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timelvss · 5 years

Text

Love Heist

parings: lee taeyong | ft. some nct kids

genre: criminal!au / romance, angst

warnings: language, gore (mentions of blood)

word count: 11.4k

description: and suddenly a switch inside taeyong flipped, that wasn’t your boyfriend anymore but there was no chance you were letting him do this alone.

author’s note: this fic has been in the works since about august of last year, it was meant to be a halloween fic but that didn’t happen..... anyways, i would really appreciate feedback on it, it’s literally my favorite fic i’ve written so far and thank you for waiting for it :( shout out to my pals for reading it and helping me through it

At the moment you hadn’t thought about how bad things really were until now that you saw the familiar gun laying on the floor across from the coffee table and a couple of bullet shells laying around it. To say the apartment you both were in was a mess was an understatement, there was glass shattered across the floor (from the tiny coffee table that used to stand) and papers scattered all over the floor. Not that it was your own apartment, but it was still a pain to look at the mess that surrounded you. There was multiple questionable stains on your clothes that annoyed you and your body ached of exhaustion but someone had to keep a watch while the other slept. How did it get like this? you mentally asked yourself as your eyes wandered to the man whose head was in your lap. His hair was now a bloody red color instead of the brown one he cared so much for back then. He almost looked peaceful while he slept, his hands were bloodied and you could only remember his smirk across his lips as he pulled the trigger on the stranger in the bathroom.

It all began when you met him, the stranger who somehow turned your life around with just a look. He was the boy with the pretty smile and gentle eyes that everyone seemed to love, he always seemed like the kind of guy you’d bring home to your parents. When you met him at the bookstore he was holding an HTML & CSS3 for Dummies that you remember pointing out, while on the other hand you were holding the latest book in the Percy Jackson series. The both of you talked about your picks and were soon exchanging numbers. That’s how it began, simple.

On the many dates the both of you shared, the two of you learnt plenty of things about the other. For example, Taeyong actually dropped out of MIT in the middle of his senior year just to join the opening of the local paper in their IT position while you on the other hand had barely graduated with an english degree. Despite your degree, you still doubted your whole literature knowledge once you graduated. He also shared his hobbies and interests with you, like how he enjoyed singing and making up raps on his free time to avoid the stress of crashing networks and moving hundreds of files to newer servers. Taeyong was the main IT guy in not just only your local paper but in the ones surrounding your small town, usually this meant that he traveled a lot from city to city.

Soon after meeting Taeyong the local newspaper started printing various articles saying that multiple chain large businesses were losing money by the millions in a matter of minutes every other night. Well, they weren’t exactly losing money, it was more like it was being stolen but no one knew exactly how it was being done besides it being through online transactions. The police was doing everything in its power to track the online transfers that were being done but the hacker of the crimes left little to no clues regarding his identity or location. A few days after the online transfers were posted on the newspaper, they posted a new story that detailed the findings of the money at various places scattered around town and even at the entrance of surrounding towns nearby. The money was always found in balloons that were filled with hundreds of bills stuffed inside them, which could only make you smile. These balloons were found at homeless shelters, orphanages, churches and places that desperately needed money yet no one knew the one who was doing it.

The unknown transactions were soon discovered at various computer cafes throughout the city, though whoever was doing it left no track of which computer was used even when all of them were thoroughly checked. This only led more papers to mock the city police, its investigators, and for the person doing the robberies to take advantage of the popularity and go to bigger things. While all of this was happening you lived a quiet life and chose to stay out of these sort of things, though listening to the story unfold was kind of a guilty pleasure. When you and Taeyong would meet up at various places, the both of you would talk about the events and how your lives were.

“You know, this person doing all of this can’t be all bad if they are literally handing out money to the ones in need,” you said as the both of you walked down the street nearing the small cafe on the corner.

“That’s what I think too, they must have a good heart.” You could only nod at Taeyong’s words as you leaned into him to take his hand in yours, smiling up at the man beside you.

The next time you found yourself with Taeyong, you were laying down beside him on his bed. Your legs were lazily laying on top of his trying to warm up your toes as he read through one of his many computer books. One of his hands was resting on your thigh and his finger kept on tracing shapes on your skin while the other held up the book. The tv played in the background while you scrolled through various apps of social media, humming softly a tune that was stuck in your head. Neither of you were paying attention until the tv beeped with an alarm sound, making the both of you look over at it. Breaking News flashed across the TV and the image quickly shifted towards the anchor and a person on the field.

“Good night, this is N.City News and I am your anchor Moon Taeil. We bring you this breaking news to follow up the recent robberies occurring around town. Today at 1:27 pm, an alarm went off in our main offices with a banner that said, ‘We’re coming soon.’ Nothing of such was discussed with anyone outside our offices but tonight at 12:07am, money started raining from the air vents. We were told we are not the only place where this is happening, here we have our junior in training Huang Renjun to fill you in.”

The image shifted from the regular anchor to a younger man (though he still reminded you of a baby) holding a microphone up while police cars were around the building behind him. Your eyebrows only furrowed at the image trying to figure out what it was, but the blue and red lights were making it a little hard to focus. A small gasp came out of your lips as you looked at the building behind the guy. It was the pet shelter you’d always volunteer for, you remember taking Taeyong there with you and watching him play with the kittens. You found yourself smiling at the thought, but quickly shaking your head and looked back at the screen to keep up with the news.

“-right, Taeil, the money was also pouring out of air vents but in this case it was fixed so it wouldn’t fall on any of the cages. No money was thrown in with the animals yet the offices in the back along with the bathrooms and lobby were all flooded with thousands of one hundred dollar bills. The police are trying to gather as much of the cash as possible before the morning when it opens, but as they keep up picking it up the vents keep on pouring out more. We have firefighters trying to figure out which pipe in the back it is so no sprinklers will go off.”

As the Renjun kid finished the image was switched back to the one with Taeil, his hands neatly placed on the desk in front of him. “From what we were told by the authorities this recent heist of this robber was done from various unknown servers across the city causing it to be very difficult to almost impossible to narrow the search down a single one. We will keep you up-” before the achor’s sentence was done, Taeyong flipped the channel leaving you wondering about the rest of the story.

Being with Taeyong was something you never intended to happen, it just sort of did. His hand was always in yours and your lips always found their way to his, wanting more of him than what was probably healthy. That’s why it came as no surprise when he finally asked you to move in with him after eight whole months of officially dating and almost a year of just knowing each other. He shared every single one of his secrets with you and you confided in him all of yours. So there you were packing up the last of the boxes of your belongings, brown boxes scattered all over your living room as your best friend Ten helped you pack the mugs out of your kitchen.

“I can’t believe you’re actually moving in with this guy,”

“Ten, we’ve known him for almost two years please, also he’s literally one of your friends,” you gave Ten a look and he only shrugged at your comment before sticking his tongue out at you, continuing to wrap mugs in newspaper. You had introduced Taeyong to Ten after a few weeks of you guys officially dating, mostly because you wanted Ten to stop asking who was making you smile.

“Be nice to me or I’ll break your favorite unicorn mug.”

Moving in with Taeyong was fairly easy to your surprise, he showed you nothing but love towards you which only made you feel welcomed. Now here three months later, you felt bored out of your mind stuck between the four walls of the empty apartment at almost midnight. It had become a habit of Taeyong’s to go with his friends every other thursday night for drinks and friendly bowling tournaments. He never came home drunk, but there was always a smile on his face when he returned. He also kind of sucked at bowling but you were still very supportive when he told you the stories when the both of you shared dinner. Every now and then you wanted to join your boyfriend on his bowling adventures but you always decided to give him a bit of space.

The following friday it was announced on the news that another robbery was done at the local branch of the bank in the middle of town, it was one of the bigger banks that had been targeted as of yet. By now the media had started calling this person the Robin Hood which only made you smile internally, he was really stealing money from the rich and giving it to the ones in need. His tactic wasn’t the right one but you knew he had good intentions which is why, secretly, you didn’t really want him to get caught. Of course, due to all the money being lost the police were heavy on his tracks, every other day they would do a press conference or maybe publish a comment on how they were getting closer to a lead. It had been published all over that millions of different bills had been written over and they all said, ‘you fools, i wish you luck trying to hunt me down’. Different newspapers published the news and it was also talked about in the evening news. The money was either left inside balloons or it somehow poured through the vents. There was so much money, that you couldn’t see the floor in some of these places, that was the only thing that never changed.

“Hey love, I’m home,” Taeyong said as he slipped into the tiny apartment, your eyes followed the sound of his voice and noticed him taking off his shoes, “Did you miss me?” a cocky grin spread over Taeyong’s lips as he moved towards you, leaning down to press a kiss to your lips.

You could only smile, this time he wasn't home as late as he usually was and you could only be thankful, it just meant you had more time with your boyfriend. “I don't know, you barely gave me time to miss you.” Taeyong walked towards the couch and flopped down next to you, stretching out his legs on the coffee table while you tucked your legs under yourself. The book in your lap soon forgotten as Taeyong placed a kiss on your forehead and turned the tv on.

“Yes, Taeil, from what we were told, the latest heist of this robber was done three nights ago from, again, from various unknown servers across the city. Just like the previous ones, it’s been causing it to be very difficult, nearly impossible, to narrow the search down a single one. For what they have done, it’s been said by the authorities that this heist was of about half a million dollars, their biggest heist as of now. Although, only twenty five thousand have been given out so far to the local animal shelter this morning. In the usual way of balloons being filled with multiple hundred dollar b-” before the reporter’s sentence was done, Taeyong flipped the channel, leaving you wondering about the rest of the story again.

“How was work?” you asked Taeyong as you let your legs stretch over his lap. Taeyong’s hands moved over your legs, massaging them softly as he turned to face you with a small smile playing on his lips.

“It was fine, Jungwoo was goofing off with the new intern. I think his name is Luke or something like that, I wasn't paying much attention when Doyoung was introducing him to me.”

The rest of the evening went slow as the both of you shared the rest of your previous activities with each other. From how Yeri sent the wrong email to your boss to how this Luke kid made the printer print five hundred pictures of his cat. You could only smile at the stories Taeyong told you, but soon he was standing up and stretching as he tugged his shirt off in front of you. “I’m going to go shower, I’ll meet you in the bedroom,”

“Sounds good, I’m gonna clean up this mess of papers and I’ll meet you there.”

The apartment to begin with was not messy, the both of you always made sure to keep everything tidy. Which was something you picked up from Taeyong early on when you moved in. Not that he was a super clean freak but he liked things to be tidy and clean, which was why the pile of papers on your dining table were burning holes into the back of your head. Bringing the stack of papers with you to the couch, you flipped the channel back to the news which were talking about the weather. While putting the papers in two piles (the keep pile and the trash pile) your eyes caught one with fancy letters. The paper read, ‘you fools, I wish you luck trying to hunt me down’ written over and over again all over the paper in bright colored letters. Your eyes glanced back at the tv which displayed the paper that they had found earlier in the week, the same words plastered on the white piece of paper.

There was a moment where you could only hear your heartbeat in your ears because there was just no way your loving and caring boyfriend could be doing these robberies all across town. There was just no way it was possible. Taeyong, pulling off a robbery? It was impossible, your boyfriend was too gentle. Shaking your head you folded the paper and hid it under one of the cushions on the sofa, hurrying through the rest of the stack and making your way to the bedroom. Desperately trying to forget about the existence of the paper.

Now, you wouldn’t call yourself a stalker, but after finding that paper there was always a nagging feeling in the back of your mind. Which is why on that same thursday, you found yourself in a rental car following Taeyong’s old Camery down the streets of the city. He had called you earlier to let you know he’d be coming home late since he was meeting up with his friends at the bowling alley. Which he did, only he had left twenty minutes after he had arrived there with a laptop he did not come with under his arm. Your eyebrows furrowed as Taeyong got back into his car and drove away from the bowling alley and towards the small internet cafe near the cafe place the both of you went on your first date. At this location, Taeyong lasted a total of six minutes inside the cafe and walked back outside a small bag in hand and no laptop within sight.

After driving an hour to the edge of town trying to keep up with Taeyong’s hectic driving, he pulled up to a bank, but by this point he was no longer wearing his usual work clothes. A long black coat that went down to his knees covered most of him, he matched it all with black pants, a black tee, and some expensive looking black dress shoes. Although it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Taeyong to wear all black, it was to see him in slicked hair, he never did that. It was a new look on him and you could only feel a blush creep over your cheeks as your eyes followed the man. There was a black mask that covered half of his face but through the small binoculars you brought, but you could see the small scar on the corner of his eye.

This Taeyong that walked inside the bank, he had another aura you had not seen on your boyfriend which made you curious and a little scared. Soon enough there was a bright light followed by a bang that made you jump in your seat. There were thoughts flying across your head, making you rub your eyes in frustration. This wasn’t your Taeyong. It just couldn’t be. Your thoughts were broken when you saw Taeyong walk back out of the bank, balloons filled with money in both of his hands and a splatter of red dots across his face.

When Taeyong returned that night you were already in bed, he leaned over to press a kiss to your cheek and walked into the bathroom to shower. You had never paid much attention to his smell when he came home from his outings but somehow he now reeked of iron and you knew exactly why. Biting down on your lip, you made your way down to the living room, lifting the cushion on the couch your fingers shakily grabbed the paper you had hid days prior. The only difference now was that it was folded in more folds than when you had left it. Weird. Another thing that was different now, though, was instead of the taunting ‘you fools, i wish you luck trying to hunt me down’ it read, ‘you should know better, love’ in black ink right in the middle of the paper, covering all of the colored words.

“You know, it’s not right to go through someone else’s things without permission, my love,” you heard Taeyong from behind you as you folded the paper back, holding it close to your chest. There was a small twinge of fear crawling up your chest but there was also another feeling that you couldn’t explain. There was something else that made your stomach flutter. You could only let out the breath you had been holding before turning to face your boyfriend. “I guess, it could be counted as an illegal activity,”

“Taeyo-”

“No, you don’t get to talk. You almost ruined the heist, thank god Mark saw you at the car rental place. We can’t let you ruin what we started, it’s gone too far and we need to finish this once and for all. Now, if you want to leave, I can’t say it won’t hurt but as long as you keep your pretty mouth shut you’ll be fine. Otherwise, I’ll be your nightmare, you know,” Taeyong shrugged as if he wasn’t just threatening your life, more as if he had just told you to wash the dishes or something.

“I don’t,” you said but quickly shut your mouth trying to think of how to phrase the next sentence you were trying to say in your head, “I don’t want to leave,”

A small flash of something flashed over Taeyong’s eyes, you didn’t know if it was hope or maybe something darker hidden behind his brown eyes. You weren’t paying much attention to what he was wearing, but in the corner of your eye you saw that in his left hand he was holding a black gun with silver letters engraved on the side. A shiver ran down your spine but you couldn’t avoid the small feeling of excitement that bubbled inside of you as Taeyong brought the gun to the middle of your chest, “You saw what I did, why do you still want to stay?”

“Because,” you swallowed the small lump in your throat as you began to move closer towards Taeyong. The gun still between the both of you, opening your mouth and softly whispering only loud enough for him to hear you, “I love you,”

There was a small pause between the both of you and then Taeyong moved the gun under your chin, the cool metal feeling cold against your skin. The gun’s muzzle dug into your chin as Taeyong tilted your head up so you could meet his dark eyes “Ah, you love me,”

“Taeyo-“

Before you could let out another word you felt Taeyong’s soft lips over yours, there was something else that wasn’t there before last time you kissed him. A small groan slipped past your lips as you pushed Taeyong up to the wall nearest to you, your lips still attached to each other’s. There was a smirk playing on Taeyong’s lips as he pulled back only turn you over, one of his hands grabbing both of yours and pinning them up above your head. With a slight chuckle Taeyong brought the gun back up to your face, the exposed barrel on it stroking your cheek softly, “Ah, my stupid little girl, I love you,”

“Tae, please listen, I know what you’re doing is not the right thing but I promise you I’m not here to rat you out. I don’t know why you’re doing this but you’re giving money to the poor, you’re helping some people at least so I’m not mad. I just, I wanted the truth,”

“We’ll see.”

After the talk the both of you shared, Taeyong no longer hid this other part of his life with you. On the contrary, he seemed to be more at peace, leaving his ammunition on the coffee table and many other guns in plain sight over the counter. There was also more of those all black outfits he wore in his closet, but all of them were spotless clean and they even smelled like his after shave. There was a small part of you that wanted to know what he did when he was gone with his friends on his outings, but there was just no way you could ask. Your thoughts were disturbed when a knocking on the door caught you off guard. Sighing you walked towards the door and opened it to find a boy with dark black hair standing there with a slanted smile over his lips.

“Hey, is Taeyong in?” The boy across from you asked as he waved at you and then shoved his hands inside his pockets, you looked at him and then back towards the hallway.

“Yeah, he was just finishing up some work from the newspaper but he is in his office,” you said moving out of the way for the boy in front of you to go down the hallway towards his office.

“Thanks, by the way, my name is Mark.”

Your eyes followed the new boy into your house, there was something familiar about the boy walking down the hallway. Thinking back to the previous dates that you and Taeyong shared, you vaguely remembered this Mark boy calling Taeyong in the middle of dinner. Making your way back to your bedroom, you remembered a couple of more people that were in Taeyong’s small friend group. There was a guy with pink hair that reminded you of cherry blossoms, another man who spoke Japanese on the phone while you visited Taeyong in his office. There was also another man who looked a bit older than Taeyong who spoke mandarin on the phone while you were dropping off lunch to Taeyong in his office. All of these guys worked with Taeyong at the newspaper office on a regular basis so you never gave it much thought besides them being his friends.

“Yo, TY,” you heard Mark say as he walked inside Taeyong’s office, you were trying not to eavesdrop on their conversation but his office was right on the other side your bedroom.

Through the wall you heard Taeyong sigh, you could already see him rubbing his temples, “Lee, what are you doing here? I told you not to bring business to my house,”

“Listen dude, I know the boundaries but this new heist we’re pulling needs more planning than what we have so far. This is the biggest one we’re about to do so far and we need to clear out some technical issues that we might have with the program. Kun has been trying to smooth out any bugs and Yuta has been trying to find armory within our sellers in Japan in case of an emergency. Jae has been keeping tabs on all the security around the SM building in case we have to bail and run,”

“First of all, Mark, we’re not going to bail and run. Second, this has to work out because they have to go down, you know all the mess they made cost the city and everyone who got left behind. Third, after this one we’re moving towns anyways so it doesn’t matter. You, me, Y/N and everybody else so we leave no trace. Remember that we all stick together no matter what.” You could almost picture Taeyong’s frustrated face as he finished his sentence. There was a feeling inside your chest from the end of Taeyong’s speech. Was Taeyong really going to take you with him no matter what? You had already told him that you weren’t going to tell the authorities regardless if you stayed with him or not, but apparently that didn’t matter.

“You’re taking Y/N? But man, what if she doesn’t want to go. Are we still taking her no matter what?” at the end of this question you heard another emotion in Mark’s words, something along the lines of empathy for you regardless if he knew you or not.

“She knows too much at this point for us to consider it being an option, she’s coming whether she wants to or not.” When Taeyong finished talking, you couldn’t bear to hear any more of what came out of his mouth, there was just no point to it. That wasn’t the boy you started dating yet, regardless, you still loved him.

After meeting Mark, the rest of Taeyong’s friends found their way to your house whenever they had a question about a certain topic that could not be named. You quickly learnt their names and faces and what they provided for Taeyong. For example, Yuta was head of armory and he consisted in getting all of the guns and rifles they needed for whatever reason. On the other hand, Mark was kind of all over the place, he was pretty much Taeyong’s assistant. Second in hand if you please. Jaehyun was in charge of investigating all of the places they were taking down one by one, looking at them for weeks on end in order to know all of their patterns so none of the heists would go down hill. Kun, was some sort of a computer genius who dropped out of high school for some unknown reason they wouldn’t tell you why yet. You barely talked to any of the boys, only when they spoke to you first and it was basically for a hello or can I have something out of the fridge? kind of situation. Last but not least there was Taeyong, he was the leader of all these operations and, for some reason, he hated SM with all his heart.

The more you thought of it, you didn’t really know much about Taeyong besides his current status. He never talked about his family like you did. He knew that your mom and dad lived in the country, pretty much living on the farm most of their life. You pretty much broke their heart when you moved to the city to start something new. Sighing, you glanced towards the front door where Taeyong was just walking in with a new laptop under his arm.

“Hey love,”

“Hi,” The relationship you both had been a little jagged since you found out about his nightly routines. It wasn’t that you were extremely pissed off, you just wanted to know the truth instead of being hidden in the dark.

“Y/N, I know our relationship has been suffering for the past couple of weeks since you found out about everything, and I’d like to say I’m sorry for that. I never meant to take you into my mess but now that you’re part of it, you’re going to have to run with us,” he stopped talking for a quick second taking, in your reaction and softly sighing when he saw you tense up, “So for the next week you’re going to be training with Yuta on how to hold and shoot a gun properly. I can’t have you not knowing what to do in case of an emergency or if something happens to me in this new heist.”

The thought of Taeyong not coming back to you was one of the scariest things you had ever thought about. There was a feeling of worry at the pit of your stomach that only made you want to puke. Sighing to yourself, you looked back at the man in front of you, nodding at his words.

“If there is no other choice, I guess I’ll have to do it,” you said as your arms crossed over your chest, meanwhile all Taeyong could do is give you a sigh.

“I don’t want you to have to look at it from that point of view, I’m only doing what’s better for your safety,” he replied to you, dropping his keys in the small bowl in the coffee table in front of you.

You could only roll your eyes at his words as he sat down next to you on the couch. Keeping your eyes focused on the tv as you spoke, “Well, if you were not doing all of this we wouldn’t have to be there in the first place,”

From the corner of your eyes you saw Taeyong clench his jaw shut, his lips turning into a thin line before he talking to you once again, “You have no idea all the pain that they’ve cost me, it was only a matter of time before somebody did something about all of their crimes. Only somehow I ended up being the first one to man up and do something about it.”

