!”

He snatches my pen from my hand to stop my tapping, “Hey, why don’t we go to the cafe for a quick break? My brain could use it.”

“You’ve been studying for fifteen minutes.”

“So? You’re supposed to take breaks after twenty minutes, it’s been like, scientifically proven or whatever.”

He stares at me with a big smile, and I know I can’t say no to him. Literally, I wouldn’t be allowed.

When we got to the cafe, the place was packed and I internally groaned. Looking around the bustling coffee shop, it was uncomfortable just how busy it was. Waiting in line practically squished next to Rafayel, I rested my head on his shoulder as I had done many times in class before. He draped his arm around my shoulder, going on about how one of his professors gave him a bad grade on a painting because he used the wrong shade of blue. I thought about how nice it would be to stand like this with Xavier, but I never felt as if I could get close enough to try.

Trying to shake off the thoughts about him, I thought about Rafayel’s arm around me. The way his finger would poke my shoulder as he talked to put emphasis on his words, or the way his bicep flexed on the back of my neck as he moved. It was comforting in a way, secure. It was protective. Safe.

“Oh my God, I hate that dude.” Rafayel scoffs, looking at a table in the corner. Following his eyes, I caught a glimpse of tousled platinum hair. Meeting his blue eyes, my breath hitched in my chest, body freezing against Rafayel. I couldn’t read a single ounce of emotion on his face, just feeling his stare bore into me.

My first instinct wanted to rip away from Rafayel, let Xavier know I was still his. Yet-

I’m not. I’m not his, and he’s not mine.

I remember the feeling of defeat this morning when I woke up, body tired from staying up and watching the rise and fall of his chest, mind exhausted from the push and pull, chasing after him and never quite catching up.

Leaning farther into the boy beside me, I look away from Xavier and look up at Rafayel.

After all, the key to moving on is finding someone new.

“Which one?” I ask him, not sure if he’s referring to anyone else at that table. It was a group of Xaviers friends, people I had met briefly.

“The blonde one, he’s in one of my gen ed classes and he’s a total prick.” Rafayel stares back at Xavier, and I try to avoid his piercing eyes, focusing on picking at a piece of lint on Rafayels sweater.

“Oh, yeah. I know him.” I don’t want him to be introduced to that part of my world. Rafayel is pure, untainted by the chaos. I didn’t want to drag him into the hurricane.

-

After that, I didn’t hear from Xavier for a while. Though his silence wasn’t uncommon, I couldn’t help but think this time it may have been provoked by the moment in the cafe. I saw him around campus a few times, in his usual spots, but when he’d notice me he’d just look away.

Saying it hurt would be an understatement.

I started seeing Rafayel more to fill the void that Xavier was leaving behind. Every tear Xavier had ripped into my heart and soul, Rafayel was taking bandaids and patching them up. While it was nice, it wasn’t a permanent solution to the wounds.

I felt guilty, like I was using him, doing the same thing to Rafayel that Xavier was doing to me. Though, despite whatever was happening, Rafayel was content. I don’t think he minded the situation I had imposed. From little dates to holding hands, to kisses on my cheek when he’d drop me off at my dorm, I was getting the attention I craved and Rafayel had someone to keep him company. It’s like we had this silent, mutual agreement that whatever was happening was okay, and this is all it had to be.

Rafayel never knew about Xavier, and I would never tell him.

The incident at the cafe was the first, but not the only time Xavier saw us together. Whether it was the library studying, or the student union building, Xavier would see us and almost always stare. Rafayel always had comments to make about it too, muttering things under his breath about him being a creepy stalker.

I was sitting on the floor of my dorm with Rafayel, scrolling aimlessly on my phone as he sketched the fake plants I had sitting on my desk. My phone started to blow up with everyone texting in our group chat, something about a party happening this weekend.

Tara: Please tell me you guys are gonna be there!

Jeremiah: i have to go, one of my friends is in the frat and he’ll kill me if i don’t

Tara: Okay that's 2 of us! Who else???

“Who’s texting you so much?” Rafayel says, clearly annoyed by my phone's insistent text tone going off.

“This group chat I’m in with my friends,” I sit my phone down, “there's a party this weekend and they’re trying to get everyone to go.”

“Are you going to?”

“I dunno, are you?”

Rafayel laughs, “You know better than anyone I couldn’t be caught dead at one of those.” He puts his sketchbook aside, grabbing my hand, “You should go though, you don’t really do much besides go to class and see me, and as much as I'm happy with the attention, this is a really sad look for you.”

I pull my hand away, offended, “I am not sad!”

“Then prove it, go to the party.”

“I’m pretty sure this is peer pressure, hazing even.”

“That’s most definitely not hazing.” Rafayel picks his sketchbook back up, going back to his drawing with a smug look on his face.

I text back in the groupchat, upset that I agree with Rafayel. Ever since I started hanging out with him and Xavier started giving me the full blown silent treatment, I haven’t really gone out much. I see Tara here and there for lunch or a quick study session, but it’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to do something fun.

Me: yea i’ll be there, lmk what time

Tara: OMG YAY!!!! I’ll send you the details

Xavier: I’ll see U guys there

Seeing Xavier text that he was going to be in attendance sent a lightning bolt of anxiety through my chest.

This was the longest we had gone without talking. Usually, his moments of silence only lasted a few weeks at most. With due time he’d come back with a post he sent or ask me to hang out, announcing his presence and waltzing back into my life; and I'd let him in.

Every. Single. Time.

The distance he created between us this time around made me anxious to face him the upcoming weekend. Would he say hi? Ask how I was? Would he look right through me like so many times before?

After Rafayel left, I sat in bed cocooned in one of Xavier's hoodies he had left behind, watching the stars through my window. I thought maybe, if I stared hard enough, they could make a constellation of his face.

-

Friday rolled around faster than I had hoped. Per Tara’s request, we showed up fashionably late, so the old beat up house was packed by the time we arrived. It was the first time in months I had put myself together, doing my hair and makeup. Taking a couple shots of whatever Tara had given me, I was feeling mildly prepared for the night ahead.

Walking in, my hand gripped hers tightly as she maneuvered gracefully through the crowd. Grabbing a drink from the makeshift bar, I cracked open the can and started chugging. I was going to need as much alcohol as I could to get me through this night. We found a couple girls that we knew, chatting loudly over the music, as I pounded back a few more drinks.

Before I knew it, the man I was dreading seeing the most appeared beside Tara with Jeremiah.

“Ladies!” Jeremiah shouted, wrapping his arms around Tara and I. Xavier’s eyes could have burned a hole through my skull with the intensity that he stared at me. Internally I was at war with myself, half wanting to shrink away because of how small his look made me feel, but also feeling powerful thanks to the liquor coursing through my veins and the hot outfit I had on.

One voice on my shoulder screamed, “Get out of here! Go home! Never show your face again!” While the other danced around, “You’re such a sexy bitch, show him what he’s missing!”

I chugged another drink.

“Wait- Tara, I want you to meet one of my friends, come with me.” Jeremiah gestured for Tara to follow him, and I flashed her a panicked look. She shrugged, squeezing my hand before following behind Jeremiah.

I stood alone with Xavier, the rest of the group disbursing where it just left us.

“I’m gonna get a drink, come on.”

I looked at him, “What?”

“I’m gonna go get a drink? Let's go.” He raised an eyebrow at me, like I asked a stupid question.

“Okay, but why do I have to come with you?”

“Because I’m not leaving you all by yourself-” Xavier pressed two fingers to his temple, “nevermind it’s fine I don’t need another one.”

“I was just asking-”

“Where’s your boyfriend?” He cut me off, his question catching me off guard.

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you having trouble understanding tonight or something? How much have you had to drink?” His words were venom, and I was appalled. Not once had he ever spoken to me this way, not even in arguments.

“I just don’t know who you’re fucking talking about, my bad.” I spat back at him.

“The guy who’s always up your ass, where is he tonight?”

I laughed, shocked, “You mean Rafayel? He is not my boyfriend.” I wasn’t sure if it was the liquor or his jealousy, but his attitude was a loaded gun.

“Well I couldn’t tell, seeing as how you both practically eye fuck wherever you go.”

Stunned, my jaw dropped. His eyes softened, and I could tell he knew he hit a nerve. With the blaring music in my ears, and the alcohol coursing through my veins, I was suddenly convinced that if I didn’t get out of that house I was going to fall apart to pieces.

“I don’t have to take this.” I shoved past him, pushing my way through the crowd and out the front door, until the cold air hit my face.

Xavier called out my name from behind, but I continued walking down the sidewalk. I wanted to be so far from that party, from him, that I thought I may just walk back to my hometown and away from this stupid place; to somewhere he didn’t exist anymore.

Calling my name again, he caught up, grabbing me by my shoulder. His face was switching through emotions every second, and I was getting whiplash.

“What the hell is your problem!” I shouted at him, tears threatening to spill, welling up in the corner of my eyes.

“Hey, wait-” His hand that was on my shoulder went to my cheek, and I jerked away.

“No, you don’t get to do that anymore, we’re done playing that game. I give up!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You- This, us! You kiss me, you tell me I’m beautiful, you tell me you love me, you sleep in my bed and I’m in your arms, then you don’t text me for weeks! You don’t acknowledge anything you do, and I don’t know what any of it means,” I don’t realize I’m crying until I taste the salt in my mouth, “You’re so confusing and I don’t know what’s happening, and it hurts so fucking bad and you don’t even care.”

Xavier stands there dumbfounded, my vision blurry and spinning. I think I might throw up, and I’m not sure if it’s from the situation or the liquor.

“Then you have the audacity to be mean to me over some guy that I’m friends with,” I start to sob, my voice becoming weak and small, “you don’t get to do that, you have no right.”

He doesn’t move, and I stop talking. The only sound between us is my quiet crying and hiccups, mixed with the faint music from the party down the block. He says my name, and I barely hear it over the roar of my own ears.

“You’re my best friend…” He whispers.

The words cut through me like a knife, and I think if I look down I’ll see I’ve been gutted. If you could die from a broken heart, I’d already be six feet under. I swallow thickly, and nod. His words were enough, it told me everything I needed to know.

“Can I walk you home?” He asks.

I shake my head.

I started walking down the sidewalk.

He didn't follow.

When he was out of sight, I sat down on the curb and broke down again. Everything I had felt over the past year of knowing him came out at once, my body ejecting all of it. I cursed him, his name, his future wife and family. I prayed that he was destined to stay up at night, regretting that the woman asleep next to him isn’t me. Distraught, because I believe I myself am cursed to love him forever.

I called Rafayel, and asked him to pick me up. I threw up in someone's yard before he did, and when I finally got back home I closed my curtains and locked my window, hiding under my blankets; convinced the stars in the sky were out to get me. I never wanted to see them again, I’d avoid going outside at night for eternity if it meant I never had to face a reminder of him and his devastating beauty.

The next morning, I blocked him.

Well, I blocked him on all social media, even the ones we didn’t use; but I didn’t block his number. For emergency purposes, I thought.

