#there's only one road there so its unlikely but possible

[absolutelybatty]

Going to work on a sprained ankle in under 9 hours and not wanting to go to sleep since that'll take away the remaining time of being in less pain than before.

[bloodmoonmuses]

come back to me | mark lee

summary: your boyfriend, mark, drunkenly recounts the day the two of you met. (mostly to prove to haechan and johnny that love does, in fact, exist. even in the most unlikely of places.)

genre: mark lee x reader, established relationship kinda... but, like, also a meet cute? young love and all that jazz lol

It’s cold outside, the beginnings of winter trickling in with bitter fervor, yet you’re warm. Or rather, being warmed by the illusion of heat that courses through your veins: liquid courage. Now on your second bottle of soju, your form feels pliant, watery even, as you sway in the wind of your friends’ joy. 

In a booth (the leather of which is crackling at the seams) that forms a sort of semi circle, sits you, Mark, Johnny and Haechan. The wooden table before you is littered in plastic shot “glasses” and fried chicken wings that have been picked clean, and the bar is quite lively despite it nearing one in the morning. You lie your head against Mark’s shoulder, lost in the feeling of his muscles tensing and relaxing repeatedly beneath it.

“You good?” Mark whispers to you, shimming slightly as if to jostle a response out of you.

The words that escape your mouth feel fuzzy on your tongue, staticky around the edges. “Never been better.”

For some reason, the night has taken a nostalgic turn, fueled by the alcohol in everyone’s system. Haechan and Johnny have been arguing about their love lives for the better part of an hour. It never fails to amuse you how much they like bickering simply for the sake of it. You tuned out about ten minutes ago when Haechan brought up Johnny’s commitment issues only to be met with a rebuttal about him using humor as a coping mechanism. Both comments clearly strike a nerve in the men respectively, deciding to psychoanalyze their exes in chronological order in an attempt to disprove the validity of one another's assertions. 

“I don’t like that we can’t make fun of Mark right now,” Johnny confesses when he’s finished talking about an ex who turned out to be a closeted sasaeng, turning his attention to you and Mark.

Haechan scrunches his nose, gazing upon you as well. “Look at you two… All cozied up- it’s disgusting.”

“Hey man,” Mark starts, “don’t blame me for the lack of love in your life.” You punctuate his declaration with a kiss on the cheek, giddy and lovey-dovey in your drunken state. “See?” 

Johnny pretends to gag.

“How’d you meet anyway?” Haechan asks, “-so I can avoid any scenario involving… that.”

“Mark hasn’t told you the story in, like, excruciating detail?” you scoff. “He’s told everyone.”

Haechan shakes his head. 

“Oh God, don’t get him started,” Johnny groans. Mark sits upright, effectively knocking your head off of his shoulder, ecstatic with the chance to relay the way you met each other in its sappy glory.

“Spring,” Mark starts. “I was seventeen, so I had just debuted a year before, and-”

The cherry blossoms. They were stunning, you remember. Glistening and quivering under the weight of all the raindrops that had accumulated on them. The sheen of puddles scattered on the roads and sidewalks... You took the bus to work, a little cafe job you worked while finishing up your requirements at the international school you attended, and during that time of year, those bus rides were some of the most peaceful times in your day to day life. 

You think back to your youth, bright eyes aged only seventeen years, and how the world then seemed filled to brim with possibility. One day in particular, a chilly one towards the end of spring, you remember watching Mark enter the bus, his boyishness evident in his untied shoelaces and clunkily carried guitar case. On his back was a spiderman backpack, you remember vividly, and his hair is frizzy from how light he’s bleached it. He comes off a bit frazzled as you watch him stumble into a seat, precariously balancing a flimsy pair of headphones on his head, and settle in it with his knees bent. 

Once he’s gathered his bearings, he takes off his backpack and retrieves a notebook and pen, placing it on his knees, and begins to write frantically- like if he doesn't put pen to paper in this exact nanosecond, the idea will leave and never return. In a world of sloth and languidness, you’re fascinated by his urgency. You take off your own headphones to hear how he sounds in the context of silence, it is seven in the morning after all, and it only draws you in further. The scratching of the pen against the paper, orchestrated by the humming that just barely escapes his lips lulling you into a state of hypnosis.

Periodically, he furrows his brows, tries out a different melody, then writes some more- over and over again, until the pattern becomes more fluid. More succinct. Like the beginnings of a fully fledged song. He’s smiling now, and you find yourself unknowingly mirroring his joy, the fuzziness of it spreading up your neck like a campfire consuming its kindling. You’re enraptured. 

You want to live inside his head. What a superpower to have; to breathe life into written language. And then suddenly, he’s stuffing his notebook into his backpack as quickly as he had taken it out. His stop must be coming up soon, you had thought to yourself. 

After putting his feet back on the ground, he gingerly places his palms against the bus window- as if to test its temperature. When deemed cool enough, he exhales against the glass, quickly etching a heart onto its foggy surface with a squeak. His fingers are calloused, that much you can tell even from across the bus, and he’s tired- if the bags under his eyes are any indication. Then, the bus crawls to a stop, and he stands. Again, you’re mirroring him instantly, body moving before your mind can catch up. It’s not your stop, yours is another three down, but you exit nonetheless, too enthralled by the boy in front of you to let him out of your sight.

You walk about a block, maintaining about a ten foot distance between the two of you, and watch him hobble down the sidewalk with his huge guitar case. He grunts occasionally, adjusting and readjusting his baggage when the weight becomes too much, humming all the while. Until, of course, he turns around, tearing the headphones off of his head, and asks, “Are you following me?!” in a frustrated huff. 

You stop in your tracks. Oh wait, you had thought, you are sorta following him. Well, the cafe is in this direction technically but-

“You’re not one of those people with a fansite, are you? Look, dude, I know we debuted last year, but I want a normal life just like-”

“I’m not a fan. I mean, not yet, I guess. Well- no. I was just… I’m not following you. Mostly.” you stammer. 

Mark scratches his head. “Then, what are you doing…?”

“You were writing a song on the bus,” you look at the ground, staring at your shoes in search of some solace, reprieve from the then stranger’s prying eyes. How did you think this would turn out any other way? “I thought maybe, you could… sing it. Like, out loud.”

Mark sighs. “Look, dude, I have practice and-”

“Right. I’m sorry for being weird, you just looked… Nevermind. Have a nice day- sorry to bother you.” You turn on your heels, in the complete opposite of the cafe you’re supposed to be going to, and make a break for it. As you trek up the hill, you shatter your reflection over and over again, the splashing of puddles beneath your feet the only sound tethering you to reality. 

“It’s not finished-” Mark starts, voice cutting through the rustling leaves and bustling city with piercing clarity.  You’re frozen, still facing away from the hypnotist behind you. “-but I could show you the idea. Because that’s what it is right now. Just an idea.”

You turn to face him. “Um. Sure. If that’s okay.”

Haechan interjects Mark’s storytelling, words warbling from his completion of a third bottle of soju for the night. “No way you actually sat down and played the song for-”

“Shh!” Johnny says, “This is the best part.”

“See, I knew you secretly loved this mushy-gushy stuff,” you say. 

Mark giggles. “So, like I was saying-”

You sit on a bench freckled cherry blossom petals and just-dried droplets of dew, knee bouncing nervously when Mark plops down beside you. Mark sets his guitar case down, flat in front of him, and opens it. Retrieving his notebook from his backpack once again, he places it on your lap, surprisingly enough. Wordlessly, he puts his guitar in his lap, throwing the strap over his neck and shoulders, and cranes his neck to re-familiarize himself with his feverishly scrawled ideas. Just before he strums the first note, he says, “Just an idea. Keep that in mind.”

Then he sings. A mix and hesitant laments of love lost, then found, yearning for the past, but hopeful for the future. But other words are not words at all. They’re more, like, messily sung runs. Like he’s sketching lightly, so he can erase later. He’s got a hook. He sings it three times, and the way his Adam's apple bobbles is now permanently etched in your mind. When he’s done, he opens his eyes slowly, assessing the damage done. He almost looks surprised that you’re still sitting there.

You whisper, voice whisked away in the gentle breeze, “I never asked your name.”

“Mark. Just Mark.”

“Nice to meet you, ‘Just Mark’.”

“What do you think? How do you feel?” Two entirely different questions, both of which hit your ear in a way that makes your stomach leap- or maybe it’s the gravelly timbre of his voice and unsure eyes.

“Good,” Mark’s eyes spur you on further, silently asking you to elaborate, “The song sounds good and I feel good.”

“Is that the only adjective you know? ‘Good’?”

“I know a lot of adjectives. I’m just… nervous. So, yeah.”

Mark grabs his notebook and returns it to his backpack, packing up his guitar as well. As he stands to leave, he turns and says, “Your name.”

“What?”

“You never told me your name.”

“_______,” you reply meekly.

“And your hand,” he urges, “give it to me.” You extend your arm and Mark delicately grasps your wrist. Then, Mark nervously scrawls his number on your palm, pen digging into your skin slightly. 

You can hear your heartbeat in your ears. 

“If you have any thoughts beyond it being ‘good’, gimme a call.” And just like that, he’s gone, running down the hill to make it to practice on time.

As Mark ends his retelling of events with a wistful hum, Haechan chortles. “Yeah. You two disgust me.”

[ghoulphile]

no use cryin' over spilled milk | c.h./the ghoul

➥ pairing | cooper howard/the ghoul x f!reader ➥ word count | 2.8 k ➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; dirty talk, frottage, lactation kink, pregnant!reader, fingerfucking, praise kink, breast play, the ghoul calls reader pretty mama, he's a pervert who wants to lend a 'helping' hand ➥ summary | based off this ask; oops being an experiment from vault 4 where you may be the first rad resistant human pregnant with a possibly rad resistant baby, and you come across the ghoul who helps you get to a safe place but then he gets attached with you and the baby 🥺 (this is just me trying to insert a lactation kink somewhere i'm sorry) ➥ notes | uhhhh pls let me know if i missed anything, my brain is dribbling out my ears (its 3:44 am and i have work at 8 am rip) but the parasites persist. i'll do the tag list when i wake up ❤️ masterlist | feel free to send in thots, questions, requests! | feedback is always appreciated ❤️

Going topside wasn’t an easy decision.

In fact, bile bitter regret often lingers in the back of your throat - a lump that stifled the air in your lungs.

And while you might’ve been bioengineered to survive better under these harsh wasteland conditions, every time you find yourself in a less than ideal situation, you're catapulted headlong into paralyzing self doubt; alone and rudderless.

No one lives in the vaults - not truly.

Birdie (and the others) warned you of what awaited beyond those lead-lined walls. But you couldn’t abide spending the rest of your life trapped in a cage, albeit a gilded one.

Not anymore.

Oh no, you wanted to feel a real breeze instead of air pumped through the HVAC. Experience the sun baking warm into your skin like fresh bread instead of the artificial heat of the UV lamp used for mandatory light therapy sessions. Complain about the chafe of sand in your shoes and hear the crunch of dirt under foot instead of a hollow clunk of sterile metal.

To witness first hand all the sights, sounds, and smells this world offers. 

Only… you didn’t expect it to be this hard.

Nor did you expect to be pregnant when setting off into the great unknown on your own (a definite oversight on your part [you really shouldn’t have had one last hurrah before hitting the road]).

Through trial and error, motion sicknesses that swing into crippling nausea as manic energy - your first taste of true freedom! - dwindled into dragging fatigue, you found a happy medium. None of which would have been possible had it not been for the most unlikely of companions.

Ghouls; who knew, huh?

Sure, you’d heard of them from the rotating door of visitors that found themselves at Vault 4, but you’d never seen them. While you grew up surrounded by visible mutations, seeing the battlefield of his body was off putting; how a person could survive a patina of burns and patchwork slices without unraveling at the seams was beyond you.

And kind of frightening.

But he took it in stride, introducing himself as Ghoul. Refused to divulge anything else of substance no matter how much you poked and prodded.  His life pre-bomb was a complete mystery filled with plot holes and unanswered questions (which is exactly what he preferred).

You learned to be comfortable with his meandering conversations, and all the words he spoke that said much of nothing. And what you did glean, you did so through observation alone. 

He was alone - had been for a very long time.

He was very old - one of the last of his kind.

And he was, in his own way, very kind - at least by wasteland standards.

“The fuck you doin’?”

Pausing, you stop mid push and hover awkwardly on your hands and knees. The vault suit pulls taut across your hips, pinching behind your knees uncomfortably. Your toes squeak in your shoes, socks thoroughly soaked through with sweat.

It’s been unseasonably hot (or it’s the hormones). Whatever the case, this is the first semi-decent lodging you’ve camped in for weeks, and you’re not about to miss an opportunity to freshen up.

And maybe find a way to soothe the building ache in your tits - flesh swollen tender and nipples rubbed raw.

“I’m just, uh, gonna,” you motion towards the back of the house, the askew bathroom door clinging to its hinges by a corner, “y’know, f-freshen up. See if they don’t still have some water.”

The Ghoul scans you up and down, gimlet-eyed. “S’that so?”

You huff, your knees starting to ache.

Being five months pregnant throws your center of gravity for a loop, the atmosphere weighing extra heavy on your bones. It doesn’t help that the baby’s decided sitting directly on your bladder with a foot tucked under your ribs is the best position.

“Didn’t know I needed permission to take a piss now,” you snipe. Usually, you try to reign in the hormones but the day’s been too long and you’re in pain. Anyone would be a little snippy (right?). “Can I do that on my own or do you need to watch, Mr. Ghoul?”

A faint smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, his gaze glinting from beneath the rim of his hat as he tips his head. “Better watch it, sweetheart,” he says. “Otherwise, I might have’ta wash your mouth out with soap.”

Pushing yourself up with a grunt, you determinedly ignore the raspy chuckle that follows as you waddle towards the bathroom. Cussing him out all the while in your mind.

While he’s been ‘nicer’ today - stopping for extra breaks, even packing it in several hours earlier than usual because he noticed how weary you looked - he’s still an asshole.

The toilet’s gone, the tub’s tipped sideways, the linoleum’s cracked, and closing the door sounds like a pack of howling mole rats but its functional. When you catch your reflection in the spider web fractures of the mirror, you grimace.

The wastes have certainly left their mark on you. Gone is the prim-and-proper vault dweller, replaced by a gremlin of a woman Overseer Benjamin would surely scowl at.

A true ‘surfie’ now.

“Great,” you groan, scrubbing a palm over your face. “Just - ugh!”

You’re caked in grime, a steak of dirt smeared across the bridge of your nose. Mysterious stains darken the blue fabric, the golden stripes of your suit an off-putting grey.

Your hair clumps in greasy chunks. You’re glossy with sweat, and while your curves have plumped up over the last few months, you didn’t realize just how much until now.

The vault suit’s always been tight - now it clings and creases in unflattering places. And there’s nothing you can do about it, unless the Ghoul is willing to spare a sewing kit.

You could let the waist out some…

What the hell am I gonna do if he won’t? There’s no way I’ll fit if this baby gets any bigger. Shit, I look like a fucking sausage. Your hand cradles the side of your stomach, stroking over the bump with a frown. This is all your fault, you little parasite.

“You better be so fucking cute - the cutest goddamn baby in the wasteland. Or I will riot.”

Tugging down the zipper over your breasts is heaven, the swollen flesh spilling out of the parting fabric, no longer compressed. It’s almost enough to make you cry as you struggle to tug the lycra off your shoulders, the fabric putting up a fight.

After some awkward contortions that pull uncomfortably at the muscles of your shoulder blades, you manage to wrangle yourself free.

The temptation to burn the stupid goddamn suit is almost too much to resist, but then you’d really be traipsing around the wasteland in the nude and just… no.

Peeling off your undershirt is another story altogether, the soft cotton feeling like sandpaper as it scrapes over sensitive skin. Your nerves tingle with awareness, bolts of pain shooting through your nipples with every shift.

Quick like a bandaid, you think, taking a steadying inhale.

It’s a miracle you don’t scream.

Tears cling to your lashes, your nose running as you toss the shirt to the side with one hand and cradle your chest with the other. Sure, you’ve had tenderness with your period but this kind of pain? A whole new level.

You almost don’t know what to do with yourself.

How is this fair - aren’t you suffering enough?

Sniffling, you peer down at your tits and gingerly cup them with your palms. Swollen hard and warm to the touch; a heavy weight crushing your ribs.

Do I really have to milk myself like a fucking brahmin? Another bolt of lightning crackles through your nerve endings as if in response. Fine. God, this is embarrassing.

Only any attempt at touching your nipples produces pure agony, shards of glass biting into delicate skin.

No matter how slight your touch, no matter how gentle your fingers - it doesn’t work. Leaves you more distraught and in pain than when you began as inflamed nerve endings crackle and burn.

And when the tears truly start, the dam breaks. It’s not long before they drip down your cheeks in fat rivulets, your breath hitching from you in pathetic little exhales.

Your fist shoves against your mouth in an attempt to smother the sounds, teeth sinking into your knuckle until you leave sore indents.

But you should know better, not only does the Ghoul have heightened senses (he’s taunted you constantly with this fact like the asshole he is), but he’s uncannily perceptive in a very annoying way.

You don’t hear the squeal of the door, but you do sense his presence behind you; the rad warm burn of his body as he stops a scant few inches away. You feel his breath against the nape of your neck, the barest brush of his chest as he inhales.

“You ready ta stop bein’ stubborn?” he hums. “I thought I told you not ta wait s’long.”

Your voice warbles from you, “G’way.” You curl into yourself, shoulders hunching as you hang your head. “Don’t need your help.”

The Ghoul snorts. “Cuz you doin’ so well on your own, huh?”

“I resent that.” You shoot him a weak glare, the animosity ruined by the crumble of your lips. “I really, really do.”

You hate always having to rely on him, so desperate to prove that you can take care of yourself only to have every effort to do so thrown back in your face.

Shit, you hate how right Birdie was, “Honey, you won’t last five minutes on your own. Please stay here with us where it’s safe.”

“Well, maybe so. But pickers can’t be choosers, sweetheart,” he shrugs with a languid roll of the shoulders. “Ain’t no use cryin’ over spilled milk. C’mon, the longer you wait, the worse it’s gon be.”

“I just - you don’t understand…”

He reaches around you to set his hat on the sink, the dwindling light of twilight creeping in through the holes in the roof to bathe him in its bloody light.

He looks like a grotesque demon that clawed its way from the depths of hell. It gets your pulse thudding, electric awareness an unwelcome visitor as it roosts behind your navel.

“I understand plenty. Now, let me.”

Not an offer - not really.

More akin to a demand, one wrapped up pretty like a gift. You’ve been here many times before, and while the Ghoul proffers his help under the guise of not wanting to hear your bitching and moaning, the hungry gleam of his eyes as they rake over your face say otherwise.

If it’s one thing you’ve learned in your travels with him, it’s this: he is entirely self-serving. He offers because he wants to suck on a set of pretty tits. If you happen to cream your panties while he does, well, he counts it as a win-win.

Quid pro quo.

And what you hate more than how utterly correct everyone is about life on the surface, is how needy he makes you. How desperate and dumb and dripping he’s got you by the end, drunk off the flick of his tongue and the rasp of his touch.

Because it’s so hard to be strong in the face of pain when the solution is right there; open-palmed.

“...Fine, just don’t - don’t leave marks this time, okay?”

A slow waking smile creaks across his face, and he says, “I ain’t makin’ any promises, sweetheart.”

Your stomach swoops, and your thighs clench.

Shit.

Scarred lips work over tender flesh as a talented tongue flicks and swirls over the bumps of your areola, the tip digging into your nipple and drawing the swollen nub into a hot mouth. You whimper, arms tossed over the Ghoul’s broad shoulders.

Cold ceramic digs into the base of your spine, your body crowded back against the sink as he plasters himself to your front. Cuts off any escape routes and refuses to let you squirm away from the overwhelming sensations as he suckles.

Heavy palms grope at the plush curves of your hips, fingertips digging into the fat.

His lips pop off your nipple with a sticky smack. “Always taste s’fucking good,” he groans against your sternum. “Got the prettiest set a tits in the wasteland.”

“Hnn! N-Not so hard.”

While you say that, you don’t mean it - not really. Your pussy throbs in time with your heartbeat, clit swollen and aching for friction. Your inner thighs are a mess of slick, your vault suit caught around your knees.

He never touches you below the waist directly (some boundaries still exist between you two), but at this point in your pregnancy, you’re so sensitive a gentle breeze could set you off.

“Heh, ain’t you know lyin’s a sin?” he says.

A scarred cheek drags over the swell of your breast, the rasp of rad burn alighting your nerves. Bolts of desire ricochet down your spine, fizzle like Nuka Cola on your tongue. He presses an open mouth kiss to your nipple, his tongue flicking out to massage the tender bud.

At the taste of your skin, his cock twitches where its grinding against your thigh. You feel him through his ragged pinstripe slacks, his shaft a thick line of heat.

It’s probably the hormones (you refuse to admit its anything else) but just the thought of touching him, of sinking down onto his erection - feeling how fucking good he’d stretch you out and fill you up - makes you dizzy.

You pant, your voice distinctly whiny when you say, “Please, d-do something. It still hurts.”

His grin reminds you of the mongrels roaming the wastelands. “Sh,” he hushes you. “I got you, sweetheart.”

The tips of his fingers brush along the side of your swollen stomach. Your heart flips in your chest, your breath catching as he follows the contours of your body, reaching down to brush over the skin of your mound. This is new, he’s never done this before. It’s simultaneously as arousing as it is terrifying.

“Can smell how wet you are for me,” he says, tone low and gruff. “You gonna be a good girl for me, ain’t you?”

“I-”

Then his mouth is slurping at your tit, his teeth biting down on your nipple gently as those strong fingers dip between your thighs. Blunt nails scratch through your pubic hair, a calloused pad swirling circles around your slippery clit. Your hips jump, your head rolling back between your shoulders as a loud moan rips itself from your throat.

You arch back so far your belly presses against the Ghoul’s, your tits smothering his face.

You think, half deliriously, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have a nose otherwise you might’ve broken it.

“Shit, that’s so - oh, fuck, please, please, please!’

Your legs widen to make room for his hand as yours fly up to grab his biceps, nails biting into the rough leather of his duster.

His tongue flutters across your areola. “C’mon, pretty mama, give it ta me.”

“Oh.” Sparks dance behind your eyes, your knees shaking as the Ghoul strokes over your folds, tests your wetness and the give of your cunt as he plays with your entrance. “Right there,” you gasp. “I’m gonna…”

He grunts, tugging on your nipple with his teeth.

The sharp bite of pain shoots through you, deepens the kindling warmth behind your navel that steadily builds and builds and builds. You feel on the very edge, nerves plucked like the keys of a piano.

So close you can taste it.

Then a tingling starts in the tips of your fingers.

Burns its way up your arms to settle in the weight of your chest, pins and needles pricking across the skin of your tits, lancing through the swollen buds of your nipples.

You tremble, the relief bringing tears to your eyes as tears the heaviness releases in a warm flood, your milk letting down to flow into the Ghoul’s eagerly pulling mouth.

“Fuckin’ finally,” he moans, chasing after the taste by nuzzling into your chest. His cock ruts against you. “Took you’re sweet damn time, didn’t you, darlin’?”

Your head spins, hazy thoughts scattering like confetti.

Endorphins simmer through your veins as you float on a cloud of cotton softness. Reality seems worlds away, your vision blurry as you focus on the points of contact between your bodies. The stretch of his fingers plunging into your pussy to stroke over the front wall.

Mouth slack, your hands creep up the Ghoul’s arms to trace over the sides of his neck, watch the dance of your fingers over his skin. “It feels s’good,” you slur. “Please don’t stop - wanna cum just like this.”

“Heh, wouldn’t dream of it.”

[majestyeverlasting]

𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 | 𝐞.𝐦.

PAIRING Vampire Eddie Muson x Female Reader

SUMMARY One eerie night on your way home from work, you nearly run over someone who’s already supposed to be a dead man. As the truth slowly comes to light, an unlikely friendship forms—and begins to grow into something more. [fluff, mild angst, mentions of blood, 7.3k]

A/N There's no shame is coming back a little wrong. Here's to Halloween 2024!

𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻 𝟷𝟿𝟾𝟿

The relentless staccato of the drums reverberating off the walls pulses in time with the headache cruelly settled in the front of your head. It’s no fault of Jim, the young kid beating away for a committed crowd of ten. Rather, it’s the culmination of an entire evening's worth of noise. Of fulfilling countless drink requests for half the thanks.

The Hideout seems to move in a delay as you finish wiping down your portion of the sticky bar. A little further down, your co-worker Alex pours whiskey for an older man with a wild head of silver hair. 

When you’re done, you head to the breakroom, weaving through sweaty bodies on the way. Shift officially over, you gather your belongings with quick hands, moving on autopilot as you so often do nowadays. 

Reprieve only comes after you’ve pushed through the back door and stepped into the night. The air welcomes you with a cool stillness. A stillness that didn’t exist up until a year ago when the ground shook and the heavens turned red for a short period of time. Those who could afford to flee left Hawkins and never looked back. People like you stayed behind. 

There’s been something different about the nighttime since that fateful day. Not only did the darkness deepen, but the nights themselves seemed to stretch longer. As if nothingness itself sought to swallow the town every time the sun made its descent. That reality doesn’t scare you anymore. 

On nights like tonight, there’s an eerie beauty to it all. 

The radio in your car bursts into pop when you start the ignition, but you kill it quickly. Tomorrow, you’d wake up, go to work, and do it all again. 

Under the glow of the remaining streetlights, you cruise your way through a near ghost town. One hand guides the wheel while the other remains propped against your head. There are more boarded windows and abandoned lots than there are signs of life, all memorializing a time that once was but is no more. 

As you turn onto Main Street, a dark flutter of movement catches your attention further ahead. You can’t quite make out what’s on the ground yet, but you slow down as a precaution.

It ends up being a black cat that scurries across the road, disappearing into an alleyway. What you’re not expecting is the figure that carelessly darts in front of you to chase after it. Slamming down on the breaks sends you lurching forward with a gasp. You don’t realize your eyes are squeezed shut until you peel them open, heart pounding in your ears. 

The figure, a man, as you can now make out, is on the ground on the other side of the street. He must’ve tripped over the curb in his haste. Propping himself up on his forearms, he glances in the direction the cat ran in as if debating to continue after it. 

Instead, in an air of defeat, he plops onto his back and stares up at the void-like sky. Alarm bells go off in your head at the possibility of this being some sort of trap, but you crank down your window because too much concern has settled within your ribcage. 

“Are you alright?” you call out to him. “I’m so sorry.” 

He just lies there, shifting ever so slightly.

Conflicted, you chew on your lower lip before finally deciding to get out of the car. The sound of your door snapping shut proceeds your hesitant footsteps as you pad over to him. 

