#at least learning curse words from other languages is faster and easier and so much more fun

[byanyan]

new genre of ask where byan comes barging in and asks your muse to teach them how to swear in their native language, or any other language(s) they might know

[yuzukult]

acquitted love || sjn & reader

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

“God, isn’t he just… so attractive?”

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

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

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

Not that you think Johnny is hot.

No.

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

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

“But he’s so hot—”

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

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

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

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

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

And well, Hyeri works directly underneath Mr. Kim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your hand goes up and Hyeri crouches down.

“Stop it.”

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

“The fuck is an ‘e2l’?”

“Enemies to lovers.”

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

Hyeri gasps.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What could she be calling for?

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

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

“Hello?”

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

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

“As you know, I have a favor.”

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

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

What the fuck?

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

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

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

“Fuck—”

“The what?”

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

“What about Gonghyun?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kiss ass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is a game changer.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay…”

“They’re jean shorts.”

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

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

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

“I don’t think—”

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

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

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

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

You hate admitting when you’re wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnny, of course, thinks otherwise.

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

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

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

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

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

“Jean shorts are the windows to the soul.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, I’m single.”

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

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

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

He’s entirely the opposite of you.

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

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

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

And knowing this information sort of angers you more.

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

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

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

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

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

To work as a team.

Together.

Jesus, this is Hell for you.

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m quitting our partnership.”

You blink. “What?”

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

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

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

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

“I like you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart stops for a second.

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

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

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

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

Hyeri is his replacement.

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

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

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

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

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

“Where are you going?”

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

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

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

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

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

Were his eyes always this sparkly?

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

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

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

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

Johnny raises a brow. “What?”

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

“Then let’s go out on a date.”

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

“I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“—Throw themselves at you?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you jealous?”

“In what way?” you snap back.

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

You’re left without anything to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I wasn’t flirting.”

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

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

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

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

Your silence answers his question.

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

“I never said you were incapable—”

“But you implied it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours? Not so much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or at least, you’ll try.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d really like that.”

[raineeskiesabove]

Do you mind if you do headcanon either of Kaeya or Zhongli who meet s/o's mute but does sign language?

Zhongli x Mute! S/O HCs

As old as he is, Zhongli regretfully did not take the time to learn sign language. The people of his nation have always considered speech to be vital for conducting business, and the idea of someone living without a voice slipped his mind

That is, until he met them. Upon their first meeting, their radiant smile instantly made his heart flutter, their innocence prompting a sense of protectiveness to wash over him. Normally, humans did not sway his judgement easily, nor did they break past his stoic demeanor. And yet, in the face of this individual, Zhongli felt quite vulnerable, like they could sense every complexity that lingered in his heart

Of course, he would want to strike up a conversation, wondering what their humble shop would be selling. The least he could do was buy something. Maybe their smile would somehow grow even sweeter than it already was.

He would quickly realize that they do not speak, as they only use primitive gestures like pointing to lead him around the shop. He doesn’t quite understand, which causes a sense of guilt to pool into his stomach. Was this really the only way that they communicated?

His question would be quickly answered when their relative would barge in from the back room, taking over in handling Zhongli’s questions and negotiations. The relative would sign an indication to leave, while forcefully nudging them away. Zhongli didn’t want to cause any trouble, forcing himself to let the mysterious person go. Their smile had faded.

It would be days before they met again, this time in a secluded place by the upper terraces of the city. They were feeding the pondfish, the smile back on their lovely face. It took everything in Zhongli’s power not to run over to them like an idiot, bless his gentle soul

They would be surprised, yet happy to see him approach, offering a small wave in welcome. Offering him some fish food was the only other thing they did to initiate some form of communication. That is, until Zhongli spoke. First, he would ask if they were deaf. The shake of their head gave him an obvious answer. Next, he asked why they didn’t use sign language around him, even though that was easier for them. Another shake of the head, this time with a modest smile.

In that moment, Zhongli decided that he would learn the language for them. Next time they met, he would surprise them. Promising to meet again in two days time, he devoted every free moment he had towards learning the basics, at least enough to carry on simple conversations. During his studies, one sign in particular caught his eye: “I love you.” It was a surprisingly simple gesture for how much it meant. He shook his head, taking note of it, but realizing that there was no need for it right now

On the day of their meeting, Zhongli would start with greeting them in sign language, modestly adding that he’s still not quite fluent. But already, the simple gesture causes the one before him to well up with tears, reciprocating a “hello”, and then a “thank you”, before enveloping him in a tight hug. Never, in their life, had someone gone out of their way to learn the language. The only ones that had were their family members, but with daily complaints and assertions that they were born “unlucky” and “cursed”.

For much of his time living as a mortal, people often told him that the way to win favor was buying the most expensive gift possible. And yet, the one he had just given was free. Or perhaps, the better word was priceless.

If Zhongli thought that their smile was cute before, their face absolutely radiated after Zhongli told them that he was learning their language

They often provided him with pointers and tips on how to improve, but only because he asked. Really, just his efforts alone were enough, but Zhongli insisted that it was only fair if he gave it his all.

Sometimes, he forgets a word, or completely butchers the signing, which embarasses him greatly. Not much makes him feel self conscious anymore, but these slip-ups weigh on him heavily. Every mistake could become a possible misconception, which scares him. Deep down, though, he knows that such a pure person like them doesn’t immediately assume ill intent. A fatal flaw in the business world. But between them, all it meant was a brief moment of confusion, laughter, and simply trying again

Their days pass with a sense of happiness and warmth, Zhongli growing more and more fluent with each conversation. Now, he feels his cheeks grow flushed around them, and his heart beats faster when they look up at him. He knows this feeling well- gods, he’s felt it before. And yet, he wonders when the time would be right to truly make his feelings known. Only then, will he finally use the sign he learned all those moons ago: “I love you.”

A/N: ack I’m sorry if this is kind of ooc, but I really do think Zhongli is very gentlemanly and thoughtful, so maybe he would see something like this to be worth his time?

[whats-rambled-rambled]

Long Nights - part 5

Neil x Reader

Chapter 5: After rain

(see chapter 4, 3, 2, 1)

summary: you learn to cope with the new situation, but you aren't the only one struggling

warnings: 18+, angst and pain, explicit language and other things

author’s note: This part of the story's been with me for... oh, so long. I just hope I did it justice. ✨6,1k words.✨ I don't even know.

Hurt/Comfort.

The song for this part is Dermot Kennedy - After rain

Enjoy! All feedback is greatly appreciated, let me know what you think?

——————

Tag list: @cxnnienikas @neutron-stars-collision ​ @ergunbilge @invertedneil @wanderedaway @mellifluous-cosmos @wonderwoman292 @buckysgoldenheart @townmoondaltwistle @theriverbeneaththeriver (please let me know if you want to be added/removed from the list)

-----

Your hands clenched on the bed’s frame, its coldness felt like the only real thing your drugged mind could process.

Doctor’s words were filling the room, but they were muffled as if they were coming from behind a barrier. Falling from such height...extreme luck...no broken bones…head trauma...internal bruising....

Was all that talking really necessary? Yeah, you were battered, all right. And it seems that even with painkillers the weird throbbing, like a morse code from your bruised cells, was about to stay with you for a little while.

...just like the darkness.

The more the doctor spoke, the more it became clear that they didn’t have any definite answers for you. Seemed like the day spent on being prodded, stabbed with needles, and tossed into various machines resulted in nothing more than a verdict: optic nerve injury.

As for what were you supposed to do now--

“Let me get this straight, doctor,” you said, slowly losing patience. “Your only solution now is: let’s wait and see what happens?”

Drumming fingers against a piece of plastic, followed by a sigh.

“Yes. There is no effective treatment, we could try a high dosage of corticosteroids, but there is no evidence that it’s gonna make any difference, really. And as some recovery may spontaneously occur within days or weeks--”

Weeks.

A cold shiver ran down your spine and you swallowed with effort.

And that was a maybe.

You just wanted to go home.

“Grand,” you cut in, “please tell me I can wait for that possible joyful occurrence anywhere else but here.” You aimed for a lighter tone, but every word coming out of your mouth was dripping with bitterness. Grimacing at your own attitude, you forced a weak smile to appear on your face. “No offense, doc.”

“None taken,” the doctor said with a snicker. “I get it.” A short pause filled with a rustling of paper. “With all the tests done, I don’t think we need to keep you here for observation any longer, but I’d recommend you weren’t alone for the next few days. Do you have anyone to take care of you after we discharge you?”

“I don’t need--”

Neil’s firm voice overlapped with yours.

“Yes, she has.”

You huffed, startled. And a bit annoyed.

You almost forgot Neil was in the room, but to be fair, you were quite sure he’d never left your side since you woke up. His initial nervous chatter got replaced by a silent presence, always ready to jump in should you needed anything - no matter if it was a glass of water or an arm to lean on. It was all comforting, endearing even, and you were so grateful to have him around, but the thought of having Neil in your apartment triggered an irrational panic.

Instead of dwelling on the roots of the anxiety, you decided to over-talk it.

“Neil, I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be okay, and you surely have better things to do than babysitting me.”

“I don’t.” Was that a hint of hurt in his voice? “Doctor, can you discharge her even if she is gonna be alone out there?”

“I’d rather she spent at least one more day here then.”

Unbelievable. You rolled your eyes, hoping it would make the same effect as always, and groaned. “Fine, you win, only because I want nothing else but to sleep in my own bed tonight.”

“Excellent,” said the doctor cheerfully, “I’ll get the forms and come back to you soon.”

“Thank you, doc,” you sighed, hanging your head in defeat.

After spending enough time with a person, it was always easy to recognize them by the way they walk. That’s how you knew it was Neil who approached you, ever so hesitantly.

And only because of a brush of his fingers against your hand you realized you were still clinging onto the bed frame.

“Hey, I’ll just help you set up everything you need there, all right?” he said quietly and you felt him sitting down next to you. “You’re gonna have all the space you want, and as soon as you decide it’s too much, I’ll get out of your hair, I promise.”

He must have noticed that little panic of yours, huh?

“I didn’t mean it like that.” You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to form a coherent thought. “It sounds good though, thank you.”

“Sure thing.” Neil shifted slightly. “How are you feeling?”

You shrugged and grimaced. “I don’t know, but either I’ve slept through the best high or these drugs they gave me are kinda lame.” Hearing Neil’s light chuckle, you cracked a small smile. “Honestly? I’m knackered.”

He hummed with sympathy.

“Is there anything I can do for you now?”

The softness in his voice was more than your tired and dazed mind could handle. You leaned to the side and rested your head on his shoulder.

“Just… take me home,” you asked, forcing the words past your clenched throat.

Neil exhaled sharply and carefully wrapped an arm around you, pressing a cheek to the top of your head.

“Of course.”

------

“Welcome to my crib.”

“Thank you, it’s...” - Neil hesitated as he closed the door behind you - “...cosy.”

Patting the wall to your right, you located a small hook and hung the keys on it.

“That is certainly one word for it,” you snorted. “Why, what did you expect?”

“Frankly? Considering you’re such an... acclaimed locksmith, I imagined something… well, bigger, for starters.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the way he stumbled on words, trying so hard not to sound offensive in any way.

Grinning, you put on your most snobbish tone. “Ah, sorry to disappoint, all my gold, glitter, and general pizzaz got moved to one of my many summer houses as my spacious lair worthy of the most infamous thief is under renovation, so I was forced to retreat to my humble family place in this ghastly neighborhood.”

“Such a shame,” he said and a smile brightened his words. “I like it, though. Matches your vibe, somehow.”

“Because it’s small, detached, empty, yet somehow messy?”

Neil sighed in a way you were absolutely sure he was rolling eyes at you, then helped you with the coat. “It’s gonna take more than putting words in my mouth to make me want to leave you here all by yourself, you know.”

You were quite sure a dirty joke was hiding in there, but it eluded your tired brain.

“Damn, need to up my game then,” you giggled, leaning against the wall to take the shoes off without losing your balance. “Nah, I’m messing with you, I’m grateful you got me out of there. Can’t wait to rinse that hospital stench off of me.”

“Do you want me to run a bath for you?”

You mused over the idea for a moment, “Thanks, I’ll take a shower - two minutes tops and I’d end up asleep in the ‘tub.” Probably even faster, considering that you already were running on fumes. “Anyway, make yourself at home, gonna grab some fresh clothes.”

Neil was not willing to give up.

“I’ll get you--”

“I’ve got this,” you uttered, instantly hating yourself for how harsh it came out, so you quickly added, “But would you please put the kettle on?” sending an apologetic grimace along with your words.

“On it.”

He seemed happy to have something to do. Or at least sounded like it as he took the crackling grocery and takeaway bags to the kitchenette.

You walked across the room with confidence, your hand reluctantly extended ahead on your waist level just in case you miscalculated the route to the bedroom. When you reached the door frame, you smiled to yourself. It wasn’t that hard, was it? Almost like going to the bathroom at night, not willing to put the light on to avoid waking up, right?

And exactly then, your shin hit the edge of the bed footboard, the impact sending a searing wave of pain up your whole leg. You bit your knuckle to stifle a groan and a curse that was bound to follow. Every. Goddamn. Time.

The noises coming from the other room stopped, but luckily there was no question. Nor a hero coming to rescue you from the sudden and vicious attacks of furniture.

Finally, the closet. Your fingers ran through the folded clothes. Clean underwear. A soft t-shirt. Comfy pj pants. The fatigue was so severe that the term dress to impress didn’t even cross your mind. Not that Neil cared, right? But before you stepped back from the wardrobe, you hesitated, sliding your hands down to one of the bottom drawers. All that boring into nothingness was straining, and keeping your eyes closed all the time felt wrong, somehow. Might as well, you shrugged, pulling out a silky blindfold. Maybe this would trick your brain into thinking it was just a game. A temporary thing. Nothing serious.

...but what if--

You took a shaky breath and slammed the closet shut. Swallowing with effort, you took the clothes and limped out of the room, then followed the wall to the bathroom.

Neil’s concerned voice reached you halfway there.

“You okay?”

“Peachy,” you said and flashed your teeth in a strained grin.

“Let me know if you need anything, all right?”

A change of strategy, then. You certainly didn’t mind, at least this way it didn’t trigger the unnecessarily rude reaction. And you had a feeling that you were going to need a pair of eyes to take care of those bruises of yours.

...or you could just follow the radiating ache and slap some gel where it hurts most, but at this point, as the painkillers were slowly wearing off, it would probably be easier to just pour the whole tube on the tiles and roll over in it.

“Will do, thanks.”

You closed the door behind you and sighed. The undressing required an accompaniment of grunts, hisses and curses, and when you finally got into the shower (hitting yourself only once while doing so) you were all sweaty and panting as if you’d run up twenty flights of stairs.

You winced as the warm water poured over your body, but you couldn’t wait to get rid of the lingering smell of antiseptics. Using soap uncovered the injured spots with a burning precision, but you gritted your teeth and soldiered through it, changing position slightly so you wouldn’t cause more damage with shampoo and conditioner. Condemning your past self for choosing a matching set of hair products, you were forced to guess and pick one to pour a little bit of it on your hand to judge which is which based on the texture of the fluid. Why did you even bother…?

When you were done and more or less dry, you put on the panties and wrapped another towel around yourself. A slow thumping in your head was growing stronger by the minute, but it was still bearable. As for taking care of the bruises… you realized you didn’t even know where the arnica ointment was. You’d bought one on your way just in case, but that meant--

You groaned and rubbed an eye with the back of your hand. Help it was, then.

“Neil?” you called out, cracking open the door.

A sudden rumble of a chair made you cringe, but a corner of your mouth twitched.

“What is it?” he asked as his rushed steps carried him closer.

“Could you help me with putting something on the most banged-up spots, please?” - a sheepish smile crept on your lips - “I thought about just mixing some cream with my lotion and rubbing it all over, but--”

He scoffed as if the idea personally offended him. “Jesus, please don’t. I’ll be right back.”

Your legs seemed to weigh a tonne, but also started to shake as though they were about to give in any moment, so you sat back on the edge of a bathtub with relief.

Neil came back after a while and muffled clanking suggested he brought a full medkit with him. You waited as he washed his hands thoroughly, and you stifled an amused giggle at the dedication, even though it was nothing more but common sense.

Neil’s soft voice broke the silence. “I’m gonna take a look at those wounds first, but for that, I need to touch you, is it okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” you shrugged. “I imagine you can’t do plenty without that, huh?”

A light chuckle. “Fair enough.” And featherlike touches that followed.

Careful fingers examining every bruised inch of skin, starting from the freshly hurt shin, scraped knees, going up your thighs until they met the edge of the towel. Then, ghosting over your hands, unhurriedly moving up the forearms…

You realized your breath got shaky.

He tucked a still quite damp strand of hair behind your ear and his fingertips glided over your forehead and down your temple, traced your jawline up to your chin. His knuckles grazed your neck, then moved across your collarbones, but when they met the towel again, Neil hesitated.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before, right?” you joked playfully and untucked the corner of the towel, letting it slide down your body.

A sharp inhale and a slipped-out curse.

“Christ…” uttered Neil, and you were quite sure what he was referring to. Your hip pulsated with dull pain in the place where the oxygen container had been, or rather where it must have moved to during the escape, bruising the hip bone and surrounding area at the impact.

You forced a crooked smile to your face. “And here I was hoping it looked better than it felt.”

“I can always lie to you if you want,” he offered, aiming for a lighter tone.

Shaking your head, you nibbled on your bottom lip. Somehow, the sole thought of him lying to you seemed like a certain heartache.

“No.” Your voice sounded weak, but maybe that was understandable, given how powerless you felt overall. Or maybe you could stop being so pathetic any moment now.

You closed your eyes, and while you tried to parley with your brain to give you a break, Neil started meticulously treating your wounds, focused on not causing any more discomfort than it was needed. You switched all your attention to his ministrations, grimacing slightly from time to time as he was tending particularly sore spots. Neil’s warm fingers contrasted with the cold ointment, all the different sensations fought a merciless battle to take precedence over one another, making even more of a mess in your tired head.

You heard Neil shifting in front of you as he was about to move to your injured face. Acting on an impulse, you spread your legs to allow him to come closer, and so he did, positioning himself on his knees between your thighs without a word. Quite a concentration, you thought and smiled fondly to your memories of the times you’d seen him so committed to a task. Slightly furrowed brows, blonde strands falling into shining blue eyes, with a bottom lip tugged between the teeth...

A brief touch on your temple brought you back to reality and you gasped, reaching out to hold on to Neil to keep your balance. As you rested your hands on his sides, he gently cupped your face and continued with taking care of the bruises. It felt as if the warmth radiating from him was mending you whole, even more so when it got combined with tender, soothing brushes of Neil’s thumb against your cheek. You melted into his palm and exhaled slowly, dropping your shoulders and relaxing.

Before you could stop the words from spilling out, you said under your breath, “It was just a fall, I don’t know how it got that bad,” voicing the thought that’s been on your head all day.

Neil pulled back abruptly and the tranquil moment shattered like glass against the bathroom tiles.

“Are you being serious right now? Just a fall? You’re lucky you’re alive, goddamnit, let alone able to walk!” Disbelief mixed with anger in his tone, taking you aback. And to your surprise, it felt like yet another wound, inflicted right at your chest. “Y-you hit the wall before you crashed on the ground, you--” his voice broke and Neil sighed. You heard him packing the medkit, simply tossing things inside before he moved away.

“Oh,” was all you could say, reaching for the abandoned towel to wrap it over your shoulders, in a sudden and desperate need to cover yourself. In every way possible. “Remind me to tie a cat and a buttered slice of bread to myself the next time we do this.”

He didn’t respond to your poor attempt at lighting up the mood, instead, you heard the door handle, a deadpanned “I’ll heat up the food” and he was gone.

You had no idea where his reaction had come from. Normally, you’d have followed him straight away to confront him, but right then you felt so exhausted and helpless you just slouched in your spot, with your hands fisted on the towel, and sat like that for a while, leveling your breath. You mustered all the strength you had left, found your clothes and put them on. Then, you tied the blindfold, letting a piece of sleek material bring a shred of comfort and hide a pitiful glimmer in the corners of your eyes.

You joined Neil in the other room and sat at the table. He didn’t comment on your attire nor the choice of accessories, hell, he barely even spoke to you when he put the plate in front of you, as well as through the whole meal.

Even though you’d picked up your favourite comfort food on the way, it tasted bland, and with your stomach tied into a knot, you couldn’t force more than a few bites into your system. Judging by the sounds - or rather the lack thereof - coming from across the table, Neil’d lost his appetite too.

Finally, you cleared your throat, breaking the heavy silence. “I think I’m full,” you said and stood up, grimacing slightly.

“I’ll do the dishes, go lie down,” he said quietly. “Please.”

As if he anticipated an argument. You really had no energy for that.

“Thank you. Are you--...” you stumbled on the question, but Neil chimed in.

“I’ll be on the couch.”

...maybe it was for the best.

You nodded and turned on your heel to fetch a spare pillow and a blanket while Neil was occupied with the dishes. The ever-growing headache was becoming unbearable, but you hoped that the sweet arms of Morpheus would bring a much-needed release soon. You brushed your teeth quickly and mumbling “‘night,” you disappeared into the bedroom, leaving the door half open for god knows what reasons. Perhaps to make you feel less alone.

The plan of sleeping off the worst pain looked good on paper but proved to be too hard to execute. That bloody awful feeling of being tired beyond comprehension and still unable to doze off, right? You tossed and turned (although carefully), trying to find the most comfortable position. After a while, you took the blindfold off and curled on your side, staring into the nothingness again. Listening to the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. Forcing every breath through your clenched chest. Trying to focus on anything other than neverending soreness.

You heard Neil’s footsteps and how they stopped right at your door. Stalling.

And you didn’t even try pretending you were asleep. Waiting.

“Hey... I wanted to check if you need anything before I turn in for the night.”

The softness of his voice was tainted by something as if he was holding back. But you were so glad to hear it anyway.

“Actually,” you said, propping yourself on the elbow and wincing, “could you bring me one of those fancy painkillers, please? I thought I might do without for a little while but-- ...yeah, not quite.”

“Of course, coming right up.”

When Neil was back, you sat on the bed, allowing him to hand you a glass and ...a shot glass? You shook the latter slightly and something rattled inside.

“Ah, okay, smart,” you smiled with recognition. “Thanks.”

“Don’t tell me you thought it was vodka?”

A hint of amusement in his tone made you snort.

“I can’t say I would mind,” - shrugging, you swallowed the pill and washed it down with cool water - “but this is gonna be more efficient, I guess.”

You shifted in your spot to put down both glasses on a bedside table. Neil was there to make sure you actually placed them on top of it, pushing your forearm gently when you were about to create a mess.

That light touch brought a lump back to your throat. As if the awkward silence wasn’t suffocating you enough.

“If that’s all…” said Neil quietly, taking a step towards the door.

But you reached out into the darkness and found his hand.

“Neil…” you squeezed his fingers, desperately trying to convey words that eluded you. Your plea was barely a whisper. “...stay?”

The pulse pounded in your ears as the stillness that followed seemed to last forever.

Then, Neil squeezed your hand back.

“I will,” he choked out, and his thumb grazed over your knuckles. “Be right back.”

You nodded and let go of his hand, not even sure that he could see your gesture, then moved to the other side of the bed. The held-back breath escaped in a shudder as another wave of pain overrode your senses, leaving a trail of cold sweat down your spine.

A faint tock of the light switch in the other room, then footsteps and a pillow landing next to yours. Neil snuggled down, keeping his distance, and you curled again in your spot, hoping that his proximity will calm you down enough to fall asleep. But as you said your goodnights and Neil’s breath leveled and got deeper, you still waited on the pills to start working, getting more and more lost in your own head and thoughts you’d managed to keep lidded on until now.

Because if only you’d cracked that safe faster. Or maybe if you’d discussed that escape route beforehand, somebody would have found a better path through the roofs. No, scratch that, the plan was tight, and it was your goddamn fault that you’d gotten distracted by a sodding rain, of all things. And that jump? Bloody amateur hour. Should have seen that coming, stepped to the side, or caught onto anything. You’d been granted a second chance at that wall. But no, you’d had to panic like a bush-leaguer, as if it had been your first fall in your life. And now you were lying there, feeling sorry for yourself. Abso-fucking-lutely pathetic.