Or I guess for the slim chance he came back; haunted by regret, choking on apologies, and falling to his knees to plead for forgiveness. I told my friends I was finished with him, swore it with conviction, but I’m starting to think those words were as empty as his own promises.

I won't text him first, I’ll just wait.

I’d wait until he misses my laugh, the sound of my voice, or the songs I’d sing to him as he fell asleep, my fingers through his hair.

I won’t text him, but I won’t shut him out entirely. I’ll close the door behind me, but I won’t lock it, not completely. I won’t hand him the key, but maybe I’ll leave behind a clue, something subtle, something only he’d recognize. Just in case he decides to come back, he’ll know where to start searching, know there’s still a way in, even if I pretend there isn’t.

I’d keep the house behind the door clean, buy a welcome mat, and even build a porch.

Just in case;

But he never called.

[clandestineivory]

What type of yandere do you think the Ancients would be if they were one

Thank you for the idea anon <3

Yandere Ancients x Reader

Summary: Oh, lookie, lookie here! It seems that you've managed to charm each and every ancient into loving you dearly...a bit too dearly perhaps. But that's just how they show their affections, right? Maybe that one cookie you were talking to the other day is alright and well and not dead in a closet?

TW: Stalking, manipulation, murder, threatening, not beta read and has never done yandere hcs before. Have fun pookies :D

(It goes from least scariest yandere to most)

REMEMBER WHAT I SAID WHEN I HAD NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE 😭

Hollyberry Cookie

She's definitely attached to you, thats for sure.

You know love bombing? Make it like she's sending a tactical nuke right towards your heart.

She's very clingy, but would allow you to go and do things on your own, you just have to tell her what you did and where you went. Oh, and who exactly you were with.

Hollyberry would never lay a finger on you in a harmful way. Why would she if she knows you'll never want to hurt her affectionate and adorable heart?

Golden Cheese Cookie

She treasures you much, much more then any piece of gold or glittering item she could ever create in her kingdom. The kingdom would be worthless without you in it.

Golden Cheese would stalk you and your every move, sometimes even commanding the marzipan cookies to follow you and photograph your day.

Talking to someone that wasn't the Golden Sovereign? Consider them gone, turned to dust in mere seconds.

She's a goddess! Why would you not want to worship her as much as she does to you..?

It would almost make her sad. Luckily, her best option is to make you do it.

And how could refuse such godly words and beautiful voice?

White Lily Cookie

She’s certainly worse then most of the Ancients. White Lily may just keep you inside the Faerie Kingdom at all times, perhaps even convincing Elder Faerie to keep you under house arrest. Although, she wouldn’t tell you specifically…

White Lily always had her eyes on you, the way you smiled at her words, how you hold her close and say how much you love her.

And she’ll convince you almost every time that you need her.

How could you refuse such a sad and pouty face she makes every time you want to doubt her? It’s almost pitying.

Knowing her goals and past, she would want you to reassure her that you love her, no matter what.

No matter what.

Dark Cacao Cookie

He CANNOT lose you. Anything that you do must be monitored.

Hell, he may even want to use Affogato Cookie’s old spells to keep you under his watch, all agreeable and soft..

He has threatened you once or twice whenever you try to question his judgement, saying stuff like:

“My love, don’t fret. I’m only protecting you.”

But your fears and suspicions were confirmed after one of the Watchers you were talking to suddenly went missing the next day. All you did was say hello and made small talk…

You knew he lost a lot, of course he had the right to be protective over you.

Except being so overprotective and going so far as to…eliminate someone out of sheer jealousy?

You had caused this situation. This was worse then what Affogato Cookie did to the King, because you were doing it completely on accident.

So, to stop hurting anyone else, you just…accepted his love, remaining safe and unharmed within the citadel, avoiding everyone in case of another accident.

Pure Vanilla Cookie

He was supposed to be a pure soul. Someone who’d never do anything horrible or wrong…

Yet when he met you, he instantly got attached. Why? Not even he could explain. You just had some sort of connection with him that made Pure Vanilla love you so dearly.

He definitely hurt you while you were sleeping once or twice, and the feeling of watching you thank him after healing you was…exhilarating.

His habits started from little cuts on your legs to full blown “love” bites and deep cuts on your arms and hands.

At first, you didn’t realize it was him, but after becoming concerned by how much it was happening, you decided to pretend sleeping and wait until something happened.

And it was an understatement that you were shocked.

It was more…terrifying, honestly.

And when you confronted him? He practically almost broke down crying, pulling on your clothes and begging for forgiveness and that he wouldn’t do it again.

Oh, how a King fell so far from purity, nobody will know.

Because after this incident, you forgave him. Surely he was going to stop? You loved him after all, of course he wouldn’t do it again..

And he didn’t. The reason? It’s because you’ve started to lose sleep now. At a concerning point…

Was that coffee in the air? No, just vanilla, as usual…

[st4rtar0t]

Helping your recognise your superpower

I'm currently doing donation based readings to pay for my tuition fees. DM to purchase a reading!

Thank you so much for your time and energy and I hope you have a great day ahead!

Picture 1

Your lust for knowledge is your superpower. And I know you may think that is a lame power to have but I do want to your realise that knowledge is everything. The more knowledgeable you are, the more mature you become. Maturity comes from a sense of understanding and experience. The way you're always ready to learn new things makes you unique. Some of could be an higher achiver, or your sense of self comes from your academic performance. I think it's good to be knowledge but don't bring yourself down when you don't perform well. Give yourself time to learn and revise.

Your another superpower is your ability to look at situations from different perspectives. You know sometimes our pain clouds our vision making it difficult to acknowledge the hurt of others. But not for you, no matter how bad your situation is, you wouldn't let your emotions cloud your judgement Which is an remarkable ability.

Your faith, whether in yourself, in others or in something greater than us all, gives you strength and resilience in times of difficulty. Your belief in humanity, your trust in kindness and your faith in the possibility of a better future awaiting us uplifts not only you but also the people around you.

Picture 2

Your planning is your superpower. It's like having a secret weapon in life. When you plan, you're like a master strategist, able to foresee obstacles and navigate around them. You can set goals and figure out the steps to reach them. Planning helps you stay organized, focused, and prepared for whatever comes your way. It's not just about making lists; it's about taking control of your future and making things happen. So, embrace your planning abilities, because they can truly make you unstoppable. Some of you could be INTJ/ENTJ.

Your another superpower is your protectiveness. It's your ability to shield and guard the ones you care about, keeping them safe from harm. Just like a superhero, you have an instinct to watch over others, anticipating dangers and swooping in to shield them from harm. Your protective nature is a strength that shines brightly, offering comfort and security to those around you. Embrace this superpower, for it is a reflection of your love and dedication to keeping your loved ones out of harm's way. you may think that this makes you more feminine but caring for the people that you makes you stronger. Your constant transformation is your superpower because it means you're always evolving, learning, and adapting. Instead of being stuck in one way of thinking or doing things, you embrace change and use it to your advantage. You're like a chameleon, able to adjust to any situation or challenge that comes your way. This flexibility allows you to grow stronger, wiser, and more resilient with each transformation. So, don't fear change, embrace it, because it's what makes you unstoppable.

Picture 3

Your love for others is your superpower because it has the ability to transform lives in ways beyond imagination. When you extend kindness, understanding, and support to those around you, you create an atmosphere of warmth and positivity. Your love has the power to heal wounds, mend broken hearts, and inspire greatness in others. It's a force that spreads joy, brings people together, and fosters deep connections. Through your love, you become a beacon of hope and strength, capable of uplifting the spirits of those who may be struggling.

Your powerful presence is like a superpower. It's all about how you carry yourself and how you make others feel when you're around. You don't need special abilities because you are your own strength. People notice you without you having to do anything flashy. Your confidence and the way you connect with others make you stand out. Your presence is like a magnet, attracting attention and admiration wherever you go. It's what makes you truly remarkable.

Your voice and the words you choose have immense power. When you speak, it's like magic weaving through the air, touching hearts and minds. The tone, pitch, and rhythm of your voice can convey emotions and messages in ways that no other form of communication can. And the words you select? They're like arrows hitting their target, shaping thoughts, inspiring actions, and building connections. Whether you're calming a storm with soothing words or igniting a fire with passionate speech.

[respectthepetty]

I LOVE THESE LAPIS LADS SO DAMN MUCH!!!!!!

Faifa is ready to die before he makes someone else uncomfortable, so thank goodness Wine is always around to remind Faifa that he will actually die if he continues to try to make everyone happy.

And then Wine gave Faifa the thing he wanted in the first place but was willing to sacrifice because Faifa is always thinking of others and now it's time someone thought about him!

I also appreciate that his Black Brooder brother, with his Green Guy boyfriend in tow, immediately went after him once he found out he spent all night out with his mentee.

So now Gun's even asking what they possibly talked about for hours all night long while Yellow Yal Arm is trying to play bad cop and get to the bottom of this.

But he is too cute for that negativity.

He is a lover, not a fighter, and he knows the best Blue Boy in all the lands would never hurt anyone, especially Wine, which is why Arm tasks Faifa with bringing our dark Blue Boy out of his shell.

So Faifa decides to do it in the kindest gayest way possible by simply being nice to the guy. Pete got Vegas that way, so it obviously works with even the toughest cases.

Maybe that's why Arm keeps wearing blue; he wants to be a Blue Boy since they are just so great, but I can't really think too much on that because Red Rascal Arc is . . . well, existing, shirtless.

And this is the proper reaction to witnessing that man, exist, shirtless. Both. Both are the proper reaction.

But crying in a Texas Roadhouse is not the proper reaction to eating with friends, mostly when your buddies are filming content. However, this feels true to a dark Blue Boy.

Because it's what dark Blue Boys do. Just being depressing. Crying in showers. Crying in the Garden of Olives. Crying in his sleep. Crying in the club. Crying. All the time.

So I actually think it was smart that light Blue Boy Faifa ran to his dad to ask about how to heal a broken heart since his dad is also a dark Blue Boy who was so depressed after their mom left him that he vowed to never love again, yet he seems fine now, right?!

And Faifa does not need the judgement of his brother and brother-in-law in this situation! But I love that Faifa was like, "break up with each other then I can ask for your advice" and it looked like Yotha was legit going to punch him for even putting that curse into the air.

Because Faifa is the BEST Blue Boy, yet he thinks he is not capable of loving someone else, when he, in fact, will be the BEST at loving Wine (and I think he is going to be heartbroken about it, but I'm not there yet), so I need his brother to support him in this effort!

Faifa is so good at loving Wine that he runs to the bar even after he said he wasn't going simply because Wine asked him to, and as much as I want to be upset that Arc and Arm keep playing color games with me, I noticed Arc has a teeny tiny bit of red on him.

And the back of Arm's shirt is yellow, so I am not mad at them! Also, this entire section of the episode was hilarious since Arc was big mad his man was telling Wine love was dumb, and at the same time Yotha, who is drunk just like everyone else, connected the dots that his brother was trying to help out Wine. I loved it!

But these two color-coded toxicitos entered the scene just in time to give Wine a gay crisis in the middle of the drunk scene of a BL.