The faint smell of vanilla and stale beer had registered with him the moment you opened your door, but it intensifies as you near, right along with a deeper, more vascular scent. The latter of which intrigues a primal part of him he often fought to suppress. Helplessly, instinctively, he licks over his teeth as the gums above his canines begin to tingle. 

You stop a few feet away as he sits up fully, hair long and disheveled. There’s an intensity to his gaze that isn’t threatening or unkind, just strikingly observant. Like an owl seeing through what you want him to see, straight to the marrow of who you are. 

In daring to look back into his eyes, you notice how they’re as black as the night sky. His face is pale, cheeks are slightly gaunt. 

He can see the moment you discard any notion of him being a threat, realizing how weak and pathetic he must look sitting on the ground. Embarrassment itches down his arms as he averts his gaze to the asphalt of the street. He can’t even pay himself the dignity of standing. 

“I didn’t see you coming.” Your voice is too sweet. “Do you need help? There’s a phone booth over there, I could call someone for you.” 

“I’m alright,” he murmurs. 

“Are you sure?” You study him for any signs of pain. “You’re not hurt, are you?” 

“Never better.” It took a lot more than a good wipeout to hurt him nowadays. 

He looks back up at you in hopes it will make you believe him. That’s when a sense of recognition kindles deep down within you. You repress it because it can’t possibly be him. 

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” The cadence of his voice, though weighed with tiredness, is unmistakably familiar in this moment. 

“Well, alright,” you finally say. 

Walking back to your car and leaving him alone almost feels like a crime. 

•••  

There’s a distanced look in your eyes as you stare up at Robin’s ceiling fan. It’s as still as you are, but the sunken cheeks of the pale stranger spiral around and around in your head. It’s past midnight and dim lamplight paints the room in a soft, yellowed glow. There are posters all over the walls, which are still painted lilac from her childhood. Everything from the album covers of Madonna and Blondie to movies like Psycho and Star Wars. 

The paper of her senior yearbook crinkles gently as she flips through the pages beside you. She stops when she finally gets to the senior portraits, pointing to Edward Munson as you flip onto your stomach to join her in looking. He has long hair, doe eyes, and a boyish grin. You stare at his face for a few quiet seconds, noting how much more alive he looked. Robin’s mouth opens a couple times but no words come out. 

“I swear it was him, Rob.” Your voice cracks a little with the weight of your sincerity. “And he looked like he needed help. Like he may be going through something right now. Something bad. Drugs.” 

Robin abruptly flips the yearbook closed. “He’s gone,” she says with the resolve of someone who’s had enough time to stitch old wounds closed. You can understand that.  

Considering the selfish discrimination that plagued Hawkins back at that time, you’re not even sure if the police department looked all that intensely. Maybe no more than a few echoing calls out into the woods for a couple days straight. They had better things to do than search for a troubled teen from Forest Hills Trailer park. The thought alone is enough to stir a sense of disgust within you, so you can only imagine how Robin feels being he was her friend. 

Eddie got held back and was set to graduate alongside you in eighty-seven but you never crossed paths, only shot the occasional curious glance his way because there always had been something magnetic about him. It wasn’t until Hawkins was rattled with the mysterious shaking that you befriended Robin, Steve, and some of their younger friends. 

They were among the residents who didn’t skip town even though they had the means to.  

Robin’s cheeks have taken on a light flush, so you give her shoulder a squeeze. “I’m sorry to bring this up on a random Saturday night, but it’s all that’s been on my mind,” you admit. “To think that he could be out there on his own, scared to come forward…” you trail off, unsure of where you’re headed. 

Her blue eyes look intently into yours. “You don’t go missing for that long and magically turn up alive… You just don’t.” There’s a practiced steadiness to her voice. 

With Eddie being someone you’d only ever seen in passing, you find yourself wondering why you wish her words were the furthest thing from the truth. 

•••

It’s quiet except for the whir of your bicycle wheels as you pedal back to your house the following morning. It feels like you’re gliding on the wind, bound to float up and away with a mere extension of your arms. The made-up tune you’re humming fades away when a slender black cat stops in the middle of the street about a hundred feet ahead, staring straight at you. It doesn’t startle as you near. 

The feline takes a few curious steps towards you as you dismount your bike, squatting down to make yourself look smaller and less imposing. That’s when you notice the collar around its neck that nearly blends in with its coat aside from the golden nameplate pendant. Luna.

“Hi, Luna,” you coo, holding out your hand. She nuzzles into it. “That’s such a pretty name. You’re a sweet girl, aren’t you?” She lets you scratch behind her ears as she blinks her big green eyes in languid satisfaction. Her fur is soft and clean, clearly from being taken care of.  

“Did you run away from home? Is that what happened?” You take a quick look around even though you’re in the portion of town where the homes are tucked further back into the trees. Nobody seems to be outside looking. 

When you stand, she gazes up at you before trotting away. Only then does it occur to you that she probably knows her way back home. But you can’t shake the possibility that she was the same cat from two nights ago who was running from the dead man. So many pets had been displaced since the Shaking, but that didn’t seem to be the case with her. A small smile pulls at your lips when she looks back at you with a soft mrrow. 

Picking up your bike, you walk closer to her. Upon noticing you’ve begun to follow, Luna starts walking again and you trail after her. 

She eventually diverts off the street and under an A-frame barricade with a sign that reads: Private Property, No Trespassing. Now standing on a dirt road leading into the woods. When you stop, still on the road, she turns back to look at you—mrrrrow.

“I can’t,” you say. 

The sound of an approaching engine startles you. A police car that slows to a stop, rolling the window down to reveal a scrawny officer with an unkempt mustache, smoking a cigarette. He gives you a quick once-over. 

“You a friend of the guy who lives back there?” For someone living in the midwest, he has a thick Southern drawl. And an unfamiliar face, now that you’re thinking about it. Likely a new hire. What was even stranger than those who decided to stay in Hawkins was the handful of people who, for some reason, sought out the town. 

Glancing back at the dirt road, you realize Luna hasn’t moved. The officer lifts his brows in curiosity when your eyes settle back on him. 

“I—yes. I am,” you say. Thankfully, he looks like he believes you. 

“How’s he doing? Chief’s planning a welfare visit within the hour,” he says it like he’s trying to collect pieces of information for a puzzle he’s working out.

“I was actually just going to see him,” you lie. “Is there reason for concern?” 

The officer snorts and shakes his head, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “You tell me. Nobody tells me a goddamn thing in this town,” he says. “I’ll get someone to crack soon enough. You take care of yourself, sweetheart.” With that, he pulls off. Mrrrow—

With a heavy sigh and buzzing nerves, you push your bike around the barricade and allow Luna to lead you down the road in a bouncy, graceful stride. 

•••

Three crisp knocks at the door startles Eddie awake on the couch. One arm is hanging off and brushing against the rug. He blinks a few drowsy times before mustering up the willpower to stand, trudging to go peak out the front window. It’s you and Luna. The way his heartbeat spikes makes him wish that no longer having a heart had been a part of the vampire deal. You’re wearing baggy jeans and a cute oversized cardigan. Your bike is propped along the railing of the porch stairs. 

Nobody was supposed to know about this place aside from a select group. A small part of him is happy to see your face again, but he knows this isn’t good. The fewer people who know about him, the better. Perhaps that was merely a lie he told himself when he managed to escape Upside Down, but it had stuck. And for some reason—whether it be patience, pity, or an odd blend of both—everyone respected his wishes. 

The house Eddie lived in now had been abandoned by a doomsday prepper. A surprisingly decent amount of supplies were left stored away in the basement. Chief Hopper had helped him move in a year ago after he returned from the Upside Down as a changed man. The chief had even found a reliable contact at the Hawkins Blood Bank for the sake of Eddie’s needs. 

As tempting as the urges sometimes were, feeding on live prey wasn’t sustainable. Drinking from blood bags was just as suitable. 

Even when it comes to his friends, they make sure to look out for him as best they can. Offering their company, their support, their laughter. All things considered, he had the stability he needed to get back out in the world and chase after a semblance of normalcy. But he hadn’t, not fully. 

The amount of times he left the house, especially during the day, was far and few between. When he did, it was to go to Steve’s place, or Robin’s, or Dustin’s. 

Now he’d fallen into funk like none other, insisting that nobody bothered him at all. For the first time since turning into a vampire, the desire to start living again was stronger than ever, yet it terrified him to his core. The last thing he wanted to do was for his cursed hands to end up tarnishing whatever good managed to come his way. He wouldn’t be able to bear it, so he figured he’d save himself the disappointment by not trying at all. 

It was killing him. 

When he opens the door, you’re wide-eyed. Luna immediately strolls inside to circle in between his legs, proudly rubbing herself against them. As bad as he wants to scoop her up into his arms in relief, he keeps looking at you. 

“Eddie Munson?” you ask hesitantly.  

He swallows. “Yeah.”  

“I knew that was you back on Friday.” 

Your eyes flick down to Luna, who gratefully peers up. “She was out in the street trying to get help for you,” you say without a doubt. “Animals always know.” There’s a brief flicker of emotion in Eddie’s eyes. 

“I’d been trying to catch her that night.” He sounds ashamed, like he knows you’re right, “She’s never run away before.” A brief moment of silence passes between the two of you. 

“There’s someone coming for a welfare check,” you tell him. “The Chief of Police, I think. An officer stopped and told me.” 

Eddie pales—if that’s even possible. A humorless laugh rises in his throat. “I’m sorry for getting you dragged into this mess—” 

“I wasn’t dragged into anything,” you counter softly, searching his eyes. “It’s called life. Things happen, you meet people, time keeps passing by. 

“Everything happens for a reason.” You offer a small, encouraging smile.

He feels a flutter in his gut that he hasn’t felt in a long time. You’re awfully pretty, and kind, and smell way too divine. 

It’s too far away for you to hear, but in the distance, there’s a rumbling engine and the sound of tires turning onto the dirt road. 

•••

Vampires were supposed to be bound to legends and myths. Not real, and certainly not in Hawkins in the form of a boy whose company you could easily learn to enjoy. Both Eddie and Chief Hopper stare at you, eagerly awaiting your response to the story they just told. It’d practically been an entire oral history of Hawkins’ woes, not solely about Eddie, but about Eleven, demogorgons, the Mind Flayer, and Venca—all underscored by a depraved dimension called the Upside Down. 

All three of you are seated in the charming living room, the sun beginning to set outside. 

“Look,” Hopper says, running a thick hand down his face. “I know this is a lot. I wouldn’t blame you if you ran off and told the whole town.” As he shifts, the buttons over his stomach strain. “But before you do, just take a second and—” 

“I won’t tell,” you promise. “I always knew this town was different. I could feel it,” you admit. “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel crazy anymore.” 

That resonates with Eddie. It was a strange, unforgiving town indeed. 

“But I think you guys already knew that,” you say. “That’s why you even bothered to trust me.” 

Hopper glances at Eddie as if to say I like this one, she’s solid. Eddie likes you too.

The boy straightens up. “And about Robin, Steve, and everybody else… I know they lied to you, but it’s only because I asked them to keep me a secret,” he says. “If you’re upset about that, you have the right to take it out on me.” 

“Not while I’m here,” Hopper quips, pushing himself up from the couch. “If she does a number on you, I refuse to be a witness.” He’s joking, and you’re grateful for the levity that works its way back into the room. 

Eddie purses his lips in amusement, peeking over at you. You smile back.  

“And for the love of God, can you get something in your system? You look like you’re withering away,” Hopper grouses. “I’m gonna swing back around tomorrow, and all those blood bags better be gone.” 

You’re unable to stop yourself from snorting at what your life has suddenly become. If the sparkle in his eyes is any indicator, Eddie didn’t seem to mind your amusement. Not even a little bit, not even at all. 

•••

Gravel crackles beneath a set of tires as a vehicle rolls up out back. You’re too far away to hear, but as Eddie hops out of his van, he can make out chatter and drums emitting from inside. The external lights of The Hideout are blown out, so it’s pitch dark as Eddie rounds to the passenger side to get his acoustic guitar and sling it over his shoulder.

Soon, his hand is meeting the cool handle of the back door, which doesn't budge when he tugs. Two years ago, it would’ve. He was still learning how much time had altered in its wake. So He begins knocking instead. 

Entering through the front would be simple enough, but he wasn’t quite ready for everyone’s eyes to fall on him at once. 

Inside, Samuel, a man with a pirate hook in place of his missing hand, uses the metal prosthetic to push his empty glass closer to you for a refill. Eddie’s unheard knocking persists as you whistle for Alex to fulfill the man’s request in your place. 

“Gotta run to the bathroom,” you say. 

When you make it to the back hallway, the knocking finally registers. Two girls with matching mullets come stumbling out the bathroom hand-in-hand, forcing you to press closer to the wall as you head to answer the door. A voice emerges from the other side as you do. 

“Hello? I’m here to—”

It’s Eddie, blending in with the darkness of the night except for his guitar and milky skin. Although, there’s a bit more life to his complexion now. His curls tumble down onto his shoulders, denser and more defined as if he’d washed his hair recently. He’s no longer wearing baggy clothes, so you can see the true broadness of his shoulders. The undeniable tone of his slim frame. 

Under the weight of your observant gaze, he clears his throat, eyes flicking to the ground. “Sorry. It’s been a while,” he says. “I don’t know what the protocol is for performers anymore.”  

With everything you’ve learned over the past few weeks, you weren’t expecting him here. You’d hung out with him several times since learning he was a vampire, but it was either at his house or somebody else's. Never out and about, and certainly not around other people. 

His shoulders relax when you smile and open the door wider for him to come inside. He smells good as he brushes past you with tentative steps. 

“The green room is still where you remember it,” you call, trailing after him as he heads that way. 

It’s more of a supply room now. There are napkins, utensils, cleaning solutions, the whole lot. A few aux cords and other random pieces of sound equipment remain from back in the day. 

Eddie pads over to a small shelf, filled with old inspection documents and financial forms, and carefully scoots the stack to the right. Curiosity gets the better of you as you go to look over his shoulder. 

He can hear your breaths even though they aren’t loud. The gentle, steady beating of your heart. He can’t pretend it isn’t what he came for. 

Written in permanent marker against the wood of the shelf is a messy cluster of Corroded Coffin signatures dated with the year 1987. The year everything changed. Among the names, is his written in chunky capital letters, devil ears on either end. 

“I never knew that was there,” you say fondly.

He turns around to face you. “We thought we were so cool.” The memory makes him smile. 

A brief moment passes of taking each other in. You break the silence, “If you wanna perform, you can go out when the drums stop. Jim gets up there every evening and eventually wears himself out. I say he’s got another five minutes left in him.”

“Everyone’s got their process,” Eddie jokes. He’s rewarded with the sweet sound of your laugh. You pretend you wouldn’t rather stay hidden in this small, stuffy room and chat the remainder of your shift away. 

Jim stops playing as you predicted, but it isn’t until you’re back at the bar that Eddie emerges. You take the time to actually read what’s painted in white on the dark wood of his guitar: THIS MACHINE SLAYS Dragons. The room immediately goes quiet as he takes a seat on the edge of the stage, commanding it without doing anything at all. He even garners the attention of drunk eyes in their blurry haze. 

Without looking up from the fingerboard, he begins a connected series of languid strums, rings glinting in the low light. 

The melodic notes soon shape into a song. One that’s as somber as it is beautiful. It’s in no way akin to the punk and metal music that usually ricochets off the walls, but there’s no complaints. Everyone is transfixed by the way he simply watches his fingers as he plays. As if his heart isn’t bleeding out before their very eyes and reaching out to theirs. 

Once upon a time, he got a kick out of being rowdy and playing off the audience’s energy. But now, simply being seen and heard was enough. Especially after a period of wandering the dark. 

He’d told himself that this was the week he’d come out of hiding. That he was worth more than living in the shadows where he couldn’t make any mistakes. 

Scattered applause rises when he finishes. Samuel, abruptly slides from his barstool and slaps a few wrinkled dollar bills on the counter for you with his good hand. There’s a tug in your chest when you notice the tears welling in his eyes. 

“Who is that kid anyway?” he asks, swiping beneath them. 

You offer a small smile. “Eddie Munson.”

“I’d pay good money to hear his story,” he says, gathering his jacket from the back of the stool. “Tell your folks I say hello.” With that, he gets up and leaves, disappearing into the night.

Eddie stands from the stage as well. A few people file into his personal space to compliment and thank him for playing, but it doesn’t seem to phase him. He doesn’t flinch or cower away. The smile that eases across his face is so genuine that you can feel yourself being compelled into his orbit as well. 

You remain behind the bar, however. 

“Hey, lady, are you deaf or something?” A man taps his empty beer glass down on the bar in front of you, clearly intoxicated or at least halfway there. “Gimme another.” 

Alex is quick to pick up your slack, sliding up alongside you to give the guy a fresh glass. “Take a chill pill, man,” he says, fixing the guy with a firm look. 

“I’m Eric fucking Rutherford, and she’s on the clock.” He belches after taking a few big gulps. “She can visit la-la land on her own time. Shit, I’m going to go take a piss,” he grumbles. 

Eddie hears the whole exchange even though he wishes he hadn’t. He hears everything nowadays.

You shoot Alex a tired, apologetic smile. What you don’t see is Eddie placing his guitar on the stage and following Eric into the bathroom. 

Another perk of being undead is that nobody scares him anymore. 

“You can clock out early if you want,” Alex insists. “It’s only gonna get crazier.” 

The loud squeak of the hinges pierce through the air as Eddie slips through the bathroom door. Eric gives him a charged glance before unzipping his pants and taking care of his business. Eddie’s heavy boots clunk against the wet tile as he makes his way to the urinal right beside the man, staring down into the dingy ceramic.

“You a fairy or something? All this space and you wanna be right up under me.” Eddie can hear the man’s heartbeat speed up in his chest. Not from fear, fear sounded different. This was more like hopefulness.

Like a secret desire packed down so tight it was begging for a reason to be set free. Upon finishing, Eric zips his pants and gives Eddie another look, “Well, are you?”

Eddie’s jaw ticks as he shadows Eric to the sink. “What does matter to you?” He clocks the wedding band on the man’s ring finger. 

It’s hard to make out a reflection amid all the cracks and scribbled writing on the mirror, but Eric can see Eddie looming behind him like a stone wall. They lock eyes, and there’s something about Eddie’s gaze that makes it hard to look away. The man has no choice but to let down his facade. 

There was an inexplicable force willing him to do so. An inhuman compulsion. Eddie can’t bring himself to feel bad for leveraging an ability he seldom used. 

In a ruse of friendliness, he pulls out a couple sheets of paper towels and hands them to Eric. “Now you’re just stringing me along and playing hard to get,” the man accuses. “There’s a motel right across the street if you wanna drop the act.”

“No thanks,” Eddie says cooly. 

That startles a laugh out of him. “No thanks? Yeah, right—” 

Eric's face pales when dark veins begin to snake beneath Eddie’s eyes. 

Back in the main room, your head snaps up from wiping the bar when Eric bursts out of the bathroom, letting out a string of terrified expletives. He nearly trips over himself as he casts numerous glances over his shoulder, but nobody’s chasing after him. 

Multiple people call out to ask what’s wrong, but he chokes on his breath when he tries to speak. Seeing the intense flush of his face makes your heartbeat pound in your ears like Jim’s drumming. The tempo swells when he locks eyes with you. 

Eddie listens from the bathroom as he splashes his face with cold water. 

“I’m sorry, alright?” Eric forces out. “We’re cool now, okay? No more bad blood.”

You nod, frozen in place at the realization of the only person who could make him this afraid. With the acceptance of your apology, he darts out the front door on shaky legs. 

•••

Not even ten minutes later, you’re scolding Eddie after accepting his offer to drive you home. It’s an invitation you could’ve passed on, if you hadn’t long regretted your decision to bike to work. Eddie’s van smells earthen, with faint undertones of tobacco and the cinnamon car freshener hanging from their rearview. 

He can hear the waver of concern in your voice as you carry on. 

“And what if he tells?” you ask. “What if he recognized you?”  

“He didn’t recognize me. And he won’t tell,” Eddie says, a little too sure for your liking. 

“You don’t know that, Eddie. Jesus.” You slouch back into the passenger seat and go silent for the first time during the entire ride. Only then does guilt begin gnawing at you, relentless nips all over your body. 

Eddie was at least trying to get back out into the world, and here you were scolding him for standing up in your defense. 

You look over to his hands as he drives, the glint of his rings. Eddie has pretty, slender fingers. He can feel you staring, but doesn’t respond because he has no regrets. Not only have his senses been amplified since the Upside Down, but so has his willingness to defend. He’d spent so long running from everyone and everything, as if being a coward was woven into the inner fabric of his being. But not anymore. 

There was an unyielding sense of protectiveness you managed to stir within him. That’s how everything felt when it came to you. He has to fight to ignore how aware he is of you. Your aura, your scent, the way your blood smells sweeter now that it was just the two of you making passage through the night. 

He licks over his teeth and his tingling gums, ignoring the relentless pull of desire. 

Looking out the passenger side window as the town passes by only works for so long. “Hey, Eddie?” you murmur. “I’m sorry for raising my voice. I just worry.” 

You shrink in on yourself when he looks over at you with more fondness than you deserve. “It’s alright,” he says.

A smile finally twitches at his lips when you hold out your pinky. He indulges you, hooking his larger one around yours. 

•••

It’s no surprise he receives an invitation inside your trailer once you’ve arrived. It feels weird being back in the small, othered community that raised him. There were a few occasions he’d come to visit Wayne at night when nobody could see. Other than that, it was the older man who came to him instead. 

The small space is cozy and lived-in. A courtesy of one of your aunt’s who’d fled Hawkins but was willing to rent the place out for cheap. Eddie’s enhanced scent allows him to perceive every note. It’s overwhelming in the best way. He could tune it all out if he wanted, but he’s greedy when it comes to you. 

You head to your bedroom as he takes off his boots by the door, bracing a hand on the wall. With owl-like eyes, watching the sway of your hips in your jeans as you disappear. Then he begins to look around in curiosity. There are numerous pictures of your friends and family. Shelves on the walls that hold different frames, trinkets, and figurines. The layout of the trailer is similar to his Uncle Wayne’s in that the living room and kitchen bleed into each other, but you’ve made a more functional utilization of the space. 

It soon registered that the shuffling sound coming from your room is you attempting to tidy up. A smile tugs at his lips. 

A small squeak escapes you as you turn around from closing a drawer of your dresser. Eddie is leaning in the doorway with an amused look on his face, and you can’t even conjure up an excuse for what you’re doing. 

“Can I come in?” he asks. 

“No,” you huff, a grin threatening to break through. 

A chuckle shakes his chest. “Please?” 

There’s a giddy flutter within you. “You’re banned for life.” 

“For life,” he repeats as he saunters in. “That’s not fair.” 

Your room reminds him of Robin’s, though it’s not as reflective of your more teenage interests. There’s more of a mature refinement that still brims with personality. 

Eddie walks over to your small, somewhat cluttered desk and picks up your journal as your back is turned away. 

When your eyes land on him again, he’s sitting on the foot of your bed, the book flipped open. His gaze is fixed on the first, where your name and the date you started writing in it are scrawled in your handwriting. He’d never be so bold in invading your privacy. He only picked it up to get a rise out of you. As expected, your heart sinks into your feet at the sight. 

“Eddie, no,” you whine, rushing over to swipe it away, completely unaware that you’ve crowded between his legs. He angles it out of your reach with a teasing grin on his face. “It’s not funny, I’m being serious.” Still, a helpless laugh bubbles out of you in betrayal. 

You reach for it again, but this time he falls onto his back, extending his arm above his head. 

Placing one knee on the bed between his spread legs, you lean forward, bracing with one hand as you reach for your journal with the other. Eddie’s breath catches when your chest brushes against his face, warmth flooding his cheeks and pleasantly melting lower and lower. 

In an effort to save himself from doing something stupid, he slips his free hand under your sweater to press his fingers into your skin like he’s playing the piano. A small squeak escapes you before you tumble into the sweetest laughter. 

You scoot further down his body to escape and, in your warm, giggly haze, capture his lips in a kiss that sends both of your heads soaring into the clouds.  

You tell yourself it’s only to get him to stop tickling you, but it’s more than that. It’s a bursting forth of every feeling that reawakened the moment you learned he was still alive. All the lost years come rushing back for their recompense in the intoxicating heat of your kiss. 

Eddie drops the journal in favor of settling both hands on your waist to steady you above him. Even then, he’s not sure how long he’ll be able to carry on like this. A familiar sensation starts up in his gums, and he makes a small sound in the back of his throat that sounds grieved. 

Almost immediately, you pull away, staring down at his spit slicked lips. “Are you okay?” you murmur, studying his face with concern.  

He nods in place of speaking, but when you lean back in to peck his lips, he makes that same sound again, pushing gently at your waist. 

“Hold on,” he breathes. 

Your brows furrow until you get the idea to raise his upper lip with a gentle thumb. For the first time, up close and personal, you see that his fangs have extended. Weakly, he fights against you to close his mouth, but you don’t move your finger. There’s a sense of wonder in your eyes as you study them, pearly and sharp. 

He feels exposed, like he’s an animal receiving an inspection. 

“Alright,” he halfheartedly urges, turning his head away to get you to stop. In doing so, the sharp end of his right fang ends up nicking your thumb. Wincing, you step back to your full height, allowing him to sit up. 

“Shit, I’m sorry. Lemme see?” He raises your hand to assess the damage. It’s nothing major. A trickle of blood runs from the puncture. 

“I’m okay.” 

He doesn’t let go of your hand. Neither has he looked away from the blood. It’d be easy for him to slip your finger into his mouth and suck it off. But he doesn’t, unsure he’d be able to stop. 

That’s when a willing look sparks in your eyes. 

“It’s okay,” you assure, recalling how your own childhood consisted of quickly sucking away the blood from minor cuts and scrapes. It was nothing. You trust him. 

Eddie blinks, conflicted, then presses his lips to the pad of your thumb as if he’s offering a kiss. You feel the wet warmth of his tongue as he pokes it out. Your blood is too good. If he never drank it again, this would be more than enough. All he needed was one taste when it came to you.   

•••

𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻 𝟷𝟿𝟿𝟶

Leaving Hawkins

Come Again Soon 

Passing the sign had almost felt wrong, but the breeze flowing in from the cracked windows didn’t. Neither did the gentle weight of Eddie’s hand resting on your thigh. Even now, as you and Eddie wander your way around a carnival two towns over, the words lingered around the edges of your mind. For a fleeting second, you allow yourself to imagine that the two of you were bound to never return.  

Golden hour paints everything in an ethereal glow. The air smells like pumpkin spice, cider, and straw. Lights from various attractions twinkle and flash like small colorful stars. Laughter and thrilled screams seem to have permanent residency in the air. So much life pulsed all around. More than Hawkins would likely ever see again for a long time. Eddie looks over at you when you squeeze his hand. 

“Doing alright?” you ask quietly. 

He nods. “You?” 

You nod. “I’ve been working up the courage to ask you to go in a photo booth with me.” 