What if Madame Karma finally decided to make you pay? What if you were never going to get your sight back? A warm tear trickled down your face slowly. No more free runs and adrenaline rushes while taking shortcuts through the most obscure places. No more lying on the rooftops to observe how the sky changes colours through the night. No more sitting on the hill and watching how the sun reflected in the river. How it danced on that messy blonde hair. You would never see his blue eyes lighting up again--

Your chin trembled as the tears stained your pillow. It felt as if you were nothing but pain, fear, and heartbreak. Pressing your lips together, you stifled a sob that shook your body mercilessly. You were nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

You wanted to brush it off, to tell him you were okay and he could go back to sleep. But instead, you sniffled and whimpered, unable to pass any word through your tightened throat.

Neil gasped and placed a hand on your shoulder.

“Hey, hey, come here,” he said softly as his fingers pressed lightly onto your back, urging you to move and you shifted into his embrace, clenching your fists on his t-shirt, struggling for every breath. “I’ve got you, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay,” he cooed, wrapping the arms around you gingerly. A much-needed reassurance whispered over and over again like a plea to anyone who could be listening.

Weeping quietly into Neil’s chest, you sought refuge in his closeness, clinging onto him as he held you and stroked your hair, waiting for the worst to pass. Soon, you ran out of tears, and there were just sobs, convulsing you whole like a heart-wrenching hiccup. Neil hugged you a little tighter, placed a small kiss on top of your head, and started humming, a melody barely more than a murmur. It felt familiar, but why?

By and by, the song and a steady heartbeat against your cheek weaved together and calmed your racing mind. Enough to finally let you drift off, with Neil’s soothing voice and warmth enveloping you, bringing comfort and hope for a better tomorrow.

-----

You should have known better than to expect something to be different when you woke up. Swallowing down the disappointment and resignation, you dug yourself up from under the covers. The pain dialed down, but was very much there, especially during sudden moves.

Maybe you would feel better if you washed your face, still a bit puffed after all that--

…oh shit.

Your brain halted, torn between making you cringe and spreading the warmth through your chest. If you were to survive the day, the key was not to think about what happened last night. At least you didn’t have to look him in the eyes, huh? Armed with a smile, albeit a bit sour, you grabbed some clothes on your way out and ventured into the quiet living room.

“Neil?”

For a split second you were sure he was gone, but--

“Over here.” Judging by the sound of it, here was somewhere near the couch. “How are you feeling?”

Concern. Obviously. He’d seen you at your worst, so there was no point in hiding your state.

“Like I’ve spent some time inside a cement mixer,” you sighed. “But better, thanks. What time is it?”

“Almost 3 o’clock.” A faint thud of a book being put down. “Are you hungry? I was about to fix something.”

It was a good moment for your insides to growl in confirmation, but at least this time your body decided to spare you. Although your stomach was pretty much cleaving to your backbone, all right.

“Oh yes, please.” You smiled with appreciation and raised a hand with a bundle of clothes. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

That minute took a little longer, as your mobility was still pretty lacking, but fresh as a (beaten-up) daisy, in a comfortable outfit and a blindfold, you followed your nose to the kitchenette.

“Smells delicious.”

A soft chuckle came through the sizzling. “Hope it tastes good as well, wanna try?” When you nodded, you heard Neil walking up to you. “Open your mouth, careful - it’s hot.”

You recognized the rich flavor as some variation of the Napoli sauce, perfectly balanced, and you could only hum in approval. Where the hell had he gotten those herbs from?

“It’s amazing,” you said, but couldn’t resist a little smirk, “or I’m just starving.”

Neil scoffed lightly. “Might be that.” There was a smile and a hint of pride in his tone, and it made you beam a little wider. “Come sit down.”

When you did, and a bowl of pasta landed in front of you on the table, your mind involuntarily went back to last evening. That tension. Sudden distance. Everything after that. What was worse, it seemed like you weren’t the only one thinking about it, because the silence that fell between you now grew heavy with unresolved issues lingering in the air.

But maybe you were misreading the room and you were fine.

“Listen, about yesterday--”

...or not.

Instead of letting Neil finish, you panicked, and before you could stop yourself, you used his moment of hesitation to blurt out, “Oh god, I’m so sorry, I was exhausted and everything hurt and--” you frowned and hid the face in your palm. The shame felt like a tightening ring around your chest, making it hard to breathe. ”I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Wait, what?” huffed Neil, his voice filled with consternation. ”Jesus, no, that’s not what I meant, I--” he faltered and groaned, then added more softly, “Why are you even apologizing for that?” And when you shook your head, unable to find the right words, Neil gently touched your arm, rubbing it up and down slowly. “I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

Your heart clenched with fondness as you palmed over his hand.

“Thank you for being there for me.”

A twist of the wrist and a light squeeze on your fingers.

“Of course.”

Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

After a moment, you asked quietly, “If it isn’t about that, then what?”

A loud buzz cut through the air, the unexpected noise almost making you jump in your seat. Impeccable timing.

Neil picked the vibrating phone from the table. “It’s work, I have to get that.” His hand was still holding yours, reluctant to let go. “If I’m not done by the time you finish eating, two words: bed rest.”

“May I make it a couch rest, doc?” you grinned, and by the resigned sigh you could tell Neil definitely rolled his eyes at you.

“Just make yourself comfy and horizontal, all right?” A final brush of his thumb against your fingers and he was up, walking off from the table. “Hi, what’s up?”

Whatever they needed him for, it took so much time that you finished your meal and obediently moved to the couch. That unfinished talk left you anxious enough to nervously pick at the edge of the blanket, but as Neil was still lost in a hushed conversation, and the aforementioned blanket was way too cosy, you slowly drifted off into a dreamless nap.

You weren’t sure what woke you up - a shift on the other side of the couch, or a heavy sigh, one of those signaling the weight of the whole world on somebody’s shoulders. Hearing the latter was enough to wipe the remains of sleep from your system and you sat up, grunting slightly.

“What is it?”

Another sigh.

“I’m an idiot.”

You puffed your cheeks and shrugged, a corner of your mouth twitching in a nervous smile.

“Before I let out a purposeful no and kick you - why are you saying that?” Silence. “...Neil?” When the answer was not coming for too long, you moved to your knees, reaching out until you touched his shoulder. No reaction. Trying to keep a rising worry at bay, you urged him quietly, “Talk to me, please.”

Neil inhaled slowly and he finally spoke, his voice barely there.

“I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” you asked, knitting your brows together as you brushed your hand down his arm only to find his clenched fist, tightening even further under your touch.

“For yesterday, for letting it out on you, when you were just--” he paused to swallow audibly, and then continued, blurting out one strained word after another, “and all of that while this whole mess is my goddamn fault because if I hadn’t hesitated out there, we both would have made it in time--”

“No, no, no, you can’t do that to yourself,” you said, crawling into his lap and nestling between his legs, wrapping yours around his waist. “It was a perfectly normal reaction.” The pulse thumped in your ears when you placed one hand on Neil’s chest and the other one travelled up along his neck to cup his face. Then your thumb glided over a wet trail on his cheek and it felt as if your heart shattered into a million pieces. Oh please, no. “My darling...” you whispered, but it was as if Neil barely acknowledged you were there, trembling and lost.

He pressed his forehead to yours and continued, traces of dread ringing in his hollow tone more and more with every choked-out sentence.

“When I turned back and I saw that--….at first, I thought you’d been shot, then you fell and-- suddenly all I could think was if your oxygen container was intact, or--... I called the Cavalry on the way down but I was so scared I was too late, I thought--” his voice broke and you felt him frowning as he shuddered, struggling to carry on. “I thought that you were gone, and I didn’t--”

His heart raced under your palm while you kept stroking his cheek, consoling him softly, “Neil, I’m here, it’s all right, I’m here.” But when that didn’t seem like enough to bring him back to you, you reached to his neck to pull him closer and kissed him, desperate to make him stop spiralling down. To make him stop hurting.

A muffled whine against your lips. But then you felt him melt and he kissed you back, still helpless, wrapping his arms around you carefully as if he expected you to fall apart under his touch. Not quite there. You deepened the kiss purposefully, burying your hands in his hair, tugging at the strands as you pressed yourself to him as much as you could in your position. You didn’t care about your own pain or discomfort. If any of you were meant to be lost in any way, it might as well be this. Neil gasped and lifted you up so you properly straddled him, then tightened the embrace, clinging on to you for dear life as he captured you in another kiss, and this time it was his turn to try to convey the unbearable mixture of despair, relief, and immense longing. All of that poured into this simple act of devotion until there was nothing but pure need. To touch and to be touched. To hold and to be held. To be close. To be wanted. To be found.

A breathless moan escaped your mouth and Neil pulled back ever so slightly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said softly, his fingertips gliding over your features.

Oh, how much you missed looking into his eyes.

The fact that he cared, without simply going ahead with it, made your chest clench with fondness. At this point, you trusted him beyond reason, although it was still nice to hear it.

“I’m not made of glass,” you huffed, nuzzling his nose.

A low hum and a trail of kisses along your jawline. You shivered when his lips reached a spot just below your ear and then smiled against your skin.

“Are you sure?” his husky voice was playful, but you knew he was double-checking.

“Try me.”

That moment was not about chasing the high. It was about feeling each other. Being with one another. As close as possible. That couldn’t wait, and neither could any of you, tugging at the clothes in random order with urgency.

Neil looped his arm around your shoulders, settling you on your side in his embrace. Keeping you steady. Safe. Close. And even though his kisses were desperate and leaving you winded, his touch was gentle, and you knew the blue eyes were watching you attentively, ready to react to the smallest sign of discomfort. But also to any encouragement to go further.

A hitched breath. A leg hooked on his hip. Fingers dragged across his back.

He was ready to give you everything and take whatever you were willing to offer. And you wanted to do the same for him until everything else lost its meaning and it was just you and him, and the fire that burned inside you. Searing every nerve. Cleansing the doubts. Numbing the pain. Lighting up the darkness. And, in the end, bringing resolution as you both came undone, moaning and gasping for air only to be comforted by hands cupping cheeks and yet another kiss. Slow. Tender. Full of admiration.

When Neil drew back and shifted slightly, you whined in protest, wrapping your leg around him tighter to keep him in place.

“Where are you going?”

A quiet chuckle, followed by a feeling of a soft blanket sliding over your naked body. And a kiss on the tip of your nose.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

You sighed with content as Neil pulled you closer again. The light stubble scratched your fingers as they studied the impossible angles of his face unhurriedly.

“Good.”

(next chapter ->)

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #185

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the snake/shrine maiden/ninja/widow Assassin of Paraiso! She’s got more jobs than a freakin’ barbie doll...

Check out her build breakdown (expect true name spoilers) below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: In Shimousa you must wait, until the dice read five or eight.

Mochizuki Chiyome is an Arcane Trickster Rogue for the regular kind of ninja trickery, plus a Fathomless Warlock to grab the kind of thing your forefather would normally have to boink a snake god to get. (That’s what happened, right? It’s been a while.)

Race and Background

Shockingly, Mochi is a Human, but Variant so we can get cool stuff. This gives her +1 Dexterity and Intelligence, as well as Religion proficiency to make her cover as a shrine maiden foolproof and the Mobile feat for when the right fool comes along. This adds 10′ to her movement speed, dashing lets her ignore difficult terrain, and you avoid opportunity attacks from creatures you’ve attacked this turn.

Magical assassins seem to be more common in D&D than their mundane counterparts, because they have their own freakin’ background! As a Volstrucker Agent, you get proficiency in Deception and Stealth. You know, for ninjaing.

Ability Scores

Dexterity is number 1. You’re a ninja, it’s not a surprise. Second is Charisma. Your snake blood doesn’t like to cooperate on good days, you’ve got to be convincing enough to make it behave. Also, there’s more ninja stuff in charisma, it’s a good skill to have. Your Intelligence comes next, ninjas don’t really have magic powers, they’re just really clever. That being said none of your spells actually use intelligence that much, so we don’t need it to be that high. Your Wisdom isn’t bad, spy networks don’t work if you can’t tell when someone’s lying, and since we’re only building the one character you’ll have to be your own spy network.

Oh yeah, the real Mochizuki ran a spy network, we’re throwing that in the build too. So we’re making a shrine maiden/snake/ninja/widow/master spy. Real simple.

Anyway. Your Constitution isn’t great, just don’t get hit and you’ll be fine. That means we’re dumping Strength. Don’t worry, you don’t really need it anyway.

Class Levels

Rogue 1: Starting off as a rogue gets you a lot of proficiencies, like Dexterity and Intelligence saves, plus four skills. Grab Acrobatics for ninjaing skills, Performance for better disguises, and Insight and Investigation for spy work. If that wasn’t enough, you get Expertise in two of those skills, doubling your proficiency bonus in Stealth and Insight. You also get a Sneak Attack if you’re attacking with a finesse weapon or a ranged weapon, and you have advantage or a friend near the target. This adds 1d6 damage to the attack once per turn. You also learn Thieves’ Cant. It’s a language.

Rogue 2: Second level rogues have a Cunning Action, which lets you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action. Y’know, ninja stuff.

Rogue 3: Boom! 2d6 sneak attack. Also, you’re an Arcane Trickster now. This gives you some Spells, most of which are Illusion or Enchantment, but all of which use your Intelligence to cast. Or they would, if we didn’t go the galaxy brain route and pick spells that don’t use your intelligence. You’re forced to pick up Mage Hand as one of your three cantrips, but you also get Friends to make fooling guards easier, and Prestidigitation for smaller magical tricks. On top of that, Illusory Script makes you an expert codewriter, Disguise Self takes care of your... well, your disguises (Though regular disguises are probably better since this is the one spell that actually uses your intelligence), and Fog Cloud gives you a quick and dirty smoke bomb. Speaking of Mage Hand, you also get a Mage Hand Legerdemain right out of the gate, making your mage hand extra sneaky. It can be invisibile, and you can use it to stow objects in containers carried by other creatures, steal objects from containers held by other creatures, or pick locks and disarm traps at range. Also, you only have to use your bonus action to control the hand.

Warlock 1: Bouncing over to grab your cursed Orochi blood makes you a Fathomless warlock. I know that’s a bit weird, but don’t worry, we’ll fix it in flavoring. Instead of a Tentacle of the Deep, you’re summoning a head of Orochi as a bonus action for up to a minute! Each turn you can attack for a bit of cold damage, and you can summon up to Proficiency heads per day. You also get a Gift of the Sea, giving you a swim speed of 40′ and the ability to breathe underwater. As long as you stay near the surface, you can probably get away with calling it walking on water. You also learn Pact Magic, which you cast with your Charisma. This doesn’t mix with your spell slots from rogue, but you can use warlock slots for rogue spells and vice versa. You get Eldritch Blast so you don’t have to collect your throwing knives like a chump, Minor Illusion for minor illusions, Hex for a weak Orochi’s curse, and Expeditious Retreat so you can go even faster if you wanna.

Warlock 2: Second level warlocks get Eldritch Invocations, like Devil’s Sight which lets you see in magical darkness and Armor of Shadows for free mage armor on yourself. Shrine maidens aren’t known for wearing plate mail, so this should help a bit. You also learn how to Cause Fear, frightening a creature for up to a minute if they fail their wisdom save. That means they can’t move closer to you, and they have disadvantage on attacks while they can see you.

Rogue 4: Now that we’re done with warlocking for a bit, bouncing over to rogue gets you your first Ability Score Improvement. Bump up that Charisma for stronger spells and Orochi heads. You also learn the spell Color Spray for some pocket sand at the ready whenever you want. Roll a couple dice, then blind creatures from least to most HP up to the point you rolled.

Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues get 3d6 sneak attack, and they can make an Uncanny Dodge as a reaction, halving incoming damage from an attack.

Rogue 6: At sixth level you get another round of Expertise, so double up on your Deception and Performance so you can sneak into wherever you need to go.

Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues get Evasion. It’s been a while since someone’s gotten evasion, huh? It’s a good feature though, it turns your failed dexterity saves into basically successes as far as damage goes, and successful dex saves now negate damage entirely. (Also, your sneak attack goes up to 4d6.)

Warlock 3: The Orochi isn’t quite done with you yet, so we’re heading back for a few more levels. At level three you undertake the Pact of the Talisman, letting you add 1d4 to a failed ability check Proficiency times per long rest. It’s a shame you don’t have a fancy sword like Grass Cutter, but at least it’s useful. Now that you can see in the dark though, you can cast Darkness to create a more effective smoke bomb that only you and other warlocks can see though.

Warlock 4: Use this ASI to get your Keen Mind. This adds 1 to your intelligence among other neat tricks, but the big reason we’re here is for the ability to recall information for up to a month. This will be more useful later, but it’s always nice to be brainy. You also learn the cantrip Toll the Dead for some ooky spooky necrotic damage, and Silence to perform acts of violence, in silence. Ninjas.

Warlock 5: Fifth level warlocks can cause Fear, frightening multiple creatures who fail their wisdom save. Once per long rest you can also mark a creature with a Sign of Ill Omen, casting Bestow Curse using a warlock spell slot. There’s a couple out of the box options in the PHB, but ultimately you can make up whatever you want, as long as it’s DM approved. The target also has to fail a wisdom save, and it lasts up to a minute.

Rogue 8: Use this ASI on your Dexterity for better damage and a higher AC. Turns out rogues are dexterous, who knew? Speaking of being dexterous, grab Misty Step so you can become so dexterous you literally blink out of existence and back in. Related note, dexterous no longer looks like a word.

Rogue 9: Ninth level rogues can really mess up their enemies with 5d6 damage on a sneak attack, or you can mess up enemies with a Magical Ambush. As long as you’re hidden from whatever creature you’re targeting, they have disadvantage on a spell’s saving throw. This also applies to warlock spells, making it especially useful for curses. (Also, 5d6 sneak attack)

Rogue 10: Tenth level rogues get another ASI, so bump up that Charisma again for a stronger curse. You also can cast Message to relay info over short distances, or Magic Mouth to set up information dead drops for other party members.

Rogue 11: Eleventh level rogues can deal reliable damage thanks to their 6d6 sneak attack. They also have Reliable Talent, so the lowest you can roll on a skill you’re proficient in is a 10. When you’re good at something, you’ll never fail a day in your life. You can also cast Blur to become harder to hit. Maybe it’s like, a little smoke bomb? Not my best work, I’ll admit.

Rogue 12: At twelfth level you get your last ASI, so max out that Dexterity for the best damage and defense you could hope for.

Rogue 13: Thirteenth level arcane tricksters are Versatile Tricksters, letting you spend an action to distract a nearby creature with your mage hand, giving advantage on your next attack that turn. If you don’t have extra ninjas at home, magic bought is fine. Don’t scoff at free advantage though, especially with that 7d6 sneak attack. You also learn to pull a Kotarou and can cast Enemies Abound, which makes it so one creature can’t tell friend from foe and will attack randomly if they fail an intelligence check.

Rogue 14: Your brand new Blindsense means you’ll always be able to sense other ninjas, since invisible and hidden creatures within 10′ of you are always on your radar. You also -finally- get your spy network online thanks to Clairvoyance, letting you create a sensor in any location you’re familiar with, or an obvious one you aren’t, like around a corner. For up to ten minutes, you can see or hear through that sensor as if you were there, and can even swap which sense you use at will.

Rogue 15: Your capstone isn’t particularly flashy, but Slippery Mind will help make sure you don’t get cursed more than you already are, since you now have proficiency with wisdom saves. One last thing: 8d6 sneak attack. It’s pretty good.

Pros:

With multiple kinds of magic backing up your impressive stealth skills, you come packing with plenty of ways to slip into and out of combat at will, or even better, avoid combat entirely.

Thanks to your keen mind and clairvoyance, you can spy on others and keep that information tucked away for safekeeping. Then, you can use spells like Message and Magic Mouth to get that info where you need it to go without arousing suspicion. Who knows, you might legitimately start up a spy network.

Curses are great. For your enemies, I mean, sorry. But yeah, they’re pretty effective, especially if you can start a fight with an enemy already cursed. Like, say, you sneak up to them and use Magical Ambush to make it even harder for them to avoid the spell, and that starts initiative? That’d be nice.

Cons:

Some DMs are not very flexible, and they’ll just force you into combat regardless of how much you try to avoid it. That’s really bad for you, since you’ve only got 100 HP. One stiff wind and you’re in Power Word Kill territory. Fortunately you’ve got a good AC, but still.

The one spell you have that actually uses intelligence is probably one of your most crucial, at least early on. Disguise Self not being that good kind of sucks while you’re getting set up, but eventually you’ll be good enough with a regular disguise kit it probably won’t matter.

You have a lot of utility spells, but only a couple spell slots to use them with. Long missions might be a problem if you don’t pace yourself.

[angxlyxn]

understand - levi x f. reader

summary: After finding that you disobeyed his rules, Levi realizes that he might have to help you understand a bit more of who actually has control.

warnings: light smut, yandere themes, PHYSICAL ABUSE, violence, dubcon, obsessive behavior, abusive language/swearing, some ooc content

word count: ~4k

You hurriedly walked through the musty hallway, heavy boots clinking against the stony floors of the base.  You continued rushing to your room, head whipping furiously from side to side as you tried to gauge your surroundings.  You knew he was coming for you- in fact, you could feel him.  You could feel his burning determination from a few rooms away, not to mention the pure fury he must be feeling for you.  You were no stranger to Levi’s punishments, and you certainly were not looking forward to the inevitable discipline that awaited you today.  Discipline.  The term was really laughable at this point, as it seemed that his perception of the very concept was skewed, to say the least.  You hastily tightened the leather straps on your legs, readjusting your jacket as you skidded through the dimly lit corridors.  You heard a few calls echoing through the hallways, and you could faintly make out your name amongst the string of words that the person was saying.  You panicked as you realized who was yelling out, using every inch of strength left in your body as you broke into a full sprint.  However, you soon realized that this was a mistake, as your heavy footfalls had just revealed your location to the very man you were trying to evade.

“L/n, get the FUCK back here!”  He was getting closer.  You willed your already sore body to move faster, your legs aching with every step that you took.  

‘Just.. a bit...further....the dorms are up ahead, just keep running, just a bi-‘  Your thoughts came to an abrupt halt as you felt a large force slamming into your back, sending you tumbling to the cold floors of the corridor.  Your chin hit the stones with a great force, causing your entire skull to shake a bit.  You felt a drop of blood make its way down your neck, presumably from your chin. Still, despite the sheer futility of the situation, you tried to push yourself up from your sprawled out position of the ground, only to be pushed back down again by a heavy boot slamming down against the back of your rib cage.  

“No, Levi, pl-“

“That’s Captain to you L/n,” he said, spitting out your name as though it were a slur of sorts.  He kicked you roughly in the side with his steel-toed shoe, urging you to turn over onto your back.  You did as he wished, the pain searing through your exhausted body as you did so.  You looked up, immediately regretting your decision to do so, as the pure rage hidden behind his usually passive eyes was enough to make you fear for your life.  You quickly averted your e/c irises from Levi’s own grey hues, biting your bottom lip out of nervousness.  

“Hey!”  You heard an aggressive, yet still somehow monotonous shout, as well as the feeling of his foot clamping down on your chest yet again, this time accompanied by a whimper from you as your body convulsed at the amount of force he put into his step.  “You look at me when I’m talking to you, do you hear me?”  He said, receiving nothing more than a small tremble from you.  Visibly dissatisfied with your lack of a response, he pressed down harder on your chest, eliciting yet another whimper from you.  

“Y-yes, Captain,” you managed to stutter out, your voice meek and frightened.  His eyes narrowed as he removed his foot from your chest.

“Get up,” he said, his tone intense and impatient.  You nodded hesitantly, pushing yourself off of the ground, or, at least, attempting to.  After a few seconds of trying to force yourself off of the stony tile, you felt a rough hand grasp your hair, pulling you up from the ground.  Your steps faltered, only resulting in another sharp tug on your hair from Levi.  “Hurry up,” he said under his breath.  “Fucking slut.”  

He continued like this for a while, tugging you along towards his chambers, much to your terror.  You began to struggle against him as he took his keys out from his pocket, slotting the rusted key into his door handle.  You mumbled a bit under your breath, but your frantic ramblings fell on deaf ears.  Soon enough, his door was opened, and you were unceremoniously thrown inside of his room.  You heard your only means of escape slamming behind you, a resounding thud echoing through the young captain’s quarters.  

