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venusiangguk · 3 years

Note

may we see the fight tae oc scene pls pls please!!! u can delete later🤔🤔🤔🤔😳😳😳😳 i’m really curious. i mean ofc u don’t have to. still 😧🙃

idealizations concerning real life relations: deleted scene

>>pairing: jungkook x reader / icrlr!couple

>>genre: fwb, angst, rated PG

>>word count: 2.5k

>>warnings: alcohol, implied smut

>>notes: this is a deleted scene from icrlr, that i omitted simply because of the length of the final fic!! feel free to skip or ignore, it doesn't change anything, but since u guys are curious about it, i'll post it as a lil ty for helping me hit that milestone <3 it takes place after the tattoo party scene, and before the lecture scene.

this does NOT provide an alternative ending.

>>summary: taehyung tries to make you see things for what they really are, but it's hard to see through the rose colored glasses.

Winter break has been long awaited and it is finally, finally here. The snow has coated the ground thick, making the town look like a winter wonderland. The air is sharp and cold but not to a miserable extent. Just chilly enough to bundle up, to hold a hand a little tighter and soak up their warmth.

Your favorite season is fall, but the later months are a close second. You love seeing the way everyone’s faces get red when snow flurries come down to kiss their nose and cheeks. Love the way pom poms bounce atop little hats as children play and have snowball fights. Winter is surprisingly one of the warmest, sweetest times of the year. Like the hot coco Jeongguk has been swapping your regular macchiato with lately.

There’s a greatly anticipated party tonight- a mashup of Taehyung’s birthday and New Year’s Eve. Anticipated for the simple fact that said birthday boy has steadily been ignoring you for weeks, and tonight was a night where he couldn’t evade your attempts of reconciliation. He hasn’t returned a single call or even sent a text back. You can’t even be mad at him really, you know it’s justified. You know you fucked up. The coffee date you had with Yoongi last week let you know what you did.

Over an iced coffee, you learned that you had unintentionally skipped out on your best friend's Winter Showcase. The important one that he mentioned multiple times. The one you promised to attend no matter what.

It wasn’t on purpose; you wanted to go, to support him. But you just got caught up. In life, in school, in Jeongguk. It happens.

When Yoongi asked you why you had missed it, when he told you how hurt Taehyung was by your absence, your heart dropped, sank deep within your chest as your mouth fell open before closing, a small pursed frown on your lips. You didn’t have a good excuse. You went to get tattoos with Jeongguk and then to a party where you fucked him, and then home after that? You were too tired to make it? You just simply forgot? Those excuses weren’t good enough for you and you knew they wouldn’t be good enough for Taehyung.

Whereas Yoongi was okay with distance, long periods in between hanging out and talking, Taehyung wasn’t. He was the kind of friend that needed support, reassurance that you cared. He liked quality time and hangs outs that were planned ahead so he could look forward to them. He was looking forward to you being at his showcase.

The party is packed, even more so than usual. Students, drop-outs, alumni, and randoms alike, all congregate to bring in the new year, to celebrate the end of finals, and a certain art majors birthday. Bodies are on bodies, music is loud and deafening. Cups, bottles, and small baggies litter the floor and the smell of weed is nauseating.

Jeongguk’s hand in yours is sweet, though. Enough to ebb the distaste in your mouth as you watch the stereotypical disaster that is a college party.

“I’m going to go find the drinks, okay?” you lie, squeezing Jeongguk’s hand lightly.

He squeezes back, kisses the side of your head as he says, “Bring me one back too?”

You nod, and slip out of his view. Scanning the crowd until you see a familiar face.

Jimin is laughing, red cup in his hand, eyes curled and happy. He’s sitting on the arm of a couch, legs swinging as he laughs with a group of people. He takes a drink from his cup and let’s his eyes roam the room like he’s looking for someone.

The way his face changes when he sees you approaching is like a punch in the gut. It goes from happy, and carefree to stony- only a small, irritated, close-lipped smile on his face. Eyes harsh and cold, no longer holding the mirth they were just seconds ago. He says nothing when you step in front of him, he just looks you over like he’s bored and waiting for you to get on with it so he can be done with it.

You shift on your feet under his scrutiny. “Where’s Tae?” you ask.

Jimin narrows his eyes at you and tilts his head. “Now you want to know where he is? Haven’t been concerned with his whereabouts for months. Definitely weren’t worried about it last week.”

You wince but carry on swiftly. “Listen, I know I fucked up. I’m here to apologize.” You look at him expectantly, but he holds his ground. When he doesn’t falter, you resort to begging, “Please, Jimin. He’s my best friend… I miss him.”

You must look pitiful, because Jimin’s indifferent facade fades, and he clicks his tongue like he’s annoyed at himself for giving into you. “He’s getting us drinks in the kitchen.”

A smile takes over your face as you rush out a ‘thank you’, quickly turning on your heel to head in the opposite direction, before Jimin calls after you.

“Yeah?” you ask, looking over your shoulder at him.

“If he’s your best friend, maybe treat him like it, yeah?”

You continue to the kitchen without replying, and you can’t help the little simmer of annoyance that bubbles in your chest. Taehyung has been your best friend for years. And even though Jimin had a point, who was he to tell you anything about yours and Taehyung’s friendship?

Before the thought can fester, however, you see the boy you came looking for, two bottles of vodka in his hand like he’s trying to decide which to use. You see the little party hat atop his shaggy hair before anything else and your heart aches a little. You really did miss him. He lets out a small annoyed sound, and knowing him, he’s probably trying to figure out which has the highest alcohol percentage. You come up next to him, and say his name gently. He jumps, but when he realizes it’s you, the ghost of a smile curls on his lips like he’s happy to see you.

Until it’s replaced with resentment just as quickly. His sharp eyes squint at you before turning back to the bottles in his hands, scowl still in place.

“So you decided you could pencil me in between getting your heart toyed with and your back blown out?” He gives you a side glance and sees how your jaw drops in surprise. He carries on, unbothered. “Or did this just work out because it coincides with New Year’s and because he was invited? Only because he’s Jimin’s friend might I add.”

“Tae-” you try, doing your best to keep the hurt whine out of your tone.

“Save it, __. I don’t want to hear the excuses you have. Just-” he looks at you again, and you think that maybe he softens when he sees your crestfallen features. He sighs like he’s tired. “Just leave me alone. Just for a bit, okay? I’ll get over it eventually,” he finishes, finally deciding on the vodka he wants.

You know his request isn't unreasonable. But it’s already been so long that the distance in your friendship has been eating away at it, that you’re scared ‘eventually’ might take too long and by the time he comes around, there won’t be much of a friendship left. That the damage done, will be irreparable.

“Tae… It’s already been months, can’t we-”

Like night and day, the softness that you were able to pull out of him is immediately replaced with that resentment and anger you were met with when you first stepped into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he seethes, strong brows furrowed. “And whose fault is that?”

His words are sharp and the sting from them makes you take a step back. That is, until you feel anger of your own creep up your throat like venom. “You’re one to talk, Taehyung. You could have reached out to me, too. You’re no better than me when you’re in a relationship.”

He groans, gives an exasperated laugh before shrugging. “You know what? Maybe I am just as bad as you, but at least I’m actually in a relationship,” he spits, “You’re just fucking someone that doesn’t give a fuck about you.”

You know he’s hurt because of the distance. That he doesn’t intend to be so mean. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less, and it doesn’t stop the angry tears from pooling in your eyes.

And although you’re angry, almost shaking with rage at the feeling of being cornered and blamed, your heart aches at hearing his words.

Jimin, who started seeing Taehyung after you started seeing Jeongguk, had already made your friend official. Had given him the title, the commitment, the relationship that you had been patiently and understandingly waiting for with Jeongguk. The bitterness that bleeds into your heart makes you feel gross and ugly.

You know what they say; that labels are superficial and don’t mean that much. But when you don’t have them? It makes you wonder. If a label really isn’t that important, like everyone says, why is Jeongguk so reluctant to give one to you?

“Jimin’s your boyfriend?” you whisper.

Taehyung gives you a short nod. “Month and half ago. You would’ve known if you got your head out of Jeongguk’s ass.”

Almost like he was summoned, the topic of debate waltz into the room, coming up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist. He nuzzles into your neck.

It’s instinctual now, the way your body responds to him. The way you melt into his chest like second-nature, how your hands settle over his like they are keeping them in place. How immediately in his presence you feel calmer; the panicky, hurt feeling you were experiencing moments ago vanishing as if it were just a fleeting thought and not something that’s always in the back of your head.

Not in a possessive, ‘I need him to be mine’ kind of way, though.

More like, ‘Why won’t he be mine?’

“Hi,” he murmurs into your neck.

“Hi, baby,” you respond softly, out of habit. The room shirks around you whenever he’s near. Makes you feel like you’re in your own bubble with him.

Jeongguk’s about to reply, ask where the drinks are, but then he hears an annoyed scoff sound in front of you both. Jeongguk bristles as he looks up and sees Taehyung taking a big swig from his cup.

“Uh- am I interrupting? Should I go?” he asks hesitantly, looking between you and your friend.

“No-” you say at the same time that Taehyung says, “Yes.”

You cringe, and turn in Jeongguk’s arms, hands resting on his chest. “Just give me a couple more minutes okay? I’ll bring the drinks.”

Jeongguk searches your eyes, before looking at Taehyung one last time before giving you a stern nod and a quick kiss.

You turn back to Taehyung, ready to apologize for Jeongguk’s interruption, when he talks over you.

“You’re pathetic,” he starts, and you roll your eyes with an irritated sigh before he continues, “but I know you love him. And that you can’t help it,” he shrugs. “But as your friend, I have to tell you that it’s not going to end well. You probably don’t even need me to tell you that. You probably already know and are choosing to ignore it for the sake of the delusions you’ve made up in your ‘pretty little head’.”

You pout at him quoting you, and your brows furrow. “He cares about me. And he’s Jimin’s best friend. He’s a good person, you don’t even know him,” you argue defensively. Though you know your arguments make little sense and are flimsy at best.

Taehyung frowns. Pauses like he’s thinking.

“I didn’t say he was a bad person, and maybe he does care about you in his own messed up way. But he doesn’t care about you in the way that you want him to.” His lips are still down turned when he speaks again.

“And the difference between him with you and him with Jimin is astronomical; it shouldn’t even be a comparison, but I will humor you,” he rubs a hand up and down his face like he’s tired. “The dynamic is completely different, for obvious reasons. For one, Jimin is a safe relationship. You are not. Jimin isn’t in love with him, Jimin isn’t sucking his dick, and Jimin doesn’t want things from Jeongguk that Jeongguk cannot give, or does not want to give,” he says with a raised brow as he takes a sip of his drink.

It seems that the anger has died down some between you both, a semi-civil conversation finally being had. You wrinkle your brows in confusion at him. “What are you talking about?”

He rolls his eyes. “Cmon __. Why do you think he hasn’t made you his girlfriend? Why do you think he literally has not been in a serious relationship since high school? Why do you think he never agrees to anything more than 2 months out?” He waits for you to answer but you just purse your lips stubbornly. “He’s scared. Dare I say terrified of commitment, and that’s exactly what you want from him right?”

You stay headstrong and quiet for a moment longer, ignoring his question in favor of asking one of your own when you finally do speak up. “If I’m so scary, why hasn’t he left?”

Taehyung shrugs. “Fuck if I know? Maybe he does care about you like you say he does. I don’t think so, but hey,” He raises his hands in mock surrender, like he is throwing in the figurative towel. “Maybe you’re right and maybe I‘m wrong. Or maybe there’s some fucked up codependency fermenting between you both when you copulate. I genuinely have no clue, and frankly, I don’t care to find out. Don’t text me until you come to your senses. And don’t get mad when I tell you ‘I told you so’.”

And with that, he turns and leaves you to make your own drinks. You hope the smile you give Jeongguk when you find him is believable.

That night when you go back to his place, you voice your concerns to him in between sweet, heated kisses that taste like hot cider. You tell him hesitantly how Taehyung voiced his concerns about Jeongguk not caring about you and Jeongguk got a little irritated, a little miffed as he unlatched his lips from your neck. He asked what Taehyung knew, how he even came to that conclusion when he’s not around you both.