A surprised laugh slips past Eddie’s lips. “What do you mean courage?”

“Last time we went in one together, you said never again,” you mock the sound of his voice, recalling the flustered look on his face. It’d been your fault, your hands had wandered, drawing eyes when you exited the booth. 

“Yeah, well, I changed my mind,” he says. 

Upon crawling into the next available booth, it’s a tight fit. Your thighs press together, but you can’t bring yourself to mind. Sometimes you couldn’t get close enough. The black curtains hanging on either side surprisingly manage to block out a decent amount of light. With a giddy smile on your face, you cling to Eddie’s free arm as he pays and presses the buttons necessary to advance past the main menu. When it comes time to take your series of photos, a brief sense of panic washes over you.

“Wait, we never planned out our poses.” 

Eddie chuckles as he drapes an arm over your shoulders and kisses your temple. “We can wing it. We’re good at that.”

Turns out he’s right. You can’t stop gushing at the strip of black-and-white pictures once you’re back on the outside. Out of the four, your favorite one is where you’re both smiling into the camera with your head resting on his shoulder. It strikes you then, how fortunate you are to be able to spend moments like this with him. If you could comb through entire dictionaries, ‘easy’ was still the word you’d settle on when it came to Eddie. It was easy to exist alongside him. He was kind in a way you’d never experienced in a relationship. And funny in a quiet sort of way you wouldn’t necessarily expect at first glance.  

“Prettiest girl in the world,” Eddie compliments as you start walking again. “Got me wrapped around your finger.” 

Instead of responding, you hook your arm around his and tuck yourself closer. A brief silence stretches between you, but the sounds of the fairgrounds continue all around like magic. You’ll remember this evening forever. 

“Thank you,” Eddie eventually says, tone thick with sincerity. You don’t ask what he’s referring to because you know it’s not one singular thing.

Even during that melancholic night when you almost hit him with your car, he knew there was something about you he wouldn’t be able to shake for a long time. Had he not seen you again, he still would’ve remembered your face, the sound of your voice, how evident it was that you cared, even in your tiredness. But then Luna led you back to him, and you brought him back to life. You showed him that there was so much worth living for, that it was okay to mess up sometimes. There was nothing to gain when you never took a chance. 

Eventually, you find yourselves in line for the ferris wheel. By the time you reach front, the sun has surrendered its golden glow to a calmer pink hue settling closer to the horizon. The lights from all the rides look particularly nice twinkling in the budding twilight. 

The cart rocks gently as you and Eddie board with care. Once you’re settled and the wheel continues its revolution, everything below no longer seems as grand. The game stands, food booths, kiddie roller coasters, countless fairgoers walking around. There’s a flutter in your gut from the new height, and you welcome it. 

When Eddie interlocks his fingers with yours, you look down at your joint hands, a smile creeping onto your face. Before you know it, you’ve reached the top. You almost expect it to keep going, but it eases to a complete stop, your cart swaying softly with the sudden stillness. 

“Sweetheart,” Eddie says. You meet his gaze. His eyes are dark like they always are, seemingly looking straight into your soul. 

Rather than continuing whatever he was going to say, he cups your face and presses his lips to yours. A pleasant warmth rushes down to your toes as if you weren’t already on top of the world. Eddie is a gentle kisser, always acutely aware of the thirst you stirred within him. One he’d never quite felt before, even when he wasn’t hungry. You’ve learned his cues, when to keep leaning in or pull away. Kissing him is exhilerating in that way. 

You’re too wrapped up in the softness of his lips to pay any mind to the teenagers on the cart behind you attempting to stifle their giggles. 

Nor do you mind the brief stinging sensation of your lower lip catching one of Eddie’s fangs. The indulgent lap of his tongue that occurs in time with the tangy, metallic taste that registers on your own. 

All around, the world carries on. Even lonesome Hawkins where it rests miles away. 

-

Thank you so much for reading! Any interaction is greatly appreciated, I promise I see it all.

Feel free to let me know what you think. (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

MORE

[the-moon-files]

I’m not sure if I’ve said this one already or not, but I wanted to tell you anyways! It’s about the humans-are-not-hylians AU!

You know the uncanny valley evolution? That thing where when you look at something that resembles a living being too closely and some part of your mind is screaming that it’s not whatever it looks like and to get away from it? Imagine that with the reader! They can spot shapeshifters easily because of this, but it instills the same extreme primal fear we’d experience, so it might be hard for the reader to confront them at first and they’ll instead just tell the Chain for a while.

This might be a double edged sword, though, because when Twilight is in his wolf form, the reader still gets that same feeling when “Wolfie” is looking at them, whether or not they know it’s Twilight. In this case, the first time the reader spots Wolfie approaching the camp, they probably freak out and try to avoid him, even if the Links are okay with him or if he seems familiar to them.

The bottom line is that wolf isn’t a wolf, so what is he?

“It’s okay, he’s a really friendly wolf!”

“...That’s not a wolf...”

Sorry i took forever to respond!! im slow as always, life is too busy for even my hobbies lately sobs 😭

bro this is especially true bc someone looked back at TP games and how he looks in his “wolf” form, and apparently he is actually a dog lol - like at most a wolf-hybrid, i added this in to support this Hyrule-is-hella-Uncanny AU lol

Moon: Guide! - Gender Neutral/Masc!Reader (”you”/he/him)

Orbit: Short headcanons

Stars: mentions of most of our Links <3

Comets & Meteors: CWs: typical LU/Loz violence, mild swearing, etc & TWs: mild possible derealization trigger, talk of Link’s Awakening and Koholint.

Please comment if I missed any. /gen

The Yiga clan members have never fooled you, not Once in person, unlike back when hyrule was still a video game

it was the constant smell of bananas, the way their eyes were always a little unfocused or they moved their head to move around their eyes, rather than their actual pupils moving, the facial muscles all stiff, usually stuck in an uncomfortable smile-

it makes more sense once u realize that they technically have a mask under that glamour hylian face, but its never not hilarious to see Wild look over his shoulder at you before approaching a lone traveler on the roads and watch him get increasingly frantic to get ur attention to see if theyre yiga lmao

u bet ur ass every link was relying on you on their adventures to know shapeshifters/illusions/glamours/etc. on sight and tell them to better prep them/warn them

tbh they all got at least a little better at being able to tell the difference the longer they heard you point out stuff/talk abt exactly why it was off-putting

(that said some of ur heroes are better at it than others, both in general, and certain aspects of it: like Twilight isn’t able to pick up illusions/glamours for the life of him, literally, sometimes, but he is more likely to figure out shapeshifters by scent after you Guided him)

(no, your heart didnt crack a little after learning that the boys had a harder time with deceit after you stopped playing the game = “were forced to leave after their adventure” bc while they were better at detecting it, they werent on ur human level yet..)

(…the only deception you ever really fell for was Koholint. It was so painful too, because Legend quietly disclosed to you one late night that you would constantly get strange feelings/uncanny disturbances, but were never able to put a name to it for him, which both made you jumpy/paranoid on the island, but made him regret ever letting his guard down all the more or feel guilty for what felt like dismissing ur instincts the more he relaxed… Legend never doubted your sense for the uncanny ever again. He takes it seriously every time now.

When you feel as if you should apologize, he tells u not to, that these days he takes comfort in it actually, it makes him feel safer. Legend looks to your face for confirmation that something isn’t a dream, and if you look at ease, so is he.)

its the way you casually laugh at Twi being called “Wolfie” when he’s obviously a wolf-dog hybrid or just a big dog

and when everyones confused u just explain smth smth, wolf heads are larger in comparison to their body, their legs are narrow, their paws are big, dogs are like the oppposite, or way more proportional like “Wolfie” is, dogs bob around when they run like “wolfie”, and have shorter legs,

smth smth wolves cant have eye colors like blue, only dogs/wolf-dog hybrids can silly-

and Wolfie is just like, 😐 😑 😐

turning around and walking away, bc hylias knotted fucking braid- he really cant escape the dog accusations now, you literally used ur freaky truth-seeing instinct and read his shapeshifter ass from head to literal toe/paw-

Wild/Hyrule look fascinated, Wind and Legend cant breath theyre laughing so hard, Time is coughing suspiciously into his fist and pops back up smirking, Four is laughing but also encouraging you to keep going, Sky is desperately trying to keep it together while also trying to get Twi to come back lmao, Wars is literally pointing and laughing ashkljdl-

ok but Twi gets his revenge later by tricking you into yapping abt how Hyrule/Four/Time all kind of look “off” sometimes too

like how u swear Rulie is glowing subtly when the moon is full, or how the world distorts behind his back sometimes,

or how Four’s eyes change colors all the time, his fighting style looks like its rotating between 4 diff ppl’s techniques,

or how Time’s face wrinkles like smile lines/crows feet at the corner of his eyes will randomly appear and disappear, how he’ll have some stubble one day then 3 days later despite having not shaven (u literally saw him wake up and do his morning routine) it’ll disappear like it was never there in the first place-

and when Twi has stopped asking you abt the others as they all reel over the knowledge of what all u can tell abt them,

(ur quietly relieved no one asked abt Wild.

You resolve urself to just lie if anyone asks, even to Wild himself.)

☆

hey im alive!! im slow yknow how it is,

ive been doing too much, and i cant wait to be done with this class so i can have free time guilt free again 🥲

god thats one good thing abt getting out of academia i dont miss and would only wish on my worst enemy,

the anxiety of doing smth, even necessary stuff like eating/sleeping/showering, and feeling liek you should be doing homework instead, god its so awful

cant wait to feel like an adult with my own life again lmao

that certification better work and get me a white collar job goddamit 🤞

anyway, hope ur all having a good weekend,

and just to let u know, im so happy acc that im alive to see the first zelda game that actually follows what i originally thought the plot of zelda games was when i was a kid lmao

(zelda as the protag, saving link!!)

Peace out,

🌙

[glorfindel-of-imladris]

I've mentioned this in passing in this post, but this is hands down my favourite line in The Fellowship of the Ring. The line speaks volumes about Glorfindel, and yet the details are easily missed by a first-time reader travelling along with Frodo and friends, and that's because not once does Glorfindel explain how significant his words and actions were. Yet there is so much to unpack! It is only left to us to appreciate them after learning more about this world.

“There are few even in Rivendell that can ride openly against the Nine…”

Again, Glorfindel only mentioned this in passing and did not explain, but the reason for this is because the only ones Rivendell would send to ride openly against the Nazgûl were special members of the Eldar: the Calaquendi, old Elves from Valinor and who have seen the light of the Two Trees. Gandalf later explains that these Elves “live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and Unseen they have great power”. The Nazgûl, as we learn, were wraiths that reside only in the Unseen world, and so to anyone else, they were invisible.

We know there were very few Calaquendi remaining in Middle-earth by the Third Age, and most of them reside in Rivendell. But even among them, likely only the warriors could be sent to go after the Nagzûl, chief of Sauron's servants. This early, we get a clue that Frodo and company have met someone extraordinary.

“It was my lot to take the Road…”

By “Road”, Glorfindel meant The Great East-West Road, an ancient road that cuts across Eriador from the Grey Havens to Rivendell and the Misty Mountains. This would have been the most perilous of the roads because it would have been the most obvious path passing through the Shire. Later, during the Council of Elrond, it would be mentioned that Sauron would be expecting the Ring to go from the Shire either to the Grey Havens or to Rivendell, both routes reached primarily via the Road.

It was to be expected therefore that this is the one path most guarded by the Enemy. Again, Glorfindel only mentions his task securing the Road in passing, but the fact that he got the most obvious and thus most perilous path speaks volumes of his ability and position in Rivendell. Only a few deemed able to ride openly against the Nine were sent out, and out of them, Glorfindel was the one sent to secure the most dangerous route. What ability and skill must this Elf have to be entrusted with such a task!

"I came to the Bridge of Mitheithel, and left a token there, nigh on seven days ago."

The Bridge of Mitheitel, or The Last Bridge, is the only way to cross the great River Hoarwell (Mitheitel) from Weathertop to Rivendell. Aragorn, as much as he could, avoided the Road, himself knowing the dangers possibly waiting for them there. Later though he tells the Hobbits, "I am afraid we must go back to the Road here for a while, [for we] have now come to the River Hoarwell... There is no way over it below its sources in the Ettenmoors, except by the Last Bridge on which the Road crosses."

Aragorn and the Hobbits therefore went to the Bridge dreading to encounter the Nazgûl, only to find it safe. Instead, Aragorn finds an elf-stone in the middle of the bridge, which gives him hope. We now learn that it was Glorfindel who left it there, for he has secured the Bridge, likely knowing how important it was to do so because unlike all other paths, this was the one path that Frodo and company would inevitably need to take. If the Enemy wanted to lay an ambush, they would have done so at the Bridge; strategically Glorfindel understood this, and coming after them at the Bridge was exactly what the company needed from him for them to stay safe.

“Three of the servants of Sauron were upon the Bridge, but they withdrew and I pursued them westward. I came also upon two others, but they turned away southward.”

Here once again is Glorfindel describing something incredible in the simplest of ways: the Nazgûl actually flee from him! Thus far in the book, the Nazgûl were the first source of terror for Frodo's company as well as for us, the readers, yet here Glorfindel was riding about with bells on his horse, not even trying to hide at all. He is the one hunting the Nazgûl and not the other way around, this was made very clear.

Glorfindel has been my favourite character from the start. He got me from their first meeting because he gave the Hobbits a sense of safety, even though they and we perhaps do not yet fully appreciate who he was and what he was capable of. As we read through the rest of the books, and even beyond through The Silmarillion, The Fall of Gondolin, The Peoples of Middle-earth and all these other books that share his history, I only learned to love him all the more. Years later, having read all these other books, I still sometimes just sit in awe thinking back on this first encounter in this first book, in the Fellowship of the Ring, about how Frodo and his friends met this seemingly humble Elf, who in actuality was literally an Elf of legend. Yet apparently one would not think it, encountering Glorfindel on the road.

[harksness]

No Going Back

Summary: An incurable illness plagues you, something one of a kind that has never been seen before. It corrupts magic, leaving you unable to use your powers without risking death or worse. Someone wants all of your unused power themselves, and a reluctant Agatha Harkness is convinced to keep you safe after some bribing.

A/N: aaa I've had the idea for this for like 2yrs now!!! I'm super excited to be finishing it and posting it finally!! It's my first in depth, planned fanfic and I'm super excited to share it I hope you guys like it <3

(Also lowk paranoid that some of the creative decisions I made for this fic are gonna end up being explained in the show so just nevermind that if it happens we're just here for some fun romance and smut with Agatha ok)

WC: 3k

Anxiety gnaws away at your insides as you flick on your blinker, knuckles tightening around the steering wheel as you turn down that familiar dirt road that you hate so much. That long, winding dirt road that also leads to the house that you hate so much.

You try the breathing exercises your therapist taught you. The slow, calculated inhales, the holding your breath, and slow calculated exhales, but it does nothing to relieve the feeling in your chest that’s suffocating you. 

The cars headlights cut through the darkness, thick layers of tall, old trees swarming each side of the road as their branches bow overhead. You can’t even see the night sky through the thick layers of leaves.

You’re positive that if you had consulted your therapist about this little visit before coming, she would have told you that it’s not a good idea. That reopening old wounds after basically being no contact for four years would undo a lot of healing and hard work. 

But, when you listened to your fathers urgent voicemail, you knew you needed to come. You had no choice. The deal you made with him before leaving was more than fair. He agreed to leave you alone and only contact you if it was a necessary emergency. And you agreed to that more than fair deal.

He wanted you to be as far away from him as possible, and you wanted the same thing. To be far, far away from him and any reminders of what happened to you, your childhood and the toxic magical community you grew up in.

You’re sure that you were only able to get away because of your little defect. And because after your mother died, he immediately remarried and your father didn’t waste time popping out plenty of new babies, pureblooded heirs that could flawlessly wield their old blood magic unlike you.

If your father called you back home you know it’s a serious, urgent matter. And that only makes your chest grow tighter as you turn the last bend and your childhood home comes into view.

“Well.. Here we go..”

You grumble to yourself, the tall, menacing house looming over you amongst all of the trees. The night sky actually cuts through these parts, the moonglow illuminating the house and its surroundings as you pull up to the front door. Immediately you kill the engine and shift your car into park, leaning forward to peer up at the house.

The pristine white under the moonlight makes it look like it’s glowing. It stands tall and proud and perfect, no chipping or dirt in sight. A black roof sits on top, perfectly black framed windows spread along the sides of the house, and not a single one is lit up with evidence of life. Curiously, you keep peering, checking for a sign of anyone being in the house. With a deep breath you grab your keys and your bag and exit the car.

It’s dead silent, save for the sound of crickets and the rustling of leaves in the trees when a soft breeze blows through. You pause as you take a deep breath to steady yourself. Cautiously, you walk around to the other side of the house, leaning over and peering just enough to see if any lights were turned on. 

Nope. Nothing. All of the windows are black as pitch. You groan, pinching your eyes shut as you try to soothe yourself by rubbing your fingers on your forehead.

Whatever. You’ll just go inside and call your father. You’d be dead meat if you left without his permission, anyways. He sounded very urgent. Deathly urgent. With a deep exhale pushing past your lips, you walk back around the house, the wind chilling your cheeks as you start to make your way up the front steps. 

No door handle, just a block of smooth painted wood that looks like a door. A wave of exhaustion overtakes you as you press your palm to the smooth center of the wood, your features dropping as an electric blue glow flows in ripples over the door before it parts for you, splitting down the middle and swinging open.

The main hall is eerily dark and you have to force yourself to move forward. The moonlight is bright enough to where you can see, but everything is shadowed. The hall stretches out far, down the length of the entire house before leading to the wide, open stairs that would take you up to the expansive second level. 

A hard, loud slam echoes through the halls and shakes the house. It’s enough for you to let out a scream and jump as you fling yourself around to the source of the noise, noticing the front doors are sealed closed. Your face scrunches in confusion at the sight. It should just.. Close like a normal door as soon as you are comfortably in the threshold of the house. Never have you seen it linger or slam like that before, not even in your years growing up here.

You sigh, deciding to brush it off even though you know something is wrong, more so because you know that you’re incapable of protecting yourself like a normal witch would be able to so gaslighting yourself is just the easier option for now.

Besides, whatever’s wrong can’t be life endangering to you. The property is warded and safe, it’s basically impossible to get through to the house let alone inside of it. Hundreds of years of magical wards and barriers make sure of that. So, you grab your phone out of your coat pocket, your fingers cold as you pull up your fathers contact and press the call button.

You raise the phone to your ear as the sound of the monotonous chimes ring through the silent rooms as you pass through them, cautiously walking into the family room. The sound of your boots is muffled by the thick carpet as you walk over it to peer out of the window. The wind rushes against the side of the house, the echo of the noise whispering through the silent halls of your childhood home.

“Okay, I’m at the house. What’s going on and where are you? Please… Just call me back.”

Lowering the phone with a tense sigh, you drop it back into your coat pocket before turning back to the window. You decide to analyze the treeline for any sign of something being off, and you see something that makes your heart drop into the pit of your stomach.

One of the protective runes carved into one of the trees has been singed off. You can tell by the sizzling burn marks that it was magic, the bark of the tree burned all the way through and to the wood underneath, leaving no sign of the runes that were previously there. Your throat dries up.

Whoever did that had to have broken through two other protective barriers on the property. It’s tough magic and in order to break through it… You’d need some scarily powerful magic on your side.

There’s only been a few times over the decades since the house was built that someone has been able to break through the protective barriers. The last time was when your mother was assassinated and you were left for dead when you were a child.

You can’t stop the panic from bubbling in your chest this time, not knowing what to do or how to protect yourself. Your mind is frantic as you search for a solution, your hand moving to fist the pendant hanging from your neck, but something catches your eye and you freeze. In the reflection of the window you see her, a woman reclining in your fathers favorite chair. The back of the extravagant, plush red chair reaches high, the woman is slumped down in it, her black heeled boots dangling over one armrest of the chair as she gently swings her feet back and forth, the fabric of her purple skirt swaying with each movement.

Her body is twisted just a bit so that her front is tilted towards you, her chin resting in her palm. She’s donning a very traditionally witchy getup. Her wild, brown curls fall off of her head in crazy waves as it cascades over her shoulders. Her lips are quirked in the snarkiest smirk you’ve ever seen, your chest tightening even further when you notice her bright blue eyes are planted right on you. 

You whip around to face her, your eyes widening when you see her with your own two eyes and not in the window's reflection, confirming this is real and not a figment of your imagination.

“Oh my goodness! It took you long enough to notice me! If this were a horror movie, or if I actually wanted to kill you, you would’ve been dead the second those doors slammed shut, sweetheart.”

The woman's smooth voice has a taunting edge to it. She swings her feet over and around and they land against the carpet with a dramatic thump! before she pushes herself out of the chair and onto her feet.

“Thank god I don’t want to kill you.”

Her smirk drops into a warning smile, her voice doing the same. You’re gripping your pendant so tightly that you can feel it cutting into the skin of your palm.

“What do you mean? What do you want?”

You ask, your voice shaky and soft. She drops her gaze to your fist, pointing at it.

“That’s what I want.”

Her eyes meet yours again as she takes a few steps towards you. 

“Are you gonna be a good girl and give it to me? Or do I have to take it from you?”

She holds out her hand, and that’s when your gaze catches on the pendant on her neck. Your eyes widen in horror, taking a slow step backwards.

Every witch knows about Agatha Harkness. About her long list of crimes, both magical and not. Especially those of you connected to the elder families. She’s successfully stolen from some, even killed a few. She was a suspect in your mothers murder and your assault, but was ruled out for having been out of the country at the time.

“Why do you want it?”

You stutter through the sentence, trying to distract her for a moment as you mentally prepare yourself for what you’re about to do. You just keep hoping, praying to whatever god is listening, that you can get your magic to work right just this once.

“Stop stalling, honey.. You know exactly why I want it.”

You take her words as your signal to call on your magic, and it appears in a sickly blue-ish yellow glow, enveloping you as you feel it wash over you, turning you invisible. You start cursing internally, knowing your magic won’t last long enough to keep you safe. But you have to try something. 

You don’t know what to do. Just run to your car, which probably won’t work, hide, which also probably won’t work, or somehow try to distract her which is your best bet but also probably won’t work.

So, you start booking it down the hall, the hard thumps of your feet on wood rattling through the old house as you dart for the stairs. Your fingers wrap around the bannister and you start running up the steps, taking them two steps at a time as you desperately search your mind for a good place to hide. 

“It’s funny you think you can hide, sweetheart.”

Agatha calls after you, and you can already hear her making her way up the stairs. She’s taking her time as she follows after you. You bolt down the hall, finding your old bedroom. When you throw open the door you’re not surprised to see that they renovated it, it seems to be an art studio for your step mother now.

You step back into the hallway, remaining invisible as you quietly move out of the way. Agatha is making her way down the hall, her robes and long hair flowing dramatically behind her as she approaches the door you flung open.

“Oh, come on.. Just make this easier for the both of us and come on out.”

She laughs as she sticks her head into the room, surveying it. She must be suspicious that you’re not actually in there. You take the opportunity to do something you’ve never tried before, something stupid that could kill you- and you call on your magic.

You raise your hand, closing your eyes as you carefully begin to draw your power from the pendant around your neck. It’s unstable in its pure form like this, your anxiety bubbling in your chest as you draw it into your hand, feeling it crackle and pop like a fire. You feel the invisibility spell wash off of you like water, your fingers flicking backwards in time with the powerful bursts of magic.

You build the magic steadily, higher and higher as you wait for her to turn around.

When she finally does, you twist your arms, using all of your strength to fling the yellow-blue ball of magic right into the woman. She flies backwards, and you hear the crashing noises as she falls right into all of the easels and canvases.

Peering through the door, you see her in a clump on the floor with the broken and tattered art supplies. She blows a long piece of thick brown hair that hand landed in her face out of the way with a dramatic puff of her lips.

“I thought you couldn’t use magic..”

Agatha grumbles as she climbs to her feet, dusting herself off. She pauses, an uneasy look overtaking her face.

“What.. What was that?”

She groans, wrapping her arms around her stomach where your magic had landed. You let out a breathy, surprised laugh. 

“What did you do to me!? I thought you couldn't use magic!”

Agatha yells at you, rage seeping through her voice as it booms in the halls of the house. Fear grips you again as you straighten up, not bothering to give her an explanation.

She groans out in pain behind you, and you start running. Your feet heavy thumps as you book it down the hall, thinking you finally got a chance.

Not only does she need to realize what's happening to her, she needs to purge it from her body. Someone that powerful shouldn't have an issue dealing with it, but fighting it out should stall just long enough for you to get away.

Or so you thought.

Something hits you so hard that you fall to the ground, landing roughly on your right arm. The force of your body hitting the hard wood beneath you causes your head to snap against the floor too, a loud yelp of pain pushing out of your throat as pain shoots in hot flashes across your skull and down your arm.

A few seconds later you’re blinking dumbly as you try to regain your senses, your head ringing and vision blurry from your hard fall. Your eyes roll in your head, a groggy groan escaping your lips as you desperately try to pick yourself off the ground.

Your right arm is stuck. Shoulder to hand, as if it’s superglued to the wood beneath you. Desperately you pull on your arm, trying to sit up to no avail as you hear the woman approaching you from behind.

You’re basically a bug that walked into a sticky trap, helpless as you watch your impending demise approach you. You turn your head to the sound of boots on the wooden floor, seeing Agatha sauntering towards you, purple skirt swaying around the ankles of her black boots. You’re just barely able to make out a coherent thought through all of the pain and fog clouding your mind- you’re fucked.

Your heart is pounding in your chest, your head throbbing in time with every beat as the woman crouches down before you. You’re unable to focus on her features, desperately wincing and pinching your eyes shut to try and get rid of the pain. Her fingers wrap around your jaw, biting softly into your cheeks as she focuses your lolling head on her gaze.

“I’m sorry.. I didn’t mean for you to hit the ground that hard. Don’t wanna risk damaging that pretty face, hm?”

You blink rapidly as she starts to come into focus. You try to gargle out a response, but find yourself unable to as pain shoots through your skull. She coos at you with wide eyes, raising her free hand to run softly over the top of your head.

“At the very least, there’s gonna be a bump. At the very most, a concussion.. I really am sorry, but I needed this-”

Her hand is reaching towards your neck. Panic spikes in your chest when you realize she’s going to grab your necklace.

“N-no!”

You force the word past your lips in a desperate stutter, your voice echoing through the long hall so loudly that it surprises you. The witch before you even seems a bit taken off guard, curling her fingers back as she retreats her hand only slightly.

“What’s wrong with your magic..”

She asks, her voice soft and firm as her eyes narrow at you in curiosity. Panic is bubbling in your chest, rising in your throat.

“I don’t know.”