“I gave you one task,” he growled.  “One..simple..FUCKING JOB.”  You could tell that he was desperately trying not to lose his cool, if only for his own personal satisfaction.  From the years of time that you had spent with the man, you had grown accustomed to his odd, sadistic way of drawing things out for way, way longer than they needed to be, well, drawn out for.  It was sick.  

“I give you one thing to do.  I tell you to stay inside.  Within the confines of the base.  All you had to do was just sit pretty in your room, the room that I so lovingly cleared and made nice for you.”  The way he spat out the word “cleared” made you more nervous than you could tell, but you supposed that wasn’t anything to be concerned about right now.  After all, when Levi is mad, it's a much larger problem than anything else that you might have an issue with. In times where he was upset, or really at all times, you found it easier to just not question him.  He continued to shout at you, his words growing incoherent as you brushed your fingers against your face, digits catching on the crimson liquid that had dribbled down from your nose and onto your chin.  As you tried to clear your foggy mind his voice rang back through your head, his tone now hostile, even bordering on animalistic as he yelled down at you.  “Little whore, are you deaf?  SAY SOMETHING!  When I talk to you, you respond, got it?” He said, kicking you in the thigh to punctuate his sentence.  You turned around, hesitantly tilting your tear-stained face at the man above you.  Gulping down your pride, you decided to tell him what you thought he would like to hear.

“I-I’m sorry, I just wasn’t thinking, and everything just felt like so much, I had to get away, I had to go outside, I-I’m sorry, I couldn’t take it anymor-“

“You couldn’t take it anymore?”  Levi mocked, bending down slightly.  “You couldn’t fucking take it anymore?  Oh L/n, you can take so, so much more than anything I’ve already done to you.  You work for me, remember?  You belong to me.  You will do as I say, and L/n, you know what happens when you disobey me.”  

Your eyes widened at his words as you began to back away from him, hands grating against the splintering hardwood beneath you.  “No, Levi, please, no no no please I’ll do anything, please,”  He just chuckled lightly in response to your pleading, simply grabbing onto your wrist and pulling you up from your spot on the floor.  He brought you close to him, so close that your hips were flush against his.  

“You need to learn that when I say it’s too much, it’s too much.  You don’t have the privilege of deciding things like this.  You haven’t earned the right,” he whispered, his hot breath brushing up against your ear.

Suddenly, he gripped onto your shoulders, shoving you onto the cot that sat in the corner of his room.  At this, you let out a yelp, barely having enough time to brace your fall before you collapsed down on the rough comforter that was tucked neatly into the corners of the bed.  As you did so, you came to a terrifying realization.  To anyone else it may have been a source of comfort, but to you, well, to put it simply, you were afraid.  Levi was acting....calm. Unsettlingly calm.  Well, at least compared to his usual persona when angry. Usually at this point, he would’ve stabbed you at least twice in the leg, and would most likely be screaming bloody murder.  That was one thing that was different about Levi whenever he was around you.  With others, he often put on a cold front, one that was virtually undisturbed, even when he would see his comrades die right before him, or even during battle, an attitude which you at first considered to be nothing short of appalling.  However, nothing could compare to the way he acted when he was alone with you.  He was always loose with his emotions around you, never holding back on things such as, well, anger.  You supposed keeping your emotions bottled up all the time would take some sort of toll on a person, as you were sure it did on Levi, but his anger was horrendous.  It was like he was some sort of sadist.  

That’s why it was so strange that his anger was not on full display, at least not yet.  Hell, you barely had any bruises yet.  Instead of his normal unhinged hostility, he was standing over what appeared to be a desk drawer, clutching a slender object.  Perfectly calm, even..docile.  Against your better judgement, you spoke up.

“L-Levi, are you not upset wi-th me?”  You said, cursing yourself for stuttering.

The man in question chuckled a bit before answering.  “Upset?  Hardly.  Angry, however….” He trailed off as he turned to face you, his features as expressionless as always.  Your gaze travelled down from his face, and immediately you wished it hadn’t, for you had noticed the small switchblade that Levi was now brandishing, the hilt of the knife illuminated by the dim lighting that was spread throughout the small room.  You began to hastily back up, ruffling the cot’s blankets in the process and eventually colliding with the wall behind you.  Levi stalked over to the bed, placing the blade on a bedside table before turning to face you.

“Now, what shall I do with you,”  he thought aloud, causing your face to further contort into an expression of fear.  “You did try to run away, did you not?  There ought to be some...repercussions for your behavior.”

“Run away- I- Captain, I’m not your captive or somethi-”

You were caught off by a foreign sound, one that grated against your ears in a way that was definitely not entirely unintentional.  It was laughing.  Levi.. was laughing.  Bouts of hysterics sprung from his mouth, the sound anything but pleasant.  He sounded almost..manic.  You had never heard him laugh, let alone smile.  You honestly don’t think that anyone had.  This was not normal, and you had never been so afraid.

“You really don’t understand, do you!”  He said as he combed his fingers through his raven locks.  “I guess if you can’t figure it out for yourself, I’ll have to help you understand, hm?”  He said, his laughter dying down as he came upon the last phrase, his stormy eyes shifting over to the small switchblade that he had taken from the drawer moments before, your own e/c irises following suit.  They widened as you realized what he was gazing at, and you were thrown right back into your state of panic as you watched his murderous gaze linger on the blade.  

“Levi, please, I’ll do anything,” your eyes flickered back up to his face, pleading with him as the image of the knife flashed through your mind. “Anything, just please don’t hurt me, I promise, I wasn’t in the right state of mind, it was a mistake, if I could go back I woul-“  You were cut off yet again, but this time by a sudden pressure on your arms.  Before you could even comprehend what was happening, you were shoved on your back with your wrists pinned beside your head while Levi, who was now straddling your waist, had the upper ground.  

“Didn’t I tell you to only speak when prompted?”  He said, voice trembling with fury.  He leaned down over you, until his lips were within an inch of your ear.  “Didn’t I tell you to obey me?”  He said.  By now, you were shaking.  Not out of fear, no, but out of pure, unadulterated anger.  You knew that he would count your silence as submission, so you took a deep breath in, preparing to scream.

“Get the FUCK OFF OF ME YOU LITTLE FUCKER!”  You yelled out, your voice hoarse and venomous.  You struggled against his hold, managing to land a solid kick in his gut and push yourself out from underneath him.  You rolled off of the bed, hoping you had enough time to reach the door before he recovered from your blow.  However, your fight was in vain, as you soon found yourself once again suffering a kick to the back of your rib cage.  You collapsed on the ground, but still you were determined to not give up, and thus you began to claw your way towards the hopefully unlocked door of his dorm.

You heard him tut behind you before grabbing your ankle and dragging you away from your only hope of escape.  

“You know, if you keep pulling shit like this things are only going to get worse for you,”  he said as he threw you back onto the bed.  His voice made you sick.  You hated how he was treating you as though you were nothing more than an unruly child, a brat that just needed to be tamed.  “Now, stay down like a good girl, hmm?”  You let out a shaky breath and began to think about your situation. In the years that you had trained alongside your colleagues outside of the walls, you had always noticed how...different Levi seemed to be, at least compared to everyone else.  Despite keeping to himself a good amount, he was driven, more so than anyone else you had ever known.  He was determined to rise through the ranks, and oftentimes did whatever he could in order to do so, even if this meant putting himself way before others.  Nevertheless, you had looked up to Levi for a good chunk of your career.  A part of you still did.  Maybe that’s why you took such an interest in the young captain, and why he did the same for you.  You had, at one point, allowed yourself to be vulnerable around him.  At the time you felt like a burden, but he assured you that you were okay.  For a while there, you even felt something a little...deeper.. for the man, but now it seems those feelings have dissipated, just like all of the previous respect he held for you.  At least, that’s what you would have thought based on the way he treated you.  But the way he was occasionally gentle with you after he had his little tantrums, or how he would look out for you while out on the battlefield kept you coming back for more.  That was, until he had forced you to literally keep yourself captive.  That was when you had finally snapped and decided to put an end to the maddening thoughts that swarmed your head whenever you so much as saw Levi.  You needed to get away, you couldn’t bear to even see his face anymore.  It was horrible, yet..rousing.  Yes, that’s what it was.  Levi’s presence was maddening,  Intoxicating.  Addictive.  He was sadistic, yet careful.  Ruthless, but calm.  How could he act so vile yet be so alluring?

“Are you even listening to me?” He yelled out, pulling you out of your thoughts.  “Little slut, you never listen!”  Grabbing a fistful of your hair, he forced you onto your back, staring down at you, face full of contempt.  “Now, you’re going to stay put, alright?”  He said as he untangled his hand from his locks, instead moving to unbutton your shirt.  In what felt like less than a second he had removed your blouse and jacket, revealing your simple white bra.  Soon he had taken off your bottoms as well, leaving you fully exposed to the man in front of you.  In turn, he pulled off his own shirt, making sure to show off his well toned stomach to you.  He looked at you expectantly, eyebrows furrowing after a few seconds of staring at your cowering form.  “On your knees,”  he spat out in a gruff voice.  You swallowed, lip trembling ever so slightly as you lowered yourself onto the cold hardwood beneath you, already bruised knees slamming onto the floor as you fell.  Before you knew it, he had taken his throbbing member out of his pants.  He already appeared to be aroused, which only made you grimace ever so slightly.  The sick bastard was getting off on beating you, a realization which you wished you didn’t have to come to terms with.  He really was just a fucking psychopath.

As he drew closer to your face, angling himself so his dick was level with your mouth you began to lean away, turning your jaw slightly to the side as your disgust took over and you could no longer hide your feelings of abhorrance.  However, he only kept inching closer, pressing his cock up against your cheek.  That was the last straw, and you began to push as hard as you could against his thighs, attempting to free yourself from the disgusting man.  

“Stop it, get away from me, I hate you, and you’re dirty and fuc-”

Your protests were cut off by the feeling of a boot colliding with your face, causing you to fall over onto your back.  You clutched your nose, whimpering a bit as you pulled your hand away, seeing blood splattered across your fingers.  

“You think you can just talk back to me?  Huh, little brat?”  He grabbed your wrist, once again forcing you onto your knees in front of him.  Before you could even think about a possible retort, you felt his shaft against the walls of your mouth.  You began to choke as he shoved it further into your mouth, coughing erratically around his cock.  You tried to pull away, but before you could he had entangled a palm in your hair, pulling you towards him, resulting in you trying to stabilize yourself against the floor beneath your shaking body.  Levi thrust your head back and forth, forcing you to suck his now hard cock.  You tried to speak, to tell him to stop or to make him feel some sort of pity for you, but this proved to be impossible, as he was currently balls deep into your mouth.  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he let go of your hair, allowing you to fall backwards onto your ass.  You groaned out in pain as you hit the floor, but, nevertheless, you were glad that your little session was over.  That is, until you saw him reach for the switchblade that had, up until now, been sitting on a small side table by his bed.  

“No, no, no Levi please!”  You pleaded with him once again, scrambling away from the man before you.  You brought your knees into your chest and your arms up, effectively shielding your face.  However, your defenses were quickly broken by Levi, and you were soon torn up yet again from your spot on the floor.  You were back on the bed in a second, your face squishing into the sheets as Levi kneeled on your back, completely eradicating any hope you had of escaping the ravenette.  He unclipped your bra, leaving your back completely bare, which only served to worry you more.  Suddenly, you felt a cool, tingly sensation brushing across your back.  It almost felt like…

Before you could even register what was happening, a searing pain spread across your form, one that you knew all too well.

“LEV-“ You screamed out, part of you trying to plead with him while the rest of you just wanted a way to alleviate the horrible feeling of a blade carving deep into your back.  But, before you could even hope to finish your sentence, you were silenced by a rough hand wrapping around your chin, forcing your mouth closed.

“No, since you can’t seem to get it through your head that you belong to ME, and that you must obey ME, I guess I’ll just have to help you along a bit, perhaps with something more permanent.”

You quivered at his words, a muffled scream escaping your mouth as you felt him stick the knife back into your delicate flesh.  

He continued on like this for a while, each of his stabs long, drawn out, and excessively precise.  After he was finally certain that the wounds were deep enough, that they would scar over nicely and not ever fade, he shifted himself back to survey his work.  Inscribed across your back was the word ‘Levi’, each of the characters in his name leaking blood across your frame.  He smiled, wider than he ever had, at the symbol of ownership, the brand which he had placed upon your body.  Now you were his, truly his.  Future lovers, family members, friends, anyone and everyone could see that you belonged to him, that he owned you.  

Your no longer muffled sobs echoed through the room, a pitiful display of weakness that he would usually frown upon.  However, he was feeling a little...strange as he heard your choked out whimpers.  Almost remorseful.  A person such as Levi should not feel pity for anyone, especially not someone who was lower than himself.  At least that was what he was taught when he was but a child.  Of course this was not the kindest approach to living, nor was it in any way empathetic, but look how far it got him!  He was an esteemed captain, someone who started out with nothing and rose through the ranks faster than anyone before him.  He shouldn’t change the very thing that made him successful over a little bit of moral turmoil, right?  But, somehow, seeing you sprawled out of the bed, blood splattered across your shoulders and tears staining your cheeks, he felt wrong.  Everything felt wrong.  Levi looked down at your weak form, inhaling sharply before turning towards the bathroom door that sat in the corner of his room.  He ruffled through his cabinets before his hand landed on some gauze, which he grasped onto and brought back into the room with him.  You were still lying on the bed, form completely vulnerable as he sat down next to you, causing the mattress to sink a bit.  He unwrapped some of the gauze, furrowing his brows and eyeing your injuries as he did so.  Taking another breath, he began to wrap the bandages gingerly around your frame, watching as you flinched at his touch.  After he was satisfied with the way in which he had dressed your wounds, he carefully flipped you onto your back once more, staring into your dilated pupils with such an intensity that you feared he was going to hurt you more than he already had.  However, after a few seconds of searching your face, he only leaned down over you, planting a tender kiss against your plush lips.  

“Thank you,” He murmured, the movement sending vibrations through your lips.  You closed your eyes, melting into the kiss just a little bit more.  You knew that you should probably resist, that you should push him away and get as far away from the man as you could, but you just- you couldn’t.  He was broken, it was obvious.  What kind of person would you be if you left someone who needed help behind?  Although he was a bit selfish, and even sadistic at times, Levi had always looked after those who were ranked lower than him, even going so far as to shield them from serious harm when fighting.  And the way he would let his touches linger on you a bit, making sure to make some sort of contact with you whenever possible was...sweet, to you at least.  These little reaffirmations, his little spouts of care were enough to make you stay.  That combined with the fact that you really weren’t sure what he would do if you ever tried to leave.  But that’s the way some relationships were, right?  You’ve got the good, and the bad, and the ugly.  Some people were just more prone to the last two things, right?  You two were fine.  It was normal for couples to fight, if one could even consider you and the short man to be a couple.  Sure your relationship could be seen as a little more...unconventional to other people, but he was satisfied, and you were fine.  

After all, love was supposed to be different for everyone, right?

[kettlequills]

C3: a wife to remember

god i love this fic so much. a03

A hag had many resources at her disposal, not at the least, her fellow sisters of feather, and Moira had a problem. She did not know the Dragonborn, and Moira did not much like not knowing things, especially when it pertained to the fruits of her bargains. The Dragonborn had not seemed adverse to Moira on the basis of being a hag alone, but accepting talons and feathers was quite different from permitting her to actively work her magics. There was too much that Moira did not know.

Moira planned to speak to someone who did.

Moira hauled her smoking cauldron into the garden patch, hissing at the weight and thinking longingly of the corded muscle that had braided the Dragonborn’s tanned brown arms, how easy it would be for them to move a cauldron almost as large as Moira was. She idly plucked a few of her own feathers and added them to the steaming brew until the liquid was thick and purple.

Her arms screamed when she took up the stirrer and laboriously fought it through the viscous liquid. Prickles of sweat broke out on her brow, and she leant her full bird-boned weight into the motion, adding an extra push with feather-fluttering hops. This cursed potion would save her days of pointless travel, but it exacted its price here, she thought irritably. Still, Moira had made it enough times before, if not for many years, that it did not take longer than a few hours before she was dipping salvaged bottles with peeling wine-labels into the mixture.

The bottles appeared largely spontaneously, washing up in the banks of the river not far from Moira’s house from Blood-Made-Pleasure’s daedric revels upstream, within the soft fold of Oblivion. Moira hunted along the banks come the morning for mortals, hollow-souled and blown from the Myriad Realms like scrunched daisies, and the trash from endless parties – human viscera, empty wine-bottles that stung the nose with haunting fragrant scents, fake cocks of shattered glass, snapped dremora horns. Sometimes, the blood-sports of the Prince of Plots bleeding over from the nexus of their shrine not far from the snow-city of Nord kings made their way to Moira’s stream, too. The river ran red for days to her mage-eye, and Moira would be weeding femurs and teeth out of her garden patch for even longer. But since Moira’s pact with Sanguine, his realm was closer, and Moira had more empty bottles than she could ever use.

Greatest power wrapped around your finger, for a single night of revelry.

She uncorked one such with her teeth and swigged from the potion as she labelled the others in spidery daedric letters that would make little sense to one foreign to haglore. When her gums began to prickle with chill, Moira kicked over her cauldron and let the dregs of the potion water her deathbell flowers. She left it there, staring hollowly out at the damp trees, and went to her roost. The potion took hold of the daedra inside her heart and dragged, and Moira’s spirit pierced the skin of Oblivion and rose on flapping raven-wings.

Witchmist Grove shimmered with ghostlike mists when she flew above it, the magic of Oblivion searing the trees tall and gloomy with the prescient tendrils of Moira’s magic soaked into the ground. The roost of a hag, visible as a thorny spot nestled like a canker around the soil. The dragon-cairn over the ridge glowed dully with trapped soul energy.

Not for the first time, Moira overflew her home and cawed at her cleverness. The necromantic energy of the dragon’s old servants and its own aedric glow nearly eclipsed Witchmist Grove, and the lines of power that hazed the ground was broken into the rippling hot pools, confusing the scrying-eye. Her own wards against magical predation still held strong, but she had been wise enough to choose a good spot to make it harder. The Grove would shelter its witch well while her mind attended to her business.

It was the work of a moment to envisage the heart of the plainsland, and a second later Moira was soaring through the cloudless blue skies of Whiterun – crisscrossed though they were by the fading trail of a dragon. Still, that was not too unusual in this season of change, and Moira made for the human city where the answers to her questions resided. It pulsed whitely in her mage-eye, the vast wings of the Skyforge spread over the city like a gargoyle. The eagle shrieked as Moira swept lower, and for a moment, its beady eye fixed on her. Her wings faltered in surprise. After a second that felt like an eternity, the eagle tucked its head back against its chest, satisfied, it seemed, that she posed little threat.

Moira’s talons clenched uneasily. The Skyforge was impersonal as the wind. Last time she had come here in this way, its wings had barely twitched when she’d landed on its head. That it was so riled up did not bode well.

Her disquiet mounted as she flew lower to the city – or what was left of it. Radiating outwards from the pulverised remains of the gates was a blast radius of crumbled stone that had reduced the surrounding timber houses to splinters. A wooden palisade had been erected, manned by guards whose spirits flickered dimly with fear to Moira’s mage-sight. Grief hung over Whiterun like a pall, and, pressing against the wall that separated Oblivion from the living, ghosts wandered dully through the streets, torn too abruptly from their living bodies to look for the way to Aetherius just yet. The living tree within the heart of the city was bowed double under the strength of their sorrow, its roots choked by a strange power crawling down from the heart of the prison of dragons. Familiar, daedric darkness, soft as poetry and suggestive as a whisper. The Webspinner, moving openly to claim the city, and, from the look of it, mostly unopposed. Even Hircine’s Underforge was muted. Well, good for the Webspinner. Moira had never liked Whiterun much.

Still, Moira noticed with some relief the burning-bright soul of the one Whiterun resident that she had come to see. Olava the Feeble was waiting for her, playing cards with a small child that shivered at Moira’s approach.

“Go along now,” Olava told the child, who wriggled in her chair. She had untidy brown hair and looked thin, but there were fresh crumbs on her ragged dress, and smears of jam on an empty plate on Olava’s table.

“But we weren’t done playing,” said the girl, and Olava smiled mysteriously.

“Yes, we were,” she said, and tapped the table between them. Moira saw the magic inside Olava flare, and the child gaped down at the cards in her hands. There was dirt caked under her nails.

“How did you do that?” she gasped. Moira sensed a curious flicker in the girl’s own fledgling spirit, as if she was trying to see as a witch did.

Food for a starving waif, and a light-show of no substance? A more obvious hook had never been planted. Moira cared not for Olava’s interest in a ragged child, but surely it would be easier to simply tell the girl whatever it was Olava wanted from her, and claim she was mad or dispose of her if she broke Olava’s cover?

“Charlatanry,” Moira commented dryly, amused at Olava’s transparent recruitment effort, “You didn’t need to touch the table at all for such a simple trick.”

“An old woman never shares all her secrets,” Olava said to them both, and then shooed the girl off. Once she had gone, perhaps a little faster than she would have if it had not been for the invisible presence of a hagraven glaring at the back of her neck, Moira fluttered down to perch on the back of the chair she had vacated. Her talons gripped the wood, but left no mark on it. She was not, after all, truly there.

“Sister,” said Olava plainly, “What can an old woman do for you?”

“Do you not need to maintain your quaint cover?” Moira asked, electing to preen herself. She tugged an errant feather back into alignment while Olava chuckled.

“Not at all.” Olava’s eyes were crinkled up at the edges and her smile was kindly, as if she really were simply nothing more than an old grandmother. Convincing, were it not for the aura of twisted power that radiated her from her like a dark sun and the way that her eyes were holes to the Void in her skull. “My neighbours think nothing of an old woman talking to herself.”

“As you wish.” Moira spread her wings and eyed them critically, as if it were more important than the task that had brought her here. “I propose a bargain of knowledge. I need to learn hand language.”

What better way to learn the ways of her new … spouse… than to prise them from the Dragonborn herself?

Olava hummed, pleased. “You have come to the right place, then. Which sign language is it you need to know?”

Moira ruffled her feathers. “How should I know?”

“Ai,” sighed Olava, “There is more than one. It would help if I knew who you need it to speak with.”

Flaring her wings, Moira shrieked her harsh raven’s cry. It echoed jealously, ear-splittingly loud. Under the eclipsing shadow of her wings, her true shape flickered and burned like coals. She would not share this knowledge. The Dragonborn was vulnerable, for now, ripe for the uncovering, and Moira would permit no other witch’s claws to steal in on her prize. Bad enough that she shared with Sanguine’s hook, that her own hold was as tenuous as the Dragonborn’s word.

Olava leant back in her seat to watch and rose a thin white eyebrow. Her face, for all it was wrought and wrecked by the passage of time, hid a mind no less canny.

“I can get you the knowledge of all major forms of hand-sign from here to Black Marsh, but it’ll cost you,” Olava relented. “I’ll have to call in a few favours.”

Moira accepted this irritably, and Olava eyed her, as if curious to see how far she would take this whim.

“I want you to … deliver something, for me.”

“Knowledge for knowledge is traditional,” Moira cawed, “I’m not your errand girl.”

“No,” said Olava, calmly, but Moira could see the tension wound in the leylines of her magic, her future-seeing eyes that glowed with the deepness of the Void, “But good luck finding another sister to help you. Did you say it was urgent?”

She hadn’t, but Moira was not patient, and Olava knew it. Besides, Olava’s demeanour was – reluctantly – intriguing. A witch’s errand was no small thing, particularly if she wanted a hag’s help to achieve it.

“Not that urgent,” Moira snapped regardless, because she did not want Olava to think that she did not see what she was doing by pricking Moira’s curiosity. “Out with it, then.”

“I need you to take an item to a particular person,” Olava said, “and ensure that it does not… leave her possession.”

Moira cawed a laugh. “A curse object, sister? Why, I’d almost do it for free. But why not see to it yourself?”

Olava’s hands smoothed deliberately over the table. She began to gather the cards and answered Moira’s question to their dog-eared and scribbled faces. “It cannot be me directly. The target knows me too well, and the spell must work.”

