#you send someone a punchline and they have to lead into it

[richincolor]

New Releases

A whole bunch of books releasing today to get us ready for our summer beach reads. Which of these is on your list?

Hot Boy Summer by Joe Jiménez MTV Books

Mac has never really felt like he belonged. Definitely not at home—his dad’s politics and toxic masculinity make a real connection impossible. He thought he fit in on the baseball team, but that’s only because he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Finding his first gay friend, Cammy, was momentous; finally, he could be his authentic self around someone else. But as it turned out, not really. Cammy could be cruel, and his “advice” often came off way harsh. And then, Mac meets Flor, who shows him that you can be both fierce and kind, and Mikey, who is superhot and might maybe think the same about him. Over the course of one hot, life-changing summer, Mac will stand face-to-face with desire, betrayal, and letting go of shame, which will lead to some huge discoveries about the realness of truly belonging. Told in Mac’s infectious, joyful, gay AF voice, Hot Boy Summer serves a tale as important as hope four gay teens doing what they can to connect and have the fiercest summer of their lives. New friendships will be forged, hot boys will be kissed…and girl, the toxic will be detoxed.

Better Must Come by Desmond Hall Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books

Deja is a “barrel girl”—one of the Jamaican kids who get barrels full of clothes, food, and treats shipped to them from parents who have moved to the US or Canada to make more money. Gabriel is caught up in a gang and desperate for a way out. When he meets Deja at a party, he starts looking for a way into her life and wonders if they could be a part of each other’s futures. Then, one day while out fishing, Deja spies a go-fast boat stalled out by some rocks, smeared with blood. Inside, a badly wounded man thrusts a knapsack at her, begging her to deliver it to his original destination, and to not say a word. She binds his wounds, determines to send for help, and make good on her promise…not realizing that the bag is stuffed with $500,000 American. Not realizing that the posse Gabriel is in will stop at nothing to get their hands on this bag—or that Gabriel’s and her lives will intersect in ways neither ever imagined, as they both are forced to make split second choices to keep the ones they love most alive.

Bite Me, Royce Taslim by Lauren Ho Disney Hyperion

Agnes Chan never expected to be the punchline of her own life . . But how else do you explain getting accidentally run over and seeing a lifetime of careful preparation, endless training, and all your hopes of a track scholarship to college destroyed in a split second? Not to mention the only witness to your humiliation being your #1 archnemesis, Royce Taslim. So, when Agnes finds a new answer to her scholarship predicament in the form of an international stand-up comedy contest for teens, the last person she expects to be up against is also the last person she wants to - Royce. Because for years Royce has represented everything Agnes extreme privilege, popularity, and physical perfection (ok maybe she doesn’t hate that part so much). Behind the scenes, though, Royce’s flawless façade fades away, revealing someone Agnes never expected—someone who shows her that perhaps the best parts of life are the ones you aren’t prepared for—and as the competition heats up, so do things between these two rivals. But will the pressure to win be too much for them to handle—or will Agnes (and Royce) get the last laugh?

Spin of Fate (The Fifth Realm #1) by A.A. Vora G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

The world is governed by Toranic Law, an ancient magical force that segregates people into upper and lower realms based on their morality. It’s said that if the sinful lowers commit themselves to kindness, their souls will lighten, allowing them into the blissful upper realms. But Aina, one of the few lowers to ever ascend, just wants to go back. Desperate to reunite with her mother, who remains stuck in their horror-infested homeland, Aina joins the Balancers—a group that defies Toranic Law by bringing aid to those condemned to a life of suffering in the lower realms. Alongside Aina are two new recruits: Aranel, a spoiled noble spying for the upper authorities; and Meizan, a ruthless fighter trying to save his clan from extinction. Before long, Aina, Aranel, and Meizan find themselves in the midst of a brewing war. On one side, a violent lower king is bent on destroying Toranic Law; on the other, the upper authorities will do anything to stay on top. The trio must face both sides head-on if they want to stop a conflict that could break not only Toranic Law… but the universe itself.

Death’s Country by R.M. Romero Peachtree Teen

Andres Santos of São Paulo was all swinging fists and firecracker fury, a foot soldier in the war between his parents. Until he drowned in the Tietê River… and made a bargain with Death for a new life. A year later, his parents have relocated the family to Miami, but their promises of a fresh start quickly dissolve in the summer heat. Instead of fists, Andres now uses music to escape his parents’ battles. While wandering Miami Beach, he meets two photographer Renee, a blaze of fire, and dancer Liora, a ray of sunshine. The three become a polyamorous triad, happy, despite how no one understands their relationship. But when a car accident leaves Liora in a coma, Andres and Renee are shattered. Then Renee proposes a radical idea. She and Andres must go into the underworld to retrieve their girlfriend’s spirit and reunite it with her body—before it’s too late. Their search takes them to the City of the dead, where painters bleed color, songs grow flowers, and regretful souls will do anything to forget their lives on earth. But finding Liora’s spirit is only the first step in returning to the living world. Because when Andres drowned, he left a part of himself in the underworld—a part he’s in no hurry to meet again. But it is eager to be reunited with him… In verse as vibrant as the Miami skyline, critically acclaimed author R.M. Romero has crafted a masterpiece of magical realism and an openhearted ode to the nature of healing.

Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams Labyrinth Road

Ten years ago, Malik’s life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. Since then, he has kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother, Taye. Now, at 17, Malik is finally ready to start a new life for both of them, far from the trauma of his past. However, a daring act to rescue Taye reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik’s mother attended. At Caiman University, Malik’s eyes are opened to a future he never could have envisioned for himself— one that includes the reappearance of his first love, Alexis. His search for answers about his heritage, his powers, and what really happened to his mother exposes the cracks in their magical community as it faces a reawakened evil dating back to the Haitian Revolution. Together with Alexis, Malik discovers a lot beneath the surface at feuding covens and magical politics, forbidden knowledge and buried mysteries. In a wholly unique saga of family, history and community, Malik must embrace his legacy to save what’s left of his old family as well as his new one. Exploring the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting, this heart-pounding fantasy series opener is a rich tapestry of atmosphere, intrigue, and emotion.

Queerceañera by Alex Crespo HarperTeen

Joaquin Zoido is out and proud of it. And while he knew his dad and sister, Carmen, would be super supportive, he wasn’t quite ready for them to surprise him with a queerceañera, a coming out party to celebrate him. Between all the talks of tastings and venues, and the chirping of his family’s RSVP texts, the question of who will be his chambelán is on everyone’s minds. What Joaquin is decidedly trying to not think about is whether his mom is going attend or if she’s finally replaced him with her favorite godson, Felix—the boy who made Joaquin realize he was gay and who was his first kiss. But when an impromptu lie snowballs into a full-fledged family-group-chat rumor, every Zoido from Texas to Mexico starts believing that Felix is not only Joaquin’s chambelán but also his brand-new boyfriend. To avoid the pity and sympathies of an ill-timed breakup, Joaquin and Felix strike a deal—they’ll stay fake boyfriends until the party. Yet, as the day draws nearer and old feelings spark anew, Joaquin will have to decide whether a picture-perfect queerceañera with a fake boyfriend is worth giving up the chance of something real.

The Unboxing of a Black Girl by Angela Shanté Page Street YA

Written as a collection of vignettes and poetry, The Unboxing of a Black Girl is a creative nonfiction reflection on Black girlhood. The debut YA title, by award-winning author Angela Shanté, is a love letter to Black girls set in New York City and serves as a personal and political critique of how the world raises Black girls. As Shanté navigates the city through memory, she balances poetry with vignettes that explore the innocence and joy of childhood eroded by adultification. Through this book, she illuminates the places where Black girls are nurtured or exploited in stories and poems about personal and political boxes, love, loss, and sexual assault. Many entries are also studded with cultural footnotes designed to further understanding.

This Book Won’t Burn by Samira Ahmed Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

After her dad abruptly abandons her family and her mom moves them a million miles from their Chicago home, Noor Khan is forced to start the last quarter of her senior year at a new school, away from everything and everyone she knows and loves. Reeling from being uprooted and deserted, Noor is certain the key to survival is to keep her head down and make it to graduation. But things aren’t so simple. At school, Noor discovers hundreds of books have been labeled “obscene” or “pornographic” and are being removed from the library in accordance with a new school board policy. Even worse, virtually all the banned books are by queer and BIPOC authors. Noor can’t sit back and do nothing, because that goes against everything she believes in, but challenging the status quo just might put a target on her back. Can she effect change by speaking up? Or will small-town politics—and small-town love—be her downfall?

The Boy From Clearwater: Book 2 by Yu Pei-Yun, illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin, translated by Lin King Levine Querido

After his imprisonment in Green Island, Kun-lin struggles to pick up where he left off ten years earlier. He reconnects with his childhood crush Kimiko and finds work as an editor, jumping from publisher to publisher until finally settling at an advertising company. But when manhua publishing becomes victim to censorship, and many of his friends lose their jobs, Kun-lin takes matters into his own hands. He starts a children’s magazine, Prince, for a group of unemployed artists and his old inmates who cannot find work anywhere else. Kun-lin’s life finally seems to be looking up… but how long will this last? Forty years later, Kun-lin serves as a volunteer at the White Terror Memorial Park, promoting human rights education. There, he meets Yu Pei-Yun, a young college professor who provides him with an opportunity to reminisce on his past and how he picked himself up after grappling with bankruptcy and depression. With the end of martial law, Kun-lin and other former New-Lifers felt compelled to mobilize to rehabilitate fellow White Terror victims, forcing him to face his past head-on. While navigating his changing homeland, he must conciliate all parts of himself – the victim and the savior, the patriot and the rebel, a father to the future generation and a son to the old Taiwan – before he can bury the ghosts of his past.

Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire by Paula Yoo Norton Young Readers

Paula Yoo’s latest is a compelling, nuanced account of Los Angeles’s 1992 uprising and its impact on its Korean and Black American communities. On April 29, 1992, following the acquittal of four police officers charged with the beating and arrest of Rodney King and the earlier killing of teenager Latasha Harlins, the city of Los Angeles erupted in violence. Many of these events were centered on the city’s Koreatown, where tensions between the Black and Korean American communities had simmered for years, fueled by economic challenges and redlining and enflamed by sensationalized and racist media. Based on more than 100 personal interviews, Rising from the Ashes follows these events through the eyes and experiences of the families of King, Harlins, shooting victim Edward Jae Song Lee, and dozens of business owners, journalists, police officers, firefighters, activists, and other community members. Deeply researched and compulsively readable, this is a vivid, propulsive, and moving story of a pivotal moment in recent American history that continues to resonate today.

[angrylittleburd]

When you get this, reply with 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last 1O people in your notifications. Whoever ya want to 💜

Friends/ Family - First and foremost the people I love and associate with willingly mean the most to me. Both IRL and Online. I'm extremely extroverted and 10 out of 9 times any experience worth having is improved when shared with someone you love.

Creating - Surprise Surprise the artist likes to create stuff. I ain't just talking about drawing though. The act of creating itself is just so fun. Thinking up characters, worlds, scenarios, etc. and then sharing these ideas through drawings, short-stories, DMing for table top games, role-playing, or heck just sitting with someone who wants to hear it and talking out loud about it. That's just half of it. I haven't even talked about getting to enjoy and or interact with other peoples creations.

Comedy - Humor holds a special place in my heart. I love jokes and the joy of being silly. Laughter is the most beautiful sound someone can make. Whether making someone laugh with my own jokes or laughing along to someone else's. Having a good sense of humor and knowing not everything has to be taken seriously leads to a happy life. Comedy can keep people humble when they get too full of themselves but it also helps cheer people up when they are down.

Tragedy - Hey man, everything in balance ya know? I know I just got done saying all that stuff about comedy and joy but a world full of only punchlines ain't for me. If you know me, you know I love a good tragedy. I LOVE putting characters in situations. Not every story has to have a happy ending. I will quickly clarify I am mainly referring to tragedies that come from fictional sources, such as sad movies, books or scenarios I put fictional characters in. But I will say while I derive no joy from real world misfortune, big or small, there is an appreciation for the contrast created when talking about personal misfortune. The sense of relief or triumph wouldn't be as sweet if the bitter taste of defeat wasn't so pungent, ya know?

Hyper-Fixations - I made a whole comic talking about the struggles of hyper-fixating on stuff and how it sucks when you suddenly lose interest in something. But look if you gotta endure the lows you might as well enjoy the highs. Its FUN to find a new source of media/ content and/or some niche interest that just encapsulates you. Heck re-discovering or reigniting an old fixation is fun! I dunno, this one really doesn't need as much explaining I feel, its fun to be interested in stuff.

[theluckywizard]

Unrequited Hawke/Aveline, a few to combine (or not) as you wish: spooky fall bingo, 'heavy fog'; whumptober, 'it's all for nothing'; whumptober, 'hunting or hunted'

Hiiiii thank you, Ammy! For @dadrunkwriting I had a wonderful time writing a little glimpse into my Hawke's history here!

Pairing: Garrett Hawke x Aveline (unrequited) WC: 860 Content Warning: Dead body Tone: Angst

They stood over a cold body, Aveline and Hawke. The investigation had already gobbled hours of sleep as he postulated late into the night and chased leads across Lowtown. And here in this forgotten corner of the docks, in this forgotten alley, Hawke felt the force of failure grinding at his soul.

Aveline surmised by their limp tissue and the blackened blood on the pavement stones that they’d been murdered yesterday. It couldn’t have been by the Templars, not in an official capacity anyway. But Meredith had been sending mercenaries after those she felt posed a serious threat. Hawke was often one of those people. But this mage was different. A sudden legend on the lips of the harried masses of Lowtown and Hightown alike. An alleged mortalitasi.

“We should hurry,” said Aveline, her tone even though the words suggested nerves. “That fog won’t be our friend in another fifteen minutes.”

He searched the apostate’s body, gingerly lifting pocket flaps and the drape of her robe in search of anything useful but she’d already been picked clean by scavenging urchins and the woman’s staff was nowhere to be seen. It could have just as easily been an unlucky encounter with a desperate someone as it could have been the more unscrupulous templars that Hawke knew sullied the ranks. 

What he wouldn’t reveal to Aveline is that he and her have been searching for her on entirely separate missions. He’d been hired by the apostate herself to track the threats against her as she searched for her younger brother, an escape of the Gallows. Aveline was merely answering Meredith’s open call to secure the streets.

“I suppose the Knight-Commander won’t complain,” said Aveline.

Her indifference smarted inside him. The woman hardly deserved such hardened apathy, far from her home in Nevarra in search of her last remaining family.

“Ah Kirkwall. Where murder is a Maker sent convenience,” retorted Hawke. 

Aveline flicked him a fraught glance that managed to be sisterly, judgmental and rueful all at once. He felt the hopelessness of the years spent pining for her at the deepest levels. Her nigh intractable marriage to the law had severed any possibility of love ages ago but he scrambled to hold onto any remaining thread that connected them. His brow was heavy with regret, layers upon layers of it. 

“Let me guess,” said Aveline. “You haven’t been working for the Order.”

Hawke sighed, scratching a hand in his hair.

“You’re really playing both sides still?” she scolded him. “Maker, Hawke. Look around. You’re going to end up on the wrong side of Meredith at this pace.”

“The mage hired me. Felt like someone was hunting her. Not the Templars though… something worse.”

“As a body guard?”

“No, well. Only the first night or two. But after those nights were quiet it was just to see what I could find out when I put my ear to the ground. And it looks like my ears weren’t sharp enough.”

“Hawke,” she scolded him. “How could you be so foolish?” It was always the same with Aveline. Oh there’d be jokes about it, but the sisterly reproof was a given. He hoped for years that he’d break it but at this point he could only accept the punchline that it had become.

“I can take care of myself,” he answered. “I know you can. But it’ll be a little bit harder when the Templars decide to take you in. Aiding and abetting apostates can be waved off well enough, but a necromancer?”

“Well it’s not like she went around raising all the dead!” he argued.

“But some of the dead is all right? Maker, Hawke,” she said.

Hawke regarded Aveline, the freckles that dusted her cheeks, the deceptively darling sweep of her nose. He searched for the spark that had flickered and glowed inside him for so many years when he looked at her. Their bond had been forged in blood and trial, the narrow escape from Ferelden. The honorable end she gave her first love that he bore witness to. He’d thought it had all meant something, but now his hopes had settled into quiet embers.

“She just wanted to find her brother. He escaped the Gallows two months back—”

“I don’t understand you sometimes,” she muttered, shaking out a sheet and drawing it over the body.

“Likewise,” he answered in a soft, bitter snort.

It had all been for nothing, all those years hoping she’d know him deeply.  Truthfully he wondered if she had the capacity. He chased true justice wherever it lay, inside or outside the confines of the law. Perhaps she’d always hoped to school him, to pull him out of chaos and into order. Perhaps that’s why she kept him close.

Hawke silently made a note to find the lad she’d been looking for and help him get back to Nevarra. It was the least he could do.

The arriving fog stuck against his skin and shrouded all the miserable ambiguities of Kirkwall. The body between him and Aveline was a cold reminder of everything that separated them. Of how wrong he’d been.

And Maker, he hated being wrong.

[docholligay]

Sometimes in life, you find a calling. Something that speaks to you utterly, and, in that moment, the gates open, and you realize that we are all created for something wondrous, be it small or large, and you have found it. Your purpose. And then sometimes you have a mortgage to pay.

It’s the latter circumstance that brings me to this office. Maybe circumstance is being too kind. I believe in God mostly because the preponderance of the evidence leads me there. Problem being, God is a jackass and wants me to be the punchline in a series of cosmic jokes. I’m a country girl, a straight shooter, and the last thing I want is to listen to someone enumerate their problems at me, thirty percent of which are a failure to listen, and sixty percent of which are a failure to act.

Gotta allow the ten percent for galactic shifts, death, and the discontinuation of Coke Starlight.

Point is, I spend a solid twenty hours of every twenty-four convincing myself not to shoot first and ask questions later, only to get a job where people are tossing targets at me. Couples counselor. There are probably jobs I’m less suited for, but inasmuch as I’m aware, typesetting’s all done by machines now. I look at the schedule today. They give me the hard cases, because I don’t take it so personal. You see my name after yours, may as well file the papers and box up the mementos. My job isn’t so much to save the boat as it is to save the people in it.

Maya Tendou and Claudine Saijo. I don’t recognized the names, though there’s no reason I would. That’s only happened a handful of times. Rich socialite. War hero. People who end up in the papers, the big ones. I don’t read much else, and barely that. What and who the kids talk about on Twitter and TikTok is beyond my ken.

I shuffle through the file quick-like, and then rubberneck at the ages like it’s a highway crash. I can tell you the trouble right now, and it’s the numbers one and six, in a neat row. People don’t try to save these relationships, they just cut through them like a college 101 course. Must be rich parents. Rich parents paying either too much attention, or none at all.

I walk into the room. Two girls who think they’re women, sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Tall, brown hair and back both straight as a pin. Surprised she allows the couch cushion to bend beneath her, but maybe that’s the secret. Other things bend. She doesn’t. On the other end, a blonde that’s going to enter every man and woman thus inclined’s dreams and nightmares someday, hair curling across her shoulders like café smoke in a Paris summer, brown eyes sparkling like champs.

“Well,” I take a sip of my coffee, “Maya. Claudine.” A nod on one end, a wave on the other. I guessed right. “So, let’s get started.”

It’s never easy breaking the ice, made worse by me, half the time. I’m no war general, and I’m always coming late to the battle. Ground has been ceded, casualties tallied, and I’m still reading the map.

Luckily, Claudine fills me in, before I even have time to finish sitting down. “Maya thinks only of herself, of her victory! She’s convinced herself she’s better than I am, but--”

She keeps talking, but I take another look at the intake form. Actress. Actress. There’s bad ideas, and then there’s worse ideas. If I could offer a list of high school commandments that would be ignored, ‘Thou shalt not let the theater kids date each other” would be at least number three. I’m tempted to send them packing, but the only way you can bill for 150 an hour is to work an hour, so I sip my coffee as she keeps going.

“--and I was always there for you! Always telling you, that you would not be defeated!” 