He assured you with gentle touches and tender words that of course he cares about you. He reminded you that he always makes time for you, he always answers your calls and your texts, he takes you out every now and then, too. He asks you what you think and when you contemplate your answer, going over what he said, you can’t really argue with him. Even if an uneasy, dismal feeling settles in the pit of your tummy.

~~~

hellooo!! again, this is just a scene and part of the plot that i chose not to use because i felt like the fic was already so long. i wish that i had ended up including it tho, so i hope you enjoyed even though its nothing special <3 feel free to do the things if you liked it: like, comment, reblog, send an ask~~ love u, ty again for helping me reach that milestone <3

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stacispratt · 3 years

Text

big god

okay so i posted this a while ago and then immediately deleted it because i hated it so much and NOW it’s about 4x longer but still just as incoherent i think BUT ANYWAYS!! big thanks to @consumedkings for letting me play with our ocs like action figures in her delightful universe!! this is essentially just. a character study of wes in the ancient names universe

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's always when Ell's not around.

"You need someone who will love you as much as you love them," John says. "Someone like me."

Always then, that John tries to dig his fingers under the chinks in Wes's armor and pry him open. Like he's just desperate to get covered in the brilliant red of Wes's blood, smeared with gore— like all he wants is to reach inside and get a hold on Wes's heart. To get such a firm hold on it that Wes will never, never be able to forget him.

He's seen him the same, with Elliot. Wes has seen the spark in his eyes when he sees her get vulnerable, the twitch in his fingers. Desperate to pry her open, too. But he doesn't get to do that right now— Joseph is busy doing it, taking Elliot's confession. And John is jealous, something inside him roiling with it, so he's taking it out on Wes. Trying to prove to himself that at least one of them is all his.

When Ell said "Not to you. Joseph." Wes had seen it, watched the careful progression flit through John's body language— fear, jealousy, fury. Panic, when John returned to their little house and Wes had taunted him with a "Don't tell me you're jealous—"

John had snapped his hand out to grip Wes's wrist, Wes had grabbed John's shirt, and. And.

Wes only stares up at John. His hands are planted into the mattress on either side of his head, caging him in. If Wes relinquishes even an inch, shows even the tiniest reaction, the smallest twitch in his expression, John will take it and run. He'll grab the thread and pull and pull and pull until Wes is nothing more than a pile of string, free for John to take and reform as he wishes. To make him into something new. Something that better suits John. Better suits Eden's Gate.

So Wes keeps his face blank. He doesn't grab for John and beg Oh, God, give me something warm and safe to stuff inside my chest. God, stuff me full of love until I can't take it anymore.

But John sees something, because he lurches forward, presses all of himself to Wes, and pushes their lips together. “You need me, Wes,” John breathes into his mouth. “You and Ell. You know why?" he asks, and doesn't wait for an answer. "Because you need someone who understands you." Their lips brush. "Someone who's never felt– never felt as loved in return for the love they've given."

It's the most honest John has ever been with him, Wes thinks. His stomach twists.

"I can give you that," John whispers. "Eden's Gate can give you that."

“Shut up,” Wes groans. “I don’t want your cult.”

“No, you’re right." John brings his hand up to cradle Wes's face in his palm, thumb just under his eye, pinky finger curled under his jaw. Wes always likes that, John holding his jaw. Firm or with feather-light touch. Either way, it makes Wes's eyelashes flutter. “You just want me.”

Wes squeezes his closed eyes shut even tighter and rolls on top of John. He pins him down, bites his lip, and repeats, "Shut up."

“He’s got his claws in me, Ell,” Wes whispers, the next morning, fearful even in the crook of her neck. No one else will hear them, alone in their cabin at Joseph's Compound (John's at one of those little Seed family meetings, where he and Ell are definitely the main topic of discussion), but it feels wrong to say at all, even when it's so hushed no one but she could hear it. “I’m afraid– I’m afraid even when we get out of here, I’ll never really leave. I’ll never be able to leave.”

She holds him, rubs his shoulderblades, and says resolutely, "We're going to get out. No matter what bullshit the Seeds feed us." She pauses, and insists, hard enough to convince both of them, "We're going to get out."

Oh, and that. John's and Joseph's insistence that they're not going to get out of this scot free— that the Feds will see everything they've done. See the violence coiled in Ell's muscles, the blood caked under Wes's fingernails. Whenever Wes tries to tell himself they're not right, tries to say It's self-defense, tries to say They'll understand, he feels anxiety crawling under his skin.

Paired with the sensation of John's hold on him, so powerful it's like physical touch, he's… he's got this terrible, sinking feeling that his mind—his identity— is never going to leave Hope County. That he'll be firmly rooted in his fear and terror and violence for the rest of his life.

Maybe he'll never even leave physically. Maybe he'll die here. Maybe he'll get stuffed full of flowers.

God, he hopes not. For Ell's sake.

They've already lost Joey.

WRATH, DO YOU STILL WANT TO BLOOM IN ME?

He imagines it, written into his chest. They wouldn't even have to write the WRATH. John already did it for them.

Wes remembers to breathe and takes a shuddering inhale, his face still pressed under Ell's jaw. "Right," he says, fighting to keep his voice even. He shakes off the ghostly sensation of John's nails in his flesh, the imagined burn of a knife in his chest, and forces himself to really feel her arms around him. To appreciate how steady she is. "We're going to get out."

Ell turns her head and kisses his temple.

Faith takes Ell on a walk. He offers to come with, a little anxious at the idea of being apart from her, but Faith dismisses the idea with a giggle. "Deputy Honeysett can take care of us, I'm sure," she chirps. "We're even taking Boomer, too. We'll be perfectly safe, Wes."

He holds Ell's gaze for a moment, until she nods, just a little. He relents, "Okay," despite his prickling neck.

"Besides," Faith chimes, "I think Joseph wanted to have a word with you."

That gives Elliot pause, makes her open her mouth to protest. "Wes, you shouldn't—" she starts, because Elliot might have a soft spot for Faith, but Joseph is just about her least favorite. She confessed to him because she felt like she had to. She doesn't want Wes to have to do the same.

It's okay. He can deal with Joseph. He can choke out the confession he wants to hear.

"I know," Wes interrupts gently. "It can't hurt. It's okay."

Ell lingers, then steps forward and grabs the back of his neck, hauls him down for a chaste kiss. "Don't forget who you're dealing with," she murmurs against his mouth. He nods, takes a deep breath, and she pulls away.

He watches her, Faith, and Boomer walk for a few moments, then turns on his heel.

He finds Joseph at the alter. "Wesley," he says, without even turning to face him.

"Wes," Wes corrects, and seats himself in one of the pews in the first row. Joseph merely hums. "Faith said you wanted to, uh… talk."

Joseph stays silent for a second, just staring at the window of the church, casting light on the dust floating in the air around them. Wes blinks at the window, in the shape of the cross of Eden's Gate, and briefly recalls his first night here.

Then cloud crosses the sky, the ray of sunlight disappears, and Joseph turns to face him.

"Yes," he says, as he looks Wes over. "I've been thinking. About the myriad of ways this situation could turn out."

Wes snorts and looks down at his hands, resting comfortably on his thighs. "How many different ways are there for the world to end in holy fire?" he asks, a smirk pulling the corner of his mouth up. "Or do you doubt your own visions?"

"No, I don't," Joseph says, almost immediately. It's not frazzled, though— he's just as unruffled as ever. Wes looks up. Joseph stands right in front of him, hands held casually behind his back. "John does."

Wes closes his mouth.

Joseph smiles, just slightly, without his eyes, and sits beside Wes on the pew. "But," he says, "he did get me thinking. About… creating safety nets. In case God's plans are not exactly as I imagine."

Just as Wes starts to think what a safety net for Eden's Gate could possibly be—finally, actually eliminating him and Ell?—Joseph says, gentle as Wes has heard him be yet, "If the world does not end as soon as I imagine, you will have to be protected from the law," and Wes feels himself lock up.

"I'm not the one who needs to worry about the law," he says, voice tight, and resolutely does not look toward Joseph, even though he can feel Joseph's eyes on him. "I haven't done anything wrong."

"You must know that's not true."

Wes keeps staring, silent and frozen, gone stone-still with fright. Joseph's face stays placid. After a moment, Wes swallows and croaks, "It's self defense."

"Deputy Honeysett has already killed one man with nothing more than a blunt object, and the two of you went on a mass Cleansing of my followers before the Family even appeared. She's a hazard to herself." Wes opens his mouth to defend her, but Joseph barrels on, "And you're no better, Deputy Beltran. Operating as judge, jury, and executioner within Hope County. There is no excuse for the things you've done here."

"You're the one who started a fucking war in the—"

"Wes," Joseph interrupts. "My group of devoted followers have been targeted, attacked, and gutted by a foreign cult. We look… sympathetic." Wes's skin starts to itch, as he anticipates the punch coming on. "If you were to align yourself with us, we could protect you from suspicion. If the very group you slaughtered accepted you, it would look… better, for your case. You would not seem so dangerous. Not such a loose canon."

"I'm not a loose canon," Wes protests, and the effect is weakened by the uncertainty in his voice.

Joseph answers him calmly once more, like he's barely even listening to what Wes has to say. "You are. You and Ell operated by your own rules and executed your enemies as you saw fit." Joseph shifts, tips his head. "My people. The… redemption it would show, to align yourselves with us, would place you in the right. You and Ell. Both of you would seem sympathetic. Two people lost in the fray."

Wes's head feels fucking cloudy. "Align myself?"

Then he makes the mistake of actually looking at Joseph. The moment he does, he sees Joseph's warm eyes (somehow, despite it fucking all, despite the cruel calculation Wes knows he's capable of), sees the concern in the lines of his face. Sees Joseph reach for him, feels cool fingers on the back of his neck, as the Father draws him in, and gently, very gently, rests their foreheads together. "Yes," he murmurs, as his thumb runs up into Wes's hairline. "You understand what I'm saying, don't you? That this is the best way to protect yourself." He pauses, then elaborates, "To protect Elliot."

Wes's eyes close against his will, and his fingers twitch in his lap.

Joseph's words creep into him and start to take root. Less of a loose canon if I'm sided with Eden's Gate. More of a victim, less of a killer, if the people on my side are the corpses stuffed with flowers.

By extension, Ell would look less guilty, too.

"We can protect you," Joseph murmurs. "I can save you. If only you'd let me."

They're breathing the same air. Maybe if Wes could just catch a breath of the crisp air outside, something brisk and fresh, he'd be thinking clearer, but right now, he's thinking As a backup. Just in case things don't go to plan, and even louder, To protect Elliot, to protect Elliot, to protect Elliot, so he says, "How would I…"

Joseph inhales and curls his other hand around Wes's bicep. Anchors himself tighter into Wes. "Your last name," he says. Warming Wes up to the idea, giving him a moment to soak in each word. "If you were to change it."

Wes scrunches his eyebrows. "Change it?"

Very faintly, Joseph breathes, "If you were to become a Seed." He only gives Wes a second to absorb that, lest panic sets in, and he continues, "You would align yourselves clearly with us. Place yourself under our protection. Under John's protection, my protection." Joseph pauses, then reminds, "And in turn, you would help Deputy Honeysett."

Wes hesitates. Joseph lands the killing blow.

"Deputy Pratt, too, would be protected with this. As he is aligned with you." Wes flinches, opens his mouth to blurt out demands about where Staci is, and how Wes needs to get him, needs to keep him safe, and Joseph continues, "He is safe, in the Whitetails. You can keep him safe."

Wes doesn't give himself too much time to think about it, to talk himself out of it. He told himself he'd do whatever he needed to get out of Hope, with Ell and Joey and Staci, and he's already fucking lost one of them. He already lost Joey, he lost her, and if he lost Ell too, lost Staci— he wouldn't know what to do, and if– if they made it out of Hope, only for their actions here to be what does Ell and Staci in, he would never– never—

"Okay," Wes blurts, and flutters his eyes open to look down at Joseph's bare chest, at the EDEN written over his ribs. "I– okay."

For a moment, Joseph squeezes his neck so tight it's painful.

Then he releases Wes entirely and leans back to look at him once more. "Good, Wes," he says. "Good."

Wes signs the document Joseph has. Under Your new name: he writes Wesley Abraham Seed with shaky, wobbly lettering, and feels his stomach turn uncomfortably. He tries to tell himself, for Ell and Staci, for Ell and Staci, for Ell and Staci, on repeat, again and again, until Joseph guides the paper from him and praises, "There. You've done well."

For Joey.

Wes flexes his hand around the pen in his hand. Seed, he thinks.

Then he thinks, Fuck, and barely remembers to say anything to Joseph before he stumbles out of the church like a drunken man. He doesn't even know where he's going until he collapses onto his and Ell's bed in their cabin.

"I think I'm a fucking idiot," he says into the pillow, as his stomach turns and turns and turns.

It'll be a fucking miracle if he ever gets to go home.

#I STILL HATE THIS BUT I HATE IT LESS NOW I HOPE IT'S OKAY ASH ILYSM #my fic #oc: wesley beltran #oc: elliot honeysett #john seed #fc5

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malfoymanortings · 4 years

Text

therefore i am

SUMMARY: she shared his curse. they were the Duo Who Lived. but while he gets sorted into Gryffindor, she gets placed in Slytherin. she soon comes to realize that everything is not as it was made out to be, starting with the question of why their godfather never got a trial.

PAIRINGS: none for now. if continued, unsure, possibly draco x oc or ron x oc.

another story that wouldn’t leave my head. i began to lose my confidence towards the end of writing this, so sorry that it may seem to end funny or not flow as well near the end. i dunno if this is worth continuing at all, but i’m just posting what i have so far! if you enjoy, let me know! honestly i may just end up deleting this lol.

“There’s not a witch or wizard that went bad that wasn’t in Slytherin.” Ron muttered to Harry and Heather, watching as Draco Malfoy sauntered over to the green and silver clad table.

Heather’s eyes lingered on the boy, before flitting back to continue watching the sorting. Harry was sorted before her. He looked nervous as he walked to the wooden stool, and the hat remained on his head for a minute longer than it had with the rest. The hat suddenly burst out, “GRYFFINDOR!”. A grin broke across Harry’s face, and he walked to the cheering Gryffindor table.

Heather felt the knots in her stomach lesson. Her brother had been sorted into Gryffindor house. That surely assured her a place in the same house. The thought took away some of her nerves, and she walked rather confidently up to the worn stool to have the old hat placed on her head.

‘Ahh, another Potter,’ the voice of the hat mused in her head. ‘Much like your brother, you have a thirst to prove yourself. You have a desire for knowledge, and wish to find out more about your parents..’

The hat was correct. Ever since she had found out that her parents were magical, she wanted to know everything about them and the world they had lived in. The resentment she harbored towards her aunt and uncle had grown and blossomed into a burning hatred. They had kept the knowledge from her and Harry because they were scared. They knew the twins were superior to them. They weren’t just mere muggles, she thought with disgust.

‘Seems as though you don’t care much for muggles, eh?’ the hat said lightly. ‘You wish to prove yourself, and your wish for knowledge is quite strong, you appear to be a bright young witch. Ravenclaw or Slytherin would be best for you..’

There’s not a witch or wizard who went bad that wasn’t in Slytherin. Ron’s words floated through her head again, and she was saddened as she realized Gryffindor wasn’t even an option for her.

She began pleading with the hat, not Slytherin, not Slytherin, please. What if she ended up evil, like Voldemort? Or a pompous arse like Malfoy? Knowing she would no longer have her twin throughout her years here, she wanted -no, needed- to be accepted, to be liked, here at Hogwarts. There would be no Dudley spreading rumor's about her and Harry, warding off any chance of friends.

‘Not Slytherin, eh? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head. And Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness, there’s no doubt about that.’

The wording gave her pause. The hat had said great, not evil. But what was the difference between great and evil? How did one ensure they wouldn’t slip past the line and land themselves in evil?

‘We are all the master of our own future,’ the sorting had replied with a chuckle. ‘It all depends on what a person intends to do with their greatness.’

Slytherin was a powerful house, she knew that. It definitely could lead her to greatness, to power… and if she intended on not becoming dark, well, then couldn’t she just be great?

‘Sounds like we have an answer,’ the hat chuckled once more. “SLYTHERIN!”

She opened her eyes, immediately searching the hall to find her brother's same green eyes staring horrified at hers. Offering him a weak smile, she slid off the chair, and made her way with her head down to the Slytherin table.

There was no eruption of cheers like there had been for Harry. Slytherin clapped heartily, while the rest of the tables had a scattering of claps and a cluster of whispers. Her cheeks flamed red, and her long red hair fell over her face like a curtain.

Sorry, Harry, she thought desperately, fighting the tears that threatened to spill out.

She had to be strong. She couldn’t be weak, that would get her nowhere, just like the one time she had burst into tears when Dudley had shoved her roughly to the ground in front of their entire elementary school. The courtyard had laughed at her, and Piers had sharply kicked at her ribs.

That couldn’t happen here. She straightened her back, and fixed what she hoped was an expression reminiscent of the mask of indifference that Aunt Petunia wore when she was forced to attend a parent teacher conference for the twins.

“Potter in Slytherin, huh?” Malfoy raised a brow as she sat across from him. “Surprised you aren’t with the muggle loving Weasley’s like your brother.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not a muggle lover,” her voice matched his nastiness, and she twisted the word as it came from her mouth. “You don’t know anything about me, Malfoy.”

The table oohed at her words, and Malfoy glowered at her, his lip lifted in a sneer. She gave him one in response. She would be damned if this disgusting little rat put her down the same way she had let Dudley all those years. There was no fear of Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon here. There was only an endless possibility of power and greatness, and she would do her best to achieve both.

She spent the rest of her year at Malfoy’s throat, the two of them constantly arguing and bickering about something. They matched each other neck in neck with grades, Hermione Granger being the only one to beat the both of them. Malfoy was utterly disgusted by the fact that a muggle born was able to outsmart a pureblood, and Heather loved to dangle that fact over his head.

Heather quickly gained a decent friend group, rivaling the popularity Malfoy had obtained. At first everyone was interested in being her friend because she was part of the Duo Who Lived, and once that allure faded, she was left with a handful of people who truly enjoyed her company.

Daphne Greengrass and Theodore Nott were her closest friends, just as Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini were Malfoy’s closest friends.

Due to Harry involving her in his first year escapades with the philosopher's stone, she was tentative friends with Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. As in, they tolerated each other's presence for the sake of Harry.

Part of her had toyed with the idea of truly befriending the two, just to get on Malfoy’s nerves even more, but not only would that risk her status on Slytherin, she also simply didn’t like the two. Ron hated her on the mere fact of her being a Slytherin, and Hermione she was just jealous of. The only thing she liked about the two was that they had accepted her brother with open arms and treated him kindly, Ron had even made him a near member of his family.

Sometimes she would get upset at the thought, for it seemed Harry didn’t need her anymore, but she was the first one he had told about the stone. She was the first one he had brought to the mirror of erisid. He had even invited her to Hagrid’s hut, although she had declined. The gamekeeper wasn’t very fond of her anymore after her sorting.

Summer had come and gone, the Weasley’s had come to rescue them from the Dursley’s, who had all but decided to starve the twins, and placed bars on their windows. All because of Dobby, the house elf, who had ruined the muggle's night with some supposedly important business man from Vernon’s work.

Heather had thought it was utterly ridiculous. They were muggles! None of them were important, really.

The Weasley’s were rather nice for being ‘blood traitors’, as Malfoy had called them. The twins had taken a liking to her, much to Ron’s chagrin. Molly was lovely as always, and treated her no differently despite her being a Slytherin. Arthur had nearly had a heart attack when he saw her sitting at their breakfast table, turning to Molly with a horrified expression as he had asked if they had had another child she hadn't told him about.

When they had gone to Diagon Alley to get their school supplies, they had run into Draco who had gotten a head taller and a slightly deeper voice. He and Heather had immediately launched into their usual banter, proving that not everything had changed over the summer with him. He had been thoroughly floored that she had befriended the Weasleys, much to her amusement.

The second year of school was more eventful than the first, with the Chamber of Secrets being opened. Everyone had assumed she had done it, and when she saw the fear it caused, she played along and pretended she was the heir. Again Harry enlisted her help in defeating the beast, and together they had encountered Tom Riddle. Harry had destroyed the basilisk with the sword of Gryffindor, and she had stabbed the diary with the basilisk fang.

Summer came once more, and this time Aunt Marge was the catalyst for their eventful break. She had insulted their parents, prompting Harry and Heather to have a rather potent bout of accidental magic. Harry had made Aunt Marge swell up like a blimp, causing her to float away from the Dursleys home, while Heather had done something that altered Aunt Marge permanently. She had caused the woman's brain to implode, which made her bleed profusely from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The Healers were unable to fix her, and they had to erase the woman from the Dursleys' memories in order to keep the peace.

Somehow, the ministry had forgiven the twins for their magic even though it had cost a woman her life.

Then, in their third year, they met their godfather. Sirius Black, a wanted criminal, who was thought to have been the one who turned the Potter’s over to Voldemort. Instead, an innocent man was sent to Azkaban without a trial while the real criminal, Peter Pettigrew, hid as Ron Weasley’s pet rat. Heather had gone back in time with Harry and Hermione to save Sirius from the dementors kiss, and he filled them with promises of living with him away from the Dursleys.

The following summer was when Heather began questioning the things they had been told since joining the Wizarding World. She began to question Dumbledore’s intentions, especially after their meeting with Sirius. How was it he wasn’t given a trial? Why had Dumbledore not even tried to help him? Couldn’t they have used Veritaserum, or Occlumency?

Whenever Heather voiced her concerns, and wondering why Dumbledore hadn't done more, Harry took it as a personal attack. She supposed she should have guessed as much, being that Harry had a special relationship with the Headmaster. Instead of talking it over with Harry, she kept it to herself, just as she kept her opinions on muggles quiet.

It was an unusually warm summer day when they received their invitation to go to the World Cup with the Weasleys. Uncle Vernon had very nearly not let them go, but thankfully, with the threat of their godfather looming over his head, he relented. Harry and Heather were packed that night.

Yet five o’clock came the next day, and then ten past five… and then a quarter past five. Heather had begun to feel anxious like Harry, although for a different reason. Harry was anxious about missing the World Cup and not visiting the Weasleys for the end of their summer break; Heather was worried about being stuck with filthy muggles for the rest of the break.

Then, as Harry and Heather waited together on the opposite of the living room, there came a great commotion, and Dudley came running into the hall clutching his bottom.

Heather’s heart soared. The Weasley’s had to be the only ones to have caused that reaction. They must be there!

The twins hurried into the living room, to hear a loud banging and scraping coming from the fireplace. The boarded up fireplace, with a fake coal fire plugged in the front of it.

“Oh, no,” Heather muttered, putting the pieces together.

“What?” questioned Harry, his eyes darting over to hers.

“They came by floo.” she slapped a hand to her forehead, exhaling loudly.

Harry gasp of understanding came just as the voice of the Weasley’s were heard through the boards.

“Ouch! Fred, no- go back, go back, there’s been some kind of mistake- tell George not to- OUCH! George, no, there’s no room, go back quickly and tell Ron-”

“Maybe they can hear us, dad- maybe one of them will be able to let us out-”

The sound of fists hammering against the wood sounded through the living room.

“Harry? Heather? Can either of you hear us?”

The Dursleys rounded on the twins like a pack of angry wolverines.

“What is this?” growled Vernon.

“Well, they’ve tried to get here by Floo powder.” explained Harry, who sounded as though he was holding back laughter.

“We can travel by fire- only you blocked the fireplace with a fake one.” Heather said disdainfully, looking at the offending object.

Vernon’s face turned purple, and Harry walked over to the fireplace.

“Mr. Weasley? Can you hear me?”

The hammering stopped.

“Mr. Weasley, it’s Harry… the fireplace has been blocked up. You won’t be able to get through there.”

“Damn!” said Mr. Weasley’s voice. “What on earth do they have the fireplace blocked up for?”

As Harry conversed with Mr. Weasley, and Ron’s voice soon joined the mix, Heather brought their things into the living room, wanting to leave the moment they could. By the time she had gotten the first load of their items, she ran into Fred and George on the stairs.

“We can take it from here,” Fred winked, grabbing the trunk from her hands. “Georgie will get the rest.”

Heather grinned, and followed Fred down the stairs. Introductions had appeared to be out of the way, and Dudley had come out from the kitchen that he had been hiding out in. Dudley looked absolutely terrified.

It made Heather absolutely ecstatic.

Fred slipped back upstairs to help George, while Heather walked over to Harry who was standing by Ron. She noticed that the boy had gotten taller yet, and appeared to have gained muscle over the summer. Yet as he gave her a distasteful look, she knew not everything had changed with him over the holiday.

Fred and George re-entered the room with Heather’s trunk, cracking identical evil grins when they noticed Dudley.

Mr. Weasley lit the fireplace, and pulled out a drawstring bag from his pocket, tossing a pinch of the powder inside. The flames burned emerald green and soared higher than ever.

“Fred, off you go,” said Mr. Weasley.

“Coming,” said Fred, “Oh no, hang on-”

A bag of sweets spilled out of his pocket with the contents rolling in every direction, toffees wrapped in brightly colored wrappers. He scrambled around, cramming them back into his pockets, then waved to the Dursleys and stepped into the flames. He vanished.

Aunt Petunia gave a shuddering gasp, making Heather grin.

George left next with the trunks, and then Ron. Harry, Mr. Weasley, and Heather were the only ones who remained.

“Well, bye then.” Harry said awkwardly to the Durselys, while Heather was quiet.

She didn’t care to say goodbye. She just wanted to leave.

They didn’t say anything. Heather moved to the hearth, but Mr. Weasley stopped her.

“Your niece and nephew are leaving for the summer,” he paused. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye?”

The look on Uncle Vernon’s face when he realized a wizard was teaching him etiquette was priceless and in Heather’s opinion, made up for the extra time spent trapped in the muggle’s house. His beady eyes saw that Mr. Weasley’s wand was still out, and that seemed to be threat enough for him to give them a very resentful goodbye.

“See you,” said Harry, who stepped next to Heather.

“Have fun with the diet, Dudley.” Heather said in a parting, the corners of her mouth lifted in a smirk. Without a second look back, she stepped into the green fire and shouted, “The burrow!”

As she spun through the warm flames, she felt elation in her chest. She didn’t have to spend the rest of the summer stuck with her piss poor family. It was a good start to the school year already.

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miceenscene · 3 years

Text

Star-Crossed

din djarin/female oc | soulmate AU | pre-canon

wc: 5.3k / 22.3k (so far)

summary: The Way was not supposed to be a solitary one. People, house, clan. And when all else failed, your Match. “Fits like a Mandalorian Match” was the old saying. Though it wasn’t so long ago that it stopped making sense. But what's a lost Match to a man like Din Djarin?

warnings: is it pining if they're a couple now??, fluff, hurt/comfort, Din Is In A Cult, brief flashbacks

Previous Chapter | Masterpost | ao3

Chapter Seven: The Investigation

The physical heft and weight of beskar had long since faded to the background of Din's senses. But he felt the dense barrier for the first time in years putting it all back on the next morning after Nia had been the one to remove it.

The physical heft and weight of beskar had long since faded to the background of Din’s senses. The absence far more noteworthy in his mind than the presence.

But he felt the dense barrier for the first time in years putting it all back on the next morning after Nia had been the one to remove it.

The memory of fingers running through his hair still tingled under his helmet. She’d gently carded as he drifted off to sleep in her arms, the two of them squeezed into a bunk barely meant for one, and she’d resumed the moment she woke up the next morning.

Perhaps he could wait a little longer to cut it.

Her obvious fondness for his curls was more than worth the minor bother.

Her gentle smile was worth a great deal of bother in his mind, though it was completely absent from her face as they worked side by side back in the Vod’oya headquarters.

With precious other leads to follow, they’d decided that returning and thoroughly searching the records was the best place to start.

The records were thorough, organized and diligent. He’d expect nothing less from a Mandalorian school, despite its… eccentricities.

There was a sudden stop in the records about eight months back. No indication as to why.

Though Din had his guess.

However, the discovery of the stop offered some ease. Nia had been on The Razor Crest for just over seven months. At least she hadn’t spent a great deal of time chipped.

Now if they could just find the bastard who put it in her head in the first place, he’d hold her staff while she delivered righteous justice with her bare hands.

But there was a murder to solve first.

They’d been combing through the rest of the records since the morning, and it was now mid-afternoon.

