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yuzukult · 3 years

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acquitted love || sjn & reader

title: acquitted love pairing: johnny suh x reader genre: fluff, angst, co-workers!au, lawyer!au, one-sided enemies to lovers word count: 8.7k warnings: some language/cursing, brief mentions of sex but there's no actual discussions or explicit conversations of the topic, but generally pg-13 prompt: you absolutely hate johnny suh. but when your boss pairs you two up together for one of the highest profile cases, you’re left working close with your enemy but he doesn’t seem to think that way of you. a/n: tada!! i wrote this for the @/ficscafe fic exchange event!! so @urlocalnctstan , hope you enjoy this !! i tried to write it according to what you put as your preferences, but honestly T_T it was so hard bc i was just not getting any ideas!! hopefully this is something you’d like :D enjoy !!

“God, isn’t he just… so attractive?”

Along with a click on your tongue, you feign a hit in Hyeri’s direction, whose reflexes have gotten so much faster in the past couple years of knowing you and it shows when she cowers underneath your arm. She gifts you that not-so-apologetic smile, full of mischievousness because she knows no matter how annoying she can be, you’ll still love her nonetheless.

“Why do you keep talking about Johnny? You know he’s banned as a topic of our conversations.”

Hyeri rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her white frilled blouse. You know that she doesn’t actually inhabit any romantic feelings for Johnny, but she has a problem of thinking without the usage of her brain when she sees a hot guy.

Not that you think Johnny is hot.

No.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t think he’s at least an ounce of smokin’ hot.” She’s unraveled her arms by now, poking your shoulder incessantly to grasp onto your attention as you're tapping on the buttons of the copier machine. “I bet if you asked him out, he’d say yes.”

You briefly glare at Hyeri. “You realize that he and I don’t get along, right? He keeps finding stupid loopholes in the system to win his cases. He thinks with his heart, not his head, and sometimes, with whatever that thing was in his pants.” And, not to mention that he walks out the court with that big grin stretched from cheek to cheek, giving the ‘good news’ to your well-respected boss (who you desperately seek the approval of but that’s a different story for another time). And every single time, she gives him that nod of appreciation, that ‘nod of approval’ if you will, when it should be given to you and not to some asshole who fucks his way to victory.

“But he’s so hot—”

You narrow your eyes at your friend, and with a stern voice, you call out, “Hyeri.”

She shrugs. “Honestly, though, he’s hella smart. He’s got a job here, and works under your boss. It’s Park, Kim & Associates—notice how Park is first, because she’s a fucking genius. She only picks the intelligent ones to work under her. Why do you think I’m still working for Mr. Kim?”

Park Seohyun and Kim Gonghyun—one of the biggest lawyers in the region, decided to join together to build their own law firm from the ground up. They were both highly respected in their field; Kim Gonghyun spent years of his life being mentored by one of the most famous judges, and as for Park Seohyun, she was, simply put, admirable because of the obstacles she has overcome to make her dreams of working in law to be real. Being a woman, young, and beautiful, she’s had her fair share of encounters with people who disregard her potential, that is until she met Gonghyun—who, admittingly is an old man who seems like he’d be traditional, sexist, even, but he proves to also make people realize how wrong they are with their impression of him.

But, as Mr. Kim is getting older, he’s gotten a bit… lazy.

In fact, he’s been slacking so much that he’s gotten a new rep in the office—if he was your direct supervisor, or your supervisor was under him, you were on the side of the office where all the easier, uncomplicated cases were assigned. Which meant that there was a slight possibility that your talents and skills weren’t as sharp and exceptional as you thought they were.

And well, Hyeri works directly underneath Mr. Kim.

Hyeri doesn’t want a heavy workload, despite the fact that there’s a plethora of files on her desk, stacked up one onto another as tall as her PC tower, and they were all open and closed cases—needless to say that she didn’t mind it.

“Okay, but you got offered a position under Seohyun. Do you really think you’re not wasting your potential?”

Hyeri scoffs. “Never. At least, not now. I’m still in my twenties, I’d like to enjoy my youth while I can, for your information.”

You quirk a brow. “And does any of that pertain fucking Johnny? The hot guy, so you claim?”

She immediately has her hand covering your mouth and you scowl. “Shhhhh, he works here!”

You bite the flesh of her hand and Hyeri instantly retracts. “You think I don’t know my archenemy works here? He sits directly across from my office—I get the best view of the guy and I’m not even one of his fangirls.”

“You’re not gonna be one of those girls who claim they’re different because they don’t like him but then end up falling for him anyway… are you?”

Your hand goes up and Hyeri crouches down.

“Stop it.”

“Seriously though! It’s the classic e2l love story,” she has her hands gesturing in front of her like she’s making an imaginary rainbow, “Two lawyers, constantly butting heads, accept each other’s differences and learn to love—“

“The fuck is an ‘e2l’?”

“Enemies to lovers.”

“Are you high? Stop spitting nonsense.” This time, you’re waving the stack of papers that finish printing in front of her face. “Meet me for lunch later. But if you keep talking about my archenemy and I falling in love, you can kiss a free meal goodbye.”

Hyeri gasps.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Maybe. Just maybe, Hyeri might be a tiny smidge right when she says Johnny is handsome. Just a bit though, because she can’t get credit for something like that.

He’s dyed his hair this shade of brunette that sort of reminds you of roasted chestnuts on a cold, winter day, sitting inside of a cooker outside of your childhood home, baking along with some sweet potatoes your mom had gotten from a farmer’s market nearby. Johnny has this focused gaze attached to the screen of his monitor; there’s a dip in the fronts of his brows, lips tightened into a straight line, and constant switching back and forth from the computer while taking notes down in a book that’s laid open in front of him.

You wonder what’s running through his mind, or well, you’re more interested in what files he has sprawled out on top of his desk.

Truthfully, if it hadn’t been obvious enough, you weren’t quite a fan of Johnny Suh and it’s mostly due to his work ethic. He’d been notorious for his reputation of sleeping around—especially with the opposing side—so it’s hard to convince yourself that he didn’t win the case because of his actual capabilities, but it’s because he pulled some strings.

And Johnny doesn’t put much effort into denying it either.

Albeit deep down, you were a teeny bit envious of his confidence. He struts around the courtroom with ease, and when he presents his position, there’s no staggering in his voice—it’s always crisp and clean, weighted with nothing but credence, and never straying from his initial perspective. It’s never a lack of poise, it’s consistently the look he goes for; from the hand gestures and the furrowed brows, to the rhetorical questions in the end of certain statements that has the speculators and jury sitting at the edge of their seat, Johnny had a talent for performing in the courtroom, but that doesn’t mean anything when the way he gets to the success isn’t ethical.

Just at that moment, his eyes lift from the screen and meet yours.

There isn’t any hesitation when you scramble to grab the remote controller, and the shades drop over the windows instantaneously.

“Fuck,” you mutter underneath your breath, tossing the remote onto your desk and shaking your hands after. What if he thought you were admiring him? Maybe he didn’t see. Yeah. It was for a brief second, and with how close your offices were to each other, it would be common to accidentally lock eyes… right?

Interrupting your thoughts, the office phone rings and it nearly startles the living soul out of you. But before you reach for it, your head tilts to the side curiously because the extension number is familiar—it’s Park Seohyun’s, your boss.

What could she be calling for?

You don’t remember fucking something up—but to be fair, half the times, you never really know if you’ve actually fucked up until someone with steaming ears and a crimson face comes storming in. So… did you do something good? Again, you don’t think that’s right either, because other people would’ve made comments about it.

Deciding to swallow your nerves, you pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey!” Seohyun never fails to be bubbly, and you could never mimic her energy. You definitely had to be born with that kind of enthusiasm. “I have a favor. Hop into my office.”

Leaned back in her leather swivel chair, she had her fingers laced with each other while resting over her stomach. Johnny stands beside you (and you do your best to not look directly at him, especially after that weird staring thing), and you both feel like kids being lectured by parents from how still you are. Her office is huge, probably the size of both yours and Johnny’s combined; with ceiling to floor windows, cases of books that line the perimeter, not to mention the humongous ass couch that practically covers the other half of the room, and her desk was so wide, you estimate about four monitors would fit on there with still additional space for work. That wasn’t even the best part—the view of the city looks almost like a generic lockscreen of a Windows computer, and you’re not even sure why she goes home at night when she basically has a penthouse here.

“As you know, I have a favor.”

“Right,” Johnny retorts, mostly as a filler in the awkward silence. “So… what’s the favor?”

She pulls a box from her purse; square, black and made from a leather material with a lock pad stitched into it, something you’ve never seen before, and she slides the passcode in, then it pops the lid open. A key (a… very small one) sits in the velvety cushion, with nothing else occupying the space with it, and it looks comical. She uses this to open the very top drawer of her desk, and as she pulls using the handle, there’s another box inside, but this time, metal instead of leather, but still black.

What the fuck?

It seems Johnny shares the same thoughts, because he sneaks a glance over at you.

“You see,” Seohyun begins, pressing on the digital keys of the box until there’s a beep at the end and the case hisses open. “There’s a lot of security for this. Which means you understand the importance of it.”

Then, she picks up four manila envelopes and lies on the surface of her wooden top desk. “I have a family emergency to attend to this upcoming week. I’m boarding a flight tonight. So I’m leaving the Hwang v. Yoon case to the two of you.”

“Fuck—”

“The what?”

You and Johnny are sputtering out of shock. The Hwang v. Yoon case is the biggest case that the firm is involved in currently, and the only people involved in it have been Seohyun and Gonghyun. It’s been on every social media platform you could think of; from Facebook to Twitter, TikTok to Instagram—there’s even this weird website for emo/grunge teens or strange kids that like writing fanfic called Tumblr, and whatever that is, it’s discussed on there too.

“What about Gonghyun?”

Seohyun scoffs, closing the drawer and dropping the key back into her special box. Where do you even get a box like that? “He can’t handle this alone. So I’m kicking him off until I come back. I thought about letting the two of you work with him, but his ego is so inflated, it’ll get in the way of our chances of winning. It’s easier if it was just me and him, but seeing that things at home aren’t well, I’m going to need you two to step up to the plate.”

The room goes quiet. The only sounds you hear are the muffled noises of a typical bustling office outside the thick walls of Seohyun’s office, and at first, excitement rushes through your blood because Seohyun thought of you taking over a special, high profile case.

Albeit, another realization gets soaked up, and it’s that Johnny also came to mind, and that because it’s such an important case, the two of you would be… working… many… hours… together.

Maybe you should back out of it—but then again, this is such a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Imagine winning this— it wouldn’t be good for just the law firm, it’d be good for you too. Your name, in articles on these big fancy news websites, perhaps even on new channels, talking about how you, this amazing lawyer, won the Hwang v. Yoon case.

But then you’re snapped back into reality when Johnny leans over to take the envelopes from Seohyun.

If your name is on those platforms, so is Johnny’s.

God, this guy just ruins everything, doesn’t he?

“We’ll take care of it, Seohyun. You can trust us,” he says assuringly, a smile tugging on each corner of his lips with that dazzling gaze. “We’ll be at our best.”

Kiss ass.

If you had the option, you wouldn’t be spending your Saturday night here at work, in one of those conference rooms with a long table in the middle, a big projector that displays on the wall, and a random black leather loveseat couch that lines the one corner in case there’s too many occupants.

Especially since the person who’s accompanying you is Johnny Suh.

There’s probably a lot of people who would kill to be in your position (Hyeri being one of them), but you dread it. Not to be that person, but what’s so special about him anyway? What? He’s tall, has some muscles, long luscious hair that he can slick back with that sultry stare—wait, what?

“Alright, moving on…” From what? You guys just started? It’d been clear with Seohyun that the mornings would be dedicated to other cases, but nights would be considered overtime and where you’d zoom in your focus on Ms. Hwang’s justice. “Let’s take a look at the facts here.”

Johnny slips off his blazer, hanging it on the back of one of the chairs as you’re seated in another, leaning back comfortably with an arm resting on the table. He loosens the first few buttons of his dress shirt before folding up the sleeves, and that’s when you notice a little thing in the inner crook of his elbow—is that a fucking sunflower? Is that what he uses to reel girls in? That he’s soft enough to have a pretty little flower etched onto his gentle, silky and supple—

“Okay,” he says, interjecting into your thoughts with a laser pointer in his hand. He taps on the space bar of his laptop that mirrors what’s on his screen, but then, that’s when you realize what’s on the slides.

There’s a collage of pictures, mostly street, casually walking themed ones, but the common factor was that they were of Yoon Changmin, the man you guys were up against. They were all paparazzi-like photos, which begs the question, how did he get pics like this, and why did he get them?

“What’s the point of this?” you ask, voice laced with nothing but suspicion.

“We gotta get into the mind of the enemy.” You wanna get into the mind of your enemy, too.

You gesture to the one image of Changmin with an arm around his girlfriend and a finger up his nose. “Seems like he’s trying to reach inside of his head instead of us. These are just everyday pictures, Johnny. What’s that going to do for us?”

“Well,” he begins, turning to look at the wall of ‘evidence’. “You see—wait, holy shit.”

Freezing in the midst of reaching for your coffee, your head jolts in the direction of your partner. “What? What is it?”

“Holy shit,” he exclaims, “Hoooooooooly shit. Why didn’t I see this before? This changes everything.”

Furrowing your brows, you’ve given up getting your drink and dropped your hands onto the table. “Tell me, what is it?”

“This is a game changer.”

“Johnny,” you call out sternly, and his eyes link with yours before he instantly points to a particular picture with his red laser pointer.

“Look at that.” There’s pride saturated in his words, but when you look at what he’s indicating, your body slouches in disappointment.

Why the hell was he directing your attention onto Changmin’s thighs? Surely, there’s no denying that they were attractive—you recall that his alibi was at the gym that very night of the crime.

“What? He’s guilty for showing off his toothpick legs?” They were lean, you never said they were muscular.

“No,” he retorts, slightly irritated by your response as he rolls his eyes. “Look at his pants.”

“Okay…”

“They’re jean shorts.”

There’s a pregnant pause, but the expression on your face is so loud it can’t be hidden.

Johnny continues, “That’s a fashion crime.” He says it as if it’s an obvious fact known by many. “Not to mention that it’s fucking raw hem. He should be arrested.”

Suddenly, your opinion of him thinking too much with his heart dissipates because it seems like he’s thinking out of his ass instead. Did he win those cases out of pity? How did this guy even pass the bar? How about law school? How the hell did he even get into law school?

“I don’t think—”

“Listen, alright, just hear me out,” he’s got the palms of his hands resting flat on the surface of the table, doing his best to gain your full undivided attention. “Only assholes wear jean shorts. They flaunt that shit around like they own the place, but they’re horrendous pieces of clothing that should not be on a male’s body. I don’t care what you say, what your opinion is, because that is a fact.”

Puffing your cheeks, you feel at a loss. If Johnny is who you had to get this done, it feels like you’re not going to be finding much evidence any time soon.

“Okay, if… if that’s how you want to play it, then show me the evidence—other than those 2012 cut off denim shorts.”

He reaches over to hit his space bar again, then with a wink and a slide change, he leans closer to you and says with that deep, honeyed voice, “Gladly.”

You hate admitting when you’re wrong.

Ironically, you concede and will confess when you actually are, but it doesn’t mean that you enjoy it. For example, when Hyeri claims that the intern Mark had a crush on you, you quickly waved her off, stating something along the lines of, “I’m too intimidating; there’s better chances of him being scared of me than ever finding me attractive.” And then a week later, you owed Hyeri free lunch at that hip ramen place downtown because Mark had approached your desk that very morning with a bouquet of red roses flowers for you, a cheeky grin glued to his face with pools of hearts in his eyes, and ready to ask you on a date because it was the day after his internship had ended. Naturally, it wasn’t fun rejecting that poor college boy.

But, you won’t say you find Johnny interesting or handsome. Or that there’s potential when it came to possibly (just barely the slightest smidge) that you’d ever consider asking Johnny out. He’s your enemy here, you’ve mentioned that a multitude of times, and you stand firm on that very declaration, despite the fact that sometimes when he gets too close, your breath gets caught in your throat and you feel like you can’t get whatever’s lodged in out.

Albeit it’s not the whole “you guys are gonna end up together” comment that Hyeri makes and resulting in you denying it afterwards, it’s that Johnny might… be a decent lawyer.

He’s not the best one you’ve seen; the stupid revelation he had on the first day working on the case about the jean shorts is evidence for it, but it’s the days following that were slowly changing your perspective on him.

When you said, “He thinks too much with his heart more than with his head,” it was 100% correct.

When meeting with potential witnesses, you recognized that Johnny empathizes with people often; when they cry and start panicking from being overwhelmed, he's quick on his feet to put an arm around them, share reassuring words, and have them back to normal in record’s time.

And, well… you? You’re the one making them cry in the first place.

You don’t want to fully take the blame for being the cause of their tears, but people need to hear what’s happening, and the very detail that they can’t even handle this information probably means they’re not worthwhile as a key witness.

Johnny, of course, thinks otherwise.

He believes that these people should have a voice (although you’ve alluded that they might be more useless than helpful), and putting them on the stand with Yoon Changmin there would change the view of the jury to supporting Hwang Naeri.

“Listen, if we get these people to sign the form, we’d get witnesses and it’ll help Naeri,” Johnny claims, frantically moving his arms annoyingly as he talks, trying his best to express the gravity of the situation, “and maybe, maybe, money wouldn’t be how Changmin wins, but how he loses. We can’t have another person with jean shorts walking on the streets of our city like this—they deserve to go to prison.”

You scrunch up your nose. “Why does this always revert back to the jean shorts?”

“It always has to do with jean shorts,” he snaps back matter-of-factly. “Any straight guy wearing jean shorts with that much goddamn confidence has done some wrong in their lives.”

“Right, but I’m pretty sure that the crimes he did are mainly the reason why he’s being prosecuted against.”

“Jean shorts are the windows to the soul.”

“I’m almost 100% sure that eyes are the windows to the soul, but whatever. If you genuinely believe that the women we met today would benefit our case, then… okay. Let’s bring them to the stand.”

On the contrary to you, Johnny doesn’t have a hard time convincing witnesses to testify. You see the way that he works; those kind eyes directed at the participants, the pools of chocolate were sweet, saturated in nothing but tenderness and warmth, then he does that weird thing where he reaches for their hands and cups them before the words that escapes from his lips are enough to swoon them to stand in front of a courtroom.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a method to his so-called madness.

Aggression and bluntness don’t work, it seems, because when you’re the one attempting to convince these people to go against the man that had done them wrong, they’re less willing to do it. Something about ‘moving on,’ and ‘not wanting to relive those memories again,’ but if it was you, you’d want justice. Then again, not everyone is like you, and not everyone thinks like you, and spending this abundance of time with Johnny is slowly getting you to ease into that perspective.

So… the initial impression you had of him may have been wrong.

