#I was chill and on time for the most part

[tywrites]

secrets that you keep (talking in your sleep) | mateo manta

pairing: mateo manta x gn!reader

word count: 1,267

warnings: implied smut, wet dreams, dry humping

a/n: i need this blanket viscerally. hope you fellow blanket fuckers enjoy <3

It wasn’t a rare scenario to find you in. Curled up on the couch, wrapped up in your fuzzy, yellow blanket ­- the TV on a low volume in the background, playing some overdramatic reality show. The only difference, however, was that you were sleeping.

You didn’t often fall asleep on the sofa, especially after receiving the dateviators. Knowing that every object in your house was sentient honestly made you feel quite self-conscious a lot of the time. You didn’t even want to think about going to the bathroom. Sleeping on Betty was still a bit new to you but she was so chill about it that it didn’t bother you as much. But you didn’t know Koa super well yet. Sleeping on him felt a bit… awkward.

But here you were, soft snores leaving your mouth as you laid in your slumber. The most awkward part of it was that you’d left your dateviators on. They were slightly slid down your nose, but still working. Since you’d been hanging out with Mateo, you’d had them on to be able to converse with him. But now, your head was slumped on his shoulder, the soft material of his duvet jacket acting as a perfect pillow.

Mateo didn’t mind in the slightest. He actually thought it was adorable, gazing on your sweet, sleeping form with a small smile. He gently brushed the hair away from your face, his hand stilling as you shifted. He definitely didn’t want to wake you up. After a moment, you stopped moving, now cuddled into Mateo’s chest as your own rose and fell in even, relaxed breaths. He chuckled at how clingy you seemed to be in your sleep.

“Wow, mi vida,” he said softly. “Guess the inanimals really took it out of you today,”

You’d both had a pretty busy day. All of the inanimals had needed grooming, Sinclaire had dropped off a pretty hyper Sudsy, and Davi had even done his usual disappearing act again. All in all, quite a chaotic time for you both. Mateo of course was kinda used to it. But you? Not so much.

Mateo very cautiously shifted your positions, taking great care not to disturb your rest as he moved you both to a reclining position on the sofa. He propped himself up against the arm, allowing you to lie fully down on top of him, your face snuggled against his chest. Pure comfort. He sighed in content, allowing himself to enjoy this small moment of peace with you. His eyes closed and for a second, he wondered if he could afford to take a quick nap himself.

His eyes shot open as a curious noise broke through the silence.

He looked down at you, a bit confused. He swore he’d heard you speak.

He waited.

Nothing.

With a small frown, he closed his eyes.

There it was again! It was definitely coming from you. Only, it didn’t sound like words. He observed your sleeping form, silently waiting for it to happen again.

“Mmm…”

Oh.

Oh.

A flush settled on his cheeks, turning his face a rosy red. Maybe he was wrong. You couldn’t be… moaning. Right? You’d fallen silent once again, your face burying itself even deeper into his plush chest. Once in the desired position, you let out a satisfied sigh. He tried his hardest to calm his racing heartbeat. Chill, Mateo. He told himself. You’re clearly imagining things. They wouldn’t be-

“Ohh.. fuck,”

He bit his lip as you let out another moan, louder this time and slightly muffled into his chest. Yeah, he definitely wasn’t imagining this. He suddenly felt kind of creepy, as if he was completely invading your privacy. He would never, ever, under any circumstances, want to make you uncomfortable. And if you knew what he was hearing right now… Mateo felt conflicted.

The noises were becoming more frequent and you seemed to be having a very… pleasing dream. He didn’t want to wake you up… You’d been working so hard today and you really deserved the rest! But you also deserved privacy. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the pure awkwardness that would fill the room after he woke you up.

He didn’t get that chance.

“Mm… fuck yes… Mateo please,”

He froze. Did you�� did you just say his name? Blood pounded in his ears, his cheeks heating up adorably. You whined in your sleep, biting your lip subconsciously as you began to grind your hips against him, searching for any kind of stimulation you could find. All the while, you whimpered out the most erotic noises Mateo had ever heard. He couldn’t believe you were still asleep.

Mateo could barely think straight, the noises you were making going straight to his head. And… straight to somewhere else. His body ran hot when he realised just how tight his usually comfy sweatpants had gotten. His cheeks burned with embarrassment.

“Mi amor, you’re gonna be the death of me...”

He had no idea what to do. Hearing you whine his name like that… It was insanely difficult for him to hold back from waking you up to hear exactly what your dream was about. He tried to take deep, calming breaths, raking a hand through his messy locks. But then, a thought struck him. The others; his fellow objects. They could probably hear you right now. I mean, you guys were literally laying on Koa. The idea of that, of them knowing how badly you wanted him… god, it drove him crazy.

You were still going at it, practically humping his thigh at this point. He honestly couldn’t stand it any longer. If you didn’t wake up soon, he’d be giving you one hell of a wake up call.

“Mateo, I need you… please,”

Ay dios mío, the way you were begging so sweetly for him – it drove him crazy. He felt like he was ready to burst. You two had never actually… done anything before. Your relationship was sweet, romantic and caring. Not that he’d never wanted to! It was kind of an awkward thing to bring up and you both were always so busy. But knowing that you’d been dreaming about it… god, he needed you too. Badly.

He gently placed a hand on your cheek, his thumb slowly stroking it, attempting to coax you from your deep slumber. He knew you slept better when you were with him, but he’d never seen you so deep in your sleep. It didn’t take too long to wake you, your eyes slowly fluttering open, blinking in the light of the TV.

“Fuck, did I fall asleep?” you asked hoarsely, rubbing at your eyes.

He chuckled nervously. “Yeah, you did. That tired, huh?”

You smiled up at him. “Must’ve been…” You yawned, stretching your arms. “God, I had the best dream,”

His eyes widened, looking at you curiously. Did… did you know you were talking in your sleep?

“Oh yeah?”

You nodded. “Yeah, it was…” You trailed off, a subtle blush rising to your cheeks. “...good, really uh, good,”

He couldn’t hold back the knowing chuckle. “Uh huh, I could tell…”

You looked at him, confusion evident in your eyes. It was only when he purposely rolled his hips up against your own that you realised what he’d meant. The hardness pressed against you left very little to the imagination. Your mouth dropped open and your body burned all over.

“H-how… how did you…”

He smirked, cupping your chin with a soft but firm hand.

“Anyone ever tell you that you talk in your sleep?”

[lotsofluvz]

LADS MEN AS DADS ⋆. 𐙚 ˚

how are the lads men as dads?

warnings none, just fluff

note i been trying to write as much before my semester starts n make me miserable. enjoy n luv ya! <3

ZAYNE

He cried when he finally saw his daughter as you cradled her in your arms after labor. After nine months, he is able to see the mini version of him and you. He can’t be any happier.

He is the strict type of dad (for the most part) but has a sweet spot for his princess. How can he say no to her sweet face? He can’t. He feels bad whenever he has to say no to her, but for the most part, your daughter wins over his heart.

It can be difficult to have time to spend with his family, especially with his line of work, but he always makes sure to not work once he arrives home and devotes himself to you and your daughter.

If she gains interest in anything related to medicine, I can see him teaching her various knowledge about it. He will buy her books, CDs, DVDs and many more related to science. He can’t pass up the opportunity to bond with her and his love for medicine.

RAFAYEL

He definitely cried the entire labor and when the nurses gave him your daughter. More tears fell down when she grabbed his pinky finger. He is beyond thankful for you giving him such an amazing gift, and he will forever treasure it.

He is the chill dad and is notorious for spoiling his princess. She wants new shoes? Bought it. She wants a new toy? Bought it. She wants ice cream? Bought it. She could ask him once, and she will get it. He can’t help it; she wants his princess to be happy.

He gained a new muse once you told him you were pregnant. He has portraits of you every week as she grows in your belly. Once she was born, he never stopped painting the both of you. He even bought a separate place for his paintings of his two favorite people because it was getting cramped in your home.

SYLUS

He was surprised when the two of you went for a regular doctor's appointment and the doctor told you that you were carrying twin girls. Sylus was ecstatic, to say the least. He asked Luke and Kieran to buy all the necessary nursery items. You have to scold him about purchasing too much for girls before they were even born.

If you think he was spoiling the twins so much before they were born, prepare for the amount of spoiling he is doing once his princesses are born. All they have to do is bat their eyelashes or look at something for a few seconds, and he is buying it already.

He is a hands-on dad, like the time you had an important meeting, and so did he. Instead of asking Luke and Kieran to look over the twins, he decided to bring them to the meeting itself. His business partners are all looking at him and the two girls in his arms. He is completely unfazed by the looks they are giving him and continues on explaining. He is more focused if his girls are comfortable throughout the meeting. He is the ultimate girl dad.

CALEB

He was so excited to learn that you were carrying twin boys. He bawled when the twins were born as you carried them in your arms. He can't believe two healthy boys came out of you, and he can't stop staring at them. He is so lucky to have you in his life and to have you gifting him with boys who shared the same features as their mom.

He is an easygoing and protective dad who loves his wife and twin boys so much. He always had a picture of you and the twins in a frame on his desk. He knows his life of work can be stressful, but he always makes sure the boys get to spend at least an hour or so every day.

He is the one who sparked the interest of the boys in planes, and they always loved going to their dad's job site and looking at the big planes. He is glad that the twins shared a likeness for planes, the same way he loved planes when he was younger.

He is always there to defend his boys, especially when they started to play soccer. A kid pushed one of the twins, and it took almost everything in him to not punch the kid's dad. After practice, he treated his wounds and bought them ice cream.

XAVIER

He initially wanted a girl so he could have a kid that looked like you, but he was gifted with a son who looked like him instead. He was kind of nervous when the nurse gave him the baby, but once he had him in his arms, he wouldn't stop staring and caressing his small cheeks. He repeatedly thanked you as he cradled your son.

He is the laid-back type of dad. If his son wants to try something, he will fully support him. He even taught him how to play board games, even if your son is clueless and mostly just laughing at his dad while pretending to playing. Although you refused to let him or your son near the kitchen, especially since he isn't particularly good at cooking or baking.

They became instant sleep buddies; you will always see them lying down and cuddling each other. Xavier is really good at calming him down and making him fall asleep; hence, you gave him the job of tucking your son in every night. There were instances when you woke up in the morning and he wasn't beside you. Instead, you saw him sleeping in the nursery room with him in his arms.

[chaoticluminaryperfection]

Scene: Erik’s childhood bedroom, 12:47 a.m.

First time doing this, so be gentle!

You’re pinned against the window of his old room, the one with the faded posters, the worn dresser, the creaky floor that gives away every movement. The city lights flicker through the blinds, casting shadows across the walls. Just down the hall, his brother Bobby’s door is cracked open, and Julia’s soft music hums faintly behind hers. But Erik doesn’t care. Not tonight.

His hands are all over you rough, hungry, reverent. Fingers dragging up your thighs, over your waist, up your ribs to cup your breasts like they’re his to worship. His inked arms flex with every movement the tattoos on his forearms and shoulders shifting as he moves, stark against his skin. One of them, a black serpent wrapping around his bicep, seems to slither with every breath he takes.

“You feel that?” he murmurs, pressing his hips into yours. You can feel the thick ridge of his cock through his jeans hot, hard, and impossible to ignore. You also feel it the subtle, intense pressure from the Prince Albert piercing he’s teased you about before.

“That’s what you do to me,” he growls, voice low and rough. “And we’re not rushing this.”

He unzips his jeans and lets them fall just low enough for his cock to spring free thick, veined, pierced, the silver catching the light like a secret meant only for you. But instead of taking you, he drops to his knees right there, on the worn carpet of his childhood bedroom.

His hands grip your thighs like he owns them, spreading you open. The chill from the window meets the heat of his breath, and you gasp as his mouth trails upward past your knees, along your inner thighs. His septum ring brushes your skin, making you shiver, and the silver earrings he wears gleam as he looks up at you with a smirk.

“Say my name,” he dares you.

“Erik…”

His mouth finally meets your center, and it’s everything. Slow, devastating licks. That tongue piercing flicks your clit with maddening precision, alternating with deep, lazy strokes that make your knees buckle. He’s relentless. His tattoos flex across his shoulders and back as he moves, muscles tense and controlled.

Your moans spill out, desperate and broken, and he grins against your heat.

“Already shaking,” he mutters, voice muffled. “And I haven’t even fucked you yet.”

He keeps going until you’re trembling, teetering on the edge, then he pulls back, lips and chin glistening, chest heaving. The silver nipple rings on his pecs, catching your eye as he leans over you, smirking.

“You’re coming with me inside you,” he growls, breath hot on your cheek. “Not before.”

He slides on the condom, stroking himself slowly teasing you with the sight of his pierced cock, thick and glistening. Then he cages you in, hovering over you on the old mattress, the bed frame squeaking under his weight. You can barely breathe.

When he pushes inside, it’s excruciatingly slow, each inch dragging, stretching, forcing you to feel every damn part of him, including that piercing that rubs exactly where you need it most.

“Shit,” he groans, forehead pressed to yours. “You feel so fucking good.”

He moves slow, deep thrusts, hips rocking with control. You wrap your arms around his inked shoulders, moaning into his mouth. The drag of his cock, the stretch, the weight of him, the friction it’s almost too much.

And yet not enough.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he groans, grabbing your leg and hooking it over his hip. “So good for me.”

He thrusts harder, deeper. The tattoos on his back ripple with every move. His piercings every one of them seem to be working overtime: his cock, sending jolts of pleasure with every thrust; his nipple rings, brushing your chest as he leans in; his septum, nudging your skin as he pants in your ear.

“You’re gonna come for me like this,” he growls, hand sliding down to circle your clit. “Eyes on me. Now.”

When it hits, it consumes you your back arches, your nails rake his shoulders, and your cry is muffled in his mouth. Your whole body spasms around him.

And that’s when he loses control.

He buries himself deep, cock pulsing, body shaking as he groans into your neck sharp and low. The sound of the headboard knocking the wall once, then going still, is the only thing keeping you from completely floating away.

His weight settles over you, breath ragged against your skin. You feel the cool metal of his piercings chest to chest, mouth to shoulder, everywhere.

But he leans in again, voice still wrecked and dripping with promise.

“Five minutes,” he whispers, nipping your jaw. “Round two’s gonna have you screaming into this damn pillow.”

[magicalqueennightmare]

Temper Flare Headcanon

Heacanon for how the fellas would react when you're normally chill but your temper finally flares

Tony has been known to not walk on eggshells around anyone (Bruce when everyone was worried about the hulk and Tony is over here zapping him and shit) but with you it seems like hardly nothing sets you off anyways. The day you finally get pushed far enough, he couldn't even tell you who said what but when you jumped to your feet and said three little words "You know what?" everyone around sat down and shut up until you were through. It's quite possible he fell in love with you more then and threatened Steve with you a time or two.

Clint is also chill for the most part and only lets his temper flare when he's been pushed to a certain point. When you finally get pushed he's not too surprised to see that part of you. He just stands to the side with his arms crossed. "Gonna stop her?" "Nope"

Steve is used to you being more laid back so when you do go off? He starts to intervene but one look from you and he's even backing up. Instead he just stands to the side to make sure you don't need him and when you do calm him he gives you that little grin "How ya feeling doll?"

Sam hangs with super soldiers and spies on the regular. He always suspected you had a little temper on you. However he didn't think it was like that. He stands there, wide eyed while you're going off. When it's said and done however? This man is laughing "Damn baby. Remind me not to piss you off"

Joaquin gets that little puppy dog look when you finally go off. The man can face dangerous missions, near death experiences but the thought of you being upset with him? However when he finds out it was cause the little blonde barista was talking about trying to get his number and wouldn't take the fact that he was with you? Well he's a grinning idiot then.

Bucky is used to people saying whatever. By now nothing bothers him and he's used to you being laid back so he doesn't expect much to bother you. One day the right (or rather wrong) thing gets muttered and he gets to see just what temper you keep under wraps. He lets it go for a few minutes, lets you get your point across then he's tossing you over his shoulder "That's enough sweetheart. You made your point clear"

John I wanna say how appropriate it would be that Captain Crashout had a girl that was a closet crashout? You and him were out, you just needed a new jacket that was it. All the people in the store had to do was keep their mouth shut but they keep muttering. John just stood there, he wasn't going to say anything and ruin your day. However you took enough. When he has to pick you up and carry you out he can't help but a low chuckle escape him.

[fictionfuel]

The tantalizing chill snakes through your veins, like sizzling lava slithering through your pulsing blood. The mix is a mouthwatering ache, so deeply seated it nestles into every fibre of your being. Your swollen, bitten bottom lip, coated in a sheen of cooling saliva. You count every laboured breath, the single fallen hair like fresh-fallen snow cascading over a pool of roaring crimson. Sylus. A man you deployed once upon a time, a time that feels like eons ago. Your old tale that will never be forgotten—a story of a ghost. How time unravels before you, a black-and-white film brimming with colours. Your innocent eyes have been riddled with tragedy and discovery, and most would frown with pity and rejection. Yet, you grin with mirth and bemusement. You're spinning your tale, one with boundless endings. With a twirl in your step, you cross one foot behind your ankle. The malleable leather of the crop gives under your lithe fingers, ghosting the handle. Like a feather tickling the equipment, you trace the handle up to the tip. That burning ember smoulders brightly in your gaze; the fiery, salacious intent matches that of the Onychinus leader. Your perfectly straightened hair falls delicately over your hooded eyes. “Sylus, this is my game. You say you have my heart; it’s that vice grip that’s holding my heart. Yet, who has your heart?” You breathe, crouching closer to the floor. Stepping sideways, you're the predator closing in on your prey. Stalking, calculating the perfect ambush. A graceful cock of a trimmed white brow, the fluent motion of one shapely lip upturning. “Well, kitten. That’s a question you answer; this game of yours you desire to play might give you what you're seeking.” Sylus taunted, a lilt of playfulness mixing into that low rasp. The voice of an angel, with the looks to murder. An intoxicating concoction of allure and grace, any foolish soul succumbs to a similar fate—the same one you fell for. A being with ethereal features, a body of Adonis, and brains beyond time itself. The weapon of mass destruction. “Oh, Sylus~” You purr a slow drawl of his name. A sound so sweet, bees would be swarming you. Sylus stares, expression unreadable; the tiniest audible hitch of breath breaks the flawless facade he’s bearing. A mark of weakness, and you’re going to exploit that. “You like the sound of my voice, don’t you, sweetie?” The name you love dearly flows like water. The husky and low timbre was lost upon your saccharine melody. “Sweetie, tread wisely. This game you're playing, you want to commit to. With me,” Sylus warned. The husky and baritone rumbles deep in his chest, a warmth so familiar it bears life and death. Those ruby irises gleam with emotions an old soul would lament, a wounded soul so sorrowful it brings nothing but melancholy. Yet, shining like the sun breaking across the horizon, lecherous mania claws at those gems. You straighten up, the crop gripped tightly in your grasp. You stare directly at Sylus, your partner. Your lover. A part of your soul. Slowly, painfully so, the cool tip of the crop traces Sylus’ sharp jawline. Like your fingers usually do, telling a story. Ghosting down towards the column of his neck, over his bobbing Adam’s apple. The final destination was his chin. Halting the crop there, you forcefully tip his chin up, eliciting a soft growl. “I don’t think you should be giving me orders, considering your predicament.” Emphasizing your point, you lay the bottom of your sleek black heels over the mouth-watering bulge. A throaty groan rips from Sylus, his head tilting further back.

“F-fuck,” he curses brokenly.

Adding pressure, you twist your foot in half circles. Taking away pressure and forcing your foot harder onto his cock. Leaning down, cocking your head to the side. “You break me, I’m going to break you; now be a good boy.”

@/fictionfuel 2025. Don’t repost, steal, claim as your own, or use to train AI. Dividers: @/saradika-graphics

[fishyaudio]

Raz, who's been your favourite design you've made for your anthro au? I have a feeling it's Saint lol

Your feeling is not wrong, she's a favourite to draw!