Neither of them truly certain what to look for, or if their needle was even in this particular haystack.

“Found another gap,” Nia said, leaning back and stretching her neck. “Two days, twenty-seven months ago.”

The only thing out of place was the occasional gap in the records, which were otherwise exhaustingly thorough.

She stood to mark it down on the display board on the other side of the room. They’d found eight in total so far, none longer than four days at most or further back than three years ago.

“It might be computer error,” Din pointed out when she returned to her post at the other terminal.

“Probably,” she muttered, scrolling further down the logs. “Very little else survived wholly… intact… wait.”

“What is it?” He leaned over to look at her screen. There was another gap, three days, thirty-one months ago.

She tapped the screen. “There was a mission between these. I remember, we–we went to a warehouse on Florrum before Bardotta. We burnt the place to the ground and–” The corner of her mouth twitched in a small smile. “Ro singed her eyebrows off with a flash grenade. She looked hilarious for weeks afterwards. I wrote about it in my mission log. Phasia said it was unprofessional.”

“And there’s no record of that?”

She shook her head and turned around to look at their collected gaps on the display board. “These could all be missions, they were never too long, travel time on either side…” she mused, finicking with the end of her braid.

“Someone could have come through and scrubbed them,” Din offered, following her logic.

“But only Vod’oya can get in here.” Her gaze rested on the table still surrounded by seven chairs. “Did I delete them?”

“Or Phasia could have… or someone else holding one of you hostage for access if they were desperate enough...”

“It’s so… selective though. It couldn’t have been a rush job.”

The captive theory wasn’t looking like it was going to hold water.

“And why were they scrubbing missions to begin with?”

Unfortunately, he had no more answers than she did.

She groaned and pinched her brow. “We need someone who’s better at computers than us. Someone who can see if the data’s really gone, or just removed. But they have to be trustworthy...”

A persnickety face immediately came to mind. “I think I know someone who can help.”

Which is how they ended up heading to Tatooine with several terminals in tow.

“Nice to see you on your feet this time,” Peli greeted Nia, all jokes and ribbing until it came time to talk shop.

Given that Nia was generally better with people, Din stepped away to closely supervise the droids refuelling, anticipating subterfuge.

Peli said she’d give data recovery a try, but it would take time. “And it’ll cost ya. Extra!”

“We expected nothing less,” Nia replied, tossing a bag of credits Peli’s way. “Half now, half when you’re done?”

Peli weighed the bag in hand and made an impressed face. “I like you. Mando should keep you around.”

Nia grinned. “He’s stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

“Eh, he doesn’t look too bothered.” Peli stepped closer, as if to be secretive but didn’t lower her volume one decibel. “What’s he look like under that helmet?”

“Oh, he’s exceptionally beautiful. That’s why he covers his face. Otherwise, everyone would be after him for entirely different reasons.”

“I can hear you,” he said, looking their way now that the droids had finished. Peli laughed and Nia just winked, making his chest glow in reply.

Though a question hovered at the edge of his mind, but he didn’t voice it till they left and made the jump to hyperspace.

“Does it bother you?” he asked Nia, not looking away from the pulsing glow as he leaned against the back wall of the flight deck.

“Does what bother me?” she replied, finishing her final checks.

“That you’ll never know what I look like?”

She glanced back at him, still typing. “I know what you look like.”

“You know what I mean.”

She finished and then turned the captain’s chair around before standing. Silently for a moment, she regarded him so thoroughly that he could almost believe that she could see him straight through the beskar.

“I don’t need to see your face to know what you look like, Din. Ni kar’taylir… veman.”

The pause pulled his throat tight and made his pulse thunder beneath his cuirass.

Ni kar’taylir veman.

I know you truly.

That’s what he’d said that night to her in the rain.

Ni kar’taylir darasuum.

I will know you eternally.

Or I love you.

And he’d nearly meant that.

Perhaps she had too.

She closed the distance between them, hands brushing over the beskar barrier and resting on his shoulders. His found a perfect spot in the small of her back.

“Does it bother you?” she asked, looking at him intently again. “That I’ll never see your face?”

It shouldn’t, that same cruel voice hissed in the back of his mind.

But he found himself without a truly honest answer, just mixed emotions sloshing about his ankles.

“I… don’t know.”

She nodded and shifted to tiptoe to press a kiss to the cheek of his helmet, somehow adding to and soothing the conflict all at once.

He held her close till the disquiet slowly settled, but it never fully left after that.

Peli wasn’t cheap so they immediately returned to Karga for more bounties while they waited to hear back.

The return to their normal rhythm was welcome, but immensely improved by the addition of Nia’s flirting and Nia’s kissing and Nia’s… everything.

It became a race to be able to yank his helmet off as soon as the quarry was thrown into carbonite. Whether killing the power in the hull, or shutting the door on their tiny bunk, or even just trusting her to keep her eyes closed.

How other Mandalorians had managed it before him, he wasn’t quite sure.

He resolved to ask the Armorer the next time he went to the Covert. They used to populate a whole planet; surely it wasn’t a complete sin to remove his armor for her, his Match?

Nia, true to her word, never seemed to mind the elaborate measures they had to take.

If anything, they appeared to amuse her. And… on a few memorable occasions, she really seemed to enjoy them.

But to him, his Oath got heavier every time he put the helmet back on.

It went beyond the novelty of her skin on his.

Something… deeper, larger than just them seemed to nearly shudder to life every time she touched him.

Sometimes he would lie awake in their bunk, braided with her, running a hand through her hair as she slept peacefully on his chest, wondering if she felt it too.

This… thing hurtling towards both of them.

Perhaps if more of the Mandalorians’ history had survived the Empire, he’d know what it was.

But instead, they’d have to figure it out together. Just the two of them.

Just like everything else.

They’d been tracking their latest quarry across a mountainous planet for the better part of the day. The mountains were rocky, mostly barren, and littered with caves that made very convenient hiding spots.

They were both covered head to toe in a fine layer of dust from the wind blowing through the crags and valleys between the peaks. Where Nia had repeatedly cleared it away from her eyes was now a different color than her cheeks.

Hopefully, they were getting close.

“Din,” Nia’s voice called from a half dozen feet behind him. He looked back at her, but didn’t even need to see where she was pointing to notice the rising storm of dust racing towards them.

“There’s a cave up the ridge.” He reached a hand for her and put her in front of him as they hurried up the slope to the opening.

The storm blew them inside, covering them both in a fresh layer of brownish grey. Nia coughed a few times as she stumbled deeper inside.

They had to move quite deep into the cave to be free of the wind. Hoping for a break, Din checked the tracking fob. No, it appeared they were not any closer to their quarry.

As the storm fully arrived, the weak light of the sun was dimmed, casting the cave in near total dark.

He reached for his helmet lamp, but a soft blue glow from behind them stopped his hand.

“What’s that?” Nia murmured, moving towards the glow without a moment’s hesitation. Din followed after taking enough hesitation for both of them.

There was a narrow crack in the wall, just big enough for them to slide through one at time, that opened into a large cavern, the walls lined with what looked to be some sort of bioluminescent moss.

The visor on Din’s helmet immediately beaded with water from the warm, humid air. In the middle of the cavern was a pool of opaque teal water, steam rising slowly from the surface.

“The nav computer did say something about hot springs,” Nia said, already walking down towards the pool.

“It may be unsafe.”

Nia stopped by the edge and dipped her staff into the water. It didn’t appear to harm the wood, or her palm when she caught a few drops. She knelt down and reached for the water, sighing as the dust washed away from her skin.

“I think it’s okay.” She grinned and splashed a small handful on his boots. Then she dropped her staff and immediately started kicking off her boots as she unfurled her braid.

“What are you doing?” Din asked, accused really, as her jacket went the way of her boots. Out of habit, he turned away as she grabbed the hem of her shirt, making her laugh quietly at him.

Though some part of him was ...interested in looking back over his shoulder, he didn’t move.

“I am generously granting the quarry one more hour of freedom.” There was a sound of a zipper and more fabric rustling.

Make that very interested.

He huffed, still not moving and clinging to stubbornness in lieu of actual self-restraint. “We don’t have time…”

“We can’t go anywhere with that storm outside. Might as well relax.” She poked his side, making him jump slightly and meet her teasing smile before she waded into the water.

Oh, he was a lucky lucky lucky man.

“Nia,” he said because every other word seemed to have flown out of his head.

The opaque water came halfway up her torso, just wetting the ends of her hair before she slipped fully under the surface.

“Ohh…” she sighed as she resurfaced. Her grin returned as she noticed him still waffling on the shore, yet absolutely enraptured.

Yeah, she knew she had him. And he really didn’t mind all that much. The view was quite lovely from up here.

She swam closer, giving tempting peaks of her strong arms pulling herself through the water, before sinking down so just her head was above the surface. “I would invite you in, but I’m afraid you’d rust.”

He smiled slightly. “Beskar does not rust.”

“Your iron will might.”

He looked back to the opening. Anyone who tried to break in would have to scramble through there, enough time for him to get to shore and grab his blaster if he had to. He unbuckled his rifle and set it next to her staff.

Nia’s smile was bright enough to light the cavern before she turned around. “I’ll close my eyes.”

It took him several minutes to remove the weapons and the armor and the padding and the jumpsuit and the underclothes. Nia had taken to floating while she waited.

He was careful to set both his helmet and his blaster within easy reach. Then he waded in, a deep groan falling out of him as the extremely rare luxury of warm water seeped into tired muscles.

She must have heard him as she chuckled. “Told you.”

It was dark enough to obscure the fine details, but he still didn’t want to risk anything. So he swam out to her and pulled her into his arms, her back against his chest.

The universe settled into place as she did.

“One hour,” he said, reminding himself more than anything.

They floated together for a while in restful quiet, fingers intertwined and her head tucked under his chin.

It’d been a long time since he’d felt such Peace. It was… heavy, secure and immoveable.

“Are those your stars?” Nia asked quietly. “The tattoo on your back, is that your stars?”

“Yes.”

“Tal’onidir, right?” He nodded, and she hummed. “I don’t–what’s that one again…”

“Blood struggle.”

“Oh… that’s… apt.”

She laughed lightly, making him smile and chuckle.

He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Yours are the interesting ones.” He could still picture the relief of her and the stars beside it. “The Mythosaur crown...”

She shook her head and stiffened. “I don’t think those are really mine.”

“You don’t think you’re destined for greatness?”

She scoffed. “We. We are destined for greatness, if they’re true.”

“But it’ll be difficult.”

“Yes. Hard… but worthwhile in the end…”

The idea of Greatness seemed too big to understand. What did Greatness even mean for a foundling bounty hunter and a former vigilante?

Maybe… maybe it just had to be Great for them.

A home could be Great. Somewhere safe and peaceful. Somewhere to stay for a long time.

Usually even the idea seemed so far out of possibility that it became just fantasy.

He looked down at the curve of her cheek that he could see. The elusive idea didn’t seem quite so far out of reach when he was holding her.

“Wonder what it means?” she murmured, her thoughts apparently similar to his.

He kissed her cheek. “I don’t really care.”

She smiled as he tilted her head back enough to kiss her, soft and slow. Before the angle could become strenuous for her, he kissed up her jaw and then down her neck, feeling her every last muscle completely relax as he made his leisurely way across her shoulder.

Her thumb traced the small bullseye tattoo he’d given himself decades ago on his hand before dragging up his arm to brush over the Mythosaur on his deltoid.

“Do you have any tattoos?” he asked, not lifting his lips from her skin.

“Just the one.”

“Where?”

She chuckled. “Why don’t you find it, bounty hunter?”

Challenge issued and permission granted, he nipped her strong shoulder, making her gasp slightly, before kissing his way back to her neck.

He lifted her hair, intending to kiss his way to the other shoulder, and found it.

The swooping Vod’oya ‘V’ rested at the nape of her neck.

The placement surprised him, he could have sworn it was on her arm. He leaned in to kiss it, then stopped.

Wait.

Why was he surprised?

Why did he think her tattoo was on her arm?

He lifted her arm from the water, turning it to examine all sides in the dim blue glow. No tattoo, just a few old scars.

“Din?” she asked, sounding concerned.

Something in his memory finally clicked.

“Did all the Vod’oya have the ‘V’ tattooed?” he asked.

“Yeah, we all got one after our first mission on Cantonica.”

His thumb stroked across the skin just below her elbow as shock filled his senses.

“You’re not the first Vod’oya I’ve met.”

“What?”

“I had a quarry… few years back. By the Guild code, the events are technically forgotten, but… it’s hard to forget a fight like that.” Something else unlocked. “And then… Karga had me deliver the quarry directly to the client.”

“What did she look like? The Vod’oya?”

The rain on the rooftop came to mind first. Then the hooded woman, blocking his blaster fire with just a simple sword and making it look all too easy.

“Red hair. Tall, broad, a scar on her cheek. The tattoo on her right arm, right here.” He tapped Nia’s forearm again, the image of the unconscious woman he’d carried to his ship finally clear in his mind.

Nia sucked in a slow breath. “Phasia.”

As soon as the storm cleared, they captured the quarry and got back to the ship to contact Peli.

“Do you know what time it is?” Peli grouched, just her staticky voice coming over the com.

“Peli, we need you to look up some dates for us in the records. Tell us what’s there,” Nia said, fingers drumming on the dashboard. “And yes, we know it’ll cost extra.”

Peli grumped. “Alright, what dates?”

“Check about three years ago. Any mention of a kidnapping,” Din said.

“Or Captain reported missing,” Nia added.

There were several prolonged minutes of static-filled quiet from Peli, till finally, “I’m not seeing anything like either of those.”

“Are you finding gaps?” Nia asked.

“No. There’s no mention of anyone going missing at all. The only thing about Captain at this time is her being on shore leave for a week.”

Nia looked back at Din, the gears turning in her head. “Are you positive it was three years ago?”

“Yes.”

She nodded a few times, still thinking. “Thank you, Peli, let us know if you find anything new.” And she hung up.

“So three years ago, Phasia had a bounty put out on her, and she didn’t tell the rest of us that she’d been captured.” Nia frowned. “Why hide that?”

“Shame?”

“We didn’t keep secrets from each other, not like this. And she came back, why wasn’t she bragging about her heroic escape?”

“Maybe she didn’t escape. Maybe she was set free.”

Nia let out a long breath, twisting the end of her braid between her fingers. “Three years is before all the scrubbed mission gaps we found. Maybe they’re connected somehow.” She looked back at him. “Do you remember where you delivered her?”

“Coruscant. A penthouse above level 5000.” He’d never made it past the landing platform, but he remembered the shape of the building. “I think I know where too.”

Coordinates were set immediately. But even in hyperspace it would still take time to arrive.

They went through the motions of appearing busy. Din taking time to oil every weapon in his armory. Nia continued her work on her staff; she was beginning to run out of room.

Despite the ever building mystery, there was a question that had lived in the back of Din’s mind since Cantonica. Since they were stuck in a mandated wait, now was as good a time as any to ask.

“When we met Ro… she said that I was ‘one of them’. What did she mean?”

Nia’s hands stilled on her staff for a second, before resuming. “Did you ever go to the Festival of the Frost on the lake?”

Confused at her reply, he answered, “No. We could see the lanterns from up the mountain. When I was young, I tried to sneak out, but I was found breaking curfew.”

She glanced up at him, still working. “That’s what she meant. That you’re part of the– tribe up the mountain.”

Tribe was not the word she was going to use. He could feel it as clearly as her forced casual demeanor.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, calmly. More curious than anything else.

She looked up now, conflicted, and let out a low breath. “Only what you’re not ready to hear.”

He reached for her hand and paused to take off his gloves, wanting to feel the touch of her skin. Pulling her hands off her staff, he held them gently, thumbs brushing over her bruised knuckles.

“Nia. Please.”

She squeezed his hands and was quiet for a few moments, obviously putting her thoughts in order.

“How long were you on Mandalore? Before the Purge?” she asked, searching his visor.

“I finished my training and was sent out a few months before Keldabe fell.”

“Why didn’t you go to the Festival when you were sent out? You were an adult; you could have competed in the tournaments. Or seen the ruins?”

The very idea twisted something in his gut. “…Because… it’s… it was unwise.”

“What was?”

“To…” Why was she asking this? “To spend time with those who were not true Mandalorians.” The old Armorer’s voice still rang clearly in his ear.

She nodded slowly. “What about me? Am I not a true Mandalorian?”

“Of course you are,” he replied, even though something nasty and cruel inside contradicted his own words.

“I went to the festivals,” she said, still conversationally calm. “I saw the tournaments. I was born in Keldabe.” Am I not a true Mandalorian?

Now that she’d laid it out before him, he could see where his own logic wasn’t adding up. He strained to rectify the gap.

“You’re… different,” he insisted.

“How?”

“You’re my Match.”

“What if I wasn’t? What if I was just a woman from Mandalore that you happened to find on Tatooine?” She was studying him closely, not giving him an inch to escape in. “My ancestors rode the Mythosaur. If the Empire had not invaded, I would have worn my mother’s armor. If I wasn’t your Match, would I still be Mandalorian in your eyes?”

The damning truth was that he knew the answer. And in spite of all of his training telling him it was the correct option, he hated it.

“Why does it matter?” he asked, his words heating slightly in his frustration. “It can’t be changed. You are my Match, which makes you Mandalorian.”

“But it doesn’t make me part of your tribe.”

That banked his frustration, concentrating the heat back his way. She’d been allowed in the Covert when she wasn’t in her right mind. But now… even though he considered her Mandalorian, she was barred from entering.

His Match, and possibly someday his chosen partner, forbidden from his community.

How could that be right?

But it was… wasn’t it?

“What happens, exactly, if another living being sees your face?” Nia asked, drawing his attention back to her concentrated study. “If you revealed it, by choice?”

“I could never put my armor back on,” he said in a low voice, his gut twisting for all new reasons. “If… If I chose to break my Oath, I would return it. To the tribe. Let it be melted down and given to a warrior who deserved it.”

She seemed to sense his unease with just talking about it and squeezed his hands tightly. “And would you still be part of the tribe?”

He shook his head, frowning down at their hands. A black pit had opened in his stomach. “No. I would be… as dead—worse. Forgotten.”

“Then what?”

His gaze lifted. “What?”

“You’ve returned your armor, you’re exiled from the tribe, but you still have your life. Then what?”

His mouth opened and shut a few times as he tried to picture something, anything, that would come after That.

It was just darkness. And isolation.

“Then… Nothing. I would have nothing. I would… deserve nothing.”

She let go of his hand to press the control panel on the wall, immediately killing the lights. He was surprised at her clambering into his lap and pulling off his helmet, before wrapping him in a tight embrace. It was tight enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs, but bracing because of it.

She held him tightly for a minute before speaking. “You’d have me,” she whispered fiercely near his ear. He could hear tears in her voice and that made him hold her just as tightly back.

“You’ll always have me,” she promised, letting go just enough to press her forehead to his. “And even… even if you didn’t have me… you have Peli.”

The absurdity of her sentence pulled a laugh out of him. “What?”

“You’re a good man, Din Djarin. And there are more people like you out there in the galaxy than you may think.”

“Point one out next time you see one,” he muttered.

She huffed in amusement, then sobered. “I understand fearing losing your home, more than most. I do.” Foreheads still touching, she shook her head. “But you’ll never have nothing. And you’ll never deserve it either.”

She kissed his forehead, hands cradling his face as if it was beyond precious to her, despite never seeing it.

Something flickered through where his forehead met her lips, deeper than just a star burst.

A loyalty other than his own. A hope so determined it felt like a gift.

A curling wisp of Connection that evaporated so quickly he could almost second guess its existence at all.

So he pulled her down for a kiss, and he didn’t stop kissing her till they arrived at Coruscant.

Despite the entire planet being one metropolis, there still weren’t too many buildings that reached all the way up to level 5000.

Din was piloting as they approached, trying to picture any other landmarks around the twin-spired building from his memory. If he wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t too far from the old Senate Plaza.

After an hour or two of searching, Nia suddenly gripped his pauldron. “Wait.”

He pulled out of the flow of traffic and then spotted a twin-spired building. That had to be it, right? He flew closer and the octagonal landing platform for the penthouse came into view. Yes, he remembered that too. This was it.

“Stop,” Nia ordered before they got close.

He turned to ask her and found her scrambling back up against the door out of the flight deck, her eyes wide and frozen on the building.

“Nia.” He leapt out of his chair and reached for her, purposefully blocking her view as his bare hand cupped her cheek.

Connection.

Images suddenly flashed in his mind, as if he was remembering but he knew he’d never seen them before.

Dropping off a grappling line onto an octagonal landing platform, exhilaration and rage flowing hotter than blood as she pelts for the door.

Skulking down a dark wide hall, listening intently for anything, hand gripping her blaster tight, and without warning, the lights blaring on, blinding.

Struggling against restraints on a cold table in a white sterile room as a mask is fitted to her face, panic threatening to drown her before gas hisses and everything dims.

Watching a human man in an elaborate suit run a finger along her cheek, wanting desperately to reach out and strangle him and not a single muscle responding. He smiles.

“Thank you for the intel. You’ll make a lovely gift, my dear.”

Din stumbled back for half a breath, the images stopping as soon as he broke contact with her.

What was that?

Nia’s frozen horror kept him from wondering further. He immediately pulled her into a tight embrace, shielding her from everything.

She was shaking, fingers curling under the edges of his armor. “Don’t go in there,” she begged in a wavering voice.

Even if the last time he hadn’t trusted her gut didn’t nearly kill him, her tone would have been more than enough to change his mind.

“We won’t. I promise.”

They parked The Razor Crest in a nearby docking bay and backtracked to the twin-spired building; Nia remaining calm though definitely uneasy on a second viewing. A nearby building was under construction, giving them a perfect place to set up for reconnaissance.

Nia kept watch on the landing pad while Din did his best to try and hack into the computer system. Despite both of them seeing his face, they still didn’t know the name of the man who owned the penthouse and had chipped her.

Unfortunately, Din wasn’t having a lot of success.

“One of us should learn how to work with computers someday,” Nia said, not looking away from the landing platform. As if it might try something if her eyes shifted an inch.

“I nominate you,” he replied as an error code popped up on screen again.

By the time night fell on Coruscant, neither of them had had any luck in cracking into the system.

“We’re going to have to hire a hacker,” Din said as Nia swore under her breath at the error screen’s most recent appearance.

“We can’t afford a hacker. We could barely afford Peli.”

“We could always come back. People that rich don’t abandon their properties. It’ll still be here.”

Nia frowned in the direction of the twin-spires, but before she could respond, the elevator in the middle of the building chimed for the first time since they’d arrived.

They both scrambled for cover, finding some behind support pillars mere seconds before the doors opened.

Din took the safety off his pulse rifle, making eye contact with Nia who had the better vantage. She dared a glance around and then held up a finger.

One person, they could easily take that.

He held up a flat palm before pointing at himself. Wait, me first. She nodded.

He stepped around the pillar, rifle trained on the small, cloaked figure just outside the doors.

“Who are you?” Din demanded, aiming for the shadow of the hood.

The figure walked forward, their gate smooth yet cautious. “What brings a Mandalorian to investigate this place?” the figure asked instead, her voice aged and lightly accented.

“My business is my own. I have no quarrel with you.”

“We will have a quarrel if you do not tell me why you are here, bounty hunter. You and your accomplice behind the pillar.”

Blaster out, Nia stepped around the pillar. “He asked you a question–who are you?”

The figure stared at her, as if in shock, then said, "Niæna?"

The figure pushed her hood back to reveal an older human woman with a head of curly grey hair and a long scar through one eye.

Nia dropped her blaster.

“Anella?”

Chapter 8: The End

taglist: @loversandantiheroes ; @kelenloth ; @keeper0fthestars ; @sarahjkl82-blog ; @thirstworldproblemss ; @spideysimpossiblegirl ; @i-belong-in-fandoms ; @gallowsjoker ; @nova646 ; @darnitdraco

#The Mandalorian #Din Djarin #Pedro Pascal #Din Djarin x ofc #mando x ofc #din djarin x oc #mando x oc #din djarin fanfiction #soulmate au #star crossed #my writing

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managedmischiefs · 4 years

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north//chapter two

ta da! chapter two for you! I am so incredibly close to finishing writing this fic (I’m halfway through the second to last chapter) and once that’s done, I have a shit ton of editing to do. I’m sure that will take a while but it will just be jazzing up the writing style and cementing the plot holes. once I’m done then I’ll have a set posting schedule and I’ll let u know what it is.

again, if you want to be added to the tag list then comment under this post or send me a message! thank you for reading and enjoy. please leave feedback, it makes me vv happy!!

genre: fluff

pairing: season nine spencer reid x female oc

warnings: none! fluff!

word count: 4.7k

SPENCER

"Reid."

I struggle to hold in a groan as I hear Hotch calling my name from his office when I try to leave the bullpen after returning from our most recent case. Alex gives me an understanding smile, one that says sorry you can’t get out of here as quickly as the rest of us, collecting her go-bag and heading into the elevator. Rossi pats my shoulder as I head up the small staircase to Hotch's office, closing the door behind me as I enter. I don't say anything as I enter, for fear of incriminating myself for whatever it is I’ve probably done wrong. After all, I’ve never been called in here to be given a pat on the back and thanked for my hard work. It’s always been to be scolded for whatever reason. So I figure for now I’ll just stay quiet until I’ve been told what the issue is.

Hotch just barely glances up from the paperwork he's doing as I stand in front of him, my bag in my hand, lingering by the closed door so I can make a quick getaway when this ends. "Is everything okay with you?"

"Yes," I say, probably a bit too quickly for him to actually believe it’s true. "Everything is fine,"

Hotch sets down his pen and stares up at me with the same intimidating, stoic expression he always has. "Reid, you were very distracted throughout this last case. You clearly weren't focused. It didn’t impact your work very much but it nearly did. One slip up means catastrophe and we can’t afford that. We can’t afford our personal lives mixing with our work lives. You know that,"

"It won't happen again,"

It's true. It won’t happen again. I’ll text Amelia and two things could happen. She could either ignore me and therefore, my infatuation with her will dissipate because I'll have no fuel to my emotional fire. Sure, that situation will hurt incredibly bad but at least I’ll have some level of closure and I’ll be able to block her out from my mind. On the other hand, she could answer my text and I'll get to see her again, and my thirst to see her again will be quenched and I won't be so plagued with a single image of her. I won’t be left to daydream of her blonde hair and her blue sweater and white nail polish. I’ll be able to see her again and hear her voice and learn more about her. But that’s contingent on if she actually answers my text. That is if I can actually get myself to reach out to her and not get swallowed up in self-doubt and anxiety.

"Good," Hotch picks up his pen again and gets back to work, ducking his head almost completely out of my view. And just when I think this conversation is over and I can get home at a reasonable time, he speaks again. "So who is she?"

My eyes widen slightly, but I manage to compose myself before my face gives away too much. My hands tighten around the leather strap of my messenger bag and I clear my throat. "Excuse me?"

Hotch gives me the tiniest of smiles, not even lifting his head or stopping his work. "I can tell. Who is she?"

I run my fingers through my hair and let out an exasperated sigh, and I know that no lie I could try and come up with would get past him. So I guess I’ll just tell him the truth and hope that he won’t ask too many questions now or in the future, if anything even transpires in the future. "Just some girl I met when I was getting coffee,"

"Must be some girl if she's been on your mind for four days," Hotch remarks. "Well, you better text her now that we're back. Head home and get sleep. That's an order,"

///

It takes me hours to actually grow the courage to text Amelia. I get back to my apartment after leaving work and I shower, do laundry, eat dinner, and read a few books before I even think about reaching for my phone. But even after I reach for it, I pick it up and put it down a few times before I force myself to sit down on the couch and open up my contacts to search for Amelia’s name.

I type and retype my message to Amelia what feels like a million times, but it actually turns out to be seven times. I wind up sending her a simple text, and even after seven attempts at a perfect message, it still feels completely wrong.

Hey, it's Spencer. We finished the case and I'm back home.

I should have said more or maybe less. Well, she told me not to text her until I got back home so isn’t it implied by the existence of the text that I’m home? Did I need to reiterate that I’m home by putting it into words for her? And she has my number so she knows it’s me texting her. I didn’t really need to tell her my name again.