Some people expect the partner they are, and not the partner they have. People’ll tell you what they’re willing to do, if you’ll listen. I’m looking at Maya’s face, and a shiver goes through me as I feel the chill of moonlight on a grave. Her future’s carved out, and if the little French storm at the other end wants to make so much as a dent, she’s gonna have to be in for the long haul. Who needs to make time for that, now? World has so many choices.

But you can’t tell a client to leave their girlfriend in the first ten minutes of a session. That’s the sort of thing that brings down the Yelp reviews. You have to make them see it themselves. Half of counseling is just interpretation. You have to change the language enough that it goes from someone’s mouth to another’s person’s ears, and means something.

The voice was clear and cold as I imagined as it answered: “You confuse the stage and the wings, Claudine.”

I hear her perfectly, but she may as well have been speaking Finnish, from the look on Claudine’s face. The relationship is gonna be second to the career, and Claudine’s career is even lower than that. Maya’s a legacy kid, paperwork says, and that name is carved in stone. It’d be easy to see her as a bad person, but I hear the way she says Claudine’s name. The French way. If nothing else about her, her tongue can bend a little.

It’s not enough. Sometimes people try, but it’s not enough. Not by the time the secretary hands them over to me.

“Claudine,” I sigh, “What is it you want?”

“I want her to--”

“Not from her,”: I set down my coffee cup, “Sorry for not being clear. Outside of Maya, what is it you want? What feeling?”

She looks at me like I have three heads and two of them are Jimmy Hoffa. That’s the thing, about teenagers, and why I should tell Louise up front I wont’ take them anymore. Bunch of people who end up in my office don’t know themselves, but with teenagers it’s a temporary condition. Hard to know yourself when you’re in the process of being rewritten. Of course she’s never thought about what she really wants. It’s just goling to school, getting to the next semester, then going to college, then getting a job, and at no point is the assembly line designed to make you think about what you want. Things are easy to get, feelings are hard. “Love, of course.” She looks insulted, like I’m the idiot here, even though I’m not the one trying to save a three month old relationship with another sixteen year old.

“And, Claudine, Maya,  what does that feel like?”

They both look at each other, not at me. The whole operation is coursing with hormones, and competition can feel like desire, and desire can feel like love.

I get a lot of annoying answers to this question. Even more silence. Twice I’ve had someone quote that goddamn bible verse at me, and both times it was someone who had a laundry list of mistakes their partner made. Sometimes, i even get a good answer. Those I keep tucked in an envelope in the back of my desk.

“When you…” Claudine’s brows furrow.

I knew she’d be the one to try to answer. Maya’s not going to answer, because she doesn’t know, and she’s the sort of girl who’s not ready to fail. She’ll sit there hoping I’ll find her stoic and not stupid. I find her both. Claudine doesn’t know either, but she’s hoping she’ll find something pretty, a Jackson Pollack of emotion pouring out of her mouth, though I heard Pllack planned his paintings, and I’m not convinced of the same for her.

I raise my hand to her. “Sounds like you want to be adored, Claudine? That right?”

All the things she’s said, about flowers and compliments and even a pretty little turn of phrase about being looked at form the other end of the room, all strat to scrub away at the truth. Claudine wants a spotlight of her own, not to be the lighting director. Nothing wrong with that. Usually one in each relationship. People think being the backstage is the right answer, but the real answer is to find someone who enjoys watching. Plenty of them.

Probably not in an acting school, though.

I tap my fingers on the arm of the chair and wish I still smoked. Maya’s mouth is hanging a little open, that perfection chipped just a little bit at the edge, like she’s realized that the stone she’s carved into can’t move, and she’s not even sure she would want to if she could. Maya’s starting to speak Finnish. Claudine’s not there yet.

Claudine’s still busy looking like I’ve accused her of murder. The glint of her eye could filet a fish.

“Non! I--”

“Claudine.” Maya says it like a judge handing down a sentence. “We don’t have time.”

“Maya…”

There’s tenderness there, between them, and it almost makes me regret killing the hour till I open my thermos of soup trying to convince them to leave each other. But they’re sixteen. If they’re mean tot find each other, it’ll mean more at twenty-six. Thirty-six. Once they’ve grown some grass under their feet.

“I want you to be the actress you can be.” Maya nods at her. “And you can’t, if you keep looking to me. I can’t look to you. We have to look up, to the stage.”

I smile, noting that Maya has carefuilly left out any idea of Claudine surpassing her, or even coming up to her level. She’s surprisingly mature and childish, wrapped in that fascinating package that only teenagers manage without being tiresome. Maybe because when adults or doing it, we know they should learned. But Maya’s both arrogant and wise, in this moment, and it’s a cute look for a teenage girl with a pedigree who’s only a few years from getting knocked flat by auditions and jobs. Let her have it while she can.

“I love you.” Claudine’s French, and it doesn’t shame her to say, though Maya blushes and looks away, and for once, that’s enough, and she smiles, “No. That’s wrong, isn’t it? I want you. I crave you. But…I don’t love you, do I?”

Maya reaches over for the first time, and takes her hand, her cool eyes looking into Claudine’s as she regains whatever composure a literal sixteen year old drama queen can have.

“No. We don’t. Do we?”

Maybe this is what their parents wanted. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, 150 in my pocket, and soup in my thermos.

Case closed.

[venus-of-the-hrdsell]

It's Hellblazer anon again and I finished it! What an amazing read! There's a thousand positive things I could say about it but instead I'm going to rant at you about those last 50 issues. You once mentioned that Azzerello was your villain origin story....well Milligan is mine. I have never read such dogshit writing in my entire life. The fact that it was Hellblazer's last issues really bloody rubs me the wrong way as well. It was character assassination on a world wide level, no survivors, everyone was annihilated. MY GOD WHAT WAS PETER MILLIGAN THINKING?? John was sooo pathetic and old and obsessed with having a wife?! All he does in those last issues is be obsessed with boring women? Like sweetie don't you have better things to do?? Phoebe was so bland, Epiphany was genuinely the absolute worst and Milligan tried sooo hard to sell us on this weird marriage? He even went as far as to bring back Kit and get John to tell her that he loves this random chick way more than he loved Kit 😭 like wtf, Kit was so important to John, their relationship was so special and Milligan just had to shit all over it just to prove a point? Making Angie a punchline to fat jokes was disgusting and so unnecessary. Holy shit poor bloody Gemma? Everything around what happened with her was so revolting and she deserved so much better. Milligan just couldn't write good John angst so he had to absolutely destroy Gemma's character and I hate him so much for it. Not even Chas could escape the onslaught! John literally left Chas to die, the only reason he saved him is because his passport got rejected, like I'm sorry but John would not let his best mate die?! Also....where did the horror go?? It just turned into the John and Epiphany show where all they did was have sex and talk about how shit everyone else was. Speaking of, words can not describe how much I hate Epiphany. Two dimensional, written way too edgy, and her being that young just felt like Milligan was trying to act out a fantasy. I just.....hated this run with my entire being. So boring, so badly written, lacking substance and I was glad that it ended. Also I have no idea wtf that ending was but I hate Milligan for having that privilege and absolutely fucking it up. He also gets the medal for writing the absolute worst love interests. Sorry that got so long but I had to tell someone! I'm honestly just pretending that none of that was canon. Gemma forgave her uncle and became a doctor, Kit and Angie lived happily ever after, Chas got a cool new car and John got to have a pint. There, fixed it.

(I'm so sorry for answering this so late) but anon I hear you and I FEEL YOU because I was sleepless the night I finished Hellblazer because of HOW BAD those last 50 issues were. It's infuriating that this trash trainwreck had more issues than the good writers Hellblazer had??? Like???

It's genuinely one of the few runs in comics that aren't salvageable for me because it both destroys John as a character, destroys the Hellblazer lore and it's side characters and sends continuity to hell (there's so many errors I can easily list here). It's also incredibly misoginistic by vertigo standards because everyone woman on it either gets disrespected, shamed abused or FRIDGED. And the fact that DC saw the shitty work this writer did on John and was like "this is the PERFECT candidate to write a Constantine lead team Justice League Dark:) "

So my best advice is to do as I do (and Spurrier) and pretend that run doesn't exist. For me, Diggle's run is the perfect conclusion for Hellblazer (this, or the route Lemire took with John on Swamp Thong: Green Hell).

[fortune-maiden]

For that writing prompt list: “I’d agree with you but then we’d both be wrong.”

Thank you for the prompt! I had a lot of fun writing this! :D

Recognition

“I’d agree with you but then we’d both be wrong.”

Even’s pen freezes mid-sentence, and he stares down at hisreport as he mentally counts to three, before lifting his head up. He doesn’tneed to turn around to picture Xehanort’s arrogant expression as he stands inthe doorway to the lab behind him.

“What, pray tell, am I wrong about?” Even says in a calmcontrolled voice, swallowing back any biting distaste. He will not accept anylip from this child, nor will he give him the satisfaction of seeing Even losehis composure.

Xehanort’s answer is a smug snort, an indication that Evenshould know damn well what he means and will need to defend his viewpointhimself. Xehanort knows how Even feels about such lip, and his grip on his pentightens. He makes sure this motion is out of sight.

“You understand what you are asking of me, correct?” Even says.He knows the correct course of action would be to return to his report andignore Xehanort’s needling until he goes away, but Even didn’t get where he isby refusing to face an issue head on. “You are asking me to go behind hisLordship’s back.”

“I’m asking for your help on a project I am stuck on,”Xehanort clarifies. “From one scientist to another.”

You’re not a scientist,Even almost snaps, because that would be easier than concede that this…nobody picked up on the intricacies ontheir research to the point where he could conduct his own experiments in themere months he spent with them.

“And as one scientist to another, I suggest you let thatgirl go, and remember who it was that saved your life. His Lordship said to stop.And so, we shall stop.”

Even can delight in the fact that he’s touched a nerve fromthe sound of Xehanort stepping forward. He is not rattled easily, but it seemsthe memory of that empty cell continues to test his self-control.

“Why should we stop?” Xehanort challenges. “We were on the vergeof the breakthrough. There was somuch more for us to discover, and then MasterAnsem comes in and shuts us down. Who does he think he is?”

Even turns around with a self-assured smirk, basking inXehanort’s barely contained fury. “MasterAnsem,” Even says pointedly, “is my mentor, my friend, and my king. I will notgo against him.”

Xehanort hears the words, and his eyes narrow. “Interestingorder of words,” he retorts, and Even realizes too late that he should haveleft out the last one. His apprenticeship is much more than a simple job to him,and his loyalty is not born out of the crown.

“You have a lot of respect for your mentor,” Xehanortrecovers his composure. “Which is what makes your obstinacy all the morepainful to watch.”

“Painkillers are in the cabinet by the door.”

“Tell me, Even, why do you think his Lordship shut down ourproject?” Xehanort asks. There’s something sinister in his tone. Even has beenhearing that cocksure arrogance more and more since their initial probe intoXehanort’s heart, and however curious it still is intellectually, something init unnerves him.

Still he is partly responsible this change in Xehanort’sdemeanor and tries to reason with him. “Whatever our intentions and results, westill performed some very dangerousexperiments,” Even says slowly. “Some of their our subjects’ hearts collapsed.Others produced those black creatures. His Lordship foresaw the dark path wewere heading towards and grew afraid. He put a stop to it for all of our sakes,and I respect this decision.”

Xehanort listens to this explanation with thoughtfulexpression. His face twists into a frown, and for a moment, Even thinks he’sreached him.

He is wrong.

“You really do parrot his words like a flunky,” Xehanortlaments, and looks Even directly in the eye. “What if I told you that wasn’tthe reason he shut us down?”

“Then you’d be wrong,” Even says simply, not breaking thegaze.

“What if I told you that he shut us down, not because of theexperiments themselves, but because we werebehind them?”

“What’s you point?”

“We didn’t involve him,” Xehanort clarifies, gesturingdramatically with his hands. Yet another habit he’d picked up after the probe.“His students pooled their knowledge, crafted a series of experiments, andcarried them out after hours in secret. And produced results.”

Even’s jaw drops. “I am not listening to this,” he statesand swivels back around. He finds himself unable drown out Xehanort’s continueddrivel, however.

“You are correct in saying Ansem grew afraid. But it wasn’tthe darkness he feared. It was that his students had learned they could unravelthe mysteries of the heart without him. They would make the breakthroughs andtake the credit for the discoveries. Without him.”

“Do you hear yourself right now, Xehanort?” Even yells back.“I would strongly suggest you stop this train of thought right now—

“Look at how he treats you,” Xehanort cuts him off, and thatis the exact moment where Even loses. He turns back around, with a hostileglare, but doesn’t speak. “It couldn’t be more obvious than if he were to, ohfor example, gather up our reports and put his name on them,” Xehanort says.“When we were working on our project, you were invaluable in developing theextraction tools and procedures. And, please, correct me if I’m wrong, but thetechniques we used in our extractions seemed very similar to the ones used inthe procedure on me. Would I be correct in pinning the credit for those to yourname?”

“It was a joint effort,” Even says in a steely voice.

Xehanort sneers in satisfaction for a moment, but then makesa face that is more reminiscent of the pensive boy they’d taken in.

“Even,” he says. “I haven’t yet been here a year, so I knowthere’s much I don’t know about how you run things. However, I think myoutsider’s perspective lets me see some things you don’t. To me, you are agenius researcher with a very strong understanding of the heart, and how toaccess its untold potential. His Lordship,however, seems to think you a mere assistant.”

“How dare—

“Tell me, Even,” Xehanort cuts him off. “Your official titleis researcher is it not? So why do you get tasked with menial chores such aslab prep, data collection, and record keeping. Why are you only supportingAnsem, and not leading your own team, or publishing your own work?”

“Master Ansem recognizes the work I do,” Even hisses. “Don’tact as though you know how things are between us.”

“I am only stating what I have observed,” Xehanort sayssimply. “And that observation is that your true talents are being suppressed bya jealous mentor who would rather have you keeping house and babysitting. Didyou not enjoy the work we were doing ourselves?”

“That is irrelevant to this discussion,” Even’s voice cracksslightly. He will not let Xehanort get to him. “And I hardly see how you’rehelping your own case.”

“I simply want to make sure you get the recognition youdeserve,” Xehanort croons. “Professor.”

Even clenches his jaw but says nothing. He’s done listeningto this nonsense. Xehanort smirks and backs off. “I’ll be in the Chamber ofRepose tonight. You are welcome to join us.”

He walks off, and Even waits until he can longer hear hisfootsteps to turn back around to his report. He’s noting down the observationsfor a timed procedure Ansem had set up earlier.

“Ridiculous,” Even says to no one. Let Xehanort do whateverhe pleases. He’ll have no part in it!

As he resumes his report, there’s a small niggle in his mindabout reporting this brazen insubordination to Master Ansem immediately. It iseasily silenced.

[abyssruler]

cyno x gn!reader

There are three unspoken rules every scholar in the Akademiya must know regarding Lord Cyno.

Firstly, no matter how bad it is, always laugh at his jokes. Do not, under any circumstances, ask him to explain the joke. Everyone will be forced to listen to an hour long analysis on what the joke is, why it’s funny, and how the sentences leading to the punchline were timed just right that it would—should—leave everyone in hysterics and gasping for breath.

Second, playing the trading card game with him will lead to varying results, usually ones that end up with the other party crying as they leave the table without their pride and dignity. Approach with caution when he has those cards in his hands.

And last, but the most important rule of all, never—and they mean never—speak of your name in a bad light. Anyone who does so can and will be found no matter the place and ears listening, and they will be forced to endure a twelve hour long lecture about the positive traits you possess and how amazing you are in general. It may seem innocuous, but throughout the entire lecture, Lord Cyno will be staring through the poor unfortunate soul and daring them to dispute his claims.

Should anyone be foolish enough as to openly mock you in front of him, they will be met with a polearm to the face and a lifetime’s worth of punishments in the form of only being allotted one hour to do every paper they will ever be assigned to make for the rest of their time as a scholar. If, under any circumstances, the scholar is unable to keep up with their deadlines, they will be kicked out of the Akademiya and labeled as a failure in society.

That one is, in fact, one of the lesser punishments Lord Cyno has met out when it comes to people insulting you with regards to your… less than average intelligence and social awareness. The harsher punishments are not for the faint of heart, and so most senior scholars resolve not to tell the new students what transpires when someone bullies you or—Archons forbid—makes you cry.

There’s a saying in the Akademiya: the fastest way to the Abyss is to make tears appear in your eyes.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the last person who did so was last seen without any light in their eyes. This is not to say that they died, no. They were, according to Lord Cyno’s words, justly and rightly punished for their transgressions against you. Perhaps he went a bit too far, but who are mere scholars to question the judgment of the General Mahamatra?

However cautious they have to be around you, there is one important thing you bring to the table: the secret fourth rule that’s more of an of advice than anything. A secret that’s passed through word of mouth, given to only those they deem worthy.

The easiest way to getting to Lord Cyno’s good graces—and, consequently, an easy path to graduating the Akademiya—is to make you laugh. An easy feat at first glance, but considering your strange humor (as proven by how you’re the only one who genuinely laughs at Cyno’s jokes), it takes a great many nights and brainstorming sessions to find the perfect joke.

But making you laugh poses its own risks. It is common fact among those in-the-know that making you laugh too hard would be a one way trip to marking them as enemy number one in the General Mahamatra’s eyes. He would see it as a challenge in usurping his place as number one funniest person in your eyes.

As of now, there is no clear way to ensure this doesn’t happen, which is why the last rule is a risk taken by only the bravest of souls.

Those are all the unspoken rules the Akademiya has that concerns Lord Cyno. This is now the end of this brief lesson. For more queries, go to Port Ormos and find an alumni named Kaveh. Best of luck.

Who in the abyss wrote my name in this stupid note? Damn scholars are name dropping every famous person they know. Be glad I’m sending this to you, Cyno, you owe me forty thousand mora and free lunch. Alhaitham locked up his pantry >:(

(Collei finds the note stashed in Cyno’s knapsack during their journey from Mondstadt to Sumeru. She resolves to never mess with whoever you are after reading its contents, sweating buckets after learning how terrifying her traveling companion truly is.)

[junova]

.˚✦ ๋࣭ˑ ִֶָ 𓂃 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 | 𝐬. 𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬

my universe

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

notes: this one has been in my drafts....forever. never really liked it too much but fuck it. maybe i can redeem it in a part 2??? this is more of a prologue if anything. idk we'll see. happy reading!

pairing: modern!steve rogers x reader, former!bucky barnes x reader, bucky barnes x natasha romanoff

concept: bucky was all you'd ever cared about, wanting him more than anyone. until he comes along, showing what it actually means to love someone. welcome to heaven in hiding.

warnings: 18+, sexual content, jealous!reader, bucky being a dick, soft!steve, heavy angst, steve is a funny lil shit at the end

wc: 3.9k

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It felt unbearable to be here. Watching how fondly she still looked at him, after all this time, not missing a beat. It was suffocating, surrounding you by a sea of water and having no other option than to drown. Greedily, his love swallowing you up in your entirety.

He did really try to dodge her looks of longing but still, even now he felt the pull to her. It didn’t really matter how long they were absent from each others’ lives.

As you sat next to him, you could feel him slipping from your grasp. Far beyond your control, way out of your depth, he was falling. Deep down, you couldn’t really blame him. The pictures you’d seen of her did no justice, she was truly a vision. Much brighter than you would ever glow and it made you wonder if what he spoke just a few hours ago still held meaning.

Not to mention, she seemed to be as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. Making you grow even more envious of her.

Sure, she had broken his heart but it wasn’t beyond forgiveness. She had simply put herself before the relationship and if you had been in her shoes you could imagine yourself doing the same. All she wanted was a better future for herself, at least it’s what he had told you.

Now sitting here you couldn’t stop thinking about how she looked at him with admiration and love laced in her eyes. Truly, if she still wanted him in her arms there was nothing stopping her.

Surely, not you. You two seemed to live on two different planes of beauty and hers was the kind you dream of having but only have a very little probability of obtaining. With her ruby hair and glossy lips, tempting nearly everyone around her to the way she carried herself and spoke to you like you were the only person she was invested in.