And maybe, just maybe, you’re developing some feelings for him, just as Hyeri predicted.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

His abrupt personal question is enough to have the coffee spill into your mouth to slide down the ‘wrong throat’ because you’re choking, hand on your chest as you’re tackling to regain your breath again and Johnny only stares in disbelief, blinking blankly. “Are… are you okay?”

You glare at him through a hooded gaze. “Well,” you clear your throat once more. “Now, I am.”

“Cool.” He nods, retracting his hand so he could rub your back soothingly, deciding it’s best to stay away. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Quirking a brow, your head tilts slightly in puzzlement. “Why are you asking this?”

Johnny shrugs. “Isn’t it weird that we’ve hung out with each other for a whole week—stayed here for nights and we both don’t know anything about each other?”

Tapping your fingers against the wooden top table, you sigh. Maybe he’s got a point; after all, “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer,” right?

“No, I’m single.”

Johnny’s face suddenly brightens, ears perked, and his body straightens its posture in his seat at this revelation. “Oh, uh, I didn’t know that. You seemed busy in your personal life, so I, uh… was just wondering.” He looked anxious, but you couldn’t pinpoint why. “I, um, I’m single too, by the way, in case you’re wondering.” You weren’t.

The plethora of cardboard and plastic boxes scattered across the table was a representation of the night. It’s been long, exhausting, and messy, mostly because it’s a Friday night, the hearing was on Monday, and the two of you were nowhere near close to having enough to present to the court. In fear of disappointing Seohyun, the two of you agreed to stay over the office for the weekend to cram work for the case. There’s no denying that the atmosphere is weirder on the weekends, especially since, well, no one really comes here on the weekends. Johnny had to use the bathroom earlier and ran into the cleaning lady and she nearly shit her pants because she didn’t think anyone was here, so she had music blasting in her headphones.

Johnny is… interesting. He makes you laugh—or well, want to laugh, but you don’t give him that sense of satisfaction—and he’s smart but in his own weird way. He’s not like the other lawyers you’ve met, or any of the law students you attended University with because he’s more lighthearted and free-spirited than the rest, taking life in strides instead of just overwhelming himself in the abundance of stress that work brings.

He’s entirely the opposite of you.

And maybe you could learn something from the guy, but there’s something in you that brews hatred toward him. Possibility that you resent how easy he makes being a lawyer seem when you’re struggling in your day-to-day life to make things work.

But it’s way too fucking hard when he’s just… like that.

Despite all of that, he’s very generous and kind toward you. On rough days, he delivers your coffee order, the one you always get because he remembers what you asked the intern to get for you the last time, and he’s good at identifying when you’re just having that kind of day. You eventually learn he has a photographic memory (fucking show off), so when he saw that crumpled napkin with scribbles of what you want in that dumb intern’s hand, it wasn’t hard to remember. Which, by the way, is how he’s able to get into the most prestigious school for undergrad, manage to pass the bar so easily, and get into law school effortlessly.

And knowing this information sort of angers you more.

You know this isn’t his fault—he’s been blessed with a trait that people desire, one that you also yearn for, but the lucky ones get handed a lot of things in life. You wonder if he’s the type of guy who wins girls easily after matching with them on dating sites because of this stupid ass ‘photographic memory.’ Does he sleep with them right after? Does it ever get serious?

You shrug your shoulders and shake your head. You shouldn’t even let these strange thoughts haunt you, especially when you don’t even like him.

He’s a spoiled brat who gets everything handed to him on a silver platter.

So you’re left counting the remaining days until the trial so you don’t ever have to work with Johnny Suh this closely again.

Okay, well, it’s evident that bad luck is glued to your side because after you win the Hwang v. Yoon case for your law firm with that asshole, Seohyun is so impressed. So goddamn impressed that she insists that all the high profile cases are to be given to both you and Johnny.

To work as a team.

Together.

Jesus, this is Hell for you.

Surely, the promotion and raise that came along with it was definitely a plus, but it has you wondering if it’s even worth it. He’s been your unspoken enemy since the first day, and although you think you’re pretty forthright about your hatred for this guy, he can’t seem to read social cues.

When you’re pushing the double doors into the conference room the two of you often spend working on cases in, you expect Johnny to be ready for another day. But strangely enough, Johnny doesn’t have his laptop out or any of the notebooks sprawled across the table.

“Um,” you slide the strap of your bag off your shoulder and onto the spare chair. “Did you come late or something?”

He takes in a deep breath like he’s been holding back something. “We need to talk.”

There’s worry inscribed into his features; from the crease in between his brows, to his pursed lips, and eyes soaked in concern, almost like he’s got bad news to share and it has your stomach in knots. Was it that the case was thrown out? It couldn’t be, right? You both worked hard, presented your stance to the point that the jury and the judge were in awe with your findings. Sure, you had to cover Johnny’s mouth right before he was about to go off in a tangent about jean shorts, but overall, it was a good win, a hard one to go back on and pull out the wrongs of it. So what was it?

“I’m quitting our partnership.”

You blink. “What?”

He gestures to the room with his hands as if there’s anything out to reference. “This thing. Our work. The big profile cases. The famous stuff. I told Seohyun that I won’t be doing it anymore and she can revoke the promotion and the raise.”

You’re still not catching on. “… Why?” Was it something you did? Yeah, you weren’t a big fan of Johnny either, but were you so bad that he decided to not go through with the raise because of you?

“Because,” he pushes his blazer back, hands sliding into the front pockets of his navy blue trousers. “There’s a policy put into place. Those who are on the same cases cannot have any personal relations with each other that extend past friendships.”

“We’re not even friends?” With confusion written across your face, your head tilts to the side. “I’m not… I’m not catching on here.”

“I like you.”

Startled, the words you want to say are stolen out of your mouth. You’re left with a mixture of perturbation and bewilderment, uncertain where to go from there because Johnny asked for the removal of both a promotion and additional money that could be so good for his career… and it’s all because he has a crush on you?

“You quit the best thing that could’ve happened to you because you like me?”

“Yeah,” Johnny states calmly, sucking in his cheeks for a brief moment. “Ain’t that romantic?”

You scoff. “No. Absolutely not. You’re insane! Why would you do yourself dirty like that? Use your head, Johnny, you’re constantly thinking with that stupid heart of yours, and hate to break it to you, but it won’t get you anywhere.” Combing your hair with your fingers, you let out a sigh. “Go ask Seohyun for the position back. Say you made a mistake and—”

“I’m not asking her for the position back.”

Johnny doesn’t make any sense to you. “What? Why wouldn’t you do that?

“Because,” he laughs in disbelief, not because he thinks you’re funny. “I’m not going to force myself to work with a girl that I keep falling for. That’s self-inflicting, you realize that, right? You’re amazing, but you can seriously be so dense sometimes.”

“I’m dense? You just told one of the best law firms in the city that you don’t want to work on the important cases anymore because you have a stupid crush on your partner!”

“If we were on a team with more people, maybe it’d be different. But it’s just us two. You think I won’t fall any harder? That’s not easy. Every time I see you working, I swear I could be hopelessly in love with you one day.”

Your heart stops for a second.

This is Johnny Suh you were talking about here. One of the claimed best lawyers in your office, one of the most intelligent people that Hyeri has ever met, and Seohyun evidently backs this up because she’s given him so much recognition for his work. He’s the guy who worked with you to win the Hwang v. Yoon case, he’s the one who brought up the stupid jean shorts that seemed so far-fetched at the time, but they were a crucial detail everyone missed—it so happened that when Changmin bought those dumb shorts, there was evidence of at least one of his crimes in that store from the security cameras.

Any cis-gendered male who wears jean shorts can’t be trusted, according to Johnny.

And candidly speaking? You couldn’t even deny that. Your past two ex-boyfriends both wore jean shorts and the one cheated on you and the other one was caught money laundering.

“Listen,” he begins, interrupting your foggy thoughts. “I’m not asking you to tell me you like me back. I’m telling you because you should know, and that I can’t go on any further without letting you know. I’ll, uh, be in my office. Seohyun said she’d find a replacement for me.”

Hyeri is his replacement.

She’s great company and does a good job of helping you with whatever you need, but that was just it. Hyeri followed you, she never led with you, just as Johnny does. Agreeing with everything you say, mindlessly trailing behind everything you do—Hyeri was smart, but she couldn’t figure out how to think for herself when it came to these bigger cases because she’s never been given such a responsibility. But you couldn’t even blame her because it’s what she was told to do under Gonghyun.

“You said that you think Maeri snatched the bracelet?”

“No, I said if you watched the security video that the jewelry store submitted, it clearly shows that Maeri snatched the bracelet. Not that I ‘think.’ The proof is right there, Hyeri.”

She nods, resuming back to her work on the computer. Truthfully, Hyeri felt more like an assistant than a co-worker, someone to bounce ideas off of and to see from a different perspective. And as much as you hated Johnny, he had decent points. He had ways of making you put yourself into the shoes of people you never thought you were; although the guy was obnoxious, at least he actually was… good at his job.

Deciding you can’t take it anymore when Hyeri asks for the tenth time that hour about your beliefs rather than her own, you abruptly stand from your seat.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” you reply shortly. “I’ll be back.”

It was just a spontaneous thought. It’s after hours, and although there are some people who stay behind to get some work done, you had your doubts that Johnny would still be here. He seems to have a better grip on that work/life balance thing people talked about (unlike yourself), but it didn’t hurt to check his office, right?

It’s a good thing you went with it. Because right across from yours, there’s Johnny.

There’s one single lamp that shines over the tabletop of his desk, and the other sources of light in his office are from his computer screen and the ones from the city skyline from behind him. It has him seemingly angelic like this, so serene, calm, and collected, only focused on what’s laid out in front of him. The sun has gone down, people have gone home, but Johnny remains, hardworking as always, despite your previous observations that he’s a lazy, unprofessional guy who gets everything handed down to him.

With a knock on his glass door, he flinches, head raising up and eyes meeting yours.

Were his eyes always this sparkly?

Opening the door, Johnny drops the pen in his hand and crosses his arms before leaning back in his seat. “What’s up?”

“You’re here late,” you state the obvious, and Johnny only nods in return, without a rebuttal in sight. “You aren’t normally here late. At least, before the Hwang v. Yoon case.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But Seohyun dropped something on my desk this morning. Wanted to work on it. What brings you here?”

Inhaling in a deep breath of courage, your hands bundle up into a fist by your side. “Please come back.”

Johnny raises a brow. “What?”

“Come back,” you reiterate, this time, it’s less tense and releases with ease. Caving in isn’t usually this effortless to you, but something about Johnny makes you feel… comfortable enough.“Come back and work with me again. Yes, I’m not supportive of how you do things—”

“Then let’s go out on a date.”

You freeze. Legs rooted into the floors of Johnny’s office, you’re left immobile and diffident on how to react next. It wasn’t what you were expecting, although you weren’t quite sure what you were hoping to anticipate, but it most definitely was not this.

“I—”

“I said my terms,” he retorts, shutting the book in front of him before shuffling up from his seat. He’s leaving, you realize, and Johnny’s ready to head home for the night and you’re not sure if you could handle an entire weekend with Hyeri here. “And, I meant what I said. One date, and if it really doesn’t work out, I’ll stay on the case.”

Chewing on your bottom lip anxiously, the next words that come out are out of character for you. “And… what if it does?”

A soft smile tugs from each corner of his mouth. “Then we’ll figure it out from there. Promise.”

This is… awkward. It shouldn’t be, but yet somehow, it remains awkward.

You’ve spent weeks with Johnny before, and those moments were in a room, in the middle of the night, and alone. Hours and hours were dedicated to work, yes, but it was just the two of you and nobody else.

So why is it so weird being in a five Michelin star restaurant with him?

Maybe it’s the atmosphere. The dim lights, the white clothed tables in lieu of the scratched up wooden one back at the law firm, and instead of leather seats, there’s a neutral beige chaise cushion for the dining chair, slightly less comfortable because it doesn’t recline like the one in your office. Instead of an array of photos and evidence disseminated in front of you, there’s a laminated menu with a multitude of options of what to have for dinner.

Johnny gets the steak with mashed potatoes and string beans, and you order something similar but seared salmon for the main protein. The waitress offers wine, babbling on about the age of the red, where the vineyard is located, and the dryness to sweetness—to be honest, you could care less; you’d rather have gin and sprite with a squirt of lime. A couple glasses of that and you can almost guarantee that the night would end with a deep slumber.

Oddly enough, Johnny seems nervous. Ever since he pulled up in his midnight black Audi in front of your apartment complex, he’s been acting strange. He keeps wiping his sweaty palms off the material of his trousers, occasionally swiping off the droplets that fall on the side of his face.

“Are you… okay?” you suddenly ask, adjusting your dress in your seat. Deciding to go with a black silk dress with a slit up the leg and your hair let down, it’s not a look you often sport but since you’re going on a date (one you haven’t been on in quite some time), you figured it would be nice to at least play the part.

“I’m, uh, honestly, I’ve never really asked a girl out before.”

You quirk a brow curiously. “What? You’re telling me you never asked a girl out before?”

He lets out a bashful laugh with a faint nod, making an attempt to swallow his nerves after. “Honestly, I’ve always been asked out and not the other way around. Not to sound like that guy, but I never really had to put effort into trying for girls. They kind of just…”

“—Throw themselves at you?”

He beams. “Yeah! Like that. I don’t really know how to react half the time, but it makes the whole dating scene a little bit easier.” Geez, he called you dense, but he’s over here acting clueless.

Either way, it feels like whatever opinion you had about Johnny remained true. He never had to try when it came to the dating scene, and you could only imagine what that means for work and the relationships he has with the women in your career field.

“Mm, does that usually happen with work too?”

Befuddled, Johnny leans back in his chair. “What do you mean by that?”

With a shrug of your shoulders, you’re poking the meat of your salmon that falls off easily. After the first initial bite, the fish practically melts on impact when it touches the tip of your tongue, smooth like butter and bursting with flavor that couldn’t be described by any common person because it wouldn’t do the salmon justice. Johnny seemed to put a lot into this date, and you’re left pondering what the point of this was. Did he actually like you, or was he trying to get into your head? “Just seems like you get a lot of special treatment.”

“Are you jealous?”

“In what way?” you snap back.

“Are you jealous of me because I’m getting this so-called special treatment that you think I’ve always had, or were you jealous of the girls that seemingly got my attention?”

You’re left without anything to say.

It was a good observation he made because truthfully, you never saw it like that.

In actuality, you often saw Johnny as your rival. He climbed the ladder in the field with ease, and it wasn’t hard to quickly blame his success on the fact that he was a guy in a male dominated industry, but the fact that there’s a possible interpretation for your hatred may be from these feelings you might’ve been harboring for him this entire time… that can’t be it… right?

“I mean, look at where you are now,” you begin, trying to defend yourself. It can’t be true that the reason you’ve been bitter about Johnny was because of the girls that got his attention, and one of them not being you. “You got a high position from—”

“—From hard work,” Johnny interjects with his brows furrowed. “I didn’t get to where I was because I slept around, if that’s what you’re insinuating. I knew you sort of always hated me, but I’ve always admired you. I like your work ethic, I like your style, even though we’re both on opposite spectrums, I like the way you think and I wanted to know what it was like being partners with you. Getting to be on that case with you showed me more than just who you were as a lawyer, but who you were as a person. I like you, but I’m trying to put my finger on why you hate me so much.”

“So you noticed.” Sucking in your cheeks, your eyes trail elsewhere—from the fork that lays beside your plate, to the glass filled halfway with wine, to the little candle that sits in between the two of you that flickers the way he has your heart when he expresses once more how he feels about you.

“Yeah, of course I noticed. If you like someone, it’s kind to miss details like that about them. So… you really hated me because you thought I slept my way to the top, huh?”

“I mean…” shoulders dropping in exasperation, you run your fingers through your disheveled hair. “All those rumors—”

“Again, they’re just rumors. I worked hard to get here, you know. And I’m kind of offended that you thought of me that way.”

You scoff. “They’re rumors, Johnny, it’s kind of hard to ignore all the office gossip when that’s all you hear. Plus, it wasn’t hard to believe either, with the whole flirtatious act whenever you encounter anyone who’s breathing and has a vagina.”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“You need a book for dummies that elaborates on what’s flirting or not, because Johnny Suh, whatever it is you do with your body language in front of that chick who sits by the front door.”

“You mean Siwoo? The pregnant one who’s married to her highschool sweetheart? Also, how do you not know our receptionist’s name?”

You throw your arms into the air. “How am I supposed to know her name?”

He tilts his head to the side, genuinely baffled. “Do you… not talk to anyone outside of Hyeri?”

Your silence answers his question.

“I… honestly, I don’t know if I should be offended or if I should be honored. You think I didn’t earn anything that I have now, you think that everything I have was handed to me. On one hand, it’s flattering that you think my looks and my bedroom skills could do that but at the same time… I’m offended because you think I’m incapable.”

“I never said you were incapable—”

“But you implied it.”

Hands falling onto your lap, it’s your turn to gulp. His words come shooting at you, but you’re without a shield to protect yourself, and with the new experience of working with Johnny, there comes the realization at times that Johnny is a hard worker. There are some things that he says and does that aren’t like the people you’ve encountered, and being put on new cases with Hyeri only proved it. He’s thoughtful in the sense that whenever you’d bring up your stance on something, he challenges you with what the defense might counter.

Johnny makes you want to be better. Not just against him, but to brush off the dust on your skills and enter into the battlefield of a courtroom to showcase them.

“Well, if you’re staying silent, I just want to say that I tried,” the crinkle in between your brows makes another appearance because Johnny is great at leaving you stunned and confused. “I really like you. I love how your head works, and I wanna be with someone like that but I also can’t be with someone who doesn’t respect me.”

Why is it that when you’re in that conference room with him, you’re not afraid and never running out of things to say, but now you’re empty handed?

“I’ll pay for dinner. Grab you an Uber. I honestly thought I could overlook those things, and maybe your perspective for me has changed, but I could see it on your face. It’s the same.”

After that date with Johnny, his life turns back to normal.

Yours? Not so much.

Candidly speaking, part of you missed working with Johnny. You were wrong about him, so wrong, and even when you wanted to apologize at the dinner for what you thought of him, the pride in you was like a vicious plague that blackened your insides, preventing you from ever saying those words.

Oftentimes, you’d still be able to sneak a glimpse of him in his office with that same look on his face—full of concentration and nothing else in his mind other than the task at hand.

The cases you have with Hyeri entail a head like Johnny’s. Someone who could question you, to protest against your stance when there could be flaws in it. It feels like deja vu each time you think about it, each time you open a new case file and Hyeri sits there, perched in that seat beside yours, eyes sparkling with what you have in mind next, instead of what she has going on in hers.

Although you’ve tried convincing yourself that maybe, just maybe, what you feel for Johnny is purely professional but when you see him standing by the water cooler with a couple of your coworkers, eyes mimicking the moon crescents in the skies, replicating the ways his lips curl in elation—it was beginning hard to believe that it was all platonic feelings.