Faifa grabbed that boy and shuffled him off to the bathroom so quickly because Klao and Arc both were looking at that kid like he was going to say some homophobic shit, BUT BABY IS GAY! This was excellent! I'm living my best life!

And we immediately get treated with Faifa rubbing Wine's back and trying to soothe him. I LOVE FAIFA!

But not as much as I love Wine at this exact moment pinning Faifa to the wall with his hands around Faifa's neck as he has a whole breakdown about being gay and fearing everyone will hate him.

WHICH PROMPTS HIM TO KISS FAIFA!!!! AND FAIFA KISSES HIM BACK!!!!!

Faifa, you're in trouble, bro. You're already lost in the deep blue boy sea. You don't know what heartache is about to hit you because you only know that Wine broke up with his girlfriend because he likes guys. But you don't know he broke up with her because he liked her brother, and we have no idea what that brother spoke to his parents about since Wine ran away before Toey could say, and . . .

These bars are giving me bad vibes, so you are about to have some competition that you don't even see coming (out) because her brother probably came out to his parents and Wine is going to be a mess about it.

Yeah, hold your little Vino Baby while you can, sir. Cuddle him before the narrative screws all of us over.

Because this man is so unpredictable that he logged into his ex's YouTube account just to mess up her algorithm so he could get his camera back. He is a genius, but also, petty. That's a dangerous combination, Faifa.

Look at Faifa. Look at him. Look at my Best Blue Boy in all the universe. Look at how chill he was seconds before Wine called him and he dropped everything to run to him and comfort him. LOOK AT WHAT A KING LOOKS LIKE!

I LOVE FAIFA! I LOVE THEM! I LOVE THIS!

Faifa has the perfect words to make Wine feel safe, and the way he looks at Wine is unbelievably soft, but we all know what this means when we still have six episodes left in their story, right?

We're fucked.

Because now the show has plenty of time to show us that even though Faifa said that Wine makes his heart flutter, Wine will struggle with it since Faifa treats everyone special, and for Tor to make his appearance since it's seemed very important that Tor spoke to his parents.

But I could be completely wrong, and we are just going to ride this wave of happiness until the very end.

Or drown trying.

[dioslesbianwife]

Hi! It’s nice to see your requests are open again and I hope your workload is cleared up a little more <3 I was thinking of a request w/ the joefoes reactions to accidentally hurting reader? It can a minor injury or something serious, up to you!

hii, tbh my workload is still pretty bad haha but thank you, i hope you enjoy and tyy for requesting <3333333

Dio

Dio freezes the moment he sees you clutching your side, blood staining your clothes.

He was sparring with you for fun and got way too aggressive.

He immediately drops to one knee beside you, his pride forgotten for a moment. "Stay still, my sweet one. I'll fix this. I'll make this right."

He physically carries you to safety, his hands so gentle it’s like he’s afraid you’ll shatter.

"Foolish of me," he mutters, frustration thick in his voice- but not at you, at himself.

When you thank him for taking care of you as he’s patching you up, he gets visibly emotional but masks it behind a low, shaky chuckle.

"Even bleeding, you adore me... I do not deserve you."

Kars

Kars hits you during a training exercise- and the second he sees your wound, his entire demeanor changes.

"Hold still." His voice drops low and serious.

He's immediately slicing a strip of cloth from his own clothing to staunch your wound, working with incredible speed and care.

For a second, he looks truly guilty- the perfect being, yet he injured you?

Afterward, he insists on personally overseeing your recovery. "You will not lift a finger until you are healed. That is an order."

Secretly very shaken up, even if he acts composed.

Yoshikage Kira

Kira’s heart sinks when he sees you bleeding.

His first thought is irrational fear- what if someone saw? What if someone tries to take you from him?

But once he sees you're stable, he kneels beside you, hands trembling slightly as he presses gauze to your wound.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, voice thick with genuine regret. "I...I was careless."

He insists on bandaging you himself, wrapping it perfectly neat with trembling fingers.

Afterward, he buys you a little gift to apologize, even though you tell him it's okay.

Diavolo

Diavolo immediately stops the second you get hurt, anger flashing across his face- but directed at himself.

"How careless of me." His voice is low and furious. "Unforgivable."

He handles the injury with ruthless efficiency, using his authority to summon the best medical help immediately.

You’re bundled in soft blankets with medicine and every comfort within the hour.

Diavolo doesn't forgive himself easily; he stays awake watching over you, tense and silent, until you wake up and tell him you’re alright again.

Only then does his expression soften, just a little.

Doppio

Doppio is horrified.

"Oh no, oh no, I didn’t mean to!! I'm sorry, please don't hate me!!"

He's frantically apologizing while trying to bandage you with tissues and bandaids he pulled from his pockets.

You have to calm him down so he doesn't hurt himself from panicking.

Once you’re patched up properly, Doppio insists on cuddling you, wrapping his arms around you protectively.

For days after, he treats you like you’re made of glass, helping you walk, feeding you snacks, everything.

Enrico Pucci

The moment he notices you’re injured, he’s rushing to stabilize you in an instant.

He's frighteningly calm, working like a surgeon- but inside, he’s aching.

"Forgive me. I allowed my judgement to be clouded."

He spends hours in prayer by your bedside afterward, quietly begging for your protection and forgiveness- even though you already gave it.

You reassuring him (even while you're injured) almost brings him to tears, though he hides it well.

Funny Valentine

Funny immediately summons somebody to help you- but he stays with you himself.

His hands are gentle and firm, applying pressure and murmuring soothing words as he works.

"You are far too precious to be marred by my hand."

Afterward, he grants you a special "security detail," surrounding you with protection until you heal- whether you want it or not.

For days, he brings you tea, pastries, even plays music for you to cheer you up.

Diego Brando

Diego yells. Not at you- at himself.

"Shit! No- ! You're not supposed to get hurt!!"

He's clumsily but fiercely trying to help, his hands moving fast but careful as he applies pressure to your wound.

He rips part of his own jacket off to use as a bandage, completely ignoring the fact that he's ruining expensive clothes.

After you're stable, he sulks at your bedside, arms crossed, kicking the floor like a moody child.

But the moment you look up at him and say something sweet like "You're still amazing, Dio..." he breaks into a crooked smile and kisses your forehead.

Tooru

Tooru is stunned at first.

"Oh shit-  I mean, Y/N-chan!! You're bleeding- !"

He's immediately by your side, rambling a bit, trying to apologize and patch you up at once.

He keeps muttering "I didn’t mean it, you're way too cute to get hurt, damn it- " while wrapping you up.

For days afterward, he is ridiculously clingy, always checking your injury, carrying your stuff, making jokes to cheer you up.

"You better milk this for all it’s worth, y'know. I'm basically your nurse now."

Secretly terrified he'd hurt your feelings more than your body.

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: The Housepet.

Continuation of The Houseguest.

Written for a very lovely anonymous commissioner.

Pairing: Yandere!Kaveh x Reader x Yandere!Alhaitham (Genshin).

Word Count: 2.0k.

TW: Implied/Referenced Non-Con, Prolonged Imprisonment, Mind Break, Physical Abuse, Dehumization, Obsessive Behavior, and Delusional Thoughts.

You’d been shaking for the past two hours.

Violently enough for the tremor to be visible in your shoulders, in the jerkiness of your rare movements, but not so aggressively as to disrupt the path of the tears Kaveh would occasionally catch running down your cheeks. It’d started halfway through your tryst, while his head was still buried between the thighs he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for weeks, and the warm bath he’d run hadn’t comforted you the way he’d hoped it would. He thought that getting you out of Alhaitham’s clothes, Alhaitham’s colors might help, but even dressed in one of his shirts, your hair pulled out of your face by one of his jewel-studded clips, you shook like a leaf caught in the morning gale. When he tried taking your collar away, hoping that it’s absence would let you (however momentarily) forget Alhaitham, you broke your silence to beg him not to, and his bleeding heart won over his better judgement. You got to keep your collar, even if the sight of it around your throat sent a bolt of discomfort straight to the pit of his stomach.

Currently, he had you on his bed, curled up in a nest of his sheets and wrapped in his arms as he tried to tempt your permanently downcast gaze back onto him. It hurt him to see you in such obvious distress, as little as you seemed to care what he thought. He could only imagine what you were like when Alhaitham had his way with you, that brute. At least Kaveh had made an effort to be gentle with you. He was sure that, behind closed doors, Alhaitham wouldn’t so much as—

Speak of the archons and they will appear. As he rubbed shallow circles into your bruised hip, Kaveh heard the door to Alhaitham’s flat creak open, a series of familiar footsteps following shortly after. There was no pretense of a search – Kaveh could’ve counted the seconds it took Alhaitham to arrive at his door, to let himself into Kaveh’s room with the same irritatingly neutral, ‘I already know this will be a waste of my time’ expression he always seemed to wear. He didn’t even attempt to knock, but Kaveh supposed that was just karma. He supposed he wouldn’t be in this mess at all if he just tread a little more carefully around Alhaitham, around you.

Despite his brazenness, Alhaitham chose to linger in the doorway, his gaze flickering from Kaveh to you to the love bites littered down the length of your neck. Kaveh was the one to break the silence, eventually. “You’re supposed to be working.”

“And you’re supposed to be paying rent.” Then, resting his shoulder against the doorframe, “I left early. I wanted to see how you two were faring.”

Kaveh scoffed. “Don’t pretend you’re clairvoyant.” Alhaitham paid him a look, and he threw his head to the side, pulling you closer. “I’m only trying to some love to someone you’ve been neglecting for months. The poor thing’s so traumatized by your company, a little affection’s rendered them nearly catatonic.”

Alhaitham let out a dry laugh, his expression remaining completely unchanged. “That is not what they look like when they’re catatonic.”

Kaveh moved to spit out something accusatory and defensive, but Alhaitham only held up a hand. When Kaveh begrudgingly went quiet, Alhaitham took a step closer, positioning himself at the foot of Kaveh’s bed. He clicked his tongue and, with only the slightest amount of hesitation, you broke away from Kaveh and crawled to your keeper, head bowed and hands pawed. You came to kneel in front of him, your gaze never rising higher than Kaveh’s sheets. “I’m sorry, I tried to…” You trailed off, clenched your eyes shut. A flower, so meek and so delicate, it couldn’t help but close its petals for fear of being burnt by the sun. “I’m sorry.”

Alhaitham took on a look of pleased exasperation. “That won’t be necessary. You remember what I told you before I left, right?”

You nodded. “That it wouldn’t be my fault.”

“Close, but not quite.” He smiled, resting his hand on top of your head. You melted into his palm, although the sigh that slipped past your lips betrayed more relief than solace. “I said he wouldn’t be able to control himself. That’s the thing about Kaveh – no matter what I put in front of him, he’d be able to justify taking it for himself.”

Again, Kaveh tried to protest, to reiterate that he hadn’t ‘taken’ anything, but Alhaitham already going on, his hand drifting to your cheek, then your chin, tilting your head back to better take in the hickey bruised into the corner of your jaw, the evidence of Kaveh’s teeth still embedded in your shoulder. “You should’ve seen what I had to deal with a few months ago. Fighting, scratching, and such a mouth – I’m glad we found a better use for it.” A pause, a glance toward Kaveh. “I’m sure even you can admit that this is an improvement. A little training goes a far way, when you’ve got the right handler.”