It wasn’t difficult to see why he spoke of her so much. You would, too.

You tried to enjoy the wonderfully prepared meal Pepper and Tony had made, well mainly Pepper. It was delicious, but your senses had gone bitter and it had nothing to do with the food.

You weren’t sure when you started to drift off, maybe it was when Bucky began looking at Natasha like she hung each and every constellation in the sky. Or maybe it’s when you heard her melodic laugh when Bucky delivered the punchline.

It was like Steve, Wanda, and Thor didn’t exist. The lovely couple in their own little bubble, speaking in a language only the two of them understood. Utterly and completely unaware of any and all of their surroundings.

“You okay?” Steve questioned, placing his hand on top of your hand, giving it a small squeeze. Discreetly and under the table away from prying eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I think I just need some air.” You weren’t sure what could remove the nothingness inside of you, but maybe some space would provide some comfort.

You felt like your heart had been ripped out right in front of you, again. He said he wouldn’t do it again, that he wanted to be with you, but all she had to do was come to town and he’d been chasing her just like he always did.

Excusing yourself you dipped out until you were out on the back patio. Alone to just think and mull over any little thing that should have tipped you off, but didn’t. You let it slide on, blinded by how much you thought you loved him.

You weren’t left in the peaceful night long, until Steve was joining you with two wine glasses in one hand and a bottle of red in the other.

“You looked like you could use a glass or two.” Steve gibed carefully. “I’m just using your sour mood as an excuse to escape from the party.” You were about to object when a full glass of wine was shoved into your grasp.

“I’m not in a sour mood. I’m just swell.” You spoke before taking a big swing of the drink, nearly emptying it’s contents, sending it barreling down your throat.

“Sure, honey. Just like the green monster isn’t oozing out of you.” You found yourself intentionally growling at him, just a little agitated of the truth he spoke.

The absolute audacity on this man seemed to never end. Whether it helped you or caused more misery than he intended.

“It certainly doesn’t help that she's so goddamn perfect. Was she fucking made in a lab? Jesus Christ.” You were jealous and if Steve already knew there was really no point in hiding it. It was written all over you, the longing look you were giving Bucky all night, desperately wanting to be the one he wanted.

“She’s not perfect, nobody is. Just better at hiding her faults than everybody else.” He said it like it was some known fact. Something you should’ve already known, but insecurities tended to eat you alive. Truthfully, it didn’t help that Bucky acted like Natasha walked on water in his hopeful, gleaming eyes. Stinging you like a bee piercing your soft, plush skin for the first time.

He really loved her. It didn’t matter how many times she messed up, what he felt was all the same — she was the one.

“Really? I don’t buy it. Name one.” Steve perched himself on his knees in front of you, his hands on the armrest of the chair you made yourself comfortable in. “Okay.”

“How about the fact that she loves Bucky just about more than anyone else but she’s too selfish to let him go? Then, for months she leads him on and promises she’ll come home but always leaves him heartbroken.” Steve let it flow all in one breath, as his body rested between your legs.

“Sounds gruesome.” You confessed because it hit a little close to home. “Yeah, it is and he has no right to do the same thing to an angel like you.”

You hated how he was right, truly hated it, but anyone with eyes could see how much Bucky dragged you through the mud. He had a good heart, but it just hadn’t been good to you.

Bucky’s intentions weren’t malicious and it didn’t seem like he was either but it didn’t take away from how much he continued to hurt you. All of the unintended consequences only affected you as he went on with his day.

Over and over, he continued to cause you pain and he didn’t even know it. Or he did and just neglected to acknowledge it. If he did, he’d actually have to deal with just how much he was actually hurting you.

It wasn’t like either one was particularly gunning for the latter, but Steve was. It wasn’t the first time Bucky had left you high and dry whenever the red head, beauty stepped foot into town. Although it was the first time you had a front row seat to the attention she commanded from him.

You both sat there in silence for the moment, taking in the starry night as he rested his cheek against your leg. He began running fingertips up and down your exposed calf, letting him soothe you.

“I’ll keep thinking I’ll be alright. That’ll get over him, but he just keeps pulling me back and jerking me around for his ride and I let him.” If anyone saw you besides Steve, you didn’t think you could handle it but you’re comfortable around him.

He’s continuously been there for you everytime Bucky pushed to the side for her. Always so sweet, so tender, comforting you in his warmth. Never once judging you, always taking the time time to just sit and listen to you.

“I don’t think it’s even about him anymore. I’m just chasing this unattainable moment, just so I fill this void in me. Maybe if he loves me I can love me, too.” Mumbling under your breath, hoping he didn’t hear you.

“Bubba.” You smiled for a second, as his voice dripped in concern. “You don’t need him or what little he can offer. Not when you can love yourself better than anyone else can.” He pulled himself up to his feet, picking you up from the chair until you were surrounded by just him.

“We love you. I love you, so stop listening to those nasty little thoughts, bubs. They’re far from the truth. You are truly amazing, incredibly beautiful, and deserve the absolute world.” With slight pressure from his index, he tilted your chin up, letting your eyes drown in his.

“Don’t expect anything less.” Steve breathed out, before testing the waters. He just held you there, caressing your back as you just sunk in his arms, allowing his warmth to ease your hurt. Just like he’d done so many times before.

Somehow, Steve seemed to know exactly what you need to hear. You didn’t know how he managed to be so wonderful all the time. Maybe you could just stay there forever with him shielding you from every single evil in the world out to get you.

“Can you take me somewhere? This is the last place I want to be.” Steve simply nodded before lacing your hand in his, before making your way back inside.

The moment the two of you stepped foot into the house, it was silent. Everyone looked at the two of you. Steve took notice of the Bucky’s bugged eyes at the joined hands of his two best friends, but knew better than to verbally acknowledge it.

It wasn’t something Steve and you hadn’t done, but never in the prying eyes of Bucky. Thor and Wanda had taken note of it a few times, but never spoke a word about it. Secretly, Wanda hoped it meant something for you, because she could see just how much Steve adored you.

He never spoke a word, so you remained clueless to a feeling he never felt like he had a right to speak on. No matter how strongly he felt, he knew if he confessed, it would do more damage than good.

You had become one of his closest friends in the past few years he’d known you and he wouldn’t jeopardize it for anything. Selfishly, he left you under Bucky’s radar because being your friend was far safer than risking the rejection he was sure would be sent his way.

He knew you were close to cutting Bucky off from your life completely, he just had to wait it out. Natasha being here tonight was the icing on the cake for Steve, because all he had to do was be here for in a way Bucky never could. Not when he was slicing through your heart every time his attention diverted from you to her.

Just because he was stuck in a past love instead of the future and Steve would fully take advantage of it — being there for you in any way you needed.

Regardless of everything, he wanted to — needed to. He couldn’t live with himself if he let you go through the hurt and heartache alone. Not when so many times you had seeked the comfort of him to lean on. Steve would never be one to say no to you.

“Are you leaving, doll?” The endearment Bucky intended to be sweet but left a sour taste in your mouth. More than that, you didn’t miss the way Natasha’s eyes widened slightly at the use of his pet name for you. The one she thought was only reserved for her.

Maybe if he held affection for you like he did earlier today, your heart would be filled to the brim, but he didn't. So, you weren’t. “Yeah, Steve’s going to take me home. I have an early morning tomorrow and I’ve already had a bit too much wine.” Bucky didn’t argue, nodding with a tight lipped smile.

Perhaps his indifference is what made you hurt even more. He didn’t care about anything, not even you with you so closely tangled with Steve. It didn’t have an effect on him because the woman sitting by his side, draped over him held more value than you ever could.

“You sure? I can make sure you get home safely.” Bucky pleaded, but before you could respond Steve did.

“I got it, Buck. I’ll make sure she gets home.” He looked like he wanted to say more but he decided to stay silent as he watched you walk out the door with Steve, hand and hand.

The drive home in the Uber was silent, Steve didn’t say a word, just the weight of his arm holding you close. He took note of how you refused to look at anything but the luminescence of the New York’s city lights captivating your vision.

Even if it hurt Bucky only chose you whenever Natasha wasn’t around you couldn’t help but focus on how hot and heated your body felt with Steve so close to you. Holding you so tightly like he was afraid you would let go.

Perhaps it was a bit shady of you to drape yourself over his childhood best friend whenever he rejected you, but now you were finding yourself finding solace in Steve in everything, like you used to with Bucky. He had become this safe place for you, where you wouldn’t be shamed for how you felt or what you were going through.

Even if he knew how much you were hurting from your own obliviousness to Bucky’s behavior, he always let you find solace in his strong, comforting arms. Always sturdy enough to hold the weight of your hurt and what he was carrying too. Just like tonight.

“He’s never going to love me the way I want him to — like the way he loves her.” It wasn’t a question any longer, it was a stone cold fact. Something you’d tried to ignore over the past year, especially.

Not wanting anything in this moment but him, you laid your head on his chest, his steady heartbeat giving you a sense of peace in the aftermath of your heartbreak. The crisp material of the white button up he was wearing shifted from the weight of you, he didn’t really mind.

“I think it’s time for me to let go of this image I have of him, one he can never live up to and accept him for who he is and where he’s at right now.” Steve nodded, still not saying a word, slipping farther and farther away from you as he let his thoughts consume him entirely.

It’d been happening a lot more lately. This. The close, excruciating intimacy between Steve and the woman he was in love with.

Over the past few months, anytime you were upset about something, you would show up at his doorsteps crashing into him as you wept. Always wanting to be close to him, snuggled up to his side, bleeding your heart out to him, something you hadn’t done with anyone.

Not even Bucky.

Then there was the one kiss on New Years’ Eve a few weeks ago which stayed imprinted on the forefront of his mind. He remembered when he woke up the following morning, he was holding you to his chest, the both of you bodies laced with one another.

He got up before you were there to consciously witness it, but it was all he thought about weeks after. Being that close awoke the need to be near you. It was already there, but now he knew how it felt to hold you in the comfort of his own bed.

It nearly killed him when you woke up, making your way down the stairs from his bedroom, wearing nothing but his boxers and the shirt he wore last night. Steve wasn’t drunk enough to completely forget the whole night, nothing had happened in his room last night. Seeing you, in here, in his apartment, made him think what his life could possibly be like with you here.

If he was ever to be so lucky.

As of yesterday, when you told him Bucky finally wanted to move forward with you, it broke him. Even if he kept his true feelings hidden, he felt you crush his heart with one fatale squeeze. Any particular hope he once had, was diminished into a fantasy far from reality.

The both of you were Steve’s best friends — he had to be happy for you.

Then, Natasha came to town. Storming through Bucky’s heart just like she’s always done. When Steve invited you to the dinner his best friend was trying to keep you from, he knew it could possibly be the last fatale blow to whatever string your relationship with Buck was. Maybe his, too.

Steve knew going after you could mean losing his really good friend, but he simply couldn’t stop himself. Not when you were a pure goddess ascending from above in all of your glory, capturing his heart in every single glance you threw his way. At this point, he didn’t care what it’d cost him.

As long as he had you, it would be worth it.

When the car pulled up to your street, you let your hand glide down his chest, resting on his lower abdomen. Not missing the way his body trembled under your touch, the thin material of his shirt doing nothing to protect him from you — not that he wanted to be anywhere but here.

As soon as those sinful words left your mouth, he knew he was done for.

Perhaps, if the both of you hadn’t been tipsy of the bottle of wine you shared, you wouldn’t feel the urge to invite him up, but he smelled too good and acted too perfect for any other consideration.

“Do you want to come inside, Stevie?” You purred watching the gears switch in his mind. Contemplating if he really should go through with it. Now that it was within his reach, he was becoming hesitant to grab it. You were drunk, he was drunk. Hence the uber and the both of your cars left behind in Tony and Pepper’s driveway.

“I don’t think it’s the best idea for me to go up there, bubs.” Instantly, you pouted. A deep frown etched on your beautiful face. “Why not? I think it would be a wonderful thing. Don’t you?” With one swift movement, you were cupping his crotch, making your intentions more than clear.

The grunt leaving Steve’s mouth was animalistic as he tried to exercise the very little restraint he was holding onto. It seemed to become increasingly difficult as you refused to move your hand away.

“I need you to take care of me and I’ll take care of you.” Finally releasing your grip on him, you exited out of the car and you didn’t have to look back to know he was falling you into the lobby of your apartment building.

After a silent elevator ride, with you tucked into his side you made the walk down the narrow hallway into your home, fidgeting to open the door with Steve’s hands caressing your sides. Carefully watching as you kicked off the painful heels, the bottom of your feet thankful, pulling you deeper into the apartment.

“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.” You retreated, afraid someone else might turn you down, too. If Steve did, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. He’s been your person you can count on and now you couldn’t imagine your life without him.

Stopping your movement once you reached your bedroom, you were still waiting for his response. Meticulously, he reached for hand before twirling you around your back pressed against his front. Sighing, when his hand dragged up your spine, while the other hung on your waist with his hand pressed against your stomach.

Pushing the thin strap of your velvet dress, letting it fall off your shoulder. Soft, firm lips touching your soft skin, you couldn’t help but lean back into him. Tilting your head back, offering yourself up to him on a silver platter.

His touch felt like heaven and you didn’t think you’d ever want him to leave. Not when you always felt safe wrapped up in his large muscular arms. Never making you question if you felt wanted.

“Right now, my body wants you as badly as it ever has.” Steve confessed while his lips migrated towards your neck, giving you some much needed attention.

“Does it?” You questioned him, losing any other train of thought as let his other hand push the other strap off your shoulder, the slinky dress falling to floor pooling at your feet.

“It does, sweetheart, but it’ll have to wait.” Already pouting like the brat you were, ready to seduce him right into filling you up, just like you brought him here tonight for.

Dropping down to your level, Steve whispers in your ear, “Because when I fuck you just the way your pussy is aching for it won’t be when you’re drunk, princess.” Throwing gasoline on the fire he created, sharply he bit your earlobe, making you moan.

“I’ve thought about this so much, princess. At first, I thought I would take you from behind, but then I wouldn’t see those begging, doe-eyes itching for a release.” You were trembling for him. His filthy words flooding straight to your slick, crying for him already.

“Maybe you’d want to ride me, huh? Do you want to fuck yourself on my fat cock?” At this point, if it was anyone else, you’d be embarrassed if he found out just how wet you were. Your panties are completely ruined because of him.

“I want to ride you so bad, Stevie.” Maliciously, he laughed before giving your clothed pussy a rough slap, causing you to gasp out. Your nails digging themselves into his bicep as you reached for it.

“Well, if you had been a good girl, maybe I’d let you cum on my cock.” You turned around face to face, ready to bruise your knees for him in a heartbeat. In this space and time, you’ve never wanted anyone more.

Harshly, he gripped your chin as his thumb smoothed over your bottom lip, dragging it down so it plumped right back up. “Bucky will be here tomorrow morning, if not tonight. I took his precious little play thing home and he’s not gonna like that one bit.”

“He wants to have his cake and eat it, too. If you want to let him, by all means go right ahead. And if you don’t? You know where I live, princess.” Very much in contrast to the last few minutes, he sweetly kissed your cheek and headed out right back the door without so much as a second glance.

Leaving you with a hell of a lot to process.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

tagging: @tonystankschild | @andromedasstarship | @tinylumpiaa | @brattycherubwrites | @bval-1 | @kayteewritessteve |

[wavesmp3]

you jump; i jump

sunwoo x reader 

requested from sensory prompts #46: the waver in someone’s voice when they’re stressed genre: spy au, exes (ish) to lovers wc: 5.6k  warnings: cursing, tiny bit of gore/blood

Sunwoo used to pride himself for being able to keep his cool, in even the most unimaginable situations. He kept his exterior when Haknyeon turned out to be double crossing their agency, Creker, and secretly sending information to a rivaling one the whole time. Sunwoo didn’t crack when his entire mission in Sydney blew up right in his fucking face, never even flinched when his gear malfunctioned dumping him in a hospital for a week. But all those instances seem to fall flat now. All the times where Sunwoo stayed strong seem to disappear the moment he feels a tap on his shoulder and turns around only to come face to face with you. “What are you-“ he falters, grasping at the last bits of crumbling pride and hanging on to the dip in his voice. “What are you doing here?” 

“You forgot this,” you continue, ignoring him entirely, “forgot it in Vienna specifically.” You dangle a watch in front of his face. The same watch he lost somewhere in Austria three months ago, at the same time that he was in the middle of the most intense and longest mission the agency had ever given him, and more notably, around the same time he met you. “Don’t look so shocked.” You scoff when he fails to respond. “You told me you were gonna be here.” 

Sunwoo laughs, except it’s less of a laugh and more of an exhale of pure disbelief. “I know what I said, but you’re…” his voice trails off, some part of him unable to finish the sentence and another part of him still too disturbed to believe it. 

You tilt your head with faux confusion. “I’m what?”

Sunwoo gulps. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

VIENNA, AUSTRIA  THREE MONTHS AGO 

Sunwoo remembers, with a starling amount of clarity, all that happened three months ago. He can recall every day he spent roaming the streets of Vienna with you despite the way he’s been trying to drown out the memories and douse his lingering feelings. 

When he met you at a pub on one of his first nights there, he told himself he entertained your conversation because, well, to put it bluntly, he thought you were cute. Although the small tug in his gut doesn’t help justify why he found himself stumbling back to his hotel room with you by his side. And there’s really no good excuse for the tiny sting of disappointment Sunwoo feels when he wakes up alone the next morning. 

It’s two days after that night when Sunwoo sees you again, sitting on a bench with a book in one hand and a to-go cup of coffee in the other. It’s an odd coincidence that he should see you in Vienna again, but the small pang of doubt is quickly replaced with a more promising burst of elation. Sunwoo can’t tell if it’s exhilarating or terrifying.

“Ah,” you mutter when you notice him approaching, “Sunwoo right?” It’s a facade, Sunwoo thinks to himself, he knows you remember his name, knows you only pretend to forget. But he doesn’t mention that, instead he nods rather lamely, shoving his fists into his pockets and burying away the voice of reason in the back of his head telling him this is a mistake. “Sit.” You say, moving your things to the other side of the bench and patting the now empty spot next to you. “I’ve been waiting for you.” 

And in retrospect, it’s quite obvious that Sunwoo should have found the words alarming. Really, he should have begun to put his guard up the second he spotted you in Vienna again. But at that moment in time, the only thing Sunwoo can think to ask is if he was worth the wait. 

Your tongue darts out, swiping at your bottom lip in thought for the smallest of seconds, before disappearing into your mouth again. “Yeah,” you say, lips turning up into an intrigued smile, “you were.” 

—

Sunwoo doesn’t think much of the way he comes to trust you so easily, telling you the truth about his job in the darkness of the hotel room. He doesn’t think anything of the way you hang onto his every word without ever sharing much about yourself. And when one day, you sit down at the cafe booth across from him and ask, “what’s your current mission,” Sunwoo doesn’t think twice before telling you everything about his objective to infiltrate Pegasus. He also doesn’t notice the phone call you make soon after. 

—

When the truth does come out, it comes fast, like water rushing off a cliff and crashing into Sunwoo sitting unsuspecting at the bottom. It comes in the form of a charity event that he only attends as part of the mission which sent him to Vienna to begin with. The truth arrives, like a rock in his gut, at the same second that Sunwoo sees you across the hall. You, who he last saw at the hotel, and you, who’s supposed to be on a train to Paris right now. And when your eyes finally catch his, there’s something unmistakable swimming in them. You’ve been caught, Sunwoo thinks, finally placing a name to the familiar way you swallow and dart your eyes around the room. Sunwoo recognizes the feeling, vaguely remembers the rush he felt once in Santiago and again in New York. 

“I can explain,” you hiss, quiet and breathless, finding him outside the hall after a few minutes. 

And Sunwoo knows he should be dying for an explanation of what you’re doing here or who you’re really working with. Some small part of Sunwoo knows that he should already be replaying every conversation and trying to determine how much information he’s given you to use against him. But another, larger part of him, that’s poking at his heart and prodding at his brain, chooses to stare at your lying eyes, study the face he’s come to memorize, and lamely ask, “how much of…” his voice tapers off, gesturing to the empty space in between you two, “of this was a lie?”