So maybe you should be bold for once. Pull off that exterior that displays you as someone who isn’t just independent and assiduous, but someone who’s stubborn and aggressive in getting what they want—and not in a good way.

This time, you’ll show it in a good way.

Or at least, you’ll try.

Johnny is a routine kind-of-guy—he grabs an iced americano every morning at the coffee shop downstairs at the edge of the street, he does his daily 11:00AM drop-by at the water cooler to refill his Hydroflask (which was his prized possession, by the way), and parked in the same exact spot in the parking garage of your building, despite there being an abundance of places he could choose.

That’s why you decide to stand by his car after work that day. Bouncing on the balls of your feet, hands shaking because it’s your turn to feel anxious. That blazer that once fit so comfortably in the morning suddenly feels tight and hot in the afternoon, and the weather hasn’t even changed. Your bag slung over your shoulder weighs ten times heavier than an hour ago, and you can’t stop your jaw from tightening.

Before your thoughts could spiral off all the possibilities of what the outcome may be when you tell Johnny how you feel, he’s already standing there, feet away from you with that dip in the fronts of his brows that you want to smoothen out the crinkles of with the pad of your thumb.

“Hi,” you greet, faint and peculiarly different from your other approaches. “Um, I just… was waiting for you.”

“Hey,” Johnny says back, the first few buttons of his shirt already unraveled, his blazer hung over his forearm and the sleeves are rolled up. “I see that. What’s up with you?”

“Um,” your leg was jittery, hard to control so you spat everything you had to say out as fast as you could before he could see right through you. “I just wanted to apologize. For everything. You’re admirable, kind, and I wish I inhabited those same characteristics you have. I think professionally, you’ve got great ideas, one that could be implemented into mine and what we did together for that case was just… yeah. We could do something big if we put our heads together.”

Johnny nods in agreement. The relationship between you two work-wise was obvious, he knew that much. “And what about… outside of that?”

“I like you,” you choked, barely getting the words out. “More than just coworkers, um, I guess, more than friends but I’m not really sure since you walked out on our first date,” inhaling in a deep breath of courage, you continue on, “and I don’t know how you feel now after I’m standing before you like this, asking for another chance and that I’m sorry.”

He stares at you blankly, and it leaves you unsure whether or not he accepts your apology. “You know why we ended that date early.”

“Well,” you start again, “can we… start over and try again? I promise I won’t tempt you to end the date early this time.”

And with that, there’s the signature smile that Johnny sports that swoons girls, makes their knees weak, and heart clench but this time… it’s just for you.

“I’d really like that.”

#ficscafe #nct fanfic #johnny x reader #johnny fanfic #johnny suh #johnny nct #nct 127 #nct 127 fanfic #suh johnny #gyukultfics #idk what else to tag #hopefully this does well :|

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annathesillyfriend · 3 years

Text

Anna's April Fic Recs ✨

Hello everyone, wellcome to my April fic recommendations (part 1) masterpost! This is a new thing I want to try to do and create a list like that twice a month. It really pains me that the amazing authors out there don't get the recognition they dereserve so I'm gonna do what I can to spread my love for them. I also hope more people will get to experience the joy of reading all these wonderful works!

To all the writers - I love you and I appreciate you so much! To all the readers - please, share the fics you read and love. The reblog really makes the change! It's the least we could do to show our gratitude.

Without further ado, here are the fic I read this month and adored

MARVEL

Bucky Barnes

Take a chance on me by @jurassicbarnes

one-shot, single mum!au, fwb to lovers

Bucky's game nights by @eurynome827

series, slow burn, they're playing games with their hearts

Baby fever by @youlightmeupfinn

one-shot, who wouldn't want that man as their baby daddy?

All yours by @babyboibucky

one-shot, 18+, tfatws!Bucky

A single thread by @jobean12-blog

one-shot, coffeeshop with Buck

New adventures by @celestialbarnes

one-shot, best friends to lovers

Beautiful girl by @borkingbarnes

one-shot, a morning with Buck

Erase every trace by @angrythingstarlight

one-shot, 18+, tfatws!Bucky

What you need by @buckycuddlebuddy

one-shot, 18+, best friend and roommate!Bucky, a cam is involved 👀

Cookies, kisses and such by @sweetbucky

one-shot, friends to lovers

The Match by @/babyboibucky

series, ceo!bucky

Policework by @jurassicbarnes

one-shot, police detectives!au

Eyes on you by @kleohoneyao3

one-shot, 18+

Take me as I am, whoever I am by @/jurassicbarnes

one-shot, 18+

Greedy by @/babyboibucky

one-shot, 18+, hot hot hot!

Destructive by @buckybarnesdiaries

one-shot, Bucky's scared of his feelings

Sunday kinda' love by @msmarvelwrites

one-shot, 18+, some things are more important than breakfast

Separation, connection (part 2) by @firefly-in-darkness

two-shot, 18+, the angst is strong in this one

Angel on her knees by @/babyboibucky

one-shot, 18+, Bucky gets some love hehe

Feelings are fatal by @sunmoonandbucky

series, steve leaves to be with Peggy, reader deals with the loss

It's messy inside, let me take your coat by @/divine-mistake

one-shot, 18+, plus size!reader

Beautiful people by @nacho-bucky

series, plus size!reader, the most real, beautiful, human story

Sam Wilson

Dancing with Sam Wilson would include... by @certifiedskywalker

head cannon, the title says it all

Positions by @luciilferss

one-shot, 18+, Sam's a gem Monday through Sunday

Identity by @samwilsons-pillowpecs

series, Sam loses memory and they say he wanted to kill Bucky

Amartment 3C by @/bohemianpages

series, Sam comes back from the snap to find his flat occupied

Honest by @xbuchananbarnes

one-shot, tfatws!sam

The first time you realise you are in love by @barnesnroses

part of a mini series, the fluff 😫

Walk me home by @whisperlullaby

one-shot, Sam comes to the rescue

Memory loss by @/captain-kelli

series, Sam and reader are on a hunt for winter solider

SamBucky

Cratures of habit by @callitdreamland

miniseries, sambucky x reader

How sweet it is by @indyluckycharlie

series, sambucky modern!au

The therapist by @holylulusworld

mini series, y/n helps them with their problems

Steve Rogers

Glitter by @sarahwroteathing

one-shot, elementary teacher!Steve x single mom!reader

Error by @buckysknifecollection

one-shot, de-serumed!steve

Words whispered in the dark by @anika-ann

part of the Attached series or stand alone, modern-college-professor AU, 18+

Corrupting a good boy by @donutloverxo

series, ceo!steve x desi!reader

Cash rules everything around me by @/slyyywriting

series, stripper!steve

Where the love light gleams by @/sunmoonandbucky

series, social media!au

Sharon Carter

Permanent by @/samwilsons-pillowpecs

one-shot, tattoo artist!sharon

Loki Laufeyson

Steam by @the--sad--hatter

series, slowburn, enemies to frenemies to idiots in love

Peter Parker

Love sick and a little bit drunk by @spideyspeaches

one-shot, collage!peter

Invisible string by @peterbenjiparker

series, soulmate!au

Don't hold back by @hollandcrush

one-shot, 18+, college!peter

Dancing with our hand tied by @/justeclipseblogs

series, stark!reader, enemies to lovers

My medication by @/kelieah

one-shot, broken teens in love

HOLLAND & CO.

Tom Holland

Lockscreen by @cherrycheridarling

one-shot, famous!reader

Monday mornings by @blissfulparker

one-shot, professor!tom x professor!reader

Written in the stars by @ptersmj

one-shot, fuff!!!

Hooked on your feelings by @heyhihellowhatsup0

series, fwb!tom

Ski date by @tetralea

one-shot, 18+, idiots in love, friends to lovers

Take sugar? by @/hollandcrush

one-shot, carpenter!tom x ex-best friend!reader, 18+

I swear to God I never fall in love by @hazofmyheart

one-shot, fratboy!tom, 18+, spoiler alert: he does

Break up with your girlfriend by @rosyparkers

one-shot, 18+, frat football player!tom, cheerleader!y/n, fwb au

Perennial by @peeterparkr

series, sequel to Perdify, the biggest oof moment yet

All for her by @screamholland

series, single dad!tom

Royal convinience by @/poetrcy

series, royal!au

Kiss me slowly by @/storybookholland

one-shot, soft frat!tom

Harry Holland

Always by @/multiholland

series, best freind!harry

Sam Holland

'tis the damn season by @/unsaidholland

one-shot, ex boyfriend!sam

Our night by @/storybookholland

one-shot, jealous!sam

Harrison Osterfield

No way by @soft-haz

one-shot, friends to lovers

Second self by @/soft-haz

one-shot, 18+, reader gives Haz a hand wink wink

Harrison mastelist by @allegra-writes

lots of great Haz things!

Bet on it by @storybookholland

series, fwb

THE IRREGULARS

Whole masterlist by @uglypastels

these all wonderful!! you should also check out the amazing art works at the bottom of this masterlist

LEO

The Fountain of Ichor by @thegirlintheswivelchair

series, leo x lady-in-waiting!reader

OTHERS

Anthony Bridgerton

Sham, pride and illicit affairs by @/peeterparkr

series, quite possibly the most poetic fic ever written

Coming home again by @/misstonybridgerton

series, old friends reunite

Spencer Reid

An Interesting Electronic by @/homoose

one-shot, 18+

Frank Adler

I ruined our sweet tune by @/rodrikstark

one-shot, kinda professor!frank

Ransom Drysdale

The Five Times You Told Ransom Drysdale You Loved Him (And The One Time He Said It Back) by @just-one-ordinary-fangirl

one-shot, childhood friends to life gets in the way to lovers

Sacrilage by @the-iceni-bitch

one-shot, 18+, you'll have to shower in holy water after this

Okay, I might have gone a little overboard but hey, there's no such thing as too much good fanfiction!

Enjoy! 🥰

#april fic recs #april fic recs part 1 #fic rec #anna's fic recs #bucky barnes x reader #steve rogers x reader #sam wilson x reader #tom holland x reader #harrison osterfield x reader #sambucky x reader #sambucky #peter parker x reader

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yelenasdog · 3 years

Text

moving out, moving on (mitch rapp x fem reader)

genre: fluff

summary: mitch and reader are taking another step towards mitch moving on, and it’s bittersweet.

words: 2.2k

warnings: drinking wine, kinda suggestive at times, talks abt katrina, mitch being emotional, my writing being melodramatic LOL

a/n: so. this was written during an all nighter that went to 7 am where i was listening to nicki minaj and eminem (???) for a good duration of it so. i’m very sorry if this is wonky at times! i hope u enjoy either way! mwah

🥍🥍🥍

The early morning rays streamed through thin fabric, draped above the assassin's window. Dust particles floated about, becoming visible within the section of light cast from the sun. The birds perched outside the small apartment tweeted happily from their branch, their songs beautiful.

Though, they were quite pesterous to the pair that lay together, wrapped in gray sheets. They reveled in the heat provided by the soft blanket, but even more so by the warmth from their joint bodies.

A mop of dark brown hair stirred, bringing one hand up to softly rub his eyes with his knuckle, the other hand snaking around the waist of the woman peacefully sleeping beside him. He watched with fond eyes as she lightly groaned, rolling to face away from the invasion of bright, turning towards her love.

Mitch smiled down at her sleepy behavior, reaching out and brushing stray hairs from her forehead. He reluctantly retracted it only moments later, forcing himself out of bed to go and prepare the two of them for their big day as best he knew how: Coffee.

His sock clad feet dragged across the hardwood as he went, his sweatpants hanging low on his hips and groggy-ness (a word Y/n had donned as her own, and Mitch had caught on to) still very prevalent in his entire system.

The Rhode Island air was frigid this time of year, Mitch allowing a grin to break out on his face upon remembrance of two nights previous, just how cold Y/n had been in the arena of the Providence Bruins hockey team. Nose pink, donned in a beanie proudly showing the team's logo, well, he had found himself a new lockscreen.

He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of said groggy-ness, his body on autopilot as it made the beverages. He picked out her favorite mug from the cupboard (AKA a souvenir from Dubai he had picked up long ago) that she had adopted as her own, drinking out of it every time she would spend the night, almost like clockwork. He waited for his coffee beans to brew, scratching his stubble along his jaw. He flinched, though, when he felt two arms wrap around his middle. He quickly relaxed into the embrace upon realization of who the supposed assailant was, her head finding its way to rest on his bare shoulder.

“You scared me, there.” Mitch muttered, his larger hand inching towards her’s on his waist. He closed his eyes in content and she hummed in acknowledgment. Mitch allowed her to turn his figure to face her, still residing in her arms, seeing a bright smile plastered across her face.

“Only for a minute though, right?”

She laughed to which he chuckled in response, nodding in false surrender. “You’ve got me there, Y/n/n.” He mused, his eyes lighting up at the sound of the coffee machine beeping. He looked back to her, shrugging.

“I made you coffee, was gonna bring it to you in bed but, y’know.” He gestured to where she had now climbed up to sit on top of his counter, his sweatshirt around her that read “Brown University” across the front in large lettering pooling around her thighs.

“It’s alright, I need to get a move on anyway.” She smiled, hopping down to retrieve the mug, taking the warm ceramic from Mitch’s hands and sighing at the wondrous feeling that had spread through her whole body. She lifted it to her lips and drank, not surprised that her boyfriend had made it just the way she liked, to perfection.

“Thank you, baby.” She commented, reaching up to plant a chaste kiss on his lips. Her lip curled as she pulled away, Mitch already knowing what she was going to say, a laugh bubbling up in his throat.

“Mitch! Go brush your teeth, for the love of God!” She whined, watching as he scampered off towards the bathroom, snickering all the way. She rolled her eyes, downing the rest of her beverage before following where Mitch had gone.

Once in the bathroom after rinsing her and Mitch’s mugs, she tied her hair up, undressing and turning on the water (practically scalding hot, of course). Mitch had no objections to the temperature, though, seeing as it was his last time showering with her in that apartment, and in that apartment, period.

The whole thing felt very symbolic to Y/n, at least, seeing it as washing themselves clean for the next phase of their lives together, a sort of preparation. (Maybe not so much for Mitch, who really was just pleased for any excuse to see his girlfriend naked.)

They used generous amounts of soap, as not only were most of them nearly empty (in fact, a few were and if it weren’t for Y/n, they probably all would be), but also that they had decided to simply just buy new toiletries as a whole for their new place.

They giggled at the sight of each other, all lathered in bubbles and suds. Mitch reached a finger forward, wiping it from above her eyebrows and preventing it from falling into her eyes. Y/n brought her arms around his neck, her lips connecting with his. “Much better.” She regarded with a smirk, before leaning back in.

Nearly 40 minutes later, they both emerged from the shower, fresh faced and ready for the day ahead. He didn’t have a lot that needed to be packed up, given that his place came fully furnished, so it took all but 2 hours and 5 boxes to pack up Mitch Rapp’s life. It honestly might have taken even longer than originally would have been needed, as Y/n would stop every time she found something interesting, allowing Mitch to tell her all about whatever stories had been connected to the item.

It had started with the ridiculous bird lamp that sat on his bedside table, once belonging to Mr. Nazir, and ended with his lacrosse stick. (And, a promise that one day, he’d show her how to play. He swore he’d never seen her smile that big.)

They also threw away and donated a lot, some of Kat’s old stuff bringing a pained smile to his face as he would place it in a box simply labeled “Kat” in messy, thick letters. He wasn’t sure if the box would end up in his new closet, covered in dust and unopened, or back with her family. But either way, he wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to her completely, which Y/n was able to understand.

“Mitch? Did you pack away your coats already?” Y/n called out, opening up the closet near the front door. Her breath slightly hitched in her throat upon seeing all of the photos of Mansur, still pasted to the painted wood, the edges curling up.

“Nah, not yet, I was gonna handle that while you worked on the cupboards” He responded, busying himself with a text from Irene on his phone wishing him good luck. He looked up and saw what she had been asking about, his phone quickly sliding into his pocket as he made his way over to where she stood, visibly distressed.

“How long have these been here?” She questioned, feeling Mitch’s arms wrap around her shoulders. She brought her hands up to grasp onto his wrists, leaning backwards into him and biting into her lip.

“Since the beach, when I decided to go after Mansur. When everything happened with the CIA, it was kind of a whirlwind, I didn’t really have enough time to even think about taking it down when I was only even here for hours at a time.” He lightly chuckled, watching as she stepped forward and began to take the pictures down, crumbling them up in her hands.

She ran her fingertips over the indents left in the door, feeling the splinters against them. She turned back to Mitch, quipping how “Mr. Nazir won’t be too pleased about that.”

He smiled, joining her in taking all of the images down, ripping them or balling them up in his fists. All of them ended up in one of the old Target bags they had been using for trash, filling up an entire bag (minus a few Dunkin cups sitting at the bottom).

Mitch trailed a few tender kisses down the left side of her next, and though it sounds cheesy, a feeling of hopefulness flooded himself out of most of the bitterness that had been stuck inside for so long.

She turned her head to catch his lips with her own, and smiled into the kiss, her hand finding the back of his head. She lightly tugged on the chocolate colored strands and he groaned in content, to which her grin only widened. She pulled back, ruffling the top of his head before beginning to pack away the remnants of what was left in the closet. He rolled his eyes, following suit.

They had piled all of the boxes into the back of Mitch’s old decommissioned CIA vehicle (which was obvious that is was such, given that the side was littered with bullet holes and metallic scratches), returned the key to Mr. Nazir (who was glad to see Mitch go), and with that, they were off.

The new place wasn’t too far away, the pair taking a page out of Stan’s book and opting for a wonderful sense of privacy. It was nestled in a rural corner of Massachusetts, where Mitch would be able to come home to a sense of serenity. Y/n had already moved in her possessions, Mitch’s items being the last step. They’d also furnished the cozy cabin, trips to IKEA and Urban Outfitters (along with several other over-priced boutiques) making the place feel like a perfect fit for the couple.

Mitch’s strange and varied knick knacks made the house feel like a home, his lacrosse stick finding a new home by the front door, right under a hanging potted plant that Y/n and Mitch had decided to affectionately name “Charles” after a drunken night watching the X-Men movies. The house was littered in plants such as Charles, in fact, with Mitch’s first response to seeing all of them being “Wow, looks like a greenhouse in here.”

(Still, he’d grown to love the plant babies. Trust me.)

Two tired smiles made their ways to their faces as they both sat on their new sofa, admiring a job well done. Though several boxes still lay on the hardwood, unopened, they felt accomplished enough to pull out a bottle of wine that they had been saving for the occasion. It was an early housewarming gift from Stan, to which they were unprepared to take advantage of, it seemed.

“Baby, did we unpack the wine glasses earlier?” Mitch questioned, his mind slightly foggy of the day's events and early start.