But if I had to choose one, favourite design ever out of the ten, it would be the one for Shine (aka Monk, I really need to start using the names I gave them all for the AU here as well, gahh)

It's a surprising choice for me, because when it came to in-game depiction + popular fandom interpretations of Monk, I never really liked the guy (not disliked, just didn't think about the character a lot and found others more interesting). I don't usually dig the "peaceful, kind, happy" archetype characters in media in general, it's just not my thing, and most "fanmade character extensions" of Monk I've seen just expanded on that alone. It's not that they're anyhow wrong! They're just really not my thing and it always itches me to introduce more contrast or flavor in personalities of that sort. It's suprisingly hard to write a character who is mainly just really pure and avoids conflict, at least for me. Unhinged beasts with weird morals are sometimes just easier to grasp bwahaha

And with that, since it's "character design" and not just "design" - that initially made me feel like designing and creating the anthro AU equivalent for Monk would be a neccessary struggle and when I'm done, I won't ever pay much attention to a character I'd consider a bit more flat in comparison to what I had planned for others. But the longer I sketched, more "what ifs" came to mind and I ended up with Shine - still the younger sibling, just taller and bigger than the scrawny, troublemaking, older one. Took advantage of Share (Gourmand) being his parent, so he takes after him in size and personality a bit more. That opened a really fun path to explore with him.

I've decided to link his pacifist mentality and kindness not to being childish and bit unwise, but to idealism, stronger sense of justice and an overall aspiration to be reliable and responsible. He's still young and naive, but it doesn't come from being childish and having a "kill them with kindness, no other options allowed" mentality, but rather from being an inexperienced, future leader with a lot of potential. One that's often being very harsh on himself when his mistakes or faulty judgement causes a slip-up or a situation escalated in a way he couldn't predict. Sometimes, things just happen and there was no way to foresee the consequences or avoid confrontation, despite how hard everyone tried, and that's also a part of life - that's something Shine would struggle to accept. He's naive, but not dumb. Even with that - it doesn't stop him from being a very trustworthy and quick-thinking individual. I like that about him!

And this is also what's reflected in the design - he's on the taller side, with a more blocky build. Flowy, loose clothes both make him look really comfortable and chill, visually suggesting that he's more laid-back, not active, not used to fights and messy situations, while also pushing the silhouette to be a one, sturdy shape even more. That just yells "you can approach and trust this guy easily" by looks alone. From smaller details - he has the monk symbol in a visible place on his belt -> wants to signal to others that he's not a threat and is always willing to talk things out or settle for a compromise. He doesn't have much more accessories -> doesn't like showing off and isn't desperate for attention. The only striking, busy pattern he has on him is the striped sleeve to match his sib - he values Ways (Survivor) a lot!

From other designs for the AU - March, Ways and Steps (Spearmaster, Survivor and Rivulet) are also my favourites for various reasons, but this post is already a yap session. Maybe next time, if anyone's curious.

Thanks for the ask! Gave me an excuse to draw them more!!

AU tag here!

[alacants]

further thoughts on sincaraz winner's room:

bff: ok but i want the version where after umag '22 carlitos was practically vibrating out of his skin with anticipation because it's finally happening, they're going to make love fall in love and live happily ever after bang or whatever uh yeah that's cool it's chill and then he discovers that jannik doesn't believe in this sports tradition and is very politely but firmly like I Will Not Force You Into Anything Like This, Carlos, I Have Too Much Respect For You ...so i guess the answer is carlos just has to win every single final they ever play from now until forever so HE gets to control the outcome!

alacants: kajgkgkjl;fdgkldgfkl;fdgkl;gfgf scream oh my god that. does explain so much about roland garros. also lfjdkafjdfjdlk hahahaha no WONDER he was pissed about ao

bff: i'm laughing to myself thinking about this and beijing last year actually

alacants: UH HUH jesus yeah like

bff: SUDDENLY, HONEYMOON BECAUSE THEY BANGED

alacants: beijing → the week of—YEAH EXACTLY

bff: CARLOS WAITED TWO YEARS FOR THIS

alacants: wow are we sure this isn't actually happening

bff: i mean honestly i think this is just truth there's also something there about... there's no winners room for non-finals matches obviously but carlos does just turn up at jannik's door after their matches anyway "that was basically the final!" is not an excuse that flies when you're saying it because u want to bang ur rival, carlos

alacants: "i have a rival and i'm not afraid to say it" vs "this is the best rivalry in tennis"

bff: the most damning part will be the one time jannik actually gives in

alacants: wow... UH, YEAH, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING JANNIK

bff: this also explain novandy ok we're not going there

alacants: NO I KNOW like every single novandy fic from a certain era is just this idea writ large but there is something here about novak loses miami final → two uninspired first round losses → novandy split → novak wins geneva i can't quite put my finger on it but. it's there.

[nohoperadio]

Today I had lunch with my mom at a café, which is a thing we traditionally do twice a month, and partway through the meal she asked me quite casually whether I was on HRT because I allegedly looked "a bit booby". I was not prepared for this question in the slightest. For one thing while I have experienced nonzero boob growth since going on Œ six months ago (damn, six months ago...) my feeling is that it's very subtle, certainly well within the range of what most people would attribute to weight fluctuation if they noticed at all? But okay I'm willing to accept I might be underestimating that due to whatever cognitive biases, this still seems like a leap!

For context I have never said anything about my gender to anybody irl and I hadn't been planning to at any point in the near future. I feel like my mom would not have guessed this without having already been primed by previous examples of me being weird about gender, she's seen me wearing nail polish and skirts before, albeit not in recent years. So sure, it's a less dramatic revelation than it might have been. She knows I'm bi which isn't really evidence of anything but idk. Possibly she noticed that I've started removing my arm hair this year, I don't have a good sense of how noticeable that is. Last year my trans man coworker was going through a lot of gender healthcare drama and I mined that for conversation fodder a lot, possibly she intuited a more than merely neighbourly interest in the topic (but she specifically initiated asking for updates a lot too)? I am still very surprised! Obviously it's kinda validating but jeez. I had been thinking as though the pace of when I let people know about this would be entirely in my control for a long time; it seems possibly this was naive?

Well anyway it felt pointless to deny it so I told her yes. My mom is 65 years old and I would say not super knowledgeable about trans topics but she's also extremely live-and-let-live by nature and I've never known her to be other than chill when this cluster of topics comes up, so I wasn't super worried, but you never know when it gets more personal right. She seemed pretty calm about it and in fact the conversation moved back to other stuff pretty quickly, almost disappointingly quickly. She asked a couple of questions about it but not many. She seemed more-than-usually pensive to me for a little bit afterwards and I got the sense she wanted to know more but didn't feel on safe ground wrt what questions to ask, and I probably could have encouraged her more about that, but I wasn't sure how to do that without moving us towards a deeper conversation than I was really ready for, so idk. Nothing about pronouns was mentioned which I was glad about because I still don't fully know what I feel about pronouns, beyond that I wish they weren't a thing. But for the most part it just felt like a normal lunch with my mom, which I guess in terms of the spread of possible outcomes for this kind of event is pretty positive.

Still though--weird!! I thought I had a secret. I only kind of have a secret it turns out. How bout that.

[chimcess]

⚔︎ Chapter One: The Longhorn Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, Age Gap, 18+ only Word Count: 16.8k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: graphic violence, blood, bar fight, underage drinking, drinking under 21, alcoholism, implied child abuse, implied CSA, stabbed by pool cue, hitting with bottles, male/female fight, threats of violence, there's just so much violence in this series, homeless character, food insecurity, murderous thoughts, murderous intent, very strong language, This is the most tame chapter moving forward btw, can only think of one other that's this chill, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: And so it begins... Surprise dropping to celebrate my birthday. Thanks so much for reading!

prev || masterlist || next

The Longhorn didn’t sit so much as it slouched—just off Highway 87, somewhere between Amarillo and Canyon, like a half-dead dog that hadn’t figured out how to lie down properly. It looked slapped together from scrap and bad intentions: walls patched with corrugated tin, tar smeared in ugly gobs over leaky seams, warped boards nailed by someone with more liquor than judgment. The wind didn’t bother whistling here—it groaned, a tired old man dragging chains through its guts. It wasn’t much to look at, not even enough to mock. But it didn’t give a damn. Never had. It was as much a fixture as the sunburnt sky and the stretches of withered land it squatted on. It simply was, and had been long enough that no one could remember a time it wasn’t.

It was July 18th, 1990, and the heat in South Texas had stopped pretending it was part of the weather. It was punishment. The kind of brutal, mind-numbing heat that didn’t beat down on you—it crawled up inside, found the tender spots, and stayed there. The sun poured itself across the land like molten brass, draining the world of color until everything looked cooked. Bone-white sky. Rust-red dirt. Yellow grass scorched to ash. Even the road gave up—blacktop rippling like oil on a skillet, the edges of the highway blurring into a hallucinatory shimmer. The mesquites had folded into themselves, brittle things waiting for death, while the cacti stretched wide and thick, crawling over the far side of the highway.

But the Longhorn didn’t blink. Its porch sagged in the middle like a drunk passed out halfway through a fall, the planks beneath it creaking with each gust of wind. Boards had been replaced without reason or rhythm, patched like wounds with scraps of whatever could be nailed down. The windows weren’t windows anymore, just grimy lies with more filth than glass, fogged over with years of grease and cigarette smoke until they were better at keeping secrets than letting in light. Above the entrance, a twisted chunk of tin swung halfheartedly from rust-choked chains. The lettering—once proud—was chipped to near-oblivion, “The Longhorn” barely decipherable in the right light. Below that, a bleached cow skull dangled crookedly, one horn snapped clean off, the other yellowed and worm-bitten.

But it wasn’t the look of the place that got you—it was the smell. The stink hit you like a sucker punch. Hot grease that had gone sour, diesel baked in the heat, leather soaked in sweat and left to rot. Stale beer that had melted into the wood decades ago and never left. Underneath it all, something sharp and chemical, like industrial cleaner that didn’t clean so much as announce its failure. The kind of stink that settled into your skin, your hair, your lungs—and lingered, no matter how long you scrubbed.

The parking lot was more suggestion than surface—dust, gravel, and spiderweb cracks that split like lightning strikes through dried-out earth. A few trucks sat there like bleached carcasses, sun-blasted and peeling, their windshields so caked in grime they looked frosted over in filth. Heat waves shimmered up off their hoods like steam from a dying engine. The trucks weren’t abandoned, just forgotten for the moment. Their owners were inside, soaking into the shadows, becoming part of the walls, drinking like they didn’t expect the next round to taste any different than the last.

Inside, it wasn’t any cooler. Ceiling fans turned with all the urgency of molasses, creaking like they hated their job. The air moved just enough to spread the heat around evenly. Smoke stains marbled the ceiling, the walls stained a nicotine yellow so deep it looked baked in. Lightbulbs flickered from overhead like they were considering retirement. Everything was faded. Everything was slow. Nothing was clean, and nothing wanted to be.

The air was thick—cigarettes, old beer, something decaying in the background like a warning no one bothered to heed. Something had died back there. Maybe a rat. Maybe something with a name. The jukebox gasped out a tired Waylon Jennings song, skipping and sputtering like it was coughing through the lyrics. It didn’t matter. No one was listening.

Behind the bar stood Ellis Clifton—tall, broad, a man who looked like he’d been built, not born. His skin was burnished bronze, like metal worked under the sun, and his face was stone, still and solid, except for his eyes. Those eyes moved like they had all the time in the world. Ellis didn’t waste words. Ellis talked like molasses ran in his veins, but when he did speak, no one dared interrupt.

The name on the deed belonged to Frank Dickman, but Frank hadn’t been seen in half a decade. Rumor said he’d gone soft in the head, wandering around Sabinal with a Bible and a blank stare. His daughter, Betty Anne, was still figuring out if she wanted to sell the place or just wait for time and termites to do the job for her. Ellis kept it going, because it was the only thing he had ever done well. Before this, he was a ranch hand, and he wasn’t about to go back to chasing cattle and eating dust. Not when he had his boots planted behind a bar that needed him more than anyone else ever had.

The regulars were stitched into the furniture. Ranchers with bark for skin and hands that looked like they’d lost fights with barbed wire. Truckers with road-glazed eyes who stared past everything like they were still watching mile markers flash by. Old rodeo men who still walked with the pain of a thousand falls and wore championship buckles to remember the time when they mattered.

The women were jagged, loud, and weathered by hard years. Lips stained red, lipstick feathering into the cracks at the corners, eyes sharp from squinting through too many lies and cheap sunglasses. They wore jangling bracelets and too much perfume, their laughter hard and half a second too late. Their stories didn’t change either. Same soap-opera misery, same whispered grudges, same bad jokes chewed down to the gristle. The only thing that shifted was who was saying it, and how drunk they were when they did.

Far corner, near the window no one bothered looking through—not because the view was anything special, but because everyone knew better. There was no sign on that booth, no rope to keep people out, no brass plaque to explain its gravity. It didn’t need one. Some places earn their boundaries the hard way. People just knew. That booth belonged to a man who didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard, a man whose silence could clear a room better than a shotgun blast. He didn’t ask for space. He was the space.

Taehyung Kim. That’s what he said when people asked—not that many did. But names in this part of Texas had a way of bending around the truth, and Taehyung collected his share of nicknames like shadows collect dust. The one that stuck was Snake Charmer, whispered more often than spoken, and never, ever said to his face. Juan, his Mexican friend, had been the first to say it out loud—said Taehyung had a way with men, with moods, with danger, like he could whisper something terrible into the world and it would listen. It fit. Not because he looked like a threat—he didn’t—but because that was his trick. Lean and still, calm like dusk before a wildfire, slow like a fuse you don’t see until your eyebrows are already gone. He didn’t look dangerous. And that’s what made him dangerous.

He first rolled into town a decade ago, young enough that he shouldn’t have been drinking, old enough that nobody said shit about it. There was something in his stare—flat, quiet, heavy—that made men older than him reconsider their words and shift their stance. He didn’t smile. He didn’t joke. He just was, like some goddamn force of nature wearing skin. He came and went over the years, like a storm system that couldn’t make up its mind, and every time he came back, someone ended up across from him in that corner booth. They’d talk. Or they wouldn’t. They’d sit for ten minutes, or an hour. Sometimes they walked out together, looking changed in the kind of way that made you wonder if they’d sleep again. Sometimes they didn’t walk out at all. Sometimes their names showed up on the news. Other times, their names just stopped getting said.

When Taehyung came into the Longhorn, the temperature changed. Not the heat—that stayed, clinging to your skin like wet gauze—but the air, the tension, the vibe. It went still, like the room was holding its breath. Voices dipped. Conversations thinned out. People suddenly remembered their drinks were worth studying. No one offered him a beer. No one asked why he was there. He didn’t want company. He didn’t want attention. He wanted the booth. He wanted the door in his line of sight. And he wanted time to tick the way he decided.

That night, he wore black. He always did. A western shirt with thin red piping, neat but lived-in, sleeves rolled just enough to reveal the white scar curling like a worm from his wrist to his forearm, and the silver watch that never ticked. His pants were clean, creased like he cared. His boots, scuffed at the heel and toe, looked like they’d seen more road than the trucks out front. On one finger, a turquoise ring; on his pinky, a plain silver band—old, worn smooth, the only thing he still wore from his brother Namjoon, a man who’d once been something before the world took it from him.

He didn’t fidget. Didn’t glance around like he was sizing anyone up. He just sat. Still. Pinned to the leather seat like gravity worked a little harder on him. One hand cradled a glass of scotch, the liquid already gone lukewarm. In front of him, untouched, a shot of tequila. Next to that, a sweating glass of water leaving a wide wet ring on the wood that made his jaw tighten every time he looked at it. He drank slow, if he drank at all. Everything about him was measured.

Above the bar, the clock was lying again. It always had. Plastic molded to look like brass, hung crooked since ’78 when Ellis put it up and never bothered to fix it. The second hand twitched every few ticks like it had arthritis. The minute hand sagged like it knew it was running late. But Taehyung didn’t look at it. He didn’t need to. He knew. The kid was ten minutes late. Exactly ten. Not enough to make it personal yet, but enough to speak volumes.

Tardiness wasn’t neutral in his world. It was communication. A statement. It said something about respect, or the lack of it. It said something about fear, or its absence. Being late meant one of two things: you didn’t understand what you were walking into, or you did—and didn’t care. Either way, it wasn’t smart. Not with him. Once, maybe, Taehyung might’ve let that kind of thing slide. Back when he still believed in second chances and the redemptive power of mercy. But that man burned out somewhere far from here, in some booth like this one, in a town that doesn’t get mentioned anymore.

He moved, just a little—so little it could be missed if you weren’t watching close. His right boot creaked as it dragged an inch forward. His knee bent slightly. A casual observer might call it relaxed. But they’d be wrong. Taehyung didn’t relax. He readjusted. He calibrated. He made the necessary shifts to maintain control. The scotch caught the yellow light overhead, glowed like old honey, and stayed in his hand as if the feel of it mattered more than the drink itself. The ring from the water glass kept spreading, a slow, wet insult he couldn’t stop seeing.

The ceiling fans above groaned in their lazy, lopsided circles, stirring the same stale cocktail of cigarette smoke, hot breath, and old secrets that had been hanging in the Longhorn since the '70s. The air moved, but it didn’t get better. Voices still murmured in pockets around the bar, but they came out slower now, hushed and cautious, like the words were watching their own backs.

Taehyung’s eyes moved through the room with that slow, sweeping stillness of someone who never looked rushed but missed nothing. He saw the guy at the bar, the one with the nervous lighter—snap, flick, snap, again and again. He saw the woman across the way tapping her fingers on the tabletop in a rhythm that didn’t match her mouth. And he saw the two brothers hunched in the back booth, not speaking but clearly angry at each other—one of them slamming his boot against the floor just a bit too hard, making sure the other felt it. Taehyung didn’t need to hear what any of them were saying. Bodies always spoke louder than mouths.

He’d given the kid twenty minutes. That was the unspoken line in the sand. Not a rule—those were too flexible. Anyone worth meeting knew better than to cross it. Show up too late, and it wasn’t a mistake—it was a message. It meant you thought you could get away with it. It meant you thought you had leverage. At twelve minutes past, Taehyung began tapping his thumb against the side of his glass. His patience was wearing thin.

Then the cowbell above the door gave out its signature death rattle—dry, cracked metal on wire, like bones tumbling inside a soup can. It had sounded sick for decades. No one remembered the last time it rang clean. Still, it worked. The room reacted as one—spines stiffened, mouths shut mid-sentence, a card half-drawn from a deck froze like it was afraid of the outcome. Forks hovered, cigarettes paused just short of lips. Heads turned slow, like livestock catching a scent they didn’t like. First the men, instinctive, sizing up whatever was coming through that door. Then the women, slower, more surgical. Women at the Longhorn had learned early the difference between looking and being looked at. One was defense. The other, liability.

Standing there was a girl.

She stood in the doorway like a dropped match—small, sharp, a flicker of something that might catch fire if given the right wind. Maybe eighteen. Maybe younger. Hard to tell through the grime and the glare of the beer sign behind her, lighting her up in flickering blue like a ghost in a neon fog. One foot inside, one out, caught in that thin moment between flight and arrival. She looked like the road had tried to eat her and only half succeeded. Her blue hoodie hung loose and sun-faded, collar stained with sweat and something darker. Sleeves shoved up past the elbow, arms streaked with dirt, maybe blood. Hair yanked back with a shoelace. Clothes clung to her wrong—too tight where they shouldn't be, too loose where it mattered. Jeans torn and dragging. One boot held together with duct tape, the other torn up and covered in mud. A duffel hung off one shoulder, canvas worn to threads, the strap frayed like a wound that wouldn’t close.

She stepped inside. The door swung shut behind her with a groan that matched the floorboards swallowing her footsteps. The temperature didn’t change, but the air did. Taehyung smelled her before she got halfway to the bar—hot pavement, bad gas station coffee, motel shampoo, and the ghost of somewhere worse. She didn’t drop her gaze. She scanned the room with the kind of look that had nothing to do with hope and everything to do with survival. She wasn’t looking for help. She was counting exits. Taking stock of threats. Her eyes swept past the men and women and smoke without sticking. Not even the ones who leaned a little forward, trying to catch her eye like a hook.