He felt something sharp and heavy fall into the pit of his stomach. “It sounds like you’re talking about an animal.”

Kaveh didn’t want to be strict with you. He didn’t want to be like Alhaitham; endlessly cruel, endlessly demanding, a void where all emotions more sentimental than lukewarm indifference were eradicated with the utmost efficiency. He wanted to be soft with you, a reprieve you could run to when Alhaitham proved unyielding. He wanted to love you, if only because of how much it hurt him to see Alhaitham failing to do the same.

“It’s not completely different. Give a subject the right incentive, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to tame a student or a sumpter beast. This subject just happens to do well with direct instruction. I found that out early on, after a softer approach proved ineffective.” He snapped his fingers, and as if guided by a string, you straightened your back, your formerly divided attention now focused solely on Alhaitham. “I could teach you a few of their commands, if you think you could be strict enough not to undo all of my hard work.”

But, seeing you kneel in front of Alhaitham, staring up at him like he’d hung the stars in the sky – he couldn’t help but feel his heart ache at the memory of the state you’d been in only a few minutes ago, of the trembling doll who needed to be posed by hand. At least, under the weight of Alhaitham’s commands, you were more of a house pet than a toy, more of a flower than a block of crumbling stone.

The thought alone should’ve made him feel sick.

Should’ve.

He straightened, swung his legs over the side of his mattress. He looked at you as he spoke, only letting Alhaitham take up a fraction of his peripheral. “What do you mean by ‘commands’?”

Kaveh wasn’t looking at him, but he didn’t have to be.

He could hear Alhaitham’s grin in his voice. “Come here.”

He took long seconds to push himself onto his feet, to find his way to Alhaitham’s side. With a soft hum, Alhaitham stepped back and brought a hand to Kaveh’s waist, another to his shoulder, drawing him forward until he was standing in front of you. He could see something spark in your eyes – not quite distress, but confusion. There’d been a change in the routine that you and Alhaitham had perfected, and you clearly weren’t sure how to react. To his credit, he wasn’t either.

“You already saw how to get their attention,” Alhaitham started, his hand coming to rest on your shoulder. “Names haven’t had much affect since our time with the cellar, but most verbal commands are fairly straightforward. Kneel, sit, and stand all do exactly what you’d assume, and while they usually ask for approval to speak, they’re good at responding to direct questions. Aren’t you, love?”

Kaveh watched you perk up, looking towards Alhaitham for approval. He offered a curt nod, and with a few seconds of deliberation, you managed a small “…I am.”

“See? There’s still a brain in there after all.” Alhaitham flashed that awful smile toward Kaveh. Kaveh didn’t return the gesture. “We’re making progress, but due to prior incidents—” Alhaitham’s tone didn’t change, but you flinched. “—our outdoor privileges are still restricted. Kitchen access is limited, too, until someone proves that they know how to handle knives responsibly.”

You bowed your head, a scolded dog who knew better than to pretend it hadn’t learned its lesson. Kaveh interjected before Alhaitham could forget the point of his lecture. “That’s not what I care about.”

He could practically taste the smugness radiating off of Alhaitham. “And what do you care about, Kaveh?”

“I can’t believe you’d hold this over my—”

“Answer the question,” Alhaitham cut in. “If you want to use something that belongs to me, you’re going to have to tell me what you plan to do with it.”

It felt like something was attempting to crawl up his throat, one spiny leg at a time. It felt like his chest was about to split open. “I want to be…”

His eyes met yours. For a moment, he thought he saw something other than the dull acknowledgment of an unpleasant reality, other than the fear of punishment and the anticipation of reward. Something more visceral, more conscious than what could be ingrained into you by someone else’s hands.

“I’d like to be loving with them.” He saw it for a moment and then, that visceral something fell apart and disappeared. “I’d like for them to love me. Or, to act like they do, at least.”

Alhaitham let out a breath of a laugh. It sounded like nails against porcelain. You seemed to think so too. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Your voice sounded so painstakingly delicate. If he had a little less self-control, he might’ve taken you in his arms and whisked you away, taken you somewhere Alhaitham couldn’t follow. If he was a little less selfish, he would’ve. “It wasn’t.”

If Alhaitham heard you speak out of turn, he was willing to overlook the infraction. “Use the collar. Just make sure not to pull too hard – you won’t like what that means.”

It was Kaveh’s turn to shake, now. He tried to keep his hands steady, to touch you as carefully as he had when you were alone together, but his limbs felt disconnected from his body, his mind buzzing numbly with a static haze. The material was softer than he thought it would – not quite the silk he’d taken it for, but rather, a fine velvet, soft to the touch and bound by a small, metallic ring that rested over your throat. Two fingers slipped under the thin fabric, and as if you’d only just noticed what was happening, you looked toward Alhaitham, your lips parting and—

There was a blur of movement in the corner of his eye, a resounding crack that seemed to ring in Kaveh’s ears for seconds. It took him a moment to piece together what had happened, to associate your reddened cheek with Alhaitham’s raised hand, and another to realize Alhaitham was talking, to hear something other than the sound of his own heart racing in his chest. “Do not question the orders you’re given,” he said, his tone flat, unaffected. “If you act out again, there will be consequences. Do you understand?”

There was no hesitation, no trepidation. Just a deep breath, a new slackness to your posture, and a smile terrible enough to match Alhaitham’s own. “I do. Thank you for correcting me.”

Kaveh couldn’t take it. He didn’t think, didn’t wait, didn’t give himself time to think better of being so rough with you – just took your collar in his fist and dragged you upward, forcing his mouth against yours. It was messy, clumsy, near violent. His teeth cut into your lips, your blood spreading over his tongue, but you didn’t pull away. Rather, you leaned into him, resting hands on his chest and doing your best not to jolt when he hauled you closer. He’d be gentle with you later on. He’d treat you like the delicate, precious thing you were later on.

For now, he just wanted to pretend he was telling himself the truth, when he said that.

[auroralwriting]

illicit affairs chapter five

pairing: biker!bucky barnes x stark!reader

summary: retail therapy with the girls is always the way to solve family drama, especially after you might've just cut ties with tony once and for all

warnings: violence, language, small age gap (6~ years), angst, arguing, drinking, overall crime and gang stuff, sort of enemies to lovers

: ̗̀➛ series masterlist | masterlist

Dread. That was the one thing you felt deep in your soul the next morning. Of course Tony had found out what you had done. Why wouldn't he? It was a stupid decision on your part. Even if you paid The Guardians to be quiet, Tony would've doubled it to find out who paid them off.

Against your better judgement and Clint's warning, you found yourself walking into Tony's penthouse, fist clenched and jaw set. You knew what you were walking into. Tony had a nasty temper--just look at your healing hand.

Tony's voice bounced off the walls. He sounded angry, rightfully so. The moment you stepped into the room, Clint sent you a weary look. Vision looked almost nauseous, Bruce's eyes grew wide, and Rhodey and Tony looked as if they could have killed you right then and there. It was actually surprising you didn't already have a bullet hole straight through your skull.

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me!"

Clint shook his head. You could practically hear his thoughts: you shouldn't have come. Clint was usually right. No doubts he was about to be right again.

"Tony--" you tried, your voice calm, a hand out trying to coax him to be easy. Almost like you were walking up to an aggressive dog.

Tony’s glare cut through you like a blade, his dark eyes narrowing as he took a step forward, his fists clenching at his sides. He was still in his suit from the night before, his tie pulled loose and his shirt rumpled, as if he hadn’t slept. His hair stuck up in a way that might have been comical if his face wasn’t twisted in such raw, seething anger.

“Don’t ‘Tony’ me,” he snarled, his voice crackling with fury. “You went behind my back. My back. Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”

You swallowed hard, your heart hammering against your ribs. You could feel the weight of the others’ eyes on you – Clint’s silent, pleading stare, Bruce’s worried frown, Rhodey’s tight-lipped grimace. Vision looked like he was trying to calculate the best way to break up a potential fistfight without anyone getting seriously hurt.

“I did what I thought was best,” you replied, forcing your voice to stay steady even as your hands trembled. “I paid them off to avoid a bloodbath, to keep you from walking into a trap. I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” Tony barked out a bitter, humorless laugh, his chest heaving. “You think you know better than me? You think you’re some kind of mastermind now, pulling strings behind my back like I’m some idiot who can’t handle his own business?”

You opened your mouth to protest, but Tony cut you off, his voice rising with each word. “You just put a target on your back, do you understand that? You’ve shown your hand. You’ve proven to every goddamn person out there that they can manipulate you – that you’re the weak link. You’ve made us look like fools.”

He took another step toward you, his face mere inches from yours now, his breath coming out in short, angry bursts. You could see the wild, furious gleam in his eyes, the barely contained rage that had always lurked beneath his polished exterior.

“You don’t get to make these kinds of calls,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous. “You don’t get to play hero. That’s my job. That’s my fight.”

For a split second, you saw it – the fear behind his anger, the raw, unfiltered terror that had always driven Tony Stark. The fear of losing, of being outmaneuvered, of watching the people he cared about get hurt because he wasn’t good enough, smart enough, fast enough to save them.

“You're not a hero,” you whispered, the words slipping out before you could stop them. “None of us are heros.”

Tony’s jaw tightened, his eyes flicking over your face like he was trying to find a crack, a sign of weakness, a reason to keep tearing into you. But then he just let out a shaky breath, turning on his heel and raking a hand through his hair, his shoulders trembling with the effort of holding himself together.

“Get out,” he said, his voice rough, broken. “Just… get out. I can’t look at you right now.”

You felt a sharp, painful twist in your chest, the cold, cutting edge of rejection slicing through you. You glanced at Clint, who gave you a tiny, sympathetic nod, his eyes soft with unspoken understanding.

Without another word, you turned on your heel, your footsteps echoing off the cold marble floors as you made your way back to the elevator. You didn’t look back, even as the doors slid shut, cutting you off from the chaos and anger and hurt you’d left behind.

The ride down felt like an eternity, each second stretching into a painful, suffocating silence. As the elevator doors opened onto the lobby, you took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing yourself to stand a little straighter, to hold your head a little higher, even as the tears burned at the corners of your eyes.

You’d made your choice, and now you’d have to live with the consequences. But a part of you, the part that still remembered the sound of Tony’s laughter, the warmth of his arm around your shoulders, wondered if you’d just lost your brother for good.

Retail therapy – that’s what Clint had called it the last time you got into it with Tony, when you spent an absurd amount on a leather jacket you never ended up wearing. This time, you were determined to actually pick out something useful, something that felt like you, rather than a desperate attempt to fill the growing gap between you and your brother.

The mall was busy, even for a weekday. The steady hum of conversation, the clinking of dishes from the food court, and the distant, repetitive thrum of pop music over the speakers did little to distract you from the gnawing ache in your chest. You’d barely managed to make it out of the Tower without breaking down, and now, surrounded by strangers and the bright, bustling chaos of consumerism, you felt like you could finally breathe again.