“No, I think they’re still packed up.” She replied, to which Mitch’s eyes lit up, an idea forming and an imaginary lightbulb popping up over his head. He got up from his seat, a wide smile spreading across his face. Her expression mirrored his own, with an added quirked brow at his antics.

“I’ve got a solution, wait here.” Mitch responded, padding over to where he had remembered the new home of the mugs to be. Upon realization of what he was doing, Y/n smiled, rolling her eyes and bringing a hand up to run through her roots.

He shuffled back over moments later, his girlfriend recognizing one of the mugs in his hands as her favorite. He sat down next to her, with the bare skin of her thighs touching his own, jean clad. He bumped his knee to hers with a giggle, pouring out the Pinot Grigio into the mugs.

She gratefully accepted it as it was handed to her, smiling as she took a sip. Mitch did the same, the two of them leaning back into the soft sofa. Y/n brought her legs up, cuddling into his side and absorbing his warmth. He brought his free hand to her side, a strong hold giving them both a strong sense of comfort as she lay her head on his shoulder.

The box labeled “Kat” remained unpacked along with the others on the floor, dust already beginning to gather. Mitch had come across it a few times that day, each time more thoughtful than the last as he struggled to decide what it was exactly he was feeling towards the objects; or perhaps towards the memory of Katrina.

He had come to realize that it was acceptance he felt, deep in his stomach, settling down. It had been brought upon him in totality over time, today’s events being the final step. A soft smile spread across Mitch’s face, a single tear falling from his eye. Y/n looked up, eyebrows furrowed with worry.

“Mitch, are you alright?”

He leaned down, connecting their lips in a watery yet nectarous kiss, his hand beginning to rub small circles on her shoulder.

“Yeah, Y/n/n.”

The fire they had built earlier was roaring, now, casting a warm glow across the pair’s features. The damp trail down his cheek was highlighted, nearly glistening on his skin like an amber.

“I’m doin’ just fine.”

🥍🥍🥍

ok btw ik that wine in mugs would be a horrible idea but this is fiction so SHUSH

anyway i hope yall enjoyed! i love writing for mitch and i have lots of future fics for him, so if u liked this, please reblog and follow if ya wanna. mwah, go drink water and have some protein <333

xx hj

#mitch rapp x reader #mitch rapp imagine #american assassin fic #american assassin fanfiction #american assassin imagine #dylan obrien imagine #dylan o'brien imagine #dylan obrien x reader #dylan o'brien x reader #dylan o'brien x y/n #dylan o'brian imagine #mitch rapp x y/n #stiles x reader #we will rock queue #yelenasdog

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nostuntmanneeded · 3 years

Text

Sebastian’s Birthday Video

Well, everyone — Sebastian finally posted about Alejandra on his Instagram 10 months after they supposedly started dating.

While the posting of this video does put the relationship more in the public eye, it doesn’t mean it has confirmed the relationship is real.

If you’re one of those fans who have started to believe this relationship is real, I’m not judging you or forcing you to stay on the “Team PR” side. But I will tell you that there are a lot of weird things I’ve picked up on in the video that still link this relationship to being a publicity stunt.

The video is old

There’s no doubt about it that the video Sebastian posted is old and is pre-recorded. People are speculating that this video was recorded before traveling to Ibiza.

Sebastian’s hair is shorter and it’s natural-looking. If this video was made recently, we’d see longer and dyed hair.

Sebastian also looks like he is in his apartment in New York City which further proves that the video is old as heck. And unless Sebastian got super into video editing during quarantine, the video had to have been edited by someone else (probably by someone on his team).

The video is also super general. It’s not even a special birthday video. This makes me believe that Sebastian was told to record it, and his team kept it in the archives until a good time to post it came along.

The video is comedic

If you dated someone seriously for almost a year, and their birthday came along, you’d probably want to make a sentimental video for your significant other.

This video was goofy and comedic.

We are all aware of how heartfelt Sebastian’s birthday messages can be and this video was far from that.

I’ve sent and received birthday messages to and from friends that were more sincere than Sebastian’s video. Heck, I wrote a super genuine paragraph to my crush in his graduation card not too long ago.

Maybe Sebastian just wanted to be a goofball, but I feel like he should’ve been more heartfelt in his message if he wanted to make this relationship more believable.

The baits

A huge giveaway to this strange video being orchestrated is the baits that we’ve seen from Alejandra throughout this relationship appearing in it.

We see Sebastian poking fun at Alejandra’s cooking baits, her Christmas bait, her attempts to loophole in the United States through the beach in Tulum and her Valentine’s Day bait.

Fans have even picked up on the picture being a shoutout to Alejandra’s infamous lockscreen bait.

But the baits appearing in this video alone isn’t the only thing that’s weird — it’s the fact that this video was supposedly filmed before Ibiza, which implies that Sebastian and his team knew about the baits before they actually happened in real time.

CAA script?

As you watch the video, if you look closely, you’ll see a white board with a “to do” list. One of the items on that list says “CAA script.”

While CAA and other talent agencies look at screenwriting scripts, agencies also have scripts that are specifically tied to a certain planned PR stunt.

It is unknown what kind of script Sebastian was talking about, though.

There was no tag and no “I love you”

Some fans have picked up on the fact that Sebastian did not tag Alejandra in his video (he only @’ed her in the caption), and the fact that he didn’t say “I love you” at all.

Sebastian may not be allowed to tag Alejandra, as Alejandra’s team probably wouldn’t allow the tag to go through. (Similar to when Alejandra tagged Sebastian in the shadow picture and Sebastian’s team didn’t allow the tag to go through.)

The caption of this post was interesting overall. Saying that Alejandra was the “light” in a “dark” time is super universal. You could say the same thing to a family member or a close friend. My neighbor was my “light” during the “darkness” of the pandemic.

Although a significant other could hold that spot, it’s still nothing unique.

The story post for Tom Holland

These are two things that fans have observed that tie directly into PR strategies to divert focus and generate more fame respectively.

Alejandra has been raking in controversy since she started dating Sebastian. This video had to have gotten some mixed reviews among fans, and receiving backlash isn’t uncommon for Sebastian at this point.

Posting for Tom Holland’s birthday was the perfect distraction.

Fans love Sebastian and Tom’s friendship, and they love Sebastian and Anthony Mackie’s comments on Tom’s age and maturity. Sebastian’s story post for Tom’s birthday diverted the focus to something positive and playful.

Chris Evans’ like

There’s a couple of reasons as to why Chris Evans might’ve liked this video.

First of all, Chris is known for not being skilled in social media, especially on Instagram. He could’ve been scrolling through his feed, aimlessly, and liked the video without knowing what it was. (I do it all the time.)

But Chris is also a client of CAA, and the agency could’ve forced him to like the video.

If people see that Chris Evans liked Sebastian’s video, it’ll get the video more views and it’ll get Alejandra more fame. And that’s how PR works, my friends.

Alejandra’s comment — te quiero verses te amo

Nearly a day after the video was posted, Alejandra commented.

Fans have been discussing the meaning of “te quiero” versus “te amo” in terms of saying “I love you” to Sebastian.

Here’s a little Spanish lesson for you all…

“Te quiero” translates literally to “I want you.” (“Quiero” stems from the verb “querer” which means “to want.”) “Te amo” translates to “I love you.” (“Amo” stems from the verb “amar” which means “to love.”)

“Te quiero” is known to be the softer version of saying “I love you,” and it’s most commonly expressed to family members, friends and relationships that are just starting out. “Te amo” is the deeper version of “I love you,” and it is normally reserved for very serious romantic relationships.

But with this being said, “te quiero” is the most common form of saying “I love you” across romantic partners, so take that mini-lesson with a grain of salt.

#Sebastian Stan #alejandra onieva #pr relationships #Team PR #PRomance #pr stunt #PR #public relations #celebrity relationships #relationship #celebrity #celebrity news #gossip blog #gossip #celebrities #fake romances #pr romance #romance

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daswarschonkaputt · 2 years

Note

hi i was just scrolling through ur blog and i saw u mentioned a miraculous ladybug/bnha crossover, i’d love to hear more about it! also i love the snippets of your stories you post, they’re always so interesting and well written <3

okay, so this story is pretty old?? i think. it's not really still in the works, so i'll just talk about it and my plans for it here.

the main vibe of this fic was to try and tell a slightly more mature story using the basis of the show. i was at the time deeply frustrated by the show, and couldn’t really find what i wanted in fanfic. i wanted to age up marinette and chat noir, put them at like, 17ish, and try and approach the show's premise through the lens of their more adult selves.

(fun fact: my phone lockscreen is art that i made for this story, way back when)

okay here's the story summary:

After four years in the Hero business, Marinette wishes she could say she has it all figured out. But, with a Quirk that’s on the fritz, a secret identity that’s slowly eating away at her life, and one hell of an escalation from everyone’s least favourite villain, she’s almost faced with more than she can handle. And that’s not even mentioning her ever more complicated relationship with her partner-in-crime-fighting.

and here's all i had written:

A chill has set into the air by the time she finds herself crouched behind the treeline, watching the road for riders. Her breath condenses on the air in front of her face, the tips of her ears tinted pink by the cold, but her fingers, coated in light, black gloves, remain nimble.

Left hand gripped tight around her spotted bow, she waits.

It’s quiet. It niggles at her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck, because just a week ago, she wouldn’t be doing this alone. He’d promised her once that he’d follow her wherever she needed him, but that it was beyond him to do it silently. She misses his incontrovertible pessimism the same way she misses the presence of his warmth, pressed into her side, watching her back.

She’ll never have that again.

She spots her target when he crests the hill. At first, he’s nothing more than a silhouette against the night, but as he rides closer, she can better make out his features. His distinctive riding posture and his ridiculous clothes.

He deserves this. He deserves worse than this. It should be slow. It should be agonising. He should beg – beg her to forgive him, to take back what he stole, to leave him alive.

She pulls an arrow from her quiver. In the half light of the moon, she can just make out the red-and-black spots on the fletching.

She draws. The bowstring sits taut, her fingers curved into the hollow of her cheek.

He rides closer.

A whisper: “Lucky—”

The arrow flies.

“—Shot!”

It strikes true.

“—ette, Marinette!”

Something’s tugging on her fringe.

“Marinette, wake up!”

In a bedroom in Paris, oceans and centuries away from that secluded woodland scene, Marinette Dupain-Cheng opens her eyes. There’s no forest, no road, no rider—just the pastel pink walls of her bedroom, peppered with the occasional picture of Adrien Agreste. She takes it all in purposefully – her patterned bedspread, her worn floor, the mannequin wearing a half-assembled jacked in the corner – until the details of that freezing night, with the bowstring, and the cold, calculating weight of anger that doesn’t belong to her, melt away.

She covers her face with her hands and groans.

“You had another dream, didn’t you?” Tikki. She must have been the one to wake her up. She feels a soft weight as Tikki wriggles under her wrists, trying to pry her hands away from her face. “Marinette, this is third night in a row. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

Marinette sighs, letting Tikki lever her hands off her face. Tikki flies up in the air, and meets Marinette’s eye with the sternest frown she has in her repertoire.

It’s unbearably cute.

“Marinette!” Tikki says.

Right. Okay. So they’re talking about this now. At – she glances at her bedside clock – 4:12 in the morning. Less than an hour before she has to sneak out to meet Chat Noir for their Monday morning debrief.

Perfect.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Marinette admits. She runs a finger over the smooth surface of her earrings. “I barely got anything off them when I first put them in. I’ve never picked up anything that happened over a year ago, and never with this level of clarity. It’s just localised flashes, usually.” She sighs. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about why this might be happening?”

Tikki’s stern frown quickly gives way to a worried one. “You’re the first Ladybug since the advent of Quirks,” she says, chewing on her lower lip. “Where were you tonight?”

“A wood somewhere,” Marinette answers. “It was cold. Ladybug had a bow and arrow. She was angry. I think,” she pauses, closing her eyes to chase away the afterimage of that icy rage, “I think someone had killed Chat Noir and taken his Miraculous.”

“Oh.” Tikki’s voice is small. “I remember that.”

“I guess that kind of thing didn’t happen very often.”

“No, it didn’t,” Tikki says. “But that’s not the point. Marinette, that happened over five hundred years ago.”

Marinette’s fingers freeze where they’re still running over her earrings.

Well, shit.

quirkgirl243

Ladybug is cancelled y’all. I can’t believe some of you are out here defending her after she literally said it was akuma victims’ fault they got akumatised. Fuck that noise. I don’t want to hear any of you defending that victim blaming shit.

labybloggerbug

Ladybug said what????? Um, source please?????

theladyblog

So, OP deleted, but bringing back this post to debunk some of the rumours it started. Ladybug has never said that akuma victims are to blame for getting akumatised. Never. Misinformation like this is really dangerous to spread around, and I’m not just saying that over an imagined slight to Ladybug’s honour.

I’m not sure how many of Ladybug’s current fans were around from the very beginning, but when she first appeared on the scene, both she and Chat Noir faced widespread criticism for their public defence of akuma victims. Several notable Pro-Heroes spoke out against them (sources for Cloudburst, Victoire, and Iridescence) – and most especially against the fact that they refused to support moves to prosecute the first akuma victims.

There was a lot of anti akuma victim sentiment in those early days, and Ladybug in particular is responsible for diffusing it.

(A collection of sources for Ladybug and Chat Noir’s staunch support of akuma victims: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5).)

So, where does this new rumour come from? Well, given the timing of the post, it’s most likely tied to the Gabrielle Lavoie tapes. For the uninitiated, these tapes were made during a court case last year, when someone targeted during an akuma attack then moved to sue the akuma victim for psychological damages. (The Ladyblog covered the case here, with an English translation here.)

Ladybug and Chat Noir provided video testimony on the mechanics of akumatisation – testimony that was then leaked to the press. The passage that most likely kickstarted this post is as follows:

Ladybug: We know that there is a certain degree of consent involved in akumatisation. You have to say yes to Hawk Moth, or the akuma doesn’t take hold.

However, she elaborates:

Ladybug: That consent doesn’t have to be informed or unconditional. When an akuma – for lack of a better word – infects someone, their judgement immediately becomes compromised. Negative emotions are heightened. I’ve heard a few people describe it as a kind of tunnel vision – it’s hard to think of any other solution than agreeing to what Hawk Moth wants. And once you say yes, there’s no changing your mind. Chat Noir and I have both seen examples where Hawk Moth has coerced, threatened, or even tortured akuma that attempt to subvert his will. I do know of cases where someone has resisted akumatisation, but they’re exceptionally rare. In most cases, it’s the exception, not the rule.

(Transcript of the tapes available here.)

I hope that this clears things up at least a little!

-Mod A

undernightskies

God bless the ladyblog. If everyone could reblog this version instead, that’d be great.

source: quirkgirl243-deactivated33492837 #ladybug #chat noir #akuma mention cw #idk how many y’all were around right at the start #but like ladybug used to get shit on a lot by the hero industry as a whole #esp for her views on akuma victims #other stuff as well #but that’s a story for another post

France can boast some of the most relaxed Quirk Regulation laws in the world – and, because of this, some of the strictest legislation regarding Pro-Hero work. The line between vigilante behaviour and lawful intervention may seem paper-thin, but it amounts to the difference between a cheque from the mayor and jail-time.

The unique circumstances surrounding the ongoing Akuma Crisis have led to both Ladybug and Chat Noir being cut a lot of slack by the authorities and, by extension, the National Hero Commission, but Marinette’s never been too willing to toe the line. Neither of them really have any excuse anymore – it’s not like they’re thirteen year-olds catapulted into heroics without so much as a Provisional Licence to justify their presence.

Nowadays, Ladybug and Chat Noir are as by the book as they come. They log and report their hours to a designated secretary. They fill out and sign all the necessary paperwork that comes from an akuma attack and they file their patrol routes a month in advance. They attend conferences, they sit in on meetings, they run workshops – they do everything the Hero Commission asks them to do.

And that includes the Hero Licences.

Marinette looks down at the little piece of plastic in her hand. For something so small, it carries one hell of a lot of weight.

The Hero Licences are a compromise on the part of the Hero Commission – a compromise that only exists because she and Chat Noir were adamant in their refusal to disclose their identities. After months of back and forth and one incident of not entirely ethical akuma-baiting, it was decided that Ladybug and Chat Noir would be issued Hero Licences against their superhero identities, and carry them whenever they responded to a threat.

It’s that last part that strikes a chord of terror in the back of Marinette’s mind.

She can’t control when an akuma will attack. The only thing she has any control over is her patrol schedule, and even that can be difficult to bend around her civilian life. Because of that, she has to carry Ladybug’s Hero Licence with her wherever she goes.

There isn’t anything out there that concretely ties her to Ladybug. Her Miraculous even distorts her face – twisting her features until she looks like an imperfect mirror of herself – and she knows Chat Noir himself couldn’t pick her civilian identity out of a line up.

But—ever since she was handed her first Provisional Hero Licence, two years ago, the thought has lurked in the back of her mind that it’s a shackle. It’s a link between Marinette and Ladybug, in a world where Hawkmoth has proven time and time again how dogged and resourceful he is.

And it’s always on her.

She can be as vigilant as she likes. She can hide it in a secret pocket in her bag, she can stuff it into her bra in blind panic, she can never so much as look at it outside her work as Ladybug—but one day, someone is going to find it.

Marinette places the little plastic card down on her bed. She’s already dressed for school – having learned her lesson about assuming patrol will only take as long as they’ve scheduled it for years ago – and it’s nearly five. Chat Noir is probably already waiting for her. He’s good like that.

“Tikki, you ready to head out?”

Tikki appears from—somewhere that she was probably breaking a few laws of physics to be in the first place. “Are you sure, Marinette?” she asks. “What if it makes your Quirk worse?”

That ship has probably already sailed, Marinette doesn’t say. “Being Ladybug is the only time I don’t have to worry about my Quirk,” she says instead.

Tikki doesn’t look reassured at all.

Marinette sighs. “If it makes you feel better, I can try to talk to someone about it,” she says. “I still have my old Quirk Counsellor’s number. I can shoot them a text.”

“Won’t you have to explain about the Miraculous?”

“Dominique doesn’t ask questions,” Marinette says. “They won’t pry if I tell them I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain.” Marinette smiles warmly at Tikki, who flies up to nuzzle her hand.

Quirks have always unnerved Tikki, even if she’s tried to hide it from Marinette. Marinette figures it’s probably pretty rough observing thousands of years of the human race, only to be hit by a curveball like Quirks. Given that it took humans two hundred years to figure out how to handle the issue with anything approaching dignity, Marinette thinks Tikki’s doing pretty well after just four.

“You ready?”

Tikki nods.

“Okay then, Tikki,” she says, “spots on!”

Ladybug (@)ladybug Good morning, Paris.