I stand from the sticky leather couch and cross my apartment, standing in front of one of my many bookshelves, searching for a book to read. I might as well read to distract myself from the text that surely just ruined any chance I had with the most beautiful, interesting, and intriguing girl I’ve ever met. But before I can even find a book that is compelling enough to distract me, my phone dings. I audibly gasp, and I almost hit myself for acting like this. I've never been like this. It's dumb, really, to be acting like this. But no matter how dumb I try to convince myself I’m being, I can’t help the excitement that bubbles up in me as I rush back to my couch to grab my phone. Is this what it's like to be a teenager and have your first crush? Is this what it's like to stay up late and talk to your crush on the phone, having to whisper to not wake your parents? Is that what this is like?

how did the case go?

It's an interesting question and I'm surprised she even asked. I'm not sure what I was expecting her to say, but it wasn't that. Maybe I'd expected a text about the four day gap in communication, but nothing. Just a simple question about the case. It still takes me too long to answer as I grapple, yet again, to come up with a proper text.

It went pretty well considering the circumstances. It was an abduction case of a few women and we managed to save all the women in the end.

She responds almost immediately this time. Was she sitting and watching her phone and waiting for me to respond? Is that something people do in this situation? Is that what I’m supposed to be doing? Should I call Penelope and ask for advice on this? No. Absolutely not. The entire team would know in minutes and that’s the last thing I want.

that's great! good job. it's always nice to hear of good outcomes. I hear about way too many cases with horrible outcomes.

I'm about to type a response, but she sends another text before I can.

will you be getting coffee tomorrow?

Most likely. Why?

do you want to get coffee with me? we could talk a bit more before you have to go to work

I can't help the smile that comes to my face. She actually wants to see me again. Even after I didn't text her for four days, she still wants to see me. She asked me out. That has never been my luck.

There's a small tinge of doubt that starts to grow within me. The Pessimist in me starts to scream, telling me to run in the other direction. It’s telling me to delete her number and curl up in bed and never go to that cafe ever again, just so I know I’ll never see her again. The Pessimist is telling me to stop talking to this angel and not get her tangled up in this horrible job that I'm enveloped in. Too many people have been hurt because of me and I don't want to ruin another innocent life. But I can't help the way I get excited when I see her name pop up on my phone, and I can't stop my shaky hands whenever her face renters my brain. It's wrong, I know it is, but I can't help myself. So against my better judgment, I respond.

I'd love to get coffee with you. I'll meet you there at 8?

sounds perfect! see you then

I barely sleep at all that night. I doze off a few times on the couch with a book my book falling onto my stomach, but that's all. I'm far too excited to see Amelia again to actually spend more than an hour asleep at a time.

It takes me almost an hour to get dressed. I just can't decide what to wear. It takes me an hour to decide on an outfit, and I wind up wearing clothes that I would wear to work on any normal day, not on a day where I’m meeting a pretty girl for coffee (and tea). A button-up, a tie, a sweater vest, a peacoat jacket, jeans, and my beat up black converse. Yet again, it feels like it's not enough but god only knows what today could have in store for me. Plus, it's cold and I don't feel like freezing to death on my walk to the cafe.

I grab everything I could need for my walk and sling my messenger bag over my shoulder before locking up my apartment. I almost stumble down the stairs in my daydreaming daze but manage to keep my feet steady, letting out a breath and calming myself down as much as I can. I’ll need to be as calm as I can when I arrive because I know I won’t have much opportunity to when I get there.

I arrive at 7:45 and stand on line, waiting patiently to get to the barista. I order my coffee and then relay Amelia's tea order as well, the one I had noticed in her hand five days ago. Once I pay for the drinks, I sit down in the same booth we had been in previously and hope that Amelia will have the same thought process as me and will find me here.

I'm determined to make myself seem more comfortable than I was last time, so I put my messenger bag aside and straighten my tie around my neck. I make sure it's even with the hem of my sweater vest and smoothen down my pants, then run my fingers through my hair to make sure it's not too unruly. I've gotten a new haircut recently and I'm not too fond of it. The sides are too short and the top is too long but I haven't gotten a chance to go back to the barber to get it fixed. I'm not sure how to style it yet but I guess I have to figure it out eventually. But once I’ve dealt with my appearance, I roll my shoulders to loosen them up and take a few sips of my coffee, hoping that the caffeine will course through my veins at rapid speed.

"Hi, Spencer," Amelia pops up beside me with her stunning smile, pouring out her energy onto the table and setting the tone for the morning. Maybe I won’t even need my coffee if she’s with me.

I take a refreshing breath as soon as I see her, smiling back. I push myself out of the booth in an attempt to greet her properly, as best as I can. "Hi, Amelia,"

Despite it being five incredibly long days after our first meeting, Amelia is just as stunning to me now as she was before. Her skin is glowing and her eyes are still harnessing the beauty of the ocean. Her hair is up in a bun today, just a little bit messy but just perfect enough to be put together. She's wearing a black turtleneck with a red plaid skirt, black stockings, and the same black heeled boots as before. There's no camera around her neck today, but I see the straps of her leather backpack around her shoulders and I assume it's tucked away in there. Her nails are yellow now and her fingers are still full of rings, and now that her hair is up, I notice a handful of piercings in each of her ears. She looks different, sure, but I still have to keep myself from swooning at the mere sight of her.

"Okay," Amelia holds her hands out in front of me, as if halting me from coming any closer, "so I was thinking about you when you were off at work-"

That's nowhere near the end of her sentence, but it catches my attention the most. I couldn't stop thinking about her, but she was actually thinking about me. Maybe she was thinking about my coffee order and my tie and my messenger bag like I was thinking about her heels and her blonde hair and her choice of tea. It's not one-sided. I've never been successful with girls but I somehow did something to this girl to make her think about me and to wait for my text and actually want to respond. What could I have possibly done?

"Or more specifically," she corrects herself, "about how you don't like shaking hands and I totally agree with you. I looked up more statistics on handshaking and it's so disgusting and so germy and I totally get why you hate it and, honestly, I don’t blame you one bit. So," she annunciates the word with a huge smile, and she bounces just a little bit on her toes out of excitement. That sight is truly the most adorable sight I think I’ve ever seen. "I came up with alternatives,"

I furrow my eyebrows. "Alternatives?"

"Yeah! For handshaking," Amelia tells me, her excitement never faltering. "I thought maybe we could high five, but that wasn't my favorite option because it’s kinda lame, and it’s still touching hands, just for a really short time. We could fist bump, or we could elbow bump, or we could do like," she holds up her hand with her pinky out, "almost like a pinky promise but then I thought that, again, it's still technically touching hands, but we're not covering as much surface area as a whole handshake would. And, of course, I'd assume that hugs are off the table, which is fine. As much as I love hugging, I get that hugging strangers is super weird so it’s not that big of a deal to me." Amelia lets out a loud breath as she finishes her speech, a speech similar to the ones I deliver daily to my coworkers, and as she speaks, my smile grows and grows and I can’t seem to stop it. "That was a lot all at once. Sorry about that,”

"No, it's okay," I tuck my hands in my pockets and bow my head, trying to wipe the stupid grin off my face. "It's actually really, um, it's really sweet that you put so much thought into how to greet me. Most people think I’m weird because I don’t like shaking hands,”

Amelia presses her lips together in a shy smile and she just bounces on her toes once more before her eyes dart towards the growing line of people towards the front of the cafe. "I should go get on line before it gets too long. I'll-"

"Actually, I-"

"Spencer!"

My cheeks turn pink as the barista shouts out my name with impeccable timing, cutting off Amelia’s sentence. "I noticed your order when we met and I ordered your tea when I ordered my coffee, if you don’t mind. I hope it’s okay,”

"That's really sweet of you, Spencer, thank you," I find some sort of odd comfort in the way that Amelia seems to get shy at my tiny gentlemanly gesture. Maybe the comfort comes in knowing that I’m not the only one who’s getting bashful.

"Sit, I'll go grab them," I gesture back to the table before rushing off to grab both of our piping hot drinks, hurrying through the growing line of customers before they can cool off too much. I sit back down and slide the cup over to Amelia, which she grabs with a grateful smile. "So how are you?"

Amelia takes the first sip of her tea as I pull off the top of mine and blow gently. "I'm pretty great, actually. The weather isn't so nice out today so I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get that many good pictures. What about you?"

"I'm," I weigh my options of what I could say for a moment, "happy to be here,"

Amelia's eyes widen slightly and her cheeks get pink as she hides in a long drink of her tea, but I can't tell if her blush that's because of her scolding drink or because of my implication that I’m happy to be with her. "So, Mr. FBI, tell me more about you. I know we don't have too much time but I wanna know more about you," she goes quiet then, giving me her full attention. Her eyes are locked with mine and she's facing me straight on, giving me her full and undivided attention. I don’t give myself enough time to get anxious over this attention and I just focus on trying to tell her the basic details about myself that seem to be most prominent in my life.

"Well, I'm a behavioral profiler for the FBI, but you already know that," I almost roll my eyes at how dumb it was for me to say that first, because Amelia already knew that, but I move on just as quick as I did when I sent her that stupid text with my name in it yesterday. "I have an IQ of 187,"

Amelia's eyes go wide and she quickly sets her cup down, nearly slamming her hands down on the table as her jaw falls open in disbelief. "You're serious?"

I laugh at her reaction, even if her reaction is much more dramatic than the ones I’m used to seeing from police officers and other FBI agents. But at least her first reaction isn’t to call me weird or freaky for being so abnormally smart. "Yes, actually. And I can read 20,000 words per minute. I've got three Ph.D.’s and three BA's,"

"Oh my god," she puts her elbows on the table and presses her fingers into her temples, "I'm in the presence of a literal genius! I don't even deserve to be sitting at this table," her words contradict her body language though because despite what she's saying, she seems to become more comfortable and sinks impossibly further into the leather booth. "So," she takes a breath and drops her hands from her head, collecting herself just a little bit, "you're a doctor?"

"Yes," I say, taking the first sip of my coffee, now cooled off enough for me to actually drink it, "but not a medical doctor,"

"So you're Doctor Spencer-" her voice trails off and her eyebrows raise as she expects me to fill in the blank.

"Reid,"

"Doctor Spencer Reid," she says it as if she's testing out the way it rolls off her tongue. And if I thought if my first name coming out of her mouth sounded magnificent before, my full name escaping her lips so effortlessly sounds breathtaking and glorious. I almost miss it when she speaks again because I’m so caught up in trying to recreate the sound of her voice in my head. "Wow. You work for the FBI, you're a genius, you're a doctor with three Ph.D.’s, is there anything you can't do?"

I choose not to answer that because I could give a laundry list of things I can't do. But this is not the time to be self-deprecating. I want Amelia to actually like me, not be scared away by my incompetence. But thankfully, before I can try to think of anything to say to pivot the conversation to a new topic, Amelia does it for me.

"And what else? That's just work stuff. Tell me about you as a person. Your hobbies, that kinda stuff,"

"Well, I read a lot," I tell her. "I always have books with me. I like classical music," I take another second to think, my eyes wandering around the relatively empty cafe as I struggle to think of more things about myself that would seem intriguing and wouldn’t make me seem completely lame. But I’m starting to get the impression that Amelia doesn’t think that way. She hasn’t given me any reason to believe that she thinks I’m weird, even as I reveal more and more details about myself. "I like magic,"

"Magic?" Amelia smirks, the topic clearly piquing her interest. "I didn't peg you as a magician, Dr. Reid,"

"Well, I'm from Las Vegas so it's kind of imperative that I know some magic tricks,"

"Then you'll just have to show me some tricks next time, won't you?"

Next time.

"Y-Yeah," I stutter out, trying not to sound too taken aback by the revelation that she is willing to see me again, "I'll come prepared next time." Amelia beams at my response and now that she’s distracted, I figure now is the perfect time to divert the conversation away from me. "Okay, now you go. Tell me about you and your hobbies,"

"Oh, okay," she wiggles in her seat from excitement, brushing her fallen pieces of hair behind her ear when they stick to her long lashes and obstruct her sight, "art is what I find myself doing the most. It’s my job but it’s also my main hobby, considering I’ve already told you I walk around with my camera a lot. But apart from art, I really love thrift shopping. I don’t know if that qualifies as a hobby but I really love seeing what I can find. I have this system that I follow and it’s top secret but it ensures you find something really good every time. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day. Other than that, I’m a Taurus. I moved here right after college with my best friends but I live alone now. What else? This is lame but my favorite color is-”

"Yellow," I cut her off but I barely even mean to.

Amelia's smile falters for a moment, but then it grows even bigger than before. "Y-Yeah, it is. How'd you know? Well, you're a profiler and you’re supposed to notice behavior but how do you know what my favorite color is based off of my behavior?"

"The scarf on your head five days ago had a pattern on it but was mostly yellow. The rings you were wearing also had yellow in them, as do the ones on your fingers now," she glances down at them as I talk. "Your nails are also painted yellow now, but they were white before and they weren't chipped. That means that you took the white polish off and changed it to yellow even though the white polish was perfectly fine. So that means your favorite color is yellow,"

"You-" she lets out a breath, absolutely baffled, "you remember the scarf I was wearing and that my nail polish wasn't chipped?"

"Yeah," I bob my head up and down in a nod, clutching my coffee cup tighter in my hands, "ironically enough, I forgot to mention that I have an eidetic memory,"

Amelia tilts her head to the side. "What's that?"

"It's also widely known as a photographic memory. I can see or read something once and then I'll remember it. I don’t necessarily remember every word of a conversation but I remember books I read and I’ll remember our texts and I remember what we were both wearing-"

"It's why you remembered my order," she has a moment of realization, her fingers curling around her almost empty cup of tea. "You just keep getting more and more impressive, Dr. Reid. But unfortunately," I see her eyes wander over to the watch on my wrist, "you're not the only one who remembers things. This is about the time you left last time,"

"You'd be correct," I sigh begrudgingly, my hand slowly reaching for my bag, dreading the fact that I have to go to work yet again and leave her warm presence. I know I can’t possibly leave her without expressing my need to see her again. So once I’ve managed to get my bag over my head and inhale deeply, I quickly blurt out the first sentence that pops into my head that articulates my thoughts. "I'd love to do this again,"

"You better! You need to wow me with your magic skills!" Amelia exclaims with a casual tone to her voice that makes me wonder if I even needed to tell her that I wanted to see her again. Maybe she just expected that we would see each other again. "Tomorrow, same time? Of course, that’s contingent on your job. If you have to work then it’s fine. We can rain check,"

"That sounds like a plan to me,” The giddiness and the excitement build up in me as I stand and wait for her to button up her jacket. She flashes me her millionth smile of the morning as we head towards the door, and I make sure to hold the door open for her to make sure she gets out first. "So I'll text you or call you later and let you know if I get a case,"

"I'll be waiting,"

We pause in front of the window of the cafe, just waiting for one of us to initiate a proper goodbye. But nothing seems to feel right after the perfect morning we had. No smile, or wave, or verbal greeting can wrap up an encounter so absurdly perfect. But then as I see Amelia glance down at her shoes and as she lets her anxieties shine through for one of the first times since I met her, I remember what she had told me when she first arrived at the cafe this morning. I hold up my hand with my pinky sticking out, and I'd do anything to immortalize the smile that comes to Amelia's face in that exact moment.

"I knew you'd like this one," she murmurs to herself happily, even though I can obviously hear her, wrapping her warm pinky around mine. "I'll talk to you soon, Dr. Reid,"

"You know, you can call me Spencer," I respond, reluctantly letting go of her hand as she takes a step in the direction opposite to where I need to go.

"I'll think about it," she smirks and turns on her heels, bouncing on her toes again before rushing down the sidewalk. I watch her go, too entranced by her to even move or think about attempting to catch my train. Every tiny detail about her draws me into her world and just watching her walk away makes me want to run up and sweep her off her feet, literally and metaphorically. Leaving her is the most disappointing thing I can think of, and all I want is to drag her back into the cafe and back to the booth and sit down and talk for hours upon hours. But I shake my head at my intrusive thoughts and force myself to turn around and get to the metro before I miss my train. I can't afford to be late. I can't afford anyone asking questions.

///

We got a case today. I'll be headed to LA for a couple of days. Raincheck on coffee and tea?

coffee and tea and magic tricks! don't you dare forget magic tricks!

if you’ve read this far then please let me know your favorite color. i really wanna know. thank u sm. also let me know what you thought of the chapter. love u all <3333

TAGLIST

@etheralgubler @babybobbybones @whollytaciturn @reidswords @thegingerfairchild @matthewreid @shrimpyblog @garcias-batcave @anamelessfacelessnerd

#nikos north fic #nikos writing #spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid x oc #matthew gray gubler #mgg

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pebblysand · 4 years

Text

OF CRYSTAL ROSES (EXTENDED AUTHOR’S NOTE OF CHAPTER VI. OF CASTLES)

-- TO READ THE CHAPTER ITSELF, SEE HERE ON AO3 --

well, well, well. here we are. spoiler alert, gryffindors make plans they don’t stick to, lolz. all the good intentions in the world, i had. study, i said i would. yet, here were find ourselves, eighteen thousand words later. this appears to be how i roll. slept about five hours last night, too, so apologies if i’m slightly non-sensical/rambly. this chapter ought to be sponsored by deliveroo and teapigs tea, a brand of tea that appeared in my local supermarket a few moths ago and that i steadily refused to buy because - can tea really be worth this much? low and behold, once you’ve tried it once, it appears to be addictive. i’ve, while writing this chapter, worked my way through about four packs of their different teas - they are just this good. i have a job interview tomorrow so wish me luck in gaining employment which will hopefully fund my expensive habits.

now, before we get into the nitty gritty of the chapter, itself, i just needed to say this: i cannot thank everyone enough for the incredible response on last chapter. i’d kind of grown accustomed to getting a couple of reviews for each of them and to writing in my little corner of the internet but boy, you guys are bloody legends! i am so overwhelmed with gratitude for everyone who commented, kudo-ed and generally gave love to this fic in general. i really didn’t expect such a response and it’s meant the world to me. i think it’s probably also the reason why i’m posting so early because i kept being like, god, i can’t leave this many people waiting in this cliffhanger hell. i think this chapter ends on a more positive note (although, i’ll let you judge), one that might be more conducive of a few weeks’ wait (more on that below), haha.

this being said, as i explained on here before, i come from very tiny fandoms where basically everyone knows each other and the number of people reading would usually fit in my flat. the fact that over 80 people are now subscribed to this fic just blows my fucking mind. you’re all magnificent and i love you. i try to respond to all the comments so let’s keep chatting if you feel like it (although, no pressure - comment if you want to, but do know that it makes me very happy when you do :)). you’re all fabulous and i wish you all the best!

anyway, spoilers for castles, chapter vi under the cut.

guys, guys, guys, i am so tired. i’ve spent four days editing almost 20,000 words and my brain is fried. but, we are officially at the halfway point of this story, yaaaay!!! my plan, at this point, is that we’ll have six chapters on each side but even if i do end up splitting this one later (more on this below) i’ll end up with seven chapters on each side so either way - yay to the end of act 1!

i think that’s also why i tried to turn this chapter around this quickly. to me, i always kind of saw this fic as having two parts. part 1: the immediate post-war aftermath with the heartache and the love-fast/burn-fast start to harry/ginny. part 2: a slow and actually healthy rebuild of their relationship, and of the world around them. i have genuinely been writing towards that last harry/ginny scene in this chapter for months. it feels like such a relief to finally have that weight off my shoulders. and i actually do think it’ll allow me to focus on study later. act one is finished, and act two can wait a bit, i suppose.

now, obviously, given that i already apologised last time, part of me still wants to apologise for the length of this chapter, even more so, actually. it sits at about 18,000 words which, by nanowrimo’s standards, is over a third of a full book, wtf. yet, you guys also said last time that you didn’t actually mind long chapters, so perhaps i shouldn’t beat myself up too much?

as i said in the a/n, this is a little bit of different set up than chapter v. though. i know exactly where to split this. as you’ve probably seen by now, there’s a very natural split point after harry has his breakdown on the couch with ginny, before Christmas properly "starts." the reason i didn’t split this one there, though is: a) selfish: i needed to get this out. stop working on it. i need to study. when it’s out, i’m not thinking about it anymore. it would have been a bit non sensical to split this just for the sake of it and post two chapters at once, which means i probably would have held onto the second part for another couple of weeks, and fuck that. additionally, b) you may not have noticed this but: the chapter titles rhyme. why did i bring this additional difficulty upon myself, i do not fucking know. especially because i will soon run out of one-word construction materials to draw from, lol. as a result, though, i need an even number of chapters to close out this story and because i’m sort of planning six chapters from now to the end (more on that below) i can’t really split this one right now. like, if i end up with another overlong chapter in the next few months, i probably will take that opportunity and go back and split this one, just for readability. but at this stage, at this stage, because i don’t know how many chapters i’ll have for act two (six or seven), i’m keeping this chapter like this for the time being. i kind of hope i end up with seven chapters on the other side and am able to split this one down the line, but we will see. in the meantime, my most sincere apologies to the folks who read fanfiction before bed and it’s now 4 am by the time you’ve finished this. i’ve been there before, believe me.

from a personal standpoint, though, i have to say, this chapter (compared to the last one) was incredibly easy to write. i think i’d spent so much time imagining and writing these scenes in my head as kind of a culminating point for the first half of the story, that it quite simply poured out. i did have a little bit of an everything is shit crisis yesterday and today, but sure look, that always happens. overall, i am quite happy - i think - with the end result.

now, when i say "easy to write" i mean, technically, easy to find words to write down what was in my head. i do not mean: easy to write on an emotional level. oh boy. i’m generally not a crier. i have been asked, a number of times, by people who said my writing made them cry: do you cry when you write, too? and my answer was always ‘no’. i don’t judge, but i’m just not that kind of person. i know people who cry every day but personally, we are in the middle of a pandemic, my father recently passed away, i’ve lost my job and am studying for an exam my life is pretty dependent upon, and i haven’t cried in months. yet, i swear, there were a couple of times, both writing this and editing it, when i had to step away from the screen because i could feel a lump in my throat. that had never happened to me before. i didn’t, like, bawl or anything but god i felt it. i don’t know if it’s because it’s my first time killing an oc, someone who was really mine but boy. giulia. i kept trying to find ways not to kill her, or apologising to her. to me, she’s tom’s last victim and that really, fucking hurts. if you’re hurting too, i don’t really know what to tell you. i’m sorry, i suppose. her death was needed for … plot purposes, lol. god, i’m the worst haha.

re:harry/ginny: i must say i really like where they end up, at the end of this. i had planned this to a certain extent. i was always under the impression that they would talk over christmas, but not get back together. however, the reason why they weren’t getting back together, in my head, was initially quite different. i initially didn’t have ginny dating someone else. i think i mentioned i was toying with the idea in the a/n for last chapter, but at the time i wasn’t truly sold on it. then, i ended up writing the scene i’d originally planned for them and it didn’t quite fit. what i’d planned, at the time, felt rather ooc for ginny when actually on paper. on the other hand, harry, under my fingertips, kept trying to kiss her and i kept hitting the delete button. i swear, i know it sounds weird to people who might not be writers but sometimes, your characters really do seem to have their own agendas. when i caved, let him kiss her, then the scene took on a different meaning, and, i hope, a better one. i think something clicked there and it feels like a good place for act one to end. obviously, they’ll get back together cause this follows cannon so you know, not much suspense there. it’s more about the how than the what, to me.

re:ginny’s letters: this idea came to me a while ago, actually. i was thinking that they’d need to talk about what happened last year, but i was kind of struggling on the how. having character a tell a story to character b is always a bit difficult, in writing, because it can quickly end up being boring. like, when ginny tells harry about christmas last year and lupin, in this chapter, telling that in dialogue is already rather long an laborious, and it’s overall such a short story. for harry, it’s easy. i’m in his head so he can just say ‘he told her about the hallows’ and the dialogue can be about their reaction, rather than the events itself. but ginny, she needs to share facts, as well as feelings. and doing that through long monologues just didn’t appeal. first, it’s quickly boring and second, it’s also kind of ooc. she’s not giulia, you see.

i did entertain the idea of completely skimming past it. ‘she told him about last year and he was horrified.’ - moving on. but, i don’t know, that didn’t feel quite right either, because i think they need to exchange, and talk, and that just felt like a copout. also, to be honest, it’s a very difficult story to tell. like, i’ve seen people in fics being like ‘so, harry sat down all of the weasleys and told them everything the trio did in seventh year,’ and i’m like that’s so difficult, though. sitting someone down and telling them all about your trauma, with little preamble, just setting it all out there, i can’t imagine ginny (or, frankly, most people) actually doing that, you know? we reveal bits of ourselves bit by bit, not all at once.

then, it hit me: she’s a writer, isn’t she? at least, she is canonically in first year, with not only the diary but also the poems, then writing for the prophet. obviously, the diary thing would have riled her up a bit but i do think in the end, she would probably have been like: no, i won’t let him take writing away from me, you know? so yeah, letters. daily letters. you won’t see all of them in next chapter, but probably quotes from the most important ones, things that harry reads. that’s where he gets his facts about her story last year, and then they can focus on their feelings about it. fab! something to look forward to, haha.

now, re: the future. as i said, we are entering act two. act two will gradually become more "fun" and fluffy, i suppose, but i won’t lie, we will be keeping the same happy/sad vibe that a lot of you have commented on with this fic. it exists for a reason (as i said, life is about sex, but it’s also about funerals). as i said before, this fic is, above all, an exploration of what ‘all was well’ actually means.

this being said, this isn’t an 8th year fic. there is a very specific future pov from which this fic is being narrated, and that’s in october 2027 (i know, precise). obviously i have 28 years to get through in act two so that will affect the way that the timeline is designed. it will obviously be more spread out, especially in the later chapters. this being said, while i have about a million of ideas for all the space in between and a very clear view of what the last chapter will be, the exact layout of each chapter is still slightly blurry. i haven’t sat down to put all my ideas in chronological order yet, as well as into some sort of chapter structure, which is also why i can’t really tell if it’ll be six or seven chapters in the end. all of this to say, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done.

this means that, as i said in the a/n, i don’t think you’ll get next chapter until at least, may. please don’t think that this means i’ll be abandoning this fic or anything, it’s just that i’ll be doing work you probably won’t see. i’m probably going to take the rest of march off writing to study (bar maybe a roar-series Harry&Hermione friendship one shot? maybe) then take april to plan and write as much of the next chapters i possibly can. ideally, by the end of april i can have a first draft of the whole thing. i desperately want to write as much as i can now that I’m jobless in the hopes that when i do find a job (again, interview tomorrow, pray for me), i can just have editing to do at the weekends. but we all know i relate to harry on a very deep level when he says ‘when have our plans ever worked, anyway?’ so we will see, haha.

anyway, these were all the thoughts off the top of my head, re: this chapter. if you have any questions or other things you’d like me to ramble about, feel free to send in questions, my ask box is always open. i know i probably think about this fic (and hp) way too much but i’m an extrovert and my hobbies used to include travelling, pints at the pub, dating and, well, there’s none of that anymore, is there, lol? the uk has stolen our vaccines (fucking brexit) so here’s to being obsessed with fictional worlds i wish i could live in for a while longer,

i will now go and endlessly refresh my email for reviews and kudos, like the attention seeking basic bitch i am haha.