You wandered into a high-end boutique, your fingers brushing over the racks of carefully arranged designer clothes, the soft, cool fabric a small, tactile comfort. You were lost in thought, your mind replaying Tony’s harsh words on a loop, when a familiar, sharp voice cut through your haze.

“Stark? That you?”

You whipped your head around to find Natasha and Wanda, both dressed casually but still somehow managing to look effortlessly badass. Natasha had her hair up in a messy bun, her sharp green eyes narrowing slightly as she took you in, while Wanda’s soft, curious smile was framed by loose waves of dark hair that cascaded over her shoulders.

“Oh,” you stammered, trying to force a smile. “Hey, guys.”

Wanda’s eyes flicked over you, her brow furrowing just slightly as she caught the tight, tense set of your shoulders, the way your hands were clenching and unclenching at your sides. “You okay?” she asked, her voice tinged with genuine concern.

Natasha’s gaze was a little harder to read, but you caught the way her head tilted slightly, her eyes sharp, like she was already piecing together the situation. She crossed her arms over her chest, one perfectly shaped brow arching. “You look like you’ve just gone ten rounds with Tony,” she remarked dryly, a hint of dark humor in her tone.

You let out a small, bitter laugh, running a shaky hand through your hair. “Close enough.”

Wanda stepped closer, her eyes still searching your face for cracks in the armor you were trying so hard to hold together. “What happened?”

For a split second, you considered brushing it off, making some lame excuse and slipping out the door before they could push you further. But then you remembered that these two women had probably seen more broken bones, bruised egos, and shattered friendships than anyone else you knew. If anyone could handle your mess, it was them.

"Tony found out," you sighed, rubbing a hand over your forehead. "About The Guardians. How I paid them off."

Wanda reached out, her fingers wrapping gently around your wrist, her eyes filled with a quiet, empathetic understanding. “Come on,” she said softly, tugging you toward the back of the store. “We’re getting you something nice. Consider it a distraction.”

Natasha smirked, already scanning the racks for something in your size. “Yeah, something sharp, something that says ‘I’m not taking anyone’s shit today.’”

For the first time in hours, you felt a small, genuine smile pull at the corners of your mouth. Maybe retail therapy wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

As the three of you shopped, you truly took in the presence of two women. It wasn't often you were surrounded by people other than the men in Tony's gang. Wanda and Natasha were lovely, truly. Even if they were Southside Avengers. They were funny, nice, and they truly seemed to give a shit about you--something you couldn't really say for your gang.

“Okay,” Wanda said, leaning against the full-length mirror in the fitting room with a mischievous grin. “You can’t just brush this off. What’s the deal with you and Bucky?”

You groaned, running your hands down the fabric of the jumpsuit, still processing the sudden rush of old memories. “There is no deal, Wanda. He barely looks at me, let alone talks to me. I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

Natasha’s sharp laugh cut through the air as she leaned on the other side of the mirror, arms crossed, her eyes glinting with amusement. “Oh, please. I’ve seen the way he stares at you when you’re not looking. It’s not hate, Stark. Trust me, I know the difference.”

You felt your cheeks warm, and you turned back to the mirror, pretending to fix the strap of the jumpsuit. “He’s just… intense. It’s not the same.”

Wanda stepped closer, her gaze soft but curious, head tilted like she was trying to solve a particularly tricky puzzle. “So, what happened? Why are you two so… weird around each other?”

You hesitated, your fingers stilling against the silky fabric. You hadn’t talked to anyone about this, not even Clint, who knew almost every dark corner of your life. But something about the way Wanda’s eyes searched yours, gentle but unrelenting, made you feel like maybe you could trust her. And Natasha, despite her razor-sharp edges, had a loyalty that ran deeper than most people realized.

With a shaky sigh, you leaned back against the wall, the coolness of the mirror pressing against your bare shoulder. “It’s… complicated. He was there. The night my parents died.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed, her fingers tightening around the edge of the rack she leaned against. “You mean he was involved?”

“Not exactly,” you said quickly, shaking your head. “Not like that. I think he was just… caught up in it. Wrong place, wrong time. But knowing he was there, that he saw it, maybe even could’ve stopped it… it’s hard to look at him and not think about that night because I honestly don't know. I don't know how involved he was or if he even...”

Wanda’s face softened, her hand reaching out to squeeze yours gently. “I had no idea. That must be so hard, to be around him.”

You gave a weak, bitter smile, your eyes drifting back to the mirror, catching the haunted look in your own reflection. “Yeah. And I think he knows it, too. It’s like we’re both just waiting for the other shoe to drop. For one of us to finally snap and say what’s really on our minds.”

Natasha leaned closer, her sharp eyes never leaving your face. “Maybe that’s what you need. Rip the band-aid off. Get it out in the open, and maybe you’ll both feel better.”

You huffed a dry, humorless laugh, shaking your head. “Yeah, and maybe I’ll just make things even worse. I don’t exactly have a great track record with this stuff, you know?”

Wanda gave you a small, encouraging smile, her fingers still warm against yours. “You’re stronger than you think. And if Bucky can’t see that, then he’s the one missing out.”

Natasha straightened, a wicked grin spreading across her lips. “Or we just get him drunk enough that he can’t keep his mouth shut. I’ve got some very effective vodka stashed away for just this kind of situation.”

You couldn’t help the small, genuine laugh that escaped your lips, the tension in your chest easing just a little. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to finally confront Bucky – to stop letting the past keep its icy grip on you.

“Alright,” you said, pushing yourself off the wall and forcing a more confident smile. “Let’s get me out of this jumpsuit before I overthink this whole thing and run for the hills.”

Wanda and Natasha shared a quick, conspiratorial glance as you turned back to the fitting room, the echoes of their quiet giggles following you inside.

The three of you had just finished at the checkout, your arms weighed down with glossy shopping bags when Natasha suddenly slowed her pace, her sharp eyes locking onto a group lingering near the mall entrance. You followed her gaze, your heart skipping a beat as you recognized the familiar, towering figure of Steve Rogers. He was standing beside Sam, who had his phone out, and Bucky, whose face was partially hidden by the brim of his baseball cap, the dark fabric shadowing his sharp jawline and piercing blue eyes.

Wanda let out a small, delighted gasp, her arm brushing against yours. “Oh, look who it is,” she whispered, her voice dripping with playful mischief. “Talk about perfect timing.”

Natasha shot you a knowing smirk, adjusting the bags on her arm as she straightened up, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t say I never do anything for you, Stark,” she murmured, her tone sly as a fox’s.

Before you could protest, Natasha raised her voice, calling out to the trio with a casual wave. “Hey, boys! Fancy running into you here.”

Steve’s head snapped up, his face breaking into a broad, welcoming grin as he spotted Natasha. Sam’s eyes lit up, and he quickly pocketed his phone, elbowing Bucky in the ribs as he straightened. Bucky’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second before he forced a small, polite nod in your direction, his eyes flicking over you briefly before returning to some distant, imaginary point on the polished mall floor.

“Hey, ladies,” Sam called, a wide, easy grin spreading across his face. “What’s with all the bags? You robbing this place or just single-handedly boosting the economy?”

Natasha smirked, shifting the bags on her arm. “A little of both. You know us.”

Steve stepped forward, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled at you. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Stark. Nice to see you out and about.”

You forced a small, tight smile, suddenly very aware of the way your heart was racing, the slight, annoying tremble in your hands. “Yeah, figured a little retail therapy couldn’t hurt.”

Wanda, still practically glowing with excitement, leaned in closer to you, her eyes sparkling as she glanced between you and Bucky. “We found some really cute stuff. You should see what she picked out.”

Bucky’s eyes flicked up for a split second, a muscle in his jaw jumping as his gaze darted to the bags in your hands before quickly dropping back to the floor. You felt your cheeks heat, and you silently cursed Wanda for putting you on the spot.

Sam, ever the instigator, waggled his eyebrows, clearly picking up on the strange, tense undercurrent passing between you and Bucky. “What, you didn’t pick anything up for the rest of us? I’m hurt, Stark.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, leaning in closer to whisper in your ear, her breath warm against your skin. “Maybe you should buy Barnes something. Might get him to actually speak to you for once.”

You shot her a sharp look, your heart now thudding wildly in your chest, but before you could respond, Steve clapped his hands together, his bright, blue eyes sparkling with that boyish charm that always seemed to disarm everyone around him.

“You ladies heading out for drinks again tonight?” Steve asked, his gaze shifting briefly to you, a small, encouraging smile on his lips. “You should come by The Grove again. It’s on me this time.”

Wanda shot you a quick, excited glance, her arm tightening around yours. “Oh, we’re definitely in. Right, Stark?”

You opened your mouth to protest, to come up with some excuse, any excuse, but Natasha was already nodding, her eyes locked on Bucky with a wicked, satisfied grin. “Of course. We’ll see you there, boys.”

Steve’s smile widened, and he gave a small, approving nod. “Perfect. We’ll save you a seat.”

As the three of them turned to leave, Sam shot you a playful wink over his shoulder, while Bucky remained silent, his head dipped low as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans. You caught the briefest flicker of his eyes in your direction, a ghost of something unreadable passing over his face before he turned away.

The moment they were out of earshot, you turned on Natasha, your heart still thundering in your chest. “What the hell was that?”

Natasha just smirked, tossing her hair back as she started walking again, her steps quick and confident. “That, Stark, was me doing you a favor. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

Wanda giggled, her arm still looped through yours. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

You groaned, glancing down at the bags in your hands and already regretting everything. “This is a terrible idea.”

Natasha glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes glinting with the sharp, dangerous glee of a woman who lived for this kind of chaos. “No, sweetheart. This is a game-changer.”

[torturedtypewritersdept]

proclivity - part three - true blue

✯ pairing:

ex!bff!rafe cameron x diabetic!kook!fem!reader

✯ summary:

at one point in time rafe was your best friend. can summer romance erase all the damage he's done?

✯ [4.1k] warnings:

mature themes, mentions of anxiety, nostalgia, heartbreak, diabetes lingo, injury, ghosting, fluff and fear, domestic violence (not rafe), mean!ex!jj etc.

✯ a/n:

nothing!! please don't engage if you have a hard time with any of these topics <3 this was origianlly posted on my old blog @/illicitfixations, @/lovelornanonymity and i have rewritten + reshared it here :) trying out a new format with this post, hope you like it!

You didn’t want to – really you didn’t. The idea of you and Rafe being alone at a spot – your spot – a place, the place, that you hadn’t shared in close to two years was suffocating to say the least. You have continuously pressed replay on all the world’s worst scenarios; all the things that could go horribly wrong, that would surely break your heart into a million pieces all over again. Your feet feel clucky as they trudge through the sand and like the water that meets the land on the other side, you feel rushed into you; like the waves of a tsunami are crashing against the wall you’ve placed around your heart, the barriers are so close to breaking and they do as soon as you see him. He’s sitting, just past a sand dune, his shirt has been discarded and his hair is wet. 