“Then explain to me, what did they do so bad that you have to do all these things including killing people?”

“I didn’t kill anyone, I have just hurt them a little or...” Taeyong only struggled when you finish the sentence. It only reminded you of one of the previous conversations you’ve both shared, much like when he first told you when you found out.

“That’s not the point Taeyong, all I want to know is why you’re doing all of this? Why are you getting your hands bloodied in this mess?”

“Because it cost me everything that my family had, for the same reason that my sister passed away three years ago due to the fact that I could not provide enough money to keep her alive. The fact that my dad lost his business when he decided to join in partnership with SM and them stealing from right under his nose without him knowing. All of that and we were not the only family that they’ve done this to. With Jaehyun, his mom passed away five years ago to some cancer from working at the factory SM ran in their town. Yuta had to travel all the way here to hunt them down when they destroyed his town when some chemicals leaked into the water system. All of us have something we want justice for, this is not for nothing.” With that, Taeyong walked away from you and towards the bedroom not saying another word to you or even sparing you a second glance.

After this new argument you had with Taeyong, you couldn’t help but to feel guilty about everything he had just said to you. The truth is, you wanted to know everything but so far you knew enough to know where he was coming from. You knew Taeyong was not the hard, stone cold person he appeared to be, he was soft and very sentimental inside. That was the man that you had fallen in love with and still loved regardless of his actions now.

Walking from the living room back to the kitchen, your eyes widened at the figure standing in front of your fridge. There was Mark, rummaging through the fridge looking for something to eat. “Jesus, Mark, could you at least make yourself noticeable when you’re in the house?”

“Well, I heard you and Taeyong arguing again and I didn’t want to disturb you two in the middle of it. I didn’t want to be that person,” Mark said as he took a bite of the apple in his left hand. Shrugging, he walked over towards you and jumped up to sit on the counter, looking back at you as he leaned his head back on the cabinets behind his head. “Listen, I know it’s none of my business but you should really cut the guy some slack. He’s not a bad person, it's just the way his whole life changed from one day to the next that made him the way he is. You probably don’t believe me but I’ve known him for a while now, I used to live next-door to him and his sister used to babysit me. I know way more than I should probably know about him and it’s not my place to tell you what happened but he is kind of traumatized,”

With your shoulders slumped, you sighed as Mark finished his sentence. After all Taeyong had just told you part of the reason why he was doing these things. The only thing is, you wanted to know the whole thing not just part and you needed Taeyong to tell that to you, “I just want the truth Mark, I don’t want anymore secrets. If I’m in this for a while now, I want to know everything. I don’t want anything to be hidden from me anymore,”

“He didn’t tell you the details yet but he told you the most important stuff and that’s all you need to know. At this point, the less you know the better, trust me, he’s doing it for your own safety.” With that, Mark jumped off the counter and walked down the hallway towards Taeyong’s office, closing the door after him.

Walking back towards your shared bedroom with Taeyong, you found him going over some papers in his lap, his glasses riding on the bridge of his nose as he glanced over towards you. He said nothing but went back to the piles of papers scattered on the bed, there were different sticky notes on each pile and you couldn’t help but smile. “Give me a few minutes to get this sorted and then we can go to bed,”

“That’s fine, but uh, I actually wanted to apologize,” you said after letting out an awkward cough from the back of your throat. Taeyong’s eyes flew up to meet yours, there was a small twinkle you had almost forgotten was there, “Mark said some stuff to me and I know he’s right, I just don’t like to admit things to myself sometimes and I’m sorry,”

A small sigh slipped past his lips as he set down the papers in his hands, getting up from the bed and walking over towards you. His hands found their way to their spot on your hips as you leaned more into him unconsciously, “My love, as much as you frustrate me to the point where I want to put a gun up to your chest, again, I’d rather die than to be here without you. I know you want to know many things about this but I also don’t want to put you in danger due to your knowledge,”

“I know that, but I also want you to know whenever you finally want to talk about it, that I'm here with my ears wide open to listen,” you nodded as you finished your sentence, glancing back up to the man in front of you.

A small smile spread over Taeyong’s lips as he nodded along with you, his hands moving from the spot on your hips to hold your face in his hands. His fingers moving over your cheeks as he leaned in to press a soft kiss to your lips before speaking again, “Do you know how much I love you?”

“I might need a refresher actually,” you answered while your own lips tugged into a smile, moving your hands around his neck. It had been a bit too long since you and Taeyong had shared a moment like this but suddenly the feeling hit you, this was home. He was your home.

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

After a long training session with Yuta, you let yourself flop down on the couch next to Taeyong who was busy typing away on the keyboard in front of him. Jaehyun and Kun were busy in Taeyong’s office trying to contact some server in Russia to avoid leaving any traces behind on this new heist. There were plenty of guns laid out on the dining table and by now, you knew how to disassemble each and every single one of them and put them back together. Being part of this was not too bad but the work on your body was exhausting, Taeyong told you to quit your job due to the fact that all of you were leaving after this was over which was exactly what you did. Taeyong’s hand reached over to yours, your palm was now covered in calluses which made him frown and traced over the harsh marks on your soft skin.

“New ones?”

Shaking your head, you could only turn to look at him, hair sticking to your forehead from the sweat, “I don’t think so, the old ones just burst when Yuta went to train me over hidden knives and gu-”

“Jesus, Yuta! I told you basics for crying out loud, not the entire thing. At least not yet, couldn’t you have waited until we were out of here?” Groaning, Taeyong let his laptop fall shut and he walked over towards the dining room where Yuta was cleaning out the nuzzle in one of the rifles. “What the hell happened to basics?”

You could only picture Yuta rolling his eyes at Taeyong as you followed behind, “A hidden knife could be the difference between her being alive or dead in a matter of seconds TY,” There was something else in Taeyong’s eyes when he starred directly at the man sitting down in front of him, “Plus, you need to chill. You’ve been a pain in everyone’s ass lately, we know what we’re doing remember?”

By the end of Yuta’s sentence you only wanted to sigh but instead you took Taeyong’s hand, you lead him back to your bedroom. Giving him a small smile as he sat down on the mattress in the middle of the floor. There were boxes surrounding the both of you from the move but you couldn’t bring yourself to care enough to continue packing the remaining of your belongings while Taeyong was like this. Clothes were still in your closet and there was plenty of books scattered on the floor that went from computer science to kamasutra positions. That was a book which you were shy to show to Taeyong when the both of you started getting too comfortable in the routine. A blush covered you cheeks at the memory of it but your thoughts were soon broken apart by Taeyong who was tugging on your shirt.

“Have I really been an asshole lately?” he asked in a small voice as he looked up at you, this look on him always reminded you of a baby kitten which only made your insides melt.

“A little, but we all know you’re on the edge lately so we let it slide.” you replied as you sat down next to him, taking his hand in yours and giving it a small squeeze. You knew it wasn’t much but he needed the reassurance in every way possible and you were there to give it to him even if you didn’t think it was such a good idea.

“It’ll all be over soon, just think of it that way.” The way he said it only made the hairs on your arms stand up and your insides feel like they were being turned inside out, but you could only nod and put on a brave face.

You had never seen Taeyong get himself ready for one of his missions but seeing him turn from your adorable boyfriend to this emotionless human was something you would never forget. As he traded in his usual skinny jeans for some pants that looked as if they were a mix between sweatpants and cargo pants you noticed the twinkle in his eyes start to shut down. There was no sign of remorse in his eyes and the thought of Taeyong being this person scared you a little bit, not that you would ever tell anyone but that made you aware of every single move he made. There were knives and guns hidden throughout his body in case of any emergencies, while he was still going to be carrying a gun on each of his hands. The long black trench coat you had seen before was on his shoulders once again and this time there was a black turtleneck sweater that covered his torso up to his neck. There was also a skin tight bullet proof vest underneath but it was barely visible under the sweater. His black dress shoes were traded in for black military boots as he walked towards you, handing you your own black outfit. There was something in his eyes when his eyes met yours that reminded you of the old Taeyong but that was quickly gone as he turned to look at the rest of the guys who were already dressed in black. You could only nod as you let them talk, Taeyong giving them a brief pep talk to lead them into this. Biting down on your lip, you walked out of the office and towards your now empty room to change.

The outfit Taeyong had given you was nothing out of the ordinary, black cargo sweatpants like his, a black tshirt, the vest that was meant to go under your shirt, and a black bomber that was similar to Mark’s. Getting dressed was the easy part but as you tied the military boots you realized how this was about to go down, you were about to go rob a fucking company for crying out loud. Looking back at the mirror, you grabbed your matching face mask and turned towards Taeyong who was standing in the door, no face mask but instead a black bandana covering half of his face.

“I never thought you’d look this good in this outfit,” he let out a small chuckle as he took your hand, bringing it up to his face and giving it a kiss through the cloth. “Ready to go, princess?”

Making your way down to the middle of town and through the streets that you used to call home, you were now sealing your ticket deal out of there with no chance of return. You took a look at the people around you, Taeyong who was on the driver’s seat with Mark on his right talking to him about some new video game he had found. Kun and Jaehyun were talking about the security on the bank while Yuta was putting ammo into the guns they were bringing in. Sighing to yourself, you looked down at your hands and thought about everything that was about to happen.

“Remember, you are only to come out of the van in case of emergencies but there will be none. Is that understood?” Taeyong said as he sat right in front of you as you tied your shoe laces on the combat boots on your feet. “You are to have a gun and a knife on you at all times, even when we walk out of this place. You are to wear the chip in your ear for us to make contact if we get separated and for either of us to know your location,”

“Tae, I got it, don’t worry. We’ll be fine,”

“You don’t get it, you’re everything I need and I’m putting you on the line here. Honestly, I’d be nothing without you and I can’t lose you,”

The memory floated on your mind as the car parked about two blocks away from the bank, Taeyong turning to look at all of you while he pulled the bandana back over his face. All of them nodded to each other before Taeyong turned to look at you, there was a soft look in his eyes as he pointed to his mask telling you to put yours on. After the cloth was over your face Taeyong, Mark, Jaehyun, and Yuta made their way outside. They all walked different ways while Jaehyun ran towards the nearest building climbing up the escape stairs and up towards the roof. Kun stayed back with you in order to use the computer to retrieve all the wired money.

“Don’t worry, they’ll be fine.” Kun said as you looked through the window at the man walking away from you. You could only nod as Taeyong walked towards the building, his mask covering half of his face but the scar at the corner of his eye was there. His hands were tucked inside the pockets of his coat, he looked powerful as he took long strides into the building.

It must have been at least ten minutes before you heard two gunshots making the hair on your arms stand up. Your eyes could only look between Kun and the building where the rest of the boys were. There was a beeping on one of the many screens and Kun quickly pressed the bluetooth in his ear, “Jaehyun! Listen, you can’t just ru- no, get Yuta to help! Taeyong said she was not to get involved!” as the last words came out of Kun’s mouth you were already getting out of the van, only for his hand to reach back to you. “Goddammit Y/N, you can’t go,”

“Kun, let me go, I can help!” you tugged your arm back from his grip only to see him groan and let you go. His hand pushing his hair back from his face and shaking his head, a sigh escaping his lips as he turned towards the screen.

“Listen, go help them get Mark out and I’ll pull up the van in the front. Most of the money is already wired anyways.”

Nodding, you took off running towards the building, the cool breeze felt refreshing against your clothed skin. There was an adrenaline rush entering your bloodstream as you made your way up the steps, fixing your hair before pulling the door open. There were two police men holding guns towards Taeyong who was in front of a wounded Mark who was holding his side, a pool of red was starting to spread under him. Oh fuck. Everyone’s eyes were suddenly on you as your feet kicked some glass away from your path. Taeyong’s eyes narrowed at you making you only nod as your hands glided along your sides pulling out two of the many hidden knives on you.

The only thing you could think of was of how Yuta had taught you to throw weeks prior to this. Your eyes focused on the two men in blue who stood in front of you before the knives made their way out of your grip. They landed on the strip of skin visible between their ironed shirts and their chin as small drops of dark red blood slowly dribbled out, soon becoming a steady stream of red liquid. Your eyes flickered between Taeyong and the gasping men in front of him that reached for him with bloody hands. Panic settled at the pit of your stomach as you realized what you had done, your hands were soon trying to take off the mask that seemed to take away the oxygen from your lungs.

“Yong!” you heard Yuta’s voice from somewhere behind you. Soon enough Taeyong was in front of you, pushing your hands away from your face and fixing the mask back. Your eyes went from Taeyong’s form in front of you to where Jaehyun was getting Mark up with the help of Yuta, leaving a trail of red as they walked towards the doors. It had only been a couple of seconds but you could hear the police sirens starting to near, that was when you felt a tug on your arm.

“Listen darling, I love you but, we gotta go. Now.”

Time felt like as if it were dragging as you slowly walked with Taeyong towards the doors, as you started shaking your head trying to get out of the daze you were still in. Taeyong’s hand was in yours and giving it a comforting squeeze, meanwhile you walked a bit faster to keep up with him as the both of you made it out. Jaehyun and Yuta were now getting into the van as various police cars started pulling up closer to the building. Taeyong pressed the small bluetooth chip in his ear and started speaking as bright red lights started getting closer, “You guys have to go, get Mark patched up. Me and Y/N will find a way to meet you guys, just go.”

From the small chip in your ear you heard Jaehyun scoffing, “As if, run. We can still get away,” Taeyong shook his head and flicked his finger towards the nearest empty street, you could barely see but Kun only nodded and started driving off. There was more arguing from the bluetooth but you knew Kun wasn’t going to stop, “Fuck Taeyong, you better keep yourself alive.”

The next thing you saw was Taeyong pulling out the small device and stepping on it, you copied his actions and did the same with yours. The police was now less than fifty feet away from the both of you which is when he finally turned to you, “We gotta run, see that silver car? You are to get in as soon as I get it unlocked,”

“Got it.” The both of you ran as shouts from the police started coming in, you could only swallow the lump in your throat as your legs moved the fastest they had in awhile. Taeyong was a couple of steps in front of you, his hand digging inside his pockets and finally pulling out his favorite gun. As Taeyong stopped at the driver’s side of the car, the butt of the gun met the window, shattering the glass in many little pieces. His hand went to unlock the doors which only made you get in as soon as you could only, this was when bullets started making sounds against the metal.

“Fuck.” You heard Taeyong mutter as he started working on some cables from under the steering wheel. Peaking your head back towards the window, your eyes locked on a few officers that were slowly moving around the car with their guns aimed at the both of you.

“Tae, you gotta move a little faster please,” you whispered as you grabbed one of the guns that was strapped against your thigh, biting down on your lip as your fingers found their way towards the hammer. Tugging on it back before you made yourself aim towards the people coming towards you. The police were less than ten feet away, crowding around the car as the engine finally roared to life. A shaky breath escaping from your lips as relief washed over you, turning to look at Taeyong who was busy driving away from the scene. “Oh, thank god.”

“As long as you got me, we’ll find a way out.” Taeyong said as he reached over to take your hand in his. His hand was a little rough from earlier and there was blood caked under his nails but you didn’t seem to care anymore. You were part of his world and you had to learn to accept it. Though there was still a nagging feeling eating you alive, but you chose not to pay attention to that.

The both of you had been on the road for two hours, the radio kept going in and out about the robbery. Of course, the police were still trying to locate the car the both of you were escaping in so there was still something to worry about. Rubbing your eyes, you could only sigh and look out the window, but your eyebrows soon furrowed when you turned into an apartment complex you hadn’t recognized. Looking around, you tried to locate yourself before turning to Taeyong who was pulling up the mask once again to cover his face.

“Stay here, look at that window on the corner. When you see me turn on the light you can come in,” he stated as he pulled the silencer on his gun and carefully put it on the barrel. You could only nod as the gun was put back into his coat and he made his way out of the car, walking up the stairs into the second floor. A couple of minutes passed by before there was a small bang that sounded barely audible from where you were and then a few seconds later the light was turned on. You brought your hand to your hair, pulling off the hair tie and letting your hair fall down your shoulders as if to cover your face as you walked into the night sky.

Your feet moved one in front of the other as you made your way up the stairs and into the apartment whose door was slightly opened. Walking inside, you took a look at your surroundings, taking notice of the papers that were scattered on the floor, reminding you of how you and Taeyong would sit down and organize the ones back home. A few shells from bullets were laying on top of the white sheets of paper and a streak of red was now leading from the living room towards the bathroom. Taeyong walked out of the bathroom with a few dots of red covering the side of his face, his bandana hung around his neck as he approached you. In one hand, he was holding a box of home hair dye and in the other was his gun with specks of blood on the silencer drying down. “How good are you with hair dye?”

It had only been a couple of hours, Taeyong’s head resting on your lap while he slept and you kept a look out until midnight. His bright red hair stood out against his black outfit that had multiple darker spots that you knew were not hair dye. In the pit of your stomach, you still felt a little weird about the whole situation, but now you prefered to know less. It had been your first time and somehow you ended up with a body count that only floated in the back of your mind when everything was silent.

“So now what?” you asked Taeyong as you flopped down on the couch across from him as he walked behind you, a towel in his hair as he dried it down. The towel stained in a bright red that you didn’t know if it was blood or if it was dye.

“We rest, we take off at midnight. We should be able to arrive at the safe house in the morning where the rest of the guys should be waiting for us,” Taeyong replied as he sat down next to you.

Sighing, you turned and grabbed the towel from his hands, helping him dry off his wet hair, “And then? Are we just going to start over?”

“I mean, I guess we can, we could keep running this for the rest of our lives. We’re pretty much invencible,” there was a small chuckle that followed his comment as he finished. There was also a small glimmer in the corner of his eye that you caught and it only made the pit in your stomach grow. “Then again, we could find jobs and play nice,”

“You like this don’t you?”

“Y/N, that’s n-”

“But it is Yong, you like this life. I can see it and I’m sure the guys saw it too, I’ve never seen you so passionate about another project in your life since this. Yeah, it’s terrifying but I’m going to be there with you all the way.”

The memory of the earlier moment had you still a bit shaken up, you had pretty much signed a deal to be with him ride or die. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you looked down at the man in your lap, if you wanted to end this you could. You were still carrying the rest of your weapons on your body and you were fairly certain on how each of them were supposed to be used. The idea of ending it all here and turning everybody in felt foreign to your mind but it still kept floating around.

You were busy looking outside the window when you heard the door knob start to jiggle, the boy on your lap quickly getting up from his position. Furrowing your eyebrows, you looked at Taeyong who had a smirk on his lips, his expression changed the moment he turned to you and looked down the hallway. He pointed towards the last door before the bathroom, you could only nod as he picked up the gun from the floor and made his way behind the front door. You moved inside the empty bedroom and looked around, there was an array of photos on the walls along with awards on one of the bookshelves. To OH SEHUN, from SM ENT. one of the awards read as you glanced through the bookshelf.

The photos showed three men, two of them were obviously younger which only made you assume they were investors of this SM ENT. Your hand reached out to grab one of the photos that was on the wall, there was a third guy who seemed shorter than either of them. The sound of footsteps caught you off guard as you quickly pulled your hand back and ignored the photo behind you.

“Taeyong, dude, we can talk about it seriously,” the stranger pleaded as he walked back towards the bathroom. You leaned to peek between the door and the wall, the gun was aimed at the stranger’s head as he slowly backed up into the sink. There was something familiar about this guy that you couldn't help but notice, “C’mon, put that down, we can talk,”

“There’s nothing to talk about, you and Chanyeol ran with my idea and then pretended it was yours just to make money off of it. You knew I need that money more than you and your rich family, and because of you she’s dead!” Taeyong exclaimed as he pushed the taller man towards the tub, the mirror reflecting the side of his face, giving you a clear sight of Taeyong.

The taller man was taken aback by Taeyong’s words that he hadn’t even noticed the other man who was already in the tub, his body already cold. “Wait, no Bokyoung can’t be dead. Taeyong, stop playing, you can’t be serious!”

“You killed her, Sehun.” The voice that came out of Taeyong was emotionless and it sort of reminded you of a robot as he pulled on the hammer of the gun, his aim never leaving the man in front of him.

“Taeyong, I had no idea, please.” The taller man was pretty much begging at this point and from what you could see there was no way Taeyong was going to let him go.

Bringing the gun up to the stranger’s forehead, Taeyong tilted his head to the side as he spoke, “Thank god that you won’t see her where you’re going.”

“Taey-” whatever the man was going to say was cut short with a silent bang that rang through your ears as your eyes looked through the mirror back at Taeyong. The smirk that appeared earlier was now plastered across his face once again. A cold chill made its way down your back as you moved away from the door, backing away until your body knocked into the bookshelf. Turning your head to the side, you looked at the picture once again, the men who were now laying in the bathtub were in that picture along with Taeyong.

“Who were they?” you asked Taeyong as you got into the newest car which was kind of taken from the two dead men in the tub. Is not like they’re going to ask for it back, you mentally thought to yourself as you looked over at the man next to you who was pulling out of the parking lot.

“They were nobody’s until I came along with all the brains,” he replied in a cold tone as his fingers tightened around the wheel. His knuckles almost turning a pinky white before he sighed and turned to look at you for a brief second. “They were the reason Bokyoung died, I was on the team with them and we were supposed to turn in our idea for a multi wall protection with zero traceable coding behind. The day of the presentation, I was let go by SM, they told me they didn’t need my ideas anymore. Of course, I was upset but then from one of the leaders, I found out they had picked Chanyeol and Sehun’s idea. My idea. I tried to reach all of them but I got no replies, no answers so I decided to wait.”

Taeyong only shrugged as he finished his sentence and relaxed back against the chair, his hand reaching over to take yours in his. “How long have you been keeping tabs on them?”

“Ever since I went to my bowling outings, Kun is a lot more into this than me. He was the one who taught me how to trace them without leaving a sign behind. To hack into CCTV’s to see where they’d be going, track cell phone records, all of those things.” His hand felt warm against yours as you stared at the road ahead of you, his thumb tracing soothing circles over your knuckles. Nodding, you decided against asking more questions about the situation, it was obvious Taeyong had eyes and ears everywhere. In the back of your mind, you could only think of what would’ve happened if you had stayed behind, your every move would’ve been watched by him no doubt.