[IMAGE: A selfie taken from the rooftops in Paris as the sun rises. Chat Noir can be seen in the distance of the shot, grinning at the camera.]

just ENDeavour me (@)coldturtle_isme wait wait wait wait i know the ladybug twitter is verified but i thought it was run by someone in her agency? but this selfie was clearly posted in real time???

flawless victoire (@)monique_123 (@)coldturtle_isme Iirc it’s a mix? Ladybug and Chat Noir’s hero agency manage both of the accounts normally, but Ladybug and Chat Noir have to carry phones with them when they patrol for HC related reasons so they sometimes post stuff themselves.

The first thing Marinette notices when she drops beside Chat Noir is the lack of smile on his face. There’s tension in his shoulders, and he’s fiddling with the controls on his baton, repetitive and twitchy. She doesn’t need four years of friendship with him to identify the clear signs that something’s bothering him.

“Something wrong, chaton?” she asks, flicking her yo-yo back together as she walks over to his side.

“Have you spoken to Paulette today?”

Marinette pauses. Paulette is the sole administrative employee of their Hero agency, a long-suffering old woman who half-resents them for interfering with her retirement plans, and wholly disapproves of their involvement in the Hero industry at all. Chat Noir used to joke that she was a punishment from the Hero Commission – retribution for the procedural clusterfuck that their Heroics careers have been from start to finish.

On her worse days, Marinette is inclined to agree.

“Not since last week,” she tells Chat Noir. “She shouted at me for going over quota again.”

Technically speaking, Chat Noir and Ladybug have a set number of hours they’re supposed to work each week, assigned by the Hero Commission. It’s a general measure for all Pro-Heroes that ensures there’s always someone on-duty and counteracts Hero overcrowding. Going over quota is just as bad as going under, and the Hero Commission can restrict working hours, levy fines, and even revoke licences for breaches of the policy.

In reality, it doesn’t really work like that. At least not for Chat Noir and Ladybug.

The past few weeks have been pretty rough on the akuma front. The attacks tend to average at one a day over the Christmas and New Year’s period – Marinette has long since let go of the idea that people are happier around the holidays. Christmas day in particular can boast some of the most vicious akuma Ladybug and Chat Noir have defeated.

Chat Noir makes a face. “You know, I once asked her about that?” he says. “She told me we should have just defeated the akuma faster.”

Marinette wouldn’t be surprised. “So, what’s she upset about today?” she asks.

“She wasn’t upset,” Chat Noir says. “She had… news.”

Marinette tenses. The last time Paulette had news, she was standing next to a court officer holding a subpoena. “Good news?” she asks hopefully.

“News news,” Chat Noir says. He pauses. “You remember that typewriter akuma we fought a few days ago?”

“Typeset?” How could Marinette forget? Dodging car-size typewriter keys as they’re flung about the crowded streets of Paris on New Year’s Eve is pretty fraught, even so far as akuma fights go. “Is she okay? I didn’t want to leave her with Akuma Response Team, without talking to her, but she passed out as soon as I banished the akuma.”

“She’s fine. She just hadn’t slept in three days – her boss was running her into the ground with deadlines during the holidays, which is—” Chat Noir catches sight of her expression, “—beside the point. The point is, her Quirk is called Vocal Recall.”

Marinette frowns. They’ve been through this song and dance before, and it only leads to dead ends. “Using a Miraculous makes you functionally Quirkless, though,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if she has a—perfect recollection Quirk?” Chat Noir nods to confirm her guess. “She still won’t be able to remember anything from when she was akumatised.”

“You’re right,” Chat Noir says. “Or you would be if we were interested in what happened when she was akumatised. But we’re not. We’re interested in what happened just before she was akumatised. Her Quirk provides her with a perfect memory of the timbre and pitch of people’s voices, which generally isn’t that useful in day to day life, but—”

It hits her. “Hawkmoth spoke to her.”

Chat Noir nods. “Hawkmoth spoke to her,” he confirms. “She went to the police yesterday. She’s convinced that she could identify him if she heard his voice again.”

Marinette runs it all over in her head. “Well, shit,” she says, not sure what else she can add.

“Well, shit, indeed, my lady,” Chat Noir responds.

okay so a few more bits from this au:

marinette’s quirk is a touch-based clairvoyance quirk that allows her to see significant scenes from an object’s history. she usually can’t pick up things that have happened further back than a few months -- a year max.

because of this quirk, marinette has a quirk licence that allows her to use her quirk to consult with the police on crimes. she doesn’t do it as much anymore, because her parents got concerned that they were traumatising their preteen daughter by making her watch violent crimes.

lately, however, marinette has been getting flashes of shit that happened with the miraculous earrings like, 200 years ago. this is very concerning.

because miraculouses are from before the advent of quirks, they shut off user’s access to their quirks when they’re in use. barring the miraculous, ladybug is functionally quirkless in costume.

tikki is worried, because she’s never had a user with a quirk before, and she thinks something about the miraculous is making marinette’s quirk go out of control.

i don’t know if i ever figured out where i wanted this plot thread to go? but it’s there.

akuma victims are typically handled very poorly by regular pro-heroes, to the point where there’s a rule that akuma victims are to only be contained and not directly engaged unless you’re ladybug and chat noir

this isn’t directly relevant to the plot, but it’s just sort of part of the backdrop of ladybug and chat noir’s place in the heroics industry

basically: they’re the darlings of the nation, now, but pro-heroes used to fucking hate them and still lowkey do

the same way you’d hate anyone that got special treatment at your really dangerous and difficult job

anyway

when the witness comes forward that says she can identify hawkmoth by his voice, ladybug and chat noir are cautiously hopeful.

and then said witness is murdered in the police station, before she can give a proper statement to the police.

marinette is called in in her civilian self to try and get a reading off the murder weapon (a knife)

long story short, the clues marinette gets off the knife seem to point to nathalie, gabriel agreste’s assistant

MEANWHILE we have a really complicated dynamic between ladybug and chat noir

they’ve been friends for years at this point and trust each other a lot

but a point of contention remains ladybug’s staunch belief that they shouldn’t tell each other their identities

in the short extract above it says something about “not-entirely-ethical akuma baiting” or similar

essentially, way back when ladybug and chat noir were fighting for the right not to have to disclose their civilian identities when they got their hero licences, they announced that this one official from the hero comission had been let in on the secret, and that official was promptly akumatised forthright

but surprise! he didn’t know shit! it was all a test so ladybug and chat noir could demonstrate how important their identities remaining a secret was

so, like, ladybug’s position on the matter is that no-one is infallible, especially her -- and if one of them gets akumatised, they need to minimise the fallout

whereas chat noir’s position is that if ladybug is akumatised, they’ve already lost, so it should be safe for her at least to know his identity

she’s deadset against it, though, and he respects that

there’s an added layer to it where chat noir is very openly in love with her and she kind of returns the feelings, but she doesn’t want to have a relationship that can only exist when she’s wearing a mask

she’d much rather date in her civilian identity

so, obviously, this is another point of contention -- because ladybug basically admits to returning chat noir’s feelings, but the barrier in the way of their relationship (their secret identities) is steadfastly maintained only by ladybug

the murder mystery runs parallel to the interpersonal drama, basically

anyway, the end reveal of the fic comes after nathalie and gabriel have both been arrested by the police on suspicion of being hawkmoth but the authorities have failed to retrieve their miraculouses

and we discover that the peacock miraculous is now in the possession of lila

and lila was the one who murdered the witness in the police station, covering it up and fooling marinette using facts about the nitty-gritty mechanics of marinette’s quirk that only alya knew

if we pivot a bit to adrien, we find out that before he was arrested, gabriel essentially gave him the keys to the castle, and adrien discovers the secret hawkmoth layer beneath the mansion as well as his comatose mother

and there it is! the missing butterfly miraculous!

only bam! lila is here to claim it

we get a showdown in the lair between lila and adrien. adrien manages to keep the butterfly miraculous away from lila, but she manages to rip off his cat miraculous ring

lila cataclysms to bring the ceiling down on them, and adrien has to run for his life

the destruction summons ladybug to the manor, as she was called in because of its links to the akuma case

lila tries to play some mind games to get ladybug to believe she’s the good guy in all this, and adrien is on his father’s side

adrien says something cryptic that only chat noir would know, as a message to ladybug, and she realises what’s going on

big dramatic fight! ladybug is driven back, struggling against lila who has two miraculous. eventually, adrien uses his father’s butterfly miraculous, and powers ladybug up. ladybug and adrien team-up defeat lila.

with the black cat miraculous retrieved, and lila defeated, ladybug turns to adrien. her earrings are beeping at her. adrien apologises to her. he knows how important she considers their secret identities.

ladybug doesn’t care. she’s just glad he’s alive. she kisses him, and as she does so, her transformation melts away.

epilogue: marinette and adrien are dating. their identities are secret to the general population, but the hero comission knows now. they’re asked to consider being heroes fulltime post-graduation. they don’t want to.

also, an aside: adrien is quirkless. it’s concealed from the public out of concern for his celebrity career. the fic was going to be almost entirely marinette pov though so i’m not sure when this would come up.

one of the final scenes of the fic would be a confrontation with alya, because the entire reason lila had been able to frame nathalie was that alya shared, like, deep, dark quirk knowledge that marinette had confided in her with lila, alongside the fact that marinette works for the police. marinette considers this a betrayal, and ends their friendship over it.

last bit would be a post from the ladybug twitter, a photo of chat noir and ladybug sitting and leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, with the caption “The City of Love <3″

#kaputt writes stuff #asked and answered #sorry this is so messy i didn't have any notes from this au #normally i have at least an outline #miraculous fic #bnha fic #this fic also doesn't have a title #literally the top of the word doc just says [Title]#if u have questions abt the outline just reply to the post and i'll reply too #i know i'm not the most coherent when i'm this tired lol

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edendaphne · 3 years

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“Discordant Sonata” Chapter 19

>>Click here to read on Ao3<<

>>Click here to read on Wattpad<<

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CHAPTER 19: ATTACCA

Music glossary: Attacca - "To attack at once"; used as a direction in music at the end of a movement to begin the next without pause

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(Mood music: "The Conversation" - Pearl Django)

Being mere months away from graduating lycée meant that their group of friends didn’t have as many classes together, due to their diverse individual interests and talents. However, they always made sure to make time to hang out after school before their extracurricular activities began.

And thus, Adrien, Nino, and Alya made their way to the classroom where the art club gathered to meet up with Marinette. From there, Adrien would make his way to either fencing lessons or Chinese, depending on the day of the week. Marinette would join him on days when he had Chinese (as she’d become determined to master the language ever since her uncle visited from Shanghai a few years back), Alya would go to her journalism club, and Nino would travel to his part-time internship at the local recording studio.

“–and the backlogs just keep piling up!” Alya spoke as they walked, voice full of vigor and excitement. “I’ve had to recruit yet another mod to help me keep order in the forums! Especially since the Ladyblog has started going international and we’ve had to organize servers in different languages. You wouldn’t believe how crazy it’s gotten in there recently!”

“Dang, babe,” Nino interjected. “Sounds like things are super rough for you right now.”

“Not really, more busy than anything. Especially because I have that big research article due next week, there’s just not enough hours in the day to try to read everything that goes on in there. But I have my mods report to me daily, ‘cause I always like to stay on top of everything that goes on in the chats!”

“What’s gotten everyone so riled up in the Ladyblog lately?” Adrien chimed in. “I don’t recall it being nearly this busy last year.”

The trio entered the art club’s classroom and settled down at the table where Marinette sat, getting her various sketches organized. The art teacher was quite easy going, so they didn’t have to talk in hushed whispers and could come and go as they pleased.

“Well, to be honest, it’s because of Chat Noir,” Alya replied.

Adrien tried to contain his surprise. “R-really? What– uhhh, what do people have to say about him?”

He winced inwardly. He knew he shouldn’t ask. But curiosity got the better of him today. Maybe learning the news through the filter or Alya’s paraphrasing instead of reading the negative comments firsthand would lessen the sting of what people said about him.

Marinette whipped her head around at the mention of his alter ego. “Wait, what about Chat Noir?” she inquired.

“Girl,” Alya replied, her voice filled with renewed exuberance. “You would not believe how much we’ve had to censor and moderate all the inappropriate things people have been saying!”

Adrien flinched in his seat. “Wow… do people really hate him that much?” he asked, trying to conceal the dejection in his voice.

Alya busted out into loud guffaws. “Hate?! Dude, most people don’t hate him; they LOVE him! By ‘inappropriate’ comments, I mean the kinda stuff you wouldn’t want your grandma to catch you reading! There’s a whole giant section dedicated to his new fan club!” she said as she removed her glasses so she could wipe away the tears of laughter.

“WHAT?!” Adrien squawked in confusion, his face feeling hotter than the ovens back at the bakery. “A fan club??”

Marinette burst into uncontrollable snickering. “Has it really gotten that bad?!”

Nino joined in, “Bro! Adrien, I can’t believe you haven’t heard Alya rant about these rabid fans before! They call themselves the ‘Noir Nation’, and the kind of things they’ve been writing would make adult romance authors blush like schoolgirls!”

Alya nodded, thoroughly amused. “And that’s not including all the fanfiction people have been writing.”

“Wait– the WHAT?! There’s fanfiction?!!” Marinette gaped in shock, as if she’d been hit in the face with an enormous pie. “Alya, how come I never knew about this?!”

“Why? You wanna read em? Girl, you’ll get no judgment from me. If you wanna check ‘em out for yourself, just go check under the hashtag ‘Ladynoir’.”

Marinette stammered as her arms flailed in her bewilderment, accidentally knocking her phone off the table and onto the floor, her eyes bigger and rounder than Adrien had ever seen them. “They have a ship name?!” she screeched.

“Just mind the ratings though,” Alya advised. “Some of them can get pretty steamy. You wouldn’t want someone to catch you reading those in public,” she added with a wink.

Marinette continued to sputter incoherently. “NO, I am NOT gonna read it!! It would be different if they were fictional characters, but I could never read fanfiction about real people!”

Alya raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. “Mm-hmm… Sure.”

Marinette’s hands flew to her face, trying to hide how red her entire face had gotten, and released a long squeak that resembled a hamster on helium. As shocked as Adrien was about these rather unexpected news, seeing Marinette’s over-the-top reaction brought a wide grin to his face and he busted out laughing.

He bent over to retrieve Marinette’s phone, since she was too busy being mortified to notice it had fallen to the floor. As he was about to hand it back, the screen lit up and Adrien saw the lockscreen wallpaper: it was the same photo of Ladybug and Chat Noir that he himself had saved earlier that day. He smiled, not exactly sure what to make of it, but finding it adorable that she’d liked the photo enough to set it as her lockscreen.

He tapped her shoulder, waiting for her to respond. She emerged from behind her impromptu hand shield and turned her head, then her eyes widened once again as soon as she saw what Adrien was showing her. She jolted straight up, stiff as a board, and her eyes met his, cheeks turning tomato red. He winked at her, amused about this little secret between them, and handed back her phone without a word.

Marinette accepted it with a meek-sounding, “Thanks,” looking like she wanted to explain the photo, but not able to do so unless she wanted Alya and Nino to find out that she was potentially a… ahem– “Ladynoir” shipper.

Switching the conversation to something else (which Marinette seemed to be eternally grateful for), the group chatted until it became time for them to scatter to their next destinations.

With a wave, Adrien exited the classroom and headed towards fencing practice, one of the few activities he decided to stick with despite not being forced to participate. Fencing, along with Chinese lessons, were not only enjoyable, but were also quite useful. Sadly, he didn’t have access to a piano anymore, so he wasn’t able to pursue that hobby for the time being. Hopefully later down the line, when things had settled down and he’d found his own place to live, he’d be able to finance one.

Thinking about the future had become an exciting pastime instead of an anxiety-inducing one, and it was all thanks to his friends and those he cared about. He smiled as he reached the door to the locker rooms, continuing to daydream of what was to come.

(Mood music: "Recollection 3" - Shirō Sagisu (BLEACH OST, "The Diamond Dust Rebellion")

Adrien finished getting dressed for fencing, his head still blissfully floating in the clouds. He stored his belongings into his assigned locker, shutting it with a loud clang, which echoed through the empty room.

Huh...? Empty?

He swiveled his head around, surprised that there was no one beside him. He stood up and began walking down the large room, peeking down the other locker rows looking for his classmates; but there was nobody.

Where was everyone? There’s no way that every single one of them was running late. Had his lessons been cancelled and he’d somehow missed a text message or email? He began heading back towards his locker to check his phone for any schedule changes.

Before he reached his destination, however, heavy thudding footsteps broke the eerie silence. Adrien whipped his body around to greet whoever they belonged to.

The owner of those footsteps was one of the last people Adrien expected to meet here.

“Gaspard?!”

Adrien stood agape, face to face with his old bodyguard, whom he hadn’t seen in a couple of years; not since he’d resigned and moved out of the country. Nathalie had mentioned that in his resignation letter, Gaspard said that he’d become involved in an overseas business venture involving the market of rare action figures. Nevertheless, Adrien couldn’t help but suspect that his father’s ill temper and poor treatment of their employees was the true reason for his departure.

Adrien’s first reaction was surprise and joy, and he rushed forward to greet and embrace him. However, as he approached and got a better look at the man’s face, Adrien’s mood instantly morphed into confusion and apprehension. There was something odd about his eyes.

Something wasn’t right. Why was Gaspard here? And why now?

He came to a halt about a meter before reaching him. An oppressive weight seemed to press in all around him, and he had to suppress a shiver. “Wait. Gaspard, did–” he gulped, “–did my father send you?”

His old bodyguard did not reply, but took a heavy step towards him. Adrien stepped back.

“Please… I can’t go back. I live somewhere else now, and I’m very happy there. Whatever he told you about the situation, it’s a lie.”

His bodyguard continued to approach him, his stare vacant and unsettling.

Fighting the urge to panic, he pleaded, “You don’t have to do this. If he’s offered you compensation, I can match it; it’ll just take me a bit of time. But we can work something out, right?? For old time’s sake?”

He continued walking backwards until he bumped into something firm, but it wasn’t a wall; it was another person. Before he could turn around, they grabbed him by the shoulders, detaining him and preventing him from running away.

He was about to shout for help when something sharp jabbed him on the side of the neck, injecting a cold liquid. Adrien’s eyes grew wide in terror.

Shit.

Adrien swore as he jerked away, elbowing whoever was behind him and managing to break free. Rubbing at the spot where the syringe had stabbed him, he glanced back to take a look at his other assailant, only to see... another Gaspard?

Why are there two of him??

This was wrong. Gaspard didn’t have a twin; he knew that for a fact. He’d worked for the Agrestes ever since Adrien was a toddler and was too young to even pronounce his name correctly (hence the nickname “Gorille”, which stuck around for years afterwards). Additionally, there was something uncanny, otherworldly, even, about the way these two men looked and moved.

He shook himself out of his stupor. He didn’t have time to contemplate any possible explanations. He had to get out of there fast.

He sprinted towards the exit, but only managed to travel a few paces before he lost his footing and tripped. He fell to the ground hard, almost hitting his head on a nearby bench. As he struggled to get up, he realized that his fingers and toes had already gone numb.

Not good.