You don’t respond, but in the silence Sunwoo finds the answer anyways. 

All of it.

—

It’s not long after that night that a new message from the case officer shows up for him.  

You’re on thin ice. New mission: get rid of that Pegasus agent. 

PRESENT TIME  THREE MONTHS AFTER VIENNA

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here?” Sunwoo asks you again, shifting in his plastic red chair and keeping his gaze focused on the street you’re both seated beside. He hadn’t planned on hanging out after crossing paths with you earlier today. In fact, the only thing he wanted to do was put as much distance between the two of you as possible, but when you offer him a meal in exchange for a conversation, his rumbling stomach agrees before he can even consider the offer. The scene you lead him to is a busy one, filled with people rushing down the road and bustling behind each of the food stalls. It’s a mosh-posh of neon signs, kicked up dust, and the aroma of food being fried. More importantly, it’s a loud area, one where you and Sunwoo can talk freely without the worry of being heard by someone seated nearby. He takes a bite into his skewer, waiting for your response. 

“And you still haven’t told me why you didn’t follow through with the mission,” you counter, twirling your lime green straw with the tip of your finger. “The one where you were supposed to kill me.” 

You say it plainly, but something in Sunwoo’s stomach turns hard at the reminder anyways. “We’re spies,” he mutters behind clenched teeth, “not assassins.” 

“I don’t know,” you shrug, taking a sip from your coke, “the job description is pretty vague.” 

The words are met with a taut silence, a snap of Sunwoo’s eyes towards yours, and a search for any implication of murder behind the sentence. 

“It’s a joke,” you choke, wiping the coke that slips from your mouth and quickly shaking your head, “I haven’t killed anyone.”

“Well anyways,” Sunwoo continues, “I tried to finish the mission. Even hired someone to find you.” And as soon as the words leave his mouth, Sunwoo realizes he’s told you too much, realizes he’s let the truth slip too easily--again. Biting his lip, he thinks this must be what people mean when they say ‘old habits die hard’. 

“He didn’t follow through.” You tell him as if to fill him in on how exactly you’re still alive and sitting across from him right here, right now, miles away from Vienna and months after Sunwoo’s hire took his money and ran. “But you knew he wouldn’t, didn’t you?”

And this you say with a taunting smile, catching his eyes like there’s a private joke concealed behind them. Sunwoo only gulps and pulls his focus back to the busy street.

“So what do you want with me?”

“I left Pegasus.” You answer, clearing your throat.

Sunwoo waits. He waits for you to take it back, for you to laugh at his widened eyes and say it’s a joke. The punchline never comes. “You’re an idiot.” He settles on.

“And I’ve got two agencies who’d prefer me to be dead right about now.” You grimace. “But despite the bounty on my head, I’m still here which means you’re probably not on great terms with Creker either.”

“Get to the point.”

“We both have people who want us dead. We both have next to nothing to lose at this point. So let’s team up.” You pause, checking Sunwoo’s reaction. He watches you intently, body pushing against the creaking plastic table in an attempt to hear you better. With an almost mischievous glint in your eyes and a satisfied quirk, you continue: “Let’s take back what we stole for them.”

There’s a long moment where Sunwoo just stares at you, deciphering what to make of the proposition. You appear genuine, Sunwoo decides leaning away from the table until his back hits the chair, but Sunwoo isn’t exactly sure how much he trusts his own judgement considering the last time he decided you were sincere you had been lying to him left and right.

Sunwoo lifts his hand to the vendor of the food stall you’re sitting by. The previous glint in your eyes is gone, overshadowed by a darker shade of doubt. “What are you doing?” you finally ask, voice lower and less excited than it had been a second ago.

With a tired sigh, he replies, “I’m gonna need more food while you explain your plan.”

Sunwoo has to swallow back the smile that nearly emerges at how happy you get.

--

It’s a simple enough idea. Clear our names, you had explained, wipe ourselves entirely from both agencies. And it’ll work too, Sunwoo realizes when you begin the second explanation on the logistics of the whole operation. The only downside to your plan is you. Because the last person Sunwoo wants to start a new mission with is the same person who broke his heart three months ago. And it’s bothersome, almost, how calm you are and how collected you appear, especially compared to how scattered Sunwoo feels just to be around you again.

“What do you think?” You ask once you’ve explained your plan completely, tapping anxiously on the table.

“I think,” Sunwoo starts, inhaling deeply, “you’ve thought about this way too much.”

“Well, yeah,” you scoff, gulping down some more coke, “three months is kind of a long time.”

And yeah, he thinks, it is. But despite the time that’s passed since you’ve last seen each other and despite the way Sunwoo thought he was over you, his stomach still flips each time you look his way. He just prays that the past three months have at least somewhat watered down how he used to feel about you.

“How do I know you won’t ditch me after we clear you?” Sunwoo asks, pushing away the thoughts of lingering heartache to a corner of his mind.

“We’ll do you first.” You state simply. “Steal your file off Creker and get the bounty off your head first. Then we’ll do me.”

“And then how do you know that I won’t ditch you?”

You falter at that, frowning for the smallest of seconds, then say, “I don’t.”

Sunwoo nods, pretending to contemplate your offer. But in all transparency, Sunwoo knew he’d agree to your plan despite the bile that turns up at your name because with the way he’s been hiding in a crappy motel and eating instant ramen every night, it’s kind of hard to refuse any proposition that gives him the slightest chance at an out from Creker. 

“Okay,” he finally utters, wiping the crumbs of his second skewer off his hands, “let’s do it.” You meet his eyes expectantly. Nodding, he says,

“Let’s team up.”

//

You and Sunwoo clash more than anything else on the first day of prepping for the mission, crammed in a corner of Sunwoo’s dingy motel with two half finished cans of red bull sitting forgotten on the table, fighting about even the smallest details.

“I know the building,” Sunwoo argues, pointing to the floor plan you have pulled up on your laptop, “and this is the entrance we should use.”

“But using this entrance,” you refute, dragging your finger across the screen to show him exactly what you mean, “will give us better access to security and admin. And trust me, I know the building better than you do.”

“How do you—” Sunwoo stills. Something seems to register in your eyes at that moment as well, a small recognition of the tiny slip up, a barely audible acknowledgement that comes in the form of a cough. And all at once, Sunwoo’s reminded of the time he spent spilling his heart to you in Vienna under more covers than he was aware of. Sunwoo’s harshly thrown against the realization that you must’ve been watching him, surveying him long before you ever found him in that Austrian pub.

“See, I knew this wouldn’t work.” He grumbles, shaking his head. “You know too much about me. No, actually, you know everything about me. And I--” there’s a dip in his tone, “I know nothing about you.”

“Fine then, ask.”

“What?”

“Whatever it is you think will even the playing field between us. Whatever it is you want to know about me,” you shut the laptop and turn your body to face him completely, an action that exudes largely frustration but more faintly, guilt, “just ask.”

--

Sunwoo learns more about you than he had intended to. He learns about the origin of the scar that runs along your spine. A fucked up operation in Shanghai, you tell him, writing over the lie you told him three months ago about it being from your childhood. He learns about your old partner Younghoon and about the shadow falling over your forehead at the sound of his name. He’s told about how you got involved with Pegasus to begin with, a similar story to Sunwoo’s beginning with Creker: an unlucky concoction of desperation and coincidence. You tell him, with reluctance, your most embarrassing story, followed by a long list of firsts and favorites. So by the time night falls, with two empty red bulls at the foot of the bed and the building’s floor plan now forgotten behind the black screen of your laptop, Sunwoo learns enough to rebuild a fraction of the trust he lost.

//

Everything goes smoother after that. You and Sunwoo seem to fall into a rhythm, meeting at a café in the morning and at the motel in the afternoon, planning out the missions with far less difficulty than before. A rather quick adjustment, from both of your ends, and an even faster allocation of responsibilities. He finds himself looking forward to sitting in front of your open laptop each day and conjuring new ways to distract you every hour. 

And it’s after meeting up with you one night, not as partners but—perhaps more cruelly—as friends, that a dangerously familiar warmth blooms in his chest and refuses to wilt away when he sees you again the next day. Sunwoo knows that he should be doing something, anything to blow out the flame, but instead he feeds the fire and prays that this time it spreads from his heart to yours.

//

“Where’d you get all of this?” Sunwoo questions one day when you show up at the motel with a suitcase full of equipment. An assortment of laptops, earpieces, weapons, and randomly picked gadgets.

“Took it from Pegasus before I left,” you smirk, pulling out an earpiece and holding it out in front of his ear. “You’re usually on the field, right? The one in action?” He nods. “Good, you can be the agent for this mission then,” you mumble, setting down the earpiece and holding up another. “I’m usually the person behind the computer anyways. Was even a handler for a mission in Seoul once.” You place the earpiece in his palm and begin to pull out the other pieces of equipment from the suitcase.

“What about Vienna?” Sunwoo says, inspecting a certain gadget from the case. “You were on the field then.” And it’s a question that would’ve been asked with malice if it had come up a couple weeks ago, but right now, there’s nothing but curiosity behind Sunwoo’s words.

“Oh,” you hesitate, a small smile appearing briefly, “I guess I do both.”

Sunwoo doesn’t ponder over your answer for long.

It’s later that day, right as you’re about to leave, that you frown at Sunwoo’s head, matter-of-factly saying, “you should change your hair before the mission.” Then, with a laugh bubbling behind your teeth, you add, “again.”

(Sunwoo changed his appearance a lot. One of the tactics that had stuck from his training days. Never really in big ways, but small changes here and there every couple of months. Sometimes it was a new piercing that he’d wear for a year and let close up in the next, and other times the change came in the form of a temporary tattoo imprinted on his neck whilst in Vancouver with Kevin. When Sunwoo met you in Vienna his hair was a light brown that he had gotten done in Tokyo and hadn’t bothered to touch up since. So when the time had come to change something again, he headed to the hair salon.

“When’d you do this?” you asked him that night, running a hand through the new red hair. 

“Just today.” He answered, hoping you wouldn’t ask for a reason. 

“I like it.” 

“More than the brown?”

“Way more.” You whispered, leaning in until he felt the breath of your words on his lips. 

And in the moment before you closed the distance, Sunwoo had made a silent vow to never change his hair again.)

Sunwoo gets his hair done the day after you suggest it, and when he returns to the motel from the salon, he finds you already there.

“Oh good, you’re back.” You mumble, arms full and an extra key card to his room that he had given you out of convenience a while back held between your teeth. “I just came to drop these off because I have to go to—" you stop, straightening yourself and eyes fixated on him. “You got your hair done.”

It’s an observation, a small, stupid thing really. A comment made in passing that should feel routine with as much time as you and Sunwoo spend together and one that should feel even more mundane considering you were the one to suggest it. But there’s something about the way you say the words that makes Sunwoo feel slightly breathless anyways. “Yeah,” he finally affirms, running a hand through his now black hair, “I did.”

You nod in acknowledgement, setting the things in your hands down, then turn to leave. 

“Wait,” he calls out. You do, pausing three paces away from the door and give a long look to the hand he’s placed on your arm to stop you before turning around to face him. And the next words seem to fall off the edge of Sunwoo’s mouth at that moment, tumbling back down his throat and landing heavily in the pit of his stomach. “Do you still…” he hesitates, attempting to smooth over the nervousness folding up in the corners of his mind. 

“What?” 

“Do you still like my hair?”

You consider it for a moment, bringing a hand up to tug at the new black fringe. And there’s something unmistakably domestic about the way you tilt your head in concentration, eyes fixed on Sunwoo’s hair as if there’s nothing more important for you to be doing in this moment. He watches you evaluate his hair closely. 

“Yeah,” you finally say, eyes meeting his and something like a double meaning swimming in them, “I still like it.”

//

The first mission goes smoothly thanks to you sitting back at the motel instructing Sunwoo which turns to take and what files to download. So with a flash drive containing all the information he needs to free himself from the agency stuffed in his pocket, he turns to leave, whispering into his earpiece, “is the exit path clear?”

“Shit.”

He stops walking. “What?”

“It’s blocked. I think I can get you out another way, but you’re not gonna like it.”

“Just tell me.”

“Okay, go one story below. Take two rights and then a left.” He does as you say, feet hitting the ground as quietly and as quickly as possible. The less time he spends in the building the better. “At the end of the hall, there’s a window.” You say once he’s near the place you directed him too. His stomach drops. “Jump from it.” 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He breathes, studying the drop with grimace. “I really hate heights.”

“I know.” And there’s a misplaced softness when Sunwoo hears you mutter, “I remember.” You wait a beat. “Do you trust me?” 

“Do I trust you?” He echoes, dread and disbelief coating his words. “I don’t even—”

“Just answer the question, Sunwoo. Do you?”

“I—” he studies the drop again, thinks and overthinks the newfound steadiness in your voice. Quietly, he mumbles, “yeah.”

“Then jump.” You tell him how exactly to do it as well, where to find the rope you packed and which hook is best to use. He does as you say, preparing for a jump he hasn’t decided to take yet. And once everything is prepared, the only thing that passes between you and Sunwoo on the intercom is silence. “Hey,” you mutter after a long while, something like a joke audible in your voice, “you jump; I jump, jack.”

“Except you aren’t jumping.”

“Technically, yes, that’s true but—”

“Okay, okay, okay. Shut up.” Sunwoo inhales deeply, closing his eyes and letting silence fill the intercom again. The silence, however, is interrupted the second he hears a group of voices travelling from somewhere down the hall. His eyes snap open.

“Sunwoo—”

“Fuck it.”

He jumps.

— 

“You’re bleeding.” Is the first thing Sunwoo hears when he walks through the motel room’s door, quickly followed by you rushing to him, tilting his head with a finger against his chin, and inspecting the cut above his eyebrow. 

“Yeah well your little jump stunt didn’t make for the smoothest of landings.” 

He means it as a joke. A bad one he realizes when you pull your hand away, eyes dropping from his face and guilt hanging over your head. “Sorry about that.” 

He shrugs. “It didn’t kill me.” 

“Come on,” you beckon, grabbing the first aid kit and heading to the bathroom, “I’ll help you bandage them.” 

Sunwoo sits on top of the closed toilet lid, folding up his pant leg to examine the gash running across his shin. The cut, he realizes, isn’t nearly as bad as it feels, but you make a small face at the sight of it anyways. It doesn’t take you very long to clean the cut on his leg, quickly finishing it while kneeling on the cold bathroom tile and asking him questions about the mission.

“No stitches?” He wonders when you pat a bandage in place.

You shake your head. “You should be fine. Nothing more than a gloried scrape really.” You add teasingly while rearranging the objects in the first aid kit. And when you laugh at the look he gives you for the comment, Sunwoo does his best to ignore the fluttering that appears in his gut at the sound. 

You move on from the cut on his leg, placing the first aid kid on top of the counter and poking the bruise that’s forming above his knee before getting up yourself. He smacks your hand away.

“How’d you know about my fear of heights by the way?”

“You told me one night in Vienna.” You answer, tearing open an alcohol wipe packet. “Do you not remember?”

He shakes his head.

Frowning, you let out a small, “oh.”

Neither of you say anything after that. And Sunwoo’s so focused on the frown that’s yet to leave your face that he barely registers the way you lean towards him for better access, propping your knee on top of the toilet and between his legs for balance. Although he does notice the warmth that radiates off your body. And a minute after that, he notices how much longer it takes you to clean this, smaller cut than it took to clean the one on his leg.

“Sorry.” You quickly apologize when you press against the cut too harshly. Sunwoo waves you off. “I am sorry though.” You repeat, seriously, lips still turned down in a frown and brows knit together.

“It’s really fine.” He chuckles, amused by the amount of gravity in the apology. 

“No. For Vienna.” The amusement dies in the back of his throat. “I never apologized for…” you falter there, fingers paused against his forehead, “for that. But I am sorry.”

“It was your mission.” Sunwoo gulps. “You were being a good agent.”

“And a shitty person.” You say, no hint of a joke laced in the statement. “In fact, the mission was just to observe you. Make sure you didn’t find out anything too important about Pegasus. Meeting you was mostly on accident. And everything that followed,” you bite your lip, and Sunwoo can’t tell if you’re biting back a smile or a frown, “all those other parts just sort of came naturally.”

The flame in his chest from before bursts into a bonfire, filling his lungs with a hopeful smoke. “Naturally?” He echoes.

“Yeah,” you repeat, tongue darting out in concentration while you complete the last step of smoothing out the bandage. You don’t lean away when you finish. You don’t remove your knee from between his legs. Don’t pull away the hand you have holding back his hair or the one resting against the side of his face. Nothing but your eyes move, trailing down until they find his, visibly gulping, then wandering further below. “Naturally.”

And the word is like a spell, lifting his chin and drawing him towards you until his lips are brushing against yours. It’s barely a kiss, a small hesitant press of lips that lasts no longer than a second, but one that has Sunwoo’s heart pounding wildly in a way it never did three months ago. He pauses there, lips unmoving and hovering just below yours, waiting for you.

You don’t move. Neither leaning in nor away. His gaze flickers up to your eyes, finds them half open, focused on the upper curve of his lip. He captures your lips between his again, a second attempt that is met with response when you lean into it, inhaling him in for a tiny blissful moment and exhaling him out in the next, pushing him back by the shoulders and stepping away yourself.

“I should…”

“Fuck.”

“I should go.”

And you’re gone before he can say anything else. 

// 

The kiss is ignored by both of you while prepping for the second half of the mission. A silent agreement to act like it never even happened and another one to not discuss whatever misplaced feelings led to it. It’s almost sickening how easily you and Sunwoo fall back into being just partners. Especially considering the fact that Sunwoo’s feelings haven’t faded, the bonfire in his chest still burning with the same brightness. So Sunwoo spends his days with you, attempting to put out the fire between his lungs, and he spends his nights alone, replaying the kiss you both pretend to ignore.

“Tomorrow’s the big day.” You mutter on the last night, a trail of anxiousness slipping off your tongue. “And then we’ll be done.” 

Sunwoo only nods, watching how your tongue pokes the inside of your cheek and mulling over whether you mean done with the mission or done with him.

--

The Pegasus mission doesn’t go nearly as smoothly as the Creker one, complications toppling around Sunwoo from the moment he begins. They start small first: a locked door resulting in a change of entry and a janitor straggling in a hallway that should have been clear. He makes it to his first destination eventually, quickly shuffling through the room of file cabinets until he finds your physical files, slipping them into his bag, and heading to the next room with you whispering directions into his ear. The next room is empty when Sunwoo arrives. He works quick, bypassing the security system and fingers flying across to find your information.

“Faster.” He hears you mutter over the earpiece. A hasty reminder of what you had told him earlier that week: the room never stays empty for long.

“Got it.” He exhales, finally pinpointing your files and beginning the process of downloading and deleting them.

“Sunwoo,” he hears an elevator ding from somewhere outside the room at the same time he hears you, “someone’s coming.”

He doesn’t move. Keeping one eye on the closed door and the other on the still-pending status of your files. “I’m almost done.”

“If you leave now, they won’t see you.” Voices fill the hall. “But you have to leave now.”

“I’m not done yet.”

The voices move closer, louder. “It’s not worth it. Please, just go!”

He hears them behind the door. “It’s you.”

There’s a jingle of keys. “How will you—”

“Hey,” the door unlocks with a click, “you jump; I jump, right?”

“Sunwoo—”

He pulls the earpiece out at the exact moment that the door swings open.

-- 

The rooftop is obscenely pretty at this hour, with the golden sun partly hidden by a high-rise building but still growing in the distance, scattering its light across the sky, and casting a golden shadow on everything it touches. It’s a gorgeous sight, and yet, there’s no one but Sunwoo here to appreciate it.

“You’re okay.”

He whips around only to find you standing on the rooftop with him, body trembling and hands clasped over your mouth. Behind you, the door to the roof is still falling closed. Your eyes are red, dark circles hanging under them that make it look as if you haven’t slept days. Silently, Sunwoo wonders how he’s just now noticing your sudden restlessness, and a small part of him hopes—no prays that whatever’s chasing your sleep away is the same thing chasing his.