Moonlight came through the sunroof, shining over the rings across Taeyong’s fingers as his fingers laced into yours. At this point, the clock on the dashboard read 3:15 am and you were coming in and out of consciousness, sleep finally taking its toll on you. There was a feeling of protection when Taeyong did small things like hold your hand that made your heart skip a beat. Closing your eyes, you finally let sleep wash over you, Taeyong’s distant humming lulling you to sleep.

It had been less than an hour before you felt Taeyong shake your leg, making you groan as your eyes once again adjusted to the darkness. There was a sound of sirens in the background that reminded you of white noise, but sleep was still heavy on you and you weren’t fully functional yet. “Baby, c’mon you gotta wake up,” Taeyong’s voice was a bit strained as he kept one of his hands on the wheel while the other kept shaking your leg to wake you up.

“What’s going on?” you groaned out as your hands stretched over your head, blinking a few times before turning to him. There was a serious look on his face as his eyes shifted between the mirrors and the road in front of him.

“We might have a little company.” He said as he reached over and pulled out his gun, setting it on your lap. Your breath hitched, knowing what he was asking, you could only nod as you began to reload the magazine.

“Fuck.”

Beginning to slowly sit up, the sunroof above the both of you slowly opened up, revealing the twinkling stars above the both of you. Your body fit smoothly between the small rectangle and you could see that behind you there were about three police cars chasing the car. “Stop the car!” one of the speakers from the cars boomed through the night. Adrenaline rushed through your body as your body turned to face the incoming cop cars behind you. Bringing the gun up, your hand pulled the hammer on the top, aiming at the police car and quickly shooting four bullets out. A loud boom and a hiss from the car coming to a halt suddenly was heard through the empty highway. The police car behind the both of you screeched and stopped, covering the road and the other cars stop behind it abruptly.

As soon as they stopped, officers ran out of their cars, shooting various bullets your way and making Taeyong yank your leg down. It was barely enough time as bullets buzzed over the roof of the car. Meanwhile Taeyong could only press on the gas, the needle on the dashboard hitting close to a hundred as you both escaped the scene. “That’s my girl!”

There was a grin on your lips as you leaned over to press a kiss down to his cheek, fixing yourself back into your seat, “That was kind of exciting.” Your eyes turned to look back at Taeyong who had a smile plastered on his lips.

As you reached for his hand, you noticed Taeyong’s smile fade into a blank face and you could only look at him in confusion. That was until you looked ahead, there was about a dozen police cars surrounding the car and there was no way to drive out of.

“Lee Taeyong! Y/L/N Y/N! Come out with your hands up!”

Your eyes looked back at Taeyong who stopped the car about twenty feet from the other cars, his breathing was calmed as he turned to look at you, “You know I love you, right? That you’re the best thing that could’ve happened to me in my twenty four years of living in this miserable Earth. That you’re the love of my life and I’m just sorry I couldn’t give you a better life, a life outside of this and I’m so sorry I dragged you into this,”

“Lee Taeyong, I could’ve left you back there at that stupid building to die yet I killed two people for you. If that doesn’t show how devoted I am to you then what does?” There was a brief moment where he could only chuckle and stare at you. The police was still screaming from outside the car, but at that moment it was just you and him, nothing else.

“You trust me, correct?”

“With my life.”

That was all he needed to know, within seconds the car was picking up speed as it reached the people and cars in front of you. The car colliding with everything in its path, Taeyong’s hand in yours as your world turned into utter darkness.

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punninglyswift · 5 years

Text

I could stay.

Every album has come at the perfect time in my life when I needed it most and because of that the albums make me remember those times, maybe just in flashes, but even if it’s a not so great flashback, I look back on it with happiness and that I genuinely believe is thanks to you, @taylorswift

Since I was a sophomore in high school when Red came out I think I really can explain what I said above for the past 3 albums more clearly...but it goes for debut through Speak Now as well. Let’s do each album, shall we?

Taylor Swift - the album had been released a bit by the time I heard songs from it. I was performing in my school’s talent show and this meant 2 performances because my very catholic elementary school made us audition to see if what we were doing was appropriate and to plan out the order I guess. I was playing classical piano, which I’ve done since I was 3. There was a girl named Carly who was 2 years older than me and she was auditioning with a song I’d never heard. It was called Our Song and it was catchy as HELL. (My fifth grade self knew what was UP) She sounded great too, so she got into the talent show but rumor had it they didn’t want the word “kiss” in a song that was to be performed (remember the “very catholic” part? Yup.) - so I heard another catchy as hell song but this time it was one where my mind AND my heart went, “wow....that’s how I feel about life” and it’s still accurate to the way I feel about that PERFECT song today: that song was A Place in this World. I was going into middle school. Middle school, high school...we can all agree we see their problems...bullying is unfortunately real. With your self titled debut album I finally had songs I discovered on my own, nothing against the music my brothers always played for me (Coldplay, Green Day, the Foo Fighters, The Lonely Island - yes I’m on a BOAT, motherf****** I’m sorry I get really into it) - I had anthems thanks to you, I also thought HARD about love cause even at that age I crushed on guys a lot but all in my head because boys are weird. Still are. Onto Fearless....

Fearless. Soon after the talent show, I mean a year or two, my mom got me Fearless after a piano jury. I flipped through the lyric booklet. It was like reading a prize winning book. (Ayyy Grammys foreshadowing) and the SONGS...I was in middle school. 7th grade I believe...and guys would play stupid but hurtful pranks on me and I had a great group of friends but the hurt definitely got to me...but I had an album telling me that yeah sure- “they might be bigger, but we’re faster and never scared..you can walk away, say we don’t need this; but something in your eyes says we can beat this”. I had an album that gave me a song my mom and i smile so big during cause without my mom and without our little mom & daughter trips downtown (dc) or to New York in the holidays, or just taking a walk or browsing in random stores, I don’t know where I’d be but I know my happiness wouldn’t exist. I again had anthems as well as slower songs that taught me about love. And little did I know Fifteen would be THAT song I needed for the high school journey that was growing closer and closer.

Speak Now. That powerful fairytale of an album written entirely only by you, Taylor. I was about to enter high school - an all girls high school. Also around this time I started watching SNL every week thanks to your time as host AND musical guest during the Fearless era and watching that show is a favorite Saturday night activity now. I used to (i still kinda do this) have to convince myself whatever feelings i felt re: mainly crushes were valid instead of just thinking they were. I always thought I was being irrational. I’d think up scenarios in my mind of spilling the feelings and having it go perfectly. Those scenarios never happened in real life. I guess I told myself I wasn’t good enough for whoever I liked to like me back. Unfortunately that mindset still exists...I tend to go, well this kind of guy would never...and it hurts. And I’m hurting myself by doing that. So Speak Now was the epitome of you, Taylor, being the person who can perfectly illustrate whatever feelings we all have, but using your own examples. I’d need TED talks on feelings and owning your heart and Speak Now was that 24/7 TED talk. Especially with Enchanted. “The words I held back” there are so many words I want to say to honestly every guy I’ve had an actual crush on. (I specify “actual” because one of the first crushes I had turned out to be a douchebag! Fun!!!) and then again with Mean, that helped me and still does when I encounter bullies. I encountered bullies (and cyberbullies! FUN!!) in middle & high school a LOT. But I did grow to be “big enough so they can’t hit me” - I’m still quite short, but you get my point. And Never Grow Up was again a reality check for me growing up, and the lyrics were so real that sometimes I couldn’t listen to it when it came on shuffle or on the CD because sometimes you can’t deal with that reality. But it’s a favorite song and I’m forever grateful it exists. Long Live is the song that is a full on letter to the friends and family members who have helped me grow and become who I am and weren’t temporary and didn’t make me feel bad about myself. They all have crowns in my opinion. (Lover - Out August 23) Speak Now was also the first TOUR of yours I attended and I remember being speechless seeing you rise out of the stage. And hearing your voice telling me “I don’t think you should wait, I think you should speak Now” - truly those words are the reason I have in the past several years told guys how I’ve felt. It’s never worked out but telling them lifted weights off my shoulders and it’s never been a negative experience. Seeing that tour live in all its theatrical, magical goodness made me the happiest person ever.

Red. I have a weirdly clear memory of driving to target with a friend after school let out in 2012 to buy a copy of Red before rehearsals started for Hairspray, the show we were doing that fall. I didn’t have a way to listen to it at school yet so I just kinda held it and stared at it. True story. To me, Red was the Speak Now that dealt with bullies and was better for it and came out stronger than ever. Red again was like wow does Taylor know exactly what I’m feeling? It wasn’t even a QUESTION. I Almost Do - again with the speaking now. And the line in Treacherous - “I can’t decide if it’s a choice, getting swept away” is everything I feel all the time SWEPT into a BEAUTIFUL SENTENCE. And with your words since the very first album I’ve felt like wow she seems like my best friend. And it’s beautiful.

1989. While it goes for every album, this was the first time I remember having a lightbulb moment of holy crap I needed this album at this moment as a 17 year old driving to college with my mom. At least..i heard Shake It Off while attempting to listen to the livestream on my phone. That’s kinda what college is, or what it can be - shaking it off, a new you but the same you. Literally though - you shaped that beautiful album around finding yourself when you didn’t have to necessarily in love in a big city. My city was Chicago, but the sentiments are the same. (Go ramblers!!!) It was tough, adapting to a big school and making all new friends - and I didn’t really have an actual group of friends until sophomore year. Now I can’t get rid of them and that’s the best thing, I love em with my whole heart. 1989 still helped me be like oh these feelings are valid, and like “god I’ve felt that way more than once...thank goodness for Taylor” - referencing specifically I Wish You Would - cause I didn’t have in depth conversations about anything like that with anyone. 1989 gave me dancy, positive, self confident vibes and I rode that positivity train through college.

reputation. Speaking of riding a positivity train through college...there were low points along that journey. reputation came in 2017, during my senior year of college. Going out into the “real world”. The year before was 2016 - a year that gave me unforgettable study abroad experiences and honestly helped me grow so much in happiness and in general - I actually spent that summer canvassing and phone banking for Hillary Clinton, I was so fired up. That fire went out for a brief, heartbreaking moment in November 2016. I cried all night, and then each night after that for 3 days; sometimes calling my mom and grandma, sometimes just remembering how hopeful I was. And how far it felt like we had to go. The fire came back, and I was angry but empowered. Cue senior year. I was taking all the classes I loved and writing kickass papers about political violence as well as the amazing book Gabriel by Georges Sand which challenges gender norms, and I felt ready but also not ready for whatever was next after graduation come May 2018. November 2017, réputation came into our lives. Like 1989, it was a well rounded story I needed to propel me through whatever came next, but different...I knew I needed to have more of a “take no shit” attitude and rep really helped me with that. Hell, I definitely credit listening to I Did Something Bad on my way to a morning class with helping me be brave enough to raise my hand because I KNEW what I had to say and I KNEW it was good enough and I just HAD TO be BRAVE enough to say it. “I’m doing better than I ever was...” = same way I felt and honestly that’s in a large part thanks to you.

So now I’m not in school anymore, I graduated in May 2018, and I’m still trying to find a place in this world. I live with some of my best friends in Chicago, I’m trying to work on a campaign soon, currently working retail at a crafty store, and when I don’t think I’m going anywhere I remember that I have to own who I am and embrace my creativity and my passions - and take the occasional break to help plan my friend’s 23rd birthday party which has themed everything so gotta get to work on that. And Lover? There’s NO doubt in my mind it will be any different in terms of coming at the perfect time in my life. And I know this: it’ll be magical. Thank you Taylor. Sorry this is an actual essay, I love you always.

- Isabelle

@taylorswift

#lover #the archer #you need to calm down #1989 #taylor swift #fearless #reputation #speak now #red

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all-time-logan · 6 years

Text

By any other Pet Name

My first Sanders Sides fic! This is based off of a logicality pet names post by @thelowlysatsuma (who is amazing). I have more in the works, and might do a part two if anyone wants it! Happy reading!

Words: 2785

Warnings: none that I know of

Pairings: Logicality

As most of Logan’s problems do, it starts with a pun. Well, it was less of a problem and more of Logan having to deal with his own feelings, and it was more of a dad joke than a pun. All in all, Logan blamed Roman.

The four sides were relaxing in the living room of the mindscape, simply talking and hanging out. Logan had been reading a book about astronomy next to Virgil, who had music playing just loud enough from his headphones for Logan to pick out the base melody. Roman and Patton had been talking and laughing on the floor, paper and pencils scattered around them as they workshopped part of Thomas’s upcoming video. Logan had heard Roman say Virgil’s name, and tapped said side’s thigh gently to get his attention.

Virgil slipped his headphones off, his music coming out a bit louder, and Logan quickly identified the music as the Disney’s Hercules soundtrack. He nodded his head at the two on the floor, saying,

“Roman mentioned you. I was simply getting your attention so as to allow you to inquire what he had said.”

Virgil nodded in thanks before turning towards the fanciful side. “Yo, Roman, you said my name?”

Roman started, before smiling kindly at Virgil. “I was simply stating how Patton was similar to a father figure to you.”

Logan hummed, already back to reading his book. “More like Pat is his Pat-ernal figure.”

There were a few moments of silence after his statement, causing him to look up at the other three. Virgil was smirking, as if holding in laughter, Roman was hiding his mouth with his hand, and Patton…

Well, Patton looked ecstatic. His hands were balled up by his face, which was sporting wide eyes and a grin that seemed to take up most of the lower half of Patton’s face. To be truthful, Logan thought he looked adorable and cute (this thought was promptly shoved into a box in Logan’s mind labeled Not Now Gay Thoughts to be examined later).

Logan blinked, slightly confused, and asked, “What? What did I do?”

Patton squealed, startling the other three. “You made a pun! Intentionally! Or maybe not intentionally, you weren’t really paying attention, but you made a pun, Logan! It was good! And…” Patton trailed off, his smile growing softer around the edges as he calmed a bit. “You called me Pat.”

As Patton spoke, Logan flushed. “I-Well-I-I hadn’t meant to… why is that important? It’s your name.”

Patton shrugged, smile still soft and kind and causing Logan’s insides to turn mush. “I don’t know, I like it.”

Logan gave a quick nod, ducking his head as he determinedly turned back to his book, ignoring the all too knowing look Virgil gave him.

After that, much to Logan’s frustration, it kept happening. Small nicknames slipping out in his conversations with Patton, sometimes not even to him! He called him ‘Pat,’ ‘Mo,’ and even on one odd occasion after a trip into Roman’s room ‘Padre,’ and each time Patton got that same soft yet starry-eyed look! It made Logan flustered, his face red and hot and he couldn’t quite think after it, simply because of how genuine it seemed. Patton seemed truly astounded that Logan would give him simple nicknames, astounded and pleased by what all accounts was small in nature, and Logan didn’t understand it.

He certainly didn’t get like that when the others called him ‘Lo’ or ‘L’ and Patton himself didn’t get like that when Roman or Virgil called him Pat or Padre (and some small part of Logan was pleased that that soft look was reserved for him, but that small part was shoved deep into the Gay Thoughts box and left for dead). Logan didn’t want to delve deep into that train of feelings to understand why Patton reacted the way he did, so he resolved to cut back a bit on the names, simply to see what would happen.

What happened is that things got worse. Well, not worse, more… domestic. Teasing, almost. Without any consent from Logan, his brain and mouth decided to come up with gently teasing nicknames for Patton.

One instance, for example, was when he had entered the living room of the mindscape, intending to relax in his armchair with a book, but instead found Patton sitting on the couch surrounded by paper. He walked over, leaning against the back of the couch with his arms crossed, and said, with a small smile but without any rhyme or reason,

“And what is Mr. Morality up to today?”

Patton jumped, face flushing as he whipped around to look at Logan. His shoulders relaxed a bit, but it took a few moments for Patton’s face to return to a normal color as he seemed to struggle to form a sentence.

Finally, he said, “Logan, hi! You scared me for a second there, bud!”

Logan huffed a laugh, moving around to perch on the arm rest of the couch. “My apologies. What are you doing, though?”

“I’m trying to decide the perfect order for our next family movie night.” When Logan nodded for him to continue, he launched into what sounded more like his current stream of conscious than an actual rant.

“Because I want everyone to be included, right? And Roman always likes to start with Disney, but then it’s hard to change from that into a different genre, and I know you and Virgil can only handle so many one-man Disney shows from Roman during our movie nights, so I thought, ‘Hey, why don’t we start with a mystery movie?’

“Because you like those, and Roman can get into the adventure of it, but then I realized that the suspense might be stressful on Virgil, so maybe a comedy would be better to start it, so we can ease into the more stressful movies like mysteries or action because Virgil will be sleepy after two movies like usual, and he would fall asleep on me or Roman before we got to those. The problem is that comedies aren’t your favorite genre, so you might not want to watch many if we start with that. So then-”

Logan interrupted with a gentle “Patton,” and Patton flushed.

“Sorry, that was a lot.”

Logan shook his head as he slid off the arm rest to sit fully on the couch, book forgotten momentarily. “There is nothing to apologize for. I was simply going to ask what movie you would want to watch first.”

Patton sat in thought for a moment, then said, “A comedy.”

Logan nodded. “Then we can start with a comedy.” At Patton’s uncertain look, he said, “One comedy movie won’t kill me, Pat. And if you choose it, I might even enjoy it.” He picked up his book and began reading, missing the flustered, completely red face Patton sported.

The teasing nicknames even traveled into one of Thomas’s videos, as Virgil and Logan were arguing over some small problem that Thomas was facing. When Virgil suggested bringing in Patton, Logan threw his hands into the air and exclaimed,

“Fine, bring in Mr. Nice Guy, I don’t care.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, only looking up when he heard both Virgil and Thomas laugh. Patton stood across from him in his spot by the windows, and he was trying to fight down a very large grin. His cheeks were slightly flushed.

“You think I’m nice?”

Logan blinked, confused, before his brain caught up and he realized he had let another nickname slip. His face heated, and he was able to stammer out “I-Well, yes, but-I don’t-” before Thomas cut him off, amusement clear as he got them back on the matter at hand.

The teasing nicknames (his brain was yelling pet names at him, but he ignored it) soon gave way for sweeter ones, though Logan was quick to stop those before he truly said them after almost calling Patton ‘Dear’ while filming. Some did slip out, though they were not entirely his fault.

They had been in the kitchen of the mindscape, the four of them playfully arguing after Virgil had teased Roman for putting honey in his tea as opposed to Virgil putting sugar in his own. It had led to Patton asking some questions about the differences, and Logan going on about the merits of honey versus sugar versus artificial sweetener.

“So, some artificial sweetener is better than others?” Patton had asked, leaning closer to Logan as he nodded.

“Yes. There are some that are similar enough to real sugar to the point that there reason to not use real sugar, and some that have no effect on the taste until you add enough for it to not be healthy.”

“Why even use artificial sweetener then?” Patton asked, tilting his head. “If there’s such a discrepancy, why not just use real sugar?”

Logan sighed, readjusting his glasses. “Society, I can only assume. There is enough positive media for artificial sweetener that it is used often, sweethea-” He cut himself off with a cough that escalated into a coughing fit as he choked on his own spit when Logan realized he was about to call Patton ‘sweetheart.’

He felt Patton pat his back gently and he got redder as he noticed the glass of water that had been placed by his elbow. When he got his coughing under control, he nodded in thanks the paternal side, then glared at the smug looks that Roman and Virgil gave him.

Not even two days later, he had been in the kitchen again with Roman, making tea while reading the book that laid open on the counter next to his mug. He could here Patton and Virgil talking, but Roman spoke before he realized their voices had neared the kitchen.

“Hey, Specs, you never did say what you put in your tea during our discussion the other day. What do you usually put in yours?”

Logan glanced up and said, “Honey?” before he noticed that Patton had just walked into the kitchen, an all too satisfied Virgil behind him. Patton’s faced flushed a brilliant shade of red and smiled, and Logan tried not to sputter as he quickly backtracked.

“I, uh, I put honey in my tea, Roman. That is the answer to your question you asked right before Patton entered the kitchen. Now, uh, if you all will excuse me, I will be in my room reading if you need me.”

He glared at Roman and Virgil, but gave Patton, who still stood in the entryway, a soft smile and a nod as he passed. He entered his room, calmly put his book and tea down on his bedside table, sat on his bed, then promptly slammed his face into his pillow and screeched.

After that liberating exercise, Logan rolled over and spread his arms out on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling in thought. Why did calling Patton nicknames (PET NAMES his brain screeched at him) get him flustered? Well, more like why did it get Patton flustered, which made him flustered?

He already knew why it made him flustered, if the Not Now Gay Thoughts box in his brain was any indication. Patton made him… feel things. And they weren’t bad! Yes, sometimes Patton’s jokes and bubbly attitude got on his nerves, but the moral side more often than not made him…happy.

Logan sat up, his brows furrowed. Patton made him happy. And excited, and annoyed, and content, and peeved, and made him feel loved. His face flushed. Patton made him feel loved, yes, but he also made him feel love. Unabashed, content and happy and true love. But did Patton feel the same?

He sighed and ran a slightly shaky hand through his hair. If his reactions to the pet names were any indication, it was a possibility, but Logan didn’t want to risk it. He didn’t want to go out on a whim and ruin a friendship that he cherished, as much as he wanted something more.

Maybe… maybe some experiments were in order? He groaned, putting his face in his hands. That would mean saying more nick names and pet names and having to see the lovely soft smile Patton gave him, and that, Logan knew, would kill him.

No, Logan decided, grabbing his book from his nightstand, he wouldn’t use the pet names in pursuit of an experiment. He would ignore these feelings until he knew exactly what Patton felt for him and go on as if nothing had changed.

Acting as if nothing had changed was harder than it seemed. Now that Logan had realized and somewhat accepted his feelings for Patton, the pet names and nick names were always there, a breath away from escaping his mouth in any given conversation.

Patton had brought him the script for Thomas’s next video earlier in the day, and Logan had almost called him ‘Love,’ but had quickly amended it to “Thank you, love…lovely having it this early in the morning so I can work on it. Thank you.” Before shutting the door to hide his burning face.