Time was running out. Adrenaline coursed through him and, with a grunt, he hefted himself to his feet and scrambled towards the exit, as fast as he could despite a heavy limp. Though his heart was hammering and his legs felt like they were filled with sand, he pushed himself, concentrating on reaching the door.

After taking a few steps, however, he realized that even if he did manage to exit the locker room, the area beyond was an open courtyard. Meaning he wasn’t going to be able to reach someplace safe before getting caught. He had no choice but to transform into Chat Noir, and hopefully Plagg’s powers and strength could help him escape and find somewhere to hide.

He’d scarcely uttered the first syllable in the transformation phrase when he was tackled to the ground. A giant hand swiftly covered his mouth and Adrien felt his hands get bound together with thick zip ties behind his back. A muffled scream of writhing frustration made its way up his throat as his limbs became more and more useless by the second.

No… This can’t be happening! Please, this can’t be how it all ends!

Just when his life had finally gained a semblance of normalcy and he’d found happiness again, it would get ripped away and he would disappear without a trace, leaving everyone to wonder what had happened to him. Leaving his friends to think that Gabriel had pulled him from school and they would never see him again. Leaving Ladybug to wonder if Chat had abandoned her forever. Leaving her to fight Hawkmoth alone. Again.

He couldn’t let that happen. He thrashed and struggled as furiously as he could, fighting the feelings of overwhelming helplessness that threatened to consume him. Nearing despair, he was too distracted to notice Plagg phrasing through the wall, away from the skirmish, in search of the only person who could save him.

(Mood music: "Run" - Ludovico Einaudi)

Marinette fidgeted with her pencil, her feet wiggled and bounced under her desk. She didn’t understand; when she’d arrived at the art club, her head had been filled with inspiration and ideas that she’d been excited to draw and execute. However, at the moment, her mind was filled with noise and disquietude.

Having had enough, she excused herself to visit the restroom. Once she’d walked far enough from the classroom, she opened her purse to talk to Tikki about her current dilemma.

“It’s the same feeling as last night, Tikki! Except that would mean one of three possibilities. Option A.) It’s nothing and I’m going crazy. And— don’t give me that look, Tikki! I can see what you’re thinking and I don’t have time for your cheeky sass right now!” The kwami snickered while Marinette cleared her throat and continued, “Option B.) that Chat is here, at this school, which is impossible because his school’s on the other side of the city, that’s why he always leaves the house super early for his long commute.”

Tikki opened her mouth and looked like she was about to say something, but then didn’t (...or couldn’t?).

Marinette resumed, “Or, C.) that my–– what do I even call it? My ‘Spidey sense’??–– that it’s got a long distance mode, and Chat is all the way across Paris and he’s in trouble! But what am I supposed to do about that from here?! I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking!”

Tikki shrugged. “Follow your instincts, Marinette. There’s no harm in taking a quick look around the school, right?”

Marinette groaned. “UGH! It doesn’t make sense!! Am I going to get interrupted like this all the time from now on?” She shook her head resolutely. “No. I can’t just go off on random field trips every single time I feel a random fit of anxiety. I’m sure it’s just leftover jitters from last night. I’m supposed to call Master Fu after school anyway; he can help me figure everything out. I’m just gonna go back to class and forget about it.”

Tikki frowned, not quite convinced, but deciding not to press further.

Marinette made her way back to the classroom in a frustrated huff. But as her hand reached to turn the handle, the feelings of danger and urgency multiplied tenfold. Without a word, she sprinted away in the opposite direction, not even knowing where she was running to, only knowing she had to get there immediately.

She reached the large common area of the school downstairs. Her head whipped around, frantically searching for something, anything. In her haste, she didn’t notice a small black creature zoom into her open purse.

A few moments later, she felt a frantic tugging at her shirt from below.

“Marinette!! Over there! Check the locker room, quick!!!” Tikki whisper-screamed as she peeked outside the purse, her tone uncharacteristically frantic.

Marinette nodded, then sprinted to the locker room.

“Wait! You should transform first!” Tikki added.

No time!

“Marinette, wait!!”

Despite Tikki’s protests, Marinette raced towards the double doors, tackling them open.

Three sets of eyes landed on her as she skidded to a halt, but only one pair consumed her entire attention. She gasped in horror, hands flying to her face as she stared at what was occurring in front of her. Adrien let out a desperate, muffled scream urging her to run.

His panicked voice snapped her out of her dazed shock; but instead of running, she stood her ground, eyes darting back and forth across the area searching for something useful. The room was remarkably barren except for a lone broom a short distance away from her. She grabbed it and leaped towards the closest attacker (the one holding Adrien down), swinging it like a baseball bat.

The man didn’t even try to avoid the hit; the broomstick merely bounced off the side of his face where Marinette had hit him. She frowned in confusion, then tried hitting him again, bringing the stick down on the top of his head like an axe.

SNAP.

The end of the broom flew off, and Marinette stared in shock at the broken broomstick.

“What the hell are you?!” Marinette exclaimed, shifting her grip on the shortened wooden stub.

She pounced at the second bodyguard, bringing her weapon down in a stabbing motion; but he swatted at her hand, disarming her. She yelped in pain, leaping backwards to get some distance between them.

She was outmatched. The only strategy available was to use their own size against them. With a feint to the side, she shot at his legs for a takedown, hoping to catch him off balance. He called her bluff and shoved her backwards with his giant palm, then kneed her in the stomach.

Winded from the impact, Marinette doubled over with a gasping wheeze, fighting with all her might to keep herself from collapsing onto the ground. She forced herself upright and attacked again. With a clumsy jerk, she lunged forward, swinging wild punches at her opponent. The shots connected but his expression barely changed; it was like beating a breathing punching bag.

The bodyguard backhanded Marinette across the face. Pain shooting across her cheek, she staggered, almost losing her balance. In her daze, she watched helplessly as the man reared his arm back. There was no chance to dodge. His fist connected with her abdomen, delivering a liver shot that shut down her entire body. She crumpled to the floor as if boneless. She tried to call out Adrien’s name, but her mouth merely opened in a silent scream.

Marinette could hear Adrien’s distressed screaming, but it sounded distant, like they were underwater. The edges of her vision grew black and fuzzy, the entire room dissolving around her. She had to consciously force her lungs to inhale, but couldn’t fill them all the way, as if a boulder had been placed on top of her chest.

Faintly, she felt herself getting picked up off the ground and carried away over someone’s shoulder. Disoriented and semi-blinded, the sudden movement and rough jostling made her head spin and gave her vertigo. She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block it all out.

A few moments later, they stopped moving, and she heard a door burst open. Where were they? Before she could gather her senses, she was in the air, thrown several meters away, landing with a hard thud. A sharp pain traveled down her body as she rolled into the wall across them. The shriek that tried to escape her throat emerged as a strained, shallow whine.

The man stomped out, leaving her alone in the room. “Stop…!” she rasped out, managing to tilt her neck upwards, head pounding.

The bodyguard slammed the door shut, followed by a bang and a clattering sound that could only mean he’d broken the doorknob of whatever room she was in.

Marinette's vision became more and more blurred. At the verge of losing consciousness, she fought to keep her eyes open as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

No, she couldn’t pass out! She had to save Adrien! Stay awake, Marinette, stay awake!!

She bit down on her lip hard, focusing on the sharp sting, on the swelling that was already forming around her right eye, forcing herself to feel the pain her body was in. At this moment, feeling pain was better than falling unconscious. She concentrated on her breathing, slowly regaining her senses.

She reached down to open her purse and get Tikki’s help… only to be met with emptiness. Panic settled in her gut as she realized that sometime during the skirmish, the purse had slipped off her shoulder. She sat up, slowly, so she wouldn’t risk feeling faint again from the change in positions.

She squinted, adjusting her eyesight to the darkness of the room. It seemed to be some sort of supply closet. After a failed few attempts to stand, she crawled towards the door instead, careful not to bump into the crates and shelves that filled the area.

The girl eyed the broken doorknob wearily. She was pretty proficient at lockpicking and breaking into things, but not as good at breaking out. Her only hope was that Tikki would be able to find her… if she was even nearby.

She swore to herself. Why had she rushed in and attacked two grown ass men (who, incidentally, may or may not be supernatural to boot!) instead of hiding and creating a strategy?! Now she was useless, Tikki was gone, and Adrien was surely on his way to get auctioned to the highest bidder in the criminal black market and ransomed off for an enormous sum. Great job, Marinette. Adrien’s been abducted and it’s all your fault.

Gathering all the determination she could muster, she tried to call out for help. But her voice was still too hoarse, and only a weak croak came out. She clenched her fists, grumbling irritably. Time for a different approach. Somehow, she needed to make noise.

After a brief search, she found a hard, metallic object that she could use to hammer on the door. She tested it out; it was surprisingly effective. She doubled her efforts, making as big a racket as possible. Hopefully, it would only be a matter of time before somebody heard her, let her out, and she could go find Adrien.

She couldn’t let anything else happen to another loved one. Not again.

–––––

I'M REEEAAAAALLY SORRY FOR THAT CLIFFHANGER JSHDKFJHSKDF ᕕ(╯°д°)ᕗ I tried splitting up the sections differently but it didn't really flow as well.

But the next chapter is almost done, so I'll have it ready by next weekend!!

#Miraculous Ladybug #Ladynoir #Enemies AU #enemies to lovers #Marinette Dupain Cheng #Adrien Agreste #Chat Noir #Ladybug #fanfiction #Discordant Sonata #ML AU #aged up #Eden writes

156 notes · View notes

gukyi · 4 years

Text

good luck charm | kth

summary: kim taehyung has nearly everything he’s ever dreamed of: an apartment in new york city, a lead role in an off-broadway play, and a best friend to share it with. but even still, there’s one thing missing—love. and when he goes on the hunt for it, he dots every i and crosses every t, leaves no stone unturned, but forgets to look at the person who could ever love him the most: you.

{friends to lovers!au, roommates!au, actor!au}

pairing: kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff, angst, unrequited love word count: 11k a/n: a huge thank you to MK for commissioning me for this piece–i hope it’s everything you dreamed of!!!! these are tough times, but i hope this can serve as a distraction to everyone!! please stay safe and wash your hands! if you’re interested in commissioning me, check out this post! also, if the pictures are unclear, click on them for higher resolution!

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite customer.”

You see a tuft of purple hair sticking out behind a basket of orange pansies, two nimble hands with long fingers fiddling with the stems.

“I bet you say that to everyone,” you tease, as Namjoon peers out from where he’s hiding behind a shelf of flowers, greeting you with the same warm grin he always wears.

Namjoon pauses, gaze tilting upwards as he corrects himself, “my favorite customer who’s about to confess to her best friend of four years with a bouquet arranged by yours truly?”

You roll your eyes, thankful that there’s nobody else inside this little flower shop. Not that you seem to have an issue exposing your entire life story to certain strangers, especially if they’ve got dimples and colored hair to match. Namjoon has always been something of an exception—perhaps he is one of the closest friends you have here in the city, where everything moves so quickly you barely have time to say hello to a new acquaintance. Namjoon and his flower shop are a respite, a safe haven in a bustling world, where time always seems to move slower than it does outside.

“Don’t remind me, I’m sweating just thinking about it,” you tell him, trying to cover your nervousness with a laugh.

“Ah, well how could I forget, when you came to me to arrange the perfect bouquet for tonight?” Namjoon says. He chops a wilting flower from its stem and places it behind his ear. Even though it’s a little sadder, a little less lively than its comrades, the bright yellow of the primrose complements his hair nicely, making him look even more ethereal, magical, than he already does.

“Who else would I ask besides the best bouquet-maker in town?” You ask as Namjoon leads you to the counter, where various bouquets have been laid out in vases, ready for pick-up. It’s a secret garden here, all green and fresh and calm, a sharp contrast to the industrial machine outside.

Namjoon heads to the back, a room behind a little wooden door that’s the slightest bit too short for him, so he has to bend down to avoid hitting his head (he still hits his head rather frequently, though), as you breathe in the scents of the flowers surrounding you, the roses and the daisies and everything in between. It’s not much, but it does calm the thick beating of your heart ever so slightly, and that’s enough.

He emerges a minute or so later, banging his head on the way out. In his hands is one of the biggest bouquets you’ve ever laid eyes on, thick with some flowers you recognize but more you don’t. It’s breathtaking and gorgeous and impressive, all at once.

“Namjoon, you know that I didn’t ask for this many flowers,” you chide as he plops the bouquet down onto the counter, clicking away at the ancient cash register to his left.

“Consider it a good luck gift,” Namjoon tells you with a wink.

You sigh, pulling out your card to pay him. “I could use all of the luck I could get.” The likelihood of tonight going more right than wrong is miniscule. But what else can you do, besides try? “What do they all mean?”

“Well, the daffodils represent honesty and truth. The red carnations mean love, obviously. So do the chrysanthemums. The baby’s breath is just for decoration, but it also means everlasting love. The gardenias are for secret love. And the freesia is just because I thought it went well with the bouquet,” Namjoon says expertly, pointing to each one as he tells you what it means. “I don’t know if Taehyung’s super up with his flower meanings, but I think that even the gesture will say more than enough. But if he is, this is just a bonus.”

“I feel like it’s going to go really badly, is that wrong?” You say, the nerves overtaking you. You were hoping to just act calm and collected, thank Namjoon for the bouquet and be on with your lives, but even you can’t help but seek advice from him.

Namjoon lets out a laugh. “If you think it’s going to go so badly, why have you planned so much?” He poses. “It’s normal to be nervous about this sort of thing—what if I mess up, what if he doesn’t feel the same way, what if he rejects me—but I think that, deep down inside of you, there’s a part that thinks that it will all be worth it. And I don’t know, maybe I’m just a sucker for happy endings, but I think that that’s the most important. The part of you that doesn’t want to spend the rest of its life thinking about what might have been.” Namjoon’s phone lights up next to him, his lockscreen a picture of him and another boy, shorter, but with the same dyed hair. The two look so happy together. He gazes down at it, exhales, and shuts his phone off. “Just my two cents.”

“You’re wise beyond your years, Kim Namjoon,” you tell him with a smile. Maybe you are nervous about the what ifs, nervous that this whole thing could blow up in your face, but is it so naive of you to listen to that whisper in your heart? The one that says, maybe he feels the same? “I wish you’d take your own advice, sometimes.”

“It’s different,” Namjoon murmurs to himself. “He and I… this is all we’ll ever be.”

“You don’t know unless you try,” you tell him. You know the feeling. Perhaps, if tonight goes well, it will encourage him to give it a shot himself. “You never know.” Namjoon looks up at you, smile wide but eyes sad. There’s clearly something more that he isn’t mentioning, but you won’t push it. You get it. How could you not? “What if he does feel the same?”

The bell above the door rings on your way out, fingers clenching onto a bouquet, praying and wishing and dreaming that maybe this will all be worth it, in the end.

Something is up with Kim Taehyung.

When you return to your apartment, Kim Taehyung is slouched on your dinky loveseat, arm deep inside a six-month-old box of Frosted Flakes, as an episode of Jeopardy! plays on his laptop, his eyes empty and glazed over as he stares at Alex Trebek, wordless.

You nearly jump in shock, terrified that he’ll spot you and the enormous bouquet in your hands, terrified that he’ll ask you about it, terrified that your entire plan for tonight will get flushed down the toilet the moment you and him lock eyes. But it doesn’t, because Kim Taehyung doesn’t even acknowledge you when you walk in, for better or for worse, and you manage to stash the bouquet into a vase in your bedroom before rounding on your roommate, because something is up with Kim Taehyung.

Kim Taehyung hates Frosted Flakes. The only reason they’re in your apartment to begin with is because Jungkook had brought them over one time when he was visiting, and even then they were stale. Now they’re extra stale. So stale that they make a hollow sound on your countertop when you tap them against the laminate.

Kim Taehyung normally shuffles through Jeopardy! like it’s nobody’s business. He gets at least a quarter, if not half of the questions correct, and always earns more points than you. But he doesn’t even open his mouth when Alex Trebek says, “This Renaissance artist left Florence to serve as principal engineer for the Duke of Milan’s army” and you know that he knows it’s Leonardo Da Vinci.

Kim Taehyung normally has plenty to say, especially to Sawyer the Suspicious Floor Dip, who currently resides in your living room. Sawyer the Suspicious Floor Dip has been your honorary second roommate ever since the two of you moved into this apartment four months ago. Taehyung made him a little museum placard that is framed and hanging on the wall above him, and he has an account on every social media website under the sun. Sawyer the Suspicious Floor Dip has more followers on Instagram than you do. But today, both he and Sawyer are silent and unmoving.

“Tae?” You ask, treading over to the couch as he empties the box of Frosted Flakes into his stomach, finishing up the episode. “Is everything alright?”

“Mmrph,” he mumbles in response. You suppose that means he said fine, which means that no, everything is not alright.

“What’s going on? You’re normally really excited the day of your shows,” you ask. At least he hasn’t entirely turned into a soulless hermit, and he moves his legs off of the couch so you can sit beside him. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Taehyung says, louder. “I don’t know. I feel like it’s going to go really badly, is that wrong?”

You smile softly, shaking your head as you reach a hand out, letting it rest in his lap before he takes your hand in his. “No, it’s not. Tonight’s a big deal, isn’t it? You must be under a lot of pressure to do well.”

“I’m just so worried that I’ll fuck it up and everyone will hate me forever,” Taehyung says, exasperated. It’s almost as if he’s tired with himself for being so negative.

“You’re not gonna fuck it up and nobody is going to hate you. I’ll always love you, you know that,” you assure him.

“Yeah, I know,” Taehyung says, but the worst part is that you’re not sure if he really does.

“It’s okay to be nervous, and to worry. Tonight is really important. But you’re an incredible actor, and you’ve always been so good at what you do,” you tell him, thumb rubbing against the back of his hand softly. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of you.”

Taehyung lets his head rest on your own and the two of you sit together on the couch in silence, watching as the minutes on his laptop clock tick by. You can hear his heartbeat, steady and soft, firm underneath his chest. You wonder if he can hear yours. Hear how it’s picking up speed, hear how it beats only for him.

“You always know what to say,” Taehyung tells you. “I wish I knew how to do that.”

You grin sadly to yourself, happy that the two of you are side by side so he doesn’t have to see your face. How could Taehyung tell you something like that? How could he, when every time you’re near him, you’re speechless?

You never really considered yourself to be a theater person when you were younger. You would fall asleep when you went to see plays with your parents or on a school field trip. You never made an effort to go see the performances that your school put on. You were one-hundred percent confident that you would go through all four years of university without seeing one of the fifteen different theater groups’ shows, not because you hated them, but because they never crossed your mind in the first place.

And then, you met Kim Taehyung.