Moira paused. Olava’s carefully level voice roused her suspicion, and as she watched Olava stack the cards and slide them precisely into a bag woven of river-reeds, she grasped that Olava was not dissembling. She was worried. Moira did not lack confidence in her magical strength, but nor was she a fool. She had no desire to get mixed up in something that was going to require too much of her time.

“You have seen something that you hope to avoid,” Moira prompted.

“Yes,” Olava admitted, freely. “Nothing that concerns you, sister. A few fraying strings will soon be cut, and I have a … vested interest.”

Moira stared hard at Olava, who returned her gaze steadily. She was being sincere, Moira could tell that immediately from the glow and pulse of her magicka, and even more, Olava was letting her see without a single attempt to hide herself from Moira’s mage-sight. Whatever it was, it was important to her, perhaps important enough to ask a hag to do a courier’s job, if only to be sure it was done.

“Where is this target?”

“Falkreath,” said Olava and Moira squawked indignantly.

“It is far from my roost,” she complained, but Olava only shrugged.

“You’re the one who asked for something,” she said, and Moira conceded with a whistling hiss through her beak.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see your token delivered.”

“Thank you,” said Olava. She smiled, a genuine one, smaller and slyer than her elderly façade. “I will send you a … friend, on the night of the new moon. He will have what you need.”

Three days. Moira shifted her claws on the chair, then took off without ceremony. She beat her wings quickly to rise over Whiterun, and took the precaution to soar some ways away from the wandering eyes of the powers that wrestled beneath the city. It was only once Moira wheeled freely over the stripped bones of a dead dragon, soul-claimed, that she tucked her wings and followed the thread tethering her to her body, and home.

---

Of course, it was not three days. It was two, and Olava’s friend came yowling with his ear in the firm grip of the Dragonborn.

“You’re early,” Moira said sourly, and the Dragonborn’s mouth tensed.

They wore no helmet today, and their greying brown hair had been roughly knotted at the nape of their neck. It was greasy, already damp from the moist air of the Grove. The rude knot exposed the gruesome fullness of their facial scarring, which twisted as they scowled at the terrified Khajiit whose tunic they held. Still broad, still strong, but there was a bandage wrapped around their bicep, several days old if Moira was any judge, and somewhat dirty and stained. The Khajiit in their grasp was a young ginger tom, his yellow eyes slitted with fear.

“Let him go,” Moira chided the Dragonborn, “Have you no manners?”

Moira did not recognise the boy, but she guessed that he had been sent when he offered her with trembling paws a bag marked with the crest of the Nords of Whiterun, a curling ram’s head.

“For you,” the Khajiit whispered. The Dragonborn’s lips thinned unsubtly, and they stalked off to lean against a tree, their back to the Khajiit but their head cocked, as if they were listening.

The boy’s tail lashed. “This one was not trying to sneak, he swears! He was told to bring a message, to the old woman in the grove by the dragon burial, that is all!”

“I am old, and within the grove,” Moira said, flatly, annoyed that she had not seen him coming, and had time to muster her illusions of being a harmless – if unnerving – old woman who lived alone. She had not sensed the Khajiit at all around the brilliance of the Dragonborn’s signature when they entered Witchmist Grove. “Give it to me.”

The Khajiit hesitated, but when Moira flashed her claws he tripped over himself in his rush to thrust the sack at her. It fell at her feet with a muted rattle. The Khajiit withered under Moira’s poisonous glare.

“Well?” she demanded, and the poor boy’s ears twitched. He bolted, and Moira rolled her eyes. “Let him go,” she told the Dragonborn, whose hunter’s eyes had tracked his flight, “and come in.”

But Moira did not move from her position on the top step as the Dragonborn pushed off the tree and approached her with slow, steady steps, their armour – wrapped for silence, again, in the shredded remains of what appeared to be Nordic burial shrouds – reflecting back the whiteness of the magelight Moira had tethered in the mouths of her staked goat heads. They removed their gauntlet carefully, and, without breaking eye contact, they stooped to pick up the sack and hand it to her.

Feeling as if she were moving thrice as slowly as normal, Moira took it, and her feathers fluttered involuntarily when their fingertips – rough and callused, but hot as fire – brushed her skin. Before the Dragonborn could pull away Moira tightened her grip until the tips of her sharp claws pressed into the back of the Dragonborn’s hand. Scarred, even here, with the nicks and cuts of a lifelong soldier.

The Dragonborn watched her. Those dark dragon eyes were steady as granite, and when Moira stared into them she had the odd sense of falling inwards. It was as if she peered into the implacable gaze of a creature so impossibly huge and dense that it warped the world towards it, as inexorable as a bird struck from the sky must meet the stony ground. She wondered how the Dragonborn would look beneath her potion-enhanced mage sight. She wondered how the Dragonborn saw her.

Moira had the height advantage on them from the top step, but the weight of their gaze was so immense that she felt small, like a darting bird before the maw of a dragon. She remembered challenging the Dragonborn to consummate their engagement the second time they had come to Witchmist Grove. Almost involuntarily, she pictured being pinned beneath that suffocating presence, those dark eyes, that searing heat – the enormity of them like a serpent big enough to touch nose to tail around the entirety of Tamriel coiling itself into one short human body that had to tilt their head up to look Moira in the eyes.

Moira was a hagraven, no fragile thing, her body knitted with ancient magics and raven-feathers, and she had birthed horrors on her altar for little reason other than curiosity. But she was also a bird-hearted once-woman, and the strange, arrhythmic pounding in her chest that could not decide what it felt at the warmth of the Dragonborn’s skin on hers disconcerted her.

With an impatient snort, Moira released the Dragonborn, but not before one last, pointed flex of her claws. The Dragonborn did not flinch at the tiny teardrops of blood that welled up from the scratches, just as they had not reacted to the poison tea, and when Moira turned and stormed into her house, she felt the shaking of the steps as the Dragonborn followed her.

As before, Moira filled the kettle and set it to boil, after checking the sack and tucking it away for later in a cabinet. She was curious to see if the Dragonborn would make the same mistake twice. They did not choose to sit down this time, but leant uncertainly against the wall, arms folded uncomfortably across their chest. Moira was expecting the airlessness of the shack this time and took a moment over the smoke of the fire to soothe herself.

A clinking distracted her, and she whipped her head around in time to catch the Dragonborn leaning back like a child caught going for the cookie jar, hand froze in the act of placing something shiny on the table.

“What’s that?” Moira demanded, and the Dragonborn’s grim mouth moved oddly, as if they were trying to smile.

They gestured sweepingly at Moira, and Moira eyed them suspiciously as she seized this latest offering. It was a bottle, a large one, filled to the brim with glittering dust that shifted and shimmered when she tipped it to and fro, like it was trying to escape the directness of her gaze. The aura that seeped off it reeked of death even with the cap sealed with what looked like leather and home-made twine.

“Blood-drinker dust,” Moira identified. Useful in potions, very useful. Her claws clacked when she tapped the bottle, not wanting to admit that she had nearly run out of her own supply. And she had never had so much as this. It was a handsome gift, and practical, as well. A hag had little use for frippery, after all, even if the Dragonborn’s last gift was currently hidden safely under Moira’s bed and warded with her strongest spells. “You hunted all of these yourself?”

The Dragonborn’s scarred face split, and all of their teeth gleamed. They nodded.

“Is that how you hurt your arm?” Moira asked before she registered what she was going to say, and hissed at herself.

It did not help that the Dragonborn seemed equally surprised at her question, and by the way their eyes flickered to the wound on their arm and back, she imagined they were wondering why she was bothered – or perhaps, had forgotten the wound was there at all. After a brief hesitation, the Dragonborn shook their head.

Moira cursed herself to the Void and back. “How then?” she snapped, aware of the brittle anger in her voice. She wanted to know now. Her curiosity had been piqued, and more than that, there was a strange, restless annoyance Moira ascribed to a healer’s knowledge, impatient with the mysterious wound under its dirty bandage.

The Dragonborn’s shoulders rounded, and their movements as they fumbled for their journal seemed if anything oddly shy. They scribbled for a moment, and then avoided her eye when they presented the page.

“Wolf pack surprised me,” they had written.

“You slay dragons, and hunt vampires, but not wolves,” Moira said. “Did you at least clean it?”

The Dragonborn nodded, and then cleared their throat. They were still looking away, and after a moment, Moira recognised that the fire’s warmth on their cheek was not solely responsible for the redness that had bloomed there.

“Well,” Moira heard herself say irascibly, “Wash your bandages, then.”

Scrubbing the back of their neck with their hand, the Dragonborn nodded. The motion reminded her of their skin touching hers, and Moira busied herself with the kettle, indiscreetly bolstering the fire with magic. The heat enveloped the hut, steaming away the perpetual dampness, and Moira heard the Dragonborn sigh with pleasure behind her. It was nearly noiseless, but not quite, and Moira was hard-pressed to tell whether the shiver that went through her was from some miniature earthquake or the base of her spine, which had elected to, for some reason only daedra knew, play host to half a dozen guttering candles.

“So,” Moira said eventually, “What do they call you?”

Silence, not the scratch of charcoal, and Moira glanced over her shoulder to see the Dragonborn’s confused expression.

“Your name?”

With a metallic creak, the Dragonborn’s arms around their chest tightened, and a muscle in their cheek jumped. They shrugged flatly, and then with a weariness that Moira could almost sense bent their head to write.

“I don’t know the name I was born with,” they showed her, “The dragons call me – “

More of the claw-mark letters of the dragon language, and Moira pursed her lips.

“You know I can’t read this,” she said. The Dragonborn’s mouth crooked helplessly, but Moira’s eye was drawn to the smudges of charcoal on their fingers, exposed, because they hadn’t put their gauntlet back on.

“It comes from inside,” they scribbled, and then illustratively clasped their bare hand over their breastplate. A smear of charcoal darkened the fraying edge of one of the ripped up shrouds.

They shifted, and the shadow of their warhammer blotted the firelight over the page. Moira’s claws flexed, and she wondered, briefly, precisely when the fool bird in her brain had forgotten to watch the Dragonborn’s weapon hovering ominously over their shoulder.

“I could tell you my name, but you’ll have to come outside to hear it,” they wrote. Wariness in them then, and wasn’t that an interesting response to their own offer.

Moira weighed her options. Outside would give the Dragonborn more room to swing, but it also gave Moira better manoeuvrability to escape. It was a gamble, but Moira knew herself. She was a fast shifter, and a faster flier.

“Fine,” she said, and the Dragonborn jerked their chin and led the way outside.

They were not content with Moira’s garden, but crunched their way up the garden path and out the gate without a backwards glance. Their stride was aggressive and quick, a beat short of a march, and Moira got three steps after them on her talons and then gave up and took to her wings instead. The Dragonborn glanced up and with narrowed eyes searched among the flapping cloud of black-winged birds that rose like a fanfare at their intrusion into their domain. Moira circled above them, making no move to announce herself, and with an uneasy twitch the Dragonborn continued.

They had a hunter’s instinct, and as they walked a strange, circuitous route out of Witchmist Grove, Moira realised that they were following and walking on top of the Khajiit’s tracks. She wondered at it as she swept along overhead, doubling back every so often to flit down among the trees and feel the heavy leaves weep their burden of rain onto her glossy feathers.

Did the Dragonborn hope to find the boy, or simply to obliterate his tracks with their heavy boots? To stop Moira from following him, or to ensure he did manage to find his way out of the labyrinthine corridors of twining pine and hanging ivy, the nightshade groves and lurking brambles? The enchanted mist worked well to entrap and ensnare visitors, bringing them to the heart of the Grove into Moira’s clutches. Most had some trouble finding their way out without her blessing. Perhaps the Dragonborn had an abundance of caution, to walk only where it was demonstrably safe to step, in a hag’s home.

Moira appreciated it. Some of the moss she cultivated was rather difficult to grow, and she kept it away from the illusory paths for a reason.

The Dragonborn stopped only when they had reached the boundary of Witchmist Grove, where the copse of trees broke into the steaming hot-pools. The sandy-seared ground rose in jagged humps towards Bonestrewn Crest, where the sleeping dragonbones waited like a scar on the horizon. Squat rocks clumped around the meandering dirt path, and heat shimmered lazily, like Sanguine’s ruby red eye. Tensely, they waited for Moira.

Her damp feathers billowed steam in cross-currents and curls as she backwinged towards the ground, already changing. The Dragonborn did not look away, but Moira saw them blink rapidly as the illusions fell away and it seemed as if there had never been a bird there at all, only a hag, feathered and clawed, perched atop a rock that still, technically, was within the boundary of her grove.

The Dragonborn inclined their head, then purposefully, they planted their feet and turned their back on her. Facing out over the steamy barrenness of Eastmarch, their fist clenched nervously, as if they were second-guessing their decision.

Before Moira could demand an explanation, or taunt them to fulfilling their offer, the Dragonborn spoke.

At first, it was noise. Just noise, like the sound of lightning so deep it rumbled in the bones. A flash of awareness like seeing that stark-white fork in the black sky, and then understanding that what she was experiencing was noise, horribly loud noise, like every drum in the world beating at once, every rock falling, every heart stopping. And then it was power – power like every spell in the world backfiring at once immense and throbbing, power like Moira’s first flight, like the buffeting of the wind under her feathers.

In the ringing aftermath, Moira opened stinging eyes – when had she closed them? – and took in a world unutterably changed. She thought that the Grove had reacted to her presence by thickening the mist, and realised with a strange feeling like falling into the Dragonborn’s eyes that no, the grey smoke in the air was neither smoke nor mist, but dust. Dust, all that was left of all the rocks in the Dragonborn’s path, the furrowed brow of the hill that led up to Bonestrewn Crest. Instead, there was a perfectly carved bowl, wide and smooth as any stone-carved arena. It was perfectly done, steady as if the Dragonborn had simply scooped a section of the world away with a giant spoon. Except for the claw-like, shimmering markings that were chiselled in the wall, markings that matched the Dragonborn’s name in their journal.

It was only then that Moira’s ears made sense of the sounds, and the Dragonborn’s name clicked into her mind like a fact she had always known, but had not realised she had forgotten.

“Laataazin,” Moira gasped, and the Dragonborn – Laataazin – nodded slowly.

Greatest power wrapped around your finger. Oh. Oh. Oh. And to think – all this time, Moira had been angry for his trickery, when this was the prize!

Moira’s feathers quivered, then her shoulders, and then all at once she was laughing. It was a rusty, inelegant sound, more raven-shriek than human, and when the Dragonborn heard it they startled. After a moment, as Moira continued to laugh at the immensity of the gift that Sanguine had given her, slowly, tentatively, Laataazin started to smile back.

It was small, and sweet, and looked like they were unused to it as it was to their face. But it brightened their eyes and took years from their face, and Moira recognised for the first time the winsome, laughing-loud but shy creature that had come calling to her gate in a night of revelry, and offered a ring paid in blood for a hagraven’s hand in marriage.

[sailtoafarawayland]

CS Modern AU

A/N: I planned on this being a a light one-shot, but my heart ran away with it and here is what we have... 

Summary:  If there was one thing Emma had learned, it was that falling didn't mean you broke forever, it just meant you had the opportunity to scrape up all the jagged pieces and move on. That's what she did, that's what she'd always done, but it turned out there was something she didn't know about falling, and that was that sometimes, if you landed in exactly the right place, it could put your broken pieces back together. 

Rated T for now: language

Read on AO3 - FF 

Special thanks to @kmomof4 for walking me through links! Hopefully these ones don’t block my post.

Chapter One

Not for the first time, but maybe for the last time, Emma cursed her stupidity.

It was usually something she did under her breath, a one-word expletive that would betray the self-doubt that plagued her if someone were to overhear.

She’d done it on a dark street when she was seventeen with her hands in the air, and again a few weeks later when those two pink lines appeared. There were plenty more—after two years of shattered hopes when she finally left Tallahassee in the rearview, and anytime she found herself thinking a one-night thing could maybe be something more if she just tried.

It was fair to say cursing her own stupidity was a familiar pastime. This time though, there was no one around to catch her in the moment of weakness—which was half the problem, if she was being honest with herself—so she didn’t mind really putting some feeling into it.

“Fuck!” she screamed, forcing out all of the frustration and regret, only to have it blown back against her face by a strong gust of wind. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Emma hadn’t been thinking—half the problem, since she was being honest with herself—but this was the first time that not thinking had led to such a precarious place, literally.

She forced herself to flex the fingers of her right hand, one at a time, carefully releasing the protruding lip of stone she clung to, pain blossoming as she moved her joints in a futile attempt to regain some feeling.

Rinse and repeat with the left.

She wasn’t dumb enough to try stretching her cramped legs—again—remembering how she’d lost her footing and slipped another five feet down, the top of the rocky bluff now a hopeless distance above her.

Her cell was god knows where. It had probably fallen out of her pocket somewhere in the woods, completely useless to her now—not that it mattered, there was no one who would be calling to look for her. The only certainty she had was that her payday was long gone—probably well on his way to Canada.

If there was any karma in the world, he’d get picked off by a hungry bear.

Maine had bears, she thought. Canada definitely did.

Fuck, her arms hurt. Every muscle in her body was taut and screaming. It was a simple fact that she wasn’t going to be able to hold onto the near vertical slope much longer. She forced her eyes open and glanced over her shoulder and down—really far down.

The slope below her dropped another ten feet or so before disappearing, leaving nothing but a clear view of the grey water swirling menacingly below—October was no time for a dip in the Atlantic—but at least it looked free of rocks from up here.

She tried not to think of the titanic.

While she was busy not thinking about underwater icebergs that could tear a ship apart, she also avoided thinking about what it would feel like to hit the ocean from twenty or thirty feet up.

Or what would happen if she hit a rock.

Fuck.

It was going to be one or the other, because right now—if she was being honest with herself, and she was—down was the only option. American Ninja Warrior she was not, and the amount of time she could hold on was running out. It seemed smart to drop while she still had some strength left for swimming, if any version of this could be called smart.

Another gust of wind ripped by and she made her choice. Just turn and push off. Hopefully, she’d clear the ledge below and hit open water, then she could swim to the stretch of shore she’d seen as she tumbled over the edge.

She could do it. People did this on TV all the time.

Gulping in a deep breath, she twisted, trying to maintain her footing enough that she could shove off the rock, but it turned out this stuff looked way easier in movies, and that in real life gravity was a bitch.  

Gravel shifted and she lost any chance of getting momentum. A grunt was forced from her lungs as her side clipped the stony edge on her way down, then there was nothing but air and that sick weightlessness before she hit the water.

If she’d been able to think coherently, she would have cursed her stupidity—not for the first time—for thinking that water from twenty feet up would feel like anything other than concrete, but she wasn’t thinking.

The air had been knocked from her body with the force of a truck, replaced with pain—the pain of falling onto a pile of knives as the sea closed over her.

Freezing was the wrong word. The water was so cold it stabbed and burned, and she was only just lucid enough to remember not to open her mouth and scream. Her lungs threatened to burst and she kicked her legs violently, pain exploding in her side as she struggled toward the lingering brightness that she was pretty sure was up.

She broke the surface just in time to receive the hard smack of a wave to the side of her face. Her mouth, already open to release the pressure inside her lungs, filled with salty water, and she choked, her head going under again.

It was a nightmare on repeat, except instead of waking up, she could feel herself sinking deeper into sleep.

Each kick she made was slower, weaker, her head barely clearing the surface as she struggled for just one more breath. Her legs felt like lead weights, and then like nothing. Up was so far, but it was hard to care because it was dark and quiet and she couldn’t feel anything to kick anyways.

Just as she was about to sink into that blissful nothingness, something latched onto her and yanked, the pain distant as she was dragged from the icy water.

xxx 

Killian had been about to turn around, his last trap baited and dropped, when he heard it. He froze, his brow creasing as he cast his eyes across the peaceful sea, but there was no sign of another boat, of another person.

His brain told him he was hearing things—it wouldn’t be the first time—but his gut told him something else. You didn’t just imagine hearing someone yell fuck, at least he didn’t, and people didn’t just yell such things for no reason. It was strange though, because this was a remote drag of the coast and, honestly, there wasn’t another boat in sight.

Wiping the hair plastered across his eyes aside, he looked back toward land and finally caught movement. There was a flash of something gold on the rocks as the wind blew, and something red.

“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, almost not believing what his eyes were telling him.

The bait bag fell from his hand and he rushed to get moving and turn the boat. His heart thumped wildly in his chest as the engine sputtered to life, and he urged the boat forward, faster and quicker than she would normally allow, but he was far—perhaps too far—and he knew that the waters beneath those cliffs were dangerous, riddled with underwater outcroppings of rock only visible at low tide.

Time seemed to slow despite the rush of the wind as his boat powered through the waves, his heart dropping and a curse tearing from his mouth as he watched the woman—he could see flashes of long, blonde hair whipping—pitch into the sea below. He was already moving at top speed, and there was nothing he could do except search the waves for a sign of her breaking the surface. He kept his eyes trained carefully on the spot she’d fallen and pulled closer, praying to any gods listening that he wouldn’t catch a rock. He was unable to see them beneath the murky water, but was unwilling to simply leave the woman out of worry over himself.

His eyes caught movement and he cried out as he saw a face break the surface, her mouth open and gasping as another low wave rocked over her, sending her back down. He adjusted course quickly, needing to bring the boat closer to reach her. Again, she surfaced, her arms clawing toward air as she managed a small breath before sinking back under. The wake from his boat wasn’t helping, and as he watched the water slip by him, he picked out the shadow of a rocky ridge to his right. She’d been lucky, though perhaps not so lucky as to be rescued by someone who kept bloody safety equipment aboard.

He never thought he’d have to worry about someone else…

He let the engine stall and rushed to the side as the boat drifted to where he’d last seen her struggling, but as he peered hopefully into the frigid gloom, nothing looked back. Despite the adrenaline rushing through his body, he could have sworn his heart stopped, only starting again when he caught a flash of red. He leaned—nearly threw himself—over the rail, his hand shooting into the icy waves where he’d caught a glimpse of her, his fingers wrapping tightly in her hair and pulling, but the drag was nearly impossible. He couldn’t get her like this. Knowing he was tempting fate—and wouldn’t it be cruel, for her to finally give in now—he let go of his grip on the boat and leaned further, his left hand joining the other as he struggled against the sea. His fingers scrambled and found purchase in something, perhaps a jacket. He yanked upwards, ignoring the pain shooting up his arm as he fought to keep his grip from loosening, hauling her out of the waves and over the rail of his boat with every last ounce of his strength.

Pushing aside his own exhaustion and the crippling pain in his left arm, he rolled her onto her side and watched as seawater ran out of her nose and mouth. Her skin was pale and tinted blue, her eyes closed and her chest completely still.

“Come on, love,” Killian pleaded, leaning down to try and catch if there was even the faintest breath, but there was nothing.

He pinched her nose and covered her icy lips with his own, breathing into her once, twice—five breaths, watching her chest rise as her lungs filled, but she didn’t stir. Dread settled in his gut as he crossed his hands over her chest and began compressions, blood filling his mouth as he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, the pain in his arm and hand doubling as he put his weight into her chest. His mouth covered hers again, desperate to wake her, to bring her back. There was no one to call, the radio on his boat long broken, and he’d never regretted his disregard as much as in this moment.  

Suddenly there was a rush of fluid against his mouth and he pulled away quickly, turning her body to the side as she started vomiting up seawater beneath him.

“That’s it, lass,” he encouraged, letting out a trembling breath as she sputtered and gasped for air before dropping back to the deck, still hovering somewhere beyond wakefulness.

It took only that brief moment of consciousness for the shivering to start, small quivers at her fingertips growing to violent body-wide tremors that made her teeth clatter and her legs pull inward toward her belly.

He yanked his oil jacket off and draped it over her, struggling with what needed to be done next. She was hypothermic, and she may very well die if he didn’t get her out of her wet things and warmed, but if he didn’t get the boat started and get them out of here, it would only be a matter of time before the waves rocked them into one of the deadly rocks that littered the coastline. Splitting the decision, he yanked off his outermost sweatshirt and stretched it across the deck, picking her up quickly and laying her on top of it, still huddled beneath the warmth of his jacket. It would do little good with her clothing still freezing her to the bone, but he needed to get them both to safety.