“Hey, hot shot – you've been swimming without me?” 

You ask with a forced cheek. He only responds with his signature smirk. It was quiet, awkward for a moment. You couldn’t help but feel like you were being punked as you sat down beside him, his feet digging holes in the sand. You couldn’t remember the last time the notion of him being this close had crossed your mind or even seemed within reach. Which probed your next question to the boy sitting next to you. 

“Rafe.”

“Yeah?”

He questioned, with a smile on his face. 

“Can you tell me now?” 

You asked anxiously, ready for the blow of what you knew was coming – he was going to tell you why he left and you were sure that it was because of you after all. That’s the only thing that made sense in your brain. You watch him anxiously, intently as he shuffles, bringing his hand up to his hair to swoop his long locks out of his face and behind his ears. 

“Yeah, I guess I owe you that don’t I, pretty girl?” 

You’re on edge as you hear your old namesake leave his lips. He moves his hands behind him, leaning back into the sand. His skin feels hot against it, he notes. He swallows thickly and opens his mouth to speak. 

“You know I was different after my mom died, right?” 

You’re taken aback by his question – of course you know. She was the fucking sun and he’s just fucking like her; his cheeks and eyes – they belong to her. He belonged to her and it physically pains you to see him lose it after she’s passed away. You remember it all but mostly the way the bright left the blue hue of his eyes in the same moment the breath left her body. It makes your bones hurt to think about it still. 

“Yeah – how could I forget? I was too, we all were.” 

You said quickly. 

“I kept it well hidden then – until I couldn’t anymore, until I didn’t have a choice.” 

He’d replayed how he was going to tell you in his head over and over, over the last two years and finally came to the conclusion that he never ever would. But, now – at the prospect of having you within his reach again, he’s sure he’s going to spill his guts any moment. 

“Can you spit it out, drama queen?” 

You said with annoyance. So he blurted it out – rather frantically. 

“I was on drugs, okay!” 

He shouted. There was silence for a moment, you – too shell shocked to reply. 

“Look – I know you’re perfect and you’ve never done anything wrong in your life, okay? I’m sorry.” 

His eyes go dull as he braces himself for your judgemental glare. 

“What?” 

You ask in a too small voice. He doesn’t know what to say, so he stays quiet for a moment. 

“I was on drugs. Nobody knew. Then, I owed Barry a massive amount of money and he knew I loved you more than anyone, alright? So I had to cut ties.” 

He said very matter-of-factly. 

“I’m sorry.” 

You whispered and the ocean breeze made him suddenly cold, or maybe your tone of voice sent a chill up his spine. He’s truly not sure which. 

“What do you have to be sorry about, y/n?” 

He asked confusedly. 

“Not being enough – not being good enough for you to come to me and tell me the truth, that you didn’t feel like you could come to me.” 

The crack in your voice as you finished talking cut him straight to his core.     

“Pretty girl, it’s not like that, okay? I was trying to protect you.” 

Again, there was silence for a little while before either of you spoke. Rafe was trying to find the words; the ones to make you understand that you weren’t to blame. 

“You’re not messing with me, right?”

You asked suddenly. 

“What do you mean?” 

He questioned, confusedly. 

“I mean, you actually want to be near me again? You’re not messing with me?” 

You asked innocently, feeling far too insecure for his answer to be anything other than yes. 

“Of course, I want to be near you. I never wanted to stop being near you. It was just easier to cut everyone out than to explain my pain to someone else. I didn’t want to face all the disappointment either.” 

You swallowed thickly and he noticed. 

“I’m sorry. I always just assumed it was me, that I had done something.” 

You whispered, almost inaudibly. But, he heard you, loud and clear. 

“What? What could you possibly have done?” 

He asked incredulously. 

“I-I don’t know.” 

You looked down at your feet, afraid of what he was going to say next, not wanting this intimacy with him to become foreign and far off again. He gently lifted your chin so your eyes could meet his. 

“You never did anything wrong and this is not a game. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” 

He reassured you gently. 

“I appreciate you reassuring me, but it’s going to take a lot more than words for me to trust you again and I think you know that.” 

You replied, giving him the kindest smile you could muster up. It wasn’t your intention to be rude or mean to him, you just needed him to know where you stood. 

“I know. I’m sorry that I broke your trust, but I hope you know I’m going to spend every day trying to make things right between us.” 

“Okay, Cameron.”

You smiled nudging his shoulder. You made your way back to the parking lot with Rafe, not long after the conversation fizzled out. 

“Well, I think I’m gonna head home. This was fun.” 

You said with a sweet smile. 

“Let me drive you, I know you walked, you always walk here.”  

Rafe spoke, excitement in his voice. 

“Okay.” 

You agreed to his idea, smiling kindly his way, following him to the truck you had made your home ever since he had gotten his license. He was the first of the two of you to be able to drive and you had taken full advantage of that, waiting for him after football practices and in the early morning so he could cart you everywhere you needed to go. That was the first thing you missed when he had left you - the intimate car rides, where you experienced a version of Rafe that no one else got to. He opened the door for you, ushering you into the passenger seat and closing it once he made sure you were inside and comfortable. Making his way around to the driver’s side, he took his keys out of his pocket and climbed in, starting the truck. The engine roared, sending vibrations through your spine. It felt euphoric to be here, alone with him. Which was something you had dreamed about for so long. He pulled out of the beach parking lot, hands steady on the wheel, and began the trek to his neighborhood. Tannyhill had become your second home over the years, whether it was play dates with Rafe when you were six or trying on clothes with Sarah when you were fifteen, the Camerons were your family and you were thankful that your favorite one was seated next to you, a backward baseball cap sitting on his head and strong arms fixed on the wheel. You’d never get over the view. 

“Y/N?”

He spoke your name with a question in mind. 

“Yeah?”

You smiled in his direction. 

“Would you wanna come to dinner tomorrow at Tannyhill?”

He asked gently. 

“Sure, you know I never pass up Rose’s cooking! What’s the occasion?” 

You questioned with a giggle, it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

“Just having you back, I guess.” 

He smiled sheepishly. 

“That’s sweet, Rafe.” 

You spoke softly, the blush coating your freckled cheeks. 

“Your parents are going to be there, so I figured you could just join them and we can have a big family dinner.” 

“Why are my parents going to be there?”

You questioned, confused at his comment. 

“Uh, Ward said he and your dad are working on some big business project or something.” 

He replied, not really knowing the answer to what you were asking. He had no idea what the two men were up to. 

“Ah, okay. Sure, Rafe, I’d love to come. How fancy do I have to dress, 1-10 on the fancy scale?” 

The laugh that escaped his lungs was boisterous. You and Rafe had created the fancy scale after you got bitched out by your dad’s for not dressing appropriately for Midsummer’s in the eighth grade and ever since you always warned each other of the fancy level parties or dinners would be. 

“A solid 5.” 

He retorted a laugh ever-present on his lips. He forgot how much you made him laugh and how good it felt. He was brought out of his thoughts as he pulled into the driveway, spotting your car sitting right next to your dad’s. 

“This has been fun! I missed you.” 

You spoke softly and a smile danced across Rafe’s features. 

“I missed you too, Y/N.” 

Your eyes studied his face, looking for any inkling of deception. There were none, at least not that you could see. His eyes met yours, locking in on your face and not looking away. You swallowed thickly, unsure of what to do. Having his full attention was not something you were used to anymore. 

“Thank you, Rafe. I seriously had a really good time tonight. We will do a movie night soon.” 

“Of course, you’re still my favorite girl.” 

He smiled kindly, ushering you over to your front door, lingering for moments longer than he should have, but not wanting to let you out of your sight. 

- 

Your phone rang early the next morning and as you groaned loudly, willing whoever was making your phone ring at 7 am to die, you read the contact. It was Topper. Your sluggish fingers slowly but surely slid across the screen to see what in God’s name your best friend wanted this early. 

“H-hello?”

You grumbled. 

“Wake your ass up!” 

Topper yelled into the phone. 

“T-top. I’m about three seconds from killing you. Why are you screaming into my phone so early?” 

You questioned with annoyance. 

“Get up and get dressed. We’re outside your house.” 

He said plainly. 

“Who’s we? And for what? It’s fucking 7 am?!” 

“Don’t be grumpy, princess. We just want to spend the day with your sexy little self.” 

Kelce interjected. 

“Kelce, please shut up. I’m not awake enough for your bullshit attempts at flirting with me.” 

You grumbled with a sneer behind that phone that he couldn’t see. 

“Damn, you’re a spitfire today!” 

Topper exclaimed, laughing. 

“I was up late, okay? Jesus Christ.” 

You couldn’t believe he was being so mean to you this early in the day. 

“Okay, well get up, get dressed and pack insulin and some snacks. We’re going to be gone all day.” 

He replied. 

“Top, I can’t. I have this dinner with Rafe tonight, I can’t be gone all day.” 

You were nervous to be saying anything to Topper about it at all, he knew your history with Rafe better than anyone. But, you knew you had to tell him the truth. 

“Listen, idiot, Rafe is with us. So, come on. We’ll have you both back at Tannyhill in time for your dinner, so either pack a dress or wear one. You’re not missing this.” 

You rolled your eyes, but your heart leapt at hearing you were going to spend the day with Rafe by your side whether it was in a group setting or not. 

“Fine, I’m coming, Topper! Jesus.” 

You said, feigning annoyance. 

“Told you she’s not a morning person.”

Rafe interjected, giggling. 

You grinned to yourself, realizing you were going to get to spend an entire day and night with Rafe. Scurrying out of bed, you searched through your closet in a hurry and settled on wearing a baby blue sundress with white polka dots that Rafe got you for your birthday the summer before you started high school. He always said that baby blue was your color. You slid it on quickly, pairing it with white platform sneakers and some dainty gold jewelry. You fluffed your hair and quickly packed your insulin after changing your insulin pump site and choosing a new area of your stomach to plunge the needle into. You ran through the kitchen, grabbing a few snacks and some juice to throw in your bag. Before walking out the door to Topper’s jeep, you stopped, took a breath, and smoothed your dress and hair before stepping out of the house and opening the back passenger door, hopping in, to be met with a very tired Rafe Cameron. 

“Hey, sweet cheeks! Are you done being an asshole? I need my morning kiss.” 

Kelce gave you a sly smirk and Rafe chuckled to himself, knowing pushing your buttons this early was not a good idea. 

“Kelceo, Fuck off!” 

You exclaimed with a growl, letting him know you weren’t in the mood. 

“Fine, I’ll chill. Can you blame me? Look at that dress.” 

He continued his train of putting his foot in his mouth. 

“Kelce, cool it, man.” 

Rafe spoke, his tone laced with warning. His protective nature made you smile. 

“So, what’s so important that you drug me out of bed at 7 am on a Saturday?” 

You questioned Topper. 

“My mom set us up on a tour of UNC like months ago and I forgot to tell you until this morning.” 

He replied nonchalantly, as if it wasn’t absolutely unhinged to let you know the morning of – in a way that only Topper knows how. 

“Topper, I’m going to kill you.” 