Near the jukebox, an old-timer—face cratered like a busted moon, grin decades past its expiration date—gave her a smile he probably thought was charming. She didn’t blink. She didn’t stop. She moved through the Longhorn like a needle through old leather—clean line, no hesitation. Straight toward the bar.

The duffel hit the wood with a thud that turned heads. Ellis Clifton, mid-pour, froze. The whiskey overflowed, a thin trail running down the side of the glass, pooling at his fingers. He didn’t move. Just watched her. He didn’t speak. Didn’t have to. She climbed onto the barstool without looking around, folding in on herself. Elbows on the bar, shoulders hunched, eyes down just enough to make herself smaller. Anyone with eyes could see the girl did not want to be noticed.

But the Longhorn didn’t let things slide past unnoticed. Not when they walked in like they were dragging ghosts behind them. The place remembered. Not in a conscious way—no scribbled notes or whispering walls. Just something quieter. A sense that it was all being filed away somewhere under the floorboards.

Taehyung still hadn’t moved. The scotch sat beneath his hand, glass fogged with sweat, the warmth of his skin still sinking through it. He wasn’t staring—nothing that crude—but his attention had tilted. His eyes tracked her the way a hunter watches the wind. Not locked, but fixed all the same. Still as stone, still as shadow. He hadn’t twitched. Hadn’t even adjusted his seat.

She wasn’t the one he was here for. That part was obvious. But there was something about her—something that stepped outside the lines. The way she moved. The way she held space like she didn’t need permission. She didn’t look around, didn’t perform for the room. She sat like she was casing the joint without trying. And that, more than anything, snagged his interest.

She was cute, sure. He could admit that to himself. Had the kind of look that might’ve turned his head a few years back—too young to carry the weight she wore, too old in the eyes to pretend she didn’t. But Taehyung wasn’t twenty anymore. He didn’t chase pretty. He didn’t chase anything. Not unless it bled.

If this were another life, another night, maybe he’d have stood. Maybe he’d have crossed the floor and offered a drink she didn’t ask for. But not tonight. Tonight he was here on business. And something told him that if he so much as sat too close, the girl would gut him with her eyes before she even thought to reach for a weapon.

Still, he didn’t look away.

Two stools down, Waylon Cordell stirred—if you could call it that. He moved like something arthritic and forgotten. Waylon had been part of the Longhorn longer than the termites. He was the living, breathing equivalent of a beer stain—permanent, unpleasant, impossible to scrub out. His gut hung heavy over his belt, his scalp patchy like peeling wallpaper. Red veins mapped across his cheeks, skin shining with the wet gloss of cheap bourbon and cheaper regrets. He turned his head toward her like it took effort and leaned in.

“Well now,” Waylon said, his voice dragging the syllables like they were coated in syrup, thick with phlegm and the kind of back-bar bourbon that didn’t burn clean. “Ain’t you somethin’. Let me buy you a drink, sugar.” 

His grin came apart in real time—one side curling around a yellow tooth that didn’t quite fit, the other hanging slack beneath a sagging eye that always seemed a second behind the rest of his face. Whatever charm he thought he still carried had long since expired, dead and buried in the same dirt as his last three marriages and any self-respect he might’ve once owned. He dropped his elbow to the bar with the, leaned in heavy, dragging the reek of sweat, sour booze, and hopeless years into the space between them. He didn’t move his feet. Didn’t ask permission. Just inserted himself, claimed the air she was breathing like he was entitled to it.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t shrink or shift or shy away. Just turned her head toward him with that same mechanical smoothness she’d used at the door. Her eyes met his, and in them was no fear, no discomfort—just a kind of quiet, calculating clarity. Like she was already writing him into the margins of a plan, mapping his bulk, his range, how long it would take to move if she had to.

Then she smiled.

It wasn’t the kind of smile you returned. It wasn’t warm, or soft, or anything close to an invitation. It was a ghost of something long dead, summoned up like muscle memory, a reflex fired off from somewhere deep beneath the hard-set lines of her face. But it changed her. Briefly. Like stormlight cutting through clouds—quick, sharp, gone. Behind the grime and road-dust, underneath the brittle tension of her jaw, something softened. And in that blink of surrender, there was the faint suggestion of who she might’ve been once. Not innocent, not untouched, but maybe not always carved out of survival. Maybe, a long time ago, before the bruises learned how to fade faster than the memories, before silence became sharper than screaming—maybe she had known softness. Maybe it had been stolen. Maybe she had given it up. Either way, what remained now was just the echo.

Taehyung saw it. That flicker. That shape her mouth made and how it changed everything about her face for half a second. Her usual edge—tight, defensive, braced for impact—smoothed out just long enough to show the shape of the weapon beneath it. Not innocence, no. But the memory of it. And it struck him then, unexpected and uninvited, that she was beautiful.

“Hello,” she said, voice rough like gravel under a tire, worn thin but steady.

Waylon’s grin widened. Too drunk to notice the razor behind her calm. Too slow to see the trap already set. He leaned closer, his gaze already drifting lower like gravity was dragging his thoughts down with it. He didn’t see the way her jaw tightened beneath that smile. Didn’t see how her hand hovered just above the bar. He was the kind of man who’d spent his life mistaking survival tactics for flirtation. The dumb ones always did. The dangerous ones, too. Waylon managed to be both in the same breath.

At the other end of the bar, Ellis Clifton set a bottle down with a dull, deliberate thud. Heads turned. Cards paused. Dice sat still where they landed. Even the jukebox, halfway between songs, gave up and went quiet.

Waylon hesitated. He blinked—slow, wet, and confused—then turned, sluggish, toward the source of the weight pressing against him.

Ellis didn’t speak at first. Just kept wiping that same glass, slow circles etched into the shape of habit and second chances. His hand moved like it had its own memory, but his eyes—they were locked on the girl now. Steady, thoughtful, drawn not to the bruises or the grime but to the way she held herself. Too still. Too deliberate. It wasn’t the kind of stillness you get from fear. It was the kind of stillness you get when the walls are already closing in and you’re figuring out which one to punch through. She looked too young, sure, but not in the skin—that could lie, caked in dust and road-sharp edges—but in the way her shoulders carried weight like they’d been braced since childhood. In the way her gaze scanned the bar without moving her head. In the way she sat like a chair might break beneath her or turn into a weapon. She didn’t belong here. She belonged somewhere with clean sheets, central air, warm coffee, and the kind of silence that wasn’t earned through violence. But Ellis had been in the Longhorn long enough to know what belonged didn’t always get to stay.

His wife used to look like that. Back when they were seventeen and something in her flinched when people got too close. It had taken months to get her to stop checking every door twice. Years before she stopped tensing at raised voices. And here was this kid—this dusty, carved-up girl—carrying that same silent alarm in her bones. Ellis knew the type. Knew what they needed, too. And he knew Waylon Cordell even better. Knew that slow, boiling temper that made every room a match waiting for a spark. He didn’t want to scrape anyone off the floor tonight, least of all a girl who’d already survived more than Waylon ever could.

“Ma’am,” Ellis said, voice cut low and flat, a sound with weight. “Gonna need to see some ID.”

She turned toward him like she was moving through water. No twitch. No panic. Just that careful stillness again. Her movements weren’t slow because she was afraid—they were slow because fast meant fear, and fear drew predators. She turned like someone who’d been prey before and knew speed didn’t save you. Her eyes opened a little wider, just enough to read innocent if you weren’t paying attention. Her mouth parted like a lie was about to fall out, soft and practiced. Then came the mask. That fragile, feminine tilt of the head. The breath caught just short of trembling. The helpless look girls wear when they’ve been taught that survival depends on making other people feel needed.

But Ellis saw through it. Not because she was bad at it—hell, she was damn good—but because he’d seen it too many times. That wasn’t fear, not really. That was muscle memory. That was calculation. She wasn’t scrambling—she was adjusting. Choosing a different play from the same worn book. Not a girl bluffing her way out. A girl trained to weigh every angle. And that meant something—something important.

Taehyung hadn’t moved from his booth. Still leaned back, fingers loose on the scotch glass, the tip of his thumb resting just above the base like a conductor holding time. His body gave nothing away, all muscle memory and quiet patience—but something inside him had shifted. Subtle. Mechanical. Like a camera lens narrowing its aperture. Not interest. Not pity. Focus. He was reading her now. Parsing her choices, her posture. The smile that lived only in her mouth and never touched her eyes. The angle of her shoulders. The refusal to give Waylon the full turn of her body. She wasn’t playing the scared girl—she was playing the smart one. She’d picked Waylon because she knew exactly what to expect. Not safety. Predictability. That made her dangerous. Taehyung had seen it before—in cold basements, strobe-lit clubs, and safehouses where nothing was safe. This girl didn’t flinch. She calculated.

Maybe the scene would’ve held. The fragile balance. The illusion of harmless tension. Maybe she could’ve kept Waylon strung out on his own assumptions for another few minutes—long enough to slip the hook. But then Waylon slapped the bar.

It came down like a wet slap to the face of the room. Loud. Crude. Designed to be heard, to remind everyone that Waylon Cordell still thought he mattered. The wood rattled under his palm, sticky with decades of spilled liquor and sweat. His grin curled into something rotten.

“Come on, Ellis,” he slurred, words dragging behind the bourbon. “She’s with me. My treat. You know how it is.”

Ellis didn’t answer right away. But the Longhorn did.

A pool cue hit its slot like a bullet casing. Chairs shifted as boots planted. Someone near the back put down his fork like he’d lost his appetite. And the jukebox—already half-dead—gave up the ghost completely. The only thing moving was Ellis’s rag, slow as ever, like he hadn’t heard a thing. But his jaw was set now. Shoulders tight under that oil-stained flannel. He was calculating too, same as her, just older. More tired.

“Rules are rules,” Ellis said finally, and the grit in his voice scratched like sandpaper on steel. “I ain’t gettin’ caught up with the law for ya, Mr. Cordell.”

Waylon blinked. His face twitched like a computer error—couldn’t process. He didn’t get it. Couldn’t. He’d coasted through life like a dull knife, cutting nothing clean but always expecting someone else to do the sharpening.

“What the hell you talkin’ about?” Waylon said. “Since when do you care about IDs, huh? You served that kid from Tatum Creek with the busted nose and no shoes.”

“That kid,” Ellis said, folding the rag and setting it down like punctuation, “was sixteen, scared, and left me a ten-dollar tip. He didn’t grab no one, and he didn’t act like the place owed him a favor. He drank his Coke and walked out. You?” He leaned in, voice lowering. “You’re a liability with a mouth.”

Taehyung’s glass tapped the wood. Once. Then again. Then a third time. Not a threat. Not a countdown. Just the sound of time thickening.

The Longhorn knew tension the way a dog knows storms. Not through the sky, but through the bones. And this storm was coming in close. People could feel it. You didn’t need a forecast when your teeth ached and the floor started to hum.

Y/N felt it too. Not fear—she’d buried that years ago, left it behind with the taste of metal and the sound of sirens. This was a different sensation. A shift. A recalibration. Like gravity had tilted and her center of balance had moved with it. Her spine lengthened. Her breath slowed. Hands flat on the bar, elbows loose, body not braced but prepared.

Waylon didn’t see it. Couldn’t. Still too soaked in his own sweat and stale ego. He leaned in again, breath thick with smoke and sour mash, thinking he was about to get what he wanted.

“C’mon, Ellis,” he tried again, voice fraying. “Me and the little lady—hell, we might even—”

Taehyung looked up.

Nothing moved on his face. No twitch. No warning. But his eyes—those eyes—cut through the noise like a scalpel. Cold. Clean. He didn’t see a bar. He saw math. Angles. Time. She wasn’t waiting to be saved. She was waiting to move. He’d seen it before—in Havana, in Marseilles, in motel bathtubs under red lights. This wasn’t a girl in trouble. This was a weapon not yet drawn.

Waylon slapped the bar again—this time with the weight of someone used to getting his way. The sound cracked, louder now. Ugly.

“Just give me the fuckin’ drink, Ellis!” His voice was breaking. “I’ll deal with her if she gets too frisky.”

Everything stopped. The room exhaled into silence. The pool table held its breath mid-break. Dice stayed in stasis, fingertips still curled around them like they were sacred. The men in the booths, who’d been half-watching with the passive attention of wolves pretending to nap, turned fully now. One of them, eyes shaded by a trucker cap that hadn’t been clean since the Clinton years, let out a slow whistle between his teeth. Another—older, lean, hollowed out by desert years and harder work—shifted just enough for the glint of metal on his hip to catch the light. No one made a move, but the bar had already turned.

Ellis didn’t blink. His hand, once circling the same glass like a man scrubbing his conscience, froze flat against the wood. Not clenched. Not flexed. Just still. And that stillness held something heavier than sound.

“Say that again,” he said, voice soft as worn gravel. “So I can make sure I heard it right.”

Waylon blinked slow, like his brain was swimming through bourbon. His eyes darted from face to face, expecting support, finding none. Even the jukebox had abandoned him—still stuck in its own silence like it didn’t want to be part of what came next.

“I didn’t mean nothin’,” he muttered, all that confidence leaking out through the cracks in his tone.

“You never do,” Ellis replied. “That’s the problem.”

Y/N shifted. Subtle. Not a flinch—she didn’t flinch. Just realigned. Like a hinge settling into place. Chin up. Shoulders squared. Not tensed. Not bracing. Ready. Her hands didn’t tremble. They waited. And that waiting felt louder than any threat Waylon had ever heard.

Ellis drew a breath. Long. Deep. It tasted like smoke, dust, and hard choices. He let it out like a man resigning himself to a job no one else would do. His eyes closed—not out of fear, not weariness. He’d seen this before. Hell, he’d lived through it. Too many bars. Too many girls. Too many Waylons who didn’t know when they were one bad sentence away from being a headline.

He thought about his Tina. Before she stopped twitching. Before Ellis learned how to speak without volume. That memory, tight and uninvited, rose in his throat like smoke from a backdraft. He looked at the girl again—at the weight behind her stillness, the gaunt sharpness in her cheekbones, the grit pressed into the corners of her mouth—and he knew. She hadn’t eaten in a day. Maybe longer. Probably hadn’t had clean water either.

So Ellis reached for the bottle.

The shot hit the wood with a low scrape. He slid it to her without flourish. With his other hand, he reached under the bar, pulled out a chipped glass, and filled it with cold water from the gun and set it beside the shot.

She didn’t say thank you. Didn’t nod. Just kept her eyes locked on Waylon like she was watching a rabid dog decide whether to bark or bite.

Waylon, still drunk on ego and sour mash, saw the drink and mistook it for victory. He grinned, sloppy and wide, and grabbed the bottle like a trophy. Sloshed it over the lip of a knocked-over coaster and settled into the stool beside her with all the grace of a landslide.

“So,” he slurred, sliding closer, breath hot and damp, “what brings you ’round these parts?”

She turned.

“I’ve had a shitty few years,” she said. Her voice didn’t tremble. It carried the weight of every night she hadn’t slept, every bruise she’d earned, every hallway she’d walked where the floor threatened to fall out from under her.

Waylon laughed. That stupid, wet, snorting kind of laugh that men like him thought counted as charm. “Shit, girl. Welcome to the club.”

She didn’t respond. Just watched him like he was weather.

Ellis slid the shot glass again. Louder this time. A knock, not a suggestion. Like a judge tapping the gavel and daring the room to argue. Waylon reached out to pour himself another, but his hand missed the mark. Liquor sloshed across the bar and down the front of his shirt. He didn’t notice. Didn’t care. Just pushed the bottle toward her like it was a gift, like this was his moment.

“To you, sweetheart,” he said.

She didn’t toast. Didn’t look at him. She took the bottle with calm, calloused hands, poured a clean shot, and knocked it back like she’d done it a hundred times. No wince. No fanfare. She set the glass down like punctuation.

Then she reached for the water. Held it in both hands for a beat too long. Looked at it not like she was thirsty, but like someone who hadn’t been allowed to need anything in a long time. Like the glass itself meant something more than hydration. She drank it slow. Not cautious—deliberate. Like her body knew this was the only clean thing that might touch her that night. Every swallow quiet, drawn out, reverent.

Behind the bar, Ellis watched her the way a man watches a candle burning too close to a curtain—nervous, conflicted, unable to look away. His jaw was tight, stomach turning slow and steady like gears in an old clock. He’d seen plenty walk through the Longhorn who didn’t belong, but none quite like this. She didn’t need help. That much was clear. But she hadn’t eaten. Probably hadn’t slept either. And Ellis had the sick feeling that if he didn’t give her something tonight—one small kindness—she might not live long enough to ever ask again.

So when Waylon reached for the bottle again with all the grace of a drunk reaching for relevance, her hand was already there. Calm. Still. But firm—an unspoken line drawn across the bar. She didn’t yank it back. Didn’t push him away. Just stopped him, expression unreadable.

“Appreciate the drink,” she said, voice flat.

Then she stood. Boots hit the floor like punctuation, heavy and grounded. She didn’t look back. Didn’t hesitate. The bottle hung loose in her hand, balanced perfectly. She was almost to the door, nearly free of the moment, when the word came flying at her—petty and sharp and desperate.

“Bitch.”

She didn’t stop. Just tilted her head a little, like a dog catching a new scent. Her shoulders shifted, subtle and slow.

Thick fingers—greasy, unsteady—wrapped around her wrist with a sloppy kind of force. Her arm jerked, not from the pressure, but from the audacity of it. She froze. Not in panic—but with a focus that came from somewhere far worse than fear. Her breath slowed, her jaw locked, her shoulders squared. Every inch of her body had gone still in that dangerous way predators do just before they strike.

From the booth, Taehyung tapped his glass and watched.

Waylon leaned closer, breath sour with booze and rot. “No way you walk out with that bottle,” he muttered. “Not without givin’ me something.” His grip tightened. His thumb dug in. His other hand found her waist, fingers clumsy and sliding.

“You came in lookin’ for trouble,” he said, thick and breathless. “Guess you found it.”

Her knee came up in a blur—fast, brutal, and perfectly placed. It slammed into his gut just beneath the ribs with a sick thud. His breath left him in a choked grunt, spit trailing from his lips. He bent forward like a folding chair. Before he could even process the pain, her fist followed. Hard and clean, it cracked across his face with a sound that turned heads—sharp and wet. His cheekbone lit up like a struck match, and his nose exploded in a rush of red that painted his chin and shirt.

He staggered, blinking stupidly, hands to his face—not to protect, but to understand. He clipped the edge of a stool, lost balance, and hit the floor hard, knocking the wind out of himself in a grunt that silenced what little noise had been left in the room.

She stood over him, unmoved. Her breathing was calm, her stance balanced. Blood dripped from her knuckles in slow, thick drops. The bottle still hung in her hand, not raised, just present. She didn’t speak. Didn’t make a show of it. She just watched him writhe, one leg kicking against the sticky floor, face smeared red, groaning like he couldn’t figure out how things had turned. She waited. Not for applause. Not for backup. Just to see if he’d try again.

In the booth, Taehyung leaned forward. Slow. His elbow slid across the worn surface, casting a flicker of green from the neon sign across his forearm. His eyes tracked her movements—posture, grip, breath. He wasn’t surprised. There was no awe in his gaze. Just understanding. Like he’d seen this before. Like he knew exactly what kind of history shapes that kind of silence.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t gloat. Waylon whimpered—small, pathetic, a broken noise that crawled out of him like a surrender. She gave him a slight nod. Barely a tilt of her chin. That’s enough.

Then she turned.

The bottle swung gently at her side, catching slices of fractured light from the buzzing sign overhead. She didn’t step over him. She stepped around him—like you would a puddle of something you didn’t want to track through the house. Her walk didn’t change. Her pace didn’t rush. It was the walk of someone who knew this was done. Over. Handled.