have a fab evening, everyone!

#castles #is out baby #whoop whoop

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aries-writingblog · 3 years

Text

Atlas (4)

Summary: After years of being imprisoned on the Raft, Tony negotiates freedom for his sister Tessa. When she’s free- so is her past, and it will never stop hunting her.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OC(Stark)

Chapter Word count: 1939

Warnings: PTSD (subtle ish), trauma, torture (in later parts), suicidal behaviors and thoughts, mentions of death, character death, injury, violence, angst, and a lil bit of fluff in there

Disclaimer: Atlas is my own, original work with characters belonging to Marvel (except Tessa and Dr. Clifton). Plagiarism is not cool kids.

A/N: this is my first work Im posting to this platform and I’m really excited and nervous about it. Hope you enjoy- constructive criticism is always helpful as well!!

Tony stared at the screen, wondering why he was God’s choice of boxing partners. He had been decoding the intel all night, only becoming increasingly concerned as the data rolled through. There was a surplus of data that encrypted with the title ‘Project Maelstrom’. From what he could tell, it was centered around Tessa. The head of the project was a Dr. J.R. Clifton- the one who was dicking around with things he didn’t understand and caused his baby sister a lot of pain.

What Project Maelstrom seemed to have as a goal was to create more of her. This time on purpose. There were samples of her blood that were torn apart. X rays and documents of medical visits labelled T. Stark. There was even detailed descriptions of the only two missions Tessa had been sent on before she was thrown in the Raft.

Tony would admit- he was curious, burning with the need to read every detail of why she was locked away. Tessa wouldn’t tell him. Ever. And the army never gave a clear reason, just that she was a danger and her whole squad had been killed on a mission. Nothing more, nothing less. When Tony threatened them with a lawsuit, he was told that Tessa would get the death penalty if it went to court. So, he had to play nice.

Instead, he called a meeting at the ass crack of dawn to decide how to play this. He was slightly wary of breaking the news to Tessa, as it was all based around her and her powers, but he figured if he had enough fire extinguishers on hand, everything would be fine. As long as she was contained on one floor. To one room. Maybe we should meet on the roof.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“So... what’s the move?” Tony asked, hesitantly. He was trying to gauge reactions around the room, mostly focused on Tessa. She seemed to lock down as soon as he mentioned the mission reports. She wasn’t surprised or fazed by much of the other intel.

Bucky had also instantly switched his attention from Tony to Tessa as it was brought up. She hadn’t spoken to him since the incident in her room- three days ago. She remained on her floor, although Wanda had convinced her to come down to eat with her, Steve and Vision every day at lunch. Wanda seemed to have that persuasion on her.

He noticed her clam up, keeping her eyes low while Steve began to form a plan, with the help of Natasha and Tony. Bruce was sifting through the medical records produced from the intel, gleaning information to research his own. He had been curious about Tessa’s enhancement but the woman wouldn’t let him near her with any medical or scientific equipment. So, he agreed to wait until she was ready for it.

“What about the mission reports, what do they say?” Steve asked, reaching for the papers. Tessa immediately leapt up, snatching the papers before he could reach them. She looked down at them, seemingly trying to confirm her suspicions before lighting them on fire, letting the ash fall at her feet. She swallowed harshly, meeting Steve’s shocked eyes.

“There’s nothing important in them.” She snapped, dropping the last of the papers. She turned to Tony, anger in her stance. “Did you make more copies of those?” He blinked and shook his head.

“There’s the original on the drive Wilson brought back.” He answered, already aware of what she would ask him to do next.

“Delete it.” She hissed, spinning on her heel and stomping out of the room. Tony nodded, even though she had already slammed the door shut.

“Anyone want to check on her?” Tony offered. There was a hesitance in the way Bucky stood up, pushing his chair back. Tony’s eyes narrowed and zeroed in on the hulking mass of a man. “Anyone else- cause, not to be petty but he’s already killed the rest of my family and I’d like to keep what I have left around for a while.”

Bucky’s expression didn’t alter but he felt the sting of the comment. Nevertheless, he sat back down, pulling his chair in, clasping his hands on the table and keeping his gaze on them.

“Tony...” Steve chided, anger and self righteous indignation in his tone. Tony rolled his eyes before turning back to the papers. None of them could refute the obvious. Everyone was aware of the obvious- the Winter Soldier responsible for the death of the Starks- and they were aware of Tony’s less than forgiving attitude toward the recovering soldier himself.

“Whatever- just let her go, maybe she’ll blow up the top floor and set fire to my belongings.” He responded, grumbling as he began the presentation again.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Days later, Tessa was still being temperamental. Bucky had not spoken to her, Tony had been locked out of her apartment. The only ones she let in were Sam and Wanda. Sam attempted to soothe her, trying to help her make sense of her head and emotions. Wanda ensured she was eating regularly and trying to help her make sense of her powers. She knew a thing or two about out of control enhancements.

Bucky had been upset, moping around his shared apartment mostly because he was unable to talk to the person he had feelings for. The one person who he felt actually wanted him around. Steve took notice after the umpteenth sigh and ensured him that he would try to set it up for him.

“What’s that supposed to mean, jackass?” Bucky’s nose scrunched up and a wrinkle presented itself on his forehead. Steve rolled his eyes and tossed his paper to the table.

“I mean, on the mission. I’ll make you two partners. Someone has to be responsible for her, a guardian when she’s on the field, and you two got... close.” Steve began folding towels, turning his back to his roommate. Bucky blinked twice before snorting. Steve turned back around to see him pouting. “Oh- what is it, you’ve been moping around for days now- what happened between you and Tessa that’s got your panties in a twist?”

“First off- what the fuck my guy?” Bucky’s hands flicked toward him before resting on the table he sat at. “And second, it’s none of your business.”

Steve almost called bullshit. He could see that Bucky was bursting at the seams, almost exploding with his problem. The guy was the best at sneaking around to find intel or perform his espionage but ask him about a girl he had a crush on and the man would spill like a can on a car. Steve knew just what to say to get him to talk- it would only take him asking once more and Bucky would spill his guts.

“Okay... all I’m saying is that you two were helping each other. The progress you made when you started hanging out was phenomenal- exponential almost.” Steve commented, nonchalantly and kept folding his towels. Only a few more seconds now and...

“She doesn’t sleep well.” Bucky started. Steve mentally congratulated himself on being able to manipulate Bucky into talking- the same way Bucky was able to manipulate Steve into doing his share of chores. “And so I’d see her in the kitchen at night when I couldn’t sleep and we started talking. Then she gave me her dog tags, because I said I never got mine back. And my heart exploded. Steve- I’d never thought I’d feel like this again. I just want to make her happy- I want to see her smile and I want to be around her- I want to talk to her.”

Steve knew the importance of the relationship when Bucky stressed that point. Bucky never went out of his way to join a conversation or even speak to someone. It always had to be initiated by the other party and even then it was one sided. Bucky hated talking to other people. So to actually want to talk to her... Steve felt that progress was being made.

“And then, after the mission... she let me touch her.” Bucky sat back in his chair, remembering how he held her tightly. Remembering how she latched to him, like her was her life line. In a way, he was in that moment. “She let me comfort her and hold her... then she fell asleep and had a nightmare and set my shirt on fire.” Steve’s eyes widened as he whirled around to face him. Bucky was quick to defend her. “It was an accident- she apologized but... I think it hit too close to home for her. She kicked me out and she hasn’t spoken to me in days. What am I supposed to do now? I’ve grown so close to her and now... she won’t even look my way. I thought she had the same feelings but, maybe I was just caught up in my emotions, remembering what it felt like to have feelings for a woman.”

“I don’t think it’s that, Buck.” Steve assured him. He’d seen the glances Tessa gave him. She’d greet him with a ‘good morning’ and already have his coffee mug down with coffee in it. “Maybe she’s just scared. She doesn’t have a good control over her powers and she set you on fire. She just needs time, you both need to be patient with the other. It’s not gonna be easy.”

“I know that... I just- I want to jump straight into this feeling but she’s holding back... and I don’t know how to help her.” Bucky muttered. Steve had seen this before- granted it wasn’t the same reason. It was when they were teenagers and a senior girl had been stringing Bucky along because he was the best looking in the sophomore class. Poor Bucky actually had feelings for the girl but she was just trying to prove a point to her friends. But he knew Tessa was holding back for a different reason. A selfless reason.

“Just try and understand her side. If she gives you the chance, explain how you feel.” Steve couldn’t believe that he was giving Bucky girl advice. It used to be so different went they were younger. “Maybe flowers- buy her flowers to show that you’re not pissed about catching fire.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Everyone suited up?" Tony asked, tossing his glasses onto the seat beside his iron man armor. Steve and Natasha were sitting in the pilot seats, switching buttons and levers, preparing for takeoff. Sam was doing last minute repair work on Redwing, while Bucky sat beside him trying to hold back on jamming his finger directly into Redwing’s circuit board- just to annoy Sam. Wanda and Vision were sitting together reading a book they had borrowed from Laura the last time they had visited Clint. Bruce decided to stay behind, as he usually did. Tessa was the last one on the jet, taking a seat in the far back, hooking herself in and just sitting quietly.

Everyone gave Tony a response- whether it be a grunt, nod, or a ‘fuck off, mom’ from several of the passengers. Tony spared a glance back to Tessa when he didn’t hear a response from her. She was wearing the design he’d made for her. Completely fire proof, black tactical pants with a long sleeved black spandex shirt and black combat boots. She wore a Kevlar vest over the top. She was also decked out in weapons- knives in her belt and boots, a hand gun on each hip and an AR- 15 sitting by her side. He’d wanted to go for the dramatic but Tessa practically cussed him out when she saw his first idea.

“Hey, kiddo.” Tony scooted in beside her, bumping hips as he buckled his harness in. Natasha had announced take off in two minutes so he settled in beside his loving sister for a pep talk. “How you feeling?”

“Did you read those reports?” Tessa questioned, forgoing formalities and small talk. Her dark eyes landed on his face, worry and irritation building up in her brows.

“No, I didn’t. I wanted to because you never talk about it but I didn’t.” Tony sighed as Tessa relaxed slightly into her seat. “I just want to be here for you and you don’t make that easy when you hide things from me.”

“If it makes you feel better I also lie to my therapist.” Tessa cocked her head to the side.

“Well that I can understand.” Tony scoffed, gently elbowing her. Tessa smiled, looking down at her fingers, playing with a string on her fingerless gloves. “I love you, you know that right?” She nodded. “Good. So, just keep your cool this mission, alright? Don’t be afraid of your powers. Don’t be afraid that you’re putting us in danger. We can handle ourselves. And you’re paired with Barnes so just... keep your head down and follow his orders- even though I’d personally like to jab his eyes out.”

“He’s a perfectly nice guy.” Tessa muttered quietly.

“That murdered your parents.” Tony pressured, trying his best to not throw himself into a tirade. “He’s responsible for so much death and destruction-“

“Well so am I...” Tessa shot a glance at Tony, shutting him up instantly. It was the first time she had ever admitted it to him. “He isn’t the only one here with blood on his hands- the whole team is morally grey when it comes to the lives saved and taken. Besides, he wasn’t in his right mind... he’s a good guy.”

Tony could see it- the light blush on her neck and ears. He felt a pit forming in his stomach- she wasn’t falling for the guy, was she? There was so much he didn’t know about his sister from the past six years. That made him feel even worse. She had gone through so much, too much for someone her age to deal with and she wouldn’t even talk about it. So why wouldn’t she fall in love with the first person that actually listened to her- that made time for her.

“Tell you what-“ Tony told her, unsnapping the buckles and standing up. “After this mission- we go to that pizza place you and your friends used to terrorize in high school. Just the two of us. Catch up on everything we’ve missed.” Tessa looked up, meeting his eyes. The dark brown eyes of Howard Stark, passed down to both of his children.

“Sounds nice, Tony.” She agreed. “Stopping for doughnuts on fifth?”

“As many as you want.”

“It’s a deal.”

#james barnes #james buchanan bucky barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x oc #bucky x oc

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ddaenghoney · 5 years

Text

chapter seventeen

masterlist link in blog description.

As a successful songwriter, you want nothing more than the acknowledgment that the chart-topping musical pieces are your own creations. But contracts, relationships, and the difficulty of facing the stakes involved head on, keep your mouth shut until pressure builds too much.

Pairing(s): Park Jimin x Y/N, Min Yoongi x Y/N

disclaimer: any characters depicted do not represent the actual personality of the respected idol in real life.

Series warning(s)/genre(s): Chapter-based written fic, Slow-burn relationship(s), Fake-dating, Unrequited love, Songwriter/producer!oc, idol!Jimin, idol/songwriter/producer!Yoongi, friends with benefits, drama, romance, smut, angst, fluff (updated as needed)

Chapter warning(s): quite a bit of unsettling/paranoia themes around the middle of the chapter (again in regards to stalking from fans). Also, some making out that alludes to more after it !

Word count: 5481

if you enjoy please, please let me know!

Headlines of multiple news sites, trending hashtags, and seemingly hundreds of threads in online forums center around the topic that goes viral the day after. With SoundWave wasting no time to act subtly, choosing to take a blunt rebuttal of the independent release of music, they announce a separation of SUGA from the label. Without offering much other than the central reasoning in the official statement attributing a lack of loyalty, and openly rebellious attitude in the way of involving his personal relationships into his music without consent of the company, Yoongi’s public reputation takes a giant strike.

The primary attitude of his fanbase is startled confusion, as is similarly the feelings of pop culture commenters, who all agree that this action made by SoundCloud seems incredibly rash considering how high of status the title SUGA has in the music industry. A threshold of rumors contaminate social websites, all trying to gauge underlying motivations for the company’s decision to completely drop Min Yoongi from the label, feeling like there has to be more words each side could make but holds back.

With slowly passing weeks of conversation stirring faster from the sensationalized wonder that accumulates in the silence of both involved parties, fandoms grow impatient. A future tour scheduled to begin early next year is obviously squashed, and the subtle hints of new music thrown far from any burner of focus. Worry holds a multitude of loyal fans who are eager for clarification from their favorite idol, but no answers are clearly given. Blurry images of Yoongi to and from SoundWave only serve to prove that there are talks going on, especially when sightings of him and Taehyung begin growing consistent as well as thought to be moving vans relocating assumed sound equipment.

Naturally, frustration builds. Latching in tight grips onto every instance your name or image appears on the internet, angry shouts question your involvement with this entire ordeal. Confused as people are, they have little doubt that you deserve the bulk of blame for this dissent between Yoongi and SoundWave. After all, everything had always seemed steady in growth for SUGA’s career before your public involvement with him.

You realize this isn’t true. So much of the situation still lingers in the darkness, far from cameras and microphones to state the severity of everything that led the sequence of events to this point. You know that this whole problem isn’t entirely your fault, but it feels like it. Words cling to your psyche every time you try to peruse even the filtered social media feed of those you follow on instagram, but the comments still remain and grow on every one of your own posts, making you delete the app after only three days into the chaotic situation.

Apologies become common, though usually squashed within your reply to whenever Yoongi tells you them. Worry brims in his eyes just as well as his chest every time he notices anything off in your expressions that relate to all of the responses online. You’re quick to state that this isn’t his fault either, and not to worry about the silence he’s forced to keep while legal affairs are being handled. You’ve already settled yourself with the high chance that he won’t ever be able to make a statement that gives out the picture, just like you won’t ever be able to without losing every royalty you have.

While the online response does burn on your nerves, you can calm yourself by remembering it will eventually blow over to a new topic. It could take a lot of time, but eventually you’ll be able to not be the villain in every assumed narration of Yoongi being fired from SoundWave. Instead, concern wraps around any thoughts you have towards a new job.

With your work history visibly clean of any ink on your resume, you don’t have much to say to combat the fact. And as such you simply use your degree as well as projects from when you were a college student to talk yourself up. But you aren’t naive-- you realize that the gap of time from you receiving your diploma to the current date unease potential employers.

At this point, you’re no longer surprised. The man sitting across from you sits tapping his pen on papers in front of him. They’re spread in a controlled mess on a folder you brought. His eyes scan the words over, but because of the minute hand on the clock behind him reaching a new number, you’re inclined to believe the silence so far isn’t favorable.

Answering the initial questions isn’t usually difficult. In fact, you believe you win over a few uncertain glances in the way you speak with experience, but any opinion gained usually diminishes at the skinny portfolio you present. Every time you’ve passed it, you also feel underwhelmed by the humble sight of it, garnering none of the weight you should have the thin wings filled with. All of that is within your mind.

All of the tension in your mind fills more and more, contemplating what there is to take away from your meager showings of visible experience. This tension comes to a throbbing disappointment when the majority of those who have looked at the portfolio mention Yoongi’s name under their breath.

A large part of you becomes increasingly defensive from these tiny comments. Controlling your mouth from blurting questions in reply to their intentions is a difficult task, especially when the issues have been consistent. Multiple misinterpretations veil over the actual situation underneath the media’s depictions and what your residual contractual obligations to SoundWave will let you fix.

The man’s eyebrows furrow, his head tilting as something he sees perplexes him. You don’t openly react, simply sitting in the chair, legs not particularly tensely poised on the floor and your back only erect enough to be formal. Posture forgot a few interviews ago in favor of knowing glances at the employers body languages when reading through. This subtle confused realization on his face is familiar, but you smile politely as he gets up stating he needs to step out for a moment. As though he’s the first one to go ask questions about you to other people.

Walking into the lobby from the small meeting room, you do little more than sigh, reaching to rub your shoulder as you contemplate your next action. The man’s voice when he came back to the room and stated you’ll get contact in the future if they’d like to explore job opportunities was entirely monotone, and you can’t even be offended by the fact at this point.

Still, reality weighs on your shoulders, growing uncomfortably nagging, and at quickening paces when televisions like the one hanging on the opposite wall post pop news stations with Yoongi’s pictures and titles of dissention between himself and SoundWave.

“Oh,” A voice from the side disrupts the settling glare in your eyes. Softening your expression to one of surprise you turn your head as a figure comes to you. A smile on her face that seems disingenuous, but fitting when matched with the consistent brand name on each article of clothing apparent. “It was Y/N, right?”

In the medley of companies you set out to try landing jobs at, you didn’t take into consideration their current idols. More interested in just getting a place to continue working. But as Seulgi approached you from the way of the elevators, there’s a piece inside of you somewhat glad you’re likely to be rejected from this one. “Yeah.”

“What a coincidence to run into you here.” She says as she places her phone in her handbag. “Looking for work? Heard that you’ve taken a chance at the music production world.”

For the sake of pleasantry, you don’t irritably sigh from having to deal with this immediately following an unsatisfying industry. Instead just shrug your shoulder, “Something like that.”

“Guess it hasn’t been going well,” You’re unable to stop your eyebrows from narrowing at her, but Seulgi is unhindered from your evidently growing annoyance. “It’s a hard thing getting through scandals, especially when you don’t have anything to show for yourself.”

“Such a hard thing that you didn’t mind shoving your boyfriend into it.” You roll your eyes, head shaking as you start to walk away.

“Well, actually,” She catches up to your pace, overlapping you to cut off your trec to the front doors. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Hoseok could use a hand, right? If you want to try to get some work, why not ask him? Independent work is good to help build a resume-- though, I guess Hoseok’s reputation and Yoongi’s current one don’t make companies feel comfortable-”

“What are you trying for here?” Your tone causes a falter of expression in Seulgi’s face, shifting it into a muted shock. Her smile replaces itself with pursing lips, then eventually the picturesque way she poses her shoulders also deflates. Appearing much less superficial, though now openly tired with frustration from the little act she tried to play with you.

“What? I can’t try and do a nice thing for my ex?”

“Ex that you threw under the bus.” Unhesitant. You cross your arms. “Why in the world would I think you’re not trying to gain something right now too?”

“You’re just like Yoongi--I get the relationship now.” She sighs, playing with her hair as her eyes trail off to nowhere. “Well, the relationship you ended up getting yourself after all.”

Your arms tense over your front, quietly startled that she seems aware of the false beginning with your relationship with Yoongi, and even acknowledging that it’s currently real. Part of you wants to question how she’s found out the tidbit of information, though it’s not a top concern of yours. The small fact that she has methods to get information throughout the industry is odd, but you doubt it needs to be a worrisome issue.

“Anyways, I was just offering a suggestion. Three songs aren’t going to cut it to get top companies like this one to let you in.” As if you needed her to say that when the past week has only been proof of that. Seulgi adjusts the hoodie she wears so that it no longer falls off a shoulder, and her eyes appear introspective for the moment of silence before speaking again. “You’re not going to get anywhere without stepping on a few people along the way. You can’t play along with all the rules and expect to succeed.”

If her tone remained snarky, you would have shot a comment in return, as the instant thought in your brain relates Seulgi’s words to her actions against Hoseok in the past. However, the simplistic way she spoke was calm, almost bordering into a somber timbre hidden beneath the surface. At that moment you feel like you see something inside of that shadow, but you don’t have the liberty of pondering it.

“Seulgi, I thought you were using the big dance studio right now.” A voice enters into the conversation, making Seulgi’s head turn back towards the entrance. Looking beyond her, you see a face you again would have expected if you took any consideration to the companies you were skipping through for interviews. “Oh,” Jeongguk’s eyes widen, catching sight of you, a smile forming as he speaks on in happy surprise, “Y/N! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Hi, Jeongguk.” You give a little smile and nod as a greeting.

“Yeah, I’m late.” Seulgi speaks up while she takes a step to begin a smooth leave, eyeing Jeongguk then you in curiosity of how there’s a mutual connection. But her final words have nothing to do with questions. “Sorry about that whole thing at my party, by the way. Taking your date and all. Just getting a conversation Yoongi owed me.”

Her vague insinuation makes your eyes narrow, following her figure as she casually goes. Already knowing the content of the conversation she had with Yoongi, you’re left to assume that she speaks in a way to ingrain seeds of uncertainty or jealousy under your skin, but all the needless comment does is further you from any positive opinions of Seulgi.

“Something about that seemed hostile.” Jeongguk states as the two of you watch Seulgi disappear down a hall. Instead of screaming out intelligibly from the frustration of your day so far, you just exhale a long sigh, turning your head back towards Jeongguk. His mouth curls into a slightly uneasy smile, not sure of what he just stumbled in on, “Everything okay?”

“I can’t wait to go home and sleep, to be honest with you.” You admit, trying to get humor into your voice, but you’re sure your expression betrays any chance of a joking ambiance as Jeongguk slowly nods bouncing his long locks of soft, warm-toned pink. “Your band is going to be performing at the river festival this weekend, right? Saw online.”

“Yeah, we have a set in the late evening. You going?” His demeanor is wholly casual, pronounced further in the relaxation of his shoulders and lazily situated hands in the pockets of his big hoodie.

“I would, but now’s not really the best time for me to be doing much out.” You smile as your eyebrows furrow a bit. For a moment you consider the fact that he may not know anything, as you recall him not being one to peruse comment sections of social media sites. But as Jeongguk’s lips cast into a frown, he recalls the news your words refer to,

“Oh, right; I heard about that all.” He bites his lip, while removing a hand from the confines of his pocket to push back hair from his face. “Actually, I’ve been out of the country with my group for almost six months now, and, it’s not really my place to ask, but have you been okay since,” He pauses, quickly taking a scan around the area like others may be listening in. “Well, you know.”

You nod your head, understanding that he means to inquire about your state of mind since breaking things off from Jimin at the beginning of the year. “For awhile I really wasn’t,” You admit, but find yourself able to smile as you continue on with full assurance, “But I’m more than okay now. My career may be sort of crazy, but I have people that care about me, so I’m fairing a lot better than I would’ve ever thought.”

“That’s good.” Jeongguk smiles, and parts of you are sure that perhaps he’s even the smallest bit sad that there isn’t hesitation in your voice because his friendship with Jimin would likely root for the fact. But he’s not unfair in that regard, always having been a supportive, close friend of Jimin, but not to the extent of harboring ill sentiment about things like this. “If you’re looking for song writing work just let me know; my band liked the three tracks you and Yoongi released, and I always thought it’d be cool to work with you on lyrics anyways.”

“What?” You blurt in surprise, eyes widening from the easygoing proposition, “Wait, really?”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk grins in return, wondering silently if the offer is odd because of your reaction. “I mean, why not, right?”

“Even if I’m not an employee here?” You question, still in disbelief at how simply he’d asked for even bits of collaborative work in the future. Where you have been learning to anticipate a lot of hesitation, and even flat out refusal from all of your interviews so far, Jeongguk breaks the cycle out of nowhere. Perhaps you should not be as excited from the simple prospect as you are, but you’re unable to stop yourself from the little success making you vibrant with joy.

“You don’t need to be an employee of any company, Y/N, your skills already speak for themselves to me.”

When you step outside of the building, Jeongguk’s words remain at the forefront of your mind. You type a location on the map digitally showing on your phone screen, unconsciously setting up a call for a taxi, but you think only of the small piece of hope given to you from the offer. The more you consider it, you believe there exists a deeper lesson from that small interaction. It’s like he said to you; the company isn’t as important as your own skills.

You bite your lip, thinking of any contacts made throughout the years. Frankly, not many people beyond SoundWave met you because of your job, but there were still some small acquaintances you’ve gained. Some friends as well, though fewer than you could count with your fingers perhaps. It’s unlikely many would jump at the opportunity to work with you in light of the current news, but perhaps there’s something to consider down that avenue.

Your spine tightens slightly, and suddenly you feel overly aware of the area around you. You lift your eyes from your phone screen to across the street beyond cars going along to wherever. People walk normally as the beginnings of evening traffic occur as they would any day of the business week. With a small shake of your head, you ignore the suspicion in your nerves, letting yourself check notifications on your phone instead as the taxi descends towards you from a few blocks away.

Alerting Yoongi that you’re going to head to his apartment to help him move around items delivered from the company, you eventually press the lock on your phone screen and turn your attention down the road to see if you can spot your taxi’s license. In the same direction is the stairwell into a subway station with its constant flood of people in and out that never remain in the area longer than it takes them to walk. But perched with their elbows on railings overlooking the descent into the subway is a small group of three similar in age to the ones assumed to follow you to Namjoon’s cafe.

Your eyes linger on their figures for a noticeable amount of time, and you don’t believe them to care that they’ve been spotted. You bite your inner cheek, and look back to the taxi app for the time of arrival. Your stomach knots, but you try not to focus on it, because of this occurrence being more regular in the past couple of weeks. If you kept your mouth shut and thoughts from roaming frantically, it would be over just as soon as you stepped into the taxi.

A bump on your shoulder startles you, shaking your heart around in the ribcage, as your throat assumes the worst by trapping air. A businessperson continues along, however, simply going up the road as they chatter away on their phone, completely unaware of the tiny collision. You swallow the air back down, squeezing your phone tightly as it vibrates a tiny series of beats to signify the taxi is soon to arrive.

As you look on at the back of the random person, you notice more eyes in your direction. These ones from a college-age duo, you think. But they’re clearly focused on you, walking on the sidewalk in your direction. Your leg muscle tightens, becoming highly alert of the phone’s they have clutched close to their chests with the camera lenses evident.