Right before lunch, Roman had popped in the check on his progress in proof reading the script, and then decided to stay for the sole purpose, Logan could only assume, of accosting him.

“So,” Roman had started, leaning against the bookshelf by Logan’s desk. “You’ve been calling our dear old Padre some pretty interesting names. Or, at least, you start to then come down with a ‘coughing fit.’” He grinned, crooking his fingers into quotations marks as he finished.

“And what off it?” Logan replied stiffly.

“I want to know why you don’t give me or Virgil any nicknames.”

“Because I don’t like you.” Logan deadpanned, picking up his pen again.

“So, you like Patton?” Roman ducked as the pen was thrown at him, laughing as he rushed out of the room. He paused in the door way, turning back towards Logan with a gentle grin.

“In truth, Logan, I’m rooting for you. You both deserve it.” He gave a two-fingered salute and disappeared down the hallway.

Logan sighed, his face flushed pink, before a small smile crossed his face. At least he had one person’s support. He picked up his pen and got back to work.

A few hours later, he groaned loudly and ran his hand through his hair. There was a factual error near the end of the video, but for the life of him Logan couldn’t find the actual fact anywhere in his resources. He had been going at it for the better part of an hour now, searching and looking for what he was looking for, and he couldn’t find it.

He could hear Patton singing in the common area, and Logan wondered if he might know where the fact could be. He grabbed the script and tucked the pen behind his ear, running his hand through his hair again. His shirt was crumpled, and half untucked from sitting for so long, but he didn’t try to fix it as he held in a yawn.

He tapped a rhythm against the script as he reread the line with the error as he entered the common area, calling, “Patton, sweetheart, could you help me real quick?”

Patton’s singing had stopped when he had entered, and when he replied his voice was carefully calm and slow. “Yes, dear?”

Logan didn’t register what he had said, already going back through the script as he walked over to the couch and sat down.

“There’s a part in the script that’s incorrect, see right here,” he leaned over to Patton, pointing out the error. “But I can’t find the correct information anywhere in my storage. I was wondering if you happened to know where it might be?” He grabbed the pen from behind his ear and tapped it against his chin, missing the fond grin and loving gaze Patton sent him as he sighed.

“Have you checked Thomas’s memory banks, hon? It might be there.” Patton said, reaching forward to smooth a crumple on Logan’s shoulder.

Logan flushed slightly at the touch but nodded in thanks as he wrote a quick reminder on the script to check the memory banks. “I hadn’t yet, no. I’ll check those now. Thank you, dear.”

He stood and squeezed Patton’s shoulder, walking out of the room. Halfway down the hall, the conversation completely caught up with Logan and he froze. His face burned as he realized what he had said, what Patton had said, and he buried his face into the script to hide his blush. In the common area, Patton was doing the same with a pillow.

#I hope y'all enjoyed!#logicality #logan sanders #patton sanders #sanders sides #my writing #gozy writes #I'm kind of nervous to post this?? Because this is the first time I've posted fic on tumblr #also that name was hard to think of

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we-search-health · 4 years

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SPORT MOTIVATION

THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL IN SPORT Little is said about it, either on social networks or in sports halls with friends, yet the mind plays a major role in achieving its physical goals and sports training.

It is a source of envy and energy, it is what will allow us to go to the end of our workouts, even when fatigue and pain are felt. So how do you maintain your motivation for sport?

1) SPORTS MOTIVATION PASSES WITH PLEASURE, MANDATORY

Feeling pleasure while practicing is surely one of the secrets of successful sports progression, and perhaps even in most of the other activities where you would like to progress. In bodybuilding for example, the progression is slow, the body will not build 5 kg of muscle in a week of training, and you always have to exert a lot of effort, go regularly to the gyms during their opening hours , but not only.

If efforts are made in the gym at 30%, they are mostly 70% in the kitchen. But above all, that shouldn't make you give up quickly. What you should rather do is be impatient to start each new training and take out your dumbbells, enjoy going shopping at the market, choosing your fresh products and adopting a healthy lifestyle . You must find in each training a little pleasure that will make you love what you are doing.

Going back to our example, when you feel muscle pain after a good run, think of it as a step forward towards achieving your goals, keep in mind that your muscle will become bigger, even stronger and more aesthetic; this should have the effect of giving you a feeling of satisfaction. In bodybuilding, you can do high intensity sessions, put heavier, cause muscle congestion and you will appreciate the effort.

2) AUTO MOTIVATION FOR SPORT

Among the multiple motivational methods for sport known, scientific studies have proven that self-dialogue is a beneficial technique for athletes, because it acts on muscle performance by optimizing power development, which is a paramount thing. for bodybuilders.

But what does autodialogue look like? Autodialogue is the act of speaking to yourself internally with positive affirmations. Here are some typical sentences: "we continue", "you are doing well", "I feel good" or "get over it". To do this correctly, we use two standard sentences adapted to the start of the effort (for example "I feel good" and two standard sentences adapted to the end of the effort (for example "get over it").

3) MOTIVATE FOR MULTIPLE SPORT

Self-talk is a good thing, however, if you have friends, it's even better! When you train with others, you are more likely to complete your training program than to do it alone. Team training or co-workout builds confidence and leads to better pain tolerance.

Researchers say that in fact training collectively in sports halls or with new infrastructure in cities (crossfit and street workout) can cause a greater surge of endorphins, even if our general performance does not really change. In addition, there is the opportunity to motivate each other and support each other.

This is an emerging trend in the world of sport in 2015, it becomes very easy to find a partner near you to train or to join an existing group via social networks. In addition, French cities are putting more and more budgets into infrastructure, which makes co-workouts easier. Not everyone has a gym membership, with the return of sunny days, you can quickly build a group of motivated athletes around you.

4) SEND OUR NEED FOR RECOGNITION

We all want to have self-respect, but above all recognition and appreciation of others. We are proud to share our exploits and successes, it is a real pleasure to receive compliments from those around us. This is another big trend that shows up, socializing and showing off your athletic performance.

Our coach became our phone and he is there, in our pocket, to remind us that today is the jogging session. He briefs us, makes our program, and it is more and more to him that we refer during training. At the end of the session, there is this satisfaction, of having been to the end of course, but also of showing that we have done it.

It’s Sunday morning, I ran 10km with Runtastic and my friends who see it on their Facebook prawn sons are going to bite their fingers ... or make fun of it madly, whatever. At best it will inspire others to find the courage to do the same, because sports motivation is contagious.

There is therefore more than ever a question in 2015 of exhibition of performances. The same goes for bodybuilding, the fact of having the possibility of showing off your muscular body brings real satisfaction and above all a desire to want to continue, even to go more.

6) KEEP IN MIND YOUR EVOLUTION It is also important to take notes before you start weight training and during the actual period. That is to say, measure his arm circumference, his pecs, his thigh circumference, his weight, etc., and write them in a small notebook or on a sheet of paper stuck to the wall of your room.

It is strongly advised to follow your muscle development, as this can give you more motivation when you see your numbers increase. In addition, keeping this training log will allow you to better appreciate the effectiveness of your weight training programs and to compare them with each other.

Another important factor, nutrition, and on this side too, there is plenty to do in terms of tools, because we enter the all connected children! Connected scales, connected textile connected watches, everything goes. Applications for smartphones are not left behind, calorie counters abound, read our test on the very good MyFitnessPal.

7) HAVE A MODEL It seems that we learn that by imitation: children imitate their parents, the apprentice imitates his master, and "poor disciple than one who does not exceed the master" said Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, a model is the one who helps us to forge ourselves, it is the one who stimulates our will, and the one who helps us to give the best of ourselves.

By definition, a model is a representation deemed "ideal" which we would like to resemble by adopting the same criteria, whether physical or moral. There are many fitness or bodybuilding icons that you can model. Thanks to their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram sites or accounts, they can serve as a “mentor” from a distance.

We can rely on the advice they share there, and be inspired by their photos. Your model can also be a friend, no need to aim for the moon, nor fall into the trap of finding the perfect plastic, because the top of this mountain is unattainable, you will always want more. The only goal is your happiness, be happy, be at peace with your body.

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purplesurveys · 5 years

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640

Your name, please? Robyn. Are you heartbroken right now? No, my heart’s doing okay. If so, how long have you been heartbroken? Do you like the area you live in? I like that it’s a lot quieter than the metro, but we get everything we could also get in the city nonetheless. Right now it’s just a little unsettling since the Taal Volcano erupted and we have ashfall land all over our house, but otherwise where we live is pretty decent and uneventful for the most part. Do you ever get complimented on your eyes? What color are they? It’s not my strongest feature so no, not really. They’re dark brown/almost black.

What facial feature do you like the best on a person? Everyone has their different strong suits, so. Do you like to be called baby? Only by my parents and my girlfriend, because otherwise that would be creepy. What is your favorite flower? I like roses, sunflowers, and peonies. Idk, my answers to this question changes every time so it’s safe to say they’re only my favorites today. When did you last use the restroom? Five minutes ago. I went before starting this. How long is your hair? Pretty long. I haven’t had it cut since late in 2018; if I throw my head slightly back it already reaches my hips. I plan to keep it long until my graduation shoot, so I won’t be going to the salon for at least another month. Do you have braces? I used to. Do you have any freckles? Nope. What is your favorite Internet meme? There was a local meme going around last week and it involved people making hilarious puns out of celebrity names and pairing them with Photoshopped pictures of the celebrities to match the pun – for example, a local celeb named Rico Blanco was styled as Rico Blanket and a photo of him was shopped so that he’s in bed wrapped in a blanket :(((( OK IT DOESN’T SOUND FUNNY RN but all the entries were hilarioussssss I swear. Unfortunately everyone hopped on the meme train and it died in like a week. How many windows does your room have? Two big windows but each have four tiny window panes in them that can be opened. Do you have a rug in your room? What color is it? No. My dog likes peeing on rugs so we don’t like having them laying around. What is the weirdest animal you've ever held? I don’t think any animal is weird... but the coolest ones I’ve ever held are a snake, an eagle, a sea turtle, and a crocodile. The first three I got to meet in Bali, and the crocodile was from Palawan. Do you get extremely hyper when under the influence of sugar? No. I never really believed in that either. What about caffeine? I get pretty talkative, yes. I also talk like I have built-in exclamation points lol. Have you ever tried any drugs? If so, did you regret it? No, I haven’t. Do you have any pregnant friends? None of my friends are, but I can never be sure anymore when it comes to people I know. I always say no to this question, then sooner or later someone I know gives birth kfdgkdjfhd like a classmate from high school just had her third kid and no one even had any idea she was pregnant again. Guess I’ll just keep answering this question with a shrug. Have you seen anyone lately that you knew but didn't remember from where? Yeah, this was me for a few seconds when I arrived in my history class for our first day last Friday and I saw several people that I knew I know, but I had to recollect my thoughts. I eventually remembered who they were, but for a few seconds I was stumped. When was the last time you toilet papered or egged someones house? I’ve never done this, because you don’t do this in the Philippines. Do you usually dress up for Halloween? Some years I would. When ordering food, what do you usually get as a drink? I always get ala carte because I only drink water (I get full quicker if I have any other drink), and service water is always there. Put your favorite color and favorite animal. EX: Silver walrus Pink dog. When drawing something, do you try to be super precise or do you not care? I don’t care for drawing and am aware of just how bad I am at it, so I barely make any effort when I have to. When was the last time you snapped at someone? Sunday morning. My mom was playing a mobile game where the character will only be able to move if you scream, so she was screaming her ass off at 7 AM and I was worried it would wake the neighbors up. Does it bug you when people clap with their palms? HAHAHAHAHA like Nicole Kidman? Oh man. I’ve never actually seen someone clap the way she did in real life, so I don’t know if it would bug me. I know it’d send me laughing, though. Have you hugged anyone today? Just my dog. Classes have been suspended because of the Taal erupting, so I’m not seeing anyone else today. How many languages do you know how to say 'happy birthday' in? Filipino, English, Spanish, French, and Korean, so make that five. What language would you like to learn that you don't already know? Korean, just because I watch so many Korean shows as it is lmao. Are you able to take this language at your school? Yes, but it’s not required in my curriculum so I’ve never taken a Korean language elective. Have you ever been into a bar? Yes, I’ve always preferred bars to clubs so I’ve gone to a lot of them. What ethnicity are you? Broadly, Austronesian. But specifically, I’m Filipino, and even more specifically, Tagalog. How much makeup do you wear? None. I usually wear makeup only for special events, or if I absolutely had to, like for my graduation shoot. If you could fly, what kind of wings would you have? I’d like pink sparkly ones please hahahaha. Write some lyrics from the song stuck in your head right now. Nothing’s playing in my head at the moment. Do you like that song? Would you describe yourself as 'fiesty'? You mean feisty? I can bring out that side of me if I have to, but I’m not naturally it. How corny is High School Musical in your opinion? Pretty fucking corny. But I love the series and it’ll always be an important part of my childhood, so I’m never going to hate it. Have you actually read Twilight? Yes. I don’t know how I started getting into it though; I just remember it became insanely popular in the fourth grade and all of a sudden I wanted the Twilight boxed set for Christmas. What about Harry Potter? Yes, I read most of the books. My sister got into HP when she was aroundddd 10-11ish and my parents also got her a boxed set, so I borrowed each book after she finished them. Out of the two, which is better? Twilight.

Name a member of the Beatles! Ringo Starr. Who was the name of your first crush? My first real crush was Andi. How long ago was that? Eleven years ago. Do you still know that person? She migrated to New Zealand nine years ago, so we got disconnected for a long time and that’s when we got cut off. We’re Facebook friends now, but it’s never been the same. Happy for her, though. Can you handle your emotions very well? Usually I can, but when I’m at my breaking point then I’m at my breaking point. How often do you read books? Once every five years :(( JK uhhhhh I read loads, just not from books, and particularly not anything fictional. Are you the jealous type? I can be when there’s reason to, yep. Are you the type of person who gets jealous of people's pasts? No. And usually people regret their past, so I don’t feel jealous about that. Have you ever gotten an ear infection from riding an airplane? No. My ears were incredibly uncomfortable during my first plane ride though, and it didn’t help that I was already panicking long before the flight started. Anyway, my ears never fully ~popped and I was like 80% deaf for the entire plane ride. When was the last time you witnessed someone throw up? The last time someone threw up, it was me lol. But if we’re gonna be strict about the question, it wassssss last April I think. When was the last time YOU threw up? Sometime around May last year. Do you know anyone who faints at the sight of blood? ME. I’m anyone who faints at the sight of blood. Maybe not literally faint but I do feel super nauseous and weak and dizzy and I’d sometimes gag too. Hmm. I wonder how those girls have their period. Yeah well it’s not a very fun 3-4 days for me, my dude. Don't you just love the Cottonelle puppy? I don’t know what that is. Can you do any 'magic' tricks? No. Do you know how to play Checkers? I used to as a kid, because we used to have lots of board games. But since it was the game we barely ever played, I eventually forgot the rules. What clubs are you in at school? I’m in one of the two journalism organizations, and I also joined the graduation committee this year so that I get to contribute something for our batch :) What do you fear most in this world? Either falling from a very high place or drowning. And injections. What do your siblings fear most in this world? I know my sister is afraid of big crowds, chaotic situations, and small spaces. I don’t know what my brother fears, nor do I really care. What was the last sentence you heard anyone say? I’m listening to a mukbang ASMR right now and the last thing the girl said was her basically describing what she’s about to eat. Is Taylor more of a boy's name or a girl's name? I know we’re not supposed to care about this anymore, but if I really had to think about this question I see it as a boy’s name. But I also see that it works on girls just as nicely, so. What about Dylan? Boy’s name. But it sounds so badass on girls, and I prefer it as a girl’s name. What colors are the eyes of your family members? Dark brown/black. Filipinos all look the same, dude. Are you related to anyone with red hair? No. Do you know anyone with super super green eyes? Other than celebrities, no. What color was your hair when you were little? It has always been black. What color is it now? ^ Were you a chubby baby? I was a pretty chubby young kid especially from the ages of 3-5, but I was an okay-sized baby/toddler. I’d be surprised if I was chubby considering my mom and dad are both slim. What is your favorite mythical creature? Not a fan of those. Do you know anyone with a mullet? No, I don’t think so. Put down a random word here. Watermelon. What is your favorite fruit? Avocado. Now what is your favorite flavor of lollipop? Chocolate. If you combine your 2 above answers and make a perfume would it smell good? Probably not. They’re so different. Do you always feel like you have to be the best? Yes. That’s why I always take it hard when I end up not being that. Are you looking forward to summer? Yes, because I’ll get to rest. No, because it will be my last summer until I die. Are you wearing socks right now or are you barefoot? I’m barefoot. Socks always feels like they’re there, and I don’t like that feeling. What's on your favorite necklace? I’m not regularly wearing any necklace these days. How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Around seven, which is okay for me. Which is better: gingerbread or butterscotch? Caramel or peanut butter? Nutella or chocolate? Do you own an iPad? We own a family iPad, but no one’s used it in a while. I was the one who used it last as a means to work and communicate, back when I broke my phone and didn’t have a new laptop yet in my first year of college. I honestly hope that iPad never dies on us, since there’s a load of great memories there. Do you watch Glee? No and as someone who hates song covers, I think I’m better off not watching it skksjfdhgfg. How hard is it for you to get out of bed in the morning? When that day would require me to do something I dread, like attend a class I hate, it will be a lot harder for me to get up. But generally I’m pretty okay, as long as I set my alarm 30 minutes to an hour before I actually have to get up so that I have enough time to properly wake up. How many books are in the current room you're in? I’m in the dining room so there are zero books around. Have you ever witnessed an aircraft break the sound barrier? No. I also never really knew what that means, but I know I’ve never seen that. Do you keep a sketchpad in your room? I don’t draw, so I never needed one. Is there anything you do right before you go to sleep? Put water on my dog’s bowl – he likes drinking before we doze off. What color is your favorite purse? I only use one and it’s pink. How much money is currently in your wallet? ₱2,000. Do you get an allowance? Yes. How many songs are on your iPod? Don’t use an iPod these days. Do you usually have sweet dreams or nightmares? My dreams are either weird or nightmares. I never get any sweet ones. How has the weather been lately? It’s a little gloomy and cloudy. I don’t know if it’s an effect of the volcano eruption nearby, or if the weather is just like this. When was the last earthquake you felt? It was either August or September.

#survey #surveys

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snicketstrange · 6 years

Text

Daniel Handler duplicates events to confuse you

This is Part 4 of Strange Interpretation by Jean Lúcio From Brazil.

To understand this text, it is necessary to read my first and my second texts in the links below. And my third, too.

The next step in understanding my theory is to understand a Daniel Handler mechanism to confuse the reader. Daniel Handler uses duplicates. I believe most people have realized this in one form or another. The plot involving The Triplets Denouement is a classic example of this. But in addition, Daniel Handler creates events with several similarides, despite some diffences. In my first text I showed an example of this. Lemony Snicket was kidnapped twice. Once when he was a baby, and again when he was a child a few years old. In the letter found in chapter 1 of the UA, Lemony highlights the small differences between the facts reported in the music the Litte Snicket Lad and his own memories. Even the name of Lemony's father is different in music. While Lemony believes he was kidnapped only once when he was a child of a few years, there is a photo that confirms that Lemony was really a baby who fell to the ground and crawled out when he was kidnapped. In addition, Lemony's "mother" was surprised to find a picture of when Lemony was a baby. She soon wondered, "Who took this picture?" The "13 Shocking Secrets" pamphlet confirmed that Lemony was kidnapped when he was a baby, and this makes me believe that Daniel Handler has created two similar events separated by a few years from each other.

I believe that this example found in chapter 1 of the UA was a hint of Daniel Handler. He wanted to show how investigations should be on the chronology of the ASOUE universe. Readers should assume that there may be similar events that occurred at different points in time.

Five of these events stand out in my theory.

The first one is the embarkation of Lemony on the ship Prospero to flee to the outside of the country.

The second of them is the publication of the death of Lemony in the Daily Punctilio.

The third is the existence of two Masked Balls sponsored by the Duchess of Winippeg specifically quoted in ASOUE, one of which happened before Kit's death, and another masked ball that happened years after Kit's death.

The fourth duplicate event is Schism. In fact this event was tripled. There was VFD's Great Schism, which happened when Kit was about 4 years old. This Schism divided VFD on two sides. One side was against all forms of violence, which completely abandoned the use of weapons, and devoted itself to reading and good deeds. Ishmael decided to support this side, and abandoned his weapons completely. Kit, Jacques, Lemony, and Olaf were taken to this pacifist side. The other side of Schism decided to fight fire against fire. This side was very violent, and probably believes that all evil must be fought with violence. Everyone who participated in this Schism has an ankle tattoo. Hence, just before the cancellation of Lemony's marriage, there was Olaf's Schism, when Olaf became a "freelancer", and decided to use his troupe to destroy VFD. But for this Olaf allied with the old enemies of VFD, that was the incendiary organization resulting from the first Schism. Between one Schism and another happened the events described in ATWQ. At these events we realized that Lemony disagreed with the totally peaceful methods on the side he was in VFD. Shortly before finishing his theoretical training in VFD, Lemony made a revolutionary speech. He also sent a letter to Beatrice about a preemptive war. While in Stain'd-by-the-Sea, Lemony said that he believed that it was necessary to use evil to fight evil and eventually killed Hangfire. When Lemony was an adult, Lemony fought using machetes along with Jacques and Kit. In addition, apparently Lemony, Kit, Beatrice and Bertrand participated in a plan to kill Count Olaf's father or parents. Thus, Lemony and his associates believe that from time to time it is necessary to fight fire with fire, but they also believe that only noble and well read people can make a correct judgment and then use violence from time to time to do away with evil. So Lemony created a secret organization within a secret organization. I call this event a Lemony's Schism. It is interesting that Olaf speaks of Shismes in plural when he is imprisoned on the island. Thus, during the ASOUE events there are 4 groups relating to each other. A pacifist side, a fire-fighting side, Olaf and his Troupe, and Lemony and his associates who are officially part of the pacifist side but who are willing to use violence secretly to do away with evil. In a future text I will explain this whole concept better by citing the references, but I believe fans should know which parts I referred to in this paragraph.