She passed the bar like a ghost that bled warmth on contact, dragging silence behind her. Ellis hadn’t moved since the shot hit the counter—still as driftwood in a tide he knew better than to fight. The regulars stayed rooted to their stools, eyes following her like they were afraid to admit they were watching. No muttering, no whispers, no shift of cards or low jokes. The Longhorn had gone dead quiet, as if the bar itself held its breath. Her boots thudded soft and steady against warped floorboards, each step deliberate. Her shadow stretched long behind her, thin and sharp across blood, tile, and cracked linoleum. The jukebox stuttered, caught in the throat between tracks. A neon sign near the door fizzed once—bright blue, then nothing. It popped and died with the faint sigh of something old giving up.

Waylon coughed. The sound shattered the tension, sliced through the hush like a beer bottle through a windshield. 

“You fuckin’ cunt!” he barked, voice shrill and breaking, ugly with rage. 

He rose in a flurry of blood and slick hands, using the bar to haul his weight up, knocking a stool out of the way with a violent scrape. He stood swaying, shirt half untucked, breath snarling out of his busted nose. Red smeared his chin. The room didn’t move. No one intervened. Ellis didn’t twitch. The towel in his hand hung limp now, soaked and forgotten. His face stayed locked in that same blank calm that only came from long exposure to hopeless things.

Taehyung was no longer lounging. The slow, silent watcher had shifted. Elbows on the table, shoulders forward, posture coiled. His eyes had changed—no longer curious, no longer detached. He wasn’t watching a girl anymore. He was watching potential.

Waylon didn’t see it. He never had. All he saw was blood on his shirt and laughter in his head that wasn’t real. He saw mockery. He saw her walking away. He lunged.

He grabbed her arm and yanked hard. Her boots slipped on the slick spill of liquor. She hit the ground on her knees, the breath punched out of her with a sharp gasp between clenched teeth. He loomed over her, reeking of fury and rot, his breath hot on her ear. “Come back here, bitch,” he hissed, voice thick and low. “I ain’t done—” His hand clawed at her shirt, and that’s when the bottle moved.

She didn’t hesitate. Her grip shifted and the glass cracked down across his wrist. Bone met glass. Glass won. Waylon howled and stumbled, clutching his arm, face twisted in shock and pain.

She was on her feet before the noise finished echoing. Two sharp breaths, two quick steps, and she vanished into the shadows past the pool tables, disappearing into the darker end of the Longhorn, where the lights were low and neon signs barely clung to life. She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. The rage behind her boiled like oil on flame. The heat of it rose off the ground. Taehyung tracked every step. His body looked relaxed, one arm casually stretched across the booth like he was just another drinker killing time—but the lie stopped at the shoulders. His eyes had never left her. Not since the door. Not since the first shot. Not since the moment she dropped Waylon like a sack of potatoes.

It wasn’t beauty that caught him. It wasn’t even her power. It was her usefulness. She moved like a weapon. There was no panic in her steps. No hesitation. She was the kind of woman who wouldn’t ask what the job meant, only what it required. Taehyung had seen men like that. Rarely women. Rarer still with that kind of calm.

Then Waylon screamed.

“COME HERE!”

It sounded broken. More animal than man. All throat, no thought. Chairs scraped out of his way as he stomped forward, boots slick with liquor and blood. Glass crunched beneath his soles. He shoved tables, knocked over a barstool. The Longhorn didn’t move to stop him. No one did. Not Ellis. Not the regulars. Not Taehyung. The air pulled back. The room tightened, bracing.

She reached for a pool cue, her eyes squinting as the older man ran at her.

The sound it made—when it cracked across the side of Waylon’s skull—was almost too clean. Like a piece of wood splitting in winter air. He froze. Eyes wide, mouth open, confusion replacing fury. Then he buckled, knees giving way beneath him. He dropped, landing with a weighty thud that shook the floor.

She stood over him, cue in hand, breathing slow and even. Her grip didn’t loosen. Her feet stayed planted. Taehyung never blinked.

Waylon laughed. It was a thin, sick sound—somewhere between a wheeze and a sob. “You gotta be shittin’ me…”

She didn’t wait. The second swing was harder, sharper. She brought her full weight behind it, the cue slamming down across his arm. Wood cracked. The stick flew from her hands and clattered across the floor into the dark, out of reach.

Waylon howled, not from shock this time, but real pain. Raw, honest agony.

“I’m done with this!” he bellowed.

Waylon went for her again, and their bodies slammed into each other. Her shoulder hit the ground first, then his elbow cracked against a chair leg. They rolled in a tangle of limbs. 

A pool ball knocked free and danced across the tile. Tap. Tap. Tap. Then still.

The cue splintered beneath them—wood snapping, splinters flying. He landed on top, breath hot and ragged. His knee jammed into her hip. An elbow ground into her shoulder. His face hovered inches from hers, twisted in fury, mouth a stink of blood and whiskey.

She didn’t scream. Her knee drove up into his gut. He gagged.

She shoved hard, rolled, scrambled. Now she was on top, one hand pressed to his chest, the other gripping a jagged shard of cue stick, holding it just above his throat—close. Not touching. But the threat was unmistakable.

Her face was a mask of bruises and blood. Her lip was split, one eye starting to swell. Hair stuck to her face. But her eyes stayed cold. Focused. She didn’t blink.

“You shouldn’t’ve called me a cunt,” she said, voice flat.

Waylon spat, blood streaking down her boot. He grinned through it. “Not rude if it’s true. You ain’t tough. You ain’t nothin’.”

His hand shot up, gnarled and fast, tangling deep in her hair and yanking like he was trying to rip the past out of her skull. Her head snapped back with a raw, guttural sound—part pain, part rage—body jerking with the sudden violence. Her grip slipped, control blinking out like a lightbulb catching a surge. His boot lifted and struck her in the ribs with its heel. She flew, weightless for a half-second, then crashed shoulder-first into the floor with a fleshy thud. The breath was torn from her lungs, her back arched, her mouth filled with the sharp copper burn of blood. For a second, everything tilted. Ceiling lights swam above her, distant and warped, the world yawning sideways.

But she got up.

Waylon tried to rise too, but his knees weren’t listening. He pushed up and swayed, arms shaking, breath like steam escaping a cracked pipe. His shirt clung to him, soaked with sweat and blood and whatever fight was left. He stood there, trying to remember how to be a man again, trying to pretend he had control. But it was all gone.

Across the bar, Taehyung sat motionless. One hand near his untouched glass. Posture loose but unreadable, all shadows and stillness. But his eyes told the truth. They hadn't moved since the first punch. He wasn’t watching a bar fight anymore—he was watching a test unfold, watching a decision unravel in blood and breath. Not judging. Not intervening. Just witnessing.

Waylon reached for a stool.

His fingers curled around the seat, knuckles red, blood-slicked. His jaw clenched so tight his teeth creaked. His shoulders twitched. He lifted the stool overhead, wobbling under the weight of it. His eyes were wild now, unfocused, the way animals look when cornered. His breath came short and shallow.

“COME ON, BITCH!” he roared. “Let’s see that kung fu shit again!”

He swung.

She dropped. Just folded like a hinge. The stool arced wide, missed by inches, and exploded against the wall behind her. The impact cracked plaster, sent wood flying. A shard spun into the jukebox. The beer sign sparked once, then fizzled out with a soft hiss. And she was already moving.

One sharp pivot. Her boot snapped sideways, low and fast, catching the broken stool still clutched in Waylon’s hand. It knocked it loose, sent it spinning across the floor, where it skittered under the jukebox with a shriek of metal and wood.

Waylon howled and charged. He didn’t think. His hand found her wrist. Yanked hard. And that was it.

The broken cue still in her other hand came up fast. She didn’t swing. She drove it straight into his arm, just above the elbow. There was a sound—wet, wrong, thick with resistance. Muscle splitting, cartilage groaning. Blood sprayed, bright and sudden, like something had burst.

Waylon froze. Mouth open. Silent. Then the scream hit, all at once—high, raw, animal. It tore from his throat like something alive. Blood gushed from the wound, hot and red, speckling her shirt, her arms, her face. It soaked into denim, streaked across skin. She didn’t flinch. She stepped in closer.

Her hand pressed against the base of the cue, and she shoved. It slid deeper. Flesh parted. Waylon’s eyes went glassy, knees wobbling. One hand tried to find the shaft, clawing at it like it might disappear. The other flailed, seeking purchase on nothing.

She dropped to one knee beside him, quiet, smooth, no wasted motion. Her knee pressed into his ribs, pinning him. One hand braced the cue, the other hovered above his chest like a promise. Her face was close—calm, blank, surgical.

When she spoke, her voice was low, carved from something old and cold. “You’re right,” she said, no tremble in her tone. “I am a cunt.”

A drop of blood fell from her hand, landing on the pale fabric of his shirt.

“But you were still rude.”

Her palm settled gently on his chest, the cue trembling faintly between them. She didn’t press. Everyone in that bar knew if she leaned in, he wouldn’t get up.

Then a voice cut the silence, low and deliberate. Smooth like oil, sharp like broken glass. “Some people,” it said, “aren’t worth killing for free.”

Her hand didn’t move, but her head turned. She stayed crouched over Waylon’s broken body, jeans soaked at the hem, shirt clinging to sweat and blood, arms streaked with bruises that hadn’t even started to bloom yet. Her lip bled in a slow trickle down her chin. Hair stuck to the sides of her face.

The low light from the busted sign caught her face as Taehyung stepped into view. She looked up at him. When he knelt beside her, his shadow stretched long and heavy across Waylon’s broken form, swallowing him up in its blackness. He reached out his hand, offering it to the girl. His fingers brushed over hers. She hadn’t even realized how hard she’d been holding onto the cue until his warmth broke through it. Her knuckles were white, her hand rigid. He didn’t try to take it. It was then that Y/N realized exactly what she was about to do.

The broken cue slipped from her grip, falling with a dull clink to the floor, spinning once before settling in a patch of blood. Taehyung didn’t pull his hand away. She met his gaze.

There was no softness there, no patronizing comfort, but no judgment either. His eyes held something that she sometimes saw when she looked into the mirror. He gave her the faintest smile, so slight it barely existed.

“Take my word for it,” he said, voice low, calm, firm in that way only truth could be. “He’s not worth it.”

She didn’t respond, but her breath shifted—slower now, more controlled. Her shoulders dropped the tiniest amount. Behind them, Waylon whimpered.

It was a pathetic, high-pitched sound, too soft for a man his size. He clutched his arm with both hands, blood pumping down his side in thick pulses, soaking his shirt, pooling beneath him. 

“She... she was gonna kill me,” he stammered, voice full of disbelief, wet with panic. “Jesus, man... if you hadn’t—if you hadn’t showed up—” He coughed, deep and rattling, like something was trying to crawl out of his chest. “You’re a... a fuckin’ lifesaver.”

Taehyung looked at him. “Leave.”

Waylon nodded, jerking his head like a puppet with frayed strings. He moved to push himself up, grunting with effort, face twisting with each inch like his body hated him for trying. He reached for a stool, missed, cursed, then tried again. No one helped. No one moved. He didn’t look at her, but he made the mistake of glancing at Taehyung.

Whatever he saw there cut straight through him. His eyes dropped fast, shame folding him in half. He turned and staggered toward the door, one hand clamped to his ruined arm, the other dragging along the wall. A dark trail followed him—thick, uneven smears of blood across the wood that would stain. The cowbell gave one half-hearted jingle. The hinges moaned. The door slammed behind him as he left.

Behind the bar, Ellis gripped the sink like it was all that kept him upright. The towel in his other hand hung limp, half-dried glass forgotten in his grip. Sweat had begun to line his forehead, beading along the hairline. His face was tight, jaw locked, lips pale. The long, exhausted resignation of a man who knew he’d remember this one and it would follow him to his dreams tonight. His wife would be horrified if he told her what happened that night.

The jukebox tried to come back—gave a stutter, a spark, then died again. One last cough of sound, then silence.

Taehyung rose without a drop of fear, like he hadn’t just stared down a man bleeding out on the floor. This wasn’t the worst he’d seen. Maybe not even the messiest. Just another page in a book already full. His coat brushed against splinters and glass, the hem dark with spilled beer and blood, dragging through the same grooves worn into the wood by years of too many boots and too many regrets.

At the bar, he didn’t pause. His voice cut through the room—quiet, level.

“Two damp towels.” It wasn’t a request.

Ellis blinked like he’d just remembered his body, ducked down without a word, and came back with two thick towels—still hot, still smelling faintly of bleach and age. They were stained already. Nothing clean stayed clean here. He handed them over in silence.

Taehyung took the towels and turned back to the girl. She was still on the floor, knees pressed into wood that had seen too many nights like this one, grain dark with sweat, beer, and blood that no mop ever reached. Her hands sat in her lap—bloodied, open, trembling just enough to betray the cost of what she’d held in. Her shoulders were slumped. Each breath she took was uneven, dragging in through grit-lined lungs and slipping out like glass.

She looked wrecked, but her eyes were clear.

Taehyung knelt beside her without a word, his coat folding around him, his presence settling into the space without disruption. He moved with that same quiet intention he’d carried since the beginning, because nothing ever surprised him anymore, and this girl had managed to. 

One towel he held out. The other he brought to her temple, pressing it against dried blood with a kind of care that told her that he’d done this before. There was no hesitation in his touch. She didn’t flinch, didn’t lean away. She let him clean her face without any fuss.

When he offered her the second towel, she took it, gaze never leaving her hands. She wiped them slowly, mall, grinding motions, circles, pressure and pause. Like she’d done this before, maybe too many times, and never gotten clean enough. It made him wonder who else’s blood she’s had to clean off.

Taehyung didn’t speak. Just kept at it—behind her ear, along her jaw, down her neck. The bar around them didn’t make a sound. No footsteps. No glass clink. Just smoke rising, blood dripping, and the low hum of tension bleeding out into stillness. Her elbow still wept crimson in slow, steady drops that soaked into the wood.

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” she said, voice thin and stretched but not shaking.

Taehyung didn’t answer immediately. He folded the towel neatly, blood inside, and placed it by her knee. Then he looked at her fully—her torn lip, the bruises blooming dark across her cheek, the red coating her knuckles, and the eyes beneath it all. Calm.

“Maybe not,” he said after a beat. “But if the wind had changed... you would’ve.”

She didn’t argue. Didn’t nod either. 

Taehyung kept his eyes on her. Trying to place her. She had the stillness that came after chaos, the kind that wasn’t taught but burned into your bones. She carried a certain calm about her that he knew he carried with himself. He had a few years on the girl and had managed to get over the rage she carried along the way, but he remembered a time when he made the stunt she pulled that night look like child’s play.

He held out a hand—palm open, fingers loose. There was a smear of blood across the base of his thumb. She stared at it.

“Taehyung,” he said. His voice was low, even, patient.

She didn’t take his hand right away. Her eyes moved over him slowly, methodically. She took in the details—his collar, slightly crooked like he didn’t care much for appearances. The thin scar over his knuckle, healed badly. The boots, expensive once but worn down with miles. His face was unreadable. Not cold. Just still. Not inviting, but not closed off either. And then she reached forward.

“Y/N,” she said. “Y/N Y/L/N.”

Taehyung nodded once. “Well, Y/N,” he said, dry, “you don’t strike me as someone who drinks Jack by choice.” His chin dipped toward the busted bottle still bleeding into the cracks of the floor. “How about something you actually like, sugar?”

Her eyes followed the gesture, then slid back to him. A brow lifted.

“You offering because you feel bad?”

He breathed out—close to a laugh, but not quite.

“Not unless I should. I’m offering because I feel like it.”

She studied him. “Nothing more?”

“Nothing less.”

Y/N didn’t speak right away. She traced the edge of the towel, thumb moving through blood caught in the seams of the fabric. Her jaw worked slightly. Her gaze flicked to the door—out of instinct—then back.

“Margarita,” she said. “On the rocks. No salt.”

That earned her a smile. A real one this time. Slow, uneven, like the muscles hadn’t been used in a while. It made him look younger, more handsome and boyish.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Taehyung said. “Though I like the salt.”

Taehyung tipped his head toward the corner booth he’s been sitting at since he got there. It crouched in half-shadow, half-flicker, backlit by a dying COLD BEER sign that stammered through its last few breaths in twitching red and blue. The letters didn’t glow so much as tremble.

Y/N rose without a word. She crossed the room unbothered by the stares, her limping not stopping her from holding her head up high. When she slipped into the booth, the vinyl groaned beneath her and gave way slowly.

Behind the bar, Ellis’s shoulders rolled like they ached, his hands shook but he didn’t fumble. Didn’t speak. He didn’t look their way. Just reached for the bottles without another word. Two glasses—one rim salted, one bare. Lime dropped in hers with a heavy thunk. Ice cracked. Liquor poured. He tried his best to think about how lost the girl looked earlier rather the the blood staining through her clothes.

He had said Waylon didn’t know when it quit. It was only a matter of time before something like that happened. Ellis just never expected it would be from an emaciated little girl. Or that a pool cue would be involved.

Taehyung returned with both drinks in hand, boots whispering across the sticky wood. He set her glass down with the kind of care that made noise unnecessary. The glass kissed the tabletop, condensation already forming in a slow ring.

“No salt. On the rocks,” he said, and then lowered himself into the booth. One arm draped across the seat, legs stretched out, weight sunk in. The booth shaped itself around him.

Above, the neon sputtered—red, blue, red again—washing their faces in bruised light. Shadows crawled across their cheeks and hands, flickering over old scars and fresh cuts. The drinks caught the color too, fractured beams glinting off the surface.

Taehyung swirled his drink and stared into the cloudy green like it might offer him a better story than the one they were already in. 

“Looks like antifreeze,” he muttered, then took a sip and grimaced. “Once had the real thing. Shack outside Baja. Bartender looked ninety. Said the tequila was older than him. Dust in the air. Gunfire on the horizon. Best night of my life.” He stared at his drink again. “This tastes like piss with lime.”

Y/N sipped hers and flinched like she’d been hit again. Her mouth twisted, tongue curling against the aftershock. “Christ,” she muttered, swiping at her lip with the back of her hand. “It’s a good thing I don’t care about what I’m drinking.”

Taehyung laughed. Not a breathy sound or a polite exhale—laughed, real and cracked and full. She didn’t react beyond another sip. She drank again anyway. It didn’t taste better the second time.

They stayed like that for a while—no rush, no questions. Just two people sitting in the smoke-thick silence of a bar that had seen too much and cleaned too little. The jukebox, somewhere behind them, fizzled out into static, then gave up entirely. Blood dried into the floor behind them in slow, rust-colored stains, and the air thickened with the weight of everything that had happened—and the things no one said out loud.

Flies had started surrounding the pools of blood.

Taehyung leaned back again, his posture loose but grounded, one arm slung along the booth, the other hand near his glass. He didn’t speak right away. He let the silence hang. Let it wrap around them like smoke.

Then: “What you did back there—clean.” He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t grin. Just looked at her and let the words land. “Thought you’d freeze. Or fold. Most people do.”

A beat. Then something in the corner of his mouth pulled tight—not a smile. More like the shape of respect. Dry, edged.

“But that?” he said. “That was magical.” He paused, voice dropping half an octave. “And yeah. Looked cool as hell.”

Y/N didn’t lift her head. Didn’t blink. Just stared into the bottom of her glass like there was something in it she hadn’t found yet. Then she tilted it back and drained the rest in one motion. The ice clinked, then settled.

Taehyung watched her, still as a man waiting on a trigger. He looked at her like someone might look at a coyote pacing just beyond the edge of the firelight—half curious, half cautious, and fully impressed.

“How old are you?” he asked, flat.

“Nineteen.”

No pause. No flicker of doubt. Just truth, clean as a cut.

He nodded, no change in expression. No raised brow. Just cataloguing.

“Where you from?”

“Alabama.”

“You don’t sound like Alabama.”

She shrugged—left shoulder only, just enough to be called motion. “What’s it supposed to sound like?”