“I got it.” He says, pulling out the flash drive he stayed to retrieve. Your eyes never flicker off his. “How’d you find me?”

“How’d you get out?”

Neither of you answer. Instead, you begin to walk towards him, asking if he’s hurt with a voice that’s too soft and too concerned for Sunwoo to make out an answer. You ask it again.

“No, I’m not hurt.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

You stop in front of him. Close enough for Sunwoo to see the tears welled up in your eyes. “You’re okay.” You repeat, voice wavering with a sudden gust of wind.

“I am, but I—” he hesitates; you take a step towards him, “I miss you.” He succumbs to the fire in his chest; lets it fill his lungs, burn up his throat, and throw the sentence, “I just miss you so much,” out of his mouth without bothering to hide the crack in it.

He meets your eyes and finds a starling amount of clarity in them. “I missed you too.”

“Really?”

You laugh at that, nodding your head and stepping closer to him again. “I missed you before we ever met.”

He stares at you. For too long probably. Watches a smile grace your features, spreading like a fire. The flame feels familiar. And for the first time since seeing you after Vienna, Sunwoo doesn’t have to hold back the urge to ask, “Can I kiss you now?”

“Please.”

He does. Lips crashing into yours, and you meeting the motion halfway, leaning into his lips, his body, him. A fervent want present in the way you pull at his neck and grab onto the collar of his shirt that would’ve probably been surprising if it wasn’t matched completely by him. He wraps his arms around your waist, pulling your body flush against his and deepening the kiss for a second more.

You both pull away, just barely, faces still close and bodies pressed against each other.

“Hey,” you begin, breath hot against his lips and a knowing smirk appearing briefly, “was I worth the wait?”

And suddenly Sunwoo’s in Vienna again, sitting on a bench, and asking you the same question.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, smiling, “you were.”

//

a/n: i apologize this request took me forever to get around too. and if the actual spy aspects to this fic make zero sense then my bad i was spit balling here. brownie points if u can find the scene inspired by queens gambit and the other scene inspired by the office lmao

[undxrworld]

Hanamaki Takahiro as your Boyfriend

Hanamaki Takahiro x Reader

—Word Count: 1k

—Warnings: N/A

—Notes: A set of HCs I have with a mix of characterization I have generally thought of for Hiro

—MINORS DNI

—Masterlist

This man can NOT choose a set love language to save his life.

He is a giant giver when it comes to gifts and little surprises. You can always expect a small snack and drink while working or studying to remind you to take breaks every so often so you don't burn yourself out.

He is weak to physical touch. Your presence around him is enough to put a smile on his face, easing any worries in his head knowing that you're safe when you're with him. Cuddles melt him down easily. Little spoon or big spoon? It doesn't matter to him so long as you're in each others arms.

If it's words of affirmation and reassurance you want, he'll be right there to make sure you get it. Listening to your every word before putting his thoughts in, complimenting you the entire process even if it was ever so subtly. 

He constantly reminds you how much he means to you with eyes full on sincerity ass he spoke. He becomes an open book once it comes to professing his undying love to ones he think are important in his life, especially you because he wants you to know what goes inside his head at the sight of you or hearing your name.  

He firmly believes in actions speak louder than words so he not only speaks to you of his feelings but show them in the little things. If you’ve had a long day, he’s there to give you a massage, a backrub or even helping lessen the chores you need to do. If he can somehow make things easier for you, he’ll do it in a heartbeat.

➳ He loves to play and helping you with your hair whenever allowed. Depending in your hairstyle, he loves combing his fingers through it, fixing your curls, or assisting you in your hair care routine. Honestly he just wants to be involved and know how to help you out one day if ever you need a pair of extra hands for the job.

➳ Do you want to paint your nails or get them done? He'll match with you! He takes good care of his hands, keeping them neat and cut to take hand pictures for you and for you to post online.

➳ The amount of memes, cute animals and TikToks this man sends in a day is enough to blow up your phone. He's never not keeping you entertained. Are you at work? Watch them for later to destress. Having a bad day? Here are some cute animals to put your frown upside down. Are you on TikTok? He is too!

➳ The puns this man sends you range from corny to cringe to hilarious. It’s like he’s Dad Joke Central! You’d even come to think what he’d be like if he’s around kids, blending in to the younger generation by cracking them up with so many punchlines. 

➳ He is determined to learn how to bake. Cooking for him is something he needs to improve on more but he knows the basics. Profiteroles and Cream Puffs are his main goal to master but cookies and brownies are close seconds because they’re a staple baked good everywhere. So if you ever want to teach him or learn with him, he’ll be the most focused student.

➳ For someone with a very warm body, he actually gets cold really fast so he layers up a lot which explains the amount of hoodies and sweatshirts that occupy his closet. Which directly translates to many comfy clothing to ‘steal’ off of him.

➳ His fashion sense has grown and evolved over the years. He’s always well dressed for any occasion and thought out. Mixing and matching so many garments. He’s also down to match outfits with you whenever you want. 

➳ Sadly, he can’t pick a set aesthetic to stick with so he goes with the general ‘vibe of the day’. If unsure, he asks you to see what you’re in the mood for and he’ll be right there to support the vibe and embody it with you. 

➳ The list of pet names he has for you are endless. His love, darling, sweetheart, sunshine, gumdrop, prince/ss or high highness, etc. He always finds a name to put to your face because nearly everything reminds him of you.

➳ He’s very careful of you, staying sensitive and curious to know all the emotions you’re feeling. Hiding your emotions deep inside won’t be much help because he easily senses when something is wrong. 

➳ The amount of body worship you receive from him. All your curves, scars, muscles or what—he’s in love with it. Shape, size, and height don’t matter to him in the slightest. Even if you get insecure of others that seem more ‘fit’ or ‘skinny’, anything else that society thinks of as the ideal, he gives no mind to that because in his eyes you’re perfect just the way you are and he loves every inch and crevice of you, inside and out.

➳ Typical dates with him are very fun to say the least. He’s not that picky because he just wants to spend time with you. Staying at home? Carnival dates? Movie dates? Dinner dates? Stargazing? He’ll be there and come prepared. Your comfort and happiness come first in this mans head. 

➳ He isn’t afraid to indulge with you in any new adventures either. Atleast try things once just to see if you both will enjoy the activity or not but live to tell the tale instead of simply being ignorant. 

➳ If you’re ever into content creation and making videos that can possibly go viral, he does like to pull some pranks on you, following texting trends and the like that are harmless. Even if people request him to do more extreme pranks, he’d rather ask you beforehand on your opinion on it or try his best to script it to avoid hurting your feelings.

➳ When you hear him laugh, it’s so wholehearted and loud if you’re not around with others. It often leads to him clutching his stomach too and evolving into being on the ground, begging for mercy. Even if he says he’ll be serious, he easily cracks up again.

Taglist: @anxiousbabybirdb @goldenshoyo @sailor-vi @fukurotiny @c-herri @gg9183 @kay-n-tsumtsum @introloves @sugawarakoushilove @lemillieon @angelofdarkness1020​ @selfishwitch​ @prince-lo​​ (I also may have tagged other people I know who like him to a degree so hello there!-) 

[doodlebloo]

not to be a lil sensitive but not only do i just think its bad taste to constantly joke abt killing off a 3yr old fictional or not but it also just like. doesnt reflect well on the ccs involved to be doing this like. just so they can upset fans that arent even theirs like. theyre just doing this to make people Uncomfortable and Upset and thats fucked up when we were told that michael wouldnt have this stuff happen to him. theres a difference between sam keeping michael hostage when sams habit of kidnapping michael was already established and something beeduo was aware of and.

sapnap n george constantly getting people into actively threatening him and constantly baiting viewers into believing they killed him off like. for many its funny sure but for a lot of other people its just genuinely upsetting and disappointing esp bc theres a possibility that it messed with other peoples (such as tubbo and ranboo, MICHAELS LITERAL PARENTS) story arcs lmao. rp etiquette is down the gutter w this -🎭🎪

Yeah like I'm not watching this particular stream so I can't testify as to like how far this particular joke went, how quick they dropped it, how clear it was that it's a joke, etc BUT

I feel like it's different for the CCs because they always know their own intent. So when they say they're going to kill him, THEY know it's a joke, and they assume everyone else knows it's a joke. And by now, most of us do know it's a joke! But back when this all first started that really wasn't as clear, y'know?

I feel like esp with upcoming lore they know not to Really put the actual mob in any Real danger but like. Even if we take int account that they're currently acting Out Of Character (which means that this isn't c!Sapnap threatening a child it's Sapnap The CC threatening a Minecraft Mob who belongs to someone else) it's still weird because. Again there are countless pets builds etc on the server that are important but would upset people way less and may EVEN lead to "lore" or something.

Like there are other people on the server who are in way more frequently, and if the point of the joke was to grief or pretend to grief people, you'd think they'd choose a target that 1. Isn't super plot relevant and 2. Is owned by someone who logs on more frequently, y'know?

So like I fully understand that the joke is not "Kill Michael_B", the joke is "SAY we are going to kill him/pretend to kill him while really he is safe." I understand that that is the intent behind the jokes and that they wouldn't actually ruin someone's storyline on purpose.

But the fact that they're STILL singling out this one mob as the one they're going to joke about killing really does make it seem like griefing or killing a pet isn't the punchline at all and the punchline they're actually shooting for is seeing fans get upset. And I know they probably mean it in a lighthearted way, just to see people spam D: or NOOO in chat and such, but it's just Weird that this is a joke they continuously return to, because how many times can you pretend to kill the same mob and watch people for "no don't" before it's not entertaining anymore?

Like I'm sure they don't mean badly and maybe it's some like inside joke between them that we're not in on but I really can't figure out what's funny enough about "I could kill this mob which would cause a poltline to be ruined but I won't but will pretend to do it" for them to do it over and over again (esp because these ccs are so effortlessly funny)

(but seriously nobody send any ccs hate over this they haven't done anything actually wrong 👍)

[catzula]

(Don't) Let me be the judge of that

a/n: enemies to lovers w Osamu. Nothing more to say.

genre: mostly fluff, enemies to lovers au, fem!reader

warnings: Osamu being an ass in the beginning, swearing, mentions of social anxiety, 5.6k

《Synopsis: Osamu Miya is too judgemental for his own good, never accepting he's simply wrong. You're here to change that.》

Osamu Miya had a habit of judging people. It would take him one look and a few seconds to decide whether he liked someone or not, the answer often being the latter. But the worst part was just how stubborn and maybe a bit self-centered Osamu was. He trusted himself a little too much, and it was impossible to change his opinion of someone after he had made up his mind, and if he didn't like someone, that was it, he would never grow to like them.

Or so everyone -including Osamu himself- thought until you entered his life.

~

You weren't surprised to feel the brown pair of eyes looking your way when your professor announced the project was in pairs. "Decide on your partners until the end of the hour and give me a list of the groups." He told the class and leaned back in his chair.

"Y/N!" You heard him before you saw him, a mop of bleached blond hair coming into your view right after. "Hi, Atsumu." You offered him a smile as you pocketed your phone, tilting your head when he frowned in response. "I already told you, Y/N, it's 'Tsumu to you!"

"Why?" You sighed annoyedly. Having had the conversation once before, you knew damn well he wouldn't stop until you did what he wanted, but you still chose to resist.

"Because," the boy whined, "it's a sign of our friendship. Only my friends and 'Samu call me that, and I want you to call me by my nickname, too." You chose not to talk about how he excluded his twin from his friends, knowing that would only lead to another argument. 

"Who even came up with this stupid name? It doesn't make any sense, it's only one syllable shorter, and it's even harder to say!" Atsumu's warm-brown eyes narrowed. "It's not stupid!" He protested, pouting until you gave up.

"Okay, okay, whatever. 'Tsumu-kun. There, happy?"

"Tsumu." The blond corrected with a grin.

"Kun." You added (to rile him up)

"Only Tsumu, goddammit! We're close enough."

"Are we, though? We only know each other for... what? A week?"

"A month!" Atsumu gasped as he corrected you. "And it doesn't matter how long we know each other, okay? It's a matter of how well we connect." His frown got deeper when you made a face, muttering something about him being cheesy, so he decided to switch strategies.

"But you always call me by my name when we're alone, Y/N-chan." Words spoken as flirtatiously as possible, Atsumu never missed the chance to tease you.

"A-atsumu, what the fuck, don't make it sound weird!" You exclaimed, already aware of the murmurs starting to spread around the room and the eyes turning on you both.

"There we go," Atsumu grinned when he heard his name falling from your lips, "wasn't that hard, was it?"

"You just had to be a little shit." You sighed, and his grin only spread wider. "I am a little shit, aren't I? Thank god I'm handsome. Anyway, I'm writing our names down." 

"It feels like we're getting married, seeing our names standing next to each other like this." He sighed, wiping the nonexistent tears from the corner of his eyes as he handed the paper to the person sitting behind you. You heard someone gasp at his words, and you never wanted to hit someone with a chair this much in your life.

"Shut the hell up!" You whisper-yelled, only feeling your anger growing when he sent you an innocent look. "What? I'm just saying-"

"I swear to god," You flared, "I'll tell everyone that one time you ran out of the library screaming when you saw a cockroach if you don't shut up." His grin disappeared as soon as you spoke the words, eyes widening and mouth shutting.

"You promised to never talk about it!" You had to admit that it did feel powerful to see him so panicked, face flushed, the sleazy look that was almost always in his eyes nonexistent and replaced with something similar to fear.

"It's up to you wether I talk about it or not." You shrugged.

~~~

"Woah, you look tired." You heard a familiar voice say as he plopped right next to you on the bench, holding a homemade bento in his hands, wrapped too neatly to be made by him.

"And whose fault is that?" You muttered, trying to conceal your murderous intent towards him. Even just thinking about your day gave you headaches. You groaned when he shrugged, focusing on unwrapping the bento box. "Yours, idiot!" 

"What did I d-" You winced when he spoke after taking a big spoon of rice and showing you everything that was in his mouth. 

"Your fans wont let me be! Ever since we started hanging out, it's almost like I'm being harassed."

"That's not necesarrily my fault." Atsumu shrugged, proceeding with another bite of his food. 

"It is, actually. I know you like to tease me, but if you keep saying shit like 'oh look our names together, feels like we're getting married' or that fucking 'you call me by my name when we're alone' you make it worse! You know how many people came up to me and asked if we were sleeping? One even asked me if we were engaged! We've known each other for two weeks, for god's sake!"

"A month." Atsumu corrected, shutting up when you sent him a look. "That's not even the worst part. Whenever I don't give an answer, or the answer they want to hear from me, people start to-" 

They started to get mean. Some even insulted you without batting an eye, speaking of how you weren't even pretty, that you had to be sleeping with Atsumu to be near him, and many fucking more.

"What?" He asked. "People started to what?" You knew he could sense how tense you were starting to get, but you always started to fight with him whenever he asked if people were bothering you, never answering his question, despite the answer being obvious. 

"Nothing, its just frustrating." You shrugged, taking a bite out of your meal to stop yourself from talking -or crying-. 

"Look, I can guess what's going on." Atsumu sighed, "and the only reason I can think of of you not telling me what's happening is that you don't want me to interfere, but you should tell them to piss off, already." He advised you the same stupid sentence he had been advising the past few days, ever since he noticed how his fans acted towards you. 

"Yeah, thanks for the advice, jackass. It would be easier if you stopped being so extra." You muttered into your cup full of coffee, feeling a tinge of guilt, putting the whole blame on him and not admitting you probably should tell people to mind their business already.

But you just weren't the type of person that was comfortable with talking to people you didn't know or know well enough, and you certainly weren't going to tell people to 'piss off' so comfortably.

You gulped when he sighed. "Okay, sorry, you're right, and I went overboard. But I gotta go to training now. It'll end around 5 p.m, so come to my place at 6?" He raised to his feet as he took one last sip of his drink when he finished his food.

"And if anyone asks you if we're married again, you have my permission to say yes." He grinned, patting your hair twice before you rolled your eyes, but couldn't stop a giggle from escaping your lips. "Oh, thank you, gracious lord." You cried out dramatically, scoffing when he pinched your cheek. "Exactly."

~~~

"I'm going into shower." Atsumu announced as Osamu shuffled through the fridge. 

"And?" The grey-haired twin asked from the fridge without pulling back, locating the eggs, and taking some out. "Do you want my help or something?

He expected an equally sarcastic comment from his brother, lifting his head as he closed the door of the fridge. "Cook for 3 today, a friend's coming over." He heard him say instead.

"A friend?" Osamu quirked his brow, ready to laugh given the punchline, but it never came.

"Yep." His twin answered instead, popping the p like some idiot middle schooler. "She's nice, you'll like her." He grinned, and Samu was already sure that wouldn't be the case. "Is this the girl ya can't stop talking about?"

Osamu couldn't say he wasn't interested since it was rare to see his brother drawn to anything but himself and volleyball, especially not to a girl. And judging by how Atsumu spoke about you, it was evident he had a particular liking to you.

The smug grin on Atsumu's face gave Osamu his answer, to which he grimaced. "don't wanna hear a fucking sound."

"She's coming over to study, you pervert! We have a project together."