The fifith duplicate event is the survival of a person to a fire inside a secret tunnel that connects that person's home to another building. One of these people was Quigley and the other person was Beatrice.

Let's start by talking about what makes me believe that Lemony fled abroad on the Prospero ship twice, and that Lemony's death was published twice in the Daily Punctilio newspaper.

Look this excerpts from UA chapter 1.

Lemony Snicket, Autor of A Séries of Unfortunate events, the purportedly true chronicles of the Baudelaire children, was reported dead today by anonymous and possibly unreliable sources... Mr. Snicket became a fugitive from justice and was rarely seen in public... At least, the Baudelaires' story, and his, appears to be over... A burial maybe scheduled later this year.

Notice in these excerpts that Lemony is called the author of ASOUE. Even the newspaper in question being unreliable, the publishers of this newspaper would never have imagined that Lemony would one day become the author of ASOUE if these news had been written at the time Beatrice canceled Lemony's marriage. In fact, by the time Beatrice canceled her marriage to Lemony, Beatrice had no children.

So when this news was published, at least some of the ASOUE books had already been published in Lemony's universe.

But not all 13 books had been published. The reason why it was explained in the paper that the books of ASOUE would stop being published was not the conclusion of the work by Lemony Snicket, but it was Lemony to have died before completing the work.

Now read below an excerpt from Lemony's personal notes regarding this report.

"I have arrived early at the harbor and still have a few minutes before the Prospero os scheduled to appear so I thought I might jot down a few notes concerning the news of my death, which was alarming but not true. I'm, as of half -past four this afternoon, still alive, and I was most certainly alive the day I sat at Cafe Kafka with my afternoon tea and read my obituary in the newspaper.

The Daily Punctilio has never been a reliable newspaper: not when I worked there as part of an under-cover assignment, not when that terrible reporter to write about the Baudelaire case and not when they advertised a sale on three-piece suits a few days ago, at a store that turned out to sell nothing but Indian rugs... The only thing that turned out to be true about my obituary was the last sentence, and this morning I had the curious experience of attending my own burial. To my astonishment, quite a crowd showed up for the event - mostly people who had believed the EARLIER stories about me IN THE DAILY PUNCTILIO and wanted to be sure that a notorious criminal was indeed dead. That is why I am waiting here at this fogged-in harbor, in order to ... The Prospero has arrived, so I ill stop writing and file these notes with my letter... It make me sad to think that my whole life, from the cradele to the grave, is full of errors, but at least that will not happen to the Baudelaires.”

Please note that these personal notes were written following a report in the Daily Punctilio concerning Lemony's death found in chapter 1 of the UA.

Thus, these personal notes were evidently written after Lemony began publishing his books with the current editor. When Lemony was writing these personal notes, he was waiting for the Prospero to be able to escape to the outside of the country. By this time, all the major events narrated in ASOUE with the Baudelaire siblings had already occurred. Remember, since book 2 of ASOUE, Lemony already knew what had happened to Klaus years later.

However, as shown in ASOUE and Chapter 6 of the UA, Lemony had also fled abroad on the Prospero shortly after the cancellation of his marriage. At that time he fled in disguise as a sailor. At that time Jacques Snicket was still alive,and Jacques who advised Lemony to flee in this way. And also at this time, the Daily Punctilio reported that Lemony Snicket had died. According to Lemony on TGG, the Windershins showed this story to Beatrice, and this led Beatrice to marry Bertrand. It is interesting that in the personal notes of Lemony in chapter 1 of the UA, Lemony wrote that many people came to his "burial" to confirm if this time Lemony had really died. Most of the people who were there had been people who believed the first reports about Lemony, among these reports there was evidently one that related to Lemony's death.

In that time that Lemony passed abroad he did not publish any book of ASOUE. In the next text I will write about it, which is what I call The Great Hiatus Theory. It is grounded in the R letter to Lemony found in chapter 2 of the UA and in the letter to the editor found at the end of TWW. Therefore, I will need to confirm the authenticity of the letter of R, or at least show that even if the letter is a fraud, it still confirms the Theory of the Great Hiatus. Until the next text.

Please comment!

#asoue #asoue chronology #asoue theories #lemony snicket #beatrice is alive #beatrice snicket #beatrice baudelaire #sugar bowl #sunny baudelaire #klaus baudelaire #violet baudelaire #desventuras em série #des #Lemony Snicket the unauthorized autobiography #the beatrice letters

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hpdabbles · 6 years

Text

Lost Traditions

He shouldn’t ask. He should just walk right by. There is no need to be involved in whatever this was. It was best for him if he kept his route undisturbed. Really.

“What are you doing?”

The words left his mouth before he knew it and Sasuke hated himself for it.

Naruto jerks in place utterly surprised by his presence, out in the middle Konoha’s thickest and darkest forest. Well besides the ones used for training but these ones used far less than those ones, which is why Sasuke like walking them. It was the place he went to when he to have some alone time from his family and all the expectations that nearly suffocated him.

The idiot lost his balance, tumbling backward from the stole he crouched down on while the book he had been writing feverishly writing into fell into the barrel of oldy colored green goo.

Sasuke watches it sink into the liquid with a morbid fascination. The pages didn’t either, instead, it almost seems as if the paper was absorbed into the gloo, a loud popping bubble it’s send-off as it meets its end.

“No! My notes! How am I supposed to do it now!?” Naruto cries. He stands abruptly seemingly unaware of the multi-color glitter clinging to his every being nor the fact that he was dressed in what seemed to be a cat onesie “I don’t remember the order Kurama!”

The Uchiha watched as the blond boy stuffed his hands into the goo, completely ignoring his classmate. He shifts about desperately but it was obvious that what he was searching for had sunk further down then his short arms could reach. It was an impressive barrel about a head bigger than both boys- or maybe two for Naruto seeing as the blond was smaller than anyone in their class. Itachi always claims it was a bad diet that lacks far too many vegetables but Sasuke barely believes that because his brother always tried to make Sauske eat his own after stating it.- he did, however, rush forward when the stool starts to dangerously tilt over.

If he fell from that hight he could get hurt, and even though they weren’t exactly friends Sasuke would never make an Uchiha Policeman if he just let him get injured right in front of him like that.

His hand curled around one of the legs in the exact moment Naruto nose-dived forward with a loud cry. The goo splashed everywhere, covering Sasuke with whatever it was the other boy swam about in.

“Mom is going to have my head...” The poor child moan already thinking of just how his very proper and clean mother would react. Not to mention what his father would do when he learns of Sasuke tarnishing the Uchiha name by being seen in public like this.

He let go off the stool to whip the green out of his eyes, some of the heavy stuff falling to the ground a loud wet splash and covering his ankles. Just then Uzumaki popped out of the water, his outfit ruin beyond repair shouting loudly “Victory!”

He waved his little notebook about, and Sasuke’s temple twitch.

“You idiot! What were you thinking, jumping like that! You can’t even read those pages anymore!” He shouts his own frustration being dirty bleeding into his voice. Naruto blinks at him, his wide blue eyes almost taking over his face. Sasuke notes the near void look in them and fights the urge to shiver.

Some of the other children whisper that something is just not right with the blond. Sasuke never had a chance to speak to him- it was like every time they cross paths something or someone got in the way stopping any attempts of conversation- but he had noticed.

For example, Naruto would often be sent outside into the hallway for nothing. Instead of being bothered by it he would skip right outside but not before giving the teacher a kind phrase and a gentle Don’t worry. I know you need something to be angry at. I forgive you.

If anything that seems make the teachers more upset. Other students roll their eyes or shook their head at him, thinking he was being stupid but Sasuke always found it odd how sure Naruto sounded. It wasn’t a kid back talking a teacher it was something more.

When he brought up at the dinner table both his parents had gotten quite then forbid him to repeat that ever again.

“Oh, you’re in my class!” The boy chirp and Sasuke briefly wonder if he was a genjustu prodigy. Because the Uchiha could have sworn he just saw flowers floating about Naruto’s head. “Uchiha Sasuke right? I’m Uzumaki Naruto!”

“I know. You’re the idiot that pulls pranks all the time” he grunts. If anything that seems to make Naruto much happier, beaming at him and causing more flowers to appear.

“Yup that’s me!”

He really shouldn’t sound proud of that. Really Sasuke regrets ever straying off the path from his hike. He should have just gone home

“What are you doing anyway?”

“Namikaze family tradition” Naruto’s answer is part air and part laughter “It’s traditional to do it ever seven years!”

Sasuke’s eyebrow rises. He’s never heard of the Namikaze clan but everyone knows about the deceased Fourth Hokage after all the Kyubbi Festeble always ended with a firework show dedicated to the man. What was Naruto doing celebrating the previous Kage’s traditions?

The blond seemed to realize something before holding one finger up to his lips, smiling a smile that seemed almost predatory “But don’t tell anyone okay Sasuke? It’s a secret”

A kid a head shorter than him, dress as a cat and sitting a pool of goo should not be intimidating but somehow it was. He swallowed down the fear that, appeared at Naruto’s near glowing blue eyes and nods unable to trust his voice.

As sudden as the change of behavior arrive it goes away like wind blowing away smoke, leaving behind a smiling blond once more. “Want to join? I have the steps for the ceremony. And you're already covered in the ceremonial seal containment- I mean juice!”

He was planning on saying no and leaving but something about Naruto made it hard to deny him.

Before he realizes it Sasuke was dragged into a family tradition he had no part being in and spent the rest of the afternoon helping Naruto create symbols across the floor while occasionally meowing.

“Most people don’t know this but the Fourth’s family was really close to the Cat Ninja Clan. They gave the Uchiha passage to the Cat Fort as a sign of friendship some year in the Great Clan Wars.” Naruto explains smile wide as he sits in the middle of the circle they have drawn “ They were one of the first clans to create Summon Contracts in fact. Namikaze were once on par with sealing with clans like the Uzumaki, but while the Uzumaki used their seals for war and battle Namikaze focused more on medical terms and summons. Because of this, they weren’t really that famous seeing as medical ninjutsu didn’t develop until hundreds of years later and the contracts only work if the animal agrees to form a pact. It was actually seen as weak support seals instead of the value advantages it was. So people didn’t bother them when they started to summon animals at random seeing if a contract could be form- often times it was a weak race anyway. It turns into a coming of age tradition at age seven to summon something eventually but no one really knows when or why seven.”

Sasuke stare at him not really sure where this sudden history lesson came from. Naruto didn’t seem to notice, happily patting down the goo all over his body “It’s a tradition to rekindle the connection with those Summon Contracts seals and summon animals that close to a Namikaze’s soul. Even if no pact was formed, it’s still seen as a necessity to call them ever so often. The Fourth was toads maybe with all the exposal he had to them before he made his own coming of age ceremony. But today we learn what ours are!”

“I’m not a Namikaze” Sasuke felt the need to say head spinning by the long-winded sentences of Naruto. Did the guy not a breath between words?

The flap his wrist about with a dismissive smile “You don’t have to be. You just have to have a Namikaze present to help you call an animal through the dimensions. And use the juice to help you access your hidden chakra.”

“We don’t have a Namikaze here.”

Naruto laughs loudly like Sasuke just said a joke. “ Not that anyone is aware of.”

“Then this won’t work”

“It will”

“No it won’t”

“Yeah it will”

He crosses his arms fed up with this weirdo “How are you so sure?”

“The toads told me”

Right. Sasuke turns and leaves ignoring Naruto’s squawking. His parents were right, he should stay as far as possible from the Uzumaki.

The next day in class Naruto gets in trouble for bringing a toad to class. He refuses to be separated with it even though it’s as big as his head and argues that he needed to be with it for a full week as that is what the toad told him to do.

He also refuses to take off the cat onesie stating it was to honor the connects of history. The teacher is not amused by this at all.

Sasuke sinks into his seat when he shouts “Sasuke back me up on this! It’s important Dattebayo!”

#naruto #Time travel #Namikaze traditions #Minato is so proud #Naruto is from the furture and his just going along for the ride #Sasuke's pov #From a fic I never finished #Kakashi has a mini heart attack when he sees the outfit #Minato wear one ever seven years too #naruto uzumaki #Sasuke Uchiha

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swanderful1 · 6 years

Text

Duplicity: Ch 5/?

Notes: So.... it has been a long time since I updated this story. And I could list all of the reasons why, but I won't. Instead I will leave this chapter here and promise to do my best to get on a regular schedule with it again.Writing has always been and will always be a passion of mine, but it's easy for me to let day to day life get in the way of that. I hope you will continue to read and enjoy what I put out in this story (and others in the future) and I am forever grateful for all of the support.The next chapter will not take so long to be posted, that much I can guarantee, so stay tuned and let me know what you think! Thank you :)

A special, special thanks to my beta @resident-of-storybrooke who is a gift and also to @shady-swan-jones for the incredible art and also to @onceuponaprincessworld for keeping me accountable and reminding me to keep writing

Summary: Secrets shroud the homes of the idyllic Willow Lane. Its newest resident, Emma Swan is no exception. In a place where perception is everything, the facade begins to crack. And Emma finds herself staring down the deep, dark secrets that the neighborhood was built on and that nothing is as it seems. Not even the blue eyed gardener.

Read the whole thing on AO3 and ffnet

For as long as Killian could remember he loved being on the water. It didn’t matter if he was in a canoe, a speedboat, or just swimming around he was at ease. He and Liam used to spend as many weekends as they could, off fishing in their favorite spot. A lake not far from Storybrooke that they had gone to as children. It was the only example of a vacation they had ever known. Their family never had much, so anywhere that required planes or trains was out of the question.

The day he had told Emma about the cabin, and how it had been the inspiration for what his current home looked like, was the first time he had ever said that sentence out loud. Making it all the more real.

All of that changed seven years ago. His comfort on the water completely disintegrated when Killian lost his brother. Liam’s death altered the entire course of his life and even now, standing near the small creek behind his house, he felt the crippling anxiety of being near water. Which was why it was surprising to him that he had even uttered the words aloud to her. To Emma.

It was Saturday morning, and the day was crisp. Overcast. Chilly. The warm April weather had shifted quickly, as it sometimes did in the northeast. So today he wore Liam’s old Storybrooke High sweatshirt. It was ripped and threadbare but it kept Killian warm. And his family didn’t exactly have heirlooms to pass down, so he kept their memory alive in little ways that he could.

An old tree sat, tall and gangly near the creek where his old fishing boat rested in the grass.

Old was an understatement, as the small boat looked as if it hadn’t been used in thirty years. Grass growing around it, like an ornate lawn sculpture that was intentionally planted there to make it look rustic.

From the creek he looked up at his modest home and compared it to the cottage he had once loved so much. The pitched roof. The simple stonework that made up the walls. The modest back porch with two rocking chairs where he used to sit every morning. The green shutters, where the paint was now peeling. He would have to redo those eventually. But it hardly seemed worth it. He had no neighbors and never any guests.

It was interesting to him how he spent his days making the outside of other people’s homes so lovely while his appeared to be falling into disrepair.

What he should do was sell the house. Between losing Liam and Milah, there was too much history. Too many ghosts lingering in the floorboards. And all of it was painful. At least the most recent ones were. It was why he hid in the apartment above Robin’s bar for so long, and why he went back there on weekends when he needed to not feel so alone. The one room, impersonal space with a stranger was about all he could bear.

A gentle breeze rustled the trees around him. His house was surrounded by foliage that had been there for years. And at one point he found it to be peaceful on a Saturday morning like this, when there was a chilly breeze bringing it all alive. But today all he felt was morose.

His phone rang, bringing his attention away from his general bad mood. The caller ID told him it was Will… and that the time was already almost 9 am. Bloody hell. He was going to be late.

“Top of the morning,” Will said on the other end. “Can I expect to see you at any point today or should I tell your friend you aren’t coming?”

“My friend.. What… who?” Killian was startled by the question. His friend couldn’t possibly mean….

“Mrs. Gold.”

Her last name is Swan, Killian thought to himself, but chose not to correct Will over the phone. The last thing he wanted to hear was the relentless teasing about Emma Swan. Who he found himself thinking of a lot, especially when he shouldn’t be.

“The pallet of bricks arrived at her house this morning and are good to be laid for next week, but she hates them…” said Will. “I told her you had said her husband already gave specific instructions about the brickwork…”

As much as Killian normally would have rolled his eyes and made some comment about the unimportance of the tile pathways, he softened a bit. He remembered the last time he had seen Emma, and how unsettled she looked. Like a deer in the headlights, in her own home.

That had been on Monday, and Killian hadn’t been over there since. Now that it was Saturday, he figured he had avoided checking in at the Gold project for as long as he could. It was hard, he felt torn between wanting to know everything about Emma Swan and wanting to keep a safe distance.

“Tell her I’ll be right over,” Killian said quickly hanging up the phone. He took one more look around his own backyard. There were no gazebos or hand laid brick. There were no intricately plotted flowerbeds. No fountains. But when he and Liam had bought the place all of those years ago, it had been the proudest day of his life.

So perhaps all of the memories here were not bad, perhaps he just had to work a bit harder to uncover the good ones.

The plumbing for the sprinkler system had gone in the front and the backyards during the week. When Killian’s truck pulled up to the curb, he could see his workers putting the wooden fence in place. It would all be fine if he avoided the place, he knew that. Still though he wanted to be there.

“There he is,” Will said removing his gloves and walking over to Killian. He had been making his way around back when Will had caught sight of him. “Thought I would have to take over the business if you didn’t start showing up here.”

“It’s a busy time of year, you know that.”

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Will’s arm pointed to the pallets of bricks that had been ordered weeks ago to be used in the yard. “She’s not pleased.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Killian said looking toward the house. Emma wasn’t outside so he would have to go to the door. He would use the back, safer from prying eyes that way. He caught enough shit for following her in on Monday, he didn’t need to amplify it.

The back porch was not as empty as he had last seen it. Gone were the empty moving boxes that had scattered the space that was now filled with furniture. A bench with colorful pillows and a small table with a candle on it. A yoga mat sat in the far corner with a dog eared book and a bottle of water. All of which he assumed belonged to Emma. He could oddly picture her out here, even amongst the chaos surrounding her yard.

She just seemed like one of those people who was immune to the insanity, but allowed it in her life anyway.

“Killian… hi,” Emma said when she answered the door. Her expression was surprisingly readable to him, if he didn’t know any better he would say she was happy. It was a stark contrast to the last time he had seen her. “I’m sorry to make you drive all the way out here, I know you’re probably busy…”

“Don’t worry, love, it’s my job.”

Her face fell a bit but not for long. In an instant she was back on, pleasant even and guiding him into the kitchen. Her long hair was tied in a braid that fell down her back, and she was dressed in jeans with a sweater in a lovely shade of pale pink. Everything about her reminded him of a doll, so poised and careful.

This time he felt a bit better about being inside her house. He wasn’t covered in filth from work, and he didn’t have on dirty work boots. Killian was still in his jeans and ragged sweatshirt. But it also meant he forgot to put on his gloves before coming to talk to her. He had left his truck so quickly he didn’t cover his prosthetic hand.

“I saw the bricks and they’re terrible…” she started, heading over to the circular dining table in the kitchen nook. The surface was scattered with her laptop and some papers and home magazines. Clearly she had done some research before arguing the yard’s design. “I found some other examples that I like better….”

“I see that,” he laughed. For someone who didn’t care too much about living here, she certainly managed to keep a pristine home and gather a lot of ideas. He tried to tuck his hand in his pocket to hide it from her view. In the gloves or in dim lighting he could normally get away with the fake hand, but he had forgotten to put on the gloves and it was broad daylight… so it was pretty obvious.

“I know Neal gave you instructions already but do you think we could use those bricks in the front and maybe this limestone in the back?” She pointed to an image of a lush backyard garden with a limestone path in grass leading to a bird bath. Her hands were so soft looking, her painted fingers gliding across the glossy page as her bracelets dangled.

Killian was uneasy. It had been her husband who ordered them in the first place, and if the Gold’s were as powerful as Killian suspected they were, he didn’t want to go against them. Even in such a seemingly small way.

“If it makes you feel any better, all of the homes on this street used those bricks for their pathways…” Killian chimed in. He remembered putting them in across the street at the Mills’ house and then at the Nolan’s and even at Ruby’s grandmother’s house. It was all part of the uniform structure that was the cul de sac.

Emma looked up at him, her green eyes were lighter today. Not quite so concerned as the last time he had seen her. From that alone he was relieved. It was interesting though that, even in her most relaxed state, she appeared caged. Like there was so much more she wished she could say and do.

“I can talk to him if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said finally. Behind her was the bay windows that looked out toward the backyard where he saw the fence being put up. Normally he would just allow the wife to start the fight, to bring up her dissatisfaction with the landscaping design choices the husband made, but the look in her eyes made him want to be the one to take that hit. “He can be tough to deal with.”

“It’s all right, I will make some suggestions,” Killian offered with a soft smile. Again, interpreting that she wanted to say more about her husband but biting back on it. “I may not be able to get him to agree on the front yard but perhaps the backyard could be negotiable.”

Emma smiled back at him. One that reached her eyes.

“Which tiles would you like me to suggest?” he asked, pointing to the magazines on the table. Not even realizing that he had used his prosthetic hand to do so. He tried to pull it away before she noticed but her head had frozen. And not on the clutter on the table. “I... um…”

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t realize…” she stumbled over her words, an adorable shade of pink highlighting her cheeks. “I would have never noticed, you usually wear the gloves.”

“Boating accident… when I was seven years old,” he said, catching her looking. He remained calm though, mostly because she wasn’t riddled with disgust or judgement. Emma’s face was simply kind in expression.

“I didn’t mean to stare…”

“It’s quite alright, love.” He took a step toward her, now they were only a few inches apart, as his prosthetic hand extended in her direction. She took it, with much trepidation, and other than the day he met her when they shook hands, this was the only other time they had touched.