As he starts the engine, he’s sure he’s never prayed so much in his life, but the universe must have been on his side, because the finicky boat jumped to life. His prayers don’t stop as they move off the cliffs, but he manages to get them out with no incident, and the voyage home passes like the god of the sea himself is pushing them on—the lass must have someone watching over her, because he’s never had less trouble with his boat since he purchased the bloody thing.  

The seconds it takes to slow her down and drift into the dock feels like an eternity, and he ties off quickly and returns to the woman he plucked from the sea, ignoring the pain as he lifts her and rushes up the path towards his cabin. He can feel her shaking against him, and he’s grateful because it means she still has a chance, that she hasn’t slipped away.

He throws himself against the warped front door and barrels into the cabin, swallowing his relief at the warmth. He’ll have to radio in for her, but it can wait until he gets her out of her wet clothes and warmed. He steps easily out of his over-large boots and carries her to the rug nearest the woodstove, stretching her out and peeling off the sopping layers of clothing. A leather jacket and long-sleeved thermal, then her jeans—almost impossible to slide off her skin, skin that’s barely warmer than when he pulled her from the waves—and he moves faster, cognizant of her shallow breathing and shuttered eyes. She’s most certainly hypothermic.

God, it’s been so long since he’s had this much depending on him.

When he finally manages to tug her boots and jeans off, he snatches a quilt from the sofa and wraps it around her limp form, leaving her in the warmth radiating from the stove. The light from the fire casts her cheeks with a sunny glow, making her look more alive than he fears she may be.

He glances toward the two-way, but decides it can wait. She needs more warmth than the quilt, and he rushes off to the bedroom, returning with some of his own items—a warm pair of flannel pants and an oversized thermal. Removing her wet things has certainly lifted some of the pall about her, and when he peels back the blanket, he can see that her lips are less blue, though her body is still trembling from bone-deep cold.

For the first time he really looks at her, swallowing roughly. He knows he should remove her underthings—the black bra trimmed with lace and matching panties—and tries to remind himself it isn’t an abuse of her state, and she hopefully won’t see it that way once she wakes. The garments are soaked, and though they don’t cover much, she won’t warm with them against her skin. Knowing that doesn’t stop the pang in his gut as he carefully slips the straps from her shoulders and unclasps the back, exposing her breasts before he quickly yanks the shirt over her wet hair and down, restoring her modesty. He takes a moment to squeeze the water from her long tresses and wraps the quilt around her torso before shimmying her panties down. He keeps his eyes steadily focused on the far wall, but he can feel her damp curls brush against his fingers as he lowers the hem, and god help him he’s praying again, and he’s not even sure what for. He fumbles the scrap of lace over her feet and replaces it with the soft, warmth of his pajama bottoms, the task not made any simpler by his steadfast refusal to look at what he’s doing, but at least he can sleep knowing he refrained from taking advantage of her unconscious state by ogling her.  

Once she’s completely dry and wrapped in blankets by the fire, her breathing steadies and her skin begins to truly warm, color flushing her cheeks once again. He feels comfortable leaving her side for a moment and gathers her wet things, laying them across chairs near the stove so they’ll dry. He searches the pockets, but finds no form of identification to provide the police with. Now that she seems a safe distance from harm, he allows himself the first chance to puzzle over what in the hell she was doing on the cliffs by herself. She certainly hadn’t been dressed for hiking in this weather.    

He checks to make sure she is still peaceful and well before he crosses the cabin and leans down in front of the two-way radio. He switches on the transmitter and picks up the handheld, speaking clearly.

“This is Captain to SBPD, do you read me?”

He moves the radio back to receive and listens to the white noise, waiting for a response. Another glance toward the rug, but his words don’t seem to have pulled her from her exhaustion. After a full minute of nothing he hits the switch and repeats his call, but there’s no acknowledgement from the other side. He checks the frequency, making a few adjustments and trying once more.

“Bloody hell,” he mutters, switching back and dropping the handheld on the table. Of course, this would be one of those times the two-way was buggered.

A slow groan escapes from the pile of blankets on the floor and he rushes to her side. He’ll fiddle with blasted thing when she’s in a better state. Lowering himself to the rug beside her, he feels her brow with the back of his hand, happy that she’s returning to a normal, human temperature. He carefully lifts the blanket from her feet and checks her toes. They’re colder than the rest of her and he wraps his large hands around them, trying to impart some warmth.

It’s then that he realizes the rush of adrenaline is fading, the freezing cold of his sweatshirt sinking into his skin alongside the steady, lancing pain that shoots up his arm. He tucks the blanket back around her bare feet and stands up, shedding his layers as he stumbles into the bedroom in search of something warmer for himself.

For the next hour, the woman alternates between silence and noises of discomfort, though she seems put at ease when he whispers wordless things beside her. Once she settles into a truly peaceful sleep, he pulls back the blankets so she doesn’t overheat and pours himself a glass of rum, nursing it at her side. It barely takes the edge off the pain still twisting in his hand, but he doesn’t dare to drink more.

He knows he should go see to the boat and the things he left off when he spotted her, but can’t bring himself to go. The image of her tumbling form the cliff into the water below replays in his mind, and he thinks again that she must be owed something by the universe to have avoided hitting any of the rocks. He hadn’t noticed any obvious damage when he stripped her of her wet clothing, but he also knows it may take some time for deep bruises to come to the surface. If she were to wake and panic while he was gone, he’d never forgive himself for putting her through more undue stress. So instead, he rests his back against the sofa and studies her face as she sleeps. Her hair is drying into a beautiful, tangled halo of gold around a face framed by high cheeks and beautiful bow-shaped lips. Her eyes were green, he recalls, seeing them flash in his memory.

She snuggles against his legs in her sleep, perhaps looking for more warmth, and he carefully tucks the blanket around her shoulders once more, his chest tightening as she releases a soft exhale against his knuckles.

Unbidden, his thoughts lurch back through the years, to another time, another place, another woman who breathed a sigh against his skin, only to turn and disappear from his life. His hand tightens around the glass and he pushes the memories away. Memories of her often led to memories of Liam, all of them wrapped up in his failings.

Failings that could have nearly cost someone else their life, he thinks, his eyes settling on the woman sleeping against his leg. The vision of her gasping at the surface, breaking the waves only to be pulled back down, it may very well haunt him the rest of his days. He should have had a working radio on the boat, a buoy to throw to her. He should have been anyone else, not half a cripple who could barely pull her out of the water.

He took another drag of the rum and silently begged that it would wash away more than just the chill from his bones, his eyes so caught in the fire as it burned that he didn’t notice her hand reach out and brush his, her fingertips wrapping contentedly around his own, somehow stilling the ache that never left them.

[spookyceph]

Peace Offering, a Shigadabi Fanfic

The first in a series of Shigadabi fics. Because why not?

WARNINGS for mention of destructive/depressive thoughts, language, and unabashed self-indulgence.

Rating: Teen and Up

Words: 3,378

Also, find it on my Ao3 account @ CarlyChameleon.

For someone who hated to drink, Tomura spent a lot of time sitting at the hideout’s bar. He couldn’t have done it if the place were still in business—some unlucky server would’ve had several drunk assholes to mop up off the floor before the night ended. But with it sealed off from the outside world the atmosphere suited him fine. It was quiet. Clean. Both adjectives that applied to his room upstairs, but locking himself in there too long gave him the urge to start climbing the walls. Even he needed to get out of his own head once in a while, whether that involved speaking with Sensei or just watching Kurogiri dust the glasses.

The open space of the bar never threatened to close in and suffocate him. All the different sizes and shapes of the bottles occupying the shelves, glinting in the low lighting, gave him something to look at while he thought besides a glowing screen or blank ceiling as he laid in bed. Or, like now, he could simply trace the swirling grain of the bar top with one finger and think nothing. Or what passed for nothing in his case—his mind churned and surged as relentlessly as the sea grinding away the edges of the land. He’d only learned how to roll back the tide enough to allow for some sleep or brief breaks that kept him from throwing himself off the roof and quieting his brain for good.

The Internet had fished up terms like rumination and obsessive compulsive and thought loops when he’d done a search once. Psychobabble for being his own worst enemy, in other words. Tracing patterns in fabric or wood or pictures or whatever did help sometimes like a few of the articles had suggested, though. Listing colors or items in his surroundings too when he became overwhelmed and started to flounder. (Breathing exercises, however, could fuck right off—all those did was cause him to hyperventilate as he counted each inhale and exhale faster and faster.) The tricks allowed him to hit reset and go back to a previous save point, in a way. The level didn’t get any easier when he returned to it, but the momentary respite allowed him to regroup and adjust his tactics.

He’d been doing an awful fucking lot of both ever since Giran’s first two finds had moved in. Tomura’s nail scraped against polished wood, digging in while his mind replayed the conversation with Kurogiri the evening before, clear as a cutscene.

We cannot further our ends without skilled support, Shigaraki Tomura.

I know, damn it. He couldn’t have even said what his party was fighting on-screen. He’d just kept selecting Attack each round. That doesn’t mean we have to take in every stray Giran drags in from the gutter.

True…yet please recall why we hired the man in the first place: to scout for promising candidates. He wouldn’t present us with anyone he considered beneath our notice. Each point had been spoken with the polite but unwavering logic that had won him the job as Tomura’s handler to begin with. Drifting over to the computer desk, Kurogiri had warped two manila folders onto it. At least skim their profiles before declaring your ultimate decision.

So, Tomura had. And he’d seen beyond a doubt that the fucking walking Rorschach test had been right, as usual. The description of the brat’s quirk had been particularly surprising. Tomura’s mind had roiled with all the possible uses for her. The smartass’s, on the other hand, didn’t boast as much versatility, but it did promise the kind of ranged and wide-area attacks needed to control a battle.

Giran had brought him an illusionist assassin and a black mage. With them, he’d have a better chance at clearing higher level quests. He hated the facts, but that didn’t change them, as he’d been taught in no uncertain terms during the little excursion to UA’s training facility.

Thus, Toga Himiko and Dabi, whoever he really was, had been granted permission to move what worldly goods they possessed into rooms of their choosing upstairs. Tomura hadn’t bothered to learn which. He figured he’d reduce the chances of murdering them in their sleep if he didn’t know.

His hand left the bar and relocated to his throat. The fingers didn’t scratch, but they flexed in the familiar pattern. Letting those two move in might have been a mistake—yet another in a growing string of them. He shouldn’t have given in to Kurogiri so easily because of rattled confidence. He should have insisted all recruits stay somewhere else until they proved their worth and loyalty. To hell with Giran’s professional instincts. What if they were spies for some hero agency? The Toga brat especially, with a quirk like hers. Barring that, they still hadn’t made it past basic introductions without trying to kill each other. How could they be expected to follow orders or not botch a mission because of their own petty goals? And anyway, both of them were just fucking weird.

A sound barged into Tomura’s thoughts from the outer world. Only the small, metallic click of a door handle turning, but it made his head snap in the direction of the hallway. Kurogiri never used the door. He didn’t need to.

Sure enough, there slouched a tall, ragged figure. The zombie. The one name wonder. Dabi.

The skin of Tomura’s throat stung as his nails finally found purchase. Of course the last person on Earth he wanted to see would show up at that very moment. Of course. Because the universe fucking hated him and the feeling was very much mutual.

For a minute, Dabi just filled up the space in the doorway, watching and being watched. When Tomura didn’t move to attack, he finally stepped into the room. His ugly boots clomped on the floorboards as he approached. Still wary, still keeping an eye on where Tomura’s hands rested, he paused at the far corner of the bar. Kurogiri must have had a chat with both newcomers, oh yes. Now they had to be aware of just how close they’d come to never annoying the shit out of anyone ever again.

“So.” Dabi nodded toward the shelves. “We gotta pay for booze or is it included in our membership?”

Even while asking a simple question he couldn’t sound anything less than full of contempt. Putting on an air of boredom despite the knot of tension between his shoulder blades, Tomura shrugged. “Knock yourself out. None of this shit comes out of my pocket.”

No further invitation was required. Dabi strode behind the bar and started examining labels, back turned. Tomura’s fingers twitched. Patchwork asshole. Like he’d fall for a trap that obvious.

Dabi settled on a dark blue bottle with a foreign label. Turning around, he grabbed a glass from beneath the bar, twisted the cap open, and poured without restraint. Fumes wafted over, crinkling Tomura’s nose. Great. Wonder-fucking-ful. The reek of alcohol made his stomach tie itself in knots just as much as it had after his first and final hangover.

He’d thought that drinking the toxic shit might help shut his brain up. And, after choking down an acidic gulp—he’d chosen something a deep gold because he’d just liked the color—it had, sort of. His thoughts had softened, stretching out and slowing with a new elasticity. So, even though his chest and nostrils had still been full of napalm he’d knocked back another swallow. The volume of his mental chatter had faded with the third. By the fifth it became benign background noise. The alcohol’s chemical burn had faded away on the seventh. Memories slid into blank blackness sometime after the tenth.

Kurogiri must have warped him to bed that night because when Tomura woke, sweaty, shaking, sicker than a lab rat, the man already had a bucket at the ready. He spoke not a word while letting Tomura puke his guts up. Or when he brought miso broth, umeboshi, and tea after the dry heaves stopped. He didn’t have to. Tomura hadn’t drunk a drop since.

“You look like you swallowed a bug.”

Tomura’s gaze leapt up from the bar to find Dabi staring at him over the rim of the now empty glass. A little riff of unease jangled his nerves. He’d never seen eyes such a deep blue. They caught and glinted in the low lighting the same way the selected bottle did. The patches of ruined skin sagging beneath just made them more striking.

“Must be the company.” His tongue moved too sluggishly to be sharp, turning the comeback into little more than a mumble. Another jolt of realization lanced through Tomura: Father wasn’t shielding his own face. There wouldn’t be much to see with his hair hanging in a messy curtain…but he still had to repress the urge to fidget on the stool and shift away.

Dabi smirked. Tomura couldn’t tear his stare away from how the smooth skin of his upper cheeks and the trauma-purple scar tissue of his jaw pulled in opposite directions against the surgical staples—the fuckmothering staples—binding them at the seams. The smirk only grew under the attention.

“Yeah, about that…” Dabi reached into his raggedy jacket and Tomura tensed. Then mentally cursed when not a weapon but a small jar was produced. Dark glass, unlabeled, it looked utterly boring in the other man’s palm (also stapled, also intensely weird) as he offered it across the bar. “For you.”

“What…what’s in it?”

“A gesture of goodwill.”

The scarred corner of Tomura’s upper lip peeled back just enough to show a glimmer of teeth. “You couldn’t have given me one in the first place by introducing yourself properly?”

Those disquieting eyes almost glowed. “Sure. But then I wouldn’t have seen who you are. People always show their real selves when they’re pissed.”

A fine tremor infected Tomura’s hands. One swift, short lunge. That’s all it would take to disintegrate Frankendick’s face for good. There would be no Kurogiri to play referee either… “So, what? That was just part of some elaborate test? You going to amaze me with an in-depth character analysis now?”

“Nope. I’m not feeling that generous.”

Right. That did it for his quota of fucks to give for the day. If he stuck around for another thirty seconds there really would be a murder in progress. Tomura turned away from the bar with a scoff.

“Hurts, huh? The stuff around your eyes.”

He froze with one foot on the floor, one still hooked on the bottom of the stool.

“Itches like a sonuvabitch too when it’s humid probably,” Dabi continued, sensing the hook had set. “What’s in the jar helps with that kind of thing.”

“Nothing helps.” The words hissed out of Tomura like a jet of steam.

“This will. I make it. Look how good it works on me.”

For the next solid minute, Tomura could do nothing except grapple with the question of how this staple-faced fucker could even be for real.

Dabi, for his part, let his smirk soften into something that almost resembled an actual smile. Unscrewing the jar’s lid, he set it down on the bar and dipped two fingers into the contents. When he reached forward, Tomura’s hand shot up and captured him around the wrist. Only his index finger didn’t touch, pointed at the ceiling and ready to clamp down in an instant.

On the verge of being reduced to bloody slush staining the floor, Dabi just cocked his head. “Jumpy, are we?”

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” It came out entirely too high and strained to spare Tomura’s dignity.

“I told you. Showing goodwill.” A pause. “Are you touch averse?”

“Am I what?”

“You know. Like, being touched gets you nervous or grosses you out. That sort of thing.”

“The fuck would I know? It’s not like I ever let anyone try!”

Okay. That hadn’t come out quite as intended. Tomura dug his fingers into Dabi’s wrist, deep enough to leave marks even through the sleeve of a jacket, daring the bastard to laugh or make a crude quip. Instead, said bastard quit smiling. His strange, stained-glass eyes only observed, absorbing details while giving none away. Contrary to the lack of mockery, hot blood rushed straight up Tomura’s neck and flooded his face.

All he had to do was flex one finger and Dabi would be dead. Every scenario that played out in inside his mind showed him having the clear advantage at such a close range. So why, why, why had the pulse in his chest and temples kicked into hyper mode?

“Think of this another way,” Dabi said, as if reading his thoughts and causing another spike in blood pressure. “As a show of trust.”

“T-trust?” The word tripped up Tomura’s tongue like it came from an alien language. “We tried to kill each other yesterday.”

The response was a shrug. “That’s yesterday. Like I said, you showed me what I wanted to know. Now I’m returning the favor. That’s why you were so pissed, wasn’t it? When I didn’t make an introduction? You wanted to see if you could trust me. Well, here I am, close enough for you to use your quirk on without much chance to dodge. Still not gonna tell you my name, though.”

All valid points. And having Dabi at his mercy did make for a strong show of dominance. It still didn’t explain why Tomura was the one on the edge of his seat. He eyed the pale goop coating Dabi’s fingers. Sensei had educated him on a wide variety of poisons used for killing or incapacitating victims, but he held few suspicions from that angle. Another crackpot personality test sounded more plausible. For cowardice? To see if he’d flinch if confronted? The only thing Tomura knew for sure was that he couldn’t back down without proving both. He could do nothing except follow the limited dialog and action choices to see what ending he got.

Gathering his will, he eased his fingers from Dabi’s wrist. “Fine. I accept.” A little forethought went a long way; the words came across as gracious rather than sullen.

Dabi continued to study him for a few more heartbeats. When he caught no hint of a trick he reached out and closed the gap.

The warmth came as a shock. It radiated off his fingers just before they made contact with Tomura’s cheek. Against skin they bordered on searing. Despite the extensive training in muscle control and pain tolerance Sensei had drilled into him, a twitch from his jaw betrayed him.

Raising his eyebrows a fraction, Dabi pulled away a few centimeters. “All right?”

Mismatched ass rag. He’d probably raised his body temperature with his fire quirk to provoke a reaction. Rather than Decay his hand and snap it off at the wrist, Tomura said through a snarl, “I’m fine.”

Dabi’s hooded stare declared his doubts on that, but he reached out again. Tomura didn’t falter a second time. The ointment, whatever it was made of, glided onto his cracked skin hot, clingy, and stinging. The fingertips applying it, though, did so with gentle strokes. After a minute or so the sting fizzled into tingling and the heat turned tolerable. It seeped into Tomura’s skull, his jaw and neck. The pinched muscles of his face slowly relaxed. Not so terrible after all. Weird to the nth degree, and he had no clue what he’d do if Kurogiri warped in on them, but not awful. Maybe he’d order Dabi to do this again in the near future. See how much the fucker smirked when his plan worked too well.

Fingers sliding into his hair scattered all petty plans of revenge. Tomura jumped and jerked his head away, blinking, startled.

Dabi’s skin pulled at the seams slightly from a small smile. “Your hair’s covering the other side of your face.”

“Oh.” The only way he could have sounded stupider was if he’d fried his brain like the UA kid with the electricity quirk. A possibility, given how his cheeks and neck were burning up. How the hell had he wound up on the defensive—again? This was why he liked games: whenever a dialog option or approval interaction went wrong he could backtrack and do it over until he got the desired result.

He should kill Dabi where he stood. Eliminate such a major factor of uncertainty. The League needed members to grow, yes, but it also needed stability. Kurogiri would come to see that eventually. Even if he didn’t there wasn’t shit he could do about it in the end. Tomura’s fingers curled on his thighs, ready to leap up and grab any bit of exposed flesh.

A gentle, stitched up hand beat him to it. Dabi brushed aside Tomura’s hair, tucking it back behind his ear. The tickle of the messy strands and strokes from warm fingertips sent fireworks sizzling and popping along the bundles of nerves in his neck and shoulders. Instead of going in for an easy kill his fingers dug into his legs. He barely managed to swallow what would definitely have been a humiliating noise in his surprise. He didn’t even want to consider what his expression had betrayed in that instant.

Was this why people hugged and held hands and all that? Because contact gave them a high? Somehow, Tomura doubted it. Novelty and his inexperience were probably heightening the sensations. Every touch he could remember had been a threat, either given or received. This would turn out no different. He raised his eyes from the bar, intent on finding some shred of evidence to support the suspicion.

Instead, he caught Dabi watching him. Not focused on rubbing the salve in. Not gauging reactions. Just…staring straight at him, irises as bright as the hearts of candleflames. Brain upended, Tomura shrunk in on himself a bit. Seriously, what the blazing fuck did this guy want? Why not spit it out already? The game didn’t have a point without a clear objective.

Tiny sparks spat across the network of nerves in Tomura’s scalp as fingers slipped into his hair again, combing through it. The sharp, involuntary breath he sucked in had nothing to do with the few strands that got caught and pulled by staples. Dabi took his hand away only to let it settle against the curve of Tomura’s cheek. The mildly calloused pad of his thumb caressed soothing heat into the peeling skin.

“There. Better?” His voice was almost as soft as his touch.

Against his will, Tomura realized it was. Not just his face either. For several glorious seconds, his thoughts stayed silent, at rest. There was nothing but warmth and blue eyes and strange feelings he had no names for.

Then the last possibility he would have considered for the whole bizarre encounter breached the calm surface of his mind, churning it back into chaos.

The stool tipped precariously under Tomura as he lurched back from Dabi’s reach. He latched onto the bar’s edge in the nick of time, keeping a finger on each hand away purely by the grace of reflex.

“You really are jumpy. Like a damn stray cat.”

If looks could Decay, he would have given Kurogiri something to sigh about in the form of sixty-eight kilograms’ worth of dust sprayed all over the immaculate shelves and cabinets.

Willfully oblivious, Dabi pushed the little jar across the bar top. “Here. Keep it. Should last awhile.” The smirk returned to his mismatched face as if it had never left. “Don’t expect me to share my chapstick, though. You’re on your own with that one, creep.”

Nothing but a strangled sound of outrage managed to escape Tomura’s constricted throat while the unbelievable bastard grabbed his chosen bottle and sauntered away. He considered flinging the empty glass after him. Using his quirk to bring the entire building crashing down on everyone inside. Crawling into the nearest hole and never coming out too. By the time Dabi was halfway across the room, Tomura had made his decision.

Slowly, his hand went to the jar. One finger touched the lid.

Dabi stopped in front of the door.

A second finger touched the dark glass.

The handle turned.

Three points of contact now.

Faint light spilled in from the hallway.

Tomura’s thumb wrapped around the jar in fourth place.

The door swung shut behind Dabi just as Shigaraki Tomura made his gesture of goodwill disappear, not in his grip but into his pocket.

[secret-engima]

King’s Skjald verse HCs

Because @ertrunkenerwassergeist inspired me and I’ve been working on it lately anyway.

-Gladiolus learned to speak King’s Speech (Eos’s language) partly by listening to his parents talk, but a great deal of it was by comparing each knew word to the closest nordic counterpart and cataloguing it under that. It’s one of the reasons he was so slow to talk as a child and tended to use very small sentences, or take long times to respond to anyone verbally, he was busy mentally running the words through his norse filter and then back into King’s Speech.

-As he grew older, this because less necessary, but he still does it. This can ... occasionally lead to problems that I don’t get to expand on (at least not yet?). Problems such as-

-Words that have no counterpart. Like “computer” “television” “internet” etc. It took him FOREVER to learn those words because he didn’t have an easy counterpart to them. When he was a kid and was lured into talking faster than his usual careful pace, this often led to translations of his sloppy nicknames for them coming out instead of the proper word like “picture-box” for computer “moving painting” for television and “knowing-spider’s web” for internet. He was always vaguely embarrassed about the slip-ups but Noctis thought the words were cool and tended to parrot them.