You whisper in return, before that all too familiar flash of blue-yellow magic lights up between the two of you. Agatha raises her hands, manifesting a wide, purple shield the exact moment your unstable magic collides with it. A loud noise sounds right when it collides with hers, shaking the house and echoing loudly in your ears. Your head flies in the opposite direction at the force, smacking against the floor once again as your vision goes black.

[kinokkotsu]

“Why were you ignoring my calls?” You were first greeted by your boyfriend’s sternness as soon as you got out of your workplace, the coffee shop.

Between you and Megumi, he used to be the first to reach out if anything did not seem to work out. But unlike him, lately, he had been acting like a kid. Regarding your two years age gap, he was only seventeen years old when he first confessed his feelings for you. Regarding that, he did not give you one hint of his childishness.

But after years into the relationship, you weren’t sure whether you should be happy or upset about him starting to act like a younger one with you.

You sighed into the freezing air, “Megumi, you know I need to put my phone on silent during work.” You got no response.

You turn to look at him. He was walking behind you, slowly on purpose. He had claimed that he would be there to prevent you from tripping over. A purple shawl was wrapped around his neck, its hugeness covering almost half of his face. He wasn’t even trying to look at you but rather on the road instead.

You pulled your legs to a stop, claiming a startled motive from the guy. “Why are you acting like this these days? Has something been bothering you? You seem like you merely want to walk with me because it’s your responsibility as a boyfriend, is that right?”

Your boyfriend looked clearly stunned. Wide eyes staring at you. “No- no. What? What does that even supposed to mean? Of course not.” He exhaled. “Let’s just go, it’s nothing like that. I promise.”

You pursed your lips. “Then speak.”

he attempted to pull your arm. “I swear it’s nothing,”

“I said, speak.” Hesitatingly, he pulled away his hand and ruffled his hair awkwardly. “Is it because I have not been answering your calls during the day? You clearly understand why I can’t so then wh—”

“Well, at times I get to pick you up earlier than the time we agreed. And sometimes I just have to sit and watch while guys hit on you when they order stuff. I know it’s your job but still I don’t like it.”

“Okay..” your voice came out as though it was a question. “Is that it?” He nodded, body moving closer to yours. He was not looking at you and you understood why he wasn’t. He was obviously embarrassed.

You coughed out a laugh and spread your arms wide open, hoping he would get the hint. Instantly, he brought his large body onto yours, suffocating you in his arms. He still refused to look at you in the eyes. You heaved in his shampoo scent as he buried his head in your neck.

“Don’t ever hide your words next time. You can always talk to me, okay?” You said, smiling as he nodded.

“You’re too sweet for your own good.” He held you tighter. “I almost got to invoke Mahoraga.”

You laughed at his little joke. Possibly he wouldn’t do that..Right?

[stxrvel]

the exile (1)

series summary. y/n knew that her whole life was outside the Palace, but it was hard to resist when the Crown Prince had been chasing her for as long as she could remember. doomed to an end where everything she loves has to be abandoned, y/n is forced to restart her life far from her mother, her village that saw her grow up and the man she loves. who would've thought that loving would come at such a high price…

pairing. prince!jungkook x f!reader

content. english is not my first lenguage! violence. royal themes. be-heading is still spoken of in this kingdom, nothing that will materialize. use of swords. someone is almost dying. a lot of anxiety.

a/n. ummm hello. i just wanted to leave this here. >:) hope you like it!! see you next time <3

series masterlist | bts masterlist | next

The fear you felt didn't allow you to raise your head. You could only watch the Queen's shoes, standing in front of you, her eyes carving your neck as if she wanted to break your body in two. Her cold and condescending words were echoing in your head, spinning around like an old spinning top that has no end. You knew this day might come someday, a voice in the back of your head was always reminding you that you were abusing borrowed time and that at some point the universe would put you where you deserved to be. Where you belonged.

There was no light at the end of the road. The beacon that guided you had lost its glow and you were wandering lost in the deep, cold ocean. You knew he could do nothing to help you. He hadn't even been allowed to come to the square. His punishment was going to be not being able to say goodbye, you knew this from the Queen's dry words, full of a forced rationality that spat from her mouth as the absolute truth. You didn't understand how anyone could be so cruel. How anyone could unleash tremendous fury against an act of kindness and innocence.

“Wangbi.”

A sob echoed through the crowd. The voice behind you caused you to shiver, the air rushing through your body aggravating your sensations to the point where you felt like you could freeze in the bright sunlight. You closed your eyes tightly, your hands clasped behind your back. She couldn't do that, what was she thinking?

“Wangbi,” she spoke again and your body almost moved forward out of instinct. The pressure you felt in your throat from holding back tears of helplessness was cutting off your breath, and you didn't know that the feeling of not being able to speak out of respect could be so suffocating. “Please, have mercy.”

You heard a struggle and a wail left your lips.

“Eommoni,” you raised your voice, lucky to be able to speak harshly and firmly. “Enough is enough. The Queen's will is greater than your wailing.”

Subtly, you averted your gaze from the queen's shoes and turned to observe your mother behind you. You saw first her eyes, filled with uncontainable tears unlike yours, an agonized expression adorning her face and you promptly felt that anguish, anger, guilt and reproach for not having been more careful as she told you. Then you saw the knights holding each of her arms, holding her in place as if she were a threat, as if she were capable of hurting the Queen for whatever incomprehensible reason.

“Don't make it worse,” you almost whispered, but the silence that dominated the square allowed your mother to understand and her face contracted in pain.

More sobs echoed in the square as you returned your gaze to the ground.

“No,” your mother cried, "Please have mercy on my daughter. I can't lose her- she's my only daughter!"

Many things were going through your head at the same time. The possibility that your mother would end up kneeling before the Queen like you was one of them. The mere thought caused you such a wave of panic that you could only pray that the Queen would have mercy on her. She was a mother too. Couldn't she think how that would make her feel if it were the other way around, and the crown prince was right where you were at that moment, and she was in the back screaming for her life and cornered as if she were a criminal just for wanting to save her son's life?

“I will pay for her mistakes, wangbi, take me instead. Please.”

The Queen's feet disappeared from your sight. The fear that began to run through your body made you shake your head unconsciously, fearful that your mother would be pushed to the center where you were. You looked up to see the Queen's face staring behind you, right where you knew your mother was struggling with the knights. Her face was empty, unable to hint at any thought through her expression. You knew the stories, you had heard some and witnessed others for yourself, and you knew she was not an accommodating, patient or even kind person.

The Queen was the most feared woman in the kingdom.

In that same square where you found yourself kneeling in the stinging sunlight, the same central place where the citizens' stalls were located, in the same place where they gathered every year to celebrate the Festival of Lights, the executions of more than 200 people had taken place in the last twenty years. There, where people gathered to shop, eat and celebrate, where children ran their dogs and peasants sold their potatoes, the Queen used it as an example of purgatory on earth. Every time an execution took place, it was a reminder that their lives did not belong to them, that nothing was really theirs, ours, but that the Palace held all the strength and fortitude to take whatever they wanted and whenever they wanted.

No one ever stood in this square without thinking that a stranger, a friend, a relative had been killed there. No one passed through the square without fearing that someday it might be their turn.

It was the constant reminder that we lived, not because freedom existed, but because the monarchs wished it so.

You had done so. You had passed the square enough times avoiding the right side of the left side of the square that was just in front of the palace down the mountain. That piece of the square was untouchable. All citizens avoided it like the plague. Some children told that, if you stepped beyond the invisible line, that line that was marked on the square because of the platform on which the Queen would put her guillotine or gallows, and which over time had become a floor space with a much lighter color than the rest of the floor of the square, you would be condemned and the Queen would end your life the next day. It was a cursed space.

And, at that moment, your knees were millimeters away from crossing the line between the filth of the square and the neatness of death.

The platform had not yet been set up. Knowing the Queen and understanding the background of your case, you knew she sought to give you a public humiliation. At least something that wouldn't allow her to remember you with respect, not even with compassion.

You followed her movements with your gaze until she stopped, not far from where you were. She raised her hand as a symbol of silence, and you knew your mother was making a great effort not to rant in front of her.

Your gaze was wary. You tried to catch any movement trying to decipher what the Queen was thinking as she looked at your mother. You wanted to understand what was going through her head so you could prepare yourself and know if you were going to have to offer up your already doomed life again to keep your mother from suffering the same wretched future.

“Is she your only daughter?”

“Yes,” your mother replied instantly, her voice riddled with hope only because the Queen had addressed her. It pained you to think that by that she thought she had earned it, that she had managed to save you from misfortune.

“And being your only daughter, couldn't you have educated her better to keep her filthy hands off what doesn't belong to her?” The Queen spat, her voice rising after each angrily spat word.

You watched your mother hold her breath and give you a look. You saw a flash of fury pass in front of her eyes and you shuddered at the possibility that she dared to defy you. You frowned at her, your head subtly shaking in refusal.

“I raised her as best I could, your majesty. My daughter is not a thief and not a bad person either.”

“The evidence showed otherwise,” the Queen countered with a raised head, almost daring your mother to speak further. “You yourself saw what they found inside your house, and you still have the gall to look me in the eye and beg for mercy?”

You held your breath for a few seconds. You knew the tone of voice the Queen had used, as well as all the people in the square. The only way the citizens had learned to understand, halfway, the Queen, was through her voice. Normally she doesn't say much, when she speaks it is in the calmest and most neutral tone possible. But now she was enraged. Angry. The way she raised her voice wasn't something you heard very often, but when you heard it it seemed like everyone around her ran away or hid as best they could.

That voice… It was the call of death.

“Wangbi, please,” your mother implored again. You watched her lower her head. Her legs lost the stability of her body which bent downward until the knights had to release her, and finally she knelt before the Queen. “I will pay the punishment. I will take her place.”

You turned to look at the Queen. And you could barely notice a glimmer of her expression, a gleam of satisfaction at seeing your mother beg for your life's salvation. It was disgusting. Repulsive. The shadow of a smile vanished almost instantly, and the unwavering expression of neutrality returned. Still, you could glimpse the anger on her face, and you knew she wasn't trying to hide it.

The Queen had her reasons for being angry. You knew it. Your mother knew it. The Queen was not wrong. Surely the decision was disproportionate, but acting out of insurmountable fear did not allow her to give way to more logical and just thinking.

Death was your punishment for the sin of loving.

And there could be no argument about it.

The Queen's dry laughter drew all eyes.

“I gave you a chance to stay in your home, and yet here you are, pleading for an indelible doom.”

The angry sound of your mother's voice sent chills down your spine:

“What kind of a mother would I be if I tried to let my daughter at the feet of her own death?”

The Queen embodied an eyebrow, you saw her shake her head from your place. The fingers of her hands intertwined in front of her body subtly moved the rings she wore that day, never taking her intense gaze from your mother's figure.

“It's the least he could do knowing what your daughter had done. What kind of parent would come for their child like a proud one when her actions shame their family?”

“What kind of parent would abandon his child?”

Your mother's cry was followed by silence.

The Queen took a step back, her face contracting in indignation. You closed your eyes tightly for a moment and inhaled trying to calm your heart, beating indiscriminately fast at the fear invading your mind.

It scared you even more that there was really nothing you could do. If you tried to get up, the knight to your left wasn't going to hesitate to swing his sword and slit your throat. If your mother got any closer to the Queen, there was going to be nothing left of her. You couldn't move, she couldn't move. If you kept it up, neither of you would ever leave the square.

The only thing you could do was to pray for a…

“Eommoni!”

… miracle.

You opened your eyes with a start. Your head frantically moved from side to side trying to search for the source of that voice, of his voice. Suddenly you felt that you really couldn't hold back the tears, that you couldn't be that strong, that you just didn't have the strength to make up your mind that this day must be the last day of your life. No. You couldn't. Not when he was there. Not when, surely, he had done everything he could to get there. Not when he had fought to reach you.

But…

What could you do to stop him?

“Eommoni!”

The angry exclamation filled the silence of the square again, and the people who had crowded around to watch began to murmur. That clearly did not go unnoticed by the Queen, who was looking at all the people in the square with narrowed eyes. You knew she knew they were going to start talking, asking questions.

The citizens looked at the Queen, looked at you, and then looked at the path the Crown Prince was coming down. You knew that the Queen knew it was only a matter of time before they put two and two together and came to a conclusion that would not please the monarch and the reputation of the Palace. You knew that her plan had fallen apart and was slipping through her fingers like water. She tried to hide it, but her eyes glittered uneasily.

“Juwon,” the Queen exclaimed turning to look at the knight on your left.

The man did not hesitate for a second to set off in the direction in which the Crown Prince was coming, taking after him other knights who had arrived that morning with the Queen.

And then, the Queen's gaze focused on you.

She began to take long strides towards where you stood and you felt so helpless and uneasy thinking that you could only stay kneeling looking at her, even if she planned to take your life herself with her own hands.

“Wangbi!” your mother cried out again.

The Queen barely gave her a glance, but with almost no time to reach you her path ended as she heard several swords being drawn at the same time.

She paused, looking around, and you inhaled sharply before looking back. It was as if the world had begun to go in slow motion.

Your mother had escaped from the knights guarding her and had moved closer to the Queen, much closer than she should have, and the men behind her had moved in to swing their swords and hold her in place. She wasn't hurt. She looked frightened, her eyes moving between your body and the halted figure of the Queen.

You let the air out.

“Jungkook,” the Queen hissed.

Then you saw it.

Behind the Queen, a few feet away, with more than five swords wielded in his direction, stood the Crown Prince. His own sword glinted in the sunlight raised against the knights. His face was bathed in fury, his brow furrowed and you could barely notice his tense jaw. He watched the Queen as if she were the only person in this square, and the Queen watched him back as if he were a gnat in her soup.

“Go to the Palace,” the Queen verbalized, her words empty of any emotion without taking her eyes off her son.

“Let them go first,” the Prince tried to bargain, but at this the Queen let out a wry laugh.

“What position do you think you have to try to question my decisions?”

The Prince, contrary to being intimidated at the look and tone of voice in which his mother addressed those words to him, smiled cynically at her.

“At the moment I think I have a very good position.”

His words generated more hubbub among the people who were already murmuring, and the Queen did not lose sight of that.

Nor did she fail to notice how the Prince gave you a fleeting glance before raising his sword again without really caring about the others that were pointed at him. You knew he was a bit oblivious, but at that moment he was playing with fire.

Jeon Jungkook was the eldest son and only male of the four children the Queen had had, therefore he was the heir to the throne. He usually used that as a bribe to his parents when he wanted to do something, threatening that, if they didn't let him do something, he would give up the throne to his uncle, with whom his parents were not very familiar. Most of the time he got his way, but at the time you feared that his mother would rather he resign, or they would get rid of him, than let him get away with it.

That threat did not escape the Prince's eyes and the Queen was aware of it.

“Jeon Jungkook, I command you to return to the Palace this very instant,” the Queen bellowed, her arm moving to point back the way she came.

Her words sounded more uncontrolled, anger seeping from every pore of her body.

“I will, as long as you come back that way with me,” her son shot back.

You noticed the Queen's clasped hands on either side of his body.

“This is not the time to argue about this.”

“Ah, now is not a good time? I agree with that. The time to discuss this was last night, when you locked me in the dungeon without even addressing me or giving me an explanation.”

“You have no say in this, Jungkook, you're not above me.”

The Prince's gaze drifted slightly after hearing his mother's words. You barely noticed how the hubbub of voices quieted down.

“Maybe I'm not,” he agreed serenely and you frowned at that.

“That's enough.”

Silence settled over the square.

The King was here.

“Wangbi,” he turned his gaze to his wife, who watched him with a flash of anger in her eyes. She knew what was coming and she didn't like it, “Why don't you escort your son back to the Palace? I see you have things to talk about."”

“Wang-”

“Now,” the King cut off the Queen's attempt at reasoning. “I will finish this trial.”

Stupefied, you watched her move without looking back. Her body passed right by her son, not venturing a glance at you, but her son was more focused on anything other than that.

His eyes inspected your figure, still kneeling on the ground. You felt the wails make their way down your throat, and you had to muster all your power to keep from becoming an uncontrollable mass of weeping in front of all the people watching them.

You weren't afraid when he finally had to turn around to leave, because you knew that if it wasn't safe for you he would be at your side in a couple of seconds.

Then, you were intrigued to know what the King would say.

“Inhabitants of Sapphire,” the King began, moving until he was almost in front of you, “I'm afraid there won't be any executions to watch today.”

At this, surprised exclamations were not long in coming, including yours.

“Nevertheless, knowing the Queen's reasons for calling this trial, there must be punishment for the one responsible for the crimes committed.”

Amidst the hubbub, you could hear your mother crying, but you were unable to turn to see her. Knowing that there really was a possibility other than the one that summoned you to this place, you remained static in your place for fear of spoiling everything.

“Y/N L/N,” the King spoke, your head moving to stare at him at the harshness in his voice, your body anxious with your heart on the verge of bursting. “As King of these lands, sovereign of their goods and wealth, final executioner of every crime committed against the crown, I declare today before the people and the square that saw the birth of our nation, that you will be condemned to exile with no chance of appeal.”

Your body leaned forward as you let out the air you were holding back. The mixture of the voices of the people behind you with all the thoughts that were going through your head was overwhelming you so much that you couldn't even understand what was happening.

Had… had the King forgiven you?

The look in Jungkook's eyes before he left suddenly made more sense. If what he said was true, then you couldn't really get an idea of how he was able to escape from the Palace dungeons and convince his father to save you from certain death. You moved your eyes to watch the monarch. The King was the unpredictable one of all those who made up the royal family. In this case, in your case, you had previously been certain that the execution had been a two-party decision.

Apparently, you were wrong.

“Let this decree endure in force until the day of my death.”

The King's gaze met yours. His face empty of emotion, like his wife's.

But you couldn't help the confused expression that adorned your face at his words. It was not against the law what he had ruled, the crimes of which you were accused could've different penalties depending on the harm that had been caused against the crown; however, it had been decades, almost centuries, since a King had decreed the end of a punishment with his death.

With his gaze on yours, he continued, “You have until midnight to leave the city. There will be knights at your house, in the carriage and the exit of the city watching to see that all goes neatly.”

His gaze refocused on the crowd in front of him.

“This trial is over.”

And without further ado, he turns on his heels in the direction of the palace.

[mywritingonlyfans]

hi, i like the last one xx could you do one with cillian where she briefly feels insecure about being with him, maybe because of her age, and he fucks her into safe space. thanks xx

it's not big but i hope you liked it! (it's smut; fem oral, riding and some missionary, but it's comfy and goofy). 3K words.

...

Yours. // Cillian Murphy X Reader! (Smut)

You appeared distant, your gaze unfocused, but it was evident that your unease had nothing to do with sadness caused by him. Silence filled the car, a departure from the usual comfort it provided between you. Your eyes were fixed on the road, avoiding his, a shift that had taken place sometime before leaving the party. As he drove, he lightly brushed his fingers over your knees, his touch gentle, leaving his hand there for reassurance once he realized that you weren't feeling unwell because of him. Your delicate hand touched his, fingers playfully interlocking, and you found solace in that simple contact. He found himself smiling gently at the gesture.

"Do you want to talk, doll?" he inquired, acknowledging your discomfort. You shook your head, still displaying signs of a troubled mind. He respected your response, considering revisiting the topic at a later time. It was intriguing to think that even with his eyes half-closed and his fists clenched, he could sense that something was amiss with you. He disliked seeing you worried, getting a sight of you like that did that to him.

Upon arriving home, things unfolded as usual. He shed his blazer as you removed your coat, and in the midst of heavy breaths, he embraced you, placing a gentle kiss on your forehead. His arms wrapped around you with tenderness before you pulled back slightly. No words were exchanged, but he stood there with you. Persistent tears welled in your eyes, emotions too strong to contain. You had hoped to avoid this; thinking that you would just sleep with him intertwined the way you loved, and by morning, everything would be clear. However, you now felt that you couldn't do that, you needed his extra warmth to help this pass, even if you wished it could just pass on its own.

In your mind, avoiding moments like this would possibly make you seem more mature in his eyes. But all he really wanted was for you to feel comfortable enough with him, that any of your concerns could be shared with him. After all, he loved you, and it was only fair that you’d both be a safe space for each other. Cupping your face, he carefully kissed you, and you responded with slow, pleasurable movements, allowing him to guide you through it. Gradually, he kissed away your tears, until a soft smile broke through your silent tears. You embraced him, seeking solace in his chest, finding his embrace unlike any other. He kissed the top of your head in silence, waiting until you let go calmly.

"I feel so silly," you whispered, wiping your cheeks with your hands and allowing his eyes to comfort you. In truth, he held no judgment in those eyes.

"You're not," he said, his voice strong yet comforting. It could whisk away your worries and clear your mind. "If it's bugging you, then it ain't silly," he added, his hands resting easy on your waist, fingers pressing gently. He motioned for you to settle on his lap as he made himself comfy on the couch near the entrance. A soft chuckle slipped from you, and his gaze locked onto yours. This time, the silence felt easygoing, and you held his eye until you felt like talking. He had a knack for calming you down.

"I'm kinda feeling a hint of jealousy, not a big deal, but it's niggling at me. But I want you to know it's not 'cause I don't trust you. That ain't it," you explained. Your body was rigid and your hands cold. He nodded, giving you space to keep going if you wanted. A shiver trickled down your spine as you held him closer, the hug cozy, every inch of his frame against yours. You could feel the warmth of his chest as he responded with a comforting sigh. Despite the run-in with that woman who'd tried to get his attention earlier, he hadn't even hesitated to brush her off. By now, he'd forgotten what her face looked like.

"I'm all yours," his words felt like a lullaby, urging you to nestle into the crook of his neck, his scent enveloping you as he molded himself around you. The way he said it, so sure and free of doubt, soothed you. You held on tighter, your legs wrapping around his waist as he chuckled softly and shifted to make sure you were comfy. Slowly, his hands started to wander over your dress. Even though it was kinda sensual, his touch and the way he looked at you were more about admiration than anything else.

"I get that," you giggled, your cheeks turning a bit hot as you admitted it. You knew he'd never given you reason to doubt. He nodded and his fingers brushed your chin, his blue eyes tracing every feature on your face. "I'm having trouble wrapping my head ‘round it, babe," a tiny wrinkle formed between his brows, showing his confusion. A gentle kiss from you smoothed it out.

"She was pretty attractive, and she's your age," you sighed, your words getting caught in your throat. "I get you don't really care about that stuff, ‘bout her, but you can't always predict who you might fall for, you know? And it scares me that it could happen, even if I can't explain why it’s bothering me so much right now..." He listened close, catching some of it, and he felt grateful you were sharing your feelings with him, even with you worrying over nothing. But he couldn't lie that he had his own fears about losing you and he'd circled around these thoughts sometimes too. Seeing you upset tugged at his heart.

"I love hearing what's on your mind," his warm hands traveled up your thigh, giving a gentle squeeze as he pulled them closer. He wanted you to feel heard. You nibbled your lip, a tingling creeping up your face. He chuckled, like you both knew where this was heading. "I think you're perfect, this dress makes you even more stunning, and I love how confident you get when you're with me. And I love how you look at me," his cheeks and nose had a cute flush. His voice dropped low, like it was meant for you only, and you laughed with your eyes at him.

It was good to watch because most of all, he was still shy, and it was remarkable, but he wanted to see you well.

"Do you ever think you might fall for someone else?" His question had you shaking your head right away. You couldn't imagine finding anyone even close to him, or even having room to think about it. "I know I couldn't. I'm so caught up thinking about you, there's no space for anyone else. And I love that," you nodded, his words resonating deep inside. As you brought his lips to yours, you relished the surprised sigh that escaped him. Although the kiss ended softly, he held your face firmly, his earlier intention still clear in his mind since leaving the house.

"You're my girl," he affirmed, brows serious and jaw clenched. Your blood was already pumping through your veins at that declaration. Your fingers found the first buttons of his shirt, undoing them coolly and freeing a bit of his bare skin while his words echoed in your head, his gaze intently fixed on you. Your hands slipped inside his shirt, and he relaxed as he felt you trail your touch from his chest hair to his shoulders. "Can I unbutton all of them?" you asked sweetly, anticipation lacing your voice. God, he wanted to show you right there that there'd never be anyone for him but you. He nodded, your trembling fingers undoing the last few buttons. It was cute how you got a bit flustered in these initial moments, as if you'd never been in them before. He could never get much of that.

"I sorta need you," your breath hitched, and he chuckled, understanding. "I can feel it, little one," he took your hand in his and kissed it, then you traced the sharp line of his cheekbone and ran your thumb over his freckles. He closed his eyes, and you found yourself melting into his embrace, adoring the more pronounced lines of his expressions, the way they smiled and relaxed along with him, making it clear that he didn't regulate his age with yours. But it was lovely. He was so attractive, in a way that was hard to keep up with when he was this close. You brushed his hair away from his face and touched your lips to his forehead, placing kisses along his nose, cheeks and down his neck, and over his shoulders until you found your way to his chest. Your body was restless, and while you might not have recognized it, he could feel the heat building beneath you. He let out a low grunt, spreading out across the seat as you wriggled on top of him, peppering him with kisses and playful bites.

"I think I should show you just how much you're my girl, don't you think?" His voice was firm, sending shivers to your soul. His hands were thicker, more striking than yours, and you couldn't help but notice the contrast. He motioned for you to stand in front of him, and you obliged. Things moved in their own time, but in your perspective, everything seemed to slow down, your stomach churning with anticipation.

"I don't want any bad thoughts lingering in your head, not even the most fleeting ones, got it?" Still seated, he lifted the hem of your dress, placing wet kisses on your thighs until he reached your lower belly. His nose nuzzled into your skin, so gentle it made you feel slightly guilty for being this desperate. Cillian chuckled as he observed how readily you lifted the fabric to give him better access, and with his eyes on you, he trailed his fingertips along your pulsating nerve, seemingly begging for his touch. You pulled back a little, but he shook his head. "Don't move, little one," he anchored your hip with a firm grip, his fingers circling the area, your body involuntarily pressing into his touch for more. He let out a deep, drawn-out sigh as he felt you make his tips lightly sticky through the thin fabric. His throat tightened as his temples throbbed, his body yearning to feel you melt under his mouth as you always did so wonderfully.

Without dragging it out for too long, as he knew he wouldn't be able to bear it for much time, he delicately interlocked his fingers with the hems and pulled them down. His lips moistened as he saw the lace peel off you with some difficulty due to how damp it was. And sure, there was indeed a wet patch on your panties. For balance, you grasped his shoulders, squeezing eagerly with a pleading gaze, and he shut his, kissing the area, his mouth watering and devoid of prior thoughts. He held you firmly in place and licked from the center up, gathering your essence on his tongue, his eyes closing in pure pleasure at being able to feel you. Yours clenched shut, and your mouth fell open as you experienced the warm sensation and perfect pressure of how he sucked you, as if it truly granted him as much bliss as it did for you.