Her fingers slowly traced the palm, the soft manicured tips dragging along the prosthetic. He felt himself wishing it was his real hand she was touching, but then again wouldn’t that be incredibly inappropriate?

“It doesn’t prevent me from doing anything.”

Emma considered him, her eyes searching his face. He turned away, knowing that if someone were to walk in right now it would be a horrible scene.

At the same moment, she seemed to also realize that the two of them had crossed a line. It was unspoken, not entirely obvious, but nevertheless the air in the room had shifted.

“So,” Killian cleared his throat, stepping slightly away from Emma. “The tiles. I will have a quote for you by the end of the day.”

“Perfect,” she replied. Her posture stiffened and she busied her hands with sorting the magazines on the table. Out of the corner of his eye Killian could see the fencework coming along, and while he could have let Emma Swan trace his palm all day he had no business doing that. “I’ll um, I’ll be around so just let me know.”

“Certainly.” His smile was terse and he knew it, forced. But hers was the same.

And as he headed back into the yard to continue doing his job, he wondered if Emma Swan was thinking the same thing that he was.

That night, after spending the rest of the day working in the Emerald Forest, Killian and Will plopped their arses down on two barstools for a well earned round of drinks at The Rose and the Thorn.

“What’ll it be, boys?” Robin joked as he poured their usual two fingers of rum into tumblers and slid them down the wooden bar.

Killian graciously took the glass and tilted it so the liquid coated his throat. It went down smooth, it usually did on Saturdays when he found himself planted on a barstool washing away the week. He twirled the empty glass in his hand, focusing on the surface marks from frequent use.

“Another?” Robin asked, pulling Killian’s attention away.

He thought on it, hesitating a little too long before setting the glass down for his friend to finish it.

“Ah, there he is, I hoped you weren’t getting lazy,” said Will nudging Killian on the shoulder. They both went through another round and then rose from the barstools to claim the dartboard before it got busy. The night was young, it had just gotten dark outside, which meant soon enough people would start pouring in.

“Don’t look now but someone’s already staring at you,” said Will, taking the darts from the pegs and handing them to Killian. Who looked in the direction Will was. “Hey, I told you not to look.”

“I’ve never been a great listener.”

Killian gave Will a sardonic look. This was all part of their normal banter for a Saturday night. It was the familiarity of it that Killian appreciated, because it wasn’t like he had a family with traditions or dinners. His friends were his family now.

“One of these days I want to trade faces with you… just to see what it’s like.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Killian muttered while throwing the first dart, it landed just below the center.

“Oh don’t pretend.” Will threw the next dart. “You draw a crowd everywhere.”

“It’s just the dim lighting.”

“Normally you would have been over there in a heartbeat.”

Killian looked to the small table of young women, specifically the one who had also been looking at him. She was pretty, brunette, dark eyes, a knowing smile on her face. She was his type and someone that usually caught his eye, Will was right. He politely nodded and went back to his dart throwing. Robin brought them over another round and stayed for a drink of his own before the bar got busy.

They spent so much time at this bar because Robin owned it, and Ruby worked there also. They could all spend time together, but on nights like tonight when the place was packed to the gills it was hard to have any sort of quality time.

The air was thick, with all of the bodies packed in the tight space. Will had wandered off to talk to some girl who often spent her weekends in the bar. Which left Killian alone with his drink, he toyed with his phone and let his mind drift to when he used to spend his Saturday nights in the company of a woman he actually cared for.

The crowd drowned out many other sounds but it couldn’t quiet the voice in his head. The one that told him to stop using these distractions as a means to avoid opening back up again. It was so much easier to take the easy way out.

His eyes locked with a woman a few feet from him. Not the same from before, she was different. Her hair was long, it hung in curls down her back and it was a light blonde. He had to look twice, to make sure it wasn’t Emma. It wasn’t, the woman was beautiful certainly but she wasn’t a match. Not even close.

Killian downed the rest of his drink and made his way over to the blonde. Her hair was a few shades darker and her skin wasn’t the same smooth, fair complexion. Her eyes weren’t a striking shade of green. But if he was honest with himself, truly honest, he knew why he allowed himself to be drawn to her.

Sunday morning bright and early, Emma was throwing in a few loads of laundry. The basement of the new house was unfinished, for now, but that was where the washer and dryer were. So she spent an awful lot of time in the dark, cinder block space throwing in load after load of clothes.

The boxes that had been on the back porch were now down here, stacked neatly in a corner. Emma had decided to assemble the deck furniture on her own one night when Neal neglected to call before coming home.

That was the thing with him, he would make grandiose promises to her about the future, and then they would fall by the wayside as quickly as they had been dreamt up.

She had sorted out all of the delicate clothes, wanting to do some of those to save money on dry cleaning when she stumbled upon a pair of Neal’s pants with his house keys in the pocket. Emma rolled her eyes, if she had a dollar for every time she found something he had forgotten to take out she could have bought all of Storybrooke ten times over.

It was a small inconvenience for her, to have to check Neal’s pockets, but these days the tiny things were adding up to mean more and more.

Like the surprise party Neal was apparently planning in their backyard. The one that had kept Emma on edge for the past week. It was probably why she had snapped so quickly when the bricks had arrived. The ones Neal had picked without talking to her.

Was it odd that her first instinct had been to call Killian and not Neal? Well, that wasn’t something she was willing to dive into.

After doing the laundry, and thinking far too much about things she couldn’t control, Emma began to get dressed in the master bathroom.

And a car horn began honking. She was just about finished, securing her watch on her wrist, putting small gold studs in her ears, zipping the knee high brown boots she wore over her jeans.

Mary Margaret had asked Emma if she had any interest in going to the Storybrooke farmers market. And it seemed like just as good of an excuse as any to get out of her house. To get out of her own head.

“I got us coffee for the ride, it takes a bit to get into town,” Mary Margaret said when Emma climbed into her car. The steaming to-go mugs left an aroma in the car of coffee that was calming. The morning was chilly, and it felt cosy in the car. She wasn’t sure what it was about this woman, but everything about her felt like home.

“Thank you,” Emma said taking a cup and sipping it. “How far away is town?”

“Well, on a good day… twenty minutes but today probably closer to forty. There’s a lot of construction.”

There was a time when Emma lived within walking distance of a farmers market. That was a trade off of living in the wide open suburbs where she had to get into a car anytime she needed a gallon of milk.

The highway was sectioned off by large orange cones from all of the road work that was happening. Emma noticed a few other incomplete neighborhoods that she remembered Neal pointing out to her as the work of his father. Well… and now Neal she supposed.

The trees were few and far between as the housing developments took over and the landscape became more manicured. Row after row of box houses lined up ready for families to move in. That’s where Neal had been all weekend, working on some plumbing issue in one of the developments. She fixed her eyes elsewhere, on anything. An old gum wrapper on the floor, an air freshener hanging on the mirror, the name of the radio station on the screen.

Neal hadn’t been around since the brick incident. So he had no idea she was angry, no idea she felt like he micromanaged her even when he wasn’t there. But for her, it wasn’t so much the appearance of the bricks, it was more so that they were exactly the same as everyone else’s.

Emma didn’t consider herself to be particularly high maintenance, but one thing she didn’t like was falling in line with everyone else. Her whole life had been a rebellious streak where she continuously ran the other way from what was expected of her.

It was how she had run away from several group homes even though it would have been easier to just stay there quiet. It was how she had met Neal. In a bar, in a shady neighborhood, that took fake ID’s and let her in without so much as a second glance at 17. It was how she had run from him the second she found out he would be working for his father. It was how she had done it again when he told her they would have to move to Storybrooke.

The closer they got to the central city of Storybrooke, the more Emma felt intrigued. Where she was living was such a stiff, suburban complex but the town at the center was much different. The symmetrical neighborhoods and manicured shrubs turned to old townhouses and apartment buildings. Little sidewalks lined with unique, quirky structures where no two looked the same.

Young people flooded the streets, which were narrow and crowded. There were couples walking dogs, groups of friends sharing coffee on stoops, and cars parked all along the sides.

“I’m so terrible at parallel parking, that’s the one issue with coming to this,” Mary Margaret mumbled as she cut the wheel and backed the car into a narrow spot along the street. “They block off half of this street.”

Emma looked ahead at the wooden structures blocking off the roadway. Just beyond that she could see the farmer’s market bustling with people. The tops of white tents were visible and Emma could smell the fresh scent of donuts and sweets as she climbed out of the car.

“This is quite the operation isn’t it?” Emma said, taking in all of the activity. It was probably the most at home she had felt since moving here. She was a city person, always had been, and while it wasn’t Boston she was stepping into, it was a place that was different.

“I think you’ll like it here, there’s all kind of fun things to see,” Mary Margaret said, her steps on the cracked sidewalk falling in pace with Emma’s. “Thanks for coming along.”

Emma looked over at Mary Margaret. Her face and smile were soft, she wore a pretty blue sweater. Even though they hadn’t known each other for that long, she was one of the few people she had warmed to not just in Storybrooke but in years.

“Are you kidding? I love this kind of stuff.”

“You do?” Mary Margaret seemed surprised at Emma’s admission. “I only mean that you seem like you aren’t interested in the town much…”

She looked over at the dark-haired woman again, trying to gauge what she was getting at. Her soft face had gone concerned, her brows furrowing in on one another. Emma made note of how tense she herself had gone. Instead of holding onto that resistance, she let it go. Mary Margaret wasn’t being nasty, she was a nice person just scared to breach the guardedness.

It was then that Emma realized how good she had gotten at reading people.

They made their way through the crowd. Mostly young people perusing the various stands. Between the food options and the boutique tents there was a lot to see. Mary Margaret led them through the maze of people toward a restaurant on the corner. The front windows took up the face of the building and inside Emma could see people eating breakfast at the checkered cloth tables.

“I figured we could stop by Granny’s and grab Ruby.” Mary Margaret held the door for her to the sound of a ringing bell above. “She works Sunday mornings so she should be good to leave soon.”

“There you two are I was beginning to waste away here,” Ruby said from behind the breakfast bar. The brunette was tall, and clearly garnered a male following, the men at the bar stools eating the breakfasts right where she was polishing silverware. Her long legs were in a pair of tight red shorts and her hair was in two pigtails. She and Mary Margaret were night and day in comparison.

“Sorry, it took a while to get into town,” Mary Margaret took a seat on one of the swivel stools on the end, Emma followed. “You know how it is Sunday’s.”

“That’s why I get here at 6 am,” the brunette smirked as she polished off the last fork and walked over to take her apron off. Emma could practically hear the men at the counter sigh.

“Emma, this is Ruby’s grandma’s place, it’s a bit of an institution…”

“Yeah, years ago when the city started the revamp, some developer offered her big money for this place… to turn it into apartments. And she wouldn’t do it.”

Emma looked around. The place was certainly charming. It wasn’t massive, the whole space was cozy. Filled with booths and a jukebox, metal chairs and checkered floors. It was the quintessential small town diner, in a city that had exploded around it.

The swinging doors the led to the area behind the breakfast bar swung open, and much to Emma’s surprise, out walked Killian Jones. Looking more worse for wear than she had ever seen him.

“Morning sunshine,” Ruby said when she noticed him. He had hardly looked up. His black hair a raggedy mess, his eyes fixated on the cup of coffee he was pouring, his feet dragging on the floor. When he finally looked up his eyes landed directly on Emma and she felt her whole body spike in response.

“Rough night?” she said quickly, not knowing what else to say when his gaze was still aimed at her. He was in the outfit she had seen him in yesterday at her house. And now here he was on a Sunday morning, fresh off a one night stand. But why was that any of her business?

“I’ve had better,” he said back.

Emma realized they had company. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Ruby’s gaze, who watched on pensively. She wasn’t sure what pull she felt toward him or why, but it was something. Each time she saw Killian Jones, or thought of him for that matter, that tether got the tiniest bit stronger.

And she caught herself thinking of him more often than she would admit out loud.

“Last I saw you were twelve drinks deep buying another round for a bachelorette party,” Ruby chimed in thankfully, bringing the other two people into the conversation.

Killian’s right hand reached up and scratched behind his ear, a soft hint of red hitting his cheeks. Emma tried to picture him in a bar, buying drinks for women, maybe going home with one of them. And then she stopped there. For whatever reason, her imagination couldn’t go beyond that.

“The bar next door is owned by an old friend of ours,” Mary Margaret leaned into Emma’s ear and said.

“You can get there through those swinging doors,” Ruby pointed. Now she was assembling some sort of sandwich on a plate for Killian. It was an intimate act, prepping someone’s favorite food when they were worse for wear without them even asking. “I’m gonna grab my bag then I’ll be ready to go. Killian, eat something so you don’t look like a zombie all day.”

Ruby handed him the sandwich and almost immediately he leaned over the counter to dig in. His hands wrapped around the buttered biscuit on either side.

“I’m gonna run to the ladies room I’ll be right back,” said Mary Margaret before hurrying off.

Then it was just the two of them.

“I apologize for you having to see me in this state, love,” he said before taking another bite. His face almost immediately perked up at the taste of the greasy sandwich, a feeling Emma knew well. After a late night, a breakfast sandwich was all she ever needed. And back in the day it had been all she could afford.

“It’s ok, I recognize that face…” She used to look like that on Sunday mornings. Before becoming a housewife, she thought but chose not to add.

“Ah, well, I must have missed you out last night.” He smirked.

“Unless you were in my living room watching Lifetime movies, I don’t think we would have crossed paths.”

“Sounds far lovelier than anything I partook in,” he shook his head. Emma smiled, he was oddly an easy person for her to talk to.

“In fairness, this is your side of town, not mine. You were just doing what you do.” Emma didn’t necessarily want to know what it was that he did, and with whom but she tried to remain nonchalant as she toyed with the sleeves of her sweater that peeked out of her jacket. “Unless you don’t do this every weekend….”

He stopped chewing and looked her way, his facial hair grown longer than usual, his eyes foggy from lack of sleep.

“I try not to,” he offered. “Every other Sunday I don’t schedule myself any work.”

“Interesting…” Emma studied him, it felt like he wanted to say more. “That must be hard to do though, especially during this time of year.”

A beat went by, and Emma thought that would be the end of it. It certainly seemed like a nice end point for a conversation between her and her gardener.

“Every other Sunday I go to see my mum.”

“Oh.” It surprised even Emma that he said it. Mostly because he had told her he had lost his parents. “Does she live far away….?”

“It’s about a two hour drive from here.” He stood up, his sandwich gone and the coffee drained from the cup. “I can’t go that often…. She’s in… It’s complicated.”

“I get complicated…” Just as Emma was about to tell him he didn’t have to get into it if he didn’t want, their conversation was cut off by Ruby and Mary Margaret returning to the counter.

“Alright, let’s get me out of here, I’ve already worked a full shift and I need some food truck nachos,” Ruby said.

“Perfect,” Emma replied, standing up from the stool a bit too quickly. It made her nervous, that he felt so comfortable talking to her. Because she was starting to feel it toward him, and she had spent most of her life repressing that sort of thing.

“Killian seems to be doing a bit better these days,” Mary Margaret said a little later when the three of them were walking down a city block with a shared order of pulled pork nachos.

“He has his good days and bad days,” Ruby replied, eating a glob of sour cream off of her finger. “Sunday’s are always tough though, cause he goes to see his mom.”

“It must be brutal.”

“Is she sick or something?” Emma asked. She had never had parents, so she had no idea what it would be like to make a decent drive once a week to visit family. “He was saying it’s hard to visit her…”

“He talked about her with you?” Both Ruby and Mary Margaret stopped walking, their eyes locked on Emma who was not expecting that reaction.

She treaded lightly, nervous to say the wrong thing.

“Just a little bit, before we left the diner when you two weren’t there…”

“Oh,” Ruby said, falling into step again. “He just doesn’t bring her up much.”

Emma wasn’t sure why this felt like such a victory for her. Maybe it was because she enjoyed talking to him, maybe it was something beyond that. Either way she was starting to feel a comfort with Killian Jones that was unlike other dynamics in her life.

“I didn’t know his mother was alive, he had said before that his brother raised him. So I assumed his parents were both-”

“He talked to you about Liam?” The women stopped yet again to look at Emma like she had a third eye.

“Briefly.” Emma went on the defense. Her guard up even though Ruby and Mary Margaret weren’t threatening in any way. But the last thing she needed was her new friends worrying. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“His mom is in prison. For killing his father.”

Now Emma was the one staring wide eyed. His mother had killed his father?

“Ruby…” Mary Margaret interrupted.

“What? It’s public knowledge, if she wanted to look it up she could.” Ruby picked up another chip and ate it. “Besides, it seems he’s more open with her than normal.”

This thought made Emma squirm. Not because she didn’t like being around Killian, she did, but perhaps a little too much. Certainly too much for someone who was for all intents and purposes ‘married’ to someone else.

Later that night, as Emma returned to her new home on Willow Lane, she breezed past Neal’s car parked in the driveway and headed inside where she could already hear him on the phone with someone in his home office. She had stayed out with Ruby and Mary Margaret all day, enjoying the farmer’s market and then eating dinner at Granny’s after. Emma had to admit, it was probably the best grilled cheese she had ever tried.

The entire house smelled like fast food, and Emma crinkled her nose, not that she was opposed to it. Her career as a personal trainer didn’t prohibit her from being human and craving a greasy burger. But it was the mood that accompanied the whole thing. And all of the good feelings that had come as a distraction during the day, were gone.

When Neal caught sight of her from the office, she could see the greasy bag on the edge of the desk. Their eyes locked and his were only filled with contempt. Like he couldn’t fathom the idea of her not being there to cook him.

Ice shot through Emma’s veins at his stare. And then just as quickly as it had happened, it was gone. All of his focus went back to his work. As per usual.

Neal could run late, miss meals, birthdays, take calls at parties, and Emma would say nothing. But the second she fell out of step, he turned nasty.

It had been a while since she had seen it, and standing in the kitchen right now watching through the french doors as he ignored her, she was on her best behavior all the time without realizing it.

“I’m going to bed,” she said coldly, careful to make her steps extra heavy as she made her way upstairs to the bedroom. The sound of the office doors closing made her jump but she kept walking. Not that she would be sleeping anywhere near him tonight. Emma quickly changed and crawled into bed in the guest room.

Emma wondered what it would be like to curl into bed next to a warm body. It was something she felt herself wanting more these days than she cared to admit. Nowadays the only warmth she got was from her pillows.

She rolled over onto her side so she could see out the window. The sky was foggy, so she couldn’t see the stars. Emma reached her hand down between the mattress and the boxspring. For what she had found in Neal’s pants pocket earlier that day when she was doing laundry. The tiny plastic baggie that had been buried underneath his forgotten house keys. It was only a matter of time before he noticed it was gone.

The white powder glistened in the moonlight, the baggie resting between Emma’s fingers. Cocaine. It was his. It had to be. Why else would it have been in his pants pocket that he thought was going to the dry cleaner’s?

She had done her best to forget about it, all day but that was easier said than done. Emma had no idea what to do with it. For now, she would slip it back between the mattresses, rest her head on the down pillow. And for once, allow herself a few minutes to think that somewhere out there, a better life awaited her.

#cs ff #cs au #captain swan fanfiction #cs fic #cs ff au #captain swan #emma swan #killian jones

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thecitysorrowbuilt · 6 years

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Cry

"Since the passage of the Differently Powered Americans Act in 1989, relations between the newly designated 'perdos' and powertypicals have improved markedly. Where previously perdos were viewed with disdain and fear by the majority of the populace, now both groups live side-by-side, unafraid. By ensuring equal treatment under the law and instituting government oversight over powered vigilante activity, the DPAA stands up today as a shining example of compromise between two groups who have historically faced difficulty seeing eye-to-eye."