The abrupt stop of brakes in front of you brings you back to your current position as does a quick honk from a car bothered by the stop of your taxi as it drives around. Without hesitation you enter inside, stating an affirmative as the driver asks if you were the one with the given destination on his GPS. You can’t contain the sigh of relief flooding out of your lungs as he merges into the flow of traffic and away from the individuals whose walk stopped to stare at the leave of the taxi.

You have high doubts that if the people were truly fans that they would berate you or angrily yell, but nonetheless you didn’t want the onslaught of questions they more likely had prepared to be said in civil voices. You already had the displeasure of weaning along a forceful and awkward conversation on a subway train days earlier. Leading you to start avoiding that means of transportation entirely now.

Arriving at Yoongi’s front door, your finger presses to ring the bell. Listening to the muted sound on the inside you feel your shoulders jumping ever so slightly at the sound, but you shake your head to rid away the sensitivity. Really no one had been belligerent towards you, you were overthinking any of the things that could have happened. Another twitch in your shoulders induces with the knob twisting and with it the door opens to reveal Hoseok whose face eventually slips into a pout,

“Wow, don’t look so disappointed.” He teases you as you roll your eyes and walk inside. “You should be thanking me since I did most of the heavy lifting before you got here.”

“Thanks,” You smile at him in an overly polite manner that causes Hoseok to scoff and shake his head in amusement. “I’m sure you were more than willing to since Yoongi offered to get you a fancy dinner as payment-”

“Wait, don’t tell him that; I was going to avoid it.” You turn towards the way of the bedrooms as Yoongi walks into the living area from it, hair tousled from moving furniture and a loose t-shirt hanging off his shoulders comfortably. You watch him grin as Hoseok shouts an irritated rebuttle about Yoongi’s deflection of payment for helping. As Yoongi comes to a stop a mere couple of feet from you his eyes look towards you and before you know it the teeth peeking from his joke drift away while his brows furrowed with concern, “Angel, what’s wrong?”

You shake your head, trying to disburse the worry in your shoulders that you apparently had not been successful to not think about. Wordlessly Yoongi steps closer, initiating a hug that you finish by clinging your arms around his torso.

Hoseok frowns in confusion since you had seemed fine when he opened the door, but glancing up at Yoongi whose eyes are just as unsure of the problem Hoseok decides it’s probably the result of some kind of build up. “‘m going to get that last box unpacked.”

“Thanks.” Yoongi says as his hands rub trails on your back, waiting for Hoseok to leave the room before speaking up again, “Baby, do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m just overthinking something.” You mumble against the cotton soaked in the familiar scent of laundry detergent. With a small sigh you adjust yourself to look up towards Yoongi whose attentive gaze meets yours. Gently he presses a small kiss against your forehead, settling his hands on your sides to give a little comforting squeeze.

“Was it more people following you around?”

“Yeah,” You hide your face against his chest again as you put the problem in the air. “It really, really wasn’t anything much. I just want a hug. It’s been a long day because of the whole job interview session parade I went on too.”

“I can do hugs,” Yoongi nods before perching his chin atop your head. The moment lingers on, granting a warming comfort as you remain encapsulated in Yoongi’s arms. But he can’t help a final, quiet question that is likely the reason for the rate of his heartbeat in your ear. “Did anyone do anything to you, angel?”

“No.” You squeeze your arms around him. “I doubt any of them really would. They probably just want to get information. It’s just uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, it is.” Yoongi’s chest fills from the breath of an inhale as he thinks of all the other instances since news of him being let go from SoundWave released. “I’m sorry, angel, once all the paperwork is done, I’ll try and figure out something to say to the press about everything.”

“It’s okay, Yoon.” You pull away to press a pecking kiss against his lips. He notes your expression to be considerably calmer than minutes earlier. “Really, it’s okay. It’s not your fault anyways. But besides that all, I do have some good news.”

“Oh, yeah?” He keeps his hands on your waist while your arms drop from their gentle encapture of his frame. Your quick nod matching the beginnings of a smile on your lips give Yoongi more cheerfulness as well, “Tell me then, sweetie.”

“I saw Jeongguk earlier and he said he’d be willing to work on songwriting together sometime.” You explain, allowing the excitement you felt then to take over the bulk of your tone. Inquisitively Yoongi’s head tilts,

“Jeon Jeongguk? Where did you see him at?”

“His company after I got interviewed--oh, right, I don’t think I’ve mentioned to you I know him.” You ramble along earning a chuckle from Yoongi as he nods to that fact as well. “Well, I met him through Jimin a couple of years ago, but he’s really nice. It was just an innocent offer on his part.”

“Yeah, I believe that-- he’s really easygoing.” Yoongi nods, turning his head to the hallway as yours looks in the same direction at the sound of Hoseok cursing as he hops on one foot into view while his other foot stays clenched between his two hands.

“I hit my toe on the corner of the door into the room-” He says with a wincing voice, “Didn’t mean to interrupt the emotional fest-- it just really hurt, and I think I should be owed more than just a fancy dinner because of it-”

“If it keeps you from suing me.” Yoongi shakes his head and refrains from laughter like the kind leaving your mouth as you listen to their conversation. Yoongi goes back to resting his head on yours, this time pressing his cheek on top of your scalp when you hug him once more. “But I’m picking the place to eat at.”

“That doesn’t even make sense if it’s supposed to be a payment to me.” Hoseok scoffs as he dramatically hobbles to the couch where he collapses himself onto it. “Y/N, if you asked your best friend to help you move your heavy equipment and this same friend stubs his toe doing it-- and this best friend and you are also getting into a partnership, would you just give him a dinner as payment?”

“Partnership?” You repeat as your eyes narrow, honing in on the one word that slipped into Hoseok’s monologue. “And no I’d buy my friend at least a house.”

“See!”

“A house,” Yoongi murmurs through pouting lips as Hoseok claps his hands to your method of penance. “He already has a nicer apartment than mine-”

“Wait, what did you mean about a partnership, Hoseok?” You ask, poking Yoongi’s stomach to get him to quiet from the tickling sensation. Hoseok actively twiddles his thumbs instead of a verbal. He glances towards Yoongi who responds to his antics with a sigh as he tugs himself off the comfort of hugging you.

“He and I were thinking we’d start our own label.”

“What!” Your eyes grow wide glancing towards Hoseok then back to Yoongi. “Your own music label? Like an idol company too?”

“Well, yeah.” Yoongi says without a lot of conviction as he shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know how many people would actually want to become an idol through us, but at least for Hoseok and I it would be a good way to keep doing music. And on our own terms.”

You stand looking at him awestruck, not at all anticipating the two of them to come to this type of business plan for the future. Frankly, you weren’t sure at all what Yoongi intended to do without SoundWave, but you would have sooner assumed he would simply relocate to another company. The requests for him to do so would no doubt flock after a month or two of the current news becoming history.

“Hey,” Hoseok gets up from the couch, phone in hand as the two of you look over to him. “I’m meeting a friend in a while, so I’ll get out of here. Don’t forget that you owe me a really fancy meal-”

“I get it, I won’t.” Yoongi rolls his eyes as he follows Hoseok towards the front door to see him off. You simply watch, still in a stupor from their casual way of telling you that their idea is to create their own fucking company. You wave at Hoseok as he shouts out a goodbye to you and walks out the door. Yoongi turns towards you as it shuts with an electronic click, finding you still baffled by the news. He rubs the back of his neck as he returns towards you. “We sound crazy?”

“No,” You shake your head and let it tilt as your imagination takes over to see an outcome where the two of them operate a successful idol company. With their production skills and overall talent with music, it didn’t seem far fetched that they at least make a small company that runs well. “I think you both should do it.”

Yoongi smiles gently at the hopeful gleam in your eyes. His hand falls from toying with the small hairs on the back of his neck to find itself entangling your own appendage with a delicate hold. “You’re free to do anything you want, angel, but I was thinking--and Hoseok agreed-- that you could join us and be a producer if we make a company.”

“Me?” Your voice barely mumbles the response, eyes struck wide in surprise at his offer.

“You don’t have to at all--I really understand if you don’t want to take the risk of it instead of finding a place that’s already settled, but,” Yoongi bites his lip, fiddling with your hand as he holds it. He finds your eyes as he sweetly smiles “It can be an option for you.”

With the two happy surprises of the day swimming in your chest, you stand in a stunned quiet as you take them in. For Yoongi and Hoseok, despite their respective scandals, you don’t have any doubt that they could definitely make something out of this idea for themselves. Especially happy about Yoongi being able to do as he wants for himself if they start a company. He’d be completely in control of his representation in the way that he hasn’t had ever since his debut.

And his offer gives the same freedom for yourself to create songs like you’d always wanted as well.

“Of course, I’m sure there’s a lot we have to do to get everything going, so really don’t feel bad about saying no-”

Interrupting his sentence by pressing your lips onto his chattering mouth, You let your arms wrap around his neck, silently grateful for Yoongi's hands steadying the two of you by finding a firm grip on your hips. “I say yes.”

Anticipation and excitement ricochets throughout your chest, exuding outwardly in your smile that you find Yoongi quickly returning with a growing grin. Running his hips in lips trails along your sides, he keeps silent in favor of kissing you again, practically bruising your lips with his own. Your hands mesh into soft locks of black hair, keeping Yoongi held in place as the kiss deepens into an oxygen depriving attachment.

Allowing time for air only when your mouth gasps as Yoongi’s hands find your backside and with a squeeze pulls your waist against his own, your eyes open along with his as you both take in quick sips of air, momentarily frozen from continuing action. Yoongi’s jaw clenches shut as you very obviously allow your hips to grind friction. He watches the beginnings of a smirk take over your expression, and stops the teasing attitude to dip his lips down to your neck.

There his trails tiny molten kisses along the skin, searching until your fingertips curl against his scalp and a small whimper casts out of your mouth. Attaching to the spot, his mouth blisters in a garden meant to flourish red and purple by next sunrise, and his hands continue to press into your ass riding up the fabric of your skirt as a moan escapes your lips, “Yoongi-”

“Do you want me to stop, angel?” He asks with a rough timbre the contrasts the soft ministrations he trails from the love bite to reach your mouth once more. Kissing the outline of your jaw, he hums against the skin waiting for your reply which comes as your hands remove from his hair to cup his face and bring his lips back to yours,

“Not at all.”

if you enjoy please, please let me know via ask, comment, rb with tags– however ! i’d just really appreciate feedback 🥺 i hope you enjoy the series, i’m working really hard on it! : )

also yes ik this chapter cuts off right before the smut lsjkdfkfdghg it’s also not going to be continued into the next chapter sO lkjdsffgdsfjkfg if it’s something you’d like to read as a blurb on its own lmk while commenting on this chapter hehe shameless incentive and i’ll try to write it as an additive piece to the story!

tag list (send an ask to be added): @jaiuneamesolitaiire @tsvkino-usagi@xionysus @baebyjoonie @honeyoongles @betysotelo18

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wcamino-confessions · 4 years

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Ok so here’s a long sumbission with my experience with echo. I want to talk about her because I don’t believe she’s an evil person, but she’s done bad things, and I want to share my experience. Quick warning that this is really long and I don’t know the limit to submissions, sorry ack- but just scroll past this eyesore if a post if you don’t wanna read it because it’s really long

So, one day she pmed me on warriors amino some time in late September or October. She had been there for around 100 days and she was level 11. I always answer any “will you be my friend” pm’s anyone invites me to, but her conversation with me definitely stuck and she would approach me in all of my spare time. We talked for a while and she asked me out. Stuff happening irl recently atm I was vulnerable, and ended up dating her within a few hours of her pming me ig. We voice chatted a couple times with a user named dawn (not the mod) who was her friend. Scrolling down through their posts I saw a comment with echo saying ily and such, I asked her if she dated them and she said “yeah” and moved on to another topic.

I was pmed by a group of people about echo, they all said she was out for my art. She dated people in the past (atm so far it had been someone named koi and then dawn /not the mod/. She was uncomfortable with the age gap in her and koi’s relationship and then broke up with dawn because she thought they were ignoring her but they were just off of amino for a while. This made a lot of sense to me that we were together partially because of art.

I ended up breaking up with her after about a month of dating. Of course she was upset by this, but within 24 hours she had immediately rebounded to another person. This was pretty much the start or near the start of the chain of dating people without breaks. Some relationship lasted days, others lasted weeks or nearly a month, rarely. At this point I can’t remember all of the people she’s dated but it’s not a small amount for that amount of time. For me, I ended up dating someone I had known irl for a year or rather than an hour, a few weeks after me and echo dated. Me and this person recently broke up a few weeks ago and she talked to me saying she still had feelings for me, and something about liking me when I was dating him but not doing anything to get us broken up. This was really a wtf moment

She usually sells ocs with a lot mainly gift art, but I thought she cared about catra more than a roblox toy. Her original design was a gift and her gallery was mostly filled with gifts by people (/I think/ suki, creeky, minnow, ottot, me, and more.). I wouldn’t have minded, but catra’s art had gifts from people who cared about her and made an effort. This is why I gave her 10k ac. I didn’t want her to sell catra. Apparently someone else was selling another roblox toy for 12k ac and she tried to sell catra again. Her friend gave her another 12k to get her to not sell catra. I believe I heard she sold catra and went against my wishes a 3rd time,,,

I actually gave her 6k ac and she replied with “ no no I need 10k “ which makes me feel pretty used. I don’t wanna spent 10k ac for that,, she went to me because she knew I had it and knew I could give it to her and the whole thing just hurts. We never spoke for 5 days and she comes by saying she needs 10k ac from me.

I told her to pay me back the coins because apparently I heard she sold catra. Echo, if you’re reading this please pay me back as soon as you can.

She also was in a dm where she said “you don’t care how I am, you’re just here because I hurt miss perfect’s feelings.” Seems surprising but it’s really something she would do.

I know what echo has dated a lot of people, I know someone that she basically tried to manipulate into dating her. She brought up beforehand that she couldn’t take rejection and when this person was able to reject her, she ghosted them because they wouldn’t date her. That’s horrible. Thats really manipulative.

I feel like she ranks her friends or treats them differently. I know she had a wiki listing her friends all ranked out, which didn’t bother me that much, but when you think you’re close with her or that she considers you a good friend she unfollows you and only refollows her favorites at the time that she wants to interact with. I remember trying to talk to her and she just ignored me (I knew because she was online atm.) I feel like sometimes she treats people like toys that she can put away when she’s bored of them and only interact with her favorite ones, but then she switches out her favorites and just ignores the other ones.

When she’s asking someone out she’ll always tell them they make her feel special or something. I don’t believe she’s after relationships for art, but I believe she has a preference for artistic or popular users. She has a pattern of meeting someone, getting close with them, they date her for a short while, and then they break up because the relationship isn’t what she thought it was.

She makes hangout chats with whoever she ships herself with, and ship art contests. When people donate prizes to her and make entries she just deletes the post (I don’t think that’s okay, people actually made an effort to make you art.)

I heard from one of the people she had a crush on at some point (super cool and valid person btw) that she was pestering people for contest prizes for a ship art contest of them she made without asking. This person is someone that she made really uncomfortable; she got mad at THEM when she found out she did.

The claim that she is homophobic is something I don’t believe personally. Without a doubt she’s done homophobic things- she talked to me about one submission here that accused her of being homophobic. She said her ftm trans friend had a personality change when they came out, but in a voice not she constantly misgendered her friend/used dead name and made no effort to ever correct herself on his pronouns/name. The whole time she never addressed them correctly and didn’t care to try. I have a trans friend who she’s completely fine with, she calls him by the correct names and pronouns all the time and isn’t homophobic to all trans people. Ig she was different in that situation, but I still think purposely misgendering is never okay.

I don’t want to make this super long (bruh it already is) but that’s just the basics of my experiences with her, I know many people she dated can relate to some of these, and I’m so sorry to anyone she’s treated badly. You and your feelings are valid and I hope you had okay experiences with her,, Again, I’m so sorry to anyone she has hurt.

#submission #transphobia tw

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the-bts-archive · 4 years

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nvzblgrrl · 4 years

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On the subject of old fics 1

Allegedly, A Gentleman’s Tale (published 1-6-2012) was my first fanfic ever (again, allegedly - will explain after a bit). It only exists now as a private copy at least one person has saved and a capture on the WayBackMachine (which thankfully covered the whole ten chapters of it), because I have a habit of... deleting stories that embarrass me after the fact. It’s something I’m trying to break myself of, mostly because there are a number of people who do enjoy my work even if most of what I see in it are the flaws and I would feel bad about taking away something they enjoyed.

The ‘allegedly’ part comes in in that, based on my memories of my One Piece OCs and stories (along with more concrete evidence from my tumblr), I had a few OCs with snippets of story (with one who had at least a few chapters worth of story that I have memorized in broad strokes) attached that preceded that by at least one or two years, even though the description of ‘my first fic’ was in the synopsis of the fic as it was posted. Unfortunately, it’s hard to trace that information thanks to the ‘destroy all the evidence of me embarrassing myself’ habit (I completely deactivated my deviantart account on account of ‘cringe’, that’s how bad it got) and the passage of time making it unclear which mutuals might have been around at that time or if they even remember those things.

Now, I still have the computers that I typed up those stories on (they’re hanging out in my basement), but - they haven’t worked in quite a while. I’m not sure if they’re completely bricked or not, but I haven’t had anything to do with them for a while and I know that at least one of them was replaced because it refused to turn on anymore. Someday, I might get the chance to pull out their hard-drives and get a look at the data there, but that’s not a ‘now’ solution so...

Anyway - got a bit distracted there -, thanks to the power of the WayBackMachine, I was able to reread this specific fic in its entirety.

‘A Gentleman’s Tale’ was a little thing that was pretty much Brook backstory wrapped up in the framing device of Luffy wanting a story to help him get to sleep. I was 18, had maybe a year or two of creative writing experience/interest under my belt, and a whole lot of Soul King Stan energy to spend on my favorite character despite being at the tail end of my high school career.

Surprisingly, it was not entirely awful for an alleged ‘first attempt’. The formatting was a little eh, the pacing was borked, and a lot of characters were fairly flat (and a few leaned too hard on certain stereotypes while a lot had Western order names for some reason), but other than that, it was actually palatable. Ten chapters, about 8000 words, not a whole lot to write home about or find objectionable outside of the odd grammatical error and the fact that alcohol is mentioned in almost. every. single. chapter.

Seriously, I have no idea why that was a thing for me 2012-2013ish (it ended up in Witt and Witticism a little bit - more heavily on the rewrites that never took off back in the day but a little present in the original too). I was 18-19. I’d never had alcohol. I still haven’t had alcohol. I’d never really been around drinking at that age, socially or not, beyond like, enjoying brew fries and eating chicken tenders at a bar one time because my shit father wanted to have lunch there for some reason. I just guess that I woke up at the start of 2012 and thought Drink Mixing and Booze were interesting things.

The story wasn’t much to write home about, but the characters are the real area of interest here, so let’s cover them and a few of my plans for handling them in the rewrite.

Brook - Starts out his backstory being seasick, gets to have five decent minutes when he meets Yorki, and then is immediately shoved into the wall-to-wall shitshow that’s his life as the battle convoy captain and resident responsible adult, despite 70% of the convoy being at least ten to fifteen years older than him. Somehow that makes his interest in getting black out drunk almost every single night sound reasonable. Seriously, that’s what he was doing in that story, according to what happened almost every other chapter of the fic (because pacing is for writers on their third or fourth story). That’s one reason why the timeline is being stretched out in the rewrite plans - so we don’t kill the main character through alcohol poisoning (though with the kind of stress he was under in that original cut, I can’t blame him for trying - he got saddled with three weird + constantly fighting teenagers and a dying military organization, snubbed by the king, publicly embarrassed in front of 90% of the kingdom’s nobility, and so on in the course of two to three days max). Honestly, in retrospect, I’m not sure how well this plays with the framing device of Brook relating his backstory 62 years later, because he should have lost so many brain cells to this nonsense.

Yorki - Starts his introduction by saying ‘hey, my name’s Yorki, i’m close, bi, and willing to take you on a whirlwind adventure literally two seconds after meeting you’ which Brook immediately responds to as the best thing that’s happened to him in the last (and probably next) month. Probably the only person in Brook’s life as of the fic not stressing him out or enabling his self-destructive coping habits, though that doesn’t stop him from being one of the better things Brook woke up to after one of his blackout drinking nights. Also got an incredibly shitty nickname thanks to me not knowing how that sort of thing works from his mom. In the rewrite, he’s from Ohio (because I and my Middle-Ground lingering Self-Insert are from Michigan and the opportunity for a struggle between ‘hey we’ve both being isekai’d into this weird place and have similar backgrounds/music tastes so we’re going to hang together based on that’ and ‘200 year old inter-state hatred turned into over the top sports rivalry and disliking the other state on principle’ was too good to pass up).

Luchere Gregg (Gregg being her surname) - junior member of the battle convoy. Incredibly thorny and violent personality, with very little respect for authority (outside of her father, probably) and a generally superior attitude towards literally everyone except her father, especially when she perceived someone as being weak and ‘uppity’ at the same time - Maysure was the main target of this (as was intended at the time of the writing), but considering that Luchere was taking a similar tone with Brook (which was probably intended to be for different reasons, but honestly reads very similarly almost ten years on, given that Brook’s everything is very much not in line with her ideal anything) but not Hana (who was ‘weak’ but definitely not trying to mess with Luchere’s preferred social order), I think I can get more development out of her in that dimension. Her everything was probably was cool and badass back when I was 18, but now she just strikes me as petulant and unpleasant brat.

Minalee Hana - Generic smart guy of the junior team, complete with ‘shy’ personality and ‘harmless cute’ look... which, in retrospect, makes it really confusing why she’d join a military force in the first place and just raises suspicions on the fact that she did. Honestly she could be a Government plant and I wouldn’t be surprised. Another ‘problem’ with Hana is that she was based on someone I was friends with at the time I wrote the fic, which kinda ended up helping me dislike her a lot on more recent rereads, just because of the nature of that real world ‘friendship’ and the way it blew up in the end (with a whole lot of ugly reveals along the way that went back to pretty much when I first met that person).

Maysure Semenov Tara Su-all Evony Taebory Celeste - was originally a parody of the Mary Sue archetype, as you may have guessed from the name. Flashy, overeager, desperate for acknowledgement, and not quite managing to act in ways appropriate to her age (15, directly stated in text), either being too cutesy with her speech pattern and body language or dressing in ways that would be suited for a very different profession than soldier. I ended up liking her the most out of the junior trio out on my most recent rereads, just because she’s the only member of the group that’s actually making an effort at anything (well, beyond Luchere being hostile + trying to make Brook leave), doesn’t go out of her way to be hostile or destructive, and isn’t vaguely there in a way that makes me suspicious. Apparently was the only one of the junior trio ever stated to have weapons training (with Luchere being an unarmed fighter and Hana... just being there) and was apparently dedicated enough to it to have the schedule for the different training drills memorized.

Captain Gregg - the former captain of the battle convoy. He was never seen, only ever referenced in the fic. Based on the content, he was pretty much Luchere 1.0 - crass, unpleasant, violent, and without a lot of tolerance for those that couldn’t deal with or keep up with the unfortunate matter of his everything. The notes on rewrite so far have him becoming a lot more pleasant and lot less generally awful person, though still a bit of a roughneck and unpleasant to be around if you aren’t cut from the same cloth or a similar weave. Was not inspired by Captain Clegg until I started imbibing pop culture in preparation for the various parts of the project.

Jeevenine - quartermaster of the battle convoy, bartender, and carrier of heavy butler vibes, which feels like it might have been intentional. Said to be a master of ‘improvisation combat’ but honestly seems to be the person most likely to have taught Brook his style of fencing (based on his speed and precision being noted as something Brook had difficulty keeping up with in text) and his gentlemanly ways, considering every other character I wrote into the convoy is some flavor of hot mess and either a bruiser or a gunman. Still loses points for enabling Brook’s blackout drinking habits and being passive-aggressive instead of properly helpful.

Jack Rackum and John Delacroix - sniper-spotter pair, as indicated by their nicknames of ‘Windward’ and ‘Leeward’ respectively. Highly implied to be in a long-standing romantic relationship with each other or at least in a long-term holding pattern of pining. Delacroix’s tendency to sleep in the nude is used as half of a ‘my eyes’ joke that Brook is the victim of (the other half is Maysure’s chosen nightclothes being both stereotypical of a ‘Mary Sue’ and vastly age inappropriate, which is a running gag with her). Rackum gets the most description out of the set, with his brown leather hat and green-grey hair being mentioned, along with his taste for fruity cocktails (he might also be an alcoholic, which isn’t really all that remarkable in this fic).

Kurotora Ren - Big Guy McHugeBeef. Also the guy responsible for keeping the battle convoy awash in homebrew booze. Almost kills Brook by accident during his introduction by clapping him on the back at the exact wrong moment. Doesn’t have a lot more detail than that, mostly because he slides into the background after that brief focus moment, but I like him for being genuinely sorry about the near-death thing on top of being friendly for real and not being duplicitous about his wants + thoughts.

Zest - noble. Stupid. Probably the closest thing that Brook has to a friend in his actual age range at the start of the story, which is really fucking sad considering Zest’s everything and the fact that Brook doesn’t enjoy his company at all. Somehow when I was 18, the idea of a guy who spent most of his time in some state of wasted and trying to get his ‘friend’ (who doesn’t even like him that much but seems to tolerate him more than literally everyone else Zest ever interacted with who wasn’t being paid) into a similar condition because of unrequited love or something was tragi-cute-slash-funny instead of pathetic and faintly disturbing (though I guess I might end up writing him as tragic again anyway just because it probably takes Some Shit to make a person like that). Spent 90% of his screen time in the old story making Brook’s life inconvenient and the remaining 10% fully aware that his own life is going nowhere. His personality is oddly similar to Maysure’s, which is... interesting, implications-wise. Holy Shit, is this guy going to be a trip to work with as an adult.

#the big fat one piece fic project #talking about old fic #a gentleman's tale #my writing #if you have any questions about this or other fic i've done feel free to fire away

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hot-tae-with-suga · 6 years

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This Looks Bad || 1

Summary: Taehyung and I were just horsing around, but someone took a picture, and now everyone thinks I’m cheating on my boyfriend Namjoon with one of his best friends. Which I’m not, because I don’t (let myself) think of Tae that way. And neither does Namjoon. Right?

Reader (1st person unnamed femme OC)/Namjoon/Taehyung

Idol AU

36.2K total || Rated M || Part 2 | Part 3 (final) | AO3 || Masterlist

Genre: fluff / smut / angst with happy ending || Warnings: Misunderstandings, Failure to Communicate, Bisexual characters, Threesome (in later parts), Smut (in later parts)

Originally Posted 2019-03-25

Thank you so so so much to my editor S, and my wonderful betas from the JAG discord (L, V, and D)

DOI (Day of Incident)

Balancing my laptop on the arm of a couch with my legs curled up under myself to avoid accidentally flashing someone (because my very sparkly cocktail dress was very short) was not exactly how I’d imagined I’d be writing my thesis for my doctorate. Nevertheless, my boyfriend Namjoon had asked me to accompany him to this event with some music types from Japan, and I was nothing if not a dutiful partner.