You met Kim Taehyung halfway through your freshman year because the two of you were in the same Cinematography in the 1900’s class. And then, suddenly, you were eating the same shitty food in the dining hall after class ended at seven in the evening. And then, suddenly, you were studying together, spending nights watching Jeopardy! on his laptop when you didn’t feel like doing any work. And then, suddenly, Kim Taehyung mentioned in passing one day that he had a show that Friday, and would you like to come, it would really mean a lot to him, he thinks you’ll really like it.

And then, suddenly, you were a theater person.

That night was the first night Kim Taehyung had ever taken your breath away. And every performance, every night, every fucking moment after that, he never stopped.

Tonight is no exception. You can’t say that you’re super well-versed in theater fame and its technicalities, but you think that this may just be Taehyung’s best performance yet. Here, in this theater off of Sixth Avenue, to a crowd of two, perhaps three hundred people, Taehyung is nothing short of amazing. He never is. From the moment he steps on stage in a raggedy old flannel and jeans, eyes wide with dreams, he reels you in and makes sure that you won’t leave this theater, won’t leave here unscathed. But the fatal blow is halfway through, when he finally spots you in the third row, sees you staring up at him in wonder, and he smiles.

There is so much that you wish you could tell him.

After the show, you race back to your apartment, desperate to finish up the last of the preparations before he arrives, after taking off all of his makeup and his costumes, saying goodbye to all of his co-stars. Normally, you’d hang around, let him introduce you, but tonight is different. Special.

[September 8th, 9:35PM]

You: Had to go home bc I’m planning a special something for the star of the night! Sorry I missed all of the fun afterwards You: Something very important to tell you

Taehyung: ohoho Taehyung: I wonder who that could be Taehyung: Coming soon. I have something to tell you too! ^^

You stare at the text as you grab the vase of flowers from your room, setting it up at your very unimpressive kitchen table. What could Taehyung possibly have to tell you? Other than perhaps a thanks for showing up (as if you weren’t going to).

What if, that voice whispers. The part deep in your heart, the one that you wish would shut up sometimes.

“No,” you say aloud, perhaps more for yourself than anyone else. “No. I have something to tell him. I have to tell him this.”

You never know, she says. He might. What are you waiting for?

You pull out all of the scented candles in the apartment, setting them up on the coffee table and on the windowsills. There’s a plate of macarons that you had purchased from the fancy bakery in Midtown sitting by the vase, a little treat for the two of you since your diets usually consist of premade Costco pasta and takeout.

There is so much you want to tell him. So much to say, and no way to do it. It seems impossible. As the minutes tick by, as he gets closer and closer, you wonder if you even have the courage to open your mouth. It’s not as if this is life-changing news. It would be so easy, so easy to just pretend that this is nothing but a celebration of Taehyung’s very first major off-Broadway show, to push down the ache in your heart and tell that voice to stay quiet, if only for a little longer. You’ve lived like this for so long already. Who’s to say you can’t live like this forever?

Taehyung comes home as you’re flicking through late-night television show reruns and fiddling with a Rubix cube, anything to keep your mind occupied and your fingers busy. You hear as he fumbles with the lock—his key has always been a little bit off—and scramble to get everything ready, shutting your laptop and putting the Rubix cube on your designated Weird Stuff Shelf. The apartment smells like a hodgepodge of vanilla, flowers, cinnamon, and champagne, and the flowers are already starting to wilt slightly. But it’s now or never, really.

Taehyung swings the door open with a grin and gasps in excitement when he sees you, standing in the hazy, flickering yellow light of the kitchen, surrounded by candles, with a plate of macarons and a vase of flowers on the table.

“Oh my God!” He says, overjoyed, high off of the adrenaline from a successful show, eyes still sparking from the spotlight. “Y/N! What is all of this?”

“Just a little something from me to you,” you say awkwardly. You have no idea how to tell him. You’re not sure if you even will. “To celebrate.”

“Dare I say, this apartment has never looked better,” he tells you, beaming. He walks over to where you’re hovering by the kitchen table, knee deep in it all, admiring the sight before him. He leans over you, ever so slightly, as he takes in the scent of the flowers, the macarons sitting before him. And then he turns to you, the glow from the candles making his eyes warm and caramel-y, almost as if they’re shimmering in the light, and he says, “You did all of this for me?”

“Of course,” you tell him, because you would do this again and again if it means you could see him like this. If you could watch him burst through the front door for the rest of your goddamn life, watch as he comes home to you. “Tonight’s special.”

“It wouldn’t be without you,” he tells you honestly, candidly. He tells you that because he means it. You wish you could say the same things to him. “You’re my best friend, Y/N.”

It’s now or never. If he takes one step closer, turns to look at you one more time, you don’t know if you’ll still have the courage. You don’t know if you even have it right now, but tomorrow, when you wake up, you don’t want to regret this night. You don’t want to wonder what if, what might have been. You’ve been friends for so long. Who’s to say you can’t be more than that?

“I have something to tell you,” you breathe out, words heavy on your tongue. You can feel your heart seize up, almost like it’s holding its breath with you.

“Right, you said that,” Taehyung says with a nod, stuffing a cherry macaron into his mouth. “I have something to tell you, too.”

“Do you want to go first?” You ask him. You just need a little more time. You just want to hear his voice once more.

“Okay,” Taehyung says happily. “I got a girlfriend!”

Oh.

Well.

Okay.

“Really?” You ask, trying to make it sound more like a Really? That’s great! and not a Really? I thought that we had something special. You don’t think that you’re doing a very good job.

“Yeah!” Taehyung says. He’s ecstatic. It tears your heart in two. “I mean, I know I’m just… a super, hopeless romantic and I fall in love with people when they hold the door open for me, but I’m really happy with her. It’s Ariel, actually, she played Lucy! Isn’t it funny how even though our characters never even officially met, we still found something there?”

“Yeah,” you say, emotionless. Taehyung is far too excited, far too joyous to notice.

“I just—I wanted to tell you, because you’re my best friend and you deserve to know,” he says, breaking off half of the raspberry macaron and holding it out to you. “What did you want to tell me? Did you say it was important?”

“Oh, uh…” you fumble, shaking your head at the macaron. Your stomach has never felt smaller. It’s like there’s nothing left to say to him. “I think I’m getting transferred to another office.” It’s not news. Your job told you that last week. But it’s something, and it’s better than being honest. Anything is, at this point. “They might pay a little more.”

“Yay!” Taehyung says. “That’s great! Now, maybe we can fix up the lights in the kitchen. So they don’t read horror movie every time I try to make pasta at 2AM. I’m happy for you, you deserve it!”

You smile, putting on a brave face, just for him. “Me too.” You can’t muster up the strength to say anything else.

Taehyung spends the rest of the night gobbling down the macarons and telling you all about Ariel, as you try desperately to tune him out. Even the sound of your own thoughts would be better than this. Anything. Anything. Eventually, after it’s long past midnight and Taehyung realizes he’ll need his sleep for the show tomorrow night, he bids you goodbye and sets off to his room, a bounce in his step.

You stand in the middle of your apartment. Even though it’s small, and even though you have him, it’s never felt emptier.

Namjoon always says that flowers don’t just need food and water to stay happy. They need love, they need to be surrounded by happiness. He says that they can feel it, that they react to it. That’s why he always tries to be happy when he’s working. Because he hates seeing the flowers so sad. He says they remind him of himself.

It’s no wonder why the flowers in the vase look even more wilted than before.

Here’s the thing: You had pretty much always known that it was going to hurt like this. There had always been that part of you, deep down inside, that knew that there was no way it wasn’t going to hurt like this. That knew that there was nothing you could do to stop it from hurting like this.

And still, foolishly so, you allowed yourself to believe that maybe, just maybe, telling him would make it stop. You gave into this fantasy that, even if he didn’t feel the same, even if he let you down easy, even if he told you that he just wanted to be friends, it would be better.

That’s the worst part of it all, really. The fact that you never even told him. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Didn’t. You never told him, and now, somehow, everything is even worse than before.

The flowers have long been thrown out by now, tossed out after hardly a week, unable to stand the tension in the air, the emptiness that lingered far beyond that night. Still, you remembered to keep one, plucking it from the vase before it died of secondary sadness. Because even if they hurt you, even if they tear at your heartstrings one by one, you’ve always had this terrible habit of never letting go of what you love. You pressed the flower with an old college textbook, placed it into a thin little vase, meant for one flower only. A red carnation, to remind you of what you could have had. What might have been.

Kim Taehyung is significantly less worried this time around as he prepares for the opening night of his latest play. He wakes up early and does some yoga in the living room, pushing all of the furniture to the walls so he has enough space to Downward Dog in peace. He watches a couple episodes of Jeopardy! as he eats the Pad Thai he Doordashed to your apartment, and gets half of the questions correct. Even from your bedroom, you can hear him talking to Sawyer.

“I’m excited for tonight, Sawyer,” he says to him. “I don’t know, last time I did Shakespeare was sophomore year in college, I think? I was Mercutio. It was fun and I got to use a sword. Y/N came to that show, too. I annoyed her so much that night that she told me that she was glad Tybalt killed me, but we had a good time anyway.”

Sawyer doesn’t say anything back, because he is a Suspicious Floor Dip in your living room. But it’s so lovely to hear Taehyung’s voice again.

“Do you think that Y/N’s been acting weird, lately?” Taehyung asks. “I just feel like—I feel like she and I aren’t as close these days. She works in her room a lot more and some days I don’t see her at all. Which is crazy, because we live together. My ex always said it was a little weird how I lived with my best friend who is also a girl. But I don’t think it is. Do you think I did something wrong?”

No, you wish you could say, leaning against your thin bedroom door as you hear Taehyung wonder aloud. Never, in a million years. It was me, you want to tell him. I got my hopes up and now I’m paying the price. It’s not you. It’s never you.

“Yeah, I guess she’s just busier these days,” Taehyung says with a sigh. “She did get transferred to that new office a couple of months ago. But she’s still my best friend. I’ll never stop telling her that—she deserves to know that no matter what, she always has me.”

“Sawyer the Suspicious Floor Therapist, huh?” You interrupt, finally getting the nerve to open your door. Taehyung’s on his way out, all dressed, backpack on his shoulder. He has to be at the theater a few hours before the show begins, anyway.

“He’s just so easy to talk to,” Taehyung jokes. “Did you… uh… did you hear that?”

“The part about being your best friend?” You ask with an eyebrow raise, making Taehyung smile. You don’t mention the other things you heard. You don’t think that would make things better.

(You’re not sure what will, at this point. Telling him is off the table. You distantly wonder if it was ever on the table to begin with.)

“Just making sure you knew,” Taehyung says with a grin. “Don’t want you forgetting about that.”

“How could I?” You muse, and it makes him smile something fierce and makes you wish that things were different.

“You’re coming tonight, right?” Taehyung says. He must know the answer, already.

“Of course I am,” you tell him. “Who do you take me for?”

“I’ll look for you in the crowd, okay?” Taehyung says, a hand on the doorknob as he gets ready to leave. “Keep an eye out for me. Promise?”

It’s always been so hard to say no to him.

“Promise,” you tell him.

That night, you sit a little further back, shadowed by the mezzanine above you, but Taehyung finds you anyway. As he schmoozes his way through the storyline on stage, he sends a wink your way, a couple of the girls in the row in front of you giggling to each other when he does. You sort of wish he was really winking at them. That way, it would hurt a little less.

Afterwards, you linger around in the lobby, waiting for him like you always have, like you always do, like you always will. You don’t have anything special waiting for him back at your apartment. There’s nothing left to tell him.

You spot his head of soft, wavy brown hair far before he spots you, can make it out in a sea of cast members as they cheer for themselves, celebrating another successful opening show. Your face lights up when you see him, when you see that he sees you. This is how it has always been. This is how it should be—you find each other in the crowd, grinning as you congratulate him, as he introduces you to his cast members and then invites you to the afterparty. You spend the night together, high off of the adrenaline and just a little tipsy, before stumbling back to your apartment, basking in the afterglow.

You want nothing more than for things to go back to the way they were.

And then, you see her.

“Y/N!” Taehyung shouts excitedly, and it takes all of your strength to not let your face fall as she comes into view, hand interlaced with Taehyung’s. “I knew you’d be here!”

“How could I not be?” You say, letting Taehyung wrap you in a one-armed hug rather than two. “You know me.”

“This is my girlfriend,” Taehyung introduces proudly, motioning to the pretty girl beside him as she waves at you good-naturedly. “Madison, this is my roommate and college best friend, Y/N.”

“Taehyung talks about you non-stop,” Madison says with a smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“All good things, I hope,” you say, because what else are you supposed to say to the love of your life’s new girlfriend? How else can you salvage this conversation when you already see it going terribly? “You both were really good tonight. I’m happy that I came.”

“Me too!” Taehyung grins. “Did you see me wink at you? I promised you I would.”

You nod, eyes desperately scanning the rest of the room, the rest of the people, the floor, anything to keep from watching as Madison drapes herself over Taehyung, intertwines their hands as she leans against him, like she can’t get enough of him.

“Hey, do you want to come to the afterparty? It’s at Alex’s house, apparently he has this brownstone in Brooklyn all to himself, I’ve heard it’s gorgeous—”

“No, actually, I have a lot of work that I need to catch up on,” you interrupt. You don’t think you’d last five minutes there, where the only person you know is Taehyung, where he’s got a girlfriend on his arm the entire time. You aren’t even sure how you’re faring now, if you’re even breathing, standing before him and his equally-gorgeous new partner.

You just wish everything could go back to normal.

Taehyung’s brows furrow, disappointed. “Oh, you do? But—”

“Yeah, I’m just—I’m really sorry, Tae, you know I want to. But I should get going. It was really nice meeting you, Madison, I hope we can see each other again sometime—” You spew out a few more goodbyes and even more apologies as you rush towards the exit, turning away so you don’t have to see Taehyung calling after you.

On the way back, you bump into Namjoon, who’s closing up shop for the day. He looks positively exhausted, always working diligently from morning to far past sunset every day, but he smiles when he sees you, setting aside his tired eyes to say hello.

“Hey, Y/N, fancy seeing you here,” he greets. “How are you? How’d it go?” He gives you a sort of grin that means that he thinks it went super well.

“Not great,” you tell him truthfully, because it’s late and you don’t feel like hiding things anymore.

“Oh,” Namjoon says. He opens his mouth to say something else, but you can see the hesitation in his eyes, the way he thinks that none of the things he has to say will go down very well. You know the feeling. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright,” you assure him, even though it’s not. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Namjoon asks solemnly.

You frown. “Do you really think we should both be having this conversation?” Namjoon has his own secrets, his dreams of a short boy with colored hair by his side. “You aren’t much better.”

“No, I’m not,” he muses to himself. “But it is a big deal, Y/N. Please don’t act like it isn’t. You love him, don’t you? Even if he doesn’t love you back.”

You love him.

It’s not a secret anymore.

You love him like the stars love the moon, surrounding her in their light, making sure she never gets lonely. You love him like an old Hollywood movie, film faded and worn, getting played once in a while to make sure you never forget where you started. You love him like a flower, carnations, daffodils, chrysanthemums, perking up when you’re around him and wilting when you’re not.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say with a sigh. Certainly, there are more important things to dwell on. You’re looking for a new job because being an office temp isn’t exactly what you were envisioning for your life. You want to start fixing up the bathroom, because the grout by the shower is starting to disintegrate. Sawyer the Suspicious Floor Dip is a fire hazard. “I’m okay with just being friends.”

Namjoon smiles, and it’s so sad, but not with pity. It’s sad with I know, and sad with feeling, because he gets it, and that must be why you’re here, standing on the sidewalk at ten on a Friday night, underneath the street lamps as the city begins to open its eyes. “But when you have him the way you do, how can you be okay with any of it?”

Taehyung comes home late that night, and you only know because you’re running to the bathroom at the same time he fumbles with the door. He takes longer than usual, which means he’s drunk, and you can only hope and pray that he’s alone. You watch as he finally manages to unlock the door, stumbling inside, managing to turn on the main overhead lights in your apartment as he does. From where you’re peering at him from the darkness of the hallway, you can make out dark red, purple spots all along his skin.

You pull the bathroom door almost shut, leaving it a little ajar so you can gaze out at him, watch as he pours himself a glass of water and downs the entire thing before he makes his way to the hallway, heading for his bedroom. From here, you see the way his hair is mussed, all fucked up from someone’s hands in it, see the marks up close, the way they line his neck, his jaw, his collarbones. He finds his way to his bedroom and shuts the door behind him as you stand, trapped in the bathroom, mad at him for not knowing but furious at yourself for being so ridiculous.

Love was never supposed to hurt like this.

The next time that you attend one of Taehyung’s opening nights, you don’t stick around long afterwards.

You were planning on it, of course, like you always do, because ever since college you’ve made a point to see him after a show, tell him all of the things you wish you could say to him all of the time, you were amazing, you were brilliant, you were perfect in every way. You even have a small bouquet of flowers in your hands, arranged by none other than Namjoon—a pity bouquet, an I hope that you two can still be friends bouquet—ready to give to him, ready to see them sitting on your kitchen table as a reminder.

And then, you see the way he kisses her, overcome with joy, running on that post-show high. You see the way he pulls her into him and plants one on her, arms wrapped around each other as they celebrate, in their own special way.

Suddenly, the flowers feel like dead weight in your hands.

You manage to catch one of the few co-stars of Taehyung’s that you recognize, one who was in Our Lives with him. His name is Seokjin, and he’s gorgeous. Broadway material. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony material. He stops to say hello to you, and you ask if he could give the bouquet to Taehyung, tell him it was from you.

Seokjin’s nice. He doesn’t ask why, he just nods. It saves you the trouble of telling him. Nobody wants to listen to your sob story. He says goodbye to you, and that he hopes to see you again soon. You hope so too.

You spend the night curled up in your room pretending that everything is fine. You don’t see Taehyung when he comes home, and you don’t see him the next day, either.

It’s not as if you’ve started to avoid Taehyung entirely. You live together—it would be downright impressive if you didn’t see each other for a whole day. It’s just, sometimes he still—

“Y/N? Wanna order Pad Thai?”

“Hey, Y/N, they’re playing The Devil Wears Prada on Freeform, do you want to come watch with me?”

“Central Park is having a Dog Festival, do you wanna go together?”

And sometimes, you just can’t. The thought of spending time with him makes your heart ache, whether it be from not wanting to be too close, or from missing him terribly. Either way, you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to muster up the same courage you once had.

Turning to look at the pressed carnation in the vase atop your dresser, you laugh to yourself. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago you thought that you would finally be able to tell him, to open up your heart and let him look into it like a kaleidoscope. Hard to believe that there was once a time when you thought that maybe, just maybe, he loved you back. It feels like it was eons ago. Like it was another universe entirely.

You know that it’s not right for you to do this to Taehyung. He’s still your best friend. He always will be. He has no idea. He’ll never know.

But sometimes—

Sometimes he comes home love drunk, wasted on kisses, splotches of pink lip gloss decorating his skin.

Sometimes he spends dinner telling you all about the date he went on, the amazing vodka shrimp linguine he had, as the two of you eat Kirkland spaghetti in your dinky apartment.