You gently grasped the back of his head, urging him closer, and you could sense him smiling as you struggled to remain composed for him. As you caressed his soft hair, he nuzzled the tip of his nose against your clit before sucking it between his lips, causing you to moan so wantonly. He was already a mess, lost in your scent and taste enveloping him, while you panted breathlessly. When you opened your eyes and saw his hair, those delicate tresses, both ash and dark intertwined in a chaotic dance, you became a bit more alert, tugging on the strands to have him look at you. He deserved your attention that night too; you didn't want this to go unnoticed.

With his eyes locked onto yours, your body still trembling, you found your words stuck in your throat. He was just as desperate as you, though he concealed it well. The snug trousers he wore due to his position, and the zipper left open, which you only noticed now, made you wonder how uncomfortable he was. "Can I ride you, babe?" Your voice was soft yet mesmerizing to him. He appreciated how you always asked, an act so delicate for such a moment, but it had become characteristic, and he would certainly miss it if you changed.

"I want to be good for you," you whispered, and he couldn't deny that even if he tried as he shed the layers of fabric that held your disapproval. He marveled at how flustered and nervous you sounded, unable to control both your mind and your senses at the same time. And in a matter of seconds, you were on his lap once again, your head nestled on his shoulder as he kissed your neck and face, and you began to grind against him, your touches growing more fervent.

As he burned against your skin, he lifted you, albeit clumsily, hoisting up your dress and letting you settle onto him with a prolonged groan, your needy hands clinging to his arm. You held onto him, your muscles quivering as you gazed into his calm eyes, his expression relaxed as you took your time to adjust to him. You were sore and wet, feeling him all over you, full and comfortable, even if not fully stretched due to your eagerness. But every second was worth it.

You worked your way onto him, lifting yourself slightly and settling back down, taking him all into you. "You're so beautiful," he whispered, his voice husky and accentuated, filling you up completely. “Aren’t you, doll?”

His words took effect on you, and his gaze held the purest contentment as he watched you stumble through forming responses, not that he needed them. His movements were slow, letting you take the lead. Your lips were slightly parted, legs tightly wrapped around him. In fact, you were only holding yourself together because he was supporting you. The straps of your dress slipped to the side, gracefully as if watching a painting dry. Assisting you, he squeezed your thighs, using his thumb to press between your legs, exerting pressure on your clit. Your body immediately responded to the extra stimulus, and you collapsed onto him with a slight moan.

"It's okay, pretty girl, I've got you," he whispered amidst more persistent sighs, his hands gaining a rhythm against your hips, making your body more relaxed and ready to accommodate him. You rubbed yourself on him just beautifully. His lips grazed your collarbone, wet kisses and nips tracing over your exposed skin. He lowered the straps further, your breasts on display for him, in a gentle sway prompted by you. He took one in his mouth, your nails grazing him, marks he knew would be left, but he relished in it. He sucked on the flesh, releasing it with a wet sound before giving the same attention to the other, fingertips skimming over the erect nipple and then warm tongue soothing you through it all. Your hands tangled in his hair, a sound escaping him as he rested his forehead against yours, leaving you even more soaked. Your legs grew sluggish, and you found yourself grinding against him more than riding, a detail he didn't miss. He lifted with you briefly, and soon you were lying on your back, him atop you. His face was still close, breath mixing with yours in the warm space between you. You clung to his shirt collar firmly, both for control and to keep him close, and he chuckled. "Please, I'm aching, Cill," your vision blurred as tears formed, your body trembling without any movement from him. He trailed the tip of his nose across yours, his hair falling onto your face, which you brushed aside to kiss him better. You hugged him tight, curling into his chest, and gradually, air filled your lungs as your body was brought up and down with his.

"You're being so good to me. Look at what you do to me, fuck. How could you even think you're not just mine, and only mine alone?" His voice was disoriented, husky and staggered, clearly needing to focus intently to sound coherent. And then his gaze locked onto you, eagerly waiting to take in every last bit of it. He was gentle, even in his urgency, and you loved that he knew your body so well that you didn't have to tell him what you needed; he was exactly what you needed. With him deep inside you, feeling your senses growing restless, he braced his hands above your head, applying more pressure, your eyes closing as he held you close. The tears running down your cheeks that would soon be kissed clean. He loved to watch it. He whispered soothingly for you to calm down, sweet nothings while he thrust you through that sensation until your mind was filled with his rough, broken moans as he peaked along with you. His body collapsed onto yours, the weight becoming comfortable, his fingers tracing lines among the scattered freckles on his back, and he didn't fail to kiss your exposed skin. "I love you," you said, breathless, his hand affectionately running over you. You were right; you'd fall asleep next to him, entwined, and wake up with a clearer mind. You could already imagine waking up in his shirt, going to sit on his lap while he wore his glasses and had a book ready to be put aside for your more important presence. No one else could bring you the comfort he did. He settled beside you, both your breaths gradually returning to normal, and just before his lips brushed yours in a smile, he whispered in his lazy voice, "I love you, and I'm yours, only yours, my girl."

[of-pale]

Just some wild dmc scenario that struck-eth:

Vergil got behind the wheel of a car, with Nero occupying the passenger seat. Maybe they even steal the car—not so unlikely if the area is in utter chaos and demons are throwing a party everywhere. Vergil certainly didn't have many qualms about committing theft, while Nero reluctantly agreed to it. It was only when Vergil started the abandoned vehicle did a realisation strike Nero.

“Wait, you know how to drive, right?”

“Yes, I've driven a car before. I doubt they’ve changed too drastically over the years.” Vergil gripped the gear shifter and smacked it into reverse.

“Wait, wait, what's that supposed to mean? When's the last time you drove a car?”

Vergil hit the gas, backing up until they collided with a demon approaching the car from behind, the impact marked by a loud thud. The car shook as it went over its body. “Hmmmm, must be about twenty-six years, give or take.”

“And you didn't think I should be the one behind the wheel? That driver's license is waaay past its expiry.”

Vergil cracked a small smile as if he'd been told a great joke. “That assumes I had one to start with.” He harshly shifted the gears again and stomped on the gas, sending the car screeching forward. “I don't think I was old enough to obtain one even if such an option interested me.”

Vergil took a sharp turn, drifting into an alleyway and forcing the side of the car’s boot to smack into more demons. Meanwhile, Nero clung on for dear life to his seat and the dashboard to avoid bouncing his head off the side. With each passing moment, he began to grasp the gravity of his grave mistake.

Nero learned the hard way that there, in fact, did exist an even bigger menace on the road than Nico. Vergil drove like an absolute lunatic when given the chance: taking corners at the last possible second, playing bloody ping pong with every demon he could possibly hit, and drove at the highest speed the situation allowed him to get away with. To say there were many narrow misses during the wild ride would be an understatement.

Also Vergil, probably:

[scary-grace]

Opposites Attract (Chapter 3) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your quirk lets you capture almost anyone with ease, and you can't believe you let Shigaraki Tomura escape. Shigaraki can't believe it, either, and according to the League, there's only one possible explanation -- you let him go because you've fallen in love with him. He decides to find out if it's true. You decide you won't fail to capture him again. You both get a lot more than you bargained for. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4

Chapter 3

You don’t notice the envelope that’s been shoved under your front door until you trip on it, and even once you pick it up, you’re not sure it’s for you. The name scrawled on the front of it is almost illegible, but after studying it for a few seconds you’re able to determine that it does in fact say Skynet. Maybe it’s hate mail. Even if your public profile’s improved significantly since the incident with the train, someone could have mailed this last week and you’re just finding it now.

You were in the hospital for three days. Getting dragged by a train isn’t the kind of thing you can just walk off. If you’d had the boots from your costume, you would have been able to anchor yourself, and with your feet planted and a good grip on a magnetic field nearby, you’d have avoided getting pulled off your feet. But you didn’t have your boots, because Yue made you wear heels, and you fractured your femur when one of them got caught in the rails. You also dislocated your shoulder, bit a chunk out of the inside of your cheek, and picked up the road rash from hell on the entire anterior of your body. It’s the worst set of injuries you’ve gotten in your career, and there wasn’t a single villain involved.

It got you off the public’s shit list, though, and it taught you something important about your quirk. If a metal has a distinct profile, different from what’s around it, you can latch onto just that metal and avoid drawing in anything else. Bullet-train steel is a beast of its own, unlike everything else in the area, which allowed you to focus all your power on it without ripping downtown Tokyo apart. So you can use Magnetism on a larger scale, as long as you know exactly what you’re aiming for. Most of the time, you don’t, and most of the time, there are too many metals with similar properties for you to yank one towards you without pulling up everything else. But it’s good to know that there are some cases where it’s safe to let loose.

You employ your metal sense on the envelope you’re holding and find only inert compounds, no moving parts. Nothing dangerous in here. You open it, fumbling slightly, and pull out a 500-yen coin. There’s a note wrapped around it. The handwriting on the note is just as bad as the handwriting on the envelope. Worse, maybe, because so much of it is crossed out, but in between all the cross-outs you’re able to make out a pair of sentences. Nice job with the train. Buy yourself a flower or something.

Huh. Whoever sent it didn’t leave a name, or a return address, and the note is sort of abrupt – but it’s still a nice note. And a nice thing to do. Maybe you will buy yourself a flower or something. Or maybe you’ll save the coin, so there’s evidence of the first time somebody thanked you personally for something heroic you did. Or evidence of the first truly heroic thing you’ve done in your career. One of the two.

You had some time to think in the hospital, and you thought a lot of things over. Some thoughts are ones you’ve had for a while, like the thought that stopping petty criminals isn’t actually that heroic, especially when they’re stealing things like food, warm clothes in the winter, or water bottles in the summer. Some are thoughts that make you wonder if you got a concussion during the train incident – like the idea that the existence of hero as a profession creates a demand for villains, and an incentive to expand the definition of villain as much as possible. The people you’re expected to arrest for stealing food from a convenience store aren’t in the same category as one of the various yakuza groups. They’re not even close to the League of Villains.

Those are the kind of thoughts you should keep to yourself if you want to have friends. You sit down on your couch and log into the hero network, seeing that you’ve got a pileup of messages. A lot of them are from heroes congratulating you on the train rescue. When you look closer at them, about a third of them were pretty clearly prompted by their agencies, as evidenced by the request to stop by their offices “at your earliest convenience” to “discuss your future”. After the way everyone’s been treating you, it rings pretty hollow.

Some of the messages are about team-ups, or requests to join missions. Those are usually about taking down actual criminals, which you’re still interested in, and most of them are yellow-flagged – important, but not urgent. You wouldn’t be able to respond to urgent ones. Even though UA’s Recovery Girl made a special trip out to Tokyo to heal your leg, you’re still supposed to rest for at least three more days.

Social media next. You took it off private while you were in the hospital, then forgot about it, and now you’re looking at an influx of followers and a ton of private messages. You get into the messages and start deleting anything that looks like a pickup line, which clears things out a bit. There are sponsorship offers, too, although why anybody wants to sponsor a hero whose twin claims to fame are letting the League of Villains slip through her fingers and getting dragged by a train is absolutely beyond you. You leave the offers alone for now. Time to look at the actual people who messaged you.

One in particular catches your eye. The profile picture is a cloudburst and most of the page is aesthetic photos – usually of clouds, with a secondary theme of purple things. The message doesn’t match the content of the page at all. Which iron supplements would you recommend for someone with iron-deficiency anemia?

You message back. Hi. I’m not a doctor. It would probably be best to ask a doctor about this.

Medical care is not universally accessible. What is the best supplement to use?

That was a fast response, but they’re right, whoever they are – Japan might have universal healthcare, but there are still a lot of reasons why somebody might not feel comfortable going to a doctor. And you do have some familiarity with this stuff. Of the supplements, sublingual is best. The capsules or the pills can do stuff to your digestive system. You want something that dissolves.

In what dosage?

It depends on your height, weight, and the severity of your anemia, you answer, only to remember that this person probably isn’t running off to the lab for a blood panel. Just go by what’s on the bottle. But honestly, the best way to improve your iron is to eat more iron-rich foods. That’s how your body really wants to absorb it.

Which foods?

Whoever this is could just look it up, but you’re feeling benevolent right now. Shellfish, legumes, fish, quinoa, spinach, red meat, dark chocolate, tofu, broccoli, pumpkin seeds. Organ meat is good for that, too.

He is not going to eat any of that.

If you have the right recipe, basically all of it tastes good, you reply. You’re about to send this person a link to your favorite recipe site, but then something clicks in your head – something about who’d ask you these questions, who wouldn’t be able to go to a doctor and get bloodwork done, or iron infusions prescribed. He wouldn’t refer to himself in the third person, which means the person messaging you right now can only be – Kurogiri?

Thank you for your assistance, Kurogiri says, and blocks you. All you can do is stare down at your phone in horror.

Shigaraki still has his anemia, it sounds like. Kurogiri is trying to help him treat it, but it must not be going well. You know next to nothing about Shigaraki, but it’s hard to imagine him popping an iron supplement or sitting down to a healthy meal. You weren’t on any of the teams during the first Kamino incident, but you heard things about what Shigaraki’s room was like when they searched it, and it sounds like he eats – or ate – a lot of processed food. He’s probably deficient in everything else along with the iron. If you end up being the one who finally apprehends him, you’ll probably swing by an urgent care on the way to the nearest police station so you can quantify just how not-okay he is.

You’re not sure why it bothers you. Except that Shigaraki’s supposed to be All For One’s heir, and All For One was funding the League, and apparently still had enough money left over to put himself in a tailored, custom-made suit for his showdown with All Might. All For One was loaded. If he had all that money, why didn’t he spend some of it on taking care of his successor? It’s not really a question you’re equipped to answer. You’re not a supervillain or a criminal mastermind. You’re not even investigating the League yourself. You’re just some hero who was there when they attacked. You don’t need to think about him any more than that.

It. You don’t need to think about it. The League, the fight at Kamino, anything. Sure, asking Shigaraki about his symptoms broke his focus so badly that you’d have had him dead to rights if Kurogiri hadn’t shown up, and sure, Kurogiri was messaging you on Instagram thirty seconds ago, but this has nothing to do with you.

You set your phone aside and roll the 500-yen coin between your fingers, first palm-side, then knuckle-side, then alternating, in an exercise you’ve been practicing since you were little to improve your control over your quirk. Maybe you’ll keep the coin. You can afford to buy your own flowers, but this is something you want to hang onto.

Life goes back to normal at shocking speed as soon as you’ve recovered from your injuries. Saving approximately three hundred people and getting dragged behind a train in the process is apparently enough to cancel out letting the League of Villains escape, and you’re back to being an approximate zero in the public consciousness. Which is how you like it. Even when you were at UA, you were never very interested in the spotlight – not because you don’t need the money you’d get from sponsorships, endorsements, and high-profile missions, but because your quirk was too much to handle, and the bigger the spotlight was, the more likely it was to catch you in a fatal mistake.

You’re out of the spotlight, but you’re a little busier than usual. When you went to work with Eraserhead’s class again, they had questions about how you stopped the train, and the girl with the Creation quirk suggested memorizing the profile of specific alloys, the ones commonly used in cars, buses, and building supports. That way you could focus your power on only objects with the specific profile rather than exerting a general pull and destroying whole city blocks. You decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot, and after a few days of memorizing the metallic profiles of the twenty most common car makes and models in Japan, you averted a car accident by magnetizing one of the two out-of-control vehicles and hoisting it – it, and only it – out of the way.

You can’t memorize every alloy on the planet, some of the alloys show up in almost everything, and the risk of tipping too many gravitational fields and causing a chain reaction is just as present as ever. But you’re a little more useful now. A little better at saving people. You’ve been wondering lately if it might not be a good idea to pivot to rescue heroics. Rescue heroics don’t have the same kind of ethical issues as combat heroics do.

But you can’t step out of combat heroics entirely. You’ve had a watch on a Shie Hassaikai safehouse in your city for a while, and you got a ping from the Nighteye agency summoning you to a strategy meeting about it sometime next week. In the meantime, you’re still getting into it with muggers, carjackers, and assorted creeps on a nightly basis. You’re busy. Tired when you wake up, tired when you get home. Most nights you’re too tired to cook.

Not tonight, though. Tonight you’re not allowed to fall asleep on the couch. You bought groceries on your day off last week in a fit of truly absurd optimism, and if you don’t use them tonight, they’ll go bad. You get home from patrol, shower off cold to wake yourself up, and get into the kitchen. Your rice cooker is waiting for you. You thank your lucky stars that you remembered to wash it out after your last kitchen escapade and get it started again.

You aren’t a good cook, but you aren’t a bad one, either. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that you’re not a pretty cook. Most meals you make are a bunch of different components piled up on a bowl or rice or noodles or dumped into a broth – not visually appealing, but still pretty tasty. Back when you were rooming with Yue and Kagura and Mayuko, Yue used to put a blindfold on so she wouldn’t see what the food you made looked like. Then again, she only ever ate seconds when it was your turn to cook.

That’s the other problem with your cooking – there are always seconds, and thirds, and sometimes fourths, because you always buy more than you can eat in one sitting, and you get bored with leftovers really fast. The scope of the problem begins to occur to you as you dice garlic and ginger and scrape them into a saucepan filled with sizzling cooking oil. You’ll eat this tonight, sure. Definitely tomorrow, but by the next day, you’ll be so sick of beef and assorted vegetables over rice that you’d almost rather run into the League of Villains a second time than have to eat it again. At least if you have to go into hiding from a vengeful public, no one will question why you didn’t eat your leftovers.

Once the aromatics start to brown and the smell infuses your apartment, the mass quantities of food you’re pawing through start to look a little less intimidating. You put on some music – quietly, since it’s past midnight and you’ve got neighbors, humming along to some English-language pop song from a decade and a half ago. The girl who babysat you back home always played it, the lyrics so simple that even four-year-old you could follow along. I really, really, really, really, really, really like you! And I want you – do you want me – do you want me too?

Between the sizzling of the flank steak and vegetables you’re currently sauteing, the sound of the music, and the rush of the wind whipping through the alley outside, you could almost write off the sound on the fire escape. It could be squirrels, or raccoons, or even a particularly chunky pigeon. It could just be the wind. But you reach for your metal-sense to check, just in case, and what you find sends a chill straight down your spine. You know that iron concentration. You couldn’t forget it if you tried.

This time, you react the right way. The fire escape is perfect for it. You bend the rails apart with a flick of your fingers, then wrap them tightly around the figure perched on the landing, pulling him down to seated. One around his waist, two immobilizing each arm, three spreading and pinning his fingers apart, so there’s no chance of all five making contact with anything at once. And one more railing around his throat, just to be extra safe.

You don’t step away from the stove until you know he’s secure. Your heart is racing as you turn off the music and make your way through your apartment to the window. You need four fingers on your right hand to manage the restraints, and you flip the latch on the window with your thumb and use your quirk to lever it open. This isn’t like last time. You’ve got the undisputed upper hand. So why do you feel so tense?

The tension comes through in your voice when you speak. “What are you doing here?”

Shigaraki Tomura looks up at you from where he’s ensnared by the railings you bent to your will. He’s not at ease like this. You can feel him straining to bring his fingers together, to break out of your grip, but he still manages the ghost of a cocky smirk. “Skynet,” he says. “Did you miss me?”

Shigaraki was expecting you to be surprised to see him, but he wasn’t expecting you to react quite this fast. Or to immobilize him this quickly. He squirms slightly, testing the restraints, only for two more to come up, wrapping around his thighs and welding him to the platform. You got him from inside your apartment, before he even realized you knew he was there. You’re good. Shigaraki hardens his resolve. If you’re this good, he absolutely needs you for the League.

“Did I miss you?” you repeat, incredulous. “Answer my question, Shigaraki. What are you doing here?”

Before Shigaraki can answer, you ask another question. “How do you know where I live?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Shigaraki says. “I came to see if you bought yourself a flower like I said to.”

Your jaw drops. “That was you?”

“Who else?” Shigaraki can’t figure out why you looked so shocked. You’re in love with him. You should have guessed it was him, wanted it to be him. Is there somebody else you wanted it to be from? “Who did you think it was?”

“You can’t be here,” you say instead of answering. “You need to leave.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Shigaraki challenges. “You’re the one who won’t let me go.”

Your grip on him doesn’t loosen, and he still can’t bring his fingers together. Shigaraki’s stuck. If you call the cops to come get him, he can’t get away. Would you really call the cops on him? There’s no way. You love him. Right?

You still aren’t saying anything, but you also aren’t letting him go. Shigaraki tries to bring the subject back around to you liking him. “Did you buy a flower or not?”

“Why did you leave me that note?”

“I asked first.”

“Sure, I bought a flower.” You roll your eyes, which pisses Shigaraki off. He gave you something when he didn’t have to. What happened to gratitude? “Why did you leave me that note? Were you messing with me or something?”

“Messing with you?” Is that what you thought? Shigaraki wouldn’t be grateful, either. “I wasn’t messing with you. I saw the train thing, so I’m interested. I was just letting you know.”

He was expecting the news that he’s interested in you to land a little better. Then again, everything that’s happened today has proved that he’s a shitty judge of character, so maybe he’s wrong. He’s wrong, and the rest of the League was fucking with him, and because Shigaraki was stupid enough to believe them he’s now landed squarely in the hands of a hero who has every reason to think that turning him in will redeem her. He practically gift-wrapped himself.

Shigaraki’s throat tightens with rage, or something else. His skin crawls and his eyes burn. He can’t rub or scratch it away, because you’ve got him completely pinned. This is awful. It’s –

A timer goes off somewhere in your apartment, and you look away. Shigaraki seizes the opportunity to try to struggle free, but you’re already shaking your head. “Did you forget I’m the Capture Hero?” you ask. “If I can’t hang onto you and take a pan off the stove at the same time, I should hand in my license right now.”

You’re cooking something. The smell of it is drifting through the open window, and Shigaraki’s stupid mouth starts to water. He swallows. “You’re making dinner at midnight?”

You shrug. “That’s when I got home.”

“Kurogiri’s been cooking.” Trying to cook, and it’s weird that he’s trying. He used to leave Shigaraki alone about what he ate, but lately he’s been making Shigaraki eat things that have iron on them, or take iron pills, or dissolve iron tablets under his tongue. It’s a pain in the ass. “The stuff he makes doesn’t smell like that.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Like that?”

Maybe once you’re in the League, you can give Kurogiri lessons. Shigaraki had better start hinting about that now. “Good.”

You don’t say anything. Shigaraki’s stomach growls, so loudly that people on the moon can probably hear it, and his face heats up with embarrassment. But your expression is shifting, almost the same way it shifted in the square at Kamino. Seeing it gives Shigaraki a weird sense of relief. He wasn’t imagining it. The League wasn’t screwing with him. You do care. He can’t figure out why it took his stomach making stupid sounds to get it out of you.

“Are you hungry?” you ask.

Your voice sounds the same as it did when you asked if he was okay. This time Shigaraki tells the truth. “Yes.”

You glance back into your apartment, then look at him – then back to your apartment, then to him. “I must be out of my mind,” you mumble, and then you square your shoulders and make eye contact. “You’re hungry, and I made too much food. If you want, you can come inside.”

“What?” Shigaraki manages. You can’t be serious – but the metal railings are unwrapping from around his throat, his waist, his arms, until he’s anchored at the thighs and wrists and nowhere else. “You’re going to let me leave if I say no?”

“No one knows you’re here except me,” you say. “If you leave now, it’ll be like it never happened.”

Shigaraki should take you up on it, five seconds ago. You could change your mind at any moment, and now he knows he has to be a lot more careful the next time he tries to recruit you – keep a greater distance, stay disguised at first, not get complacent listening to you sing some song in English about how you really, really, really, really, really, really like someone. This was today’s second colossal fuckup, and unlike the first one, it’s recoverable. Shigaraki needs to leave. Now.

Instead – “I could eat,” he says, and you let him go.

Or you sort of let him go. He’s not attached to the fire escape anymore, but there are thin metal bands around his wrists and ankles. He shakes one of them at you. “What’s this?”

“Insurance policy,” you say. Huh. Shigaraki decides it’s fair, and probably a good sign as far as your usefulness to the League. After what happened today, it’s pretty clear that the League could use some members who are a little less trusting. You step back from the window, leaving space for Shigaraki to step through. “Get in here before someone sees you.”

Shigaraki smacks his head on the window frame, and it’s your fault. Your fault, because you’re holding out your hand for him to take, so you can help him through, and it’s such a weird thing to do that he can’t focus. You know how his quirk works. Why would you give him a chance to touch you? He avoids your outstretched hand, loses his balance, smacks his head on the other side of the window this time, and you catch his elbow to steady him. You’re touching him. Nobody touches Shigaraki on purpose. Nobody who’s not trying to hurt him.

You act like it’s nothing, and you let him go, shutting the window behind him with a wave of your hand. Then you turn away. “Find somewhere to sit. The food’s almost done.”

It smells even better inside your apartment than it did on the fire escape. Shigaraki wants to pay attention to that, but you just turned your back on him. “You sure you trust me this much?”

“I don’t need to look at you to know what you’re doing. My metal sense takes care of that.” You’re stirring something in a pan on the stove now. “I wouldn’t say I love my odds, but I’m okay with them. Do you want water to drink or something?”

“Uh, okay.” Shigaraki watches as you leave whatever’s on the stove to open a cabinet and retrieve a glass, which you fill from a pitcher in the fridge. You hand it to him and go back to the stove, and Shigaraki stares at it stupidly. Better that he stares at it than at you.

You aren’t doing what he expected you to do. Now that Shigaraki thinks about it, he’s got no idea what he was expecting you to do. Scream? Faint? Be ecstatic to see him? Drag him into your apartment and offer yourself to him – not just your allegiance to the League, but all of you, all for him? Shigaraki’s face heats up at the thought. You wouldn’t do that. You don’t even post thirst-traps on Instagram. There’s no way you’d get physical with him on your second meeting. Which is good. Because Shigaraki’s not exactly experienced in that department, and it’s possible that he’s never been less in the mood.

Shigaraki is used to having shitty days. He’s had a lot of shitty days in the last year. He’s gotten shot, stabbed, punched, punched but with explosions added in, and fucked things up so badly that Sensei had to get involved, only for Sensei get captured by the heroes. But today is abnormally, astronomically shitty – shitty enough to top all the others combined. This is the first shitty day in Shigaraki’s adult life where someone he cares about has died. And the first time it’s been his fault.

Maybe not totally his fault. There’s blame to go around. But Shigaraki’s the leader, so it’s on him. He should have been more suspicious of Overhaul from the start, regardless of what Twice said. He should have ended the meeting immediately when he realized Overhaul’s true intentions, and he should have had Kurogiri on standby, so the League could leave if Overhaul refused to. Failing all that, he should have found a way to stop Magne and Compress from engaging Overhaul – something he could have planned for, if he’d been smart enough to be suspicious. Instead he was stupid, and now Magne’s dead.

And Shigaraki couldn’t even take revenge on Overhaul. Assessing the scene, realizing they were outmatched, and calling a pause was probably the smartest thing Shigaraki did all day.