Jeremy chewed the inside of his cheek and shot a glance around the room. Only Cheyenne seemed to be even interested in the documentary, that is assuming it was notes she was writing down and not just random scribbling.The rest of the team by turns stared at the clock, considered the inside of their eyelids or examined their fingernails. Generally speaking, Human-Perdo relations was not that bad of a course, at least it was easy, but these documentaries always seemed to rub Jeremy just a little bit the wrong way. It was amazing how the pleasant voiced man narrating could be so quick to forgive decades and decades of mistreatment, glossing over it as if it was some far off dark age and not merely a few generations removed. Jeremy steepled his fingers and popped his knuckles, earning a shush from Greenstar at the back of the room. He hadn't asked to be roped into all this. Half the time he wished his parents had just followed through on their threat of shipping him off to a military school for kids with powers. The rest of the time he shivered and wondered if it was true the things he'd heard about those schools, how kids got listed as run aways so they could be turned into human weapons and used against the Soviets. Being a member of the Youth Vanguard wasn't terrible really, when compared to other options. It just wasn't fair that while some teens got lucky and were assigned to good teams, with good leadership, Jeremy had somehow wound up on one of the 'problem' units. These were kids that either had shit powers, shit families, or shit attitudes. He told himself that he was here because of the latter, although at night the thought popped into his head that maybe it was his ability after all. He'd push these thoughts back and back, but they always lingered on waiting for the right moment to attack. He told himself that what sent him here was his conduct record, and that it was nothing a little hard work and positivity couldn't fix. Not that these were things that came easily to him. He looked over at Cheyenne hoping to meet her eyes. She didn't even notice, remaining enrapt in the exciting tale of how normals in their profound generosity had given up on exterminating every single perdo. Jeremy looked back down, his hands callused and his nails bitten low. 'Maybe this will be good for me,' he whispered to himself. Mercifully the documentary ended soon, and everyone was allowed to stand and stretch. Jeremy stifled a yawn as he rolled his neck, mentally patting himself on the back for good behavior. Greenstar and Catcher, their assigned mentors, came to the front of the classroom and collected the question sheets they had passed out earlier. Catcher spoke first. "Alright, now that that's out of the way. Was there anything in that video anyone found particularly surprising?" Completely unsurprisingly, Cheyenne's hand was the only one to go up. "Ms. Hererra." "I had read before about the riots in 1987, but I had no idea it was so violent! So many people died just because they were born different." Her voice started off excited, but trailed off. Catcher nodded slowly in agreement while Greenstar crossed his arms. "Anyone else?" In comparison to Catcher's even tone, Greenstar's voice always seemed harsh to Jeremy's ears. "Mr. Harris?" Jeremy blinked his eyes automatically at hearing his surname, then looked down to his desk and back up. "Well, uh, I thought that it was interesting that perdo became the preferred word when the DPAA got passed, but now it's such a controversy if we should keep it or not." Everyone sat in silence for a second. From the corner of his eye, Jeremy saw Liam flash him a thumbs up and a goofy grin. Before one of the adults could respond, his hand went up too. Hesitantly, Catcher called him. "Mr. Bernard.." "I learned," Liam began excitedly, "that Jeremy actually can stay awake during an in-class movie." Silence persisted only for a second before the class set to giggling. Jeremy's face burned and he pursed his lips. Catcher clapped his hands loudly and everyone sat at attention. "Hilarious. Don't do it again, Bernard. Class is dismissed, but as I'm sure you're all aware we have combat training at 4:30. Go to your dorm, change, get ready, come back." As soon as that sentence ended, Jeremy felt himself jamming all his papers into his bookbag, zipping it in one motion and rushing toward the door. He tried to beat the rush, but his desk sat at the far edge of the classroom, so he was unable to make it far down the hall before encountering conversation. "That was pretty funny, right?" Liam said to him, grabbing his shoulder as he walked up behind him. Jeremy rolled his eyes. Connie stepped beside them and smirked. "Don't do it again Mr. Bernard", she quoted, punching him lightly in the stomach. Even still Liam gasped and bent with the blow, releasing Jeremy. "I just don't see why Greenstar has to always call me out. As if I'm the only one other than Teacher's Pet who doesn’t want to be here." Connie shot a look of pure death at him. "Be nice," she said, pulling back her arm, "Or else." Jeremy licked his lips nervously and nodded. "Yeah, alright. I'll put it on my to-do list." Shooting a glance over his shoulder he saw Cheyenne still hadn't left the classroom, and Eric was dragging his feet behind them, completely unhurried. Strange, because his power required the most downtime before it could be used effectively. While many abilities could operate with no buildup necessary, Eric needed to spend a fairly decent amount of time holding onto something hot in order to charge up his heat beams. Normally this took the form of him sitting next to the stove in the dorm he shared with Liam and Jeremy, one hand gripping the red hot element, the other lazily flipping through channels. The dorms were really only supposed to accomodate two YV members, but because of the nature of their team as a 'problem' unit, all three of the boys on the team had been forced to share one room. At first it had been a hassle, but over time they had fostered an uneasy peace, going so far as to make a schedule so no one had to sleep on the futon more than one night in a row. This was not to say the bunks were appreciably more comfortable, but in the minds of the roommates, sleeping on the couch permanently while the other two got the beds would be a clear sign of submission. It had been Liam's idea, ever diplomatic. He had told Jeremy once that he was the middle of seven siblings, and it showed. Eric on the other hand was like a smooth stone, not difficult to deal with, but unmoving. He kept to himself mostly, preferring to watch tv or listen to music, but if one of the others challenged him he was quick to lash out. So long as everyone followed the rules and he understood and agreed to them, he was a perfectly amicable dormmate. The three had been living together for almost a month now, but Jeremy still felt sometimes that he barely knew either of them. On their second week, the three had sat together playing cards and Liam had raised the topic of how they all ended up there, half jokingly. When silence reigned he volunteered that he had always wanted to be in the YV, and that he had actually had to beg his parents to let him go to try and be a hero. He laughed when telling the story but it was obvious that hurt sat just below the surface. Jeremy had gone next, telling them after tripping a teacher at his old school and using his powers mischeviously, his parents had forced him to join, giving over the other option as Perdo Military school. What he hadn't said was that he had been pleased, because he had been trying to get away from home for years unsuccessfully. Both of them turned their glance to Eric, who all the time had been studying his hand of cards. Feeling their gazes, he looked up and regarded them with his deep grey eyes. One corner of his mouth twitched to the side before he spoke. "I burned someone."

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lainaraquel · 7 years

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Heart Like Yours

On her first day of U.A. Momo receives a strange letter from herself ten years in the future. She doesn’t think this letter could be real until the predictions are so accurate she can’t overlook them. Her 25-year-old self is asking her to help shape a better future and it starts with saving a hostile classmate from himself.

Based very loosely on the series Orange.

Series: Boku No Hero Academia

Chapter 01: Letter 01: The beginning of everything

Pairing: Bakumomo, Bakugou x Yaoyorozu. Slight Todomomo.

Rating: M (canon-divergent)

Word Count: 3,778

AO3: x

A/N: I hope you like this! Thank you so much to @emeraldwaves for always encouraging me and pushing me to write this fic! I dedicate this first chapter to her. You can also find me at @creatiwrites

The sun peeked in through her curtains gently waking the dark-haired girl from her slumber. There was nothing like a proper nights rest before her first day at the esteemed U.A. Even for a recommendation student like herself she couldn't shake the nerves that came over her. She would be training to become a pro-hero. It was her dream to use her quirk to help others and become a top hero. Everyone in her family was counting on her to keep the honor of the Yaoyorozu name and show the world what she was made of. She had been training extremely hard her whole life for this moment.

She was quick to get ready making sure that the skirt of her uniform was perfectly pleated and her tie straight and tucked under the grey jacket. Her bag was packed with everything that she might need, new school supplies, water, snacks, and her notes that would help her until she got the costume that she had requested. Perfect, now she just needed to fix her hair and she would be ready for the day. Wearing it down was an option, but probably not a smart one. A school like U.A. didn't just do a presentation and then send everyone on their way. It wasn't like a regular high school and she had to be prepared.

It made much more sense to wear her hair up and to keep it out of her face. She walked over to her vanity, surprised to see a present on laying there. It was wrapped in a light blue wrapping paper with a lavender bow tied around the box. The wrapping paper perfectly snug and not one wrinkle was present on the paper. She looked at the card that was snug underneath the ribbon. It had her name written on it. It would be just like her parents to leave some type of gift for her to celebrate her first day. Even though they could be strict with her training-- they did it because they wanted her to succeed. She glanced at the time placing the box off to the side. She had to finish getting ready and could not afford to be late or even on time. She had to set an example for her fellow classmates by arriving early.

Momo tried her hair in several different styles. Ranging from a bun to a loose braid, before deciding that just up in a high ponytail would be the best. It was plain, but she didn't need to look dolled up to be a hero and that was the important thing. She grabbed her school bag ready to walk out the door when out of the corner of her eye she spotted the blue paper. Okay- just one second to open it so she could at least call her parents to tell them 'thank you' after school.

She pulled gently on the lavender ribbon watching as it slowly cascaded down the side of the box. Her fingers eager to pull the lid off and see what it was that was inside. But first, the card. She pried it open and inside was just a little note that said

“Trust me and have a good first day.'

Her brows knitted together in confusion; What kind of message was that? It wasn't even signed with their names which was also extremely odd, but who else would have sent this gift? She put the card aside making a mental note to ask them about it later. That was when she saw it. It was a beautiful notebook that matched the same burgundy color of the costume she designed. It looked so sleek and almost different than the other ones she had. She wondered if perhaps they had it custom made for her. Her name was even embroidered on the cover of it in elegant script. She brought the notebook to her nose inhaling the scent of new pages. The smell of them never failed to make her heart swell.

The sound of the horn honking shook her from her daze and she glanced at the clock."Ah!" she squealed, tossing the notebook and pen into her bag. She darted out of her room making her way towards the black Mercedes and apologizing to the driver for running behind.

She could not afford to start off the year making a bad first impression.

The classroom was still empty when Yaoyorozu arrived and she sighed in relief. Good. Her classmates would know she was punctual and that they could depend on her. She found her seat all the way in the back as expected and began to get her things organized. She put her pen on the top corner of her desk, her eraser right next to it and a few spare pens should someone else have forgotten theirs. Finally, she put the burgundy notebook in the center of the desk. She was about to grab her book to read when a rather tall and stocky boy entered the room.

"Ah! Yes, good morning fellow student!" he chimed hastily making his way toward her. "My name is Iida Tenya! I am from the Somei Private Academy and it is an honor to meet you."

Before Momo even got the chance to say anything other students began to fall in. Soon the once quiet classroom was bustling with noise.Her fingers gently brushed along the edge of the notebook as she waited for the time to tick down. Maybe she could open up the page and start to organize her notes before class began. She pulled the little book open shocked to see that there was already writing it.

“Momo, turn the next page and don't let anyone see.”

It was scribbled in the center of the paper and her heart began to race. Why did this suddenly feel so ominous?

“Dear Yaomomo,

Are you nervous? Please, try not to be these are going to be the best years of your life.”

A small smile crept onto her face upon reading that sentence, but the feeling didn’t last long as her eyes scanned the next set of words.

“I’m writing this letter to you from the future. It’s ten years from today on the dot.”

Ten years in the future?! Eh?!

“I know this seems completely impossible, but trust me, it is possible. And if I know you, which I do, you’re wracking your brain trying to figure out how-- but that isn’t the important part right now. In this notebook, I’m going to help you shape a better future. We have to change the choices you make in high school.”

April 5th:

The first day of term at U.A.

”The boy who introduced himself to you as Iida he will be arguing with another boy. His name is Bakugou. They’ll be arguing about Bakugou having his feet on the desk, but will get distracted by another boy with curly green hair. He’ll introduce himself as Midoriya. Remember the boy with the blonde hair. He sits in seat 17 and I need you to make sure that you become friends with him, but most importantly, I need you to change his heart.”

Momo’s eyes lifted from the letter, blinking, she needed a moment to process everything. How did the letter know what Iida had said to her or that he was going to come over here? Were her parents spying on her? Was this really her future self? Her head was spinning.

“Don’t put your feet on the desk!” Iida scolded.

“Huh?” the blonde smirked not moving his feet from their current position.

. “Don’t you think that’s rude to the U.A. upperclassmen and the people who made the desk?”

“Nope. What junior high did you go to, you side character?”

Well, he was rather crude, wasn’t he? Why would her future-self want her to pay attention to someone like him? That didn’t make any sense to her and it didn’t look like he was very friendly. So, how exactly was she supposed to become friends with him?

Momo’s hands began to tremble as she watched the exchange between them.

It was insanely accurate.

This didn’t make any sense and she couldn’t read any more of this nonsense. It must have somehow been some prank. There was no way that she could be talking to herself from the future, could she? She shut the notebook deciding it wasn’t at all possible.

“Are we walking home together?” a familiar voice rang in her ears and Momo turned quickly on her heels to see Todoroki waiting for her outside of the classroom. He was a long time friend of hers. They both knew what it was like to grow up in the life of the wealthy and had become friends at the tender age of five. They were at an esteemed party being shown off by their parents and that night they became friends. There was a genuine understanding between them and Momo had never met anyone else who got it quite like he did.

They didn’t see each other as often as they would’ve liked growing up. Their days had been filled with training-- but any time they were stuck at one of those events they could count on each other to be there. It had been nice to always have a friendly face to look forward to and even though he never really talked about what went on at home-- they were still there for each other. She wished she could do more for him, protect him somehow. It didn’t take much for her to figure out how terrible things were for him (and she didn’t just mean the fact that they had missed out on normal childhood things in favor of training). Sometimes looking at him made her heartache, but not with pity. She just wanted to ease his pain if she could.

“Do you feel alright? You’re doing that thing where you mindlessly look into the distance…” he trailed.

“Oh! Sorry, I’m fine, I was just thinking about something. But yes, we can walk home together,” she smiled softly securing her bag over her shoulder. He nodded and the two of them headed towards the gates of U.A.

“You did a great job today Todoroki-san!” she complimented, a bounce in her step.

“You placed first.”

Momo couldn’t help but smile, her face growing a little bit warm. She knew it was his own way of saying that she had done a good job. “I know, but you still did well. Your quirk is really amazing.”

“Bye Yaoyorozu-san!” they heard Ashido yell waving her arm with a big smile at them. “And you too Todoroki-san!” She was walking with the boy with red hair and Momo was pretty sure his name was Kirishima. Ashido had introduced herself to Momo during lunch. She had never encountered anyone so warm and inviting. It was a little strange, but she had been happy to make new friends on her first day there. All of the girls in her class seemed really nice now that she was thinking about it.

The redhead turned and waved at the both of them now, cupping his hands around his mouth to yell. “Nice to meet you both today! Awesome quirks, guys! Totally manly. See ya tomorrow!”

Momo waved back at them, though she was questioning how exactly her quirk was ‘manly’ and Todoroki just seemed a little taken aback by the whole exchange. New people weren’t exactly his thing.

“Did you lose your manners, Todoroki-san?” she asked him in light gest.

“No.” he answered his tone flat, but his cheeks were slightly tinted- she had caught that.

“Come on, it’s getting late and I’m sure we both have lessons,” he spoke.

“Right.”

Later that evening Momo was trying to read, but couldn’t stop her mind from wandering to that notebook. It was tempting to consider opening it again-- but did she really want to get fooled by some prank? It must have been something planned by her class. No that wasn’t possible. They didn’t even know who she was until today, well most of them. There wasn’t any way for them to get into her room and most of them did not seem like the type to go along with any childish games. Plus why would they want to prank her? What would they get out of it? She was definitely overthinking this.

She had to know what was in there.

No, she should probably just throw it away.

But what if it really was important?

There is no way that it could be real!

Perhaps just a small peek.

No, she had to be strong!

“Oh for goodness sake just look at it!” she muttered to herself tossing her book off to the side. Momo opened the bag that was hanging off one of the chairs in her room. As she picked it up, it suddenly felt heavier than it did before. If this truly was from the future, why was it being trusted to her? She didn’t even know this boy, so why would this be something that she had to do? On the other hand, she was anything but reckless-- and so there must have been a good reason even if for the moment she couldn’t comprehend it.

The burgundy bound notebook was becoming warm as she held it in her hands. She still wasn’t able to bring herself to open it quite yet. It was almost like reading a horror novel, curious to know more, but terrified to find out what lies within the text. Slowly she peeled open the cover to reveal the familiar writing. She reached over to grab a blank sheet of paper, penning the exact same words of the letter before her. They would probably look different and this whole debate would be completely over. It was preposterous to think that it could be identical- She stopped mid-thought holding the two papers next to each other. Her eyes narrowed scanning each piece carefully as if she would be able to spot at least one difference, but she couldn’t find any.

“I guess I just have to read this,” she mumbled. It would be the only way to ease her troubled mind.

Her finger guided her to where she had last left off and her face instantly flushed at the words she read.

“Now that you’re done with your handwriting analysis, will you just trust me? I know that’s weird to ask. This is a notebook that just showed up on your desk. But remember who it’s from.”

What harm could reading the first few pages do?

She ate up every word as her future-self detailed exactly how the day went to-a-T.

Okay. Today was a new day, she was going to walk up to him and they were going to be friends. Yep! She would make it happen, the future depended on it.

“I know he won’t be easy to get along with, but it’s imperative that you befriend him and help him change his ways.”

She entered the classroom early as always and waited. Perhaps she could strike up a conversation before class. Surprisingly he was never the last one in either. She thought someone with his demeanor would arrive to class late and without a care in the world. But it didn’t seem to be that way at all with him. Could they possibly bond over something like being on time to their classes? No that was stupid. He wasn’t someone like Iida who would pride himself on something like punctuality. That much she could tell about him already.

He sat down at his desk three seats ahead of her and she stood to go speak to him. Her legs were moving before she could even really think about it. All she had to do was introduce herself and then the conversation would probably flow naturally from there, right? She could compliment him on his impressive scores in yesterday’s quirk assessment. He got third place which was pretty impressive! Yaoyorozu was sure he would be pretty happy about that.

She inhaled a sharp breath and walked up to him. “Bakugou-san- I”.

Before she could say anything else though her nerves got the better of her and she wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe because he looked so intimidating and uninviting. His red eyes met her dark ones and his brows furrowed.

“Yeah? What the fuck do you want? And who are you?”

Luck was clearly on her side because she spotted a pen on the floor and quickly picked it up holding it out for him. “You dropped this.”

“Tch.” He reached forward snatching the pen from her hand.

“You’re welcome, Bakugou-san.” she huffed swiftly turning and heading back toward her desk.

He really did have a rotten attitude and foul mouth. Would it have killed him to be cordial to her?

Probably.

The answer was probably.

Later that day it was time for Heroics and All Might had them paired off for combat training. It startled Momo how excited Bakugou seemed to get when it was brought it up. He clearly reveled in the idea of getting to show off his quirk. It was powerful, but he was reckless with it and that wouldn’t cut it if he wanted to be a pro someday. When he did get a chance to use his power he was too hung up on whatever it was that happened between him and Midoriya.

It had been too easy to analyze the two of them and it baffled her that their Sensei hadn’t stepped in, but she trusted there was a reason for that. He was the symbol of peace after all.

When she critiqued the fight she could see the anger and maybe even shame? It was only there for a moment before his normal Bakugou scowl returned.

When it was her turn she half expected him to critique her just to get back at her, but he didn’t. He was clearly still bothered by what happened and she wondered if she should say something to him. After class, she would try to catch him to apologize. It wasn’t that she thought she was wrong for anything she said-- maybe she had just been too harsh. But he didn't seem like the type that would accept an apology so easily either. She had to do something or at least try.

Yaomomo had been so lost in thought that she hadn’t noticed that he ended up leaving the classroom altogether, nor that Midoriya was also missing. She gathered up her things slipping out of the classroom to see if she could still catch him. She had promised herself that she would try to make friends with him today and had already failed once. Momo didn’t want to fail again.

Her small feet quick against the pavement as she attempted to catch up to him.

‘I should’ve been paying more attention! What if this is a key moment and I’m messing it up?!’

She rounded the corner barely having time to adjust her eyes to see Bakugou and Midoriya were speaking. Before she could say or do anything a pair of arms wrapped around her. One around her shoulders and the other around her waist. She was about to scream when she realized she was familiar with this person’s grip. She recognized the smell of his cologne too.

“Yaoyorozu,” his voice a hushed whisper as he kept her back pressed against his chest.

Why was Todoroki here?

He put his finger to her lips, warning her not to speak and she nodded. Did he know something that she didn’t know? What was going on here and why was he still holding her like this?

It was hard to concentrate, but they were close enough that they could slightly hear what the other pair were talking about. At least in jumbled pieces. Bakugou, of course, was much easier to hear because, well, he was yelling.

“One day I will make this quirk my own and beat you with my own power.” Midoriya declared.

The two hiding exchanged a look not sure what he meant by that. It was odd phrasing and then Momo remembered something in the letter.

“If you save Bakugou-san, then you save Midoriya-san too.”

She had made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t read ahead like the notebook asked her not to. Her future-self claimed that she didn’t want past Momo getting overwhelmed, but it was hard to keep such a promise. If this was so important shouldn’t she go in with as much knowledge as possible that way she could handle the situation properly? Her future-self seemed to know her well enough to counter argue that point, but still-- it was frustrating. To hear them talking like this…. it only piqued her curiosity even further.

“Today I lost to you…” Bakugou trailed off shaking in anger. It sounded like he was in some sort of pain and Momo wondered why this mattered to him so much. It was just a trial battle, a learning experience. But, on that same token, she understood too. It seemed like he was a perfectionist much like herself. Though they had two completely different ways of dealing with it.

“That’s all it was, that’s all…”

Seeing him like this, talking about how he knew that he couldn’t beat Todoroki cast him in a different light for her. He was unintentionally being vulnerable and unknowingly exposing himself not only to Midoriya but to the two of them too. Momo wanted to comfort the both of them. She could feel the animosity and she just wanted to know what happened between them-- and furthermore what was going to happen that made all of this necessary?

"DAMN IT! I ENDED UP AGREEING WITH WHAT THAT PONYTAIL GIRL SAID!" He bellowed, startling Momo, but Todoroki kept his grip tight on her.

Was he crying? Did her words, though necessary, really cut him that deeply? And he agreed? With her?

Being a hero was really important to him, wasn’t it? She knew it was important to all of them who were here… but his passion was overwhelming even for himself. Maybe especially for himself.

That’s why she was here doing this….

“I need you to change his heart..”

“Come on,” Todoroki whispered finally pulling her away as Bakugou turned from Midoriya. There was no way she could go to him now, but this wasn’t all for not. She had gained something.

Momo learned who he really was and now she wanted to save him.

#bakumomo #todomomo #bnha fanfiction #momo yaoyorozu #katsuki bakugou #bnha fic

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tanyatalbotreflectivejournal · 4 years

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Week 12

~ASSESSMENT WEEK~

Monday was the English assessment day. As the pupil’s were too unfocused on Friday to write the written assessment piece, we tackled this Monday instead. Mr S and I focused on using emotive language and independent clauses with the class, and then after break the class was asked to write their assessment piece - a letter to Harry Potter’s parents from Harry, from after he saw them in the mirror of Erised. I worked with a group of 10 students for the Big Write and helped them to plan out what to include in their work / told them which spellings to correct / which words could be improved using a dictionary etc.

We have no had the TA recently as she has been busy in other classes due to staff shortages from COVID, so it is more challenging working with the class in English. I have seen first hand how important it is to have a TA or extra assistance in a class where so many pupils have different types of SEN. At least 4/5 pupil’s in the class will usually not even write one sentence without assistance.

What I have found works well: I find it particularly helpful asking one of these individual pupils to dictate for me what they want to write and then writing it on their whiteboard for them, and then having them copy this into their books.

I am now teaching independently in the afternoons, with Mr S often not present due to meetings / brilliance club / football training etc. This afternoon I had the help of the TA who helps keep the class focused and on track. They are often well behaved with Mrs B (Year 6 TA) present in the classroom as she is strict with them. I certainly need to work on my classroom presence and keeping the behaviour well managed for when I will teach this class without the TA present.

Even today, between us we struggled with the behaviour as the class had to split into groups to prepare a presentation for the class. Firstly, the groups I dictated to the class did not go down well as the pupil’s wanted to work with their friends even though I knew that they would disrupt each other. In the end I had the 4 most disruptive pupils work with the TA outside of the classroom so that the remaining 12 pupils could focus better inside of the classroom. By moving some of the pupils outside of the classroom, the groups worked better but still needed constant reminders of the behaviour expectations in the classroom.