-Another issue is his occasional slip up into Norse when he forgets to complete the filter of King’s Speech to Norse and then BACK and instead blurts out his answer in Norse. This has gained him many odd looks from his parents and King Regis and Cor.

-Gladio doesn’t remember a lot of the names of countries he’s been to on earth. For instance, his homeland where Thorfinn grew up is just “home” in his mind. It has no name anymore. Maybe he used to know it, but as Gladio got older, the weaker parts of Thors’ memories faded away and that was one of them. He remembers the name “Vinland” though. He’s not sure why.

-There are few words to describe how much this boy hates Insomnia traffic. He tolerates it, he does, but a part of him never got over the sheer difference in SCALE when it comes to population. And noise. Good astrals the NOISE. For a boy with memories of little nordic villages and the endless song of creaking wood and hissing waves, the constant non-stop engine noises and humming of electronics and people in the Citadel chatting/moving can still occasionally drive this boy bonkers. It gets easier as he grows older and learns to tune it out better but- sometimes it sneaks up on him, like some kind of wall between him and the world going down without warning and he has to go hide somewhere dark and quiet, hands over his ears, trying to get the screaming collage sound out of his head.

-Loves the royal aquarium. It’s this HUGE thing in the Citadel that stretches up to the rooftop but also down into this special floor just dedicated to being an aquarium and Gladiolus ADORES IT. He’s UNDERWATER. Without having to worry about drowning. He can see the rippling water and the hundreds of fish and other water creatures swimming around in there and it’s just- gorgeous. He adores it. Even as a teenager/adult he is fully happy to just curl up in a corner of the aquarium surrounded by this miniature seaworld and bask.

-Has taught both Noctis and Ignis (and way later, Prompto) to speak Norse. Fluently. Noctis takes way too much glee in holding private conversations with Gladiolus and Ignis in Norse, knowing that no one else knows what he's saying. Will mutter Norse during parties so he can get away with cursing the annoying nobles or whining to Gladio on how he wants to leave already (Gladio sympathizes, but no you can’t leave yet).

-Gladiolus has defeated Cor in a sparring match.

-He was 12.

-Cor was torn between being so super proud of his godson he could burst and being ... afraid. Instinctively afraid on a gut-deep level that Gladiolus was going to suffer through the same things he did as a young prodigy. He knows, logically, that Regis would never do that to Gladio, NEVER. But he hears the way people are gasping and talking and he thinks of some of the things that have already happened in Gladio’s life (read: invasion of Tenebrae) and he still worries.

-Gladio meets the glaives eventually, when Nyx, Lib, and Crowe are still Dumb Rookie Teenagers. They are ... the closest things he gets to “friends in his age group” because Noctis and Ignis will forever be more his “son-friends” than “peer-friends”.

-Everybody picture Tired Viking Dad trailing along behind the Glaive Trio, alternating between being the Tired Dad Braincell and being Reckless Viking Boi because the three of them are able to bring out his Actual Age way better than any other force on the planet.

-So. Many. Shenanigans.

-Ends up teaching the Trio Norse.

-Cue Nyx gleefully being Disrespectful in Norse whenever he feels like it and Crowe yelling Norse curses while casting spells because it Sounds Cool And Witchy™.

-Also he probably ends up dating and kissing Crowe.

[carlottastudios]

Rosegarden week 2.0 Day 7: Curse

“Forget it, Ruby,” Oscar shook his head. “I’m not going to teach you how to curse in dead languages.”

“Aww, why not?” Ruby wailed, her shoulder slumping.

Oscar exhaled impatiently.

“Because-Wait-Why do you even want to know that anyway?!”

Ruby was all too eager to explain.

“Because I want to know how to curse without my dad or Yang or Qrow catching on. They don’t want me cursing because ‘it’s not lady-like’ or, even worse ‘I’m not old enough’.” she said, making air-quotes and rolling her eyes. “Which is ridiculous! I don’t have to be a lady AND I’m old enough to know what the F word means!”

Oscar frowned doubtfully.

“And do you know-”

“Yes! I know what it means!” Ruby interrupted.

“Just thought I’d make sure.” Oscar said, though at least now he seemed convinced in Ruby’s knowledge in profanity.

“So, will you teach me?” she asked, her big silver eyes shining with hope.

“No.” he said firmly.

“Come on, pleeeaaase?” Ruby begged. “What’s it going to take for me to convince you?!”

As she spoke, she leaned close to him, causing a bright rosy blush to spread over his cheeks. For just the briefest instant, his eyes automatically flicked towards her lips before he made himself look back into her eyes. Ruby noticed this (it was difficult not to) and found herself blushing too. Oscar shook his head vehemently and backed away on the couch.

“Nothing! Th-There’s nothing you can do that’ll change my mind!” he stuttered, his blush deepening.

His answer left Ruby thoroughly unconvinced. For all his protests, there was definitely something that could change his mind. And that, coupled with his reaction to her approach, gave her an idea.

“Are you sure?” she smirked cunningly, edging closer to him.

Oscar’s face heated up again and he scooted away until he ran out of couch. Ruby promptly closed the gap the boy had attempted to put between them, holding back a giggle at the look on Oscar’s face. His big eyes were now the size of dinner plates and his freckles stood out adorably against the vivid pink of his cheeks. It was almost funny how cute she found him when he was this shy.

“Positive.” he said in answer to her question, and his voice was practically a squeak.

This only encouraged Ruby to go along with her idea.

“What about this?” she hesitated a beat, then kissed Oscar on the cheek.

He was scarlet and freezes as soon as her lips touched him, as though he’d had a hundred volts of electricity suddenly shoot throughout his body. Then he seemed to melt, a moonstruck smile spreading across his face.

“W-Well I g-guess one or two words might be okay…” he conceded.

“Yes!” Ruby pumped her fist joyfully. “Thank you, Oscar! You’re the best! Also, just as a side-note,” she added, blushing as she spoke, “your cheeks are very kissable.”

This statement nearly gave Oscar a heart-attack.

…

And so, the lessons began. Oscar and Ruby would find a quiet place to sit down, every day, and Oscar would teach her a few curses, which she’d then repeat with his aid until she had memorized them. After every new word he taught her, she rewarded his teachings with a kiss on the cheek, or wherever else on his face that she wanted to kiss. And as the lessons continued, Oscar grew less and less nervous about her kisses, though his enjoyment of them never diminished. If anything, he seemed to look even more forward to them, so much that he once tried to rush through the lesson to get a kiss on the forehead. He only did this once though, and Ruby teased him for his impatience until he apologized. For her part, Ruby found that she very much liked kissing Oscar. And then, one day, the dynamic changed. This time, he was teaching her curses in latin.

“So there are two words in Latin for the F word.” Ruby said.

“Right,” Oscar nodded, “and they are?”

“Irrumabo and futuo.”

“Correct. And the S word is?”

“Stercore.”

“Exactly. And if you’ve just stubbed your toe extra hard on the edge of the coffee table…”

“Malum sit! Which means ‘Damn it!’! And the next time I see Tyrian or Cinder and I want to give them a piece of my mind in Latin, I say ‘Vilis!’!” Ruby beamed triumphantly.

“Correct!” Oscar grinned. “So that’s 5 ways to curse in Latin, which means you owe me 5 kisses.”

Ruby raised an eyebrow at him. Already the flutters were starting up again in her stomach at the thought of kissing Oscar five times.

“But we only translated 4 curses.”

“But the two different ways of saying the F word count as two separate curses. So that makes 5.”

He smirked, and Ruby could feel even more fluttering, this time in her chest.

“How do I know you’re not just trying to get extra kisses?” she scooted over to Oscar and kissed him on the cheek.

Oscar laughed lightly.

“Can you blame me?” he asked as Ruby kissed him on the other cheek.

She pulls away, surprised.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Oscar realized what he’d just said and backtracked, going red in the face.

“Uh-Well-The thing is-I…well…I really…really like you-”

Ruby’s eyes went wide.

“I mean-your kissing me! But also you-uh-!”

Oscar cut himself off as Ruby put a hand on his shoulder.

“Oscar,”

“Y-Y-Yeah?” he nervously looked at her, and slowly seemed to realize that she blushing about as much as he was, if not more.

She chuckled nervously.

“I…” she said softly, not quite knowing how to put into words what she was thinking.

She looked back up at him, then cupped his face, facing him properly.

“I really” she said, then leaned forward to kiss him again on the cheek, “really” another kiss, on the other cheek, “like” a kiss on his forehead, “kissing you” on the tip of his nose, “too.” she finished, before kissing him very lightly and carefully on his lips.

As she did, there was a sudden burst of fluttering in her stomach and she could swear, when she pulled away, that her heart had skipped a beat. It seemed that Oscar had had a similar reaction as, when they both blinked open their eyes, he looked just as flustered as she felt.

“R-Really?!” he asked, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a smile.

He sounded so adorably surprised and happy that Ruby couldn’t help but laugh.

“Really.” she said, trying in vain to stifle her giggles.

It proved easier said than done, so she tried to muffle them by kissing Oscar again.

“S-Sorry!” Ruby said as she pulled away, her snickers slowly starting to subside.

Oscar shook his head and made it clear she had nothing to apologize for, this time, by kissing her. And then they kissed again, and again, and then a bit more. It was just so nice, so very very nice, kissing Oscar, that it was a bit hard to stop.

‘And to think,’ both teens thought, ‘it had started all with cursing.’

And as soon as that thought had crossed their minds, Oscar suddenly pulled away, his eyes wide.

“Oh no.” he said and Ruby looked at him in worry.

“What? What is it? A-Am I bad at this?” Ruby asked, all at once feeling the first twinges of mortification.

“Wh-No! Not at all!” Oscar quickly reassured. “It’s just that…” he stared in terror. “I’m going to die.”

Ruby frowned, confused.

“What?”

“I’m going to die!” Oscar exclaimed. “Your uncle’s going to kill me for kissing you and teaching you how to curse in dead languages in exchange for kisses and-Oh I’m such a dead man! And I’ve only just begun kissing you!” he moaned in dread.

“Oscar,” Ruby soothed, “don’t worry about it. Uncle Qrow’s not going to kill you. He likes you, he’s not going to hurt you!”

“Yeah, but you’re his niece! Isn’t it his job to be protective of you and murder any creature with a Y chromosome that approaches you?”

“Well, maybe, but he’s not going to murder this one.” she lightly poked him on the chest to emphasize her words, then smiled. “Tell you what, how about we just keep kissing until you forget all about him?”

Oscar gave her a skeptical look.

“Do you really think your kissing me is going to make me do whatever you want?”

In answer, she kissed him and almost immediately, she felt him relax beneath her touch.

“Okay, you’re totally right,” he admitted, “I’d give you the world.”

She smiled.

“Well, I’m not asking for the world.” she said, kissing him again.

…

A sharp pain flared throughout Ruby’s scalp as her forehead hit the refrigerator’s upper door. Her hand flew to the aching spot and she hissed loudly:

“Futuo suus damnare!”

“Ruby!” Yang cried, rushing over. “Are you okay?!”

“Yeah, I’m alright, sis.” Ruby said, rubbing at the tender spot on her forehead.

“You sure?” Oscar asked, having reached her side almost faster than her sister.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Just whacked myself on the head.” Ruby explained.

Then the three heard a voice from the kitchen doorway:

“Ruby,”

They all turned, slightly worried at the serious edge in the huntsman’s voice. The look on the scythe-wielder’s face didn’t reassure them.

“Yes, uncle Qrow?” asked Ruby.

“Where did you learn that?” he growled lowly.

That sent a jolt of fear down Ruby’s spine.

“Learn what?” she asked, feigning innocence, praying to the almighty Oum that he wasn’t talking about what she thought he was talking about.

“That sentence. That’s cursing in Latin.” he said, his red eyes narrowing.

He was talking exactly about what’s she’d thought, and feared, he’d been talking about. That alone was enough to make Ruby’s complexion go white. Even worse, Yang was now looking at her sister with growing menace.

“Ruby, how did you learn to curse in Latin?” she asked warningly.

Ruby and Oscar glanced nervously at each other and the look in their eyes spoke the same message:

‘Stercore!’

[merlevum]

Dormiens rex De Aurora

Chapters: 2/?

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia/Ignis Scientia, Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum Characters: Gladiolus Amicitia, Ignis Scientia, Prompto Argentum, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Nyx Ulric Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, cyrofreeze, cryovat Summary: Gladio comes out of the cryovat and learns just how long he's been asleep.

It was strange. Gladio couldn’t make heads or tails of why he couldn’t open his damn eyes. His body was numb, slow, and he couldn’t feel it like he was supposed to, how he knew he was supposed to. If he moved, he didn’t know, but the cold was there again.

Pain.

Right, his lungs felt like they were on fire with every breath he took.

In.

Out.

He needed to breathe. He needed to live if he was going to do what he was trained to do.

Static buzzed in his arms first and then his legs. Finally, forcing his eyes open, Gladio tried to discern where he was. What was going on? What happened?

Dad.

Where was dad?

Green eyes came into view. Heat flared, burning him. Hands held him? Was he falling? Gladio couldn’t tell, but the world spun, so he focused on those green eyes behind panes of glass instead. Without his consent, his body shivered and slowly the aching from the cold grew till it burned and he could finally hear his own ragged breathing. Too fast. He needed to slow it down, to calm his racing heart.

Why was it racing? Where was his--

“D-Dad?” Gladio didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded hoarse and broken. Trying to speak gave him a coughing fit that only hurt.

The one with green eyes was saying something, but it was so far away, muffled. Did he have ice in his ears too? Wait, what was he saying? It didn’t sound right? It wasn’t Lucian. What was he saying? He didn’t know what to do with the sound. He needed to get to his dad, to help him fight off the Niffs. Wait, the ring, where was Noct? If his vat was open, Noct would be woken too? Had it not worked? Or had he woken to help his dad?

Gladio looked for his father’s body, but there was nothing in the corner it had fallen to right before Gladio was frozen. Had they managed to overpower the Niffs and this was the future? Gladio couldn’t be sure, but those hands were a boon to his cold body. But fucking Six, what was the guy saying?

“I-I....I can’t understand.” Gladio managed to croak out. “N-Noct, Is he-”

“Noct?”

It’s a question? Does he not know about Noct? Glancing around, the room had cracks, and layers of dust and rubble. No, it wasn’t like it was when he had gone in. There were no technicians running around, just him and the man with green eyes. Wait, no there are more, but they are nothing like the rebels who had put him under ice. How long was he asleep?

Gladio’s body grew heavy. Why couldn’t he move when he needed to? Why couldn’t he have the strength to do what he needed to do? Why were the people he loved always in fucking danger because he couldn’t do his job?

The world slowly faded as concerned green eyes watched over him, words were formed, but Gladio couldn’t hear them.

Beep.

Beep. Beep.

Beep.

Astrals give him patience, Gladio thought as he groaned. Was that his alarm? No, it sounded off and his body was sore all over. Had he overdone it at training? No that didn’t sound right either. He had fallen asleep with Iris after they hugged. Wait, there was more. Right, he had been escorted to the cryovat. Was this what it felt like to wake up?

Fuck.

Slowly he tested out his muscles. Wiggling his feet a little. Clenching his fists. Focusing on his breath to make sure everything was in check, but there was still that steady beeping. A few moments went by before he realised the sound had a rhythm to it. Opening his eyes, it was easier to focus them this time. First, on the machine next to him, wires sticking out and connecting to his own body, and then to screen that was making that horrible noise. He watched a green line move up and down until he realised it was a heart monitor.

How long had he been under? Opening his eyes more, to take in his surroundings, a gentle hand pushed him back down on the bed he was laying in. He hadn’t realised he was trying to get up.

“Steady there. You’re alright.”

Gladio shuddered at the touch, it was warm. Six, he was still fucking cold. He needed to have a word with whoever took over the cryovat science. Maybe there was no way to really fix the way his body felt so cold, but hell it was worth a shot. Noct was probably having a much harder time, never liking the cold. Wait, shit where was Noct?

“N-No-” Gladio cursed himself as he started coughing. His throat was still hoarse and barely there.

“Noct or Noctis I presume?” the man asked, his green eyes gentle. The guy from before when he first woke up sat there. Gladio nods. “He’s stable. Look to your left.”

Gladio does so and breathes a sigh of relief seeing Noct laying there in a bed next to him. Thank the gods he was fine. His dad would have had his head if Noct was killed after everything they had gone through. Dad....Gladio closed his eyes. He couldn’t grieve for his dad or anyone for that matter. Not yet. Not when there was still so much to do. While he was certainly thankful to the guy sitting next to his bed, Gladio didn’t know who this guy was or if this was still even part of King Regis’s plan anymore. Everything was starting to fall apart.

“Gladiolus? Is that your name?”

Gladio needed a name for the stranger. Seeing the glasses, he decided Specs would be fine for now. At least until he knew the guys real name. He nodded his head.

“Good. At least we understand that much of the lost tongue.” Specs relaxed a little as he sits straight in the chair. “Can you understand me alright, Gladiolus?”

“Gl-Gladio’s fine.”

“Then I presume you can.” Specs smiled, but Gladio didn't know why.

“Great! At least we know the chip is working.”

Gladio whips his head back to the left, glaring at the new voice. A blonde kid, probably around Noct’s age, sat down in a chair. The kid smiled, not wavering at Gladio’s look. Chip? What were they talking about? What had they done? Shit, Gladio tried to get up.

“W-Wait, please. You’ll only hurt yourself. Prompto, please be gentle. They’ve been asleep for quite some time. We don’t want to stress them.”

Gladio can hear the heart monitor now. The steady beating is no longer his, it’s Noct's. His own was pounding much faster and harder. Specs was right about one thing, he was stressed and for good reason. Would the Amiger still work with Noct unconscious? He hoped so because if he had to, he’d pull out his sword and show them a thing to two, but there was no shimmer and no sound to indicate it.

“S-Sorry, Igs...” Prompto shifted in his chair uncomfortably, his hands resting on the seat between his legs, heels hooked into the bars.

“Listen Gladio, we put a chip in both you and Noctis. It’s standard for everyone here to get them when they are little. The chip translates languages for you to understand and in return when you speak you are able to speak the same language. We meant to ask you both first, but seeing as there seemed to be a bit of a language barrier when we brought you both out, we presumed--”

“W-What?”

He can’t help but wince as he body protests to him sitting up. They put a chip in him without even checking if it was okay? What the hell? And they did that to Noct too. Shit. His dad really was going to come and kill now. Some shield he was being.

“Gladio, please. You’ll only make your recovery longer.” Those hands were on him, gently guiding him back down. If Gladio didn’t have to worry about his arms giving way, he might have actually fought against the guy. “That’s all we did. It’s just a translation chip. I promise, at least to you.”

He glared at Specs, or he supposed Igs, wanting to know what the hell that meant. Seeing where those green eyes were suddenly trained, Gladio tried to sit up once more before falling onto his arm with a cut of cry of pain.

“Gladio!” Igs sighed pinching the bridge of his nose. Prompto hid a grin behind a hand until Gladio glared at him. “Your friend, Noct. He has- or rather- had something called the Starscourge coursing through him. The remedy for that disease was found hundreds of years ago, so we cured him of it. Now he should be able to use whatever power he normally couldn’t. He’ll just need to learn to control it.”

Gladio looked at his prince. Noctis had the Starscourge and no one told him? Did Noctis even know? This was all kinds of fucked up. Prompto sat in the chair, quiet. Perhaps Igs was the better of the two to explain things, but dammit all. He wanted more than just reassurance that they were going to be okay. Dawning on him, Gladio reached into his pocket only to find it empty. Panic settled in once more, the monitor raising in bleeps alerted both Prompto and Igs as they glanced at each other. Shit, where the hell was it?

“Are you looking for this?” Igs held out the Lucii ring. “Thought you might. It fell from your pocket when we were taking you out of the cryovat. I kept it safe.”

Gladio shifts so he holds out a hand. “Give it back.”

There, that sounds more like him. Strong and confident and definitely more like the Shield he was meant to be. Still, he wished he could have had some water or something. He was damned parched and his throat was itchy, dry, and hoarse.

“Here.”

Gladio half suspected Igs to keep it or try and put it on himself, but instead, those lithe hands place the ring gingerly in Gladio’s plam. Thank the Six. If Igs had put it on or even knew a fraction of what he held, things could have gone very differently. Everything was so out of place, but at least he hadn’t lost the fucking thing. Leaning back into bed, Gladio felt tired again.

“You should get some more rest. I’ll be here when you wake to answer any questions,” Igs said, eyes gentle.

“W-Water?” Gladio asked, not caring if this was the enemy and if they drugged the water fine. He would probably just fall asleep anyway after he drank a bit.

“Ice chips for you and Noct,” Prompto said, handing Igs a cup full of the stuff. Great, more ice. “Doc says you won’t be on solid food for another week either. So just take easy.”

Gladio nods. For now, he’ll accept their reassurance if only to bide his time. When he has his voice back he’ll ask a few more questions, but for now, he is satisfied with Igs putting an ice chip to his lips.

Gladio woke again, this time there’s more weight on top of him, but he is finally warm. Opening his eyes, he sees the white walls of the room, but the beeping has finally gone away. Did they not need heart monitors anymore? Where they okay now? Gods, he hoped so. Taking stock of his body once more, he’s relieved to see that he can move a little better than before and his body is no longer as sore. To his left Noct was still sleeping with Prompto dosing in the chair he occupied the last time. Gladio wasn’t surprised to see Igs sitting in the chair by his own bed either, but rather bemused at Igs’ glasses practically hanging at the edge of his nose and head slumped forward.

How long had he slept this time? He couldn’t be sure. There were no windows here. Which should have concerned him, but at the moment he was thankful. It meant no one could see him and that meant privacy. Maybe they didn’t know Noct was royalty and then again, maybe they did and this was a precaution. But with everyone asleep, Gladio had no one to stop him from thinking. No one to distract him from his thoughts.

Dad.

Iris.

Crownsguard.

Kingsglaive.

Every one of the rebels who had survived since then.

He doubted any of them still existed. Not even Cor the Immortal could have survived. Right? Astrals take him, he could feel the stinging in his eyes before the tears finally fell. He’d never see any of them again. A gentle hand is on his, making him flinch as he took a shuddering breath. Glancing at the hand, he can tell it’s Igs despite his blurred vision. Some shield he was, crying in front of a stranger. Gritting his teeth, Gladio willed the tears to stop.

“Gladio....” Igs spoke softly, if only to comfort him, or keep Prompto or Noct from hearing, Gladio doesn’t know. “It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot it seems and holding it in will only worsen matters.”

Gladio swallowed past the lump in his throat.

“H-How--” he cleared his throat before trying again. “How long have we been asleep?”

“I’m afraid a thousand years, Gladio.”

He choked back another sob. That long? No, it couldn’t be. Why had they stayed asleep for so long? Was that really the plan?

“I....I don’t know exactly how to tell you this, Gladio, but Lucian, the language you tried to talk to me in first, that language has long since died. Niflheim has made sure of that. I work as an assistant to a scientist, who is very intrigued by history and past sciences. Prompto is a friend of mine, who documents her findings and so generally goes along with me when I do research. We happened upon your cyrovat first. It took years to decipher what the words on the screen said.”

Igs repositioned his glasses, but the hand on Gladio’s never wavered.

“When he found out there was another, we immediately searched for Noct. Only when we were certain you two could be brought out of your status without harming you or the structures, we finally started the process.”

“Structures?” Gladio said, interrupting Igs. “What do you mean the structures? And why doesn’t this place have windows?”

The hand on top of Gladio’s squeezed his. “Insomnia as you know it is no longer here, Gladio. Insomnia is now just ruins and I’m sorry, but there is an outpost that was built on top of it. What you might have considered your home is now what we consider the catacombs. When we found your cryovat, the building was sound enough. But Noct, his cryovat was not exactly in the same condition. Some of the building was coming down and there apparently was something wrong with his console. When I read that if one of you was woken the other would as well, we had to take precautions.”

Gladio breathed deep, trying to take in what Igs was telling him. If it wasn’t for the two cryovats connected, it meant that Noct might not have ever been able to wake up. Shit.

“It took another week before you started to --defrost? I suppose that would be the easiest of terms to put it. We monitored your vitals the entire time and ensured you were both stable. But as I dug into the files more and more, I’ve found it rather difficult to decipher some of what was written. Please, why were you put into the cryovat in the first place, you and his highness?”