They couldn’t keep using that hideout. No one wanted to stay after what happened, and there was a chance Overhaul had tipped off the police to where they were. Shigaraki ordered the League to scatter for twenty-four hours and reunite at a new hideout, which Kurogiri is responsible for finding. Shigaraki doesn’t know where everyone else went. But he didn’t think twice before coming here, to your city. To your neighborhood. To you.

“Shigaraki.” You say his name as you’re setting two rice bowls in front of two chairs at a tiny kitchen table. “Do you want to sit down?”

Right. He’s standing here, staring at a glass of water, like an idiot. Shigaraki sits down in front of one bowl and you sit at the other. “What’s in here?”

“Flank steak, spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, garlic, ginger, green onions –” You trail off to eat some of it. “And rice underneath. I’m guessing Kurogiri forgot some of that stuff.”

“The last three things.” Shigaraki picks up his chopsticks, lifts out a piece of broccoli, and inspects it. It doesn’t look quite as disgusting as whatever Kurogiri made. He sticks it in his mouth, burns his tongue, realizes that it doesn’t actually taste bad, and starts talking in a hurry. “You can’t tell anyone about this. If they find out –”

“That you ate a vegetable?” You look skeptical. Maybe because Shigaraki’s talking with his mouth full. “There are lots of reasons I can’t tell anybody about this. I might as well add that to the list.”

Shigaraki makes sure to finish chewing before he tries to say anything else, then decides against saying anything at all in favor of trying to figure out which of the vegetables tastes the worst. You don’t ask him any questions. You’re just eating dinner, like it’s a normal night, like it doesn’t matter that Shigaraki’s here at all.

Maybe you’re playing it cool. “So,” Shigaraki starts, after a sip of water to wash the taste of carrots out of his mouth, “you must not think much of the League of Villains, if you used more of your quirk on a train than on us.”

You used more of your quirk pinning Shigaraki to the fire escape than you did during the second Kamino incident, but Shigaraki decides not to point that out. You’re making a face. “They were totally different situations. If I’d used that kind of power in our fight, I’d have taken down all the buildings your boss and All Might didn’t get to during the first battle.”

“So what? Capturing us wasn’t worth it?” Shigaraki can tell by your expression that this is the wrong way to go. He stuffs a wad of spinach into his mouth to give himself some time to think, then drinks some water to give a little more. “You said it was different with the train. Why?”

“It was on an elevated track.”

“Huh?”

“The train was on an elevated track.” You’re picking at your food. “The problem with my quirk isn’t whether I can grab something and pull it towards me, the problem is what happens to everything in between. If the train had been street level or underground, the magnetic field I was altering would have torn up everything with a similar metallic signature to the train. But the train was on an elevated track. There was nothing around it with a matching signature, so I could let loose.”

It sounds like there’s not a limit to your quirk. You held back at Kamino because you didn’t want to make a mess. “How hard was it to stop the train?”

“Harder once I fell over.”

You’re avoiding Shigaraki’s eyes, and Shigaraki adjusts your answer to reflect reality. “It wasn’t hard at all,” he says. You keep averting your eyes. There’s color coming up in your face. “Damn.”

You eat a few more bites, and so does Shigaraki. The food is good, or at least good enough to highlight how bad Kurogiri’s cooking is. If Shigaraki wasn’t already sure he needed you for the League, he’d be convinced now – between your quirk and the fact that you can make the vegetables he’s supposed to eat taste like anything other than garbage, he’s pretty sure you’ll be essential. “Is that why you came here?” you ask, and Shigaraki looks up. “To talk about my quirk?”

“What else is there to talk about?” What do people talk about on dinner dates, anyway? “How our days were? Like I’d tell you that.”

“You could,” you say. “There’s nobody I could tell about it.”

“Bullshit. You’re a hero –”

“And if I went to the cops and spilled all your secrets, their next question would be where I got the information,” you say. “I can’t exactly say ‘I got it from Shigaraki Tomura, when he came over for dinner last night.’ So if you want to talk about how your day went, you can.”

Shigaraki’s chest goes tight. Maybe he swallowed something wrong. “You first,” he says. “What did you do today? Let me guess – dispensing peace and justice with government-sponsored violence.”

You laugh. “Today I fixed some girl’s bike so she could get to work on time. Then I got called out to a primary school to help some kid who got his head stuck in the rails on a staircase. After that I caught some guy spray-painting ‘bitch’ on his ex-wife’s car. That would have been a nuisance crime, except he’d been stalking her, too.”

Shigaraki knew you were small-time, but this is ridiculous. “Don’t you get bored?”

“There was a car accident, too,” you say. “The fire department was late, so I helped pry open the car so the passengers could get out. And then I helped clear wreckage from somebody else’s villain fight downtown until my shift ended.”

Five incidents, one actual interaction with a criminal. “That’s not going to get you back in the headlines.”

“Believe me, I’d love to stay out of them,” you say. Shigaraki remembers what Spinner said about how you’re a hero Stain would approve of. It sounds like he’s right. “Today was a decent day. How was yours?”

Shigaraki’s throat closes. He’s still hungry – really hungry – but if he tried to swallow something right now, he’s pretty sure he’d choke on it. The anger builds inside him, seeking any target, and you’re the closest. “Don’t ask me that. You don’t give a shit about me.”

“Hey –”

“You call someone a villain and you can write them off for good. It doesn’t matter what happens to villains. Villains aren’t people to you.” Shigaraki can’t believe you’re trying to argue with him. “Sure, I could tell you how my day was. If I wanted to watch you pretend to care that one of my friends died.”

Your eyes widen. “Someone died?”

Shigaraki wasn’t going to tell you anything, and then he told you, right in the middle of telling you all the reasons why he wasn’t going to tell you. This is a fucking nightmare. “Save it for someone who believes your stupid act. I’m out of here.”

“My stupid act, huh?” Your voice is sharp. “Let me tell you something about what happened at Kamino, Shigaraki. I should have captured you then. I had everything I needed to take you down. And then I got so distracted when I realized you were sick that I let all four of you escape. I screwed myself pretty solidly for somebody who doesn’t care, don’t you think?”

You did, sort of. Shigaraki knows that if you hadn’t stopped the train, the public would still hate you. A society as corrupt as this one doesn’t forgive mistakes like the one you made. Like the one you’re making right now, if anybody ever finds out you let him in. “You’re still sick,” you continue. “I can feel it. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that something bad happened. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but I don’t think you came here just to see if I bought a flower.”

You don’t say why you think Shigaraki came here. With Shigaraki’s luck, you’d guess right, and the sheer humiliation of being called out on it would probably kill him. “You said you bought one. Where is it?”

“Right there.”

Right there, as in dead center on the table, right in the middle of Shigaraki’s eyeline. And here he was thinking it couldn’t get worse. “I think you probably meant a cut flower, but I wanted this one,” you say. “It’s alive, so it should keep blooming as long as I don’t kill it through benign neglect.”

Shigaraki’s throat won’t relax. He coughs, trying to clear it. “Kill a lot of plants, do you?”

“Only by accident,” you say. “It probably doesn’t make a difference to the plant, but under human law, intention matters.”

“What?”

“Crime is bad,” you say. No shit. Shigaraki snorts. “But the degree of badness depends on the intention. If I lost control of my quirk and hurt someone, I’d be in trouble. But I’d be in a lot more trouble if I hurt them deliberately.”

Shigaraki’s stomach ties itself in a knot. “For serious crimes, the reason why a person did something matters, too,” you continue. “If I was a civilian and someone attacked me, I might hurt them with my quirk to protect myself. But if I hurt that person the same way in an argument, that would be different. And sometimes premeditation can be a mitigating factor – like, a person being stalked and threatened might feel so backed into a corner that killing the stalker feels like the only option. They’d have to plan that ahead of time, probably. But it’s not something they’d have done if they hadn’t been pushed to the limit first.”

The knot in Shigaraki’s stomach is pulling his entire body with it – intestines, heart, lungs. He stands up so fast he knocks his chair over. “Bathroom.”

“Down the hall. Door on the right,” you say. “Are you –”

Shigaraki’s in the bathroom with the door locked before you can finish asking the question. He hunches over the sink, struggling to breathe without gagging. Why did you tell him that? All that stuff about intention and premeditation and the reasons mattering – why would you think he needed to hear it? Shigaraki’s pretty sure you don’t monologue about the legal system to your hero friends, but you weren’t trying to convince him that the system’s good, or right. You were just telling him. Almost like you know.

Like you know what? That question gives Shigaraki pause, and in the pause, he forces himself to straighten up and take a look around. Your bathroom is small, like everything else in y our apartment. There’s not a lot of stuff lying around on the counter. Or a lot of stuff under the sink, when he looks down there. The cabinet behind the mirror has more in it, but Shigaraki’s not sure what to make of what he’s looking at. Girl stuff, probably. Does sunscreen count as girl stuff? There’s makeup, or what Shigaraki thinks is makeup, but not much of it has been used. Most of it is still in its packaging. There’s also a pile of narrow elastic bands – black, made of fabric, not rubber. Hair ties. Shigaraki picks one up and slides it down over his wrist.

He’s not sure why he did that, but he feels a little better, and he takes a few more deep breaths. You weren’t trying to do something to him. You were just talking, because people talk when they go out to dinner together. There’s nothing weird happening. You don’t know anything. You’re in love with him. It’s fine.

Shigaraki leaves the bathroom and makes his way down the hall, stopping in a few places to look at the pictures you have hanging up. There’s one where you’re hugging a big golden dog, looking stupid-happy and a lot younger than you are now. Another one from when you were a student at UA, in a school uniform, standing with three other girls. And then there’s one that makes Shigaraki feel sick and angry all over again – you and some guy. He’s got his arm around your shoulders.

“That’s my brother.”

Shigaraki jumps, swears. You snuck up on him. “He doesn’t live in Japan,” you continue. “So if you were planning to use him to get back at me, find something else.”

“I’ll get back at you when you do something to me,” Shigaraki says. “Not before.”

You study him, head tilted to one side. “Are you okay?” you ask. “You looked like you were going to be sick.”

“I want to finish the food,” Shigaraki says. He has a bad feeling about his ability to lie to you right now. Lying is a bad policy with somebody he’s trying to recruit. The fucking recruitment thing. How did he forget about that? “Did you get rid of it?”

“No,” you say, puzzled. “It’s probably gotten cold, though. I’ll heat it up again.”

Shigaraki leans against the kitchen counter while you mess with the microwave, and decides to test your supposed metal sense while he’s waiting. He reaches out, like he’s going to grab your shoulder, and his arm stalls in midair, held back by the metal shackle around his wrist. Pulling back doesn’t make a difference, and it fits too closely to pull his hand free. Shigaraki tries to bring up his other hand and Decay the shackle, but that hand freezes in place, too. You didn’t even turn around. “Can I help you?”

“Just testing you,” Shigaraki says. “You really are good. Want to let me go?”

You shrug. “You might not believe me, but I’m sorry about your friend,” you say. “Whichever of your friends it was. I wish it hadn’t happened. To them or to you.”

Shigaraki doesn’t sleep much. He’s pretty sure what happened to Magne and Compress will be making an appearance in his nightmares. It’ll fit in nicely with the nightmares he already has, which also include a lot of blood and dismembered bodies. “Heroes like it when villains kill villains, right? Like taking out the trash.”

“You must spend a lot of time arguing with the imaginary hero in your head.” The microwave beeps, and you lift the bowls out without touching them. “You’re talking to me. Listen to what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“I’m saying I’m sorry about your friend.” You turn to face Shigaraki, arms crossed over your chest, while the bowls drift back to the table and settle on opposite sides. “I wish it hadn’t happened. Is there anything I can do?”

“Let me out.” Shigaraki pulls at the shackles again, and you release your hold on them. “And if you get a chance, put Overhaul in the fucking ground.”

“Overhaul,” you repeat. “Like, Hassaikai Overhaul? He did it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You need to stay away from him,” you say flatly. “From all of them. It’s not safe.”

“I know it’s not fucking safe. They just killed my friend. Do you think I’m going to –” Shigaraki breaks off as a thought crosses his mind. “What do you mean, it’s not safe?”

“It’s not safe,” you say again. You step around Shigaraki, and he follows you to the table. “I can’t tell you why. But it’s not a good idea to be anywhere near Overhaul or his organization right now.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you,” you say. You pick up your chopsticks. “Are you going to eat?”

The food smells good heated up again. Shigaraki takes a few bites and thinks over what you said. You know something about the Shie Hassaikai, and whatever it is, it’s enough to make you warn Shigaraki away from them. You love him, so some of it is probably that you don’t want him going back near somebody who killed his friend. But it sounds like more than that. You can’t tell him why. What’s something a hero can’t tell a villain?

What the other heroes are up to. Shigaraki feels a grin spreading across his face. “The heroes are going after the Hassaikai.” Across the table, you cringe. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“No!”

You’re not a good liar, at least not to Shigaraki. Good to know. Shigaraki eats fast, his mind working faster. Overhaul thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, heroes and villains both. Which will be more humiliating – getting his shit rocked by another villain, or being crushed by a gang of heroes? It’s the last one for sure. Shigaraki doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting of destroying Overhaul. All he has to do is pretend to help, stay out of the way, and yank the illusion of his support when Overhaul needs it most. To betray Overhaul’s trust. Just like Overhaul did to him.

Easy enough. And Shigaraki wouldn’t have known about it if you hadn’t told him.

Shigaraki has a hard time believing that he ever felt weird about you being in love with him. You didn’t hand him over to the cops. You let him in. You made food for him and tried to make him feel better and actually succeeded, at least a little, when you gave him a clue about how to crush Overhaul. As far as Shigaraki can see, there’s not a single downside to having a hero as a girlfriend.

[quixoticanarchy]

Maglor saying "the oath says not that we may not bide our time" is very interesting (not, unfortunately, conducive to conciseness). bear with me.

a) if they can bide their time, that kind of undermines the idea that they are driven by the oath into atrocity; rather, they can choose the moment to obey it (to some degree). the truth of this statement is unclear because it does seem that they spend a lot of the First Age biding their time, but also when they try to bide their time before the third kinslaying, it was said that they were tormented by the oath. was that false? what is it that pushes them into action, if not the pressure of the oath? or, is it the knowledge and shame of the unfulfilled oath combined with events that enable them to strike out for the jewels, but not actually any metaphysical pressure forcing their hand?

b) Maglor is also saying here, let's go back to Valinor and just see what happens. maybe eventually we can get the silmarils peacefully and be forgiven (I have to agree with Maedhros that that seems.. unlikely). probably correctly, Maedhros envisions the difficulty of trying to get the silmarils in Valinor while unforgiven, and what it would entail and cost to do violence there again. Maglor imagines peace; Maedhros definitely anticipates violence

c) I think Maglor also just wants to go home. he wants to stop. he would probably like to fulfill the oath (or be freed from it), but also would be fine with kicking the can down the road, presuming the oath will allow that. but once Maedhros talks him out of the likelihood of success if they wait til Valinor, he's also willing to break it entirely. his contention that Manwë and Varda making the oath impossible to fulfill would also make it void could be interpreted as a hope that both these things would happen

Maedhros makes the points that they can't be released bc they swore also to Ilúvatar, and therefore they're still facing the Everlasting Darkness if they fail. to which Maglor makes the fair point that if they can't be released, then either they hold themselves bound by the oath and keep trying for the silmarils (and if they fail, face Everlasting Darkness), or try to give up the oath, find they are still bound by it and, having auto-failed their task by breaking the oath, face Everlasting Darkness anyway. therefore yes, they would do less evil in the breaking, but the result is the same to them - as long as in neither case do they actually anticipate fulfilling the oath. Maglor therefore is maybe ready to give it up as impossible; possibly, Maedhros is arguing that it remains achievable for now, but "its fulfilment be byeond all hope" only once back in Aman, lending urgency to the final attempt to get the silmarils now.

a follow-up question: do they at this point believe that success is still possible? what is success? if they have to get all 3 silmarils to satisfy the oath, they're up against Earendil, but they never mention that. what does fulfilling the oath mean - that they evade the consequence of failure? is the force that 'drives' them to stick to the oath not so much (or not only) a metaphysical pain or burden that torments them, but the fear of the failure condition itself - the Everlasting Darkness?

this would explain Maglor's interest in wanting to stop pursuing the oath, but also wanting it somehow neutralized - whether by biding time or having the oath declared void. and Maedhros is arguing that a) they can't be released, b) they can only keep the darkness at bay by continuing to actually try for fulfilment, and c) they should take this one last shot while arguably they still have a chance (or at least it's easier than it would be in Aman). it may not matter whether success is ultimately possible (i.e. if Earendil does come into the picture, or the crosshairs), but it matters that they are trying.

but then, what to make of them reportedly realizing Eönwë was right and they've lost their right to the silmarils? what does that matter to the oath? the oath declares they'll do anything to get them back, and they do. as much as it sucks to get burned, getting them back (ignore the 3rd silmaril) should mean their deed has not failed so they should not face Everlasting Darkness.

I see a couple of possibilities here: a) they ceased being bound by the oath when they lost their right to the silmarils, which would make it vain and mean none of the atrocities had to happen. but is that how the oath operates? did they stop being bound by it long ago and just not realize? or, alternately, b) does their losing their right to the silmarils mean they auto-fail the oath bc they’ll never truly “reclaim” them? and therefore, rather than their never being at risk of Everlasting Darkness, are they consigned to it now no matter what? (but Maglor at least seems to evade that, unless it’s very metaphorical…) or, c) were they indeed bound by the oath all along and indeed fulfilled it, it just doesn't really matter bc the victory is hollow, and they themselves can’t hold the very things they killed others for holding? could be harsh enough on its own, whether or not the oath responds to the status of their “right” to the silmarils.

there is also the matter of we don’t know what the Everlasting Darkness is. lol. but I’m not touching that now beyond I think it’s a thing the SoF are genuinely afraid of

[daichiduskdrop]

˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚⋆·˚ ༘ *𝙎𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙡 ⋆·˚ ༘ *ੈ✩‧₊˚

Chapter 12

Pairing: BTS Ot7 X fem! reader

Genre: A/B/O AU, Fluff, Angst, Strangers to lovers,

Warnings: Slight mentions of unhealthy eating habits

Words: 3358

Taglist: @thelilbutifulthings @ilovemoneymorethenmen @singukieee @cherrysainttt @felicityroth @mageprincess7 @lucis-noctiana @danielle143 @osakis-gf @girl-nahh @vintageoldfashion @neverthefirstchoice @juju-227592 @silentreadersthings @i-have-no-life-charlie @everyonehatesshani @iamkookiesforyou @dragons-flare @fangirl125reader @roseidol

Previous:

⋆·˚ ༘ *ੈ✩‧₊˚˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚˚ ✩‧₊˚⋆·˚ ༘ *

Smiling at the calming words, you rested fully against the alpha's shoulder, his large hands curling around your upper back, pulling you closer.

Hoseok chuckled at the soft interaction, knowing well that Yoongi was acting against his usual cold and shy nature, just for you. He wouldn't let even the youngest cuddle with him, and that said something.

You were just special for them.

Driving carefully, the car went slowly. There wasn't any snow falling at the current time, but the roads were glistening with ice, and so the alpha tried to avoid any possible accidents.

It didn't take much more than 20 minutes before they were able to see the university building from the main road. Turning on the closest street, Jungkook drove the vehicle to the parking lot available for the students.

When entering the school, along with a few other important documents and cards, all the students received a parking access card, allowing them to save some money.

Not a lot of the people there actually used it; it was much more common for them to just use the train, bus, or anything along those lines. A car was just an expense not many could afford.

Most of the students were betas, or alphas, because the lectures and assignments brought a high stress level that wasn't advised for omegas to endure every day. It was usual for alphas to drive cars; betas most of the time also had the licence, but for omegas, it was fairly unusual.

Passing the tests with the second-gender burden was just unlikely. Plus, even if some lucky ones managed to pass, most likely paid behind their backs by their pack alphas, they wouldn't always actually get the licence.

It wasn't a very honourable act to pay to pass any tests or bypass any important rules, but if a pack omega just so wanted to learn how to drive for whatever reason, would study so well for it, and would be nervous during any of the practise drives, the pack would just eventually soften up.

It was just harsh to see them fail and look so sad after it happened; usually the omegas would end up crying because of it too.

"They wouldn't need the licence anyways," was usually what the teachers at the driving school would say, blatantly obvious with just not wanting to allow them to drive.

Car accidents could end terribly, and a pack that has lost their omega for such things would most definitely carry the burden for way longer than healthy.

It was true, though; the passenger princess privelage omegas held was just too powerful.

And so, the parking lot was mostly empty, occupied in only at very few spots. Getting in the line before the lifting barrier, only a few cars stood before the pack's.

Noticing the driver being let in only after scanning a card, Jungkook turned to look at you, palms still holding the wheel fully.

„Babybun? Do you have card access for the parking lot, sweet bunny?” Nodding, you took your backpack from next to you, rummaging through it until you fished out your wallet.

Going through the many passes you didn't really use, you took out the dark blue card, which had a barcode at its bottom with your information printed out on top.

Handing it to Jin, he gave it to Jungkook's outstretched hand. Thanking you gently, the alpha drove a few metres forward after the last car went through.

Pulling the window down, he let the scan recognise your access, and the barrier pulled up right after. Driving in, he turned to park at one of the bigger slots, making sure not to bump into anyone's car.

Turning the engine off, seatbelts unbuckled, and doors opened, with you also slipping out in time. Yoongi carried your backpack for you and held it by one of the straps.

Zipping up your now slightly opened jacket for you, Jungkook smiled widely at you. „I'll keep the card for when one of us comes to pick you up later, okay, bun?” Rubbing your cheek with his knuckles, his warm and soft eyes settled on your form.

Nodding at it, you didn't have any issue with it. Turning to your backpack, you took out your college ID and hung it around your neck with the strap.

With the time quickly approaching closer and closer to 8, the alphas decided that going from the oldest to the youngest, they would share their goodbyes. With the first alpha approaching you, he took a hold of both of your hands, intertwining your fingers and squeezing them.

„Sweet cub, have fun at lessons today, okay? You can tell me all about them later. Text us if you need anything; we are always available for you. And eat your lunch well; I made it extra tasty just for you.”

Cooing at you, Jin stepped closer to you, his body feeling warm even through all the layers. His chin rubbed softly over the top of your head, scenting you just the smallest bit.

Stepping back, the man allowed his packmates to also say their goodbyes, but even then, he didn't let his eyes waver from your form, watching closely over you.

„My sweet kitten. Have a good day, hm? If anything happens, alphas are always ready to come here and get you. Pay attention in lessons and stay out of trouble, kitty.”

Yoongi didn't show much affection, instead choosing to just scent you, being much less obvious about it. Rubbing his hands around your soft face tenderly, he let his wrist scent glands do the trick.

After making deep eye contact with the alpha for a few seconds, he pulled away, helping you put on your backpack.

Smiling widely at you, the next alpha pulled you to his chest right away, rubbing both of his palms over your sides, being mindful not to bump into your bag.

„Sunshine, have a great day. What is your schedule today anyway?"

„Um..I have to meet my course leader first, since it's Monday. I'll be in the studio until lunch break, and then I should have some lectures and then continue on some assignments again.” You said, thinking about your schedule for the day.

Usually, it was pretty much the same every day, but Mondays were a bit different, with meeting up with the course leader in the morning. They were there to explain and inform you about any upcoming events or assignments for the week, going over all the work you have done for the past week.

„That sounds like a lot, bub. You aren't too tired now, are you? My baby, be careful on yourself, please.” Already getting too worried for any good reason, he wrapped his arms around your head, pushing you under his chin.

Breathing in your scent, he felt his nerves settle down a bit. With his chin gently going over your hairline, he too left a bit of his scent lingering on you. Pursing his lips in disappointment, he pulled away after prolonging the hug for a good few seconds, gently rubbing your shoulders before he stepped away.

„Okay, babypup, pay good attention to your lessons, sweetheart. Make sure you do well in your classes, and if anything happens, tell the alphas right away; we are here to protect you.” Looking into your eyes with his neck bended towards you, you nodded at Packalpha's words.

Gentle and caring, yet strict at the same time. Namjoon always cared about studies, and you doing well in your lessons was very important to him. He knew a bit about art, but even if he didn't, he was more than willing to study anything to be able to help you if you had any troubles.

Gently patting the back of your head for a few rhythms, he hummed in approval when you nodded. Rubbing his cheek on your hair, he let his scent cover you fully. You gripped his fingers tightly before you let him pull away again.

„Aigoo, princess, make sure you have lots of fun with your classmates today, hm? We already added you to our group chat, so make sure you message us throughout the day, sweet baby. Alphas will get worried otherwise!”

Whining through his chuckles, Jimin shook you softly, making you also erupt in soft giggles. Pleased with the sound, he also carefully pulled you close to his body, snuggling up against your warm neck and cheeks.

With you well scented, he felt satisfied with his work, allowing the other alphas to also say their goodbyes.

„Babycheeks, be careful alright? If anyone picks on you, you tell us immediately. Do you understand? ...good girl. Take photos of what you made; you can show me later today. I would love to see.”

Nodding into his neck, you breathed in the musky scent he carried. He felt worried about leaving you out of his sight after having you drop twice already these past two days. It was just worrying for him.

With his fingers combing through your hair, Taehyung squeezed your cheeks a little, pinching them and laughing widely at your face. You were just adorable, weren't you?

With his small wrist scent glands doing a good job of scenting you well, he felt satisfied with his work, letting the youngest do his own thing.

„Babybun, I will get lonely without you like this! You have to text me, okay, so I don't cry! I will, I really will—no, baby, don't laugh! Nooo, yah! Stop! Aish..” His fake sobs were just ridiculous; his face looked too funny for you to handle.

Hugging him instead, you could hear the loud coos of the other men around you, making you hide your face in the alpha's chest better. Giggling himself, he rubbed his palms over your sides himself, his knuckles caressing your cheeks gently.

Stepping away after a few more moments, you adjusted the card around your neck and shyly looked down. The men didn't leave yet, watching over you with soft eyes. Sighing out, you knew you had to go now.

„I'll go now...” You softly whispered, about to turn on your heel, when Namjoon answered.

„Be a good girl for alphas today.” The packalpha said, and with your shy nod, you made your way to the entrance of your college.

The pack watched over you fondly, making sure you left inside safely. And so, after you turned a corner, they all eventually piled back in the van, the time showing 7:54. They didn't have any strict schedules they always had to comply with, but they had scheduled meetings for the day.

They didn't mind, though; even if they were a little late, saying proper goodbyes to you was much more important to them.

Rounding the corner, you walked through the busy corridors, many scents erupting from all around you. It wasn't too loud; most of the people who studied at art schools were more introverted and quiet. Still, with the many people you didn't know well and the scents they carried, the noise was a bit overwhelming.