You muttered. You truly couldn’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday, your three favorite boys, and a four-hour-long road trip. Truthfully, what could go wrong? 

You were brought out of your thoughts by Rafe’s hand touching your elbow. 

“Y/N?”

He was saying your name in question again. 

“Sorry, I was zoned out. What’s up?” 

You asked. 

“Have you eaten yet?” 

He asked in a gentle, hushed tone not wanting to draw everyone's attention to the two of you. 

“No.” 

You replied just as quietly. 

“Go ahead and eat, okay? I read that being up on your feet all day can be hard on your body.” 

You were shell shocked for just a second – he cared enough to read about what your life is like?

“You’ve been reading about diabetes?”

You questioned. 

“Of course I have, you’re my favorite girl.” 

He said it again. 

“Thanks, Rafe. That’s so sweet.” 

He smiled in response and watched as you took the banana out of your bag and began to eat it. When you finished, Topper was pulling into a gas station and asked you to come in with him to pick out some snacks while Rafe and Kelce pumped gas. As you made your way inside, rummaging through the aisles of various snacks, Topper began the inevitable best friend questioning that you knew was bound to happen eventually. 

“So, you and Cameron, huh?”

He teased, knowing your history of being in love with him since you were six. 

“I don’t think he feels that way. I’m just happy to have him back.” 

You gave Topper a kind smile. 

“So, what happened? I mean was there a conversation? Did he at least apologize?” 

“Yeah, Top. He did.” 

You said, matter-of-factly. 

“Y/N, if you don’t tell me everything right now, I’m going to fucking combust.” 

He said with urgency as he giggled. 

“Okay, okay. Jesus! So, we met up at our spot the day after the party and he told me the truth. I have a feeling that it’s not all of it, but he seemed genuine and i’m assuming it’ll all come out in layers over time.” 

“Why do you say that?” 

He questioned with curiosity. 

“Because it seemed like there was more to the story, more to tell. I got a very shrunken down version.” 

You replied.

“Well, if you need me to beat his ass I will. You just let me know.” 

He spoke with a devilish smirk that you knew meant he was both serious and joking. 

“Thanks, Top.” 

You laughed. 

“Of course, you know I always have your back.” 

He replied, snaking an arm around your shoulders. 

“Anyways, so we talked about the drugs and why he felt like he couldn’t talk to me, and then he told me he was sorry and he wanted to be friends again. He drove me home and asked me to come to dinner tonight at Tannyhill. I said, yes, so here we are. Oh, and I told him about me being sick at the party-”

“You did what?!” 

You were cut off with an incredulous question and raised eyebrows from Topper. 

“Yeah, I told him a little about getting sick when we ended things and he didn’t even run like I thought he would.” 

You said with a soft, sweet smile. Topper couldn’t remember the last time he had seen you smile like that. 

“I told you he wouldn’t. He loves you.” 

He replied easily, the truth of the words flew out of his mouth so effortlessly. 

“Yeah, we’ll see. I’m not 100% on board yet. I don’t want to get my hopes up and then he runs away again.” 

Topper shrugged, he couldn’t disagree with your reservations after the last couple years you’d had. You’d been through so much. All he wanted was to see you happy and he knew if the timing was right Rafe would treat you so well. He’d truly changed. 

“That’s understandable and valid. Just don’t write him off yet. He might surprise you.” 

He said with an easy smile. 

“Thanks, Top.” 

The two of you shared a hug after exiting the convenience store, with snacks in hand. As you made your way back to the jeep, Rafe admired your form, watching the wind raking through the skirt of your dress. 

“Welcome back, pretty girl. Are you ready for our morning kiss, yet?” 

Kelce asked again, sweetly this time. He was starting to get on your nerves. 

“Kelceo, cool it.” 

Topper stated, climbing into the driver's seat. Kelce was annoying everyone today, kidding or not. 

You climbed into the backseat again, plopping down next to Rafe. His sparkling blue eyes took in your smiling form as you tore into a bag of popcorn. 

“How are you feeling, sweet girl?” 

Rafe questioned, studying your form with his piercing blue eyes. Sweet girl. You hadn’t heard that in a long time and it felt warm against your ears.

“I’m feeling pretty good right now. But, my sugar is low.” 

You smiled in his direction. 

“How do you know it’s low?” 

He asked with genuine curiosity. 

“I have this app on my phone, see.” 

You turned your phone screen around, which displayed your glucose monitor’s readings. Your blood sugar was low, reading 76 mg/dL. Which was not low enough to warrant panic, but also not high enough to be considered normal.  

“So, if 76 is low, what’s considered normal?” 

Rafe probed in a genuinely curious fashion.

“Generally, the goal is to keep the daytime blood sugar levels before meals between 80 and 130 mg. But, after-meal numbers are a little bit higher but shouldn’t be more than 180 mg.” 

You explained simply. 

“Oh, okay. That makes sense. Will you tell me if you start to feel bad?” 

He questioned. It made you smile that you seemed to be falling back into your rhythm so easily. 

“I won’t have to. You’ll know. But, I promise I will.” 

You gave him a reassuring smile and grabbed his hand, squeezing it. The touch, though short-lived, was electric and you wondered if he felt it too. The music topper was playing lulled you to sleep all of thirty minutes into the road trip and you were beginning to stir as soon as he pulled into the UNC visitor’s parking lot.

“Wake up, sleepyhead.” 

Rafe ran his fingers through your hair, scratching it in a circular motion. Your favorite way to wake up. When you opened your eyes, you jolted up, embarrassed, realizing your head was on Rafe’s shoulder and drool was pooling at the corner of your mouth, dripping onto the gray t-shirt he was wearing. You turned your head towards him with apologetic eyes as you took in his face, the sweet disposition oozing out of him, as his eyes smiled at you before his mouth did. 

“I’m sorry I drooled on you.”

You spoke sheepishly. 

“Hey, it’s okay. Not the first time, definitely won’t be the last.” 

He chuckled, giving you his classic Rafe Cameron smile before getting out of Topper’s jeep and making his way to the passenger side to open yours for you. As you began to climb out of the car, he picked up your bag, carrying it for you. 

“Thanks, Rafe. You don’t have to carry it, though.”

You said, beaming up at him. 

“You look so pretty today, I think I’d do anything you asked of me.” 

He blurted out without thinking and your eyes went wide as your cheeks filled with a blush. 

“You are so sweet, Rafe. Thank you.” 

He nodded and smiled your way, yet again. 

“I’ll carry it. It will make me feel better if you have a glucose emergency if I know where it is.” 

He stated, matter-of-factly, as he placed the brown leather backpack on his shoulder. His words created a flutter in your stomach. 

“Okay, losers! Come on, we gotta check-in at the visitor’s center.” 

Topper remarked. You and Rafe began following him and Kelce to the front of the building. Topper quickly went inside and left the three of you waiting on the steps as he went to collect your program information, campus maps, and name tags. When he came back out of the door, he handed each of you your designated packets of information and began explaining what the game plan was. 

“Okay, so in each of these packets is information specific to your major. Y/N and Rafe, you’re in a group and then me and Kelce are in a group because our majors and buildings are on the same sides of campus. Go through the packet, it’s got a scavenger hunt and then instructions for meeting the bigger tour group after lunch. We will see you guys then.” 

He finished what he was saying and Rafe was already moving, ready to get away from Topper and Kelce and celebrate his alone time with you. 

“Okay, sounds good.” 

Rafe spoke, taking the packet of information from Topper’s hands, and turning to you with a smile. 

“You ready?” 

He questioned with a smile. 

“As I'll ever be, lead the way, Cameron.” 

You gestured to the sidewalk in front of you, beaming up at his tall form, opting to go the opposite direction of Kelce and Topper. 

Topper and Kelce quickly scurried off, putting you and Rafe alone again, finally. You love the other two stooges with every fiber of your being, but you’d always loved Rafe more. If soulmates were a thing, he was yours in a platonic way of course, because there’s no way he felt about you the way you felt about him. You were okay with that. Rafe in any way, shape, or form was enough for you, as long as you had him in some way, you’d be okay. As Rafe began talking to you, you were brought out of your daydream. 

“So, what do you want to hit first, the football field?” 

He asked sarcasm present in his tone, though playful and innocent. 

“Sure, if you’re gonna be playing here, we should check it out first.” 

You gave him a small smile. 

“Are you thinking about coming here in all seriousness?” 

“Yeah, I was offered a full scholarship for cheer and academics pending my final grades next year.” 

“What?! That’s amazing, Y/N!” 

“Thanks, Rafe. I wish my brother thought so.” 

“What do you mean? Hasn’t he wanted you to go to UNC like forever?” 

He asked, confusion ever-present in his voice. 

“I mean, yeah. He’s just been different ever since I got sick.” 

“What do you mean?”

He questioned. 

“It’s like most of the time, I’m a bug he’s trying to swat away.” 

You replied with nonchalance, though Rafe could register the pain in your voice. 

“Maybe he just worries about you?” 

He asked, suggestively. 

“Maybe. I don’t know. You’ll see tonight what I mean.” 

You muttered. 

“Well if it makes you feel any better, we’ll be here together. At UNC, I mean.” 

He said with a sweet smile. 

“Really?!” 

The joy that riddled your face made Rafe smile. 

“Yeah, I’ve got some scouts coming to see me play in the fall and I’m excited. UNC is my dream school, though. So even if I have to be a walk-on or not play at all, I’ll still be coming here. They’ve already given me a scholarship.” 

“As they should, Mr. Valedictorian.” 

You smiled brightly at him. 

“Hey, how do you know I’m valedictorian?!” 

He chuckled but was surprised. He had never talked to anyone about his class standing. 

“Well, I did some digging after realizing I was second in our class, and to my surprise, my favorite Cameron was the one that beat me out.” 

You gave him a sly smile. 

“Since when am I your favorite Cameron?” 

He asked jokingly, though the notion made his heart soar. 

“Since always.” 

“Oh, come on! You and Sarah have been thick as thieves for the last two years.” 

“Maybe. Sarah’s always been a good friend to me. Topper and Kelce too. But, you’ve always been number one in my heart, I hope you know that.” 

The kindness exuded from your eyes. You meant every word. 

“You’re something else, you know that.” 

He chuckled, but you suddenly felt like you had said the wrong thing, swallowing thickly. He observed your form, realizing where your mind had gone. 

“No, no, I mean that in a good way. There’s just no one like you. You’ve always been just so perfect. It’s hard to measure up.” 

“It’s a facade, trust me.” 

You spoke, rolling your eyes at the notion that anything that had anything to do with you was in the same category as perfect. You were brought out of your thoughts as the two of you made your way to the entrance of the football field, following other students into the gates. Rafe looked on in awe at what would be his stomping grounds in just a few short years, his eyes sparkled as he daydreamed about the baby blue uniform he’d get to wear with his name and number sewn into the back. He’d get to matter here. He’d get to be somebody other than Ward Cameron’s son. He’d hope to make you his girl, here. But, quickly pushed that thought down as you began speaking to him. 