Tuesday was again an assessment day and I was still helping FT with reading her papers. We then had Art in the afternoon and I led the lesson, teaching the pupils how to paint plates in the style of Ancient China - a history/art curriculum crossover. The students enjoyed this lesson and having a more ‘fun’ lesson after an assessment certainly goes down better!

After lunch I taught my first PSHE lesson and prepared all resources and slides independently. I focused on exam stress and anxiety, as I am aware of pupils in the class who suffer from anxiety. S, for example, missed around 3 years of school due to school anxiety and often will not come into school or has to be enticed in by Mr S promising he can look after the school guinea pigs. S was very vocal in the lesson and expressed strategies which he uses to cope with anxiety - so the session was very useful!

I have also started observing PE lessons this week and in a few weeks time will be teaching my own PE lesson. I was a team leader in Choi Kwang Do for many years, leading children’s classes and warmups so this is something I am exceptionally excited about!

I assisted FT with more assessments throughout the whole week and Friday was decided to be ‘Fun Friday’ as a treat for the stressful week. I came up with a fun Art lesson.. having the pupil’s paint a Harry Potter landscape and cutting out a silhouette of Hogwarts and sticking it over the top. All pupil’s were so involved in this lesson and really enjoyed it. Some of the pupil’s in the class struggle with their hand dexterity and do not enjoy Art as they struggle with it, so I ensured I had stencils for these pupils to use. Because of this, all pupils could successfully complete the activity.

0 notes

statierogers · 7 years

Text

You know - Steve Rogers

Title: You know

Pairings: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Steve is keeping secrets from the reader, trying to protect her. But (Y/N) is not having that. (btw: the reader has mind powers)

Words: 4267

Warnings: None

Genere: I don’t even know. Fluffy?

A/N: Something that was supposed to be short but I got waaaaay into it. I really love the reader's powers. Thinking about writing an imagine with a reader with powers like this and Bucky. wouldn’t that be interesting?

((AN 22.11.2021 - I have slightly rewritten this and changed the title, It was called “Stop Protecting me” before))

- Katie xx

My Masterlist

(Y/N) - Your Name

(Y/L/N) - Your last name

Your name: submit What is this?

°°°

The noise of (Y/N)'s steps on the floor were the only sound to be heard in the kitchen of the Avengers compound. It was unusually empty. She wasn't sure how that could happen. She just came back from a mission yesterday. So she may have let herself sleep until 10. Usually, her Teammates came in motion around 8 a.m. Tony would be somewhere in the lab. He probably even slept there. He tended to work into the morning hours on some new Gimmick and barely made it home, which would piss Pepper off.

Bucky and Sam would be back from their morning run, and Wanda and Vision would be having breakfast. But (Y/N) didn't even meet one Avenger on her way here. Not even Steve, and he was always around somewhere. He would greet her good morning, give her a gentle smile and would basically spend his whole day with her. Steve and (Y/N) liked each other. A lot. It wasn't a secret. Both knew there was more than a friendship between them. They practically already acted like a couple. They fought like an old married couple and they sometimes slept in each others bed when the others needed comfort.

"FRIDAY? Where is everyone?" she asked while she poured herself coffee into her favourite mug. It was an Iron Man Mug that Tony gave to her for Christmas.

"I'm not supposed to say," the robotic voice sounded guilty.

(Y/N) shook her head confused and stopped mid-movement.

"What? Why? Tell me!" she said.

"I'm afraid it's classified Miss (Y/L/N)," Friday answered.

(Y/N) put the cup down on the counter forcefully. Tony must have tinkered with the system, and Friday had a bug. She was ready to walk down to the lab and yell at him, just as Tony's assistant entered the kitchen. She had a tray full of empty coffee cups in her hands and looked strangely guilty when she spotted (Y/N).

"Oh, Julie. Where is everyone?" (Y/N) asked her.

The slim woman put the cups down on the table next to her and turned around. As fast as she came in, she walked out again. (Y/N) frowned and shook her head to herself.

"What the Hell?" (Y/N) mumbled and followed her.

What was going on this morning? She wasn't sure if she should be angry or worried. They were either keeping secrets from her, or something happened to them. She hated either of these options.

"Julie? Why are you walking away?" she yelled, catching up with the woman, who looked torn.

"I am not supposed to say," she said and sped up.

Did they brainwash people to say that sentence to her? First FRIDAY and now her. Even in her heels, Julie could walk really fast. (Y/N) would have been impressed if she wasn't really irritated by her. (Y/N) stepped around her and looked deeply into her eyes.

"Who told you not to tell me? I'd prefer you would tell me yourself instead of me looking into your head," (Y/N)'s voice was daunting.

She had the power to read minds or control them. It was a scary power for everyone. Even (Y/N) was scared of what she could do. And it was hard to get close to people in an honest way. She had to control herself to not take a peek into peoples heads. But it was a valuable skill to have in battle if it wouldn't exhaust her so much. It didn't take long for her to find something out on an untrained mind like Julie's. But there could be trained minds. They were harder to crack. Just like really stubborn people, for example, Steve. When she came here, she tried to have a look into his mind. As soon as she reached out, Steve had turned to her with an angry look. It's like he felt it. He felt her advance. She didn't try further because she was intimidated by the soldier. It's funny how people were usually uncomfortable around her, but Steve never seemed to care.

Although (Y/N) had threatened Julie, she still didn't say what was going on.

"Miss. I am certainly scared of you, but he scares me more," she mumbled.

(Y/N) furrowed her brows. Not quite so sure anymore. But her aggressive stance flattered. She didn't want to force her way into an innocent girls head. Even though she had no idea what was going on or what exactly Julie meant. She didn't want the girl to be scared and quit her job. Tony couldn't afford to lose another one.

"What?" (Y/N) just mumbled, furrowing her brows.

That moment the door to their left opened, and Natasha and Clint stepped out. As soon they saw (Y/N), they lowered their eyes.

"Don't lower your eyes at me!" she scowled.

They didn't want her to see into their heads. Although she knew Tasha and Clint would fight her off. Before they could say a word to the young woman, Tony, Sam and Wanda interrupted by following them out of the room. Great, then she would just do it on one of them. She hated using her power on her friends. But (Y/N) decided to go for the weakest of the trio and grabbed him by his shoulder. His face had a shocked expression as (Y/N) starred into his eyes to look for the answer. She only picked up some shreds of Tony's memories. Enough for context. She sighed and closed her eyes.

"He is in there," Tony mumbled and pointed at the closed door.

She didn't even want to have this fight with Steve, but his recent behaviour was ridiculous. She let go of Tony and stormed into the room. It was one of the main mission meeting rooms the compound had. There were still some mugs and random papers spread out on the big table in the middle of the room. The screen on the right wall showed a map with a few red dots. They were having a meeting for a mission that apparently required most Avengers. Well, all except her, apparently. Or at least that is what Steve thought. Said man was currently sitting on the glass table discussing something with Bucky. The Cap's muscular back was facing her. Bucky looked generally shocked when she entered. Steve just turned in his seat slowly. He looked like he knew who was there before even laying his eyes on her.

"(Y/N)," he said calmly.

Steve didn't even look ashamed. He didn't look like he'd done something wrong. He also didn't move up from his chair. No smile, no good morning. (Y/N) felt hurt, and she missed her soft Steve. Those blue eyes that looked at her adoringly just yesterday when she had returned. Bucky, on the other hand, who had recovered from his surprise, rose from the office chair. He walked over to the girl to give her a hug. She shifted her focus from one soldier to the other. For (Y/N), it was always weird how smooth Bucky was. He had the strut of dangerous men but the most boyish smile in the world. She most definitely understood how the women fell for him. He was polite, handsome and charming.

"Hi. Have you slept well? How was your mission?" he asked and hugged her.

(Y/N) smiled. She couldn't hide it. Buck was one of her closest friends. They met about a year ago. (Y/N) knew Bucky like no one else. That was only because she fixed his mind. She was the one who pulled Bucky out. She removed the trigger words. This was a long and exhausting procedure for both of them, which brought them really close together. They had seen each other worst moments. (Y/N) hadn't seen Bucky in a few weeks. He was one of the few Avengers who didn't live here, like Tony, Clint and Natasha. Bucky was really fun to be around, so she had missed him.

Steve didn't like it at all when Bucky did that. When he acted that way around his girl. Well, she wasn't his. He wanted her to be, though. Before she even met Bucky, Steve knew the girl. She was there when they had the first mission as Avengers. She was there when SHIELD fell. In the beginning, it was just a strong friendship he felt for her. But after a while, it transformed into love. She was there as soon as he entered this century, and she hadn't left him since. Even when he tore the Avengers apart, even when Thanos rained down hell on them, and both of them barely survived. (Y/N) stayed. Fought with him. And when she healed his best friend, he was there every step of it. He sat at her bed when the exhaustion took over, and she had to take a break. He had smiled down at her. It had pained him seeing her this way, but she saved his best friend, and he was forever grateful for that.

"Hi, James. Well, I got a new scar," she said, letting him go.

She took her hair to the side and showed him the scar on her shoulder. Bucky raised his eyebrows at the still fresh red flesh.

"An Arrow. Probably would have ended worse if T'Challa wouldn't have been there," she mumbled, letting her hair fall again.

Steve remembered frantically touching that scar over and over again yesterday. She had told him so many times that she was okay, but he didn't believe her. He even had the Doctor check her over again. And when she crawled into his bed because he insisted on not leaving her side for a while, he had starred at it and decided that he hated it. Steve knew she had a few scars here and there, and he didn't mind them at all. He loved them like he loved her, but he still hated it when another was added to the collection. Steve was angry at himself for not joining her on the mission. He was thinking about it before she went, but she had assured him she would be fine with T'Challa by her side. But if that arrow had been only an inch closer, she could have died. He wanted to protect her, which was also why he didn't tell her about today's mission meeting. Yes, they would need every member for this. But he was too scared for her safety. There was nothing he loved more than her. And so he didn't want her to go. To get hurt, again. And he knew she could take care of herself, but what about him? He wouldn't be able to concentrate with her out there. What an incredibly selfish thought of him that actually was.

"Yea, I know those. They suck. I have a scar from one on my leg," Bucky mentioned pointing at the spot.

Steve furrowed his brows. He couldn't believe he actually felt jealous. That was the first time he felt angry over not scaring. The serum took that from him. Not from Bucky, though. He didn't like how much in common they had. He knew it was stupid. But his heart overruled his head, and before he could stop himself, he interfered.

"Bucky, you can go now the meeting is over," he said and rose from his chair.

His friend and the girl both turned to him. (Y/N) pretty pissed at his behaviour, but Bucky just smiled. He knew. He knew what exactly Steve had on his mind. And not because they just talked about it. But Bucky knew Steve. He knew he was in love with the girl. He also understood how jealous he was. And Bucky was really annoyed about the fact that they didn't just tell each other how they felt. But maybe today was the day they would. So he turned to the door, giving them the chance.

"Well, I guess I'll let you two talk. Just bare in mind we have to leave in 10," he said and left.

(Y/N)'s eyes followed Bucky out of the door. Only as the door closed, she turned around to face Steve. Her stance was defensive. She was angry at him. He could see that.

"What is this?" she asked, making a gesture tracing the room.

Steve crossed his muscular arms over his chest. (Y/N) was sure she heard him huff.

"I don't know what you are talking about," he said.

His voice was dripping with authority. He would only use that voice when he was talking about missions or when he was talking to new recruits.

"Steve. You held a mission meeting without me," she complained.

Pretty much stating the obvious. She knew he was playing innocent; he wasn't stupid. Steve was just a thing coy he must have known this would bother her. What was up with him?

"Well, I don't need you for this mission. Your abilities are not required," he answered and moved to the iPad.

He was typing on something now. Trying to look busy. So he didn't have to see that face. Those intensive eyes of hers.

"Don't talk to me like I am one of them. Like I am just one of your recruits. It's me (Y/N)... It's us, Steve. Now look me in the eyes and talk to me" (Y/N) yelled, now throwing her hands into the air.

She hated when he acted like this. So stubborn. It hurt. It hurt that the person, that meant so much to her would act so cold and disinterested towards her.

"I don't know what you mean. You got hurt from your last mission. You are still in recovery. If I l let you on that field now, you will be over-exhausted after reading one mind," he just said, lazily lifting his arm to point at her shoulder.

This time glancing into her direction before lowering his gaze again. This action confused her. Steve was never scared to look at her.

"Rogers, I am going on this mission if you want to or not."

Anger laced her voice. She would not let him do this, not to her. He would not bench her. She was an asset to them, and a tiny fresh scar wouldn't stop that. Steve was overreacting. Yesterday his worried seemed endearing and made her heart flutter, but she would have never thought this what it would come to. He turned to her now, looking up from his tablet. His eyes were angry. (Y/N) didn't need to see into his head to know he was just as pissed as her. But she just challenged him. Steve was a leader, a soldier. He was her boss in a way. And her not listening, refusing his order made him angry. In his mind, she was the stupid and immature one. She would endanger herself. Her recklessness was always pointed out by Steve. But this was (Y/N) and Steve; they talked about their issues and made up; they never just yelled at each other for no reason. But today, he didn't seem to wanna listen or talk to her. She sighed, remembering that they had to leave soon.

"I'll see you at the jet," she mumbled and tried walking past Steve.

But he stepped in front of the door. His hands to his hips. (Y/N) was sure his tight blue shirt would explode if he decided to flex his muscles more. He tried to intimidate her. She knew that. His need for control was too big for his body. She sucked at this authority thing. She never listened to people. She was stubborn and proud, just like Steve. Their Characters had clashed before, but never like this.

"Stand down. That is an order," he said firmly.

(Y/N) just raised her eyebrows and lifted her chin. He knew he couldn't make her. No one could make her do anything. And that was not only because of her powers. She wasn't sure if she could take on Steve, but she would go down trying.

"Try and make me Captain," her voice was close to a whisper and her smile cold.

She would use her powers, she wouldn't like it, but she would do it. Two could play that game. If he treated her like his recruit, she would treat him like Captain America. Not like the person she knew and loved. The person she would always stand by. But no one could stand by someone who pushed them away. He could see for himself if he enjoyed that. Steve didn't say anything. He just looked into her eyes. The blue of his Iris now seemed cold and like Ice. (Y/N) shook her head and walked past Steve after he didn't make a move to stop her. As soon as the door closed behind her, Steve's defensive statue flattered. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

°°°

"So you guys are fighting?" Bucky asked (Y/N) while kicking a man in the stomach.

He flew against the wall and slid to the floor, staying there unmoving. They were currently on a Hydra base in some remote location. The mission was easy. At least they thought. But after they got the Intel they needed, (Y/N) found out there was a bomb here from looking into someone's head. And if it would go off, it would take down the small town a few miles away. Steve, Bucky and (Y/N) were trying to get to said bomb. (Y/N) didn't want to be paired up with him on this mission, but Steve insisted. And the rest of the team followed his rules. He was still Captain America and in charge of the missions. A small part of her was still glad that he was here. She might have lied to Steve yesterday, and her body felt more exhausted than she led on. (Y/N) also had hurt her foot while fighting an agent. Steve had seen it the moment it happened, but he was too afraid to step closer. But since then, he seemed to try to take all the fire on him and away from her.

"Well, Captain America is being an asshole," she said and grabbed an Agent around the neck.

(Y/N) turned him around so he would look into her eyes. She started searching in his head for the location of the bomb. She had been trying with the last five men she touched. All of them seemed to have something in their minds blocking her. Steve knew she had weakened already. That didn't help his worry. But he still rolled his eyes at her answer. Bucky looked at him reproachfully. He didn't like it when they fought. Steve would get all broody, while (Y/N) would only complain about Steve. And he wouldn't be able to take sides, unlike the rest of the team. Tony and Natasha would automatically side with (Y/N) while Sam and Clint would choose Steve.

"I was only doing my Job," Steve said with gritted teeth and threw his shield at a guy coming closer to them.

All three of them knew that Steve was a jerk. He knew he caused this whole fight, but Steve wasn't good at holding back. And after he fucked up, he was too stubborn to admit it to anyone. At least he could put all his frustration into beating up the bad guys. Bucky and Steve were circling (Y/N), who was still trying to get the information, blocking the agents trying to get to her. The shield flew between the men like they had practised it.

"(Y/N). Uhm, how long is this going to take?" Bucky asked, now raising his gun.

They were under time pressure. (Y/N) just furrowed her eyebrows more. She had gone pale over the last minute. Steve knew she was pushing herself. She had already shifted all her weight on her right foot, and he wasn't sure how much longer she could take it.

"Give me a second. He has few walls around his mind," she mumbled.

Her hands had begun to shake rapidly. Steve never saw it like this before. Maybe once when she tried to fix Bucky. This was the moment he would usually interfere and stop her when she was in Buck's head. Steve's focus shifted from fighting to her ever so often.

"(Y/N) that's enough. We'll find another way," he said with a stern voice.

But (Y/N) didn't listen. She was determined to get it right. To show Steve, she was not useless or meant to be benched. He had hurt her pride so she would show him.

"No, I can do this," she said, her teeth grinding together.

Steve had now turned around fully to her. Trusting Bucky to cover them. He needed her to stop now. They didn't know what would happen, and if she fell into unconsciousness, she would be a liability. Not just because they would have to take her out of here somehow, but also because Steve couldn't think straight anymore then.

"(Y/N)! I said enough," he reaped sternly.

Seeing her getting weaker, her skin colour fading, hurt him inside. He felt it in his heart. It was aching for her. God, he just wanted to protect her. But maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Maybe he should have tried it with tenderness. He should have known that sternness wasn't going to work with her. His worry stopped him from thinking straight.

"Darling, please don't," his voice was quivering by now.

He had placed a hand on her shoulder. (Y/N) took one deep breath before she let the man go. Both of them fell backwards. The man to the floor, but (Y/N) was caught by Steve. He looked down at her softly. He pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face.

"Second floor. Electricity room," she mumbled.

Her body was like a puddle in his arms. Steve shook his head at her. Astonished and worried at the same time. He touched her forehead with the back of his hand. She felt hot, too hot.

"Romanov?" Bucky mumbled into his earpiece, still battling the agents.

"Yea, got it. Tony and I are on the move," she said.

Steve sometimes forgot that all his teammates could hear him. But now, he didn't care at all. He just looked at the girl in his arms.

"Told you I could do it. Go, team," she said to him weakly.

Her eyes were half-lidded, and she was obviously fading in and out of consciousness. But a smile graced her lips. A proud smile. He would have laughed at that if the situation had been different.

"I know…You did well. But please, can I get you out of here now?" he mumbled, giving her a forced smile.

Steve tried to be nice. But even the nearly unconscious (Y/N) could see that he was worried like hell. She hated being incapable of things. But maybe she would let him take care of her, for once. He didn't move even f every fibre of his being wanted to run out of here. But he was going to respect her wishes now. She nodded weakly. And the moment Steve caught that movement, he started moving down the hall. Bucky followed him. He had only paid attention with one ear, but he knew (Y/N) didn't seem well. She looked like they had sucked her life force out of her. And this time, it wasn't his mind that did this.

"Sam, can you get her please," was the last thing she heard and the feeling of flying.

After that, she went fully unconscious.

°°°

She woke up from the sunlight coming through her curtains. It took (Y/N) a while to open her eyes. The first thing she saw was Steves face next to her. She smiled lazily. She loved this sight. The soldier had his hands under his pillow. Her eyes travelled from his chin to the sharp cheekbones, then to his long lashes. Steve always looked like he thought really hard about something when he slept. A frown covered his face. (Y/N) reached out her hand and touched the folds between his eyebrows with her tump, then she placed a hand on his cheek. Seconds after, she was starring into beautiful blue eyes. A smile graced the Captain's face as he saw her awake.

"Glad to see you waking up," she mumbled.

Steve covered her hand with his and took it from his face, shaking his head at her. He stared at (Y/N)s hand a bit before he spoke.

"Me? You have been out the last couple of days," he mumbled.

His smile flattened. The memory of her pale face and hollow cheeks haunted him. Even though she seemed better now. They had wrapped her foot up. It wasn't broken, just a torn ligament.

"Bruce said there was nothing wrong with you. You just overused your power. And all you would need is sleep. But 3 days is a long time," he continued, lost in thoughts.

(Y/N) was searching for Steve's eyes. He sounded so pained. He looked up at her abruptly.

"Please be careful on every mission from now on. Just think before you do stuff. I… If something happens again...," he trailed off.

His face only showed worry. (Y/N) titled her head to the side. She new he was worried about her, but there had to be another way for him to deal with this.

"Steve…Your worry can't stop what I do. I am just like every other Avenger," she mumbled.

The Captain sighed and took a deep breath. He grabbed her hand and put it to his heart.

"Not to me, you're not," his voice was quiet.

Steve needed her to know. To understand how he felt. How he loved her. How he needed her. He wanted her to feel what he felt.

"If you'd look into my mind, you would know..." he began thinking out loud.

He didn't know if he would like her to know it all, but at least she could see what he had been struggling to put into words for so long. But she shook her head with a tired smile.

"I don't need to know it all, Steve. I think we just finally need to tell each other how we feel," she said.

Steve looked at her, and it seemed like his words were stuck in his throat. He was usually so good at giving emotional speeches, but when it came to declaring his love, he seemed to suck at it. (Y/N) had her head propped up in her elbow, and the other still lay on his chest covered by his bigger one.

"I know you already know how I feel. But maybe I do need to tell you just once," Steve said. "I love you. I have for a while."

He laughed a little; it's funny how they were dancing around each other, actually never telling each other. Maybe they had never felt the need to tell each other before. (Y/N) turned around her hand and held his. She stared at their intertwined hands for a second before she dipped down and kissed him softly and slowly. It was their first kiss, but it felt so familiar. Because it was them, they had known each other for over ten years now. She only moved away from him slightly.

"You know I love you too," she answered.

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