Shrugging off your coat and placing it in your locker, you locked it, taking just your backpack. Continuing on your way to the studios, yours was at the bottom level of the school, right next to all the printing techniques.

It was just more convenient for all the students since a lot of the time fine arts included sculptures and other various materials, and you were also used to going to the printing techniques quite frequently. The giant machines were placed downstairs for obvious reasons.

Walking through the open space where a lot of the figurative drawing classes were held, you made your way to the room you shared with the few classmates you had. Opening the doors, you bent your head so you wouldn't accidentally meet anyone's eyes.

There weren't many people in your class anyway, and sharing it with only six others was a pretty private experience if you were being honest. Fine arts weren't just that popular for a major, very understandably so.

Taking a seat at the corner of the big table, you all piled together, waiting for the teacher to arrive.

❄️

„And the curating? How is it going?” The man asked, watching over his class. The exhibitions would take place in just about a week or so, and so it was important to get the finishing touches down.

After splitting up the class into two equal groups, it was assigned for them to help curate two exhibitions, one for each. The works of the other students would be shown too, with the show held in the school building a few days before Christmas.

They had to do everything basically by themselves, and that was a lot of work, having to label everything, prepare all the work on time, and get it together with no issues.

You shared the project with two betas, a boy named Chin-Hae and another girl named Sun-Hi. They didn't let you do much stuff completely by yourself, so you more or less helped them around. Most of the talking with other students was done by them, with you being close by.

Neither of them talked too much with you, but with a few of the other classmates, they were a lot more outgoing. You didn't mind, though, feeling a little too shy to try and approach them with anything else but the project you were required to work on together.

„We are working on the posters for it right now; we still have to finalise all the names. Not much left to do.” Sun-Hi spoke, her voice sounding velvety and calm.

Even if the group seemed mostly well collected, they were more than worried. The preparations have been taking over two months now, and it's been complicated getting the work ready.

„Alright. Do you have some sketches or anything? I can look over it with you.” Nodding at that, the beta pulled out her laptop, unlocking it, and after a minute, she turned the screen to the teacher.

There wasn't much yet done for the poster; together they only decided on the colour scheme and font but didn't go too deep into how it would actually look. You had some ideas on your mind, but you didn't expect the group to actually use them.

Looking at the screen for a second, you nervously sat next to the teacher and the two other classmates opposite you. Hiding your palms under the sleeves of the jumper you wore, you huddled closer to yourself.

Nodding at your work, the teacher mentioned finishing it within two or so days at the maximum because they had to present the whole preparation process by Friday. He would be able to help them at least a little until then, but when Friday hits, he won't be able to do much.

Thanking him quietly, the teacher then went over the other students work for the assignments given for the month. Checking over how they were progressing, he was quick to give any needed help.

With every assignment, you were given a written note going over what techniques you had to use, the theme, colours, and any other notes that had to be made. Everything else was fully up to you.

With the sketches already done, you were moving quickly with the work you still had to do since it had to be done before the Christmas holidays. The critiques would be held the day after New Year's celebrations, and you had to have everything done by then.

You weren't too wowed by the theme. „What is your problem?” just sounded a bit lame to your ears, but you did get a few nice ideas you continued to work on further.

You liked that the sentence could be interpreted and said in so many different ways, from a caring and worried question all the way to a rude and sarcastic remark.

You wanted to hold on to that thought for a little longer, wanting to maybe even collaborate with someone you thought would never understand your perspective and view. And so, after telling your kind teacher about your idea, he was quick to help.

Providing you with a contact for a senior alpha man you had never met in your life before, he helped you arrange a short meeting, held on the school grounds, where the man arrived.

It was an experience you never really thought about going through before, but you decided to trust it, and you believed you would be able to make an artwork after the appointment.

And so the day you met up with the elder, you were led to the cafeteria with your teacher with you, helping you get settled down for a second or two before he also left. It was a little bit awkward at first; the alpha's face was obviously more than tired.

You still remember the bright white coat he wore and the thick knitted scarf he tightly wrapped around his neck. With a walking stick held by him, the man took a seat by the small table in the cantine, his wire-rimmed glasses perched up on his big nose.

Even when it intimidated you at first greatly, soon you went on talking with the alpha, and shockingly, he felt very sweet towards you. A bit confused with the new technologies, he was actually very nice to talk to.

When you told him about the assignment, he laughed loudly and was quick to answer the question. „I got old, and so will you.”

With the main idea of your work already so easily said by him, you now had a few nice ideas you wanted to carry out further. Wanting to phase the whole project around age and mostly time, you weren't too sure what to exactly present, but choosing to do multimedia just felt right for this.

You knew making a video could be risky, especially with the music that would have to play in the background, the animation, and everything else that was just time-consuming, but you had already prepared well for it by creating a plan and taking a few photos you wanted to include.

And so, going over all the stuff you had prepared earlier last week, your teacher also helped you around, making sure you understood well what was wanted.

It didn't feel like a long time passed before it was lunch break. You were actually quite excited for it, going from being huddled up before the notebook the school would provide you with to finally stretching out again.

Unzipping your backpack, you pulled out the steel dosirak case. It was cold by now, but you hoped that the alpha would have only packed food that was usually eaten cold. You hated when your meals, which were usually served warm, would go icy. It just tasted different.

There was rice in one of the side compartments, four kimbap neatly placed in a line, cut-up lotus roots in one of the smaller placements, sesame seeds sprinkled on top, and a bit of bulgogi was also in the lunch box.

It looked like a meal you would buy at a restaurant, not a lunch you would take from home. Feeling excited, you went on to take a bite with the wooden chopsticks Jin gave you, the case safely tucked in the box with a few napkins placed around it.

It tasted good, and so you kept coming back for seconds, having, for once in your life, truly finished the whole box without having to force yourself even a little. Your tastebuds were dancing in delight, and you had your stomach filled up once again.

With only a bit of the beef, lotus, and rice left for your afternoon snack, you were more than satisfied.

Taking your phone out, you reminded yourself to thank the pack's oldest for the nice meal he must have whipped up for you the last evening and morning. Opening WhatsApp, you were already added to a group with a few text notifications.

⋆·˚ ༘ *ੈ✩‧₊˚˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚˚ ✩‧₊˚⋆·˚ ༘ *

Next:

[lizzy019]

𝒜𝓇𝑒 𝒴𝑜𝓊 𝐼𝓃 𝐿𝑜𝓋𝑒? ...𝐹𝑜𝓇 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝓁 𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝒯𝒾𝓂𝑒?

Sub!Two-Bit x Fem!Reader [Reader is best friends with Two-Bit] SLOW BURN!

cw -> somnophilia, masturbation, couch seggs, breast play, cowgirl, dacryphilia, light degradation

Word Count -> 6.2K (crazy ikr?)

Two-Bit is mah baby whatchu on abttttt

“Blasted car.” You muttered to yourself, parking your now useless vehicle onto the side of the road where people couldn’t hit it.

The car had stopped working, shooting out clouds of black smoke from its exhaust pipe while the little clunking noise had become repetitive from somewhere in the back of your vehicle.

With obvious exhaustion in your eyes, you find yourself trekking along the muddy and overgrown sidewalks, trying to spot Two-Bit’s house anywhere nearby to stay for a bit until a tow company could come pick up your car. Unfortunately, while you couldn’t find his house, you stumbled upon him trying to pick up a random innocent girl on the streets, who so clearly wanted nothing to do with him.

So with tired steps, you made your way over to the two and sighed heavily to announce your presence. This had Two-Bit looking over in confusion, smiling at you instantly and forgetting the other girl quicker than he could even think it. His hands grabbed your shoulders and happily shook you, making you a little dizzy, but a smile still managed to cross your face.

“Heya, numbnut! You wanna go with me to get ice cream? I’m so hungry, but food’s too hard to cook.” He frowned, hands moving to fix the little fold of hair hanging over his forehead. How could you possibly say no to him?

“I mean, I would, but my car’s busted. I think the engine’s worn out, and I was hopin’ I could stay over at your place until a tow truck driver comes by to pick up my car for a fix.” You murmured, hands pushed deep into the warm fabric of your pockets, eyes staying fixated on him as you watched him think.

With a soft grin on his lips, he nodded his head happily and politely let you loop your arm with his. In this sort of neighbourhood, any woman was likely to have something improper done to them without the supervision of another man. With paced steps, Two-Bit began to lead you to his house, talking away gleefully as you travelled to your awaiting destination.

“Oh, it was gnarly alright! The movie was sick, I don’t think I’ve ever seen somethin’ so swell! I ain’t never watched a movie starrin’ a girl either, but it was pretty alright. What about you, numby?” He asked with a smirk, awaiting an answer as you only shook your head and smiled.

What a big goof he was.

“Unlike you, I was drivin’ up to go get food. I was runnin’ low and you know how my family gets. I gotta be the one to do everythin’ nowadays..” You contempted, gently bumping him with your hip to try and get him to stumble. It was playful, a common little joke you did to amuse each other.

“Why were you buggin’ that girl? You gotta stop flirtin’ with ‘em just to bum their money, Two.”

Two-Bit scoffed at your words, bumping you back playfully and shrugging. Soon, you arrived at his home.

“My life’s boring, smartass. Gotta do somethin’ while Brenda’s at school, yeah? Somethin’ aside drinkin’ and eating cake while watchin’ Mickey, but it doesn’t matter. I like my way of doin’ things.” He answered, walking you to the side door and allowing you into his little bungalow house.

While inside reeked of cigarettes, alcohol, and overall dirtiness, it held a sort of comfort that made it appealing to you. Maybe it was the mess in the kitchen that was all too real at your own home, or maybe it was the way Two-Bit flopped so freely onto the sofa without a care in the world in hopes he’d turn on the TV and find a rerun of a Mickey show, or maybe it was the way the house had this.. warm feeling. Regardless, you threw away all ladylike manners and plopped yourself down beside him, trying to prevent him from moving with your weight and giggling when he slammed a pillow to your face.

“Hey! That’s not nice, I’ve been nothing but kind to you.” You tried to act innocuous, yet it was rebutted with another whack of the pillow which had both of you laughing hysterically.

The hand on the time’s clock finally hit 6:30, and just a moment or two later, Two-Bit’s mother and Brenda came through the side door. Why was the side door so popular for entry when there was a front door?

Nonetheless, Brenda’s beady blue eyes met yours and the cute 6 year old ran over to you with the most curious and gleeful expression you could possibly think of. She was the spitting image of Two-Bit, chubby face with the cutest eyes, lovely dirty blonde hair and the prettiest little smile. She looked like an absolute sweetheart!

“Are you another girlfriend that.. that Keith brought home?” Brenda asked you, a soft inhale between words as she collected some of her thoughts to speak them properly. You had to choke back a laugh, smiling so widely you were sure you looked like the Cheshire cat.

“No, sweetie, I’m not. You’re Brenda, aren’t you? Your brother says everyone calls you Annie.” You responded with faux serenity, trying to maintain your composure at the sweet sight of the little female version of Two-Bit. It was honestly adorable.

With a bright little gappy smile, Brenda nodded and hopped onto the couch beside you, sweet little hands coming to fiddle around with your purse.

“Yeah, everyone calls me Annie or Bren, but you can call me whatever! I’m just happy you’re not one of those weird girls he brings over, they scare me.” She muttered, her little petite hands releasing your purse before moving to the sleeve of your shirt. She seemed very curious, but before you could say much, Brenda tried to wriggle herself into your lap to watch Mickey more comfortably. So Mickey Mouse was common in the household?

“Alright Annie. You know you’re very pretty, right? You look a lot like your brother and your mother.” You paused to speak, gently beginning to split the little amount of hair she had to put two small braids on her head.

Entwining the hair together to form a pattern while Two-Bit and Brenda laughed at whatever was playing on the TV screen, you didn’t have the chance to see his mother walk by, a tired expression clearly tainting her facial features before she appeared in your peripheral vision. She seemed very content watching the three of you, and you paid no mind as to not embarrass her.

“Do you three want anything in particular for dinner?” Her dulcet and soft voice rang through the room, alerting the two siblings and you as well.

You could only shrug, putting the decision on the two as you finished Brenda’s braids. Now she had two lovely french braids, loose enough to be comfortable but tight enough to stay in place.

“Potatoes ‘n gravy!” Brenda exclaimed with glee, hopping off of your lap to scurry over and help her mother in the kitchen with dinner.

You smiled graciously at this sight, and a simple thought ran through your head as you watched. Brenda was a good kid, swell beyond belief and as kind as any girl could hope to be. Two-Bit sat up as well, handing you the remote in case you wanted to watch anything while he walked over to help set up the table. It seemed everyone had a job in the family, a role to play to get a task done.

You shut off the TV, setting the remote on the coffee table and sighing while you pushed yourself up off of the sofa to follow behind. Entering the kitchen, you were met with the unpleasant sight of garbage mixed with beer bottles, cigarette packs, carton boxes and filth piled up. While it had you frowning, the way Two-Bit had Brenda on his shoulders, grabbing the plates from the highest shelf to set the table, and his mother with the most affectionate smile anyone could ever display while she watched them was what distracted you from the mess. As long as they were happy, nothing else really mattered.

His mother’s gaze fell to you, and with a smile, she gestured you over. Without a second thought, you hurried over and smiled back, giving her the softest expression you possibly could.

“Yes, ma’am? Did you need something from me?” You asked politely, and his mother nodded slowly.

“Yes, I need you to mash the potatoes while I make the gravy. They’re already peeled, could you do that for me? If you don’t wish to, I could get Keith to do it.” She hummed out, moving to the fridge to dig out the proper ingredients while you agreed to it without a doubt.

How could you possibly say no when she looked so tired already?

With gentle motions, you began to mash the softened potatoes, carefully smashing them in the bowl they were in and adding the occasional sprinkle of salt and pepper to add flavour. No one likes flavourless, warm mashed potatoes anyway.

Sitting at the dining room table, skies dark outside and the one light overhead keeping the dining room table lit, you all were happily chit chatting over some steamed chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies. You had to admit, Two-Bit’s mother could cook really damn good. Regardless, you couldn’t help but occasionally frown whenever it seemed that Brenda disliked the veggies. It was sweet though, you could see your own younger self in her at times.

“Annie, are you okay, sweetheart? You look like you don’t like your food.” You always found yourself in awe by how gentle his mother was, but you smiled when Brenda pouted and pushed away her plate, everything nearly licked clean off except for the damned veggies.

“Mama, I don’t wanna eat ‘em! Yucky.” She pouted, bottom lip pushed forward in a plea to not eat them.

With a soft sigh, their mother nodded and shooed away the child to go watch shows on the television while she finished the rest of the veggies. You felt bad, but you didn’t wanna say anything in case you were interrupting something. But you turned to Two-Bit and saw him purloining the vegetables from his mother’s plate, and it wasn’t even sneakily anymore. He probably had the same thought process.

His mother turned to him with a wide smile, and you couldn’t help smiling yourself. She looked so happy.

“Keith, where will your friend stay? The guest room is occupied with all of our things. Would it be awkward to ask if you two could maybe share a bed for tonight? If not, we can clean up the guest bedroom for her.” She was almost too sweet, and you could tell Two-Bit was thinking the same thing.

While it would indeed be a bit awkward sleeping together with your best friend, you didn’t wish to put her through more work considering she just came back from a 14 hour shift. You shook your head, taking all the plates and cutlery to put them into the sink. In the kitchen with a sponge in hand, you began to clean all the used dishes and cutlery, as well as the glasses. It was the least you could do since they let you stay at their place for a day or two until the tow truck came. Unfortunately, there was still no one. Apparently they were “behind on schedule.”

Once you were finished, you looked back into the living room where Two-Bit had another beer in his hand, Brenda was sitting with a box of juice, and their mother laid on the armchair with a blanket on her lap trying to get some sleep. It was a sweet sight, you couldn’t lie.

“Two-Bit, can I use your shower? I promise I won’t be long, but where is it?” You asked serenely, smoothly almost.

His gaze wafted over to yours, and he nodded while he sat up to lead you to the bathroom. Soft steps followed by creaking floorboards were all that was heard for a moment or two. The hallway walls were littered with family photos, the one that stood out to you the most was the one with just Two-Bit, his mom and his dad. Two-bit had a father?

You paid no mind, tippy-toeing until you found the bathroom at the end of the hall. You thanked him silently, giving his arm a little slap before giggling and hiding away in the bathroom.

Stripping the clothes you wore off of your body so you could freely shower, the cold tiles of the floor stinging your feet, you began to find yourself smiling at the little collection of rubber ducks you presumed were Brenda’s. It was sweet, honestly. You turned on the shower, keeping it at your favourite temperature before hopping in to wash away any stress left behind from your car incident. While it was nice staying with Two-Bit, you had this little nagging feeling in your chest, something tight that made everything feel a little too rough around the edges.

You tried convincing yourself that it was just stress as you washed your body with soap, lathering it on all parts of flesh that were dirty or sore before rinsing under the shower’s waves of rain. You were losing it, there was no way you were falling for Two-Bit and just how lovely his whole lifestyle was. There was no way from a simple visit to his house, you had finally managed to convince yourself of it.

But that can only hold out for so long.

Two-Bit handed you a shirt while you embarrassingly covered your breasts from his view, taking the shirt in your free hand before he turned around so his back faced you, giving you privacy to put it on. You did just that, you threw the shirt over your head and popped your arms through the sleeve holes, finding the shirt to be just a tad bit too loose as it hung low around your collarbone.

Nonetheless, you found it cozy and you found yourself liking the smell of it. Needless to say it stunk with cigarette and beer, but it also had that scent that only Two-Bit had, that little chocolatey and woody kind of smell. It was nice, you couldn’t lie.

It had now reached 10:30 at night, you were exhausted from everything and honestly, you really didn’t want any more disturbances, so you tugged at Two-Bit’s arm and gestured for him to lay down and rest as well. Your head rested on the pillow he provided you, eyes already shut as his weight dipped the bed. You smiled softly when he covered your body with the blanket, it was sweet.

“Mmh.. thanks for everything, Two-Bit. ‘M sorry the tow truck company isn’t here yet, I swear I called them twice.” You apologized, hands tucked close to you as you felt yourself drifting off too quickly.

Two-Bit didn’t seem to mind, he was busy watching how your body looked in his shirt. He couldn’t tell you what was happening to him, how you affected him and how you annoyingly messed with his mind more than you already did. He simply gave a hum of acknowledgement to your statement, watching you fully succumb to the strength of your exhaustion before he moved his hand to rub at his crotch.

It was wrong, he knew it was. But he also knew you were a deep sleeper, he could use that to his advantage.

A hand came to dig his own half erection from his underwear, and his other trying to gently push up your shirt without having you stir or move. It was a selfish and greedy way to get what he wanted, what he’d been seeking since he first met you. He knew you’d never feel the same, you’d never wanna be with a guy like him. Someone scolded by society, shunned and disgraced.

Two-Bit was different from Keith. Keith was soft towards his family, loving to his friends, but Two-Bit was the one who was rebellious, boisterous and careless.

Soft groans left his mouth as he watched the slow rise and fall of your chest, nipples erect from the cold of the air. The way they moved and swayed whenever you subconsciously moved your body to become more comfortable. He felt so wrong, he didn’t know if this was a Two-Bit move or a Keith move. Whichever it was, it was a low move for the sake of getting his own pleasure.

His strokes on his weepy cock became more desperate until he focused solely on the tingling and burning of an orgasm building up. Poor Two-Bit, struggling not to moan, cum, or move too much for the sake of himself and everyone else’s sleep. But surely enough, his hand clasped the tip of his cock while thick spurts of semen began to spew out from the head, overfilling his hand and some inevitably pouring onto the bedding.

A loud whimper managed to leave his throat, until he too was knocked out from exhaustion. The sleep had managed to overcome his own need to clean up his hand and rid it from the semen on it, but he was dead asleep before he even had the thought to go and clean himself up. He’d do it in the morning..

Waking up to rustling fabrics wasn’t the most pleasant way to start your morning, but it was enough to get you going. You pulled down your shirt which you thought innocently was shifted while you were asleep, stretching and accidentally bonking Two-Bit right in the head. This woke you up more properly, and you began to apologize lazily.

“Mmh.. sorry, Two. Didn’t mean it.” You hummed, voice groggy from lack of use during the night while you tried to blink your eyes awake. Unfortunately, you were still too tired to even care about starting the day when the bed was warm and Two-Bit was there beside you.

However, Two-Bit looked down at his crotch, angry with his new morning wood he hadn’t realized until he moved his legs. But when he saw you were oblivious to it, he took it as his chance to get out of his own room as fast as he possibly could. Pants on and shirt messy, he zipped out from the room, leaving you hazy and confused all by yourself.

You didn’t mind, eyes adjusting to the daylight beaming through the curtains. You hummed and groaned softly, pushing yourself off of the fabric mattress and rubbing your eyes. Everything was stiff, your legs and back especially. Maybe some breakfast and a walk would do you some good.

You hobbled out of bed, securing some pants before peeking into Brenda’s room to check in on the sweetheart. She was just happily snoozing away, you couldn’t bring yourself to wake her up. Tip-toeing to the living room and dining room, you saw their mother still on the couch, Two-Bit reading the newspaper and sipping some tea. This had you smiling, he looked rather handsome with eye bags and glazed eyes.

Wait- handsome?!

You caught yourself mid thought, looking at him more thoroughly and your eyes uncomfortably drifted lower to where a slight bulge was most prominent under his pants. Your own body shivered, eyes darting back into the kitchen out of nervousness and discomfort as you made yourself a tea as well.

Soon enough, once your water had finished boiling, you had poured yourself a soft tea with sugar and honey to get you started, and you sat near the television to spectate over his mother in case she woke up and needed anything. She was such a sweetheart, and definitely needed the most care. Soft sips were the only noises heard in the room, coming from you and Two-Bit drinking your morning drinks. While it wasn’t pleasant, it had a nice and cozy, homey feeling.

You occasionally looked over at Two-Bit, seeing him unfocused as if he was using the newspaper to look busy but in reality it was only to cover up whatever else his mind was doing. It always wandered, Two-Bit’s thoughts.

Once you had finished your tea, you’d set it down on the coffee table and hurried to get dressed, needing to see if they took your car or not. Your own blouse was put on, pants as well before you rushed to the front door to grab your shoes. A soft “see you” was uttered by Two-Bit, and you responded with the same words before lightly jogging out of the house to go check.

Jogging through the front door and down the stairs, you managed to spot what looked like an oil blotch where your car was parked previously. A “yes!” escaped you when you realized they’d taken your car, and hopefully would be finished fixing it in a day. You didn’t wish to invade Two-Bit and his family’s home as if it was normal.

You jogged back to the house, a little tweak in your breath but overall having a more refreshed feeling now that you had breathed in the fresh air and got that good news. Once you entered through the side door like before, you found yourself looking around in confusion. Where had Two-Bit’s mother gone? Your worry was soon replaced with relief when Brenda had rushed into the living room, jumping with energy while her mother followed behind her.

Her tired eyes met yours, and she smiled gently at your soft huffs and puffs. Her smile didn’t hurt you in the slightest.

“Running in the morning? I didn’t take you for the athletic type, dear.” She hummed, taking the newspaper from Two-Bit to read it herself and sighing deeply.

“What misfortunes ruin our world now?”

You chuckled at her question, shrugging and playfully slapping the back of Two-Bit’s head. It earned a soft chuckle from him, and you chuckled as well.

“John Kennedy is elected President? What a mockery to our country.” Two-Bit’s mother hissed, earning a laugh from you both.

You looked at the bill for your car’s payment and the due date of your car’s pick up day.

$324.

Bill due - Sept. 18

Pick up day - Sept. 14

You had a week to pay off your car’s repairs, and had to wait three more days until you could pick up your vehicle?

It nearly had tears in your eyes, but you let them flow freely since you were all alone in the now quiet house. No Two-Bit, no Brenda, or their mother. The only sound in response to your sobs were the echoes of them once they left your throat.

How could you possibly pay off this bill in that short amount of time? Everything was getting so stressful and worrisome, it was all just piling up and piling up-

A loud creak startled you out of your spiral, making your body tense almost too fast and had your poor heart rate increasing faster than it had to be. Regardless of that, you tried your hardest to stop your unnecessary tears, fearing whoever was in the house would ridicule you for it. Whoever it was, it had every nerve in your body tightening as the footsteps grew nearer.

The door to Two-Bit’s door had opened, and sure enough, it was him. At first, you couldn’t tell what his expression was, but he hurried in to help you when he saw your current distress.

For a second, you truly didn’t know what to do, but you handed him the papers you received and he read them over carefully for your sake and his comfort. Two-Bit had to re-read it multiple times over, reading it out of confusion and laughing afterward. This seemed so incredibly stupid! You both were rather incredulous about the whole situation, but when he saw you had true distress, worry, and stress behind your beautifully coloured eyes, he knew he had to act properly. Even if you were best friends, he really had to step up and be the person you could lean on.

“Hey, it’ll be okay. I’ll help pay this off with you, yeah? You don’t even owe me after, how’s that sound?” Two-Bit offered generously, his expression grim as he saw you wipe tears from your face.

However, words couldn’t describe how happy he was when he saw you smiling all big and wide again at his offer, still sniffling a little. His hand came to gently rub your shoulder out of comfort and instinct, he couldn’t ever tell you how he felt seeing you so melancholy.

“Yeah, thanks, Two. I’d really appreciate that.” You hummed, sniffling once or twice more before he pulled you in for an honest hug.

Soon, it was the evening of the next day. You’d become Brenda’s “favourite girlfriend of Keith’s” despite not being his girlfriend, but you let her call you it anyway. You were happy the sweet little girl liked you so much to begin with!

You sat with Brenda on the couch, her in your lap as you both watched whatever was on TV. Two-Bit was staring holes into your skull as you put your focus on the screen, but he could tell you were only doing it for his sister’s enjoyment. He loved that about you, the way you were so sweet to his sister purely because you were his best friend.

He didn’t want to be best friends though.

It was almost unhealthy how obsessed he was with you, how desperately he wanted to be wrapped around your inner walls and feel your body pressed to his. To feel what your kisses would be like, to grope you and have you as his in totality and to push any risk and discontentful thoughts of being just a friend. It was like some uncontrollable magnetic pull, something that attracted him to you without meaning.

Two-Bit stuttered out of his thoughts when his mother came into the room, looking at Brenda with knowing eyes. Brenda gave a “hmph” before hopping from your lap, and she hurried off with her mother. You were confused, but you didn’t want to ask questions and seem rude for not letting his family have their privacy. You watched as the two put on their outdoor shoes before Brenda waved goodbye to you.

Soon enough, they had headed out and it was just you and Two-Bit alone in the house once again. While this caused you discomfort, you didn’t say anything and just shut off the TV.

However, Two-Bit sat right beside you, stiff as a sack of twigs before his eyes met yours. You could tell he was nervous from the way his eyes couldn’t maintain eye contact, and the way he was fidgeting in his seat was also a definite giveaway. But you didn’t say anything out of kindness.. and because he looked a little too pathetic.