"Yeah, whatever, I said what I said." Osamu shrugged, turning his back to Atsumu and started to chop the vegetables, unable to shake off the unlucky feeling pooling in his stomach.

~~~

"Oi, shit-head, does yer friend have any allergies or somethin'?" Osamu knocked on the bathroom door that had steam coming from the gap beneath it. He waited as Atsumu closed the water. "Eh, I'm not sure." 

"Yer not sure? How long do you even know her?"

"A month." Atsumu answered, turning the water back on. A month? It wasn't like Atsumu didn't get close to a girl he knew for such a short time, but Osamu had never, ever seen Atsumu bring a girl home.

"Hurry up, already, what the hell are you even doing in there?!" Osamu shouted, knocking on the bathroom door and holding back an urge to kick down the door when he heard the happy humms of his brothers.

"Oi, idiot, I'm telling you- goddammit." He clenched his teeth when he heard the doorbell. 

"Hurry up or you're not eating." Osamu knocked one last time before he rushed to the door to let you in. 

He opened the door without thinking of opening the lights as well, and since it was well after the sun had set, he couldn't see what you looked like, but he knew he wasn't expecting- well, you.

You were bent forward, trying to undo the messy knot your shoelaces had formed when the door opened. Sending a glance at the silhouette standing at the door, you turned your attention back to untying the mess your shoes were. 

"Hey, Atsumu." You muttered without taking another look, assuming it was Atsumu who had greeted you. You didn't see how Osamu's face soured, dark-grey eyes narrowing at your form with some hostility he couldn't help.

In your defense, the light wasn't on, and you hadn't taken a good look at the boy standing before you, so it wasn't exactly your fault for not realizing it was Osamu, right?

No.

Strike one.

Osamu hated when people mixed him with Atsumu. Did they not see the bright platinum gray hair, clearly different from his twins piss colored one? Osamu hadn't dyed his hair for the sake of looking nice, and he certainly hadn't sat in the hairdresser for hours long just to get mixed up with his twin again.

You had noticed your mistake as soon as you stood up and looked at the tall figure staring at you, leaning on the door frame and his arms tied on his chest almost defensively. "O-oh," Osamu heard you mutter softly, not sure as to why your voice sent goosebumps down his arms. "You're not Atsumu."

The somewhat disappointed tone of your voice made him furrow his brows. The smile you had on your lips dropped as soon as you locked eyes with the grey ones, familiar yet strange, and Osamu could feel himself getting more irked by the second.

The truth was, you weren't exactly disappointed, mostly embarrassed and a little surprised, although the unsatisfied look his eyes held kept making you even more nervous. He waited as your eyes wandered over his face, over the scowl resting on his lips, looking so mean and hostile, you found yourself taking a defensive step away from him.

"I- uh," Osamu's scowl didn't move an inch when you forced a smile at him, and you checked the time on your phone to break the eye contact. "Atsumu told me to come by at 6, and... is he- is he home?"

"Yeah," The boy talked for the first time, and you noticed how his voice was deeper than his twin's. It was nicer, too, you thought. "He's in the shower, though he should be-"

"Y/N, you're here!" You heard the twin you were familiar with speak your name, standing in the entrance, hair still wet and dripping with excess water. 

"Don't get cocky, I'm here for the project." You rolled your eyes with fake annoyance, unsuccessful at hiding your smile. Osamu felt something in him shift as he watched the change in your demeanor, feeling- what, jealous? 

"You met 'Samu?" Atsumu approached you, not missing the tension hanging in the air. "Y/N, this is the inferior twin, 'Samu, as you can also tell. And 'Samu, this' Y/N." He introduced you, making you laugh awkwardly, but Osamu kept his glower. 

"Don't mind him, he can be an asshole sometimes." Atsumu whispered at you, which anyone even passing by outside the house could hear. "Look at who's talking." You told him with a snarky quirk of a brow, making Atsumu frown. "Mean."

The blond pulled you towards the living room, making you settle on the couch and plopping next to you. Osamu caught the glance you sent his way when he didn't sit, leaning against the wall that was across you, instead, and you found he still had that frown that seemed to be imprinted on his face.

Osamu's frown was deepening on his lips at how comfortable you looked next to Atsumu, the friendly banter you had the exact opposite of how uncomfortable you looked next to Osamu. Maybe it was the natural competitiveness that came with having a twin, but Osamu hated this feeling. Why couldn't you smile at him like that, too? Yeah, maybe he was acting like a dick, but wasn't Atsumu also?

"Go dry your hair, idiot, you'll get sick!" Osamu heard you tell his twin, watching you hit him with the nearest pillow. "Hm?" Atsumu turned to you with a grin, leaning towards you for easy access to his hair. "I thought ya could do it for me?"

Osamu watched you with interest as you glared at his twin with annoyance. "I hope you get sick." You narrowed your eyes at him. "If you keep this attitude around other people, I'll kick you."

"Alright, alright, I won't flirt with ya when other people are around." Atsumu grinned, and Osamu felt his appetite vanishing. "I'll just leave." He muttered to himself, closing the door behind him just after hearing your answer to his twin.

"Don't flirt with me, ever?" 

You had spoken it with such genuine annoyance that if you had listened closely, you could hear Osamu laughing from the other side of the door.

~

So, the meeting with his twin was anything but successful.

Osamu was very blunt with how much he hadn't liked you, his glare reminding you of the ones Atsumu had whenever his fans approached him, cold and cruel.

Grey was clearly the superior choice, though, that you found yourself thinking as you gazed at the blond. "What? Lost in my handsomeness?" Atsumu teased you when he noticed you weren't paying attention to the project. You had to hold yourself back physically before you said something along the lines of how his twin was hotter, but you knew he wouldn't talk to you ever again, so you shut your mouth and took the teasing. 

Luckily, Osamu was barging through the door before Atsumu could continue, bored-looking eyes finding you two where he had left you. "Dinner's ready." He told you and left the room.

"Food," Atsumu salivated, jumping on his feet the moment he heard his brother, ready to sprint to the kitchen. You shuffled awkwardly in your place when you felt his warm-brown gaze on you, expecting you to stand up, as well, and eat.

"I- uh," you muttered. "I'm not really hungry, and I ate before I came here." Lies. "Can't we just finish this project instead?"

Strike two.

Just as he started to think you weren't horrible, Osamu gasped from the other side of the wall when he heard you (the walls were thin), his teeth clenching in annoyance. Really? Did you prefer doing a fucking project over his food? The food he had cooked?

Osamu was never a forgiving person, but this- this was something he could never forgive, he decided on the spot.

"Oh, come on, stop bein' a baby." Atsumu told you, pulling you by your hand on your legs, he knew you well to understand you were hesitating to go there because of his brother. Or more as he was making you nervous and you would rather not eat than go in his presence. "Osamu's the best cook around, you'll see." He joked so you could relax a little, making you giggle nervously.

Strikeout.

Osamu flinched at the words, eyes narrowing on you as you entered the kitchen. Did you doubt his abilities? 

You thanked the boy as he placed your plate in front of you, steaming hot food, smelling so good that you wanted to bury your face in it, but the grey gaze hovering over you was making you so nervous that it made it impossible for you to take even a small bite.

"Do ya like it?" Atsumu asked you, noticing how you were nudging the food with your fork without eating. You flinched in your place, your friends' voice pulling you out of your thoughts and back to reality, to which you mustered a smile and nodded. "Yeah! Yeah, it's- it's delicious. Thank you." You turned back to Osamu, who scoffed at your words, causing you to frown. 

You could tell he didn't like you one bit, even though you weren't sure as to why, but you discarded the thought. He was free to like or dislike you, which, in this case, was the latter, though it stung a little since you thought he seemed nice when- well, when he didn't frown at you.

He seemed like the type you would either get along or hate mutually.

He had obviously chosen the latter, and both Atsumu and you could feel the almost hateful air coming from Osamu as he glanced at you with a disinterested, blank face. "Did ya have a bad day or something, 'Samu?" Atsumu broke the silence, and you felt like you could finally take a breath. "You look like someone kicked ya in the nuts."

"Fuck off, 'Tsumu." 

"Nah, you've been acting like a dick all day. What's with ya today?"

"I said fuck off!" Osamu warned his twin another time, this time successfully silencing the blonde. 

"Thank you," You broke the awful silence that followed Osamu's voice. "The food was delicious." You told him after you finished your food. You could still feel his gaze over you as you placed your plate in the sink and retreated to the living room. 

"Your brother didn't like me very much, did he?" Osamu heard you mutter to his brother after he had left, too, feeling a fracture of guilt in his chest as he caught the disappointment in your voice.

"It's just... 'Samu. Don't worry about it." Atsumu told you, closing the door behind you.

~

Osamu was hesitant to knock on the living room door.

It had been about two hours since you had gone in, and knowing his brother- he couldn't be sure as of what's to happening.

"Oi, 'Tsumu!" He barged in the room, discarding the thoughts before he gave up. 

"Shut up." Atsumu whispered, eyes lifting from his phone screen for a second and glancing at you. You, who was lying on the sofa and- sleeping?

"She fell asleep." Atsumu grinned at his brother's questioning gaze. "I'll carry her back to the car. Can you drive her home?"

Osamu didn't hold back his snicker when Atsumu's voice dropped volume as he asked the favor from his brother, still not able to admit to himself the defeat.

"Your hair is still wet, idiot," Osamu mumbled, his eyes wandering over your figure. "And I will not take care of you if you go out and get sick."

"What?" Atsumu grinned mockingly. "Are you gonna carry her then? Be a hero for the girl you've been acting like an ass all day? What the fuck was up with you today?"

"I don't like her." Osamu shrugged.

"She's not the kind of girl you think of her as." Atsumu quickly responded, already aware of what his twin had decided about you. Atsumu knew Osamu too well, his stubbornness even more, so he wasn't exactly surprised when he shrugged. 

"Let me be the judge of that, and I don't have to like her."

"Whatever, you do you. But you know, you don't have to dislike her just because she's my friend, too."

Osamu stood silent, eyes falling back on you. He knew Atsumu was partly right, but he had his reasons not to like you, right? Osamu pocketed his car keys, nodding at his twin and lifting you off the couch.

Atsumu grinned at the audible gulp his twin took when you shifted uncomfortably in Osamu's arms, snuggling your body closer to him, your hand fisting his shirt unconsciously. 

You woke up with Osamu hovering over you, and it took you a second or two to notice you were in a car and he was tying your seatbelt. He was so close, yet so careful not to touch you, his smell -a different perfume than his brother's- filling your newly awakened senses with him, him, him. Your eyes met his when he tied it and pulled back, a brow quirking up as his frown settled on his lips. 

"Did I wake you up?" He muttered as he retreated to his seat, running his fingers through his hair as he fixed his mirror, pushing back the few stray strands back from his face. Osamu turned back to you when you stood quiet, a sarcastic smile quirking his lips upwards, but it fell as soon as you talked.

"Wh- uh, where's Atsumu?"

Osamu clenched his teeth, not knowing why it angered it so much that his twin was the first thing that came to your mind as soon as you woke up.

"Home." Osamu gritted through his teeth. "I'm dropping you home, 'Tsumu gave me the address."

He glanced at you when you stood silent. "He doesn't have a license." Osamu couldn't help but add, a feeling stirring in him when you laughed at that. "So he failed the exam and you passed? That must've been a blow on his ego."

"Oh, you have no idea." Osamu found himself laughing with you.

Silence. He could feel your growing anxiety, and you could tell he was nervous as well, the taps of his fingers on the stirring wheel echoing in the car. His hair reflecting the colors coming from the road, yellow, red, and green, the features of his face illuminated, you thought he looked too handsome to be true.

"Why are you friends with him?" Osamu blurted out after a few seconds of silence, but the question didn't seem to surprise you. "Why is anyone friends with anyone?" You teased.

"Atsumu isn't exactly the type people wanna be friends with." 

"Hm," he heard you humm thoughtfully, not answering the question. "If we're asking questions, well, here's one. Why don't you like me?"

He could feel your light gaze on him as he kept his eyes on the road. It wasn't if he liked you or not, but you asked him why. He found himself wondering where that annoying meak girl he had met inside went. "And you don't like me."

"No," you answered honestly, which he found amusing. "You're mean."

"And 'Tsumu isn't?"

He turned to you when you shrugged. "Well, Atsumu is, too. But there is a difference, you know."

"And what is that?"

"He's a naturally mean person." You explained as if it made perfect sense. "He's just mean, he doesn't try to be meaner or nicer. You, on the other hand," you looked at him. "I don't think you're naturally mean, not as much as him, at least. I think you're purposefully being mean, and thats why I don't like you."

You met his eyes when Osamu turned his eyes from the road to you when the car stopped at the red light, grey eyes glistening with reds and yellows from the road. Your eyes followed the small smile that appeared on his lips, and you couldn't help yourself from thinking how soft they looked. How much more handsome he looked with a smile, even with one as cruel as he had now.

"I just don't like you." He told you with as much spite as possible, not sure why he was deliberately trying to hurt you. His brows furrowed when you laughed at his answer, instead.

"You certainly aren't the first." 

"What does that mean?" He asked without missing a beat, the tension now almost solidifying in the air. His heart was hammering in his chest, eyes watching your smiling lips as he waited for your next words, your chest heaving in sync with his, and you were so close, so close that if he leaned even just a little-

"You only met me today, Osamu-kun." He felt goosebumps climbing his back as he heard his name from your lips for the first time. "You know me for what, a few hours at most, and here you are telling me you just don't like me." The cynical tone of your voice made him send you a glare, his hands working over the gear when the red illuminating the car turned green.

"People like you do this a lot, you know. Judge people by one or two mistakes they do, not even anything major, but things you don't like, and deem them unworthy of your time. And how much I hate it when they boast about it, too. What, do you think you're so perfect? Don't you ever make any mistake?"

"People like me?" Osamu repeated, uncharasterically silent after all those words you had spat. "Yeah, shallow people." You answered, but you weren't looking at him anymore as you tapped the window instead. "We're here." 

You were silent as he stopped the car, pulling to the side, and watched you open the door. "You know," he finally spoke, rolling down his window before you were too far. "You say I judge people so quickly, but you did a full-blown analysis just now, and you say I'm the one to judge quick?"

"Tell me, Osamu." You bent forward a little, leveling your face with his. "If you can promise me that you didn't think, ah, I know this type of girl, even once tonight, I'll take it all back and apologize to you."

You smiled when he stood quiet. 

"Goodnight, Osamu. Thank you for the ride." You told him before walking back to your house.

~

"Ya know, with the amount of time you spend here, you may as well move in." Osamu told you gruffly, eyeing you from his side of the couch. Your eyes followed him as he took a bite out of his food, adam's apple bobbing up and down.  

"I'll move in as soon as you leave." You answered with a fake smile, turning your eyes away from his as soon as you realized you were staring, hoping he hadn't noticed, but he had. 

"Yer sure ya want me to leave?" He quirked a brow at you, making you grimace. "Never been more sure." 

It had been about a month since you met Osamu, and it was like this ever since. Osamu never missed the chance to take a jab at you, or he couldn't sleep. You never backed down from it either, the fights going back and forth until either Atsumu got bored and pulled you away or one of their friends called you out.

You didn't enjoy it like they thought you did. In fact, it was getting tiring and annoying, but you couldn't stop yourself from taking a jab at Osamu whenever he shot you a remark.

He looked at you when you sighed, brows quirking up in a silent question. "When's Atsumu gonna be here?"

Atsumu had told you to come to his place that day, telling you he would be there in a few minutes after you and he had something to do, but as always, he was late at least an hour, and you were now stuck with his brother. 

"I'll just go home and meet you up later." You had told the blonde, but he had insisted you stay. 

"Have you ever seen 'Tsumu come somewhere not at least two hours late? I bet he won't be here for at least an hour more." Osamu chuckled. "I'm hungry." He added right after, eyes finding yours.

"And? You need me to cook?" You snickered, not expecting him to stay silent, looking at you for a few more seconds and rolling his eyes as he turned around and went to the kitchen. 

Your brows furrowed in confusion at the antic. Surely Osamu wasn't- he wasn't asking you if you wanted something, was he?

"At least open a movie or something as we wait." Osamu muttered from the kitchen. 

"Do you have something on mind?" You asked, feeling weird at how soft he suddenly was acting. "No, pick one."

"Okay," you muttered to yourself, emphasizing the 'o'. You thought of opening a volleyball match, Atsumu always liked it when you did, and maybe he would- no, why were you even thinking of what he would like? He told you to open whatever, hadn't he?

Still, despite reasoning with yourself, you were jittery as you opened a random comedy show from Netflix. Trying to focus your thoughts on the show playing, you did your best not to think about the silver-haired boy inside, failing miserably by how your mind wandered to him and the odd way he was acting today.

"Say, ya never gave me an answer as to why yer friends with 'Tsumu." He entered the room, carrying a tray with two plates and forks inside. The crooked smile on his lips was making your heart beat twice as fast, even though you didn't want to admit it, and the way he focused on holding the tray on balance, the slight crease between his furrowed brows. Osamu Miya was too handsome for his own good.

"Thanks," you muttered half-heartedly as you took the plate from him, not even aware it was an olive branch he was sticking out. Osamu's face fell when you didn't spare him or his food another look. "You never gave me an answer of why you don't like me, so I guess we're even." You laughed, smile wavering when he didn't laugh along.

He sighed, eyes glancing at you and then back at his hands. It made you antsy, making you feel like something was wrong.

"You chose this to watch?" He turned back to the not answering you. He shifted in his place when you hummed, "I can change it i fyou want." The way he hadn't made fun of your choice of the movie yet, was too uncharacteristic of him.

"No, its okay." He answered instead, ending the conversation -if you could even call this one. You ate in silence, tv playing in the background, though neither of you cared of it, your gaze meeting now and then until you couldn't take it.

"What is wrong with you?" You couldn't help but blurt out, turning the TV off and facing him. You watched him as he quirked his brow up, looking at you questioningly even though he knew what you meant.

"What is wrong with me?" He repeated.

"Why are you being nice?"

He turned back to face the tv after a beat of silence, looking somewhat... shy? What the-

"Wh-what was that?" You asked when he mumbled something, the answer so silent that it was inaudible. "I said," Osamu repeated, eyes still focused on his plate. "You told me you didn't like me because I- uh, I was rude."

His voice was still uncharacteristically quiet, but this time you heard him loud and clear. That didn't mean you understood it, though.

"What do you mean?" He heard you ask, your voice laced with something resembling suspicion, you scoffed when he stood quiet, standing up to your legs and picking your plate off from the table. "If you're trying to tell me you want me to like you, I'm not buying it."

"You're not buying it?" He repeated, mirroring your movements and standing up, making you realize how much taller he was than you. The way he was looking at you- what was it, hurt? No, it couldn't be. Anger would be more like it. 

"Is there no way of winning with you?" He asked, following you to the kitchen and placing his plate a little too roughly on the counter. "You say you don't like me because I'm rude. I try to be nice and you fucking ask me what's wrong with me? What do you want me to do, disappear?"

Now, there was no denying that Osamu was, indeed, hurt, as his face soured when you stood quiet, staring at him blankly at his question. "So you hate me this much." He muttered to himself, running his fingers through his hair. 

"I don't know why you expected me to like someone who has been nothing but rude to me since the moment we met." You shrugged, but a part of you wanted to tell him it was a lie, and despite everything that you- well, you liked him. 

The glare he sent your way was enough to make you choke on the breath you took, taking a step forward to you, close enough for you to feel dizzy with his scent.

"Well, that concludes it, I guess. This was stupid, anyway." Osamu muttered, but he was so close- so close that you could almost feel the heat radiating from him, your eyes fixated on his lips, and if you just leaned forward- a few millimeters was all there was.

"What was- what was stupid?" You whispered, noticing his gaze was also wandering on your lips. Your heart suddenly started thundering in your chest, and you couldn't even ask yourself what's happening? What are you doing?

"This," Osamu breathed against your lips, his gaze so intense over you that it sent chills down your spine. He finally leaned forward, doing what you wanted but couldn't do, the word "apologizing," being the last thing you hear before you felt his lips on yours.

It was a soft kiss, nothing similar to how you thought Osamu would kiss -not that you had thought on it, or so you told yourself-, this kiss was deeper, irrational, amazing. 

"Do you always apologize to people by kissing them?" You asked when he pulled back, smirking at the way your chest heave, feeling a tinge of pride at how breathless he had left you.

"Hm?" He hummed, not wiping that damn smirk off of his face, it even grew wider when he noticed you pressing your fingers on your lips, still in shock, "I don't apologize to people." 

It was true. 

No one had ever seen Osamu Miya change his opinion about something, about someone. He would never admit he was wrong yet apologize.

But here he was, standing before you -just as breathless as you were- apologizing. 

"Maybe you should apologize more." You told him with a sly smile, to which he happily complied.