Taehyung shut his eyes for the length of a breath, just long enough to drag a picture from the dirt. He didn’t need the details—not names or places or dates. Just enough to sketch the edges. Dusty roads the color of sunburnt skin, trailers bleached pale by heat and regret, dogs sleeping under rusted-out cars that hadn’t run in years. A girl sitting barefoot on a porch with her knees pulled up, staring out past the treeline like she already knew everything behind her was poison. A place that didn’t need bars to keep you in, just silence thick enough to choke. A girl who didn’t cry, didn’t shout, just waited for the first excuse to leave—and the second not to come back.

“You leave on your own?” he asked, still watching the past unfold behind his eyelids.

She nodded.

“How far’d you get before someone tried to stop you?”

“First night.”

Taehyung leaned back. He rested against the booth, mind already trying to plan out the rest of the conversation. The girl either didn’t notice or didn’t care that he was analysing her like this. Wouldn’t have mattered either way.

“Nineteen,” he muttered. “Alabama girl with no accent, walks into a bar in Texas, and stabs a man with a cue. Am I supposed to believe that?”

She tilted her glass, watching the ice melt into weak liquor, the way someone might study blood swirling down a drain. “You’re the one asking.”

Taehyung let out a short breath, more ghost than laugh. “You any good at poker?”

“Never played.”

She didn’t look at him. Didn’t have to.

He studied her then, not to figure her out, but to understand the edges she was carved with. “Could’ve fooled me.”

She took another sip, winced like it bit back, swallowed anyway. “I get that a lot.”

“Why Texas?”

Another shrug. “It was west.”

His eyebrow arched. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the truth. I want California. Heard there’s stuff there.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Her gaze lifted, just slightly, like the word itself had weight. “Stuff I ain’t seen.”

He took a slow sip, face unreadable as he swallowed. The taste didn’t improve. He grimaced, set the glass down with a dull, hollow thud. His fingers tapped once against the rim. Then stopped.

“You ever kill someone before tonight?”

“Yes.”

That made him pause.

“Would you have killed him, too, if I hadn’t stepped in?”

She didn’t rush her answer. Didn’t posture. Just swirled the last inch of her drink, watching it settle, then lift again. “Maybe.”

Taehyung didn’t blink.

“You sure?”

She tilted her head like an animal would. Her ponytail slid over one shoulder, damp and matted with sweat, blood, and road dust. The neon above them buzzed once, flickered red, then blue, and back red again. Then her eyes met his, full-on, steady.

And she asked, without hesitation: “Do you want it to be?”

Taehyung didn’t move. Didn’t smile. But something in him stilled. A gear locking into place. He saw it now—not the scrapes or the broken skin, not the way she kept one foot metaphorically planted like the fight might start again. It was in her stare. That terrifying calm that didn’t come from practice. It came from origin. From blood. From birth. It was violence that had never needed translation. A reflex, not a strategy. She didn’t think in pain. She thought in reaction.

She wasn’t broken. She was built like this.

His mouth twitched. Just a flicker. Barely there. The closest he got to smiling.

“Okay, Alabama,” he said, voice low, laced with dry recognition. “You win this round.”

She didn’t nod. Didn’t answer with a smirk or a glance. Just drained the last of her drink in that slow, resigned way people take medicine they know won’t help. The glass hit the table a little off-center, left a faint ring in the sweat pooled beneath it, and stayed there like a held breath.

“I’ll get you another one,” Taehyung said, already half-turned.

“Okay,” she replied.

He flicked his fingers toward Ellis, who understood without needing to. Five minutes later, the bartender returned—one fresh margarita, no salt, lime hanging limp on the rim. Y/N didn’t thank him. Just picked it up and took a long, unbothered swallow.

Silence followed. The jukebox fizzled out into static.. Blood dried in curling stains across the floorboards, blackening into something permanent. The flies continued their buzzing.

Taehyung leaned in a little, elbows on the table. His voice came lighter, almost casual—something slipped under the door instead of knocked out loud. “You into kung fu flicks?”

She didn’t blink, didn’t lift her head much, but something in her eyes shifted—fast, subtle. A flash of recognition. Not quite warmth. Not quite nostalgia. But it stirred the dust.

He saw it. Grinned a little. “The old ones,” he said. “Bootlegs. VHS copies with the tracking lines jumping like crickets. Dubbing so bad it felt like it was from a whole different movie.”

Something broke loose in her chest—a sound that might’ve been a laugh in another life. Rough, breathy, unfinished. “Yeah,” she said, voice uncoiling. “Used to wake up early for ’em. Local station ran ‘em before cartoons. Half the titles were wrong. Didn’t matter.”

She smiled. Small. Crooked. Disappeared before it could mean too much.

“Had five tapes,” she said. “Played ‘em till the reels stretched out. Could quote half of Drunken Master before I could spell my own name.”

Taehyung didn’t speak. Just watched her remember. He liked the way her eyes lit up.

“The dubbing was garbage,” she added, quieter now. “Voices didn’t match the faces.” She took a sip. Winced again. Same bitterness, same fire. “I didn’t care. I was hooked. I read about the styles. Cranes, tigers, mantis. Probably bullshit, but it was fun.”

Her voice dropped. She drank again. It tasted like chemicals and broken air conditioners, but she got it down.

“People thought I was weird,” she said, finally looking at him. “Didn’t say it. But I knew.” A shrug followed—left shoulder only. “Then Jason Mathers tried to grab me in gym class.”

Taehyung’s brow arched slightly.

She smiled again. This time with teeth. “Popped his shoulder out of the socket.”

He laughed. It caught high in his throat and dropped low in his chest, like it hadn’t been used in a while. A few heads turned toward the sound, then looked away just as quick.

For a second, the bar seemed to relax. Even the ceiling fan gave one low groan and spun to a stop. The jukebox didn’t even try to resurrect itself.

She sat back, glass nearly empty, knuckles torn open, lip split. Jaw bruised. But there was something in her posture that hadn’t taken damage. Something behind her eyes that still burned—not like a wildfire, but like a pilot light that never went out. Defiance in its purest form. Not loud. Not reckless. Just unwilling to die.

Taehyung saw it. Sat with it. Leaned back slowly, keeping his gaze on her. He’d seen killers. He’d made a few. Broken more. But this girl wasn’t forged yet. She was still fire and metal, not finished into anything. A knife in the middle of becoming. He could feel it in how she held still. Not with fear, but with control. Like she knew her edge and didn’t care who else did.

“You’re not Jackie Chan,” he said, voice low, something dry threading through it. “But for someone raised on warped tapes and bad years, you’re ahead of the curve.”

His smile came slow. Uneven. Genuine in the way most things aren’t anymore.

Then Taehyung leaned in again, elbows settling on the table. His rings caught a flicker of the busted neon light overhead, purple and sickly, cutting across the knuckles of a man who’d learned more with his fists than most did with their mouths. His voice dropped.

“I’m gonna tell you something,” he said. “But first—” He didn’t blink. “If it leaves your mouth, even once... there’ll be consequences.”

Y/N didn’t blink. Didn’t ask what kind of consequences. Didn’t twitch like someone about to bluff. She just nodded once.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.

And Taehyung, who didn’t believe in many things—especially not people—believed her.

He watched her a second longer. She wasn’t tense. Wasn’t performing. She just was.

“Good,” he said. He leaned in just a hair more. Not enough to break distance. Just enough to change the temperature between them. Close enough she could smell him—burnt whiskey and sweat-soaked denim, the sharp tang of powder and metal, leather baked by the sun, the stale bite of something mechanical. “Because if you talk,” he said, voice low but clean, “I’ll kill you.”

She didn’t move.

“You ever made good on that before?” she asked, swirling her glass, ice clinking.

He raised a brow. Let the question hang.

“Once or twice.”

She didn’t dig deeper. She leaned back just slightly, enough to let her spine breathe, let her ribs remember where they were supposed to sit. She studied him. Not the boots. Not the scars. The man. The shape of him beneath it all.

“What did you see in me?” she asked.

He rolled one shoulder. His leather jacket creaked.

“Something familiar.”

She waited.

His eyes dropped to her hands—blood cracked in her knuckles, skin tight over bruised bone, muscles still twitching like they hadn’t gotten the message yet.

“I’ve seen tough,” he said. “And I’ve seen a room full of pussies with their chests puffed.” His eyes met hers. “I can assure you, you’re the former.”

He drew a circle on the table with one ringed finger. Voice low, but steady.

“What you did to Waylon... your body got there before your mind even caught up.”

She let that sit. Felt it settle. Then gave a slow nod. She did not think about these things.

“Yeah,” she said. “Guess it did.”

“Where’d you learn it?”

Her eyes stayed on his.

“Life. You hit first, people stop testing you. Eventually.”

He nodded. Like someone who’d heard it said before, or maybe said it himself, a long time ago.

She watched him a moment longer.

“Doesn’t scare you?”

His head tilted slightly. One brow low.

“Should it?”

She looked down at her drink. The ice was all but gone now.

“Most people either try to fix me,” she said, voice quieter, “or they run.”

He lifted his glass. Raised it halfway.

“I don’t fix people,” he said. “And I don’t run from shit, Alabama.”

She raised hers to meet his. The glasses touched with a soft clink.

Outside, the wind kept scraping leaves across the roof. A semi moaned down the blacktop, its lights flashing through the window and gone before anyone could blink. The jukebox sputtered once, gasped, and then Patsy Cline’s voice crawled out—ragged, beautiful, dragging heartbreak behind it like a rusted chain. Y/N thought about her mother. “Crazy” had been one of her favorite songs.

Taehyung didn’t speak right away. Just stared into his glass, letting the tequila spin slow and sullen, like dirty runoff circling a drain. His hand stayed loose on the rim, thumb dragging against the condensation like he could wear a groove into it if he tried hard enough. His eyes didn’t blink, didn’t flick, just watched the swirl like it had something honest to tell him. And then—finally, like a match catching wind—his voice cut through the stillness.

“There’s people out there,” he said, not with cynicism, not with envy, just with the weight of knowing, “who keep things simple. Fix trucks. Run registers. Marry the first person who smiles and never ask why they stopped.” He looked up. Met her eyes. No smile. No sell. Just locked in. “And then there’s people like me,” he continued. “Maybe like you.”

Y/N could not tell if she believed him or not, but something about him made her second guess her hesitation.

“We live under things,” he said. “Behind gas stations. Under bridges. In the spaces polite folks pretend don’t exist when they say grace. The cracks in the system that people cover with prayer and tax returns.” And she still hadn’t spoken. Just listened. She knew about those things more than most people realized.

“I run a crew,” he said. “We call ourselves the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.”

He waited a beat, watching her. Most people laughed at that part. It was a litmus test—see what the smile meant, if it was fear, disbelief, or just nerves. She didn’t laugh. Her face didn’t even twitch. He almost smiled at that.

“Stupid name,” he said, and his mouth curved a fraction. “Friend picked it. I kept it after he died.” He threw the last of the tequila back, slow, savoring the burn. Then set the glass down with a slow spin, watching it turn. “We’re contract killers.”

He watched her—not her face, but the way her body held the silence. That stillness. That self-control. That rare breed of calm that didn’t come from peace but from the kind of pain that teaches you to breathe around a scream.

“You want someone gone? We make that happen. Two hundred grand gets you in the door. More if they want peace of mind along with the body.” His eyes narrowed. “They’re trained. All of them. But they blend. No one expects the girl in beat-up sneakers. Or the busboy with a lisp.”

He leaned forward. The neon buzzed above, flickering against the metal of his rings. His voice dropped, low and certain.

“I’m not a pimp,” he said. “We don’t sell bodies. We sell death.”

She didn’t react. Didn’t flinch. Her fingers just tightened on the glass.

“I train them,” he went on. “Me and the ones who’ve lasted long enough to matter. Knives. Guns. Close quarters. Vanishing. Walking away clean. No flare. No loose ends.”

Then softer, “How to end someone with your hands—and still remember to feed the dog before midnight.”

Still, she didn’t move. Just held the glass like it might anchor her. And maybe it did. He reached across the table and gently rested his hand on her forearm. His thumb traced a line, just once. She looked at him. He could see she was measuring him up.

“I know where you come from,” he said. “That kind of pain doesn’t show much. It sits in how you breathe. How you stop asking for anything you don’t think you deserve.”

He gave her arm the smallest squeeze Then pulled back, let the distance return. All the while she watched him with that same blank expression on her face.

“You didn’t crack,” he said. “You came out sharp. As sharp as all the others did.”

He leaned back. The booth let out a soft groan. His gaze didn’t leave hers.

“What I’m offering isn’t revenge. It’s not justice. It’s not a fucking redemption arc.” His voice was sandpaper now, worn down to the grain. “It’s a life. Real. Dirty. Paid in scars and years you don’t get back. That’s the cost.”

She traced the condensation ring on her glass.

“You’ll see the world. Make real money. And yeah—you’ll kill people. Most will deserve it. Some won’t. Tough shit.” He spun his glass one last time. Then let it stop. “It’s not clean,” he said. “It’s not easy.” Then, softer. Lower. “And it costs everything.”

He lifted his hands, palms up, empty. He wasn’t selling. He was showing her what the road looked like. Nothing more.

“Your name. Your past. Every person who thought they knew you—gone. You get a codename. You start over.”

Then he stood. The booth gave a tired creak beneath him, the table shivered under the shift in weight, and her glass wobbled in its condensation ring. Taehyung stepped out with that same unfazed grace, boots silent on the warped floorboards. His hand came down on her shoulder, firm and hot to the touch. She didn’t look up.

“I’m going outside,” he said, voice flat. “There’s a cherry-red ’67 Mustang behind the ice machine.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgement. Didn’t reach for her gaze. His own was already turned toward the door.

“If you’re in,” he said, “go left. Get in the car.” A pause. “If not... go right. No hard feelings. You won’t see me again.”

And then—just as quiet, just as strange—he bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Quick. Dry. Not romantic. Could’ve meant goodbye. Could’ve meant nothing. Could’ve meant everything.

“Fifteen minutes,” he whispered.

Then he walked away. No backward glance. Just the whisper of the door swinging open, the groan of old wood under practiced boots, and the Longhorn folding around the vacuum he left behind.

She didn’t watch him go.

She stayed right there. Elbows on the table. Palm pressed damp against the warm glass. Her eyes unfocused. The drink wasn’t cold anymore, and when she set it down, it landed off-center with a small, definitive click. It wasn’t loud. But it was enough.

The bar breathed again. Like something had let go. The jukebox stumbled back to life, vomiting up Willie Nelson. Laughter rose from the back—too loud, too sudden, trying to shake off the static that still clung to the walls. A cue ball cracked. A chair scraped. The fan above ticked once. Then again. Spinning. Moving. Like life wanted so badly to pretend it had never paused.

But for her, nothing had started moving again.

She hadn’t broken. She’d just... shifted. A slow click back into place. A truth she hadn’t known was off until it corrected itself. It didn’t hurt. It was relief. Like breathing through your nose after years of congestion. And now her brain was ticking through its lists again.

Find food. Something fried. Don’t taste it. Start a fight. Win it. Don’t bleed. Take a drink. Leave it half-finished. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t ask. Don’t explain.

Then one more line. Slipped in like it had always been there.

Join a crew of contract killers?

It should’ve felt absurd. Surreal. Something from the wrong end of a bad dream. But it didn’t. It sat right next to the other rules, like it had always been waiting for its turn.

She let out a breath—short and jagged. There was too much blood in her mouth. Too much silence in her chest. Too much of this one day shoved into the same body she’d been dragging around for nineteen years. The bar’s light was slanted now, cut into ribbons by grime-streaked windows. The dust caught in it hung like ash. She watched it float.

Somewhere in her mind, her mother’s voice cracked through, scratchy and cigarette-shredded.

The world don’t care about your feelings, girl. It’s gonna keep turning whether you like it or not.

Funny, she used to laugh at her mother. Call her stupid. Crazy how much her mother was right about the world.

And her thoughts spiraled back to fists and bone, to the grip of a cue stick, to the clean contact of knuckle on jaw.

This wasn’t a decision. Not really. It was just the next thing. A step she’d already taken without realizing it. A door she’d already passed through. She leaned back into the booth. Vinyl squeaked, stuck to her bare arms. She folded them tight across her chest.

Her jaw set. Her eyes dropped. There, etched into the table, were initials. Faded. Carved in shallow. Maybe ten years old. Maybe older. A scar in the wood no one had ever bothered to sand down. Her reflection sat beside it, faint in the gloss—just a suggestion.

They used to call her an old soul. Like it was a compliment. Teachers. The old ladies at church. Rhonda Portnoy with liquor on their breath and too many stories that never ended right. 

No one ever asked what it cost to know too much too young. Maybe she was deep. Or maybe they just didn’t want to look long enough to see she was drowning. Her eyes burned. She blinked them dry—twice. 

The Longhorn still stank. Of sweat, beer, bleach, old fry oil. But under it—she could still smell the blood.

What the hell just happened?

She already knew. Even if her bones hadn’t caught up.

A man had walked in. The kind who didn’t need volume to make people listen. He didn’t offer comfort. Didn’t promise rescue. He’d promised a life. Maybe not a safe one, but it was more than she’d had going for her.

And she hadn’t flinched.

What filled her now wasn’t fear. It was interest. It lived in her chest like smoke behind a locked door waiting for a crack.

She reached for her glass again, out of muscle memory. Swirled what was left. It shimmered like a coin tossed into deep water. No answers there. She drank it anyway. The burn barely registered. Her hand was steady.

Willie kept singing. The cue ball cracked. Somebody laughed too loud. The fan overhead ticked on, blades slicing the air with lazy threat.

The Longhorn had moved on, but not her.

Something in her had shifted. Slid into place. And the ache that followed wasn’t a wound. It was release. She felt light. Like she’d stepped out of her old skin and hadn’t quite landed in the new one yet. The girl she’d been was fading fast. Just static now.

One step left and she was gone.

She didn’t move. Not yet. But the voice inside—the one that never screamed, never rushed—was speaking now.

Walk left.

Toward the door. The gravel. The Mustang behind the ice machine. Toward the man who hadn’t lied. Who hadn’t asked for anything but the truth of who she already was. All she had to do was stand.

Could I actually do this?

Because this wasn’t instinct. Wasn’t heat. This wasn’t defending herself. This was choice. A step you didn’t come back from.

Taehyung hadn’t sold her a dream. He’d shown her a blade. This is the life. Take it or don’t. He’d said she had the eyes for it. And he wasn’t wrong.

There was something awake behind her eyes now. The low hum she always carried had risen—quiet, sure. Like a machine warming up after years at rest.

Sick? Maybe. But it felt right.

She’d always known she was off. Not cracked—just tilted. Enough to make teachers cautious, the old bitches from church quiet, other girls keep their distance without knowing why.

She used to kneel on threadbare carpet, rewinding battered kung fu tapes until the ribbon whined. Not for fantasy—for form. Breath, stance, control. The blade under her pillow wasn’t a a made up fantasy, it had been a promise to herself. A promise she’d never acted on.

She never told anyone about the dreams. Not about hurting people. Not about blood. Not about killing her father. Not her mother, too tired to listen. Not the church girls, all soft smiles and sharp whispers.

But she remembered the fire that took her daddy from her. Remembered the nights before it—his shadow in the doorframe, the silence after. She was seventeen when she walked barefoot into the dark, half-packed bag in one hand, his truck keys in the other. The moon spilled over her shoulders like it was waiting for her to speak. She didn’t.

She never looked back. But she thought about that night every day.

And when she couldn’t go back, she started hitting other men. The ones who leaned in too close. Who mistook silence for weakness. Who brushed her arm like they owned it. She didn’t flinch anymore. She struck.

She got good. Because no one expects the punch from the girl who doesn’t raise her voice. Not from the reverend's good little girl who went to church three times a week and spoke on Sundays.

Now here she was. Slumped in a cracked booth that stank of bleach, beer, and too many bad nights. Lip split. Fists aching. Warm drink gone. No sirens. No screaming. Just stillness. 

Nothing had changed. Except everything had.

She stared at the ring her glass left on the table. Traced it once. Faint green glow from the beer sign above caught in the condensation. It looked like an answer. Or maybe a door.