Sometimes he tells you that you’re his best friend, and that he misses you.

Being in love with Taehyung had always been easy. It was being best friends, and making sure to keep the feelings a secret, that was hard.

Taehyung isn’t home tonight. You hadn’t asked him where he’d be. You didn’t think that it mattered.

And you tell yourself, over and over again, that it doesn’t matter. That you don’t need to know where he is every second of every day. He’s got a life outside of what exists in your stuffy apartment, a whole world of people craning to see him. He has reviews written about him in The New York Times and people lining up outside the theater for his autograph on their Playbill. There’s so much more to his life than what he has with you.

It’s better this way, you tell yourself, even if it’s not. Even if every time you step into your apartment, glance over at the vase on the kitchen table, you are reminded that it’s worse. Every time you see a damn carnation, daffodil, chrysanthemum, you can’t help but wish that things were different. You’re even starting to avoid Namjoon.

That night finds you at a small Italian restaurant in a tiny alley off of Ninth Street. You’ve never been, but it had good reviews on Yelp and you could do with spending some time alone, wallowing in your feelings somewhere other than your bedroom. You’re starting to feel suffocated just being there. It would be good for you to get out.

It would be good for you to get out, because the apartment reeks of what ifs, of what could have beens, and you can’t spend more than five minutes inside without throwing yourself your own personal pity party. You hardly see Taehyung nowadays because you can’t bear looking into his eyes anymore. Everything is awful, and you wish that it wasn’t, but you don’t know what to do to fix it.

But Fate seems to love doing that thing where it’s out to get you. From the moment you met Kim Taehyung, Fate decided that you would be her next target. That no moment with him would leave you unscathed. And tonight is no exception.

It’s just your luck that, ten minutes after you’re seated, the bell above the door rings to signal another customer, and you look up to see Taehyung and his girlfriend strolling in, glowing under the warm yellow light. You’ve never been more thankful, in that moment, to be seated right beside the bathroom, just out of sight of the booth that the hostess leads them to. It’s terrible, and it’s terrible, and it’s terrible. You watch as they order two glasses of a fancy rosé and giggle as they cheers to their show, to their lives, and to themselves. They spend the evening in the light of a single exposed bulb above their head, laughing and smiling and talking.

The craziest part is that once upon a time, that would have been you. You and Taehyung would have decided that the night was a restaurant day and not a stay-at-home-and-cook-meal day. You would have found a quaint little place on Yelp and gotten the cheapest food on the menu. Once upon a time, you looked like that.

[April 17th, 7:34PM]

Taehyung: [image sent] Taehyung: MMMMM look at this yummy yummy fish that I had tonight!! Taehyung: We should go here sometime!! I think you’d like it hehe

You look down at your plate. The food in front of you tastes like ash.

“Congrats,” you say when you hear Taehyung leaving his bedroom, feet padding against the hardwood floor as he makes his way to the kitchen.

“Huh?” Taehyung asks, eyes wide. It’s almost as if he’s surprised to see you out here, sitting on the couch, answering emails. Like he can’t believe you’re in your own home. You can’t blame him. “What are you talking about?”

“The review on The New York Times,” you tell him distantly, switching over to the tab on your computer where you read it. There’s a picture at the top of Taehyung and his co-star, front and center, holding hands as they look off into the distance, staring into an unknown future. “It’s your first five star review, isn’t it? They even listed it as the Critic’s Pick.”

“Oh, I… uh,” he begins, “I haven’t seen it yet. Been too busy.”

Bitterly, you wonder why. Even when you two are further apart than you have ever been, even when he spends all day out of the apartment and you spend all day inside, even when you barely fucking see each other, you can’t help but click on the articles that mention him, scroll through every review that mentions his name.

Things might be different now, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be proud of him. Of what he does. Of who he is.

“Well, they said great things,” you tell him, sparing him the trouble of looking. “You deserve it.”

“You’re coming tonight, right? You have to, if the play is getting such good reviews,” Taehyung asks, an olive branch. You’ve spent so much time doing everything you can to keep your relationship as distant as possible, hiding in your bedroom and eating dinner at odd hours. But this is the one thing that you both can still hold onto. Taehyung’s shows, his performances, and you, in the audience, always finding his eyes. If everything else is in shambles, at least you will always have this. “I think you’d like it.”

“It sounds very Matrix-y.”

“Well,” Taehyung says, shrugging. “It sort of is. But it’s also about love. You’d like that, right?”

You suppose you’d like it a little more in another timeline.

Taehyung continues, barely giving himself time to catch his breath. “Basically, these two kids are playing this life-simulation game where every move they make directly corresponds with the actions of the characters they’re playing as. Cue me and Lancaster. And we meet, and slowly fall in love, over a series of chance encounters. You know, a coffee shop, the bank, a restaurant.”

“Really?” You ask, brows furrowed.

“Why?” Taehyung’s eyes widen in concern, smile downturned ever so slightly as he takes in your expression.

“I don’t know—” you begin. There’s just something about the storyline that rubs you the wrong way. “Maybe I’m just being cynical. But is it really possible for two people to find love like that? Through chance? Luck?”

Perhaps, Namjoon would say. You can hear his voice echoing in your head now. After all, wasn’t it luck that brought the two of you together?

You shake his thoughts away. Namjoon’s got his own set of problems—he’s in no position to be the wise one in this scenario.

Taehyung shrugs, as if he’d never given that a thought to begin with. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think that love can blossom anywhere. Just so long as you nurture it, water it and give it lots of sunlight. I just—I think that if you look hard enough, you can find love anywhere.”

You turn to face him, blinking up at him as you stare at each other, sitting on this damn couch in the middle of your apartment. Taehyung waxes poetic in front of you, tells you that if you just fucking look for love, you’ll find it. But he doesn’t know—and he never will. You’ve been looking for love for the past four years, you’ve been searching in all of the nooks and crannies of your body, and the only place you’ve ever found it has been in the deep pit of your heart, dusty and quiet and forgotten. Even now, staring into his eyes, scanning every bit of his irises for even a sliver of it, a spark, you come up empty.

How could he say something like that, when he lives with you? When he looks at you while you’re eating takeout or sitting and watching a movie together. Does he just not see it? Or worse—does he know, and just refuse to say anything?

Suddenly, your body turns cold. It’s hard to believe that someone as hopelessly romantic can’t see what’s right in front of him.

“I wish that was how it worked,” you say sourly, the words leaving a bitter taste on your tongue. You snatch your laptop from the table and head into your room, leaving Taehyung alone on the couch, speechless.

He may be the one with flowers blooming in his heart, but you have been drowning for the past four years, and never have you felt further from the surface than right now.

You don’t go to Taehyung’s opening show that night.

Taehyung leaves to get ready at the theater at three in the afternoon, and you bid him goodbye before holing yourself up in your bedroom and keeping yourself busy. You start watching the newest season of Stranger Things and tidy up the knick knacks you have scattered all over the place. Anything to keep your mind occupied.

Taehyung texts you during intermission.

[June 3rd, 8:55PM]

Taehyung: Hey are you here?

You don’t respond.

By ten at night, you end up with the cleanest room you’ve had in years and half of the season left to watch. It’s not a great kind of busy. The red carnation atop your dresser stares into your soul and you nearly throw it out three different times. But it’s an okay kind of busy, because you don’t know if you could have beared to see Taehyung on stage tonight. See him dancing around with a beautiful girl on his arm, confessing his love for her and pulling her in for a kiss.

Over the years, you have seen Taehyung kiss so many people. From the shy freshman boy cast next to him in a student-written play in college to the model-esque women on stage in an off-Broadway play with him. And it never used to hurt—not like this. You saw him lock lips with another and you supposed that that was just show business.

But it’s not show business anymore. It stopped being show business that night, when he came home to an apartment lit up with candles, the sweet scent of macarons wafting through the air, and told you he had found someone. It hasn’t been show business since, not when Taehyung is looking for love and finds it everywhere except where you wish he would look most.

Maybe you’re just being selfish. Taehyung doesn’t have to love you for you to love him. You knew that. You lived with that. He’s your best friend. He always will be. You can’t do anything to force him to love you back. You had always been fine with just being friends.

But just—knowing that he doesn’t feel the same. Having that certainty rooted deep within you. That’s the part that hurts the most.

Taehyung comes home earlier than he normally would on a day like this, catching you in the kitchen as you brew some chamomile tea, hoping that it will calm the waves that crash against the pier inside you. You turn to meet his eyes, and suddenly, you feel like you can’t see anything in them at all.

“Why didn’t you come tonight?” He demands. “I looked for you and you weren’t there. Where were you?”

“Here,” you tell him. “I was thinking maybe I would go tomorrow.”

“But you’re always at my opening show,” Taehyung says, like you don’t know that already. “Why didn’t you come? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you didn’t,” you tell him. You don’t think you’re drunk or tired enough for this conversation. At ten at night, you’re still cognizant, aware of what consequences this conversation might have when you wake up in the morning.

“Then why weren’t you there? You know I need you there,” Taehyung pleads, coming up to you as you stand in your kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil.

“No, I didn’t know that,” you tell him firmly. You went to his opening shows because it was tradition. Not because it was necessary.

“You’re my good luck charm, for god’s sake, Y/N,” Taehyung says, fists curled up at his sides. You can tell that he’s trying hard not to burst at the seams, like there are so many things he’s holding at the tip of his tongue. “I did such a shit job tonight without you there. I spent the entire first half of the show looking out into the crowd so much that Lancaster asked me if I had taken anything before we started.”

“That’s not my fault,” you tell him. “I didn’t know that you thought I was your good luck charm, or whatever.” And, because you’re bitter and petty and heartbroken, you add, “I would have thought that would be something your girlfriend is.”

Taehyung loses it. “What’s been going on with you, Y/N? Why are you being like this? Ever since my first show, I feel like we’re drifting further and further apart. You never want to spend time with me, you never want to come to my afterparties, you barely spare a glance at my girlfriends when I introduce them to you, and now, you’ve stopped coming to my shows. All of these things that I thought that we shared, ever since college. Tell me, Y/N, am I doing something wrong? Is there something that I’ve missed? Because it feels like we’re fucking strangers.”

The water finishes boiling, the kettle whistling on the stovetop as steam billows from the spout. “I’m not obligated to do any of those things, Taehyung,” you tell him harshly. “Just because we did them in college doesn’t mean I have to keep doing them now. What, did you think we’d still be doing that sort of stuff when we’re thirty? Forty, fifty? They were just college traditions.”

“‘College traditions’?” Taehyung asks, astounded. “Were all of those nights that we spent together just college traditions, too? Are we not allowed to do those things anymore? I miss you, Y/N. I hate not having you around and tonight was the worst it’s ever been. I don’t know what to do or say, I don’t know how to fix this, I don’t even fucking know what’s broken.”

“I just need space, Taehyung,” you tell him, hands gripping the edge of the countertop as you stare at the laminate, eyes tracing the lines to keep you from meeting his own. “I just need some time to myself, that’s all.”

“But why, Y/N?” Taehyung pleads, He reaches over to grab your hand, holds it in between the two of you like a lifeline.

“‘Why?’” You echo angrily. “You don’t know? You can’t tell? We’ve known each other for four years and you haven’t realized?” You tug your hand from his grasp. It’s clear you’re beating a dead horse. You wonder why you even tried in the first place. How naive you were, standing in the kitchen surrounded by scented candles and flowers and macarons, dreaming of a life with him by your side. Foolish.

“Realized what?”

“That I’m in love with you!” You shout, and the world goes silent. The kettle stops whistling, the water having evaporated into nothing, the packet of chamomile tea left, forgotten on the countertop. You stand there, breaths heavy, chest heaving, as you look at Taehyung, angry and mad and in love, all at once.

“You’re what?”

“Don’t make me say it again,” you hiss. “I already know that you don’t feel the same.”

“Y/N, wait—”

“Goodnight, Taehyung.” You turn on your heels, storming into your bedroom and collapsing against the door. Finally, finally, finally, you let the tears wrack your body, sending shivers down your spine. There’s salt on your tongue and smudged liner beneath your eyes.

You thought pressing flowers makes them last forever. But even the red carnation is starting to shrivel.

Subject Title: New Project????

From Park, Seojoon, to me

Hi Taehyung,

You did a great job last night in Chance Card! Really proud of you for accomplishing so much. Pretty soon you’ll be on Broadway and be too big for a small manager like me. You’ll need an agent, and a publicist, and a stylist, and a dog-walker…

Anyway, just emailing to let you know that Hugo Cleveland reached out to me to see if you were interested in auditioning for his next play. He personally wanted to see if you liked the part, and would give you preference if you did want to audition. It’s called Cupid, and it’s another one of those modern-day retellings of an old tale. I thought you might like it. Attached is the script and a short description of the play. Let me know if you’d like to give it a shot! I think this might be the project that gets you onto Broadway!!

As always, contact me if you need anything at all.

Park

Taehyung, still in bed despite it being nearly noon, taps around on his phone, pulling up the description of the play. He hates reading PDFs on his phone, so he’ll check out the script on his laptop later.

Cupid by Hugo Cleveland

Cupid chronicles the tale of the world’s most well known hopeless romantic—Cupid himself. Set in a world of magical realism, Cupid has the power to make two people fall in love with a single shot of his arrow, and spends his life walking around the city of New York, bow and arrow by his side.

The only problem is that Cupid has no way to make people fall in love with him, because his magic operates under the assumption of soulmates—a single person meant for another. And as the years have gone by, he has searched and searched and searched over millennia, desperate to find love, but it’s almost as if everyone has soulmates except for him.

Little does he know, he need look no further to find the person he shall spend the rest of his life with—not when his best friend has always been by his side.

Taehyung glares at the description like it’s personally offended him. He knows that it’s just a coincidence that he happens to receive this email the morning after his fight with you, but he can’t help but feel like God is playing the world’s worst practical joke on him.

Cursed with the memory of an actor, he replays last night in his head over and over and over again, looping the feed back and forth as your words echo in his mind.

You don’t know? You can’t tell? We’ve known each other for four years and you haven’t realized?

He never knew what he was supposed to be looking for. You were just friends, you had always been just friends. But then he looked out in the crowd and couldn’t see you anywhere, couldn’t make out your eyes even in a sea of hundreds like he always does, and it felt like there was more than just another audience member missing. He spent the rest of the evening getting his hopes up, thinking that maybe you’re just sitting somewhere else, maybe you put in colored contacts, maybe you’re hidden by some really buff guy in front of you.

He missed you, last night. He’s been missing you a lot recently, missing the way the days you spent together would bleed into nights. Missing the way you wrap your arms around him and smother him in cuddles, missing the way you always remember his takeout order for the fifteen different restaurants you frequent. Missing the way he once thought that you could spend your whole lives together.

Realized what?

He supposes that he has always been a bit foolish. All of his ex-girlfriends broke up with him, never the other way around. And while they all ended on good terms, they all said the same thing to him: it always seemed like his heart belonged to someone else. But he misread that, too. He just thought that he hadn’t found the right person, yet. He would keep searching until he did.

That I’m in love with you!

The craziest thing about it all is that your confession didn’t even shock him that much. After the initial surprise wore off, it was almost as if the dust settled around you, the storm finally calming. Like finding the last puzzle piece after thinking it had been lost for days. Like feeling everything click into place.

Taehyung has been thinking a lot about last night, but his least favorite part is always this:

I already know that you don’t feel the same.

He wishes that he could have told you. He wishes that he could have been strong enough, could have realized what he had before it slipped through his fingertips. Wishes that he could have reached out and grabbed onto you and never let go. There’s nothing more that he wants to do than see you again. You live in the same tiny New York apartment, and you’ve never felt further away from him.

Taehyung wills himself out of bed and washes his face, clearing away the leftover makeup and the sleep in his eyes. It’s a fresh start. It’s a new day.

He sees you standing in the kitchen, making that tea that you had left forgotten last night. He catches your eyes for just a second before he loses them again, watches as you turn your back to him in a desperate attempt to avoid contact.

“I got a new potential show to audition for,” he says loudly, breaking the silence.

“That’s cool,” you say, emotionless.

“Do you want to know what it’s about?”

You don’t respond. Taehyung takes this as a cue to continue.

“It’s about a boy on a search for love,” Taehyung begins, rallying himself despite only being able to see your back. “And he goes out and sees all of these people falling in love and wants that for himself. And he wonders why nothing is sticking, why he can’t seem to fall in love with anybody. And then he realizes that the reason he can’t seem to fall in love with anyone else is because he’s already found his person.” A pause. He’s just summarizing a story, but this feels like a confession. “His best friend.”

You turn around sharply, tea sloshing in the cup in your hand. Taehyung inhales, then exhales. It’s now or never. You’ve been friends for so long. Who’s to say you can’t be more than that?

“Don’t you think I’d play this part well?” He asks.

You shrug, closing your eyes and breathing heavy. He can tell that you’re holding something back, trying not to burst at the seams. “I’m not sure, Tae.”

“I think I would,” Taehyung tells you confidently. He takes a step closer to you, reaches over to take the cup of tea from your hands, placing it on the counter. “Because I’ve been doing it for so long, already.”

You gasp when he kisses you, a gust of air escaping your lips and immediately mixing with his, seize up at the feeling of his lips on yours. Immediately, Taehyung wonders if he’s overstepped a boundary, or two, or five, but then he feels you relax under his touch, feels you reach your hands up to cup his cheeks as you press against him insistently, drunk on the taste of his lips on your own.

Taehyung’s kissed a lot of people in his day, but this one is different. He’s felt sparks, seen fireworks, but with you, it’s as if he’s sinking into a warm bath after a cold day. As if he’s returning to an apartment filled with the things he loves after a long day out. As if he’s coming home.

All of these emotions, all of the little things tucked away in the corners of his soul, in the dark attic of his heart, come bubbling up to the surface, and all he can do is hope that you can feel them, swallow them up like wine, as you press your lips against his, grinning.

Finally, you pull yourself away, almost as if you think you’ll get drunk if you keep going.

“How long?” You ask.

Taehyung shrugs. “I don’t know. A while now, definitely.”

“Really?”

“I think so,” Taehyung says. “I guess that I was wrong, what I said before about looking for love. I looked everywhere, I wanted to see it in every spark that was set my way, but I forgot the most important place. I should have known.” You curl into his touch, resting your head against his chest as his arms wrap around your waist. “How about you?”

“Forever,” you breathe out. “It started and it never stopped.”

Taehyung beams. The flowerbud in his heart had been shuttered for so long, hardly watered and never in the sun. And then suddenly, the curtains opened up and the clouds began to cry, and everything blossomed. You make him feel like he’s always home. You make him feel safe.

You make him feel like a red carnation in bloom.

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#taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #v fluff #v angst #v scenario #taehyung scenario #bts imagine #taehyung imagine #v imagine #bts au #taehyung au #w: good luck charm #formatting this on tumblr was a BITCHHHHHHH

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