~

"I wanted to make peace." He told you, sitting on the couch right beside you, refusing to look at you, though. "I've been trying to act nice for a while now, but you seem to- you don't like that."

"A while?" You repeat. "You were never nice to me!"

"I was trying." His brows furrowed at your protest. "But you always had something snarky to say, and I couldn't just stay silent, could I now?"

"But- what? You were always the one who started them!" 

"Was I?" He asked, giving you the time to think, watching your face in disbelief fall into a look of 'fuck, he's right.'

It was you who started the fights, despite thinking it was him all this time. Upon recognizing that, you started to see the times he actually was nice to you, which you had always discarded or turned a blind eye.

Biting your lip guiltily, your turned to him. "I might... owe you an apology." You muttered, very aware of how his eyes glinted, gaze falling back on your lips. "Well," he told you, smiling. "I can't disagree."

[amillionsmiles]

in your bedroom after the war (Dick/Artemis)

Title: in your bedroom after the war Summary: As far as coping mechanisms go, Artemis could be doing worse. At least her method has a gymnast’s ass. / Post-Invasion, pre-Outsiders. Rated M.  A/N: I have one (1) agenda and that is messy grieving fuck buddies who are each other’s ride-or-dies. if you are not into fic that sits squarely in sad feral horny territory, then this is probably not your speed.

[Read and review here] or continue under the cut.  

| GOTHAM

| JANUARY 14, 2017; 12:05 AM EST

Artemis is a bit heavier than she was in her teenage years, but her feet land lightly on the fire escape by the window. An hour ago, she’d called her mom from Metropolis, promising she’d be home by midnight. Ever since her daughter faked her death a year ago, Paula Nguyen has become even more of a worrywart, and Artemis knows that the five minutes she’s running late are going to cause her to receive an earful.

“Didn’t think I’d see you back in this neck of the woods.” A familiar figure drops from the roof above onto the rung below her.

“Nightwing.”

She’s not surprised that he’s been keeping tabs. Officially, he’s been on a leave of absence for the past six months, but Dick, like her, is vigilant in his grief.

She’d come back to Gotham because it put her closer to Metropolis and Beta Squad’s continued investigation of LexCorp, but the truth is that she could have Zeta-tubed from Palo Alto easily. Their—her—apartment had been no good though, not without Wally. So she’d left most of her things in storage to figure out later and moved back in with her mom. On days when Artemis can’t muster the energy to get out of bed, Paula wheels determinedly around the kitchen, ready to whip up some mì xào  or a warm bowl of  mì gói.  They play card games and laugh about how bad Wally was at tiến lên the first time Paula tried to teach him. Your boy has no patience, he always wants to play his strongest cards right away, her mom had teased, and Wally had protested, I make it a rule to always put my best foot forward! and Artemis had loved him even more then.

Loved. Loves. She hates the past tense.

“I mean, were you ever going to ask me to grab coffee?”

She can see the bits of Wally in his cracks. In a room together, it was always easy to tell they were best friends from the way they riffed off each other. The acrobat and the speedster: all verbal gymnastics and fast-moving quips. But unlike Wally, who liked poking fun because he liked getting attention, Dick is at his wittiest when trying to avoid talking about himself.

Artemis reaches out and pulls him to sit down beside her. She makes a show of looking at her watch.

“How’s… 12:15 AM this Saturday?”

Dick pretends to check it against his mental schedule. If his is anything like hers, it probably goes: Wake up. Exercise (beating up bad guys counts). Mourn.

“Yeah, seems like I can swing it.”

“Perfect,” says Artemis, sliding up the glass panes to let them into her childhood bedroom. “I’ve got just the stuff.” 

*

In the kitchen, Brucely stirs briefly from his dog bed to sniff the air and  yip, then curls back asleep. Paula hands Dick a mug, waiting for him to take a sip before saying, “So you were the one who had the brilliant plan to have my daughter fake her death.” 

Dick splutters; from the table, Artemis rises to his defense. “Mom,” she says. “Leave him be.”

Setting his cup down, Dick leans against the cabinets, bending his head slightly and rubbing the back of his neck. He does a good job of appearing chastised, and Artemis wants to roll her eyes, if only because she’s heard from Bette and Raquel that this pose is far too effective at convincing women to want to forgive him or try again.

“I’m not leading much of anything these days, if that’s at all a comfort to you.”

“Hmph.” Paula sniffs. “You live alone?”

“Yeah.” Dick shoots Artemis a questioning look over her mom’s head. Artemis shrugs.

“What do you do to fill the time?”

“A lot of reading. Gotham’s library system actually has a pretty good selection, believe it or not. I’ve also gotten really into meditating.”

“And you don’t sleep.”

Dick stiffens. For the first time, he looks exposed, a boy with too much guilt and too much time on his hands.

“I do. Tonight I was just… restless.”

Paula nods and backs up her wheelchair so she can sit by Artemis, curling her fingers over Artemis’s hand and squeezing. She raises her drink, Artemis and Dick following suit, the three of them toasting to invisible losses.

“Aren’t we all.”

*

Later, back on the fire escape, Dick taps his fingers against the railing, jittery. “I feel like I need to start doing jumping jacks. What was in that stuff?”

Artemis bites back a smile. “Yeah, Vietnamese coffee packs a hit. That’s my bad. Probably should have given you something non-caffeinated at this hour.”

“It’s fine. I’ll jog it out, or something.” He turns to go, but Artemis stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, listen—it was good seeing you tonight. And if you need someone to talk to…” What she really means is: it’d be nice to be around someone who’s hurting as much as I am. Not to say that the rest of the team wasn’t as torn up over Wally’s death, but she and Dick had been ground zero. Closest to the blast.

After a pause, Dick nods. “Yeah… I could use a sparring partner, actually. I’ll send you an address.”

“Okay.” Satisfied, Artemis withdraws her hand, curling her fingers into her palm.

It feels like a start.

*

Dick’s directions lead Artemis to Wayne Manor; from there he takes her to the Bat Cave.

“I thought you were striking out on your own,” Artemis says, using her forearms to deflect a kick to her face. Dick grunts and recovers, throwing a punch to her stomach; she dances out of the way.

“I am. I just pop in here from time to time because Bruce has better equipment. Plus there’s less of a chance of me disturbing the neighbors.” He gestures to the eerily blue-lit stone walls around them.

Artemis feints and goes low, ducking under Dick’s guard. Two quick hits to Dick’s sternum pushes him back, before he gets a hand on her wrist and twists her around so that her back is pressed against his chest.

“Weren’t we supposed to be talking?”

Kicking his shin, Artemis breaks free. “All right, fine. I’ll start.”  Jab.  “I keep wanting a scapegoat.”  Kick.  “Like, one person to blame, instead of something as big as the Reach. But it’s not some giant revenge thing, and I know Wally wouldn’t want me to go down that sort of all-consuming rabbit hole even if it was, and that pisses. Me. Off.” On those last words, she manages to use Dick’s momentum against him and flips him over her shoulder.

For a minute, it’s so quiet between them she can hear the faint plip of water dripping from a stalactite into the water below the sparring dais. Still lying on the floor, Dick confesses, “I keep hearing him.”

“I make a joke to myself and he’s there, in my ear, with the punchline. And then…” He passes a hand over his face.  “And then I realize that the real punchline is him being gone.”

Slowly, Artemis approaches him. She feels like she did when they were undercover at Haly’s circus so many years ago, that brief moment of hangtime before their hands connected in the air. She means to sit down next to him, pat his shoulder, she doesn’t know what, but instead Dick sweeps her legs out from under her and she goes down hard, the air whooshing out of her chest as she falls flat on her back.

“Agh!” The release sets something loose inside her. Next thing she knows, she’s yelling again, louder, just because.

Dick catches on and then it’s just the two of them shouting, their voices echoing through the cavern, threading around and piling atop each other like a flock of birds. After they’re done, Dick rolls so that they’re lying side by side.

“You know, when we were starting out—when we first became friends—I used to make fun of Wally that if he kept talking so much while running he was bound to swallow more bugs, or something. And he’d just shoot back like, ‘Nah dude, you think I’m not fast enough to see them and dodge them in the air?’ But you know how he was always so hungry after missions? One time I was so mad at him I put a bug in his sandwich. I’ve never forgotten the look on his face after he bit into it and I said, dodge that.”

“You didn’t.” Artemis gasps and covers her mouth, horrified, but she can see it so vividly: the colors draining from Wally’s face, making his freckles pop even more against his skin, the same greenish tint his cheeks took the time they went to Vietnam and he got food poisoning. He’d spent two days feverishly glaring up at the mosquito netting, and Artemis had draped cold hand towels over his forehead and promised she wasn’t going to leave him for the very obliging boy who kept bringing them ice.

“I did.” Dick is gleeful. “Really put the ‘rank’ in prank.”  

Artemis snorts; the snort turns into a full-blown guffaw. Dick turns toward her, laughing too. His hair is matted with sweat but still soft; it brushes against her forehead.

It feels so good to be close to someone again, to be able to flip on a dime from sadness to frustration to anger to laughter and not have to explain herself. She can’t remember the last time she smiled and didn’t feel guilty about it, and she means it more affectionately than anything when she reaches over and brings Dick’s mouth to hers, like if she inhales whatever they’ve temporarily managed to create here between them, it’ll be enough to tide her over for the next few months. For a second, he’s warm and responsive, before his lips stiffen and he pulls back.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.  Shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, shouldn’t blame yourself for getting back in the game.  Artemis is sick of people telling her how to deal, how it’s supposed to go.  It’ll get better and then it doesn’t. People talk like there are guidebooks for this kind of shit, like it’s a marathon she just needs to pace herself through. And it’s the stupidest thing, but she misses being held.

She sits up and crosses her arms, resisting the urge to curl in on herself. “You didn’t do anything. I’ll go.”

“No, Artemis, wait, I don’t think you should go, I just want to understand what’s going on—”

“I want you to touch me, okay?” she explodes. “I want you to touch me because he’s never going to again and I know you loved him too and—and maybe if it’s you, I won’t feel so desperately alone.”

Dick looks stricken, and then, hesitantly, he reaches for her. His eyes are so blue, the kind of crushed eggshell you’d use to make a paint. “You’re not alone.”

“Prove it,” she says, vision blurring with tears—wanting, needing him closer, and then his hairline is up against hers again and his nose is at her cheek, his mouth at her jaw, soft but with a willingness to bruise. Don’t ask me what we’re about to do, Artemis silently begs, and Dick doesn’t.

 *

 Wally had been a restless lover. Always turning them over, switching positions. Artemis had taken it as a challenge, part of the ongoing competition that defined their relationship. Deep down, she’d known that Wally would be just as content if the rest of their sex life consisted solely of spooning gently on Sundays, which, if anything, was why she’d been so eager to experiment—because it felt like an easy gift she could give, not something she had to master to “maintain excitement” or make him stay.

She’s not sure what she expected from Dick. Maybe that’s a comfort—that she wasn’t fantasizing before they happened, wondering about all the mechanics of how it would go. Dick lets her call the shots, lets her ride him into the ground, the grip of his fingers around her thighs the only reminder she isn’t just angling toward oblivion. When he presses his thumb between her legs, it’s a weird sort of anchor—like hearing a voice pick up on a line you thought was dead. She has a body, and here’s someone on the other end of it, caring about her release. As soon as that thought hits, the relief shudders through her; she keeps rocking long enough to feel Dick follow, a stutter and a grunt, before she collapses boneless over him, the sweat of his skin a comforting stickiness against her cheek.

Internally, she apologizes to Bruce for desecrating his training space. Then again, they’re hardly the first of the Justice League to get handsy in less than appropriate places. She’s seen how Black Canary and Green Arrow act around each other.

Below her, Dick catches his breath. The rush of blood—his or hers—is loud in her ears.

“I didn’t think you’d be so…”  Giving, she means to say, but it gets lost on her tongue. “I mean, Zatanna…” she trails off again.

If Dick’s embarrassed at the prospect of his ex-girlfriend having blabbed about the details of their sex life to Artemis, he doesn’t show it. His fingers find a snag in her hair; gently, he works it loose. The air smells hedonistic. He keeps combing. Nice is the only word she can think to describe it, and that makes her want to cry again, so she squeezes her eyes shut.

“Thank you,” she whispers against his chest.

Dick pauses his ministrations. He flattens his palm against the base of her neck and just—holds her there.

“Don’t mention it.”  

When she goes home that afternoon to shower, she runs the water on full blast for a long time.

 *

 Armed with Chinese food, she visits Dick’s place the next day intent on making amends. Dick doesn’t even act surprised; he just points to the glass coffee table where she can set the bag of chopsticks, napkins, and takeout.

“I’m trying to decide what to watch.”

There’s really no need for him to stand in front of the TV the way he does, one hand propped on his hip as he clicks through options with the remote. Artemis lets herself ogle, a bit. The surest way to blow past what happened between them yesterday is to be honest with herself, right? And as far as coping mechanisms go, Artemis could have done worse. At least her method has a gymnast’s ass.

“Any preferences?”

“Between what?” asks Artemis, cracking open the carton of lo mein and settling back against the cushions. The Netflix suggestion algorithm onscreen paints a condemning picture of Dick’s tastes. “True crime or… true crime?”

Wally had been really into nature documentaries. One time during freshman year, when they were still living on Stanford’s campus, they’d gotten high in Wally’s dorm room and watched Blue Planet. Wally had cried when the seal got flung apart by killer whales.

“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark it is, then,” says Dick. He settles next to her on the couch, peeling back one of the orders and sniffing its contents. “What’s this one?”

“Salt and pepper ribs. They were today’s special.”

“Artemis.” Dick beams. “You really do care about me.”

 *

 Ten minutes into the episode begs a single question: “Isn’t it sort of depressing that you spend so much of your day fighting crime, and then you go home to unwind and just watch… more of it?”

Dick shrugs. “It keeps me sharp. And it’s nice seeing other people solve problems.”

“Well, if you ever feel like branching out, there’s a short film about Rubik’s cubes you might like.” Artemis nudges his side. “Remember when you were a scrawny math geek?”

Bringing both hands behind his head, Dick smirks. “Still a math geek. Just not scrawny.”

Artemis stares. That was just a bit of friendly showboating, right? Or was it a flirt? Not trusting herself, she whips her gaze back toward the TV. What feels like eons later, the credits roll.

“Artemis,” Dick says, too soft for having just finished a show about murder. He taps the corner of his mouth. “You’ve got some food stuck.”

She wipes with the back of her hand; a breaded piece of orange chicken emerges as the culprit. Without thinking, she flicks it off, sending it flying somewhere onto Dick’s carpet.

“Oops.”

Chuckling, Dick shakes his head. “I need to vacuum tomorrow, anyways.”

The mention of tomorrow stirs her. “Right. I should head out.”

“Yeah.” Dick rises to help her clean up their mess, holding open the plastic bag so she can toss in the soiled napkins and other bits of trash. “Or—”

He hesitates, but the hesitation’s enough. It might as well be a hand on her wrist, with how it stops her in her tracks. All night, despite what she told herself, she’s been looking for proof: proof that his aloneness fits the shape of hers, that he needs her, too. This time, Dick makes the first move—cups her face in both hands and kisses her, slow and deep and full of heat. Some pepper from the food they ate still lingers on his lips, making her mouth tingle, and Artemis is dizzy and flat on her back on the couch before she knows it, giving in.

Not scrawny at all, she thinks, admiring the solidness of Dick’s knees on either side of her, the weight of his frame as they grind together. The sheer mechanics of it feel very horny-teenager-after-prom, but the way Dick sucks her bottom lip and swallows her breath down with it is decidedly adult.  These days, Artemis practically lives in her sports bra, which doesn’t exactly grant easy access, but when Dick’s fingertips skim over the cotton covering her breasts the sensation zings all the way down her spine.

“Need… off…”

“Yeah,” Dick murmurs, humming as he moves down the column of her neck. “Gimme a sec, I’m working on it.”

She’d worn sweats because she figured their bagginess would keep her from sparring again and any potential… situations that could arise from that. Instead, all it means is Dick unties the drawstrings easily, sliding her pants down her legs. Cool air brushes across her as he shifts positions; she wants to sob in relief. His teeth graze her hip and then catch the edge of her panties and—oh. Fuck. The moan tears out of her and she scrabbles at the armrest, hips rising of their own accord. Next time, she is handcuffing Dick to a bed, because what he’s doing with his tongue and fingers should be illegal. She can feel him grinning, the bastard, and the only thing keeping her from crushing his head to a pulp between her thighs is the maneuver he pulls where he hooks her knees over his shoulders, so he can change the angle and plunge in deeper. Artemis shoves the edge of her T-shirt into her mouth at the last minute, only barely managing to muffle her cry.

Dick surfaces from his solo mission looking entirely too satisfied, mouth glistening. Trembling, still, from her orgasm, Artemis squints at him, possessed by some combination of unbridled lust and rage.

“Dick.”

“You calling, or asking?”

“Shut up,” she hisses. She feels like a newborn foal, after what he just did to her, but the urge to dismantle him just as thoroughly sends her surging upward and pushing him back. Dick welcomes their reversed positions by peeling off his shirt and tossing it over his shoulder, all while Artemis works furiously at his belt. It shouldn’t feel so good, to hear the metal clink against his button and watch the leather slide through the loops. To see the shadows the light of the TV casts on him—the lashes on his cheeks, the hollow of his throat. Artemis hadn’t paid much attention the first time, too desperate and caught up a bit in self-loathing, but now she’s actually enjoying this, savoring the flex of Dick’s abs as he pushes up to meet her, his skin pebbling at her touch.

“I’m going to take you apart,” she purrs.

Dick groans and bucks. The sensation sends a sharp spike of pleasure through her, and she clamps down on him tighter, refusing to yield.

“Try me, Tigress,” he rasps, pushing himself up on one arm so he can mouth at her collarbone. With his other hand, he pulls off her hairtie so her hair comes free of her ponytail, and this is going to be a thing with him, isn’t it, him wanting to fuck her while her hair swings loose around her face. She indulges him for a few minutes, claws his back and bites his shoulder for good measure, but then she’s pushing him back down and stretching out her body as languidly as possible to remind him who’s boss. Their pace slows. Dick keeps a hand fisted in her hair, so he can tug her head back in order to keep her neck exposed to his wanton mouth, but his grip gets less sure the closer she pushes him to the edge.

“Art—” says Dick, the single syllable like a painting pinned to the wall, fraught with desire, and then he just lets it drop, the tresses of her hair falling through his fingers. She wants to tell him that he’s beautiful, that he does look like a boy wonder, right then, in the midst of coming undone, chest flushed and hair mussed and pupils blown nearly wide enough to overtake the blue.

She doesn’t, but she stays the night, and that’s close enough.

 *

  High-functioning, Artemis’s therapist had called her, before Artemis moved back to Gotham. And it does feel like a high—the sneaking around, the after-hours meet-ups, the back-and-forth. There’s no one really keeping tabs on her, though Artemis has plenty of cover stories if anyone asks (new intel, side reconnaissance, etcetera, etcetera). Her mom eyes her and says, “As long as you’re not planning on staging your own death again, because I will find out and I will kill you this time,” and that’s that. Artemis nearly laughs. If anything, what she’s doing is the opposite, a small resurrection. An entire month and a half passes this way: day trips and dinners and movie nights and Dick and her in a bathtub, in the shower, against a wall. She even wears a gown and heels once, not because they have an actual event to attend, but because Dick has a fantasy that involves taking her from behind in the Wayne Manor library.

They’re in his apartment on a Sunday morning bathing in the afterglow, sheets tangled around their waists. Thank god Dick is one of those assholes that splurged on not only a nice mattress but also a solid bed frame. Artemis reaches over to push the hair out of his eyes. The black tuft on the back of his head that she likes grabbing is fluffed up like a duck's tail, and under the sunlight slanting through the windows, he looks angelic.

“Are you falling back asleep?”

Yawning, Dick snags her around the waist, dragging her to him. She should not delight this much in being manhandled.

“You wore me out,” he complains, tucking his chin over her shoulder.

“They just don’t make them like they used to,” Artemis sighs. Dick growls a little at the dig, fingers tightening against her hip.

Well. If he’s going to nap, she is, too. Comfortably spooned, she snuggles back against him, prepared to drift off.

“Do you think Wally would have wanted…” Dick doesn’t finish the thought.

Artemis turns in his arms. Dick has long eyelashes, and he’s looking at her through them almost bashfully. She places a hand on his chest. Feels his heartbeat thump once, twice.

“I think he would want us to be happy.”

“Are you?” Dick’s voice fades out and he has to swallow hard to clear his throat. “Happy?”

“I’m not… miserable.” 

Dick runs his hand up her bare arm, over her shoulder. “Me neither.”

“You know, Wally and I thought…” She bites her lip, remembering a whoosh of air, Wally speeding to her side to kiss her and interrupting her report on the disabled Paris MFD.  I know we promised each other we’d get out of this game, but maybe we can have our life together and play hero, too.  “We thought we’d have everything.”

Dick’s response isn’t mournful; it’s matter-of-fact. “After my parents died, I never really convinced myself that I could have it all.”

“That sounds like something Batman would say.”

“Does it?”

“A little.”