So they knew. They knew Noct was royalty. The last of his line. The last prince of Insomnia, or what was left of it.

“....Noct and I....we were...” Gladio bit his lip trying to find the words. Igs had given him the answers he had sought, the right thing would be to give him the same answers in return. “King Regis decided it was best to have us frozen. Something about a better future if we were. Dad agreed with him and volunteered me along with him. We were supposed to still have time.” He gripped the sheets tighter. “When I was being frozen, I saw my d-dad....he-...he was struck down and there was nothing I could do for him.”

Igs shifted to scoot his chair closer to the bed, green eyes gentle when Gladio looked at him. Neither spoke, but just having Igs there was enough. Gladio let the tears fall, his body curling towards the stranger, who didn’t judge him. There was no accusation of being weak or being told to buck up. He was allowed to be human. He was allowed to grieve what he had lost even if it didn’t feel like a thousand years had passed. When the tears finally subsided, Gladio relaxed in the bed. He hated this. All of it and he couldn’t even go work out to relieve some of the pressure he felt because he was stuck in the bed.

“--Gladiolus.”

Gladio blinked, focusing back on Igs.

“Ah, I’ve found you. You were far away. It’s best not to think too much right now. You and his highness have been through a lot and I assure you, no one knows of your actual status. When we told our scientist we had found something of interest, we told her the machines weren’t working. She works for Niflheim, you see. We technically all do, but some of us....well,” he shrugs.

Shit. Niflheim was still at large? Gladio made to move, to try and summon his weapon from the Amiger, but he was in no state to do so and Igs had his hands on his shoulder again. Nothing but gentle touches and concern in those green eyes. Was there still a resistance?

“Gladio, please. Stop trying to make your recovery longer. You are safe here.” Igs relaxed back into his seat, his hands folded in his lap. “The only ones who know you are awake, are Prompto, the medical team, one other person, and myself. But you have no fear there, they have no loyalties to Niflheim either. Finding them was rather difficult and obtaining their help was even more so, but we knew if we brought you out of your cryostasis, we would be dealing with something rather important.”

“Who’s the other person?” Gladio stiffened a little. He still needed to be a shield to Noct.

“A man by the name of Nyx Ulric. Fear not, he is a good man. You’ll meet him soon enough. He’s the one who provided us with the necessary information to create the Lucian translation we are using now. He wouldn’t let me have the necessary books without knowing why.” Igs sighed before going wide-eyed. “Oh dear. Forgive me, Gladio. It seems with everything happening, you know everyone’s name but mine. My name is Ignis Scientia.”

Ignis? So, Prompto was using a nickname, figures. They must really be close then.

“Nice to meet you....I guess,” Gladio said with a shrug of his shoulder. He’s tired again, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He’s afraid. He’s afraid, now that he was more aware, the nightmares would start. They always did. “So, what happens now?”

“Now? We help you two recover. After that, well....it’s up to you I suppose. I doubt you’ll want to turn yourselves over to the empire, but then again, there are other dangers out there now that I’m sure were not there when you were last in your crowned city, Gladio. Perhaps we had best wait until you can move about before talking about what happens next aside from rest and regaining your strength.”

There’s no need for Ignis to hold his hand. There was no reason for Ignis to show him any sort of compassion. Gladio knows that, but he misses the feeling of those lithe hands on his, now slightly colder than he remembered. Maybe now that he was more awake, he was starting to retain his usual body heat. Good signs. He was healing.

Gladio gave a non-committed grunt in response, not sure where else to take the conversation at this point. Watching Ignis fiddle with a watch on his wrist, Gladio couldn’t help but find himself closing his eyes again. Next time, he would keep them open longer. He needed to get stronger for both Noct and himself. Noct would want to take back what belonged to him, but the how would be the problem.

[officialleehadan]

Barroom Brawl

Callen Tor was a tall man, but not a big one. His frame was more wiry than bulky, although Cora would bet he punched well above his weight and would probably cheat given the slightest opportunity. Tattoos crawled down his forearms, an abstract collection of elemental fractals and tunes, with the marks of supernatural beings mixed in here and there.

It wa possibly the beat combination of magic and ink that Cora had seen since she first learned about tattoo magic from a wizened old yakuza lady in Japan. At a thought, any of those tattoos would wake, and Callen could unleash the devastating magic they channeled.

Far faster than actual spell-casting, although there was a good chance he could do that too.

“You’re a hard man to find,” Cora told him, as she slid into his favorite booth, cunningly chosen for its’ magnificent view of the whole bar. Months of tracking him, and she had finally pieced it together.

After a heist, he disappeared for six months to a year. After he came back to the city, he began putting together a crew fo his next big heist. It was clever. Made it hard to pin anything on him, since he wasn’t around for questioning.

Not that it mattered. His heists were always shiny clean. Professional. Everything they had on him was questionable at the very best, and completely unfounded except that he was the only one who could have pulled it off, so it had to be him.

Frankly, Cora was surprised he was still in town, considering his father’s murder.

Oddly, that made her wonder if he had actually done it. It broke his pattern, and generally the best of the best kept to their patterns religiously.

“You’re a brave cop, to walk into this bar,” Tor noted. He had a heavy slums accent going, but something about it sounded like an affectation. If she had to guess, it was to make people think he was stupid. “There are men from all three Families having a poker game in the back. Jackknife is three tables over, and pretty much no one here likes anyone with a badge.”

“Except firefighters. We like them.”

Cora bit off a curse.

Rao Byrn. Callen Tor’s best friend, half demon, and probable demon-pactmate. Even without the demonic aspect, he was a huge man with immense bulging muscles and a fondness for fighting that wouldn’t be out of place in the MMA ring.

Cora didn’t think she could take them both on in a fight. One or the other maybe, but together they were a serious problem, and that was assuming she was quick enough to kill Tor’s magic before he leveled the building.

Fortunately, neither of them seemed to be inclined to fight. At least not yet.

Byrn had two fresh beers and passed his partner one before he sat down, a wary eye on the rest of the bar.

“We do like the firefighters,” Tor agreed, and slid his nachos over so Byrn could get at them. “But they barely count as badges. You, on the other hand...”

“Technically I’m not a cop either,” Cora said, and saw a flicker of interest cross Tor’s eyes. “I’m here about the murder of Breton Tor.”

Callen Tor immediately, and rudely, spat on the floor, which summed up his feelings on his father rather well.

“Wasn’t me, but I wish it was,” he said with a venomous smile. “And before you get any bright ideas, Lisette has been in France all month, and it wasn’t her ether.”

That part Cora knew already. Lisette Tor was much easier to pin down than her brother. Born a natural beauty, she spent a great deal of her time modeling. Presently she was the favorite muse of a particularly renowned painter who kept her in high style.

Cora wondered what her painter friend though of Lisette’s criminal brother. Probably not much, since Tor was pretty much in a class of his own as a thief, and the only thing on his record was aggravated assault from years earlier.

“I’m looking for the person who did it,” Cora told him casually, and took an easy swing of her own beer. “You might not mind that Breton was murdered-“

“Properly pleased, really,” Byrn corrected her. He had an accent, but for the life of her, Cora couldn’t place it. Somewhere between Irish and Russian, but distinctly neither. “Wouldn’t mind buying them a drink if we found out who it was.”

“So no idea who would want him dead badly enough to beat him, torture him, and cut his throat to the bone?”

Cora kept her voice light, but they all knew the question for the trap it was.

Byrn roared with laughter as Tor chuckled into his beer.

“Genuinely no idea,” he told her when he managed to stop laughing. And had elbowed his huge friend to quiet the games of laughter to some decidedly undignified snickering. “The shorter list would be people who didn’t want him dead. It’s not like my asshole sire made himself well-liked.”

“Anyone besides you at the top of that list?”

“Lisette,” Tor grinned and took a sip of his beer, flashing more deep tattoos spiraling up under his sleeves, “Rao, here. Any of the Family Men he screwed over in the last lifetime or so. He was popular. Take your pick.”

“Name names for me, Tor,” Cora said, although she really wasn’t surprised it was going this way. No one ever took Tor for an idiot. At least, not more than once. “The faster we do this, the sooner I go away.”

“But we were just starting to like you,” Byrn said cheerfully, still chuckling. “Askin’ Cal would want Breton Tor dead. Funny, you are.”

“I don’t see the joke,” Cora said. She was fishing for information and they knew it, but it might pay off. A sorcerer and a demon were always worth watching, and like it or not, blood called to blood. “And I could use a name or three.”

“Last time I saw him, he was blackmailing me into a heist,” Tor finally coughed up some real information and Cora hurried to write it down. “We had words, and I didn’t see him again after that. About a week later he turned up dead.”

“By words...?” Cora was still hoping for just a little more, and something told her this would be important. “WhT do you mean by that?”

“He beat the shit out of me,” Tor said bitterly, and hiked up his shirt to show more tattoos and a set of deep, half-heeled bruises. “I put him through a wall, pretty polite no considering, and left.”

“Sounds like motive.”

“If you had grounds, I would already be in cuffs.”

Before Cora could reply, the door blasted open and sent shards of wood across the dirty floor.

A dozen men rushed in, clad in unmarked body armor. Each carried a heavy semiautomatic rifle, and they moved like trained professionals.

Byrn and Tor shot to their feet even as Cora kicked over the metal table and took a knee behind it, scant but vital cover.

The new arrivals raised their rifles even as the bar dissolved into chaos. Bullets went everywhere, and Cora was deeply grateful for the thick metal blocking the worst of the fire.

“Friends of yours?” Tor ducked into her cover, closely followed by Byrn. With a snap of his fingers, a shield appeared around them, blocking the rain of bullets. “Lot of firepower for a conversation!”

“They’re not with me!” Cora snapped and pulled her gun. Body armor or no, a good shot would drop a man just fine, and did when she methodically began targeting kneecaps. “You think the cops would storm a place with one of their own inside?”

“Thought you weren’t a cop,” Byrn rumbled and began flinging hands of almost-black fire at the men across the room. Screams announced his aim was good. “Are they badges?”

Cora stole a quick glance and spotted another man, with expensive-looking bodyguards beside him, behind the strike team.

“Callen Tor!” The man yelled when the gunfire slowed, and was only punctuated by groans of pain from the injured. “Come out now or we burn you out!”

“They really don’t know us,” Tor said to Byrn, a sardonic smile on his face. “Thinking fire will bother us one bit. Just sloppy, really.”

“Want me to-“

“Probably best if you don’t.”

“Right-o. Tell me if you change your mind.”

Cora really wished they would use human words, and not the language of two old friends who mostly communicated in shrugs and incomprehensible jokes. “Go live me a minute. I’ll get backup on the way, if hey aren’t already from the gunfire.”

“Don’t bother,” Tor said tightly, and jerked a thumb upwards. “This is the slums. Gunfire is as common as rain here and cops aren’t welcome. Rao, the sprinklers.”

“On it,” Byrn agreed, and blasted the piles above the strike team. Water poured down and soaked the men thoroughly. “Enough?”

“More than enough.” Tor yanked up his sleeves to display cat paw-prints shaped from lightning bolts. They blazed to life and sent electricity crackling over his hands. “Get down Badge. Don’t want to cook you in those cute boots of yours.”

With that he sent a cat made of lightning prowling out around their shelter.

“Try not to kill them,” Cora said, even as the gunfire slowed, and then ceased as men went down, twitching as the cat stalked them, electric paws deep in the growing puddle beneath them. “Irma hard to convince cops to protect a guy who killed twelve guys by himself.”

“They’re not dead,” Tor drawled, and peered over the table and through his shield. “Hey mister! You coming in to talk? I’m not dead!”

There was no answer. When Cora peeked out herself, the man was gone.

His lackeys were already being zip tied, no doubt by Family soldiers, called when the gunfire started.

“Congratulations, Callen Tor,” she said as got to her feet and tucked her gun back under her coat. “Someone has an axe to grind against you.”

“They aren’t the first, and they won’t be the last,” Tor said, but all trace of joking drawl was gone, and only icy seriousness remained in its place. “And they’re going to have to be much, much better than this to take me alive.”

+++

Secondhand Souls:

Partnership of Flames

+++

Support me on Patreon

My Tip Jar

[taehyungiestummy]

Summer Dreams -- Chapter Eighteen

Masterlist     Previous     Next

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3277

         “I’d say that it was fun walking to their place of work, but getting lost kind of put a damper on that,” I roll my eyes as the Big Hit Entertainment building comes into view.

         “At least we got here practically on time,” Emily shrugs. “Next time we should just get a taxi or have Nari drive us.”

         “They could just send someone to pick us up,” I firmly nod, crossing my arms over my chest. “Maybe they will do that next time.”

         “Next time will probably next summer. I’d just like to hang out with them more, period.”

         “I agree with you there. I’d like to spend whole days with them, and know that I can see them whenever I want.”

         “Crazier things have happened, so I think that dream will come true,” Emily opens the building’s door, and we shuffle inside. “Namjoon said that he would be in the lobby to grab us.”

         “There he is,” I point to Namjoon standing off to the side, then start overly waving to get his attention.

         Namjoon’s eyes catch my movements, taking a second to focus in on us before he smiles and waves us over.

         “He’s like our official greeter every time,” Emily chuckles as we make our way over to him.

         “Good afternoon,” Namjoon crosses his arms. “I’m surprised that you are only a little late, since Emily texted me saying you got lost.”

         “Lost is a strong word,” I tap my jaw with my index finger.

         “You just used it outside,” Emily looks at me with a side eye squint.

         “Shut up,” I pout. “We got to see some more of the city, so did we really get lost?”

         “Yes,” Namjoon and Emily grin at each other.

         “You guys are no fun,” I shake my head.

         “That’s because we are just standing in the lobby,” Namjoon turns to face where the elevators are. “Follow me, and we can get to where everyone else is.”

         “Quick question,” Emily says as we journey to the elevators. “Is this how all other groups or solos work? In an office like building?”

         “There are dance rooms, studios, conference rooms, even office,” Namjoon answers. “Everything needed for the creation and production of the Korean music scene.”

         “This place is amazing,” I smile as Namjoon pushes the up-button.

         “From an outsiders view, I guess it is pretty interesting.” Namjoon shrugs, “Just another building where we work, though.”

         “So, all the others are in the room where you practice?” Emily clarifies.

         “Yes, all waiting for us, and they are all excited to see you.”

         The elevator dings and the doors open. The three of us step inside and Namjoon pushes a floor number.

         “Can you repeat the information on the final boy we are meeting today?” I lean against the wall.

         “Jeon Jungkook,” Namjoon starts, “Jungkook on the stage. Sixteen years old, so he’s the youngest.”

         “Ah, the baby,” Emily giggles. “Maknae, if I remember correctly.”

         “That is right. Kookie is our maknae.”

         “Kookie?” I giggle. “That is too cute.”

         “Everyone does think that he is adorable.”

         The elevator comes to a stop and the door opens. Then the three of us step out and Namjoon leads the way down the hall. About a minute later, Namjoon briefly stops at a door before opening in and walking in. Emily and I are not far behind.

         The room we walk into has a mirror on one wall, and nice hard wood floor. The six other members of BTS are warming up in different ways all over the room.

         “We made it!” Namjoon shouts out, quickly switching to ramble off all kinds of things in Korean.

         “Amber,” Taehyung, a huge smile on his face, walks up to me. “Oh, and Emily.”

         “Hi Taehyung,” I almost reach out to grab his hand, but stop myself.

         “Jungkook is over there,” Taehyung motions to a boy on his phone. “Meet him, then come right back to me,” he cups my cheeks in his hands. “Okay?”

         “Sure thing, Taehyung,” I giggle, moving his hands off my face. “Jealous of your maknae?”

         Taehyung’s face instantly drops. “No. He cannot take you. Besides, I am much cuter than him.”

         “He won’t,” I grab Emily’s hand, walking us over to Jungkook.

         “Um, hi Jungkook,” Emily speaks up.

         The boy looks up and slowly smiles. “Hi,” he comes off as shy, and his looks are very adorable. He doesn’t have a really defined face, his jaw line hasn’t developed that much yet. His hair is black and a bit shaggy. He has dark brown, basically black, eyes. His nose is slender and button like, slightly plump lips, and seems to be Taehyung’s height.

         “Nae ileum-eun Amber ibnida,” I smile, knowing how much it means to him that I talk to him in his own language.

         “Nae ileum-eun Emily ibnida,” Emily pulls her hand out of mine.

         “Ah, so Taehyung was right when he said you could speak Korean,” Jungkook nods, the worry of communicating in a language he does not know floating away.

         “You are close to our age, and I hope to spend a lot of time together,” I shift around on my feet. “We don’t know much Korean, but we can still talk.”

         “I think it is very nice that you are trying so hard to learn a foreign language to talk to us,” he ruffles his hair.

         “This might be easier if I get Namjoon,” Emily chuckles. “I’ll be right back,” she turns on her heel.

         “Hi cutie,” Taehyung’s voice fills my ears as arms wrap around my shoulders.

         “Oh, hi, Taehyung,” I giggle. “Nice of you to join us.”

         Taehyung dives into Korean faster than I can track, and Jungkook responds just as quickly. I get lost in their words since I can’t understand anything, and it is pointless to even try to catch what they might be saying.

         “Do you need translating?” Namjoon steps up with Emily on his arm.

         “Yes, a lot,” I pout. “You all talk too fast. Taehyung just sprouting so much Korean way too fast that I think it was on purpose.”

         “Maybe,” Taehyung gives me a small squeeze.

    ��    “You’ll get used to it, and it all comes with learning,” Namjoon says. “For now, I am happy to help you two girls.”

         “Well, I don’t think that these two will tell you what they were just discussing, so that will be pointless,” I sigh.

         “I was just telling him about you,” Taehyung rests his chin on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

         “He was just telling me how you two are best friends,” Jungkook speaks up. “And that we can be friends, too.”

         “Once I become fluent in Korean, for sure,” I nod a few times.

         “It doesn’t seem like you need much help,” Namjoon grins, switching to English. “There are some pronunciation issues, but I’m sure that’s an accent issue and you’ll grasp it eventually.”

         “We’ll keep working at it,” Emily lets go of Namjoon’s arm.

         “I’ll try to get what Taehyung said out of him later, and then I can text Emily about it.”

         “It doesn’t matter, really,” I duck out of Taehyung’s grasp, turning to gently jab at his stomach a few times. “I think I can figure out what it was about. He doesn’t want his maknae to make a move on me, but maybe he should make a move already.”

         Taehyung grabs my hands, giggles fluttering out of his mouth like music to my ears. “Watch me as we dance, okay?” He taps my nose as he speaks in his native tongue.

         “Sure,” I firmly nod. “But I have to sneak a glance at the others.”

         “I want to have most of your attention, though.”

         “I’m sure you do, Tae,” Namjoon pats the boy on the shoulder. “We should probably get to work now.”

         “Before that,” Yoongi’s voice makes me jump as he steps up to us. “How come you didn’t come say hi to me?” He crosses his arms over his chest as he looks at me. “I thought we were friends.”

         I chuckle, “We are friends, but I had to meet Jungkook.”

         “She’s going to be all of our friends, and so is Emily,” Jungkook slowly stands up. “Don’t keep her to yourself, like Tae-hyung wants to do.”

         “I am not going to keep her from anyone,” Taehyung pouts.

         “I have a say in what I do, too,” I briefly raise my hand. “Don’t worry, I am going to spend time with all of you when we have the chance.”

         “I still have yet to get a hug,” Yoongi huffs.

         “You are like a big family,” Emily smiles, turning back to English. “All this teasing and how well you know each other.”

         “A dysfunctional family, that’s for sure,” Namjoon sighs.

         I wrap my arms around Yoongi’s middle, “Those are the best kinds, though. You are also a band of brothers that have no blood relation, which makes it even better. Families that you make give such a heartwarming feeling.”

         “One day you might get to join this crazy family. As long as you want to keep hanging out with us, and decided to keep coming back to Korea.”

         “I wouldn’t mind being a member of this family,” I giggle, taking a step away from Yoongi. “It would be an adventure, and I would be ready to be a part of that journey.”

********

         “Another day spent relaxing in an apartment that is starting to feel a lot like home,” I giggle as I lie down on my side on the couch. My eyes are trained on the screen of my DS as I continue my journey in Pokémon. “This feels so natural.”

         “This is the only change you will ever be excited for,” Emily chuckles as she leans back in the recliner to pop the footrest out.

         “That’s probably true. Most humans despise change, and I am in the boat with all those people. Change makes it feel like I have no control. It makes my brain go crazy with all that I will have to do, or all that I have to get used to all over again.”

         “Nari has been such a blessing to help us transition. Without her I don’t think that this trip would be going nearly as well.”

         “I think that meeting the boys has also helped me enjoy this trip to the max,” I curse under my breath as my lead Pokémon, Piplup, faints. “There’s something to look forward to.”

         “It is nice to know that we get to hang out with them with the effort it takes to plan those times together.”

         “I really want to learn how to dance like the boys. Yesterday was too cool. That get to do that every day. It is their job to dance and sing, which is amazing.”

         “That is their element. It is what they are working so hard at to be the best that they can be. They look so happy and free, too.”

         “We should probably listen to their music a lot more now since we’ve met all of the group, and we looked like total dorks when the song played of the speakers and we had no clue what it was.”

         “That would be a good idea, but where do we start? Don’t they have a couple albums as well as mini-albums?”

“I’m on it,” I set my DS down, reaching an arm out to snatch my phone off the coffee table. “I’ll actually have their songs downloaded already thanks to Tae one day some time ago, so I’ll just play it in order from oldest to newest.”

         “Did they say they leave for America soon? What are they going to do over there?”

         “In a week, yes. They are going to L.A. for some reason, but that is all I know.” I turn the volume on my phone up, placing it back on the coffee table.

         “Taehyung better ask you out on a date before he leaves then. You two need to figure out what the hell your relationship is before we are apart for months.”

         “Well, that is up to Tae if he wants to ask me out. He said he was going to text me today, but I’m still waiting,” I focus back in on my DS.

         “They are busy, as we saw yesterday, so I am sure he is waiting until they are given a long break to be able to talk to you.”

         “Yeah, that’s probably it,” I take a deep breath. “How are you and Namjoon?”

         “Good, I guess. He asked me on a date, if you can call it that, to the bookstore downtown. I’m sure he would like for it to just be the two of us, but I kind of want to make it a double date with you and Taehyung. You love books, so you could get some as Namjoon told me there’s an English section.”

         “I could make that happen,” I let a small yawn escape my lips. “Not comfortable being alone with him just yet?”

         “That, and we promised Nari that we would always be together.”

         “Ah, yes, we can’t leave the apartment without the other. Remind me to ask Taehyung about double dating to the bookstore when he texts today.”

         “As long as you tell me what you two are talking about, I can remind you about the double date suggestion.”

         “I’m loving this music,” I tap my feet to the beat. “I can understand bits and pieces, but there’s still room for improvement.”

         “For the short amount of time that we have been studying the language, I think that we are doing good to pick out words in a song.”

         In the next second, the music cuts out as my ringtone of the Marvel theme takes over.

         “That can be one of three people, and Nari is not having lunch right now,” Emily speaks up. “Better answer quickly before he wonders if you still are friends.”

         “He’s not that clingy,” I roll my eyes, setting my DS down once again and reaching to grab my phone off the coffee table. “He is just worrying right now since we have yet to put a label on what we are.”

         “The label will be a couple, but everyone has to be patient.”

         I click my phone on, seeing that Taehyung is the one who has texted me. “If only Yoongi would have texted and made this funny.”

| Taehyung: Hello cutie! I didn’t forget about texting you, so I hope you weren’t worrying.

| Me: Hey Tae. I have just been playing Pokémon and relaxing as I wait for your text. How is work going?

         “It would be nice if Namjoon texted me now too, but I bet he’s got a lot of other things on his mind,” Emily sighs, placing her notebook on the side table. “Tell me what he says when I get back from the bathroom,” she points at me as she stands up, and before I know it is out of the room.

| Taehyung: Work is good. I miss having you here to watch. It feels better when there is an audience that enjoys what we do.

| Me: I’ll just have to come back some day and watch you again!

| Taehyung: I want you to come back as much as possible because I like being around you.

| Me: I like being around you too, Tae.

| Taehyung: The others will yell at me if I don’t ask you this, and over text helps me feel more confident. Do you want to go out to dinner with me?