That flicker still burned. The one that lived deep in her chest, behind the ribs, where no drink could drown it. The one that lit up not in fear, not in rage, but in the clean, quiet snap of bone under knuckle. It was still there. Low. Steady. Waiting. Like a pilot light in a dark house. She could ignore it for a while, maybe even forget it—but it never went out. Never really dimmed. And now it was humming. Calling.

Six minutes, maybe seven had passed. She hadn’t moved. Barely breathed. But the thought that had cracked her open when he left hadn’t faded. It had taken root. Sent feelers into her ribs. Started to grow.

What kind of person wants to kill?

Not one who’s good. But she’d stopped pretending to be good somewhere around thirteen. Maybe earlier. Good had been ripped out of her the day the belt came out of its loops, the jingle waking her up out of her sleep.

Ten minutes.

What if I said yes?

A Mustang parked behind the bar like it had been waiting since before she was born. A man she didn’t know, not really—but somehow, he’d seen her clearer than anyone ever had. No questions. No promises. Just a job. A life. Violence that meant something. Hurt that paid.

Right was more of the same. Dead towns with names she forgot before the motels gave her keys. Fights in alleys and parking lots that ended in bruises and nothing else. Rotating faces. Static nights. Cheap whiskey and cheaper exits. Right felt like a story she’d already finished, flipped closed, and tossed aside. It didn’t feel real anymore. Just a rerun on a broken screen.

She didn’t move. Arms crossed. Jaw locked. Her pulse murmured in her ears, each beat a warning or a countdown—she couldn’t tell the difference. Her fingers tapped against the tabletop, quiet and relentless. The ring left by her glass still glowed faint under the beer sign, warped and uneven. She reached out and touched it, pressed her fingertip to the cool wet rim, like it might tell her something.

It didn’t.

She said it anyway, under her breath, to herself, to the moment, to the whole damn weight of it.

“Fuck.”

Then she stood.

The chair scraped back hard, loud in the hush that followed. Heads turned. A glass froze mid-pour. Cigarette smoke spiraled up, caught midair. But no one spoke. No one stopped her. She didn’t look at them. Didn’t give a single glance. Let them stare. Let them guess. They’d already stopped mattering.

Her bag hung from the hook beside her, the same frayed canvas thing that had followed her from shelter to shelter, couch to cot. She grabbed it without flinching, swung it over her shoulder, felt the strap bite into her skin. It was heavy with places that never held her, but it tethered her. Always had.

She walked through. Past the jukebox bleeding out some slow, sad country tune. Past the cracked stools and stained bar and the men too far gone to lift their heads. She didn’t look back. Not once. She walked like she’d already left. The door was just a formality.

Outside, the heat punched her full in the chest. Thick. Wet. The kind of southern night that clung to your ribs. She paused on the warped porch, boards groaning beneath her boots.

To her right: the same spiral. New towns. Same lies. Rotting from the inside. Same weight, different grave.

To her left: gravel crunching under old tires. A red ’67 Mustang parked under a crooked streetlamp, dust dulling its lines. And him—Taehyung. Leaning back against the driver’s side door like he’d never been unsure of anything in his life. Coat loose. Boots crossed. Eyes watching, steady as midnight.

She didn’t hesitate. One breath. Then she turned left. 

Right on time.

The Mustang didn’t sparkle like she expected it to. She crossed the gravel like it was a bridge, not a road. Her shadow stretched long under the lamp’s sickly flicker. She stopped at the fender, turned toward him, met his gaze head-on.

Chin high. Shoulders square. Spine tight and straight.

“Okay,” she said.

No tremble. No emphasis. Just fact. Like she’d known she would say it all along.

Taehyung nodded once. “Of course you do.”

He pushed off the Mustang with that same lazy grace, unhurried and unbothered, and opened the driver’s side door. The creak of it echoed across the lot. She stepped around the front of the car, dust catching on her boots, gravel crunching like bones underfoot. Her hand found the passenger handle, and for a second she just held it.

The roar came out of nowhere—engine high and desperate, headlights screaming white across the dark. A truck barreled into the lot too fast for the space it had. Tires locked. Dust exploded in plumes. The whole lot filled with the sound of friction and panic and that awful skidding pause that always came right before something crashed.

But nothing crashed.

The truck slewed to a crooked stop like it was throwing a tantrum. The door flung open before the dust even settled.

Out came a boy. Mid-twenties. All sweat and noise and denim swagger. Cowboy hat pulled low, shirt stuck to his spine, boots worn past style into utility. He moved with a kind of reckless confidence that didn’t come from experience—it came from never being hit hard enough to change.

“Taehyung! Shit—sorry, man!” he called, jogging toward them. “I lost track of time!”

Taehyung didn’t move. One hand still rested on the door. His silhouette didn’t shift. But something about him changed. The unbothered ease Y/N had come to know was melted away and in its place was a man with sharp eyes and tense muscles.

Y/N didn’t wait. She slipped into the passenger seat without a word. Shut the door. Rested her elbow on the frame and tapped her fingers against the glass in a slow, even rhythm—tick, tick, tick.

The guy noticed her then. Slowed mid-step.

“Oh,” he said, dragging the vowel like he wasn’t sure what he’d found. “Didn’t realize you had... company.” His eyes lingered a beat too long. Smile tried to form, didn’t stick. “Didn’t know you had a lady friend.”

Taehyung closed her door. A quiet, measured push. Then he turned toward the boy.

“She’s not company,” he said. His voice didn’t rise, but it filled the air like smoke. “She’s taking your place.”

The guy blinked, smile cracking at the edges. “What?”

“You were late,” he said. “She wasn’t.”

The guy laughed, too fast, and it broke in the middle. “Come on. Her? I was late, yeah, but—”

“Thirty minutes,” Taehyung said, flat as pavement. “And fate doesn’t wait.”

He reached the driver’s side and stopped. One hand on the handle. The other hovered near the fold of his coat—casual, almost lazy, but close. Deliberate.

“I don’t run a boys’ club,” he said. There might’ve been a smile there, buried under steel. Or maybe just the ghost of one long dead.

Color crept up the other man’s neck, flushed and hot. His fists curled like he didn’t trust his own fingers. His jaw locked. He was building toward something he couldn’t carry.

“Wait. Just—”

Taehyung didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

“There’s a gun ten inches from my right hand,” he said. “How close is yours?”

The guy froze. You could see the thoughts rearranging behind his eyes. Anger giving way to math. Math giving way to fear. Then, finally, defeat.

He stepped back. Shoulders loose now, but not relaxed.

“Fine,” he muttered, like it was the last word he had in him.

He turned and yanked open the truck door. Slammed it like it owed him something. Peeled out hard, tires screaming again, dust rising in a curtain behind him as if trying to cover the embarrassment.

Then silence returned.

Taehyung slid into the driver’s seat without a glance. The door thunked shut with that same clean, heavy sound. Leather groaned. The engine turned over—growling awake like something half-feral and starved.

Inside, it smelled like sun-baked leather, old metal, and something harder to name. Heat. History. Maybe a stale pack of Newports. The Longhorn blinked once in the mirror—neon twitching like a dying eye—then slipped away, swallowed by dust and distance.

Taehyung rested one hand on the wheel. The other on his thigh. Just a man doing what he was built for.

“You ready?” he asked.

She didn’t look at him. Just kept her eyes stitched to the road as it unspooled in front of them—blacktop like a scar across the desert’s pale skin, long and cracked and endless, the kind of road that never really took you anywhere, just farther from what came before. Her hands sat locked between her knees.

“Does it matter?” she asked.

Next to her, Taehyung’s mouth twitched—not a smile, not quite. Just a flicker, a shift in the lines of his face. He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The answer was already in motion. He dropped the Mustang into reverse and the tires crunched over the gravel like brittle bone. The gear clicked into drive, and the car moved forward, slow at first, then steady.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t say goodbye. There was no last look at the bar behind them, no sentimental drag to the rearview. The Longhorn blinked out behind them like a cigarette going dark in an ashtray—smoked down, used up, done.

By the time the Mustang hit third, the world behind them was gone.

The wind cut in hard, dry and wild, tangling her hair and slapping it against her face. She didn’t fix it. Didn’t tuck it back or smooth it down. Just let it whip and twist and get in her way like it belonged there.

Taehyung’s voice slid through the hum of the road like gravel dragged across glass. “You ever been to Mexico?”

She turned her head a little, enough for him to see the slope of her jaw, the shape of her mouth. “No,” she said. “But I’ve seen all of Texas. Different towns. Same ceiling.”

He gave a short laugh—low, real, and rough around the edges. “I love Mexico,” he said. “Didn’t grow up there. But it’s where I figured out who I was.”

Fourth gear clicked in like a final decision. The Mustang stretched out, engine dropping into a deeper, meaner hum. The road ahead unfurled in shades of gray and heat. The desert didn’t welcome them—it just made room. Wide, flat, indifferent.

“Mexico’s messy,” he said. “But it’s free. Less noise. Fewer eyes. You want to vanish, you do. You stay vanished.”

He let that hang. No sales pitch. No persuasion. Just another truth left lying in the space between them.

“I bought a place there in February,” he said. “Hilltop. Nothing fancy. Just quiet. No neighbors. No questions.”

He looked over, just a glance. Not searching for approval—just checking for signal. “Think you’d like it.”

She didn’t nod. Didn’t speak. Her fingers curled against the inside of the door. He saw it. Knew she was anxious, but didn’t press the issue. The girl would get over that in time.

He shifted again, and the Mustang eased forward like it was being pulled by something older than maps. Fences blurred by. Power lines strobed overhead like broken film. The desert slipped past without memory. No towns. No signs. Just the land and the dark and the feeling of being farther and farther away from anyone who could spell her name.

The moon climbed up behind them, casting everything in that bruised kind of light. It touched the side of her face, the curve of her cheekbone, the line of her throat. She didn’t notice. But her shoulders loosened—barely. Just enough to tell someone paying attention.

He was. He caught it. Said nothing. Just nodded to the night like it had answered something for him.

“You’ll like it,” he repeated.

Still, she didn’t reply. Didn’t need to. Silence filled the car. Worn in like an old jacket. Engine noise. Wind. The occasional rattle in the dash. The Mustang didn’t ask questions. It just ran.

She didn’t fidget. Didn’t twist in her seat or look out the window for meaning. Just sat there, jaw tight, hands quiet, eyes locked forward. She didn’t know what was coming—not the killing, not the weight of it, not the cleanup or the silence that follows after—but if she did, if some part of her already understood what kind of blood she was signing up to wear, she didn’t flinch.

She just rode.

Taglist: @haru-jiminn @fancypeacepersona @futuristicenemychaos @cranberrycupcake @mar-lo-pap @wannaghostbts @solephile @paramedicnerd004 @stargirl-mayaa @calmyourtitts7 @bjoriis @11thenightwemet11 @screamertannie @everybodysaynoooooo

[r00ib0s]

(If you’re comfortable answering) What’s Halcyon’s dnd party like? And how much chaos do they get into?

Oo hahaha, so first off, I love character questions. It's been a while since I had enough following to get them, so I'm overjoyed.

I actually have a full blown webcomic about that campaign (which I'm currently writing after health hiatus), so if you're interested, you can find it on tumblr and tapas (and a high res version on patreon for 1 doller)

As for the party.. since I don't think some spoilers are necessarily a bad thing in this story, here's a little bit of what we're up to lately:

We're in the middle of saving the world! From cultists. That are convinced that THEY are saving the world. Also there's a mysterious manipulative mastermind and a bunch of terrifying dragons. Sounds like pretty standard dnd when I put it like that, hm?

The game is split into 12 arcs, an in each one we dive into a new religion of our pantheon and are faced with all the freaky things that are wrong with them.

Our next arc will be an elven music contest! Elfovision, if you will. Really stoked for that one.

Halcyon (wood elf bard+warlock) is a bard who made a pact with a being that came with his instrument. Since we started, he has evolved from a vulnerable, secretive bundle of nerves, furiously speed-walking away from his own mistakes, into a terrifying, only-full-caster-in-party creature, specializing in mobility (being a slippery evasion monster) and giving cultists depression. He's recently randomly found an item that lets him swim into the ground, which, (to DMs dismay) is giving him movement speed in all three dimensions. He has a tendency to cause both accidental and premeditated mass destruction. His overall chill dude popstar demeanor is peppered with fear that all his friends will die or abandon him. Also he's in a convoluted situationship with his guardian angel patron (giving that old man every kind of religious crisis).

Raymund (human? paladin/sorcerer) is a reluctant paladin of the goddess of love. Like a teen pulled out of a Brazilian telenovela, his trouble comes in great part from family drama, past deals with the local mafia, etcccc. Also from his heritage that gives him strange randomness powers. Although he seems composed on the outside for most part, he's the guy who usually harbors the most internal turmoil. Raymund is the appointed boy detective of the team, and an author of most of the conspiracy theories involving the mysterious big bad. His conspiration board no longer fits into his room. Most of his spell slots are used to read thoughts. Apart from that, he has a great instinct when it comes to trade, and will be inclined to solve problems by haggle. He's going through a plant-related transformation that didn't START as some sort of weird trans metaphor, but might as well be one… and well, I'm not gonna spoil that too much.

Thia (wood elf ranger) is the party's lore seeker. A lone wolf kind of tamed in time by her relation to Halcyon, she's quick to jump to the conclusion that everyone around her is a snitch and out to off her… for pretty justified reasons. Causing her relation with Raymund to go pretty terrible. Hiding a big library of history tomes and travel logs back in the home basement. Obsessed with mystery and the artifacts we come across. As for her story, it's probably better to keep that under the covers for now.

Anastasia (human barbarian) is the competent woman of the team. Usually staying on the side of the party drama and cooking snacks. The only person on the team composed enough to easily gain the trust of all the other party members. She was raised on the city streets and has deep hatred for all kinds of coppers and copper-esque figures we come across (and the party relates). Uninterested in her mysterious heritage, her character arc is solely composed of building a traveling bakery business, which Raymund helps her supervise. Always calmly expecting that if you hit your problems hard enough with a magic beheading sword, eventually they will go away.

Couple of our favorite stunts so far:

Accidentally convincing the local lich to bite the arc villain in the asshole during the final fight (lich turned out to be a terrible match for the ancient dragon)

Debuffing the arc villains into recognizing their own failure and helping in the final encounter. Also making them drunk enough to turn the floor into lava TWICE.

Putting spells on the summoned steed until we created an flying invisible exploding horse. Which (to DM's dismay) turned out to be a great idea.

Hal, with his tendency to create an elter ego for fun every other arc, has convinced the entire foreign city during the peak of political conflict that they should turn their attention to saving the local fish (the fish did not need saving).

Accidentally turning every person in the city full of scholars into chickens, and engaging in a full blown Oxford-sttyle debate in place of the final fight.

… hope that is the kind of response you were counting on.

[rhettrosunsets]

Danger Zone - Bob Floyd X Fem! Retired F1 Driver

Pairing: Bob Floyd X Fem!Retired F1 Driver

Category: Hurt/Comfort, Fluff!

Summary: You've kept this part of your life held close to your chest for years, it doesn't matter that millions of people watched you live on TV. But when Bob Floyd wiggles his way into your secluded life, you realize that he deserves to know, and his reaction only makes you wish you would've told him sooner.

Based off this ask: here!

Warnings: Readers a bit of an over-thinker at times, mentions of F1 crash, illusions that reader has been used for being a driver in the past, mentions of reporters being assholes, no description of reader, no use of Y/N. Mentions of doctors, hospitals, bruises, etc, Mentions of reader having a scar across their forearm and wrist from the crash. Reader used to drive for Haas (yes, that deserves it's own warning.)

Notes: Thank you anon who requested this!! I hope I made it fluffy enough with all the world building I had going on here lol. I absolutely loved this request and am so happy that I got to write it. I had so much fun with this as it felt like my two worlds colliding. I hope I did the request justice :)

The crash didn’t end in screaming agony or dramatics like most thought, it had ended with silence.

You hadn’t raced since, the rehab had ended up taking months, with the doctors saying you were lucky you’d only shattered your wrist and not your spine considering the amount of bruising you had. Haas had sent you flowers, started working on press releases immediately, and gave you a contract release form buried under one too many thank you’s and “we’re so sorry, praying for your recovery” to make you actually appreciate any of it.

You had been just twenty-two years old at the time. You had come seventh place in Spain and your best result yet as you dragged your lifeless car as far as you could with what you could manage. You were the only woman in Formula One, barely into your early twenties, and clawing your way into points like your life depended on it, having a fire in your eyes, something to prove.

Then Monza happened.

Now, three years later at twenty-five, San Diego was the only place that didn’t make you feel like you were being haunted by memories you couldn’t run far enough from. You’d grown up here, before karting and the Formula Series had turned you into a never ending headline. 

You’d missed it while being gone for so much of your teenage years. You missed the gentle sea breeze that would cover your skin in a soft chill even on the warmest of San Diego nights. You missed hearing the aviator jets as you were lulled to sleep in your bed at night, the sound of crashing waves and the jets enough to knock you out instantly as a kid. You missed San Diego, and you missed who you used to be when you once lived here.

So here you were, barefoot in the sand as you stared out at the ocean, your hoodie sleeves rolled up just enough to expose the scar across your wrist and forearm that you didn’t bother hiding anymore.

You were trying your best to distance yourself from what you had lost, trying to focus intently on the way the seagulls were flying over squawking at anyone in sight, or the way that the water reflected the beautiful sunset happening in front of your eyes. But your wrist ached like it always did when the temperature dropped and you heard a loud engine backfire in the distance, giving you an instant reminder of everything you had lost all at once.

You needed something to pull you out of your own head, just something to distract you and make you forget about the last three years of your life, if even just for a moment. That’s when you heard music drifting from the beachside bar behind you. You heard loud joyous laughter, loud music, and the sound of Glasses clinking every so often. 

You turned toward it, brushing sand from your ankles and pulling your hood down. Just one drink, you told yourself. Just something to take the edge off for a minute. You didn’t know it yet, but that bar was about to change everything.

You walked into the bar and slid onto a barstool and quickly ordered a drink, quickly brushing excess sand off your calves with a soft groan at how the sand still tried to stick to you. And that’s when you heard a voice beside you, it was low, polite, and a little shy. Something you weren’t used to hearing much these days.

“You, uh..come from the beach?” 

You turned your head and blinked, looking up at the man next to you. He was tall, blonde, and had wire rimmed glasses that sat just a little crooked on him. You also noticed he had the kindest looking baby blue eyes you’d ever seen. He wore a flight suit, the name tag reading Floyd.

Something between the soft look in his eyes and the way he wore his quiet smile made your shoulders unclench from the tense state they always seem to be permanently locked in. “What gave me away?” you asked.

He chuckled quietly, lifting his drink. “Well, the sand spilling off of you may have given me a bit of a hint.” And you laughed, for what felt like the first time in weeks.

“I’m Bob” he said, offering his hand. You hesitated slightly, so used to people asking you for things immediately, or asking you wildly inappropriate questions. But for some reason, this felt different. So after hesitating just a beat longer, you took his hand and smiled up at him, saying a soft  “Nice to meet you, Bob.”

The evening changed. You didn’t tell him your last name that night, still carrying fear with you everywhere you went. But instead you just talked, you talked about anything and everything. About what types of music you both like, about books you’re reading. He didn’t ask what you did, and he didn’t seem to care when you didn’t mention it at all throughout the evening. When he walked you to your car later, his hand brushing lightly against yours, as he insisted on opening your car door even if you were going to drive it home, you knew something had shifted.

Now, a few months later, you were nervous, something that you really hadn’t felt in years.

It was quite absurd when you considered the fact that you had driven 200 mph into corners with half an inch of space between you and the wall and hadn’t even blinked, deeming it second nature. You’d skidded through the rain at Monza and survived after hitting a barrier so hard that your wrist would never be the same and your career would be over. You went through Formula One as the only woman on the grid and had to learn how to deal with horrific interviewers, awkward questions and things that would make anyone shiver.

But meeting you boyfriends team? That's where you drew the line, that was absolutely terrifying to you.