I’d been proper arm candy for the first hour, but my Japanese skills barely stretched past nodding and smiling when Namjoon did. He saw that it was starting to wear on me, so he reminded me that my laptop was still in the overnight bag he’d packed if I wanted to go get some work done. I’d kissed him on the cheek and quietly made my escape. The stylists and coordi-noonas had wandered off to the loading dock for a smoke break, or were busy in other parts of the building, so I had the place to myself for at least half an hour before I even heard anyone else.

Voices carried down the hall, but I tuned them out until someone opened the door and strode through. I looked up to see who it was, smiling when I saw Taehyung, Namjoon’s group member I was closest to. He was followed by a pretty young woman who he was speaking to about some style of art, from the few words I caught before he greeted me.

“Hey Charlotte Bronte,” he joked. “Are you hiding from the guests of honour, too?” The woman looked confused, which was rather unsurprising given Taehyung’s habit of calling me by author’s names whenever he caught me writing. Which, at the current stage in my thesis project, was pretty much all the time.

I nodded and stood, quickly bowing to the woman he hadn’t yet introduced. “Yeah, I could only understand about two out of every ten words, so Joon sent me down here.” I quickly saved the work I’d been in the middle of and closed my computer. “If you need the room or anything, I can take off, though.” Maybe not the most subtle approach, but I’d never want to be accused of cockblocking one of my best friends. If Tae was desperate enough to drag this woman to the green room in the middle of an event, I wasn’t going to get in the way of him getting some. It was hard enough to date as an idol, so they tended to take every opportunity they could if they found someone they liked.

Taehyung shook his head. “No, I’m just getting changed a bit early because it will be way too crowded once everyone is back here,” he said, moving to grab his carefully labeled stage wear from the rack in the middle of the room. “Plus, everyone out there was boring, except Park Jiyoo,” he nodded toward his companion. “We were discussing art and photography. She is a curator at a gallery in Ilsan.”

I bowed again in her direction. “Hello Park Jiyoo, I’m-”

She cut me off. “I know who you are,” she said softly. “You’re Kim Namjoon’s girlfriend.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Among other things. I’m hiding out back here to work on my thesis project, feels like it’s all I do these days.”

“Joon-hyung got a smart girl,” Tae commented from behind the folding privacy screen at the back of the room. The hanger clinked against the metal frame as he hooked it over the edge. “Cause he’s a smart boy. They’re a matched set.”

“So are you looking for your match then, Taehyungie?” I teased. Even if he wasn’t bringing Jiyoo back here to hook up right this moment, I’d be a poor friend if I didn’t at least try to play wingman. “So we need to find you a goofball with little-to-no sense of personal space?” Jiyoo giggled at that.

Taehyung stuck his head around the side of the screen, obviously unbuttoning his while dress shirt. “Don’t listen to Ms. Smart Ass, she is cruel and knows nothing.” He ducked back behind the screen again, and I could hear the sound of his belt slithering out of the loops of his pants before it came flying over the top to drape over the screen. I grabbed the belt, sliding it between my hands and then folding it in half.

“Which basically means I know everything,” I told Jiyoo triumphantly. I snapped the belt against itself, the sharp noise making Tae jump and Jiyoo squeak. “But I will admit I can indeed be cruel, to boys who deserve it.”

Tae stepped around the screen, his shirt hanging completely open and off one shoulder, gathering at his elbow, while he held up his unbuttoned pants with one fist. His eyes narrowed at me.

“Give me back the belt, noona,” he warned. I giggled and held the belt behind my back, shaking my head. “The stylists have already warned me about losing costume pieces, I don’t want to get in any more trouble.”

I shook my head again, backing up as he stepped forward. The game of keep away was familiar, reminding me of nights of drinking in the dorm or playing around after a concert as the adrenaline faded. “Nuh-uh, it makes such a fun noise. I think I’d like to use it to scare Namjoon later,” I teased.

Tae took a couple long steps towards me, gaining ground quickly since his legs were to much longer than my own. “I don’t care what kinky shit you and hyung get up to, do it with someone else’s belt!”

I stepped backwards to escape the approaching man, but I’d reached the edge of the room, where a series of tables and mirrors had been set up for makeup and hair, and Tae was in front of me before I could divert course. He reached around me with his free hand, but I twisted and bent to keep the belt out of his reach. Frustrated, he dropped the hand holding his pants up, letting them fall to the floor so he could use both arms to grab for the accessory. I was laughing, switching it from one hand to the other, trying to keep it from him even though I knew that with his superior wing span he’d pin me eventually.

That’s when we saw the flash of light.

Both of us turned to see Park Jiyoo with her phone out, the camera lens pointed at the two of us, with a look of guilty embarrassment on her face. I looked down and saw what she had been taking a picture of: a half-naked Taehyung practically groping me.

“What the hell, Jiyoo-ssi?” Tae asked sharply, and the woman looked panicked. She spun around and ran for the door, both Taehyung and I close behind her.

Tae was slowed down by his loosened pants, which had fallen around his ankles, so I was the one to slide out of the green room in my stockinged feet and shout at security to stop Jiyoo. I watched her try to evade them for a few moments, but it was a narrow hallway and they were big guys, so it wasn’t long before they caught her and took her to the venue security office.

I followed, speaking to the guard in charge. “She was backstage with us, and she took an unauthorized photo, of V,” I used his stage name, trying to impress upon them the seriousness of the matter. I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. I was used to being photographed when I was out with Namjoon, but this had been a private moment between friends, and I knew the situation we were in would look incredibly suggestive, even though it had been mostly innocent.

Namjoon, Taehyung and the other members were such a big part of my life now, they acted so normal, that it was easy to forget how careful they had to be with the people around them. Sometimes that nice young woman they were talking about art with wasn’t able to be trusted with their privacy. It was a wonder they ever let anyone outside their own industry in.

Venue security turned the situation over to Big Hit’s security team, who directed me to wait nearby in case they had any questions. Taehyung found me shortly thereafter, having re-dressed himself and then wandering a bit to find the security office. He wrapped his arms around me and I leaned into him, soaking up any comfort he could offer. The other members happened to file past on their way to prepare for the performance, Namjoon breaking off to join us when he noticed we weren’t where he expected.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked, immediately opening his arms and pulling me close when I extracted myself from Tae and approached him. “What’s wrong, baby? You look worried.”

Taehyung’s large hand rubbed across my back where it wasn’t covered by Joon’s arms. “There was a woman, a fan maybe? I don’t know. Someone I brought back to the green room with me when I was getting changed, she ended up taking a picture of noona and me while we were goofing off. Who knows, maybe more than one,” he explained softly.

“So what?” Namjoon sounded confused. “So she got some backstage pictures? It’s not like our relationship is a secret, so what’s the issue?”

“The pictures will look bad, Joon-ah,” I mumbled into his chest where my face was still pressed. Leaning back, I added, “Tae and I...We were in a kind of compromising position.”

Tae sighed and elaborated, “I was in the middle of getting changed, noona and I were goofing around like usual. We’ll just hope they can delete the photos off the phone and send her on her way.”

Just as he said it, their head of security stepped into the hall and approached us, while one of the venue security lead Jiyoo in the opposite direction, toward the back exit. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” the security head lead with. “She sent a couple of pictures into a group chat before they grabbed her. One of the ones that got out…” He shrugged and looked sympathetic. “Let’s say its not flattering. I’ll contact head office, they’re going to want to get ahead of the storm that’s coming.”

***

I’d been more than a little worried that the commotion might have thrown off their performance, but all the members had been doing this for too long to let a little incident like that bleed through. I’d heard tales of shows on tour that they had performed hurt, sick, and heartbroken; one little kerfuffle with a rogue fan wasn’t going to shake them.

After the event, Namjoon came back with me to my place, as we’d planned beforehand. We’d been instructed by management not to look on our SNS or any gossip sites, management would get a handle on what was happening and didn’t want us to be unnecessarily stressed. I explained to Namjoon exactly what happened in the room, every single detail at least three times, but I still wouldn’t know how bad it was until I saw the picture.

I could only imagine the worst, though, remembering that Tae was practically shirtless, his pants around his knees, pinning me to the table with his hips and reaching around me with both his arms. My dress was so short it had ridden up high on my thighs, I’d had to pull it down before running after the girl. I’d remembered more details each time I described it to Namjoon, repeating it often enough for him to accuse me of trying to turn him on with it.

I stamped my foot and crossed my arms, pouting at him. “Kim Namjoon, this is serious! I don’t want you to think I’d ever do something like that to you,” I whined. “I just want, like, full disclosure. I don’t want you to be surprised.” He moved in front of me, putting his hands on my shoulders.

“I know baby, I know you’d never cheat, that’s why I’m not worried. I trust you, and not only that, but I trust my members. Sure, Jungkook has issues keeping his hands off his hyung’s things, and I’ve seen the way some of them look at you when they think I won’t notice, but they are my family. Closer than, even, and more loyal,”Namjoon said. He chuckled to himself, adding, “And if it was going to be any of them to try something with my girl, it’d never be Taehyung.” He ran his hands down my arms and pulled me closer.

“Hmm?” I asked. “Why?” The way he’d said that last bit struck me as weird.

He looked down at me, mumbling, “I told you, I trust you.”

“Why are you so sure of Taehyung out of all of them though? Because he’s your roommate? Am I so far out of his type that he’d never be attracted to me?” Something occurred to me, and I gasped. “Is he gay?” I started to backpedal, aware of how that could sound. “I mean, its fine if he is, of course, I’d just never had any idea, and I thought he’d had a girlfriend before-”

“Babe,” Namjoon interrupted my spiral into incoherent rambling. “Tae likes girls, and I’m sure he thinks you’re very cute. Just trust me when I say that Taehyung would never think of doing something like that to me.” He bent to give me a gentle kiss that quickly turned into something hotter.

Namjoon picked me up, not breaking our kiss, and set me on the back of my couch, his arms still around me to keep me stable. “Now,” he started. “All of your talk about this potentially naughty picture kinda got me all worked up. Were you like this?” His hands on my hips slid the dress I still wore up a little further, and he pressed himself between my legs. Evidence of just how ‘worked up’ I’d gotten him tented his pants, and I moaned feeling it against my thigh.

He kissed me again, lips sliding against mine until I pulled back enough to point out, “Yeah, just like this. But Tae was wearing way less clothes.” Namjoon laughed, shrugging off his jacket and helping me with the buttons of his shirt.

1 Day P.I (Post Incident)

The next morning I accompanied Namjoon back to the Big Hit offices, which photographers captured since they were waiting for us outside my apartment building. I wasn’t even sure how they had found out where I lived, but apparently they were motivated enough to do so and caught us by surprise. Namjoon held my hand as we walked as quickly as possible toward the car the company had sent for us, hiding behind sunglasses and masks as best we could. It took at least ten minutes longer than normal to get to the offices due to the circuitous route we had to take. Once we finally arrived and rushed inside, I thought we were safe.

I hadn’t taken the other members into account though, and we were greeted with whistles and applause as we entered the conference room.

“Taehyungie-hyung, your new girlfriend is here!,” Jungkook shouted, despite the face that Tae was just two seats away from him. Taehyung lunged to slap their maknae upside the head, and Jungkook rolled away from him in his chair, rubbing the spot he’d been hit.

“How bad is it?,” I asked the room. “We haven’t looked yet.” Jin whistled, the note falling at the end, and I knew it had to be pretty bad.

“Our managers will be back in a minute,” Taehyung said, and stood to approach us with a tablet in his hand, offering it to us. Namjoon grabbed it from him, frantically scrolling up to see the picture that was the subject of the string of comments on the screen. He hissed when it finally came into view and angled the tablet so I could see.

It was a worst case scenario. The picture was cropped so you couldn’t see that Tae’s pants were technically still on (though who knows why that fact was so important to me), the way the shot was angled made it look like my arm was wrapping around his far side, and worst of all, our faces were only inches apart. I groaned and sank to the floor in a squat, wrapping my arms around my knees.

“Babe, babe, it’s gonna be okay,” Namjoon crouched down next to me, patting me on the back. Tae sank down on my other side, rubbing my arm to comfort me.

“ARMYs are going to hate me, Joon!” I cried into my arms. “I’m going to be a villain in their eyes, like from a drama!” I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, but I managed to keep them from falling. “Tae-ah, you’re going to catch so much hate, too!”

Before he could answer there as a noise at the door as the managers returned, all looking very serious. The three of us stood up, and I ran my hands over my cheeks to make sure they were dry. Namjoon put his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him.

“We’ve made a statement on Namjoon’s behalf, that the picture was a private moment that was taken out of context, captured by an over enthusiastic fan who was in an unauthorized area,” Manager Sejin told us, with a sharp look at Taehyung. I had a feeling he’d be getting in trouble for bringing someone “backstage” without clearing it with management. Sejin continued, “It’s a start, but we will need to do more to stay clear of a major scandal.”

I was a little worried about what exactly “more” entailed.

***

Sejin’s “more” turned out to be a complete media blackout, at least on my part. I had to take all of my SNS accounts private, or deactivate them, and I wouldn’t be able to attend any events or even be seen in public with any of the band until this all blew over. The last part would be easy enough, with Namjoon needing to concentrate on finishing their new album and my own thesis due date looming, we weren’t going to be going out together a lot anyway.

Big Hit and the group would also be making an effort to emphasize that everything was fine on their end, lots of content with Namjoon and Taehyung together on their SNS to show there was no tension between them and reassure the fans.

“I hate this,” Namjoon said, his arms wrapped around me as we sat on the couch in his studio. We’d retreated there after the meeting with the managers, to get the last bit of time together we would have for a while.

I nodded. “Me too,” I agreed. “But, we’ll make it through this, right? Its not like we were going to see each other a lot in the next few weeks anyway, with our own obligations we’ll be so busy.” I twisted in his arms to be able to see his face. “We’ll text and call and FaceTime.”

Namjoon smiled. “You gonna tune in to my vlive when I get bored in the middle of the night and can’t just come over to bug you?” he teased. I blushed.

“I always do,” I reminded him. I stretched to kiss his cheek softly. “I’m gonna miss your face.” He pulled me up so that my face was even with his.

“I’m gonna miss your everything,” he said, and returned the kiss, on my lips. “Gonna have to figure out a way to sneak out, like when we were first dating. Or maybe we should sneak you in.”

I smiled against his mouth. “Mmm, every girl’s dream, being snuck in like a dirty secret to fuck in your shared room,” I joked.

Namjoon chuckled and kissed me again. “I’m sure Taehyung won’t mind, since he’s the one who got us in this mess.”

I smacked him playfully. “Don’t blame Tae!” I admonished him. “It’s my fault, too, I was the one who stole his belt. I shouldn’t have been teasing him like we do at the dorm.”

“You didn’t bring some outsider into our space,” he argued. “And Tae will be forgiven much faster than you will be.” His tone was light, but there was a bit of annoyance or even anger behind it.

“Don’t, Joon-ah.” I spoke softly, still curled up against him. “He’s your dongsaeng, don’t go there.” I leaned down and pressed a kiss to his neck. “Let’s not talk about that, it’s the last time we’ll be together for a while. I’m gonna miss this, being with you like this.” His head fell back, giving me room to trail kisses down toward his collarbone, exposed by the tank top he was wearing. I couldn’t help but lick along the ridge of bone, dipping my tongue into the hollow by his throat.

Namjoon groaned and pulled his arms from between us so he could lift me by the hips, turning me and settling me back down so that I was straddling his legs. I rolled my hips against him and celebrated the moan the move drew from him with a nibble on his earlobe. His large hands slid up over my waist and started pushing my shirt up, pulling it over my head. He threw it to the floor, his hands back on me as he claimed my mouth.

Our kisses grew heated, no longer about enjoying the last moments we had together and instead building toward something more. My hands were fisted in Namjoon’s hair, holding his head at the perfect angle for me to dominate our kiss. One of his hands had slid under the waistband of my pants, gripping the skin at my hip, and the other was fumbling with my bra strap when the door opened behind me.

I shrieked and looked frantically for my shirt, but Namjoon had thrown it to the other side of the narrow room. Instead I curled my body in toward my boyfriend, only showing my bare back to our unexpected visitor. Namjoon leaned to one side, keeping an arm around me so I didn’t fall off, and grabbed a zippered hoodie from the back of his chair, wrapping it around me.

“What the hell, Tae?” Namjoon bit out.

Taehyung stood by the door with his hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he was apologizing. “I just came to tell you that security is ready to take noona back to her place.”

I sighed and dropped my forehead to Namjoon;s chest, and he squeezed me close for a moment. “Of course it had to be Taehyung, didn’t it?” he murmured, close enough so that only I could hear. I barked a laugh, earning a look from Taehyung that I didn’t acknowledge.

I stood up, zipping up Namjoon’s hoodie so that I could reach up my back to refasten my bra where he had managed to undo one hook. Joon stood up behind me, grabbing my arms and holding them, making me arch forward awkwardly. “Hey!,” I objected, but he just leaned down and kissed the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, sucking long enough that I knew I’d see a mark there in the morning. I let it happen, forgetting myself in the moment and relaxing back in to him.

Namjoon finally pulled back, and I could hear the smile in his voice as he declared, “There. Mine.” His oddly possessive comment made me turn to look at him, but instead of looking down at me, his head was turned toward Taehyung.

I pulled away from him and grabbed my abandoned shirt off the floor, balling it up and shoving it into one of the oversized pockets of the hoodie. “I’m keeping this, by the way,” I told Namjoon, grabbing my purse as well.

He whined, “But it’s my favourite! I’ll get cold.”

I returned to him and reached up to pat him on the head. “It smells like you, so I like it. You have plenty of other sweaters.”

He hugged me again, and gave me a fond little kiss on the forehead. “You’re lucky I love you,” he warned me.

I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

***

That night we chatted on the phone. We didn’t usually need to talk again when we’d seen each other throughout the day, we weren’t that kind of couple. The events of the day, though, had left us both feeling a little more needy than normal.

“So, how was your day?” Namjoon asked, his usual conversation opener. I was sitting on my bed with my laptop open in front of me, going through my SNS accounts. I couldn’t resist posting one last picture to my twitter feed before making it private, knowing ARMYs would take a screenshot before it disappeared. It was a shot I’d taken a couple a weeks earlier, we were laying in bed after we’d woken up, and he was holding my hand up to his mouth to kiss it. His expressive eyes stared at me through the screen and I felt like I could still feel the love that had overwhelmed me at that moment. I’d captioned it simply, ‘Steadfast’, needing to make my loyalties known when the world was going to make a lot of assumptions about things they didn’t know. Namjoon and I were in it for the long haul, we would remain steady through this storm.

“What, before or after I was told I wasn’t allowed to see my boyfriend or some of my best friends for weeks?” I replied, though I immediately regretted how passive agressive my words sounded. “Any day I get to see you is better than one I don’t, though,” I added to help soften them.

“I know, the whole situation is fucked up,” he agreed. “But I have total faith in us, we can get through this.” We lapsed into silence, neither of us wanting to burden the other with complaints about a situation we were both stuck in.

“Oh,” I remembered something I wanted to ask. “What was with your little possessive act in the studio today, with Tae? I felt like you were marking your territory or something.”

“Ah,” he said, suddenly sounding shy. “I was just realizing that people might assume we’d broken up or something. Got a little over enthusiastic.”

He hadn’t really answered my question about Taehyung, but I let it go. “I’m not a possession, Joon-ah. Even if someone were to think I’m single, I am perfectly capable of telling them I’m not.”

Namjoon sighed. “I’m sorry, babe. This whole thing is messing with me.” I stayed silent for a beat, waiting for him to add something more. “And I won’t do it again.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I’m not looking forward to wearing turtlenecks for the next week.” Again we fell silent, unsure that there was anything more to say.

“I love you.” Namjoon’s sudden declaration wasn’t rare, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

“I love you, too.”

Silence fell between us. It was a comfortable one, though, borne of having shared everything we needed to and merely enjoying each other’s presence, even on the phone.

“We should probably get to bed, though,” I finally said.

“Uh huh,” he mumbled noncommittally, which meant that instead of going to bed, he was going to stay in his studio for a few more hours at least. Usually I would nag at him about getting enough sleep, but I figured he might need the cathartic release that music brought him.

5 days P.I.

“Joon-ah, what does 《bros be-pore hoes》mean?” I asked, knowing I was likely mispronouncing the English phrase. My English was pretty good when it came to academic subjects, but idioms still escaped me.

“What now?” Namjoon asked. We were on the phone again, our nightly ritual of the last several days, to compliment the steady conversation in texts we exchanged throughout the day. Last night he’d initiated a video call during our talk, apparently hearing my voice had made him really miss me in a certain way, and he wanted to show me the evidence. I’d never really been one for phone sex before, but it had at least taken the edge off. It was something I was going to have to get used to before their next extended world tour, at least.

I scrolled through the replies to the latest picture in the group’s feed, a candid shot of RM and V eating noodles. I had to separate them in my head, the men I knew and their stage personalities that they shared with the world, it was the only way to stop me from going off on the people in comments lusting after my man.

“There’s this hashtag people keep using, I know I’m mispronouncing it,” I clarified. “What does it mean?”

“ 《Bros be-pore-》-” he stopped midway, then said it again with what I could only assume was the correct English pronunciation. “Oh, 《bros before hoes》. It’s a rhyme in English. It’s about choosing your brother over-,” he coughed. “About choosing your brother over a woman.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t keep the disappointment out of my voice. “So they think you’ve forgiven Taehyung and chosen him over me.”

“Babe…” I could hear his bed shifting, he was moving around in his helpless frustration. “It was a long shot that they’d believe our statement, you know that. This is the best case scenario right now: they aren’t losing faith in Bangtan and fearing we’re going to break up. We just have to wait until this blows over, or some other scandal takes its place.”

I knew he was right, but it still hurt to hear him say that the best case scenario was having his fans call me an adulteress. I tried to keep quiet, but a hiccuping sob escaped me, making Namjoon curse.

“Babe, I don’t want you to be alone right now. I’m gonna find a disguise or something and come over,” he muttered.

“No, please, I’m fine,” I tried to convince him. “I’ll be okay.” My voice was as shaky as my insides felt.

“I’ll be there in like 20 minutes, tops,” was the last thing he said before hanging up.

6 days P.I.

I’d fallen asleep in Namjoon’s arms after crying my heart out the night before, and barely remembered him tucking me in to bed before sneaking back to the dorm. I’d awoken feeling better, more secure in our relationship and more confident than ever that we were going to be able to see this through to the other side.

Then I checked my phone. It turns out that my boyfriend was super smart, but be could also be a gigantic idiot.

“Joon, how could you?” I hissed into my phone. I was alone in my office at the university, no one to hear me, but I knew he was surrounded by people on his end and didn’t want them to head me screaming at him.

“I didn’t even think! I grabbed a hat and coat that weren’t mine that would fit!” he explained.

“Yeah, but you grabbed Taehyung’s coat, Namjoon. His Gucci coat! And you’re of a similar enough build that it’s easy enough to mistake you in the dark!” I wasn’t even sure when or where the photographers had caught him, only that the news sites were splashed with the image of a tall man with a very distinctive coat at my apartment complex in the middle of the night.

“You didn’t notice either,” Namjoon pointed out.

I ground my teeth. “I was emotionally distressed,” I bit out. “And now people think that Tae snuck over here to see me last night, and that you’re a fool to have forgiven him.

“I’ll fix it,” he promised, hanging up without even a ‘goodbye’. Or an ‘I love you’.

8 days P.I.

“Buying all the members copies of Tae’s coat wasn’t exactly how I imagined you’d fix things, Joon,” I said a couple of days later.

“Now they can’t say for certain who it was,” Namjoon said with pride in his voice.

“Yeah,” I signed. “Now I could be fucking any member of BTS.”

Namjoon scoffed at the idea. “Not any of them, I’m several centimeters taller than most of them.”

“You’re taller than Tae, and they still confused you,” I pointed out.

“I’m sorry.”

11 days P.I.

“Do you think Yoongi would start dating that girl for us?” I asked.

Namjoon mumbled, “Sorry, what?” He was distracted again. He was distracted a lot during our nightly phone calls these days. Working on the album, writing songs, and collaborating with both his members and other producers kept him busy.

“That idol singer he made a song for. If he started dating her, it would at least be something else for people to focus on,” I explained.

He sighed. “I don’t think he’d do it, but you can ask.”

16 days P.I.

It’s the first day we don’t talk.

I told myself we were both busy, I’d forgotten until it was too late to call. But so did he.

It hurt more than I wanted to admit.

20 days P.I.

The managers had decided it was safe enough for me to come visit Namjoon at the dorms. He hadn’t mentioned anything about it when we’d talked, but he texted me that morning to come over in the afternoon and to be cautious.

As the day went on, the data I was supposed to be analyzing was going blurry in front of my eyes. I couldn’t concentrate any longer.

I was leaving straight from the university to minimize the chances of someone seeing or following me, though the crowd camping outside my building had pretty much dispersed. After weeks of no nighttime visitors and my going nowhere except to the school and to run exceedingly boring errands, they’d mostly given up. Still, I had the taxi drop me off several blocks from the dorm, and donned a hat, sunglasses, and a mask before I got out.

Security was waiting for me at the private entrance and I slipped inside, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. I made my way to the boy’s dorm and hesitated before I barged in like I used to. It felt weird being there, probably because things had begun to feel increasingly weird between Namjoon and I.

Seokjin looked surprised when he opened the door after I rang the bell, whether it was due to my bothering to ring or that he was surprised to see me at all, I wasn’t sure. Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook were all relaxing in the common area, Jimin on his phone while Tae watched Jungkook play Overwatch on his laptop, but they looked up in sync when I came padding around the corner. Jimin and Jungkook both jumped up to give me a hug, and Tae waved from the couch. I could see the hesitation on his face, and it broke my heart a little that he decided not to come hug me like he usually did, but I understood why.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Jungkook said. “Rapmonnie has been an asshole!” I laughed.

“So, I’m here for your benefit, not Namjoon’s?” I joked.

“Yes!” Jimin insisted. The boys sat back down, and I leaned on the arm of the couch, not intending to stay and chat for long. “He’s been super grouchy. That’s why Yoongi-hyung asked if you could come visit.”

The happy feeling I’d felt building inside me, that Namjoon had wanted to see me, had asked the managers if there was any way I could come visit, suddenly left in a rush. “Oh,” I said simply. Unsure what to do now, since Namjoon obviously wasn’t eagerly awaiting my visit as I’d assumed, I slid off the arm and into the couch, pulling my purse into my lap. My coat was still on, since I’d planned on heading to the studio to hang out with Namjoon after dropping off my stuff but now...

“Aren’t you going to go see him?” Taehyung asked softly.

I shrugged. “He knows I’m here.” At least, he knew I was planning on coming to visit after our texts this morning. “He told me to come to the dorm. I’m sure he’ll come back when he wants a break.”

Taehyung shrugged and turned back to Jungkook’s screen. I settled in, shrugging off my warm jacket and laying my legs along the couch, not quite reaching Tae at the other end. I watched Jungkook play for a little while, but my mind wasn’t on the game. Part of me kind of wanted to leave, to see if Namjoon would even notice that I hadn’t come over, but I dismissed that as too petty. Not that I wasn’t already being petty by not going to the studio, but I knew he would come back to the dorm at some point.

I felt useless, just starting off into space, so I pulled out my phone and started re-reading through some of the data analysis for my thesis project. I had to switch apps back and forth in order to make some notes, which was getting annoying, so I asked Taehyung if I could borrow the tablet sitting beside him to email myself some points to include in my own analysis.

“What are you doing?” Jimin asked, looking up from his phone.

I scoffed. “Boring math stuff,” I replied, my eyes darting from one screen to the other as I typed a short sentence about a possible bias in the data.

Jungkook took an interest and exited the lobby he was in, getting up and crouching behind me so he could see my screen. “What’s with all the dots?” he asked.

I laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve graphed all the data points from my research. In an ideal world, they are all supposed to fall between here-” I pointed to a spot on the graph, “-and here, in an even spread.”

“But a bunch are all together there at the end,” he commented.

“Yep,” I confirmed. “Which means either my data is incomplete, or there is a bias that we haven’t accounted for.” I let my head fall back so I could look at Jungkook upside down. “Which means I need to find it or find more data to include in the analysis.”

“Aish,” he muttered, bracing his arm on the couch beside my head and leaning his chin on it. “It’s all just dots on the screen to me. You’re so smart, noona.”

Footsteps sounded behind us and we both twisted to see who had come in, since we hadn’t heard the door.

It was Namjoon. Of course the first time I see him in weeks, I’m sprawled out on the couch having an intimate looking conversation with his friend while another had grabbed my feet out of habit and was giving me a massage, a fact I hadn’t even noticed in my concentration.

“Hyung, look who came to visit!” Jungkook said, bouncing to his feet.

“Hey,” Namjoon greeted us all collectively. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his oversized knit cardigan, horn rimmed glasses framing his eyes, and a black ball cap pulled down over his blonde hair. After so many weeks not seeing him, he looked like a wet dream.

“I came back to see if anybody wanted to go grab some food with me,” he continued. Silence hung in the room. I tried to tell myself that he’d just forgotten that I couldn’t go out with them, but their silence proved that everyone else had managed to remember.

Seokjin cleared his throat and stepped up next to Namjoon. “How about the four of us go grab something and bring it back here,” he suggested. “Give you two a moment to yourselves?” I met Jin’s eyes, thanking him silently.

I’d never seen the lot of them scramble so quickly to get out the door.

I had stood up while they were all running around, sticking next to the couch, my hands in the back pockets of my jeans. Once the room cleared and we heard the front door close, I looked up at Namjoon and approached him slowly.

“Hey stranger,” I said, and went to wrap my arms around his waist, but he stepped back. I frowned in confusion. “Joon-ah, what’s wrong?”

He reached down and grabbed something from the floor next to my purse, the hoodie I’d stolen and brought back to return in his hand. “Is this it? Because if you’re here to break up with me, I don’t want to draw this out.”

“What?” My confusion only grew, now that he was speaking nonsense.

“You’re returning my shit, you didn’t come down to the studio or even tell me you were here, you’re- you’re fucking flirting with Jungkook!” he rambled, his voice getting heated. “Just do it, already!”

I couldn’t help the edge in my voice, an automatic response to the aggression in his. “I can’t believe you,” I growled. “I’m here, I snuck over here just to see you, because I thought you wanted me, that you needed to see me. I brought your favourite hoodie because it doesn’t smell much like you anymore because I’ve been wearing it for weeks and I wanted to trade you for another one. But I get here and find out that it wasn’t even you who wanted me here, it was fucking Yoongi who asked, because you’re being as asshole to all of them.” I crossed my arms over my chest, huffing at him. “And I’m not flirting with Kookie! He asked me what my thesis is about! And as far as I know, you are the only man in existence who finds my discussing statistical analysis sexy.”

I watched his face soften as I spoke. “Babe, I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’ve just been so busy-”

“I’ve been busy too, Namjoon,” I pointed out, my righteous anger not yet slaked. Now it was my turn to step back and avoid his embrace. “And I didn’t pull away like you did. Don’t try and pretend this is just about today.” Frustrated tears fell down my face, and I was helpless to stop them; pretty much any strong emotion made me cry. “This doesn’t exactly bode well for the future of our relationship, does it? Because after you’re done this album, then it’s weeks of promotions, and then your world tour. And it’ll be even harder if I take the job in Busan!”

I hadn’t meant to tell him like this. The offer from a university near my hometown I’d received a couple days previous had been weighing on me and I’d been looking for a chance to tell him about it.

Namjoon froze, his face contorting again. “Busan? You’re moving back to Busan?”

I let my arms curl around my abdomen, feeling very small and sick to my stomach. “My thesis advisor sent part of my draft to a colleague at the university there, and he offered me a job,” I explained. “I haven’t decided anything, and it wouldn’t be until after graduation, but…”

Namjoon scoffed. “Well, good luck with that. You think Tae- or-or- Jungkook would be any better than I am at long distance?” His stutter when he got angry was something I’d never seen directed at me before. “Good luck with that,” he repeated.

“Why the fuck do you keep thinking that I’d leave you and start dating one of them?” my voice had finally risen enough to be called a shout. “They are my friends. How many times do you need to hear it? I’m not interested in dating any of the other members!”

“Because I know you’re attracted to them!” Namjoon shouted back. “You told me, back before we started dating, before I confessed, that you thought every one of us was attractive.”

“But I’m not in love with them, you idiot, I’m in love with you! You’re impossible sometimes, you know that?” I threw my hands up, grabbing my purse and sweater off the couch. “Talk about a double standard. You work with some of the most attractive women in the world, I have to sit there and watch you actively flirt with them on camera, and you smile and give them that look-” I gripped the strap of my bag and shook it in his face. “But I trust you to know the difference between casual attraction and wanting to pursue a relationship, and to come home to me.” A sob wracked my body, the tears coming all at once and my throat constricting painfully. “I trust you. But if you can’t trust me the same way, then there’s no point to this, I guess it’s over.”

I tried to move around him, heading for the door, but he stopped me by wrapping his arms around me. “Please, don’t go,” he begged softly. I felt his body shake with sobs to match mine, though he was better at keeping them quiet. “Don’t leave me like this, please. I can do better.”

“What more do you want from me, Namjoon?” I asked, not moving as tears fell down my face. I was afraid to move, to look at him, not knowing what I would see on his face.

He spun me around, sinking to his knees in front of me. “I see now how I’ve fucked up,” he admitted, his voice muffled by my shirt where he pressed his face into my soft abdomen. “I guess I just got too far into my own head, and I lashed out at you, and I just miss you so goddamn much it hurts.”

I let my things fall to the floor and wrapped my arms around his head. “I miss you, too. It’s been breaking my heart, feeling like you’re pulling away from me.” I felt him turn his face up toward me and looked down to meet his eyes. “This doesn’t work without that trust, Namjoon. I can’t keep doing this.”

“Please,” he choked out a sob, rubbing his face against me again. “Let me try again, I can make it up to you. I can do better, I swear. We can be better together, just don’t leave me.”

“Can we be better?” I asked, more to myself than to him. “We have no idea when things will get back to our normal, this could go on for months.” My heart was breaking even though I knew I had to say the words. “And even then, I’m still busy, you’re still busy, and you’re going to be travelling for extended periods. And who knows where I’ll end up working.” I swallowed, trying to keep my voice even. “Should we just- just cut our losses now?”

“No no no,” Namjoon chanted. “Don’t give up on us, on me. Please.” He stood up, and I let my arms fall back to my sides. I looked up into his face and saw the pain spilling out of his eyes.

I’d spent the last days wondering if he’d been distant because he didn’t love me anymore, that he’d stopped caring when I wasn’t constantly there to remind him. The tortured expression on his face made those worries seem ridiculous. His love for me, his enduring affection and care, was plain as day.

“I don’t want to,” I whispered. “I don’t want to give up, I mean.” I leaned into him and hugged him around the waist. “I love you too much to give up.”

He returned my embrace, one of his hands reaching up to cup my head, tangling in my hair. We stood there for several minutes, each lost in our own thoughts, but so grateful to simply be in each other’s arms.

I finally pulled back and sniffled, wiping the back of my hand across one cheek. Namjoon’s strong hands cupped my face, this thumbs wiping away the rest of the tears. Once that was done, he leaned down and gave me the sweetest kiss on my mouth, just a soft brush of his lips on mine.

We heard a door close down the hall and turned to see Yoongi walking in from his room. “Thank fuck,” he cursed, seeing us embracing. “I was afraid I’d be coming out to see you alone and crying after the shouting, but looks like you’ve made up. Are you going to stop biting my head off now?” Namjoon laughed softly at his hyung’s question.

“Thank you, Yooni-ssi,” I said, turning to him. “I hear you’re the reason I was allowed to visit.”

Yoongi shrugged. “He was unbearable, and you said you missed him,” he brushed off my thanks.

“You were talking to Yoongi-hyung?” Namjoon sounded surprised. Doubt crept into my mind, wondering if his newly revealed irrational jealousy was going to make for another fight.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I texted him a few days ago to ask if he’d start a scandal to take the spotlight off of us. And he asked how I was doing.”

Namjoon laughed. “I didn’t think you were actually going to ask him!” he admitted.

I bit my lower lip, knowing I needed to be upfront. If Namjoon was going to take issue with me contacting my friends just because they were guys, I needed to know as soon as possible. “A few of the other members texted me, too, asking how I was handling things. I thought they were just being sweet, but now I think they might have been worrying over you.” I met his eyes, looking for any clue as to how he’d react. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

Namjoon pulled me close again, placing a kiss on my temple. “It’s fine, you don’t have to tell me about your friends texting you.”

Wanting to make myself clear, I added, “You don’t have a problem with us being friends, do you?”

Namjoon looked me in the face again. “Of course not. What did you think, I was going to ask you to cut them off? Imagine Jimin if you just suddenly stopped being friends with him. It would break his little heart.” He smiled at me. “I’m sorry my stupid jealous freakout has you doubting your own friendships. I just- I guess I’m not all that good at long distance after being able to be with you for so long. That’s on me, though, something I have to work on for myself. Because I do trust you, implicitly. I swear I do.” I felt like that wasn’t the whole story, not the root of the problem anyway, but it was enough for me, for now.

My boyfriend leaned down to kiss me again, this time a little harder, more like he usually did when he was just saying hi. I let my lips fall open as his tongue swept inside to meet my own. He moaned a little into my mouth, pressing his body closer until we heard someone clearing their throat.

“Ah hmm,” Yoongi coughed very deliberately from where he sat on one of the couches, staring at his phone. “Are you done? Cause the guys want to know if its safe to come in with the food, and I’m hungry.”

***

I leaned back in my chair, resting my hands on my over-full belly and sinking into the comforting feeling of Namjoon’s arm around my shoulders. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like a relief to be back here, hanging out with all of them again. Namjoon especially, of course, but I missed the camaraderie of the whole group as well.

“Do you want to come back to the studio with me?” Namjoon asked as he pushed his chair back from the takeout container covered table and stood. “I can play you what I’ve got so far.” I nodded and moved to stand up as well, knowing that ‘listening to what he’s got’ was code for some time alone, which we both needed and knew we weren’t likely to get if we stayed at the dorm.

“Hyung, can we hear too?” Jimin asked, rushing to stand with us. Taehyung and Jungkook both jumped up as well, though the maknae was still bent in half, shovelling another bite of noodles into his mouth. “You’ve been such a bear, we’ve kind of been afraid to ask.”

Namjoon leaned into me and groaned, but I could see the dimple in his cheek, so he was smiling at their antics. It warmed my heart, that he was willing to indulge them even though he knew they were using me as a buffer. “Fine,” he sighed for dramatic effect, his smile gone when he straightened to look at them. “It’s still pretty rough, though.”

Even rough, the little snippets he played for us held a lot of promise. The three boys were obviously as into it as I was, asking Namjoon to play some parts over and over and throwing out ideas of their own. He’d been working with other writers and producers, as usual, but I felt like I was starting to recognize the spin he put on each piece of music.

“And Taehyung already laid down vocals for this one,” Namjoon reached around me and clicked to open a new file on his computer, the smooth notes filtering through the speakers. He pulled his arms back around my waist, holding me tight on his lap, a position so easy and familiar it was hard to believe we’d been fighting at all.

Taehyung’s voice filled the room, the deep soulful tone sliding around the melody, and I smiled. “Oh my goodness, Tae!” I gushed. “Your voice is absolutely- It’s like, toe-curling!”

Namjoon chuckled behind me. “Don’t you usually call his voice panty melting?” he asked, loud enough for the others to hear over the music, much to my shame.

I blushed. “I didn’t think that phrase was entirely appropriate, given the circumstances,” I muttered, and they all laughed quickly before quieting down to listen to the rest of the song. Taehyung’s haunting voice was lamenting a love he could not have, purely due to circumstances out of their control. Tears sprung to my eyes, and I leaned back to ask Namjoon, “You wrote this one, didn’t you?”

He nodded, and added, “Taehyung helped with the melody and some of the lyrics. Not sure this one is going on the album, but maybe we’ll release it on soundcloud or something.”

I snuggled further into his lap, pulling his arm around me until he squeezed me so tight I could barely breathe. The combination of the sweet lyrics and Tae’s voice were only making that time alone with Namjoon more urgent. “Do you think I could spend the night?” I asked softly. “Ask Taehyung to pile in with one of the others, just for tonight?”

I felt Namjoon smile, since I couldn’t see him. “I dunno, baby, I think Taehyung might not mind watching,” he said, louder than I had been, deliberately making it so the boys could hear.

Jimin started laughing so hard, he curled into a ball and rolled sideways on the couch, bumping into Taehyung beside him. Tae’s face coloured and he looked pointedly at the floor as Jungkook giggled and slapped his knee.

I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, Joon-ah, don’t be such a pervert,” I admonished him. “Come on, isn’t it time you took me to bed?” I knew that would get a reaction, and it did, everyone laughing at my intentional hypocrisy.

“Aish, noona, I never thought you’d be so cold,” Jungkook said. When I shot him a confused look, he continued, “You get turned on by Taehyung, and then you kick him out of his own room to bang Namjoon-hyung.”

I laughed at his analysis. “Or, my lovely boyfriend wrote a song for me, which he got his friend to sing because he knows how much I love his friend’s voice,” I argued. “Really, it’s Joon-ah who is using Tae as foreplay.”

The guys laughed at that and Namjoon grumbled, telling everybody to get out, and we all made our way back to the dorm. No one said anything, but I saw Taehyung duck into Kookie’s room as everyone headed off to bed.

***

Despite how tiring our day had been, both physically and emotionally, neither Namjoon nor I wanted to fall asleep quite yet. We’d fucked as soon as the door to his room closed, all rough hands and hard mouths, then cuddled for a while and made love a second time. Namjoon had ducked out to get a washcloth to clean ourselves up with before we fell asleep, but he hadn’t waited long enough for the water to warm up, so I yelped when the cold cloth first made contact with my cum streaked thigh.

“Sorry, babe,” he said, moving quickly so as to minimize the amount of time I had to deal with it. I sucked in a breath when he swiped over my swollen labia, and he grinned. “A bit sensitive, hmm?”

“Just a bit,” I confirmed, and pushed his hand away when he moved to shock me again. He dropped the cloth to the floor, and I tried to see where it landed so I wouldn’t step on it in the morning, but he flopped on top of me before I could spot it. “You should really hang that up or something,” I pointed out.

“Mmm,” he hummed against my throat where he’d nestled his head. “Missed this.”

“What, squishing me to death?” I asked, slowly shoving him until he rolled onto the other side of me, but he pulled me with him so I was lying half on top of him. “You just missed sex,” I accused, trying to play it off like a joke, but I still worried that’s all he wanted me for.

Namjoon shook his head. “Nope, I’m sure it’s you,” he asserted. He kissed my neck softly, then pulled his head back, voice turning all serious. “Babe, can I tell you something? Promise not to get mad?”

My heart dropped, sure he was going to confess to something awful like cheating on me. We’d been apart for weeks, and I knew the sexual frustration would have been getting to him as much as it did to me, and he had no shortage of opportunities. I swallowed thickly, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray my inner turmoil. “Sure.”

“See…” he started, and my heart rate increased, terrified of what was to come. “For a long time, Taehyung and I have had this kind of friends-with-benefits arrangement-” My brain short circuited, not understanding what I was hearing. I was expecting something, something like an intern he made out with, but he’s suddenly confessing to some past relationship with Taehyung? His roommate and fellow band member, Taehyung, who everyone thought I was cheating on Namjoon with? I didn’t even know he was into guys, like at all. Namjoon was still talking though, so I tried to catch back up. “-So when he offered I kinda freaked out and he didn’t mean anything by it cause he thought it’d be cool, and I swear I didn’t fuck him.”

I turned on my side so I was facing him. “Okay, slow down. You and Tae have...a past?” He nodded. “A romantic one?” He twisted his mouth and brought his hand closer to our faces and tited it back in forth, meaning kind of. “Okay, not quite romantic, but sexual?” Another nod.

This time the feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn’t dread or fear, but something molten I felt to my core. Namjoon smirked when he saw the way my pupils reacted. I tried to push aside the flash of lust that had hit me at the thought of my boyfriend and his group member together in that way. “So, sorry, what happened with Tae?”

“Whenever we’re both between relationships and feeling horny we, you know, help each other out,” Namjoon explained unnecessarily.

I shook my head. “No no, I get that part. What happened the other day that Tae didn’t mean anything by cause he thought it was cool? I kinda lost the thread of what you were saying in the middle there,” I admitted, which made him smile even wider.

“Uh huh,” he leered at me as he said it. “So Taehyung saw that I was...shall we say I was struggling with being away from you for so long, and he thought I might need some relief of a sexual nature. And he offered by, uh, kinda waking me up with his mouth. Like, on my dick.”

I listened to him struggle to give me details, and the images his words brought to mind were some of the most erotic things I’d ever imagined. I glanced around at the bed we were lying on, imagining Joon splayed out across it like he usually was when he had the bed to himself, morning wood tenting the soft grey sweatpants he used as pyjamas. Taehyung, sliding out of the bed on the other side of the room and approaching Namjoon’s bed slowly, pulling down Joon’s pants to free his erection and sliding that wicked looking tongue of his from base to tip. I knew from experience that would be enough to wake Namjoon, but in my little fantasy Tae didn’t stop, crouched over my boyfriend and taking him deep into his throat a few times before Namjoon’s hand fell to the back of his head and Joon arched up into the younger man’s mouth…

“Well now, isn’t that interesting,” real life Namjoon said quietly. I snapped my head up to meet his eyes, falling into his all too perceptive gaze. “You like that, don’t you?” He slipped his firm thigh between my knees and pressed upwards. “Here I thought you’d be pissed, or need me to convince you that I didn’t take him up on his offer, which I didn’t, and that he knew now that it wasn’t something I’d be welcoming since you and I are together, which he does. Instead, I think you want me to tell you more.”

His thigh was high enough to press against my core, and I rocked against it. Namjoon hissed. “Baby, you’re soaking again. I can feel it on my leg. We just got cleaned up for bed, but you’re such a dirty girl, aren’t you?” he said into my ear, his voice low and gravelly, which wasn’t helping my level of arousal. I moaned and twisted my head to kiss him again just as a sliver of light fell across the opposite wall and the door creaked open. Namjoon grabbed a blanket and quickly pulled it over our entwined bodies.

Taehyung walked into the room slowly, glancing around in the dark to detect any possible movement, trying not to disturb us while he thought we were sleeping. After he stumbled over something on the floor, it was too dark to see what, Namjoon took pity on him. “It’s okay, Tae, we aren’t asleep yet.”

“Oh, sorry,” Tae whispered. “I can go back, I was just getting tired and it sounded like you guys had, uh, finished…”

“We were just falling asleep, Taehyung,” I reassured him. “Go to bed if you want.”

“Mmm, are you sure, babe?” Namjoon teased me. “We were just talking about what happened with Tae and I the other morning, and you were getting all hot and bothered.”

Taehyung coughed. “I’m sorry, what? You- you told her?” I wished there had been enough light to see the expression on his face, to see the shock that as so evident in his voice.

“Yeah, don’t worry, she’s kind of really into the idea,” Namjoon laughed until I struck his arm lightly. I didn’t want Tae to know I’d been fantasizing about him fucking my boyfriend and get all awkward with me.

“No, we are just going to go to sleep, you’re safe to stay,” I assured the younger man. Namjoon rocked forward, the thigh still between my own pressing against my centre, so I shoved him back. “And if you don’t stop that, my love, I’ll go find somewhere else to sleep, and you can sleep alone.”

25 days P.I.

“Come on, babe, please?” Namjoon begged. I sighed, knowing I shouldn’t give in but wishing I could.

Things between us had been better since I’d been to visit a few days earlier, back to the nightly phone call and endless string of texts. Now he was asking if he could come by my place for a quick visit, and being whiney about it.

“I have a deadline, Joon-ah,” I reminded him for what felt like the twelfth time in the five minutes we’d been on the phone. “I need to work through the edits from my advisor before I submit my final draft, and after that I need to start preparing for my defense.”

“I promised I won’t stay too long,” he argued. “I’ll even bring some of the guys with me so we have chaperones. We’ll bring dinner and we can all eat together. I know you probably haven’t been taking time to eat properly…” I looked at my messy kitchen, counters piled with bowls of half-eaten ramyeon eaten hastily in front of my computer, knowing he was right. Namjoon’s voice dropped as he added, “I don’t want to go so long without seeing you again. I don’t want us to end up doubting each other again.”

Of course he knew exactly how to pull at my heartstrings. “Fine,” I acquiesced, as he knew I would. “But only for a little bit.”

I really should have known better. Namjoon showed up with Taehyung (“the others were all busy”), dressed so stylishly in their ripped jeans and designer shirts that I wondered if they’d just come off a photo shoot, and filled my coffee table with the boxes of food they’d brought. Once we’d eaten, he’d insisted there’d be no harm in them staying to watch a movie while I continued to work. He just wanted to hold me, he claimed, so I settled in to his lap with my computer and ignored the movie on screen. I was so engrossed in my work that I didn’t even notice when the first movie ended and they started a second, but it was one of my favourites, so eventually I closed my work and settled back into Namjoon.

After a few moments of my leaning across him, Namjoon shifted so that he was sitting sideways on the couch, his legs on either side of me so he could pull me more firmly into his lap. I wiggled back against him and he let out a low groan, slipping his hand up under my shirt to splay across my stomach.

“Uh, Joon-ah, don’t be gross in front of Tae,” I chided him, but wiggled back again, wanting to punish him a little bit for staying longer than he’d promised.

Namjoon swatted at my thigh with his free hand. “Sit still, then!” he returned. “I wouldn’t have been gross if you weren’t being dirty.”

I gasped for dramatic effect and twisted to look him in the face. “How exactly am I being dirty? I’m just getting comfortable.”

Namjoon scoffed. “Yeah, you’re comfortably grinding on my dick.” The hand on my abdomen slid up high enough slip unter the wire of my bra and graze at the underside of my breast, causing me to wiggle yet again. “You’re killing me here, babe!”

I stopped, remembering we weren’t alone, and looked over at Taehyung to make sure he wasn’t about to run away in embarrassment. To my surprise, he met my gaze and smiled. “It’s okay,” he assured me. “Nothing I haven’t heard or seen before.” I blushed, but smiled my thanks and grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch, throwing it over Namjoon and I for a little more privacy if he decided to pull my shirt up again.

By the end of the second movie, Namjoon was snoring behind me and Tae could barely keep his eyes open. “Okay, guys, you’ve been here longer than you said you would, time to head home,” I said, loud enough to startle them both. Taehyung groaned, and Namjoon hugged me tighter, pulling me back into his lap.

“Babe, it’s too late,” he complained. “Can’t we just crash here?”

I muttered, “How did I not see this coming?” but still freed myself from Namjoon’s arms and went to the closet to grab an extra pillow and some blankets. “Here, Taehyung,” I said, dropping them on the couch. “The couch is comfy enough that I fall asleep on it all the time.” I helped Namjoon to stand and pulled him behind me to my bedroom.

We had settled down, ready to fall back asleep when we heard my couch scrape against the floor as if someone was moving it around. It finally stopped, but we listened to bare feet padding down the short hall to my closed door.

“Noona?” Taehyung asked through the door. He said something else, but it was muffled.

“What?” Namjoon asked. “Open the door, we can’t hear you.” Taehyung did as ordered, but stood in the doorway, not stepping into the room.

“Do you have an air mattress, or some more blankets or something? I’m too tall to fit on the couch,” he said.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t really.” Tae nodded and reached for the door to close it again.

“Just-” Namjoon said with a sigh. “Come join us,” he offered. “We should have enough room.”

My eyes widened in shock, and I turned back to look at Joon’s face. Was he serious? I knew he was used to sharing a bed with Tae, but I certainly wasn’t. Did he really want to spend the night sandwiched between his past and current lovers? I may have found the idea of the two of them together that way...intriguing, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to lay next to them while they snuggled or something. I certainly wasn’t a fan of having the situation sprung on me like this.

I couldn’t exactly deny him after the offer had been made, though, so I scooted back toward the edge of the bed to make room for Taehyung on Namjoon’s other side. Joon grabbed me, though, and started pulling the both of us the other way. “You know I’d overheat if I was between the two of you,” he explained, and I felt the bed sink behind me as Tae climbed in. “You good?” Joon asked once we were all settled in.

“Yeah, sure,” I promised bravely. Tae and I had technically fallen asleep together before, but there was a big difference between falling asleep against each other on the couch at the dorm and sleeping in bed together on purpose.

“You know,” Namjoon began with a smirk. “If you get too hot, you can always take off your pyjamas. Neither of us will mind.”

“Hyung!” This time it was Taehyung scolding him. “This is awkward enough without you making it worse.”

I kicked my way out from underneath the blankets, sitting up to crawl out of the bed. “I’ll just go sleep on the couch, I’ve done it before,” I grumbled, trying not to let emotion creep into my voice. I’d nearly made it to the end of the bed before a strong arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me back. To my surprise, it was Taehyung who held me to him, not my boyfriend.

“Ignore hyung, he’s being an asshole,” Tae said, his mouth right next to my ear. I hoped he couldn’t feel the shiver that coursed through my body; I really wasn’t exaggerating the effect his voice had on me. “It’s just like passing out on the couch together, no big deal.” He had a point, our relationship had always been heavy on skinship and it had never bothered me before.

As if to further convince me, Taehyung started humming softly, some tuneless notes that turned into the melody of the song I’d heard at the studio, the one he and Namjoon had written for me. My body was still tingling from his voice, so I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing, hoping I’d drift off.

I must have looked convincing, because once the song was over, Tae started whispering at Namjoon. “What the fuck are you trying to pull, hyung?” His voice was harsh despite his attempts to keep quiet.

“Don’t act all innocent, I know you still like her,” Namjoon answered, his voice almost teasing and heavy with sleep. It seems Tae’s lullaby had worked on Joon as well. “Seen the way you watch her when she isn’t looking, use every excuse to touch her and hold her close. That picture, the scandal...I don’t know how she doesn’t see how bad you want her, it’s all over your face.”

“Hyung,” Tae whined. “So you just want to torture me? Force us closer to punish me for wanting her, or is this retaliation for interrupting you the other night?”

Namjoon chuckled. “No, nothing like that.”

“Then what, hyung?”

Namjoon was silent for a few moments, long enough that I was tempted to open my eyes to check if he’d fallen asleep mid conversation. Finally he spoke, but his words gave me no comfort. “Look at her, curled up with you in an instant, when I’m right in front of her. She was looking at you the same way, Taetae, in that picture. She wants you too, I’m pretty sure.”

I felt more than heard Tae’s sharply indrawn breath; he had pulled me right up against him and his arms tightened around me even further in his moment of shock. I had to will myself to remain relaxed, knowing that if I even stiffened they would realize I was awake, and I’d lose out on hearing the rest of this conversation they were having.

“I would never, hyung! Noona wouldn’t- She’s your girl, Joon-hyung,” Taehyung stumbled through the words, clearly at a loss for what to say to Namjoon’s revelation.

I wouldn’t have known what to say, either. My mind was racing, overwhelmed with new information and things to consider. Was he right? Did I really have a crush or something on Tae? He was probably my best friend, and I adored him to pieces, but I had been into Namjoon from the moment we met, head-over-heels in love for a couple of years now. Sure, Taehyung was attractive, but so were all the other members, and no one could fault me for enjoying the view. But I couldn’t deny that my relationship with Taehyung was different from the rest of the guys, we were closer and hung out together more, and were more cuddly, but I figured Tae was just like that with everybody. Unless that touchyness was a manifestation of some kind of feelings for me…

“She is, for now. Doesn’t have to stay that way,” Namjoon said softly, and my racing mind ground to a halt.

Next (Part 2)

#bts fic #namjoon x reader #taehyung x reader #namjoon x reader x taehyung #ipurpleunet #my fic #bts smut #namjoon scenario #taehyung scenario #idol au #bangtan smut #namjoon au #taehyung au #bangtan x reader #namjoon fic #taehyung fic #bts au #bts au fanfic #fic: this looks bad

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