“I gotta talk to you. Not no joke either, need you to be serious here.” He muttered out to you, hoping you heard him properly since his voice was all too quiet.

You nodded at his words, giving him your full and undivided attention while you waited patiently for him to properly collect and plan out what he wanted to tell you. It took some time, some open mouthed tries to spurt a word or two out, yet he struggled.

Finally, he worked out whatever knot he had in his throat and looked at you more seriously.

“I dunno how to tell you this, but somethin’s been goin’ on with me. I used to see you as a friend, a good friend no less, but now you’re lookin’ more and more like a goddess from the heavens. I catch myself havin’ these spirals of likin’ you so much to the point it hurts, and then it goes to some lewd and lustful part of me that wants to have you so fully in my hands. My little Minnie mouse, I dunno what to do anymore.” Two-Bit spoke almost too fast, you had to focus and listen real close.

Once you understood, you gave the softest hum and looked at your own lap. You didn’t quite know how to react. Sure, you felt the same, but how would that work? Regardless, your gaze came back to meet his and your confused expression became more accepting, more serene and agreeable.

“The feeling’s mutual then. I guess it’s a requited emotion we’re both experiencing, is it not?” You hummed out, your legs moving to straddle his hips while you looked at him intently.

Two-Bit was absolutely ecstatic when he got your confirmation on you feeling the same about him, his heart beating almost too fast and it felt like it would rip right through his ribcage. Hell, he’d let it do it if it wasn’t for him needing his heart to live. His dry hands came to touch the skin of your waist under your little top.

Your skin was so soft, warm and plush when he pressed his fingers into it to grip you better. The strength of his grip wasn’t too bad, but it showed his insistence on having you stay on his lap. You couldn’t help but smile, a hand coming to gently pull his bottom lip away from the top one. Soon enough, your mouths were pressed to one another and everything began to unfold.

Tongues swirling around, you could only enjoy what he tasted like. Beer obviously, but there was this little minty taste too, something alluring that had you trying to push your mouth closer to his own. Unfortunately, you could only go so far.

Nonetheless, his hands needily tried to tug at your top to signal that he wanted it off, and that he had to have you in that totality he yearned for for so long. Desperate attempts were ensued, and he finally managed to fling it off of you and toss it to the side. The kiss was put on pause as he eyed your breasts so perfectly held up by your bra, a lovely shaded colour that complimented your skin.

“Oh baby, you’re so pretty..” He hummed, unclipping the bra and putting it to the side. He was practically drooling when he saw your supple breasts on display, just for him.

Two-Bit attached his mouth to your nipple, eliciting a moan from your pretty lips while his hand was playing and tweaking the other one until they were both hard and tingly. Call him a simp, but he was genuinely getting off to your soft noises and the way your body reacted so pleasantly to his ministrations. You felt your pussy leaking in your panties for him, for his own body.

“Oh, Keith.. yeah, you’re doin’ good, baby. Fuckin’ shit..” You groaned, a hand grasping his bicep while the other fiddled with his hair.

The praise you so graciously handed him and calling him his real name had his already erect cock tightening the confines of his jeans further. He’d love hearing you degrade him, but maybe that’d be too embarrassing to ask for and he’d come to the conclusion that he didn’t need it that bad.

He pulled away from your nipple, his hands moving to wriggle your pants off of you, pulling your undergarments off with it until you were bared entirely to him. While it was indeed a bit embarrassing, you found yourself yearning for some kind of acceptance from him, not just some blank stare.

Truth be told, he was just admiring how wet you’d gotten for him, and how it’d stained your panties and left a lovely sticky patch all in between your thighs. If he’d known any better, he’d be eating it all up like it was his last meal. But no, this moment wasn’t about one person getting pleasure only. Two-Bit wanted to experience a moment of true cherishment with you, where it was both of you in your own world experiencing only feelings you could bring each other. So he took his clothes off as well, both of you bare and flat on the sofa. No, he wanted you to be in control, he wanted to see you take him like every fantasy he had of you wanted.

“Get on top’a me, baby. You take the lead, yeah?” He murmured out sweetly, stroking his weepy cock in his hand while he waited for you to start.

You both adjusted positions, now he was flat on his back on the sofa with his hands at your hips, and you meticulously fisted his cock once or twice before sitting yourself atop it. It was a struggle, but your self-lube and his precum were enough to make the movement quick, and soon his erection slipped into your pussy’s walls and enveloping his length happily.

Moans were bouncing and echoing off of the living room walls, the only thing repeating in your mind was how to move your hips and legs, and how amazing Two-Bit’s hard rod felt deep inside your core, kissing your cervix with a painful little pang until everything became mind numbingly sensational.

“Oh Keith! Yeah, baby, get that dick in there! Come on, you makin’ me do all the work? You lazy sack of shit.” You chided with pants and hard inhales, exhales becoming too hard to control.

He moaned wildly at your degradation, hips bucking into your pelvic bone to make up for his slacking that you made abundantly clear you disliked. His head was thrown back, hot streams of tears falling down his cheeks while he tried so hard to appease you and overcome your expectations.

The orgasm bubbling and moving in your lower stomach was almost painful with how strong it was trying to push through, but you held on and smirked at his tears. It showed how good you were making him feel, and it was honestly pretty hot. Regardless of that, you focused for a bit longer, watching him really begin to writhe and squirm.

“Oh fuck, baby, gonna cum! Ohh God yes, don’t stop! I’ll be good, wanna be good for you, baby!” Two-Bit shrieked in ecstasy, the orgasmic feeling of your walls tightening against him was almost enough to have his tip burst out semen, but he held on just like you were.

It was like a silent challenge to see who’d climax first.

Two-Bit struggled, eyes squeezed shut as they spurted more tears. Sure enough, his fingers dug into your waist when his climax shot through every nerve in his body, causing his movements to cease while he waited for his pleasured climax to simmer down.

You thrusted yourself onto his cock once or twice more until you too reached the climax you were pining for. It made a loud moan rip from your rest, reverberating your vocal cords while your release lifted you to cloud nine. It was white, searing pleasure, nothing less of congenial ecstasy.

Now it was just silence, asides the huffs and puffs you both gave as you recuperated from what was the most heavenly experience you could possibly live to go through.

“Well.. that was a wild experience, haha! Come on, let’s go wash off before Annie and mom come back from their program.” Two-Bit hummed out, kissing your cheek graciously before taking your hand and leading you off into the shower.

It was now safe to say you two had grown more close after that day. Hand holding became common, visits at each other’s places and shaboinking was a regular. You couldn’t say you disliked it at all. Except for the occasional weird stares you received out in public whenever people caught you two being all close. In the 60s, it was more improper for a woman to be boisterous and forward about her relationship, especially in the hood.

Now it came down to one final issue, and while it didn’t cause much harm to anything important, it served as a great annoyance to your day and commonly had you groaning with an eye roll and with a smile.

Little miss Brenda with all her curious questions, always asking you the cutest but most annoying things on the planet. It was sweet, but it got progressively harder to tolerate.

“Are you and Keith in love? For real this time?” She asked with a tone you couldn’t exactly code out, but you simply chuckled and patted her head.

“Yes, Keith and I are very in love, for real this time, Annie.” You answered, watching her expression contort into skepticism.

“He’s my brother, and even I wouldn’t trust him with that.” She retorted, pouting and stomping away.

This had both you and Two-Bit snickering quietly to yourselves, sharing a soft and innocent kiss before he parted to go and chide his sister.

[buckychristwrites]

About You | Day 6 | j.t.

Summary: Your job? Pop culture journalist for The Independent. Your assignment? To write a profile on the cocky footballer that you're publicly feuding with.

Word Count: 4.3k

Warnings: Cussing. Enemies to lovers

A/N: Let me know what you think! :)

Masterlist | About You Masterlist | Main Blog

“Fuck off!”

Though you hadn’t looked at the clock, you knew it was early, and it was definitely too early for your phone to be going off. When you opened your eyes, you noted that it was still dark outside. Not a single stream of light was coming from beyond the curtain. The light from your phone was blinding as you reached over, slamming your hand on the nightstand a few times before finally catching it in your grip.

The number wasn’t one saved in your phone. Your brain told you to ignore it and throw your phone down before going back to sleep. But something, you weren’t sure what, told you to pick up.

So you did. 

“What?” 

Just because you decided to answer, that didn’t mean you had to be nice about it.

A familiar laugh floated through the other end of the phone.

“Are you always this cranky in the mornin’?”

You glanced at the clock on your phone before bringing it back to your ear.

“I am when it’s almost 2 and I was just asleep.” You wanted to clobber him, and you felt that he should thank his lucky stars he wasn’t in front of you. “Jamie, it’s not even fucking morning yet.” He laughed again. How did it still sound so nice and magical, even this early in the morning? You cursed at yourself for the thought. Despite that, however, you still felt the anger in your chest lower.

You sat up, bringing your leg up to your chest and resting your chin on your knee. 

“You saved my number,” You remarked. The sleep was heavy in your voice, but you wondered if he could hear your smile in it as well.

“You did give it to me.”

“You threw it on the floor.” 

“It made its way back to me.” You turned your head so now your cheek was pressed into your knee.

“What can I do for you at 2 in the morning, Jamie Tartt?” Your mind went through a long list of the possibilities as your heart picked up in pace. It was unlikely that Jamie had called you this early just for a friendly chat. 

“I have something to show ya,” He said, sounding a little urgent. “But we have to leave now.” You sat up straighter, feeling a little more awake. Was that excitement filling your chest? Of course fucking not, you were absolutely furious about the intrusion on your sleep. Complete anger. Not a single ounce of curiosity or excitement. None at all. Nope. 

“Right now?” He didn’t miss a single beat.

“Right now.” When you didn’t answer right away, he spoke again. “I think it’s gonna help your article and all that.”

You looked around the room blankly, your brain still not having quite caught up with the time. 

“Where are you?” You asked weakly as you began to climb out of bed. Somehow, you already knew the answer.

“Outside your place.” Sure enough, when you peaked out the window of your bedroom, you could just make out a figure below, right in front of the front door. Despite the confusion and the questions you had, you began to search for proper clothing. “Hurry up, yeah? We ain’t got all day.”

“It’s still not fucking day, Jamie. It’s the middle of the night.” 

“You can be mad all you want, but I promise, you’ll like this.” As you pulled on a pair of leggings, at 0154 in the morning, you believed him. 

With the speed you were able to muster up to get ready, you felt like you deserved an award. Feet dragging across the floor, you opened the door of the building to find Jamie beaming at you, his car parked on the road behind him. Before a word was said, he handed you a cup of what you could only assume was tea. It was a welcomed sight, and only made you slightly less angry at him.

“This better be good, Tartt,” You warned before taking a sip. “Not the tea.The tea is spectacular. I mean whatever you have to show me.” He nodded, raising his hands in innocence.

“I promise, it’s good,” He assured you. When you opened up your mouth to speak again, he immediately turned and jogged to the car. 

“Less talkin’, more movin’,” He urged, gesturing towards the inside of the car. “We’re burnin’ moonlight here.” You flopped into the car, pulling the seatbelt across your lap and settling into the seat. Jamie shut the door behind you before running back to the driver’s side. In an instant, the car was taking off down the road. 

“How far away is it?” You asked him.

“It’s a surprise.” 

“This could be considered kidnapping, you know.” He snorted.

“I don’t recall tyin’ ya up and throwin’ ya in my car.” He took a sharp turn, throwing your body in his direction as he held steady, like nothing happened at all. 

“Alright, you won’t be driving like that the whole drive, will you?” It came out more frustrated than you intended, but in your defence, you had only been awake for maybe 10 minutes at this point. Jamie looked at you with apologetic eyes.

“Sorry,” He said, an ease to his voice. “I’ll take it easy. Just for you.”

“Appreciated.” 

You snuggled into your seat. Your body was turned so it was tucked into the left side, and you were more facing Jamie than the front. He had one hand on the wheel, the other tapping to the rhythm of the music on his radio.

“How long of a drive is it?” You asked him. He side eyed you before looking back at the road. You could see the indent in his cheek where he was biting it. The longer he went without answering, the more anxious you felt.

“A few hours,” He finally admitted. Your mouth dropped in surprise, your eyes suddenly feeling quite tired.

“A few hours?” You repeated in an exasperated voice. “Where the fuck are we going, Jamie?” Deep down, you knew asking again was a losing game. He simply shook his head, not saying another word. 

You laid your head back against the seat and listened to the music. It was just the radio playing a song off the top 40 list, but it was something to focus on. Your eyes began to droop. 

“You can take a nap if you want,” He told you in a soft voice. “We have time. I’ll watch for the potholes for ya.” He even turned the music down.

You watched him for a while, studying the way he mouthed along to each song, bobbing his head ever so slightly to the beat. He would occasionally switch how he held the steering wheel, going between the very top to the bottom towards the left. But he never used both hands. Just the left one. His phone was hidden in his pocket, and you could tell that he was the type to never text and drive with a passenger in the car (what he did while alone in the car was another story). He still sported the usual headband, which parted like curtains down the middle to reveal the windows that were his eyes. Though it was not a training day, he was still wearing a black hoodie and shorts as if he were going to train. Part of you wished you had your notebook. It was easier, in your opinion anyway, to describe something if you were able to write it down in front of you. 

It was quite clear that he was holding to his promise, for roads that were so familiar to you by their wretched pave job alone were now the smoothest you’d ever experienced. Before long, you weren’t able to fight it, your eyes blinking closed and holding like that for a while.

It felt like seconds had passed before you came around again, but when you looked outside, despite the continued darkness from the sky, the surroundings had completely changed. The clock read a quarter to 4. You pushed yourself upwards slightly as you yawned heavily. Jamie looked over at you for a brief second.

“Alright, Sleepy?” 

As you settled back into your seat, you exhaled deeply.

“Just surprised we made it this far with how you usually drive.” 

He looked positively offended by this.

“I’ve been good! Drivin’ like a proper angel, in my opinion!” He kept looking back and forth quickly between you and the road. You lifted your hands in the air.

“Alright, alright,” You said calmly. “Even I’ll give credit when due. You’ve done a brilliant job.” He beamed, picking up his cup, which couldn’t possibly be holding anything warm anymore, and took a sip. 

“What makes this place so special that you had to drag me out of bed in the dead of the night to go see it?” You asked him. He pondered your question for a moment.

“Technically, it’s two things we’re seein’,” He admitted. “But that’s all I can tell ya. So talk about somethin’ else, will ya?” You tapped your finger against your chin.

“Tell me something good about you.” His face scrunched up.

“Something good about me?” He repeated in a questioning tone. “Like what?” You shrugged your shoulders.

“Anything.” 

The words hung in the air as he was silent. A few times, he opened his mouth only to immediately close it once more. 

“Football!” He exclaimed, looking pleased.  “I’m good at football. Got ya.” To his dismay, you shook your head.

“Not something obvious, goofball. Something real.” 

“Football is real.”

“You know what I mean.” 

He sat on your question for a few minutes, the silence moving easy between the pair of you. You watched the silhouettes of the trees in the darkness as they raced by while waiting patiently. 

“I’m super close with me mum.” Your head whirled towards him, a shocked look on your face. Between his parents, you’d only heard about his dad at this point. Turning in your seat, you pressed your right arm against the leather so you could face him completely, your legs curled beneath you. He stared out the windshield for a minute, before giving you a quick look. “Shocks a lot of people. I get it.” 

“Tell me about her.” His expression was immediately filled with so much love, it was almost as if his mother was in the car right that moment. 

“She’s… she’s everythin’,” He said, shaking his head. “She’s my number one fan. Always encouraged me when I was younger. Not like dad though.” He shook his head. “If I lost, she was never upset.” He paused, and you could tell by his eyes that the memories were all replaying in his head. “Win or lose, we’d get a treat after every match. And she always told me that she loves me regardless of how I play.” He looked at you earnestly. “Every goal I’ve ever scored and ever will score is for her.” 

Something seemed to swell up in your chest as you looked at him, his words spinning through your brain. You had never considered Jamie having any sort of relationship with his mum, with what you knew of his father, but listening to how he described her made you feel some type of way. 

“She’s still in Manchester, right?” You asked, forcing yourself out of your head. He nodded, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “Do you miss her?”

“Oh yeah,” He admitted. “I still talk to her every day. But it ain’t the same, now that I live in London.” 

No, you couldn’t imagine it was. 

“But you would still see your dad,” You commented. Eye roll commenced.

“When I played at Man City, he went to every single game,” He said. “Mum came when she could. But Dad was always there.” He sighed. “Now, he’s only at the games that we play against Man City.” He swallowed hard. “I know if she could, she’d be there every time. Rather it be her than him, if I’m honest. It’s hard sometimes.” You nodded.

Now you really wished you had your notepad. It just felt nicer to write things down. Settling on your phone, you opened the notepad app and began to type.

The way Tartt talks about his mum will make you side eye your own boyfriend/husband. It makes one imagine how he would describe a significant other.

You reread the words over and over, debating on taking the second sentence out entirely. Who’s the one imagining? The readers, of course. Not you.

Definitely not you.

“Tell me something good about you,” He countered. This was one thing you weren’t prepared for when it came down to Jamie Tartt. No one else that you had ever interviewed asked you questions or cared about your answers.

But no one else pulled you out of bed in the middle of the night to take you on a road trip to a mysterious destination, either.

“I hope to publish a book someday,” You informed him, slight hesitation in your voice. An impressed look filled his face. 

“Alright,” He said, sounding as he looked. The genuinity of his voice was warming. “What would you write about?” That was the question that always killed the vibe for you.

“I haven’t decided yet,” You admitted, shifting uncomfortably in your seat. “Need inspiration to strike.” He nodded, seeming to understand in his own way.

“It’ll come to ya,” He assured you. “You’re a smart and creative person, ain’t ya?.” A smile sprang on his lips. “When you release it, I better get a signed copy, yeah?” Swallowing the emotion that threatened to spill over, you shook your head.

“I’ll add you to the very long list of people. Let’s hope I have enough to get one for you.”

He shot you a playful glare. “You better!”

In a blink, the car was pulling into a car park. You squinted your eyes in an attempt to study your surroundings. Mostly, it was just trees, but it felt impossible to see them. Jamie hopped out of the car, immediately heading to the trunk. A football was in his hands when you were closing the passenger side door. 

“So… you’re gonna murder me with a football, then?” 

He rolled his eyes, saying nothing as he began to walk in the opposite direction. You walked quickly to catch up with him in an effort to stay close. It was almost 5 in the morning, and you were in a place you did not recognize. Staying close to the professional athlete who seemed to know where he was going was for the best.

The pavement of the car park was replaced with what could only be grass, easily mushed down by the dew that covered each blade. Jamie suddenly stopped. 

“Alright,” He said as he turned to face you. “Just wait here, yeah?” As confused as ever, you nodded. He ran off, practically skipping as he disappeared in the darkness. You crossed your arms tightly across your torso. With every second that he was gone, you grew more and more anxious.

The surrounding lights burst on, making you throw your hands up to protect your poor, delicate eyes. It took another few seconds to adjust, but once you did, you looked around.

“Welcome to me second childhood home,” Jamie announced, his hands outstretched to either side. 

It was a football pitch.

Much smaller than Richmond’s, you could only assume it was for amateur footballers, or childrens’ leagues. It was surrounded by trees and greenery. Jamie stood in the very middle of the pitch, watching you intensely for your reaction. You finally met his eyes again.

“The first ever pitch that I ever played football on,” He elaborated, looking around with great pride in his face. “We only lived a few roads away. I was here every day after class, kickin’ around.” He let out a longing sigh. “Never woulda thought it would bring me where I am now.”

You took a few careful steps forward, as if you were tainting it by your presence. 

“Jamie…” You breathed. “This is lovely.” It was then that you noticed he had a blanket draped over his arm. He unfolded it and quickly laid it out in the grass. You took a few more steps forward as he flopped down on the ground. A smile was glued to his face as he placed his hand on the empty space next to him and patted it gently. You bit back a smile while you sat down. 

“How did you know where the light box was?” You asked him.

“Had to figure it out to play at night,” He admitted, a hint of mischief in his voice. Hands folding in your lap, you stared at him.

“So this is the first thing you wanted to show me,” You said as he laid his head onto his shoulder. You mirrored him. “What’s the second thing?” 

His eyes jumped to look behind you, before he raised a finger and pointed over your shoulder.

“That.”

When you turned, your heart swelled so much, you felt like it was going to burst out of your chest.

Over the tops of the trees, the sunlight began to pour in. Pastel pinks and yellows filled the sky, ombreing into a bright periwinkle. The whole thing looked like a painting that one would see in an art museum. It had been a long time since you had actually seen a sunrise. It was incredibly breathtaking.

“Your favourite time of day,” You said wistfully. 

“You told me I should see it more,” He reminded you, as if you had forgotten. “Figured I’d bring you along.” 

You turned to face him. Why was it surprising to find that he was already looking at you? Why were you embarrassed? And incredibly overwhelmed?

“What’s the ball for?” You asked him, nodding towards the blue, read and yellow sphere that he had placed a few feet away. He let out a laugh, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“To play, obviously.”

Within minutes, he was running around the field, kicking the ball around while you took pictures of him. It was hardly professional, but the stadium lighting made it look good enough for you. He kicked the ball towards you, an inviting look on his face. It took a moment of you staring at it to understand what he wanted from you.

“Oh! No,” You said, shaking your head. “I don’t know how to play!” He blew a raspberry.

“If only there were a professional here to teach ya.”

The next thing you knew, you were standing in front of the net, the ball in front of you. 

“Hit it with the side of your foot,” Jamie said from right behind you. He was so close that you could smell his cologne. A shudder ran through your body. You nodded as if this was something you did everyday. He took a step away from you, leaving a cold air in his wake, before beginning to clap. “Alright, give it a go.”

Inhale. Exhale. You hopped forward and kicked your foot out, missing the ball entirely and landing right on your arse. At first, Jamie looked at you with complete shock and concern. Then, the both of you exploded in laughter. Walking towards you while almost doubled over, Jamie weakly pulled you back to your feet. 

“Alright,” He said when he finally calmed down. “Let’s try again.” 

He showed you once more what to do with your feet and arms, and you even mirrored it back to him in practice. Once he approved, he stepped away once more. Another deep inhale followed by a deep exhale, you tried again. 

This time, you did actually make contact, but the ball rocketed through the air and went well over the net. Jamie, the gentleman, ran after it while you watched in horror, your hands covering your mouth. 

One.

Two.

Three more attempts were given, all of them complete failures. It was starting to make you feel a little embarrassed. Jamie was so patient with you, not making fun of you or trying to make you feel bad when he showed you again and again what to do. 

“Maybe I’m just not a natural born talent like you are,” You told him. He shook his head.

“Just give it one more try,” He urged. “If you miss it, I won’t ever make you even look at another football again.” You narrowed your eyes at him as he seemed to register what he just said. “Right. I won’t make you touch one again.”

“That’s better.”

Closing your eyes, you tried to relax and channel your inner footballer. Who is your inner footballer, anyway? Was it Roy Kent, with his anger? Or Sam Obisayna, with his pureness? Or Dani Rojas, with his passion? 

None of those, you decided. You already knew who to channel.

Without missing another beat, you threw your foot out again and kicked the ball. It soared over the green grass, hitting almost perfectly in the middle of the net. 

“FUCK, I DID IT!” You screamed, throwing your hands in the air and shouting. Jamie did the same, the both of you running circles on the pitch, just like they would in a professional match. The wind was flying through your hair, your eyes squeezed shut. The both of you continued on like this for longer than what could be considered normal. The excitement was real, not an ounce of it for show.

Jamie came at you from the side, picking you up like a sack of potatoes and throwing you over his shoulder while he continued to run around the field. You couldn’t help but laugh as your legs kicked through the air. 

It never occurred to you to be afraid that he would drop you. You somehow just knew you’d be safe in his arms.

He lowered you back to the ground, his smile the widest you had ever seen it, his expression filled with deep pride.

“You did it,” He said quietly.

“Thanks to you.”

Why do I keep looking at his mouth?

Is that him doing the same?

It was then that you realised that his hands were still on your hips. He seemed to have had the same realisation, for he immediately released you as if you had burnt him. 

The sun had been out for a long while at this point. Now the pitch was incredibly bright, with the stadium lights still glaring down. Jamie sighed as he picked up the blanket off the ground. 

“Guess we should head back,” He said.

“Didn’t get much of an interview from it,” You said, taking one last look at the pitch. When you arrived, it had just meant something to one of you. Now, it meant something to both. Jamie stopped walking. 

“Oh fuck,” He said, wiping his eyes. “Do you wanna stay? I just thought you’d be tired from me wakin’ you up and all.” The guilt on his face was so apparent, you almost felt bad for saying anything at all. You quickly shook your head.

“No, it’s all right,” You assured him. “I’ll have plenty of time to chat.” When he gave you a confused look, your eyebrows hit your hairline. “Oh shit. I forgot to tell you.” He looked at you expectantly. You wondered if his heart was beating as fast as yours. 

Why would it be?

“I decided to take another week for the article,” You informed him. “I think I just need a little more time.” 

His tongue was pressed against the inside of his cheek as he smiled. 

“That’s probably not a bad idea,” He said casually after a few seconds. “Just to iron out the details and all that. It’ll be good.” You nodded.

“Unless, of course, you think I’ve got everything I need?” He immediately shook his head.

“No, I think another week would be good,” He said. “There’s plenty of me left to show ya.” There was something in his tone, but you couldn’t place what it was. A breeze flew in, pushing his hair in front of his face. You stuffed your hands in your pockets to stop yourself from putting the strands back where they belonged. He didn’t appear to notice them.

“Good… good.”

The two of you walked to the car in silence. Jamie opened the door for you, and you climbed in with nothing but a shy smile to give to him. He gently shut the door before throwing the football and the blanket in the back seat and making his way to the driver’s side. 

Something had shifted. You could feel it. Did Jamie feel it too? It was unclear. But you definitely did. What was it? You couldn’t say for sure. But something felt different now. It was in the air. It was in your lungs. It was in the way you couldn’t stop looking at him.

“Oh right,” He said after turning the car on. A stupid smile formed on his face as he reached into the back seat and pulled out a black cap with white lettering spelling out TARTT. His grin was absolutely shit eating as he put it on your head. “Got you this to wear to the match tomorrow. And I already told security to not let ya through unless you’re wearin’ it.” You rolled your eyes.

“What happens if I show up without it?” You asked him. He scoffed.

“Kill ya onsight, obviously.” You looked at him with wide eyes and a wider smile, causing him to fight the urge to break his straight face. “My instructions were clear.” You shook your head.

“I guess I’ll wear it then.” 

He pulled the car out of the car park while still sporting the dopey grin. Tucked into the passenger side, you stared out the window. When you looked over at him, and felt your stomach flutter, it occurred to you just what that shift that you had felt was.

Fuck.