The team was loud, close enough to be considered family, and extremely chaotic. Yet, they welcomed you at The Hard Deck like you were already one of their own, like you were family.

Phoenix had shot you a smile and whispered into your ear that “Bob’s one of the good ones, I'd keep him if I were you.” which made you giggle and automatically like the girl, feeling much more confident than when you walked in. While Rooster gave you a casual nod before tipping back his beer and grabbing the pool-stick from Fanboy. Hangman, however, leaned in with that trademark smirk of his and immediately asked you “So what do you do?”

“I used to drive, but I’ve always loved photography, so I'm pursuing that for now.” you said simply, not wanting to dive into your entire career story right now, not when the night had been going so good and you had been in such a good mood. “What, racing or something?” Hangman had teased, clearly not expecting you to say yes. You nodded, swallowing the strange twist of emotion in your chest that came into your throat and left a painful hitch. “Yeah. Something kinda like that.” 

You didn’t elaborate much further, your shoulder’s hunching slightly inwards, and Bob, your sweet, caring, ever observant boyfriend caught that immediately as his hand reached under the table to wrap around yours, giving it a firm squeeze and rubbing his thumb gently over yours without saying a word. You knew at this moment that you truly loved Bob Floyd. And he deserved to know about the other part of your life that you’ve kept so tightly hidden to yourself for the last few years, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to try to bring it up and talk about it, all the memories and emotions flooding back as you do.

A few weeks had passed since you had met the team, and you knew that you wanted Bob to meet your family. You wanted your family to meet the man who treated you like gold, massaged your wrist out for you when it started aching on bad days, the man who opens every door for you and hugs you like you’re all he ever needs. You decided it was finally time.

You invited him to dinner with your parents at their house, your nerves through the roof as you imagined how this would all go down.

 Bob had come straight from the base, his shirt half tucked into his jeans, and a bouquet of grocery store flowers in hand as he hugged your mom, and shook your dad’s hand, introducing himself before giving you a gentle kiss. Your mom had practically swooned at the sight, asking him all sorts of questions about his job, how he became an aviator, and all the questions about how you two met. Bob had just laughed and smiled that shy smile of his that makes your heart skip a beat and answered all your moms questions intently, not brushing over anything or making her feel like she asked a stupid question when it came to the mechanics of being a WSO. 

Your dad had grilled him with narrowed eyes, asking every question in the book that he could think of, and saying the normal "What are your intentions with my daughter?” before breaking into a grin halfway through dinner as he saw the way Bob interacted with your mom and the way he never let his hand falter from yours, seeing the way Bob constantly would give a nod to you as if to ask if you were okay. After that, Bob was met with a big “Welcome to the family, Son.” and a clap on the back as everyone gathered their dishes.

But then, then the part you’ve been dreading since the moment this evening happened.

Bob had gone to the bathroom, walking down the hallway you know has every photo, memory and award hung up gracing the wall. He came back five minutes later looking stunned.

 You followed his gaze to the hallway wall he was still glancing at, his eyes taking in every photo and memory. Dozens of framed photos lined the wall. Every race win since you were in karting, every podium you’ve ever had while being in the Formula Series, every photos of you each season with your team. There was one of you at eleven years old, it was your parents' favorite photo. It captured you grinning widely as you were in your tiny karting suit, holding your first ever trophy above your head. 

Others littered the wall, like one from when you were in Formula 3, your helmet under one arm and your racing suit smeared with grease and champagne as you smiled big at your team principal. Then one of you during your Formula 2 days, it was you on the podium, your smile so wide you felt like you were reliving the memory just by looking at it. And then, well then there was the photo that you never wanted to look at again. The photo that you had worked so hard to get to the point of being able to take, a photo that your parent’s cherished and you grimaced at. It was you in the Haas garage, arm slung around your engineer as you laughed just before your first ever F1 debut, the whole garage smiling at the fact that they had a women driver, and she was about to debut, not in a practice session, not in pre-season testing, no, she going to debut on track in a race.

Your body deflates slightly and Bob notices, walking away from the years worth of memories and gently wrapping his arm around your shoulder as he leads you back to the living room, where the rest of your family is waiting, eager to hear more about you two together. 

Soon you bid your family goodbye, and start heading back to your car, Bob’s hand firmly placed on your back grounding you despite the anxiety you feel about the inevitable questions he’s going to have.

Bob opens your car door, softly helping you in, before gently pressing a kiss to your forehead before closing your door and heading around to the drivers side, opening the door and getting in himself, and starting the car. 

As he pulls away from your parent’s house his hand finds yours, giving it a firm squeeze and softly saying “I’ve got questions Baby, I would love to know why my girlfriend is such a badass and hid it from me all this time. But, I can tell this is a sensitive topic for you and if you don’t want to talk about it yet then we aren’t going too. This is something I want you to tell me in your own time, Hun.”

Your eyes instantly well with tears, because Bob, your amazing boyfriend who has been nothing but thoughtful and caring to you since you met him just saw the hidden part of your life, the one you hide with a mask, and isn’t pushing you like others, isn’t drilling you with questions about what the rest of the drivers where like, asking what your crash felt like. Bob’s just there, holding you hand firmly, and letting you process how you need too. 

It’s at this moment that you decide to tell him, not because you feel the pressure too, but because you trust that he will accept every part of you. You know Bob, and he’s not going to compare you now, to the you that you once were. You know Bob doesn’t care about how many trophies you’ve won, how many podiums you’ve made, the people you’ve met, Bob just cares about you, and not because you were once a formula one driver, but because you're his girlfriend.  His girlfriend who tries to make him lunches when you stay over at his apartment, the one who always litters his face with kisses after a long day to make him smile. 

You know Bob wants you, all of you. As the car pulls into his apartment, and you guys go in, you tell him everything. 

How you started karting when you were six after a friend’s birthday party made you wanna keep doing it. How you rocked a barbie pink helmet at eight years old and never let anyone tell you different, how the boys never took you seriously in karting until you started winning big events, which made you only more determined to keep doing it. 

How as you got older and older you knew that this was what you wanted to do in life. How you fought your way through F3 and F2 as a teen, fighting to let everyone know that a girl could beat the best of the best, always giving interviews with grace even when you wished you would’ve punched some of them for the questions they’d ask you. You told him how you sobbed in your moms arms when you got the F1 call up saying you were going to be racing for Haas. You told him how everyone said a girl couldn’t make it, that you'd get cut from your seat within just a few races, and how your first finish in the points felt like spitting in their face, telling everyone who ever doubted you just because you were a woman to get fucked.

And then? Then you told him about the crash, about how when you turned that corner and felt the grip go and your car begin sliding, you knew you wouldn’t be able to stop the physics of what was going to happen. You told him about the sound of your car crumpling and how it’s something that’ll never leave your memories, and how after you crashed all you heard was ringing and then silence.

You told him the way you’ll never forget the smell of the burnt rubber and carbon fiber, and then you told him about the way your wrist shattered against the wheel as it got stuck, breaking your wrist and multiple fingers to the point where you needed five different surgeries to correct the nerve damage that had been created.

You told him about the pain when you woke up in the hospital after managing to climb in the ambulance before promptly passing out. You told him the pain of waking up and knowing you’d never race again, as you saw the state of your body and hands, knowing you were going to have to completely relearn how to use your right wrist, how to write, how to hold things, all of that was going to have to be completely redone.

Bob didn’t once interrupt you, ask you questions to go more in depth, he just listened. His presence calming, and his gaze on you firm with concern and love. “I miss it. so much” you said, your eyes on the ceiling as you lean back against the couch the tension in your body fading to something softer, something sadder. “That feeling, It was like flying. When I was in those cars nothing else mattered to me but the line I was going to take. Always trying to push the limit, go a bit further than the person before, take a risk and see the payoff from it.”

He doesn’t speak, he just keeps his hand warm on your thigh, gently squeezing it to let you know he was there when he could tell you were getting emotional. 

“I just. I really don’t like talking about it because I hate sounding bitter. I can see the way people pity me and look at me like I'm wasted potential, like they’re always wondering what could’ve been if I had continued, yet never acknowledging what I did do. I see those races on TV, or playing at the bar and it just guts me, because that should’ve been me, that was me, and now it’s all a faded away memory that I keep locked close to my chest.” You admitted softly

He finally turned toward you, his eyes full of quiet awe and something that looked like admiration. “You’re not bitter Baby, you’re brave, you changed the game darling. You became what little girls looked up to. You made it possible for someone else to believe they could do it too. Sure, you may have not ended the way you wanted, but what you’ve done can’t be erased”

You blinked hard, trying to fight the tears trying to escape your eyes, but failing as they began to wall. “And yeah” he continued, his thumb brushing away a stray tear on your cheek “Maybe your wrist doesn’t work the way it used to, but that doesn’t take away a single thing you’ve done. You’re still you, and I love every version of you because I want all of you, not just the girl who once raced, and not just the girl who I get to curl up with everything. I want you baby, all of you.”

You let out a shaky breath and leaned into him burying your face in his chest, while he held you on that couch while you fell apart in his arms, and not once did he make you feel bad for it.

Later that night, you're wrapped in his sheets and lying against his chest, your thoughts beginning to spiral again. “You okay?” Bob whispered, his voice raspy from exhaustion. 

You hesitated before humming a gentle “Just thinkin.” He pressed a kiss to your temple and softly asked “You ever think about driving again? Just for fun?” You tilted your head up a bit confused “What? Like sim racing?”

“No,” he said, a smirk quirking up in the corner of his mouth despite his tired eyes “Like go karting, the real kind. Maybe’ we take the team sometime. You know Hangman’s too competitive not to talk trash everyone. I’d pay to see my badass of a girl leave him in the dust.”

You snorted, a smile finally growing on your lips as you shake your head softly.

 “Oh come on baby, It’d be so much fun. You would get to be in your element again without all the stress, and I'd get to watch my girl absolutely destroy everyone's egos.” Bob say’s trying his best to convince you.

You laughed loudly, the real laughs that Bob always manages to pull out of you even when you think it’s impossible. You curled closer to him, burying yourself further into his hold, relishing in the way his arms gently squeezed you closer to him. “Thanks, Bobby” you whispered quietly.

 “For what?” He asks softly, peering down at you through tired eyes. You smile, meeting his gentle gaze and softly say “For making me feel like I still have a purpose, like I haven’t reached my full potential yet.”

He kissed your temple. “You haven’t, Baby. Not even close.”

[adlersbitchboy]

So I recently played Black Ops 1 for like the first time and I genuinely have no idea what the fuck was going on. Like genuinely. For most of the playthrough I had a legit migraine from watching Mason trip fucking balls. The game is so damn disorienting.

However, I will be replaying it to get all the damn intel and probably playing more online multiplayer because that shit does still work. There were 2,940 people online when I was playing. Most in America but their were some scattered all over. I'm pretty sure there was someone in Moscow or like somewhere around there. Idk the map wasn't detailed.

I might take some tylenol for my next play through though because holy shit. I literally felt like I was tripping. Like in Cold War, Bell's stuff was disorienting but like not THAT bad. Like it felt so mind numbing real.

Also Mr. Shades aka my other mans Hudson. Omg we love.

HOWEVER I WILL BE FIGHTING WEAVER! LIKE BOY I KNOW YOU'RE BLIND IN THE SAME FUCKING EYE THAT I HAVE A SCAR BUT QUIT RUNNING STRAIGHT INTO THE BATTLEFIELD AND GETTING A RPG TO THE FACE!!! LIKE BRO I'M THINKING ITS SAFE BECAUSE YOU'RE RUNNING IN AND THEN I GET AN RPG OR BULLET TO THE FACE! BRO STOP! WE HAVE THE SAME DAMN BLIND SPOT! Only difference is I ain't completely blind. Making me get your man Hudson killed and shit. Like bro chill. Literally sprinting down them god damn rooftops in that one part but was taking forever to get down when we were actually doing parkour and throwing ourselves down rooftops. I love you but damn.

[makingfanfictionstosleep]

defying fate

a/n : love and deepspace au | reverse-harem | mature and explicit | MDNI — not for kids | lads boys x femreader | read at your own risk | story masterlist : love and deepspace

previous ... next

CHAPTER 6 : FINDING ORDER IN CHAOS

Days after Xavier's vanishing felt like a suffocating eternity, each passing moment a stark, aching void where his presence used to be. The grief was a physical weight, it was crushing.

Then, Zayne, ever the quiet anchor in your storm, sat you down. His hands were gentle as he guided you to the sofa, his eyes, usually so analytical, softened with a profound compassion that pierced through your numbed despair.

"Baby," he began, his voice low, steady, "Xavier… he didn't just vanish. He figured out a way." He explained, patiently, the last-minute results of Xavier's frantic investigation, the desperate, brilliant plan to return. "The tricky part isn't his return, it's finding him. And… making him remember."

You stared at him, confusion clouding your grief-addled mind. "Making him remember? What do you mean?" The words felt foreign on your tongue.

Zayne sighed, a deep, weary sound. He reached out, his hand gently settling on your trembling knee, his touch a grounding force.

"He theorized that making him remember would be the easier part. He found out his current state in this very timeline, that some kind of time paradox happened while his presence was disintegrating… or rather, going back to where he should be, in Philos." His gaze was steady, unwavering. "The truly tricky part... is actually locating him."

A cold dread seeped into your bones, replacing the numb sorrow. "Making him remember is the easy part?" you repeated, a bitter taste in your mouth. "What could possibly make that easy?"

Zayne took a deep, steadying breath, his eyes darkening with a flicker of distant pain, a silent preparation for the coming revelation. "Xavier had a theory," he continued, his voice barely a whisper, "that this is the exact timeline when EVER first started working on him. Before… before he became the Xavier we knew."

He paused, giving you time to absorb the chilling implication, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on your knee.

"This version of him… he's much different. He's one of their most successful subjects. One of the most powerful."

He inhaled sharply, then exhaled slowly, the air thick with unspoken warnings. "It's going to be very tricky. Because after we find this version of Xavier… we may have to subdue him first."

Zayne's thumb stroked your knee, a silent apology.

"According to Xavier, the thing on his neck… that necklace… it somewhat limits his use of Evol. The version we're about to meet? He won't have it. He'll show his real strength."

Your eyes widened, a gasp catching in your throat, and you mumbled, disbelieving, "But… the Xavier we know… he's already powerful enough to fend off hordes of Wanderers, capable of clearing missions alone without backup, coming back unscathed and unharmed."

Your voice cracked, the memory of his fading light too raw, too fresh. "Not until… not until those final months when his time was almost up."

You looked at Zayne, your eyes burning with disbelief, with a sudden, overwhelming fear. "You mean… we're going to fight a version of Xavier who has no necklace that limits his powers? The full force of him?"

Zayne nodded, his face impassive, indifferent, but his eyes, those deep, knowing eyes, screamed volumes—a profound weariness, a shared sorrow, and an unwavering resolve.

Then, his voice continued, now in a much more worried tone—for you.

He reached out, his hand lifting from your knee to cup your cheek tenderly, his thumb stroking your skin with agonizing softness.

"Xavier knew you would exert yourself. He knew your heart might not withstand fighting this version of him. It will hurt you, darling."

His gaze was intense, burning into yours. "I don't want you to get hurt. None of us do. But… nobody would get in your way. We all agreed to give our full support, in all ways. Whatever you need."

A soft, almost imperceptible smile touched your lips, a flicker of gratitude amidst the pain. You reached up, your fingers lacing with his hand that cupped your cheek, holding it tightly. "Thank you, Zayne," you mumbled, your voice thick with unshed tears.

He looked into your eyes, sensing the flicker of guilt, the conflict in your heart. Zayne’s expression softened further, his thumb brushing away a stray tear you hadn’t realized had fallen.

"There's no reason for you to feel guilty," he reassured you, his voice a balm to your wounded soul. "None of this is your fault. It's not anyone's fault."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the empty space in the room, then back to you.

"We all agreed to this set-up. It's twisted, yes, and scandalous by any normal measure, but it seems like… it's the only way to break the sick cycle of our doomed destiny. This is our chance. Our chance to beat the odds and go against the predestined doom that awaits each of us."

His eyes held yours, earnest and unwavering. "We all knew how you love us. Equally. And differently. There's no need for you to feel resentment towards yourself. No need for that impossible choice anymore."

He leaned forward, slowly, giving you time, then captured your lips in a soft, sweet, reassuring kiss. It was a promise, a solace, a silent understanding passing between you.

You returned it, pouring all your fear, all your love, all your desperate hope into the contact. As he pulled away, he kept his forehead pressed against yours, his breath mingling with yours, his eyes searching your soul. "Are you overwhelmed?" he whispered, his voice laced with concern.

"No," you breathed, shaking your head, your voice firm despite the lingering ache in your heart. "I'm not. I understand the risk. And… I want him back. We should start planning soon. We have a lot of cursed destinies to break. And," a fierce glint entered your eyes, "we also have to kick Xavier's ass first to make him remember us."

As if on cue, the heavy door clicked open, and Sylus stepped into the room, his presence immediately shifting the atmosphere, bringing a new wave of calculated intensity.

He moved with silent grace, sitting behind you on the sofa, and without a word, respectfully pulled you back, away from Zayne's embrace, drawing you against his broad chest.

Zayne didn't mind—he didn't even look offended, merely adjusting his position, as if this shifting of allegiances, this seamless rotation of comfort, was the most normal thing in the world.

Sylus pressed his lips against the back of your head, a soft, possessive touch, while his large hands rested protectively on your stomach, warm and grounding. Zayne's hand, no longer on your knee, settled softly on your thigh, a lingering connection, a silent claim.

"Don't worry about the sleepy head's ass, sweetie," Sylus mumbled, his soft voice rumbling against your skull, a low, comforting vibration. He then handed you something cool and metallic—a biometric key.

"Xavier game me this," he explained, his fingers brushing yours as you took it, "an advanced technology from his time, but it should work on EVER's systems to trigger his memories. Pure encryption bypass."

Then, he handed you another, identical biometric key. "And this one," he stated, his voice precise, "is for the Colonel's chip. The one that harms his memories, the one that controls him. It should neutralize it, make it possible to extract it without damaging anything. But we have to get the right timing. It's delicate."

You allowed your head to fall back against Sylus's chest, closing your eyes for a moment, the weight of their combined support a strange comfort. You stared at Zayne, absorbing everything, the technical details, the impossible plans, trying to prioritize what should be tackled first, your mind racing, trying to find the order in the chaos.

Sylus gave you another soft kiss, this time on your cheek, his breath warm against your skin. "We'll figure things out one at a time, kitten," he murmured, his voice laced with a quiet confidence that was both reassuring and utterly terrifying. "For now, we have to wait and see what Rafayel has for us."

Then, Sylus's arm tightened around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer until your back was flush against his chest.

Without warning, he turned your face, his fingers gently guiding your chin, and captured your lips in a claiming kiss.

It wasn't soft or sweet like Zayne's; it was deep, demanding, a silent assertion of his presence, his devotion. "This should take your mind off your worries, kitten," he mumbled against your mouth, his voice a low growl that vibrated through you.

You melted into his lips, returning the desperate urgency of his kiss, your own anxieties momentarily eclipsed by the surge of sensation. His hands, large and warm, slipped inside your shirt, fingers splayed wide as they caressed the bare skin of your stomach, sending shivers through you.

From the front, Zayne leaned forward, his breath hot against your neck, nipping soft, possessive kisses along your pulse point, sandwiching you between the two of them. You were a fulcrum of raw emotion, caught between Sylus's passionate claim and Zayne's gentle, yet firm, adoration.

The second your lips parted from Sylus's, Zayne gently, but firmly, pulled you forward, away from Sylus's embrace, drawing you into his own space.

Sylus's hands, still inside your shirt, moved higher, his large, calloused fingers finding the soft mounds of your breasts, expertly massaging them through the fabric, making a low moan escape your throat and into Zayne's lips as he captured your mouth once more.

Sylus leaned in close to your ear, his voice a warm whisper that bypassed your mind and went straight to your reeling senses, "Just let go, kitten. Let us take care of you."