Once upon a time, Artemis had stood before the team ready to lay bare her darkest secret, waiting to be kicked out. And Dick had shown his hand: he’d known from the beginning and hadn’t cared.  You aren’t your family. You’re one of us. She knows he’s second-guessed himself over the years, wondering how fit he actually is to play leader. But for her, trust has always been the easiest thing about the two of them. It was why she’d said yes so easily to his deep cover mission—because she knew that he wouldn’t quit until he’d brought all of them home, that he would do whatever he could to keep them safe.

Taking his face in both her hands, she looks deep into his eyes. “You deserve good things, Dick Grayson.”

“Mm.” Dick smiles into her kiss, hooks his ankle over hers. “Keep telling me that. I’ll start to believe it.”

 *

 Jade abandons Will and Lian on a Tuesday, and Artemis’s carefully crafted equilibrium falls apart. At least this time she’s not the one directly being left, unlike when she was a teenager. Her expectations of her older sister had hardly been high, but if she’d plotted them on a graph they’d have trended upward. Now they’ve tanked.

“Did she leave any hint of where she was going?” Dick asks over the whir of his juicer. He’s gotten really into squeezing oranges lately; Artemis can’t complain because he always gives her the first glass.

“It’s Jade. She never wants to be found, and I hardly think she’s about to try an  Eat Pray Love type thing.”

“Eat Slash Steal, maybe?” Dick offers, dropping two ice cubes into a drink and setting it in front of her.

Artemis sips, balling up a napkin and throwing it at him at the same time. “Watch it, that’s still my family you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry. How’s Will taking it?”

“As well as any dad trying to raise a two-year-old by himself would.”

“So, poorly.” Dick taps his finger against the table. “Are they coming here?”

Artemis looks at him blankly. “Why?”

“I figured they might want to be closer to you and your mom now that Jade’s gone. Gotham’s not so bad—you and I turned out fine. And Will probably needs to look into preschools and a babysitter for Lian soon. If you move in with me, you can bring her over whenever.”

The last piece of information slips in so casually she thinks she’s misheard. “What?”

“If you move in with me, you can bring Lian over whenever,” repeats Dick. “This place is as good as yours. You’re over here all the time anyway.”

Suddenly, she can’t breathe. “You’re serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She can’t meet his eyes. “W—Will’s home is in Star City. He’s not going to move.”

Slowly, Dick says, “Okay. But my offer doesn’t really depend on Will.”

Her stuff is still in boxes. She’s still paying for a storage unit almost 3,000 miles away. And Dick is waiting on her so intently it makes her chest hurt.

Artemis stands up. “We’re not doing this.”

Dick’s eyebrows rise. Annoyance, or maybe anger, flickers across his face. “You wanna fill me in on what exactly it is we’re doing, according to you?”

“We’re not going to fight about this like we’re…”  In a relationship. In love. In anything other than a messy configuration started by shared grief. She doesn’t say any of it out loud, but she doesn’t need to—Dick’s always been great at reading people, and he’s known all her tells from the start.

“Right.”  The single syllable comes out as cold and pointed as an icicle. He pushes his chair back from the table and stands up. The clouds are rolling in, throwing shadows across his features. Even now, Artemis wants to kiss him, wants to be the one to smooth the furrow between his eyebrows away.

“Dick…”

“Do me a favor, will you?” Dick grabs his jacket from the hook by his door, shrugging it on. He pauses, briefly, in the doorway. “Lock my door on the way out.”  

That night, she lies alone in her bedroom next to the picture of her, Wally, and Brucely. Brucely snuffles at the foot of her bed and then leaps onto the covers, and this time she doesn’t shoo him off. Neither does she fall asleep.

 *

 There was a song Jade had liked to sing, passed down from their mother: a Vietnamese lullaby about a yellow butterfly, to the tune of “Frère Jacques.” The butterfly flies all over the sky. Come and see. Come and see. When it became clear that Artemis’s hair would grow in blond, not black, Jade started pulling it, making her giggle. You’re the yellow butterfly, see?

The taxicab she calls for the airport is bright yellow in the morning light. Plain old civilian travel for plain old civilian business. You don’t need to be a superhero to fly across the country and move in with your brother-in-law and your niece. She’ll sing silly little songs and wash Lian’s hair, and they’ll be a family same as anyone else’s: clumsy, incomplete.

“Artemis.” Dick coalesces out of the fog. They haven’t seen or spoken to each other in a week, and she should be mad that he’s here because it probably means he’s been monitoring her web traffic and caught wind she’d bought plane tickets. Still, all she feels is relief.

Jade had laughed when Artemis had let slip what she was doing during one rare sisterly bonding moment. “Oh, darling sister, your thing with your little bird boy isn’t about moving on. You’re using him as a holding pattern. Try not to damage him too much, hm?” Rankled, Artemis had hung up the phone—what did Jade know about anything, besides shoving it under the rug and pretending it didn’t matter? Now, though, Artemis sees things more clearly. Jade did know something about bodies and what they could and couldn’t fix; after all, isn’t that why she ran?

She worries with the strap of her duffel bag, letting Dick approach.

“If this were a romcom, you would have waited until I got to the airport and then run through security.”

“If this were a romcom,” says Dick, stopping in front of her and shoving his hands in his pockets, “I’d be trying to make you stay.”

She thinks he might be the one person left on this planet who knows her best. She thinks they could save each other, if they’d let themselves try. But they each have work to do on their own, first.

Setting down her bag, she tucks her face into the crook of his neck and breathes him in. Wherever else she goes, this spot will always feel like forgiveness. Nose buried in her hair, Dick squeezes her back.

The taxi driver rolls down his window. “Is this guy coming with us or not?”

Artemis pulls back, and there’s so much sky in Dick’s eyes.

“You know where to find me,” she says.

 *

 | STAR CITY

| JULY 29, 2018; 7:30 AM PST

 “Who are you here to recruit this time?” Will asks, leaning against the doorframe, but Artemis doesn’t need an answer, doesn’t need any details but the black hair she can see just over Will’s shoulder, Dick’s voice at the end of a line.

He jumps, and she jumps with him. They’ll figure out everything else as they go.

Before Dick can respond, she says: “I’m in.”

[daegalfangirl]

in a world where all romances result from seasonal coincidences, although not all are eternal.

└> GENRE; angst, fluff, n crack

└> WARNINGS; swearing

└> AUTHORS NOTE; i'm definitely going to be taking some sort of break sometime soon, and before i go on my quick hiatus i decided to provide some actual good content because my time stamps are really shit and never proofread. hopefully i'll get all of this finished before my break. i'm planning on doing so but i cant make any promises. nonetheless, please enjoy! also, please note, none of these series have any relations to each other. they all will most likely take place in separate places, unless stated otherwise. none of them have any relation so feel free to read 1 or all of them, it doesn't really matter as long as you enjoy it. another thing is that i'm not really doing it in order LMAO i started with the winter one which is the last one on the list so... yeah

└> DATES; on hold

└> RECENT UPDATES; n/a

└> TAGLIST; @kyuwoyo @sunflowerhae @bluejaem (message/send an ask/comment to be added)

It's spring! Lee Jeno visits your mothers flower shop everyday, with you coincidentally working there. You admire the boy and end up developing a crush. Who wouldn't fall in love with Lee Jeno, the man blessed with many charms? It takes you a while to get a reality check; those flowers were never for you. They were always for his girlfriend. You wallow in self pity, they'll never be for you, will they?

❝ Not to be a home wrecker, but I want to be the one receiving those flowers everyday. ❞

└> PAIRING; jeno x fem!reader

└> GENRE(s); angst & fluff

└> WARNINGS; definitely going to be quite angsty (emotional readers, get your tissues ready), rest is tba

└> STATUS; not started

└> PROGRESS; 0%

It's summer! You and your large friend group decide to take a long summer vacation together; money not being much of a struggle. Na Jaemin was always someone you appreciated from afar, not interacting much. You always made your distance from him since he was your best friends long term ex boyfriend. After an unforgettable encounter, the two of you become attached to one another. You both manage to fall in love so easily and openly, one problem though. Your best friend hates Jaemin with a passion, how could you break the news? (NOT) Easy! You just don't tell her! How long can you carry on the secret before your guilt eats you up?

❝ Holy shit, this is such a girl code violation. ❞

└> PAIRING; jaemin x fem!reader

└> GENRE(s); fluff, crack, and a teensy bit of angst, friends to lovers

└> WARNINGS; lots of guilt on the readers end (whoops), rest is tba

└> STATUS; not started

└> PROGRESS; 0%

It's autumn! You and Renjun happen to be best friends. Your sister was quite fond of the season, and asked for you to collect some leaves for her. You listen to your little sisters request, she was (mostly) an angel after all. While collecting leaves, you notice two familiar presences nearby at the local park. Renjun and your best friend? You feel instant regret as you listen to their conversation. You decide to tell Renjun what you've heard. Things lead to one another, and before you know it, Huang Renjun is after your tail.

❝ It was fun while it lasted. Key words being, while it lasted. ❞

└> PAIRING; bff!renjun x fem!reader

└> GENRE(s); crack, angst, fluff, sort of unrequited love for quite a while

└> WARNINGS; reader is dense asf, rest is tba

└> STATUS; not started

└> PROGRESS; 0%

It's winter! Congratulations you fucking idiot, you're more than unprepared for finals! Of course, you went to the library. Although, you don't expect a snowstorm to take place as you take your nap break. Hahaha... Fuck. A coincidence; an unlucky one at that. That's what you wanted to believe when you found yourself stuck at your local bookstore with the one and only, your ex, Lee Donghyuck. Maybe it's not something you end up regretting though...

❝ I want to punch you. There's literally no punchline, I just want to punch you. ❞

└> PAIRING; ex!donghyuck x fem!reader

└> GENRE(s); crack & fluff (MAYBE a grain of angst in between the lines)

└> WARNINGS; LOTS of bickering, disgusting amounts of fluff (come on guys.. this is a bookstore 🤨)

└> STATUS; in progress

└> PROGRESS; 10%

[twh-news]

‘Loki’ Gives Tom Hiddleston’s Antihero the Spotlight, but Sticks to Marvel’s Superhero Basics: TV Review

It should only take a few minutes before “Loki” viewers know whether they’re down for what the show is serving up or too tired of the Marvel Cinematic Universe machine to follow this chapter of its increasingly complex saga.

[NOTE: Maybe read further after you've seen the first ep 😁]

The new Disney Plus show — the third under Marvel’s burgeoning TV offshoot — opens with dashing villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in the Avengers’ custody circa the 2012 movie that first brought the team together. In this version of those events, however, Loki manages to escape — thus upending the reality in which the character eventually dies at the hands of Thanos and freeing him up to anchor a show all his own.

Unfortunately for this Loki, his spontaneous getaway gambit sends him straight into the path of an armored guard (Wunmi Mosaku) who stares him down and declares that, “on behalf of the Time Variants Authority, I hereby arrest you for crimes against The Sacred Timeline.” Imbuing such a wholeheartedly cheesy line with hyperbolic gravitas is a superhero story staple, and yet this one’s grim righteousness still made me laugh in a way it was probably not supposed to.

For a new Marvel production, introducing a powerful league of militaristic cops is practically a prerequisite for whatever story is yet to come. But it’s nevertheless a bit of a letdown when you realize halfway through the dense first episode that one of the MCU’s ostensibly most unpredictable lead characters has somehow landed in the most predictable of setups.

To be fair, some of this irony is by design. As written by Michael Waldron, Loki very purposefully couldn’t be a worse fit for the monochromatic, bureaucratic order of the Time Variants Authority (or “TVA”), nor more offended when he understands exactly what it represents. As a chipper cartoon clock (“Miss Minutes”) informs him in an explanatory animated video, the TVA is an organization tasked with keeping every multiverse moving forward on the same “sacred timeline” as prescribed by three almighty  “Timekeepers,” which sometimes means snuffing out “Variants” like Loki who might mess it up.

The implication, Loki quickly grasps with real horror, is that there’s almost nothing anyone can do to change their fate; even his tricks are preordained parts of the greater whole. That emphasis on fate, paired with Kasra Farahani’s deliberately drab and vaguely midcentury production design, is what sets the TVA apart from something like SHIELD, though both share the same affection for unilateral authority and quips without punchlines.

I’ll leave it to bigger Marvel fans than me who can unravel exactly what the TVA’s level of authority means for the MCU at large. At first glance, though, it does seem as though the mere existence of the TVA should have huge implications, especially as upcoming big screen installments are set to explore the multiverse in more depth (including “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” also written by Waldron). For now, Loki has found himself outsmarted by this seemingly omniscient organization, forcing him to reluctantly team up with Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson), who’s convinced Loki can help them sift through an infinite number of timelines to track down one particularly pernicious Variant.

Only two episodes of “Loki” were screened for critics, making it hard to know exactly how successful the 6-episode season might be in shaping its own identity within the onscreen Marvel universe. Of these first two episodes, however, the second was far more engaging. The pilot has such an extraordinary amount of ground to cover that director Kate Herron only gets a couple opportunities to find humor in between the exposition, and Hiddleston can barely get into the pithy groove that made Loki such a standout in the first place. The second, at least, can have a bit more fun.

Waldron’s scripts do their best throughout to layer in moments of pathos for its central antihero to make clear exactly where his head is at in this point of his life. (To make it even clearer: this version of Loki has only lived through the events of the first “Thor” movie and “The Avengers.”) By the time Wilson’s Mobius extracts Loki from the TVA’s courtroom, presided over by an annoyed judge (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Loki is so exhausted and annoyed that he can barely muster the energy to resist too many of Mobius’ probing questions about his end goals. “Why does someone with so much range just want to rule?” Mobius asks, voice thick with pity and admiration. Loki has no good answer besides the one he’s resisted ever since arriving at the TVA: he wants to rule because harboring that burning desire is just his fate.

After establishing all the wheres and whys, the series is then free to move on to the second episode, which gives Loki a bit more room to explore his surroundings and make some calculations of his own. (Emphasis on “a bit”; Hiddleston never quite gets enough time to play around with his character given the show’s pressing need to get to the next timeline and/or twist.) From there, the show establishes a new rhythm as Loki, Mobius and Time Monitor B-15 (Mosaku) ricochet throughout time. Given his experience on “Rick and Morty,” Waldron is comfortable with this dynamic of an odd couple traveling through time and space to potentially disastrous results, but still constrained by the ever-complicating Marvel narrative web surrounding Loki and Mobius. The end of the second episode teases an intriguing new direction for the series to take, but without knowing what happens next, it’s hard to say how much it might deviate from the usual script.

The most fun “Loki” has is when Hiddleston and Wilson get to banter — a distinction from when Mobius playacts as Loki���s placid therapist, a dynamic neither the character nor actor can fully sell. But Wilson’s singular comedic delivery, which somehow combines both a dry deadpan and puppy dog enthusiasm still strikes an amusing balance against Hiddleston, especially when he gets to drop Loki’s existential angst for genuine curiosity about the strange new world around him. And yet: when Loki sighs in frustration about the TVA’s tedious overreach dictating his story when he could be doing something much more dangerous and strange, it’s hard not to agree.

“Loki” premieres Wednesday, June 9, on Disney Plus.

[zillyeh]

🗣 zipper and smiles thank u

Send me 🗣+ the names of 2 muses on the blog, and there will be a random conversation written involving them.

For context this happens during the Yule Ball. I've been sitting on this concept for like half a year lmfao. Also Doc Version bc this is 1,193 words long lol.

Zippie was a fish out of water in most polite social situations- a ball of all things was far beyond her comfort zone. She hadn’t shoved herself into a suit and doused herself in a haze of cologne for her own sake, of course, but she was still suffering the consequences of being here. Namely being approached by strangers. Short, robbable strangers. The old jadeblood who dared it this time had a haughty air about him.

“We aren’t exactly subtle, are we?” He said, his tone, face, and gaudy gold accents immediately punchable. A half cape? A watch chain? She couldn’t really say anything about the white tuxedo, but it was different when he was so obviously moneyed.

“Can I help you?” She asked, impolite as she’d been to anyone else she didn’t immediately recognize.

“I believe you can, Undertaker.” He said with a smile, his freaky fangs moving with his lips. He tugged at that chain in his pocket, flashing a gold watch with a symbol she was all too familiar with. That crying eye that lined almost every Delhon City alleyway. She’d never seen it outside of a spray painted spot on a brick or the sidewalk or Dale’s wrists before. Of course. Of course.

Zippie clenched her teeth. Did all her feelings of foreboding always have to be right?

“I’ll help you alright you motherf-”

“Tsk, are we really going to have an altercation in the middle of such a pristine event, Miss Undertaker?” He asked condescendingly. Even without the hostility between them she would have wanted to toss him off one of this mansion’s balconies.

“I think you over estimate how much I give a shit about what polite society thinks of me, Smiles.” Zippie spat, clenching her fist. This could be the first and last time she saw the man in person, if nearly twenty sweeps of never seeing tail of him meant anything.

“Believe me I don’t.” Smiles nodded over her shoulder, Zippie followed his eye and released her hand. Bess- who had been catching up with her old co-performers- was talking animatedly with a tall, broad tealblood that was just as obnoxiously dressed as Smiles. He glanced over his shoulder and winked. Bess didn’t seem to notice.

“If you touch her-”

“If you touch me.” He said smugly, knowing full well he had his hooks in. “Join me upstairs, won’t you? It’s so awfully loud down here...”

Zipper said nothing as he lead her through the crowd to a VIP balcony area overlooking the ballroom. She clenched and unclenched her fists, occasionally looking back to Bessba until they reached the top of the stairs.

There were a quartet of massive blue and olivebloods waiting for them at the top, but nobody else. It seemed that this was Smiles’ alone.

“Out.” Smiles said firmly. The four wordlessly removed themselves from the room, but not without giving Zippie some glares. She returned them in full force.

“Champagne, wine?” Smiles offered, gesturing to an ice bucket on his table. “It’s far better up here than down there.”

Zippie wordlessly crossed her arms and leaned against the balcony, trying to find Bess in the crowd. Her white hair made it easy, at least.

“Alright, I’ll get to the point, then.” He said, clearly having underestimated just how unreceptive Zippie would be to this. He placed himself in front of her- too close- gripping the ornate rail in front of them.

“Your little north city group would have better odds working with mine than against it.” Smiles said. Zippie waited for the punchline. She scoffed when he let that hang in the air.

“Oh fuck off.” She said, wondering if he really had that much audacity.

Smiles’ pet teal had convinced Bess to dance.

“I don’t think our goals are all that dissimilar, are they Undertaker? I gather we both want what’s best for Delhon.”

“It’s Anthem unless you’re in my church, Smiles.” Zippie said through gritted teeth. “And you don’t want shit for Delhon besides what can gild your fucking lapels.”

Smiles laughed, stepping back, placing a hand on his chest. Bess seemed to be leading.

“Is that what you think? What has my reputation trickled down to in the streets? My heart’s always been set on the city’s best interest.”

“Uh huh, sure. I know your type. You’re a couple decades too late for me to fall for your shit.” Zippie stood up a little straighter, taller than him by just enough. “That all you want from me then, Smiles? Cause we coulda saved the trip up here if you just let me tell you to go fuck yourself downstairs.” That tealblood was just tall enough against Bess’ heels to twirl her around.

“Oh no sweetheart.” Smiles said with a wave of his hand. “It’s such a barrage of colors down there, it’s hard to sniff out one singular anon.”

Zippie froze, gripping the railing hard enough the wood and the pins in her wrist protested.

“Oh, are we listening now?” He teased, stepping closer again. She took a substantial step back.

“Stay away from me.” She threatened, feeling the hairs on her arms stand up. Zippie couldn’t afford to spark right now, but that also wasn’t entirely up to her, consciously. Smiles grinned, clasping his hands in front of him. Could he feel the growing static in the air?

“Oh now I can’t do that, can we? We just made nice.” Smiles watched her with a critical eye, staying put this time. Zippie couldn’t afford this. Not now.

“Jumpy, aren’t we?” He said with a tut. “Get back over here, I’m not finished with you.”

Zippie hardened her jaw, staying put. The faintest twitch of his eye, the way he held the balcony where she just was. That was… frustration. She could feel that in the air over her own fear.

He was bluffing.

“Now.”

“Shove it up your ass.” She spat, still not entirely sure, whether or not she was right. “If you know then you know you’re in trouble if you do shit anything to me.”

“Oh am I?”

“Are you?”

His face fell slightly. Zippie felt the tension melt off of her. She smirked, visible for the most part in the mask she chose for the evening.

“Would love to stick around, but it’s awful rude to leave my date for this long, ain’t it? Been a real displeasure finally meeting you in person, Mr. Smiles.” Zippie said, backing towards the stairs. “I think we both know what’ll happen next time, shithead.”

“If you’re so lucky.” He said, grimacing. Zippie snorted, relieved but still unsettled by the whole ordeal. He didn’t follow her until she was a handful of steps down. Near the top still, she made brief, far away eye contact with Bessba, who looked panicked at her temporary dance partner.

“You’re so hostile to someone you just met.” Smiles called huffily, distracting her. “I almost wonder if I’m standing in for someone.”

“Don’t go grasping for straws old man.” Zippie said, rolling her eyes, ignoring a small chill running down her spine. “I got enough vitriol to power Delhon twice over.”