“What? Are you imagining all of your fans screaming your name? All the girls throwing themselves at you?”

You chuckled. 

“Nope. Just one.” 

“Shutup! Who is it, Cameron? You have to tell me!” 

“You’ll know soon enough, you know how bad I am with secrets.” 

You giggled and its music to his ears. 

“Boy do I! Remember that time in second grade when we brought that puppy to my house from the street and we were only able to hide it from my mom for three hours before you blabbered?!” 

“Not my best secret-keeping moment.”

He chuckled, remembering that day with you. Your soft curls that too often fell on your face and the look of pure fear in your eyes when your mom found out about the puppy. 

“That was a good day.” 

You spoke softly. 

“Yeah, it was.” 

The two of you stood side by side, Rafe’s shoulders towering over you, as you both looked onto the field that would be your home for four years. Excitement stirred in your gut at the chance to get out of the Outer Banks, out of Kildare fucking county with your best friends in the entire world and you simply, couldn’t wait. You hoped the next two years would fly by so you could get out of your hometown, finally fall in love, and forget that Kooks and Pogues even existed. 

“Okay, Cameron. Let’s go check out the buildings where our classes will be.” 

“Sounds good, pretty girl.” 

He smiled at you and placed his hand on the small of your back as he led you out of the stadium and back to the quad. Once you made it away from the large crowd inhabiting the stadium, you probed Rafe with another question. 

“So, what are you majoring in, big guy?” 

“I haven’t fully decided. Dad wants me to be a business and marketing major, but I am really into the idea of English lit. What about you?” 

“I’m English Literature with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in entrepreneurship.” 

“Nice! What do you want to do with that?” 

He probed, curious about your career path. 

“I’m not sure, yet. Maybe teach English or become a writer. All I know is that writing and reading makes me feel alive and I’d like to chase that high as long as I can.” 

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

You instantly recognized the words he was stringing together into a sentence. 

“Rafe Cameron, are you quoting Dead Poets Society to me?” 

You smiled so widely at him. This version of Rafe was different. It was one you had seen glimpses of over the years, but this one, he was your person. You were sure of it. 

“Don’t all the guys you talk to do that?” 

“What? Do you mean the ever-so-educated JJ Maybank who cares about feelings and reading? Yeah, no. I can’t say that they do.” 

You scoffed into a laugh at Rafe’s joke slash question. 

“Okay, that’s fair.” 

He said, letting out a boisterous belly laugh. 

“Let’s go look at the Business Administration building first.” 

You suggested and Rafe agreed with your idea. Since you both would have classes in both buildings, it truly didn’t matter which you explored first. As you made your way to the building across the quad, your phone started dinging. Your stupid blood sugar, ruining things again. 

“What’s that noise?” 

Rafe questioned. 

“It’s my glucose monitor on my phone. It’s low again.” 

You looked on at him, defeated. He gently lifted your bag off of his shoulders and took your phone out and looked down at the readings. 76 mg, way too low for his comfort and probably for yours too. 

“It’s 76 mg, Y/N. What do I need to do?” 

“Look for anything in my bag with carbs and I'll check again in 15 minutes.” 

You reply without the urgency that Rafe is feeling. 

“Okay, let’s sit down for the time being. You don’t look like you feel great.” 

He motioned to the bench, just off the sidewalk, close to the arboretum. He knew you wanted to see it before you left campus today, so this was the perfect spot. 

“I’m okay, just sluggish. I thought I was just tired from last night.” 

You let Rafe lead you to sit, his hand on the small of your back. You took his hand as he motioned you down onto the bench and he felt you shaking. Rafe looked through the bag, examining its contents, quickly. 

“Okay, there’s bread and a banana. Which is better?” 

“Give me the bread. It’s this banana nut bread I make every week.” 

“You amaze me you know that?” 

He gave you a soft smile and unwrapped the bread from the Ziploc bag it sat in, handing it to you. 

“Thank you, Rafe, really, it means the world to have you here and to have your help.” 

“Anything for you, I mean that. Are you thirsty?” 

“Yeah, there’s water in there, too.” 

He nodded, reaching back into the bag to retrieve the water bottle and handing it to you. 

“After we get your levels back up, let’s go into the arboretum, and then we will grab some lunch.” 

“Sure, thanks, Rafe. I love the Arboretum here, it’s so beautiful!” 

“Yeah, I know. You’ve only been talking about visiting it since we were ten.” 

“You remember that?” 

“I remember everything you tell me.” 

You blushed at his confession. You sat there, just chatting back and forth for the fifteen minutes it took for the food to settle before you checked your blood sugar again. Rafe pulled your phone back out of your bag and looked at the screen. 100 mg. We’re back in business baby!

“88 mg, back to normal, pretty girl.” 

He spoke, blush coating your cheeks and you watched the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile. 

“Thanks, Rafe. You’ve been so good about all of this. It scares most people.” 

You thank him sheepishly. 

“I’m not most people, you know that.” 

He stood up from the bench, placing your backpack on his shoulders once more, and gently took your hand in his, lifting you to your feet. He led you to the sidewalk and you began your trek to the arboretum, his hand on the small of your back once again. You tried not to read too much into his hands constantly being close to you, you and Rafe had always had an intimate relationship that was very hands-on. As you made your way toward the greenhouse, you felt a raindrop hit your nose and before your brain could process what your orbs had just taken in, the bottom of the sky fell out and rain poured from the sky. The same way your eyes leaked when you and Rafe had stopped speaking. As the rain-drenched your clothes, you and Rafe shared a mischievous look, before he grabbed your hand and you both took off running toward your destination. It seemed like you had been running forever when you made it inside the doors of the greenhouse. Once you finally shook the water off of your bodies, reminiscent of a wet dog shaking his fur violently, you had a minute to take Rafe in. The light from the lightning lit up his drenched features. He took his baseball cap off, shaking it out and ringing out the water from his shirt. As he turned to look at you, you moved into him, eyes locking with his, his tall muscular form standing over you. You’re not sure what’s come over you, maybe it’s the care he’s shown you or how different he is now. But, you couldn’t take too much time to process what you were feeling or what you were thinking. The next few moments felt like a scene from a movie, as you placed your hands on his cheeks and kissed his lips, deeply, a moan escaping your lips. He was quick to pull away, bewilderment in his eyes. 

“I-I’m sorry, Rafe. I read the signals wrong.” 

“I’m not sorry because you didn’t misread anything.” 

And just like that, Rafe Cameron was kissing you, gently, deeply, madly, clothes drenched in rainwater and with ecstasy-filled eyes. Rafe Goddamn Cameron was kissing you and you fucking loved it. 

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[ochacoca]

CHAPTER 12: ONE MORE NIGHT

now playing ♫ slow dancing in the dark by joji

word count: text messages + 1034 words

series masterlist | prev chap. | next chap.

It was the middle of the night when my doorbell suddenly rang. My skincare was applied and I was already in my jammies. I wondered how could be at my house this late at night. As I opened the door, I was met with Katsuki's eyes burning into mine. His bright red orbs blazing with anger and hurt.

“Bakugou?-”

“So what, you're avoiding me now?” He cut me off. His voice was sharp and his jaw was clenched. Until now, I've never seen him look so angry towards me. “What the hell, Y/n?”

I stood there frozen and speechless. He pushed past my door and invited himself inside. He paced around my living room while running a hand through his spikey yet soft hair. “Do you have ANY idea how annoying this shit is? I've been trying to talk to you for days.” He emphasized.

I opened my mouth to try and speak, but nothing came out. The silence was deafening and the air made me feel like I was suffocating. This is exactly what I was avoiding. An argument, someone hating me. I didn't want this and now it's happening and I hate it.

He seemed even more annoyed when I didn't answer him. “You don't want me around or something? You don't like me how I like you? Stop being so scared and fucking tell me.”

My breath caught in my throat. He doesn't understand. Fuck, I don't even understand. But I still can't fight the slight anger that rises in my chest after he says that.

“You need to leave.” I said as I opened the door wider, signaling for him to walk out.

Katsuki eyed the door then looked back at me with a sneer. “Like hell I do.”

I walked up to him and put my hand on his chest, pushing him softly until he walked out the door. I didn't even notice how much it was raining until I felt the droplets on my skin and the water soaking my hair. “Please just go. Don't make this harder for me than it already is.”

I felt the way his heart thumped underneath my hand and how his angry breaths settled into soft ones. The anger in his eyes dissipated and it was just.. hurt. His hand grasped mine that laid upon his chest, squeezing it slightly. “No.” He muttered.

I yanked my hand off of him, stepping back and crossing my arms over my chest. “Please! Bakugou, you don't want to deal with me, I'm telling you this!”

“You think I'd be here if I didn't want to be with you?” He questioned. It shut me up quickly. Am I really just letting this fear gnaw at my brain? Is it twisting my judgement?

“You wouldn't understand—”

“Then make me understand!”

I tried to fight it, but the words came clawing at my throat before I could stop them.

“I'm scared, okay?!” I shouted, my voice cracking as it raised an octave. “I'm terrified to fall in love with you! That you’ll get bored, o-or realize you wanted the chase and not me!” My chest heaved as my confessions poured out. “I've been hurt my entire life. I'd do anything to be with you but I'm too scared to get hurt.”

I was met with silence. Only the uncomfortable sound of my heavy breathing and the rain pattering against the concrete sidewalk was filling my ears. It was like nails on a chalkboard.

“And not to mention that shit with Aiko. If you were so interested in me why were you letting her get all up on you?”

He just stood there, staring at me. His expression was so unreadable it was making me uneasy.

“You really think I would do that to you?” He finally spoke and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. “Y/n, you're the prettiest girl I've laid my eyes on. The only girl I want, I don't care about Aiko. You think I'd treat you like that?”

“I-I..” I had no response to his inquiries. I was caught so off guard it was starting to make me feel dizzy. “I won't treat you good. Please just go.”

I turned around with a heavy heart and tried to make my way back inside my house before I felt a grip on my wrist twisting me back around. “Don't walk away. Not now.”

I tried pulling my wrist back, but his grip was so tight yet so gentle. “Bakugou-”

“Don't call me that,” He interrupted me, his voice so full of emotion. “It's Katsuki to you.”

My throat felt like sandpaper as I swallowed. My entire body was trembling and the cold rain and breeze wasn't helping. “…Katsuki please just go-”

“You don't get to tell me when to leave. I make my own decisions and my decision is stay here. with you.”

“Stop..”

His other hand reached out to grab my other wrist. “I'm not going anywhere, Y/n. Please, stop pushing me away.”

He didn't even give me a chance to answer before he cupped my face and tilted my head up, pressing his soft lips against mine.

The world around us began to blur.

The rain was pouring harder than it was before, my clothes were soaked but I didn't even notice with the electricity that sparked between our lips. His lips were warm and soft, and there was so much passion. It was almost as if he was trying to show me something within the kiss. Trying to show me that I had nothing to be afraid of.

My hands tangled in his hair as I tugged and pulled, fearing that he'd be the one to walk away this time instead of me.

But I know that wouldn't happen. Because for the first time in forever…

I finally know what it felt like to love.

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