Zayne pulled away, his forehead resting against yours, his eyes, usually so guarded, now alight with a fierce tenderness.

"Will you let us, baby?" he asked, his voice soft, a clear invitation. You gazed at him, your vision hazy, your body humming with a pleasure that momentarily dulled the edge of grief.

You simply nodded, a slow, dazed agreement, giving them your implicit permission.

And just like that, in that moment, sandwiched between their warmth, their desire, and their unwavering protection, they made sure that you forgot all of your cursed fates, the relentless loop of doomed destiny, and the agonizing weight of the world.

For a precious few moments, there was only them, and you, and the intoxicating promise of shared oblivion.

an : i figured out what was missing, checked my file and saw that i was not able to paste everything. so here you go — the missing part added towards the end. :)

[skyward-floored]

Swapped (interlude (part 7))

Next part of the Incredibles au swap fic lets gooooo. Checking in on what Sky’s doing! This one is a sort of break before the more dramatic ending chapters we’re getting to, so enjoy the moment of chill before things get crazy again lol.

People who voted on that poll ages ago for Sky to get a break... here you go XD

First | Previous | Next (coming soon)

————————————————————

Sky was supposed to be relaxing.

He looked up at his namesake, a cool breeze tousling his bangs, and sighed as some puffy clouds drifted by, trying not to think about what most of his extended family was doing. None of them had contacted him with any report of trouble, but they were all storming an illegal lab without him, stated several times to be dangerous, and Sky couldn’t help but worry.

And I could be helping them...

Sun looked over at him as she spread out a blanket on the grass, but Sky barely noticed, still staring up at the clouds. His thoughts were running rampant with things that might happen without him there, and it wasn’t until Sun came over and poked him that he snapped out of it.

“Link,” she said in a chiding voice.

He sighed. “I know, I know, I’m worrying. I just... I don’t know Zel, I feel bad about not helping,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. “It just feels...”

“Weird?” she offered, and Sky sighed again as he nodded. “I know, I agree. But Time specifically said they’d contact us if they needed help. We’re the backup plan.”

Sky looked at her and smiled, reaching out to lightly tap her middle. “You mean I’m the backup plan. You’re carrying triplets and are not going anywhere.”

Sun scowled, and gave him a light swat. “I’m not due for a while yet, I could handle punching a few unethical scientists.”

“Yeah, I guess. So long as they were slow ones.”

Sun crossed her arms with a foul look, and Sky grinned, giving her an apologetic kiss.

“Sorry my love, you walked right into it.”

“Ha ha. I’ll consider forgiving you if you come sit and stop worrying,” she said, poking his nose. “We’re here to relax, remember?”

“Right, right... sorry.”

Sky let Sun take his hand in hers, and she pulled him over to the blanket, Aryll squealing as she ran through the grass nearby. Sky smiled as he watched her sit down next to the river nearby, easily in view of him and Sun, and began chirping hellos to the birds in the trees around her.

Sun sat down on the blanket she’d spread out, and Sky couldn’t help the way his thoughts drifted back to the rest of his family. He had no idea what they were doing, whether they were okay or not, if things were going well... Four was still so young, all of his nephews were, and he didn’t know—

“Sky.”

A hand squeezed his shoulder, and he drooped, looking guiltily at Sun.

“Hey. I’m worried too. But unless we need to worry about them, why don’t we do what we came here to do?” Sun said gently, and Sky exhaled.

“You wouldn’t think relaxing would be so hard,” he chuckled weakly, and Sun leaned on his shoulder.

“It can be. But that’s why we’re here, to just take it easy for a while,” she said with a smile, and sat back down. “We’re just here to sit by the water, or watch some clouds, or... pet ducks, like Aryll.”

“Is she really?” Sky asked, then gulped as he turned to look at her. Several large white birds were gathered around Aryll, their heads bobbing as they followed every move she made. They weren’t acting antagonistic, merely curious, and Sky heard Aryll giggle. “...Those are swans actually.”

Sun didn’t quite succeed in muffling her laugh. “Oh boy. Well, so long as she doesn’t take any home.”

“Please no, I don’t want a repeat of the geese incident,” Sky groaned, and Sun truly laughed that time, falling back on the grass.

“You looked so funny covered in all those feathers though. It was like you’d molted early.”

Sky huffed, joining her on the grass and setting his head on her lap when she sat up to lean against a tree. “Ha ha. You weren’t laughing so hard when we had to vacuum everything up, as I recall.”

Sun’s face turned cross, and Sky laughed, even when his wife plucked a dandelion and blew the seeds at his face.

Their laughter eventually faded, and Sky and Sun watched the clouds as they drifted by, the sound of the river behind them mixing with Aryll’s laughter. Sky’s eyes slipped closed as Sun began to play with his hair, and he breathed out a slow sigh, feeling calmer while he rested against her.

Sun was right. They were here to relax, and he would do his best to do that.

I used to be so good at just lazing around, he thought wryly, distant memories of being teased as a kid for having his head in the clouds drifting through his memory. Even as an adult Sky was known as being somewhat feather-headed, but ever since the island, relaxing had... not come easily. He did often find himself tired and wanting to sleep, possibly more so then he did before the island, but relaxing wasn’t the same as that.

It was just... hard to turn off his sense of danger.

It was better than it had been at least. When Sky had first come back, he could barely sleep at all despite his exhaustion, and found it nearly impossible to turn off his hyper-vigilant nerves. But even now he still found it hard to just... take it easy. Not worry about anything. Not have to constantly deal with life-or-death matters, and pay for a lapse in attention with his life.

But he was getting there. And despite how hard it had been spending over a year clinging desperately to survival, dealing with the fallout, relearning how to live normally again... making it to moments like this, his daughter’s laughter in the air while he laid next to his beautiful wife, her fingers gently playing with his hair... it had been worth it.

Every bit.

Sky hazarded a look up at Sun, still playing with his hair as she watched Aryll talk with the birds. The dappled sunlight that filtered through the tree made her hair glow, even pulled back like it was at the moment, and the few strands that had whisked loose of the style she’d pulled the rest of it into brushed her jaw when the breeze tickled them.

Sun must have felt his gaze, for she looked back at him, smiling as bright as her nickname as their eyes met. Neither of them said anything, but they didn’t need to.

Sky shifted his position to be able to look at her better, then glanced at Sun’s middle, feeling a rush of fondness as he gently set a hand on the raised part. He could feel a light kicking in there, and smiled as he felt the tiny movements.

“Have you thought more about names?” he asked as Sun let out an oof at the kicking, pausing to rub her middle before going back to idly braiding his hair.

“I was thinking maybe some that were related to each other would be nice,” she said with a hum. “Nothing overly theme-y, but just a little something.”

Sky hummed, and was quiet a moment as Sun kept braiding. “Well if they’re boys... how about Reddy, Will, and Abel?”

Sun paused. “...Why those?”

Sky couldn’t help the grin that stretched across his face. “So that whenever we agree to go somewhere, we can say that they’re ready, willing, and able.”

Sun groaned, and Sky cackled, still laughing when she poked him with her elbow.

“Time certainly passed on his dad jokes,” she snorted, and Sky smiled up at her.

“Yep, him and my Dad. Time’s have always been worse though.”

“That bad, huh?”

Sky nodded, chuckling as he thought back to some of Time’s worst jokes. “I know exactly where Wild got his love of puns from.”

Sun chuckled, and it was quiet between them again for a moment as she finished the braid. Sky heard a distant splash, and Aryll’s laughter rang through the air.

“You know, if there’s a boy... I was maybe thinking Crimson would be a nice name,” Sun suddenly spoke up, her voice soft. Sky looked at her in surprise.

“Really? Why?”

“Because of you, silly. Your hero name. And your father’s,” she said more quietly, and Sky felt his throat tighten rather suddenly.

“Oh. Yeah, that... that’s nice,” Sky whispered. He couldn’t quite get out what he wanted to say, but Sun understood, running her hand along his ear as she smiled.

Crimson Blade had been his father’s hero name, and Sky had taken the first part for his own in memory of him. The thought of also naming one of their kids after him wasn’t one he’d ever even thought of, but...

He liked it.

Sky took her hand in his, and she twined their fingers together, silence drifting between them for a moment.

“Do you have any more ideas?” Sky asked after he’d gotten more ahold of himself. “That’s only one out of three. Maybe if there’s a girl we can call her Songbird?”

“Might be a tad suspicious along with Crimson,” Sun replied with a smile. “If we really want a nod to it, then something like Lyric or Melody might be better.”

“Those are nice,” Sky agreed. “Oh hey, maybe if there’s a boy we can name him Link.”

Sun groaned dramatically. “Another one? Really?”

“It runs in the family, Zelda! We have to!”

She gave him a look. “Only if we can’t think of anything better. You know we don’t need more Links.”

Sky grinned, but he couldn’t help but think of the rest of his family again at the name. His smile faded, and Sun noticed, giving his hand a squeeze.

“You okay?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Yeah. I just wish we could help them,” Sky murmured, wishing he hadn’t been left behind, wishing he was there and fighting beside his family. Sun hummed thoughtfully, looking at the sky.

“Maybe we can.”

“Oh?” Sky said in interest, and Sun tapped her chin as she thought.

“Not in the fighting sense. But there are other ways to be helpful. Maybe we could go to Time and Malon’s place and get things ready for when they return,” she said. “Get medical supplies out, and make some dinner for them. And then whenever they all get back, they don’t have to do as much.”

Sky nodded eagerly in agreement, feeling a little burst of excitement. Finally, a way to help! “That’s a great idea. When do you want to go?”

Sun laughed. “Slow down, Link. Let’s enjoy things here first. Then we can go. We have plenty of time.”

Sky nodded, a little sheepishly, and they both relaxed again, silence drifting over them. An undercurrent of eagerness to help ran through him, but he did his best to set it aside for now, and properly relax.

They would help out, but first... they would rest.

Sky closed his eyes with a slow breath out. He breathed in again slowly, taking in the faint perfume of the flowers in the tree above them, and the grass and water in the breeze that brushed his face.

It really was a gorgeous afternoon.

Several quiet minutes went by, Sky lightly dozing, Sun still playing with his hair. A squeal and some louder footsteps eventually roused him though, and he opened his eyes to see Aryll charge up, her dress damp at the bottom, a grin on her face.

“Look!” Aryll said proudly, and Sky stared at the large frog in her muddy hands. “A heron showed me how to catch frogs, look look!”

“Wow, very nice,” Sky said with a smile, and he heard Sun muffle a laugh.

Aryll wiggled happily. “Watch this! If I do a— oops!”

The frog leapt out of her hands, and landed on Sky’s head, making him startle upwards. The frog went flying off of him as he straightened, and Sun yelped as it scrambled across her dress in its scramble to get away. Aryll shrieked happily as it leapt into the grass, and she ran after it as it hopped frantically away.

Sky wiped some mud off his head, Sun staring down at her now-damp and dirty clothes, and they met eyes.

“...On the other hand, maybe we should leave sooner,” Sun said, an exasperated smile twitching at her lips.

Sky just laughed.

[chrattvibe]

៹Dinner. Coworker!matt x coworker!reader.

Friday, 4:56 PM

"Have a good weekend everyone, get some rest," Matt said, already slinging his backpack over one shoulder with that usual soft smile.

I glanced up from my desk and managed to give him a quick smile before he disappeared down the hallway. He was rarely the first one to leave. I guess today had been a long day for him.

The blinking cursor on the blank screen stared back at me. I clenched my jaw.

I'd been thinking about it all day. Ever since I bumped into him in the kitchen this morning, coffee in hand, making some dumb comment about the weather.

We had a hangout pending. He was the one who suggested it. Dinner at my place, something chill. I'd been wanting to invite him for days. I could feel it, that little voice that said, "today's the day."

And still, I didn’t.

Time slipped away. The chance passed. And now, the week had walked out the door along with him.

I shut my laptop with a bit more force than necessary.

On the bus ride home, I rested my head against the window. I told myself it wasn't that deep. It wasn't even a date. It was something he brought up. Something I wanted too.

But still, that bitter feeling lingered. Why is something so simple so hard? I knew Matt was waiting for my invitation. It showed. I could tell by how he held eye contact a little longer than necessary every time we talked.

I sighed, frustrated with myself. I hated this part of me, the one that held back just when I most wanted to move forward.

It was nearly five-thirty when I got home. I kicked off my sneakers, tied up my hair, and collapsed on the couch, trying to quiet my mind.

I wasted some time scrolling through social media. Then I cleaned up a bit, nothing major, just swept and wiped the dust off the furniture.

Once I was done, I sat staring at the screen of my phone for a good while, doing nothing. My mind kept running all over the place, but my hands refused to move.

Until suddenly, on impulse, I sat up, opened Matt's chat, and started typing:

"I want to invite you to dinner tonight." No, too blunt.

"What are you doing tonight?" Deleted. Too casual.

"Remember that dinner I owe you?" No. Sounds like an obligation.

Minutes passed like that. Typing, doubting, deleting. Until I landed on something more neutral. I had to test the waters first.

hi! saw you left early today, everything okay?

I waited. Just a few minutes.

Hey, yeah, all good. Just had a bit of a headache, but I'm better now :)

My heart sped up just a little. Okay. Now or never.

glad you're feeling better!

soo I'm free tonight, thought maybe we could do that dinner we've been talking about

only if ur up for it, not pressure at all

He replied in seconds.

Thought you'd never ask. Red or white?

Wine, ofc

Or do you prefer beer?

I grinned, wide. At some point during our back-and-forth, I found myself pacing around my apartment. I was restless, nervous—but in a good way.

We agreed I'd cook something. He insisted on helping, but I wanted to play it cool and said I'd handle everything. He only needed to bring something to drink.

I ran to the corner store for the few things I needed. It wasn't much, but the idea of not eating alone tonight made me oddly excited. I tried to walk slow; I still had time, but my feet moved faster than I meant them to.

Back home, I showered quickly. Tied my hair in a way that looked casual but not messy and did some light makeup. I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard, but I didn’t want to look like I didn’t care either. I kept the outfit simple but put on my favorite perfume.

I played music from the TV. Sang and danced around the kitchen, trying to shake off the nervous energy while I started dinner.

It felt ridiculous, how nervous I was. I needed to chill, remind myself this was just a friendly dinner. Nothing more. Even if deep down I knew it meant a lot more. At least for me.

My distraction plan was cut short when the doorbell rang.

I turned the oven down, wiped my hands on a dish towel, glanced at myself in the hallway mirror on my way to the door, and opened it.

There was Matt. Gray hoodie, baggy jeans, a few raindrops on his shoulders. He held a bottle in one hand and smiled sideways, standing straighter than usual, like he'd practiced how to stand before ringing the bell.

He looked different. Not the office Matt: no rolled-up sleeves, no professional air. He was wearing a sweeter, warmer cologne than his usual. And while his outfit was simple, the details stood out: a little star ring on his pinky, a barely-there necklace and a carabiner with keys at his waist jingling faintly when he moved.

He wasn’t underdressed. Just comfortable—like he’d put effort into looking effortless.

"Hey," he said, soft.

"Hi," I replied, feeling my body shift strangely between nerves and excitement.

We shared a short, slightly awkward hug. It felt odd touching his back without his usual work bag in the way. We laughed when we pulled away, not really knowing why.

"I brought red. The guy at the wine shop said it pairs with everything. So if you hate it, I’ll blame him," he joked, lifting the bottle. I laughed and invited him in.

Matt looked around with quiet curiosity and ran a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it back into place.

"Smells amazing, what are we cooking? Need help with anything?"

I shook my head as I opened the oven a little, showing him the half-baked homemade pizza. One of his suggestions I’d actually gone with. At least it was different from the takeout pizza we'd had at his place last weekend with all our co-workers.

I showed Matt around a bit. He complimented the decor and the wall colors, which I thought was sweet. He asked about some framed family photos, and listened closely to everything I said.

We set the table on the coffee table in front of the couch. It felt more comfortable that way. Eating at the dining table would’ve felt too formal—too much like a date, and I think we both wanted to avoid that, at least for now.

Matt helped quietly. He moved the table, brought over the plates, arranged the napkins. His movements were calm, like he was almost used to being here already, but I noticed his hands were a little fidgety. Or maybe it was just me, noticing more now that the work filter was totally gone.

We sat on the couch, side by side, with a comfortable amount of space between us. Like we were both testing how close was too close.

"Want me to pour?" Matt asked, holding the corkscrew.

I nodded, watching him concentrate like it was brain surgery. It made me smile. Maybe he was nervous too. That made me feel better.

"So... thoughts on the weather?" he joked as he poured my glass, breaking the ice and humorously addressing the obvious tension in the air.

We laughed. Somehow, everything felt lighter. Acknowledging our nerves, even jokingly, was oddly reassuring. We clinked glasses softly. The wine was warm and smooth. It helped.

Dinner flowed naturally. We put on a movie, but we barely watched it. We ate between bursts of laughter, threw out comments here and there about the film, and he complimented the pizza like it was gourmet. Said I earned an almost-professional chef title, but he’d need to try more dishes to be fully convinced.

The house was calm. Outside, occasional raindrops tapped against the windows. Inside, the lighting was soft and warm. It didn’t feel like a Friday night, or a date, or a casual hangout. It felt like something in between.

"Is that new?" I asked, nodding toward the pinky ring while he poured more wine.

Matt looked down at his hand, like he wasn't sure what I meant.

"The ring? Oh... yeah. I mean, no. I’ve had it for a while, but I don’t wear it much."

"It’s cute." My hand moved instinctively to his, pulling it gently closer to get a better look. "You should wear more rings. They suit you."

I said it without overthinking. If I second-guessed every word I wanted to say tonight, I wouldn't say anything at all.

He blinked, a tiny smile slipping through. He held my gaze for a second. Then laughed softly, a bit shy. He whispered a "thanks" barely audible.

And just then, as he laughed and lifted his glass again, it happened: a slight slip of the fingers, and a few drops of wine spilled onto his hoodie.

"Oh fuck–" he said, looking down. "Perfect."

I tensed at first, but then saw his face: amused.

"You okay?" I asked, trying to hide my laugh.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, glancing at the stain and setting his glass down. "Bad timing tho. Right after the compliment. Embarrassing."

Still half-laughing, he grabbed a few napkins and tried to clean it, but only spread it further.

"I'm messing it up more, right?" he said, looking up at me with a helpless kind of smile. "Is it worse now?"

"Just a little," I said, biting my lip to keep from laughing again. "But don't worry, I'm an expert in these kinds of disasters."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you?"

I nodded.

"I'm a mess when I eat. I spill stuff all the time. I can try to save it, if you want."

Matt hesitated, then slowly took off the hoodie.

"It's in your hands now," he said, offering it to me. His fingers brushed mine, just slightly.

I sprayed some stain remover on it, gave it a quick scrub, and threw it in the wash. We agreed I’d bring it to the office Monday, hopefully stain-free.

Now, Matt looked a bit self-conscious about the sudden outfit change, though personally I thought that pink Hershey's tee was adorable. He told me not to comment on it.

We finished the pizza, laughing and tossing a few last remarks about the movie we still weren't really watching. The wine helped. It softened the edges, made conversation easier, made our eyes linger just a bit longer.

Matt insisted on helping clean up, even though I told him not to worry. He gathered the plates with endearing clumsiness, smiling when our hands touched at the edge of the table.

We didn’t talk about the time. Or whether it was time for him to leave. But we both knew. Neither of us wanted the night to end. His Uber took a little longer than expected. It gave us a few more minutes to pretend we weren’t saying goodbye.

When Matt finally stood up to go, he did it slowly. Like he was trying to stretch the moment. I walked him to the door. For a second, we both just stood there. Not knowing what else to say.

"Thanks for dinner," he said quietly.

"Thank you for coming," I replied, my voice a bit softer than I meant.

He hugged me again. Not like before. Less awkward. Longer. Warmer.

"Next time at my place?"

—chrattvibe.

masterlist.

taglist.

[ames-draws]

I just need to tell y'all that I just finished - as in, got paid and delivered final files finished - the BIGGEST art commission I have ever SUCCESSFULLY completed!!!!