         I feel my heart skip a beat as I read the text over and over again for the words to sink in. I want to jump off the couch and dance all over the room. I’m too comfy to do so, but smile as wide as possible as I text back.

| Me: I’ve actually been waiting for you to ask me out on a proper date. So, yes, I’d love to go out to dinner with you!

| Taehyung: Really? Ah, you make me so happy! I have a free day in a few days on the tenth. Can you make that?

| Me: Of course I can make that. I better get to work with my Korean lessons.

| Taehyung: I don’t even need to talk when I’m around you.

| Me: Okay, now you are just being flirty.

         “What’s going on out here?” Emily enters the living room. “Why are you smiling so big? Oh my god, did he ask you out? On a real date?”

         I nod a few times, glancing up to see my best friend with a smile equally as big as mine. “Dinner, on the tenth. Just the two of us. Is this real life?”

         “I can pinch you if you want.”

         “No, I don’t think that will be necessary. Better ask about the double date before he gets back to practice.”

| Me: Oh, and Tae, could you ask Namjoon if it would be okay if we tag along with him on his date with Emily? She doesn’t want to be alone.

| Taehyung: Of course! I’m sure Namjoon will let us come along.

| Me: Great, thank you so much! I better let you get back to work.

| Taehyung: I can’t wait for our date. Wear something cute! Like you always do.

| Me: Will do, Tae! It will probably be the next time we see each other.

| Taehyung: We’ll talk about all the details later. Have a great rest of the day, cutie!

| Me: You too! Have fun with the rest of your practice. I’ll be cheering you on!

| Taehyung: You cheering me on will get me through anything.

         “You have to tell me everything, Amber,” Emily has taken her seat in the recliner with her notebook back on her lap. “My best friend is going on her first real date.”

         “I only know that we are going out to dinner in like, four days?” I set my phone back on the coffee table, knowing I’ll be reading over those texts again later. “He said he’ll let me know where later, and what time, and probably what to wear. He also said he’ll ask Namjoon if we can tag along to your bookstore date.”

         “Basically he didn’t know if you were going to say yes since you two barely know each other, and he doesn’t have anything set in stone yet,” Emily chuckles. “That is actually super cute because it means he worked up the guts to ask you.”

         “That, and the they other boys were going to strangle him if he didn’t.” I pick my DS up once again, hoping that I can play more without getting distracted. “Nari is going to be ecstatic when we tell her the news.”

         “She’ll be the one driving you to the restaurant so she knows where you’ll be for a few hours.”

         “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I grin. “Now, the music is back on, and I really want to beat this gym, so we can go back to the silence before all the crazy happened.”

         “It’s a good thing that I still have big chunks of the scrapbooks to plan, or else we would be planning everything for your date right now.”

         “I have multiple days to plan all I want, so there is no reason to worry,” I start moving my head gently to the beat. “Besides, the more I think about it, the more nervous I will get, and I don’t want to go crazy.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hope you enjoyed reading! Are you hoping the Amber and Taehyung end up together? What about Namjoon and Emily? Is Nari going to find someone? I would love to hear what you think! :D

[toushindai]

The Hidebound Journal

Conflict erupts over the hidebound journal the kid brought back from Prosper Bluff.

[Bastion, missing scene fic]

[ Read on AO3 ]

The journal is all cramped notes and rough diagrams, Venn’s handwriting so haphazard that it would be a challenge to decipher even if he’d written in the language of the City. But it’s written in his native tongue, and Rucks answers the kid’s hopeful glance with a shrug.

“My Ura ain’t that great,” he says. “Zulf’ll have a better chance of reading it than I will. Why don’t you show him?”

The kid’s brows contract. “I don’t know,” he says, averting his gaze. “Something about it makes me nervous. You really can’t read it?”

“Not quickly.” Rucks can make out a few words here and there, but to actually pick out what it’s saying, he’d need a lot of time and maybe a dictionary.

The kid leaves it with him anyway, rather than showing Zulf, and he heads out to the edge of the Wilds with a musket slung over his shoulder. “Be careful, okay?” he says to Zia before he goes, even though the worst that could happen already has. Rucks scoffs at the unnecessary warning as artless flirting.

But try as he might, he can’t convince himself of his own nonchalance. He’s been uneasy since the kid brought that notebook to the Bastion, too, a sick sense of premonition in the pit of his stomach. Maybe he will work on Venn’s journal after all. It’s something, at least, to keep him from dwelling on his sense of déjà vu and the Bastion and what those two things might mean together.

An hour later, though, he’s two uninteresting pages in, and the only things he’s learned are that Venn hated his job and that Ura still gives him a headache. It would be easier if Zia weren’t humming, but Rucks isn’t about to stop her; he admires her optimism. He wishes he could feel the same way. By all rights, he should: all the kid has to do is find that last core and they’re home free. They’ll go back to before the Calamity. The City will remake all its decisions, and hopefully this time it’ll do a better job. In a sense, it doesn’t even matter what’s in this journal.

But he can’t get rid of this lingering apprehension, so he keeps reading. Or at least trying to.

“Do you need some help?”

Rucks is so caught up in his thoughts that he jumps when Zulf touches his shoulder. The startle response makes sense. The way his stomach plunges with suspicion and fear doesn’t so much. He’s been feeling this ever since the kid brought Zulf back, to his own frustration. He thought he’d left all his old racial sentiments behind; there’s no point in resenting or fearing the Ura anymore. And it certainly doesn’t make sense to resent or fear Zulf. He’s a gentleman, learned and kind; he believes in nothing so much as peace between the Cael and the Ura. That’s something few Caelondians ever bothered to believe in.

So maybe that’s why Rucks sighs and hands the journal over. “Need more than just help,” he confesses. “My Ura was never this good. You want to take a crack at it? Translate it for our little songbird over there?”

“I could do that.” Zulf accepts the journal, but his eyes are on Zia. “It’s a tragedy that she wasn’t taught any of her own language.”

“Well, it’s outlawed within City limits,” Rucks says practically.

A strain appears on Zulf’s face. “I wish it weren’t. We have so much to learn from each other, the Ura and the Cael.”

“I agree wholeheartedly, but I’m just sayin’, Venn had enough reason to avoid teachin’ her anything that might bring the wrath of the Marshals down on her head.” Given that she gets twitchy when the kid flashes the badge he picked up, might be that Venn wasn’t entirely successful in shielding her.

But Zulf doesn’t pursue that line of thought any further. Instead, he tilts his head. “You speak of her father rather familiarly. Did you know him?”

Rucks shrugs, hesitates; then decides that there’s nothing stopping him from being honest. “We were distant coworkers, you might say,” he explains. “Both Mancers. Our paths crossed once or twice.”

“Mancers,” Zulf repeats with wariness in his voice. “Are you sure I should be reading this journal, then?”

“Well, if there were any City left to speak of, I’d be on the hook for treason just for handin’ it to you. But there ain’t no one left for whatever’s in that journal to hurt.”

Zulf sighs heavily. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll see what I can do.”

*

So Rucks leaves the journal with Zulf and tries to think no more of it. The kid will be back soon, and anyway it looks like rain, so he goes down to the Bastion’s heart and checks it against his own notes. Everything looks to be in place. As long as the principle behind the restoration function is solid—and he flatters himself that it is—then they should be able to undo the Calamity just as soon as the kid brings back that last core. Then everything Rucks has put him through will be worth it, and it’ll be erased anyway. He wonders what the kid’ll do once he gets off his absurd second tour on the walls. Briefly, Rucks indulges in the fantasy of remembering just enough to find him and take him on as an apprentice. He may not have the subtlety of thought expected of a Mancer, but he’s not an idiot. He’s effective. Sometimes that’s what the Mancers value most of all.

He’s disturbed from his task when the Bastion gives a great shudder, and his stomach plunges. Not again is his first thought, but he doesn’t stop to figure out why. As fast as his legs and his cane will take him, he climbs up to the Bastion’s surface—

Just in time to see a rain-drenched Zulf raise the kid’s hammer over his head and swing it down against the Monument. Metal resounds against stone and Rucks’ ears ring.

“Hey!” he thunders. “What are you doing?!”

Zulf doesn’t stop. He raises the hammer again with a strained grunt and lets gravity and the hammer’s weight do his dirty work. The Monument fractures under his assault with an enormous crack, and blood pounds in Rucks’ ears. He hobbles forward over the slippery stone, barely taking the time to curse his old body or wish that the kid had come back faster before he’s shouting again.

“Zulf, what in Mother’s name are you doing?” he demands. “That Monument is our only hope!”

“Your only hope of what?!” Zulf whirls around as Rucks nears. He slips in the rain and the hammer’s weight nearly overbalances him, but he catches himself. “Of finishing off the Calamity’s work, of murdering the rest of my people?”

“What?” Rucks asks in genuine confusion.

Patience and despair alike are gone from Zulf’s face; instead, it’s twisted with loathing. Rucks can hardly believe this is the same self-appointed diplomat that the kid brought back from the Hanging Gardens. “Don’t you dare play the fool with me, old man—”

“Zulf? Rucks?” Zia runs up as if to get between them. “What’s going on?”

“Stay back!” Rucks orders, warning her away with an outstretched arm. She falters, looking back and forth in confusion.

Something unreadable flashes across Zulf’s face. “You think I’d hurt her?”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you!” Rucks growls in answer. He takes one more step forward and reaches for the hammer to pull it out of Zulf’s grasp. “Why don’t you put this down and—”

“No!”

Zulf grapples with the hammer and shakes him free. Rucks falls backwards with an undignified, muddy flump. A jolt of pain shoots up his tailbone and down his calves.

“Zulf, what are you doing?” Zia rushes forward to help, but they both ignore her.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Zulf?” Rucks demands.

But Zulf only spits a question in return. “How much did you know about the ‘peace project’?”

All the air goes out of Rucks at once and he goes pale. Instinctively, he tries to protest ignorance, but he can’t do it. He can’t. He’s known the whole time that the Calamity had the marks of Mancer tech, he’s just tried to pretend not to. “What did Venn do?” he asks, his voice trembling.

“My father?” Zia asks faintly. “Zulf, what does my father have to do with this? Is this about his journal?”

Rucks glances her way and sees that her pale skin is even paler with alarm. His stomach drops, some instinctive dread telling him that she deserves better than to hear whatever’s made Zulf so furious. “Zia, this doesn’t—”

“You want to know what he did, Rucks?” Zulf switches suddenly into Ura, his voice cold. “He turned the Cael’s own weapon against them.”

His words come as quick and vicious as their machetes as he explains, and it’s a struggle to keep up, but Rucks doesn’t need to catch every word to follow the story. The Mancers had Venn on the peace project, searching for something to prevent future war between the Cael and the Ura. He found a way to seal the Ura tunnels with the Ura trapped inside. They told him it would only be used in an emergency. He didn’t believe them, or maybe he just didn’t care. He set his weapon to backfire if they ever did use it. To take down the Cael along with the Ura.

To cause the Calamity.

Rucks’ heart pounds as Zulf finally falls silent. Zia speaks before he can, Zulf’s tirade gone over her head because the girl can’t speak her own inherited language. “Zulf, what did you say?” When Zulf just looks back at her, jaw set, she looks at Rucks instead. “What did he say?”

Rucks feels sick. “Never mind,” he says. “Stay out of this.”

“But—”

“Forget it, Zia,” Zulf says, speaking Cael once more.

“You’re talking about my father—”

“Stay out of it!” Rucks and Zulf snap, almost in sync. Zulf glares at Rucks as if angry that he, too, cares to protect Zia from despair.

Rucks tries to find the words. “Zulf,” he says, “no one wanted this—”

Zulf sneers. “No, you just wanted my people safely disposed of!”

“That wasn’t the point!” Rucks retorts, but it’s a poor defense and he knows it. He swallows hard and makes himself say, “Listen, the peace project was—bad. Ain’t a single good thing that’s come out of it. But that’s what the Bastion is for, all right? To keep people safe. And if you go destroyin’ it—”

“Then the Cael will fall once and for all!” Zulf finishes for him.

Mother, he’s righter than he knows. “You don’t understand what the Bastion’s capable of—”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly keen to find out,” Zulf snarls. “You, and your Bastion, and your entire damn City can go to hell. If I have to—”

But the shattered stone at his feet takes on a blue sheen suddenly, just before the Bastion shakes with an impact. The kid. He’s back.

Zulf’s eyes dart towards the skyway and he swears under his breath. He’s afraid of the kid, Rucks realizes, and some vindictive part of him feels smug at the realization. Zulf deserves to panic after what he’s done to the Bastion. The core won’t be enough to fix this.

But Zulf only grimaces and throws the hammer down at Rucks’ feet. “I’m going home,” he says in Ura. “If any of my people are left alive, you’ll see them soon.”

Rucks’ smugness falls away and it’s his turn to feel fear. “Zulf, what are you thinking?”

Zulf sends a long glare his way as the kid runs up, baffled.

“Rucks? Zia?” The kid looks at Zulf like he doesn’t want to believe what he’s seeing. “Zulf, what’s going on?”

Zulf’s eyes pass over the kid once, and then he turns away. “The Calamity failed,” he says in a low, trembling voice. “But I will not.”

He storms towards the skyway, and the kid doesn’t even grasp the situation well enough to try to stop him. He hurries to Rucks instead, to help him up. He and Zia get Rucks to his feet together, and Rucks thanks them for their attention.

But his heart is still racing, and even with his cane back in hand, he’s never felt so unsteady.

[limitlessmonster]

18 for AoKi. Please. DOESN'T MATTER WHICH ONE OF THEM SAY IT. Give me angst..or fluff (or you know.. both).

18. “I shouldn’t be in love with you.”

title: drownpairing: aokisegenre: angst with a happy endingw/c: 2200summary: one night with kise turns into a dozen and aomine begins to wonder if he can really dip his feet in without letting himself drown.a/n: you said the magic words, cocobeans ♥ this got away from me hahaon ao3

The first time they hook up, it’s at an after-party for one of Kise’s events. It’s flashy and loud - all glitter and gold and flashbulb lights. Everything Kise is used to, attention he basks in. Aomine had been uncomfortable then, nursing a drink (his fourth of the night) and staying in his corner until Kise had been ready to leave. It was by chance Aomine had run into him in the first place, the spontaneous invite out of the blue and probably offered because Kise couldn’t find anyone else to go with him at the last minute.

“My date canceled,” he’d said, tapping away on his phone before he’d offered a sheepish grin and a hopeful tilt of his head. “Why don’t you come with me instead? It’ll be fun, Aominecchi! We can play basketball after if you get bored.”

Aomine had tried to decline, tried to find an excuse not to go so he wouldn’t have to spend the night boozing with a crowd that made him feel out of place, like he didn’t quite belong. But Kise was insistent. And when Kise has his mind set, Aomine has learned long ago not to even try.

When he’d found himself tangled with Kise in an empty coat room of the banquet hall, the music blaring from somewhere close by, Aomine had tried to think of a million excuses why it’d been a bad idea. But between the end of his fifth glass and Kise’s mouth burning a trail along the curve of his jaw, his excuses had disappeared into a haze filled with sloppy, heated, wanting kisses that continued well into the night, promise of basketball forgotten.

All he remembers is a hangover from hell, aching limbs, and Kise’s half-turned smile as he lay naked beneath the crumpled white of starched sheets tugged around legs that had been wrapped around him only hours before. He’d snuck out that morning, a texted apology and an impulsive kiss against Kise’s wayward strands all that was left as a reminder of what he’d tried to forget.

If Kise was bothered by his abrupt departure, he didn’t let on. Instead, he’d called for lunch a few days later and by the time they’d hooked up at least a dozen times (thirteen, but who was counting), Aomine knew he needed to make a decision. Needed to end things before it became so complicated, he’d drown in it like he did at thirteen. He thought he’d learned his lesson, even when, at fifteen, Kise had swept him in again before he’d realized it was too late to turn back. But now he’s older, wiser. More adept at recognizing the pull, the wreckage Kise would leave.

It seems, he thinks as he narrows his eyes at the publication he’d tossed on the table where Kise had been sitting with a model Aomine vaguely recognizes, that his decision has been made for him. Makes it easier, he tells himself. Makes it so I never have to go through this shit again.

But the thought only makes him angrier, more upset with himself than anything else that he’d let it happen again. That he’d been so stupid. 

The magazine lays open on the table, pages crumpled beyond repair, but somehow managing to flip open at the exact page responsible for inciting Aomine’s ire in the first place.

Kise’s picture stares up at him, wrinkled but still vibrant, still teasing, his finger pressed secretively against lips Aomine knows well. But the look isn’t meant for him; instead, Kise is pressed up against someone else. Someone, who up until an hour before, Aomine had been sure was just “a friend from work”. 

His fingers curl into his palms, nails biting into the skin, intent on breaking it if only to feel something else besides the hurt and confusion churning like venom in his gut, the irritation singing in his veins. The sting keeps him distracted as Kise stands in front of him, guiltily biting the edge of his lip while he fumbles for an excuse. 

Because anything he says right then is just that. An excuse, a half-hearted attempt to keep Aomine’s temper in check, a way to smooth things over.

Aomine should have known better. But he is just as stupid, just as gullible, just as fucked as the first time he let himself fall, let himself drown, wreckage be damned. 

“Aominecchi, it’s not what you thi–” Kise starts, his half-empty glass of whatever blue fruity thing he’s decided to have this time around knocked carelessly aside when he’d jumped apart from the model he’d shot with earlier in the day. Aomine gives the guy a once over, attempting to shove away the image of his arm around Kise’s shoulder, whispered conversation meant for places probably less public than some crummy bar. His steeled gaze scrutinizes the pale skin, the perfectly symmetrical face, the black button-up with sleeves rucked up to the guy’s elbows. Easy on the eyes, he thinks. Exactly like someone Kise should be with.

“Wasn’t thinkin’ anything,” Aomine replies with a knowing smirk in the guy’s direction. It earns him a confused grin in return, and even in the darkness of the bar, he can feel Kise’s burning gaze on him. “Just thought I’d drop this off. It’s what you wanted to talk about, right? You could’ve just texted. It would’ve been a hell of a lot faster to get it over with than draggin’ my ass down here. Nice article, by the way,” he says with a dry chuckle, before he hands the other guy a handful of bills and pats his shoulder and, because his insides feel hollowed out and he needs something, anything, to make him not feel as dumb as he probably looks, he lashes out with a snide, “he likes the blue drinks, but the green ones will do the trick faster.”

Kise’s expression is enough to level him, to ignite the guilt that joins the silent agony he refuses to acknowledge. His companion continues to look just as confused as before, but Aomine doesn’t stay to hear what either of them has to say. He turns and deadpans, tosses a mocking salute over his shoulder before weaving his way through the crowd. The air outside is cold, biting, but it tempers the stifling heat suffocating him moments before. The wind permeates through his clothes, runs a shiver up his spine. He tugs his coat around himself, intent on putting as much distance between him and whatever the hell just happened. 

“Wait, Aominecchi!”

Aomine quickens his pace, curses himself for the sting behind his eyelids, and shoves his hands into his pockets as he pushes through despite the chilled wind whipping his face. Belated, he realizes his breaths have shallowed, and when a hand grabs his arm to pull him back, he exhales with a gasp as he whirls around to find Kise, wild-eyed and hair mussed, expression just as wrecked as Aomine feels. 

Walls building back up, brick by brick, he deadpans before yanking his arm away. “I don’t have time for this shit,” he says, tone even. A little exasperated at having been made to have this conversation. But betraying nothing else.

“If you’d just let me explain–”

Aomine snorts, shakes his head. “It’s fine. You needed to get laid, I was there, it was convenient. I get it.”

“No, you don’t. It’s not like th–”

“I read the article.” Aomine rolls his eyes at Kise’s incredulous look. “I know, surprise, surprise. I actually do read your shit. Would’ve been nice to find out I’m ‘nobody special’ without havin’ to read it outta some fucking magazine, but hey, can’t lose what you didn’t have, right?”

“Aominecchi,” Kise tries again, voice tight. Aomine avoids looking at his face on purpose, doesn’t know if he can stomach what he’d find if he did. “When I did that interview, it was the day after you left me in the hotel and I didn’t know what that was or what we were because you disappeared and I–”

But Aomine puts a hand up to stop him. “That was a mistake. I shoulda stopped it then ‘cause I knew where that shit was going. I knew it like how I knew it wasn’t gonna work back in high school ‘cause I was good enough for you to fuck around with when no one knew about it, but not good enough to tell anyone about–”

“Aominecchi, please,” Kise whispers, desperate now, his hands twitching like he’s trying to keep from reaching out. Aomine knows the feeling. 

“It was me. I fucking let it happen and I shoulda known better.” Aomine scoffs, bites the edge of his lip to keep his voice from shaking before he continues, “I mean, you’re you,” he says plainly, rambling now, waving a hand at Kise like it should be obvious that the universe is fucking with him. “I shouldn’t be in love with you.”

Kise stills, eyes wide and Adam’s apple noticeably bobbing. It’s a minute before he speaks, but when he does, it’s hesitant, unsure. “What?” he squeaks, taking a step back and shaking his head like Aomine had said something in a foreign language he couldn’t understand. 

With a hand at his nape, Aomine shrugs. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, meeting Kise’s gaze and holding it; a glint of a challenge. “I’m ‘nobody special’… remember?”

“I lied!” Kise throws his hands up in the air before tangling his fingers through his hair in surprising frustration. “I didn’t want to sound more pathetic than I already felt. I thought when we’d met up again that maybe this time, it’d be different. This time, I wasn’t going to mess it up. We’re not as dumb as we both were before, we’d had time to figure out what we wanted, and I even canceled my date so you’d come to the party with me.” He sucks in a shaky breath, the tremble of his lip something Aomine fights to brush away. “But you left. And then I thought I was so stupid for thinking I could be to you what you’ve always been to me–”

It takes a second for Aomine to register what Kise had said, but when he does, he plants a hand on Kise’s face to shut him up as he tries to piece it together. “Hold on, what?” 

Kise bats his hand away. “You were always looking at those magazines and you never seemed to be interested in what I had to say or what I was doing outside of basketball, so I thought, I don’t know, that I would end it before I got hurt any more than I already did,” he says, voice quiet. His lip juts out in a small pout, the glance he gives Aomine a little helpless, a little embarrassed. “That guy you saw me with inside? That wasn’t what you thought – he was trying to talk me into confessing and I was too chicken to do it ‘cause I didn’t want to mess up whatever we are. But I did that anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter if you know now.”

Aomine lets the words sink in, takes in Kise’s mournful expression before he closes his eyes and doubles over, laughter echoing through the near empty parking lot. He braces a hand against his knee, presses the other against his side to alleviate the cramping pain. Kise waits for the laughter to subside before he squats in front of Aomine and tentatively ventures, “a-are you okay? I don’t get what’s so funny…”

Aomine shakes his head and straightens, offering to help Kise up. “You’re an idiot, y’know that?” he says, suddenly hyper-aware of the way his heart thrums against his rib cage and that he’s still holding on to Kise’s hand. 

Kise looks affronted at the insult, but something in Aomine’s expression must have looked less tense, less angry than it did a moment before because he scoffs and tries to cross his arms without letting Aomine go. Their eyes meet and they both burst into hysterics. It isn’t until they’ve both calmed down that Aomine realizes how closely they’re standing together.  Kise seems to sense it at exactly the same moment, his eyes zeroing in on Aomine’s mouth when he bites the edge out of anticipation. 

“So, um,” Kise murmurs, so close that Aomine feels the warmth of his breath, catches the hint of sandalwood. Aches with the memory of it, the familiar yearning for something he thought he’d never have. “What now?”

“You’re an idiot, I’m an idiot,” Aomine says with a shrug, arms fitting around Kise like they were always meant to be there. “We can be idiots together? Wait, that sounds stupid and cheesy and just forget I sai–”

“Daiki,” Kise says with a small grin, lips so agonizingly close that Aomine can almost taste him, “I love cheesy. And stupid. Almost as much as I love you. Now, are you going to shut up and kiss me or do I have to–”

Before Kise can finish, Aomine closes the distance. Forgets dipping his feet in and lets himself drown.